Thank you both for your responses.
Because of this, I've decided to add 400mg L-Theanine + 500mg L-Tryptophan, and enable "F.LUX" (computer program that increases melatonin production in the brain by dimming bright/blue lights on your monitor) an hour before my desired sleep,
I'm now getting at least 7 hours of sleep, with even better wakefulness throughout the day.
BTW, I'm glad you're having positive results with your -racetams stack. I am willing to bet that it's your lowest-but-effective dose of choline bitartrate that is somewhat responsible for this. Many people make the mistake of dosing too much choline; resulting in negative effects.
For me, I like to dose 150mg Alpha-GPC (once a day), with 400mg Piracetam + 250mg Aniracetam (both 3x a day). I find that lower dosages in general work better for me, along with some others.
I might try this just for peace of mind. I am aware the L-tryptophan is for melatonin production, and L-Theanine (which I honestly haven't heard much about before, but a quite wikipedia reveals) is for promoting alpha wave production. Would you mind elaborating a little on how you decided on these chemicals specifically? Did you try one first and add the other later for example, or just hit on it straight away?
Also, what specifically do you feel the L-Theanine adds? Not very clued up at the moment about the effects of different "brainwaves" so am interested.
I have taken 5-HTP before as a serotonin precursor (a long time ago now when I was more into somewhat neurotoxic chemicals) in an effort to mitigate MDMA neurotoxicity. I notice L-Tryptophan seems to convert to melatonin via serotonin... does this meamn 5-hydroxytryptophan would do also, or not? (Not particularly important either way I guess, just curious about serotonin's connection to melatonin.)
On the choline thing - I have considered other choline sources but decided to stick with bitartrate for now as for me it's sort of reassuring I guess that it has to go through a metabolic process, whereas Alpha-GPC (if I remember correctly) passes directly through the Blood-Brain Barrier, meaning, I would think, it would be easier to use a more than comfortable dose.
][/size]I'm having pretty much the same thing. I've been taking 2 x 750 mg aniracetam for about a month, and 3 x 800 mg piracetam for about 2 weeks, without any choline, because I've tried some source of choline and they all make me feel bad in some ways (CDP Choline, Choline bitartrate, ALCAR). And I don't feel any side-effects when taking these racetams without choline.
It all went great when I first started the racetams. Although there were some initial fatigue and weirdness, it went away after a few days. Aniracetam make me feel calm and not nervous around people. Piracetam seems to increase my verbal fluency, creativity, and music make me more excited. I was doing great socially.
This last one week though, have been a problem. I could go to sleep easily, and the sleep was great, but I could only slept for 5 hours. At first, I could still function pretty well, but days after days I slept on 5 hours, I felt weaker each days. And the "good feeling" I got from the racetams diminished each days, probably because of the lack of sleep.
Right now, when I'm writing this, it's morning. I just woke up after another 5 hours sleep. I'm feeling tired and can't think clearly, but I can't sleep.
I also took other supplements but this problem only started when I started the racetams. I really don't want to drop the racetams, and hoping to find another supplement to make my sleep normal again.
Ah, that is fairly worrying. I guess it's almost inevitable that there would be some side effects though. Honestly I do feel a little tired this morning so hopefully that is not the start of increasing problems with this sleep weirdness.
I am going to be taking a week break from all Nootropics in about 5 days as I am going on holiday and don't really feel like taking a bunch of relatively unknown (if not actually illegal) pills and powders onto a plane, so that will give my brain a chance to readjust if I don't find another solution in the meantime, after which I will probably start supplementing with at least L-Tryptophan before sleep.
