mushrooms that ramp up your immune system

hello Peter and Welcome,

i would like to hear about mushrooms that ramp up your immune system
or prevent cancer such as reishe and shitaki and how this works.

rav

Raven Sutherland wrote:hello Peter and Welcome,

i would like to hear about mushrooms that ramp up your immune system
or prevent cancer such as reishe and shitaki and how this works.

rav

There is endless rubbish circulating on the web about how certain things will "boost your immune system".

Ninety-nine per cent of it is unscientific crap.

I can find one study (summarised here, with a link to the paper: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150416112826.htm *) on this subject, which suggests that daily consumption of Lentinula edodes (Shiitake) mushrooms resulted in participants showing improved function in gamma delta T-cells and reductions in inflammatory proteins.

I can also find a pile of unscientific claptrap.

Similarly, if someone had found a mushroom to reliably prevent cancer, we'd probably know all about it. They'd make billions from the extracts.

There are papers that point towards anti-cancer properties for Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum), Maitake (Grifola frondosa) and even shiitake (Lentinula edodes), all of which you could grow but, as a doctor working for Cancer Research UK explains in this article: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/02/could-mushrooms-cure-cancer there are

lots of things can kill cells in a lab, not just mushroom extracts. Whether it is bleach or leaving the incubator door open, there may be many reasons for the positive results. It doesn't mean they are all treatments for cancer.

"When it's something like food, people get really excited and say: 'Does it mean if I eat enough of these things, it will have this effect on me?' she says. "It doesn't really work that way because you don't know about the dose, you don't know whether by eating something it's bio-available – meaning it can get from the inside of your tummy into your bloodstream and into the tumour in a dose that's actually relevant. That's the trouble.

Of course, it's also possible to eat too much of a good thing. Eating "loads of mushrooms", especially those with complex biological actions, may not be any more of a good thing than tipping loads of products of the pharmacology industry down your throat.

This article seems to reliably summarise the information you seek on cancer: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cancers-in-general/cancer-questions/mushrooms-in-cancer-treatment

*Note that Science Daily is not exactly my go-to source for reliable information!

Vitamin D is known to be very beneficial to people with autoimmune disease--and there are many studies to back this up. I wonder if it's the vitamin D in the shiitakes that's so good for us? At any rate, they are delicious, so it's a win-win!

Hi Raven
In general, the high molecular weight (1,3) Beta-D-glucans in the cell walls of fungi can have a simulating effect on different immune cell types (e.g. T-cells, B-cells, NK cells, etc.). Different sugars have different effects. Some of the most revered and well-researched include LEM (from Shiitake), schizophyllan from Schizophlum commune, and PSK (Krestin) from Turkey Tail. PSK is so effective that it is covered by the Japanese government's health insurance. In general, these compounds don't seem to directly fight cancer but support and enhance the body's natural ability to do so.

These links are just samples. The wonderful book The Fungal Pharmacy by Robert Rogers is a compendium of medicinal fungal studies.

Cheers
Peter

When cures, such as what Dr Burzynsky developed, are demonized by big medicine to the point that he was brought before a grand jury 5 different times to stop him(he won each time). The only patients he was allowed to see were those who were hopeless with large brain tumors and such, yet he saved many of those. Google him and watch the documentary, it will bring tears, and anger,,,