WEBVTT - Augmenting the Brain, Part One: Chemicals 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:15.360 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.119 podcast that looks at the future and says, I like 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.759 the big brains. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Falkon, and 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:26.640 I'm Joe McCormick. So so, guys, uh we here in 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:31.400 this room and in this podcast room, I think all 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:36.800 agree that brains are in general delicious. That's not the 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:38.320 word I was going to use, But now we do 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:40.880 know something specific about you, Joe. I was going to say, 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:45.640 there are things that squishy, you know. I wasn't actually 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:47.839 going to make this a guessing game. I was just 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.720 going to tell you tell me about brains, John, I 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:52.320 was just gonna say that we were going to consider 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.160 them in general to be good things to possess, right, 0:00:55.240 --> 0:01:00.240 to be able to think and problems solve and anticipate things. 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.920 This is these generally good traits. I I enjoy mine 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:08.000 about fifty of the time. That's more than half. Yeah, 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.200 you'll notice that in the animal kingdom, or let's say, 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.720 in nature more generally, organisms that don't have brains usually 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:19.240 are not very funny. They don't have much good technology, yeah. Yeah, 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:22.760 their stand up comedy is lackluster at best. Yeah, it's 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:27.680 pedestrian truly. Yeah. Okay, so we probably all agree that 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:30.840 we have the power to develop our minds through education, right, 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:33.880 so we should learn new skills and absorb new knowledge. 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:36.000 But what I want to talk about today is whether 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:39.800 we have the power to actually increase our base aptitudes 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:44.720 in things like memory, reasoning, focus, all of the abilities 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:47.840 that make up what we call intelligence or brain power. 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.480 So can a person tune up his or her brain 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:55.200 and simply make it a more effective machine. Also, we 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:57.200 should just go ahead and address this right off the bat. 0:01:57.240 --> 0:01:59.000 I didn't put this in the notes, but we really 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:01.280 it's one of those things that I'm sure all of 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:06.760 our listeners already know. But unlike the popular depiction in media, 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:10.040 such as in films like Lucy, we do in fact 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:14.359 use of our brains. Where the whole idea of you 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:16.400 only use ten percent and if if you could just 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:20.840 unlock that other of gray matter that's just laying dormant 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.480 inside your skull, you could fly and look like Scarlett Johanssen. Yeah. 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:27.240 What I've always thought about this is, um, if you 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.400 only use ten percent of your brain, how come brain 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.760 injury matters. I mean, wouldn't like nine percent of brain 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.880 injuries miss the part that you use, or or you 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:40.000 would just have another dormant part of the brain take 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:43.480 the place of the injured part. Thus you essentially have 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:49.960 have greater life in that brain. That that's one of 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:53.760 those that's such nonsense. I don't even know how it 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.680 got started unless it's just one of those things that 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.880 was just where a metaphor came to be taken literal 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:02.520 by accident, Like somebody was just saying, oh, you know, 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.600 we have untapped potential. We probably only use ten percent 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:08.200 of our brains. And they didn't even mean it literally, 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:10.919 or they minute some way of saying, like ten percent 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:13.560 of your brain is dedicated to cognitive thought and the 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.600 other nine is to everything else that the brain does. 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:20.840 Even even then it's really misleading at any rate. So 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:23.200 we're not going to talk about the ability to suddenly 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:27.440 unlock some potential in your brain that otherwise will remain untapped. 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:31.240 We're talking about actually making your brain work better. So 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:34.720 it's still gonna be working, it's just now it is 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:37.520 more efficient that it's able to pack more in that 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:42.080 than it was before. And uh, this in this particular episode, 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.760 we wanted to really look at the ways you could 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:49.839 do so through either dietary changes, chemicals, this kind of thing. 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:54.680 How because our brains are electrochemical organs, right, they communicate 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:58.240 through electrochemical uh processes, and so it's not a huge 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:02.320 surprise that chemicals and affect that. But before we get 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:05.240 into all that, we should probably look back on just 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:08.800 the idea of how humans as a species, how how 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:14.080 we've seen our brain sizes increase over the ages. Right 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:16.960 over the last seven million years or so, the human 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.640 brain has nearly tripled in size. A lot of that 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:22.760 growth took place over the last two million years, actually 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.880 partially because in general, the more healthier diet, the larger 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.200 our brains could get. So the development of agriculture was 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:33.640 a big step up from us as hunter gatherers. Access 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:38.320 to a variety of foods also helped. And some researchers 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:42.640 are speculating that when humans began eating meat, you know, 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:46.159 which we can see in the fossil record as human 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.840 teeth marks on bones about two point three million years ago, 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:53.120 they speculate that that led to our brains to start 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:56.279 really growing. And you know that that when we started 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:58.400 cooking our food. That helped a lot more as well, 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:00.760 because we can get more nutri shin out of it 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.520 when we have cooked it. Now, our brains haven't been 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:10.240 growing steadily this entire time. Eventually, as agriculture became organized 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.640 and then industrialized, and also as we didn't need to, 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:16.719 you know, to raw food really hard, our our skulls 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:19.480 and brains began to shrink a little over the past 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:23.000 like ten thousand years or so. But there's a lot 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:28.599 of friendly scientific disagreement among various researchers in various fields 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.520 about what humans have done or haven't done exactly to 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:35.920 make that happen, and furthermore, whether we can change our 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:41.159 brains on purpose. Absolutely, And then there's also just the uh, Unfortunately, 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:47.760 there's also all on misinformation out there for from various individuals, organizations, companies, whatever, 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:52.440 that are trying to market specific substances that are supposed 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:56.240 to give specific effects and may or may not have 0:05:56.279 --> 0:06:01.640 any actual scientific foundation to make such claim. So it's 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:05.040 a complicated substance subject, certainly, and it's it's not all 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:09.320 necessarily malicious. I mean, there have been many instances in 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:12.040 history where people had the best of intentions but just 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:16.800 we're operating under a very basic misunderstanding of what's going 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:18.599 on in the brain. Yeah, I suggest we take a 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.960 brief stroll through history and look at what people have 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:25.120 thought in the past the brain did, and ideas they 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:28.480 might have had about how its powers could be improved. 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.520 So what I mean, when did we figure out that 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:39.160 the brain was for thinking on a universal timeline? Actually? Yeah, 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:41.920 like about about it was pretty late, right when I 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:46.560 read the script? Yeah, yeah, no, Um, folks have been 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.960 pretty confused about the brain's functions and and our capacity 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:54.760 to influence it for most of history, starting in ancient Egypt. 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.159 Is really when we have record of this by way 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:01.120 of uh, the the Egyptian funerary practice, which dictated that 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:03.840 the brain just kind of be discarded during the embalming 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.839 process because the heart was considered the seat of knowledge. 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.040 And you've probably heard about that before. Yeah, but how 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:13.920 about the fact that this theory still dominated around four 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:18.600 hundred and fifty BC, thousands of years later. Okay, that's 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.480 when Alcman, who was a Greek physician around that time, 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.040 wrote down for the first time that we can determine 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:30.240 now in modern history, Um, that the brain was actually important. 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:32.640 It wasn't just something that you had to pull out 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:38.000 through the nose and discard in a little trash urn. Yes, um, 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:41.320 And like a hundred years after that, even Aristotle stated 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:43.920 that the brain is basically just a radiator designed to 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.560 keep the heart at at its appropriate temperature. And it 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.440 wasn't until dissection and comparison of human brains with animal 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.880 brains became more widespread. Circle like three hundred BC two 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:57.320 two D b C or b C E I should 0:07:57.360 --> 0:08:00.360 be saying all of this time that the idea of 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:04.120 the brain being responsible for memory and intelligence was actually popularized. 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.480 That's really interesting to me. It makes me wonder what 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:11.680 people in the ancient world thought when someone suffered a 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:16.600 head injury and their their ability to uh to to 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:20.280 function would be impaired, And wonder how they they were 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:24.000 able to reconcile that with this belief of that the 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:27.880 heart the heart of thought. Oh. Interestingly enough, there's also 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:30.680 records from a few physicians and more kind of like 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.959 lower class physicians that we're doing preliminary, kind of crude research, 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:39.760 albeit into how to fix brain injuries and help people 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:42.360 out for for all of this time, but it wasn't 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:47.400 really popular. It wasn't the common widely held aristocratic belief 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:51.439 certainly then, Okay, Starting around a hundred and seventy b 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:56.280 c E. We got the Roman physician Galen's ideas about humors. 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:58.560 And I'm sure that everyone's heard of this kind of thing. 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:03.240 It's one of my favorite terrific, completely untrue things. It's 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:06.760 the no it's the concept that the balance of four 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:12.040 fluids being blood, FLGM, color, and black file are responsible 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.319 for a person's mental and physical health. And furthermore, that 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:19.600 the brain is a gland that creates those four humors. Right, 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.000 so you have an imbalance of humors when you are 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:26.440 not well, and depending upon your your your symptoms, you 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:30.600 have a deficiency or surplus of a certain humor and 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:34.040 they must be rebalanced. I still go to a physician 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:39.360 who does this. Your primary care physician doesn't know. Well, 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:41.680 it's funny got out of this around a thousand. See, 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:44.560 we still have it in our language, right, like you 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.480 can be really sanguine about something, or you can be 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:54.880 flegmatic flegmatic however you say that word phlegmatic automatic. But 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:58.560 so this this theory persisted for like a thousand years, okay, 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:00.600 and it was just the idea that the brain was 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.840 basically only a place where this fluid developed and that 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:07.000 was all it was really good for. When we finally 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:09.679 started getting out of that concept, the Church went ahead 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:13.320 and banned human dissection in anatomical study as desecrations of 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.160 the body. So, uh, we didn't really get any more 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:18.880 research into the brain for another four or five hundred years. 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:22.880 Are you saying you're in favor of desecration? Yeah? Actually 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:26.800 scientifically speaking, so okay, it wasn't until about the sixteen 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:30.400 hundreds or so that we started to actually understand anything 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:33.840 about the brain and it's and its functions, um, at 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:37.080 which point we promptly continued to bork the entire business. 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:42.080 Uh So, powdered human skulls, dissolved brains, and even the 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:46.520 moss that grew on unburied heads was thought to improve 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:50.160 various brain related conditions from like the sixteen hundreds to 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.360 the nineteen hundreds. I feel like that's part of a 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.720 sort of common way of thinking about medicine in the 0:10:56.760 --> 0:11:00.640 olden days, which is, if something touches something or if 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:03.680 it's like something that's what you use. It's a type 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:06.640 of magical thinking. Yeah, sure, sure, And I mean specifically, 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:10.400 I'm talking about cannibalism, not about the in in Western 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:13.240 culture at any rate, it was mostly cannibalism and not 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:17.680 animal brains and skulls. So I mean, like, to the 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:21.200 point that duties were placed on skulls imported to England 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:23.920 from the battlefields of Ireland in the seventeen hundreds. Is 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:25.520 that big of a thing that people were like, we 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:29.439 could tax this and make some money, y'all. That's okay, 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:33.120 all right, Well, how about something closer to modern time. Yeah, 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:35.480 in better news. Coca cola back when it you know, 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.360 actual facts, had cocaine in it in the eighteen hundreds, 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.440 was sold as and I quote, the ideal brain tonic. 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:45.600 There were, in fact, a lot of cures, cures in 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:50.439 quotation marks being sold around that time for neurasthenia a 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:54.880 k A, nervous exhaustion a k A. Basically any mental 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:59.200 health issue one could possibly have, um, most of which 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:01.920 were just us and whatever else seemed good at the 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:06.559 time to grind up and putting booze. There were just yeah, 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:09.439 you know, mental health problems weren't all booze. I'm sure 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:11.880 that part of that was it says it cures everything. 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:14.160 It's got to work. One of the one of the 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:18.880 rural synonyms for coke for coca cola is dope. Did 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:23.360 you guys know that? Yeah, and certain areas of the 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.679 southeast it was referred to just as dope because it 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.559 was known to have, you know, stimulants in it, so 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:34.080 it was doped with stuff. Um, And it was you know, 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:36.760 supposed to be this kind of approach to you know, 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:39.320 the sort of tonic exactly as you were saying that, 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:42.680 it was not considered necessarily just a drink, but also 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:45.800 a potential cure for things. Um. As it turns out. 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:48.320 We'll we'll return to stimulants a little bit later in 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:52.040 this episode and talk about how those are currently being 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:56.880 um uh, experimented with as far as brain function goes. Yeah, 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:00.120 these days many remedies that are on the market are 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:03.959 a little bit more reliable. However, you know, there's still 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:06.559 a lot of claims that go on and f d 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:10.160 A not approved kind of warning labels that packaging is 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:14.319 required to have on them if, for example, it's totally 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:16.280 not been checked out by the f d A to 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:20.120 affirm whatever claim they're making. Um. And I think it's 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:25.080 interesting the very first court trial that tested The Pure 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:27.600 Food and Drugs Act, which sprang up in the early 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:30.800 nineteen hundreds, was about one of these brain tonics. It 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:37.680 was called Queue for Headache, brain Food, food fu d 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.600 it might be food food. Yeah, makes me think of 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.880 a far side cartoon that was Harper's Cure for Headache 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:51.120 brain food to be specific, and also cure broken bones emphysema. 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:58.679 It made a lot of claims and I don't think yeah, okay, 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:03.040 well for Actunately, once we get into more recent medical history, 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:06.719 we do start getting a better idea of some compounds 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:10.280 and chemicals that actually do have a positive effect on 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:15.520 brain health and brain power. Yeah. One of the big 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:18.079 ones we can first point to and say here, here's 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:21.640 a definite Yes. One thing we really know for sure 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:26.000 is iodine um so. Iodine has been shown to be 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:29.840 very important in brain health, especially for pregnant mothers and 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.640 how this will affect their baby. So early gestational iodine 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:37.320 deficiency is known to be a cause of later mental disability. 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:41.040 In a study published in the Lance that found that 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:45.640 even a mild iodine deficiency during pregnancy can cause lower 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:49.280 verbal IQ scores for children. And then there was a 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:53.760 paper published in in the National Bureau of Economic Research. 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.360 I thought this was really interesting, and it's called the 0:14:56.440 --> 0:15:01.840 Cognitive Effects of Micronutrient deficiency Evidence from salt iodization in 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:07.160 the United States. Salt iodization right, adding iodine to salt. Now, 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.760 obviously iodine effects health in more ways than just your 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:15.240 mental powers, like you can get goiter and thyroid issues 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:18.480 if you don't have proper iodine in your diet. So 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:22.200 iodized salt was widely introduced in the United States in 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:27.160 nineteen twenty four. Um, we don't have large distributed samples 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.560 of intelligence scores to work with from the time, So 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.200 how do we look back and see if salt made 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:36.800 a difference in intelligence back then? Well, the authors of 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:38.800 this paper I just named came up with a really 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:43.040 interesting method. They looked at the placement of armed forces 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:47.520 recruits to infer data about mental aptitude UH for children 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.960 before the introduction of IODI salt and then after, and 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:53.240 from the looks of it, the salt made a difference 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:56.200 in parts of the country where there was previously known 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:59.760 to be an iodine deficiency. Introduction of IODI salt led 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:02.160 to a greater number of young men from those areas 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:04.480 being admitted to a branch of the armed forces with 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:08.600 higher aptitude requirements. And you could see the effect pretty 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:13.920 much immediately kids and after it's a spike in Yeah, 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.200 and so there's one example where we know pretty sure 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:21.360 that this is a chemical that really does affect brain 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:24.800 brain function for the better. You get it in your diet. 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:28.360 It's something you need. Your body can't manufacture it naturally, 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:30.360 so you've got to get it through the foods you eat, 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.760 or through a supplement, or through salt or whatever it is. 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:37.080 And it really does make a difference. But I dine 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:39.360 is not the only chemical we know of today that 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.880 can have a positive effect on our brain power, right, 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:45.680 And some of these chemicals, actually, the one I'm going 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:49.400 to the broad category of chemicals I'm going to tackle next, 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:53.760 has a temporary effect. So this is not something that 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:56.000 you know, you take a pill and then suddenly you're smarter. 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:00.080 This is you end up taking some dose of this 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:04.680 chemical or this type of chemical, and part of your 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:09.080 brain function might be sharpened or focused for a given 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:13.200 amount of time until the effects of the chemical wear offs. Okay, 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:16.520 so it's not increasing like your continuous base i Q, 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.400 but it might might give you a really good edge 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:21.000 on the study session. Yeah, it's not going to be 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:23.920 across an entire population. This one is truly individual, right, 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:26.919 this and this may very well mean that you're able to, 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.359 like you said, study more effectively and that you are 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:34.320 able to form memories more effectively and you remember more 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:37.720 of what you studied or that you memory is a 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:40.280 really big one. That's one of the more popular uses 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.480 for this broad range of chemicals which are are known 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:48.320 as new A tropics, which essentially means to bend the mind. 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:53.560 So if sure sure does like matrix style like there 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:57.600 is no spoon, no like what they call the Matrix 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.240 the movie right on Netflix, it's a mind been ding thriller. Yeah. 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:03.679 Now we'll get into more like the matrix style stuff 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:05.920 in our in our Companion episode where we talk about 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:09.320 the tech that can manipulate your brain. But in this case, 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:13.200 these are drugs that have an effect of some sort, 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:17.560 or at least they're supposed to, and not everything necessarily 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:22.200 listed as a new tropic might have an actual effect. 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:23.920 This is one of those things where you're going to 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:25.399 be able to find a lot of stuff that's out 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:28.359 on the market that isn't necessarily um overseen by the 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:33.159 f d A, so some claims may be unfounded, whether 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.480 on purpose or not. But there are stimulants that can 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:39.199 affect the way the brain functions, and in fact have 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.040 been used in medicine for quite some time, often to 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:46.760 treat various disorders and diseases, things like Parkinson's disease or 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:51.240 a d h D or Alzheimer's. These are all various 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:54.399 conditions that doctors have treated with the use of certain 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:58.679 types of drugs, including UH stimulants. Not all new tropics 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:00.679 are stimulants, just a lot of them happened to be 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.200 so kind of similar to something like caffeine. If you 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:05.520 guys have ever had a study session where you drink 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:07.440 some caffeine so that you could really kind of feel 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:10.720 focused and just zone in specifically on what you wanted 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:13.359 to look at and ignore everything else. That's really what 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:16.160 we're talking about here. But then you end up playing 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:18.720 contra until four in the morning. That is that that 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:20.919 can be an issue. Actually, one of the things that 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.280 I have heard about people who you know, there are 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.320 obviously people who are prescribed this medication in order to 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.480 treat an illness or condition. There are some people who 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:33.280 get hold of it to use it specifically to try 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:36.640 and sharpen up their their minds for a specific purpose. 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:41.320 And uh, that's not what the drugs are being sold 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:45.960 as officially anyway, legally, um, but that there is a 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:50.719 huge market for it, particularly in places like uh, prestigious 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:54.000 schools where there's a high pressure environment to do really well. 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:57.720 And so um. The thing is that sometimes it can 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:00.040 really help you focus on what you need to do. 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:03.239 Does not necessarily make you a super genius. It just 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.400 means that you are able to focus much more effectively 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:08.639 than you normally would. You might be able to recall 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:11.280 things more effectively, or you may just be able to 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:14.920 really concentrate well, so that if you have the dedication, 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.840 it's helpful. It does not magically have you learned everything 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.199 in your class by taking a pill? Right? No, No, 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:24.960 it's not an osmosis of knowledge pill. Right. And so 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:29.480 then better at low doses, yes, yes, higher dose often 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:34.880 will actually impair neurological function. So normally the doses that 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:37.879 would have this kind of effect where you're able to 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:42.320 focus your attention would be very very low doses, at 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.679 least initially. Uh. The body has this habit of building 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:49.040 up tolerances to chemicals depending upon the type of chemical. 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:52.680 So sometimes you will have people who just realize that 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.760 the effect no longer has the kick that used to have, 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:59.560 and that pupping the dose does not necessarily give them 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.480 that same feeling they had at the onset. It may 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:06.440 just be that it's not effective at all for them, uh, 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:08.800 at least to you know, sharpen up their brains. It 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:12.080 might be very effective in hurting them, which is one 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:15.520 of the issues about New A tropics. Another is that 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.760 if you aren't focused on the specific task you wanted 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:23.399 to to really concentrate on, you might find yourself, you know, 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:26.640 distracting yourself with anything else to do that will take 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:29.680 up your time. I read accounts of people who said, yeah, 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.600 I did. I took some fully fully intending to study 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:36.600 for a big you know, mid term or something along 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:40.800 those lines. Instead spent four hours reorganizing my music collection, 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:46.199 or you know, endlessly cleaning the room I was in 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:50.399 as opposed to or or yeah, or the proving to 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:52.399 my friends that I can get there without using the 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:55.960 Konami code. Um, you know, these are certain things that 0:21:56.080 --> 0:22:00.560 can happen. And uh, it's again I us that this 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:04.639 is something I would really recommend staying away from until 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.600 science is able to catch up and determine what stuff 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:13.080 is actually effective, what stuff is safe, whether or not 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:17.399 anyone should ever try this kind of thing, because the 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:20.720 thing with a lot of these uh man made brain 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:25.120 chemical altering substances is that we're not sure why they 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:28.240 do what they do. That's a big thing. The inner 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:31.159 workings of the brain are still so mysterious to us 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:34.639 that we can't be completely certain that something that at 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:36.919 least on the surface appears to be beneficial does not 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:40.080 have some other effect that could be really bad. And 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:42.280 we don't know what the long term effects are because 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:44.879 these drugs have not been out there that long, and 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:50.000 especially haven't been used to treat someone indefinitely. Right, It 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:52.560 wasn't necessarily a drug that you're going to be taking 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:54.879 this for the rest of your life type thing, or 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:58.800 or as regularly as someone who perhaps is really trying 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:02.160 to excel at a particular high stress environment might be doing. 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:03.919 And since the drugs are fairly new, we don't have 0:23:03.960 --> 0:23:06.760 any lifetime studies about all of that long term kind 0:23:06.800 --> 0:23:09.440 of stuff. We do have a lot of people who 0:23:09.480 --> 0:23:12.280 have UH tested it quite a bit, and you know, 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:15.360 like like the and not just not just people who 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:18.480 are testing it, you know, self testing, like I tested 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:21.720 that whiskey a lot less week, but like like the military. 0:23:21.800 --> 0:23:24.480 You know, obviously the military has a vested interest in 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:28.440 making sure that certain individuals are able to really focus 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:31.560 on tasks at hand, like the Air Force being a 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:34.560 great example. If you have pilots who are going to 0:23:34.600 --> 0:23:38.040 be on a particularly long mission and you want their 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:42.440 mental acuity to remain at peak performance throughout the entire uh, 0:23:42.480 --> 0:23:46.000 the entire endeavor, then you may say, hey, you're going 0:23:46.000 --> 0:23:49.120 to want to take this type of medication. It's going 0:23:49.160 --> 0:23:52.840 to keep you sharp so that you and your team 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:55.679