Sulbutiamine is a nootropic that boosts energy levels and reduces fatigue. It’s an ideal choice on days when you’re feeling tired, slow, or hungover. Furthermore, Sulbutiamine elevates mood and has a substantial impact on memory.
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Overview
What is Sulbutiamine?
Sulbutiamine (brand name: Arcalion) is a synthetic derivative of thiamine (vitamin B1). In France, it is used to treat symptoms of weakness or fatigue. It also sells as a dietary supplement.
A discovery from Japan as part of an effort to develop useful thiamine derivatives. [R]
It is an upgraded version of vitamin B1. Japanese researchers developed it in the 1960s while trying to address a growing vitamin B1 deficiency in the Japanese population. [R]
Sulbutiamine supplement is unusually bioavailable — in other words, you absorb it very well, and unlike standard vitamin B1, sulbutiamine passes through your blood-brain barrier, supplying your brain with the precious B vitamin.[R]
Benefits and Effects
What Are Sulbutiamine Benefits?
- Decreases Fatigue and Improves Mood
- Relieves Anxiety, Depression
- Boosts Motivation
- Enhances Memory
- Improves Sexual Health & Performance
Supporting research:
Decreases Fatigue, Improves Mood
Several extensive studies have found that sulbutiamine significantly increases energy in people who are feeling fatigued. Sulbutiamine benefits Increase energy & stamina.
Enerion was used in the treatment of 40 patients with psychovegetative syndrome and asthenia. Before treatment, the patients have pronounced asthenia appearances, anxiety disorders, relevant autonomic disorders, mild depression and decrease of working capacity, attention concentration and memory. The treatment conducted as monotherapy during 28 days with enerion dosage 400 mg/day. After treatment, expression of autonomic and asthenic disorders was reduced significantly, along with improvement of psychometric and neurophysiological indices. High efficacy of the medication was in 75% of the patients and moderate one–in 25%.
Relieves Anxiety, Depression, and Social Avoidance
Sulbutiamine has no antidepressive effect but it can hasten the resorption of psycho-behavioural inhibition occurring during major depressive disorder and thereby facilitate the rehabilitation of patients in their social, professional and family life functioning. [R]
Boosts Motivation
There is also some evidence that sulbutiamine increases dopamine and glutamate in your prefrontal cortex, which links to increased motivation and good mood. [R]
It has a growing number of fans in the nootropic community, many of whom report improved mood and heightened mental endurance.
Impact on Memory
Sulbutiamine is made up of two vitamin B1 molecules attached together, which could explain its effect on memory. Vitamin B1 plays an essential role in acetylcholine synthesis in your brain. In fact, it’s the only vitamin that regulates acetylcholine levels, keeping them from getting too low or too high. [R]
What is Acetylcholine?
Acetylcholine is a substance found throughout your nervous system, that acts as a neurotransmitter. Your brain uses most of its acetylcholine to control your muscles, which could explain why taking sulbutiamine helps so much with fatigue. But acetylcholine also plays a key part in memory; it helps you consolidate new memories and remember old ones.” [R]
Improves Sexual Performance
Sulbutiamine treatment for 30 days restored sexual performance in 16 patients out of 20 (open-label) with erectile dysfunction (caused by psychological issues) [R]
Mechanism of Action
How Does Sulbutiamine Work?
Sulbutiamine is a molecule which is two Thiamine (B1) molecules linking together, similar to how Pyritinol is two Pyridoxine (B6) molecules link together.
Sulbutiamine is a isobutyryl thiamine disulfide and sometimes goes by its brand names of Ereon or Arcalion. It is most commonly in use for Asthenia, or weakness (part neurological and part myopathic) as well as treatment of somatic and psychic inhibition. It doesn’t possess psychostimulant properties, although it is designed to act centrally (in the brain). [1]
Sulbutiamine synthesizes from Thiamine, where after the opening of the thiazole ring of Thiamine and dimerization to a disulfide compound it is then esterified. [2]
Sulbutiamine is a fat-soluble molecule that crosses the blood-brain barrier more readily than thiamine. Once in your brain, it increases levels of thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP). Thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP) is directly involving in the citric acid cycle in the brain.
This cycle breaks fatty acids, amino acids, and monosaccharides into smaller molecules that produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) energy for your mitochondria. And provide the building blocks of the electrons needed to generate brain cells.
Dosage
How To Take Sulbutiamine?
Sulbutiamine supplement recommendation dose is 400mg. However, caution is necessary in regards to cycling sulbutiamine and not supplementing on daily basis.
Sulbutiamine dosage: 200-600 mg/day, taken in the morning. Sulbutiamine is fat-soluble (in fact, that’s the reason it can pass the blood-brain barrier and have all these nootropic properties), so be sure you take it with a fat source; otherwise, you won’t absorb it. [R]
Stack
Effective Sulbutiamine Stack
It’s quite rare to find recommendations of stacking sulbutiamine and out of all that I have come across, I think the best stack, or at least one that I would personally consider, is sulbutiamine, aniracetam, and choline stack. For example:
Sulbutiamine 200mg
Aniracetam 750mg
Alpha-GPC 300mg
Aniracetam & choline stack has been one of the most effective I have ever tried. Sulbutiamine supposedly stacks well with racetams and is a common choice due to similarities of effects on cognitive function. [R]
Side Effects
What Are Sulbutiamine Side Effects?
At standard doses (200-1000 mg), side effects could include a headache, nausea, and trouble sleeping.
People doing self-experiments with sulbutiamine, though, occasionally report anxiety and negative thoughts from taking higher doses (most of these side effects showed up around 1000-2000 mg). Others say they feel anxiety from taking sulbutiamine for too long without a break. [R]
User Experience
Here is a sulbutiamine Reddit user experience from someone who’s ADD (high five!) and prescribed Adderall:
…I only heard about nootropics for the first time around 9 months ago. Used to take Adderall for many years, but quit over 5 years ago because it was causing daily headaches and I suspected it was causing my chronic insomnia.
I have legit ADD, as well as what I would call brain fog, low level depression, lack of motivation. I’ve taken sulbutiamine a few times, and I have really good results with it. I only take it occasionally, when I have a big project I need to get done (because I don’t want it to stop working, like I’ve read that it will if you take it often). I took it today because I had a lot of organization tasks I needed to do, and since I hate these kinds of tasks, I often lack motivation to start or complete them.
When I take my capsule, I can actually feel it start to kick in around 20-30 minutes after taking it. It reminds me a lot of how Adderall worked/felt but without that unexplainable “buzzy” feeling. I felt motivated and energized, and really got into my work. Just thought I’d share for any other noobs out there who haven’t tried it yet.
Conclusion
If you decide to use sulbutiamine, be sure to cycle it. When you don’t take the occasional day off from sulbutiamine, it’s likely you’ll build a tolerance to its effects, and the sulbutiamine will stop working unless you increase the dose. [R]
Experiment is key to finding the dosage and cycle that’s just right for you and your body composition.
Its a great choice to consider on days where you need extra mental functionality.
Sulbutiamine is becoming more and more popular in the biohacking community. If you’re curious, give it a try and see how you feel.