Magic Mushrooms

We typically imagine magic mushrooms

But the real magic mushroom is not so glamourous…

Psilocybe semilanceata

Magic mushrooms have been used since ancient times, even appearing in stone age cave paintings. Apart from their psychedelic properties, did ancient man know more?

Are mushrooms magic in more ways than one?

Could mushrooms be the cure for cancer?

Mushrooms are being hailed as a miracle cure for cancer. But can a shiitake stir-fry really work wonders?

From left: shiitake, reishi and maitake mushrooms. Photograph: Getty/Alamy

Behold the mighty mushroom. Neither plant nor animal, the mysterious fungus is a class, or kingdom, of its own, and has fascinated cultures around the world for centuries. But while they do make a tasty omelette filling, does the real magic of mushrooms lie not in their flavour, but in their potential to combat one of our biggest killers – cancer?

The ancient Egyptians believed eating mushrooms brought long life. While their scientific method was perhaps not entirely sound, modern scientists investigating the medicinal properties of the organism are beginning to produce some fascinating results. There are thousands of species of mushroom growing in the wild, but most studies have focused on three main varieties – reishi, maitake and shiitake.

Reishi, otherwise known as ganoderma, has been used in Chinese medicine for 2,000 years and numerous studies have investigated its much-vaunted anti-cancer and immune-boosting properties. In a paper published last year in the US’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal, a team of scientists linked its use to cancer-cell death. The team, from the Taiwanese research centre Academia Sinica, found that F3 polysaccharides, a type of carbohydrate molecule found in reishi mushrooms, can induce antibodies to recognise and kill antigens associated with tumours or cancer cells.

Maitake mushrooms are believed to have similar qualities. In a human trial, conducted by Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Centre in 2009, maitake was shown to stimulate the immune systems of breast cancer patients. Laboratory in vitro research by Sensuke Konno, associate professor of urology at New York Medical College, found that non-toxic concentrations of the GD or PL “fractions” found in maitake mushrooms, when combined with vitamin C, not only reduced growth of bladder cancer cells by 90% in 72 hours, but were also highly effective in killing them.

But perhaps the best known of all the medicinal mushrooms is the shiitake. Not only is it a delicious ingredient, but it is also famed for its compound lentinan. Several papers have found the polysaccharide could help increase the survival rate of cancer patients, including research carried out by a team of scientists at Harbin University, China, in 2008, which found that lentinan was “beneficial in terms of increasing mean survival duration, tumour necrosis and reducing the recurrence rate”.

The shiitake extract Active Hexose Correlated Compound (AHCC) is the second most popular form of alternative medicine used by cancer patients in Japan – Agaricus subrufescens, another mushroom, is the first. A study in 2011 by researchers in Texas found that AHCC may also be effective in protecting the body against viruses and infections, including flu.

Mushrooms for sale at a herbal medicine shop in China. Photograph: Prisma Bildagentur AG/Alamy

“These mushrooms have attributes you can’t synthesise, because the molecules are often too complex,” says medicinal plant expert Chris Kilham. He considers the immune value of many of these fungi to be “critically important”, and just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the possible health benefits. He complains that many doctors are still ignorant of their potential in modern medicine.

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I am Laughing my Socks Off!

I have always considered that we are too hygienic, so hygienic that our systems have lost the resilience to germs.

It’s documented here on the blog.

Cow poo is good for you!

Now read this…

Alzheimer’s may be linked to better hygiene, say scientists

Reduced contact with infectious agents might stall development of key elements of immune system, researchers suggest

The researchers say hygiene is positively associated with risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Photograph: Jeff Blackler/Rex Features

Improvements in hygiene could partly explain increased rates of Alzheimer’s disease seen in many developed countries, according to research into the link between infections and the condition.

The researchers studied the prevalence of the neurodegenerative disease across 192 countries and compared it with the diversity of microbes in those places.

Taking into account differences in birth rate, life expectancy and age structure in their study, the scientists found that levels of sanitation, infectious disease and urbanisation accounted for 33%, 36% and 28% respectively of the discrepancies seen in Alzheimer’s rates between countries.

In their report which was published in the journal Evolution, Medicine and Public Health, the researchers concluded that hygiene was positively associated with risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Countries with greater degree of sanitation and lower prevalence of pathogens had a higher burden from the disorder. Countries with greater degree of urbanisation and wealth also had higher Alzheimer’s burdens.

Whether hygiene causes the pattern is not yet clear – cleanliness or infectious disease might be associated with some other factor – but the team does have a speculative hypothesis for how the two factors might be linked.

Exposure to micro-organisms – good and bad – is important for the body to develop proper immune responses.

The researchers’ “hygiene hypothesis suggests that as societies have become cleaner, the reduced level of contact with bacteria and other kinds of infectious agents might stall the proper development of important elements of the body’s immune system such as white blood cells. The team suggest that developing Alzheimer’s might be linked to autoimmune disease, in which the body’s immune system attacks itself.

“Alzheimer’s disease (AD) shares certain etiological features with autoimmunity,” the researchers wrote in the journal Evolution, Medicine and Public Health. “Prevalence of autoimmunity varies between populations in accordance with variation in environmental microbial diversity. Exposure to micro-organisms may improve individuals’ immunoregulation in ways that protect against autoimmunity, and we suggest this may also be the case for AD.”

James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, who was not involved in the research, said it was well known that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease varied between countries. “That this discrepancy could be the result of better hygiene is certainly an interesting theory and loosely ties in with the links we know exist between inflammation and the disease,” he said.

“However, it is always difficult to pin causality to one factor and this study does not cancel out the role of the many other lifestyle differences such as diet, education and wider health which we know can also have a role to play. One in three people over 65 will develop dementia. The best way to reduce your risk is to eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, not smoke and keep your blood pressure and cholesterol in check.”

Opinion:

I agree that this report is not conclusive, but it does represent so many links in common, that it cannot be discarded entirely.

The hygiene industry is huge, globally amounting to trillions of dollars, we have swallowed all the propaganda that germs are bad and flocked to the stores to protect ourselves. Much, as it seems, to our detriment.

“Waiter, there’s a hair in my soup!” Maybe that hair is there for a reason, ever thought about that? I bet you hadn’t! Misadventures like finding the erroneous in places it’s not supposed to be maybe part of nature’s design to keep us healthy. Meanwhile, we are doing our utmost to go against that design.

Once again, we are trying to control the way Mother Nature works, and to me it looks like we have created more problems than we have solved.

Dirt and germs CAN be good for us.