A good strategy, when starting anything new, is to start slow and gradually working your way up. This takes advantage of the body’s adaptive capacities and minimizes chances of poor response. Exercise is a great example of this. When starting a new exercise routine, the tendency is to want to do a lot right away. But this increases chances of having very sore muscles or getting injured. So, it’s better to start conservatively and slowly do more as your body gets accustomed to the new routine.
This same principle, starting low and adding more gradually, can be applied to taking dietary supplements. Starting by doing less is done by taking 1-2 capsules a day for the first few days (three days is a good rule of thumb). Then gradually add 1-2 more capsules every few days till you reach the full dose. This gradual approach can be especially important for people who are: already taking a lot of other supplements, or tend to be more sensitive to dietary supplements or foods.
Yes you can take Qualia Life with Qualia Mind, Qualia Focus or Qualia Nootropic Energy.
When we designed Qualia Life, we did so understanding people would take it with one of the other Qualia nootropic products.
Nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide are newer (and very expensive) dietary ingredients used to boost NAD+. Boosting NAD+ is not unique to these newer ingredients. It’s the defining characteristic that makes a compound a vitamin B3. The niacin equivalents—niacin (nicotinic acid; NA) and niacinamide (NAM)—boost NAD+. L-tryptophan is also a precursor for NAD+. We included both NA and NAM, as well as L-tryptophan, because these ingredients can be used to make NAD+ and this approach supports three different ways of making it. Redundancy is a core value within complex systems science and something we look for when formulating our products.
How does Qualia Life work?
We’ve written a series of articles discussing how Qualia Life works in detail. But, in general, it works by helping our cells and mitochondria do more work, especially the types of tasks they tend to struggle to get to as we get older. When our cells and mitochondria can do more work, and get to all the important jobs we need them to do, we look, feel and function better.
One of the interesting things found in studies is that placebos can have positive effects … and unwanted effects. The common side-effects seen from placebos match what are found in studies of dietary supplements and what we saw in our tolerability testing.
Qualia Life was designed to make your cells and mitochondria (the powerhouses of cells) work better. When your cells and mitochondria are able to do their jobs better, we look, feel, and perform better.
Depending on health, age, and other factors, what you experience will vary. In the biohacker and quantified self communities, you’ll run across the acronym YMMV. This stands for “your mileage may vary.” It means that every person does not respond identically to the same thing. YMMV is seen with diet, exercise, sleep needs, and circadian preferences (i.e., some people are morning people; others are night people). It’s also seen with dietary supplements. Because of this, there’s a growing movement for what are called N-of-1 (or one person) experiments.
For the full list of the ingredients in Qualia Life, why they were chosen, and the research behind them, please review our formulation section.
Neurohacker Collective uses a model of science called complex systems science. One of the core principles is adaptation. Living organisms are experts at adapting to things.
In general, we recommend taking the full dose. The full dose provides the studied amounts of many of the ingredients (this is an important part of being able to make accurate structure/function claims) and is the dose we designed the formulation to deliver and have studied in our testing.