Ginkgo Biloba, For Memory And, Uh, What Else Again?
Discover the science behind Ginkgo biloba’s antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and potential cognitive enhancement effects in this informative article.
Ginkgo biloba, for memory and, uh, what else again?
Ginkgo biloba extract has enjoyed use for thousands of years for an assortment of uses, and has made its way from Traditional Chinese Medicine, to the world supplement market at large. See:
Ginkgo biloba: A Treasure of Functional Phytochemicals with Multimedicinal Applications
But what does the science say about the specific claims?
Antioxidant & anti-inflammatory
We’re going to lump these two qualities together for examination, since one invariably leads to the other.
A quick note: things that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, often also help guard against cancer and aging. However, in this case, there are few good studies pertaining to anti-aging, and none that we could find pertaining to anti-cancer potential.
So, does it have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, first?
Yes, it has potent antioxidants that do fight inflammation; this is clear, from an abundance of in vitro and in vivo studies, including with human patients:
- Properties of Ginkgo biloba L.: incl. Antioxidant Characterization
- Anti-inflammatory effects of Ginkgo biloba extract against hippocampal neuronal injury
- Gingko biloba-derived lactone prevents osteoarthritis by activating anti-inflammatory signaling pathway
- The anti-inflammatory properties of Ginkgo biloba for the treatment of pulmonary diseases
In short: it helps, and there’s plenty of science for it.
What about anti-aging effects?
For this, there is science, but a lot of the science is not great. As one team of researchers concluded while doing a research review of their own:
❝Based on the reviewed information regarding EGb’s effects in vitro and in vivo, most have reported very positive outcomes with strong statistical analyses, indicating that EGb must have some sort of beneficial effect.
However, information from the reported clinical trials involving EGb are hardly conclusive since many do not include information such as the participant’s age and physical condition, drug doses administered, duration of drug administered as well as suitable control groups for comparison.
We therefore call on clinicians and clinician-scientists to establish a set of standard and reliable standard operating procedure for future clinical studies to properly evaluate EGb’s effects in the healthy and diseased person since it is highly possible it possesses beneficial effects.❞
Translation from sciencese: “These results are great, but come on, please, we are begging you to use more robust methodology”
If you’d like to read the review in question, here it is:
Advances in the Studies of Ginkgo Biloba Leaves Extract on Aging-Related Diseases
Does it have cognitive enhancement effects?
The claims here are generally that it helps:
- improve memory
- improve focus
- reduce cognitive decline
- reduce anxiety and depression
Let’s break these down:
Does it improve memory and cognition?
Ginkgo biloba was quite popular for memory 20+ years ago, and perhaps had an uptick in popularity in the wake of the 1999 movie “Analyze This” in which the protagonist psychiatrist mentions taking ginkgo biloba, because “it helps my memory, and I forget what else”.
Here are a couple of studies from not long after that:
- A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial of Ginkgo biloba in cognitively intact older adults: neuropsychological findings
- Effects of Ginkgo biloba on mental functioning in healthy volunteers
In short:
- in the first study, it helped in standardized tests of memory and cognition (quite convincing)
- In the second study, it helped in subjective self-reports of mental wellness (also placebo-controlled)
On the other hand, here’s a more recent research review ten years later, that provides measures of memory, executive function and attention in 1132, 534 and 910 participants, respectively. That’s quite a few times more than the individual studies we cited above, by the way. They concluded:
❝We report that G. biloba had no ascertainable positive effects on a range of targeted cognitive functions in healthy individuals❞
Read: Is Ginkgo biloba a cognitive enhancer in healthy individuals? A meta-analysis
Our (10almonds) conclusion: we can’t say either way, on this one.
Does it have neuroprotective effects (i.e., against cognitive decline)?
Yes—probably by the same mechanism will discuss shortly.
- Ginkgo Biloba for Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
- Treatment effects of Ginkgo biloba extract on symptoms of dementia: meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
Can it help against depression and anxiety?
Yes—but probably indirectly by the mechanism we’ll get to in a moment:
- Role of Ginkgo biloba extract as an adjunctive treatment of elderly patients with depression
- Ginkgo biloba in generalized anxiety disorder and adjustment disorder with anxious mood
Likely this helps by improving blood flow, as illustrated better per:
Efficacy of ginkgo biloba extract as augmentation of venlafaxine in treating post-stroke depression
Which means…
Bonus: improved blood flow
This mechanism may support the other beneficial effects.
See: Ginkgo biloba extract improves coronary blood flow in healthy elderly adults
Is it safe?
Ginkgo biloba extract* is generally recognized as safe.
- However, as it improves blood flow, please don’t take it if you have a bleeding disorder.
- Additionally, it may interact badly with SSRIs, so you might want to avoid it if you’re taking such (despite it having been tested and found beneficial as an adjuvant to citalopram, an SSRI, in one of the studies above).
- No list of possible contraindications can be exhaustive, so please consult your own doctor/pharmacist before taking something new.
*Extract, specifically. The seeds and leaves of this plant are poisonous. Sometimes “all natural” is not better.
Where can I get it?
As ever, we don’t sell it (or anything else), but here’s an example product on Amazon 🙂
Enjoy!
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Stop Cancer 20 Years Ago
Dr. Jenn Simmons shares vital tips on preventing cancer and inflammation, advocating for lifestyle changes and proactive health management at any age.
Get Abreast And Keep Abreast
This is Dr. Jenn Simmons. Her specialization is integrative oncology, as she—then a breast cancer surgeon—got breast cancer, decided the system wasn’t nearly as good from the patients’ side of things as from the doctors’ side, and took to educate herself, and now others, on how things can be better.
What does she want us to know?
Start now
If you have breast cancer, the best time to start adjusting your lifestyle might be 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now. We realize our readers with breast cancer (or a history thereof) probably have indeed started already—all strength to you.
What this means for those of us without breast cancer (or a history therof) is: start now
Even if you don’t have a genetic risk factor, even if there’s no history of it in your family, there’s just no reason not to start now.
Start what, you ask? Taking away its roots. And how?
Inflammation as the root of cancer
To oversimplify: cancer occurs because an accidentally immortal cell replicates and replicates and replicates and takes any nearby resources to keep on going. While science doesn’t know all the details of how this happens, it is a factor of genetic mutation (itself a normal process, without which evolution would be impossible), something which in turn is accelerated by damage to the DNA. The damage to the DNA? That occurs (often as not) as a result of cellular oxidation. Cellular oxidation is far from the only genotoxic thing out there, and a lot of non-food “this thing causes cancer” warnings are usually about other kinds of genotoxicity. But cellular oxidation is a big one, and it’s one that we can fight vigorously with our lifestyle.
Because cellular oxidation and inflammation go hand-in-hand, reducing one tends to reduce the other. That’s why so often you’ll see in our Research Review Monday features, a line that goes something like:
“and now for those things that usually come together: antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and anti-aging”
So, fight inflammation now, and have a reduced risk of a lot of other woes later.
See: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Don’t settle for “normal”
People are told, correctly but not always helpfully, such things as:
- It’s normal to have less energy at your age
- It’s normal to have a weaker immune system at your age
- It’s normal to be at a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, etc
…and many more. And these things are true! But that doesn’t mean we have to settle for them.
We can be all the way over on the healthy end of the distribution curve. We can do that!
(so can everyone else, given sufficient opportunity and resources, because health is not a zero-sum game)
If we’re going to get a cancer diagnosis, then our 60s are the decade where we’re most likely to get it. Earlier than that and the risk is extant but lower; later than that and technically the risk increases, but we probably got it already in our 60s.
So, if we be younger than 60, then now’s a good time to prepare to hit the ground running when we get there. And if we missed that chance, then again, the second-best time is now:
See: Focusing On Health In Our Sixties
Fast to live
Of course, anything can happen to anyone at any age (alas), but this is about the benefits of living a fasting lifestyle—that is to say, not just fasting for a 4-week health kick or something, but making it one’s “new normal” and just continuing it for life.
This doesn’t mean “never eat”, of course, but it does mean “practice intermittent fasting, if you can”—something that Dr. Simmons strongly advocates.
See: Intermittent Fasting: We Sort The Science From The Hype
While this calls back to the previous “fight inflammation”, it deserves its own mention here as a very specific way of fighting it.
It’s never too late
All of the advices that go before a cancer diagnosis, continue to stand afterwards too. There is no point of “well, I already have cancer, so what’s the harm in…?”
The harm in it after a diagnosis will be the same as the harm before. When it comes to lifestyle, preventing a cancer and preventing it from spreading are very much the same thing, which is also the same as shrinking it. Basically, if it’s anticancer, it’s anticancer, no matter whether it’s before, during, or after.
Dr. Simmons has seen too many patients get a diagnosis, and place their lives squarely in the hands of doctors, when doctors can only do so much.
Instead, Dr. Simmons recommends taking charge of your health as best you are able, today and onwards, no matter what. And that means two things:
- Knowing stuff
- Doing stuff
So it becomes our responsibility (and our lifeline) to educate ourselves, and take action accordingly.
Want to know more?
We recently reviewed her book, and heartily recommend it:
The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer – by Dr. Jenn Simmons
Enjoy!