Boost Your Brain with Nootropics (aka Smart Drugs) with Matt Gallant of BiOptimizers & Nootopia

Hello, longevity friends. Your host Claudia von Boeselager here, and welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast and another longevity and biohacking product series., where I invite leading longevity and biohacking product entrepreneurs to share their pioneering products developed to help you optimize your health and your life for longer. Today's guest is Matt Gallant, CEO and co-founder of renowned Bioptimizers and recently launched Nootopia, a brain enhancement supplements company with the first ever customized nootropic stacks. Matt has spent over $150,000 on his brain between hefty neurofeedback training, supplements, EFT trainings, and much more. This let him down his meaningful journey of breakthrough discoveries about the brain, which he shares with us today. If you want to boost your emotional intelligence to become a better leader, increase your verbal fluency for sales and presentations, get hyper-focused for the toughest tasks, and even activate neurogenesis to enhance your learning, this episode is for you. In this episode, we dig into Matt's powerful journey to understanding and optimizing his brain, how he took these learnings and insights to create Nootopia, a first-of-its-kind customized nootropic stacks for anyone looking to up their Cognitive Game, how to reverse your brain's neurochemical deficiencies and permanently level up your mental endurance, how Nootopia stacks work, when to use them, and much more. And also for you, dear audience, to say goodbye to afternoon energy crashes, boost your emotional intelligence, activate neurogenesis, and more, check out nootopia.com/claudia to receive 10% off your order. Before we begin, please hit subscribe to the podcast to get your weekly dose of longevity and lifestyle inspiration, and share the podcast with those who would enjoy it. You can also reach out to me on Instagram @longevityandlifestyle. Please enjoy.

Welcome, Matt, to the Longevity and Lifestyle podcast and to the Longevity and Biohacking Product Series. It's a pleasure to have you on today.

Yeah, it's great to be here.

Thank you. Thanks, Matt. So can you give a brief background for my listeners to your journey to creating Nootopia? You've got such a wonderful story.

So I've been creating supplements for about 15 years. We started with enzymes and it's evolved into many other products. However, my own personal journey, as far as my brain goes, I hit bottom when I was 32. My brain wasn't functioning very well. I was using a lot of drugs and alcohol for many years, and even when I got sober, my brain just wasn't fully operational. So it was kind of a journey. I started experimenting with things like lion's mane and fish oil and photobiomodulation and Neurofeedback, all of those things helped. I think those are all great technologies. However, when I started playing with nootropics, I found that I was able to really push my cognitive performance, my mental performance to a different level. So I was working on stacks and then a friend of mine introduced me to Mr. Nootz, Mark Heffinger. And I just quickly realized that this guy is probably the smartest guy I've ever met when it came to building nootropic stacks. We made a deal, we acquired his company, and we launched Nootopia about a year ago. We do personalized, customized brain enhancement supplements, and we can talk about what that is, but you can feed your brain different molecules, amino acids, different plant compounds, and enhance the neurochemicals. And that changes your brain's performance. It changes actually your experience of reality. It's very powerful.

And just for people listening and wondering that, you know, these are obviously over-the-counter legal substances, because I I think there is obviously some people think, oh, there must be something illegal in it or whatever. So maybe we can just dive a little bit into the benefits. You touched on a few, and if there's any risks, then we can go on to look at why customizing them are so powerful.

Yeah, I think with every molecule in the body, from water to nootropics, there's an optimal range, there's an optimal level. And that's a big part of what we're always focused on at Bioptimizers. What's the optimal dose based on your physiology, based on your lifestyle, based on your genetics? And we talk about safety. That's a key thing with anything, right? It's what is the effective dose, the optimal effective dose for you. And the dose always creates the effect, right? I mean, we know the difference between drinking one glass of wine versus drinking two bottles. Well, one glass of wine is fine, but drinking two bottles, you're a mess. It's the same thing with a lot of molecules. And when it comes to the brain, you really want to give it again the optimal amount. And that's why we customize and personalize. When people order, they go through a pretty in-depth questionnaire and we assess based on that how much stim, you know, stimulants we should give them. And again, some people are very sensitive to stimulants with caffeine. Some people are slow caffeine metabolizers or fast caffeine metabolizers. And that's just one of the things that we adjust. And every month we continue adjusting based on the feedback. So the safety element really comes down to the right dose based on people's physiology. And of course, pretty much every compound that's in the nootropics are either, again, amino acids or plants. You know, everything is essentially natural. And just as a side note, I have experimented with a lot of drugs, you know, smart drugs, including modafinil and Adderall. And what I found was, yeah, I'd get a boost that day, but the next day I felt less than. And with Nootopia, we don't have that experience. You never feel less than. In fact, your baseline continues to improve because of the neurogenesis that's generated through the stacks. A lot of that too comes down to how we design the stacks. We're big on giving your body the adaptogens so that your body's not getting stressed out using nootropics or vitamins or minerals. So it's really about making sure that you're giving the body everything that it needs and you're not compromising anything. And I think most of us have experienced overdosing on caffeine and feeling jitteriness. That's what we want to avoid. And we can do that through essentially extending the effects of caffeine, as an example. So we don't use that much caffeine. We use maybe a third of a cup of coffee on average. Some people like more. So again, we can adjust that. However, we can make a third of a cup of caffeine and extend that effect. So you don't get that spike in that crash. Like today I took an Apex and that's going to last about 8 to 12 hours. And it's awesome. You know, it's just a long lasting effect and I'm going to have a great day. I've got 3 podcasts, including this one.

So, and I mean, I can vouch for that myself. Right. So following meeting at the conference in Miami, I got to try out one and It was really remarkable because actually in the space of 2 weeks, I had been in 4 different time zones and was a bit discombobulated, but I had unbelievable concentration for such a long period of time. I felt my body was a bit tired, but the focus concentration was still there, which is just really phenomenal. So yeah, I find it really, really exciting. I'd love to just help my listeners better understand how you actually personalize it. So you said it's a questionnaire, right? Because everybody's different and, you know, male versus female and obviously stage of life, etc. A product that's only for a specific type of people, or is it really for everyone? What would you say are the best sort of use cases and profile of people that this would really benefit?

Yeah, we've got incredible range. We got everything from university students to friends that are in their 80s using them. And obviously, again, the stacks change and the dosage changes. But one of the things that we want to help people figure out is, okay, what's the optimal state, or what is the state that you're trying to get into. So for an example, we have some poker players that need to sit at the table and play like 12 hours. We have people that are salespeople and they want to be more verbal, have better verbal fluency. So it just depends what you're trying to achieve. And we have 9 different stacks that help people optimize their states. And then again, as far as the modifications, we really boil things down into the nervous system and then the neurochemicals. So on the nervous system side, if you're more of a relaxed, chill person, stimulating yourself right into the center, which we call that apex zone, can have massive impact. And what's been interesting is women especially, they love Power Solution, which is one of our strongest stacks. Why is that? Because again, it gets them from maybe too relaxed into that perfect zone. Now, if you're already an intense, hard-driving person such as myself, then, you know, you got to be careful with Power Solution. It can get you too far into driving this. So that's one. And the second side is the neurochemicals. So serotonin, GABA, acetylcholine, noradrenaline, adrenaline— basically, we can change the amount of the neurochemicals in our brain and it changes your experience of reality. With acetylcholine, which one of the key ones, it allows us to focus and maintain focus. You know, serotonin is the stabilizer. GABA is really the molecule of chill. Noradrenaline is really important to kind of get activated and start driving adrenaline. So there's a lot of different molecules that are key to really optimizing your state.

Excellent. Thank you for explaining that as well. And then I think what I find brilliant with this model is that there's a continuous iteration that you were saying that's based on what the client has experienced, and you can fine-tune it from there. How long does that fine-tuning process typically go on for?

Well, it's endless if they want it to be, but typically people achieve what they want about 60 days. So usually by the second or third order, people have really found what works for them, from the products to optimizing each and every single stack. We also have an app, so there's a 30-day guided journey. People go through this guided journey and they can give us feedback on every single stack. We look at that and then there's a monthly feedback form at the end of the month as well.

Excellent. What about risks, Matt, of taking this over a prolonged period of time? Or, you know, some people get addicted to the high, you know, even caffeine, right, is addictive. What would you say are some risks and how do people manage this?

Well, I think the risk comes when you overdo one thing and your receptors downregulate. Let's take caffeine as an example. Let's say somebody's never done caffeine or has never drank coffee. It works very well for a few days, and then your body downregulates and it doesn't really work anymore. What we do is we have a variety of stacks, and you want to rotate the stack so your body's not getting used to any single thing. And the other thing we're big on is cofactors. So we're not relying on brute force and saying, hey, let's take 300 milligrams of caffeine and get you all jacked up. Instead, it's like, let's use 30 milligrams and 50, and let's add a lot of other things where your brain's really operating like an orchestra instead of blowing out your speakers with one molecule. So those are many of the things that we do to prevent any downsides. And that's one of the most common feedbacks is, you know, we usually recommend people take 1 or 2 days off every week. People say, I don't feel any drop, I don't feel less than, I don't feel any downsides, I just feel like myself. And there is neurogenesis. Like right now I'm drinking Nectar X, which is this one here, it's a tube. And that is one of the stacks that will create neurogenesis over time, which your baseline levels up and in general, people get the best effects at the 3, 4, 5 week mark and beyond. So they work right away. But as the neurogenesis happens, as you activate new parts of your brain, you will actually level up your baseline, which is awesome. So I'd say it's more of a constant leveling up. And again, if there's things that don't agree with your brain chemistry, obviously don't use them or lower the dose. And those are sort of things that we obviously recommend and watch for, like with Nectar X, you mix this with about a liter of water and you can control the dose. You can drink 10% of it or half of it or all of it. And also another thing that we recommend is, you know, drink it over an extended period of time so that you're not getting a spike. You want to kind of get to optimal and then stay there. We're all about optimal. We're not into getting high or blasting yourself with any single molecule and discombobulating yourself. And we have some stacks that are definitely more on the parasympathetic side, like Brain Flow and Upbeat. People that are really sensitive to stim, they love those because you do get the lateral thinking enhancement. You do get enhanced brain performance, but there's very little stim. So we have everything from people that want to run through walls and do some hardcore workouts, like Power Solution. It's a great pre-workout to people that just want to be calm but alert and calm but alert is a high performance state.

You've mentioned some of the different products, but can you just walk through the full range of Nootopia products that you have available and what they do?

So in the morning we have this guy, this is a great stack to start. It's called Mental Reboot AM. And you essentially open the capsule and you drop it under your tongue. And if you have brain fog, maybe if you drank last night or didn't sleep well, It's awesome. It gives a good base layer of acetylcholine and kind of sets up the rest of your day. And that's not something you need to use every day, but usually 2, 3 times a week. And then you look at your day, like this morning I woke up, I look at my schedule, I said, okay, well, what do I need? So based on what you need, then you choose the right stack. So one of the most popular ones is Apex. And, but I'll just show the capsules. You can see on camera that They're multi-layered. And why are they multi-layered? Because that's how we customize. We literally build for every single person different layers and change the amounts in the capsules. Apex is a lot of people's favorites. It's probably the longest lasting one. It's what I took today. This is gonna last like 8 to 12 hours, and it's just awesome for all-day focus. Beat is a great mood enhancer. It's another beautiful capsule, multi-layered as well. And this is a really— it's a good serotonin booster. It doesn't have that much stim, and what it does, it just essentially puts you into a better mood. You become more upbeat. If people want to be hyper-focused and work on the computer, write, do spreadsheets— I have a friend who's like an accountant at KPMG and another guy in real estate, and this is what they take. This is called Focus Savagery. It's one of the more intense ones. It's really designed to get you into that jet fighter hyper-focused state, and it's great for that. Also along the same lines, we have Power Solution, and this is another one. This is another tube with powder. You mix it with about a liter of water. And what I'll say with the tubes, including, you know, Nectar X, is I always have some pre-mixed in the fridge. And what I love to do is like I'll drink about 10% of a bottle in the morning instantly wakes me up. This blows a coffee away by a long shot. I also love using it before workouts. We have gamers using this, so if you need to be hyper-focused and play video games, it's phenomenal for that. So that's a really popular one. And then we have some other ones as well. We have Mental Reboot PM, which actually helps clean out the detritus from your brain while you sleep. So it's a really powerful stack for that. And we have Brain Flow, which is really one of my favorites recently. I usually use it in the afternoons, and it really enhances verbal fluency and lateral thinking. So all in all, there's 9 stacks. It comes in a beautiful box. It comes with an app. There's a 30-day guided journey. It comes with a book that helps guide people and gives a lot of tips. So we're not just about selling the supplements, but we're really about guiding people and helping people figure out how to use them and how to optimize your brains through a variety of methods, not just through using nootropics.

Which I think is such a nice offering that it's not just, here's a product and figure it out yourself. Um, with the app and that constant feedback and iteration that you supply, really, really helpful for so many people, I think. So you take basically several different ones during the day, or can you just take one a day? Just to understand. How that works.

Yeah, I think one of the, the key things with the nootropics is timing. So for an example, if you're a morning person, typically your cortisol will crash in the afternoon, right? And your energy goes along with it. So one of the strategies is you can take a stack, let's just say one, around noon, and that's going to carry you the whole afternoon and you won't have any lulls, you won't have any downs. So that's one strategy. Another strategy is to use a stack in the morning and another one in the afternoon. So you get two waves because most of the products will last anywhere from like 4 to 6 hours. So if you take, for an example, an Upbeat in the morning, that'll carry you till about noon. And then you might take a Brain Flow at noon and that'll carry you till 5, 6 PM. Some of them do last longer, like Focus Savagery and Apex. But yeah, people could take one or they can take two at the same time. Some people like stacking them as well. And the other thing too with timing is, you know, if you had a podcast, let's say at 1 PM, you want to take it around 11, 11:30 so that it peaks while you're doing the podcast and your brain is optimized for that experience. So timing is a really big thing in terms of really getting the most out of your supplements.

Really helpful. And can you walk through the price point also for people to understand where it is and how the model works and where people can find out more information on this?

Yeah, so as far as the price points, they start at around $100, which will give you about kind of an occasional dose. We have some people, they just want to use nootropics maybe once or twice a week. That's a good program for them. And then it goes up to $350 for the biggest box, which is called World Domination.

That's US dollars, just for people, because I have people in 66 countries around the world.

So, okay, yeah, that's US dollars.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's for high performers. I mean, we have some of the top actors and actresses using the stacks, and agents and CEOs. So even with our team, we have pretty much people using stacks every single day. So if you're really wanting to optimize your performance and drive your career forward to the max, the world domination, or there's a tier in the middle called Focus Ferocity, those are good options. And yeah, you save when you subscribe. And, you know, again, it just gets better and better every single month. And we got a lot more stacks coming out this year as well. We got a new one coming out in March and There's several more coming out later this year.

Exciting.

Congratulations.

Wonderful, Matt. I think this is a fully comprehensive overview. Is there anything else that you'd like to share, or any parting message for my audience?

Yeah, I would also recommend two other modalities that have nothing to do with nootropics as far as optimizing your brain. One is photobiomodulation. Probably the best device for the brain is from Vielight. Again, I've got no association with them. They're a Canadian company that does a very, very strong headset that essentially shines light into your brain, and you can actually get different frequencies from alpha to gamma, and it will entrain your brain into that frequency. If you actually put an EEG on your brain after running the V-Light, you'll see that you're into alpha or gamma. It's powerful. I know they're doing a lot of research on Alzheimer's and dementia and some other things. The second one is neurofeedback. I spent about $150,000 in neurofeedback. I'm doing another round end of this month. It's probably the most profound thing I've done. I've been to BioCybernaut. I've been to Zen 5 times. I've got a medical-grade system in my house. And for those of you that, again, that can't afford, you know, $15,000, $20,000 a shot, there is a headset coming out later this year from a company called Sensei. It's sens.ai. You can go check them out. And it's a dream come true for me because even though I've got a medical-grade system in my house, I don't use it that much because it's like a 10-minute setup. It's a 10-minute cleanup. This is going to be dry EEGs. You put it on, all you need is a mobile. You don't even need a computer and you can do everything from alpha to gamma to synchrony. And it's well priced. It's going to be, I think around, it's under $1,500. It might be even less than that. It's not out yet. They just had a really successful crowdfunding campaign. But really excited about that for myself. And I think it's gonna be a game changer for people that wanna train. And you'll be able to do basically neurofeedback in an Uber ride or a plane ride. It's awesome. I tried it and, you know, I invested in the company and I'm very, very excited to have a headset myself.

So that's exciting. So would you say the triad between Neutopia, Sensai, and V-Lights, you'll be off like a rocket ship?

Well, yeah, they compound. I think, you know, one of the most powerful principles to optimize your performance. And something we realize, both Wade and I, in bodybuilding is things synergize and compound. So you might get 50% from one technology, and then you get another 20% from the other one, you get another 50% from the Nutopia Saks. If you combine all three, now you're well over 100%. And I did the same approach to optimize my sleep, to build muscle mass. We do the same approach for fat loss. Compounding and stacking modalities is always going to be a much better approach than just using one thing.

Yeah.

Excellent, Matt. Thank you so much for your time today and sharing this amazing new product development that you are bringing out to the world. So thank you for that.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited for everything that you're doing.

So thank you. Hey everyone, it's Claudia von Boeselager here. Before you take off, I hope you enjoyed the episode and learned as much as I did. If so, please hit subscribe so you don't miss out on our next episodes. I would also love to hear what you thought, be it your favorite part, quote, or other feedback from the episode. So please leave a written review on Apple Podcasts or on social media. And if you think this episode will help someone in your own life, share it with them. Together we can change our own lives and the lives around us for the better. Until next week, goodbye, farewell, and choose to live well.