Overview
NoöCamilon: The best tools for getting smarter usually come from Russia.
NoCamilon is LifeLink’s brand name for ‘picamilon’ — a notropic substance developed in Russia for improving a range of brain functions. Chemically, picamilon can be thought of as a fusion of the vitamin niacin and the neurotransmitter GABA.
Picamilon has been used therapeutically in Russia since 1986 to:
- decrease anxiety and depression
- improve recovery time after intense work
- improve memory
- lower blood pressure
- improve recovery after traumatic brain injury
- ameliorate senile psychoses.
Almost all serious research with picamilon is published in the Russian language. A handful of translated reviews provide almost all of our clinical information about this intriguing substance. According to these sources, picamilon has been intensively studied both in experimental animals and in humans, and shown to have the following properties:
- decreases anxiety, fear, irritability, and symptoms of emotional stress
- quickly restores physical working capacity after fatiguing work
- does not cause muscle relaxation, drowsiness or lethargy
- lowers blood pressure
- inhibits aggression associated with fighting for territory
- enhances memorization and recall, and prevents forgetfulness
- suppresses some of the effects of oxygen starvation
- improves mood, memory, irritability, and vascular responses in patients with deficient cerebral blood flow
- decreases symptoms of headache, dizziness, and ‘noise’ in the head
- improves speech and emotional state
- increases mental and motor activity in patients with anxiety and depression
- can help prevent and suppress diabetic neuropathy
- suppresses side effects of alcohol withdrawal
- ameliorates glaucoma and vascular diseases of the retina and optic nerve
- improves urination in people with neurologically-based urological problems
- causes no significant changes in the blood, urine and internal organs
- has no allergic or carcinogenic effects
- does not cause birth defects.
LifeLink’s suggested dosage is 50 mg, one to four times per day. The effects of picamilon are noticeable after about 3 to 5 days of use.
Read NoöCamilon™ Monograph
NoöCamilon is LifeLink’s brand name for ‘picamilon’ — a noötropic substance developed in Russia during the 1980s and 1990s for improving a narrow range of brain functions. Chemically, picamilon can be thought of as a fusion of the vitamin niacin and the neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). However, the effects of picamilon in the body are not exactly the sum of the separate effects of niacin and GABA.
Russia, like China and several other countries, is currently enjoying a period of relative freedom from the bureaucratic obstructionism that formerly impeded technical progress there. Consequently, Russians now have greater freedom to innovate, develop, and make use of medical technology than do the citizens of other Western countries. Medical advances that in the U.S. or Western Europe might require decades of jumping through regulatory hoops and billions of dollars in costs become available in Russia many years before people in the U.S. even hear about them.
Picamilon has been used therapeutically in Russia since 1986 to:1
- decrease anxiety and depression
- improve recovery time after intense work
- improve memory
- lower blood pressure
- improve recovery after traumatic brain injury
- ameliorate senile psychoses
What we can’t tell you
In the U.S. and some other industrialized countries, government agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have adopted censorship as a method for intensifying their control over supplement users and their suppliers. Thus, FDA regulations prohibit us from telling you that any of our products are effective as medical treatments, even if they are, in fact, effective.
Accordingly, we will limit our discussion of NoöCamilon to a brief summary of relevant research, and let you draw your own conclusions about what medical conditions it may be effective in treating.
Mechanism of action
Animal experiments suggest that picamilon’s effects in the brain depend upon its ability to increase blood flow by relaxing the walls of small blood vessels.2 Both of picamilon’s precursor compounds, GABA and niacin, have the ability to do this. GABA seems to accomplish this blood vessel dilation through its role as a neurotransmitter — by adjusting the activity of nerves that regulate tension in muscle cells in the blood vessel walls.3 Niacin, on the other hand, may act directly upon these muscle cells.4
It may seem surprising that a mere increase in blood flow would significantly improve brain function — surely something as sophisticated as mental activity would not be at the mercy of minor fluctuations in blood flow. But this does seem to be the case. In fact, one of the most effective tools for mapping brain function is functional MRI5 — the use of magnetic resonance imaging to pinpoint the locations of increased blood flow in the brain during the performance of selected mental tasks.
Laboratory and clinical studies
Almost all serious research with picamilon has taken place in Russia and is published in Russian journals in the Russian language. Many of the scientific reports are not even indexed in international medical databases. This arrogant neglect by the non-Russian medical establishment means that we must rely on anecdotal reports and a handful of translated reviews for most of our clinical information about this intriguing substance.
According to these sources, picamilon has been intensively studied both in experimental animals and in humans, and shown to have the following properties:
- acts like a tranquilizer but with a stimulating component
- does not cause muscle relaxation, drowsiness or lethargy
- lowers blood pressure
- decreases anxiety, fear, irritability, and symptoms of emotional stress
- inhibits aggression associated with fighting for territory
- quickly restores physical working capacity after fatiguing work
- prevents forgetfulness
- enhances memorization and recall in people with memory disorders
- suppresses some of the effects of oxygen starvation
- improves mood, memory, irritability, and vascular responses in patients with deficient cerebral blood flow
- decreases symptoms of headache, dizziness, and ‘noise’ in the head
- improves speech and emotional state
- increases mental and motor activity in patients with anxiety and depression
- can help prevent and suppress diabetic neuropathy6
- suppresses side effects of alcohol withdrawal
- ameliorates glaucoma and vascular diseases of the retina and optic nerve7
- improves urination in people with neurologically-based urological problems
- passes efficiently through the blood-brain barrier
- causes no significant changes in the blood, urine and internal organs
- has no allergic or carcinogenic effects
- does not cause birth defects
The effects of picamilon were noticeable after about 3 to 5 days of use.
Dosages
Picamilon has been studied at many Russian scientific facilities. The dosages used in these studies were typically 20 to 50 mg, two or three times per day, for two to six weeks.
LifeLink’s suggested dosage is 50 mg, one to four times per day.
Conclusion
Is NoöCamilon useful for the conditions and purposes mentioned above? We aren’t allowed to tell you, so you should take a
look at some of the references cited here, and then decide for yourself.
References
[1] Picamilon Wikipedia website
[2] [Effect of pikamilon on the cortical blood supply and microcirculation in the pial arteriole system] Biull Eksp Biol Med. 1989 May; 107(5):581-2
[3] Effect of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) on vasodilation in resistance-sized arteries isolated from the monkey, rabbit, and rat. J Cardiovasc Pharmacol. 1988 Sep; 12(3):372-6 Lai FM, Tanikella T, Cervoni P
[4] Why is flushing limited to a mostly facial cutaneous distribution? J Am Acad Dermatol. 1988 Aug; 19(2 Pt 1):309-13 Wilkin JK
[5] Magnetic resonance imaging Wikipedia website
[6] [Correction of diabetic neuropathies using aldose reductase inhibitors and pikamilon] Vopr Med Khim. 1998 Nov-Dec; 44(6):559-64 Kuchmerovskaia TM, Parkhomets PK, Donchenko GV, Obrosova IG, Klimenko AP, Kuchmerovski NA, Pakirbaeva LV, Efimov AS
[7] [Pathogenetic treatment of central chorioretinal dystrophies with pikamilon] Vestn Oftalmol. 2001 Mar-Apr; 117(2):42-4 Basinski SN, Krasnogorskaia VN, Lenis IuA
