#116 How to Fix Your Brain with Nootropics - David Tomen the Nootropics Expert

David Tomen (0:00)

I tested fine, I didn't have Alzheimer's or Dementia, so mainstream medicine could not help me.

But my life was falling apart, my marriage was in trouble, we were broke, I couldn't run a business anymore, and I was determined that I was going to either fix this brain again, or die, and I chose to live. You're giving your brain the things that it needs to perform the way it wants to perform.

SPEAKER_2 (0:24)

Do you want to know what it is?

Siim Land (0:27)

It is Body Mind Empowerment.

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Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:35)

Everything the body needs.

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Control your mind.

Siim Land (0:41)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast, I'm your host Siim Land, and our guest today is David Tomen, the NoTropics expert. David runs the website notropicsexpert.com, which is a resource about different nootropic compounds and biohacks to improve your cognition.

David, welcome to the show.

David Tomen (0:59)

Thank you so much for having me on, Siim.

Siim Land (1:01)

Yeah, thanks for coming. And I think you got a really good hold on the SEO title of your website, which is a good kind of a domain for people who are specifically looking into improving their cognition with nootropics.

But why did you become involved in this field? And how did you start learning about nootropics?

David Tomen (1:24)

That's a good question. And it was kind of accidental. About 12 years ago, I was diagnosed with adult ADD, which was a revelation to me. Psychiatrists said that it was adult ADD and PTSD, which that took me about 10 years to figure out where that came from. But adult ADD, he put me on Ritalin, methoquatidate. And it was like somebody turned the lights on in my brain. It was just like this miraculous improvement. And all of a sudden, for the first time in my adult life, I was able to focus. But about two years into that, I started growing a tolerance to methoquatidate. And it was helping me so much, I was determined that I was going to find out what was going on, how the thing worked in my brain, and if there was anything that I could do to improve this efficacy or the way it worked. So I found out the mechanism of action for methoquatidate and how it worked. And I realized that my brain was served with dopamine.

And I did a little bit more research and I found out that L-tyrosine is a precursor to dopamine. So if I just took L-tyrosine, I could supply more dopamine to my brain so that the Ritalin worked better and it worked. And the other problem that we've got with ADD and ADHD brains is brain cell signaling.

And a little bit more research and I discovered that acetylalkarnitine or Alkar helps in brain cell signaling and synthesizing the set of colon. So I started supplementing with malt or anacetylalkyrosine and Alkar or acetylalkarnitine and all of a sudden Ritalin started working again and it was working really well. And if I dosed it correctly later on in the day, I didn't have a stimulant crash like we typically associate with the stimulant drugs.

So that was my first, but I still had not heard the word nootropic. I just knew that these supplements help the brain. And then about six years ago, I ended up in the hospital with what my wife thought was a heart attack. And it turns out it wasn't a heart attack at all, but for some reason I turned severely hyperthyroid with two long lists of symptoms. And one of them was complete memory loss.

And I went to two different neurologists who tested me for Alzheimer's and I tested fine. I didn't have Alzheimer's or dementia, so mainstream medicine could not help me. But my life was falling apart.

My marriage was in trouble. We were broke. I couldn't run a business anymore. And I was determined that I was going to either fix this brain again or die. And I chose to live. And so I started doing more research and found out what I needed to do to restore my memory and restore my cognition. And here we are today. Now it's working better than ever before. So that was kind of like my introduction. And that's when I started, when I first heard the word nootropics and the origination of that term and where it came from and what it meant and what dietary supplements can legitimately legitimately be called nootropics.

Siim Land (4:46)

Can we go through like what is the definition of nootropics and maybe give like a few examples to people as well?