6 replies to this topic

[goku]

I'm just curious why P-serine isn't more popular. I haven't done enough research on it yet, but in a couple of books on Noops I've been reading, it's been consistently getting the highest or second highest rating as a cognitive enhancer. Of course, both books gave Vincopetine a very poor rating and people here feel vincopetine is great from what I've read.

[gcurrie]

Possibly due to experiental reasons, as you say.

PS did nothing for me that I could discern. I tried it for almost a month.

Vinpocetine has a very noticeable effect for me.

It seems that many nootropics and cognitive enhancers differ significantly from person to person. For example, I tried a course of liquid hydergine. Did not care for it much. Others think it's the bees knees.

Since our mixture of neurotransmitters and receptors are highly individual, it would make sense that our responses are as well.

[oilfieldpilot]

I guess I fall into one of the -Vinpocetine doesn't do much for me- group.
I used it alone for about 2 yrs and noticed nothing.
but I don't discount it and keep it in the stack.

never tried P'serine.

[xanadu]

Vinpocetine had a slight effect on me. It was so slight I quit using it after a while and then after I'd been off it, I began to notice I was a little fuzzier in the memory department than I was when I was on it. It's not a striking difference like you might get from a racetam but it does do some good so I'm back on it.

[purerealm]

I've been wondering the same thing about PS. LM removed it from his initial stack and didn't really give any reasons why.

[rhdrury]

how do you people get an objective measure of whether these marginally beneficial results (xanadu - Vinpocetine...) are actually due to the substances themselves, and not that it's just you're getting more sunlight or falling in love or the effects of something else are fully kicking in...?

[gcurrie]

It's really tough to get an objective measure. I've observed it is a lot easier to notice the effects in the absence of the substance (like when you cycle off or stop for any other reason) than to see any objective yardstick of cognitive ability.

For instance, I ran out of capped aniracetam (the first racetam I tried). While waiting for my bulk powder to arrive, I noticed that the verbal fluency I had been enjoying for 5-6 weeks seemed to have dropped off somewhat. I observed myself spending more time searching for the right word when two weeks before the right word rolled off my lips with minimal latency. Once I resumed my aniracetam regimen, the verbal fluency returned within a couple of days.

I've noticed this type of process with piracetam, with vinpocetine, and with deprenyl. Less so with pyritinol, picamilon, centrophenoxine.

I think the key is to avoid judging effects based on short time periods, and to validate your observations with cycling off. Also, it is impossible in my experience to detect effects from many nootropics at once.

I look at it like exercise. Years ago I started exercising regularly. I did not feel any positive effects right away. It took a month before I experienced any endorphin high. But once time had passed, and especially when I stopped for a time, it was more noticeable.

To your point, maybe it's all subjective and thus an illusion. Maybe it's the biggest placebo effect I've ever experienced. I haven't done any IQ testing before and after. I'm not even sure there are tests available that could end the argument. Utlimately, it doesn't matter since I see undeniable positive effects in almost every area of my life connected with cognitive abilities. The effects are objective, the causes are speculative. The only substantial change was starting to experiment with nootropics a year ago.

Having lived for 48 years, I've never seen a change this big in a year's time.