A contact asked me if I had ever come across Bacopa extract for treating memory loss. I certainly grow the plant as an ornamental in hanging baskets because of its spreading mass of white or mid-blue flowers but have not come across it in any other context.

Of the large number of species in the genus, Bacopa monniera L. known as Brahmi has been a neurological treatment with a long history of use in the traditional Indian medicinal system of “Ayurveda”. There is a comprehensive wide and detailed review by Gohil and Patel (2010) on the extract’s properties and a perspective on its importance to Western medical thinking (Abascal and Yarnell, 2011). The disorders range from treating anxiety, poor intellect and memory (Singh and Dhawan, 1997; Gohil and Patel, 2010). There is some other technical information reviewing its antioxidant properties, but in the West it is being taken as an extract to improve mental performance, especially memory enhancement and mental acuity. It is described as an adaptogenic too i.e. helps increase resilience to stress, fatigue and other mental trauma. The active constituents are said to be alkaloids, the steroidal saponins, bacosides A and B and a group called the bacoposides.

Some human studies using the extract have been conducted but most behavioural studies have used rats and mice. One early study showed improvements in the rate of learning in a brightness discrimination test and a conditioned avoidance task (Singh and Dhawan, 1997). The authors believed that the bacosides were affecting the cholinergic systems. The antioxidant effects were reported in a study on rat frontal cortex, hippocampus and striatum (Bhattacharya et al., 2000). In terms of memory improvement, there was a recent study in mice where improvements were shown in maze-learning upon administration of the bacopa extract (Joshi and Parle, 2006).

More recently, human intervention studies have been conducted where one showed long term memory improvements (Roodenrys et al., 2002) and reduction in stress and anxiety using B. monniera extract (Chowdhuri et al., 2002). Administration to mentally retarded children has also been claimed to produce improvements in mental acuity (Lodha and Bagga, 2000). The lists of studies is growing to support its application.

On another level, this particular plant is a water dwelling herb and has the ability to withstand higher levels of cadmium than most plants because it can increase the level of antioxidants and other agents to deal effectively with the presence of this toxic metal in its aquatic environment (Mishra et al., 2006).

It appears the B. monniera extract has much to offer in the treatment of neurological disease especially as its seeks methods to treat Alzheimers and other age-related mental conditions for example.

References

Abascal, K., Yarnell, E. (2011) Bacopa for the Brain: A Smart Addition To Western medicine. Alternative and Complementary Therapies. 17(1) pp. 21-25. doi:10.1089/act.2011.17106.
Bhattacharya SK, Bhattacharya A, Kumar A, Ghosal S (2000) Antioxidant activity of Bacopa monniera in rat frontal cortex, striatum and hippocampus. Phytother. Res. 14 pp. 174–179
Gohil KJ, Patel JA. (2010) A review on Bacopa monniera: Current research and future prospects. Int. J. Green Pharm . 4 pp. 1-9
Joshi H, Parle M. (2006) Brahmi Rasayana improves learning and memory in mice. Evid. Based Complement Alternat. Med. 3 pp. 79–85.
Lodha, R., Bagga, A. (2000) Traditional Indian systems of medicine. Ann. Acad. Med. Singapore 29 pp. 37–41.
Mishra, S., Srivastava, S., Tripathi, R.D., Govindarajan, R., Kuriakose S.V., Prasad M.N.V. (2006) Phytochelatin synthesis and response of antioxidants during cadmium stress in Bacopa monnieri L. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, 44 pp. 25–37.
Roodenrys S, Booth D, Bulzomi S, Phipps A, Micallef C, Smoker J. (2002) Chronic effects of Brahmi (Bacopa monnieri) on human memory. Neuropsychopharmacology 27 pp. 279–81.
Singh HK, Dhawan BN (1997): Neuropsychopharmacological effects of the Ayurvedic nootropic Bacopa Monniera Linn. (Brahmi). Indian J. Pharmacol. 29 pp.359–365