Science Says This Mushroom Could Help Keep Your Brain Sharp as You Age
Discover how lion’s mane mushroom supports brain health. Explore the clinical studies on memory, mycelium vs. extract, and how to choose a real supplement.
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Lion’s mane mushrooms have been having their moment, and the science is starting to back it up. Studies have started to show that eating mushrooms twice a week can lower the risk of mild cognitive impairment, an early, subtle decline in memory and thinking skills that’s a step before dementia, but lion’s mane, or Hericium erinaceus, is stealing the spotlight.
What Does the Science Say? Lion’s Mane Clinical Trials and Brain Health
“The evidence for lion’s mane has grown considerably over the past 15 years, and we’ve been following it every step of the way,” says Skye Chilton, who has spent over a decade sourcing and testing mushroom extracts for the supplement industry. The mushroom has been a fixture of Traditional Chinese Medicine for centuries, according to Chilton, but it’s the last decade and a half of human trials that have given it a foothold outside of that tradition, testing whether it actually does anything for memory and focus, not just whether people believe it does.
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Two early placebo-controlled trials, one in 2009 and another a decade later, gave older adults with the same mild memory decline either dried lion’s mane or a fake pill and found real, if modest and temporary, improvement on standard memory and thinking tests, according to the researchers behind both studies. Neither trial involved more than a few dozen people, but both were randomized and double-blind, meaning neither the participants nor the researchers knew who’d gotten the real mushroom versus the fake pill until the study ended, the design that carries the most weight in this kind of research.
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How Lion’s Mane Works: Hericenones, Erinacines, and the Blood-Brain Barrier
Part of what’s kept researchers interested is that lion’s mane and its mycelium, the root-like network the mushroom grows from before it ever sprouts, aren’t the same thing chemically, according to Chilton. The mushroom carries one set of compounds, hericenones, and the mycelium carries another, erinacines, including one called Erinacine A, both groups of compounds researchers are studying for possible effects on brain and nerve cells.
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A 2020 pilot trial gave adults with early Alzheimer’s disease an Erinacine A-enriched extract and found improvement across multiple memory and daily-function measures compared to a fake pill. Erinacine A has also been shown in laboratory research to cross the blood-brain barrier, the shield that keeps most substances in the bloodstream from ever reaching brain tissue, and to stimulate BDNF and NGF, two proteins that help brain cells grow and survive, research Chilton points to when explaining why formulators have taken notice of the compound.
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Mushroom Extract vs. Mycelial Grain: How to Choose a Quality Supplement
None of that makes lion’s mane fast-acting, according to Chilton. “It won’t feel like your first cup of coffee in the morning, or a brain-boosting nootropic stack,” he says. “Think of it as investing over time into a savings account for your brain.”
That slow build is part of why the supplement shelf gets confusing fast. A jar labeled “lion’s mane mycelium” and one labeled “lion’s mane mushroom extract” can contain almost entirely different compounds, according to Chilton, and mycelium itself is often grown on a solid grain substrate rather than in liquid. “Mycelium fermented grain is made by growing mycelium on a grain substrate, usually rice, oats or sorghum,” he explains. “With this method, the problem is that the mycelium cannot be separated from the grain, so the grain becomes part of the finished product.” None of that shows up on the front of the bottle, which is why Chilton recommends asking a brand directly for a certificate of analysis, essentially a lab report proving what’s actually inside a given batch, before assuming a jar marked “mycelium” is doing what the studies describe.
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“Though these are relatively small controlled studies, the consistency of findings across five independent, placebo-controlled human trials, using two different parts of the lion’s mane fungal organism, is very promising,” Chilton says, “and we hope to see larger clinical trials conducted in the near future to further prove these findings.” It’s the kind of early, cross-lab consistency that researchers in other corners of nutrition science, including those studying gut bacteria’s role in metabolic health, point to as the first real sign a supplement might be worth the hype.
Skye Chilton is CEO and co-founder of Real Mushrooms, a mushroom supplement company based in British Columbia, Canada.
