Elixirs For Your Memory

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Tired of frantically searching for your keys? Or of rushing into a room only to forget what you were looking for? If you're worried about memory lapses, just flick on the TV. There are Annie Potts, former star of Designing Women, and Hector Elizondo of Chicago Hope hawking dueling versions of the herbal supplement ginkgo biloba. Or click on the website www.braingum.com where you can read about a "delicious" supplement derived from the compound phosphatidyl serine. All offer hope for improving memory and brain function.

The graying of America has created a whole new industry aimed at people worried about remembering and concentrating. In health-food stores, you'll find dozens of products that claim to do wonders for your brain. They range from vitamins to exotic herbal concoctions. But at the head of the pack is the enormously popular ginkgo biloba--a derivative of a leafy ornamental tree originating in eastern China that racked up $240 million in sales in 1997.

Countless people swear that ginkgo has changed their lives. So effective has the advertising blitz been that ginkgo products seem to be leaping off the shelves. Even old-line pharmaceutical houses are offering their versions of brain boosters. In their first year on the market, Bayer Consumer Care's new vitamin pills, spiked with ginkgo--and sold under the label Memory and Concentration Formula--took in a cool $8 million.

The no-brain question: Does any of this stuff actually work? Traditional healers have no doubts about ginkgo, a staple of Chinese medicine. Nor do manufacturers of so-called nutriceuticals--the unregulated natural "medications" found in health-food stores and supermarkets. They say it somehow improves memory by increasing the flow of blood to the brain. Leading memory experts, however, are skeptical about ginkgo and other brain boosters. "Most of these products have not been investigated to any significant extent that would warrant the claims that are being made,'' says Dr. Ronald Petersen, a neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Other geriatricians are more blunt. All the hoopla, they say, is merely a case of the placebo effect run amuck: people want their memories to get better, so they do. Give them a sugar pill, and they probably wouldn't know the difference.

Government researchers are understandably concerned that millions of people are gulping supplements without any idea what their effects are, positive or negative. The National Institutes of Health is undertaking a study of the effects of ginkgo on elderly people with mild memory impairment. But it could be years before results are in.

Meanwhile, what are healthy souls in search of a quick boost to do? Consumers have little to go on other than manufacturers' claims and inconclusive research. Moreover, since ginkgo and other supplements are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, potency and purity vary from brand to brand. Most troubling, however, is that few people read labels. The list of don'ts for ginkgo biloba include the warning that those taking aspirin or other blood thinners should first consult their physician. Why? Because ginkgo, which has anticlotting characteristics, when taken in combination with a blood thinner can cause internal bleeding.