Exclusive Interview with Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw® Smash Through Your Walls With Mental Fitness Nutrition Among life extension enthusiasts, it is thought that Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw's greatest achievement - aside from their near single-handed creation of the life extension meme (contagious idea) - is their development of growth hormone releasers. Others believe that Durk & Sandy's phenylalanine-based productivity enhancers take the prize because they fill you with a desire to get the most out of whatever you're doing, whether work or pleasure. Their phenylalanine formulations have been the real cognitive detonators of nutrition that you can actually feel, unleashing creative power and energy whenever they are used. Starting in 1986 with the introduction of their first phenylalanine drink mix, Pearson & Shaw put the concept of designer food on the map and with it the idea that a person could be boosted biochemically to be anything that he or she wanted to be this time around - in this lifetime. In important ways, we are no different than the rats in the learned helplessness study that Durk & Sandy describe below. In this experiment, rats in a closed cage were made helpless by a series of hundreds of harmless yet scary shocks. When the wall separating them from escape was eventually removed, the rats remained and did not redress their defeated attitude. The rats quivered inside their cage living with their defeated attitude; they were bound by their learned helplessness. However, as we shall soon learn, if the biochemistry of the rats was altered, the outcome was altered in a positive direction. Too often, we too are bound by our belief that the "walls" around us prevent us from achieving our goals. Even when our "learned helplessness" walls come down, we can remain in our mental paralysis. We may know what to do intellectually but, as the rat study indicates, we can be predisposed by our biochemical mental state to accept our fate. Just as if we were surrounded by a wall ... just as if we lived behind the old Iron Curtain with our escape blocked by the Berlin Wall [see Jack Wheeler's article on "Learned Helplessness and the Zek's Ant"]. As you will learn in the following Exclusive Interview with Durk & Sandy, a well formulated phenylalanine mental-fitness nutritional supplement can help you break through your wall, tear it down, and overcome many of the limitations that prevent you from achieving your maximum potential. WILL: How did you create your mental fitness formulations?  DURK: Way back in the early 70's, we found that choline can be taken as a supplement and used to produce a neurotransmitter in your brain known as acetylcholine. We had been taking choline for some years, and we continued to do that when we went on our publicity tours for Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach. I don't know how being on tour compares with going into combat because no one was actually shooting bullets at us. However, until our tour, we had never been subjected to the rigors of anything even remotely resembling that. SANDY: There certainly were similarities. Taunting the wall keepers: Durk & Sandy encourage you to overthrow the influence of learned helplessness. DURK: Our media appearances required a tremendous number of rapid decisions. There were a lot of hostile people trying to knock us down challenging what we said. We got very little sleep and spent a great deal of time on the road, all of which you might expect when going to war.  SANDY: Not only all that, we were asked highly technical questions and we had to be able to respond very, very quickly - within a matter of seconds - coming up with an answer that would be understandable to people watching the program, not to mention being comprehensible to the host. And to do that, question after question after question, really puts a strain on you. DURK: Often it might be half a dozen TV shows a day and several radio shows and a few interviews. A short day might be 12 hours and some of them were as long as 18 hours. When you're doing a publicity tour for, say, a gothic romance, if it's midnight and you screw up describing the book and say that the heroine got raped in the cellar instead of in the attic, so what? Nobody's hurt. But when people are asking you medical questions, you screw up, somebody could get seriously hurt. And that's a lot of stress. What we found when we got back after five or six weeks, we were completely and totally exhausted. We were wiped out like we'd never been before.  SANDY: But we didn't think that it necessarily had to be like that, so we researched the literature to find out what nutrients were involved in the brain's production of the neurotransmitters that were needed in order to do this sort of intensely stressful continuous activity.  DURK: And we found out that noradrenaline, the brain's version of adrenaline, is required for alertness and activity and get up and go ... SANDY: Fast reactions... What we have found is that success in life depends far less on your IQ than on your persistence. DURK: Fast reactions, quick decisions, what is called "immediate memory" or "effortless memory," which is not effortless if you do a whole lot of ...  SANDY: Yes. (Laughs) DURK: ... rapid recall. A related neurotransmitter, dopamine, is involved not only in the reward system of pleasure which a lot of people have heard about, but effortful memory, where you have to stop for a moment to retrieve information. We found out which nutrients these neurotransmitters are made from. Neurotransmitters are not drugs; they're natural substances made by neurons in your brain from nutrients in your diet. The neurotransmitters transmit nerve signals across the synapse from one nerve to another. They're a basic substrate for the transmission of information in your brain. SANDY: The amount of activity that you can perform has a lot to do with the supply of the neurotransmitters that are available to your brain. Which, in turn, depends on the supply of raw materials that the brain receives from your diet or from supplements. DURK: One of the fascinating things we found was that of the essential nutrients required to make dopamine and noradrenaline in your brain, 80% of the population doesn't even get the FDA's recommended daily allowance of one or more of the essential nutrients you need make these neurotransmitters. So all of a sudden, it became very clear to us why the number one complaint that doctors get from their patients is being chronically tired or fatigued. Now I hasten to add that one shouldn't assume if you are chronically weary that all you need is one of our supplements containing phenylalanine and co-factors. You may have a medical condition such as adult-onset diabetes or hypothyroidism or Cushing's disease or any one of a huge number of other illnesses which are actually organic in nature and need to be treated by a doctor. So if you feel chronically tired, go to a doctor; have him or her do a lab work-up on you. Suppose he comes back and says, "There's nothing wrong with you, you're just getting on in years, you can't expect to have the energy of a teenager; don't work so hard, don't worry so much, go take a vacation in Tahiti and you'll feel great." In that case, we may have a much more practical solution for you than not working so hard, not thinking so much, not worrying so much and a lot cheaper than going to Tahiti! WILL: So the problem is not the availability of precursors. Phenylalanine is a precursor of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, for example, and is available in the typical diet. Most of it, however, may be squandered through competition with other amino acids for transport across the blood-brain barrier or used for other purposes (such as building proteins or for gluconeogenesis, making glucose from amino acids). But the co-factors are also an issue. DURK: That's right. If you go into a health food store, you'll be able to find phenylalanine capsules easily. Sometimes you take them and something happens; you get more energized. And a lot of times nothing at all happens. Part of that is because other nutrients such as vitamin B6 and vitamin C, folic acid and copper are needed in order to convert phenylalanine into noradrenaline and dopamine. These are essential nutrients that are required as co-factors to enzymes that are involved in the process of conversion. These materials - the copper and the vitamin B6 - are also required to convert phenylalanine into beta phenylethylamine, which is a neuromodulator in your brain that modulates the effects of noradrenaline and dopamine and probably some other neurotransmitters as well. WILL: In designing a product like this, how do you go about actually locating these co-factors and seeing the whole picture? Did you research the specific pathways along which these nutrients operate? DURK: That's exactly what we did. The first thing we looked up was the metabolic pathways by which you make neurotransmitters. Once we found that noradrenaline and dopamine were being depleted because of excessively hard work, the next thing we did was say, "How does your brain make them? What nutrients are required? What enzymes are required? What other nutrients are co-factors for the enzymes that are required?" Well-formulated phenylalanine mental-fitness nutritional supplements can help you break through your wall, tear it down, and overcome some of the limitations that prevent you from achieving your maximum potential. SANDY: Most of this has been known for several decades. DURK: It was pretty well worked out by the mid-1960's. SANDY: So the metabolic pathway charts are widely and readily available. It really gives you a good flow chart of what is going to be required at each step in order to go from the phenylalanine to noradrenaline. WILL: Have there ever been any measurements taken, with regard to how much noradrenaline can be produced? Has anybody ever gone to the trouble of measuring it? DURK: There have been some experiments done. One experiment was done on fatigue in Army personnel who were flying halfway around the world and then being put through simulated combat. They used a related amino acid, tyrosine, as a supplement. They found out that tyrosine could help fight the fatigue and brain fade that occur. SANDY: Another thing that's been studied is the amount of the breakdown products of noradrenaline and other neurotransmitters that you find in the urine after various kinds of activities. And it is known that you end up with more of the breakdown product of noradrenaline after mentally fatiguing type of activities such as working long hard hours. There's no question that more noradrenaline is used up under these conditions. DURK: In fact, there was an experiment that was performed on office workers in Japan who were given difficult mental tasks to perform and what they found out was that, if the difficult mental task went on only for a couple of hours, a supplement didn't make much of a difference. Whereas if it was an all-day task of eight hours, supplements made a real difference - particularly as the day wore on - in terms of the person's alertness and ability to perform. WILL: Do you make noradrenaline only at nighttime when you sleep? DURK: Well you make them both, noradrenaline and dopamine, during the day and during the night. The difference is that at night you're not using them up as fast as during the day. Phenylalanine is a precursor to the neurotransmitter noradrenaline. Your brain isn't running as fast and you're not making as many decisions. You're not having to remember as much information. So you do make noradrenaline at night considerably faster than you use it and you store it up in the synaptic vesicles. And when you wake up in the morning, you'll literally have a big discharge of it. Not only in your brain, but in the rest of your body. In fact, there are a few people whose discharge system for noradrenaline doesn't work correctly, and they may take literally half an hour to get themselves out of bed. If they were to just suddenly stand up, they will literally pass out and fall flat on the floor. SANDY: Because there's not enough noradrenaline to support the necessary level of blood pressure. DURK: To keep the blood up in their brain when they stand up. WILL: What is that syndrome called? DURK: That's a particular type of hypotension that occurs on arising in the morning. It's called orthostatic hypotension. It's relatively rare, but it indicates an extreme case of what can happen when noradrenaline isn't released in your body. We're dealing here primarily with the brain. And anybody who has to work hard - particularly if they are self-employed - will find out that sitting in front of a computer all day can be just as wearying as digging a ditch outdoors all day long. And yet, at the end of the day when you feel totally wiped out, it has nothing to do with having exercised your muscles to exhaustion. It's a matter of how much brainwork you've done. And if a person gets too depleted, they can end up lacking the initiative to do things that are necessary. They may not even recognize opportunities that are there. And I think that's one of the biggest problems in America; many people don't recognize and take advantage of opportunities that become available to them. WILL: This would be important for entrepreneurs or for people who work in the stock market. DURK: Or, for that matter, anybody who would like to have a better job than they have now. Because they're not going to get promoted for just sitting there, doing exactly what they're told and no more, all because of their lack of initiative. SANDY: And then there are people who would like to run their own business who just let the opportunities go by one after another. Eventually they discover that they're just locked into their jobs and they're never ... DURK: Their life has gone by and they're never going to get what they really wanted. Along with nutrients such as vitamin B6 and vitamin C, folic acid and copper are needed in order to convert phenylalanine into noradrenaline and dopamine. SANDY: That's right. DURK: There's an interesting animal model of this called learned helplessness. SANDY: The learned helplessness animal model was developed quite a long time ago and has been used to study what sort of factors affect learned helplessness, which appears to be something that could be affecting a lot of people. In animals, the classical model is to put a rat into a box and then administer mild electric shocks to the feet of the rat. DURK: These aren't severe shocks. They're about what you get walking across a rug on a cold, dry day and touching a doorknob. It'll make you jump a little, but no physiological harm is done. SANDY: There's no physical damage done, but the animals are scared out of their wits. DURK: They feel like they're getting bitten by the floor. SANDY: That's right. And so naturally, the rats are trying to get out of the boxes. The rat can try just as long as it wants to, but of course it's not going to be able to get out of the box. Eventually what you find is that after jumping around in a panic for a period of time, the rat gets quiet and just sits there and doesn't do anything anymore; it doesn't try to get out. At that point, if you open the box, the rat won't even jump out; it just continues to sit there, even though the shocks are still being administered to its feet. DURK: And even though it's physically capable of jumping out, it no longer recognizes the opportunity as something it can take advantage of. SANDY: That's exactly what it looks like. And in examining the brains of these animals which had developed what was called learned helplessness, scientists found that their brains were depleted of noradrenaline. This is the factor that enabled the rats to continue to try to get out and, when depleted, it eliminated their ability to continue to try to get out. They had developed learned helplessness. Sitting in front of the computer all day can be just as wearing as digging a ditch all day long. And yet, at the end of the day, when you feel totally wiped out, it has nothing to do with having exercised your muscles to exhaustion. It's a matter of how hard your brain worked. DURK: And then it was found that if you supplemented the rats' diet with precursors to noradrenaline, such as phenylalanine or tyrosine, they would quickly unlearn the helplessness and start jumping out. Even more interesting, if you gave them the supplemented diet to begin with, they would be much more resistant to ever becoming helpless, no matter how long the shocks went on. I think that is a very important lesson for people today because what we have found is that success in life depends far less on your IQ than on your persistence. SANDY: Absolutely. Because everybody, no matter what good factors they start out with, particularly great intelligence, a wonderful family, lots of connections ... DURK: Loads of education. SANDY: ... everybody's going to run into difficulties along the way. The difference between somebody that's successful and somebody who is unsuccessful is largely the ability to continue toward a goal, even though they're encountering difficulties along the way. DURK: In fact, if you talk to almost any millionaire who is over 50 years old, you'll find not only have they made a million, they've made it and lost it and so forth. They've gone up and down a few times. And the reason they're up is they kept on trying and didn't give up. Our phenylalanine supplements are basically work ethic formulations. We designed them so we could work longer and harder. But it really turned out to go beyond that. It enables you to enjoy what you've accomplished. There's an awful lot of people, ourselves included, who work real hard all day long and by the end of the day are too tired to look back at what was accomplished and say, "That was a really good day. I got a lot done." SANDY: That's an important part of the payoff is to be able to realize that you've gotten something done that you wanted to get done and feel good about it. And if you don't get that, it really makes it a lot less worthwhile to go to all the trouble of getting to that point. DURK: And, although we didn't expect this to happen and it never occurred to us that it would, what we found out was that the same formula that was able to keep us bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and fighting brain fade all day long also enabled us to sit back and enjoy and appreciate what we'd done. SANDY: And feel good about what we got done. So what we're dealing with here is a real brain food. DURK: Remember, neurotransmitters aren't just for mechanical things like remembering information. Everything that happens in your brain - every thought, every memory, every will to move a muscle - everything that goes on happens because of the release of neurotransmitters. So what we're dealing with here is a real brain food. It's a designer food that is specifically designed to provide nutrients that your brain can use to make more of these neurotransmitters. The results are pretty remarkable. A lot of people ask us why we don't use tyrosine instead of phenylalanine. There's a very simple reason for that. Tyrosine is not a precursor to beta-phenylethylamine, a neuromodulator that is very important. Incidentally, it's been said that one of the physiologically and psychobiochemically active substances in chocolate is beta-phenylethylamine. And it's true. SANDY: Our phenylalanine supplements contain a set of nutrients that your brain can use to make noradrenaline and dopamine and beta-phenylethylamine. Some of them don't contain caffeine, so they're all right for people who don't like caffeine or for people who want to take phenylalanine in the evening and still get to sleep. You may be able to drink a cup of coffee at 8:00 PM and get to sleep at 10:30 PM, but ... DURK: But that's not likely to happen with some phenylalanine formulations which do contain some caffeine. On the other hand, with those that don't contain caffeine, you generally can do that. You can get a smooth, gentle lift without the excessive stimulation you can get with caffeine late at night. If you don't like caffeine, but simply want a set of nutrients that your brain needs to make more noradrenaline, dopamine and beta phenylethylamine, then that's for you. Some drink mixes do have about 80 milligrams of caffeine added per serving. That's about as much as in a typical cup of coffee. Coffee runs about 60 milligrams for a typical cup of instant coffee, about 110-120 milligrams for a cup of fresh brewed coffee. So this is about in the middle, about 80 milligrams. As anybody who uses caffeine knows, that first cup of coffee really gets you up in the morning and gives you a lot of energy and stimulation, improves your ability to work quickly and accurately. SANDY: There have been tests done that show moderate doses of caffeine, in fact, improve performance on certain types of activities, like typing; typing fast and accurately improves with the use of caffeine. DURK: But everybody who uses caffeine - which is the world's most popular work ethic drug - knows that the second cup of coffee doesn't do as much as the first, the third does less than the second, and by the end of the day, you can be drinking coffee like crazy, and it will just make you jittery, irritable and nervous and it will not give you any improved performance. You may fall asleep at 10:00 at night with a cup of coffee in your hand. One of the mechanisms by which caffeine provides stimulation is that it makes you more sensitive to the effects of noradrenaline, also sensitizing you to the release of noradrenaline as well. So during the day as you make all these fast, hard decisions, you deplete your supplies of noradrenaline, the caffeine has less and less to work with. So it's not too surprising that the caffeine by itself doesn't work as well toward the end of the day. With a drink containing caffeine, phenylalanine, and other nutrients, however, you'll find that it keeps on working and working and working. What we do is take one of our supplements in the morning as soon as we get up. Generally Sandy and I use another of our phenylalanine plus cofactor formulations, unless we have a tremendous amount of early work to do, or we're going to be doing something else that is high energy and highly mentally stimulating. If it's working-on-income-taxes day, I'll start right out with a stronger drink mix formulation. Otherwise I just won't have enough energy to do that horribly aversive, helplessness-inducing task. (Laughter) SANDY: I'll say. Some designer foods are specifically designed to provide nutrients that your brain can use to make more neurotransmitters. DURK: I take another serving of either drink, depending upon how hard I'm going to be working, about an hour or so before lunch. Another serving in the mid-afternoon and, if I've got an awful lot of work to do, I may take another serving in the late afternoon. You want to take any of these formulations containing phenylalanine when you aren't eating protein because when your stomach disassembles proteins, some of the disassembly products - certain other amino acids - can interfere with transport of the phenylalanine across your stomach into your blood stream and particularly across your blood-brain barrier and into your brain. WILL: How rapid does that disassembly occur? DURK: It will start occurring within 10-15 minutes. As soon as it gets to your stomach, the proteins start to be taken apart by protease enzymes. In fact, there are protease enzymes in your saliva that get the process going as soon as you start chewing. SANDY: We're very efficient in breaking food down into the usable nutrients. DURK: As we get up in the morning, we take a phenylalanine beverage and then again about an hour or so before lunch and about mid-afternoon and - if there's a lot of work - late afternoon. Other carbohydrates won't interfere with this. Fats won't interfere either. Only protein. If you use phenylalanine capsules, which is the same as a drink mix, but in capsules and without fructose, it's important to raise your blood sugar levels if it's been quite a while since you've eaten. You'll get better results if you take some carbohydrates along with it. Any type of carbohydrates will do. You can chew up a few potato chips or pretzels if you want. SANDY: Or you could drink it down with some orange juice, something like that. DURK: Yes, that'll work out just fine. Fruit juices don't have anywhere near enough protein to interfere with the effects of these formulas. WILL: If you like caffeine, is there a use for a formulation that doesn't have it? The difference between somebody that's successful and somebody that isn't is largely the ability to continue on toward a goal, even though you're encountering difficulties  along the way. DURK: Weekends, or whenever you want to lay back and take it easy. The last thing you want to do if you're sitting on a beach in Bali is ... SANDY: ... is get yourself all activated and into a working state of mind. DURK: If you're sitting there on the beach, you don't want to overstimulate your brain, because if you do you're soon going to be back in your room with your laptop computer and starting to do some work. That isn't what you're supposed to be doing on your vacation. SANDY: If your goal is to let your mind float downstream and watch the clouds form and move around and so on, then something without caffeine is for you. DURK: If you're really rushed, you may have to compress your vacation into a short period of time. As a result, when you get back, you're more tired than when you went on the vacation. What we found out is that if you drink plenty of a phenylalanine formulation without caffeine while you're on your fast-paced vacation, you don't wear yourself out the way you would otherwise. Fun things can deplete you just like working can. SANDY: Going on vacation is supposed to allow your brain to replete itself of the things that you've used up, or used a large part of, while you're doing your everyday work. It is literally re-creation. The idea is not to continue the same process that got you on the vacation in the first place. DURK: While on a vacation, it's desirable to experience a whole bunch of new stimuli. And noradrenaline plays a very important role in identifying and responding to new stimuli. Often when you go to a new vacation spot you've never gone to before, new stimuli can drain you of noradrenaline and run you down. We've found that by taking a phenylalanine drink mix along on our vacations, that doesn't happen anymore. We come back all refreshed - the way you're supposed to be after going on a vacation. Another member of our phenylalanine family, a milder mixture, is actually our favorite. I use a stronger drink when I have to get going in a real hurry or when I have a hellaciously heavy job to do - like IRS tax form filling out. SANDY: Particularly something that you would prefer not to do, but you need to get yourself into the right state of mind to do it anyway. What we found out is that if you drink plenty of a noncaffeinated formula while you're on your vacation, you don't wear yourself out the way you would otherwise. Fun things can deplete you just like working can. DURK: Something that makes you feel helpless. Because with literally millions of pages of these regulations, you try as hard as you can to do it right but you can never be sure you haven't screwed up somewhere. That really tends to make you feel helpless. SANDY: It makes you insecure ... DURK: But in normal work, I use the milder drink. It includes an additional green tea polyphenol extract. Each serving of has the same phenylalanine and other co-factors that are needed to make noradrenaline, dopamine and beta phenylethylamine. But it also has an extract from green tea and each serving contains 280 milligrams of green tea polyphenols, about the equivalent of two cups of green tea. It also has about 38 milligrams of caffeine along with the green tea extract. So what that means is you'll be getting about the same amount of caffeine that you would in a bottle of Pepsi-Cola or Coca-Cola. The green tea polyphenols are very powerful phytoantioxidants (plant derived antioxidant, free radical scavenging nutrients). The reason that a lot of people in America aren't drinking green tea is because the stuff tastes absolutely awful to someone who hasn't been brought up on green tea. It's really very bitter. Our drink does not taste bitter at all. It tastes absolutely delightful. You have no idea there is the yucky green tea hidden inside of it. Of course, if you grew up in Japan drinking green tea ever since you were a little kid, I'm sure green tea tastes great. SANDY: It's an acquired taste. DURK: Green tea polyphenols have been the subject of hundreds of scientific papers. Some are very powerful anti-carcinogens, particularly for epithelial tissues - that's your skin and the lining of your stomach and lungs; that's incidentally where most human cancers occur, in the epithelial tissue. They also are very powerful free radical scavenging antioxidants and they have some antiviral capabilities as well. When we started formulating it for our own use we discovered, to our surprise, that it really makes you feel good. Lipton tea company used to have an advertising slogan, "Take tea and see." They didn't say, "Drink tea." They described is as if it were a drug - "Take tea and see." Well, I'll tell you; if you take a bunch of green tea, you will see. You'll not only feel a little euphoric ... SANDY: It makes you feel activated and stimulated and alert, yet mellow at the same time. DURK: Now, I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms, but when you try it you'll find out exactly what the experience is. And it's a really wonderful experience. I use a stronger drink when I have to get going in a real hurry or when I have a hellaciously heavy learned-helplessness inducing job to do - like filling out IRS tax forms. WILL: What is the possible explanation for what's going on here? DURK: One of the things that I think happens results from the fact that your brain has the highest concentration of fat in your body, the highest concentration of polyunsaturated fats in your body, and one of the highest specific metabolic rates per gram than anywhere else in your body. You put that together, and it's a free radical destructionfest. Combine that with the fact that your nerve cells don't divide and have very little repair capability, once you're an adult. Put all that together and it's not surprising that the brain is very subject to free radical damage. In fact, free radical damage is involved in both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, stroke, and a whole host of other unfortunate problems that can happen to your brain. Now, green tea polyphenols cross the blood-brain barrier because they're soluble in both fat and water, unlike most anti-oxidants. Vitamin C, for example, is soluble only in water and not in fats. Vitamin E is soluble in fats, but not in water. The green tea polyphenols are soluble in both. They go through your blood-brain barrier and get into your brain. And I think part of the effect is simply that your brain is saying, "Oh, wow! I feel good. What a free radical load off my brain! That really feels terrific getting rid of that!" It makes you feel younger and possibly that's because when you're younger you're more capable of protecting yourself from free radical damage and less damage has occurred. WILL: What about the effect that it might have on vision? DURK: I was just going to say, "Take tea and see" not only applies to feeling good, it applies to seeing as well. Sandy and I own four hot springs out here in central Nevada. And believe me, three of them are a long, long, long, long way from the nearest power line or light. I say long, I mean 20 miles or more. And the area where these are located at night is very, very dark unless there is a moon or starlight. And what I've found out is that using a mild phenylalanine formulation during the day, drinking three or four servings of it, at night, even when there was heavy overcast and you couldn't see any stars at all and there was no moon above the overcast, I could still see. I used to need a flashlight out there walking around so I wouldn't trip over rocks and sagebrush. I don't need that anymore. I can see the rocks. I can see the sagebrush. It's really quite remarkable what a few weeks' use of that stuff did for my night vision. And I find that the combination of that, the phenylalanine supplement and a fish oil supplement, really does a job. It's amazing. I can see colors just by a little slice of moonlight.