Noopept on TikTok: separating hype from the thin evidence base

What did @tombirchy actually say?

Tom described Noopept (which he calls "Newpept") as a nootropic brain substance that he dissolved under his tongue before his GCSE and A-level exams. His core claim: "it burnt into my brain" and he credits it with helping him retain material from a book he hadn't read. He also predicts nootropics are "going to be big business." He did acknowledge you can't just take Noopept and remember everything without revising, which is worth noting.

He describes the sublingual delivery method, the bitter taste, and gives a casual anecdote about cramming for exams. This is a personal testimonial, not a clinical report. That distinction matters enormously when we're talking about a compound with a thin, mostly Russian evidence base and no FDA approval.

Does the science back this up?

Partially, and with a lot of caveats. Noopept (N-phenylacetyl-L-prolylglycine ethyl ester) does have some neuropharmacological activity. It is not nothing. But the human evidence is thin, and most of the compelling data comes from Russia, where it was developed.

A 2014 randomized controlled trial by Neznamov and Teleshova published in Psychopharmacology and Biological Narcology found Noopept outperformed piracetam in patients with mild cognitive disorders, improving memory and attention. However, these were patients with existing cognitive impairment, not healthy students cramming for exams. Extrapolating those results to a healthy teenager studying Of Mice and Men is a stretch.

In animal models, Noopept has shown effects on BDNF and NGF expression (Ostrovskaya et al., 2008, Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine), which are proteins involved in neuroplasticity. That is a plausible mechanism for memory support. But rodent neuropharmacology does not translate cleanly to human exam performance, and no controlled trial has tested Noopept in healthy young adults doing academic revision.

What did they get wrong (or right)?

The sublingual delivery point is actually correct, and it is one of the more useful things in the video. Noopept has poor oral bioavailability due to first-pass hepatic metabolism, and sublingual absorption does bypass that. Tom's explanation is imprecise, "there's a blood vessel under there or something," but the underlying reasoning is sound. Credit where it is due.

What he got wrong is the attribution problem. He revised for his GCSEs, then took Noopept, then did well. That is not evidence Noopept worked. That is a teenager who revised doing well on exams. The cognitive load of attributing exam success to a powder rather than two weeks of study is significant, and it is exactly the kind of anecdote that sells supplements and misleads people.

He also describes it as something that makes you "smarter," which is an overclaim. Noopept's studied effects are on memory consolidation and retrieval in impaired populations, not general intelligence enhancement in healthy users. Smarter is a very big word for a compound with this evidence profile.

What should you actually know?

Noopept is not regulated as a drug in the UK or US for general cognitive enhancement. It exists in a legal grey zone in many countries. It is not approved by the FDA or EMA for any indication. Long-term safety data in healthy humans is essentially nonexistent.

The nootropic market Tom predicts will be "big business" is already large and largely unregulated. That creates real risks: inconsistent purity, no standardized dosing, and no clinical oversight. If you are considering any nootropic compound, that conversation belongs with a clinician who can assess your full health picture, not a TikTok video with 87,000 views.

The more honest framing here is that Noopept is an interesting research compound with a plausible mechanism and limited human data. It is not a proven cognitive enhancer for healthy people. Two weeks of actually reading the book probably did more than the powder.