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What Does Lion's Mane Actually Do, Anyway?

Plus: the benefits of just 30 days without processed foods

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The 10almonds Team
June 26, 2023

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Loading Screen Tip: whatever you do, always give 100%. Unless you’re donating blood!

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⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

  • Highly processed foods are health disasters, and skipping them can give many benefits, including:

    • Better gut health

    • Healthier blood sugar levels

    • Skin clarity

    • Weight regulation

    • Improved sleep

    • Mood stability

    • Increased longevity

  • Lion’s mane mushroom has benefits for neuron (regrowth) and may slow dementia.

    • That’s about all we could find high-quality human studies for when it comes to lion’s mane, but animal studies so far are also promising, suggesting additional benefits:

      • For digestion

      • Against inflammation

      • For cardiovascular health

      • For diabetes management

      • Against cancer

      • Against aging

  • At 10almonds we’re fond of saying that “mental health is also just health”, and one of the most evidence-based ways to look after mental health is with therapy. But that’s not always so accessible for everyone!

    • Today’s sponsor, BetterHelp, specialize in making therapy accessible to all; check them out in the sponsor section!

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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👀 WATCH AND LEARN

What happens when you quit processed foods for 30 days?

For your convenience, here’s a very unprocessed menu:

💊 MAIN FEATURE

What does lion’s mane mushroom actually do, anyway?

You may know it as an ingredient in nootropic supplements. You may have heard of lion’s mane mushroom coffee. You may know it as the big shaggy white mushroom that grows in nature and can look very impressive.

What’s special about it?

The lion’s mane mushroom, or ​​Hericium erinaceus (we mention, as studies we’ll cite often use the botanical name) is an adaptogenic agent that has an established ability to promote nerve regeneration through nerve growth factor neurotrophic activity. In other words, it helps (re)grow neurons.

In a 2023 study, researchers wondered if its abilities (well-established in the peripheral nervous system) would work in the central nervous system too, namely the brain, specifically the hippocampus (responsible for memory).

To boil what they found down to a single line, they concluded:

❝[Lion's mane extract] therefore acts through a novel pan-neurotrophic signaling pathway, leading to improved cognitive performance.❞

You can read the full study for yourself (with pictures!) here:

Limitations of the study

It’s worth noting that the above study was performed on mice brains, not those of humans. As there is a shortage of human volunteers willing to have their brains sliced and examined under microscopes, we do not expect this study to be repeated with humans any time soon.

So, are there human studies that have been done?

There are! Particularly promising was this 2020 study of people with Alzheimer’s disease, wherein supplementation with 1g of lion’s mane mushroom daily for 49 weeks significantly increased cognitive test scores compared with a placebo; you can read about it here:

Additionally, this 2019 study showed that taking 1.2g daily for eight weeks helped relieve depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders in overweight or obese patiences:

Are there other health benefits?

It seems so! Unfortunately, most of its other health claims are only supported by animal studies so far, aside from one small study funded by a supplement company for their supplement that contained mostly Agaricus blazei (a different mushroom) with 14% lion’s mane.

However, in animal studies, lion’s mane has also shown promise:

Where can I get it?

We don’t sell it (or anything else, for that matter) but if you’d like to try it, here’s an example product for your convenience:

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❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Feeding You Lies: How to Unravel the Food Industry's Playbook and Reclaim Your Health - by Vani Hari

When it comes to advertising, we know that companies will often be as misleading as they can get away with. But just how misleading is it?

Vani Hari, of "Food Babe" fame, is here to unravel it all.

The book covers many areas of food and drink advertising and marketing, and gives particular attention to:

  • Sodas (with and without sugar), and how deleterious they are to the health—as well as not even helping people lose weight, but actively hindering

  • Nutritionally fortified foods, and what we may or may not actually get from them by the time the processing is done

  • Organic food, and what that may or may not mean

She also covers a lot of what happens outside of supermarkets, way back in universities and corporate boardrooms. In short, who is crossing whose palms with silver for a seal of approval… And what that means for us as consumers.

A strength of this book that sets it apart from many of its genre, by the way, is that while being deeply critical of certain institutions' practices, it doesn't digress into tinfoil-hat pseudoscientific scaremongering, either. Here at 10almonds we love actual science, so that was good to see too.

Bottom line: is you'd like to know "can they say that and get away with it if it's not true?" and make decisions based on the actual nutritional value of things, this is a great book for you.

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Wishing you the very best start to the week,

The 10almonds Team