James Beshara - Beyond Coffee

In todays technologically activated, ever - increasingly fast - paced digital age, whats the most common medically related focus goal across demographics and ages?

Hands down, its brain performance.

From Silicon Valley execs to undergraduate and postgraduate students, aging Baby Boomers, military veterans, and at - home digital startup parents, the number one desired area of health, performance, and optimization is the brain.

We are both fascinated and fearful of the future of our immensely magical human brains. On the one hand, gene jockeys promise longer lives. On the other, the epidemic of dementia en masse looms in the not - so - distant future. The brain and various approaches to improving cognition are like a neurological Pandoras box. Our brain has the potential to create symphonies of miraculous beautyas well as degenerate into a puddle of infantile dependency, often in the same lifetime. Thus, the Decade of the Brain has brought agents of cognitive performance into the limelight, specifically a novel class of acceleration tools called nootropics.

I first came into contact with a nootropic chemical jet fuel while in my medical training, through a medication that is a close cousin to Ritalin called Cylert. Just before medical school, I broke my neck in a diving accident and suffered my fifth major concussion. While in my psychiatry residency, I got turned upside down in a snowboard park and put a six - inch crack in my helmet, thus receiving my sixth one. These two concussions compounded in effect. I started having severe post - concussive syndrome and narcolepsy, a neurological condition where one gets sudden and uncontrollable sleep attacks. It was beyond miserable.

The only treatment at the time was prescription medication. A chemical rescue pill came into the pictureand it worked! How seductively it worked. Four years into the prescription and it was still working. Then I started experiencing some of its longer - term side effects, like migraine headaches, irritability, and mood swings. I also learned about the likely long - term neurotoxicity of stimulants like these. Plus, I had watched three out of four of my grandparents pass away with neurodegenerative conditions (two from Alzheimers dementia and one with Parkinsons disease); it was clear there was a need for an integrative, healthier, and more sustainable approach to neurological recovery and longevity.

Little did I know then that this experience would lead to a lifelong passion for exploring the psychiatric realms of cognitive science and regenerative methods, medicines, and technologies.

Ive written books on concussion recovery and have medically directed clinics focused on reparative neurobiology and transformational medicine. My medical and experiential background in this space has taught me a few simultaneously simple and profound things:

1. We are each designed to express our unique brilliance.
2. The brain is an infinitely complex, ever - evolving matrix of magic.
3. Everything can be healed and optimized.
4. Its up to each of us to do our due diligence to explore the available options, try them out for individual response, and use them responsibly.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, my brush with an unsustainable neurotoxin prescribed as medicine would color my research to not just look for results, but also to pay special attention to the sustainable approach to those results.

In this, the most dynamic time in human history, the human and natural collective needs each of us to be switched on to the best versions of ourselves, to who we are and what were here to do, for the long term.

In service to this vision, we offer this guide to support you along your journey of self - discovery and sustainable optimal performance. You have a unique genius to shine forth. Were excited to see it.

Dan Engle, MD