Approaching the end of her postgraduate diploma in counselling, Robyn Ramsay was looking for an extra boost to help her study.
She’d heard that lion’s mane – an edible mushroom with health benefits said to extend from supporting the immune system to aiding digestion – could improve brain function and memory, so bought a supplement from her local health food store.
‘I was struggling to keep up with all the information I was being taught and I thought it would help,’ she recalls.
Robyn, 34, who lives in Glasgow, started taking the supplements in April last year. ‘I noticed a definite difference,’ she says. ‘I was more focused when it came to doing my coursework and able to write essays without getting distracted.’
Robyn was so pleased that she doubled her daily dose from one 500mg capsule to two (still within the maximum suggested dose). But after three weeks she developed headaches.
‘They weren’t overly intense, but I’m not someone who usually gets headaches, so I really noticed them,’ she says.
Robyn Ramsay started taking lion’s mane in the hope that the supplement would help her focus while studying for a counselling diploma
Robyn put it down to stress but, a fortnight later, watching TV alone in her flat, she experienced her first panic attack.
She recalls: ‘My heart was racing and my chest and throat felt tight. I kept jumping up and feeling like I had to run into the next room.’
She tried to calm herself using deep breathing techniques learned from her counselling training, but the sense of panic still persisted.
‘Eventually, I fell asleep,’ she says, ‘but when I woke up the next morning, the feeling was still there’.
It was the beginning of a nightmare lasting several months that Robyn now attributes to her lion’s mane supplements.
And she isn’t the only one. On the online forum Reddit, there is a community of 25,000 people claiming to have suffered harm from taking lion’s mane, with more joining all the time.
Many, like Robyn, report an initial boost in cognitive function, with better focus and memory for example, followed by symptoms of anxiety, such as panic attacks and dissociation (a sense of feeling disconnected from the world around you).
While some had mental health problems before using the supplement, many – like Robyn – had none. So could lion’s mane really be the culprit?
The mushroom – a large, white fungus with shaggy spines that hang like a mane – primarily grows on dead or dying hardwood trees and logs in forests across North America, Europe and Asia.
It has been prized for its flavour and potential health benefits for centuries. And with the suggestion that it may boost brain power and even hold back the effects of ageing, it’s easy to see why sales of lion’s mane are soaring – increasing by 1,300 per cent over the past year in the UK, according to data analytics company Nielsen.
‘Lion’s mane has become so trendy because it’s super powerful,’ explains Catalina Fernandez de Ana Portela, a biologist specialising in the study of mushrooms from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
She says lion’s mane benefits two areas in particular – cognition and the gut.
In the case of cognition, she explains, it protects neurons (nerve cells) that transmit information between brain cells.
This is in part due to molecules called hericenones and erinacines, ‘which are believed to stimulate nerve growth factor, a protein that helps grow new neurons – these nerve cells send messages all over the body – as well as protect the myelin sheath which covers and protects the nerves themselves’, says Catalina.
But she says lion’s mane also ‘reduces inflammation and oxidative stress [damage to cells caused by free radical molecules] and regenerates neurons’, making it a potentially potent weapon against cognitive decline.
In one trial involving 30 people over 50 with mild cognitive impairment, taking lion’s mane was found to improve functioning. The results, published in the journal Phytotherapy Research in 2009, showed that, after 16 weeks, the group taking lion’s mane improved their performance on cognitive tests more than those taking a placebo.
And there’s some evidence it could boost performance in otherwise healthy people.
On the online forum Reddit, there is a community of 25,000 people claiming to have suffered harm from taking the lion’s mane mushroom, with more joining all the time
A randomised, placebo-controlled trial of 31 healthy adults over 50, found that taking 3.2g of lion’s mane daily for 12 weeks improved cognitive function (based on one form of cognitive test), according to the results published in Biomedical Research International in 2019.
Catalina Fernandez de Ana Portela, who has published five research papers on mushrooms and led seven clinical trials, is so convinced of the benefits of lion’s mane in protecting against age-related mental decline that she believes all adults aged over 40 should take the supplement.
When it comes to gut health, animal and limited human studies suggest lion’s mane acts as a prebiotic (feeding ‘good’ bacteria).
In another study, published earlier this year in the journal Biomedicines, patients with colorectal cancer given the supplements after surgery experienced significant improvements in the diversity of the microbes in their gut (considered a measure of gut microbe health) compared with a placebo group.
Edzard Ernst, formerly a professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, says it’s well-known that mushrooms contain powerful compounds – ‘think of the psychedelic effects of magic mushrooms’ – yet the therapeutic potential remains ‘seriously under-researched’, he warns. He adds: ‘Preliminary evidence suggests that lion’s mane might be useful for treating age-related problems and brain diseases.
‘But there are numerous risks –ranging from allergic reactions to digestive problems [e.g. bloating, diarrhoea], sleep disorders, panic attacks and interactions with prescribed drugs [such as blood thinners].
‘In addition, lion’s mane might exacerbate conditions such as multiple sclerosis, lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.’
Nicholas Money, a professor of biology at Miami University, points to research into psilocybin – the naturally occurring psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms – as a possible treatment for depression and anxiety which has shown that while some benefit, for a minority of others it can be ‘catastrophic’.
‘Ergo, if lion’s mane actually affects the nervous system –although I’m a sceptic on this point, show me the evidence –then it could provoke anxiety too,’ he says. ‘Eating lion’s mane could be playing with fire for the most vulnerable consumers.’
Catalina Fernandez de Ana Portela, who runs Hifas da Terra – a company that makes lion’s mane supplements – perhaps not surprisingly believes that side-effects such as anxiety are not attributable to the mushroom, but rather what it is grown in.
‘Mushrooms are bio-accumulators, meaning they readily absorb compounds from their growing medium; whether those are beneficial nutrients or harmful contaminants,’ she says.
‘Non-organic mushrooms may be grown in substrates [the underlying layer they grow on] treated with synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fungicides.’
In her own lab, Catalina’s team tests for more than 400 different contaminants and pollutants that mushrooms could potentially contain. ‘We won’t use mushrooms that show any, but these are still mushrooms that could be sold to be eaten.’
Professor Money says: ‘Wild mushrooms have been shown to accumulate toxic heavy metals when they are growing in polluted soils’.
But he adds that cultivated mushrooms are unlikely to present a health threat in general, ‘because they are grown in controlled conditions’.
Yet there is certainly concern that, as supplements are regulated under food law, while they must not be sold with misleading terms and are subject to basic checks they will not have been rigorously tested to prove their safety and effectiveness in the same way a medicine would be.
Robyn – like many – believed lion’s mane would do her no harm and continued taking it for weeks after her panic attack, since ‘everyone said it was good for anxiety’. But her symptoms only worsened.
‘I started to feel little brain zaps, like tiny electric shocks in the head,’ she says.
‘And I had tinnitus, which I’d never had before and would hear things that weren’t there – like the washing machine going when it wasn’t,’ she added. Robyn saw her GP who suggested she’d developed anxiety and prescribed a short course of diazepam.
Soon after, Robyn saw a post online about lion’s mane ‘that talked about the kind of symptoms I had and it clicked’. She immediately stopped taking it and her symptoms lessened ‘quickly but not immediately’.
She says: ‘It took a good couple of days to calm down a bit and then months to feel anything approaching normal. I also felt a very strong sense of disassociation. Weirdly, my period also stopped for four months.’
For several months Robyn needed beta blockers, prescribed by her doctor, to control her anxiety.
A year later, Robyn claims she is ‘95 per cent’ back to normal.
Others have found the ill-effects of lion’s mane to be more enduring.
Will Mason (not his real surname), 32, has been battling with profound cognitive and psychiatric symptoms since trying lion’s mane two years ago. In July 2023, Will was struggling with low mood while working towards graduation in film studies.
‘I have ADHD and I was feeling a bit depressed and anxious,’ he told Good Health.
‘I heard about lion’s mane on a podcast, praising its benefits for mental clarity and mood,’ he said, adding: ‘It sounded great.’
He checked with his doctor in New Zealand – where he was studying at the time – who after a quick search told him he would potentially only face mild side-effects, such as an upset stomach.
Will believed the supplement ‘would either do nothing or might help a little.’ He now says: ‘I was pretty naive. I never imagined it could be life-altering.’
He took one 700mg capsule a day and ‘for the first couple of weeks, I felt more creative, my speech flowed more easily and I connected better with my work’, he says. ‘My mood was slightly better, too.’
But within weeks came headaches, dizziness and a flu-like malaise. A month after starting the supplement, he spiralled into depression and experienced attacks of other troubling psychological symptoms.
‘I forgot where I was,’ he recalls. ‘It was absolutely terrifying. I would turn up at university on the weekend thinking that we had a class, for example.’
By August, he was too ill to continue his course or his part-time job in catering. Looking online, Will found others with similar experiences who had taken lion’s mane and realised that his symptoms coincided with him starting the supplement.
Despite stopping it, however, his condition worsened and he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Auckland for three days.
Now back at home living with his parents in Bath, his recovery has been slow. Medication has eased his panic attacks and his headaches subsided after 18 months, but he has been left with severe fatigue and dissociation.
‘I also still can’t read properly, follow TV or manage daily tasks,’ he says.
The fallout has been immense: ‘I missed my graduation and couldn’t attend my grandmother’s funeral,’ he says.
‘My parents have been patient, but we’ve had some big arguments, the whole thing has been difficult for them.’
Will is calling for tighter regulation of the supplement industry.
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever return to a normal life, and there are thousands more like me. Something needs to be done to ensure these health products are safe.’
Martin Last, director general of the Health Foods Manufacturers’ Association (HFMA) – which represents manufacturers and suppliers of supplements – said: ‘The HFMA promotes the highest quality standards of production for our industry including those required for food supplements.
‘This ensures that manufacturers can meet all the regulatory requirements as covered by Food Standards Agency’s guidance to ensure safe and quality products for consumers.’
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .