Understanding the best way to take medicinal mushrooms based on the preferences that fit your lifestyle. Learn more in this article now
Today we are looking at the suggestions for the best way to take medicinal mushrooms. Everybody will have their own preferred method for consuming mushrooms, so there isn’t really a “best” way. We do feel it’s a good idea to share some of the recommendations though.
Below we go through making mushroom tea, using mushroom tincture, eating cooked mushrooms, and using mushroom supplements.
Mushroom tea as the best way to take medicinal mushrooms
Mushroom tea is a great introduction to drinking your mushrooms. Chaga, reishi, and shiitake are popular mushrooms to make tea with, and dried mushrooms are frequently used to do so.
The best way to make mushroom tea is to boil some water and then allow the mushrooms to steep in the boiling water. The longer you allow it to steep, the more flavorful the tea will be. Steeping mushroom tea, like reishi tea, for five to 10 minutes is all that’s needed but be sure to taste-test to find your desired flavor.
Mushroom tincture as the best way to take medicinal mushrooms
The mushroom tinctures we sell are developed using a triple extraction method, which involves alcohol, hot water, and cold water. Using a triple extraction process helps extract the various types of water-soluble and alcohol-soluble constituents. Tinctures are a nice option because they have long shelf lives.
Some people will add the tincture to water or squirt it into teas as well. Liquid tinctures are versatile in this way, as you can take the tincture straight or you can mix it with other foods or liquids.
Eating mushrooms as the best way to take medicinal mushrooms
You can always eat your medicinal mushrooms! Food as medicine is an age old concept that we can still benefit from in today’s world.
So many of the popular medicinal mushrooms are edible, like shiitake, maitake, oyster, lion’s mane, cordyceps, and maitake. Just be sure to cook these mushrooms before enjoying them. We do not recommend eating mushrooms raw because of chitin found in the cell walls of the mushroom. Chitin needs to be broken down in order to get the most nutritional benefit from the mushrooms. Chitin can also make it hard to digest the mushrooms properly, so always cook your mushrooms before eating them.
Mushroom supplements as the best way to take medicinal mushrooms
The functional mushroom industry is expanding rapidly with expected sales of $34.3 billion by 2024, up from 20 billion in 2018 (Mordor Intelligence, 2019).
As consumers become more educated about what is in their mushroom supplements, US mushroom farms will be able to tap into this market more heavily. Consumers will likely want to shift away from foreign-produced supplements as well as away from mycelial-based products. This allows American mushroom farms to begin offering value-added products to this extremely fast-growing functional mushroom market.
Mushrooms are often underappreciated for their substantial nutritional and healthful qualities. They are an important source of protein that is naturally high in Vitamin D, potassium, magnesium, and many other nutrients. Mushrooms also contain all the essential amino acids.
The best way to take medicinal mushrooms: Understanding mushroom supplements in greater depth
Not all mushroom supplements are created equally. To understand this we need to understand the fungal life cycle. The mushroom is the fruiting body of the fungus, which only comes out occasionally. The mushroom fruits from what is called “mycelium”, which is a network of cells that are always present and usually out of sight. The mycelium is how fungi gather food, grow and communicate with the surrounding environment.
Oddly enough, some mushroom supplements don’t use any mushrooms, and instead, they only use mycelium. When you look at the back of these supplements they will say at the bottom other ingredients: freeze-dried myceliated brown rice. These products are mostly the mycelium grown out on grain. The issue here is that the mycelium and grain cannot be separated so both are extracted and placed into the capsule. It is unclear what percentage of the grain has been transformed into mycelium, so who knows how much of the product is actually fungal biomass and how much is simply undigested rice.
Only in the last 10 years has this become a wide spread product, at no other time in history have people used the mycelium as the primary source for a supplement or healing aid. With products that exclusively use mushroom fruiting bodies you know 100% of that is fungal biomass and you are using the anatomical part of the fungus that has historically been used. A lot more research is needed to see if these products are equal in their efficacy.
Be aware that marketing and advertising is being heavily used in the mushroom supplement industry currently. Make sure that your products are actually mushrooms and do your own research as to what the possible benefits are.