Meet Sandy.
She’s an artist, who likes to start her day early with a mandatory 6am coffee.
That would usually keep her going until around midday. But by lunchtime, whatever energy she'd had - was gone.
By noon, Sandy's day was done.
The frustrating part was that Sandy was doing all the things she thought she should be doing.
She was a regular at her gym, she ate well and she prioritised sleep.
But there was another reason losing her afternoons felt particularly frustrating. Retirement had finally given Sandy time for all the things that working life had squeezed out.
High on her list of priorities, was pursuing her creative life as an artist. But there was a snag…
Now that she had time. She didn't have the energy.
Here’s Sandy’s Caffeine 2™ story, in her own words.
“I Felt I Was Growing Too Old, Too Fast.”
“I was struggling with my get-up-and-go. I would sit and do embroidery and watch The Traitors on reality TV, and literally nothing else. I barely had enough energy to get dinner on the table.”
After two serious bouts of COVID-19 followed by months of Long COVID, Sandy felt as though she'd never quite regained her old momentum.
“I was struggling to get a workday that extended past noon.”
More than the lost productivity, though, there was something unsettling about feeling that different from herself.
“I felt I was growing too old too fast.”
“It seemed to me I needed something to scaffold me back up to normal strength levels.”
The answer eventually came from her niece.
And a word Sandy had never heard before.
“Noo… What?”
Sandy was visiting her sister in Vancouver, Washington, along with her niece, Maya.
Maya has lived with multiple autoimmune diseases since birth and, according to Sandy, has gone out of her way to educate herself about health. So when Sandy described what had been happening, Maya listened.
Then she had an idea.
“I think you need something called nootropics.”
Sandy looked at her, “Noo… what? Explain, please.”
Maya explained the basic idea: substances used to support aspects of cognitive performance such as attention, memory and motivation. Then she started scrolling on her phone.
Sandy and her sister waited. “MIND BLOWN,” Sandy remembers.
Maya eventually landed on Performance Lab® Caffeine 2.
What caught Sandy's attention wasn't simply that it contained caffeine. She already knew caffeine. She started every morning with it. It was the idea that caffeine itself could be approached differently.
“A rethinking and reformulation of caffeine? Genius!”
She ordered her first bottle there and then.
The Problem With That Second Coffee
When Caffeine 2 arrived, Sandy didn't immediately add it to her morning routine.
She thought about when she actually needed it.
Her first coffee was usually around 6am, and worked perfectly well for her. By noon, however, Sandy felt its effects had worn off.
The obvious solution was to have another coffee. But she'd tried that.
“A second cup of coffee rode my body very differently than the first — harsher, less effective and often problematic for getting to sleep at night.”
So rather than replacing her morning coffee, Sandy decided she would try Caffeine 2 at noon instead. That decision became the basis of a routine that worked much better for her.
But the interesting thing was that she didn't particularly notice Caffeine 2 kicking in.
She noticed something else.
“I Realised I’d Had a Long and Productive Afternoon”
Sandy took Caffeine 2 at noon, after a short rest. Then she got on with her afternoon. There was no dramatic caffeine hit. No obvious moment when she suddenly felt switched on.
In fact, it wasn't until much later that Sandy realised something had changed.
“I immediately saw a difference, not at the beginning of the afternoon but at dinner time, when I was easily making dinner and realising I’d had a long and productive afternoon.”
That became one of the defining differences between Caffeine 2 and the second coffee she'd previously tried.
“The caffeine hit isn’t like coffee, not a hit at all, but more like a long, smooth ride through the day.”
She describes the effect as almost unnoticeable. It's only when she looks back over what she's accomplished that she realises just how different her afternoon has been.
And importantly for someone who'd found a second coffee could interfere with bedtime, Sandy says she was still able to go to sleep at her usual time.
She describes that part simply as “a quiet finish.”
Reclaiming the Second Half of the Day
Sandy now has a phrase for what Caffeine 2 has given her.
She's got her afternoons back.
“Instead of wilting at noon, I blossom open to the rest of the day with a quiet and steady energy.”
For a working artist, those extra hours matter.
They're hours to think, make, write and create. They're also hours in which Sandy simply feels capable of doing what she wants to do rather than watching the rest of the day disappear from the sofa.
And that's why, when asked about the biggest difference Caffeine 2 has made, Sandy doesn't talk about caffeine, she talks about time.
“This product has let me reclaim six hours of productive time a day.”
Retirement gave Sandy something she’d spent her working life working for: more control over her own time.
She wanted to use it to make art, create, and fill her days with the things there had never been enough time for. Losing every afternoon meant losing a substantial part of that freedom.
Now she feels like she has the afternoons back.
“Time, as they say, is money when you are a working artist, so that is a massive reclaiming of time and energy.”
Lab Notes: A Different Approach to Caffeine
When Sandy’s niece first suggested nootropics, Sandy’s response was: “Noo… what?”
Put simply, nootropics are substances used to support aspects of cognitive performance such as focus, attention and mental energy. And that makes them interesting partners for caffeine.
Because caffeine is already doing something useful for the brain. By blocking adenosine receptors, it temporarily reduces the signals that make us feel tired, helping us feel more awake and alert.
The problem is that more caffeine isn’t always the answer.
Sandy had already discovered that for herself. Her 6am coffee worked well, but another cup at noon felt “harsher, less effective” and could make it harder for her to sleep that night.
That’s where Caffeine 2 takes a different approach.
Less Caffeine. More Around It.
Each serving contains 50 mg of caffeine. This is deliberately lower than you’ll find in many cups of coffee. Alongside that we’ve chosen nootropics that will complement it, rather than simply adding more stimulation.
There’s 100 mg of L-theanine, an amino acid that’s been studied alongside caffeine for its effects on attention and cognitive performance.
The 2:1 ratio also helps explain the idea behind the “calm, controlled” energy Sandy describes: caffeine provides the stimulation, while L-theanine is included to help smooth the experience.
L-tyrosine takes a different role. It’s an amino acid the body uses to produce catecholamine neurotransmitters including dopamine and noradrenaline, which are involved in attention, motivation and our response to mentally demanding situations.
Caffeine 2 also provides vitamins B2, B6, folate (B9) and B12, nutrients involved in normal energy-yielding metabolism and nervous-system function.
So rather than asking caffeine to do all the work, the formula surrounds a relatively modest dose with nutrients and nootropics that support the kind of mental performance you were probably looking for from caffeine in the first place.
But What About Sleep?
There’s no form of caffeine that can promise not to affect your sleep.
Caffeine has a half-life of several hours, which means some of the caffeine you consume at lunchtime can still be in your system later that evening. How strongly that affects you depends on factors including the amount you consume, what time you take it and how quickly your individual body metabolises caffeine.
All of the above makes dose particularly important.
Sandy wasn't replacing her second coffee with an equivalent caffeine hit. Caffeine 2 gives her 50 mg of caffeine alongside the rest of the formula.
In Sandy’s case, that meant she could take Caffeine 2 at noon, have a really productive afternoon, and still go to bed at her usual time.
As she puts it, the energy has “a quiet finish.”
A note about customer stories
Every experience shared on this page is genuine and written with the customer's permission. These stories reflect individual experiences, which naturally vary from person to person.
Food supplements should be used alongside a varied, balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.
We encourage anyone with concerns about their health to seek advice from a qualified healthcare professional.
