Overview
Also called brahmi, bacopa is a plant that’s been used in traditional ayurvedic medicine in India for thousands of years to treat asthma, epilepsy and mental illness. Medical researchers are studying bacopa’s usefulness in treating anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease and age-related cognitive decline. You can use bacopa extract to improve mental function and memory, treat anxiety and depression, treat respiratory ailments, and prevent or heal stomach ulcers. The University of Michigan Health System recommends taking 5 to 10 grams daily of powdered bacopa, or 300 milligrams to 450 milligrams daily of bacopa extract containing 55 percent backsides — the active constituents.
Improves Mental Function
Taking bacopa may help to improve your mental performance and cognitive function. Bacopa leaves contain bacosides, which can improve learning, memory and overall mental function, according to the University of Michigan Health System. Bacopa promotes new nerve production, helps to mend damaged nerve cells and improves nerve signals. According to Drug Digest, different animal studies have found that bacopa can improve learning ability and memory, but human studies haven’t yielded the same positive results. A study of healthy individuals who took bacopa for three months found that the accuracy of their memory improved, and small studies of children in India found that taking 1,000 milligrams per day of bacopa improved memory, reaction time and observation. But another study of 76 people aged 40 to 65 years found that taking bacopa had no impact on restoring memory and only slight improvement in retaining new information.