Coffee is the world’s favorite tool for paying attention, and it earns the title. The question The Focus asks is what else belongs in the cup that is already on the desk. The answer is three things, each for a different part of the job: a fatty acid the brain is built from, a root with the longest record of use for mental stamina of any plant, and a vitamin the brain’s chemistry runs on.
What the coffee does
Caffeine, as the entry on it explains, blocks the signal that tells the brain it is tired. The effect on attention is one of the best measured in nutrition: a dose of 75 mg, less than one cup, is enough to improve alertness and the ability to keep attention on a task, which is the figure the European Food Safety Authority settled on after reviewing the trials in 2011. More is not better. Past about 200 mg at a time, the same molecule starts to buy jitter instead of focus. One cup, well timed, is the dose.
Omega-3: what the brain is made of
Dry, the brain is largely fat, and the omega-3 it holds most of is DHA, docosahexaenoic acid, the long chain of twenty-two carbons drawn here. It sits in the membranes of nerve cells, where it keeps them flexible enough to signal, and the body makes little of it: it has to come from oily fish, from algae, or from a formula. DHA is there for the long run, not for the next hour; it is a building material, and the brain renews it slowly. A cup a day adds to the supply, the way a diet with fish does.
Ginseng: the root for the long afternoon
Panax ginseng has been taken for stamina of mind and body for two thousand years, which proves use, not effect. The modern trials are more interesting. In a series of placebo-controlled studies at Northumbria University, a single dose of a standardized extract improved performance on demanding mental arithmetic and reduced the feeling of mental fatigue during an hour of sustained work. The Cochrane review of 2010, pooling what trials there were, called the evidence promising and thin at once: effects in healthy people, studies too small to be sure of them. That is an honest summary, and it is why ginseng is in one formula, for the long afternoon, and not in all ten.
Folate: the vitamin of one-carbon chemistry
Folate, vitamin B9, is the carrier of single carbon atoms in the body’s chemistry, and the brain uses that chemistry constantly: for the neurotransmitters it signals with, for the methyl groups that switch genes on and off, and for keeping homocysteine, a by-product of protein metabolism, from building up in the blood. Low folate shows first as tiredness and a dull mind, which is why it is in the formula for days that ask for a sharp one.
The cup
The Focus is the ordinary coffee of a working day with three things in it that the working day uses up. It will not do the work. It will make the person doing it a little better supplied for it, and for the meeting that should have been an email.