Herb of the Moon: Lion’s Mane and The Autistic Brain
Uncover the potential of the Lion's Mane mushroom as a natural herbal ally for those on the autism spectrum.
Hericium erinaceus, the greatest fungal mystery on earth.
I happen to have Asperger’s, which just means I’m on the autism spectrum.
In other words, my brain is somewhat odd.
Some of this “oddness” manifests as social avoidance, really specific and niche interests, and a complete lack of motivation for things unless driven by those specific interests.
My partner Angie is also an “aspie” and seems to have originated from the same planet as me. So thankfully, we tend to understand each other almost perfectly.
Still, as a kid, no one knew what to do with me and my general unwillingness to do things or talk to people, so I was put on different ADHD medications since childhood- to differing levels of success.
& I am not sure why anyone would think it’s a good idea to give an autistic 15 year old pure unadulterated stimulant drugs. All I know is that Adderall was like a magic pill, finally allowing me to at least somewhat mimic a sense of normalcy.
However, like Angie and many others, I have fully chosen to go the natural route for symptom management as an adult.
It is well known and established that long term exposure to a regular dose of stimulant drugs can be toxic to your dopamine (reward) systems, can create physical dependency and addiction, and can contribute to the development of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s- and God knows what else.
And as an herbalist, my goal is to improve a person’s quality of life through the least invasive route possible. So my motto tends to be something like “first the word, then the plant, and lastly the knife”.
This is a saying from Asclepius of Thessaly, one of the earliest founding fathers of medicine. In other words, I find that it’s best to go through the most natural routes of healing unless it’s really necessary.
& recently, Angie and I have been working with an ancient medicine that’s been having an incredible effect on our subconscious. It has been helping us focus better, think clearer, and feel less anxious and irritable. It’s pretty exotic, but I bet you might have actually heard of it…
It’s a mushroom.
No, not the funky magical kind (but those are great too). We’re talking about Lion’s Mane Mushroom. It’s a misshapen blob-like sort of thing that looks an AI rendition of a brain.
And as it turns out, it’s really, really good for your brain.
Can Lion’s Mane Help Autistic People?
So, autism is caused by both genetic and environmental factors. As much as people like to claim they found a cure, there is no known “cause” or “cure” for any autism spectrum disorder.
However, there are ways to manage symptoms as well as therapies that can greatly improve autistic people’s quality of life. And from research combined with personal experience, I have come to believe that the lion’s mane mushroom is one of the greatest untapped allies for people on the spectrum.
Paticularly, for autistic adults.
But as always, because it has to be said… we do not provide medical advice. This information is intended for educational purposes only and should not be considered as a recommendation or an endorsement of any particular medical or health treatment. Please consult a health care provider before pursuing any herbal treatments.
Lion’s Mane Can Reduce Brain Inflammation
Inflammation plays a vastly larger role in autism than most people think.
Brain scans of autistic people have consistently shown strong, widespread states of inflammation.
And it’s known that if this level of brain inflammation goes uncontrolled, it can lead to drastically worse outcomes for autistic people.
It’s also known that up to 40% of people with ASD eventually develop seizure disorders, and many more are susceptible to them. Research suggests that the cause of these seizures is the rampant inflammation in autistic people’s brains, and treating this inflammation may help to control these seizures and other common symptoms.
One clinical review of dozens of studies concluded that autistic children treated with anti-inflammatory therapies and flavonoids showed clinically significant improvements compared to placebo groups in the areas of attention, eye contact, social interaction, communication, irritability, lethargy, and more.
And if this sounds great to you… wait until you find out that lion's mane is one of the most potent anti-inflammatory substances for the brain.
Lion’s mane has been clinically shown to protect neurons from dying off during severe seizures, while at the same time reducing the amount of an inflammatory compound in the brain called COX2, which only aggravates the seizures and inflammation.
Other compounds in lion’s mane, like polysaccharides and beta-glucans, have been shown to affect cytokines, the proteins in your body that immune cells use to send signals to each other. They reduce the production of inflammatory cytokines and increase the production of anti-inflammatory cytokines, leading to a systemwide anti-inflammatory effect.
Lion’s Mane Can Influence Neurogenesis
The effects of lion’s mane on autistic people are, curiously, not addressed much in scientific literature. But I hope this can spark some debate.
What it comes down to is that compounds in lion's mane can boost the production of nerve growth factor (NGF). NGF is a unique little protein. It’s as essential for the survival and growth of neurons as oxygen is to you. And, it turns out that by helping promote neurogenesis, NGF can repair the vast damages caused by chronic states of inflammation.
Findings like these have shown that lion’s mane can be particularly helpful for neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s and dementia.
But what does that have to do with autism?
The reason this is so interesting, is that autistic people tend to have a strange relationship with neurogenesis…
The research states that in neurotypical children, the number of neurons in the amygdala (the part of the brain that rules social behavior) starts out at baseline and increases as the child reaches adulthood. In other words, they experience neurogenesis and increased connectivity as they age.
It turns out that in many autistic children, it’s quite the opposite. As infants and children, they have way too many neurons in certain areas of the brain that are related to each other, which is described as “fuctional hyper-connectivity”.
But the caveat is that their unusual abundance of neurons tends to greatly decrease as they grow into adulthood, possibly leading to some form of regression and a state known as “hypo-connectivity”.
To sum it up, they go from having way too many neurons to not nearly enough compared to their neurotypical peers.
If this neuronal decrease is associated in any way to chronic stress levels and inflammation, we don’t yet know. But if it is, this is where lion’s mane could prove particularly helpful for autistic adults.
A study by UC Davis does seem to hint at the possibility that this decreased neurogenesis for autistic adults may have some tie to inflammation.
They stated that an “initial excess and overconnectivity may lead to hyperexcitation, rendering the brain vulnerable to age-related and pro-inflammatory mechanisms contributing to later degenerative outcomes”, and these findings support “recent theories of increased susceptibility to neurodegenerative and cognitive decline”.
While this is far from conclusive, it’s fascinating. I personally think it would be great to see studies on how lion’s mane affects neurological health in autistic people across all ages.
*Still, I would consult a medical professional before giving lion’s mane to young autistic children until there’s more information on how it could affect their brain development.*
Lion’s Mane Can Reduce Anxiety and Depression
Anxiety is one of the common and rarely understood traits of autism. So many of the social and environmental difficulties autistic people face can stem from intense, often debilitating anxiety.
The roar of traffic, the bright and disorienting street lights, the smell of gas and smoke in the air, crowds of people gathering together- any one of those factors may be enough to cause an autistic person to have a panic attack, shut down, or even attempt to run away.
Research even estimates that at least half of all autistic people experience high and constant levels of anxiety- which in turn can create deep feelings of hopelessness and depression when trying to fit into a society that is not designed for them.
& It turns out that there is some hope. In some breakthrough studies, lion’s mane was found to be incredibly helpful for anxiety and depression. In one 4-week study on menopausal women, lion’s mane was found to significantly alleviate symptoms like anxiety, depression, irritability, sleep quality, and lack of concentration.
In another study, a primary component of lion’s mane, amycenone, was found to alleviate depression symptoms in mice.
It’s also widely known that reducing chronic inflammation, can alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression. As you may also be aware, 95 percent of the serotonin in your body isn’t made in your brain, it’s made in your gut. This is why gut health is crucial to mental health!
And wouldn’t you know it, the lion’s mane mushroom has been shown to significantly improve gut inflammation.
Lion’s Mane May Regulate Dopamine Levels
It’s been well known and researched that the dopamine system is involved in recognizing social cues and even emotions.
This not only has implications in autism, but in numerous other disorders like Parkinson’s and even schizophrenia.
But particularly, if you’re familiar with any autistic people, you know that they struggle with picking up on social cues and expressions, and even seem to be “apathetic” in highly charged emotional situations.
Well, I’ll tell you right now, it’s not that autistic people don’t care. They do. They simply can’t pick up on cues that seem obvious for anyone else in the room.
It turns out that one of the reasons for this is that autistic people tend to have disregulated dopamine levels. And not surprisingly, substances that regulate the dopamine system (dopamine modulators) can have a positive effect on autistic social behavior.
& luckily for us autists, there are natural remedies that may help. You guessed it- it’s lion’s mane! This mushroom shows a lot of promise for regulating the dopamine system.
Lion’s mane has long been thought to help with depression, but the particular mechanism for that was unknown until recently- when a breakthrough study on mice found that lion’s mane can be an excellent modulator of neurotransmitters like dopamine and seratonin.
The graph below shows the incredible results. It measured the dopamine levels of the control group of mice, which had a normal environment, while the RS mice were subjected to repeated stress. The final 3 groups were given a low, medium, and high dose of lion’s mane (hericium erinaceus).
Even with a medium dose of lion’s mane, which is around 200mg/kg of body weight, their dopamine levels more than doubled compared to the repeated stress group.
Con: normal control mice; RS: mice received vehicle treatment followed by repeated restraint stress; RS + HEL: mice received low dose of HE (100 mg/kg body weight) treatment followed by repeated restraint stress; RS + HEM: mice received middle dose of HE (200 mg/kg body weight) treatment followed by repeated restraint stress; RS + HEH: mice received high dose of HE (400 mg/kg body weight) treatment followed by repeated restraint stress.
I suspect that the more studies are conducted on lion’s mane, the more we’ll find outstanding results like this.
Lion’s Mane Can Help WIth Focus and Concentration
While no specific studies have been conducted on lion’s mane ability to help with focus and concentration, there are thousands upon thousands of anecdonal accounts of people reporting better concentration, mental clarity, memory, etc.
For this reason, lion’s mane is widely known as one of nature’s most powerful nootropics, which simply means it enhances your cognition and mental performance.
It’s not a mystery that autistic people, as well as those with ADHD, tend to struggle with executive dysfunction. Simply, that means it’s difficult for us to stay organized and focused, manage our time, set goals, and then follow through with those goals.
Throughout the past few weeks, I have been taking Lion’s Mane daily, both mixed in drinks and in capsules. Usually I take around 1000 mg. But I will say that on the days that I’ve taken 2000+ mg, I feel a clear and marked shift in my ability to focus for hours at a time without distraction or as much executive dysfunction, which completely exceeds any expectations I had of the ‘shroom.
I also feel more emotionally centered, and remarkably less irritable. I’m not sure how else to describe it, but I don’t feel this internal tension whenever something goes “wrong”, and I’m able to go with the flow more and take things less seriously. And I don’t feel the need to prove myself right when I have a disagreement with someone either.
I’m inclined to keep taking this stuff for a few months and post an Part 2 for this around the 3-4 month mark, with Angie’s input added in. This is really a unique substance, and honestly, one post doesn’t do it justice.
Lion’s Mane Is Great In Lattes
Since mushrooms have a strangely earthy taste and texture that may not appeal to many people on the spectrum (self included), some opt to put lion’s mane powder in their lattes.
It doesn’t have to be coffee, though coffee and lion’s mane do taste great together. It can be any hot drink, so that the heat can help extract the compounds in the mushroom that give it those beneficial properties.
I personally love having a lion’s mane infused morning latte, with coffee, raw milk and cream, panela (a unique form of unrefined cane sugar), around 1000 mg of lion’s mane powder, and a bit of cinnamon.
Angie and I personally dont have caffeine every day, as it can stimulate the adrenal glands to produce cortisol (the stress hormone) and that’s something we try to avoid. So we also like to add Lion’s Mane powder to a delicious golden milk latte, which by itself is an anti-inflammatory powerhouse.
In Conclusion
We really do live in a strange and often senseless world, and especially for autistic people, it can feel really hard to adapt to its circumstances.
But here's the interesting part - all the answers could be hiding where we least expect them. Think about it - even the weirdest living forms out here, the ones that look completely alien, might actually hold the secrets we're looking for. Their oddness and resilience shows us just how adaptable life can be and gives us a helping hand where we least expect it.
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Love & herbs,