Writer and Nootropic fan Alex Whybrow examines the benefits of this popular nootropic supplement and details how it impacted his day to day life as writer in our full Performance Lab Mind review.
Performance Lab Mind – An Introduction
We all want to perform a little bit better, don’t we? Whether it’s being able to concentrate more at work, have a bit of focus when we’re training, or be able to study for longer – we are all looking to get that edge.
This is why Nootropics are becoming increasingly popular. These little supplements harness the power of a variety of natural ingredients to give you a better cognitive performance.
As a result of their popularity, there are now many different options when it comes to choosing the best nootropics, which can be slightly bewildering for us as consumers. Every single one promises fantastic results, but they all differ slightly – how can you tell which one is for you?
We can help. Today we are going to be reviewing Performance Lab, specifically their Mind supplement. Performance Lab is a company based in Leamington Spa, England, and they have been expanding their portfolio of products for a while now.
The Mind product is what we are looking at today, but the other products that Performance Lab offers are: Energy, Caffeine+, MCT (Medium-chain triglycerides), Sleep, Vision, Prebiotic, Omega-3 and Immune.
Each product is made up of a different combination of ingredients and targets a different element of your body or your life, but they are all geared towards discovering your best self. The company prides itself on the amount of research it does, as they aim to revolutionize the world of nutrition.
They use the phrase ‘Ultramodern Nutrition’. Everything about the company seems to be pushing for breakthroughs to give you the edge you didn’t know you lacked.
Let’s see how Mind stacks up when we put it to the test. In this article we are going to be looking at the theoretical benefits of taking Performance Lab Mind, what ingredients are used to promote these benefits, some practical advice on how to take Performance Lab and then a look at how we found Performance Lab Mind when we tried it.
Benefits Of Performance Lab Mind
So why should you consider taking Performance Lab Mind? What are the benefits?
We found that with Performance Lab Mind, the focus was on brain health, as well as brain performance, which was slightly different to a lot of the competition. A lot of nootropics are focused on speed and focus, whereas this one is about long-term brain health.
To give you a clear idea, let’s take a look at each benefit one by one.
Performance Benefits
Better focus: No more sitting in front of your computer screen, just staring at it – get more done with improved focus. This applies to all kinds of people, particularly students. With so many distractions in the modern world, the ability to focus is absolutely crucial.
More motivation: Drive is what separates the good from the great. The ability to push yourself to go the extra mile, and to keep going when things get tough – that’s where success comes from. Performance Lab Mind is designed to help promote this.
Increased memory: Having a better memory helps in every walk of life, from being able to remember people’s names to being able to recall exact facts and figures to support your work. Even remembering the punchline to a joke! It can make your work better, and help you to make the most of your time. No need to look things up – just carry on working.
Ability to multitask: Do you ever have it when you are in the middle of something and someone asks you a question, that is not relevant to what you are doing? It can completely stop you in your tracks and grind your work to a halt. By being able to focus your mind on more than one task, this won’t happen, and you can get a lot more done.
Cope with pressure: Whatever you do, you are likely to often be in pressure situations. Exams, meetings, deadlines, and family responsibilities – all can impact our ability to think clearly, which can have severe impacts on our lives. Making the correct decisions in high-pressure situations is a rare skill and one that can really enhance your work and life.
Health Benefits
Brain recovery: You know those days when you feel burnt out? Sometimes it can take a while to recover from, the next day you feel a bit fuzzy and distant, don’t you? Performance Lab Mind aims to aid your recovery from mental exertion, ready to go again.
Neural regeneration: On a similar note, the Performance Lab Mind supplement aims to encourage neural regeneration, which in turn helps towards long-term brain health and mental clarity.
Optimization of brain cell membranes: Once again, this is essential for the long term health of your brain, as well as enabling it to function better on a day to day basis.
Performance Lab Ingredients
So how do they aim to give you these benefits? It’s all in the ingredients. Performance Lab, as a company, has put great emphasis on its research for their ingredients.
On their website, they boast “industry-leading ingredients made with advanced nutritional technologies that simply work better”. Can they back up that claim? Let’s take an in-depth look at the ingredients that are included in Performance Lab Mind to get a better idea.
Citicoline
Every living human and animal will have cells that include citicoline. It is naturally occurring in cell membranes, particularly those of organs, which is why it is seen as so important for the brain.
Citicoline is thought to increase the production of a chemical called phosphatidylcholine, which is essential for brain function. The theory is that the more citicoline you have, the more phosphatidylcholine is produced and therefore the better your brain functions.
This is a theory that is applied in practice – it is used to combat Alzheimer’s disease, as well as bipolar disorder, Parkinson’s and other brain conditions.
The problem is though, that its effectiveness has never been categorically proven – though this is due in a large part to a lack of evidence. There is the general consensus that it does have some impact on brain function, but the extent to which it does is not clear. It could also be the case that it only tends to work on brains that are struggling, rather than fit, healthy brains of Performance Lab’s target market.
This doubt is all due to a lack of testing, rather than a lack of its effectiveness. As with many of the ingredients involved in nootropics, there simply hasn’t been enough research to draw any solid conclusions.
Performance Lab conducts its own research, of course. They claim that the Cognizin® Citicoline that they use in the production of Mind could improve brain cell membrane formation by 26% and brain energy by 13.6%.
Sharp-PS® Green (Phosphatidylserine)
Phosphatidylserine is another key component in a cell membrane. It is a fatty substance that protects the cells in the brain and helps to transmit messages between them.
As such, phosphatidylserine is seen as essential when it comes to enhancing the performance of your brain and protecting it from aging. Protection, in fact, is a major part of what phosphatidylserine offers, as it is also seen to improve your immune system as well as help with stressful situations.
Phosphatidylserine is, again, used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease as well as muscle soreness in athletes and multiple sclerosis. Unfortunately, again, the effectiveness when it comes to treating these conditions is not clear, and more research is required.
Performance Lab’s research has suggested that phosphatidylserine helps to regulate brain chemicals (such as serotonin and dopamine) as well as to detect which cells are damaged and reduce stress. They also claim that phosphatidylserine dramatically increases brain energy, which benefits many brain activities, like memory, learning, concentration and mood balance.
L-Tyrosine
L-Tyrosine is one of the most common ingredients in this type of nootropic. It is a type of amino acid that we get from foods like meat, fish, eggs and dairy, and is seen as a ‘building block’ for protein.
With regards to the brain, L-Tyrosine is thought to have a close connection to dopamine, which is vital to the brain. It is the nice feeling we get when we achieve something or do something well.
The theory here is that if we are well stocked with L-Tyrosine, we will be able to reward ourselves with that pleasant feeling when we do well, and we want it more. We are then able to concentrate, focus and stay motivated next time we come up against a similar challenge.
While this still needs plenty of research to back up, Performance Lab is confident that we can link L-Tyrosine to help with memory, mental processing and performance in stressful situations. The fact that this is such a common ingredient in nootropics suggests that they are not alone in thinking that.
Maritime Pine Bark Extract
Usually found in areas near the Mediterranean, Maritime Pine Bark has an eclectic mix of potential health benefits.
It contains chemicals that could aid blood flow, prevent infections, reduce swelling and are antioxidants. This has led it to be used to combat high cholesterol, ADHD, asthma and problems with memory.
As ever, there isn’t concrete scientific evidence to back this up, but the antioxidants within Maritime Pine Bark are generally thought to have an impact on declining brains, and its anti-inflammatory nature can help to prevent mental illness caused by swelling of the brain.
That is certainly what is believed by the team that created Performance Lab Mind – Maritime Pine Bark Extract is used primarily to prevent brain deterioration and optimize brain cell regeneration.
It is important to also note what Performance Lab Mind does not include – it is suitable for vegans, containing no soy, egg, fish, shellfish, dairy, peanut, tree nuts, wheat, or other allergens. It is gluten-free, as well as free from caffeine, artificial colors, preservatives and synthetic additives.
You will have seen there that there is a need for more research to ascertain the effectiveness of all of the ingredients in Performance Lab Mind. Unfortunately, that is the case across the entire nootropics industry – more independent research is needed before we know everything, but these companies are subject to scrutiny from federal agencies: Performance Lab is FDA-registered and inspected.
How To Take Performance Lab
The suggested dose is to take 1-2 capsules in the morning, on an empty stomach – so ideally first thing in the morning when you wake up. The idea here is that your stomach will start to absorb the nutrients into your bloodstream quickly, and start to transport them around your body.
Our recommendation would be to start taking just one capsule a day for a while. It can be the case that nootropics like Performance Lab Mind can take a while (a couple of weeks or more) to really have an impact on your body and mind, so see how you get on with one.
Also bear in mind that if you do go up to taking two capsules a day, you are doubling the cost of your daily dose – you’ll need double the amount of capsules every month, which won’t be possible in everyone’s budget, so it is something to consider.
Using Performance Lab Mind – The Results
Before I get into the results that I found when I started taking Performance Lab Mind, I thought it would probably be helpful if I told you about myself. Everybody’s mind, lifestyle and responsibilities are different, of course, but I thought that if I shared with you what I required from a nootropic, it might help you to decide whether this is the one for you.
As you have probably guessed, I am a writer. I work freelance, for a number of different publications, across a number of different industries. That means that I am constantly switching the topic of my writing and the tone that I am writing in. It also means that I have to actively search for clients, pitch work, invoice them etc. I don’t love a lot of those aspects of my job, but they are important if I am going to grow my business.
The biggest struggle in my day-to-day working life is having enough focus and motivation. Focus to get as much work done as possible, and motivation to do all of those areas of the job that I don’t really enjoy. I don’t have a boss standing behind me all day, there is just me. If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.
I hope this gives you a decent picture of where I was when I started taking Performance Lab Mind, and why it appealed to me.
I’m not sure if you have seen the movie Limitless – but that was the (unrealistic) image I had in my mind when I took my first dose, just after waking up one morning. That I would head down to my office and all of a sudden I would be my best possible self.
I don’t need to tell you that this is not what happened, and for the first few days, I have to say I was starting to become a little unimpressed with the idea of Performance Lab – I hadn’t noticed any difference at all and all I was thinking about was the cost of my month’s supply.
Patience, of course, is a virtue.
Towards the end of the first week, I did start to feel something. Or rather, I noticed something – I had done all of my invoicing before the end of my month (usually a task that bleeds into the following month), without really thinking about it.
The following week, I had achieved so much more than I had anticipated that I had started to reach out to some prospective clients with new ideas for work. All of a sudden, I wasn’t just about fitting in all of my work into a week, I was getting it done early, so I could think about expanding my business – focus on marketing myself, rather than just getting by with the work I had.
It was a strange feeling – I didn’t actually feel any different at all, it just seemed like everything had suddenly become easier. I was working better, not longer, and I was getting more work done than I thought I was capable of. No staring out of the window – I just got things done.
I was really impressed by the change I saw in myself when I started taking Performance Lab Mind – it was exactly what I had been missing, and it has genuinely changed my life for the better.
I should point out, though, that these are just my own personal experiences. I have read about people becoming very nauseous when they start taking them, which I understand is quite common for supplements that you take on an empty stomach. I have also spoken to people that have struggled to sleep or found that they experienced excessive sweating after taking Performance Lab Mind for a while.
Needless to say, if you find that you are experiencing any negative side effects after you start taking Performance Lab, or any other nootropic, stop taking them and seek medical advice. It is not worth risking your health.
One final point – the capsules themselves are very easy to swallow – around 2cm long, 00 sized. I know some people can find taking this kind of capsule quite uncomfortable, but I found with a decent glass of water, they were no trouble at all.
Pros and Cons
In order to establish the pros and cons of taking Performance Lab, I have taken into account more than just my own experiences. Speaking to people and researching on the internet, I aim to give you a broad picture, rather than just my opinions.
Pros of Performance Lab
- Better focus – being able to concentrate on difficult or more mundane tasks
- Vegan – the impact on the planet places a burden on us all, so it is refreshing to see a completely vegan product on the market
- Protection for brains – this is, of course, harder to quantify than some of the pros, but most of the ingredients are used to combat brain diseases and promote the regeneration of brain cells. This is absolutely crucial as our bodies live longer – we’ll need our minds for longer as well.
Cons of Performance Lab
- Side effects – while relatively low in likelihood, you may experience some unpleasant side effects from Performance Lab, including kidney problems. Seek medical advice if you do.
- Expensive – this is a premium product, and it comes at a premium price. There are many cheaper alternatives to Performance Lab, but the results will obviously vary.
FAQs
Is taking Performance Lab safe?
Yes. All of the ingredients in Performance Lab are natural and free of additives, so it is considered to be safe for long-term use. Of course, people may experience some side effects, in which case, they should seek medical advice.
Who can take Performance Lab?
Any adults that want to enhance their cognitive performance, excluding those on medication or those that are pregnant. You should always seek professional medical advice if you are unsure.
When will I feel the effects of Performance Lab?
Everybody will be different, so it is impossible to say. Some may find they react to it very quickly, but with others, it may be a more gradual improvement over a long period of time.
Verdict
We found that Performance Lab Mind is one of the most effective nootropics available on the market today. It contains a streamlined, targeted group of ingredients that we found to be incredibly effective.
Obviously, this comes at a price, and this does represent one of the more expensive nootropics of this kind that are available. If you end up taking two capsules a day, it could be very expensive indeed.
However, in terms of performance, it will be difficult to find a nootropic that is better than Performance Lab Mind. If you are starting your search in the world of nootropics, this is a great one to try. We think you will struggle to beat it.