Switch Your Brain to Swoosh

At WillPowders, we’ve reviewed the best Mother Nature and science have to offer to form our steady, reliable and hardworking gang of ingredients for our nootropic stack, so you can be certain your brain’s in good hands.  Strap your scuba gear on, we’re deep diving those ingredients …

At WillPowders, we don’t shy away from the realities of modern life.  Many of us fantasise about downshifting our stress, going to live in an isolated place and living the good life off grid, but, while those plans are a-planning, the reality of the amount of things we need to do in the meantime is as real as the nose on our face.   That’s where a nootropic product can help.  Nootropics can help us respond and re-set the course on some of the ways our brains and bodies might react to being overwrought and overwhelmed while under energised.  And, we are talking about nature, not the so-called ‘smart pills’ hijacked from Big Pharma and put to other use by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in the past, because, if you don’t already know us by now - we do love a good herbal!

• Improving short term memory and recall
• Boosting mental energy by supplying quick, clean and efficient energy to the brain, preventing those all too familiar slumps in which our mental functioning goes AWOL and we find ourselves somehow reaching for a sugar snack attack;
• Sharpening attention, concentration and focus to help us get the job done
• Increase learning by supporting processes such as making, and recalling from, memory; 
• Enhancing our mood and feelings of good mental health by bringing about feelings of relaxation, calm and motivation;
• Improving physical performance, whether it be a mid-afternoon walk or something more competitive, by amplifying your ability to stay focussed 
• Resilience to stress through stress reduction so that work and sport benefit from the space to just get on with the job. 

Of course, when it comes to looking after and unleashing the potential of the amazing brains our customers have, it’s important to have a closer look at our carefully chosen products, our blends of ingredients and the possibilities you can create to match the occasion in mixing and matching these tools according to need.  That’s why here we take a closer WillPowders eagle-eyed look at some of the science behind our nootropic supplements and stacked nootropic tools, where we’ve pre-done the blending for you.  

Ah, humankind’s ancient friends, the coffee bean and the tea leaf - the beautifully fashioned choices of caffeine!  Most of us have been seduced for much of our lives by this as-old-as-time nootropic.  And, there’s been the occasional time when we’ve indulged in some role play with caffeine while it wore its best come hither dark chocolate costume …  

Comfortably familiar in the world of nootropics, where things can sometimes feel a little alien, we chose to craft this homeboy upper into our Brain Powder blend because of the fascinating and cognitively supportive chain of effects it ignites in your brain.  There’s seemingly a prize every time with this ingredient for your ability to apply yourself to the task or day in hand, because, even at lower doses, caffeine is said to have a positive effect on cognitive performance, memory, and brain function.  In a Brain Powder serving, you have the equivalent of the caffeine from around two 8oz cups of brewed coffee in one sachet: izzy, whizzy, let’s get busy!  

Let’s turn our attention to L-Theanine in your mix.  This little plant based wonder is classified as an adaptogen, so it will help your body re-adjust itself to stress.  In this way, you can take L-Theanine, in the WillPowders form of Calm on its own, without venturing into any other of our nootropics products.  Feeling that pit of your stomach feeling in, well, the pit of your stomach, of course?  You can take Calm for that!  Alternatively, if you want caffeine to lend a hand in managing your neurotransmitters but you’re not up for the bone shaker ride that caffeine can bring about if you’re caffeine sensitive, then you’ll be wanting to add some L-Theanine to your life.  

Or, you can do this for yourself if you want to team your caffeine in coffee with Calm.   Or you can plain and simple enjoy the benefits of Calm to calm your stress, using its adaptogen properties solo.  Of course, we totally get that you might want to opt for experimentation with a caffeine hit alone in a WillPowders coffee.  But, circle around while we take you through why we offer other ingredients in Brain Powder that have the potential to protect your brain.  Either way, we have the tools for you.  You do you, Lovely.

It may surprise you to learn that we didn’t introduce taurine into Brain Powder because it gives you the ability to sprout wings and fly.  No, siree!  But we did offer it a place in the line up because of its potential to protect the brain.  Taurine has been described as, “the elixir of life within us,” by the Columbia University geneticist, Dr. Vijay Yadav in his work, Taurine Deficiency As a Driver of Aging?.  Dr. Yadav talks you through his findings himself which you can watch here that taurine has not only increased the lifespans of animals in his testing but also increased the wellness of those animal subjects within that span of time.  

As a whole:

• Taurine is described as a ‘very essential’ amino acid and is abundant in the brain;
• Taurine, to all intents and purposes, acts as a neurotransmitter but scientists haven’t yet found the receptor piece in the jigsaw [*], but we can still enjoy the benefits of this age old, naturally occurring chemical, while we wait for science to find their missing link and get their ducks in a row as it is classified as safe in the servings WillPowders offer it in;
• Taurine supplementation works to promote healthy long term memory storage [*]
• Although taurine has come under the spotlight for use amongst teens, much of the side-eye it’s received has been as a result of taking taurine with alcohol.  So, if you haven’t done so already, it’s maybe time to hang up your ‘wings’ and stop sticking a vodka in those sticky, syrupy energy drinks and sip a strawberry daiquiri, pina colada or mojito flavoured Brain Powder instead.  Add sparkling water and you might as well be humming Club Tropicana as you bash out that last minute work demand;
• Fret not, since that same study came to the conclusion that, ‘The literature also suggests that caffeine and/or taurine at the optimal dose and in the right circumstances might confer neuroprotection [*]; 
• It seems taurine is the yin to glutamate’s yan and taurine can protect the brain from too much glutamate, so while we want to invite glutamate into our brain’s self-manufactured pharmacopoeia, we also want to support the brain’s protective mechanisms, too.