Over-the-Counter Medicinal Mushrooms

FUNGI Volume 2:1 Spring 2009 I AM OFTEN ASKED which medicinal mushrooms our family uses, if we select mushrooms for their flavor or for their medicinal properties, if we prefer wild mushrooms to cultivated ones, and how we preserve and prepare them. The assumption seems to be that we use mushrooms primarily for their medicinal properties and not because they are tasty, culinarily diverse, and nutritious. Rehydrated ground willow bark may lower fever but I doubt that anyone would prefer the bitter brew to a tablet of aspirin, or take a bite into a slice of moldy bread for its antibiotic properties. Mushrooms like Maitake (Grifola frondosa), Shiitake (Lentinula edodes), and other culinary medicinal mushrooms are tasty and versatile. Knowing that they are also rich in all kinds of beneficial nutrients and bioactive substances, low in calories, and can contribute to our efforts to stay healthy would seem to warrant using them often in our diet. This was our line of thought before we moved from New York City to the Boston area, when we first experienced living in the midst of New England’s barrage of fall mold spores. Soon after we moved, our daughter, then in high school, developed chronic sinus infections that would begin in the fall and linger into winter. These bouts were often followed by slow to clear lower respiratory infections. The vague diagnosis of Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis offered to describe her underlying condition did not address the havoc that a fall-to-winter course of recurrent sinusitis and bronchitis, along with courses of antibiotics and steroids, can wreak in the life of a teenager. She became progressively weaker and had to stay at home for long periods of time. We were fortunate to have the professional care that Boston’s excellent medical centers could offer, but even they could not alleviate her sheer exhaustion or rid her of the incapacitating feeling of malaise. If I had to single out the most debilitating aspect of this affliction, it would be the complete exhaustion that it brought on, which prevented her from leading a normal life. Hoping that there might be something else that we could do, we asked for the advice of Dr. Andrew Weil, founder and director of the University of Arizona’s Program in Integrative Medicine, and an authorOver-the-Counter Medicinal Mushrooms