Healing Foods: Mushroom Power

Strengthen your Immune System

With Medicinal Mushrooms

There’s a mystique surrounding mushrooms and the 100, 000 other species of fungi. Eat the wrong wild mushroom, and it can lead to dreadful results. Eat the right variety, and it could boost your immune system and keep you healthy through cold and flu season. Mushrooms have even been found to stop the progression of cancer and HIV.

Clearly, these plants do more than add flavor and texture to foods. Long respected in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), more than a dozen varieties of mushrooms are potent immune stimulants that have been used in Asia for more than 3, 000 years.

Perhaps the growing recognition of TCM is another reason why mushrooms with strange-sounding names like shitake, maitake, and reishi are finding their way onto the supplement shelves of health-food stores. Also look for fresh and dried shitakes in the produce and spice sections

Shitake (lentinus edodes)

Shitake has been the subject of considerable research of late due to its impressive health-promoting properties. Its main active phytonutrient components include eritadenine, polysaccharides and lignins.

Potential Health Applications of Shitake

• Immune-enhancing
• Cholesterol lowering
• General cardiovascular benefits
• Anti-parasitic
• Anti-bacterial
• Anti-viral
• Cell protective
• Liver protective

Reishi (ganoderma lucidum)

Reishi mushrooms are very rich in the health promoting phytonutrients such as polysaccharides, triterpenes and phytosterols.

Potential Health Applications of Reishi

• Immune-enhancing
• Liver protective
• Cholesterol lowering
• Anti-bacterial
• Cell protective
• Anti-allergic
• Protective against radiation
• Anti-hypertensive

Maitake (grifola frondosa)

Maitake is yet another mushroom with an impressive research record in studies which have assessed its potential health benefits. Its main active phytonutrient compounds are polysaccharides such as alpha-glucans and beta-glucans.

Potential Health Applications of Maitake

• Immune-enhancing
• Cell protective
• Anti-hypertensive
• Liver protective

Contraindications : None noted…