Do medicinal mushrooms have beneficial impacts for you?

December 16, 2005 1:06 PM

Tell me more about medicinal mushrooms!

I've recently become interested in the potential uses of mushrooms for medicinal (not psychoactive) purposes. Some of the medical studies have proved very illuminating lately. In particular, i'm interested in hearing more about Ganoderma lucidum and Hericium erinaceus, but i'm also very interested in folks who have used any medicinal mushrooms and have experienced concrete neurological or digestive effects, positive or negative. I seem to be having a little bit of a hard time finding additional resources or unbiased accounts from consumers. Can you help?

posted by arimathea to Health & Fitness (3 answers total)

PubMed makes finding additional resources easy and fun! Try popping "Ganoderma lucidum" or "Hericium erinaceus" in there and you'll get a bunch of stuff. apologies if you have already done so
posted by rxrfrx at 1:13 PM on December 16, 2005

A search on web of science finds a lot of recent articles:

Lin ZB
Cellular and molecular mechanisms of immuno-modulation by Ganoderma lucidum
JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES 99 (2): 144-153 OCT 2005

and

Ganoderma lucidum mycelia enhance innate immunity by activating NF-κB • ARTICLE
Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Volume 103, Issue 2, 16 January 2006, Pages 217-222
Mei-Chun Kuo, Ching-Yi Weng, Choi-Lan Ha and Ming-Jiuan Wu

and

Wang JCY, Hu SH, Wang JT, et al.
Hypoglycemic effect of extract of Hericium erinaceus
JOURNAL OF THE SCIENCE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE 85 (4): 641-646 MAR 2005

You should also look in:

Journal of Ethnopharmacology
Journal of Ethnobiology
Journal of Ethnobotany

Web of Science casts a wider net than pubmed. If you have access to a university library you may be able to get a lot of this online, or ask a student friend to download as PDF for you.

I have lots of experience taking the more, uh, psychoactive mushrooms like Amanita muscaria and Psylocibin cubensis, but can't vouch for their medicinal value,e xcept as an emetic. I did once get out of being busted for a big bag of Amanitas (arguably not illegal anyway) by claiming they were for making natural dyes...
posted by Rumple at 4:24 PM on December 16, 2005

This site has a ton of info on mushroom extracts. My girlfriend's father was taking mushroom extract supplements as a component of his cancer treatment.
posted by lovejones at 6:09 PM on December 16, 2005