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Comment by The_rationalist | Hacker News Reader

Can it be reversed? Can we increase myelination? Is this what senolytics do?

Hericium erinaceus (Lion's mane mushroom) has isolates called Hericenones and Erinacine that promote nerve growth factor synthesis and a lot of other Neurohealth benifits being found to do with the compounds the fungi produces.

The influence of Hericium erinaceus extract on myelination process in vitro https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12675022/

Neurohealth Properties of Hericium erinaceus Mycelia Enriched with Erinacines https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5987239/

Protip: If/When buying supplements -- There's many that are just selling capsules of ground myceliated brf (brown rice flour - the substrate inoculated/grown on). Mycelium is the 'roots/pre fruiting stage' of the fungi -- The fruit body/ mushroom itself has much greater concentrations of the desired compounds.

Was about to write this.

Here's also an easy summary of it's effect and recommendation If one consider buying supplements:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MushroomSupplements/comments/h090ry...

Bought some myself and tried to track its effect by playing 3DS Devilish Brain Training game and track performance.

Did you notice an improvement?

Nothing definitive. After 1 week I managed to achieve life-time high score in focus and short-term memory task (my previous high-score was from Uni while studying Physics), but I'm susceptible to placebo so I can't rule out that effect.

I feel like I have less "brain-fog" or rather, brain-fog induced procrastination though. But taking this coincided with a less-stressful time of my life so It might be related to both.

How do you know if you're getting the actual mushroom vs. the substrate?

If only there was some body of regulation that could help sort this stuff out without influence from industry. (not sarcasm)

Agreed, but that regulation should be on purity and label accuracy, and not venture into "sorry, we don't approve of this -- you can't have it".

Learn to cook lions main. It’s very distinct.

The ingredients list / packaging should say something like dried fruiting body... or if you're getting the rubbish = myceliated grain or mycelial biomass. The reddit link provided by NalNezumi is very good.

Here's just another link of some lighter details. https://learn.freshcap.com/tips/myceliated-grain/

They say similar things about psilocybin and magic mushrooms, but some people still eat the mycelium to get the effects. I guess it's more economical to just grow mycelium.

I have small fiber neuropathy, with de-mylinated peripheral nerves. I tried lion's mane (amongst many other things), but it didn't help.

I'd made sure t get one that was comprised only of the fruiting bodies, with a tested percentage of polysaccharides.

I tried taking this for a while, but found that I started having really bad headaches. I was taking a well known brand from Amazon. I couldn't be 100% sure the headaches were due to the Lion's mane, but felt better after I stopped taking it.

I was pretty bummed, I was hoping for a little boost from this as I had read good things about it, including the NIH articles you posted.

I can also confirm, finding the supplements that are not just mostly the ground brown rice flour is also a little difficult.

Are there any concerns about the active NGF compounds being 5a-reductase inhibitors?

"Is this what senolytics do?"

I learned today that senolytics are molecules that "... can selectively induce death of senescent cells ..."[1]

Which is interesting but you can already do this with exercise.

Nick Lane wrote a fascinating book[2] about this subject which suggests that your internal mitochondrial population is under selection pressure from your own activity.

If you don't put any pressure on it, energetically ill-performing cells are allowed to thrive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senolytic

[2] _Power, Sex, Suicide_

https://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/physical-me...

Very interesting. The standard caveat regarding mouse-human equivalence, but once again it seems that exercise is good for neurological fitness.

Senolytics cause the lysis of senescent cells- something else. So unlikely they would directly contribute here.

I don't know about reverse. But as I remeber according to Dr.Rhonda Patric in one of Joe Rogan show, cold shower can boost protection of myelin.

Senolytics might help reducing aged cells to get benefit. Not directly contribute to brain health I think.

I like Rhonda Patrick, but a lot of her recommendations seem to be speculation on what should work, given what she understands about a subject and relating it to a new study. Not that it's not valuable, but it's the sort of thing Reddit would class as "science" rather than realising it is a hypothesis that needs testing.

Here’s a talk by Dr. Terry Wahls, who reversed her MS through diet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc

Vitamin B12 is pretty critical for remyelonation and preventing demyelination. I'm not sure whether it's been studied in age related demyelination

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2219542/

TL;DR - CBD may offer a pathway to help control the inflammatory threat to the myelin sheath.

I like to understand this too, substance called ‘myelin. Is there some intake of food that can help? Just like my parents to be including anything in their diet that can help.

I have M.S.. My question is can remyelination from Lion’s Mane outpace the demyelination from M.S.

Tai chi, if you still can.

Helps substantially with balance, which should give you some more time on your own feet.

I'd be surprised if we manage to reverse deterioration in such a complex system as the human body, especially in the brain, in our lifetime. We are barely scratching the surface, trying to understand the most basic interactions between this massive amount of variables of which we can only control a few reliably.

The problem is conceptually quite simple: Ageing is an accumulation of degradations in our DNAs. We just need to reset/monkey patch our DNAs with a prior younger version through CRIPSR + viral vectors. The only issue is the scale of the gene therapy (changing whole organs) but I'm quite sure it is doable, just underresearched/underfunded.

1 March – Scientists use lipid nanoparticles to deliver CRISPR genome editing into the livers of mice, resulting in a 57% reduction of cholesterol levels.[160]

Rejuvenation is not science fiction, it just require funding but expecting this from humanity might be considered science fiction and the situation isn't going to improve given than the Flynn effect is reversing..

See also those related thoughts I wrote years ago: https://github.com/LifeIsStrange/An-algorithm-for-curing-age...

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