Mushrooms For the Immune System
Shiitake and Reishi mushrooms are two of the more common mushrooms known to support the immune system, but there have been a couple of publications recently that show you don’t have to spend $20/lb to get benefit. (In fact at Whole Foods the other day I saw a $59.99/lb mushroom. Can it be that good…15 times as good as a $3.99/lb mushroom? )
Turns out the common white buttom mushroom can hold its own in terms of immune modulation and antioxidant status according to a recent study in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture . Antioxidants are in the news quite a bit and are shown to help prevent cancer and other chronic diseases by protecting DNA from the damage we face daily. According to this article the white button mushroom does a pretty good job in terms of antioxidant, especially if you consider that it costs less than a quarter of the price of some of the lower end ‘exotic’ mushrooms.
I prefer the brown crimini mushrooms which are actually just an immature portabello mushroom. (apparently if you let the crimini grow for another few days it quadruples in size to a portabello!).
But always make sure your mushrooms are cooked! I’d avoid raw mushrooms on salad bars as mushrooms can contain certain celluloses that are hard for our digestion to break down as well as other phytochemiclas such as agartine which according to some people can be toxic. I’d rather not take a chance, besides I feel that cooked mushrooms taste better. Plus the fact that my Japanese teacher Kiiko Matsumoto always says that mushrooms should be cooked and I believe there is a lot of wisdom in traditional cultures. So how to cook? You can boil them for 20 minutes, saute them in oil or water saute them. Mushrooms and onions are great together.
So save some money and buy $3.99/lb mushrooms then you don’t have to steal just the tops of the more exotic mushroom like a friend I recently witnessed!
In Health,
George Mandler
Acupuncture
Nutrition
Herbal Medicine
July 11th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
That is great stuff! Thanks.
I took Host Defense capsules by New Chapter for awhile.
Seems like this year I’ve been sick with a cold more times than i have in the previous 5 years.
They talk about P value:
Certified P-Value
P-Value is a scientific term for the genetic integrity of the mushroom and New Chapter’s Lifeshield™ Mushrooms are the only commercially available mushrooms with a Certified P-Value. Our mushrooms are selected from the rainforest and cultured in rigorously controlled laboratory conditions. This produces a growing mushroom mycelium that is absolutely genetically identical with the rainforest mushroom that gave it birth.
Thoughts on this?
July 11th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
I don’t know the P-value of a mushroom. I know the p-value when it comes to statistics, but I have no idea about mushroom. Now I know some statistic kinds of guys that did mushrooms…I’d imagine that the p-value is just one way to measure something in a mushroom. Like the ORAC value you see for antioxidants, it is misleading to say well fruit A has an ORAC value 10 times higher than fruit B, so it must be much better in terms of antioxidant. Well that isn’t necessarily true, because ORAC only measures a subset of possible oxidation reaction and there are many others possibles.
So the point of this article was that one doesn’t have to spend a ton of money on expensive mushrooms to get benefit. Also with their product stating that it is “genetically identical..” you would think it is the same exact mushroom. Well that isn’t true because I guarantee it isn’t phytochemically identical because the photochemicals are produced by the fungi in response to stress of the growing area. Certainly the rainforest isn’t the same as the cultivated area. Makes sense?
George Mandler
Licensed Acupuncturist
Licensed Dietitian