Nick Norwitz examines DiHEXA, a redesigned brain peptide based on angiotensin IV that promotes neuronal sprouting in animal studies. The viral claim that it's "10 million times stronger than BDNF" comes from a retracted study with no verification. Norwitz reports feeling more focused after trying it himself, though the science behind the mechanism is real.
People are calling this compound 10 million times stronger than BDNF, Miracle-Gro for your brain and neurons. But that number is a lie, and the real science is much stranger. It all started with a natural brain compound that helps animals' brains learn faster. It's called angiotensin IV, but that doesn't really matter. The problem is your body destroys this brain-boosting compound if you— they administer it in minutes before it ever reaches the brain, so researchers reconfigured and rebuilt it in a form that's stable enough to survive and slip into your brain. That is DiHEXA. And in animals, it makes neurons physically sprout new connections, the actual cellular events that we end up calling learning. Now, DiHEXA works by effectively amplifying growth in learning pathways like HGF-CMET. Again, you don't need to know that, but that 10 million times number is more or less debunked. It comes from one early finding from a study that was later retracted and never verified. So the number is basically made up, but the mechanism and potential benefits of Dihexa are real. In fact, when I tried it myself, and I did, I definitely felt more focused and I was pulling words out of my vocabulary that I didn't know existed. Sorry, I can't swallow this while talking. I was pulling words out of my vocabulary I didn't know existed, like epistrophe. Who says epistrophe? There's more information below, and 10 million bonus points if you can use epistrophe in a sentence.
