Some folks swear by the herb ginkgo biloba as the ultimate brain and memory booster. Now research suggests it could also protect you from brain damage after a stroke!
The American Stroke Association says strokes can occur when a blood vessel to the brain is blocked by a clot or bursts. This damage prevents your brain from getting the blood and oxygen it needs.
When your brain is starved of life-giving oxygen, it could lead to seizures vision problems memory loss speech problems and even paralysis!
According to a UPI health report, researchers at Johns Hopkins University said their new study supports evidence that ginkgo appears to neutralize cell-damaging free radicals.
The research team gave mice daily doses of ginkgo biloba extract. The mice then had a laboratory-induced stroke. The researchers found these mice suffered about half the brain damage as animals not given the ginkgo.
They also found that mice who took ginkgo five minutes after the induced stroke sustained nearly 60 percent less brain damage the day after the stroke than those not given ginkgo at all.
And when mice received ginkgo 4 1/2 hours after a strokethey still showed about a third less damage than those not given ginkgo!
If further work confirms what weve seen, we could theoretically recommend a daily regimen of ginkgo to people at high risk of stroke as a preventive measure against brain damage, said lead researcher Sylvain Dore, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine.