/nootropics/ - Nootropics

What do you consider nootropic? Something like modafinil or amphetamine has pretty obvious effects, but their 'nootropicness' is argued.

>>13

Something that makes you super concentrated, and gives you energy, or at least gets rid of fatigue.

>>14

That's stims. Start with Modafinil. Its the least harmful of the stimulants.

Well, if you want to know about amino acids specifically, I'd start with organic chemisty. IIRC Khan Academy teaches organic.

To give you the short answer to what an amino acid is, it's… wait for it… both an amine and an acid. You see that nitrogren with the two hydrogens on it in your pick? That's an amine group, meaning chemicals that have that attached are called 'amines'. Amines are alkaline. If you put them in water they accept a hydrogen from a water molecule, leaving a free OH- ion in the water. See that carbon with the two oxygens and the hydrogen on it? That's an organic acid group. When you put it in water, it gives off an H+ ion, just like any other acid. Any compound with one of these attached is an 'organic acid.'

Amino acids are both acids and bases at the sample time. This means under the right conditions, the amine group of one amino acid can bond to the acid group of another amino acid. This is called a 'peptide' bond, and the resulting compound is a called a 'peptide.' If you start making long chains of these, eventually they will start doing weird things with themselves, like coiling into helices and bending back and forth into sheets. These very large peptide chains are called 'proteins.' They have many, many different functions in the body.

Feel free to ask any more questions, but like I said, learn a little organic chemistry, then start getting into the biology side of things.

the autistic way (works if you have a math background) :

learn (the basics of) quantum physics

learn its application to organic chemistry

then learn organic chemistry

then biology

of course its not fully needed and not the way biologists are trained but coming from a more autistic background you might have trouble with all the magic, in any case be assured that all can be traced back to actual physics

>>10

Yeah that's pretty autistic. The underlying quantum physics is one of the LAST things you learn as a chemist. The whole idea behind chemistry is that you can understand reactions based on empirical observation rather than churning through massive amounts of quantum equations, most of which have to be solved/approximated numerically.

>the posters turn out to either be selling the products themselves or are otherwise benefitting from the sales or referalls their posts generate.

That's actually part of the reason this board was created. /r/nootropics is run by the guy that owns ceretropic. His personal army downboats any criticism of his products or service.

As far as results, I've had good success with noopept. It did a good job of helping my memory in college and helped me pass calculus 3 with flying colors.

I've just started experimenting with piracetam, and its seems to help, but its not strong enough of an effect to convince me its not placebo. It does seem to be slightly stimulating, but I haven't noticed the kind of verbal fluency and enhanced colors beginning piracetam users tend to report.