Comment · Thu, April 27, 2017 · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
Why the lion's mane you're buying is probably bunk.
Original post in this thread
1337sh33p · 16 points
If you've spent any time around this sub's lion's mane threads, you'll have seen /u/realmushrooms warnings about products containing mycelium on grain and standardized to polysaccharides rather than beta-glucan.
While these are perfectly valid critiques, IMO this is only half the picture when evaluating lion's mane extract. Research indicates that it's at least equally important to use a product containing material extracted with ethanol (or certain other solvents). I've poured somewhat extensively through the extant research and failed to find a single positive result using water extract, ~~which it seems almost all products currently exclusively contain (including ND & realmushrooms).~~ (see edit)
Furthermore, Beta-glucans are not the 'active ingredients' of lion's mane as far as NGF is concerned (as is commonly claimed) but research indicates that this effect is due to hericenones (in the fruiting body) and erinacines (in the mycelium).
Addendum: While pulling up references for this post, I found a couple of rat studies on aqueous extracts, and while they do help neurons recover from injury, there was no inve…
What they were answering
1337sh33p · 7 points
Wow, thanks for this! It seems I was fundamentally mistaken about what your product contained, so I apologize. (As I said below I didn't mean to imply that either you or Real Mushrooms don't care about the research, I probably shouldn't have included that at all).
I'll have to experiment with higher doses, since with PowderCity's 10:1 was a little subtle at 500mg and only really effective at 1-2g daily for me.
I'm excited to hear about the new products on the horizon, a quality cultured mycelium extract could be very interesting.
I was a little frustrated when I wrote this post, so I apologize again for the tone. I'll go up and revise in a few minutes to reflect your valid criticism. I still think it's possible that a more concentrated solvent extraction is required to see noticeable effects in a short time period, but given the human trials I'm sure the 1:1 water 'extract' is much less worthless than I imply above.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
No worries. I completely understand the frustration. We've had this 8:1 dual water/ethanol extract ready to go for months. I just can't release it till our bank give me the go-ahead. So it's super frustrating! I have been working on the more potent extract for a long time, though. I know it can seem like sometimes I am not addressing things, but most of the time it's due to factors outside of my control.
I could bring back our old 10:1 extract as well, which was similar to PC's. However, the quality and consistency is just not there for me to be able to trust it. I know the mushrooms we currently sell are grown in clean and professional farms, do not have pesticides or heavy metals, are the correct species and plant part, and are grown on the appropriate growth medium. I cannot say that for sure with 90% of the other bulk suppliers I have access to, unfortunately.