A Cognitive Renascence - Brain stack 2.0

Upon these amino acids I shall build civilization !

Thanks to the Twitter fren who described the effects of the stack as in the title. Credit where it is due.

The brain works in mysterious ways, my brain works in stranger ways. I often experienced breakthroughs in research I have been struggling with for months while doing an unrelated task, such as analyzing a new proposed algorithm that has a more computing-efficient way of dealing with language models. This is one of those times.

This article will serve two purposes. A Taurine and Choline-centered approach, and explaining why they are good additions to the brain stack. Not overly sciency, but citations will be present. Before going any further, a PSA (public service announcement).

You don’t need to supplement anything I suggest for long term, if you are not comfortable taking X, Y, or/and Z for long periods, just cycle. Take it for 4-8 weeks, stop for 8-12 weeks. Do what feels right for you, ignore whatever I or anyone else say. Gut instinct > anyone else’s opinion

The stack, dosages, and suggestions. “Wait, it looks oddly like your Covid stack…”, yes, because I come from a complexity perspective, and my focus has always brain on protecting the brain, there is a lot of overlap because each one of these nutrients, amino acids have multiple roles in your body.

Bear in mind, that the “trick” is the absurd synergy these elements have together, not their effects as standalone compounds.

Click on the image and it will zoom in, download for full-resolution

Here is my Piracetam-centered piece. And here Glycine+NAC (GlyNAC).

I first cited Taurine in October for its potent immunomodulatory, and longevity effects, it can correct a large amount of the damage done by chronic infections, and severe SARS-CoV-2, among other positive effects. Quoting from the cited article.

Taurine supplementation in older adults helps recover muscle, lowers inflammation, and helps with oxidative stress, it also directly helps older people get more cognitive and physical benefits from exercising. It also possesses benefits for cardiovascular health.

Taurine is much more than just a way to boost your immune system or a way to care for your metabolism, but it is proposed as one of the most promising neuroprotective agents. Taurine can regulate calcium at multiple cellular levels (the normal function of calcium is paramount for proper mitochondrial function), it actively prevents glutamate toxicity, a problem people with neurodegeneration, and Long Covid can have.

Taurine will directly bind to oligomeric Amyloid Beta, it can attenuate Amyloid Beta mitochondrial dysfunction, and helps the body to keep proper glutathione levels, thus increasing antioxidant capacity. Taurine can restore the activity of the cholinergic system (AChE and ChAT enzymes) thus helping restore impaired spatial learning and memory ability. More evidence of memory impairment improvement here, and here. Most important for a section of the population, taurine enhances the antitumor activity by boosting CD8 T cell function.

If you add Piracetam and Vinpocetine to Taurine you can protect the brain against brain injury and inflammation. Vinpocetine is more potent together, but Taurine and Piracetam alone conserve GSH, and lower TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β in the brain (these are the biggest contributors to neuro-issues in a simplistic way).

Taurine and N-acetylcysteine supplementation prevents memory impairment. Protective effect of taurine on sepsis-induced lung injury via inhibiting the p38/MAPK signaling pathway

Now we cover the second addition. Choline (whenever a paper states activation of the cholinergic system, you can interpret it as supplementing choline, simplistically). Activating the cholinergic system can partially restore olfactory dysfunction, impaired memory, and learning. Choline intake correlates with better cognitive performance in older people, and given older people don’t digest and absorb the nutrients of animal protein as efficiently as before, supplementing will give the same benefit.

Long-term choline supplementation can ameliorate and most likely if early enough almost abrogate Alzheimer’s disease, and its cognitive deficits. In mice and it can be expanded to humans when mothers and neonates are used, choline supplementation improves long-term memory. Prenatal choline supplementation improves child-sustained attention.

Here are some addendums on Piracetam.

Piracetam Attenuates LPS-Induced Neuroinflammation and Cognitive Impairmentnitive deficits. Encephalopathy is mitigated by Piracetam via multiple mechanisms.

Piracetam as a Therapeutic Agent for Doxorubicin-Induced Cognitive Deficits by Enhancing Cholinergic Functions and Reducing Neuronal Inflammation, Apoptosis, and Oxidative Stress in Rats. The following from here.

• Piracetam improves cognitive function with no stimulation or sedation on CNS.

• Caffeine is CNS stimulant which is reported for nootropic activity.

• Caffeine and piracetam pre-treatment decreased scopolamine-induced cognitive damage and amnesia.

• The preventive response was reported by an improvement in learning tendency.

Thiamine itself deserves a single long article, but there are enough resources online on the benefits of Thiamine, in very simplistic terms, almost everyone in the West is Thiamine deficient. The higher in carbohydrates your diet is, the lower your thiamine levels (and it is hard to properly diagnose its levels), chronic diseases, autoimmune diseases, and inflammation all affect your thiamine levels, therefore directly affecting your mitochondrial function.

Similar to Magnesium, but this one I intend to write about it early 2024. But here is a good article on Magnesium's role in learning, and memory.

How does it all work ?

It gets complicated pretty fast, so let me try to back it down. To the scientifically inclined this stack hits over 15 pathways, this is a gross simplification. The aim of the stack is to deal with systemic inflammation but especially aimed at the gut and brain, as a byproduct it also “fixes” your cellular metabolism, and in certain regions, such as the brain, it increases it in a beneficial way.

Piracetam and NAC both have synergy, Piracetam directly influences membrane fluidity, a fancy way to say things can get inside the say with less effort, thus NAC enters cells faster, NAC potentiates Piracetam’s effects, Glycine does the same for NAC, Piracetam affects how the brain uses Glycine. One charges the other, which charges the other, creating a positive feedback loop (➕🔁).

Aspartame has the side effect of making the body get rid of calcium, and doing so potentiates the effects of Piracetam by a decent margin, a reinforcement of the ➕🔁. Caffeine per the example above influences the effects of piracetam in our neurocognition, by affecting Piracetam, you guessed, it also influences the ➕🔁. Both are Coke Zero components.

Choline has multiple effects on our physiology, and at therapeutic levels (such as supplementing, rather than getting from diet) it influences our learning capacity, memory, and attention, it also will directly change how the body uses and “deals” with the stack.

Taurine has a different effect, precisely because of Piracetam. Rather than making you feel at ease, taking it in the morning and 3 hours later (lunch), consuming the brain stack with lunch, fires your brain.

Niacinamide or Niacin Flush will affect blood flow to the brain, and given Piracetam influences membrane permeability, it will “supercharge” your cells with energy, thus your cells and mitochondria will be able to make use of the stack more efficiently.

So by taking the Brain Stack, you are directly lowering inflammation, changing the body’s and cell metabolism positively, and causing significant changes in how the brain processes, absorbs, transmits, and retains information. For reasons yet to be discovered (perhaps with deep learning we may uncover it), if you possess the genes that make you susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease and diseases of the same class, this stack of supplements will work significantly better on you than the rest. I am one of these.

Some researchers propose the same genes that make you susceptible to these diseases, are also responsible for you responding much better to Piracetam and NAC than others.

Is Coke Zero necessary ? Yes, and no. I am an absolutist on “Grab what is useful, discard what isn’t” in any field of life, and my suggestions are no different. For most people, adding the Coke Zero is what bridged the gap, as a friend described “I am living through a cognitive renascence”. You may add Caffeine and see if the results are as good. Changing NAC to Glutathione also works for many.

There are a small number of outliers who are “non-responders”, the stack doesn’t achieve anywhere near the effects I describe here (and many others describe similarly enhancing effects), but from testing on hundreds of people, one dynamic remains unchanged. The more “fucked” your brain finds itself, the more you get from the stack.


This stack also has weird positive effects, like me recovering from partial hearing loss, still present, but it improved to a perceptible level (I don’t have the slightest clue how, most likely Piracetam effects on blood flow). A friend recovered his eyesight (this one can be ascribed to how the stack makes glutathione plentiful in your cells). Some people may experience odd, singular recovery effects.

Biochemically enhancing your cognition is an easy “sell”, if the next best thing in the very near future will be, quite literally, shoving a computer chip into your brain, and being open to hacking, cognitive malware, and some deciding a good prank would be making brain-chip users going psychotic. But hey, that is just my dumb opinion =).

Today is my birthday, you can buy me a coffee if you want ! And thank you to everyone who supports this work.