Dr Andy Johnson, of Bournemouth University, tested the impact on afternoon drowsiness of eating sugar, sage (the herb) and chewing gum.
He lined up 24 volunteers and in the morning did some tests to measure alertness. Then, in the afternoon, our volunteers were randomly allocated to either chew gum, eat fudge, swallow a pill containing sage or a placebo.
One hour later they did some really boring tests. They repeated this process three more times over the course of the week, each time trying something different.
As expected, swallowing a placebo pill made little difference. The volunteers still felt drowsier in the afternoon. Eating fudge, if anything, made them feel slightly worse.
Chewing gum, surprisingly, improved mood, possibly because chewing seems to increases blood flow to brain. Going for a brisk walk would probably be just as effective.
In fact, the only thing in our test that really did seem to improve our volunteers' performance was the sage pills. This was not as unlikely as it might sound. There was a recent systematic review of clinical trials "assessing pharmacological properties of Salvia species on memory, cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease".
The review looked at eight studies which have tested the effects of sage on things like memory. Six of these trials involved normal subjects and two were done on people with Alzheimer's.
The researchers concluded that extracts of sage can enhance cognitive performance and it is safe, but they also caution that because so many different herbal preparations were used (extracts, essential oils, raw sage) better-designed trials are needed to establish which preparation is best.
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29817519
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