 What is neurohacking? What is no tropics? You've probably heard this thrown about over the past few years when people are talking about I take no tropics and my brain is Working on another level. I'm taking these smart drugs called no tropics. You got to check them out Maybe you've heard this in conversation, but you don't quite know what it is You don't quite know what no tropics do Maybe you don't even know what neurohacking means today. We're gonna find out today We're gonna talk to the co-founder of neuro hacker collective who takes a Complex system approach to medicine and well-being science We're gonna be talking about all the toxins that are in your living room and in your kitchen and in your life How spending so much time indoors is affecting your life and what we can do about it So we're gonna get geeky. We're gonna be talking brain health no tropics smart drugs Mr. Daniel Schmuckdenberger great to have you here on the show sir Thanks for having me fun to be here So let's let's dumb this down to the very simple. What is neurohacking? Neurohacking is a general term for any kind of applied neuroscience applied neuro technology for Optimizing the nervous system optimizing the mind-brain interface for various cognitive goals or psychomotional goals primarily We could also be talking about neurohacking for kind of sensory motor Neuro purposes or anything that has top-down neurologic control whether that's you know aspects of health and regulation immune system longevity But when we talk about neurohacking in kind of contra distinction to the whole field of biohacking, we're generally talking about Cognitive and psycho-emotional tuning and up regulation Okay, so to the uninitiated. What did you just say? Because it sounded very interesting it sounded it sounded very complex. What does it mean in a nutshell? tools for increasing Cognitive capability intelligence focus memory Etc. And for increasing psychological well-being awesome. Okay What is preventing us from just being naturally gifted in our intelligence and and having an optimized nervous system? Like what's going on today in 2017 as we're recording this that's preventing us from From you know having that kind of optimum capability Mm-hmm a tremendous amount actually so We if you look at our interface with the modern technological built world and you look at what Our evolutionary biological history is and you look at the places where there's suboptimal interface between those it's in almost every area so whether it's Eating food that came from topsoil where the agricultural method had a deficient in Micronutrients trace minerals know where even if you're eating the healthiest food that you can get access to you have fundamental nutrient deficiency And those are the nutrients that make not only all aspects of physiology function, but brain specifically Or whether we're looking at ubiquitous toxicity like the volatile organic compounds that are in paint and flooring and so much You know carpet so much interior toxicity or external environmental toxicity organophosphates DPEs phthalates You know most of the organic most of the toxins that we are exposed to and we see study after study of breast milk in Mothers in the United States having 200 plus petrochemicals Those are those petrochemicals are either endocrine disruptors or carcinogens or neurotoxins. They have a real effect And then we also have pathogens we never had before because of antibiotic resistance because of the amount of global travel because of pesticide resistance so As you share the effects of artificial lighting the effect of the amount of time people spend in Fixed postural positions with a fixed eye focal length to a screen so many of these things are things that we can work with But are suboptimal to the human condition. That's just on the physiology side on the psychology side most people don't have the connection to tribe that would have been part of the an evolutionary biology of humans feeling meaningfully Connected to other humans don't have a sense of connection to meaning and purpose have in a level of stress from the worldview that they have come Into and from the macroeconomic system and maybe from other macro global issues. So all of these are Stresses on our physiology our psychology our nervous system that are going to have a suboptimal quality of life and performance if we don't work with them It's fascinating. You're talking about You know the food we eat probably the cleaning products we use in our kitchen or bathroom Staring at a screen obviously I talk a lot about the dangers of looking at too much Electronic light sitting down as well. There's a great book called get up by James Levine, which talks about the problems of Humans sitting down so much and how that's affecting us and then I assume what you were talking about when you were talking about emotional capability was Of course Dunbar's number of people. I think was about 150 or 160 People when we used to be in tribes that was the number But now it seems like even if we're can if we're connected to more than that Which would make you feel like you were popular because you connected 250 people. It seems to suggest that actually You Become less happy the more people that you know or the more people that you're connected to or the more people that you Have to keep up with so can we just break down each one each one of these things? Let's just look at the food we eat for the time being like If I go to Whole Foods down on Fairfax and Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood here Can I be sure that the foods I'm eating from the salad bar at Whole Foods or the kale or spinach? I'm buying from the in the plastic bags are going to be okay for me Or is what you're arguing saying, you know what chances are it's still gonna be pretty bad for you I don't want people to feel Hopeless or I mean is buying food that is from a Farmers market or someplace that is local fresh are gonna be a lot better than other sources Yes, very likely is buying food that is organic likely to have less Pesticide residue and maybe more trace mineral. Yes, those were worth doing now even in Even in organic crops will we still find glyphosate and other organophosphate residue just because it's being sprayed nearby Yeah, we find that and is the top soil gonna have the microbiota and trace mineral density of What you know an indigenous and primitive environment would have no so it's better it is still not ideal and People aren't aren't gonna be eating the variety of foods they would in a natural environment that are seasonal and that are you know each pulling different minerals out of the soil and air and They are gonna have an increased need for certain nutrients because of toxins and stresses that they're processing So what we're arguing is basically we we don't have an evolved process for dealing with organophosphates our glutathione pathway or cytochrome p450 pathway none of those pathways were Evolved for dealing with petrochemicals because they weren't part of our evolutionary environment And so given that we have the exposure to those things. It's actually important and beneficial to support our System to deal with the world it happens to be in so how do we ensure that we're eating the best quality foods in? What's a practical way that we can do that? Outside of someone foraging or having a garden where they can really ensure that themselves I Would say Farmer's markets are great because it's someone else having a garden where you can learn about the farmer learn about their methods find one like well likely you can get something there that is you know less hours since it was harvested than at a grocery store and Outside of where that's viable then going to Local co-ops and local health food stores is going to be probably the best Usually viable option and then of course understanding the different things that are in there Which is that not everything in a health food store is actually healthy and not everything That's healthy for one person is for someone else and is there one question that we should ask our Farmer at the farmers market when we're about to buy the kale or the spinach or the strawberries or the bananas or the fruit or Whatever we're about to buy is there one question. We should be asking and one answer We should be looking for to ensure that we're giving ourselves the best opportunity to get the healthiest food we possibly can Well, you might have one question being that you framed it that way, which I'd love to hear I I would generally ask what what are they're growing? Processes and practice so I'd want to get into how they enrich the soil. What kind of you know, do they use rock flowers? Do they use different kinds of? Microrrhizia and you know soil and enrichments Pesticides proximity to other pesticides how long from when they're harvested so they'll get in Obviously the more one knows about anything the better they can do to navigate that space. Okay We're talking to Daniel Schmucktenberger who's the co-founder of neuro hacker collective We're gonna talk to him a little bit about a product that he has as well. That's gonna help you with your With your brain and to give you brain nutrients I had a yeah a cleaner come to my home just the other day here in Los Angeles Daniel and She was complaining that I didn't have enough products in my In my apartment for her to be able to clean with she didn't bring her own products. She She you know came and was reliant on me and she asked me for next time that she came to buy a product The name of which escapes me. I think it was Clorex or something like that and it was clearly like a bad chemical What products Should I be buying to clean my home or to make available like what what kind of natural products because it seems like everyone's like Oh, yeah, I get this and it's like these vicious chemicals which are doing this It seems like permanent damage to our brains Just for a little bit of context Ammonia is an amazing beautiful chemical, right chlorine. It's a beautiful Molecule all of the chemicals that we have developed. I mean DDT is a fascinating chemical, right? And and so the better living through chemistry the problem was that We didn't understand complex systems. We didn't understand whole systems And so we understood one very narrow part of a system We developed something that would be good for that part of a system, but it had other effects those other effects were called externalities We started to understand those externalities and realize the problem of the externalities on both the environment and our physiology So, you know, most of the pharma meds are actually really fascinating chemicals for the one pathway. They're affecting It's just that they affect other stuff, which isn't very problematic. So it's not that it's not that bleach or ammonia or Lime away doesn't have some application where it's possibly beneficial But we do want to be conscientious of the fact that the those chemicals have effects on biology that even breathing them have Effects on biology after the fact and those are they're not effects on biology that we want to have unconsciously So you have companies like sevens generation and heathers and things that people can get even in the grocery store that are More eco-friendly both from their effect on the environment and their effect on humans in the environment where they're clean and then you have some Companies that make really kind of high-tech things with High-tech nature tech cleaning products that can be very effective with different essential oils and Supanified natural fatty acids and so yeah, I'm not I'm not affiliated with any of the companies I'm about to mention but seventh generation certainly I have a couple of those products And I'm glad that you said that because that makes me feel good about buying them And then there's honest the honest company, which is the company created by the Hollywood actress Jessica Albert and Are you familiar with their products so that the honest company products healthy as healthy as I can get as well Daniel? I have seen them and Heard good things about them, but I can't speak to the chemistry off the top of my head. Okay You mentioned global travel. How is global travel affecting our nervous system? Lots of things I was speaking from the point of view of pathogens which was before we had global travel We had the pathogens that would have been within a bio region that would have been things that we had Evolved immune system and microbiome to deal with well and when we travel We have the possibility of getting exposed to a lot more pathogens that we don't have In a immunity to deal with and so there's of course beautiful things about our ability to travel and get exposed to other ways of looking at the world and You know people worldviews, but there are there are other effects of that that we have to be conscientious of and So the answer of just more vaccines for every place you go also has consequences and so it just these are If we have a system that's going to be exposed to more pathogens and pathogens that it didn't evolve to deal with in recent history Well, then again, we would just say that's a place where we want to have more immune system support Just like we'd want to have more detox system supported for exposed to more environmental toxins Let's highlight just a couple of other problems and then we'll get into some possible solutions here Staring at a screen What are the problems with that? well beyond the The backlighting and the lumens and the specific kind of The kelvins the specific kind of spectral frequencies of light that I imagine your listeners all understand quite well a few other things That can be problematic about it is that it's a fixed focal length and so if I'm looking at a computer that is 12 inches or 18 or however many inches from my face then the focal length of my eyes for being able to focus very close and very far Is not getting engaged in those are muscles and in an evolutionary environment We would have been not looking at a very fixed focal length for all that much time, right? We would have been looking further off and seeing trees up close in the process of that dynamic movement of the eye Musculature to be able to focus near and far is part of what helps keep that musculature healthy and prevent the kind of Vision loss that we consider so natural with age it happened before computer screens with books for us But fixed focal length for very long period of time. There's an easy solution for that, which is every 15 minutes half an hour that you're looking at a book or a screen just look far away You know and let your eyes focus look at something very close let your eyes focus so musculature stays engaged There's also a postural effect of if I'm looking at a screen If it involves me not moving very much then of course we have all of the Neurological myofocial effects of just being very sedentary But if the posture of the ergonomics themselves have me looking down and taking the s-curve out of my cervical spine the C-curve out of my cervical spine You know, then I'm gonna be dealing with those postural effects, so computers are awesome international travels awesome and To the degree that we're interfacing with it for one set of reasons, but it's having other effects We just want to understand those effects and know how to Augment any possible negatives because I got a Lifespan treadmill desk and I'm as I'm recording this with you now I'm standing on it. I'm not actually walking on it at the moment But I I now for the most part work at a computer standing up and initially I thought I was so clever But then I realized that I didn't have a computer stand on my desk So my computer was actually down at kind of chest level and so my head was kind of you know Aiming down a little bit rather rather than straight. So here I was for months going I'm so clever. I'm on a treadmill desk. I'm standing up look at me And then I was like, oh actually hang on a second My spine is probably still slouching over because I'm looking down So now I have a stand and the stand my computer and my laptop sits on top of that stand and as you can see I'm talking to you now Daniel my eyes are at You know my head and my posture is exactly the way it should be I'm speaking to you from home on my couch on a laptop. So laptops are are pretty profoundly suboptimal ergonomics and as much as we can say that we'd like people on not on computers, which is Not necessarily Realistic for what the work they have to do in the world. It's also meaningful or that we want them on ergonomically Perfect computer setups, which when they're traveling is going to be hard At least understanding the dynamics so one can counterbalance them But for most people the ergonomics that are going to be important is if you're looking straight ahead Meaning not down and not up you would like to be looking slightly up from there If you're going to be in one place for a long period of time so that the Natural C curve in the cervical spine is being supported rather than otherwise So where we're generally looking a little bit down Then we end up getting the muscles in the back of the neck and the suboccipital muscles getting tight causing all of the kind Dynamics that come from that and so if someone puts their monitor Higher than they normally would where the center point of their monitor is around eye level And then they usually want their keyboard low and that we can get into ergonomic keyboards so that the shoulders aren't up that That's generally keyboard low monitor high is a kind of first rule of thumb. I love it Well, I'm now you've inspired me to put my computer up even higher now So I'm going to make sure I do that when we when we finish this interview. Thank you for the for the tip there Two more things I want to talk about Before we move on to a little bit more about neuro hacking But we're talking to Daniel Schmuckdenberger and you can check out what he does over at neuro hacker comm That's neuro hacker comm you can read all about what it means to be a neuro hacker Wi-Fi I Love Wi-Fi everywhere everywhere. I go now when I travel. It's like I need Wi-Fi I need Wi-Fi. We're all addicted to Wi-Fi when I was down in Sydney, Australia recently They've got free Wi-Fi on Bondi Beach And when I was traveling through the Baltic area in Latvia, Lithuania everywhere you go is public Wi-Fi free everywhere I'm in my apartment here in Los Angeles. I've got the super duper high-speed Wi-Fi just running through the whole place What are the potential dangers of Wi-Fi and or too much Wi-Fi? This is a tricky and harder to answer question When we think about wireless Transmission in general, so we're talking about EMF and RF. So we're looking at Wi-Fi. We're looking at Bluetooth We're also looking at 60 Hertz EMF that is the AC in our house. We're looking at EMF fields from batteries motors, etc What we're also looking at police signal transmission military signal, you know other frequencies of radio What we know is that the total amount of wireless energy that people are Exposed to has been on a power law like Moore's law since the 60s as We have had more cell towers and more satellites and more frequencies We are doubling the amount of transmission that we're exposed to something like every 18 months that means that we are In a very high number of order of magnitudes more Total wireless transmission Then we ever were in an evolutionary environment that that is going to have some physiologic effect is pretty easy to buy That basically when you measure EEG when you measure EKG you're measuring biosignals And that there's actually electrical signal processing. That is how we work right electrical signal processing is core to how our Nervous system works that it's sensitive and that all signals end up affecting all other signals through wave interference Exactly how it affects us. There's a lot of research that is conflicting on and different countries have done research very differently largely based on the How big telecom is affecting the way their government does research? very much like pharma effects of You know government funding research, so we're actually doing a meta-analysis and structured review of all of the research done from all the company all the countries in the world right now on the topic of wireless transmission and You know potential cancer effects potential oxidative Effects of sub ionizing radiation in humans and other biology So we actually should have the best information on that topic Available soon, but we still have a lot of interpretation to do and when you're doing meta-analysis where the Initial pieces of data that you're looking at are questionable to begin with it's tricky, but I would say that for people to be thoughtful about their exposure is warranted and To take easy steps like not keeping your cell phone near your bed at night and not Having unlimited amounts of cell phone and other access and turning your Wi-Fi router off at night Just the easy steps one can do seem very well warranted and anecdotally Many people who have left Cities and went to places where they had almost no wireless exposure and deep wilderness describe Psycho-neuro dynamics, especially sleep issues, but anxiety, anorexia going away now Whether that's just to being in nature is beautiful whether it's the stress of the city whether it's small And there's so many factors that that's close to meaningless on its own But we also notice a number of people who've put themselves inside of Faraday cages and found much better sleep So I would say that research-wise we don't know fully But there's good reason to think it's something worth paying attention to is it possible that In 20 years or two years or whatever we're going to realize that cell phones and Wi-Fi Is gonna be as damaging to us as we now know that smoking is is to us for years Nobody realized nobody thought that smoking was bad for you and then all of a sudden in the 50s and 60s It's still started to sort of catch on or actually we're starting to see some correlation here between smoking and Being unfit and heart disease. Is it possible that One day not so long from now or a long time from now. We're gonna wake up and go damn I cannot believe we were using the Wi-Fi. I can't believe we're using cell phones. We were absolutely killing ourselves Entirely possible damn. I would say that it is Probable that we will realize some effects that seem unacceptable to us with I'm not quantifying how much compared to cigarettes But some effects now Cigarettes are pretty easy, which is we just don't actually need them, right? Um Wi-Fi and just wireless energy transmission and not just wireless but energy transmission in general We're just not gonna go backwards from that So I think one of the things that's going to happen is we're gonna start Realizing that just like, you know, we're not gonna stop having cleaning products We're gonna make better cleaning products where we pay attention to how the molecules and the cleaning products actually interface with biology I think we're gonna start paying attention to understanding biosignals better and what are the primary kind of EEG EKG cellular signaling biosignals that are most sensitive and Starting to develop wireless transmission Thoughtfully in terms of the spectral ranges that it works in to how it'll interface with biology where like Tesla Hypothesized that it could actually be a healing force rather than a illness force All right, let's do one more before we move on to some talk about no tropics and I want to talk about a little bit about qualia, which is a smart drug that you have developed We're talking you talked a little bit before about emotional feelings and the tribe and I mentioned, you know, Dunbar's I think it was 150 people. That's the tribe. How are we? How are we struggling with either having too many Facebook friends or having? Being connected to too many people like what's what's going on here? How is this affecting? affecting us so the primatologist Dunbar Took an observation that many people had had previously which is that most indigenous tribes capped out at around 150 people give or take Maxed out around 225 in a few cases, but generally 150 and then if they got bigger than that they would bifurcate Or intentionally limit their size and there's a question as to why and he found that there was a similar thing that happened in all kinds of primates and that the size of the troop they could hold was actually proportional to Neocortical volume and the idea was that we actually have a limited number of unique Relationships that we can actually process well and so when you've got about 150 people You can actually know everybody in that village well know their lives or history what's going on and that works If you're gonna have a village where everyone is gonna impact everyone knowing everybody caring about everybody Being able to see in real-time your effect on them is part of what makes social cohesion works as soon as you start having Enough people that you actually can't track everybody Then you start having anonymous people and you start having people where if they're suffering You don't kind of care as much and then you can have effects that could lead to them suffering But you don't care as much so you can't have social cohesion in the same way now obviously we are not going to move back to a world of just Dunbar number tribes because You also would then have to have technology that only is you know is back to the technology of that time where you're only effecting that number of people and obviously our technology extends our impact to now global There's and there's actually what we can think of that was the first insight There's multiple Dunbar numbers, which is numbers where different social dynamics occur one on one is the first right? Then small groups three four then up to about 12 or 15 Etc. So it's really not a problem how many people you've been exposed to or how many people you have friends on Facebook it There is a need to have some deep meaningful Interactions with some number of people which will probably be less than your total number of friends on Facebook And it's important to understand the difference of in-person deep meaningful human interactions where you deeply know them They deeply know you and you can be authentic with each other Then the kinds of interactions that are mediatable over social media So stop focusing on trying to get a hundred thousand Instagram fans and Facebook likes and start really going in and and concentrating on the quality of Relationships rather than the quantity It's a I really want to say I'm a technologist. Mm-hmm. I Am just about right use of technology understanding all of the effects of it I have nothing wrong with someone getting a hundred thousand likes on Facebook if they're sharing a message It's meaningfully benefiting the world and having more people hear that that is actually making a better world I just want them to understand that that doesn't equal deep interpersonal human connection And that a bunch of people liking them on Facebook also isn't going to give them a meaningful sense of esteem It's going to give them some quick external reference dopamine hits Uh, they can cover up the fact that something in their childhood didn't teach them who they were and made them externally referential for other people's approval about who they are But it's not bad To develop a following it just needs to be for the right reason and if the reason is self-esteem or connection It's the wrong tool for that job We're talking to daniel schmucktenberger the co-founder of nero hacker. Uh, nero hacker. I should say collective Um, daniel, what are what are no tropics? A lot of people ask me about this and I don't actually have a very clear answer Um, but just explain to me what what it what exactly are no tropics I'll make a distinction between three different terms that are often used kind of synonymously, but are worth uh defining differently brain nutrients no tropics and smart drugs So when we think of brain nutrients, we think about nutrients. It would be part of a natural diet That are involved in healthy brain function that either we might be deficient in or that we can actually utilize more of and it will Uh, you know, meaningfully bolster our capabilities. So we're talking about vitamins and minerals and antioxidants here so to the degree that there are Key nutrients so when people are talking about the effects of minerals like magnesium or lithium or zinc or et cetera on brain function Or vitamin d or phospholipids or essential fatty acids. Those are all brain nutrients That one would ideally get in a healthy diet But because again, like we said It's very hard to get adequate amounts of those in a healthy diet and we have increased demand because say we're talking about b vitamins We to the degree that you're experiencing more Uh psychological stress than you would in an evolutionary environment. You're going to burn through b vitamins quicker um, so supplementing the appropriate brain nutrients can be useful the distinction there is that's going to take you from deficiency to Not deficiency, which means your normal healthy baseline of cognitive and psychologic function will be supported It's not going to move you beyond baseline capacity because those are elements that are part of the evolutionary environment, right? So smart drugs and otropics are distinct in that they are not nutrients that would be part of a normal diet. They are some kind of Additional set of chemistry synthetic or natural that are going to try and modulate some systems Uh for enhanced capability So no tropic generally means A chemical that can enhance some aspect of cognitive function Like memory or focus or attention or verbal fluency or task switching So some nutrient that can modulate some aspect of cognitive function beyond someone's normal healthy baseline Without meaningful side effects. That's a general definition of a no tropic and then a smart drug is Usually and these terms are Don't have solid semantic definitions. They're they're kind of uh Slaying terms, but i'm going to give you the best general definitions smart drug are usually pharmaceuticals That have some cognitive benefit generally for off-label purposes. So these are um either psychiatric meds Like add or riddolin or welbutrin or narcolepsy meds like uh medaffinil or all simers meds or parkinson's meds levodopa things like that that Can increase wakefulness increase focus increase, you know, something um smart drugs Can enhance some aspect of cognitive function that someone wants to experience and you know hypothetically this could be not just pharma drugs But any drug you could put cocaine or methamphetamine or other drugs into those categories where they do Modulate some neurotransmitter like dopamine in a way that will have some cognitive effect But usually with some meaningful side effects immediate side effects like They might up regulate focus but increase anxiety or paranoia or irritability or something like that Um, and they might also have long-term side effects which could be anything from like real physiological issues of pathotoxicity or something but also just dependence right addiction forming because They're taking something like dopamine or acetylcholine or glutamate or some neurotransmitter usually That your body naturally regulates and they're overriding the natural regulatory process to spike it And in doing so If you do that enough times can actually override the natural regulatory process where it becomes dependent on that exogenous input That's what we call addiction Uh no tropics the goal with no tropics and it's why it's like kind of an almost like magic unicorn idea Is that there are some chemistries That can be added to the system that can enhance some aspect of function without creating meaningful short term or long term side effects So i've all so obviously the way that you're describing it. No tropics Improves your cognitive function above your average functionality without the side effects smart drugs if we How to take your explanation is Can also improve cognitive effect and they're good for things like ad and alzheimer's but they come with problems They come with potential short and long term Effects and I think there was a third one. They're brain nutrients, right? I think you broke it into You can just explain brain nutrients again as opposed as that is different from the smart drugs and the no tropics essential fatty acids essential amino acids vitamins minerals antioxidants the things that you would normally get from food That either you're not getting enough of from food or that it's beneficial to get additional amounts of based on what You know what we're exposed to how much we're actually using our brains and the cognitive load So these are basically Brain nutrients are either going to be things that could be found in food or things that could be found Indogenously in the body that the body would make from food Gotcha. Okay. So you're obviously a proponent of no tropics of all those three, correct? And brain nutrients, but not so much with the smart drugs Well again, like I said bleach has a right application and um Any drug can have a right application But in general there is such a There is such a profound complexity to how human physiology works and complex means something different than complicated A Circuit ship is complicated. It was designed externally. You put a certain number of transistors linked them in particular way A cell is complex itself organizing its boundary is non arbitrary complex systems behave and fundamentally different and more Organizing dynamic kind of ways than complicated systems. So when we look at human physiology and especially the brain it's such a radically complex self-organizing Dynamic homeostatic system that we don't want to override that right? So if someone's dopamine is low Our goal isn't to just give them in-chain dopamine or a dopamine agonist It would be to say well, let's see if we can understand The dopamine-ergic system better and see how to support that system's Indogenous regulatory capacity So that the intervention that we're doing actually leads to lasting up regulation rather than Short-term stimulus and then lasting down regulation. So in general for all kinds of inputs to biology I'm interested in things that understand And that seek to better understand the body's natural dynamic homeostatic processes and seek to work with and upregulate them rather than override them Gotcha. Okay so Let's go back to neuro hacker collective. Um, which is the organization that you that you co-founded What is its purpose? What is its mission? And What is unique about its approach to neuro hacking and applied psychoneuro optimization? Yeah, um, so neuro hacker collective our goal is Optimizing the mind-brain interface For the optimization of human experience and human capability writ large And so we are technology agnostic meaning Biochemical technologies that's both direct to consumer like no tropics and Nutraceuticals as well as things that could be, you know, doctor mediated for Medical conditions and general things that are direct to consumer are going to be And neuro hacking the way we think of it usually is not for curing illness, but for optimization well-being support and enhancement um But a complexity approach and a systems biology approach to medicine is also very meaningful and part of the deeper research that we're involved in Um, but so, you know, we work with biochemical solutions. We work with microbiomic solutions We're interested in genomic solutions in neuro tech trans cranial lasers trans cranial direct stem alternating current, you know ultrasound eeg neuro feedback as well as psychotherapeutic and you know meditative technologies working with the human hardware and software We're interested in anything that basically can up regulate some aspect of human experience to have a better human experience or human capacity um For any kind of personal condition and the reason why this is so meaningful for us is All of the other issues that we care about in the world beyond Human experience and capacity are affected by human experience and capacity all the major problems that we see environmentally and socially Etc are caused by human activity And the solutions need to come about through human activity So upgrading the comprehensive collective intelligence of humanity not just cognitive intelligence, but Uh interpersonal intelligence, you know, et cetera ends up Being a meaningful lever for every other thing worth doing Now to that extent you've created Your own products called qualia q u a l i a Um, and i'm presuming this is a no-tropic right? Yes, so tell us a little bit about what this is like So tell us a little bit about why qualia is a little different and what typical experiences people might have If they take this product that you've created So like I said, we're working on a lot of different areas of technology Qualia is the first product that we have brought to market We have quite a few other products and trials that will be coming to market this year and then some relatively difficult ones that will take a little bit longer, but are are developing well the goal with qualia was When we look at the give or take 15 billion dollars a year domestically in energy drinks and how much kind of caffeine stimulus happens and if we look at the estimated something like five billion dollars in off-label aterol use not Justified doctor aterol use which we can question if it's ever a good thing but just people who are for their midterms or finals or tech startup, whatever seeking that kind of enhancement because There is an increased demand for productivity And cognitive productivity beyond what there's ever been while having more things trying to distract from focus and you know Also stresses on the nervous system like we've talked about The thing about Aterol and other smart drugs and just shit tons of caffeine is That while they can positively affect some metrics, which is why people use them Many of the other metrics that are critical are actually being down regulated in real time. So we can see For most people when they're taking Aterol that their focus will go up their drive will go up But certain aspects of creative thinking and systemic thinking and even aspects of memory go down Let alone emotional things like empathy going down and then long-term health effects So we wanted to see can we develop something that would meet the same need people's desire To be able to go into creative productive flow states where their full cognitive capabilities were available Can we do that more comprehensively than has been done so far and more safely And we started by doing this in integrative clinical settings where we were running people's whole genome We were running a lot of clinical chemistry. We were running brain scans We're getting medical history and we were really dialing in You know personalized chemistry for people Then the question was could we Take some element of that that would work across a bell curve of people and And meaningfully be able to affect them because personalized chemistry at scale is tricky. We're working on it We're actually working on moving from the one version of qualia to multiple versions in the future all the way to You know lab-based fully customized Chemistry pharmacology But we were really surprised at how well we were able to do taking a systems approach to natropics where we were You know, we started out by modeling when people are taking Some smart drug or something to that effect. What are they really seeking and we did the kind of the cognitive science of they're they're seeking Short-term memory and long-term memory and speed of memory and digit span and verbal fluency and task switching And creative thinking and critical thinking You know analysis and synthesis and a bunch of emotional things like emotional resilience and drive And you know, so we were looking at that whole set of things together and then saying All right, we want to be able to affect that whole set not a subset of it And then what are the underlying? Physiologic pathways that mediate all that which ones are mediated via acetylcholine or glutamate or catecholamines or ion channels or So we mapped that out Used kind of systems dynamics for looking at how those all interact with each other and the and the pathways that regulate them And then looked at the chemistry that maps to those And then started our kind of hypothesis development process for what we could do to upregulate all of those systems Simultaneously in a way that would actually upregulate the regulatory capacity of the system Where after someone had been on it for a while rather than get addicted and downregulated it could actually have Lasting baseline elevation So let's just say I take I take qualia. What's my first week going to be like? What's a typical experience of someone who? Uses qualia in the first week and then you know second third and you know short term and then long term Um So We have done a bunch of internal, uh, you know single-blinded trials. We're just Engaged in our first double-blinded trials right now, but we don't have results. I can't make any claim about what one will experience I can say what many people have claimed and many people is quite large numbers for us now Um, and obviously it's going to be different experiences for different people I want to say first qualia is actually not recommended for everyone. There are contra indications um specifically if people are on psychiatric meds or neurologic meds Or treating cancer or treating hypertension then we would not recommend people use it without consulting Their appropriate healthcare practitioner first This doesn't mean that there are not healthcare practitioners that are using it and recommending it for such people In knowledgeable ways we wouldn't recommend people do it on their own because there are chances of interactions So that said Uh for people that it's not contra indicated We're getting an extremely high positive success rate This the small percentage of people about 16 percent of people that describe a null effect They don't experience very much Are almost exclusively because they have sleep issues Um, if people are not getting adequate delta sleep So if they're not sleeping enough or not sleeping well qualia will usually not work well for them because memory consolidation happens during delta sleep and we're specifically working with chemistry that is mediated through the memory consolidation pathways So one of the things we say is you know that it's that it really is critical that people are sleeping well And if you have apnea or noctuary or something like that probably going to need to address that first Of the people who are using it and having good experiences um There are testimonials on the website, but increased focus attention concentration insight actual emotional steadiness emotional regulation Many people describing increased epiphany increased empathy All of those things are fairly common All right, we're talking to daniel schmuckdenberger co-founder of neuro hacker collective I just had a look on your website while we were talking there and I see a couple Of testimonials of people that I actually know as erica lee and tj anderson. There's a few people there I know live down in the san diego area If you're listening to this and you want to follow The work of of neuro hacker collective There is a facebook page called neuro hacker collective You can go and like that page and be kept up to date with everything at daniel schmuckdenberger And his team are doing in terms of emotional resilience. No tropics outsmarting the modern world As we've been talking about uh, is there anywhere else or our listeners Can find you daniel anywhere else? Do you'd like us to go? I think the facebook page and the website are good resources right now if you go to the website Um, you'll get a hint on the ethos page of what we're working on beyond what our current offering is But mostly you'll see information about quali and there's a decent bit of information about The chemistry and the scientific approach that we use and you know, there's information that's worth looking at the blog has some Very interesting articles But what we're really working towards is Being able to vet all of the different technologies that can meaningfully enhance people's psychology and cognition This is everything from the psychotherapeutic technologies to psychedelic assisted psychotherapy to You know all forms of neurotech really vetting which ones are effective and that are effective not just at short-term and partial effects but positive system up regulation And then effective for what for what kinds of people for what kinds of pathway issues etc being able to synthesize all that Then being able to develop a platform where people can upload personal data that is synthesized with a you know unique kind of AI like combinatorial algorithms. They can then be able to direct people to What technologies have the highest probability of being most meaningful for them for the kinds of things they're wanting to work on And then being able to have a deeper version of that available for medical practitioners really pioneering the future of personalized medicine where we can Synthesize all of the diagnostics and synthesize all of the therapeutics customize the therapeutics based on this kind of deeper interpretive model and so We don't say too much about that yet because you know We want to share about the things as we're able to release meaningful offerings But if you keep checking in you'll see more in that way Terrific. Well, thank you very much for explaining the difference between no tropics smart drunks and brain nutrients. This is a fascinating conversation i'm going to make sure that My farmer's market down on Let's see. What's what road is it on? I think it's on Santa Monica Boulevard I might be on something else actually there's a farmer's market that I've been meaning to go to but I don't go to it Because I take the lazy route I must hit that now hit that now and start asking The types of questions that you ask that you encourage me to ask so I appreciate that Thank you very much for sharing your experience Daniel. I really appreciate that if you're listening make sure you like the neurohacker Collective Facebook page And you can go and check out more at neurohacker.com. Thank you sir for your time. I appreciate it Daniel James i'm i'm really happy to see all of the Important empowering brilliant work. You're showing the people and it's a delight to be on here. Thank you. Thank you, sir