Woman escapes wheelchair — hikes the Himalayas

Imagine losing the use of your legs because of an illness that puts thousands of people in a wheelchair every year.

Imagine spending the rest of your life not being able to feed yourself because your hands shake so badly.

Or imagine losing your memory at an age most people are enjoying life with their family and friends.

These are the types of nightmare scenarios that happen every day because of severe nerve damage. The damage can hit fast and leave your life in ruins. And the damage is usually irreversible.

But medical research is finding that an unusual mushroom can help you avoid these situations – even if you have a family history of disease.

This is what Nissa discovered.

Nissa felt like she just had a stroke. She was traveling in Australia and suddenly started feeling “weird.” She said it seemed like “pins and needles were surging throughout my body.”

She couldn’t walk straight. She said, “half of my face had dropped and was tingling, and I was terrified.”

In the coming days and weeks, Nissa’s condition worsened. “I was extremely fatigued,” she said.

“I couldn’t drive, my body often felt chaotic and I experienced sensory overwhelm with exposure to loud noises and bright lights. An elderly family member gave me a walking stick and I tried to learn how to function in the world as a suddenly disabled young person. It was hard.”

Nissa was only 24 when her doctor told her she had multiple sclerosis. She was afraid she was going to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

After a few years of going in and out of hospitals and taking steroids just to quiet the relapses, she made a decision: She wasn’t going to live like this anymore. That’s when she took her health into her own hands.

After doing months of research, she started eating a Paleo diet. She ate plants, berries, and foods rich in omega-3 fatty acid, including fish, nuts, and seeds. She also exercised, meditated, and took supplements.

It took a few years, but she eventually gained a lot of her abilities back. She finally felt in control of her life once again.

After five healthy years, a series of stressful events caused Nissa’s health to decline. Some of her old symptoms were coming back.

Nissa immediately looked for something new and different. That’s when she found a mushroom she had never heard of before — the Lion’s Mane mushroom.

Her research revealed a number of studies that indicated the mushroom could counter the degenerative effects of MS. So she started taking high doses of the mushroom.

Within three months, Nissa felt so good that she decided to go hiking in the Himalayas with her family. No walking cane needed.

Nissa’s case is remarkable. It’s unusual to see a disease as severe as MS respond so profoundly to one supplement.

But Lion’s Mane has been used for thousands of years in Chinese medicine with similar results. And there’s a lot of modern research behind it.

Many studies show that Lion’s Mane stimulates the regrowth of damaged brain and peripheral nerve tissue. These studies indicate that it helps regrow both nerve cells and the myelin sheath.

Myelin is the insulating material around brain and nerve tissue. As myelin gets damaged, it slows or halts the ability of impulses to travel through your nerves. This is what produces the neurologic signs and symptoms of MS.

As Lion’s Mane regrows the myelin, the nerves begin to function properly again. And MS patients often find their symptoms improve or disappear.

But It Doesn’t Just Help MS

Because of its ability to regrow nerve and brain cells, studies have found that Lion’s Mane mushroom extracts can fight a number of illnesses. These include many “incurable” diseases like:

• Parkinson’s disease
• Epilepsy
• Autism
• Guillain-Barré syndrome
• Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
• Dementia

This is just a partial list. One study used Lion’s Mane to treat disorders like these. Some of the patients in the study had Parkinson’s disease. Some had diabetic neuropathy, spinal cord injuries, and other illnesses.

The researchers divided the patients into two groups. One group took five grams (5,000 mg) of dried Lion’s Mane mushroom per day for 6 months. The other group took a placebo.

After 6 months, the researchers evaluated the patients’ perceptual abilities (memory, understanding, etc.). Then they evaluated the patients’ physical (dressing, eating, walking, etc.) capabilities.

After taking Lion’s Mane for 6 months, 86% of the participants had significant improvements in their perceptual capabilities. And the overall physical capability scores of all the patients saw improvement. That means the Lion’s Mane actually helped repair nerves.

The researchers said the only way Lion’s Mane could have this effect is if it was able to cross the blood-brain barrier. This would explain how Lion’s Mane is able to reach damaged nerve cells in the brain.

Other studies have shown that the compounds in Lion’s Mane are strong stimulants of Nerve Growth Factor. This is a protein that maintains and regenerates neurons.

Five years after this study, another group of researchers found similar results from a lower dose of Lion’s Mane. In this study, researchers gave patients 1,000 mg three times daily for 16 weeks.

The researchers continued to follow the patients after they stopped taking the Lion’s Mane. The improved nerve function disappeared after the participants stopped taking the mushroom extract. So with some nerve illnesses, you may have to take the mushroom indefinitely.

Other Studies on Lion’s Mane

Can Lion’s Mane really work on other nerve-related illnesses? Research says yes. Here are just a few of the studies on different illnesses caused by nerve cell damage.

• Depression and anxiety: Researchers had 30 otherwise healthy adult women with depression and/or anxiety take either two grams per day of Lion’s Mane or a placebo. After four weeks, those taking Lion’s Mane had significantly higher concentration abilities than those in the placebo group.

• Ischemic Stroke: Lion’s mane extract may help reduce the severity of brain damage after a stroke. In one study, high doses of Lion’s Mane mushroom extract given to rats immediately after a stroke helped decrease inflammation and reduce the size of stroke-related brain injury by 44%.

• Parkinson’s disease: One study found that the dopaminergic lesions and oxidative stress in the stratum and substantia nigra of Parkinson’s patients were significantly improved after treatment with Lion’s Mane for 25 days. Another study found Lion’s Mane improved motor deficits and reduced the loss of dopaminergic cells.

• Epilepsy: One study found that Lion’s Mane protects nerve cells in the brain from damage after a seizure.

• Peripheral neuropathy: A study found that daily oral administration of Lion’s Mane promoted the regeneration of injured peripheral nerves.

As you can see, Lion’s Mane has the ability to affect a lot of different nerve conditions. And if you have a condition that isn’t mentioned here, it’s still worth trying. Lion’s Mane is a food and won’t cause any side effects. And it could offer tremendous help.

Take autism, for example. No studies have been done on autism yet, but many integrative doctors use Lion’s Mane as part of their protocol for children with autism. They find that Lion’s Mane influences personality development, creative expression in the arts, stability, and muscular coordination.

How Much Should You Take?

Lion’s Mane is a tasty mushroom you can add to your diet to help protect your nerves against damage. You can eat as much of the mushroom as you want.

However, if you want to use Lion’s Mane as a treatment, you’ll need a lot more of it than you’ll likely want to eat. In fact, most memory formulas that use Lion’s Mane don’t contain enough of the extract to do much more than prevent damage. Most don’t contain more than 200-500 mg.

The studies I mentioned earlier all used at least 1,000 mg three times per day. That’s 3,000 mg daily. And one study used 5,000 mg daily. That’s a perfectly safe dose. But you won’t find many formulas with that much in it.

If you want to get a therapeutic dose of this size, you need to take a supplement that contains just Lion’s Mane. You can find large-dose supplements in many health food stores and online.

One final tip: If you really want to enhance the ability of Lion’s Mane, take it with niacin. Niacin is great for opening up the capillaries in your extremities.

When you take it with Lion’s Mane, it helps the mushroom reach the damaged nerves on your fingers and toes. And it helps push more of the extract into your brain where it can help your brain cells regenerate.

Take as much niacin as you can stand (the flushing is a little uncomfortable, but completely harmless) – up to 2,000 mg daily.