A warning mantra on many fitness-oriented websites is, “Don’t dig a hole and put a ladder in it.” In other words: don’t exercise and then eat like crap. Don’t go through the hard work of acquiring strong habits only to use them to make up for your poor habits. Another metaphor: don’t hit the gas and the brakes at the same time.
College students are barraged with rumors about “nootropics” – brain-enhancing drugs – and very little sane, research-based advice about them. Most mentors and professors avoid the topic because many of the drugs are illegal or semi-legal.
Before You Think About Drugs
So, here is some sane, research-backed advice about nootropics:
If you do not, the nootropic will just be the proverbial ladder in a hole. All of these have amazing, measurable cognitive benefits. (For exercise: both heavy lifting and cardio show strong cognitive benefits) They are all free and pleasurable. The common objection? “I don’t have the time.” Which brings us to number two:
- Get organized.
Look at your week’s schedule. Look at how much time you are burning doing nothing. You don’t need a brain booster at 3 am the night before the assignment is due, you need to understand how to manage your time and energy better. Luckily, the MentorScholar has a ton of awesome tactics to get the deepest procrastinator working (and sleeping and exercising). Getting organized is very complicated: little factors like the size of your desk, the time of day you work, and the music you are listening to can have strong effects. Organization also allows for better rest.
If and Only If
If, and only if, you get all of these down, then you can experiment with a few very safe nootropics. And one is not even a drug!
A low carb diet can get your brain using ketones as well as glycogen. We often have crashes because we are too reliant on outside sources of glucose. Going low carb will get your body burning fat and have your brain on a steady source of energy. To be ready for finals and the end of semester crunch, make Halloween your last carb binge. A warning, however: the first week of low carb will make you more sluggish.
- Coffee AND Tea
L-Theanine has been shown to have synergistic effects when combined with coffee, leading to a slew of extremely expensive coffees and coffee additives with the compound in it. Hilariously, this substance is available in tea, especially black tea. Drink coffee and then follow it with a few teas. Or, combine them! People seem to swear allegiance to either coffee or tea when the combination is wonderful.
- Coffee and a Cigarette
Avoid doing this frequently (for obvious reasons) and only do it when you need to think of a conclusion to a paper, for example. Bam! A great idea will hit you. One historian thinks the enlightenment happened because of coffee and cigarettes.
You really do not need the other enhancers, like Modafinil. The long-term effects are unknown. It may get you out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into now, but in the future, in a deeper hole? Who knows.