| Cute snake oil, but you might want to peddle it somewhere other than Hacker News. People here place too much importance on facts and knowledge to really go for this stuff. > The human body has an immune system that is built to fight foreign objects. Drinking works so well because we overpower the livers defenses Liver metabolism of active chemicals (including alcohol) is a totally different thing from the immune system. This is like confusing the police with the wastewater treatment authority. > isolated neurotransmitters are [...] extremely wide relative to the gap in the blood brain barrier [...] insights from the pharmacokinetic effects caused by the chemical structure of caffeine led me to experiment with different methods that combined to make Plusfour 800% more bioavailable. The neurotransmitters GABA, glutamic acid, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine are all about the same size as caffeine or slightly smaller. So the "too wide" story about why it wasn't working is not compatible with the "make it caffeine-like" story about fixing it. The pharmacokinetics of a substance depend among other things on its structure, i.e. its identity. You can't give it different pharmacokinetics and have it be the same thing. In the best case, you might be able to create a prodrug of it with a distribution more like what you want -- a classic example is heroin, a prodrug of morphine that gets across the blood-brain barrier better. But that's a matter of chemistry, not a matter of particle size or whatnot. > The neuro-pharmacokinetic compound in coffee Pharmacokinetics: the chronology of a drug's activity, including its distribution to different tissues, effect while there, and processing into active or inactive metabolites. Calling caffeine a "neuro-pharmacokinetic compound" is gobbledegook. It's like saying a book is "literary-logistical" because I had it shipped to me. > Compressing a small molecule down to the nanoscale is very difficult. In much the same way that compressing the surplus dog population down to an animal of adoptable size is very difficult. Or, as John Wayne might have put it: "Life's very difficult. More difficult if you're stupid." Anyway, I thought these were large molecules, eh? > Think about a chemical compound as a [...] sphere Acceptable, if a bit simplistic. > and think about a liquid as enough of these spheres holding hands close together That'll work. > The purpose of nano-encapsulation is [...] decreasing the diameter of these spheres. Holy crap, no. > carbonated rose water That's the most sensible thing you've said yet. > Certain vitamins and minerals in Plusfour function to prevent any tolerance. [...] if it can’t get the right nutrients, the brain will run on fumes and cause discomfort and pain. Tolerance is a result of the brain adjusting to scarcity. Of nutrients? No. Drug tolerance can be a result of the brain adjusting to the scarcity or abundance of the drug, or of some other substance through which the drug acts. Not the result of brain malnourishment. I could go on, but I don't see the point. The last time I saw this much piffle in one place, it was trying to sell me a machine to infuse my tap water with magnetic monopoles. |
Actually I think this is exactly the kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense that HN types tend to fall for. I am glad that most of the top comments are people debunking it but I think it's telling that it was upvoted to the front page in the first place.