Marvellous mushrooms

Enter the weird and wonderful world of mushrooms. . .

This is the beautiful turkey tail mushroom. It is the most widely studied medicinal mushroom for its immune-stimulating and anti-cancer effects.

In Japan and China, certain medicinal mushrooms are routinely used to complement cancer treatments. According to the National Cancer Institute:

“Polysaccharide K (PSK) is the best-known active compound in turkey tail mushrooms. In Japan, PSK is an approved mushroom product used to treat cancer.”

To cook, or not to cook?

The general advice is to cook mushrooms, rather than eat them raw. My friend learned this lesson the hard way—after waking up with what looked like whip marks over his back.

We realised that it was likely due to going to a Chinese buffet the night prior and eating raw/undercooked shiitake mushrooms (which can cause the unusual skin condition described above).

What makes mushrooms special?

Mushrooms contain many active compounds; beta-glucans and chitin—two of the most important—positively activate our immune system. According to Christopher Hobbs, internationally renowned mycologist and herbalist:

“Activated beta-glucan particles bind to tumour cells, viruses, and bacteria, marking them for destruction.”

Turkey tail mushrooms have especially high levels of beta-glucans. Oyster mushrooms have the highest beta-glucan levels of cultivated species, containing ~3x the levels of button mushrooms. Regular mushroom consumption can help us maintain an optimal microbiome balance for health.

You don’t need to consume expensive medicinal mushrooms to get benefits: 10g of dried shiitake mushrooms daily leads to benefits such as improved immunity; eating 100g of cooked white button mushrooms daily may improve mucosal immunity; and there’s an association between consumption of over 300g cooked mushrooms per week and reduced odds of mild cognitive impairment, compared to those who consumed mushrooms less than once a week. 

A vegan’s best friend

Those following a plant-based diet who consume mushrooms are actually following a plant- and fungi-based diet, however, it doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Mushrooms are a great umami-rich meat substitute. King oyster mushrooms have a particularly meaty texture—they make great vegan ‘scallops.’

(Although watch out for cordyceps—if it’s wild-cultivated, it can be unsuitable for vegans; the horror-esque video below shows why.)

A potential cure for allergies?

Several mushrooms appear as though they may have anti-allergic properties, although human clinical research is unfortunately lacking.

King oyster mushrooms have shown potential in vitro. The most promising and exciting anti-allergic effect found in the fungi kingdom so far is Inotodiol, which is a lanostane triterpenoid found only in wild Chaga mushrooms, a 2020 study concluded that:

“It [is] an excellent therapeutic candidate for food allergy with both high efficacy and outstanding safety.”

I hope human clinical trials happen soon as people like me who live with food allergies are desperate for a cure—or at least a therapeutic approach to improve their quality of life.

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If you would like to learn more about mushrooms check out, Fantastic Fungi (a Netflix documentary) or Christopher Hobbs’s wonderful—and beautiful—book, Christopher Hobbs’s Medicinal Mushrooms: The Essential Guide, where he summarises clinical research and imparts his decades of wisdom as a mycologist, herbalist, and research scientist.