Enzogenol® Found to Benefit Mental Health

by | Oct 10, 2008 | 2008, Brain Health

Written by Greg Arnold, DC, CSCS. Forty-two men given 960 mg Enzogenol and 120 mg vitamin C had a 6.4% increase in a spatial memory test compared to the control group.

A report released by the National Center for Health Statistics (1) on June 11, 2008, reported record-high life expectancy for white and black males (76 and 70 years respectively) and white and black females (81 and 76.9 years). There was also a 0.3% drop in the age-adjusted death rate (from 779 deaths per 100,000 people in 2005 to 776.4 per 100,000 in 2006).

With Americans living longer, mental health issues are becoming a priority. Alzheimer’s has now overtaken diabetes to become the 6th leading cause of death in the US, and is responsible fore the deaths of 72,914 Americans in 2006, up from 71,599 in 2005 (1).

There are a number of ways to naturally help maintain mental health, including exercise (2), fish oil (3), St. John’s Wort (4), cod liver oil (5), folic acid (6), green tea (7), unsaturated fat and vitamin E (8), grape extract (9), apples (10), and vitamin D (11). A recent study (12) has found that Enzogenol®, a formulation of antioxidant bioflavonoids extracted from the bark of the New Zealand Pine (Pinus radiata) may benefit mental health.

In the study, 42 right-handed men aged 50-65 years with a sedentary occupation were given either four capsules per day totaling 960 mg of Enzogenol® and 120 mg of vitamin C or placebo (120 mg vitamin C) for five weeks. During this time, they performed eight computer-based cognitive tasks used in a previous study by this group (13) with the exception of the contextual memory task, which was a new version. The researchers also measured the participants’ blood pressure throughout the study.

By the end of five weeks, patients in the Enzogenol® group improved significantly in a number of the mental health tests compared to those in the placebo group. Specifically, Enzogenol®, patients had a 5.4% decrease (p = 0.027) in immediate recognition reaction time (where patients had to recall specific images) (1.107 seconds to 1.05 seconds), compared to a small increase in the control (1.05 seconds to 1.057 seconds). For the spatial memory task (where the patients had to recall filled spaces on a grid), those in the Enzogenol® group had a 6.4% decrease (p = 0.001) in response time (from 1.018 seconds to .953 seconds), while there was a small increase in the control group (.946 seconds to .947 seconds). No changes in blood pressure were seen between the two groups.

These improvements in both immediate recognition and spatial working memory “are the most sensitive to the effects of aging” compared to the other tests used (14). As a result, “a short term supplementation over 5 weeks with combined [Enzogenol®] and vitamin C improved the speed of response on spatial working memory and immediate recognition tasks, whereas supplementation with vitamin C alone showed no improvements.”

Source: Pipingas, Andrew, Richard B. Silberstein, Luis Vitetta, Cindy Van Rooy, Elizabeth V. Harris, Joanna M. Young, Christopher M. Frampton, Avni Sali, and Joseph Nastasi. “Improved cognitive performance after dietary supplementation with a Pinus radiata bark extract formulation.” Phytotherapy Research 22, no. 9 (2008): 1168-1174.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Posted October 10, 2008.

References:

  1. “Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2006”, as issue 16 in volume 56 of the National Vital Statistics Report (NVSR).
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  14. Unpublished observation, A. Pipingas, 2006.