How should I take Qualia Life?
How much water should I drink with Qualia Life?
We recommend drinking Qualia Life with water and drinking plenty of fluids throughout the day, especially during the first week. One of the ingredients—creatine (as tricreatine malate)—is believed to pull water into cells. Because of this, it’s important to stay hydrated while taking Qualia Life.
The Qualia Life sachets are designed to be mixed with water, but can be used in smoothies, added to juices, or mixed into other drinks, depending on your personal taste and preferences. Similar to the capsules, it’s a good idea to make sure you mix it with at least a full 8 ounces of water or other fluids.
Should I take Qualia Life with or without food?
In general, we recommend taking Qualia Life with food. Some of the ingredients are fat-soluble, so taking them with food, especially if it contains at least a small amount of fat or oil, would be expected to help with absorption. It’s fine to take it a bit before eating the food (or drinking a smoothie), in the middle, or a bit after eating. Digestion doesn’t happen all at once.
Is it OK to take Qualia Life in a fasted state?
We've had lots of people take Qualia Life in the morning without food—Dr. Greg, the Neurohacker Collective Director of Product Development, has done this and knows many people who have. Only a few of the ingredients are fat-soluble (CoQ10 and Vitamin K2) and would be expected to be better absorbed with fat, but most of the ingredients won't be impacted. If you are drinking Bulletproof coffee in the morning, taking Qualia Life with or soon after that would give you plenty of fat for better absorbing the CoQ10 as an example. And, we'd consider it completely fine to take earlier in the day without food if that's more convenient for you.
What time of day Is best to take Qualia Life?
We recommend taking Qualia Life in the morning as opposed to dinner because things taken at dinner, in our experience, have a much more individual impact on sleep, while taking them in the morning seems to be more forgiving and they don't disrupt sleep (sleep quality has improved for quite a few people taking Qualia Life in the morning or lunch but we haven't studied this for dinner dosing). Qualia Life doesn't have any caffeine but does have about 6 mg of theobromine from the cocoa extract. Theobromine is usually not experienced as alerting in the same way caffeine is, especially at this low a dose. So, the bottom line is there's no reason we know of to avoid taking Qualia Life with dinner, but if you do, pay attention to your sleep to make sure the timing is working for you.
More Frequently Asked Questions
How should I get started with Qualia Life?
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.
Why don’t you use nicotinamide ribose or nicotinamide mononucleotide?
At the time when we first created, and later when we upgraded Qualia Life, the company that supplies the patented form of Nicotinamide Riboside (NIAGEN®) had decided they would not sell this ingredient to other companies. Long story short, they wanted to only use it under their own company branding.
This changed recently, and we have partnered with the supplier and are able to offer this ingredient, leading us to create Qualia NAD+, a formula that takes the Neurohacker complex systems science approach and applies it to making NAD+.
For people who wish to take Nicotinamide Riboside, in addition to or instead of the NAD+ support provided by Qualia Life, you'll find Nicotinamide Riboside in Qualia NAD+. Qualia Life also takes a complex systems approach to supporting NAD+: It contains niacin (nicotinic acid), niacinamide, and L-tryptophan to support three different ways of making NAD+.
Qualia Life also supplies comprehensive support for pathways and processes involved in NAD+ metabolism.*Qualia Life does not contain NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide) because the FDA has determined that NMN is excluded from the definition of dietary supplement.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
What is Qualia Life?
Qualia Life was formulated to comprehensively support the multiple interacting metabolic pathways, signaling processes, and cellular mechanisms of long-term healthy function. Better cells and mitochondrial function translates into more high-performing days and longer healthy years.
Is there a way to save money on my Qualia Life subscription?
Differences between Qualia Life and Qualia Mind?
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.
What should I expect when taking Qualia Life?
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.
What are the ingredients in Qualia Life?
For the full list of the ingredients in Qualia Life, why they were chosen, and the research behind them, please review our formulation section.
Why do you recommend taking Qualia Life for 5 days followed by 2 days off?
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.
Do I need to take the full dose of Qualia Life?
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.
Does Qualia Life work for everyone?
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.
