STAY focused… even in stressful times… with this ‘cereal secret’
Your mind is WANDERING…
You can’t seem to tell a story without running off the rails…
And you haven’t made much headway on that craft project you started WEEKS ago.
Friend, it’s so easy to get DISTRACTED nowadays… with all the politics and the RELENTLESS headlines.
But if you find yourself wishing you could stay laser-focused… and pay more attention to the task at hand…
I’ve got a “hormone hack” that could help you stay up and at ’em.
It’s an ingredient that was discovered over 100 years ago, in the 19th century…
But we’re just now starting to understand how it could benefit cognitive health.
The brain-boosting compound hordenine gets its name from what scientists call barley – Hordeum vulgare.
That’s the plant where a French researcher found and isolated this substance around the turn of the last century… and the name stuck.
Now, barley might be off-limits for you if you’re avoiding grains… especially those containing gluten.
That’s why the ability to isolate hordenine… and HARNESS its cognitive-supporting powers… is so exciting.
It’s both grain-free and gluten-free!
Hordenine has caught the attention of modern-day researchers for its ability to “turn on” cognitive function when it’s needed most… like in times of stress.
It actually works with 2 “stress hormones” produced by your adrenal glands – adrenaline and norepinephrine.
You’ve surely felt an adrenaline “rush” at some point in your life…
When your heart was RACING… your focus was HEIGHTENED… and your perception of pain was DULLED.
It’s the stuff action flicks are made of!
But norepinephrine is a different story altogether – because you might think you can’t feel its effects at all.
When its release is triggered, however, it acts as a neurotransmitter that helps you SIT UP and TAKE NOTICE…
Stay FOCUSED…
And even SPRING into action more quickly than you normally would.
It’s so effective at helping folks maintain sharp focus… it’s often given to help take the edge off of attention deficit disorders.
And norepinephrine has been shown to help ENCODE and CONSOLIDATE memories in a certain part of your brain.
Both of these hormones tend to SURGE when you feel like you’re UNDER ATTACK. They’re part of our bodies’ primitive defense mechanisms.
And under normal circumstances, you don’t need A LOT of adrenaline or norepinephrine. (That would be EXHAUSTING!)
You can save those high levels for a car chase… running out of a burning building… or some other high-stakes emergency (though I pray something like that NEVER happens to you).
So, it’s intriguing what could happen when something like hordenine might give those hormones just a bit of a nudge… instead of opening the FLOODGATES (which is usually the case in those “fight or flight” scenarios).
It appears that it could “wake up” the central nervous system with a gentle tug… instead of a BLARING alarm.
Now, scientists were testing hordenine out on animals all the way back in the 1930s…
But there STILL aren’t any clinical trials on people.
What are they waiting for??
So, I’d file this ingredient under “one to watch.” The THEORY behind it is promising… but we don’t REALLY know if it truly lives up to its potential.
If you find hordenine as an ingredient in a cognitive support formula, it’ll be hard to know whether the effects are from it… from the other ingredients… or from the cumulative effect.
But that’s often the case with “brain-boosting” supplements – they need to be “stacked” in order to MAXIMIZE their effectiveness.
In the meantime, you most commonly can find hordenine in beer, thanks to its malted barley content.
In fact, researchers have attributed beer’s mood-lifting ability to hordenine… even more so than the alcohol!
Bottoms up,
Sarah Reagan
P.S. There’s a “beer flower” that’s also been linked to the release of norepinephrine… and could also help SHARPEN focus and SUPPORT healthy cognitive function. Intrigued? Click here to find out all about it.
