Gingko does Zilch for the brain! Part 2

Says Dr DeKosky, vice dean School of Medicine, "For me, this kind of closes the book on whether or not, if you start taking ginkgo later in life, you are going to have cognitive benefit. We don't have good evidence that it maintains good brain health."
He goes on to add, "Quite frankly, one of the things that surprised us was that for an extract that has been around for this long, there ought to be a signal of some sort, or we ought to see some effect for it to have maintained its reputation for so long. And we didn't."

And what do alternative health care workers say about the study?

Says Douglas Mackay, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a principal trade association of dietary-supplement makers, "What we would really like to see is additional research. What we would not like to see is this study closing the door on answering other questions or subsets of questions on ginkgo."

So what does all this mean for the consumer?

There are always some die hard alternative health care fans who will continue to believe in the mythological properties of gingko. For those who are undecided and have common sense- save your hard earned money on gingko. If you want to have a healthy brain- eat well, exercise regularly and stop believing everything that you read on cyberspace!

Dec. 29, 2009 Journal of the American Medical Association

Gingko does Zilch for the brain! Part 1

For decades, alternative health care practitioners have been hyping the long term benefits of ginkgo for maintaining good mental function and cognition. There are thousands of anecdotal reports from vendors of this herbal supplement that it has “magical” brain stimulating properties. Now there is a study that finds that all the hype about gingko is false- the herb really does not slow down mental decline.

Led by Dr Steven DeKosky from the University of Virginia, six major US institutions looked at Gingko supplements and showed no discernible differences in the herb versus a sugar pill. The researchers looked at the effects of gingko on several brain tasks including attention, memory, concentration, language and cognition. The results revealed that gingko did not make one iota of difference compared to the sugar pill in improving any single brain function. This is the largest and longest study spanning over a mean of 6 years which has looked at effects of gingko on the brain. An earlier study led by the same team showed that ginkgo did zilch in preventing or delaying Alzheimer’s dementia. In the present study, more than 3,000 elderly volunteers between the ages 72-96 participated.