In this interview Matt Gallant, a veteran supplement creator with 15 years of experience, recounts his personal cognitive recovery after years of substance abuse and explains the philosophy behind his company Nootopia. He describes how he moved from experimenting with lion’s mane, fish oil, photobiomodulation, and neurofeedback to using nootropics that dramatically boosted his mental performance. Gallant outlines Nootopia’s core offering: nine customized nootropic "stacks" that are personalized through an in‑depth questionnaire covering lifestyle, physiology, and genetics. He emphasizes safety and optimal dosing, comparing dose‑response to alcohol consumption and warning against overstimulation and receptor down‑regulation. The stacks are designed with low‑dose primary compounds plus numerous cofactors, creating an “orchestra” effect rather than a single loud instrument. Gallant discusses stack rotation, weekly rest days, and the importance of cofactors to extend effects (e.g., extending caffeine’s impact while using only a fraction of a cup). He provides concrete use‑case timing strategies for poker players, salespeople, pre‑workout athletes, and general daily energy management, explaining how different stacks can be taken at specific times to sustain performance without crashes. The product ecosystem includes a beautifully packaged box, a companion app with a 30‑day guided journey, ongoing feedback forms, and an instructional book. Over 60‑day periods, users typically see baseline improvements due to neurogenesis, with optimal results emerging after 3‑5 weeks. Gallant positions Nootopia not just as a supplement seller but as a guided cognitive‑enhancement service.
Chapters
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. 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. 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. With every molecule in the body, from water to nootropics, there's an optimal range. There's an optimal level. And what's the optimal dose based on your physiology, based on your lifestyle, based on your genetics? And we talk about safety. 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. 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 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. 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. We're big on giving your body the adaptogens so that your body's not getting stressed out using nootropics or vitamins or minerals. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. The risk comes when you overdo one thing and your receptors downregulate. You know, 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 wanna 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. 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 just feel like myself. And there is neurogenesis, 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. 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., you know, 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. 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 gonna 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. And the other thing too with timing is 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. 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 people 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.
