Alpha Brain

During my cross Canada run I would listen to my music and as you can imagine. Running a marathon a day you go through your library pretty fast. I mean I have allot of songs however the hours, after hours of running. I needed to increase my stimuli.

So I downloaded some audio books, and pod casts. I got addicted to Ricky Gervais Pod Casts (Laugh till it hurts kind of funny) and WTF with Marc Maron (Very funny) and The Joe Rogan Experience (Funny, weird, disturbing, and addicting).

Listening to the Joe Rogan experience I was a quite surprised. First by the amount of weed the guy smokes. I have no moral issue with smoking pot, but Joe smokes allot!!

He is also a comic. I did not know that. However what I really liked was as well as his MMA knowledge he was into improving oneself not only physically but mentally. He had allot of discussion on cognitive rehabilitation, cognitive therapy and a willingness to be open minded about alternative methods of mental, and cognitive functions.

It was listening to his pod casts that I started research on Float (or isolation) tanks and also Alpha Brain This is a supplement that claims to improve cognitive functioning.

After contacting Onnit Labs they supplied me with sample of there three four products.

So I started with a base measure of my cognitive functions. This is just me on no supplements or stimuli. As I had not been taking anything I just payed attention to the things that I struggle with on a regular day. My memory, my ability to multi-task, my time of retrieval. As I have had a couple of years to get used to my "new brain" I had a good idea of my base levels.

To be honest I use my ability to play video games as a mental test. If you don't think it's hard, try any Call of Duty Game online and see how long you last.

So after about two weeks on the Various supplements and taking them as suggested. I noticed a few things.
 1) I had some serious dreams. I mean I had vivid dreams. This is important to note for me as I have short term memory loss. So dreams usually don't retain in my memory. For me to wake up and not only remember the dream, huge as that is, I could actually describe the dream step by step. This has to have some function in neurons in the head.
2) I was faster. What I mean by that was that my day to day routine stuff was faster. It took me less time to get set up, to get ready in the morning, to get my game ready, get online and start kicking some ass. (ok I had my ass kicked) however the point is, these little things we do every day, that most of us take for granted, were faster, easier, required less "thought processing".
3) I was a little bit more reflective and a little calmer.

These may be small things for most people. However after the brain injury I have paid a whole lot of attention to very small things as they are usually the hardest for me to process.