Reishi - The Mushroom of Immortality

Healthwise

Newsletter #406
Lee Euler, Editor

22 june 2014

"The Mushroom of Immortality"

We've written about mushrooms many times because of their astonishing ability to boost the immune system.

And there's a lot to love about mushrooms. They're nutritious. They have an abundance of proteins, vitamins, and fatty acids. They're known to support weight loss efforts and lower cholesterol. They can even help control diabetes.

But reishi mushrooms are particularly worth noticing, especially if you're being treated for cancer with mainstream methods like chemotherapy and radiation. Aside from their own power to fight cancer, they bring blessed relief from chemo's ugly side effects.

The life-generating mushroom

Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) grows wild in China, usually on decaying logs and tree stumps. It can be found in six different colors, but the red strain is the one that's best known and most commonly cultivated. Reishi mushrooms are edible and have a tough, wood-like texture and a kidney-shaped cap.

Reishi has long held a revered place in Chinese traditional medicine, where it's seen more than 4,000 years of use for a variety of disorders, including high blood pressure, arthritis, liver disorders, and immune system stimulation. Reishi is also said to reduce high cholesterol and offers a blood-thinning benefit, which could prove useful in heart disease prevention.

With a resumé like that, no wonder it's called "the mushroom of immortality".

Among the Chinese, reishi is believed to promote longevity and boost qi (pronounced "chee") – the very essence of the life force. The mushroom is also said to help improve intellectual capacity and memory. On top of that, it's reputed to calm and nourish the "shen," or the emotional center of the body.

Perhaps more down to earth and helpful, modern scientific studies show reishi mushrooms excel at treating diabetes and cancer.

The many cancer-fighting properties of reishi

In numerous studies, reishi mushrooms have shown an ability to decrease cancer cell proliferation and prompt natural cell death (which cancer cells try to dodge). Researchers believe its cancer-fighting benefits are partly due to the pairing of active compounds like saponins and polysaccharides.

Beta-glucan polysaccharides and triterpenes are two of the active constituents in reishi mushrooms. The triterpene compounds are believed to halt tumor invasion by limiting attachment to endothelial cells, among other things. Reishi also ramps up natural killer cell cytotoxicity against different cancer cell lines – one of the many ways it helps improve immune response.

Clinical studies show reishi is also effective at curbing chemotherapy-induced nausea, that it enhances the effects of radiotherapy, and that it offers general chemopreventive benefits. Importantly, reishi has been shown to enhance immune response against advanced-stage cancer. And for those enduring conventional treatments like chemotherapy, reishi appears to provide a protective effect for healthy cells.

On the chemopreventive front, reishi has been known to decrease chemotherapy's negative side effects by 90 to 95 percent. That means less pain and nausea, less hair loss, and less of a decrease in red and white blood cell counts. One study in Japan showed that chemo patients using reishi reported noticeable quality of life improvements.

It's hard for me to imagine a person undergoing the misery of chemo wouldn't at least consider trying this harmless food that may go such a long way toward reducing the horrible side effects – which are so bad many people refuse to endure another round, even when their doctors tell them death will follow quickly. The mushroom in no way compromises chemo's effect on cancer cells.

Reishi mushrooms also appear to lower blood sugar levels, as indicated by animal studies at the Institute of Vascular Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Diabetic mice that received reishi showed lower blood glucose levels within a single week. Researchers believe reishi is able to prevent the liver from making glucose by inhibiting a key enzyme.

In the December 2006 issue of the Journal of Asian Natural Products Research, researchers at the Department of Pharmacology of Peking University in Beijing noticed reishi mushrooms were able to curb diabetic kidney complications while also lowering triglyceride and blood sugar levels.

Sugar, of course, is a known fuel for cancer cells, so the ability to lower glucose levels may be another reason reishi can help so much with recovery from cancer.

More to the mushroom than meets the eye

Adverse reactions for reishi are minimal and seem to be restricted to people who took powdered reishi mushroom for an extended period of time. Chronic diarrhea resulted in one case while liver damage was found in two other cases. Reishi mushrooms are used effectively and safely throughout China. They're so popular, you'll even find them on the shelves of Chinese convenience stores.

Of course, it's not the only healing mushroom out there. Plenty of other mushrooms are known to prevent or treat cancer. Shiitake extract prevents tumors and lowers the risk of relapse. In Japan, a supplement called AHCC is a popular blend of organic medicinal mushrooms. It's reportedly used by over 7,000 hospitals and healing clinics. You can get it on the Internet.

Then there's the ABM mushroom – Agaricus Blazei Murill – which has been reported as effective at wiping out breast, lung, liver, colon, and ovarian cancer, and is also effective against solid cancers. We covered ABM in detail in Issue #5. You can read about the healing power of another mushroom, maitake, in Issue #220.

The U.S. currently regulates reishi as a dietary supplement. Unlike other mushrooms, the tough texture of reishi makes it difficult to digest. So you'll want to get it in extract form.

The biggest challenge if you plan to make reishi part of your health regimen is to find a biologically potent source. My recommendation is to find a supplement made with pure Ganoderma (reishi) extract, as opposed to a supplement made from ground Ganoderma and mixed with other ingredients.

One of our readers wrote to advise me, "This mushroom does more for cancer than any other mushroom. It is the key to my recovery from pancreatic, liver, and kidney cancer. You can only get [reishi] from a Chinese doctor, and you are wasting your money buying these mushrooms from a vitamin shop. They just don't have the punch of the wild mushrooms grown at high altitude." He strongly urges people not to take a chance on the OTC products.

I have to be agnostic on the subject as there are a couple of mushroom supplement suppliers – Mushroom Wisdom and Myco Essentials – in which I have high confidence. But I don't have the means to guarantee whether any given product is effective or not.

http://www.cancerdefeated.com/the-mushroom of immortality

Healthwise

For Staying Healthy, The Royal Liver Rules

Dr. Mark Wiley | Nov 02, 2011 | Comments 10

You may think that your brain rules your body, but you can make a strong philosophical argument that the liver really rules your physiology. Yes, the brain is the prime minister that administers the nervous system and many important bodily processes, but the liver is the royal organ that loyally maintains the body’s inner workings. So you’d be wise to keep your liver happy if you want to be healthy.

The liver is plenty powerful in its role of ruling the kingdom of Bodyland. It removes toxins from the blood, plays a role in protein and hormone synthesis, stores glycogen, and yields bile along with other chemicals that help break down fats and aid in digestion. The liver helps decompose red blood cells, stores blood and regulates how much blood circulates. In other words, the Liver King supervises your inner kingdom, ensures its byways are well-kept and keeps the supply lines of water and food operational.

But there’s a problem in centering so many bodily purposes in one organ. When the liver becomes toxic, running in a depressed state or otherwise succumbing to a state of dysfunction, many things become unbalanced. With a domino effect, when the liver slips below par, the body begins experiencing the signs and symptoms of ill health. A poor-functioning liver impacts a frightening number of other organs.

Multiple Difficulties

A list of symptoms reflecting a dysfunctional liver includes gastritis, nervous stomach, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), gastric ulcer, dyspepsia, hepatitis, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s disease, colitis, premenstrual syndrome, dysmenorrhea, mastitis, fibrocystic breast disease, ovarian cysts, genital pain, tension headache, migraine headache, TMJ dysfunction, chronic hepatitis, chronic cholecystitis, hepatomegaly, costochondritis, post herpetic neuralgia, intercostal neuralgia, hypertension and poor peripheral circulation.

I find it interesting that Western scientific medicine conceives the liver totally in terms of its direct functions. Yet, in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the liver is viewed also in terms of indirect effects linked to its dysfunction. In other words, when the liver becomes too hot from excessive alcohol, drug or coffee consumption, it begins to “overact on the spleen and stomach and depress the functions of the heart and kidneys.”

In TCM, the liver is recognized as being responsible for storing and regulating blood, for maintaining the free flow of qi (energy) in the body, for controlling the tendons and manifesting signs of its problems in the nails and in the eyes.

Storing And Regulating Blood

The primary function of the liver is to store up to 55 percent of your total blood volume when the body is at rest. It also regulates how much blood circulates when the body is physically active. In times of emergency, the liver can provide up to 2,000 ml of blood to the heart, giving you greater strength, stamina and mental clarity.

Maintaining The Free Flow Of Qi

The liver is responsible for maintaining the easygoing, free-flowing and harmonious functional activities of the body’s organs. At peak capacity, the liver effectively manages the constant movement of energy in the body. When the liver becomes depressed (slow-acting, sluggish), it suffers qi (energetic) stagnation, which can lead to tiredness, fatigue, cloudy thinking, depression and anger.

Emotional shifts and attitudes such as psychological depression, moodiness, loneliness and anger are the root causes of the syndrome known in TCM as “liver qi stagnation.” When the liver qi (energy) stagnates, it can cause complications in the spleen and stomach or in the heart and kidneys, leading to vomiting, nausea, heart palpitations, insomnia, restlessness, dream-disturbed sleep, cloudy thinking, poor digestion, hypochondriac pain, irritable bowel syndrome, dysmenorrhea and PMS issues as well as soft and brittle nails, blurry vision, red eyes, headache, bilirubinemia (buildup of blood-breakdown byproducts) and erectile dysfunction.

The Liver Controls The Tendons And Manifests In Nails

The liver nourishes the tendons as an aspect of its blood-controlling function. Since the tendons attach muscles to bones, this part of its role reflects its control of the normal physiological activities of the body. So when the liver lacks blood and/or is low in energy (qi), those activities deteriorate. The tendons receive insufficient nourishment to stay flexible, and they grow stiff, inflamed and painful.

It is important to note that TCM defines three types of blood: heart blood, liver blood and spleen blood. Each has its own function in the creation, promotion, distribution, cleansing and storage of blood. The state of liver blood is reflected in the health of the nails. When there is ample healthy liver blood, both tendons and nails stay strong. But when there is restriction (stagnation) or deficiency of liver blood, then the nails become soft, thin and brittle.

The Liver Opens Into The Eyes

According to TCM theory, each yin (nurturing) organ has a body part to which it opens. In this system, the liver opens into the eyes. Therefore, the nourishment of liver blood is responsible for the proper functioning of the eyes. Indeed, the liver meridian (an energetic line through the body) travels upward through the eye system. Consequently, liver deficiency can lead to blurry vision. Liver heat rising upward can lead to red and dry eyes. Liver dampness can lead to bilirubinemia.

There is much more to the “Chinese liver” than Western medicine recognizes. However, when considering not only its physiological function, but also its meridian route and energetic function, one can begin to understand the vast importance of this organ to overall health and well-being.

From both a scientific, reductive Western perspective and a traditional Eastern viewpoint, the causes of liver dysfunctions are the same. Poor diet along with the excessive consumption of alcohol and drugs (legal and illegal) stress the liver and impair its ability to function properly. Knowing this, it becomes obvious that indulging in poor lifestyle habits that negatively affect the liver leads to a host of problems that are preventable.

You can usually restore the health of the liver by sticking to a liver-friendly routine: Reduce stress, eat nutrient-dense foods and curtail drug and alcohol consumption. A liver-detox program is also a good way to jump-start the liver’s rejuvenation process.

Your body needs a healthy liver to function properly. Pamper your liver and your unimpaired liver will offer you unparalleled well-being.

http://easyhealthoptions.com/alternative-medicine/nutrition/for-staying-healthy-the-royal-liver-rules/