What Is Lion's Mane? Why Gamers Use It

I got properly into the detail on this one when we were developing the Levelz® formula, because I didn't want to just chuck it in for the sake of a label claim. If it was going into the gummy, I wanted the dose to mean something.

That turned out to be a longer conversation than expected, mostly because the gap between "contains Lion's Mane" and "contains a useful amount of Lion's Mane" is enormous, and nothing on a front-of-pack label tells you which one you're holding.

What Lion's Mane is

Lion's Mane is a mushroom, Hericium erinaceus, which grows on hardwood trees and looks like a white pom-pom. It's been eaten as food and used in traditional practice across parts of Asia for a very long time. It's edible in its whole form, and some restaurants cook with it.

What goes into supplements is an extract rather than the whole mushroom. Extraction concentrates the compounds of interest so you can get a meaningful dose without eating a bowl of mushrooms before every gaming session.

Two things worth knowing when you're comparing products. First, extracts vary in strength depending on how they're made, so 500mg of one extract isn't automatically the same as 500mg of another. Second, some products use mycelium grown on grain rather than the fruiting body, which is cheaper and often considered weaker. Neither of these is printed on the front of a pouch, which is part of why this ingredient is hard to shop for.

What does the research on Lion's Mane say?

Less than the marketing around it would suggest, and I'm not going to overclaim it. There are only a few human trials, and they're small:

A Japanese trial gave 30 adults aged 50 to 80 with mild cognitive impairment either placebo or 3g a day of dried Lion's Mane powder for 16 weeks. The Lion's Mane group scored better on a cognitive function scale than the placebo group, but the scores dropped again within four weeks of stopping. No adverse effects showed up in lab tests.
A Northumbria University pilot study gave 41 healthy adults aged 18 to 45 either placebo or 1.8g of Lion's Mane a day for 28 days. People were quicker on one attention task an hour after a single dose, and there was a trend, not statistically significant, towards lower stress after 28 days. Other measures showed no effect, and a few were negative, and the authors said the results should be interpreted with caution.
A 2025 systematic review found five randomised trials and three pilot trials in people, many of them in older adults with or without dementia, alongside a larger body of lab and animal work.

So research into Lion's Mane and cognition is ongoing rather than settled, and it isn't a nootropic miracle. None of these trials studied gamers, a gummy, or a 500mg dose. What it is, is a long-used food mushroom that was well tolerated in those trials, with early and mixed evidence on cognition.

If you take it expecting a noticeable hit like caffeine, you'll be disappointed. That's not what it does.

How much is in Levelz®, and why

Levelz® gummies contain 500mg of Lion's Mane extract per serving, which is 250mg in each of the two gummies. That figure wasn't arbitrary.

Some products include Lion's Mane at a level low enough to put on the label without it doing very much practically. Sometimes that's a few milligrams, which is enough to legally list the ingredient and no more. It's the main thing to watch for when comparing products.

We landed on 500mg of extract as the most we could include without pushing the gummy's overall size or taste out of what people would want to eat. To be straight with you, the trials above used 1.8g to 3g a day of mushroom, and extracts and powders aren't directly comparable, so you can't map their results onto our gummy, or anyone else's.

Consideration	Why it mattered to us
Dose level	A real, stated amount, not a label tick
Pairing with caffeine	It sits alongside the caffeine rather than replacing it
Taste impact	Mushroom extracts can affect flavour at high concentrations, so we balanced this carefully
Consistency	Same 500mg dose in every serving, every batch

The taste row was the constraint that shaped everything else. Mushroom extract has a distinctly earthy flavour that gets harder to mask as the dose climbs, and there's a ceiling on how much you can hide behind a sour tropical fruit coating before the gummy stops being pleasant to eat. Push past that and you've made a product with excellent numbers on paper that nobody wants to take twice.

Why is Lion's Mane in a gaming energy gummy?

Gaming sessions, especially longer or more competitive ones, aren't just about staying awake. They're about staying sharp for hours at a time.

Caffeine handles the alertness side, but it can tip into jitteriness at higher doses. The usual gamer response to fading focus is more caffeine, which past a certain point tends to leave you wired and twitchy rather than sharper.

We didn't want the formula to be just a bigger caffeine number. That's why Lion's Mane is in there, alongside L-theanine paired with the caffeine. Of the two, Lion's Mane is the one with the earliest-stage evidence, and I'd rather tell you that than dress it up.

One caveat worth stating. Lion's Mane is the slowest-acting ingredient in the pouch. Caffeine you'll feel within half an hour. Lion's Mane, if you notice it at all, is something you'd notice across weeks of regular use rather than on day one. That's how the trials were run, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

FAQ

Is Lion's Mane a stimulant?

No. It doesn't work like caffeine and won't give you an energy hit on its own. It's included alongside a stimulant, not in place of one.

How quickly does Lion's Mane work?

The human trials ran for four to sixteen weeks. One small study did see quicker results on one task an hour after a single dose, but most of the interest is in consistent use over weeks, and in the longest trial the changes faded after people stopped. The caffeine is what you'll feel on the day.

Is Lion's Mane safe to take daily?

It's an edible mushroom and was well tolerated in the trials above, though a 2025 review notes occasional stomach discomfort, headache and allergic reactions. Check with a healthcare professional if you have an underlying condition or a mushroom allergy, or take medication.

Why don't more energy products include Lion's Mane?

Cost and formulation complexity are the main reasons. It's more expensive than filler ingredients, and getting the dose right without affecting taste takes real development work.

Will Lion's Mane make gummies taste of mushrooms?

Not at the dose we use. Mushroom extract does carry an earthy note, which is exactly why the dose and the flavour system have to be balanced together rather than decided separately.

Can I take Lion's Mane and caffeine together?

Yes, and that pairing is the point. Lion's Mane is included alongside caffeine rather than competing with it.

In short

Lion's Mane is a functional mushroom extract, not an energy ingredient. It won't wake you up and you won't feel it the way you feel caffeine. Any effect would show up over consistent use, and the human research is still early, small and mixed. When comparing products, check the dose, and be sceptical of any pouch that names the ingredient without telling you how much is in it.

If you want to see how Lion's Mane sits next to the caffeine side of the formula, the L-theanine and caffeine post covers the other half of that equation.

Have a look at the full ingredient breakdown on the product pages, and the FAQ page covers dosing questions across all eight actives.