@SocialGaff Sadly I didn't keep long term track of any of the stuff I was originally reading. To be honest I didn't think it was worth it to keep detailed notes, because I didn't think it would work well enough to matter 😅

My general process is often to start with meta analyses, since they give the best summary overviews and often do the heavy lifting of filtering out stuff like exaggerated claims and flawed studies.

As icky as google is, Scholar is still a fairly decent starting point, unless you happen to be lucky enough to have access to something like a university research network.

Here's an example of the kind of search I started with: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=acetyl-l-carnitine+meta+analysis&btnG=

Some things to know:

ALCAR goes by many names and abbreviations (LAC is common). Check for synonyms.

The full name (acetyl-l-carnitine) is quite important. That "acetyl" does a lot of heavy lifting. Plain l-carnitine has different effects, side effects, and safety considerations (although both are pretty safe in general) so use care to distinguish.

I'd do the same for citicoline (which also goes by CDP-choline, and also there are many varities of choline in the research, so again being careful about specific forms is important).

Best of luck!