CHAPTER TWELVE
THIS CHAPTER TAKES a peek behind the scenes to show you some techniques for cultivating medicinal mushrooms. It also offers advice for buying medicinal mushroom products and explains the virtues of multiple-mushroom formulas. You will meet some of the people who produce the products in this chapter. These pages also offer the strange story of the orgasmic mushroom.
For many centuries, foraging for and picking mushrooms in the wild was the only way to obtain them. Sometime in the first millennium, however, cultivators in Japan and China began using the log method to grow mushrooms. With this technique, logs from felled trees are placed next to a stump or log where the fruit-bodies of mushrooms grow. The idea is for spores from the fruit-body to find their way to the felled trees and spawn a new crop. The log method is still practiced in parts of China. People use it to supplement their incomes and produce mushrooms for local markets.
More controlled methods of cultivation begin in the 1930S. At that time, Japanese cultivators began growing mushrooms on logs wrapped in rice straw. The farmer would find a log with reishi or shiitake growing on it, cut a slice from the log, and sandwich the log between other logs. Then the farmer would bind all the logs in rice straw. Soon the spores from the infected log would infect the other logs as well and mushrooms would begin growing on all the logs.
The log method of cultivating mushrooms worked very well, but then farmers hit on the idea of burying an infected log in the soil. With this technique, the log retained moisture longer, which encouraged the mushrooms to grow. What’s more, the log wasn’t exposed to and infected by unwanted weed fungi. Another cultivation method is to place mycelium from a mushroom on a wooden plug, drill a small hole in a log, hammer the plug into the log, and wax over the small hole to keep foreign spores out.
Recently, with the popularity of mushrooms on the rise and demand for mushrooms at an all-time high, cultivators have sought more advanced techniques for controlled cultivation. One technique is to cultivate the mushrooms in sawdust. This way, the fruit-bodies of the shiitake mushroom, for example, grown in ninety days, whereas cultivating the mushroom on logs requires eighteen months.
Another technique is to cultivate the mushrooms on grains such as brown rice, barley, or buckwheat. The grains are sterilized and placed into special bags that allow the mycelium to breathe but keep contaminants out. The pristine environment is essential. By the end of the growth cycle, the mycelium has eaten the grain and digested it. As long as the grower’s technique is good, very little of the grain remains intact.
In Asia, where demand for medicinal mushroom products is especially high and the products are produced en masse, growers have been devising state-of-the-art techniques to cultivate mycelium. One technique is to grow the mycelium in a liquid culture. Mushroom cultures are introduced into a liquid broth. The growers are quite secretive about their techniques, but suffice it to say, the culture is harvested from the liquid medium and dried into a powder.
Mycologists and growers often tout the superior qualities of the strains they produce. A mushroom strain is a culture from a particular mushroom. Mycologists obtain mushroom strains in various ways. The majority purchase them from a mycological culture bank such as the one run by American Type Culture Collection, a company that provides biological products to science and industry. Mycologists often trade cultures among themselves. Many have large collections in libraries. Diligent and meticulous mycologists, however, prefer to obtain the strains from mushrooms they collect themselves in the wild. These mycologists, who strive for the highest-quality mushroom, believe that seeing a mushroom in its native environment and acquainting yourself with its special features is essential. Where a mushroom grows, how quickly it grows, and its virulency matter.
Mushroom cultivation has reached new heights of sophistication in recent years, with producers going to great lengths to replicate the growing environment of mushrooms in the laboratory. For example, the Cordyceps species, Cordyceps sinensis included, is found in oxygen-deficient environments. Cordyceps grows in the Himalayas, in swampy areas where high levels of methane and carbon dioxide are found, and in valleys around volcanoes. Because Cordyceps grows in these oxygen-deficient environments, it must use oxygen in a very efficient manner. Some mycologists, experimenting with Cordyceps in their laboratories, discovered that they could produce higher quantities of cordycepin by depriving Cordyceps mycelium of a certain amount of oxygen. Cordycepin is used to treat bacterial infections such as tuberculosis and leprosy, as well as HIV replication. By altering the growing parameters with temperature-gas mixes and nutrient mixes, these mycologists can produce target compounds more efficiently than can be produced with random growth patterns.
The mushroom-growing industry has devoted itself almost exclusively to producing larger fruit-bodies and consistent crops of mushroom fruit-bodies. Not many producers have turned their attention to producing chemical compounds from mushrooms. When mycologists experiment with producing compounds in their mushrooms, they change the growth parameters and got some odd-looking fruit-bodies. These mushrooms would not be marketable in the culinary market as shiitakes, for instance, because they’re ugly and pink. But that’s okay because mycologists are not looking for a good strain to market. They are trying to produce Lentinan, Krestin, Cordycepin, and other compounds more efficiently.
The past twenty years have seen real advancements in the field of analytical chemistry, and some mycologists have brought these advancements to bear on the cultivation and study of medicinal mushrooms. In a nutshell, analytical chemistry is trying to see how things fit together that are too small to see. Gas chromatography, liquid chromatography, X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and other advancements in the field of analytical chemistry have made it possible to see compounds that couldn’t be seen before. Each of these methods uses slightly different computerized technology to look at the structure and constituents of molecules. In gas chromatography, for example, scientists place a substance in an extremely low vacuum and blast it apart into fragments. Then, similar to forensic experts piecing together the debris of a bomb blast, the scientists look at the molecular fragments and reassemble them to find out how they were put together before the blast.
Mycologists can use advanced techniques in analytical chemistry to quickly, accurately, and relatively inexpensively test the compounds in mushrooms. They can find out what these compounds are with a degree of certainty never known before. For that matter, they can discover new compounds. The new technologies will be especially useful in the emerging field of mapping beta glucan structures. What was assumed in the past can actually be quantified. These are indeed exciting days in the field of medicinal mushrooms. We can expect to discover new compounds, some of which will serve to prevent or cure disease, in the years ahead.
Using cell-culture technology, it is now possible to grow mushroom mycelium in the laboratory (the mycelium is the feeding body of the mushroom that grows beneath the soil). The processes for growing mycelium are very technical, but suffice it to say that the mycelium is produced in much the same way that baker’s and brewer’s yeasts are produced. Given the right environment and conditions, mycelium made in the laboratory has the same biological activity as mycelium that is grown in the wild. What’s more, it is cleaner and more potent. The electronically controlled culture systems keep out foreign contaminant, and ensure that natural constituents are kept at optimum levels.
Recently, scientists Dr. Randy Dorian of Hanuman Medical of San Francisco and Dr. Moshe Shifrine of Santa Fe, New Mexico, succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of professional mycologists by cultivating truffles (Tuber melasporum) in liquid culture. The scientists used mammalian cell tissue culturing techniques to grow fungal tissue. Their success was verified through DNA analysis. Many mycologists are still shaking their heads in awe of this heretofore impossible feat. Truffles contain many interesting compounds that may have significant value for the nutriceutical industry.
From the health-conscious consumer’s point of view, maybe the best thing about laboratory-produced mycelium is its cost. Cordyceps mushrooms, for example, cost as much as $1,000 per kilo. By contrast, most pharmacies and health food stores sell a Cordyceps powder that is significantly less expensive than that. Mushrooms and mushroom products that only the nobility could afford three hundred years ago are now available to everyone. We expect mushroom products to be available in supermarkets soon, as the popularity of the products is increasing.
Anyone who shops for mushrooms or mushroom products must be aware that some products are better than others. The last decade or so has seen a large increase in the number of mushroom farms, especially in the northwestern United States where the climate is damp and conducive to growing mushrooms. On some occasions, the people who manage these farms, while well intentioned, produce mushrooms of inferior quality because they start from weak isolates. The problem is that most of the mushrooms are grown from hybridized strains and these strains have only a five- to eight-year lifespan. After that, they weaken and their bioefficiency drops out.
It’s as simple as this: The grower gets the mushroom strain from a supplier and reproduces it. At first the growing is successful, but the success rate will decline unless the grower knows how to maintain the strain under laboratory conditions. That is a delicate matter requiring more expertise than most people can lay claim to. We have observed that books about cultivating mushrooms usually offer advice for growing or harvesting, but offer little in the way of how to maintain the original fungus, and that is the crucial issue. In the future, we hope that organizations that present mushroom-growing seminars to amateur mycologists will include in-depth training in long-term culture maintenance.
Because temperature and climate are so important in mushroom cultivation, Japanese suppliers have been creating strains especially for use in different climates. In Kyushu Province, where it is warmer, one strain is used; in the northern, colder part of the country, growers use a different strain. Different strains for different climates is nothing new in the world of agriculture. After all, strains of apple, cherry, and all other fruit trees are planted where they will grow best. However, many American mushroom growers are not as sophisticated as they could be. They are not taking climate into account.
Another thing for consumers of mushroom products to consider is how the mycelium is handled. As Chapter One in this book explains, the mycelium is the feeding body of the mushroom that grows underground. Preferably, mushroom mycelium should be processed from start to finish on the same site. Mushroom mycelium is a fragile substance. When it is jostled about or moved from place to place, it can be shocked and bruised, which inhibits its healthy growth cycle. The ideal mycelium mushroom product is harvested at the peak of its vigor and processed immediately on site.
Mushrooms are great absorbers. Like sponges, they take in what is in their environment. Growers who adhere to organic growing procedures produce mushrooms of the highest purity. For that reason, mushroom products that originate in the United States are preferable to mushroom products that originate in industrialized areas in other parts of the planet, where pollution and environmental toxins are often more prevalent.
As a raw material, medicinal mushrooms are more expensive than most of the other herbal supplements that you can buy in health food stores. The price of a quality medicinal mushroom product runs between twelve and a hundred dollars for a one-month supply, depending on the quality and number of strains in the formula. If you encounter a mushroom product that costs less than ten dollars, you should be wary. As they become popular, more and more mushroom products are appearing on the market, and some of these products are of inferior quality. Please be careful. The producers of mushroom products who are listed and described in this book have been chosen for their reliability and long, successful track record of supplying quality products. They represent the highest quality and value for your dollar. Before you purchase a medicinal mushroom product, do your homework and find the one from which you will obtain the most health benefits. Unfortunately, but very likely, that product will cost more than twelve dollars.
Several years ago, Andrew Miller, a co-author of this book, began experimenting with extracts from reishi fruit-bodies in the course of producing herbal sparkling wines in California’s Napa Valley. Miller decided to see what would happen if he blended mediocre red table wine and red reishi fruit-body extracts. The idea was to see if he could make a tonic wine. Miller’s company, Tonic Wines and Beers, Inc., already made a ginseng champagne, a blend of high-quality Napa Valley methode champenoise and wild American ginseng. His ginseng champagne proved a resounding success and received much critical acclaim from winemakers who had previously been skeptical.
The reishi-red wine blend, a mix of a cardiotonic—a substance that strengthens the heart—and “the mushroom of immortality,” turned out to be a happy marriage. The wine had an unusual silky texture that fooled Miller’s friends in the winemaking industry, who thought they were drinking a top-drawer Napa Valley red. Curiously, Miller’s application to produce and sell the unusual new wine was rejected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). The bureau noted that the reishi mushroom is not on the Food and Drug Administration’s official list of herbs that can be added to alcoholic beverages, and it rejected Miller’s request. Undaunted, Miller continues his work with marrying tonic herbs with wine and is achieving many interesting results.
Recently, bakers in San Francisco’s Bay Area have begun experimenting with the use of medicinal-mushroom mycelium cultivated on whole grains. The mycelium powder can be blended in flour and used in baking. As the whole-grain mycelium is heated during the baking process, its beta glucans become more bioavailable. In other words, they are made easier to digest. Putting whole-grain mushroom mycelium in baked goods is a novel and effective way to take the mushrooms, especially where children are concerned, since youngsters often balk at taking pills and capsules. On many occasions we have put reishi and Agaricus blazei mycelium powder in our families’ pancake mix without anyone being the wiser.
Contemporary cuisine has begun to make use of culinary mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus), maitakes, Pom Pom Blancs (Hericium erinaceus), and Agaricus blazei are now showing up in the kitchens of some of America’s best chefs. Apart from their medicinal value, these mushrooms are delicious. They are often the defining element in the dish in which they are served. Savvy chefs are proudly pointing out to their clientele that they are getting something rare and valuable—a food item that has been revered since ancient times for its flavor, as well as its health-giving properties.
Now that the general public in the United States and other formerly mycophobic countries are beginning to embrace mushrooms, we hope to see more mushrooms in the diet, and, dare we say it, more mushroom additives in food. Recently, a fungus-based meat substitute marketed under the brand name Quam has appeared on the shelves of some markets. Quorn has been popular in Europe for some time and recently received FDA approval in the United States. The product, made from the fungus Fusarium venenatum, is supposed to taste, ofcourse, like chicken.
To make sure that this book is not anticlimactic, we offer the story of the orgasmic mushroom, a mushroom of the genus Dictyophora. This mushroom has not been granted GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration. It has not been clinically tested. Some of what we are about to report about the mushroom is highly speculative, but we believe our curious readers would like to know.
Mushrooms of the genus Dictyophora do not have aerial spore bodies. Similar to plants, they depend on insects to reproduce. The insects are attracted by the odor of the mushroom. They come to the mushroom, get its sticky spores on their bodies, and carry off the spores. As the insects travel from place to place, they spread the Dictyophora’s spores and ensure its survival.
On the Big Island of Hawaii, on the hot, rocky lava flows, there grows a unique species of Dictyophora mushroom. The mushroom has a very fast life cycle, even faster than most Dictyophoras. It lives between thirty minutes and four hours. Consequently, the mushroom has a very pungent odor. It needs a strong odor to attract insects—and thereby reproduce—during its short lifespan. Researchers have discovered that insect behavior is dictated by the sense of smell and that sex pheromones in plant odors are what attract insects to plants. Mushrooms of the genus Dictyophora smell something like rotting meat. They give off a strong odor due to a large number of sex pheromones. Mycologists report that you can smell the mushroom from thirty feet away.
It is believed that the Dictyophora species that grows in Hawaii produces a compound that is identical to or a very close mimic of the compound that is produced in human females during the arousal stage. How this compound works in the human female can be described in terms of neurotransmitters. These are chemicals, produced in the brain or elsewhere in the body, that create activity in the brain. For example, when you are frightened, the body creates a small amount of adrenaline and it has a profound and nearly instant effect. Adrenaline is a potent neurotransmitter. Similarly, in the human female, a compound, unnamed as yet, is emitted during arousal. As a woman goes through the various stages of arousal, the level of this compound increases in her blood. Eventually’ it reaches a threshold quantity, at which point a cascade of physical events is triggered—an orgasm.
When you cut your arm, your brain produces small amounts of what is essentially morphine, the same chemical compound that the opium poppy produces. Just as poppies produce morphine millions of times greater than what the brain requires, the species of Dictyophora in question produces a compound millions of times greater than a woman produces naturally in her body during arousal. The compound is a volatile one. When a woman smells one ofthese mushrooms, a spontaneous, intense orgasm may occur. The species of Dictyophora found in Hawaii has become quite popular with some mycologists for that very reason.
Phallus impudicus, the “orgasm mushroom,” is nothing new and enjoys a rich folklore in many lands. A glance at the genus may explain where its reputation comes from. The mushroom resembles a phallus. Hadrianus Junius, in his Phalli: A Description with Pictures from Life of the Fungi Growing Occasionally in the Sand in Holland, wrote the following about the mushroom in the sixteenth century: “[It] is very effective for intense and unbearable pains in the joints, above all those caused by passions and limitless debaucheries that exceed the limits of license.”
The mushroom is used in New Guinea to encourage cattle to breed. In traditional Chinese medicine, it is used to relieve rheumatism. It is a folk remedy for ulcers, asthma, gout, and other ailments in Latvia. In England, the mushroom is known by the names Stinkhorn, Devil’s Stinkpot, Devil’s Horn, Stinking Polecat, and Wood Witch.
In her memoir Period Piece, Gwen Raverat (1885-1957) writes the following about her Aunt Etty, a proper Victorian lady who took it upon herself to remove the gaudy Stinkhorn mushroom from the nearby woods to protect young ladies’ morals. By the way, the Aunt Etty in this passage was the daughter of none other than Charles Darwin. The Latin “grosser name” she refers to, you will recall, is Phallus impudicus.
In our native woods there grows a kind of toadstool, called in the vernacular The Stinkhorn, though in Latin it bears a grosser name. This name is justified for the fungus can be hunted by the scent alone; and this was Aunt Etty’s greatest invention: armed with a basket and a pointed stick, and wearing a special hunting cloak and gloves, she would sniff her way round the wood, pausing here and there, her nostrils twitching, when she caught whiff of her prey; then at last, with a deadly pounce, she would fall upon her victim, and then poke his putrid carcass into her basket. ... The catch was brought back and burnt in deepest secrecy on the drawing-room fire, with all the doors locked, because of the morals of the maids!
Mycologists believe that the Dictyophora species that grows on the lava flows of the Big Island of Hawaii, because it lives in such a harsh environment’ has evolved an especially intense odor. Very few insects live on the lava flows. To call flies and other insects from a distance, the odor must be especially pungent and the compound that produces the odor must be especially strong.
By some estimates, as many as fifty percent of American woman suffer from orgasmic dysfunction, which is defined as difficulty achieving orgasm or the inability to achieve orgasm. Scientists hope to isolate the compound in the Dictyophora species from Hawaii and make it available to these women. One problem will be devising test protocols for experimental trials. Telling subjects that they are being tested to see if they achieve states of arousal or orgasms is almost guaranteed to skew the test results. One proposed technique is to take saliva swabs from subjects in the nonaroused state and at different stages of arousal, run the samples through a gas chromatograph, and note how the “arousal compound” increases in intensity after the Dictyophora-derived substance is administered.
Incidentally, the mushroom does not appear to be effective in men. Men find the odor of Dictyophora nothing short of repulsive. A handful of male scientists, however, in an attempt to answer the age-old question of what an orgasm feels like to women, have proposed giving the mushroom compound to men in quantities high enough to trigger a female orgasm.
Anyone who goes to the health food store in search of mushroom products inevitably finds what the health food industry calls “multiple-mushroom formulas.” Each formula is a mixture of three to as many as fourteen different mushrooms in powder form. The idea is to cover as many bases as possible in a single formula. Reishi, shiitake, Cordyceps, and other medicinal mushrooms each offer different health benefits. The different polysaccharide structures in the different mushrooms trigger different receptors of the immune system. The idea is to feed the body a lot of different polysaccharide structures to brighten or lift its immune system relatively quickly.
As Chapter Two explains, each mushroom appears to produce its own unique type of beta glucan. One may stimulate the production of T cells while another helps natural killer cells do their job. Agaricus blazei, for example, stimulates the production of natural killer cells. Maitake stimulates the production of T cells. By putting both mushrooms in the mix, you stimulate T and natural killer cells.
It is nearly impossible to tell which part of the immune system fails when a tumor, for example, starts growing uncontrollably. Multiple-mushroom formulas take the shotgun approach. Because each kind of mushroom produces a slightly different 1-3 beta glucan. each mushroom in the formula can aid the immune system in a different way.
Incidences of anyone having a reaction to a medicinal mushroom are very, very rare. Usually, when someone has a bad reaction, the cause is a lack of an enzyme for digesting a particular mushroom. Very few anaphylactic reactions have ever been recorded when taking medicinal mushrooms. For these reasons, mixing many kinds of mushrooms into a formula is safe.
The most sophisticated and advanced multi-mushroom formula of which the authors are aware is called Nikken Bio-Directed Immunity. The formula combines fourteen different medicinal mushrooms. induding the eight described in this book. The product is sold and distributed by Nikken, a worldwide distributor of health-related products. Uyou prefer to take a so-called multiple-mushroom formula. you owe it to yourself to read the label to find out how much of each mushroom is in the formula. Also note what percentage of the formula is composed of each mushroom. The "“Producers List” near the end this book lists companies that offer multiple-mushroom formulas.
Trial of a Six-Mushroom Formula
Researchers in the United States along with Chinese scientists Wang Ruwei, Xu Yiyuan, Ii Peijun, and Wang Xingli, conducted a clinical trial with a multi-mushroom formula in People’s Hospital ofLishui City, Zhejiang Province, China. The formula consisted of powder in tablet form from six mushrooms: Agaricus blazei, shiitake, maitake, reishi, Trametes versicolor, and Cordyceps sinensis. The study was conducted on fifty-six patients in the middle to late stages (Stage 3 and 4) of cancer. In terms of their physical condition, white blood cell count, granular leukocyte count, and appetite, the subjects of the study were similar. Thirty patients were given 6 grams per day of the multiple-mushroom formula; twenty-six patients were given 30 milligrams a day of the pharmaceutical drug Polyactin-A. Rather than give the comparison group a placebo, as is the custom in the West, Chinese physicians prefer to give the comparison group a medicine. Although this makes the results of experiments harder to assess, Chinese physicians believe for ethical reasons that giving comparison groups some kind of treatment is necessary. All patients in the study were treated concurrently with radiotherapy or chemotherapy a week after they began taking either the multiple-mushroom formula or Polyactin-A. Both groups took their medications for a total of two months.
At the end of the trial period, the multiple-mushroom group showed improvements beyond those of the comparison group. The scientists wrote about their study, “It was shown that the mixed polysaccharides can inhibit the protein synthesis of cancer cells, change the physiological condition of cancer cells, inhibit the growth and transference of cancer cells, relieve the poisoning action of anticancer drugs, improve the patients’ sleep and appetite, and result in overall improvement of the symptoms.” The scientists concluded that the curative effect ofthe multiple-mushroom formula was higher than that of Poly actin A and that it can serve a helper role in the treatment of tumor patients.
Multiple Mushrooms (Maitake, Shiitake) and High Blood Pressure
Nothing improves with age except great Bordeaux wines. As we grow older, we are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, or hypertension. The disorder is caused by tension, or pressure, on the arteries that constricts the flow of blood and makes the heart work harder. The causes of hypertension are hard to pinpoint. Most people inherit the disorder from their parents—in other words, hypertension is genetic. Corpulence, poor diet, lack of exercise, and environmental factors can also playa role. Many researchers believe that stress contributes to high blood pressure. Interestingly, the disorder is much more prevalent in industrialized societies than underdeveloped ones.
When the heart beats, a surge of blood is pumped through the arteries ofthe heart. Blood pressure readings comprise two numbers. The first and higher number, your systolic blood pressure, measures the pressure on your arteries as the heart contracts and blood pushes against the artery walls. The second and lower number, your diastolic blood pressure, measures the pressure on your arteries when the heart relaxes between beats. The desirable blood pressure reading is 120/80.
In what amounted to an experiment with multiple-mushroom formulas, researchers at Tohoku University in Japan experimented with hypertensive rats to gauge the effect of maitake and shiitake mushrooms on blood pressure. For eight weeks, one group was fed maitake along with its normal diet, another group was fed shiitake, and the third group received no mushroom supplement. After eight weeks, when the groups were compared, researchers discovered that blood pressure in the maitake-fed group had lowered. However, there was no difference between the maitake and control groups in terms of cholesterol levels, triglyceride levels, or plasma levels. (Plasma is the portion of the blood that is liquid before clotting; triglyceride is a component of the fatty metabolism that is associated with the hardening of the arteries.) By contrast’ blood pressure readings were not lower in the shiitake-fed group; however, levels of plasma and triglyceride were lower.
This experiment demonstrates the value of multiple-mushroom formulas. Here, you can see the benefits—in rats, anyway—of taking more than one mushroom. Multiple-mushroom formulas take advantage of the medicinal effects of different mushrooms.
Essentially, there are three ways to take medicinal mushroom products: as an extract, capsule, or powder. Medicinal mushrooms in capsule form come from dried and powdered mycelium. The mycelium is ground into a powder and encapsulated or pressed into pills. In extract form, water and alcohol are used to extract the active constituents of the mycelium. Water, for instance, extracts beta glucans (Chapter’IWo explains what that is). In the case of reishi, alcohol extracts the triterpenes, the element that aids the cardiovascular system. The extract is then bottled and labeled and put on the shelf of health food stores.
Whether you take a mushroom product in extract, capsule, or powder form doesn’t matter in terms of the health benefits of the product. What matters is which you are most comfortable taking.
Some companies, such as Garden of Life, Inc. (of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida) believe that predigestion and fermentation of medicinal mushrooms with probiotic cultures—yogurt cultures such as Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bacillus bifidus—make the mushrooms easier to digest, especially for people whose digestive systems are impaired. All Garden of Life products undergo enzymatic predigestion and lactofermentation. Garden of Life also offers a multiple-mushroom formula called RM-10.
Some of the mushrooms described in this book—maitake and shiitake especially—are very delicious. We encourage you to try your hand at using them in soups, stir-fry dishes, and stews. When you do so, however, be sure to cook them in such a way that they keep their nutrients. The rules that apply to cooking vegetables also apply to cooking mushrooms. If you want to keep the mushrooms’ nutrients, you must recover the water in which the mushrooms are cooked. The beta glucan in medicinal mushrooms dissolves into cooking water. Likewise, many nutrients dissolve into the cooking oil when you stir-fry mushrooms. What’s more, over-cooking depletes the mushrooms of some of their nutrients. The best way to prepare mushrooms is to include the cooking liquids in the dish you are preparing and be careful not to cook the mushrooms for too long. Some connoisseurs believe in tearing mushrooms instead of cutting them to preserve nutrients. By tearing, the mushrooms pieces are separated along the cell walls.
To clean mushrooms, trim the bottom of the stems and then wipe off the mushrooms. Do not soak or rinse them. Mushrooms absorb water; if you wash them in water, your mushrooms will turn soggy and lose some of their crispness and flavor.
Of course, you can always rely on medicinal mushroom powders and capsules to get nutrients from mushrooms. If you prefer not to take powders and capsules, try mixing them into soups or baking them into breads. By the way, mixing medicinal mushroom powders into food is an excellent way to give medicinal mushrooms to children, who often balk at taking pills and capsules.
We thought you might like to go behind the scenes and meet some of the people who produce medicinal mushroom products. In the United States at least, the medicinal mushroom industry—like the herbal medicines industry to which it is related—is fairly new. These pages introduce you to some of the pioneers and innovators of medicinal mushrooms in the United States.
Functional Fungi LLC
Functional Fungi, a California company with production facilities in Arroyo Grande, is being founded for the express purpose of cultivating a variety of medicinal mushroom raw materials for nutriceutical and culinary purposes, all with organic certification. The company’s liquid culture mycelial raw materials are the only certified organic variety that we know of. This company is undertaking revolutionary experiments in feeding precursor nutrients to the liquid cultures in which mushrooms grow. A precursor nutrient is a substance or chemical compound that encourages a mushroom or plant to develop in a certain way. The mycologists at Functional Fungi are trying to see if they can make the medicinal compounds in their mushrooms stronger and more potent by sowing precursor nutrients in the substrate that the mushrooms feed on. These potent raw materials are targeted for the nutriceutical as well as the pharmaceutical industry for drug development.
Whereas most companies that produce medicinal mushroom raw materials do so on one type of grain or substrate, this company has experimented with many different grains and grain blends with an eye to finding out how to grow nutrient-rich fungi. This novel approach is based on the age-old idea that a plant is only as good as the soil it grows in.
Functional Fungi’s goal is to bring advancements to the art of cultivation and innovation to the range of products currently available to consumers.
John Seleen of MushroomScience
Like many producers in the medicinal mushroom field, John Seleen of MushroomScience LLC, started as a mushroom farmer. For ten years, he grew maitake and shiitake mushrooms for the gourmet market on his farm near Eugene, Oregon. Then, in 1989, John attended a conference in China about advanced cultivation techniques. The conference opened his eyes to the wonders of medicinal mushrooms. John correctly predicted that medicinal mushrooms with their immune-enhancing qualities would find a place in the health-conscious American market. In 1994, he started JHS Natural Products (the precursor to Mushroom-Science) with the purpose of selling Trametes versicolor extracts in the United States. His company was the first to import Trametes versicolor extracts chemically matched to the material used in Japanese and Chinese clinical research. Since 1994, MushroomScience has branched out. lt now offers Cordyceps, maitake, reishi, and Agaricus blazei extracts, as well as a multiple-mushroom formula (some ofthese products are still marketed under the JHS Natural Products label).
What makes MushroomScience stand out is John’s commitment to testing and research. MushroomScience maintains a state-of-the-art laboratory where chemists work on refining quality standards. The lab is capable of performing gas chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography, and proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. MushroomScience has customized and formulated an analytical protocol for each extract it produces. The extracts are tested rigorously to maintain high standards. Looking ahead, MushroomScience has been collaborating with a Pennsylvania company to try to improve cultivation techniques and in so doing compete in the marketplace with the inexpensive raw-material mushrooms currently being imported from China.
“Doctors, who are most of our customers, are a tough crowd,” said John. “They need to be convinced they should buy a health product. They also want to know how much to prescribe to their patients over what period of time. We look very hard at how to fit our products into the Western pharmacological model. We want our products to have predictable quantities of active compounds so that doctors can do predictable dosing over a long period of time and measure results. You have to speak the language of science to reach the Western market.”
John believes that small as well as large producers have an obligation to expand the boundaries of medicinal mushrooms. The company funded a double-blind placebo group study at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine that looked into the use of Trametes versicolor extracts to treat hepatitis C. John is happy to report that everyone in the Trametes group maintained or improved their health. His company is negotiating with the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute on another study that will examine the use of Trametes versicolor as a means of treating breast cancer. MushroomScience is collaborating with one of Japan’s leading microbial chemists, Dr. Hiroaki Nanba of Kobe Pharmaceutical University, to market Dr. Nanba’s newest maitake extract in the United States.
“The benefits of mushrooms aren’t limited to the immune system,” John said. “They have benefits for cardiovascular health and liver health. They are a great source of protein, essential amino acids, and B vitamins. Medicinal mushrooms are doing a lot of people a lot of good.”
Andrew Miller of MycoHerb, Inc.
In 1987, mushroom products were scarce and difficult to find. The only way to find them in the United States was to hunt them down in the Chinatowns of major cities. Convinced of the health benefits of medicinal mushrooms, Andrew Miller, who had been producing herbal products for several years, was determined to make medicinal mushrooms readily available in the United States. In 1987, Miller, along with several mycologically inclined conspirators, including Dr. E. Justin Wilson, a former National Institutes of Health researcher, formed MycoHerb, Inc. The company was a pioneer in producing and marketing medicinal mushroom products.
MycoHerb was the first to use living mycelia to create its products. Under the guiding hand of Dr. Wilson, the company developed a proprietary method for extracting live mycelium. The method captures both water-soluble and alcohol-soluble constituents in a custom-produced, all-glass extraction apparatus. The products are encased in glass at all times so that no valuable oils escape during the creation process. MycoHerb’s pioneering techniques have since been copied throughout the industry.
MycoHerb was the first in the United States to produce a line of concentrated liquid extracts from medicinal mushrooms. The company developed a proprietary method for extracting mycelium grown on brown rice. It introduced a liposome delivery spray consisting of a twelve-mushroom formula in 1995. MycoHerb led the way in developing multiple-mushroom formulas. MycoHerb has created many products, induding MycoSurge and its liposome delivery system, and continues to be an innovator in the field of medicinal mushroom products.
In the company’s earlyyears, when the public did not realize or understand the benefits of medicinal mushrooms, MycoHerb sold its products primarily to health practitioners, doctors, and acupuncturists. Today, MycoHerb products are sold exclusively to health-care practitioners in thirteen countries, induding Ireland, the Netherlands, and Denmark, where MycoHerb products have been used as adjunct therapies in hospitals that specialize in the treatment of cancer patients.
In the distant human past, all plants and animals were repositories of secret power that could be used for good or ill. In a sense, the whole world was a pharmacopoeia. Our ancestors’ relationship to the food they ate was very different from ours. Their food was sacred. They understood nourishment in a different way than we do. Our ancestors believed that the plants and animals they ate were gifts from the divine. Plants and animals had spirits, and when you ate a plant or animal, you partook of its spirit as well.
In our day, most people would have trouble explaining where their food was grown or how it came to the table at which they sit. Too few people appreciate the expertise and effort that goes into cultivating and growing food. We have lost the primal connection to the food we put in our bodies. We have, you could say, not only lost our connection to the food we eat, we have lost our connection to the earth. Most of us understand food in terms of flavor and texture. We don’t understand that food is our connection to the earth and its vital energy.
Mushrooms are potent medicines. They contain many nutrients. Mushrooms, which grow so dose to the earth, have a grounding effect. When you take a medicinal mushroom product, you get back in touch with the essential forces of the earth. You tap into the sustaining power that incites the animal to endeavor and the plant to grow no matter what the obstacle. Humankind has been nourished by medicinal mushrooms for many centuries. We look forward with great enthusiasm to new discoveries by which modern science will harness mushrooms’ medicinal power for the good of humankind in the years to come.