- What was studied?
- Attention, reaction time, stress and cognitive performance tasks.
- In whom?
- Healthy adults in randomized controlled trials.
- What did it find?
- Support for specific aspects of attention and reaction speed, alongside a calmer subjective state.
- What does it not prove?
- That L-theanine alone determines the cognitive effect of the complete NOVOS Core formula.
Cognition + Healthy Aging
Stay sharp, longer.
Your brain changes with age - even when you remain completely healthy. Processing speed can slow. Recall can take longer. Focus may become easier to disrupt. Mental fatigue can arrive sooner. NOVOS approaches cognitive health from multiple directions: supporting calm focus, cellular energy, brain nutrients, healthy aging pathways, the gut-brain axis and the nutritional foundation your brain depends on every day.
Clinically studiedRecommended by 2,000+ verified clinicians15M+ NOVOS servings enjoyed worldwideThird-party tested
The starting point
Healthy brains change with age.
Getting older does not mean losing your intelligence. Knowledge, expertise, vocabulary and accumulated experience can remain remarkably resilient - and in some areas may even improve. But other aspects of cognition tend to become more vulnerable with age.
01
Processing speed
How quickly you take in information and respond to it.
Age-related change can mean needing slightly more time to process something complicated, switch between tasks or retrieve information.
02
Working memory
Your brain's mental scratchpad.
Working memory lets you temporarily hold information in mind while doing something with it - from remembering a number long enough to enter it to following a complex discussion.
03
Attention + focus
Choosing what matters and filtering what doesn't.
Distraction can become more costly with age, especially when the brain is tired or under stress.
04
Mental stamina
How long you can perform before cognitive fatigue sets in.
Sleep, stress, cellular energy, nutrition and physical health all influence how sharp you feel across a demanding day.
Healthy cognitive aging isn't about becoming smarter every year. It's about preserving more of your mental speed, clarity, flexibility and independence for longer.
Why it matters
Cognitive longevity is measured in ordinary moments: holding a thought through an interruption, finding the right word, staying sharp at hour six of a demanding day.
The systems map
What does your brain need?
Cognition is not one pathway - it depends on several interconnected biological support systems. Select a system to see which NOVOS products connect to it.
CorePrimary
Vital·
Boost·
BarSupporting
Core's L-theanine and Rhodiola are studied for calm focus and performance under stress. Bar's Lion's Mane adds early human attention research.
The NOVOS system
Different products. Different cognitive pathways.
NOVOS does not approach cognition as a single pathway. Core, Vital, Boost and Bar have distinct roles.
The foundation
NOVOS Core
Clinically studied
Calm focus today. Healthy brain aging for tomorrow.
NOVOS Core is the foundational NOVOS longevity formulation, designed around the interconnected biological processes that change as we age. Several Core ingredients are particularly relevant to cognition - some through human research on attention, fatigue and stress, and others through emerging research into neuronal resilience and brain aging biology.
Cognition is not only memory.
Some of the cognitive benefits people care about most are immediate and practical: Can I concentrate? Can I stay mentally steady under stress? Can I keep performing when the day gets demanding? Several ingredients in NOVOS Core have been studied in these areas.
- What was studied?
- Mental fatigue, attention, work performance and perceived stress.
- In whom?
- Healthy adults under demanding mental or physical conditions.
- What did it find?
- Reported benefits for mental fatigue, attention, work performance, perceived stress and thinking speed under demanding conditions - promising, though not uniformly consistent across every study.
- What does it not prove?
- Consistent cognitive benefit across all populations and every measured outcome.
- What was studied?
- Normal nerve signaling, cellular energy metabolism, synaptic function.
- In whom?
- Broad human physiology research; supplementation trials for cognition are mixed.
- What did it find?
- Magnesium is essential to normal neurological function and hundreds of biochemical reactions.
- What does it not prove?
- That magnesium supplementation improves cognition in already-healthy, well-nourished people.
- What was studied?
- Cellular stress responses, neurotrophic signaling, autophagy, inflammation and neuronal resilience.
- In whom?
- Mechanistic research plus heterogeneous human studies at low exposures.
- What did it find?
- Lithium influences several pathways researchers continue to study in brain aging.
- What does it not prove?
- A proven cognitive effect from the micro-dose used in NOVOS Core - that research has not yet been established.
What NOVOS customers report.
In a self-reported NOVOS customer survey, 81% reported feeling a difference within two weeks across six areas of wellbeing, which included cognition, mood, energy, sleep, skin and overall wellbeing.
Self-reported customer survey. This was not a randomized cognition trial. Individual results vary.
What has Core itself been clinically studied for?
NOVOS Core finished-formula research. NOVOS Core has been evaluated as a complete formulation in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled human trial in adults over 40. The primary demonstrated benefits were in cardiovascular aging markers, rather than cognitive endpoints.
Why mention that on a cognition page? Because healthy cognition depends on whole-body aging biology - but the clinical result should not be represented as a cognitive trial.
NOVOS Core
Foundational longevity support with ingredients relevant to calm focus, stress resilience and healthy brain aging.
Brain + organ support
NOVOS Vital
Your brain doesn't age in isolation.
The brain depends on other systems: healthy circulation, constant communication with the gut, and normal metabolic function. Some nutrients accumulate directly in both the eye and brain, where researchers can study their relationship to cognitive aging. NOVOS Vital brings together seven ingredients designed to support organs and systems that become increasingly important with age. For cognition, three stories are especially relevant.
- What was studied?
- Attention, cognitive flexibility, verbal learning and brain-function measures.
- In whom?
- Older adults in randomized controlled trials.
- What did it find?
- These carotenoids accumulate in both the retina and brain tissue, and randomized human studies have investigated their relationship to cognitive measures.
- What does it not prove?
- That eye health causes cognition - the visual communicates shared accumulation, not causation.
- What was studied?
- Prebiotic effects on the intestinal microbiome and its metabolites.
- In whom?
- Human gut-microbiome research; direct cognition research still emerging.
- What did it find?
- Inulin feeds beneficial gut bacteria whose metabolites participate in immune, metabolic and neural signaling - the gut-brain axis.
- What does it not prove?
- That inulin directly improves cognition - supporting the microbiome is not the same as proving a cognitive effect.
- What was studied?
- Proteostasis and autophagy - the systems cells use to build, fold, maintain and dispose of proteins correctly.
- In whom?
- Animal and cellular studies.
- What did it find?
- Investigated for neuronal health, cellular stress and protein maintenance.
- What does it not prove?
- That oral trehalose improves cognition in humans - evidence is not established.
Nattokinase
Supports healthy circulation and cardiovascular function. The brain is extraordinarily dependent on blood flow - but nattokinase has not been clinically shown to improve cognition.
Indirect cognitive support
Apple Cider Vinegar
Positioned around metabolic support. Healthy metabolic function contributes to whole-body and brain health - not a central memory-enhancement claim.
Metabolic support
Rutin
Studied for antioxidant, vascular and healthy-aging pathways, without a direct human cognitive-enhancement claim.
Vascular + antioxidant pathways
NOVOS Vital
Seven targeted ingredients supporting brain, eyes, gut, circulation and other essential systems.
The energy question
The brain is roughly two percent of body weight and uses about twenty percent of the body's energy. Cellular energy is not an abstraction here; it is the currency every thought is paid in.
Cellular energy
NOVOS Boost
Your brain is expensive to run.
The brain represents only a fraction of body mass, yet it requires an extraordinary and continuous supply of cellular energy. Thinking, signaling, maintaining ion gradients, repairing DNA and sustaining neurons all require energy. One molecule sits near the center of many of these processes: NAD+.
Food / nutrientsCellMitochondriaNAD+ATP / cellular energy
DNA maintenanceCellular stress responseMetabolic signaling
NAD+ does much more than make energy.
NAD+ participates in cellular energy metabolism and is required by enzymes involved in DNA maintenance, epigenetic regulation and other aspects of cellular health. NAD+ availability changes with age. NOVOS Boost provides NMN, a direct precursor the body can use to produce NAD+.
Strong biological rationale. Emerging cognitive evidence.
Because neurons have high energetic demands and depend on healthy mitochondria and cellular maintenance, NAD+ biology has become a major area of brain-aging research. Human studies show NMN supplementation can affect NAD-related metabolites.
Direct evidence that NMN supplementation improves cognition in healthy humans remains limited. This is an important scientific distinction.
NOVOS Boost
>99% pure NMN supporting your body's natural NAD+ production.
Cognitive nutrition
NOVOS Bar
Your brain has to make it through the whole day.
Cognitive performance does not depend only on exotic compounds. It depends on something much more basic: being adequately nourished. Your brain requires energy, amino acids, vitamins, minerals and healthy metabolic function every day. NOVOS Bar combines that nutritional foundation with ingredients specifically studied for brain and healthy-aging biology.
Built for steadier nutrition - not a sugar spike.
Many convenience snacks are dominated by refined carbohydrate and sugar. NOVOS Bar takes a different approach - designed for more balanced, sustained nutrition.
Typical sweet snack
- Mostly rapidly available carbohydrate
- Quick energy
- Hunger returns
NOVOS Bar
- 15 g complete plant protein
- 6–7 g fiber
- Seed butters + olive oil
- Only 4 g of sugar in current applicable flavors, from honey
- 21 essential vitamins and minerals
→ More complete nutrition.
- What was studied?
- Attention, processing speed, cognitive performance, stress and mood.
- In whom?
- Healthy adults in small randomized trials.
- What did it find?
- Signals of benefit on selected cognitive tasks, though the human evidence base remains relatively small.
- What does it not prove?
- Clinical proof for NOVOS Bar itself - or that it literally grows neurons in humans.
- What was studied?
- Memory, attention and cognitive performance.
- In whom?
- Middle-aged and older adults in small randomized studies.
- What did it find?
- Suggestive results - not uniformly conclusive.
- What does it not prove?
- That astaxanthin is clinically proven to improve memory.
- What was studied?
- Fatigue and subjective wellbeing in humans; brain biology preclinically.
- In whom?
- Human wellbeing studies; cell and animal brain research.
- What did it find?
- A long history of traditional use plus human data around fatigue and wellbeing.
- What does it not prove?
- Direct cognitive enhancement in healthy adults - that evidence is much weaker.
- What was studied?
- Mitochondrial function, cellular hydration, calcium signaling, antioxidant defense, nervous-system biology.
- In whom?
- Broad human physiology research; randomized cognition trials reviewed recently.
- What did it find?
- Genuinely important nutrient for cellular and nervous-system biology.
- What does it not prove?
- That taurine supplementation by itself consistently improves cognitive performance - reviews have not found convincing evidence.
Cognition depends on ordinary nutrients too.
It is easy to focus on "nootropics" and overlook the nutrients the nervous system requires every day. Each NOVOS Bar provides 50% of the Daily Value of 21 essential vitamins and minerals, including B vitamins and other micronutrients involved in normal energy metabolism, nervous-system function, red blood cell production, oxygen transport and cellular function.
The system, side by side
Complementary components, built as a system.
Each NOVOS product was designed for a different role. You can start with the part of the system most relevant to you. For the broadest NOVOS longevity foundation, Core is the logical place to begin.
| Pathway | Core | Vital | Boost | Bar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calm focus + stress | Strong | · | · | Supporting |
| Brain carotenoids | · | Strong | · | · |
| Gut-brain support | · | Strong | · | Supporting |
| NAD+ / cellular energy | Supporting | · | Strong | Nutrition |
| Functional mushrooms | · | · | · | Strong |
| Micronutrient foundation | Selected nutrients | Targeted | · | Broad |
| Healthy aging pathways | Strong | Supporting | Strong | Supporting |
How they fit together
NUTRITIONAL FOUNDATION
NOVOS Bar
Nutrition
Longevity foundation
NOVOS Core
Healthy aging + calm focus
Organ support
NOVOS Vital
Brain / eye / gut systems
Cellular energy
NOVOS Boost
NAD+
Evidence language
How to read the badges.
Every ingredient card on this page carries an evidence badge. Here's what each level means.
Human randomized
Evidence from placebo-controlled randomized human trials: the gold standard.
Human
Human clinical or observational research.
Ingredient research
The ingredient has been studied, but the study did not test the complete product.
Preclinical
Cell or animal research.
Emerging
Scientifically interesting, but the evidence is not mature enough for a strong conclusion.
Why evidence level matters. An ingredient behaving a certain way in a cell, mouse, or human study does not mean every formulation containing that ingredient has been clinically proven to produce the same result. NOVOS shows the evidence level so you can see the difference.
Scientific transparency
What we know. And what we're still learning.
We know
- Normal cognitive function changes with age.
- Nutrition, energy metabolism, stress and whole-body health influence cognition.
- L-theanine has human randomized evidence in attention-related tasks.
- Lutein and zeaxanthin have randomized human cognition research.
- Lion's Mane has early human randomized cognition research.
- NAD+ is essential to cellular energy and maintenance.
- B vitamins and minerals are essential to normal neurological function.
We're still learning
- Whether fisetin improves cognition in healthy humans.
- Whether pterostilbene improves cognition in healthy humans.
- Whether trehalose produces meaningful cognitive benefits in humans.
- Whether raising NAD+ meaningfully preserves human cognition with age.
- Which gut-microbiome interventions produce reliable cognitive effects.
- Whether taurine supplementation independently improves cognition.
Good science isn't certainty about everything. It's knowing the difference between what has been demonstrated and what remains promising.
The people
Longevity science built with scientists.
NOVOS formulations and research strategy have been developed with scientists and physicians whose expertise spans aging biology, genetics, neuroscience, nutrition and clinical medicine.
Dr. George Church, PhD
Harvard Medical School & MIT
Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, published the first direct genomic sequencing method and is widely regarded as a founder of synthetic biology and personalized genomics.
Dr. Pamela Maher, PhD
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Neurobiologist whose research on flavonoids, including fisetin, focuses on maintaining nerve cell function and protecting the aging brain.
Dr. Oliver Medvedik, PhD
Harvard Medical School, The Cooper Union
Director of the Kanbar Center for Biomedical Engineering at Cooper Union; completed doctoral research in David Sinclair's Harvard lab, co-authoring work on NAD+ and calorie restriction.
Beyond supplements
Supplements are only part of cognitive longevity.
Exercise, sleep, cardiovascular health, nutrition, learning, stress management and social connection also influence how the brain ages. We cover those strategies separately so this page can stay focused on the NOVOS product system.
How to Improve Cognitive Function
The lifestyle science behind memory, focus, neuroplasticity and healthy brain aging.
Where to start
Support cognition from more than one angle.
Core
Focus + healthy brain aging- L-Theanine
- Rhodiola
- Magnesium
- Micro-dosed lithium
- Fisetin
- Pterostilbene
Bar
Daily cognitive nutrition- Lion's Mane
- Reishi
- Astaxanthin
- Taurine
- 21 vitamins + minerals
- Complete protein + fiber
Not sure where to start?
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Does cognition normally change with age?
Yes. Healthy aging can involve gradual changes in areas such as processing speed, working memory, recall and the ability to filter distractions. Other abilities, including accumulated knowledge and expertise, can remain strong for many years.
Is this page about dementia prevention?
No. This page focuses on supporting normal cognitive function and healthy brain aging in generally healthy adults. NOVOS products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent cognitive disease.
Which NOVOS product is best for cognition?
NOVOS Core is the best starting point for most people looking for broad NOVOS cognitive and healthy-aging support. It contains ingredients studied for calm focus, stress resilience and several pathways relevant to brain aging. Vital provides complementary brain, eye, gut and organ support. Boost focuses on NAD+ and cellular energy. Bar provides daily nutrition plus brain-relevant functional ingredients.
Has NOVOS Core itself been clinically shown to improve cognition?
NOVOS Core's finished formulation has been evaluated in randomized, placebo-controlled human research, but cognition was not the primary clinical endpoint. Cognitive support on this page is based largely on research involving individual Core ingredients and self-reported customer experience.
Which NOVOS ingredients have human cognition research?
Human cognitive research exists for ingredients including L-theanine, lutein, zeaxanthin and Lion's Mane, with different levels of evidence. Other ingredients have primarily mechanistic, animal or emerging human evidence.
Does NOVOS Boost make you smarter?
No. Boost supplies NMN to support the body's natural production of NAD+, which cells use for energy metabolism and maintenance. NAD+ biology is highly relevant to brain aging, but direct human evidence that NMN improves cognition remains limited.
Does NOVOS Bar prevent blood sugar crashes?
NOVOS Bar has not been clinically tested to prove prevention of glucose crashes. It is designed around balanced nutrition - protein, fiber, fats, micronutrients and relatively little sugar - rather than the high-sugar composition common to many convenience snacks.
Are Lion's Mane mushrooms clinically studied for cognition?
Yes, small randomized human trials have investigated Lion's Mane for cognitive outcomes. The evidence is promising but still early, and results from research on Lion's Mane ingredients should not be treated as clinical proof of NOVOS Bar itself.
Why are lutein and zeaxanthin on a cognition page?
Lutein and zeaxanthin accumulate not only in the retina but also in brain tissue. Randomized human studies in older adults have investigated these carotenoids for attention, cognitive flexibility, verbal learning and brain-function measures.
Is taurine a nootropic?
Taurine plays important roles in nervous-system and cellular biology, but recent human evidence does not consistently demonstrate direct cognitive enhancement from taurine supplementation alone.