Nootopia

Biohacker Review: The "holy grail" of Nootropic stack customization?

The DHL guy dropped off a hefty package from Nootopia containing their World Domination package, which now dominates a corner of my biohacker armamentarium.

It contains more documentation than any supplement I've ever used, notably a 39-page booklet that thoroughly explains Nootopia's 30-day optimization process. While you're supposed to start with the stimulating Nectar X stack, the Zamner Juice I couldn't resist trying first, it's a Nootropic spray that comes in not-cheap-feeling black bottles. It's tasty and a few sprays do have a subtle uplifting effect on mood.

After reading the booklet, I downloaded the Nootopia app which is used daily to keep track of how the nine different stacks included in World Domination affect you.

The next morning I started with Nectar X, and the warning on the label not to combine it with a lot of coffee is well-warranted, it is stimulating. I did monitor my heart rate variability with my Heartmath device while planted in front of my standing desk while dosed; my heart rate was a little high and my HRV was above average for a passive session. Its taste is sweet, as it contains some healthy organic sweeteners, bringing me back to my childhood of sugary squeezable drinks in the cafeteria before recess.

Something I'll mention that I really like about Nootopia, they provided me certificates of analysis (COAs) verifying the Nootropic ingredients. If you're wondering what the ingredients are, there are a lot - too many for me to mention here! You can find them here on Nootopia.com.

The next day, I washed down The Apex stack with my usual bulletproof-style coffee. This one I liked a bit more, I found myself in a productive state of focused optimism. My heart wasn't racing so much on it and my HRV coherence improved, I averaged 2.0 (my resting morning HRV is about 1.5 for comparison).

The Upbeat stack came next. My HRV coherence on it was 2.2, but the subjective Nootropic effect was very subtle.

Next, I drank the Power Solution mixture - which also tasted like a party treat! I had it around noon to avoid overstimulation and then headed to the gym. I measured my heart rate before the workout and it was 90-101, pretty high for me! I think that's because earlier I did have a coffee. Actually, I mixed up the decaf and normal coffee. You got to be careful with coffee and some of the Nootopia stacks. But it was a good workout!

On the fifth day, I washed down an oil capsule of Focused Savagery with decaf butter coffee. As its name suggests, it did put me in a powerful state of focus for several hours. My HRV on it was 2.0.

On my sixth dayof World Domination, I was instructed by the app just to use Zamner Juice. Which I took tasty sprays of throughout the day. My HRV on the Juice was a not outstanding 1.7. It had a subtle uplifting effect on my mood but isn't much of a productivity enhancer.

Next on the Nootopia plan was AM/PM Reboot. In the morning, I took the AM stack which has some moderately stimulating ingredients. I was pretty productive and again had an HRV of 1.7. As I settled down for the evening, I remember that I was also supposed to take the PM Reboot stack. And not long after dropping it, I started to feel very drowsy, I put away what I was reading and fell asleep in about three minutes.

I awoke feeling well-rested, next up was the Brain Flow stack. It kicked in after about 30 minutes and I'd describe it as a quintessential smart drug stack. Around midday, my wife and I hung out on our patio, we joked and enjoyed catching a few fleeting summer rays. Life is just peachy! While I felt Limitless on it, my HRV did not deviate much from baseline.

A few days later, it took the Apex + Brain Flow stack before an important podcast interview and my verbal powers were brilliant. The guy I was talking to kept remarking: You've really got a way with words! It was one of my better podcast performances.

The stacks were sometimes TOO MUCH for me

• I got overstimulated on Upbeat + Focused Savagery. I did an HRV recording and my heart rate was 88 and my coherence score was a dismal .8.
• Once I took one of the stimulating stacks a little later in the day, around 4:00 PM I think, and I did have some issues getting to sleep - I tossed and turned in bed for 30 or 40 minutes before drifting off.
• Another one of the stacks made me irritable; I had to walk the dog my wife and I got furious at the dog for dilly-dallying. Well, not that furious, I didn't yell or make a scene, I just fumed silently at the dog.

However, this is sort of my fault because I didn't heed the warning issued so clearly: I kept starting my mornings with my usually bulletproof-style coffee. Nootopia stacks + coffee is a recipe for overstimulation, at least for me. It's a good idea to occasionally quit drinking strong coffee daily to reset tolerance and give your adrenals a break. I've quit coffee cold turkey a few times before which was rougher on me than going off Nicotine, alcohol, or porn.
But switching to decaf while using Nootopia stacks was easy peasy! I felt just a little funny the first few days off normal coffee but the clear-headed Nootropic focus zone quickly became my new normal. So learn from my mistake, if you're going to go on this 30-day Nootropic odyssey with Nootopia go off coffee (or at least switch to decaf).

You may find some of the stacks overstimulating and they may mess with your sleep if you take them too late in the day. I do suggest taking some sleep supplements, like BiOptimizers's Magnesium Breakthrough, at the end of days of World Domination.

A shortcoming in my subjective experience with Nootopia is that the stacks didn't consistently deliver a full working day of cognitive enhancement. In the mornings and early afternoon, I'd be awesomely focused but by the early evening, my mental edge would be dulling.

The World Domination package here is $399 and at that price point, it's hard for me to call it a good value. You could buy A LOT of very good Nootropics for four hundred bucks, while you'll go through the Nootopia box in a month or two (if you're following the app's plan.) Speaking of the app...

The app guides you through your first month on Nootopia's Nootropics. Every day it instructs you which to take and you check off subjectively how you're affected; Verbal fluency, Intense drive, Deep focus, and even Hyper productivity. The ostensible value proposition of Nootopia is that they send you this big box of Nootropics, you provide feedback via the app, and then the next month they send you more of the Nootropics that you responded best to. But the app falls short of delivering as there's no way to log negative feedback about a specific Nootropic. For example, I grew to dislike the Focused Savagery stack but there's no place in the app to indicate, I was overstimulated and irritable on this stack or that this stack disrupted my sleep. Hopefully, Nootopia will innovate on the tech front; If the app included brain training games that it prompted you to play while dosed or if it could use smartphones' camera/flash to take HRV recordings I'd see the value in Nootopia. All it does in its current form is record suggested subjective feelings.

There's this holy grail of Nootropic stack customization offering that I've seen hinted at for years in the space; you could plug all your bio-data - everything from HRV and blood panels to personal genotyping and a personality survey - into an algorithm while taking different Nootropics and tracking your cognitive performance with brain training and habit tracking. And the algorithm would figure out for you your own personal NZT-48 - you'd become awesomely limitless. And Nootopia while a very sharp offering is not that, yet. If that's what you want - to discover your own NZT-48 you'll need to DIY it.

I appreciate the thoughtfulness that's clearly gone into Nootopia - from the cool black box it comes in to the biohacking manifesto booklet it contains.