Neuro Gum Review

A chewing gum nootropic? And why not, so long as it works… but does it? We thought we’d look beyond the labeling and TV pitch and see for ourselves how good it is. Our Neuro Gum review gives an honest and comprehensive verdict.

Want to know whether Neuro Gum can really do what it claims it can do? You may have heard that Neuro Gum claims to provide you with increased energy and focus. Afterall, it’s even written across the packaging. But you’re quite right in doing your research first, with this Neuro Gum review.

It’s also highly probable that you recognize the name of this company ─ Neuro became a bit of a household name when they appeared on the TV show Shark Tank. And they have gone from strength to strength from there.

In this review I am going to be taking a closer look at the company behind Neuro Gum, and what exactly they claim this product can do for you. I’ll also do some in-depth digging into the ingredients and why they are included, and then reveal my own personal experience using Neuro Gum.

Overall, I’ll help you make an educated decision on whether this is the right nootropic for you.

Neuro Gum ─ An Introduction

The story of Neuro Gum has got a bit of everything ─ tragedy, triumph, good friends and celebrity. I don’t always get to relay such a fascinating backstory when I write these nootropic reviews!

The founders of Neuro are two friends, Kent and Ryan, who met in college. They were both keen and talented athletes. Ryan was the high school Track Team Captain, while Kent had been training with the Japanese Olympic Judo team.

But then, aged 19, Ryan was in an accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

His energy didn’t subside, though, and he channeled it all into creating something new, using his background in neuroscience. Ryan had studied chemistry, and together they created Neuro Gum ─ made with all-natural, scientifically backed ingredients.

It’s all well and good creating a product; it’s a completely different ball game when it comes to selling it. And boy, did these two rise to the challenge. Four years in, by 2019 they weren’t exactly struggling, massing over $1 million in revenue.

But they didn’t want to stop there, and sought a little help. Or at the very least, gain some more exposure. So, they recorded a pitch and submitted it to Shark Tank, the ABC series.

They had offers. Huge offers, in fact. They were in with the Sharks for over two hours (cut down to seven minutes on the show), but they declined every offer. They left without a deal, but with full control of their company.

Their experience on the show certainly seemed to validate the company in the eyes of the public, which is why I include their story here. Very successful business people wanted a part of this company, and it’s gone from strength to strength since then.

So, let’s focus on the product now ─ what can it offer you? Well, here is another way in which they differ from much of the competition ─ they don’t really go into too much detail as to what you can expect, other than ‘Energy and focus’.

Neuro do not make promise after promise on how amazing and smart you are going to be after you start taking them ─ just that you should have more energy and focus.

I like this. Their ‘less is more’ policy, which is replicated by the minimalist design of the packaging, is refreshing in an industry that seems to want to shout in your face about how great the various products are. Sometimes you just want to be spoken to by an adult.

This is reinforced by the fact that they spend longer talking about each ingredient than they do about what impact the product will have. Again, I like this, because this is exactly what I do in all of my nootropics reviews ─ look at the science behind the product, rather than just the intended results.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to be doing in our next section.

The Ingredients Behind Neuro Gum

Before we get into the specific ingredients that are included in Neuro Gum, I think that it’s important to point out that all Neuro Gum products go through processes to ensure that they are safe and compliant with US regulations.

This means that they are all NSF approved, WADA compliant and FDA compliant. Whatever the effectiveness of Neuro Gum, you can be sure that it is safe ─ which is the bare minimum for a nootropic, admittedly, but it’s still good to know that this is a product that you can trust.

On top of that, Neuro Gum is vegan friendly, gluten free, sugar free and aspartame free.

With the more standard nootropics, which are usually in the form of a capsule, all of the ingredients contribute to the desired result, other than the capsule itself.

This is slightly different for Neuro Gum, as they have to make the gum as well. For the purposes of this review, we’re not going to run through these ingredients as they won’t impact the effectiveness of the product ─ other than how pleasant it is to actually consume, which we’ll cover in the next section.

Instead we are going to focus on the four main ingredients that make up Neuro Gum.

Natural Caffeine ─ 40 mg

I think this is an appropriate place to start the list of ingredients of a nootropic that promises more ‘energy and focus’.

We all know a little bit about caffeine, right? We all know that it is a natural stimulant that we usually find in coffee and tea, and that it gives us a little bit of a buzz in terms of energy. A lot of people claim that they can’t focus on anything until they have had their morning cup of coffee. But this is all anecdotal evidence ─ what does the science tell us?

Well, studies have shown that caffeine increases the amount of serotonin and acetylcholine in our systems. Let’s look at each of these individually.

Serotonin is most commonly associated with our mood ─ having increased serotonin can make us feel happier, but its main function is to send signals between nerve cells and so is associated with learning, memory and general brain function. If we have low levels of serotonin, it can lead to disturbed sleep, depression and chronic fatigue.

Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter, and is essential to how our central nervous systems function. A deficit of acetylcholine has been linked to memory loss, even dementia, as well as confusion and delusions. On the other hand, by taking supplements of acetylcholine we can improve our memory and cognitive function.

On top of that, caffeine contains polyphenol micronutrients, which are thought to help prevent tissue damage, and it may also activate antioxidants ─ so caffeine works to prevent damage to your brain, as well as helping it to perform better.

Of course, there are some negative consequences of taking caffeine ─ people can start to feel jittery and it can prevent you from sleeping. Neuro Gum have taken this into account, with a dose of 40 mg ─ roughly the same as half a cup of coffee, so it isn’t really a huge dose.

The aim is to have enough to trigger all the positive effects, without triggering the negative ones.

If you’re particularly sensitive to caffeine or avoid it for other reasons, then this may not be the nootropic for you.

L-theanine ─ 60 mg

This is one of the most common ingredients that you’ll find in nootropics, and for good reason. Studies have been conducted to prove its effectiveness when it comes to mental performance.

The main benefits that you’ll find are that you are more immune to stress, better focus, improved reaction times and more relaxed (which can lead to better sleep).

These have all been proven by various studies, although more research is needed to prove that L-theanine can help improve general mental performance, as has been claimed.

What makes it such a good inclusion into Neuro Gum is that it works particularly well when taken with caffeine. As it is described on the Neuro Gum website, L-theanine acts as the ‘Yin to caffeine’s yang‘. It can balance out the negative side to caffeine while enhancing the good, and therefore achieves even greater focus.

Vitamin B6 ─ 41% DV

Vitamin B6 helps our bodies to create neurotransmitters, which as we’ve seen above, can aid our general cognitive performance.

A deficiency of Vitamin B6 has been linked to memory loss and dementia, so it’s so important that we keep levels high. It has also been prescribed to people that suffer from anxiety, stress and depression.

Vitamin B12 ─ 100% DV

Finally, we have Vitamin B12, which has more of a boost to our energy levels than general performance. It helps our bodies convert food into glucose, which we use as energy.

If we are low on Vitamin B12, we get tired a lot quicker, which means we lose focus and concentration. As an added bonus, B12 also helps to create our old friend serotonin.

Using Neuro Gum

Before this review, I’d never tried a nootropic gum, so I was keen to give it a whirl. I decided to opt for the peppermint flavor (the other option is cinnamon), and I started to take it as I would any other nootropic ─ first thing in the morning, so that I could feel the benefits for the rest of the day.

This was a mistake! (I guess the whole point of writing these reviews is that I make the mistakes so you don’t have to!).

First of all, chewing gum first thing in the morning just feels a bit odd ─ my mouth wasn’t really ready for it! But also, the effect kicked in a lot quicker than I thought it would, and then burned off pretty quickly.

I was really impressed with the sudden surge of energy that I felt after about 20 minutes of chewing. They say you only need to chew for around 5 minutes to get all the benefits, but I was obviously a bit distracted ─ and it did keep its flavor for longer than I expected, so I just kept chewing.

Anyway, as I was packing the kids off to school, I started to feel something ─ right there on the first day. With most nootropics, you have to wait a week or so to get them into your system, but not with Neuro Gum ─ it worked right away.

However, by around lunchtime, I was seriously flagging. So, I decided to have another gum after lunch, and boom ─ I was hit again by this surge in energy.

I got loads of work done that afternoon, but again, by the time the kids were home from school, I was beginning to once again wane. I didn’t want to take any more caffeine at that point and jeopardize my night’s sleep, so I just had to ride out the crash.

That was all on the first day… After that, I think my body began to adjust to the Neuro Gum gradually. The crashes weren’t quite so severe, but certainly still occurring.

Overall, I was impressed with its impact, and I think as I tried it, I began to work out the best ways to get the most out of using Neuro Gum.

Some days I didn’t take one at all, but on days when I had plenty of work to get done, Neuro Gum was there for it and I would end up having four or five, sometimes two at a time. It was very much trial and error, but worth taking the time to experiment.

Alternative to Neuro Gum

Neuro Gum won’t be for everyone. The peaks and troughs might be a bit too erratic for some, and for those people I would recommend trying Mind Vitality Focus, which offers many of the same benefits, and includes caffeine and l-theanine, but has more of a slow-release, long-lasting impact on your focus.

Mind Vitality Focus is an excellent product with plentiful clinical studies to back up its intelligent ingredients list. It’s there to boost mental energy, focus, mood, concentration, memory, and alertness, and it does so brilliantly yet quietly, without the erratic crashes.

In fact, users often report feeling calmer and happier when taking Mind Vitality Focus. It takes a little longer to kick in ─ a day or so, maybe three ─ but for many this is preferential to turbulent peaks and troughs. If you want steady yet very effective long-term cognitive improvement, then Mind Vitality Focus is your go to choice.

Verdict

Neuro Gum is a great and innovative nootropic. I really enjoyed my experience using it, once I had figured out how to maximize the impact for my own working life. As a writer with sporadic deadlines and workloads, this was perfect. I could increase the dose when I needed to, or take a few days off.

In terms of value for money, it’s good, but that all depends on how many you take. The recommended dose is up to 10 gums a day, and if you are regularly requiring that many to get the desired effect, you will probably find better value with other, more traditional nootropics.

For a fast-acting burst of energy and focus, though, Neuro Gum is a great option. For a more long-term cognitive plan, Mind Vitality Focus is the ultimate solution.