CHAPTER ELEVEN
DR. FUKUMI MORISHIGE, M.D., Ph.D., is a surgeon who worked at the Linus Pauling Institute in Japan. Here, he tells how reishi helped cure one of his patients of lung cancer:
In June of 1986, a thirty-nine-year-old female came to me with lung cancer and complications of the chest wall membrane. A number of hospitals had told her that she could not be operated on. She left in a hopeless state. Upon returning home, her husband started to feed her reishi. Six months earlier, she had edema in the chest cavity, secondary to cancer, but now the cancer had completely disappeared. A person who had already made her funeral arrangements and was waiting for death rediscovered there is hope for life—that’s incredible. She insisted that [her cure 1 was the result of her husband giving her reishi.
The following comes from Dr. Banchert Tantivit, M.D. The doctor is a graduate of the University of Oregon Medical School and the author of Melatonin and I and The Lingzhi I Know (written in Thai).
This is a case of Mr. Chen, a fifty-five-year-old man from Penang. I interviewed him in front of his two sons in one hotel in Anson Road in Penang in 1997.
Mr. Chen had a sudden heart attack in 1989. Angiographic study reviewed triple coronary artery disease. One tributary was completely blocked. No surgery was advised. He was treated with conventional medicine. After four years, his condition deteriorated. A repeat angiogram showed that the narrowing of the heart arteries was getting worse. Bypass surgery was advised lest he have another heart attack any moment.
The patient was too afraid to have such a major operation. A friend advised him to take lingzhi (reishi mushrooms). His friend explained to him, with such serious kind of disease, highly concentrated lingzhi had to be taken and in high doses. Finally convinced, he started to take twelve lingzhi capsules a day. Then a miracle happened. He began to feel better. The usual fatigue was gone. There was no longer shortness of breath or chest pain. Eleven months after taking lingzhi, a third angiogram was taken and showed that there was marked improvement of the coronary artery disease. What was most amazing was that the artery that was completely blocked had opened again.
The following also comes from Dr. Banchert Tantivit:
Here is a case of brain cancer. A thirty-five-year-old, healthy man, my friend’s son in Los Angeles, was found to have brain cancer, called glioblastoma multiforme. This is one of the most aggressive brain cancers. Most people with this kind of cancer don’t survive beyond one year. The patient was treated by a team of doctors from Harvard University. Three therapy techniques were used: cut (surgery), burn (radio-therapy), and poison (chemotherapy). Despite the best efforts by doctors from the famous hospital, the cancer recurred after one year. New experimental chemotherapy was tried. After two sessions, the chemotherapy was discontinued because it was too toxic for the patient. The doctor told the patient’s parents that their son would not live long, maybe a matter of weeks.
My friend called me from LA and asked whether there was any herbal medicine that might help his son. I suggested lingzhi (reishi). And I told him that the dosage had to be really high. Twenty capsules had to be taken a day instead of the usual three to six. In treating cancers, shock therapy has to be employed; otherwise it won’t be effective.
My friend did not have any experience with lingzhi. Understandably, he hesitated to accept my advice. After consulting his two other sons (who were doctors) and concluding that there was nothing to lose, he finally decided to follow my advice. Starting in June of 1998, twenty capsules of jia hor lingzhi were given daily to the patient. To treat diseases serious and life-threatening such as cancer, a high-quality product has to be used. Now one year and six months have passed, my friend’s son is still alive, and he enjoys a reasonably good quality of life. Although he cannot walk without aid because of the damage to the motor nerve of the legs by toxic chemotherapy, and his memory was affected by burn therapy, he is enjoying his life, laughing in front of the television.
The most encouraging news is that the latest brain scan showed that the cancer mass has shrunk somewhat. My friend’s son is going to live and enjoy life for many more years.
The following is from Dr. Samuel Yoon, a veterinarian who practices in Western Massachusetts. Dr. Yoon is a highly respected, much-sought-after veterinarian.
Many times chemotherapy or radiation therapy is recommended for animals, but in the case of animals, those treatments are too expensive. Radiation treatment for a dog, for example, can easily run to four or five thousand dollars. Because these treatments are expensive, I started looking for alternatives. I studied acupuncture, and eventually I started looking into herbal treatments.
Six years ago I returned to Seoul, Korea, to attend a course of study. With scholars there, I discussed how to treat cancer with herbal medications. One day I ran across a newspaper ad placed by a pharmaceutical college professor. He claimed that he had extracted an anticancer agent from a mushroom. The mushroom was reishi. When I returned to the United States, I was able to obtain a copy of the reishi study from the professor. I became interested in the healing properties of reishi and other mushrooms. I started using reishi and eventually maitake and shiitake as well.
Ten months ago, I had a bulldog with breast cancer. He was operated on, and chemotherapy was recommended, but it wasn’t an option. The dog was too old and we were concerned about its safety. The owners and I agreed to use maitake to cure the dog. Now the dog is as energetic as ever. I couldn’t find tumors when I cut open the dog. The dog shows no signs of relapse.
In another case, I treated a sixteen-year-old poodle with a big lump on its hip. I couldn’t do a biopsy on the tumor because the dog was so old. It was a do-or-die situation. I prescribed reishi for this poodle. I choose reishi because it probably has more polysaccharides. Do you know how I used it? I injected reishi at the base of the tumor. Nobody had done that before, as far as I know. A week later, the tumor had shrunk by twenty to thirty percent. I made another injection, about 2 or 3 cc. It shrank again by twenty to thirty percent. I made the injection every week for a month. The tumor shrank to the size of a grain of salt. Without the reishi treatment, I would have had to cut out the tumor, and I probably would have lost the dog. The dog lived another three or four years, and the tumor eventually disappeared.
In another case, I had a sixteen-year-old mixed-breed dog with a lump on its ankle. I couldn’t operate because of an edema, a tumor pressing against a blood vessel. I injected reishi again. The swelling decreased by forty percent. Of course, I used other medications too, but I doubt if they were solely responsible for reducing the swelling. I injected one more time. The swelling was down another twenty or thirty percent. Now the lump was small enough to be operated on. I cut it out, and it never came back.
I also treated a dog with oral melanoma. It was a large dog, about a hundred pounds. I operated on the dog and put him on maitake, three capsules daily. I didn’t find evidence of melanoma for a whole year, but when the owner reduced the prescription to two capsules, the melanoma came back. Unfortunately, the dog died. Maybe the maitake only suppressed the cancer, and the lower dose allowed it to come back.
Andrew H. Miller, age forty-four, is the president of My co-Herb, Inc. (and a co-author of this book). Miller was interested in the transformational aspects of reishi that the Taoists spoke of so many years ago. His experiences with the mushroom captured for him what it must have been like to the ancient Taoists:
The ancient Chinese medical literature says that reishi can relieve the body of its material weight, prolong life, and transform the person who takes it into a supernatural being.
I felt it was worth a try. I had suffered from chronic lung problems since adolescence. At least twice a year, I would have a bout ofbronchitis that was serious enough to warrant a course of antibiotics and bed rest. Once I began taking reishi, there was no looking back. Although I have the occasional cold or flu, I have not had one case of bronchitis since.
Another experience I had with reishi dealt more with the psychic side of my being. I had been told by colleagues that some people experience a “psychic healing crisis” when taking reishi. That one happened to me. Within a few days of taking my course of reishi, I noticed that my dream state was becoming more agitated. I dreamed about people and places and situations that I had long ago forgotten about or buried in my subconscious—unpleasant experiences from my childhood, emotions and anxieties relating to events long forgotten. I would wake up in a cold sweat and lay awake for hours reflecting on these memories, sights, sounds, and even smells that had risen from my subconscious.
The time spent lying awake was, I realize now, the beginning of a profound transformation for me. I had been carrying around a lot of negative psychic burdens, and reishi was expunging them and ridding me of the burden of carrying them around.
While in my waking state, it was as if I was able to detach myself and observe my interactions with other people, as if I were in the audience and on stage at the same time. I was able to see how I interacted with people and subsequently, I was able to change behavior patterns and ways of communicating with other people that I was unhappy with and wanted to change.
Well, I did change. I felt as if the terrain of my mind and body had shifted dramatically. I was not the same person anymore. Reishi calmed my mind, my nerves, and allowed me to concentrate more fully—allowed me, I think, to enjoy life more fully.
Rose Menlowe, age seventy-nine, is the grandmother of Jordan Rubin, founder of Garden of Life, a company that makes revolutionary whole-food nutrition products as well as a multiple-mushroom formula. His RM-10 multiple-mushroom formula is created using the Poten-Zyme process of biofermentation creating enhanced absorption and utilization while also providing beneficial probiotics and enzymes. No other fermentation process like this can be found anywhere. Jordan Rubin formulated RM-10 for his grandmother, Rose Menlowe, after she was diagnosed with metastatic cancer.
Two years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. The visible tumors were surgically removed and I underwent no further conventional treatment. My grandson formulated a special blend of herbs and probiotics for me to take. He told me that if I took this blend, my immune system and digestion should Significantly improve. Whatever it was he gave me, boy did it work! I have been using RM-10 for about eighteen months. I’ve never felt better in my life. I experience more energy than I ever remember having. I have a general feeling of well-being that I have never experienced. As a side note, I have been constipated all of my adult life. I have always required the use of laxatives, which didn’t always help. After a few months of RM-10 I’ve eliminated the use of my laxatives and have almost perfect elimination. According to my last check-up, I am cancer-free.