Lion's mane

An edible mushroom taken as a supplement, best known for memory and focus.

People take it for

Memory and focus
Mood and anxiety
Nerve health

A plain-English overview, not advice. Written from published reviews and trials and from what people say in public forums.

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What is lion's mane?

Lion’s mane is an edible mushroom, known in Japan as yamabushitake and in China as houtou, where it has been eaten and used in traditional medicine for centuries. Two parts of it end up in supplements: the fruiting body, which is the mushroom itself, and the mycelium, the thread-like network it grows from. Both carry the compounds researchers have been most interested in, a group of sugars called polysaccharides and two families of smaller molecules, the hericenones and the erinacines. In Britain it is sold as capsules, powders and extracts, and it is the mushroom most often bought with thinking and concentration in mind.

Why do people take lion's mane?

Memory and focus

The thinking. Memory, concentration and that mentally foggy feeling are what most people buy lion’s mane for. The idea starts with two families of compounds in the mushroom, the hericenones and the erinacines, which reviews describe as prompting cells to release nerve growth factor, a signal the body uses to keep nerve cells in repair. From there the thought runs that a brain whose cells are better looked after might do its everyday work a little more easily.

What research has found. A systematic review pooled the handful of trials that exist and reported cognitive test scores a little higher on the mushroom than on placebo. The trials themselves are small. Older adults with mild cognitive impairment scored better on a rating scale over sixteen weeks; single doses left healthy adults quicker on attention and working-memory tasks within a couple of hours; and where several tests were used, a difference often showed up on one of them and not on the others. Research here is still young: a few studies so far, mostly pointing the same way.

Mood and anxiety

The thinking. Lion’s mane is also bought with mood in mind, and low spirits, anxiousness and the generally out-of-sorts feeling that can come with the menopause are the things people mention. Reviews of the mushroom list improvement in anxiety and in low mood among the properties reported for it, and the same nerve growth factor idea sits underneath. The researchers who measured mood thought a different mechanism was at work, and not the nerve growth factor one.

What research has found. One small trial has measured this. Thirty women took biscuits made with the mushroom, or plain ones, for four weeks. Scores on a depression scale and on a general-complaints questionnaire came down over the four weeks, and on two parts of that questionnaire the mushroom group ended lower than the placebo group, while three other parts only leaned that way. Few studies have measured this yet, so there is little to go on either way.

Nerve health

The thinking. Nerves themselves are the third thing lion’s mane is bought for, and it is the mushroom’s oldest scientific story. Reviews describe its compounds prompting the release of nerve growth factor, the signal that keeps nerve cells repaired and connected, and also settling inflammation, easing oxidative stress and shielding nerve cells from dying off. They go further, and talk about supplements made with the nervous system in view. Almost all of that work so far has been done in cells and in animals rather than in people.

What research has found. No trial in people has measured this, so there is nothing to report either way yet.

What does lion's mane do in the body?

What interests researchers about lion’s mane is its chemistry rather than its nutrition. Two families of small molecules, the hericenones and the erinacines, are described as prompting cells to release nerve growth factor, a protein the body uses to keep nerve cells repaired and connected to one another. A third group, the polysaccharides, long chains of sugar units that make up much of the mushroom’s structure, is studied separately from those.

Beyond that, reviews describe the mushroom’s compounds settling inflammation and mopping up the reactive molecules that build up in tissue, which is offered as part of the reason one mushroom keeps turning up in work on the nervous system, on the gut and on inflammation alike. Its polysaccharides are also described as feeding the bacteria in the large intestine that make short-chain fatty acids. Almost all of this has been worked out in cells and in animals, not in people.

What do people say about taking lion's mane?

These are anecdotes people have shared, not evidence.

What people like

Four of the six threads read come from one parenting forum, so most of the voices here are women taking it for menopausal brain fog.
Focus and concentration at work is the change people mention most often, and they usually describe it as small rather than dramatic.
Several say the fog lifted after weeks or months of daily use, and one only noticed the difference once they had stopped taking it.
A few describe bigger changes than that, including finding words more easily within days, though these are single accounts rather than a pattern.

Common complaints

Noticing nothing at all is reported about as often as noticing something, sometimes after five weeks and in one case after about a year.
Headaches come up in two of the threads, in one case every single time it was taken, and that person stopped because of them.
One person described anxiety and palpitations, and another raised worries about how lightly regulated these supplements are and what is really in them.
Cost is a recurring grumble, and one person gave up despite finding it helpful because the capsules were too expensive to keep buying.
A couple said they simply kept forgetting to take it, leaving the bottle sitting on the side for weeks, so nothing came of it.

How people take it

Capsules are the commonest form, with powder stirred into morning coffee, gummies containing a blend of mushrooms, and drops of tincture also described.
Doses are rarely named. The couple of people who did give one were taking capsules somewhere in the one-and-a-half to two gram range.
Several take it alongside hormone replacement or a handful of other supplements, so very few of them are judging lion’s mane on its own.
People describe it as slow, a build over weeks or months, and several give up after a few weeks when nothing has changed.
Menopausal brain fog is much the commonest reason given for starting it, with trouble concentrating at work or with attention coming next.

Read from these public discussions:

Lions mane - please share your experiences of it (Mumsnet, 2025)
Lions mane mushroom (Mumsnet, 2024)
Lions Mane Mushrroms (Mumsnet, 2024)
ADHD mushroom supplements (Mumsnet, 2023)
Lions Mane? (Alzheimer's Society dementia support forum, 2022)
OT: Anyone here use Lion's Mane mushroom as a supplement? (RealGM forums, 2018)

What forms of lion's mane are there?

Form	What’s different	Per serving, on products we list
Fruiting body extract	A concentrated extract of the mushroom itself, the part of it hericenones are isolated from.	1 g
Mycelium	The thread-like network the mushroom grows from; erinacine A was isolated from this part.	not in our price tables yet
Whole mushroom powder	The whole dried mushroom milled up, rather than concentrated into an extract.	not in our price tables yet

What else is worth knowing about lion's mane?

The side effects recorded in the research are stomach discomfort, headache and allergic reactions. The review that gathered them notes that side effects often go unreported in this literature, which is not the same as their not happening.
The amounts used in trials vary widely: one gram as a single dose, 1.8 grams a day for four weeks, and three grams a day of mushroom tablets for sixteen weeks. Labels give the amount per serving, and a serving may be more than one capsule.
Who has been studied varies as much. Trials have been run in adults aged 50 to 80 with mild cognitive impairment, in thirty women around the menopause, and in healthy adults aged 18 to 45, which makes the results hard to line up against one another.
Supplements are made from different parts of the organism: the fruiting body, the mycelium, or the whole dried mushroom milled up. Reviews describe the compounds differing between those sources, and have called for supplements to be standardised.

If you take medication, are pregnant, or have a health condition, check with a pharmacist or GP first.

The research behind this page (12 studies)

How much does lion's mane cost?

That depends on the form and the pack, so we work out the price of the same dose of every lion's mane product we can find and rank them.

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