When you start looking into Nootropics available on the market today, you’ll find there are many supplements on offer and different supplements might work in different ways. Whilst we don’t have the room to go into immense detail into how each nootropic supplement works, we can give you information about the two mechanisms that these supplements call upon.
- Nootropics work by affecting neurotransmitter functions and we’ve already covered why these are important a little earlier in our guide. In brief, your brain is driven by billions of neurotransmitters and many of these transmitters have a set way of communicating with themselves. The communications between these transmitters result in the display of our moods, what we feel, and how we react to certain situations. Decreasing and increasing of the right chemicals in the right way will result in more efficient communication levels within the brain and this is what we are aiming for by taking Nootropics. Think of you brain as an industrial unit – the neurons are the employees and the neurotransmitters are the product. By taking Nootropics you increase the productivity of your neurons by increasing the amount of products (neurotransmitters) they create and control.
- There are many nootropic supplements that help to increase the flow of oxygen to the brain and to parts of the body. Not only does your brain use oxygen as fuel, but it also delivers oxygen to the parts of the body that need it the most. When we experience a decrease in oxygen, this is known as hypoxia whilst a lack of oxygen is called anoxia.
Symptoms of mild hypoxia include lack of coordination and concentration whilst prolonged hypoxia can result in brain damage. Complete anoxia will result in permanent brain damage or death with death setting in after as little as 4-5 minutes.
When the brain is receiving good levels of oxygen it distributes these levels to the areas that need it the most – your life support functions. These include the heart and lungs. After this, oxygen is delivered to the memory. Sufficient oxygen levels help to increase brain functions such as memory creation and recall and concentration amongst others.
Oxygen is what powers your brain. Let’s go back to the factory example. If your factory was to have no oxygen the power would fail and the machines and workers (neurons) would eventually stop working and running. When you have lots of oxygen in your system your factory will be firing on all cylinders and running well.
- Some Nootropics also increase your neuron growth factor (NFG). You may have been told that as you grow up and become an adult it is not possible to create new brain cells and that brain cells continue to decrease with age. However, modern science has since disproved this myth. In the 1950s, Rita Levi-Nontalcini and Stanley Cohen discovered the neuron growth factor and went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1986 for this discovery.
The NFG is the metric used to gauge the growth and maintenance of a number of different neurons. Let’s go back to the factory scenario again and the workers that are slaving away hard to produce products for your brain. Just as in any business, workers are hired and workers retire. When it comes to the brain factory, workers are hired a lot less quickly than they are retired and that results in the signs of aging in the brain. There are a number of Nootropics that can increase the hiring of workers so it is achieved at a much faster rate. Overall, brain aging will be decreased and mental health improved.