Explore everything you need to know about brain-supporting Lion's Mane Mushroom Capsules and exactly how to use them to keep you and your loved ones healthy.
1. Navigating Nootropic Lion’s Mane Mushroom
Unique and unusual, Lion’s Mane Mushroom is a full, stringy, light-colored fungus used in herbal medicine for centuries to support brain, neurological, and immune health.
With a massive following in both the foraging and herbalism communities, there is much more to Lion's Mane Mushroom than meets the eye.
Scientifically known as Hericium erinaceus, Lion’s Mane also goes by other names, such as bearded tooth, Japanese yamabushitake, pom pom mushroom, and the hedgehog mushroom, all giving you an idea of what this mushroom looks like. Its fruiting body (the above-ground part of a mushroom that is typically foraged) is white, stringy, and unlike any other mushroom on Earth.
Lion’s Mane grows during late summer and fall on trees like beech and oak and is native to North America, Asia, and Europe. While this is an edible (and delicious!) mushroom, you may not have seen it in the grocery store because it has a short shelf life.
At Gaia Herbs, we use Lion’s Mane Mushroom in dried, capsule form to support your nervous system, mental performance, cognition, focus, immune response, and overall brain and neurological health.*
Let’s dig into this guide and explore a bit more about our nootropic friend, Lion’s Mane Mushroom.
2. How Do Lion's Mane Mushroom Capsules Work?
A prized mushroom for overall wellness, Lion’s Mane is a nootropic used to support cognitive function, memory, creativity, and motivation, among other benefits. It nourishes the brain by crossing the blood-brain barrier to directly support brain cells.
The fruiting bodies of this mushroom contain polysaccharides, specifically a type called beta-glucans, which have been studied to support immune health and overall wellness, as well as normal, healthy cell growth and turnover.* The fruiting body extracts we use contain only these polysaccharides and no unnecessary fillers or starches.
In fact, your Lion’s Mane Mushroom Capsules contain only organically grown and sustainably sourced mushrooms using 100% mushroom extract, extracted for optimal bioavailability and digestibility and without fillers, starch, grains, or mycelium.
Each 450 mg capsule is equivalent to 2.5 g of dry mushrooms, and at 5x strength, it only takes 1 lion's mane capsule per day to add the power of this nootropic mushroom to your wellness ritual.*
But in order to reap the long-term benefits, we encourage a mindset of proactivity, i.e. taking your supplement every day, rather than one of reactivity, i.e. only taking your supplement when you feel off.
3. When Should I Take Lion's Mane Mushroom Capsules?
Keeping a proactive philosophy in mind, we formulated our Lion's Mane Mushroom Capsules so that you could take it every day and feel the benefits build over time.
For consistent neurological support, we recommend people 12 years and older take 1 capsule daily (not for use during pregnancy). Benefits will build over time and with consistency.
If you dislike or are sensitive to the capsules, they can also be opened and mixed with warm water to make tea, or added to other warm beverages, soups, broths, or sprinkled on top of food.
While it’s hard to come by, if you’re lucky enough to have access to raw Lion’s Mane Mushrooms, there are endless ways to cook them. Likened to lobster when cooked in butter, you can sautè them with garlic, serve them poached over grilled steaks, or add them to a sauce or a bowl of pasta.
They make a great canvas to exercise your culinary creativity!
4. Meet Your Lion’s Mane Mushrooms
While lots of our herbs are grown on our 350-acre organic farm in Brevard, North Carolina, some plants do best in their own native bioregion, where the conditions are just right.
Gaia Herbs Certified Organic Lion's Mane Mushroom is grown at North American Medicinal Mushroom Extract (Nammex) in China, in a remote, mountainous region far from highly populated cities and industrial manufacturing areas, often referred to as the best ecological environment in China.
Here, growers have been working for 20 years to produce the highest quality organic mushrooms. They're grown in an open setting that mimics their natural environment, rather than the lab settings many mushrooms are grown in today.
With this care, no fillers, growing medium, or mycelium end up in the finished product. Our mushrooms are grown to maturity, harvested, and extracted as they have been for thousands of years in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Interested in learning more about your herbs and where they’re grown? We created Meet Your Herbs®, the world’s first herb traceability platform, just for this reason.
Simply locate the Herb ID on the back of your Gaia Herbs product, type it into the search bar at meetyourherbs.com and discover the origin of your herbs, how they were grown, harvested, and extracted, and see the validation of your product’s level of purity and potency.
If you’d like to learn more about Lion’s Mane Mushroom, dig into these articles from our blog, Seeds of Knowledge, to find out everything you need to know:
- Lion's Mane
- Lion's Mane Mushroom Benefits, Usage, and Side Effects
- Lion’s Mane Side Effects and Precautions
- A Beginner’s Guide To Mushroom Foraging: Tips & Resources
Have More Questions?
As partners on your wellness journey, we want to help you find answers as best as we can.
If you have a specific question about your Ashwagandha Gummies or something we didn’t cover in this guide, our Customer Support Team is here for you.
You can call us at 1.800.831.7780 or send us an email at info@gaiaherbs.com and we’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as possible, Monday through Friday, 9am - 5pm EST. We observe all federal holidays and will be happy to assist you on the next business day.