Like the mushroom itself — dark, close to the ground and out of sight — mycomedicinals (mushroom-based supplements) are little known to the American public, but increasingly prescribed by practitioners of oriental and integrative medicine, even M.D.s, to combat an array of diseases, including cancer.
"Mushrooms have powerful antiviral, anti-bacteria and anti-cancer properties," says Dr. Robin Miller of Asante's Triune Integrative Medicine Clinic in Medford. "When I give talks to cancer patients, I always include mycomedicinals and I dispense them in capsule form."
Standing by a 4-foot long shelf of mycomedicinals at the Ashland Food Coop, supplement advisor Joseph Tokarz says he often sells them to people with colds and flu and "you remember that lingering cold last year where the symptoms rolled in, one by one and it wouldn't go away? Well, I gave these to several people and the symptoms would roll back one by one and go away."
The capsules, with names like Host Defense, Mental Clarity and Breathe, are made by New Chapter in Washington state, whose owner Paul Stamets says use is "soaring," largely because they're being recommended by medical doctors as an adjunct in cancer treatment.
"They don't have anything to rebuild the ravaged immune system so they're using mushrooms as an adjunct to the intervention drugs and treatments. Mushrooms are absolutely a powerful anti-cancer substance, because they enhance the immune system without being inflammatory," said Stamets, in a phone interview.
Advertisement | |
Acupuncturist and oriental medicine practitioner Ken Bendat of Ashland dispenses mushrooms for strengthening the immune system after patients have been treated for cancer.
"It's a new way of thinking — strengthening the immune system to protect against not just cancer, but allergies, asthma and auto-immune disorders. I use them a lot in my practice," Bendat says.
Mushrooms are "powerful antiviral and antibiotic" substances, have long been a big part of Chinese medicine and their effectiveness is determined by where they grow — with the Northwest U.S. being a prime area, says Michael Zanoni, an Ashland acupuncturist and oriental medicine practitioner.
However, he notes, you don't just throw mushrooms at an illness; it needs to be properly diagnosed and, if appropriate, assigned the correct mushroom. For example, as a diuretic and energy booster, he dispenses poria, a fungus from puffballs that grow on pine trees. For recovery from cancer, he advises the ganod mushroom, which interferes with replication of cells in certain tumors.
Federal law prohibits claims that herbs or mushrooms can cure anything, so you'll always find, in tiny print, a disclaimer that mycomedicinals are not designed to prevent any disease or illness, Zanoni says.
Mycomedicinals are effective, says Stamets because they include both the mushroom and the underground root web, known as the mycelium — and both are needed to enhance the two types of cells — called NK cells and macrophage cells — that target cancer and disease cells "like the PacMan in the 1980s video game."
Mushrooms differ from drugs and many herbs, in that they have few side effects, interact well with other substances and you don't become tolerant and require larger doses, says Craig Craddock, supplements specialist and the Ashland Food Co-op.
Different mushrooms aid different organs and functions. One fungi, called cordyceps, is reputed to enhance breathing, reduce asthma and increase energy, Craddock adds, and was used by two Chinese swimmers, who caused controversy when they broke many records in the 1996 Olympics.
The combination of 17 fungi called Host Defense is marketed on www.new-chapter.com with this: "it has been shown to increase human Natural Killer (NK) cell activity by up to 300 percent."
It includes a species called the "Ice Man fungus" (Fomes fomentarius) — carried in a pouch by Otzi, the 5,300 year old man found frozen in the Alps in 1991. It also has reishi, shiitake and maitake mushrooms, which are found in many preparations.
Stamets, who has discovered four new species of mushrooms in his Olympic peninsula hunting grounds, says fungi from China have cadmium and other heavy metals because of air pollution, but the Pacific Northwest, washed by ocean winds and less polluted, are to be preferred in medicines.
In his book, "MycoMedicinals," Stamets says mushrooms do the same healing work on the planet that they do on the human body, using vast networks of underground mycelia to "bolster, purify and repair" ecosystems.
"The mycelium of mushrooms is the earth's Internet," Tokarz says. "It's the largest living organism and goes on for miles and miles underground."
John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.
