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Best Nootropics 2023 - Our Top 6 Nootropic Stacks

We all need to lift the brain fog that so often clouds us if we want to live our best lives. And we need to protect our long-term cognitive health, keeping age-related cognitive decline at bay.

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Best Nootropics 2023
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Modern life can be stressful and overwhelming. Keeping your cognitive health and wellbeing up to scratch is a bit of a must. We all need to mitigate the stress and anxiety that comes with constant cognitive overload from a range of devices and media formats. 

We all need to lift the brain fog that so often clouds us if we want to live our best lives. And we need to protect our long-term cognitive health, keeping age-related cognitive decline at bay.

This is where the best nootropics come into play. They offer all these benefits and more. There is a large range to choose from out there, so we’ve set a little time aside to sift through the best of the best of them.

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Best Nootropic Picks:

NooCube - Best All-Round Nootropic 
VyvaMind - Best For ADHD (Adderall Alternative)
Hunter Focus - Most Potent Nootropic

What Are Nootropics?

Nootropics are so called ‘smart drugs’. They are over the counter supplements designed to improve various aspects of your brain’s health and healthy cognitive function. Using a variety of ingredients, they can increase blood flow to the brain, improve neuron health and functionality, ward against stress, elevate your mood, and help you to focus with greater lasting energy.

The science is a little young for many of even the best nootropic supplements. However, plenty of the individual ingredients are well-tested and are proven to work. This is certainly the case for the formulas we’ve chosen below. All told, you can be relatively confident that by simply taking a couple of pills daily your cognitive health will improve.

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Do note, however, that these are not miracle cures. They will not make you more intelligent. Nor will they get rid of stress or depression by themselves or protect against age-related cognitive decline or neurodegenerative diseases by themselves. They are not replacements for proper rest and relaxation.

Rather, they are  cognitive supplements, designed to supplement your diet and lifestyle. If you’re stressed, the first step is to reduce your life’s stressors where possible. If you’re fatigued, you should try to get some rest. If you are struggling with anxiety and/or depression, talk to your healthcare provider. Likewise, if you are struggling with symptoms similar to those of ADHD, talk to your healthcare provider.

With all this in place – with as healthy a lifestyle as you can manage – nootropics can come into play. They can augment and boost your cognitive capacities and wellbeing. In this regard, used in this way, they can be fantastic.

Our Top 6 Nootropic Supplements

Lets take a look at the best nootropics available in 2023…

NooCube

NooCube is one of my own personal nootropics of choice. It leads the market, rests on a great body of research, and contains potent blends of some of the best nootropic ingredients going. You should begin to feel benefits within an hour or so of taking it, and those benefits should realistically be quite profound.

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The main ingredient I enjoy in NooCube’s formula is Bacopa monnieri extract, or water hyssop, dosed well at 250 mg per serving. Water hyssop is found in wetlands across the globe, though it’s most strongly associated with India, where it has been included in traditional forms of medicine for centuries due to its ability to improve memory and reduce anxiety.

These benefits are pretty well documented in modern research, though the effects have mostly been studied in older adults. Its effects on younger adults have yet to be fully verified.

Then there are the two amino acids, l-tyrosine and l-theanine, which I always like to see in this kind of product.

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L-tyrosine is created naturally within the human body, sourced from the amino acid phenylalanine. It is used in the creation of various brain chemicals and also plays a role in melatonin production and hormone regulation. Its inclusion in common nootropics mainly stems from its impact on the stress neurotransmitters epinephrine and norepinephrine. More research is needed. However, tentative work suggests that l-tyrosine can improve your brain’s function, especially your memory, under stress.

You get 250 mg of l-tyrosine with each serving of NooCube.

L-theanine is generally found in black and green tea, with some mushrooms also serving as a source. It isn’t necessary for the human body. However, it has proven benefits for anxiety, making it a perfect addition in nootropic supplements. It aids in serotonin production, which in turn cheers you up and stabilizes your mood.

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You get 100 mg of l-theanine with each serving of NooCube.

Next up is Cat’s Claw concentrate at 175 mg per serving. It’s an Amazonian botanical that has a two-millennium long history of use in South and Central America. These days, it’s used as a supplement to aid in treating a wide array of healthcare concerns, including arthritis, hemorrhoids, certain types of cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. Whilst it primarily works to improve immune health, it has also been shown to slow down the brain’s aging.

You also get 150 mg of oat straw concentrate with each NooCube serving. Again, this is an ingredient with a long history of use in traditional medicine forms.

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Sourced from unripened sativa plant leaves and stem, oat straw aids blood flow regulation to the brain. This means more oxygen and nutrients to the brain, resulting in greater repair and energy.

I always like to see some form of choline in a good nootropic. In NooCube, this comes as 50 mg of Alpha GPC. It is a precursor to acetylcholine, a key neurotransmitter that enables greater attention and memory. It also plays a role in skeletal muscle contraction, giving you a bit of an athletic boost. It is thought to help overall brain function whilst also keeping neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s at bay.

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These are the main ingredients, though they are far from the only players in this formula. We also get several more conservatively dosed botanicals. The first is marigold extract, which is rich in both lutein and zeaxanthin. These may help to boost memory and cognitive function. Marigold extract also has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, which should protect the brain against stress and aging. The antioxidants don’t stop there, however. You also get 14.3 mg of resveratrol per serving, which is also rich in them. You will typically get it from grape, blueberry, mulberry, raspberry, and peanut skins. It should help to slow down the brain’s aging process, whilst also aiding clarity and focus. We also get a good dose of pterostilbene from blueberries, an anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory compound that should further ward against neurodegenerative diseases.

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Finally, NooCube gives you a good hit of vitamin B7, or biotin. Amongst its many roles within the human body, it helps to maintain a healthy nervous system. It has been linked with improved sleep, longer lasting energy levels, and lower levels of anxiety.

NooCube is very competitively priced for what it gives you, is designed and made to an incredibly high standard, and all-in-all gives us a very solid benchmark for what modern nootropics can and should do.

VyvaMind

VyvaMind is another first-class nootropic neurostimulant that begins to work within an hour of taking a couple of capsules. It gives you a potent blend of caffeine and l-theanine, among others, to give you a long-lasting energy spike that should be a fair amount smoother than simply drinking coffee or taking any kind of caffeine supplement.

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All-in, you should expect to see improved focus and concentration, far more energy, with no energy crash, and improved memory. It is marketed at high-functioning people on the go who need to remain in the zone, fully focussed and energized for long periods throughout the day.

Of course, a lot of this comes from the caffeine content. It’s one of the most potent stimulants going whilst being safe and healthy in moderate doses (you get 75 mg with each serving of VyvaMind, which is about the same as half a cup of coffee). This all hits you at once, meaning that that small serving is actually quite powerful. You should feel the energizing effects within about half an hour.

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Caffeine isn’t just a stimulant, however. Moderate doses have been shown to improve cognitive performance.

This goes hand in hand with l-tyrosine and l-theanine, which we saw above in NooCube’s formula. As we have seen, these play central roles in hormone regulation, melatonin and serotonin production, neurotransmitter formulation and functioning, and anxiety reduction. This last benefit is particularly good as it can offset the jittery anxiety that often comes from caffeine consumption.

As above, I always like to see some form of choline in a nootropic. VyvaMind uses citicoline, which will bring about similar benefits to NooCube’s Alhpa GPC. Choline, and thus citicoline, is a precursor to acetylcholine, a key neurotransmitter that enables greater attention and memory. Taking it over a prolonged period (the manufacturer recommends three months or so) will allow it to build in your system and release its full range of benefits. A twelve week course has been proven to improve memory and anxiety signifiers.

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You can get a three-bottle VyvaMind deal at a pretty decent discount. Each bottle is designed to last a month, so this deal should give you the full effects you’re looking for.
Finally, you get a good two-punch B vitamin complex with VyvaMind. This is made up of B6 and B12, two very important vitamins for your brain’s health and healthy functioning.
This also undoes a potential side effect of using VyvaMind. Caffeine use can deplete your levels of B-vitamins. It’s a diuretic, which means that you will go to the bathroom more. You can lose a lot of B-vitamins through your urine in this way.

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Everything in VyvaMind is high-quality and clinically relevant, proven to give you the results you want from any good nootropic. Its formula is a little thin. You’ll notice there are far fewer ingredients in its makeup than in NooCube’s. This is more testament to NooCube’s quality, not a detraction from VyvaMind’s utility. It doesn’t top this list, but it’s still one of the best nootropic supplements out there with the likes of SOMA Analytics rated it second on their list, and is well-worth the money they charge for their three-month supply.

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Hunter Focus

Hunter Focus is another of my favorite nootropics. It is made by Roar Ambition, a specialist supplement producer that was formed in 2012 in Leeds, England, who bring out a wide range of products aimed at helping you to become your best self. Whatever your goals, they have you covered.

Hunter Focus, as you may have guessed, is designed to improve your focus, among other things. You should find your concentration and creativity improved by taking it, with improved memory and overall cognitive function.

Firstly, happily, it contains citicoline. As ever, this is important for creating and maintaining other neurotransmitters and brain-healthy chemicals. By increasing citicoline volume in your body, you should find signaling processes in your brain speeding up significantly. In fact, Roar Ambition claim with a fair amount of evidence that citicoline supplementation alone can lead to a 13.6% increase in brain energy and a 26% increase in membrane formation.

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Then there are the amino acids, which should be pretty much obligatory. L-tyrosine and l-theanine are present in workable amounts. Roar Ambition have conducted double blind tests on their tyrosine supplements, finding a great leap in mental performance in those taking them compared to those taking a placebo. They have also found subjects taking l-theanine have performed far better under stress than those taking placebos.

Their formula is incredibly rich. It is also segmented into different uses and benefits.

For example, they have included their stellar Memory Matrix in Hunter Focus’ formula. This relies heavily on Lion’s Mane Mushroom, one of my favorite supplement ingredients going. It’s seen plenty of use in traditional East Asian medicine forms. It’s included here for its ability to aid nerve development in our bodies whilst protecting them against damage. This will benefit the whole body, of course, but will be most profoundly felt in the brain. 

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Roar Ambition’s research showed that those taking Lion’s Mane for two months showed ‘significantly increased scores on the cognitive function scale compared with the placebo group’.

This is backed up and enhanced by both maritime pine bark and bacopa.

Maritime pine bark is a Mediterranean botanical thought to improve blood flow, especially to the brain. As we have seen, improved blood flow to the brain means more oxygen and nutrients to the brain, which in turn leads to improved focus and concentration.

We have already seen bacopa monnieri extract, or water hyssop. It’s a common herb in India known for its ability to boost certain beneficial chemicals in the brain, most notably those relating to memory and cognition. It plays a role in balancing your mood and keeping your brain young.

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Then there is Hunter Focus’ Mood Amplification formula. As you might imagine, this is designed to promote happiness in conjunction with an improved sense of calm and wellbeing.

This rests on ashwagandha, which I would urge anyone to take either as part of a broader supplement or in its own. It is an Asian herb that has been used for over six thousand years in various forms of medicine. It is known for its ability to combat symptoms of arthritis, respiratory issues, tumors, insomnia and anxiety. It can also help to optimize natural testosterone output in men, which will in itself lead to more energy, greater focus, and an improved mood.

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Phosphatidylserine backs this up very ably. It’s a fatty substance that helps to prevent damage to our brain cells, particularly that associated with the aging process. It sees plenty of use in treating symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s as a result. There is also some evidence suggesting that it can help to balance levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in our brains.

Finally, you get a good vitamin complex with Hunter Focus. These include vitamins B6, B9, and B12, which should improve cognitive performance whilst inhibiting stress and anxiety. Meanwhile, vitamin C is a potent antioxidant. As we have seen, antioxidants play a key role in preventing oxidative stress to the brain and thus keeping it young and functioning optimally. Vitamin D3 can aid cognitive performance, or at least a deficit can harm it, and K2 can further help to reduce inflammation and protect brain cells.

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This is an incredibly rich, well-thought-out formula that allows Hunter Focus to easily vie with NooCube for the top spot. It will cover plenty of bases, is incredibly good value for money, and should be able to deliver everything you want and more from a higher end nootropic supplement.

NooCeptin

NooCeptin is made by SAP Nutra, who also make VyvaMind, so we’re already onto something good. They are based in the UK but produce everything in the US in FDA approved facilities. This in mind, it should be something good.

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With NooCeptin, SAP Nutra are very honest about what you can expect. Or, rather, they do a good job of limiting your expectations, where other supplement companies have a tendency to promise the Earth with miracle products. There is no miracle here, a fact about which SAP Nutra are fully open about.

They don’t promise a product that will stop cognitive decline or make you feel supercharged by itself. It is a supplement, designed to help out an already healthy and balanced lifestyle.

And it really should help out. The formula begins with citicoline, so you can expect an uptick in acetylcholine, the key neurotransmitter. This should help with memory and focus. Then there is Panax Ginseng, an ingredient I have taken in supplement form plenty over the years for a wide variety of benefits. It’s an East Asian staple with a long history of use in traditional medicine. Here, it is being used for its status as an adaptogen, a natural substance capable of aiding your body’s stress regulation. It can also help with cognitive performance and memory, making it a worthy inclusion here.

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It pairs nicely with ginkgo biloba, another East Asian staple, and another staple in traditional Chinese medicine. It has been shown to reduce anxiety levels and has been used to treat memory loss and neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s. 

Then we come onto another couple of ingredients that we have already seen in this list. Lion’s mane mushroom is there to support nerve development and the creation of new neurons whilst protecting the brain’s cells. Bacopa monieri is there to support healthy memory whilst delivering a large payload of antioxidants to keep the brain healthy and young. You also get a good dose of the amino acid l-theanine to aid memory and cognitive function.

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Finally, another of my favorite supplement ingredients rears its head for the first time on this list – rhodiola rosea, a perennial herb from the cold climes of northern Europe and Asia. It has long been used in traditional forms of medicine across Russia and Scandinavia, where it is believed to improve stamina and cognitive capacity whilst also regulating mood and anxiety. It is a lovely touch to add into this recipe.

As with VyvaMind, NooCeptin isn’t the most comprehensive supplement on this list. Its formula is a little bare bones. However, everything that is there is very good and well thought out – it’s worth a look for anyone looking to improve their mood and cognitive health.

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Mind Lab Pro

NooCube quite consistently tops lists for the best nootropic in the world. However, when it doesn’t, it’s often because it has lost out to Mind Lab Pro . It’s a fantastic offering from Opti-Nutra Limited Company, one of the best-respected supplement companies out there.

Everything included in Mind Lab Pro rests on robust data sets from pioneering clinical research. You should be able to rest assured that it really will promote a calm, relaxed mindset whilst also keeping your brain working in top order both in the short- and long- term.

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There isn’t much in the formula that we haven’t already seen. For example, we have a good dose of citicoline, bacopa monnieri, lion’s mane mushroom, rhodiola rosea (big tick from me for this inclusion), and maritime bark extract for an enviable range of botanicals. Mind Lab Pro also gives plenty of the amino acids l-tyrosine (as n-acetyl l-tyrosine) and l-theanine. Finally, there is a solid B vitamin complex offering vitamins B6, B9, and B12.

It’s as comprehensive as something like NooCube, with the added bonus of giving you that good hit of rhodiola rosea. It will do everything that anything in this list will do, plus a lot more, keeping you calm, focussed, relaxed, energized, and healthy. You will see results in as little as half an hour, though the main benefits will come with longer time use.

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It is about the best put together supplement going, providing incredibly stiff competition for the top spot.

Alpha Brain

Let’s end with a bit of a controversial supplement, with Alpha Brain. Alpha Brain is made by Onnit, a health and fitness company with a dizzying array of products, founded in 2011 as the brainchild of Aubrey Marcus and contentious podcaster Joe Rogan. Onnit’s aim is to ensure you have all the tools you need to become your best self, with Alpha Brain topping the list as perhaps their best known, most popular product.

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I call it controversial simply because of Joe Rogan’s involvement, which should give any serious minded reviewer interested in the scientific data underpinning a supplement pause for thought. Rogan is infamous for some of the cranks he hosts on his podcast and has built up a reputation for buying into pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. I would be wary of trusting anything masquerading as scientific that has his name attached to it.

However, perform that double take and you’ll likely come away impressed. I did.

Alpha Brain’s formula is split into four distinct sections, comprised of three blends and cat’s claw extract. Everything is hidden behind ‘proprietary formulas’, meaning that although we know what is going into the recipe, we don’t know doses of anything. This is a fly in the ointment and will likely rob Alpha Brain of first place in many lists like this. However, the ingredients themselves are sound.

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Firstly, of course, you get cat’s claw, which we’ve seen above. Then come the three blends.

These begin with the Onnit Flow Blend, made up of l-tyrosine, l-theanine, oat straw extract, and phosphatidylserine, a compound associated with improved memory. Then there is the Onnit Focus Blend, which gives you Alpha-GPC, a massive plus, alongside bacopa and toothed clubmoss, a botanical thought to protect brain cells from harmful natural substances. Finally, we have the Onnit Fuel Blend, including l-leucine, pterostilbene and vitamin B6. L-leucine is an essential amino acid used in protein biosynthesis. It is thought to aid in blood sugar level control as well as the growth of new muscle and lean body mass. Pterostilbene meanwhile is thought to be a potent antioxidant and anticarcinogenic, providing additional protection to your brain.

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I don’t like the fact that it is all proprietary. Looking at the volumes of each blend and the ingredients involved, some of them are clearly under-dosed, though there is no way of knowing any detail. Its provenance is also a little suspect. However, the ingredients list itself is pretty strong.

Verdict

I’m not going to break convention here. The top spot has thus far always belonged to either Mind Lab Pro or NooCube. I’ve used both to great success over the years. 

For me, NooCube’s diverse formula and overall quality put it ahead by a whisker. It really is by a whisker though. I would recommend it to anyone, but I would also encourage anybody to give Mind Lab Pro a go. With these two on the market, nobody else has much of a shot.

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