Gamers: Play Better with These Ingredients
November 2019
By Michael Lelah, PhD
Gaming is no longer just for pleasure. Gaming is a serious activity, with serious participants and serious money involved. Gamers, you need to be in tip-top shape physically, and more importantly, mentally!
Gaming places tremendous demand on many aspects of your cognition and vision at the same time. On an otherwise level playing field, your brain function can ultimately determine gaming success. During high intensity gameplay, fast reaction gives you an edge. Gaming requires significant and taxing cognitive abilities, such as heavy cognitive workload, visuospatial skills to help perceive, recognize, and manipulate visual stimuli, enhanced attention span and focus, working memory, mental energy, stress resistance, tactile control, hand-eye coordination, resistance to distraction, peripheral vision, analytical skills, spatial skills, problem solving skills, flexibility, adaptability, strategic thinking, and creativity!
We wanted to find out more about these aspects of conditioning, so we did a survey and asked over 100 gamers what they felt was most important. The top four desired skills were – quick mental abilities, good memory, good sleep and good vision. Obviously, good nutrition and body fitness will help gamers achieve these desired skills. A good diet and good eating habits – balanced meals, reduced consumption of processed foods and keeping fit will also help you excel in these skills.
But there are ways to go even further, without drugs or illegal substances. Dietary supplements can take nutrition and fitness to the next level. Dietary supplements are exactly as they sound – special foods that supplement the diet-but they also have functional effects on performance. NutriScience Innovations has many cutting-edge ingredients which go into supplement products and can help push you to new limits of performance by affecting your body’s function in a positive way.
Let’s talk about four of these ingredients – which can help you excel in the four skill sets your peers thought were most important to gaming.
1.) Suntheanine® – One of the most studied brain support ingredients on the market today, Suntheanine® is an amino acid which supports cognitive health by affecting your brain waves. Suntheanine® makes you more focused and increases your memory capabilities. It also helps relax you, reducing stress and making you ready to take on the gaming challenge. Suntheanine® has been thoroughly studied, with over 200 papers about its science, safety and clinical effects. Suntheanine acts quickly – within 30-45 minutes – and you can feel the effects – so it’s the perfect starting ingredient for a gamer. And it works especially well with InnovaTea®.
2.) InnovaTea® is natural caffeine from tea leaves. Caffeine increases your energy and your metabolism, giving you a competitive edge. And when taken in conjunction with Suntheanine® it helps reduce the negative side effects from caffeine (the jitters, etc.) while allowing you maintain an alert and focused state. Unlike most of the caffeine on the market, which is synthetic, InnovaTea® is different. InnovaTea® is natural, it is extracted from tea leaves. It’s the real thing. Better for you and your body.
3.) Shoden® Ashwagandha is an Indian Ayurvedic herb that calms you, reduces anxiety, increases your focus and brain action; it helps you get a good quality sleep – preparing you for your next gaming challenge. And not all ashwagandha extracts are the same, Shoden® has significantly more withanolide glycosides – the active components in ashwagandha – more than any other ashwagandha on the market. Shoden® is backed by three clinical studies -with more science on the way.
4.) OptiLut® – is a highly bioavailable lutein ester – the perfect nutrient for the eyes. Your peers said that eye vision is critical for good gaming. OptiLut® is clinically proven to support eye health, strength and focus and may help reduce eye fatigue. Lutein is also known to help maintain Macular Pigment Optical Density (MPOD) which has been positively correlated with cognitive function and processing speed. So feed your eyes! The OptiLut® brand is top-notch – for tip-top performance.
Now, you’ve probably been convinced that these 4 ingredients are going to support your ability to perform at max capacity in your gaming activities. Ready to give these ingredients a try? Look for one of the many consumer brands who use our ingredients in their products. While we do not sell products directly to consumers like yourself, we have proudly partnered with many well-known brands that produce dietary supplement products that you can buy online and in the store. You will know that you have purchased the genuine ingredient by checking the product labeling, all the brands that use our ingredients clearly mark the ingredient brand name (Suntheanine®, InnovaTea®, Shoden® & OptiLut®) directly on their product packaging. Websites such as Amazon, iHerb, and VitaCost host companies that sell supplements that contain our ingredients. Or you can buy from the various brands directly. IRL, your local health food or supplement store will carry products with these ingredients.
Soon, your enhanced brain and vision will take you to gaming levels you didn’t know existed.
Michael Lelah, PhD is a scientist and the Chief Science Officer at NutriScience Innovations, LLC.
Michael has been involved in dietary supplements and nutrition for over 20 years, formulating hundreds of dietary supplements. He is also active in the development of quality standards and testing of dietary supplements.
