Has anyone tried using supplement to improve their memory, and academic performance?

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After reading an article at sciencedaily.com about the results of acetyl-l-carnitine in combination with alpha lipoic acid in aging rats I decided to conduct a personal experiment. I'm in my mid thirties and while my memory is not bad it could always be better. I had my wife give me a randomly generated list of words and see how many I could recall after ten minutes. We repeated this once a day for a week and my mean score was twenty two out of thirty words before beginning supplementation. I repeated the "experiment" after sixty days of supplementation and was able to recall and average of twenty seven randomly chosen words (between four and seven letters long) out of thirty. My dosage was 150 mg alpha lipoic acid combined with 100mg acetyl-l-carnitine BID. Of course this is non-scientific, but my wife was impressed enough by my results that she is now going to try the supplement. Has anyone else here attempted anything similiar to this with these or other supplements (or diet/sleep/exercise modifications). It would also be fascinating to repeat this protocal with equivalently challenging, randomly generated, standardized intelligence tests to see if there was a difference. Does anyone know where such tests (in sufficient quantity to make this approach possible) could be obtained?

I agree that double blind studies should be the standard for FDA approval of claims, and certainly for prescription status (this is actually a lower threshold than the clinical trial process they often demand which involves many such trials in a variety of settings). However, the price of such certainty (and no doubt increased safety) is that many promising and effective, natural agents will never see the marketplace due to financial, patent, and other considerations. Alpha Lipoic acid for instance is approved in Germany for the treatment of diabetic and alcoholic related neuropathies. I have listed a few of the scientific papers published upon it's merits below. Of course these do not constitute, the type of large scale, double blind experiments required for FDA approval. In the case of alpha-lipoic acid why would anyone spend the millions required to fund such trials when the agent cannot be patented (save perhaps for the NIH which might consider funding such research were it not for a limited budget under the auspices of it's Institute for Complementary and Alternative medicine).

To the extent that I use supplements at all, I try to stick with those which have significant, scientific support from reasonably non bias scources. However, I am under no illusions that such support is equivalent to the FDA clinical trial process. I have visited quackwatch on several occasions and often agree with their perspective (I once took one of their articles to my advanced physiology professor when he mentioned colloidal minerals). There are many examples of current "mainline" approaches (such as taking an aspirin after an MI) that were once consdered CAM despite significant (but not sufficient for the FDA) clinical evidence for their efficacy. There are even current dietary approaches such as caloric restriction with adequate nutrition that have over fifty years of extensive scientific support in numerous animal models (and less in humans because we live so much longer), but are still not advocated in the mainline scientific/medical community. You are correct however in pointing out that attempting to utilize such approaches entails a higher level of risk that they may be harmful or just not effective. It really comes down to caveat emptor.

ALPHA-LIPOIC ACID REFERENCES

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2. Packer L. alpha-Lipoic acid: a metabolic antioxidant which regulates NF-kappa B signal transduction and protects against oxidative injury. Drug Metab Rev. 1998;30(2):245-275. (PubMed)

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4. Bast A, Haenen GR. Lipoic acid: a multifunctional nutraceutical. In: Kramer K, Hoppe P, Packer L, eds. Nutraceuticals in Health and Disease Prevention. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc.; 2001:113-128.

5. Packer L, Kraemer K, Rimbach G. Molecular aspects of lipoic acid in the prevention of diabetes complications. Nutrition. 2001;17(10):888-895. (PubMed)

6. Biewenga GP, Veening-Griffioen DH, Nicastia AJ, Haenen GR, Bast A. Effects of dihydrolipoic acid on peptide methionine sulfoxide reductase. Implications for antioxidant drugs. Arzneimittelforschung. 1998;48(2):144-148. (PubMed)

7. Zhang WJ, Frei B. Alpha-lipoic acid inhibits TNF-alpha-induced NF-kappaB activation and adhesion molecule expression in human aortic endothelial cells. Faseb J. 2001;15(13):2423-2432. (PubMed)

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11. Hagen TM, Ingersoll RT, Lykkesfeldt J, et al. ®-alpha-lipoic acid-supplemented old rats have improved mitochondrial function, decreased oxidative damage, and increased metabolic rate. Faseb J. 1999;13(2):411-418. (PubMed)

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16. Jacob S, Henriksen EJ, Schiemann AL, et al. Enhancement of glucose disposal in patients with type 2 diabetes by alpha-lipoic acid. Arzneimittelforschung. 1995;45(8):872-874. (PubMed)

17. Konrad T, Vicini P, Kusterer K, et al. alpha-Lipoic acid treatment decreases serum lactate and pyruvate concentrations and improves glucose effectiveness in lean and obese patients with type 2 diabetes. Diabetes Care. 1999;22(2):280-287. (PubMed)

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31. Ziegler D, Hanefeld M, Ruhnau KJ, et al. Treatment of symptomatic diabetic polyneuropathy with the antioxidant alpha-lipoic acid: a 7-month multicenter randomized controlled trial (ALADIN III Study). ALADIN III Study Group. Alpha-Lipoic Acid in Diabetic Neuropathy. Diabetes Care. 1999;22(8):1296-1301. (PubMed)

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33. Heitzer T, Finckh B, Albers S, Krohn K, Kohlschutter A, Meinertz T. Beneficial effects of alpha-lipoic acid and ascorbic acid on endothelium-dependent, nitric oxide-mediated vasodilation in diabetic patients: relation to parameters of oxidative stress. Free Radic Biol Med. 2001;31(1):53-61. (PubMed)

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41. Maitra I, Serbinova E, Tritschler HJ, Packer L. Stereospecific effects of R-lipoic acid on buthionine sulfoximine-induced cataract formation in newborn rats. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1996;221(2):422-429. (PubMed)

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Hey, Roland! About the supplements for memory, I am taking one that works GREAT, it's called.....uh.........um.........uh-oh................sorry!

:imbar

Just joking.........wish I could help you, but I know nothing about them or their benefits!

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gingko biloba pills from GNC. tastes nasty going down the ol' hatchet, but DOES improve memory :)

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Personally, I stay away from natural herbs and supplements.

I had a friend who took a performance enhancer --from GNC --don't know the name of it, and he now has cardiomyopathy induced from the so called enhancer at the age of 25.

Some of them probably do indeed work. However, the risks (in my humble opinion) do not outweigh the benefits.

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