Memory Pills — Mostly Forgettable

Memory tonics are as old as (uh ... uh ... us a minute here, okay?). Who doesn't forget? And who doesn't worry about forgetting? Despite jokes about "senior moments," declining memory keeps many middle-aged and older Americans up at night fretting. And it goes beyond not being able to remember the name of the aquaintance you ran into at the mall or what you meant to get when you walked into the living room.

"Dramatically improve your focus, concentration and memory, and eliminate mental fatigue in one month or less ... guaranteed or your money back!"

That's the enticing pitch on radio, television, and the Internet for Focus Factor, a pricey multivitamin-and-mineral pill ($165 for a three-month supply--on sale). Why so expensive? Texas chiropractor Kyl L. Smith has souped up Focus Factor with a smidgen of 19 special ingredients (like choline, pine bark, and boron) that someone, somewhere, at some time thought might help the brain work better.

A daily dose of Focus Factor (four pills a day, though the distributor encourages customers to take more) contains only 473 mg of all 19 special ingredients combined. That leaves room in the pills for only trivial amounts of many of them.

Smith calls his mix "synergistic," which means that the smaller amounts supposedly work together as well as larger amounts would. (Too bad customers can't buy Focus Factor with "synergistic" money.) Since there are no good studies testing Focus Factor, no one really knows whether the 19 ingredients can "supercharge your brain," as Smith claims.

Bottom Line: Don't waste your money.

Cost (4 pills a day): about $55 per month.

In some cases, deteriorating memory could be the result of diabetes, high blood pressure, or Alzheimer's disease. But for most of us, it's the inevitable result of aging.

Supplement manufacturers, of course, are more than willing to capitalize on the public's anxieties by offering dozens of "brain boosters." And in a brilliant marketing "two-fer," many companies also pitch their potions at 20- or 30- or 40-somethings who want to "get a mental edge" or "stay on track."

Yet the evidence behind most memory boosters is anything but memorable.

"The next generation in memory enhancement."

It was only a matter of time before someone tried to market Senior Moment pills. Senior Moment is a mixture of the kinds of fatty substances our bodies use to make the membranes that surround nerve cells, including those in the brain. About half of Senior Moment consists of docosahexanoic acid (DHA) from algae. The rest is "cerebral phospholipids' extracted from the brains of pigs.

Want to maintain your current memory? Take one to two capsules a day, says the manufacturer, Nutramax Laboratories. Want to enhance your memory? Take up to six capsules a day.

But if there are any good studies showing that algae and pig brain fat cure memory lapses, DHA experts don't know about them.

"It's true that our brains need DHA to function properly," says Norman Salem of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. "And there is some evidence that our DHA levels decline as we get older."

But "there are no trials I know of that have tested DHA supplements to see if they affect the memory of healthy people,' says DHA researcher Julie Conquer, director of the Human Nutraceutical Research Unit at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

Bottom Line: Don't waste your money.

Cost (1-6 capsules a day): $20-$110 per month.

"PS can provide relatively quick benefits, especially to mature adults who are experiencing age-related mental decline."

Brain Gum, CerebroPlex, and Mind-Max have it. So does your brain. Phosphatidylserine (pronounced fahs-fuh-TID-ill-SEEReen), or PS, is a fatty substance that occurs naturally in the membranes of all nerve cells. Some researchers believe that we lose PS as we age, and that's one reason why we start to forget things.

In more than half a dozen studies in Europe during the 1980s and early 1990s, supplements of PS extracted from cow brains helped elderly people with mild to severe memory loss. And in its one U.S. trial, cow PS produced dramatic benefits in healthy volunteers aged 50 to 75 who reported experiencing age-related memory loss.(1)

But that was before mad cow disease made it too risky to swallow anything made from cows' brains. Now you can buy PS that's made from soybeans. Can it produce the same results as the PS that came from old Bessie?

Soy manufacturer Lucas Meyer commissioned Thomas Crook, who conducted the first U.S. study of PS, to test 300 milligrams a day of soy PS on 50 middle-aged and older adults with greater-than-average memory loss for their age. But the study had a serious flaw: there was no control group. So there's no way to tell if the PS-takers did any better than people taking a look-a-like (but PS-free) placebo would have done.

Bottom Line: Preliminary results look promising, but better research is needed. Worth a shot if you can afford it.

Cost (300 mg a day): about $90 per month.