Doctors begin their careers with the Hippocratic Oath vowing to…

First do no harm.

While I’m not a doctor as an online educator the same ethos underlies my endeavors to inform about supplements and technology that people can use to empower mindset and productivity along with restoring health.

Among Biohackers there’s a predilection for risk. Perhaps due to my conspicuous position as a self experimenter and the personality I inject into my videos I’ve received a number of emails and messages from people (usually young men) asking me about experimental smart drugs, research chemicals, microdosing LSD or psychoactive chemicals in the legal fringes.

I consistently urge conservative self experimentation to these people, whatever your Biohacking goals are…

Being more energetic, focused and productive

Improving mood and mindset

Improving memory

Having better sex

Making gains in the gym

…There’s better ways of doing it than taking risks with unproven research chemicals, taking extreme dosages of supplements or invasive technological interventions.

Do the research before you order or ingest anything

First, don’t assume that anything is safe just because it’s for sale. Online and even in your local pharmacy you can find plenty of supplements for sale in enticing packaging that imbue credibility which you really should not be taking.

Before you order or ingest anything I’d urge you to do at least an hour of actual research on it.

Go on Youtube and look up all the vlogs that other people have made about their experiences with it. Watch all of these. Go onto some online forums (like Longecity and Reddit) and read what people are saying about their experiences. If you run across a few reports of undesirable side effects like a headache or trouble sleeping that’s not necessarily a deal breaker BUT if there is a significant quantity of reports of bad side effects that’s a pretty good reason to not use it. Testimonials and anecdotes can be misleading and of course the placebo effect is going to skew whatever results are being reported. So importantly you want to look at what the actual science is saying also. So search for papers and studies on the supplement on Pubmed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/advanced. For some supplements you’ll find hundreds of studies and papers, look for the more recent human studies which are placebo controlled and read the conclusions that the researchers reached in the Abstracts of the studies. If there’s very few published studies on a supplement and it’s unclear what benefit they have in human trials that’s a red flag. On LimitlessMindset.com you’ll find a database of over 50 popular Nootropic ingredients, in plain English I assign a risk grade to the Nootropics from A+ to F. You may also want to checkout the excellent objective website Examine.com which has many meticulous articles describing in depth the potential downsides of various supplements.

IF there’s consistency between the positive effects being reported in the anecdotes and the findings of the studies and papers and if there’s a lack of red flags or serious downsides discussed then go ahead with experimenting with the supplement.

Ideally you also want to ask your doctor, physician or a trusted practitioner about any supplement you’re thinking about using. But doctors can often be misinformed, cynically skeptical or sometimes recommend harmful pharmaceutical drugs so ideally you want to get a second or third opinion from other professionals also. So you should really complete research steps 1–4 with any drug that your doctor recommends as well.

It may sound like a lot of work but true health requires doing your own research and critical thinking!

Finally, if you’ve done the research and are still confused as to whether you should be taking something send me a message with a few details and I’ll offer an informed opinion.