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.

(1) Neurology 41: 644, 1991

"You may need to rethink your retirement plans."

General Nutrition Centers (GNC), the largest chain of dietary supplement boutiques in the U.S., has been pounded lately by discount stores and Internet sites that sell pretty much the same vitamins and minerals for less money.

The company is striking back by introducing a new exclusive line of supplements targeted at baby-boomers. Among the first: Cognita, to help preserve memory.

Cognita consists of nine common vitamins and other ingredients (vitamins B-l, B-12, and E; folic acid; choline, ginkgo; fish oil; DHA; and coenzyme Q-10) plus an uncommon one (huperzine A).

Huperzine (pronounced HOOP-er-zeen) A is extracted from a moss found in China and is used as a drug there to treat dementia. Although not a part of the diet anywhere in the world, it can be sold as a dietary supplement in the U.S. because it comes from a plant. (So does hemlock, but that's another story.)

Huperzine A is a "cholinesterase inhibitor"--something that interferes with the breakdown of the chemical messenger acetylcholine in the brain. That's important, says GNC, because "low levels of acetylcholine in the brain may be associated with memory loss."

But "there's no evidence that ordinary memory loss with aging is due to any specific shortage of a neurotransmitter," counters Jaime Grutzendler of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

"No good studies have looked at whether cholinesterase inhibitors can help with this problem," he adds. "And to my knowledge none are under way or even planned."

GNC says that it has launched a study "to confirm efficacy and quantify benefit" (the company apparently felt no obligation to see the results before it starting selling Cognita). But unless the study is rigged, it could also find no benefit. If that happens, will GNC offer refunds to those who've already swallowed the hype ... and the pills?

Bottom Line: Don't waste your money.

Cost (3 pills a day): about $25 per month.

"Extraordinary new nutritional supplement to enhance memory and cognitive performance."

What's the "revolutionary" pill with "the proven ability to make a difference for all ages" that has one of the biggest manufacturers of dietary supplements in the U.S. so excited?

It's vinpocetine (pronounced vin-POE-suhteen), a prescription drug used in Europe to treat dementia. Vinpocetine, which failed to help Alzheimer's patients in a big U.S. trial in the mid-1980s, has been reincarnated as a dietary supplement--an unusual one, to be sure, since it's not found in nature. It's synthesized in a laboratory from a plant extract.

Vinpocetine's backers say that it increases the flow of blood and oxygen through the brain. Even if that's true, it doesn't mean that taking vinpocetine helps improve thinking ability or memory.

Pharmavite, which markets vinpocetine under its Nature Made label, says that taking 15 mg a day will help healthy people of all ages remember and learn better. "Different studies indicate improvement in short-term memory functions as well as enhancement of learning and recall," says the Nature Made Web site.

"A couple of very small pilot trials hint that vinpocetine may enhance the short-term memory of healthy volunteers,' says vinpocetine expert Bernd Wollschlaeger, a professor of family medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine and a consultant to Pharmavite. But Wollschlaeger points out that the studies looked at a total of just 20 volunteers and lasted no more than two days. What's more, it took 40 mg of vinpocetine to see an effect, not the 15 mg touted on Pharmavite's Web site.

"Viagra for the brain," the Life Extension Foundation calls vinpocetine. "Viagra for the profit margin" is more like it.

Bottom Line: Don't waste your money.

Cost (15 mg a day): about $15 per month.

"Help get the mental edge you need."

After just four weeks of taking Ginkoba M/E, "you'll feel more confident that you have the mental edge to get the most out of each day, claims the manufacturer, Pharmaton. By then, healthy adults "should begin to realize its benefits--including improvements in mental sharpness and endurance." Ginkoba M/E is a proprietary combination of the herbs ginkgo biloba and ginseng.

What the folks at Pharmaton need is a pill to keep them from exaggerating research results.

True enough, Ginkoba M/E helped middle-aged men and women remember words and pictures better in a new study the company funded and calls "landmark." Keith Wesnes and his colleagues at a private research firm in the United Kingdom gave 256 healthy volunteers either 320 mg of Ginkoba M/E or a (look-a-like but Ginkoba-free) placebo each day.(1)

After 12 weeks, the Ginkoba-takers had improved their memory for words and pictures by about eight percent; the placebo-takers by about four percent. In other words, if both groups of volunteers could remember 30 words at the beginning of the study, three months later the placebo-takers could remember 31 words and the Ginkoba-takers 32 words.

That may be enough of a difference to qualify as statistically significant, but hardly enough to justify shelling out over $20 a month. More importantly, the improvement in the Ginkoba-takers vs. the placebo-takers was unreliable. It was apparent one hour after taking the Ginkoba, but vanished at two hours, then reappeared six hours after taking the pills. Wesnes doesn't know why. On its Web site, Pharmaton ignores the inconsistent results.

And despite Pharmaton's hype about thinking faster and having greater mental stamina with Ginkoba, Wesnes and his colleagues found that Ginkoba-takers were no faster at remembering, focusing on a particular task, or sustaining their attention than those who took the placebo.

Bottom Line: Don't waste your money.

Cost (320 mg a day): about $25 per month.

(1) Psychopharmacology 152: 353, 2000.