Saturday, July 23, 2011

Neuro Bliss and Neuro Codeine


Lindsay Lohan drinking Neuro Bliss.

NEUROBRANDS®, LLC is a company that markets a series of colorful and attractively designed "nutritional drinks", known as Neuro® Drinks.

Neuro Gasm Is Part Of The New Neuro Culture

For a company that has great product placement (with many celebrity endorsements), carefully crafted packaging, and regularly issued press releases, they sure are modest about their marketing efforts:
"Neuro Drinks® offer consumers an alternative to products that perpetuate our self-medicating caffeine-dependent society. Designed to sustain and enhance your active lifestyle with natural ingredients, each beverage is packed with essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids and botanicals at dosages backed by scientific research. Just real results — no marketing hype."
I recently purchased NeuroBliss® from a local store. As with other Neuro products, it's difficult to tell from the packaging what sort of flavor one should expect. From the white milky color it looks like it might be coconut, but smelling the brew yields a citrus-like odor (from citric acid). The taste is vaguely like grapefruit, or rather like grapefruit-flavored fizzy codeine.



The NeuroBliss® bottle claims there are no artificial colors or flavors, but I'm not sure which flavor is actually natural (other than chamomile and the generically listed "natural flavors"). There are a lot of vitamins along with chemical stabilizers and preservatives (gum acacia, ester gum, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate), plus the unproven active ingredients that purportedly make you blissful.


Nutritional information for Neuro Bliss.

These unproven active ingredients include:
"L-Theanine, an amino acid found in green tea which has been clinically proven to help reduce stress, works by altering brain waves, shifting them from the beta spectrum to the alpha spectrum — where a person is focused and alert, but calm.
In contrast to this claim, a study by Gomez-Ramirez et al. (2009) found that a 250-mg dose of L-theanine significantly reduced background alpha power during a demanding attentional cueing task. There were no alterations in the cue-related, anticipatory changes in alpha activity. In other words, this compound may be considered activating but not calming. L-theanine is an analog to glutamate, an abundant excitatory neurotransmitter that crosses the blood-brain barrier.



Testimonial from consumer Sandra Kiume: "It did make me more alert and aware of the foul taste of the beverage."


Reference

Gomez-Ramirez, M., Kelly, S., Montesi, J., & Foxe, J. (2008). The Effects of l-theanine on Alpha-Band Oscillatory Brain Activity During a Visuo-Spatial Attention Task. Brain Topography, 22 (1), 44-51 DOI: 10.1007/s10548-008-0068-z


Origin Of The Term Fight Or Flight With Neuro Bliss



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18 Comments:

At July 23, 2011 5:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mate, I expect better of you. Cute analysis of the product, I'll give you. Still, while I didn't expect you to do a survey of all the primary lit on L-theanine, somehow I figured that you would have made it to the second paragraph in Wikipedia. L-theanine's sedative activity (moderated by GABA) is relatively well-supported; its efficacy in doses as low as those in the Neuro Bliss product line, however, are not.

 
At July 23, 2011 5:30 PM, Blogger The Neurocritic said...

Anonymous Mate - My source for L-theanine EEG studies was PubMed, not Wikipedia.

The best available evidence reported reductions in alpha, NOT increases. I trust the work from JJ Foxe's lab over a paper funded by Unilever, who received a WARNING LETTER from the FDA for making false claims about its products.

 
At July 25, 2011 8:06 AM, Anonymous Tracey S. said...

From what I understand, the main problem with these drinks is mostly that, while some of the ingredients may in some doses do what they claim, no one has any idea what any of them will do when you mix them all together with fizzy water and Lindsay Lohan.

 
At July 26, 2011 9:05 AM, Blogger Neural Outlaw said...

Ha! I'd seen these drinks in my local store and had been meaning to write something about it. Great job!

 
At August 12, 2011 5:00 PM, Blogger Carol said...

I've tried them and felt no real effect... Except for having a hearty laugh with my husband on bliss or increased mental power.

 
At December 31, 2011 7:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

im doing a science project on it and this helped alittle

 
At February 17, 2012 6:23 AM, Blogger Lady Wolf Bird said...

No matter the argument for or against this product, it literally just made my throat swell up to the point where I would have gone to the ER if I wasn't familiar with how to treat an allergic reaction. I found your blog post because I am researching the ingredients. The only thing I have ever had this type of reaction to is capsaicin, so I am trying to find out if anything in this is a capsaicin derivative. I am having a hard time finding good information and the lists I am finding are not the same as the bottle I drank from, even though it was the same product. I am currently waiting on my friend to send me a picture of the exact label that I drank from. If anyone has gotten new information about this post, my email is munnin.graymoon@gmail.com if you can give me any info I would GREATLY appreciate it. Thank you for writing this article, I can't really find anything new.

 
At May 18, 2012 12:51 PM, Blogger Jadec said...

Happy water.

 
At January 26, 2013 8:24 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Actually, as far as the flavor goes, it's mango-y, with hints of chamomile and green tea. It did not taste even moderately artificial to me.

 
At February 08, 2013 5:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I tried this for the first time tonight. It tasted like grapefruit to me. Maybe like "Squirt", but lighter. It may not do as it claims, but it wasn't artificial tasting.

 
At March 03, 2013 12:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why doesn't anybody comment on the sucralose in it? Everything else sounds fine, but sucralose has caused some severe reactions from what I have read. I won't touch the stuff. Lady Wolf Bird who commented in Feb was most likely reacting to the sucralose, the ARTIFICIAL sweetener. There is nothing "natural" about sucralose. Take a look at Dr.Mercola's website for more info.

 
At June 04, 2013 6:13 AM, Blogger Piyo said...

You're oversimplifying and misrepresenting the literature because you evidently have a bias against this product.

Why don't you go and read all of the recent literature on theanine? Or, how about just all the lit by the same researchers you cited, like Gomez-Ramirez 2007?

 
At October 01, 2013 11:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Functional ingredients deteriorate in water especially vitamins. This supportive culture is nothing
but a mafia. Founder and friends (fof-"friends of founder) supporting each other. There is so much waste just in the plastic cap alone it should embarass the creator. Hype, hype, hype, create energy around a brand especially with the "wooder " influencers and you can get distribution.
This one is goofy. Neur No!

 
At March 15, 2014 10:58 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

This product is awesome and does what it promises. When it first came out the white bottle flavor reviewed here didn't taste good, but now they have better flavors and it does work for calming stress. I even asked my doctor , and she agreed based on the ingredients. Try the white Raspberry flavor it tastes great.

 
At April 09, 2016 12:22 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

I want the white bliss to come back!

 
At July 31, 2016 9:49 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Neuro BLISS does work. Neuro SLEEP--I feel like you could just take melatonin. Neuro SONIC; I don't notice a huge difference from this; yet I have a high caffeine tolerance and have been taking prescription stimulants all my life, so maybe it's just another drop in the ocean of stimulants I run off of. Because of the stimulant use, I have unfortunately severe crashes. This is where I may turn to a Neuro BLISS. It absolutely uplifts a brain that is depleted of happy-chemicals, in my experience. This may be the L-Theanine alone, or a combination of its ingredients (I'm not sure; another brand I notice effects from is the "Just Chill" line of L-Theanine-featuring drinks, but it's effects aren't as pronounced). I can't say enough about BLISS. So worth it.

 
At December 23, 2016 4:37 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

I dont know what it is about this drink but seriously every time I drink it my throat itches and my eyes swell up and itch as well, has anyone had this same reaction?

 
At March 31, 2018 9:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love the Neurosleep! It makes me very relaxed and I get great sleep. I don't drink it all the time, so I think it works well for me.

 

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