But somewhere along the line, we started losing control. The technologies that we used to master our environments started influencing us for the worse, creating attention deficiencies, negative feedback spirals giving rise to bad habits, and affecting our quality and duration of sleep for the worse. The rise of foods for convenience - ultra processed, fast and cheap - as well as the decreasing nutrient quality in foods over previous decades due to intensive agriculture and soil depletion makes us more susceptible to nutrient deficiencies now than at any time in the last 50 years. As powerful as the human mind can be, it needs both nurture and care to truly reach its potential - and right now, most of us are lacking in both of these departments.
The effects of bad health, bad habits, and the technology that surrounds us are synergistic - they compound each other to produce increasingly worse outcomes. A diet rich in processed foods is one poor in vital nutrients like choline, as well as amino acids like tyrosine - a necessary element in the biosynthesis of dopamine in the human brain. Dopamine deficiencies, in turn, hinder us from enjoying the benefits of sustained focus on long-term enjoyable activities like reading a book or watching a movie. Instead, we doomscroll through social media reels and shorts, desperately trying to feel better, but ultimately failing. When we stop scrolling, our minds are still active, which harms restful sleep and natural metabolic processes. In the morning, when the alarm clock goes off, we wake up and repeat this vicious cycle, still asking ourselves: when will it get better? When can I go back to being the old me?
The hard truth for too many of us is that the answer is often “never”. Our minds, constantly overextended and forced to operate in a state of exhaustion every day, are also affected by the aging of our bodies and brains. This process - ageing - can speed up when we continue to live with suboptimal lifestyles and diets over the long term. A landmark paper published by medical scientists in the Journal of Ageing Research Reviews back in 2024 confirmed that Alzheimer’s Disease (the leading cause of dementia worldwide) is in fact “type 3 diabetes” - an advanced form of metabolic dysfunction caused by progressive insulin resistance that leads to the brain being starved to death due to the gradually increasing inaccessibility of glucose. With insulin resistance projected to increase dramatically in coming decades, the prospects are grim - and that’s just the state of our diets. Getting crappy sleep and being overworked obviously factor into our gloomy prospects too. The overall picture is unpleasant enough that those aware of our global situation are desperately looking for solutions.
Words of ‘wisdom’ from imprisoned crypto-baron Sam Bankman-Fried
‘Solutions’ and their shortcomings
Most of the solutions currently available or popular today don’t make a lot of sense. Some people opt to sleep less, or even to skip sleep entirely once in a while when things get too demanding. Overall, and especially in the long-term, this is an awfully dumb strategy. Consider the fact that the work we do when our minds are sleep-deprived is universally recognized to be worse than what we produce when well-rested and motivated. Or, consider the fact that sleep deprivation has been concretely proven by countless studies in neuroscience and medicine to cause neurological damage that accumulates over time. Sleep is a fundamental pillar of good health; to compromise sleep so that you can meet the demands of the modern world is to make a deal with the devil that we don’t recommend.
Another so-called solution lies in the use of psychoactive drugs to push ourselves above natural limits. Most of us believe this to be a modern phenomenon, relegated to students taking ‘study drugs’ (illicit stimulants) or a few rogue finance bros like disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried (the amphetamine enthusiast and former billionaire currently serving a 25-year sentence in federal prison). In reality, this idea - that we can keep up with the increasingly complex and competitive world with the help of hard drugs - is quite an old story. We tell and retell it, but the ending never changes.
Perhaps the best example is the case of Jordan Belfort, whose autobiography ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ was adapted into a 2013 Hollywood hit of the same name. On first watch, it feels like a classic film: a story of hubris, arrogance, and excess that ultimately culminates in the anti-hero’s satisfying downfall. If you watch it as a scientist, however, it hits different. The descent of Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) into a full-blown polyaddict, dependent on quaaludes, cocaine, morphine, ambien, valium, xanax, and alcohol (among others) each and every day just to allow him to function, is entertaining for sure - but also tragically predictable.
The cold, brutal reality as depicted in The Wolf of Wall Street book the film was based on
The current scientific consensus in neuroscience and pharmacology tells us that no drug can possibly push you up to 150% or 200% of your natural performance (by definition impossible). The substances habitually used by Belfort as a stockbroker did not make him inherently smarter, better, or more productive at anything. In actuality, stimulant-type drugs work by temporarily reconfiguring the brain’s dopaminergic system: either agonizing dopamine receptor activity, or forcing the reuptake inhibition of dopamine neurotransmitters at the synaptic level, or both. The result is not a smarter mind, but instead a stranger’s mind: one with priorities, interests, and goals that are not your own. It’s important to understand that drug use isn’t actually making us ‘cooler’ ‘better’ or ‘smarter’. Rather, it’s screwing with our neurobiology to make us look at ourselves and our performance through an inauthentic and warped lens.
Finding the real self is finding the best self
We’ll admit - the prospects seem pretty dim. We’re trying to do our best, against a world in which we’re being screwed over and kept down by our modern diets, our poor sleep, our addictive tech habits, and more. Moreover we can see that even illegal psychoactive substances can’t take you from who you are now, to who you want to be. We all know this to be true, and yet the only thing we live for, paradoxically, is more bad news (peak irony). But can this cycle be broken?
In their 2008 behavioral science bestseller Nudge, authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein draw on psychological and neurobiology literature to argue that lasting change doesn’t come from overwhelming willpower-based overhauls - especially those that are drug-fueled and come with heavy costs for our bodies, brains, and sanity. Instead, they show that real change comes from subtle shifts in our operational environments that help us differentiate what matters more from what matters less, and to make the decisions that will get us from who we are now, to who we were born to be. Their principle - choice architecture - is grounded in the understanding that humans are not perfectly rational; we’re busy, tired, distracted, malnutritioned, and often operating on autopilot. That’s why the most effective health interventions aren’t the loudest or most extreme; they’re the ones that fit seamlessly into your routine, boosting your performance from the 50% you have now, towards the 100% you deserve.
At lumiblu, we’ve come up with a new solution - one that doesn’t adversely alter your mind, screw up your cognition, or modify your sense of self, but rather gives you everything you need to perform as your best self - brain, body, and mind. Our flagship product, lumiblu. FOCUS, was designed by our team of scientists as an objectively superior alternative to the sub-par solutions out there.
Focus gives you critical biologically supportive nutrients like CDP-Choline and Choline - in ratios calibrated specifically to give your prefrontal cortex the cholinergic support that it needs over the course of a demanding day. For dopaminergic support, we’ve included L-tyrosine (a precursor to dopamine vital in natural biosynthesis) in our supplement, so that your level of motivation and attention is strong where it needs to be strong - helping you to pay attention and focus where you need to, not where we want you to.
When you start the day by giving your body and brain what they actually need - nutrients that support clarity, calm, and resilience - you’re not just checking a box. You’re setting off a positive cascade: better focus leads to better work, which reduces stress, which improves sleep, which improves mood and energy, which helps you make even better decisions the next day. The result is a compounding, upward spiral of behavior and biology, sparked by a simple habit you can stick to. That’s the power of a good nudge - and the power of our expertly-designed supplements.
Our mission at lumiblu is to give you what you need to be the optimal you - no matter what may come, or what challenges you face. Stick around, and let’s work together toward the only mission that matters - living life with the clarity and harmony that only a fully optimized mind can bring.
