Bacopa confers benefits even upon infants, according to Ayurvedic medicine.
Bacopa grows either on land or in the water and can serve as an aquarium plant. It has several popular names, such as moneywort, brahmi or simply bacopa. Traditional medicine in India, called Ayurvedic medicine, values its properties, claiming that it confers intellectual and therapeutic benefits on people of all ages, including infants. But scientific evidence has so far failed to substantiate these claims.
Claimed Intellectual Benefits
Bacopa has chemicals called bacosides that bring about improved transmission of nerve signals from one brain cell to another. These chemicals are most effective in the area of the brain that governs long term memory, according to All Ayurveda. As a result, bacopa offers a broad spectrum of intellectual benefits. It improves concentration and facilitates memory and learning, as well as the ability to think and reason. Even mentally disabled schoolchildren show intellectual improvement when they take bacopa, according to Health Answers Board. And Bacopa effectively benefits people of all ages, according to Smart Publications. This includes infants. The infant brain is growing and its mental capacities are unfolding. Bacopa offers valuable assistance in this development. For this reason, people in India administer bacopa tea even to infants and have done so for hundreds of years, according to Smart Publications and Tattva's Herbs Organics.
Claimed Calming Effect
In Ayurvedic practice, bacopa is administered to relieve stress. In a way unknown to science it brings about the production of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin has a calming effect, enabling people to relax in stressful situations, according to Health Answers Board. This calming effect will soothe an infant when suffering such discomforts as colic or cold, according to Beauty Made Fresh.
Antioxidant
One of the medicinal properties of bacopa is beneficial to young and old alike. It seems to serve as an antioxidant, according to the University of Michigan. This means that it would protect the infant's cells from particles called free radicals. A free radical can be an atom or a group of atoms. They have unpaired electrons. In nature, electrons like to occur in pairs, so these free radicals often take an electron away from components of human cells, causing damage, according to Rice University.
Improved Memory
The claims made for bacopa do not have too much scientific support. Little proof exists that bacopa improves the intelligence of infants or anyone else, according to the Swedish Medical Center. But one study did yield a partial positive result. In a controlled experiment conducted by the University of Wollongong in Australia, barcopa was administered to a group of people were for a period of time and then given various tests to see if they showed any intellectual improvement. The results were mostly negative. For example, they did not learn any faster than they did before. But they did show improvement in remembering things that they had learned before, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information. In addition, an analysis of the constituents of bacopa shows that it contains compounds that are beneficial to the brains of all people including infants, such as bacosides, according to the University of Michigan.
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