Your brain runs on a chemical called acetylcholine every time you pay attention to something. CDP Choline gives your body the raw material to make it, and it is the form of choline that reaches the brain most reliably. We use 550 mg of CDP Choline sodium dihydrate, which works out to about 500 mg of active citicoline. That is the amount used in the human trials on attention and everyday recall. It is also one of the faster ingredients in here, working over days rather than months.

Lion's Mane is a mushroom, and the useful compounds in it are called hericenones. They live in the fruiting body, which is the actual mushroom, not the mycelium grown on grain that cheaper products often use. Those compounds play a role in nerve growth factor, a protein your brain uses to build and maintain the cells behind learning and everyday recall. We use 400 mg of organic fruiting body extract, and we say fruiting body on the label because the difference matters. This one is slow, so give it a couple of months before you judge it.

Ashwagandha is an adaptogen, which means it helps your body handle stress rather than numbing it. It works on the HPA axis, the system that decides how much cortisol you release when something feels demanding. In controlled trials, daily ashwagandha root taken over 8 to 12 weeks helped maintain lower cortisol and lower reported stress. We use 300 mg of organic root, and only root, because the root is the part the research is built on. It is not a sedative. It just takes some of the edge off sitting down to hard work.

Rhodiola is a root that grows in cold, high places, and people have used it for a long time to keep going when conditions are hard. The active compound is salidroside, and it plays a role in how your body handles mental fatigue during long or demanding work. Most studies on mental stamina use 200 to 400 mg a day. We use 200 mg standardized to 3% salidroside, which is three times the concentration of a typical rhodiola extract. Standardized means we can tell you exactly how much active compound is in the pack, not just how much powder.

L-Theanine is an amino acid that occurs naturally in green tea. It raises alpha brain wave activity, which is the pattern your brain makes when you are relaxed and alert at the same time, like when you are reading something you actually want to read. This is the one ingredient you may notice on day one, usually inside 30 to 60 minutes. We use 100 mg, the same dose used in the EEG and sustained attention studies. It has no caffeine in it and it does not make you drowsy, so it promotes calm without trading away alertness.