To all the go getters, nonstop hustlers, and weekend warriors. How many times have you wanted to improve your focus, wished your memory was better, or that you had more energy?
Meet: B.LXR Brain Fuel.
We combined three powerful “nootropics” to help you biohack your brain in our latest superfood product.
What’s a Nootropic Anyway?
Before we dive into B.LXR let us explain what we mean by “nootropic”. The term “nootropic” was coined by a Romanian physician named Dr. Corneliu E. Giurgea around 1983. He determined that a nootropic must follow the following requirements [1-3]:
- Must enhance learning and memory
- Must enhance the resistance of learned behaviors/memories to conditions which tend to disrupt them
- Must protect the brain against various physical or chemical injuries
- Must increase the efficacy of the tonic cortical/subcortical control mechanisms (increase the efficacy of how brain nerve cells, or neurons, talk to each other)
-They should lack the usual pharmacology of other psychotropic drugs (e.g. sedation, motor stimulation) and possess very few side effects and extremely low toxicity.
Since then, nootropics have been used by everyone from students, to executives, to simply anyone who cares about their brain.
What’s in B.LXR?
Our team at Beekeeper’s Naturals is obsessed with finding proper research to back our products and we believe that nature is queen...So we wanted to keep B.LXR clean and pure, as nature intended. B.LXR only has three powerful key ingredients: Royal Jelly, Ginkgo Biloba, and Bacopa Monnieri. Being busy people ourselves, on the go, with crazy schedules, we developed B.LXR, with convenience in mind.
BLXR is unlike other biohacking strategies that suggest ordering substances from questionable sources with limited information on the quality of their ingredients, which may be full of hidden sugars (among other things), or worse, trying to increase your mental output with an addictive prescription like Adderall. B.LXR is simple, clean, and easy to take. It’s a superfood shot that’s premixed in a vial that you can carry around with you. Let’s get into the details and hard science of the three superfoods that make up B.LXR, and how they can help you crush that next project.
Royal Jelly
Royal jelly is a secretion of worker bees that’s fed to the queen bee throughout her life. Royal jelly contains large amounts of proteins, free amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. It has been used for hundreds of years for cosmetic, longevity, and cognitive purposes.
Royal jelly packs quite the punch when it comes to benefits: antioxidant, neurotrophic effects (helps facilitate nerve growth), assists in memory, improves energy, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory (supports the immune system), and even supports a healthy hormonal balance [4-6]. The benefits seem to go on forever – the queen bee is onto something.
Regarding its nootropic effects, the list goes on! Royal jelly contains acetylcholine [4]. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter found in both the central and peripheral nervous system. In the central nervous system, or more specifically your brain, acetylcholine is thought to be a major player in attention, memory, and other executive functions. This reasoning is based on the fact that patients with Alzheimer’s typically have low acetylcholine levels and are given acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (blocks the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine) to increase levels of acetylcholine in the brain. A recent study showed that rats who were given royal jelly performed significantly better than their placebo counterparts at tasks that tested their attention and spatial memory [5].
Royal jelly also contains a compound called 10-HDA, as well as AMP N1-oxide, which are both responsible for stimulating neurogenesis [7]. Neurogenesis is the process of generating new neurons in the brain. This happens in the area of the brain responsible for learning new information, storing long term memories and regulating emotions.
Ginkgo Biloba
The next addition to this powerful stack is an extract of the heavily researched tree, Ginkgo Biloba. This tree is an ancient native tree to China and has been used in Chinese medicine for hundreds of years. The extract from the leaves of this tree contains a variety of compounds, including flavonoids (kaempferol, meletin, and isohamnetin) and terpenoids (ginkgolides A, B, C and bilobalide) [8]. Each of these compounds lends themselves to ginkgo’s wide range of benefits.
The flavonoids found in Ginkgo Biloba interact with neuron receptors in the brain that have been shown to help with memory, cognition, and learning. They do this in two ways: inhibiting acetylcholinesterase enzymes, which increase acetylcholine (mentioned earlier), and they also have been shown to increase levels of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), which help facilitate the growth of new neurons so that you can form new memories [9,13]. One study showed a significant increase in multiple aspects of cognition, most notably, processing speed and memory recall when given in acute doses [12].
The terpenoids in Ginkgo Biloba act as an antioxidant in the brain [14]. When you’re stressed, your mitochondria (powerhouse of the cell) produce what are called free radicals, which can cause damage to the surrounding tissue and sometimes even kill those cells (one of the main contributors to cognitive decline). These terpenoids act to stop that process. Another fascinating function of the terpenoids is the ability to increase blood flow to the brain [10-11]. The more blood flow your brain is getting, the greater number of nutrients you can deliver to the hungry nerve cells (especially important when you’re working on something mentally demanding).
Ginkgo also has the ability to keep your cortisol levels in check (i.e. your stress response - too much cortisol is not good). Acute supplementation of 120mg of a ginkgo extract before a stress test was noted to provide a decrease in levels of cortisol and blood pressure [15]. For reference, each vial of B.LXR has 400mg of Ginkgo.
Bacopa Monnieri
Bacopa Monnieri is a potent herb that has been used for centuries in Ayurvedic medicine. It has a long-standing history as a memory and/or learning aid with nearly 3000 years of recorded usage. The extract of this plant contains a few different compounds, bacosides, bacopasides, and bacopasaponins, that provide this herb with the ability to improve our memory processing speeds, protect against stress, and protect against neurotoxins [16].
One of the main ways Bacopa works to improve memory is by acting on the central cholinergic system [20] (the system where acetylcholine acts) and serotonergic systems [19]. One of serotonin’s jobs is to regulate emotions (particularly to incite healthy calmness), which is likely why some studies have reported improved mood after taking Bacopa. Bacopa was shown to inhibit the drop in levels of acetylcholine when people were exposed to a neurotoxin that typically lowers acetylcholine [20]. Other studies have shown improvements in verbal learning tests, state anxiety tests, as well as word recall tests [21, 18]. This suggests its powerful ability to improve memory.
Another facet of Bacopa is its ability to act as an adaptogen. An adaptogen is something that can help the body handle (or adapt to) stressors. Bacopa does not merely suppress the stress response, rather, it modulates it and prepares the body to handle the stress it faces [17, 24-26]. So, when it’s crunch time on that next project, Bacopa will help protect your brain from burning itself out.
Now that you’re a nootropic expert, it’s time to get biohacking! Fuel up on B.LXR Brain Fuel and tackle whatever lies ahead! If you have any questions about our latest nootropic, please email us at info@beekeepernaturals.com.
References: Nootropics
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ddr.430020505/abstract
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6660010
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneliu_E._Giurgea Royal Jelly References
[4]http://usabtm.weburl.ro/utilizatori/ZOOTEHNIE/file/REVISTA%202011/vol%2044/2/BIOCHIM/Pavel.pdf
[5] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378874114004012
[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499288/
[7]http://www.ffcr.or.jp/zaidan/ffcrhome.nsf/7bd44c20b0dc562649256502001b65e9/ac27905ddbeb8e354925749000273016/$FILE/213(7)3.pdf Ginkgo References
[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846949/
[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14585700
[10] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21061003
[11]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12905098
[12] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11026748
[13] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12404671
[14] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13130384
[15] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12369732 Bacopa References
[16] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12410544
[17] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153866/
[18] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15898709
[19] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21129470
[20] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21607013
[21] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11498727
[22] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20590480
[23] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18683852
[24] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17321089
[25] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19744517
[26] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12957224
Other Bacopa sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10815010 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27473605 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4921742/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20228219
