site banner

Wellness Wednesday for March 1, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Any nootropics folks here? I know someone mentioned Silexin (lavender oil) recently and I tried it. It has been okay, noticed a decent change but only after I forgot to take it - had some big changes in my life so difficult to tell if that affected me.

The one nootropic substance I do love and use regularly is Kratom. Is is truly powerful and I’m surprised it isn’t more popular. It has strong effects, is really not addictive, and very cheap/easy to produce.

I’ve tried alpha GPC and other stuff in the past but I’m too lazy to do research and leery of messing with my brain. Any highly recommended supplements folks on here like?

I tried to get into nootropics a bit during my university days, but none of the 'true' nootropics seemed to make much difference.

The only time I remember noticing a significant effect was when I took a premade stack product that made me depressed. It probably had too much choline relative to the piracetam in it.

However, I do still regularly use modafinil (I'm actually on it right now). It really can't be taken regularly but if I've had a bad night's sleep and need to be productive at work the next day, it's great. It makes me awake and able to concentrate without the anxiety of a caffeine high.

Although I have noticed a couple of weird side effects. I have to avoid playing video games while on it or I will play for too long, perhaps because it stops me getting bored. Also, it mitigates the drunken feeling from alcohol. This is a problem because it tempts me to drink more in order to get the same buzz as I usually would. Of course, it does nothing to prevent hangovers.

It makes me awake and able to concentrate without the anxiety of a caffeine high.

Also in partial response to @andenyalaa mentioning L-theanine- I've not tried any L-theanine supplements, but I've had very good results alternating my coffee with black tea (which has L-theanine) in terms of not getting hit with anxiety/jitters.

Not sure if the benefit was really from just "smoothing the curve" of caffeine intake or from the L-theanine itself, but either way worked in practice. Was definitely not from a reduction in overall caffeine, switch was from two cups of coffee to two cups of coffee with a cup of tea in between.