[rapjr9]

Disclaimer, this is not medical advice, experiment at your own risk! I once tried an "energy shot" called GungHo that was popular with gamers and that claimed to enhance cognition and reduce fatigue and was really surprised that it seemed to work for me, even consuming just a small amount of a shot/package. The company that made it went out of business, but there was a list of all the ingredients on the package so I bought them all and tried them one by one. I found that Eleuthero is the one ingredient that made a difference. I then tried reducing the dose to find out the minimum amount that seemed to have an effect and was astounded to find that a very tiny amount, just wetting my fingertip and touching it to the powder and then ingesting that, still had the same effect as a whole capsule. Here's WebMD's take on Eleuthero:

https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-985/eleuthe...

Since then I've read a variety of research papers on PubMed about it and it does not seem to work for everyone. It seems to work better for people who are older. The effect on me is dramatic, within moments I feel more awake and energetic, before I even swallow the powder (so it must be entering through the skin of the mouth). It lasts about 4 hours, and then I feel fatigued again, but there is no crash like with sugar or caffeine, I just feel like I did before. It's cheap and easily available as a herb, also called Siberian Ginseng (although it is not actually a ginseng, real ginseng just seems to raise my blood pressure). I don't use it often but when I want to stay alert and am feeling tired I use it and for me it is very effective. It seems to have been widely used in Russia over many years by the elderly. For me a single bottle of capsules is probably a life time supply.