Is lion's mane a nootropic?

Three definitions of one word: Giurgea's five criteria of 1972 and how lion's mane scores against each, and the regulator's definition, which does not exist

Is lion's mane a nootropic is a question that has to be answered three times, because the word nootropic has three definitions in use and the mushroom scores differently under each. The first and oldest is Giurgea's. Corneliu Giurgea, the Romanian chemist who synthesised piracetam, coined the word in 1972 from the Greek for mind and for turning, and set five criteria a substance had to meet to earn it: it should enhance learning and memory; it should protect the brain against conditions that disrupt learned behaviour, such as hypoxia or electroconvulsive shock; it should protect the brain against chemical injury, such as barbiturates; it should lack the sedation, the stimulation and the toxicity of the psychotropic drugs; and it should act through a defined mechanism rather than through general arousal. Scored against the five, lion's mane meets one. The fourth it meets cleanly: it has no stimulant action, no sedative action, no receptor it occupies, and a tolerability record across the human trials with no serious adverse events and rodent toxicology at grams per kilogram with no organ change. The first it meets in one population and fails in another: a cognitive scale separated from placebo in older adults with mild impairment over sixteen weeks and reversed in washout, while four weeks of daily capsules in young adults produced no clear effect, which for a lifter's age is a fail. The second and third, protection against hypoxia, shock and chemical injury, have been tested on the mushroom only in rodents and cells and never in a human, so they are untested rather than failed. The fifth, a defined mechanism, is the one the marketing leans on hardest and the one the evidence supports least: the nerve growth factor story is a signal in cultured cells and rodents that has never been measured in a human being, with no human pharmacokinetics and no human NGF result, so the mechanism is proposed rather than defined. One met, one half met, two untested, one unmeasured: by its own definition, the word does not fit.

The second definition is the regulator's, and it does not exist. The word nootropic appears nowhere in UK or European food supplement law, in the list of authorised health claims or in the medicines framework; a substance is either a medicine, licensed on evidence for a stated indication, or a food supplement, sold on safety with only the authorised claims permitted on its label, and lion's mane is the second. It has no authorised health claim of any kind, cognitive or otherwise, which means that the words nootropic, brain support, focus and memory may not appear on its label or listing as claims, and a product that uses them is making a statement the regulations do not recognise and that an enforcement officer can act on. Under the regulator's definition, then, the honest description of lion's mane is a food supplement containing a mushroom extract, with no claim, and the question is a nootropic is not one the regulator can be asked.

The marketplace's definition, which means least, what the evidence buys under each of the three, and the honest buy

The third definition is the marketplace's, and it is the one every tub on the shelf uses: a nootropic is anything sold for the brain. Under it lion's mane is a nootropic without any doubt, and so is a coffee, a fish oil, a B vitamin complex, a bottle of water and a bar of dark chocolate, because the definition is about the shelf a product is placed on rather than anything the product does. This is the definition that lets a listing call the mushroom a natural nootropic, and it is the definition that means least, since a word that applies to everything on a shelf distinguishes nothing on it. The three impostors that the marketplace word lets through are worth naming, because a lifter buying under it meets them: the stimulant sold as a nootropic, usually caffeine in a blend, which fails Giurgea's fourth criterion outright and produces the felt effect the mushroom gets credit for; the vitamin sold as a nootropic, which works only in the deficient and carries an authorised claim about normal function rather than enhancement; and the extract sold as a nootropic on a mechanism, which is the mushroom's own case, a cell signal translated into a human promise.

What the evidence buys, under any of the three definitions, is the same two human results, and the useful question is what a lifter gets for the money rather than which word fits. The sixteen-week trial in 30 older adults with mild impairment found a cognitive scale separating from placebo at week eight, widening to sixteen and reversing in a four-week washout, at 3g a day of fruiting body powder; the young-adult pilot found a faster Stroop at sixty minutes after a single 1.8g dose and no clear effect after four weeks daily. For a lifter in their twenties or thirties with no impairment, that is one adjacent signal that did not last and one result in a population they do not belong to, which under Giurgea's definition is a fail on the first criterion, under the regulator's is no claim, and under the marketplace's is a product on the brain shelf. Where it sits on the evidence ladder is below creatine, whose cognitive effects in the sleep-deprived and in vegetarians have randomised trials behind them, below caffeine, whose attention effect has an authorised claim, and well below sleep and training, which are not nootropics under any definition because nobody sells them. The honest buy is a capsule that uses none of the three words on its label and lets the trials say what they say: the worked example, {FLLM}, a stated 5:1 fruiting body extract labelled 1500mg mushroom equivalent per capsule, 120 days for £15.49 at 13p, UK made, independently lab tested, caffeine free so that it never passes as a nootropic on the strength of a stimulant, and claim-free so that the regulator's definition is the one its label obeys, which is the only one of the three a label is allowed to.

What to check on the label

Questions people also ask

Is lion's mane considered a nootropic?

Under three different definitions, three different answers: by Giurgea's 1972 criteria, which require enhanced learning and memory, protection against disruption and chemical injury, no sedation or stimulation or toxicity, and a defined mechanism, it meets only the fourth and fails the first in young adults; by the regulator, which has no definition of nootropic, it is a food supplement with no authorised health claim and the word may not appear on its label as a claim; and by the marketplace, which calls anything sold for the brain a nootropic, yes, exactly as a coffee or a fish oil is.

What are Giurgea's five criteria for a nootropic?

Set in 1972 by the chemist who coined the word: a nootropic should enhance learning and memory; protect the brain against conditions that disrupt learned behaviour, such as hypoxia or electroconvulsive shock; protect the brain against chemical injury, such as barbiturates; lack the sedation, stimulation and toxicity of the psychotropic drugs; and act through a defined mechanism rather than general arousal; the fourth is the one most products sold as nootropics fail, since caffeine is a stimulant, and the fifth is the one lion's mane fails, since its nerve growth factor mechanism has never been measured in a human.

Can a supplement legally be called a nootropic in the UK?

The word appears nowhere in food supplement law, so it is neither permitted nor defined; a food supplement may carry only the authorised health claims for its ingredients, and lion's mane has none, so nootropic, brain support, focus and memory used as claims on a lion's mane label or listing are statements the regulations do not recognise and that trading standards can act on; a product that uses the word is describing the shelf it wants to sit on rather than anything the regulations have accepted.

What is the evidence that lion's mane works as a nootropic?

Two human results: a sixteen-week trial in 30 adults aged 50 to 80 with mild cognitive impairment, where a cognitive scale separated from placebo at week eight, widened to sixteen and reversed in a four-week washout at 3g a day of fruiting body powder; and a young-adult pilot where a single 1.8g dose produced a faster Stroop at sixty minutes and four weeks of daily capsules produced no clear effect; for a lifter with no impairment that is one adjacent signal that did not last and one result in a population they are not in, which sits below creatine and caffeine on the evidence ladder.

What is the most proven nootropic for a lifter?

Under Giurgea's own fourth criterion none of the usual candidates qualify, since caffeine is a stimulant, but on the evidence ladder the order is clear: caffeine has an authorised claim for attention and alertness at 75mg and dozens of trials; creatine has randomised trials for cognition in the sleep-deprived and in vegetarians on top of its muscle evidence; and above both sit sleep and training, which nobody sells and which are therefore nootropics under no definition despite moving memory, attention and reaction time more than any capsule; lion's mane sits below all of them, with no claim and one adjacent signal at a lifter's age.

Sources

1. The nootropic concept literature: Corneliu Giurgea coined the term in 1972 with criteria including enhanced learning and memory, protection of the brain, and an absence of the usual pharmacological effects and toxicity of psychotropic drugs. PubMed record
2. The UK food supplement labelling regulations: a food supplement label must carry the words food supplement, the recommended daily dose, a warning not to exceed it, a statement that supplements should not replace a varied diet, a warning to keep out of reach of young children, and the names and quantities of the active ingredients, and must not carry any health claim that is not authorised or any statement that the product prevents, treats or cures disease. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/1387/contents/made
3. Retained Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods, and the Great Britain nutrition and health claims register. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/great-britain-nutrition-and-health-claims-nhc-register
4. The evidence hierarchy in clinical research: systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials sit above single randomised trials, which sit above pilot and uncontrolled studies, which sit above animal and cell work, and a claim is proven in proportion to the highest level it reaches and the number and size of studies at that level. PubMed record

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