What Are Mushrooms Health Benefits

Farming mushrooms can be a lucrative as well as a relaxing and peaceful activity. Throughout the years, I’ve been farming and tasting mushrooms at home and I’ve always wondered how it’d improve my health. In this post I will share the results of my investigations on the health benefits from mushrooms.

So what are mushrooms health benefits? Mushrooms are very important for the human organism’s health, even if they are not medicine nor a cure for diseases. They are a important source of antioxidants, potassium, vitamin D, zinc among other nutrients. They’re also a big source of proteins and fiber, which helps to keep a healthy heart and to prevent overweight.

As a newby to the world of mushroom farming, you must know what are the mushrooms health benefits that you will get from consuming them as a regular part of your diet. I will discuss here some of the traits that make mushrooms a great choice in business and in the kitchen.

Key health benefits from mushrooms.

Mushrooms offer all kinds of benefits for your body’s health. Here I will present you some of the main health benefits that you will get from eating mushrooms on a regular basis.

First of all, mushrooms are a very well-rounded source of different and important nutrients.

The vitamin D found in the most common types of solar farmed mushrooms is a key nutrient in the preservation of the health of the bones and the prevention of bones diseases such as osteoporosis.

Another trait that makes mushrooms an ingredient to be considered in any diet is the quantity of antioxidants found in them. This means that mushrooms help to avoid many kinds of diseases and keep the immune system sharp and strong.

Some researchers examine how mushrooms can help to keep the brain healthy and thus prevent cognitive degeneration, preventing diseases like Alzheimer’s in the long run.

Also, because of the antioxidants, mushrooms have been taken into account as a way to prevent many types of cancer, such as lung, prostate, and breast cancer, though it hasn’t been totally proven.

Something important to have in mind when adding mushrooms to your diet is the dietary fiber. Mushrooms are a great source of this type of fiber, and it’s known that the dietary fiber helps to prevent type 2 diabetes, among many other health conditions.

The beta-glaucans found in mushrooms are also a proven way to lower blood cholesterol levels. The fiber, along with the vitamin C and the potassium all contribute to increase the heart’s health and to prevent its diseases.

The zinc found in mushrooms is another nutrient that contributes the immune system and, in children, grant a healthier and proper growth.

And if they don’t like them, the texture in mushrooms allow the cook to prepare meat-like dishes that will be pleasant to anyone!

Just a single cup of sliced mushrooms, weighing 70 grams, has the potential to greatly contribute to your general health and to prevent several health conditions.

You will make business, be healthy and will still eat delightfully. What else is there to ask?

Main mushrooms characteristics that benefit your health

Mushrooms are very important ingredients to keep in any diet being highly nutritive and low in fats, something that has been widely documented. For example, in a piece written to the BBC, Nicola Shubrook, a qualified nutritionist registered with the British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine, highlights vitamin D or helping to support the immune system as some of the key benefits from mushrooms. Healthline, a leading US based online provider of health and wellness information, which is supported by a network of medical professionals, also writes about the benefits of mushrooms.

Overall, adding mushrooms to your diet means lots of positives without any apparent disadvantage. These are some of the health benefits of mushrooms as a part of your diet, while at the same time being equally a versatile and delicious ingredient in your kitchen:

3. The beta-glucan found in the mushrooms are the cornerstone to keeping a diet free of fats and cholesterol, avoiding overweight or, if it’s the case, helping to reduce your weight by integrating them to your diet and combining it with a healthy lifestyle.

4. Research hints that eating mushrooms on a regular basis help to keep a healthier brain and reduces the risk of developing cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s. It has been found that mushrooms are a source of ergothioneine, an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory that helps to keep the neurons safe from damage and degeneration over time. There’s still no direct correlation proven, but the results are encouraging.

5. Being an important source of zinc, mushrooms are a good factor to have in mind in a children’s diet. It’s known that zinc helps to keep a strong immune system, help to recover from injuries faster and also contribute to the children’s growth.

6. The potassium found in mushrooms help to improve the connection between nerves and, in higher quantities, it helps to reduce blood pressure and thus preventing heart strokes, kidney stones and osteoporosis as well.

7. Also, incorporating mushrooms to your diet may protect you against cancer by protecting your cell’s DNA from damage and avoiding tumor formations.

Some specific types of mushroom and their health benefits

Though mushrooms generally display the same characteristics, some are better suited for specific results. Here are a few anecdotal examples, including the health benefits that may be associated with the type of mushrooms:

• Reishi – This red fanned-shaped mushroom is known for its calming properties, aiding sleep, anxiety, and depression. A cup of reishi tea and a good book is a great combo to unwind with after a long day.

• Lion’s mane – Given its name because it resembles the mane of a lion. The lion’s mane mushroom contains (NFG) a protein that’s super important to brain health it’s no wonder lion’s mane is known to boost memory and concentration.

• Shiitake – One of the better-known mushrooms, this umbrella-shaped mushroom is good for heart health, blood pressure and aids with lowering cholesterol 

• Cordyceps – Probably one of the weirdest mushrooms on this list. It’s a parasitic fungus known to grow on insect larvae. Raised energy levels, higher endurance, muscle recovery, and even an increase in sexual function are all the reasons why cordyceps are so sought after. They have even been credited with giving China’s Olympic women’s running team an edge at the 1993 Olympics

• Button mushrooms – These little white-capped mushrooms are known to lower blood sugar, improve insulin resistance, and also improves gut health.

How mushrooms may help against certain diseases.

We’ve discussed how mushrooms help to keep your organism healthy and vigorous. Now, we will take an insight into how they help to prevent some of the most frightening diseases we know in the modern world.

1. Cancer. One of the main features that mushroom offers to you is that it’s speculated to be a factor in preventing different types of cancer. It’s all about the antioxidants present in them.

The antioxidants work by finding and neutralizing the effects of the free radicals present in our body, thus preventing the cells to become cancerous.

The free radicals are produced by our body in many ways. They can damage the DNA in the cells of our body, so it’s believed that the antioxidants presents in food are a good way to fight and prevent cancer.

It’s also worth noting that antioxidant supplements do not have the same impact on the body that the antioxidant found in fruits and vegetables do.

2. Osteoporosis. It’s been proven that some types of mushroom, and in particular the oyster mushrooms, contain certain inhibitors that help to keep the body from developing osteoporosis.

Its content of vitamin D is also a factor that contributes to keeping the health of our bones and thus avoiding osteoporosis while aging.

3. Alzheimer’s disease. Just as with cancer, the antioxidants present in the mushrooms help to stop the brain to buildup some types of proteins that are typically present in the development of Alzheimer’s.

4. Heart attacks. The anti-inflammatory components found in mushrooms help to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol, so, overall, they help immensely in keeping your heart healthy and forever young.

What is the evidence

There are many researches and evidence of the effects of the edible mushrooms in your health and their associated benefits.

A. Help in fighting cancer

We can find many articles about this in the reputable scientific website Pubmed, which is host to a large quantity of medical researchers and scientific articles of all kind, and is a common and trustworthy source of information both to professionals and casual researchers.

One of the examples we can find there is the article by Seema Patel and Arun Goyal, titled “Recent developments in mushrooms as anti-cancer therapeutics: a review”, which works as a great summary on the information available about the relationship between several types of cancer and mushrooms. If you check the article in the link provided above, you Will also be able to find numerous references to other works that explore the possibility that the antioxidants that mushrooms offer to us as consumers are a great way to prevent cancer in many of its types.

This particular piece of work provides us with an in-depth investigation about the potentiality of a  particular species polypores (a type of fungus with large fruiting bodies that form pores or tubes on their underside, also known as bracket fungi) in preventing the cellular degeneration that cancer causes in lung cancer. The results shown by the study are very positive: the survival rates observed in the investigations were much higher when a treatment with different quantities of concentration of polypores extracts were applied. Though here we’re talking more about medicinal herbs than edible mushrooms, it shows how this kind of food and herbs can be crucially beneficial to our health in moments of extreme importance.

Another work by several authors explores how the Pleurotus highking mushrooms help in reinvigorating the antiproliferative and anti-migratory against the cells degeneration caused by triple-negative breast cancer by suppressing Akt signaling. The Akt signaling pathway or PI3K-Akt signaling is a signal transduction pathway that helps to promote survival and growth in extracellular signals, thus preventing cells into becoming cancerous.

The study proves how the Pleurotus highking mushrooms helped in reducing the number and size of the tumor spheres in the system. Here, once again, the authors found that this type of mushroom was potentially a great partner in battling cancer. They claim that, as the mushrooms trowed promising results in the research, it could be considered as a strong source in the development of anticancer drugs for the treatment of breast cancer.

A work written by the hands of several experts also explores the correlation between mushrooms and breast cancer. In this article they not only examine mushrooms coming from Asia – a difference with the rest of the studies shown here – but they also take into account mushrooms coming from Australia and America, and therefore possibly closer to more potential consumers. This work further strengthens the confidence of health professionals in the use of mushrooms in the prevention of breast cancer and in the reduction of the size of the tumors.

A third study conducted by several researchers focus on the connection between the white button mushroom – one of the most common edible mushroom species – and cancer prevention. Based on mice as test subjects, the research highlighted the remarkable difference in the size of the tumors that were treated with white button mushrooms extracts. Based on their results, the authors of the article recommend the white button mushrooms as a way to prevent prostate cancer in men, as they observed that there was a significant impact in the treated subjects’ genes that were related to cell growth, proliferation and immune response. So, this is another scientific research example indicating that having mushrooms present as a dietary complement is probably a sensibly choice that everybody should try at some point.

As we can see, there is a significant body of research looking at how mushrooms are a potentially strong factor in cancer prevention as well as in cancer tumors reduction. Having mushrooms present in your life, either as a dietary complement or as a business, can have thus a far greater impact than probably you ever though it could.

B. Help in preventing degenerative diseases (e.g. Alzheimer)

One of the main researches in the field of mushrooms and their effects in this area in the recent years come by the hand of NUS’ assistant professor Lei Feng.

His main purpose was to prove that some of the components presents in mushrooms have an impact on preventing MCI (mild cognitive impairment).

The MCI is believed to be a much more softer version of Alzheimer’s disease.

To prove the correlation between the use of mushrooms and the alleged effect, the researchers recruited 663 participants aged 60 or older through the Diet and Healthy Aging Project.

The investigation was focused on the most common types of mushroom eaten in Singapore (the geographical location for the study): Golden, oyster, shiitake, white button, dried and canned mushrooms.

The results demonstrated a correlation between a diet with mushrooms on it and a lower risk of cognitive decline over the years. Though there was no causal relationship proven, the team believes that such is the case.

C. Help in preventing Osteoporosis

The authors of this article explore the connection between mushrooms and various chronic diseases, one of them being Osteoporosis – a very common disease in elderly people, especially among women, where the bones get weaker and fragile as time goes by.

The study claims to have proven for the first time the effect on mushrooms on trabecular bone loss at the lumbar spine. The researchers explored how the combination of extracts of several types of mushrooms helped in the prevention of bone loss, and recommended that medicinal mushrooms extracts can be considered as a preventive treatment for bone weakening or as a supplement in a pharmacotherapy treatment to enhance its effects on the patient.

The shiitake mushroom has also been studied in this article by Korean experts. They showed how this particular mushroom, very rich in vitamin D and edible, was a possible treatment for Osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, as it increases vitamin D2 bioavailability and retards trabecular bone loss.

D. Help in preventing heart attacks

In 2010 a group of experts from the University of Navarra, Spain, wrote a paper presenting the summary of the evidence on the role of edible mushrooms in the prevention cardiovascular diseases. to prove the effects of mushrooms in the prevention of heart diseases and heart attacks. The main goal of their paper was to bring to light the studies that probed the positive correlation between some of the most important features of the mushrooms – such as its anti-inflammatory properties, its effects on blood pressure, its fiber contents, and its function as a low fats ingredient – and its potential to reduce the risks of suffering cardiovascular diseases (heart diseases and heart attacks). This article is an important review that works as evidence on the effects of consuming mushrooms as a dietary component to keep our organism healthy and vigorous.

However, we must bear in mind that there are also studies that find no correlation between the consumption of mushrooms as a regular dietary complement and the prevention of heart diseases. This investigation, for example, claims that there hasn’t been proven a link between the consumption of mushrooms and some types of heart diseases; the study shows that all the experiments conducted so far were made in vitro in animals, but when it comes to humans, the results are pretty different.

In summary

It is important to note therefore that research is not fully conclusive about the direct effects of using mushrooms to either fight and/or prevent certain diseases (i.e. using mushrooms effectively as medicine). There is nonetheless a significant body of research that does point to the potential positive effects of using mushrooms as a way to reduce risks of specific diseases. Though mushrooms are not a direct cure for sicknesses such as diabetes or cancer, these studies have shown them to be very helpful in blood sugar control and immune system boosting, and thus have important associated health benefits.

But all in all, consuming mushrooms doesn’t bear any negative effects, unless you’re allergic. On the other hand, the other beneficial traits of the mushrooms that we have discussed earlier have been proven and tested over the years. Not only there are long studies of the components by themselves, but it is today common knowledge that a healthy diet will go a long way into ensuring a healthy and strong organism.

Therefore, adding mushrooms to your diet, though it might not prevent directly the person from having for example a heart attack, it will be helpful when it comes to remaining healthy and eating a balanced diet, and may reduce significantly the risk that the person will ever have a heart attack. If you want to know more about the most frequent types of mushrooms available, check this post that I wrote on the topic.

Mushrooms are growing more and more popular in the market as a good choice to replace meat and its natural fats for a much healthier substitute. So in my view, there is just no losing when choosing to add mushrooms to your diet or to make them a part of your business, supported by their health benefits.

Possible side effects from eating mushrooms.

Not everyone can eat mushrooms the same way. There’s the possibility that you are allergic to them, and this means that eating mushrooms can cause skin irritability, dryness in throat or nose, ore even nose bleeding.

So, before rushing to eat mushrooms you should check with your doctor first and be sure that there will be no armful side effects at all.

Also, it should not be forgotten that not all types of mushrooms are edible. You should avoid wild mushrooms unless you’re absolutely sure of what you’re doing.

For a trustworthy source of mushrooms, you should buy them from your local store or markets.