Nootropics comes from the Greek word “noos”, which means mind, and “trope”, which means to twist or to turn. Put together, it means to change how your mind works.
Simply put, nootropics are drugs, food supplements, or other types of substances that can help improve brain function. This includes improving memory, creativity, reflexes and even motivation for many healthy individuals.
Generally, the use and manufacture of nootropics nowadays is still at its infancy. This means that any long-term effects of consuming nootropics are still pretty much unknown.
Still, the short term effects for many people are positive and undeniable. Because of this, there has been a sudden rise in popularity for such substances, regardless of any long term effect consuming them might have.
But what is nootropic coffee? What makes it different from a regular cup of coffee? We are going to explain just that and more.
What is Nootropic Coffee?
Nootropic coffee takes the stimulating effects of a regular cup of coffee and enhances it. When mixed with other stimulating substances, nootropic coffee can improve memory, mental clarity, and encourage higher cognitive functions.
Substances mixed into coffee may include natural herbs like yerba mate, gingko biloba, green tea, certain mushrooms and ginseng. Some substances may also be synthetic or man-made.
Now technically, by its very nature, coffee can already be counted as a nootropic substance. Coffee already contains caffeine, which is a stimulant, and L-theanine, a type of protein that promotes relaxation without making you drowsy.
Because stimulants basically improve brain function, or at least alter the state in how your mind works, anything with caffeine or L-theanine in it, such as tea and energy drinks, are already counted as nootropic substances.
But why does nootropic coffee need its own classification? Well, it all goes down to what is mixed into it.
Is Nootropic Coffee a Type of Drug?
Since we’ve been talking about substances that alter the state of your mind, you’d be forgiven for thinking that nootropic coffee might be considered a drug, or contains drugs, and of course, is illegal.
This is simply not true. Nootropic coffee may have ingredients that are not included in regular coffee, but all of them are legal. It is no more illegal than caffeine is illegal.
Of course, some of these ingredients are naturally-occurring, but some of them may have been synthesized in a lab somewhere. But that doesn’t mean that consuming these man-made ingredients is like taking drugs.
None of the ingredients used in nootropic coffee are addictive, either. At least, no more addictive than your average cup of coffee. That said, nootropic coffee is safe to drink daily without any unforeseen effects outside of drinking regular coffee.
Benefits of Drinking Nootropic Coffee
Nootropic coffee has a wide range of benefits when consumed. Of course, which benefits you can enjoy all depends on which types of nootropic ingredients are added to your coffee. That said, here are some of the known benefits of drinking nootropic coffee:
Cognitive Improvement
One of the main benefits that set nootropic coffee above the average cup is that it helps improve many of your cognitive functions. Some ingredients, which includes caffeine itself, can help improve the connections you have inside your brain, allowing it to work more efficiently.
This helps by improving your overall intelligence, memory, reaction time and even creativity. This makes nootropic coffee immensely popular with students and even older people who want to keep their brains sharp as they start accumulating the years.
Helps Improve Focus
There is a lot in our modern world that can be distracting, from loud noises to bright lights, to our phones vibrating. This makes focusing on a specific task slightly difficult.
Nootropic coffee may contain focus-enhancing chemicals that can help improve your focus. Some of these chemicals, like Methylphenidate, are even used to help treat people with attention deficit disorders in higher doses.
Stress Relief
Normally, people drunk coffee to keep themselves awake, but nootropic coffee also has the added benefit of putting you on a relaxed state without causing you to fall asleep. This makes nootropic coffee a great beverage to help relieve stress but still keep you alert and active.
The Side Effects
Naturally, too much coffee, even the regular ones, can be detrimental to your health. It can cause issues with your kidneys, and you may develop sleeping disorders like insomnia or even hallucinations when drank too much.
Because nootropic coffee has ingredients aside from caffeine, the adverse effects you might end up with can vary greatly depending on the brand.
If the nootropic coffee in question is derived from natural ingredients, like the herbs we talked about earlier, then the chances of side effects are minimized. If the nootropic coffee uses synthetic ingredients, then side-effects may be a bit more pronounced.
It’s also possible to suffer from a phenomenon known as nootropics stacking if you’re drinking more than two different brands of nootropic coffee at any given time. Of course, regardless of which type of nootropic coffee you drink, it’s best to limit your consumption to only 3-4 cups a day at most, and just stick with 1 brand at a time.
Because nootropics focuses on improving brain function, the side-effects of drinking it too much are mostly associated with your head. Side-effects of drinking nootropic coffee includes headaches, nausea, insomnia and even hallucinations.
Final Thoughts
Coffee has been consumed for centuries specifically for its stimulating effects on people. Intellectuals in France drank it during the enlightenment era to stimulate their thought process, while ancient monks drank it to help prevent sleep while they did hours-long meditations.
Despite the stimulating effects coffee have on us, however, there are still people out there who are looking for more.
We as a species are already addicted to coffee. Some of us pretty much live on it, finding it nearly impossible to conceive of a day without having to drink at least one cup.
In fact, the coffee industry itself is valued at over $35 billion today. For some of us, however, the stimulating effects of coffee just doesn’t cut it anymore. Some people need a little more kick inside their daily cup. For those people, there exists nootropic coffee.