How Mushrooms Heal Us (and the World!)

Mushrooms are medicine for humans and the Earth. Not many creatures can transform waste into raw materials to sustain life. While the majestic and beautiful animals like lions, elk, and eagles get all the glory, life simply would not exist without decomposers like mushrooms. We are wise to invest more time and energy into understanding these unique and sometimes ugly, weird, and smelly life forms. They humbly hold our world together and could be the answer to a handful of environmental and human health concerns, including toxic waste accumulation, cancer, and auto-immune disorders. Mushrooms are medicines for humans and the Earth.

Like many plants in the herbal medicine world, mushrooms work by way of complex mechanisms within the body. Unlike modern drugs that present an isolate compound, mushrooms represent hundreds to thousands of constituents that work synergistically within the body to provide holistic healing. This brief article will describe how the general nature of mushrooms can heal both bodily and environmental woes.

 The immune system sits at the seat of many modern diseases. If our immune system is working well, we are protected from a wide range of toxins, pathogens, and allergens without even realizing it. However, when our immunity becomes jeopardized or overly stimulated, a whole host of issues can arise, ranging from acute allergic responses to more chronic issues like arthritis and Crohn’s disease. We are wise to include foods, activities, and herbs that nourish our immune system. First, we must identify where the immune system exists. Textbook anatomy and physiology efficiently divides the human body into discernible parts. This makes it “easier” to study, but actually confuses things in reality. This is because the body does not work by way of isolated systems; holistic healing requires a whole systems approach to health assessment. The immune system is interconnected with all body systems and its cells are imbedded in places you wouldn’t suspect. For example, two-thirds of our immune system is located within our gastrointestinal tract. We call this cellular community “GALT” (Gut Associated Lymphoid Tissue) and it plays a huge role in health. This lymphoid tissue is hard-wired to immune cells located throughout the body, many of which are clustered in our lymph nodes (ever notice how your lymph nodes get swollen when your body is fighting infection? In a nutshell, this is where our immune system cells quarantine the pathogens before marking, breaking down, and expelling them from the body).

If the seat of our immune system lives in our gut, it makes sense to stick to foods that nourish these cells rather than exhaust them. We should be ingesting things that strengthen and stimulate our immune system to action- not things that cause excessive stimulation (like when we repeatedly ingest things we are sensitive or allergic to). Over time, this is one way auto-immune diseases can develop.
 
 Unfortunately as a result of poor diet, environment, and lifestyle, many people’s immune systems are exhausted. Immune exhaustion comes as a result of chronic low-grade stress. Stress and inflammation go hand in hand. Inflammation is how our body responds to stressors of all kinds, from splinters (note how the area around the invader grows red and sometimes pus-filled) to bacteria (bodies develop fevers to burn/expel pathogens) to mental disturbances. As an initial response, inflammation is an incredibly helpful tool. However, it becomes an issue when a body is constantly inflamed at a low level. When our inflammatory response is just below the threshold level of recognition,  we might go on our merry way until we develop an auto-immune disorder or catch wind of a cold that seems to just linger on forever, and ever, and ever…

 But there is hope! - and our salvation comes in the fleshy, capped, gilled, and spore-filled form of mushrooms. Mushrooms strengthen our immune system. A happy immune system means a happy body. A strong immune system means a strong body. A strong immune system can handle stress. Stress causes inflammation. Inflammation causes disease. A strong immune system can handle inflammation to prevent disease. Therefore, mushrooms rule! Of course, I’m over-generalizing the very, very complex actions taking place here, but that is the beauty of working with mushrooms and plants. They work to build up our own intelligent systems. Nourish our good bodies with strengthening building blocks and let it do what it does best- thrive!

How do they do it?
Mushrooms strengthen our immune system in a few ways. Mushrooms are made of polysaccharides. These many (‘poly’) chained sugars (‘saccharides’) are structurally complex and have the highest capacity of any compound for carrying information since they can take on infinitely many forms. This variability of form showcases the adaptable function of mushrooms, perhaps explaining why they can help such a wide variety of diseases and body types.  One particular polysaccharide configuration creates beta-glucans (B-glucans). B-glucans are a primary reason why mushrooms hold such healing power for our body’s immune system. The size and complexity of B-glucans means that scientists still don’t exactly know how they strengthen immunity. However, numerous studies and, more importantly, traditional wisdom enforces the inevitable healing power of beta-glucans. Each medicinal mushroom under study seems to produce its own unique variation of B-glucans, stimulating the immune system in slightly varying ways. So how do they do it?
Generally speaking, B-glucans stimulate immunity by binding to specific receptors on immune cells (mainly phagocytes, or cells that eat, “phag”, other cells), unleashing their germ-killing abilities. Much like locks and keys, cells have receptors for various functions, and only certain compounds match each one. Another example of this situation is how plant phytoestrogens (found in legumes) can bind to estrogen-receptor sites on cells. This receptor-binding attribute means that mushrooms can unlock our immune-stimulating capacity in safe ways.

 Even more amazingly, B-glucans also resemble the molecules found on bacteria. Therefore, B-glucans stimulate the immune system to action by making the body believe a bacterium is afoot. Then, when immune cells like phagocytes attack a B-glucan, they give the immune system a safe boost (too much of a boost and you can have an allergic reaction and/or fatigue over time). So at the same time that B-glucans are unlocking phagocytes through receptor-binding, they are also encouraging the whole immune system to get moving. It’s as if mushrooms are training the body’s immunity and providing all the tools to do it.! Most importantly, mushrooms operate as immunomodulators. In such a way, if your immune system is over-responding (auto-immune disorders), mushrooms pacify it. If your immune-system is under-responsive, mushrooms whip it back into shape. How do we know this? One example is the wise Reishi’s (Ganoderma spp.) action in the body. Our immune system cells create cytotoxins that bodies use to kill cancerous cells and pathogens all the time. Some well-known cyto-toxins are tumor-necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), Interleukin-1-beta (IL-1-beta), and Interleukin-6 (IL-6). If a body produces too many cyto-toxins, these toxins can kill healthy cells. In the presence of Reishi, scientists found that cytotoxin production increased to its upper limit when exposed to cancerous cells. Through some unknown wisdom, Reishi was able to raise its cyto-toxin production to maximum capacity but not over-stimulation. This immunomodulating attribute is common to many medicinal mushroom species, and it means that mushrooms offer intelligent, safe healing for a wide array of woes.

 Mushrooms are caring and effective coaches for our immune systems. Mushrooms offer a complex biochemical matrix of constituents that work synergistically to both stimulate immunity while training, nourishing and pacifying it as well. The variety of B-glucans and synergistic compounds (like antioxidants, terpenoids, vitamins, and minerals) does not cure disease, but it does equip our immune system with the tools to prevent attacks from all sorts of stressors and inflammations. Remember: just as heart disease and anything ending in “-itis” (“-itis” means inflammation) indicates inflammation, depression and anxiety are also marked by inflammatory states.
 
So enough about human health, how are mushrooms medicine for the Earth?
 As creatures of the Earth, our bodies share many similarities with the Earth’s needs. For example, just as bacteria-rich soil provides access to essential nutrients and vitamins, so too do our guts require diverse communities of bacteria to unlock enzymes and help us digest our food. Similarly, just as mushrooms strengthen our immune system to protect against pathogens, they also are incredibly effect at protecting the Earth from pathogens. Mycoremediation is the practice of “remediating” contaminated soil with mushrooms. Soil contaminated with lead, arsenic, intense pesticides, oils, and all sorts of toxins has been made clean by the hungry and fearless appetites of mushrooms. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are particularly resistant to bioremediation as a result of their low water solubility. These toxins accumulate in mammals and aquatic organisms. The tasty oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) exhibited up to 100% remediation of soils at Nigerian oil-based drill cuttings. This is just one instance of mushrooms healing land like no other organism can.  I encourage you to watch the brilliant mushroom man, Paul Stamets, illuminate how mushrooms can save the world in his video “Solutions From the Underground”. Across the globe, fungi loving folks are harnessing the power of mushrooms to clean pollutants from waterways, soils, and even radioactive waste sites.

 From human health to planetary health, mushrooms are our allies and we are wise to cherish and utilize them!
 
 
Resources
 
Okparanma, Reuben N., et al. "Mycoremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)-contaminated oil-based drill-cuttings." African Journal of Biotechnology 10.26 (2011): 5149-5156.
 
Halpern, Georges M., MD, PhD. “Healing Mushrooms: Effective Treatments for Today’s Illnesses.” Square One Publishers, NY (2007).