The Smart Pre-Workout with enfinity Paraxanthine

L-Citrulline – 4,000 mg

EuphoriQ is caffeine-free, but definitely not stimulant-free.

Citrulline is an amino acid that upregulates your body’s production of nitric oxide (NO).^[1]

It’s a conditionally essential amino acid — even though your body can make some citrulline on its own, it can’t make enough to fully satisfy your requirements for citrulline during periods of increased metabolic stress, like periods of injury or convalescence. Or, in our cases, we could use more for hard training.

Citrulline is the industry’s go-to NO booster, which is interesting because citrulline isn’t even what directly increases your NO production: citrulline gets converted into arginine, which is what actually boosts NO.

If you’re wondering why we haven’t tried supplementing with arginine instead, the answer is we did – although arginine was used to boost NO for a long time, it fell by the wayside when research emerged showing that citrulline actually raises blood arginine levels more effectively than arginine itself.

The reason for this is that arginine gets broken down by something called the first pass effect, a digestive phenomenon where nutrients are digested in the stomach before they can be absorbed into the bloodstream through the intestines.

Citrulline is immune to the first pass effect, making it much more bioavailable than arginine,^[2,3] so that’s why brands intelligently opt for citrulline instead. We could probably find MuscleTech pre-workout labels from the 2000s using L-arginine. Those were good, but this is far greater. And we’ll have even more nitric oxide production from an ingredient named nooLVL later.

Why increased NO is good

Having more NO causes more vasodilation, a phenomenon where blood vessels expand and allow more blood to flow through them. This improves circulation and reduces strain on the heart while decreasing blood pressure.^[4-6]

As a result, oxygen and nutrients get delivered more efficiently to your tissues, including your muscles. And moreover, the toxic byproducts of normal cellular metabolism, which can cause muscular fatigue as they build up, get removed more efficiently.

This is the main reason why you see so many NO boosters on the supplement market today: all of this adds up to improved athletic performance.

The research shows that citrulline supplementation can:

• Improve power by increasing oxygen uptake^[7]
• Increase time to exhaustion during exercise^[8]
• Decrease muscular soreness following exercise^[8]
• Increase growth hormone (GH) secretion in response to exercise^[9]
• Reduce amino acid catabolism^[10]
• Trigger the synthesis of new muscle^[11,12]

Citrulline and waste removal

Citrulline can also increase your blood concentrations of ornithine,^[13] an amino acid that helps detoxify your body of ammonia,^[14] which is one of those pesky metabolic byproducts we alluded to earlier.

Ammonia buildup can cause mental and physical fatigue, so increasing ornithine levels is one of the means by which citrulline supplementation can boost endurance.

Of course, hitting the gym hard is never enough – the overwhelming majority of our adaptation to exercise occurs while we sleep, so getting lots of restful sleep is key to reaching your athletic potential.

And ornithine seems to help with this, having been shown to improve sleep quality and reduce stress levels in those who take it. One reason for this seems to be that ornithine can decrease your ratio of cortisol to DHEA.^[14]

The clinically validated minimum effective dose of citrulline is about 3 grams, and here we have 4, so that’s good – the effects of citrulline have been shown to increase dose-dependently.^[15]

So more is better in this case – up to a point of course. The point of diminishing returns on citrulline appears to be 10,000 milligrams per day,^[16] which is pretty far from 4 grams. So you’re still getting more bang for your buck at a 4 gram vs. a 3 gram dose.

Rather than go ultra-high citrulline, however, EuphoriQ is going to live up to its name, adding in a cognitive-based nitric oxide booster in nooLVL soon.

Beta-alanine – 3,200 mg

Beta-alanine is an ergogenic aid, defined as a technique or substance used for the purpose of enhancing performance.^[17] It’s generally used to increase athletic endurance.

This is one of the oldest ingredients in the supplement industry today, and we don’t think formulators will stop using it any time soon, because it works really well.

Beta-alanine —> carnosine, a lactic acid buffer

Beta-alanine plus histidine, an essential amino acid that’s abundant in pretty much everything we eat, forms a molecule called carnosine, which mostly gets deposited in your brain and muscle tissue, where it helps remove lactic acid.^[18]

This buffering of lactic acid is key to beta-alanine’s endurance-boosting effects, because the buildup of lactic acid in muscle tissue is a major factor in the neuromuscular fatigue that inevitably sets in once you’ve been doing an intense workout for long enough.

Here we actually have a story similar to what we discussed in the citrulline section above: supplementing directly with carnosine isn’t a great way to raise carnosine blood levels, because the oral bioavailability of the carnosine molecule itself is pretty low. So we supplement with the precursor instead, which is significantly more bioavailable.

The 2016 meta analysis showed who beta alanine may work best for^[19] – and it’s generally for endurance and mid-distance activities.

In fact, there’s some research that specifically shows how beta-alanine availability is the rate-limiting step in your body’s synthesis of carnosine.^[20,21]

So where is beta-alanine the most useful? Current research shows that beta-alanine is particularly good at benefiting workouts conducted at an intensity level that can be sustained for 30 seconds to 10 minutes.^[18-25]

We like seeing the 3,200 mg dose being used, because that’s the one that has been validated over and over again in the research on beta-alanine and athletic performance.

A word on those tingly tingles!

If you haven’t taken beta-alanine before, you’re in for a treat! The beta-alanine tingles that happen in your upper body are a supplement rite of passage – and don’t worry, researchers regard these tingles as benign.^[26]

Betaine Anhydrous – 2,500 mg

Betaine, also known as trimethylglycine (TMG), is another ergogenic aid. However, it has a very different mechanism of action compared to beta-alanine – betaine is a bit more like creatine in the way it works.

Boost ATP production

We often use creatine as a point of reference for understanding betaine — although these compounds are a little different, they have some key attributes in common.

A landmark 2013 study showed that 2.5 grams of betaine every day can have profound effects on body mass and strength^[27]

Creatine and betaine are both osmolytes that increase cellular hydration and increase adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production.^[28] Creatine does this by donating phosphate groups to the ATP production process, whereas betaine donates methyl groups.^[28]

We harp on maximizing ATP production all the time here on The PricePlow Blog, because ATP is incredibly important for peak mental and physical performance.

Put simply, ATP is the gas to your body’s engine. It is the molecule that actually contains the energy that your cells consume to do metabolic work.

Improve methylation, a crucial metabolic process

Betaine’s capacity for donating methyl groups actually goes way beyond even ATP production – methylation is involved in many different metabolic processes and touches pretty much every aspect of bodily function.

For instance, you need lots of methyl groups and methylation to manage your body’s blood levels of homocysteine, which is a byproduct of methionine metabolism. High levels of homocysteine in your blood have been linked to calcification of the arteries, heart attack, and stroke, among other things – it’s a major risk factor for cardiovascular illness.^[29]

Although it won’t affect tomorrow’s workout, ensuring that your homocysteine blood levels stay under control is one of the best investments you can make in your long-term health and performance.

How betaine improves athletic performance

Osmolytes like betaine can create a state of cellular hyperhydration, in which high osmotic pressure forces extra water into your cells. With the extra water comes extra glucose, oxygen, and other nutrients, as well as more resistance to stress.^[27,30,31]

The combination of this and betaine’s ability to support methylation and ATP production makes it a powerful ergogenic aid indeed. Many studies have demonstrated betaine’s ability to improve power, strength, and when taken long-term, body composition.^[32-37]

Just to single out one of these research trials, a 2013 study found that subjects who took 2,500 milligrams of betaine daily gained 5.3 pounds of muscle and lost 6.4 pounds of fat over the course of the 1.5 month study period. For those of you who are wondering, that translates to a body fat reduction of 3%.^[27,38]

A 2018 study with a similar design, conducted in female collegiate weightlifters, found that those who took betaine lost over 4 pounds more fat during the study period than the placebo group.^[39]

So if you’re used to seeing betaine everywhere lately, those two studies are big reasons why. It works, and it works well.

Now let’s get back to nitric oxide production:

nooLVL™ (Inositol Enhanced Bonded Arginine Silicate) – 1600mg

nooLVL is a type of inositol-stabilized arginine silicate (ASI) developed and patented by Nutrition21.^[40]

Learn more in our NooLVL explainer

Let’s recap the interplay between arginine and citrulline. Recall from our previous discussion in the L-citrulline section that arginine fell by the wayside as a NO-boosting ingredient due to its low oral bioavailability.

One solution to this problem is to formulate pre-workout supplements with citrulline, the arginine precursor, instead of arginine. But Nutrition21 came up with another – and perhaps more powerful solution that requires less material. In developing ASI, they were able to create a chemically buffered arginine that survives the first pass effect. In essence, they designed a better arginine, one that survives long enough to be absorbed by the intestines, and hence has much higher bioavailability than pure arginine.

Nutrition21’s ASI was originally marketed as Nitrosigine, and was received by the industry as another great NO booster to be used for enhancing athletic performance. This is what we were hoping L-arginine would be in those earlier MuscleTech pre-workouts back in the 2000s!

But the story continues — we don’t have Nitrosigine listed on the EuphoriQ label, after all. Some intriguing studies came out showing that ASI had significant nootropic effects, like boosting task switching in healthy young subjects, improving memory scores, and also preventing the temporary cognitive impairment that typically is caused by intense exercise.^[41-43]

NO improves cognition???

Although NO boosters were not really marketed as nootropics before Nutrition21’s invention of Nitrosigine, the idea that upregulating NO could improve brain function makes perfect sense when you think about it. After all, the brain is hungry for blood and oxygen just like any other organ or tissue in the body – in fact, it’s the hungriest for these.

nooLVL helped gamers improve scores on tests for attention and concentration, visual representation, and spatial planning, sometimes after a single use.^[44]

NO-mediated vasodilation means more nutrients and fuel delivered to your neurons, which consume more of both than pretty much any other type of cell in your body.

So Nutrition21 had yet another great idea for their arginine molecule: they optimized it to enhance the nootropic effects.

That’s how nooLVL was born. Nutrition21 took Nitrosigine and made a few tweaks, such as adding even more inositol. It was originally meant for gaming supplements, but serves a phenomenal purpose in a nootropic-fueled, feel-good pre-workout supplement like EuphoriQ.

How nooLVL works: extra inositol

A few studies have been done on nooLVL’s nootropic effects already: one showing that it can significantly improve reaction times in veteran gamers,^[45,46] and another one showing that it can improve attention and concentration, visual representation, forethought, and sequencing.^[44]

That’s one reason why nooLVL is so effective at improving cognitive performance – atop the nitric oxide and blood flow improvement, it has extra inositol. Inositol participates in the phosphatidylinositol cycle, and helps neurons in your brain communicate with each other.^[47,48] Specifically, inositol helps them interpret the signals they receive from each other, leading to higher cognitive efficiency.^[47,48]

It’s also been shown to help optimize neurotransmitter production and function,^[49] both of which are crucial for your body’s efficient transmission of the nerve impulses that coordinate every mental and physical action you take.

Why put a nootropic ingredient in a pre-workout?

So there are two interesting questions to ask about something like nooLVL: the first, of course, is why does nitric oxide improve cognition, which we’ve touched on a bit already.

A study from Texas A&M showed that nooLVL helped improve Short Term Memory and Reaction Time!^[45,46]

But the second is why put a nootropic into a pre-workout? After all, the intended purpose of a pre-workout is not necessarily to enhance cognitive performance – it’s to give you killer pumps and help you push yourself harder in the gym.

The first answer to this question is that nooLVL should help improve nitric oxide levels in the first place. After all, it’s like Nitrosigine but with extra inositol: theoretically we should see the benefits of Nitrosigine plus a little extra.

The second answer is that nootropics, even other ones that don’t boost NO, often do help improve your athletic performance. We’ve seen an industry trend towards filling their pre workouts with more and more nootropics for a couple of reasons.

One study on nooLVL found that those who took it had significantly higher levels of self-perceived energy – without caffeine.^[50] Because mood and cognition are such big factors in how we feel in our daily lives, we believe that most nootropic ingredients worth their salt should give the feeling of more mental energy. When that’s the case, it’s generally easier to get certain things done, like going to the gym and knocking out your workout.

In a way, nootropic ingredients are becoming an industry alternative to stimulants like caffeine or rauwolscine, which more and more consumers, for various reasons, are requesting be absent from pre-workout formulas.

After all, this product is named EuphoriQ – helping you feel good during your workout is one of the priorities here, and that makes perfect sense to us. Feeling good can ultimately improve adherence to a workout plan, as well as performance in the gym itself. Using nooLVL here is an excellent addition to the product, and completely on-brand.

Taurine – 1,000 mg

Taurine is a conditionally essential amino acid. Like citrulline, we enjoy getting more than what the body can produce. Supplementation is often used to maintain optimal metabolic function, and we’ve come to see taurine in a ton of supplements, which is heavily supported by the research.

Working hard in the gym is another good example of something that can increase metabolic requirements – most athletes or bodybuilders or even just moderately active people should consider supplementing with conditionally essential aminos like this. And taurine is a great one to take, because this amino has some pretty awesome effects on the brain and mitochondria.

How taurine works

Taurine’s effect on endurance, with success in doses anywhere from 1 gram to 6 grams.^[51]

After being ingested, taurine gets concentrated in the muscle, heart, eyes, and brain.^[52] It acts as a potent antioxidant in these tissues, and can improve the insulin sensitivity of their cells.^[53]

The most common use for taurine is to boost mood and improve cognitive performance, which is why taurine is a very common ingredient for commercial energy drinks. Taurine has GABAergeic neurotransmitter effects, meaning that it opposes the excitatory influence of neurotransmitters like glutamate, and can thus help reduce extraneous neural activity.^[54-58] This optimizes cognitive efficiency, helping you focus and push yourself mentally.

Taurine’s ability to bind with GABA receptors makes it a great anti-anxiety supplement. Again, that’s why we often see it stacked with caffeine: taurine synergizes with caffeine by helping “take the edge off” the stimulant energy.^[58-60] With the enfinity paraxanthine in EuphoriQ, however, we’ll see that we don’t need to worry about that as much!

Taurine can also help improve learning and memory.^[60,61]

But besides its nootropic effects, taurine has also been shown to increase athletic performance directly.^[51,62] Taurine’s ergogenic effects can attributed to its ability to increase cellular energy production.^[63]

The 1 gram taurine dose in EuphoriQ is appreciated because this is a dose that’s been repeatedly shown to improve endurance, as identified by a 2018 meta-analysis.^[51]

L-tyrosine – 500 mg

MuscleTech’s Raza Bashir and Ingenious Ingredients (and NNB Nutrition CSO) Shawn Wells join the PricePlow Podcast to talk about MuscleTech’s new iQ Series launch, using enfinity Paraxanthine! See it on Episode #072!

Tyrosine is another amino acid in EuphoriQ – this one’s non-essential, but we gladly take more because of the way it functions after ingestion. Here, we’re looking for a bit more focus, which, if you couldn’t figure out, is the name of the game in this pre-workout!

It’s important to get enough tyrosine because it’s is required for your body’s production of adrenaline and dopamine, catecholamine neurotransmitters that help keep us sharp, alert, and focused.^[40]

Upregulating the production of catecholamines can help stimulate the fight or flight response, which ultimately helps us push ourselves harder in the gym.

Tyrosine is particularly effective in people who are suffering from sleep deprivation. Although acute sleep deprivation can temporarily cause significant cognitive deficits, tyrosine supplementation has been shown to help restore us to baseline cognition.^[64,65]

Anecdotally, the 500 milligram dose here is generally where we start feeling it. But now, it’s time for the moment everyone’s been waiting for:

enfinity (paraxanthine) – 300 mg

Finally, we get to talk about the most exciting new ingredient in EuphoriQ – enfinity, a trademarked and patent-pending form of paraxanthine from Ingenious Ingredients.

So what’s paraxanthine? It’s time we take a spin down the caffeine rabbit hole.

Introducing: the caffeine metabolites

A brief intro to the science of paraxanthine / enfinity. We’ll cover far more data as it’s published!

The vast majority of American adults use caffeine on a daily basis, and for good reason – caffeine helps reduce fatigue and can boost mental and physical performance. This is why we see caffeine used all the time in preworkout supplements. At this point, you should more or less know how caffeine works (or doesn’t work) for you.

Lately, consumer feedback on caffeine has been mixed. The industry went into some very high caffeine times, and we’ve come back from them with some feedback – more isn’t always better. We’re now seeing the industry reduce the caffeine doses used in pre workouts, or even eliminate stimulants altogether from certain formulas.

To understand why, and how paraxanthine solves this problem, we need to talk a little bit about how caffeine gets metabolized by your body.

Caffeine gets sent to your liver for processing, which turns it into three different metabolites. They are, in order of prevalence:

1. Paraxanthine
2. Theobromine
3. Theophylline

Is paraxanthine the “real caffeine?”

A close analysis of these metabolites and their effect on human biology reveals that most of the effects people want from caffeine use can be attributed not to caffeine itself, but rather to its primary metabolite, paraxanthine.

A few good examples of this are fat burning (lipolysis),^[64] adenosine inhibition (caffeine’s primary anti-fatigue mechanism),^[65] and dopamine upregulation.^[66] In fact, some research shows that paraxanthine is even better than caffeine at inhibiting adenosine, improving motor skill, speeding up cognitive processing, and decreasing reaction times while increasing mental accuracy.^[67,68]

We’re even seeing pre-clinical studies showing that paraxanthine can be more effective than caffeine in improving key dimensions of athletic performance like muscle mass, strength, and endurance.^[69]

So in a way, paraxanthine could be thought of as the real caffeine – the molecule that actually delivers most of what people are looking for when they decide to reach for that second cup of tea or coffee.

Theobromine and theophylline may be responsible for caffeine’s negative effects

Just like paraxanthine seems to be responsible for most of what’s good about caffeine, the other two metabolites seem to be responsible for much of what’s bad. This is actually good news: by targeting our use of caffeine-derived alkaloid metabolites, we can get the upside of caffeine use with far less downside and habituation.

Caffeine has three major metabolites, and one of them (paraxanthine) does the heavy lifting. The other two have very long half-lives, which could be interfering with your quality of energy! Image courtesy Wikimedia

The first thing to realize about these two “dirtier” caffeine metabolites is that they have incredibly long half lives. Whereas the half-life of caffeine itself is about 4.1 hours on average (it’s a big range depending on your genetics),^[70] the half-lives of theobromine and theophylline are about 6.2 hours and 7.2 hours, respectively.^[70]

Theophylline and theobromine are stimulant methylxanthine alkaloids just like caffeine, so these long half-lives can be problematic. Just to give one example, if you take a big dose of caffeine around 4 P.M. to hit the gym before dinner, your body can only clear about half the theobromine and theophylline from your system by your 11 P.M. bedtime! And perhaps you should be going to bed even earlier than that, if you weren’t spending your evenings over-stimulated!

This is potentially one big reason why so many people, even habitual caffeine users, may experience diminished sleep quality after taking caffeine.

Paraxanthine, on the other hand, has a much shorter half-life – only 3.1 hours.^[70]

So your body is clearing paraxanthine twice as fast as it can clear theobromine or theophylline, which is why some studies have concluded that paraxanthine has lower levels of toxicity than caffeine or its other metabolites – despite the fact that it’s actually better at promoting wakefulness than these other three.^[71]

“Slow metabolizers” may struggle with caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline

Recent research showed something many of us already inherently knew — that individual caffeine metabolism varies according to genetics.^[72,73] Some people can drink a whole pot of coffee throughout the day without any issues, whereas others need to limit their intake of caffeine and confine their use of caffeine to the early hours of the day, lest it ruin their night.

Paraxanthine leads to fewer mistakes!^[74-77]

This is because, roughly speaking, everybody falls into one of three categories: slow, medium, and fast caffeine metabolizers. A lot of the negative effects from caffeine use have to do with clearing caffeine — and its even slower metabolites — from the bloodstream too slowly. And again, the other two caffeine metabolites, theobromine and theophylline, having the longest average half-lives, are the worst offenders.

Using paraxanthine instead of caffeine enables us to get around that.

Paraxanthine: the upside of caffeine, without any theobromine or theophylline

We’re getting a lot of feedback from consumers that using pure paraxanthine, instead of caffeine, gives them a smoother and cleaner kind of energy. We’ve experienced this as well, and our blinded beta testers pulled from the PricePlow Discord discovered this as well.^[78] We think a big reason for this is that the shorter half-life works better for people with slow methylxanthine metabolisms.

Paraxanthine consumption leads to significantly reduced reaction time^[68]

What’s more, consumers who get hooked on paraxanthine but then go back to using caffeine report that caffeine feels dirty to them – it gives them nervousness and jitters that they’ve gotten accustomed to going without.

Paraxanthine safety?

There’s not nearly as much published research on paraxanthine as there is on caffeine (yet), but it doesn’t seem to be any more dangerous than caffeine or its other metabolites. One researcher says “as for paraxanthine, it is also supposed to be fairly harmless for humans,”^[79] in reference to research from the 1980s.^[80]

More recent research has shown that paraxanthine has an even higher LD50 than initially thought, and shows no evidence of genotoxicity.^[81] The creators of enfinity will be providing more information over time, especially as their FDA GRAS petitions get published (subscribe to PricePlow’s alerts to learn about this when it’s live).

enfinity: paraxanthine you can trust

So, all told, paraxanthine is an extremely exciting new ingredient, especially with those who aren’t getting the most out of caffeine – as much as 80% of individuals, according to Ingenious Ingredients co-founder Shawn Wells in our enfinity paraxanthine podcast episode #072 with Raza Bashir of MuscleTech / Iovate.

The announcement of enfinity and paraxanthine is some of the biggest news in the history of the sports supplement industry, and PricePlow was here to break it!

As is the case with any exciting new ingredient, certain concerns must be addressed before it can be used at scale. Specifically, we need some assurance that the product we’re getting is genuine, but also pure and hence safe, free of adulteration or contamination.

That’s where Ingenious Ingredients, also known as ING2, comes in. ING2 is made up of qualified industry veterans like Shawn Wells and Kylin Liao of NNB Nutrition along with research experts Dr. Ralf Jaeger and Dr. Martin Purpura. This powerhouse team brings us enfinity, the supplement industry’s very first standardized paraxanthine.

As more trials (which Shawn teased in the above podcast) are published, along with GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) notifications, we’ll have a lot more information coming on enfinity, so stay tuned to PricePlow.

To summarize, preliminary research is beginning to show that paraxanthine actually exerts better effects than its parent caffeine molecule… and by replacing caffeine with enfinity, we can avoid some of the negative consequences of caffeine – many of which come from those other metabolites we’re dodging here!

Big shoutout to MuscleTech for bringing this innovative product to consumers.

AlphaSize alpha-glyceryl phosphoryl choline (A-GPC) – 300 mg

Alpha-Glycerylphosphorylcholine, also (mercifully) abbreviated as Alpha-GPC or A-GPC, is a special form of highly-bioavailable choline.

Speaking broadly, choline is crucial for many aspects of human wellness. One of the most important roles choline serves is as a building block for the phospholipid membranes that enclose the contents of your cells, acting as a border that keeps nutrients in while keeping wastes and pathogens out.^[82]

Don’t take them both at once, but also don’t forget about how incredible Burn iQ powder is. The Sweet Heat flavor is incredible

We also need choline to produce acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that facilitates inter-neuronal communication and helps mediate long-term potentiation, the process of converting short-term memories into long-term ones.^[83]

Acetylcholine boosters have been in fashion since at least the early 2010s, when the biohacker craze discovered that ingredients like huperzine A (which we’ll be discussing a couple of sections down) could significantly improve language acquisition.

The focus since then has been on boosting mental performance through acetylcholine, but as it turns out, this neurotransmitter is pretty important for motor skills as well. For example, increasing acetylcholine levels has been shown to improve balance and coordination.^[84,85]

Another thing to know about alpha-GPC’s role in a pre workout supplement is that it’s a potent growth hormone secretagogue,^[86] which means that it can help increase our blood levels of growth hormone (GH). As most readers are probably aware, GH is highly anabolic^[87,88] and is particularly good at boosting muscle gains in your legs.^[89]

Alpha-GPC is a favorite form of choline because 1) it’s highly bioavailable, and 2) it crosses the brain-blood barrier,^[90] which means it has a much greater direct impact on CNS function and acetylcholine production than some other acetylcholine precursors.

NeuroFactor decaffeinated coffee extract (as Coffea arabica) (fruit) – 100 mg

NeuroFactor is a standardized extract of coffee fruit that is used for enhancing focus and overall cognitive health.

It does this by increasing the expression of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that has been described as “miracle grow for the brain” or “brain fertilizer” because of how powerfully it can increase the growth, survival, and function of new neurons, even in the adult brain.^[91]

Another look at the EuphoriQ label

Blood levels of BDNF show a significant positive correlation with measures of overall cognitive functioning,^[92] and appear to protect the brain from toxins and neurodegenerative illness.^[92,93]

Low levels, on the other hand, appear to increase the risk of those illnesses.^[93]

One study shows that a 100 mg dose of NeuroFactor can increase BDNF levels by as much as 150%, which is a huge increase.^[93]

BDNF boosters and exercise

Coming back to our discussion on the role of nootropics in pre-workout formulas, it’s worth mentioning that exercise itself significantly improves BDNF levels,^[94,95] which is one of many reasons why exercise, and particularly aerobic exercise, is so important for long-term health and wellness.

The BDNF boosters here help potentiate the BDNF-boosting effects of caffeine: you should be getting a synergistic effect from this combination.

Huperzine A (as Huperzia serrata) (whole plant) – 10 mcg

Next up we have huperzine A, an ingredient that’s here to synergize with Alpha-GPC.

As we discussed, alpha-GPC helps increase your body’s production of acetylcholine – what huperzine A does is extend the action of acetylcholine, by inhibiting the enzyme that’s responsible for breaking acetylcholine down.^[96]

But even when taken on its own, huperzine A can improve learning and cognition by elevating acetylcholine levels above baseline.^[97]

Huperzine A is also great at protecting neuronal mitochondria from oxidative stress,^[98] which is no doubt part of its nootropic effect.