Neuro Gum Review

The nootropics market offers an ever-widening range of over-the-counter products to help you stay awake and focused on your workload. We’ve covered many of them in various brand reviews and a comprehensive best-of guide, with our favorite products to date being once-a-day capsules containing certain common ingredients.

Though it belongs in the same category, Neuro Gum is different. Instead of a capsule, it’s a confectionary. And rather than adhering to a dosing schedule, the user takes it as needed throughout the day.

In this review, we examine the products in Neuro's catalog to establish whether they hold up against the scientific literature and hold their own against other nootropic supplements.

Users who aren’t keen on capsules ought to find relief in what Neuro has to offer. Whether you go for Neuro’s gums or the mints, you’ll have an easy-to-use, comparably low-cost nootropic that offers decent potential for cognitive enhancement with clinically relevant and conscientiously administered doses of ingredients like caffeine, L-theanine, GABA, and ginseng. They taste pretty good, too, and the company provides an uncomplicated customer experience. However, Neuro Gum lacks several of the more robust cognitive-enhancing ingredients used in other nootropic supplements, like tyrosine and citicoline, so there’s some trade-off between convenience and effectiveness. There’s also no set dosing protocol — you take Neuro as needed, as you would ordinary gum or mints — so it’s tough to predict how often you’ll use the products for optimal results. Subscribers will likely need a cycle or two to determine their most suitable order amount.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

This review builds on the ample research we’d previously done on nootropic supplements. With the work we’ve added to our efforts by evaluating Neuro Gum, our expertise on the subject can be quantified to the tune of 400+ scientific sources and 1,000+ cumulative hours. That doesn’t include the time we spent corresponding with Neuro’s support team, ordering Neuro’s products (both gum and mints), trying the products, and weighing them against leading competitors.

Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this guide was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy and will continue to be monitored for updates by our editorial team.

To ascertain Neuro Gum’s place in the nootropics supplement space, we centered our evaluation on six criteria that are likely to move consumer decisions:

• Effectiveness: How reliably can the ingredients improve your cognitive function? Does the route of administration make a difference?
• Safety: How much of a health risk do the products pose to both general and specific populations?
• Cost: How affordable are the products compared to other nootropic supplements?
• Convenience: What challenges, if any, come with handling and using the products?
• Taste and texture: We’re dealing with gums and mints, so how enjoyable are they to take?
• Customer experience: What if you need to reach customer support? Return a product?

The results of our evaluation are a varied set of ratings. Here’s how Neuro Gum turned out in each category:

Effectiveness

Neuro Gum’s nootropic effects come by way of four active ingredients with decent scientific support for their cognitive-enhancing potential:

• L-Theanine: an amino acid with cognitive effects in doses as low as 100mg.1 A serving of Neuro Gum contains 60-65mg, depending on the product line.
• Caffeine: a stimulant with indirect action on mood and concentration.2 Neuro Gum’s Energy & Focus provides enough caffeine per serving to improve alertness, vigilance, attention, and reaction time in a 180lb human.3
• GABA: an inhibitory neurotransmitter that can alter areas of mood related to cognitive function.4 A 100mg dose is clinically effective; Neuro’s Calm & Clarity provides 130mg per serving.5
• Ginseng: an herbal root believed to upregulate neurotransmitters and influence the gut-brain axis.6 7 The 200mg dose in Neuro Gum’s Memory & Focus is clinically relevant.8

But any one Neuro Gum product contains only two such ingredients — for example, Energy & Focus has caffeine and L-theanine but not ginseng or GABA. Compared to competitors like Thesis and Revive, which use four times as many potent cognitive enhancers in their formulations, Neuro Gum is a lightweight. And with nootropic supplements, lightweight often corresponds to limited potential.

On the other hand, as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! has taught us, you can outclass pure power by applying a conscientious technique. So it goes with supplements, in theory. Whereas most of Neuro Gum’s competitors are capsules absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract, Neuro Gum itself transfers its active ingredients more directly into the bloodstream through the linings of the mouth and cheeks. Neuro Gum is, therefore, a faster-acting agent than capsule nootropics, as well as a more bioavailable one.9 10

In other words, Neuro Gum makes big use of a small package to give you a faster fix for focus.

Safety

We’re heartened to see that Neuro subjects its products to third-party testing. Besides mention of a “rigorous testing protocol” and one of those “3rd Party Tested” icons on the website, the company is happy to provide certificates of analysis on request. Also, the products are vegan, sugar-free, and gluten-free, so they earn points for that.

Ironically, though, one of Neuro Gum’s upsides — its form factor — invites a hit to its safety rating. As gums and mints, Neuro is meant to be taken as needed throughout the day, not in one self-limiting dose like with Thesis and Revive Brain+. Neuro provides dosage limitations on its website — no more than 2-10 pieces a day, depending on the product — but there’s room for user error. Unless you closely monitor your intake, you could end up ingesting more of a particular active ingredient than would be healthy.

Take caffeine, for example, which has a relatively low threshold for safe intake at 400mg per day.11 Neuro Gum’s Energy & Focus contains 40mg of caffeine per piece, so a ten-piece limit keeps you from crossing into dangerous territory, but what if you’re caffeine-sensitive or drink coffee? You’ll need to adjust your daily Neuro Gum limit to keep from pushing past the safe limit.

Cost

Most Neuro Gum products cost less than $25 for their standard size, and all of them have per-serving costs under $0.50. Those are fractions compared to leading nootropics like Thesis and Revive Brain+. Even the most expensive Neuro product — 180 pieces of Calm & Clarity for $79.20 as a one-time purchase — is $50 less than its Thesis counterpart, and it should last 21-156 days longer.

There’s also free shipping on all subscriptions and a $35 free-shipping threshold for one-time purchases. Combined with the low cost of the products themselves, those qualities make Neuro one of the most affordable brands we’ve encountered in the nootropics space.

But its exact cost-effectiveness depends on your rate of consumption. It’s possible, and within certain health limitations, to deplete a 90-piece container of Energy & Focus in just nine days. If you maintain a consistent rate of consumption, you’ll need more than a triple order to satisfy your needs for the month. In that case, you’d be spending around $100 every 30 days on a functional candy.

As one of our testers will tell you, such rapid consumption isn’t outside the bounds of possibility: as an ex-smoker who has tried to wean off of Nicorette, he attests to being a boon to Wrigley’s shareholders.

We cover more about the prices of Neuro products under the “How much does Neuro Gum cost?” section later on.

Convenience

With Neuro, you simply chew a piece of gum or suck on a couple of mints — nothing to measure, swallow, or hold under your tongue. As long as you like candy, it can be the ideal alternative to pills, powders, or tinctures. In contrast, most nootropics on the market require you to take multiple pills at a time. For example, a dose of Thesis is up to four capsules, while a dose of Qualia Mind is six.

Neuro’s convenience also extends to its product packaging; the gums come in easy-to-puncture blister packs, and the mints come in slide-top tins. Both containers are single-layer affairs, so they have slim horizontal profiles that comfortably occupy a front pocket.

The chief inconvenience is that you need to throw out the gum once its flavor is spent. In that regard, a fully edible form, like a gummy, would be the superior delivery format. Had the packaging included a pad of disposal paper, the rating here might be nearer to a perfect 10.

Taste and texture

In the taste department, Neuro doesn’t burst in and announce itself; it quietly occupies its space and affably contributes to the atmosphere.

That’s at least the case with the Peppermint gum and the Honey Lemon mints.

Neuro Gum occupies more of the midrange on the palate as opposed to the front-forward flavor of, say, Ice Breakers. It also holds its flavor and texture well. Two of our testers found that it held discernible flavor for around 20 minutes, and they could chew for upwards of 40 minutes before it became unpleasantly bland.

And if you like honey and lemon, you might find the mints dangerously enjoyable. They smell like Burt’s Bees beeswax lip balm (a plus in our testers’ opinions), and they taste as though Smarties were developing a line of elevated candy for the discerning confectionary consumer. We say “dangerously enjoyable” because you shouldn’t take more than four Calm & Clarity a day, per Neuro’s recommendations. So be judicious. Enjoy responsibly.

Customer experience

Our assessment of the Neuro Gum customer experience centered on its support channels and its money-back guarantee. In either case, the company is unremarkable, but not in a bad way — unremarkable like a medical checkup with no concerning findings or an errand marked by neither diversion nor delay. It’s good, but not too good.

On the support front, you can correspond with an associate by email or phone. (Yes, there’s also a message portal and a live chat widget, but in either case, the reply comes via email.) We went with the email option, and we received a satisfactory answer in around 12 business hours. We wouldn’t say that’s fast, but we also wouldn’t call it slow. It was good, just not conspicuously so.

Neuro’s money-back guarantee exhibits the same degree of decentness. Its 30-day window is the minimum we’d want from any company, but you can at least try the products before you return them. Because some companies don’t give refunds on used items at all, we have no reason to complain about Neuro’s policy. But because other companies allow much larger windows for returns, we also don’t have much reason to rhapsodize Neuro’s standard-length time frame.

Neuro is a line of functional chewing gums and mints. Functional here refers to the biological functions named in each of Neuro’s product lines:

All Neuro products are vegan-friendly and free from gluten, dairy, sugar, and aspartame (they’re sweetened with ingredients like sorbitol, sucralose, monk fruit, xylitol, mannitol, and/or stevia). All gums come packaged in easy-to-puncture blister packs, and the mints in slide-top tins; both are single-layer containers with slim horizontal profiles that nestle comfortably into front pockets.

By the way, the mint tins are terrifically engineered. They slide open with no serious effort but firmly retain their clasp when closed. They can also take a beating. A series of five drop tests on concrete yielded no visible damage to either the tin or its contents. In a later, unplanned test motivated by sheer curiosity, smacking the tin with a meat mallet on a kitchen countertop would dent the metal but leave the mints as whole as the day they came off the production line.

Neuro Gum transfers its active ingredients through the linings of the mouth and cheeks (orobuccal administration). From there, they enter the bloodstream and get to work. In theory, the orobuccal route of administration gives Neuro products an advantage in absorption owing to faster pharmacokinetics. This theory has been borne out by a review showing that orobuccal delivery can roughly double a drug’s peak plasma concentration, as well as a study in which orobuccal caffeine reached peak concentration almost twice as fast as a capsule.10 9 It’s true that not all of Neuro Gum’s ingredients have been subjected to route-of-administration tests to assess different absorption rates, but the existing literature generally favors orobuccal bioavailability.

Although Neuro’s nootropic products lack some of the more robust ingredients used in competitors — for example, the Rhodiola, tyrosine, and citicoline in Revive Brain+ — several of its ingredients have substantial scientific support behind them:

Neuro study

The company website points out a study conducted specifically on Neuro “by the Research Team at BrainCo at the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.” The only presence of this study online is a write-up in PR Newswire by the Neuro marketing team, but it’s worth considering nonetheless.

According to the write-up, the study involved 20 participants given either a Neuro nootropic mint, a placebo, or nothing at all. The participants were then asked to complete three cognitive tests. In each task, the Neuro group “reached high engagement levels significantly faster” and exhibited an “increased ability to focus faster” compared to both control and placebo. The Neuro group also completed a speed processing task more quickly than the other groups.18

With no access to the study proper, we can’t verify whether its methods were sound. What we can say is it was limited by a small sample size and that the corporate nature of the reporting suggests the study was self-funded. But the findings themselves, viewed in isolation, leave a positive impression that tracks with the research on the ingredients that Neuro uses.

Our experience using Neuro Gum

We want to present our Neuro Gum experience as objectively as possible, and the perspective of our ex-smoker (we’ll call him “Nic”) seems like the best conduit for that.

Nic has tried to wean himself off of nicotine gum but still chews it regularly to help him focus — not only because nicotine is a nootropic but also because it’s a tough habit to break. But during our testing, Nic occasionally swapped his usual 2mg cinnamon Nicorette for an Energy & Focus and experienced neither a deficit in concentration nor a craving for nicotine. In these cases, his being able to return to baseline might well constitute an increase in cognitive function.

Sleep & Recharge

We still need to talk about the ingredients in Sleep & Recharge, which isn’t a nootropic but a sleep aid. Still, seeing as sound sleep fosters clear thought,19 let’s look at the ingredient list:

• Melatonin: 1mg (regular strength) or 5mg (extra strength)
• Proprietary herbal blend: 25mg

It’s not terribly much to look at unless we peel away the cover on the proprietary blend. There, we find three botanical agents — chamomile,20 lemon balm,21 and passionflower — that are relatively well-studied for their ability to reduce anxiety and induce sleep.22 But clinical research has used them in much larger individual quantities (hundreds of milligrams) and relied on oral injection as opposed to orobuccal administration, so the 25mg total sedates our optimism more than they’re likely to do our bodies.

The extra-strength dose of melatonin is more encouraging, though the regular-strength version is less so. In a 2014 review, 1mg of melatonin was found to be too meager to enhance sleep health in most studies that administered that amount — there was only one study where it clearly improved sleep time and sleep efficiency in otherwise healthy subjects.23 Our takeaway is that Sleep & Recharge might help you sleep as long as you don’t have any existing sleep disorders.

But to its credit, Sleep & Recharge comes as a melt-away mint. It’s a conscientious choice of form. When you’re dissolving into slumber, you surely don’t want to resolidify alarmingly around a wad of gum sliding toward your throat.

Neuro’s products should be generally safe for most people, but some of their ingredients, active or otherwise, pose higher health risks:

• GABA, featured in Calm & Clarity, can cause moderate drops in blood pressure.24
• Caffeine has a relatively low dose ceiling of 400mg a day.11 You’d reach, if not exceed, the safety threshold if you drink two cups of coffee and chew five pieces of Energy & Focus.
• The melatonin in Sleep & Recharge could negate your pursuit of rest and lucidity if it causes next-day drowsiness, a common side effect.25
• Some Neuro products are colored with spirulina or turmeric, which shouldn’t be consumed by people with certain autoimmune conditions.33 34

You can minimize your risk of adverse events by heeding sensible serving limits — for example, only around four Memory & Focus a day, and no more than ten Energy & Focus (fewer if you consume caffeine in other forms).

Also, you shouldn’t use Neuro Gum if you currently take medications or supplements such as Adderall, Ritalin, or glutamate, which can interact with L-theanine and caffeine. This is not an exhaustive list, by the way.

Similar warnings apply if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding. Calm & Clarity is off the table since GABA might cause fetal complications, and the other products lack sufficient evidence to determine their safety for the developing fetus or newborn.26 12

Even if you aren’t obviously susceptible to these interactions, you should speak with your doctor to ensure you don’t have any overlooked contraindications before adding a new supplement to your regimen.

Neuro’s three nootropic products — Energy & Focus, Memory & Focus, Calm & Clarity — are for non-pregnant, non-breastfeeding people who regularly engage in focus-based activities and would prefer a non-capsule alternative to nootropics. It’s a broad user population that includes but isn’t limited to:

• Students
• Creatives
• Researchers
• Physical laborers
• Transport professionals

Again, not an exhaustive list. We can all benefit from increased concentration after all, even if only for a commute, a work meeting, or a chapter of that dull memoir issued by your book club.

Who is it not for?

Because of the health risks and uncertainties we discussed earlier, you should either skip Neuro Gum or exercise caution if you:

• Are pregnant or breastfeeding
• Are allergic or sensitive to specific ingredients (e.g., ginseng, caffeine)
• Take certain medications or supplements (e.g., Adderall, Ritalin, glutamate)

There’s also another population who may want to think twice about Neuro Gum: people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). That’s because a supplemental nootropic might not work as well as a prescription drug such as Adderall or Ritalin. But efficacy can be case-dependent. It could be worth trying Neuro Gum to see whether it can help with ADHD symptoms, but expectations should be tempered.

Neuro comes in at various price points depending on the product, size, and purchase option. This table lays out the details:

Ignoring the fact that the 180-piece Calm & Clarity offers no bulk-size bargain relative to the other sizes, we think these prices are among the budget-friendliest in the nootropics space. Compare them to the $79-$129 Thesis or $59.99 Revive Brain+, whose per-serving costs amount to around $1-$3.

But there’s a problem on the periphery here, which is that the three Neuro nootropics follow an as-needed dosing protocol, so it isn’t always easy to predict how much product you should order to fill, say, a month’s need. If you’re thinking about a subscription, you might consider doubling your item quantity, seeing how you work through your supply, and then adjusting your recurring order as you near the end of your first cycle.

At least subscriptions ship for free, as do orders above $35. Also, Neuro Gum has a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, so you can try a product risk-free.

Concerning Neuro’s taste and texture, we can speak only to the two products we ordered: Energy & Focus and Calm & Clarity. Our testers enjoyed both. Here’s what they had to say about them:

Confectionaries are still a novel niche in the current nootropics space, so we have to zoom out and survey the larger market to identify Neuro Gum’s indirect competitors. Primarily, the options are limited to capsule complexes and individual nootropic ingredients. Below we discuss what we think are the best alternatives to Neuro Gum in those areas.

Nootropic capsule complexes

They usually cost more and are less flexible in their dosing protocols than Neuro Gum, but a good nootropic capsule complex is the most common non-prescription option for improving cognitive function. Throughout this review, we’ve discussed two of the best complexes on the market right now: Thesis and Revive Brain+.

With Thesis ($129 as a one-time purchase, $79 on subscription), which offers multiple nootropic blends, one of our favorites is Logic. In addition to L-theanine, optional caffeine, and other ingredients, it contains:

• Ginkgo biloba: a botanical with “clear evidence” for its use against mild cognitive impairment and dementia per a 2016 meta-analysis27
• Bacopa monnieri: another botanical, one with demonstrated potential to improve attention and reaction time28

Revive Brain+ ($59.99) is a budget-friendlier alternative to Thesis. Its ingredients are different but well-studied for their cognitive benefits — for example:

• Choline: a nutrient that positively correlates with improved cognitive function in healthy people29
• Citicoline: a brain chemical and choline precursor that has been shown to improve episodic and composite memory30
• L-Tyrosine: a precursor of neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine, which plays a key role in cognitive function31
• Rhodiola: a botanical that can lower stress and increase mental performance32

Individual nootropic ingredients

If nootropic complexes don’t quite fit the bill, you could purchase single-ingredient supplements from reputable brands and save heaps of money in the long term. From Life Extension, for example, you can get a 60-capsule bottle of L-theanine for just $18. Along with a few cups of coffee, taking a full daily dose would be almost equivalent to chewing three pieces of Energy & Focus.

But low cost comes at the expense of convenience. Surely, for some people, popping candy in the mouth — even half a dozen throughout the day — is easier than regimenting a routine around set quantities of capsules.