Lions Mane part two Advocacy for Mushroom vape

Cited paper:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6982118/

Major depressive disorder, also known as depression, is a common neuropsychiatric disorder that affects more than 300 million people of all ages [1] and is one of the leading causes of global disease burden [2]. The common signs and symptoms of depression include loss of interest in daily activities, difficulty concentrating and making decisions, fatigue, sleep problems, overeating or appetite loss, pessimism, hopelessness, persistent sadness, and restlessness [3,4].

Hericium erinaceus is a medicinal-culinary mushroom widely found in East Asian countries and is commonly known as lion’s mane mushroom, Yamabushitake, or monkey’s head mushroom [17]. Hericium erinaceus has a long history as a medicine [17] and has been found to promote positive nerve and brain health. It has great potential in treating neurological disorders as it contains neurotrophic compounds that can pass through the blood–brain barrier [18,19]. Bioactive compounds extracted from its fruiting body or mycelium (Figure 1) have been demonstrated to possess antioxidative [20], antidiabetic [21], anticancer [22,23], anti-inflammatory [24], antimicrobial [23], antihyperglycemic [25], and hypolipidemic properties [26]. Moreover, H. erinaceus has been used to treat cognitive impairments [27], Alzheimer’s disease [28], Parkinson’s disease [29], ischemic stroke [30], and presbycusis [14]. Recently, the present research on H. erinaceus has been focused on its antidepressant-like effects for the treatment of depressive disorder [31,32,33].

Amycenone is an H. erinaceus extract that obtained from the fruiting body through a patented process, which contains 0.5% hericenone and 6% amyloban [73]. In 2015, Yao et al. reported the antidepressant-like and anti-inflammatory effects of amycenone in an animal model of depression with LPS-induced inflammation [33].

A recent study by Chiu et al. (2018) investigated the effects of extracts of H. erinaceus enriched in Erinacine A (5) in an animal model of depression induced by repeated restraint stress [31]. They found that bioactive compounds extracted from the mycelium of H. erinaceus by ethanolic extraction were enriched with erinacine A, which is believed to induce neurogenesis.

Recently, a clinical study examined the effects of H. erinaceus on anxiety, depression, binge eating, and sleep disorders in 77 volunteers with a body mass index (BMI) ≥ 25 kg/m2 and an average age of 53.2 [80]. The study recruited overweight or obese participants positive for one or more administered tests, including Zung’s Depression Self-Assessment Scale, Zung’s Anxiety Self-Assessment Scale, Symptom Checklist-90, and the binge eating scale (BES). Participants in the H. erinaceus intervention group received three capsules containing 80% mycelium extract and 20% fruiting body extract daily for 8 weeks. They found that H. erinaceus significantly reduced depression and anxiety, as well as improvement on sleep disorders after 8 weeks of oral administration. The observation was linked to an increase in peripheral pro-BDNF and in the pro-BDNF/BDNF ratio.

Hericenones are aromatic compounds extracted from the fruiting body of H. erinaceus. There are 11 hericenones (hericenones A-K) that have been identified, of which four (hericenones C (1), D (2), E (3), and H (4) (Figure 3)) have been reported to promote NGF synthesis in mouse astrocytoma cells