Why all mushrooms are magic: a talk by Martin Powell

when I was thinking about the title for this talk I thought when my daughter's used to come home sometimes from school they would tell me they're friends when they asked then their friends asked and what their dad used to do and they used to say he's involved with mushrooms he does something with mushrooms and the friends got really excited until they had to explain to them it wasn't that type of mushroom but I was involved with and that I used to say to them really you know I know there are some mushrooms that we tend to think of as magic mushrooms but really for me and I think for all of us all mushrooms are magic they are probably one of the most under under exploited under known under under utilized areas of herbal medicine of natural medicine of foods they have tremendous potentials I hope you'll see during the course of the talk to benefit our health in many different ways so I hope during the course of this evening you'll find out a little bit about why I think that all mushrooms are magic so of course that mushroom is a magic because they taste fantastic I mean mushrooms are really they should be part of everybody's diets they should be part of everybody's culinary larder and this is a selection so that's my first reason why mushrooms are magic I think they taste fantastic not only do they taste fantastic but from a nutritional point of view they also have an incredibly beneficial nutritional profile they're low in calories they're low in fats they're also high in antioxidants in fiber they're high in certain vitamins particularly the B vitamins and also vitamin D I mean you might have heard that Russian ones are high in vitamin D they're one of the only non animal sources of vitamin D however one thing to be very careful with or to be aware of in that regard is they only develop they only produce vitamin D on exposure to sunlight or to ultraviolet light so if you're buying mushrooms in the supermarket that have been grown in the dark they won't have high levels of vitamin D but if you then put them on the kitchen windowsill even for half an hour you know or an hour they will then the vitamin D levels will rise appreciably so for all these reasons mushrooms are very beneficial from a nutritional point of view but it's not because of their nutritional content or because of their deliciousness that they're considered so highly in the classical Chinese hirable pharmacopoeia that is my own clinical heritage if you like this is this fellow you see there is supposedly the divine husband's Minh who was the is considered to be the founder of Chinese hewill medicine it was considered that he gave the knowledge of the herbs to the Chinese people and the first book on the Chinese materia medica is a book that was published on was given his name the divine husband's man's materia medica and in that book already they are listing a number of different mushrooms and this is going back to the second century AD so the Chinese have been using mushrooms for their health benefits for thousands of years which was quite a surprise to me because growing up in this country I when I went for walks with my parents in the fear in the forests they would always say don't touch the mushrooms so I started out with a very negative attitude towards mushrooms I started out too with an association of mushrooms and ill health year of death which is the complete opposite of the Chinese approach where mushrooms have seen not only as preserving health but also conferring longevity you know as it said here if you eat mushrooms on a regular basis they will lighten the body and confer longevity so these are classified and the highest category of Chinese herbs those herbs which you can safely take for long periods of time without adverse effects so it's coming from that background that we're starting to look at the therapeutic benefits of mushrooms now that's traditional knowledge but over the last 50 years there's also been an increasing body of modern scientific evidence which just confirms what the ancient Chinese texts have been telling us all along this is an epidemiological study which was carried out in Japan on the population of the Nagano Prefecture looking at the rate of cancer cancer incidence among mushroom farmers compared to the general population and finding that the mushroom farmers actually had much lower rates of cancer than the general population the assumption being that the mushroom farmers were eating more mushrooms and this study has been confirmed with two further studies or not three further studies looking specifically at the incidence of breast cancer in women and correlating that with their dietary consumption of mushrooms and in all of these three studies one Chinese study two Korean studies there is a strong correlation the women who were eating mushrooms more often had lower rates of developing breast cancer so again that ability of mushrooms to confer longevity to enhance our health and well-being is very much present in these large-scale population studies now those studies didn't break it down they didn't look at which mushroom they didn't say there's one mushroom rather than another mushroom that ability of mushrooms to support our health to preserve well-being to help us to avoid developing cancer wasn't a property of one mushroom or another mushroom that was just generally eating mushrooms and why is that actually there are six hundred and fifty different mushrooms or extracts from six hundred and fifty different mushrooms they all show ability to influence the immune response so it's not one mushroom or another mushroom sometimes you're reading a magazine or you're reading literature from one company or another company that it's this mushroom or that mushroom that you need to be taking if you're going to be stay well keep your immune system strong and it's not every mushroom to some degree or another has the ability to support the immune system and that's because as part of their structure mushrooms in common with other fungi have compounds in their cell walls so the cell wall of every mushroom contains these compounds these long-chain molecules which have been shown to interact with a number of receptors on the surface of major categories of cells in the immune system so our immune system has the innate ability to recognize these compounds which are structural components of all mushrooms and respond to them with activation with increased effectiveness in terms of the immune response against not only cancerous cells but also against other foreign cells viral infections bacterial infections and parasites so these compounds from mushroom cell walls help to potentiate our immune systems response to all of these different categories of pathogens all of these different threats so it's not one mushroom or another mushroom not only do mushrooms help to support the immune system and the immune response they also have been shown recently to have a prebiotic effect on our gut flora where increasingly understanding the importance of gut flora for our overall health and well-being for our immune health neurological health etc and these compounds as well as influencing the our immune system they also influence the balance the makeup of the flora in our gut with an increased proliferation of beneficial bacteria and an inhibition of harmful bacteria so as well as supporting the immune system directly they're also helping to promote a healthy balanced gut microbiome so when we talk about individual mushrooms one of the main mushrooms that you may hear about in relation to cancer is this mushroom coriolis it's also one of the mushrooms that you will come across most commonly when you're out walking in the forests very common growing on rotting wood comes in a range of different colors this one is gray blue other ones go to more of a reddish-brown rust colored complete coloring so a whole range of different motions but at all they all have in common this concentric circles or design which has given rise to its common name of turkey tail so this is a very easy mushroom to find and recognize when you're out for your walking in the woods particularly in the autumn and it's extracts from this mushroom which have been used in a lot of clinical studies in the Far East these are studies which were carried out on stomach cancer in Japan and all of these showing positive improvements in patient survival over two years five years 15 years these are Studies on other types of cancer again showing positive improvements and one thing that's very important to point out at this point is that these studies these patients are not being given mushrooms on their own mushrooms on their own are not a treatment for cancer mushrooms are a supplement there are food that you can take to support your immune system that will enhance the body's ability to attack the cancer and also to resist some of the unwanted side effects from conventional treatment so in all these cases all of these studies the patients are being given conventional treatment and then they've been given the mushrooms and the patients are being divided into two groups one group who have the mushroom supplements and one group who just have the conventional treatment so in the groups giving them us taking the mushrooms they all they show improvements in their survival over the extended periods of time and it's not just Korea and all these so all these studies with careers have also been extensively researched these this is a study MD Anderson Cancer Center is one leading cancer centers in America so they carried out and in a exhaustive review of all of the clinical evidence looking at Coriolis and they confirmed or they concluded from that review that it did indeed show positive promise for chemo prevention due to its multiple impacts on the malignant process so you can read much more about us you know online if you want to read their study I think it's 15 pages long the report so there's a lot of good clinical evidence again so not only are we deal it when we're talking about mushrooms and their health benefits we're not only talking about a category of natural supplements that have a long history of traditional use have strong epidemiological evidence to support their benefits but also have a significant body of clinical evidence including a large number of randomized controlled trials which is not often the case with natural supplements so these are studies which were carried out on coriolis first again and this is why you know Coriolis is also highly regarded in Chinese medicine so these quotes from a famous materia medica in the 16th century again talking about the ability of Coriolis when taken for a long period of time to confer longevity and well-being but it's not just Coriolis again none it's never just the story of one mushroom rather than another mushroom so a number of other mushrooms have also been researched shiitake is one that hopefully you're all enjoying in your food called the fragrant mushroom in Chinese Changu because there is delicious flavor and again extracts from shiitake have been used clinically in Japan and in China alongside conventional treatment again with positive improvements in patient's well-being reduction in side-effects from conventional treatment and improved treatment outcomes another mushroom with similar benefits in clinical studies is maitake maitake means dancing mushroom in Japanese it is available here is a delicious culinary mushroom it's not quite clear whether people called it to dancing mushroom because they danced for joy on finding it because it was going to be it could it was so beneficial for their health or because they could sell it for so much money but for whatever reason the benefits were appreciated and again it has been researched in relation to different types of cancer showing positive improvements in treatment outcome another mushroom is the Armond mushroom which has also been researched with similar benefits and reishi reishi the new game will probably have heard of us the quintessential Chinese mushroom and we'll talk about that more later in the course of the evening but in all these cases they have shown positive improvements patients undergoing conventional treatment taking these mushroom supplements have fewer side-effects have less adverse events in terms of making them having to stop the conventional treatment because of rejection in white blood cell counts etc so they help to support the patients during the conventional treatment and when those patients are followed over a period of time they appear to do better they have better treatment outcomes but again in none of these cases are they being done taken on their own so they're not a treatment they're just a support for patients and that's really how they should be used it's how they're used in the Far East is how they used also by some leading integrative oncology centers this is one I work with closely which happens to be in Turkey and they use mushrooms alongside their treatment for that specific purpose of supporting the immune system and the benefit the good thing in about them in that regard is they can be taken very safely alongside the conventional chemotherapeutic agents alongside radiotherapy etc so there are very few side effects The Lancet reviewed one of the studies carried out in Japan meticulously went through every one of the patient records and they found no incidence of adverse events during that study so we've talked about the use of these compounds the role of these compounds these mushrooms cell wall long-chain molecules in cancer but that's not their only benefit for the body that's not the only reason why they are so important they have a number of other different functions because they support the immune system they don't just support the in system response to cancer they also support the immune systems response to viral infections to bacterial infections and also to fungal infections now many people often come up to me and they say well shouldn't if I have Candida shouldn't I not eat mushrooms there is absolutely no reason why you should not eat mushrooms if you have a fungal condition quite the opposite the things which you shouldn't eat in particular are sugar you know sugar is a very strong facilitator or promoter of fungal of Candida growth mushrooms don't contain sugar they're not sweet you know when you eat them not only do they not contain the compounds which help to promote fungal growth they also through their ability to support the immune system's response they also support the immune systems response to those fungal infections and so clinically are a very useful part of treatment protocols for those conditions as well as supporting the immune systems response to fungal infections I'll mention later on some of the compounds which they produce which have direct antifungal activity so mushrooms are not out there helping other mushrooms other fungi grow in the wild they're out there actively competing for resources and in that battle for survival the struggle of the fittest survival of the fittest they have produced evolved to produce a vast array of antimicrobial compounds many of which are antifungal so they don't contain sugar they do support the immune system's response to fungal infections and in many cases they contain Phung compounds with direct antifungal activity so these are also useful areas for benefit from mushroom supplementation or including mushrooms in your diet as well as that they've also been shown to have a beneficial effect on cholesterol control and also on blood sugar control so in studies mainly animal studies in relation to cholesterol and blood sugar mushroom consumption shows beneficial effects in improving those 1 in terms of viral conditions one viral condition which has been extensively researched in people is HPV because in HPV many women with HPV infection can go on to develop cervical dysplasia as a pre-staged the cells of the cervix start to become abnormal or so abnormalities and that's a precancerous stage and it's a stage at which the conventional Western approach is not to treat it's to just monitor they just wait and see you know is the person going to be able to effectively clear it themselves or is the condition going to progress is the abnormality going to progress to more severe precancerous stages so during that phase while there is no Western treatment offered it's an ideal time for women to take some form of supplementation to reinforce to support their immune systems ability to clear the canister and there have been a number of studies which have confirmed that mushroom supplementation has a dramatic in it has a traumatic effect traumatic increase in the clearance of both the viral infection the high-risk HPV strains together with the cervical the abnormal cells of the cervix so in three study there are three I think I've quoted two studies here but there have been three studies at least which have looked specifically at this using different mushrooms or using combinations of mushroom and in all studies you see a significant improvement the first study you know which looks which says there was 90% after 88 percent clearance compared to 5% in the control group and the second one you know with similar improvements in the clearance of the high-risk strains and also in the ability to return the cells in the cervix to a normal condition normally women can do that there if you have a healthy young woman who has a early stage cervical dysplasia you know after about six months a year 50% of the cases the cells will have returned to a healthy state but in this case we're talking closest to a hundred percent of women 90 percent of those women will show normal cell cytology after six months to a year you know and this is supported by clinical reports clinical cases in many cases it's clear that that ability to support the immune system is very appropriate so really any women in that condition I would say should be taking mushrooms whether it's Coriolis whether it's reishi whether it's two taka was another study just eating more mushrooms taking more mushroom supplements another condition where mushroom polysaccharides these compounds from mushrooms show benefit is actually in PCOS which is interesting because PCOS polycystic ovary syndrome is a condition which is shows is related to blood sugar to insulin insensitivity so there are hormonal issues was insulin control which related to PCOS and because mushrooms help to control blood sugar this may be not surprising they also share benefit for PCOS this was one study which looked at women who were not ovulating you know in many women with people with PCOS with polycystic ovaries they failed to ovulate or they stopped ovulating so in these in this study they looked at these women gave them maitake and they found that 70 yeah almost 70 75 percent of those women were able to ovulate successfully with the maitake they also found that the women who have been unable to ovulate with the first-line conventional medical treatment of clomiphene citrate all of the women given clomiphene citrate who didn't ovulate successfully when they were given maitake along side the chlorine citrate they all ovulated successfully so again another very important area where these compounds from mushrooms show beneficial effects so these compounds as I said are present in all mushrooms however they're not the only category of active compound from mushroom from mushrooms mushrooms also as well as having these structural components have evolved to produce a wide variety of other active compounds to the extent that they've been called nature's bio factories in many cases these compounds are antimicrobial and it's not surprising that all of most of the major antibiotics that are used in Western medicine come from fungi you know related to mushrooms also other compounds like statins people you may not know statins of course are prescribed extensively to reduce cholesterol levels however the first group to isolate lovastatin the first statin which was a group based in lung they didn't talk about its role in cholesterol metabolism they talked about the antifungal properties of lovastatin because that is why the mushrooms produce it the mushrooms another fungi they don't produce it because it has an impact on cholesterol metabolism they produce it because it has antifungal activity and it helps them to compete with other fungi with other mushrooms for resources so mushrooms produce a wide variety of secondary metabolites which have largely antimicrobial properties this is lovastatin it's not just found in the other fungi that it was produced it's also found in many mushrooms and it's because of these secondary metabolites it's because of these compounds which the mushrooms are producing for the antimicrobial properties in many cases also have physiological effect like the impact on cholesterol so lovastatin is produced because there is antifungal properties but it also has an impact on cholesterol metabolism so because our body shares a lot of chemistry in common with mushrooms we are more closely related to mushrooms and other fungi than we are to plants for instance when we look at DNA and evolution we find that plants diverged from fungi and animals much further back on the evolutionary tree than fungi and animals diverged so we share a lot more chemistry in common with mushrooms than we do with plants for instance so it's not surprising that some of these compounds produced by mushrooms for the antifungal properties antimicrobial properties also have impact on our own internal cellular chemistry so when we come to look at some of the most important medicinal mushrooms we find that it's not just because of their ability to support our immune system that they have this diverse array of properties it's also because of other compounds that they produce so reishi the quintessential Chinese mushroom the mushroom of immortality in Chinese legend the mushroom which is shown here embroidered into the ceremonial robes of the Chinese emperors or carved onto fans onto screens in the Chinese palaces the reason why this mushroom was so revered was not just because it's supported the immune system but also because it possessed a diverse array of other properties and these properties are down to these secondary compounds so reishi as well as supporting the immune system also shows anti-inflammatory properties it also shows anti histamine properties it also has sedative effect it is antihypertensive so all of these properties give it that incredible therapeutic breath if you like and with and makes it at the the number one mushroom certainly in China you know for people from all perspectives both for longevity for even for cancer they often reishi would be the number one mushroom that people would tend to take because it's not just supporting the immune system it's also having anti-inflammatory prop it's also directly in pairing the ability of the cancer cells to proliferate to develop and to spread in terms of this time of year and when one of the most important conditions or most common conditions is hay fever this is the mushroom for hay fever I mean this is the mushroom which certainly from my clinical practice has replaced all Chinese herbs all Chinese formula in Chinese medicine we have a way of looking at the action of treatments of conditions where we talk about the manifestation of the condition we talk about the symptoms the persons experiencing and then the reason the underlying cause we talk about the route and the manifest so in terms of hay fever the symptoms are inflammation the inflammatory you get red eyes you get itchy sore throats you get mucus overproduction of mucous etc caused by localized inflammation in the mucous membranes but the reason for that inflammation is because the immune system is overreacting you know it's over sensitive to pollen to whatever other environmental factors are precipitating the hay fever and reishi the beauty of reishi for hay fever is that it actively targets both of those so it actively helps to support a healthy immune response as well as having anti histamine activity reducing histamine levels in the mucous membranes in the tissues and having anti-inflammatory action so it bursts treats the root of the condition and it treats the manifestation of the condition so it's a it's a wonderful one one pill to treat hay fever not only does it help to treat hay fever during the acute period acute episode it also helps to prevent it when it is taken on long going a period of time so often patients they come with acute hay fever in a suit acute inflammation itchy saw dry eyes etc so reishi will help to calm that down and then if they continue to take reishi particularly you know during the during the winter early spring before their symptoms would normally appear their symptoms then don't appear or a much milder when they do appear because the immune system has been strengthened the immune system has been rebalanced probably not correct has used the word strengthened because it is about rebalancing the immune system it's about helping a under active immune system deal with infections it's also about down regulating overactive immune responses as in hay fever so racially is a fantastic mushroom for that the fact that it is also a set of to have sedative action is again a really useful secondary property of this often people taking reishi they come back and they will say I just sleep much better and you know most of us could do with sleeping much better some of the time so racis sedative properties are also very important and also as well as being helping people to sleep it also helps with anxiety so people who ever nervous disposition it also helps to calm that down as and realistic effect so it really is a very broad in its therapeutic application and these properties again are due to these other compounds in the mushroom not these long-chain molecules these try terpenes they're called and it's day that have this sedative antihistamine anti-inflammatory properties and makes it fantastic mushroom for hay fever and also other autoimmune conditions those autoimmune conditions again caused by imbalanced immune response with inflammatory processes rheumatoid arthritis lupus even psoriasis so I've seen people with psoriasis benefit you know from taking reishi again an autoimmune condition so reishi is a very useful mushroom for a lot of these different conditions another mushroom which is highly revered in China if any of you has had it had a chance to go to China have been to any Chinese herb shops you'll find that on the walls they have these wonderful displays of this mushroom this mushroom cordyceps which are really there for as gifts you know they're not really designed for therapeutic application because it's so highly regarded and give guilt gift-giving is such a major part of Chinese culture then this is a particularly precious and particularly highly regarded gift so cordyceps you know it's almost second to reishi in that regard when you look at the picture it is a little bit different from the other mushrooms because this is a mushroom which doesn't grow naturally on decaying wood or out of the soil it actually grows as a parasite on the larvae of other insects of moths and they've been a number of nature programs recently which you may have seen with species of cordyceps not this one that there are over 700 species of cordyceps and they infect the insects and the insect they take over the insects effectively and then they produce their spore-bearing tube to spread their spores their seeds to colonize other unsuspecting hosts so this is a mushroom which is harvested on the Tibetan Plateau it grows above 3,000 meters in the grasslands it's collected early in the spring before the grass has started to grow which makes it hard to find and you know that's how it's sold luckily we don't have to buy it like that now luckily it has been cultivated or variants of it have been cultivated successfully so if you're going to go into the health food store and you're buying cordyceps as a supplement it won't have been harvested in tibet it won't have been harmed growing on a Tibetan Plateau you won't be eating insect larvae with your cordyceps supplement it's a mushroom which traditionally is considered to as a tonic it's considered to strengthen the body particularly used as a fertility tonic you know for men to improve sexual performance also for women it's been shown to increase libido and also it increased his steroid hormone production so it's been shown to boost levels of testosterone it's also been shown to boost levels of estrogen and for that reason it's a Russian I tend not to advise people to take if they have hormone-dependent cancers and if you have breast cancer prostate cancer cordyceps isn't really advisable because of its the fact that it does promote steroid hormone formation it increases levels of these hormones that then potentiate the development of those cancers however if a lot of cases you know women men dealing with women dealing with infertility men did men dealing with low sperm count poor sperm quality there are a number of studies again which show beneficial improvements from taking cordyceps in those cases as well as that it was traditionally used to treat lung conditions to treat asthma and it's a very useful supplement for strengthening lungs in those cases COPD as well in horses interestingly enough there's been some positive studies in that regard and for people who are just weak and recovering after long illness so it's really of all the medicine rush rumors it's the one that has the strongest Tana fication properties it also is very beneficial for anti stress there for supporting the heart and also for protecting the liver that aspect of protecting the liver though is not something that's unique to cordyceps reishi and also will do that but cordyceps RIA is really to support to strengthen it will also help to support the immune system of course but you know that's something that all mushrooms do it's also the mushroom that's responsible for this headline a few couple of years ago in the Daily Express which was the only time I think that I've bought the Daily Express and I got very excited because I thought you know there was a mushroom here they found some cure for arthritis wonderful but unfortunately when you read the research when you read the study when you read the article it is the article is because our serratus research UK had given a grant of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to a group of researchers at nottingham university to investigate the potential of a compound from cordyceps in the treatment of arthritis so somehow the journalists had got from that to a front page headline of mushroom cure for arthritis maybe maybe one day but unfortunately not yet what of course is interesting though is that again this is another classic category of compound in mushrooms which is responsible so it's this compound in a quarter-second which is the one which has been researched in relation to arthritis so it's just another example of a diverse array of other compounds produced in Russians another reason if you like why they are so magic in their range of active properties another mushroom which is I think a really useful clinical mushroom a really beneficial culinary mushroom is lion's mane it does grow in this country unfortunately it's not easy to find although there are some growers in this country now growing it so if you're lucky you can find it probably not I'm not sure we're in Brighton in London there are there are shops there are farmers markets or stockist if anybody if any of you is interested I'll give you my email address at the end and and I can tell you where to get it from in a fresh form so lion's mane is a delicious culinary mushroom but again as well as having beneficial effects Ameena logically it shows some really useful secondary effects due to the other compounds it produces specifically these compounds have been shown to promote the generation of nerve growth factors nerve growth factors are compounds found in the brain in other nervous tissue in other cells in the body which promotes cellular repair and regeneration specifically nerve repair and regeneration so as you can imagine the ability of a mushroom to promote nerve repair and regeneration is particularly interesting today with a increasing proliferation of neurodegenerative conditions I'm seeking dementia Alzheimer's etc but also conditions like multiple sclerosis so in all these cases there are grounds for believing that with lion's mane can at least slow the development and in some cases reverse the condition in dementia in Alzheimer's in multiple sclerosis there have been a number of clinical studies this is one Japanese study looking at lion's mane in elderly patients with mild cognitive impairment and again showing that supplementation taken over 12 weeks was able to show improvements in function in their independence the improvements in their ability to perform normal tasks this was another small study again using lion's mane as a dietary component in this case just adding it into soup and showing positive improvements in their ability to carry out normal tasks there have also been studies looking at the impact of lion's mane on nerve myelination and clinically it's often shows benefits in terms of multiple sclerosis to have thought unfortunately in all of these cases these are not conditions which lion's mane is able to permanently reverse what it is able to do is slow or temporarily reverse the condition and as long as the consumption of lion's mane is maintained has continued that improvement is continued but when people stop taking the lion's mane often you start to see a deterioration of the symptoms they haven't reversed the underlying processes involved in a destruction of the nerve cells but they are helping to maintain a level of function which is better than it would be otherwise and in certainly in some cases multiple sclerosis I've seen reversal of the symptoms so where people had got loss of sensation loss of control that's come back to a degree so again these are not magic cures but they're definitely culinary components they're definitely things that people can take to help to manage the symptoms manage the condition more effectively as well as helping to promote nerve repair and regeneration these compounds in lion's mane also have sedative action they also have calming action so again it has help is very beneficial for anxiety for depression for sleep one interesting area that I had never thought about or would never have thought about is this use in menopause if you look into any of the books any of the literature even the larger book that I wrote it doesn't talk about the role of lion's mane in menopause but I had a phone call one day from a colleague of mine in North London who had a couple of his wife and up and other patients who he was given lion's mane to four nerve damage and they both independently said their hot flushes had stopped so you know I thought that was interesting and it was even more interesting when a few days later another colleague of mine said exactly the same thing to patients who who'd been giving lion's mane too for nerve damage had again reported that their hot flushes had cleared up so then I started giving lion's mane to women with menopause related symptoms hot flushes particularly for difficulty sleeping and in almost every case the women found a significant improvement in their symptoms from taking lion's mane so you know again it's a culinary mushroom which is incredibly useful for promoting overall health and well-being and these mushrooms which have these unique properties though they also have immune modulating properties so if you're going to be eating mushrooms you're going to be taking mushroom supplements as well as having a benefit for nerve damage for neurodegenerative conditions you're also going to be supporting the immune system I don't want you to think also that it's only these special mushrooms it's only reishi cordyceps lion's mane the message from this evening is not that these you have to take these special mushrooms any mushroom that you take is going to be beneficial shitake you know this one of the most common culinary mushrooms you know even that taken over a period of time by young adults led to significant led to improvements in their immune function so this is just culinary dietary consumption typically regular consumption is defined as three or four times a week in having a portion of mushrooms three or four times a week one thing that's important to be aware of with shiitake is that though is that it is important to cook it I would actually say cook all mushrooms because it helps to disrupt the cellular structure it helps to release some of the compounds from cell wall of the mushrooms but in the rain in the case of shiitake there are compounds which are toxic which are broken down by cooking so there is a condition called shiitake dermatitis which as its name suggests as a skin rash which develops on people eating a lot of shitake it's quite a lot of shitake people have to eat but in every case in every report it is always Rossa tacky so coach the tar cake is absolutely fine so I would always say cook your mushrooms another culinary mushroom which is one of my favorite mushrooms is snow fungus you probably won't recognize this particular picture because that's what it looks like in the wild when you see it on the results of a Chinese supermarket it looks a little bit different but I'll show you a picture of that in a little bit later and this wonderful mushroom it's called snow fungus often in in the West is one which once again being used for thousands of years in Chinese culture it's used in Chinese cookery quite extensively in soups and it has some wonderful properties so it helps to support the immune system but also it helps to support the nervous system and it's considered to enhance beauty so it's a particularly useful mushroom yeah I used to be skeptical about that too I used to think that you know I took that was a very large pinch of salt and it wasn't until one lady who had give their lives made two for another reason came back and said look the conditions cleared up but can I keep taking the lion's mane because my skin is so much better she had dry skin we sort of read the silver yeah the inflammation dry red slightly irritated skin and her skin the dryness had cleared up this red inflammation had cleared up I mean she was very happy and since then I've given it to other women and again it has a consistent ability particularly in elder older women with dryness you know redness in the skin it improves skin quality so it does truly have an ability to enhance beauty and we now know that that ability to enhance beauty a partly is because it has anti-inflammatory properties but it also increases micro circulation to the skin so snow fungus is a but is able to enhance support the health of the wall cells lining the walls of our blood vessels so the veins the capillaries so we're able to prevent damage but it's prevents damage to these blood vessel components and also to enhance circulation so it has mild anticoagulant properties enhances circulation improves micro circulation to the skin is anti-inflammatory and also has a beneficial impact on Brett on brain function as well so this is definitely on my daily consumption list of mushrooms because it has so many beneficial effects so reishi I take every day and snow fungus in case you want to you want to know and I said it's not that translucent appearance this is what it looks like when you buy it in the Chinese supermarket it is this very hard crispy slightly off-white coloured mushroom and but it rehydrates you put it into water and it just rehydrates fully so it's just purely you know polysaccharides so you can probably get it in Chinese supermarkets here in Brighton I would imagine so I would say yeah definitely try and include that in your cooking I mean that's just me holding something when it's growing you know in China again they don't they don't go out and harvest it in the wild some mushrooms are still harvested in the wild in China most of them are grown in these big warehouses if you like under controlled conditions and then dried and transported so yeah it's so definitely one to look out for so do all get down to your local mushroom store unfortunately we don't have any like that here in Brighton not yet it's in San Francisco but far west fungi so it's a store dedicated to to selling mushrooms if you want to find out more about any of the Russians as I've mentioned today or about mushrooms in general as Peter mentioned I've written a couple of books you know the clinical guide has a lot more in-depth information it has all the research it has the Latin names the essential guide is much more accessible much more straightforward doesn't have so much research deals with the common names so both of those have a lot of background information and I'm also always happy to answer question generally most culinary mushrooms no so shiitake in every as long as it's cooked no I mean you could have a whole meal of shiitake you know and you'd be fine snow fungus you know absolutely fine lion's mane lion's mane because it has sedative properties you know as well I wouldn't and the sedative properties in Lyons Manor because some of the compounds interact with opioid receptors in the brain so going back to that thing that picture of the front that mushroom magic mushrooms yes mushrooms as well as producing compounds which have impact on the immune system have anti-inflammatory many of these compounds also can have impact on nervous function and that's the reason why we have magic mushrooms and what compounds from lion's mane also have that property so I wouldn't have a lot of lion's mane I wouldn't have a lot of reishi also for the same for the same reason reishi is also a little bit harder to digest it's not a culinary mushroom so mushrooms like lion's mane which are used in food you know and snow fungus shitake maitake again you could eat maitake till the cows come home and you'd be fine reishi I'd be more careful with also Rhea she has anticoagulant properties so again caution on reishi if you're taking blood thinners for instance cordyceps yet again you won't be taking that into huge quantities so the culinary mushrooms your fine coriolis no adverse effect reported with Korea as far as I'm aware it's not typically a curry it's not typically a coloring Russian but it's not a mushroom which produces any compounds so which would be expected to have adverse effects taken over a long period of time or at high dose so I think you'd be okay I mean the thing with that we're seeing with dosage is it always is so specific to the individual and their condition so it's very hard to give generalized guidelines however it tries to give a kind of a broad spectrum in a ballpark figure you know that you can work with yes it is a very confusing marketplace out there absolutely and I mean that's you know III further for this reason I ended up producing my own you know as well so you know turkey tail in the wild because it's because it's a seasonal mushroom it can be dehydrated you know quite easily and it can be kept then for an extended period of time so it can either be frozen or it can be dehydrated and then you can you can keep it and preserve it some people will also make if your herbalist you might also make an extract or make a tincture out of it and preserve it that way so there are different ways to do it so whenever you see it take get it and then there are different ways so either dehydration freezing or tinkering you know making an extract either of those ways in terms of in terms of the the products out there you know going back to that the first thing I would say is there are two main there are three main categories of raw material used in mushroom supplements and this is going to be a little bit technical but you know so it's reading the label is the first thing and secondly is ignoring whatever the label says as for hers the contents the constituents or the concentration ratio so you know if it says it's 20 to 1 it's not unfortunately I mean this is a you know this is a I that's why I mean I go to China the brand the type I put together there was might is sold under the micronutrient there isn't one micro nutrient YCO nutrient UT RI there mainly you have to look online as a website mushroom nutrition calm there are three main types you know before I said yes ignore everything I've done hateful as far as the concentration ratio of percentages of constituents that's another story but yes there are three main types so the fruiting body is what you're seeing you know when you're normally harvesting a mushroom secondly there are extracts which are usually but not exclusively made from the fruiting body and an extract is just a way of concentrating some of the compounds from that and there are two types of extract hot water extracts and ethanolic extracts alcohol extracts hot water extracts will extract more of the immune immune modulating polysaccharides compounds as the knowledge extracts will extract more of the anti-inflammatory compounds you could say you know just to keep it very simple so there are extracts and then there's what's called mycelial biomass or full-spectrum products so a major range of products which is produced almost exclusively with those is on mushrooms so you see these packets om mushrooms and that's my senior biomass what mycelial biomass is is a grain based substrate which is usually brown rice but in the case of on mushrooms is corn maize which is then inoculated with the mushroom mycelium the mycelium grows to fully colonize the substrate and then the whole mass is harvested they don't separate out the grain from the mushroom mycelium the whole mass is dried powdered and harvested that has the advantage that it captures secondary metabolites the antimicrobial compounds because they tend to be secreted into the substrate on which the mushroom is growing so you get higher concentrations of those but you get lower concentrations of the mushroom cell wall components if you like so it has advantages and disadvantages but we'll be aware when you're buying a product with mycelial biomass you're probably getting up to 50% green you know or grain or what is the like fermented grain and you think of it as a fermented food so it's it's really interesting it's a very rich material but it's not all mushroom so generally for particularly for cancer I prefer extracts so I would tend to use higher concentrations because I want the highest concentration of the immune modulating compounds the anti-inflammatory compounds the anti-cancer compounds from the mushrooms and all of the clinical evidence also is derived from extracts in relation to mushrooms so I tend to like those as a health supplement generally you know the biomass you know with that full-spectrum activity also has a role to play but it's very much it's hard it's a really difficult one for the layperson to judge but just be aware look at what's on the label look at what the components are there's the fruiting body itself the fruiting body does have a lot of benefits there's no doubt fruiting bodies have high levels of D immune modulating compounds themselves so in many ways if you're looking at it from a that's why I encourage people to eat more mushrooms always your rather than necessarily taking them a supplement if you have a good condition then I think extracts are in most cases to fake my preferred way to go so I would III would stick to organic supplements because even though organic cultivation in China is not it's not as them carefully controlled so we say as it is in the UK or in the EU however for the organic export every batch has to be independently tested of the material so it term if you're buying an organically certified product as even if the origin is from China you can be sure that it has been independently tested for heavy metals and pesticide residues so yes for stuff that's not organically I I wouldn't touch stuff from China generally if it wasn't organically tested I don't I don't think you have another choice effectively you know unless you can grow it yourself and I think the risks are very low in the majority of cases the heavy matter the heavy metal levels from being involved in the production side of the industry often it's the wild harvested material that's worse than the cultivated yeah truffles are mushrooms are in truffles so they have their cell wall components again but the thing is you're going to have to eat a lot of them so unless you've got deep pockets you're probably better off having a not finding a cheaper mushroom to take to support the immune system truffles do have other interesting properties they don't of course as well but generally they are too expensive to consume in the type of quantity on a regular basis that you would want to from a clinical perspective but yes if you if you've got truffles absolutely have enjoyed them well in some cases there are some compounds there's a flavor compounds which you know obviously it does that you do lose to some extent but most mushroom most of the compounds are not volatile they they particularly the immune modulating compounds these cell wall components they're still there you know when it's been dried and kept for 10 years you know it doesn't actually go and a lot of mushrooms do rehydrate you really like shiitake for instance so many rehydrates and it's still quite tasty it's not quite the same so yes some of the some of the more volatile some of the second has smaller compounds smaller molecules you probably will lose but most of the importance most of the clinically important compounds will still be there in the mushrooms though I think they're tremendous research is tremendously exciting and I look forward to the day that we can use them here in this country as well but for now their status here doesn't permit us to use them certainly clinically I totally I think they're they're very important potentially very important area for a very important area of clinical use for mushrooms and it's a shame that more research hasn't been done there's always going to be a problem with standardization you know when you when you're actually harvesting because you know there you're not sure to some extent a you know people have got to pick the right species I mean in the case of psilocybin it's relatively easy but also the constant that could be the concentration of the psilocybin you know is going to vary significantly so the potential for adverse reactions is realtively high so it's not something that I would recommend people went out and started doing but I think you know in a controlled environment the researchers is very exciting so thank you all very much [Applause]

Channel: undefined

Views: 17,933

Rating: 4.8703704 out of 5

Keywords: Martin Powell, mushrooms, Fungi, reishi, maitake, coriolus, ling zhi, lion's mane, snow fungus

Id: fITifKJwZZc

Length: 64min 51sec (3891 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 06 2018