Natural nootropics - what are they?

Popular myth diffused on internet forums, and sometimes even in Hollywood productions, says that we use only 10% of our brain, and we have a chance to become geniuses by developing remaining 90% of our potential. Despite the fact this claim is a nonsense, which can be abolished by evey 1-year student of psychology, it has a humankind dream of fully unlocking their potential under a charm. The dream may become true, although surely not in such a spectacular way as directors of Limitless or Lucy would like to convince us. There are ways to optimize work of our nervous system, to boost default settngs of our mind, which evolutionairly is adapted to economic management stream of our awareness, vastness of our cognitive abilities is everyday decreased to the necessary state and enough to survive it. Nature is quite mean and does not like wasting supplies of energy for something what is not absolutely necessary to survive.

We have power to lift unachievable weights everyday. In extreme situations our adrenal glands, throwing out adrenaline, give an incentive to whole organism informing it we are in danger. In order to survive,  we must climb the top of our possibilities. Similar is the work of our awareness, grounded and adapted to doing activities in an automatized way everyday, in right conditions it is able to achieve maximum of cognitive processes efficiency - hone senses, spin up learning, or relevantly improve memory.
We live in times of informations, in which we are able to collect functioning models of optimization of human work and gather the most needed tools to enhance it. Meditation, mindfullness practice, physical activity taken up spontaneously and with charm. They are only some of the ways to streamline default mode of our mind work.

Additionally, we today dispose of reliable methods of attaining knowledge. Sciences such as psychology and neuroscience describe with impossible to achieve before presicion, what social, physical and biochemical conditions must be fulfilled to take our nervous system work on next level. These are amazing times, in which knowledge constantly by thousands of Research Centres lets us as a species, and every individual themselves, take over the control over their own way of experiencing, over our mental software responsible for efficiency of the system.

A number of substances, which have been used for thousands of years in traditional medicine, stayed for scientific proof of their efficiency. One of them is a plant used in Hindu Ayurvedic Medicine - Bacopa monnieri.

Research conducted on the group of 65 people by scientists from Natural Medicine Institute in Portland, Oregon (annotation 1) showed that people being tested and taking extract from Bacopa Monnieri for six weeks, statistically achieved better results in short-term memory efficiency test , and verbal activity, including bringing words ability (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test) People being tested also showed bigger ability to reject irrelevant informations in cognitive tasks. The results scientifically prove wisdom included in Hindu Medical System, where Bacopa monnieri has been used for millennia, but this is only one tenth of research results confirming benevolent influence of natural origin substances on our cognitive system.

Another work of scientists from Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore, India, (annotation 2) prove that just after 7 days of using diet based on extract from Bacopa monnieri helps to inhibit exhaustion of dopamine, which relevantly influences mood control. It also helps to prevent creating disrupted balance state between free radicals (oxidants, reactive oxygen forms - ROF) and antioxidants, so it prevents oxidative stress, which can be a cause of many serious diseases, including cancer. It proves the Bacopa monnieri extract influences our brain like a natural presservative, which helps to keep up neurochemical balance increases stress resistance.

Scientific discoveries, which prove the efficiency of solutions coming from nature, let us influence our cognitive system in a positive way, to reach possibly the highest level of brain efficiency and last in our the best psychophysical shape.

These are revolutionary times, in which knowledge we collect about healthy lifestyle and physical movement lets us design better our own efficiency. It is worth using that.

Bibliography:

(Annotation 1):
C. Calabrese, WL. Gregory, M. Leo, D. Kraemer, K. Bone, B. Oken, Effects of a Standardized Bacopa monnieri Extract on Cognitive Performance, Anxiety, and Depression in the Elderly: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2008.
(Annotation 2):
R. Hosamani, Muralidhara, Neuroprotective efficacy of Bacopa monnieri against rotenone induced oxidative stress and neurotoxicity in Drosophila, Neurotoxicology 2009.