How to Take Piracetam in the Right Dosage
If you’ve been tinkering with brain improvement, then you might’ve heard of racetams. They are one of the most popular class of nootropics out there. Piracetam was the oldest or “original” racetam which was first formulated.
Piracetam is not the most potent nootropic but this fact has stood it in good stead with people who are just getting into nootropics. As a nootropic, it comes highly recommended by the nootropic community.
Piracetam Effects and Benefits
As a nootropic piracetam has shown to help intellectual functioning, retention rates and focus in healthy individuals. It is especially useful for patients who have a chronic lack of blood circulation to the brain – cerebrovascular disorders. There are studies like this one that shows piracetam does increase the blood flow and helps rehabilitation of post stroke aphasic patients.
Piracetam has also exhibited the ability to increase short-term memory in patients significantly as shown in a few tests. The interval set in the tests was 2 weeks and the dose given to them was about 400mg/day.
In healthy patients, piracetam has shown to lower depression significantly by increasing the spontaneous activity in the cerebral cortex. In this case the most effective dose was about 2400mg/day.
Piracetam Dosages
The most important thing with nootropics is that you need to get the dosage right for it to work. And since these are really powerful, you need to make sure that your information and measurements are exact to a milligram.
You have to understand that piracetam is unregulated, so no medical body is going to give you a recommendation for the dosage. But the nootropic community have come up with a few methods of how you can determine what your dosage levels are. There are also several academic studies that are research backed which can give us a better idea of how much piracetam we are supposed to be taking.
We have put together several resources that can help you find the right dosage for you. What you will observe with unregulated nootropics like piracetam is that the range of dosing is quite large, and you will find it varies from person to person depending on several factors.
We’ve found that dosing varies from 1.2 grams to 9.6 grams in a day and most research trials have dosages ranging from 3 to 5 grams per day. A major source of dosage information as far as piracetam is concerned is research and these suggest that 4 – 4.8 grams is the most optimal one-time dosage 2 to 3 times a day.
Also keep in mind that these are based on people taking piracetam by itself without stacking it with supplements or other nootropics. If you are thinking of stacking it with other nootropics you should use a smaller quantity.
Effects of varying doses of piracetam
There are problems with taking too much or too little of piracetam. But surprisingly, people are erring on the side of caution and taking too little of it to constitute a proper dose.
Piracetam was developed back in the 60s and so it is relatively low on the potency scale. For example, a nootropic that is more recent is Noopept which is about 1000 times stronger. What people need to understand is that piracetam needs time to work and, so you need to make sure that you split the dosages over a day, so it can be more effective. When it comes to piracetam or racetams in general, it can take upwards of a week for results to show.
People have come up with a theory to reduce the amount of time it takes for piracetam to permeate in the body. They go with what is called an “attack” dose. If you are sticking to racetams, this is a popular strategy to get quicker results. Attack doses are taking 2 to 3 times the recommended amount of the drug during the initial phase for quicker results.
An attack dose should only be carried out when it comes to compatible drugs, racetams for example. It can be dangerous with potent nootropics like Ampakines and is not recommended.
Vary dosage with goals
As with all medication or supplementation, you need to figure out the end goal and decide on a dosage. If you are after its ability to protect your brain and reduce mental aging, then it is recommended that you take smaller doses. Tapping into piracetam’s cognitive enhancement properties also requires a significantly lesser amount that you are used to.
But if you need to fuel your brain for a big day, like an important meeting or a crucial test then you might need to take a but more than usual to get the full effects. There are several other applications for piracetam which will be apparent when you consult with your doctor.
Can you overdose on piracetam?
Piracetam, since it is not as strong as most of the other nootropics that have been developed recently, is surprisingly tolerable by the body even in above recommended doses. While doses we recommend come to about 12 grams in a day, clinical applications have doses of up to 24 grams.
There has been no cause for concern when it comes to dangerous side effects as far as piracetam is concerned. The easiest method to find out what suits your body is to start with a safe dose then move up gradually. Your body is the best judge of how much you should be taking.
Conclusion
We hope this article has given you enough insights to finding the right piracetam dosage for you. Another important thing we want to bring to your attention is that some people may have slight intermittent headaches when taking piracetam doses. This is nothing serious and goes away when you have adequate choline supplementation. So, it would be a good idea to stack a good source of choline like Alpha GPC when you’re taking piracetam.
We have scoured through several studies as well as carried out research ourselves about this racetam to bring you the facts about piracetam dosage. Do let us know if there’s anything else we can answer for you.