The Nootropic Cofactor that comes from Beer AND Boobies

This fish oil and B Vitamin cofactor is a promising agent to improve memory via RNA mechanisms.

In human studies, Uridine has a positive effect on depression and bipolar disorder, among other things.

This article is mostly going to focus on decoding what the human studies are saying about Uridine and how this squares up with the anecdotal experiences of Biohackers online.

Vs Bipolar Disorder

Those yo-yo-ing between rage and blind optimism may find Uridine transformational. An American 2011 human study done on Uridine, conducted over 6 weeks on a small group of adolescents, suggested it's a mitochondrial hack for a healthy psyche:

The collective evidence for mitochondrial dysfunction in bipolar disorder suggests a potential role for uridine in the treatment armamentarium. This evidence includes the co-morbidity of mood disorders with mitochondrial disorders... Rational development of new treatments for bipolar disorder would include compounds designed to normalize the bioenergetic abnormalities associated with mitochondrial dysfunction...

It concluded:

In this pilot case series, uridine was efficacious and well tolerated by study participants. Rapid onset of action may be a distinguishing feature of uridine.

Vs Depression

While the Children's Depression Rating Scale scores lowered (which is an improvement) over 6 weeks in the human trial, the study's conclusion is quite bearish:

Uridine should not enter clinical practice as a primary treatment for depressed adolescents with bipolar disorder until randomized placebo-controlled trials have been performed to confirm its efficacy.

It has a synergistic antidepressant effect in combination with omega-3s. From a 2005 animal study:

Uridine and [omega-3 fatty acids] each have antidepressant-like effects in rats. Less of each agent is required for effectiveness when the treatments are administered together.

Dr. Douglas Kondo and Dr. Perry Renshaw of Salt Lake City, as reported on in 2010, used Uridine and Creatine to treat patients. To quote Dr. Renshaw:

"We're reducing depressive symptoms by at least 50 percent within a couple of weeks... The two things that are remarkable, is one: it's a very large effect; and two: it's happening very quickly."

A Synaptic Hack

Uridine is hypothesized, in a 2010 American paper (Nutritional modifiers of aging brain function: use of uridine and other phosphatide precursors to increase formation of brain synapses) to aid synaptic function by providing phosphatidylcholine; it's a promising building block of membranes and dendrites which aid synaptic function. The researchers concluded in the Abstract of the paper:

If similar increases occur in human brain, administration of these compounds to patients with diseases that cause loss of brain synapses, such as Alzheimer's disease, could be beneficial.

Vs Alzheimer's

Uridine's benefit to those suffering from or trying to prevent Alzheimer's disease is at this point mostly hypothetical. In the limited rat studies in regards to Alzheimer's, Uridine was just one of the multiple dietary factors that had an overall helpful effect.

Cognitive Enhancer

In a 2011 Israeli study 26 elderly human participants experienced after 12 weeks of supplementation...

A significant improvement in memory abilities (recall, recognition, and spatial short term) was observed following 2 weeks of Cognitex treatment... Attention (sustained and focused), visual learning, and activities of daily living (executive functions and mental flexibility) were improved as well following this short supplementation period...

It concluded:

The results indicate that the nutritional supplement may improve cognitive performance in elderly with memory complaints...

Memory Enhancer

Another animal study (Dietary uridine enhances the improvement in learning and memory produced by administering DHA to gerbils) indicated Uridine's potential as a memory-enhancing agent in combination with DHA, from its abstract:

These findings demonstrate that a treatment that increases synaptic membrane content can enhance cognitive functions in normal animals.

This is exciting because most memory-enhancing smart drugs are just demonstrated as aiding the failing memories of the elderly whereas this study is saying that Uridine improved the memories of healthy adults from baseline.

One self-experimenter reported:

"I've personally noticed a gradual improvement in memory retention and flexibility of thinking, also mood stabilization and a certain degree of improvement in thinking skills. It's very subtle, however the gains are really remarkable when I look back over the time period from when I started to now. In a way of putting it, for the sake of verbosity, the long term memories formed over the period of this stack is more mentally accessible, especially with very detailed subjects."

Sources

Beer seems to be the best food source of Uridine with approximately 100 milligrams per liter, a Japanese study found that the alcohol content did not affect the absorption of Uridine. Breast milk and infant formula are also rich in Uridine.

However, you would have to drink a lot of beer (or breast milk!) to get the 500 - 1000 milligrams daily that's been demonstrated to have Nootropic effects. In supplemental form, it's a little more expensive with a one-month supply running around $30 capsuled (powdered it's cheaper).

Downloadable Uridine?

You may be interested in taking it as an infoceutical - a non-pharmacological, side-effect-free version of the supplement that takes advantage of the phenomenon of water memory - which is imprinted on water via quantum collocation and electromagnetism using this device...

Infocueticals typically have 1/3 or half the effect of the actual medicine being imprinted. If you're skeptical of Infopathy that's understandable, it's a game-changing application of a little-known scientific phenomenon. But I'd urge you to evaluate the scientific evidence (presented in my biohacker review) that downloadable medicine is no longer science fiction...

Citicoline

An MIT study demonstrated that Citicoline is a Uridine source:

Plasma uridine was elevated significantly for 5-6 hr after all three [citicoline] doses, increas