MIND|SET CHALLENGE AT A GLANCE
Duration: 60 days
Participants Analyzed: 10
Intervention: 2 iwi Brain softgels + 1 Setas Botanicals Intention capsule, taken after breakfast
Lifestyle: No other intentional lifestyle changes during the study period
Pre-/Post-intervention measures: GAD-7 (anxiety), PSS-10 (perceived stress), and CFQ (everyday cognitive failures)
Primary Analysis: Within-participant change from baseline to day 60
Anxiety, perceived stress, and subjective cognitive difficulties frequently overlap in clinical practice. Patients experiencing persistent stress may also report difficulty concentrating, forgetfulness, irritability, trouble relaxing, and a diminished ability to manage everyday demands.
A recent exploratory evaluation referred to as the Mind|Set Challenge examined changes in anxiety, perceived stress, and self-reported everyday cognitive failures over 60 days of daily supplementation. Ten participants completed validated assessments both at initiation and at the conclusion of the program.
Although the small, uncontrolled study cannot establish treatment efficacy or causation, the paired results produced a consistently favorable signal, particularly for anxiety.
The Study
The analysis included 10 participants with matched baseline and 60-day surveys. Participants were aged between 50 and 70 years including 8 women and 2 men. Three established instruments were used to evaluate different dimensions of mental and cognitive well-being:
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7): a seven-item measure of anxiety symptoms, scored from 0–21.
- Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10): a 10-item assessment of the degree to which life circumstances are perceived as stressful, scored from 0–40.
- Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ): a 25-item measure of self-reported everyday cognitive lapses involving memory, attention, perception, and action, scored from 0–100.
For all three instruments, lower scores represent improvement.
Because each participant served as his or her own baseline comparison, investigators calculated paired changes from initiation to 60 days. Paired t-tests were supplemented with Wilcoxon signed-rank testing because of the small sample, and Holm correction was applied across the three primary comparisons.
What Changed After 60 Days?
Mean scores declined significantly on all three measures.
| Outcome | Initiation | 60 Days | Relative Change | p value | Cohen’s dz |
| Anxiety (GAD-7) | 7.9 ± 5.2 | 2.8 ± 2.9 | −64.6% | .002 | 1.32 |
| Perceived stress (PSS-10) | 16.9 ± 9.4 | 12.0 ± 8.4 | −29.0% | .009 | 1.05 |
| Cognitive failures (CFQ) | 37.8 ± 18.3 | 30.0 ± 13.8 | −20.6% | .026 | 0.84 |
All three paired comparisons remained statistically significant following Holm correction, and nonparametric Wilcoxon testing produced the same directional conclusions.
Anxiety Produced the Strongest Signal
The most striking finding involved anxiety.
Mean GAD-7 scores declined from 7.9 at initiation to 2.8 after 60 days, representing an average reduction of 5.1 points, or 64.6%.
More notable than the group mean alone was the consistency of the response: all 10 participants reported lower GAD-7 scores at follow-up, and six moved into a lower conventional anxiety-severity category.
Individual changes were substantial in several cases. One participant’s GAD-7 score declined by 13 points. Another decreased from 15 to 7, moving from the severe to mild conventional category, while another declined from 11 to 3, moving from moderate to minimal.
The standardized within-person effect size for GAD-7 was also large (dz=1.32). In a sample this small, effect-size estimates can be unstable, but the uniform direction of change makes anxiety the clearest signal warranting further investigation.
Perceived Stress Also Declined
Mean PSS-10 scores fell from 16.9 to 12.0, corresponding to a 29.0% reduction.
Eight of the 10 participants improved. The remaining two participants each increased by only one point.
Exploratory analysis suggested that some of the largest changes involved feeling nervous or stressed, confidence in handling personal problems, and perceived ability to cope with required tasks.
These item-level observations are clinically interesting but should not be overinterpreted.
Everyday Cognitive Failures Improved Less Uniformly
Participants also reported fewer everyday cognitive difficulties.
Mean CFQ scores declined from 37.8 to 30.0, a 20.6% reduction over the study period. Seven participants improved, while three showed slight increases.
The largest individual reductions were 22 and 20 points, respectively. Exploratory item analysis suggested improvement in lapses such as failing to recall someone’s name on introduction and failing to notice road signposts.
Because the CFQ measures perceived everyday cognitive failures rather than objectively tested cognitive performance, these findings warrant more caution than the anxiety results.
The most striking finding involved anxiety. More notable than the group mean alone was the consistency of the response: all 10 participants reported lower GAD-7 scores at follow-up, and six moved into a lower conventional anxiety-severity category.
What Might These Findings Mean for Practitioners?
Three aspects of the results are noteworthy.
First, the outcomes moved in the same favorable direction. Anxiety, perceived stress, and cognitive-failure scores all declined significantly at the group level. This suggests a potentially interconnected change in participants’ perceived psychological and cognitive functioning rather than improvement confined to a single questionnaire.
Second, anxiety was unusually consistent. Every participant improved on GAD-7, with several crossing conventional symptom-severity thresholds. That consistency may be more informative for designing the next study than statistical significance alone.
Third, cognitive response was more heterogeneous. The significant group-level CFQ improvement is encouraging, but three participants did not improve. This may reflect genuine variability in response, limitations of the measurement instrument, or other factors unrelated to the intervention.
Caution Is Warranted
The magnitude of the observed changes is encouraging, but several limitations substantially constrain interpretation.
- The paired cohort contained only 10 participants.
- There was no randomized control group, placebo comparison, or blinding.
- All three outcomes were self-reported.
Clinical Takeaway
In this small paired cohort, 60 days of daily supplementation was associated with significant reductions in anxiety, perceived stress, and self-reported cognitive failures. Anxiety produced the strongest signal: mean GAD-7 scores declined 64.6%, and every participant improved.
For clinicians, the most compelling finding is that a multidimensional 60-day supplement intervention produced a coherent, measurable signal across anxiety, perceived stress, and perceived cognitive function.
Daily Intervention
- 1 Setas Botanicals Intention capsule: Cordyceps militaris (175 mg), Inonotus obliquus (150 mg), Rhodiola rosea (100 mg), Zingiber officinale (75 mg)
- 2 iwi Brain softgels: Algae oil blend (300 mg DHA, 50 mg EPA), phosphatidylserine (50 mg), green coffee (Coffea robusta) bean extract (25 mg)
References
Spitzer RL, Kroenke K, Williams JBW, Löwe B. A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: the GAD-7. Arch Intern Med. 2006;166(10):1092-1097. doi:10.1001/archinte.166.10.1092.
Cohen S, Kamarck T, Mermelstein R. A global measure of perceived stress. J Health Soc Behav. 1983;24(4):385-396. doi:10.2307/2136404.
Broadbent DE, Cooper PF, FitzGerald P, Parkes KR. The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) and its correlates. Br J Clin Psychol. 1982;21(1):1-16. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8260.1982.tb01421.x
