Candido's Apocalypse

A Brief Overview of Mushroom Extracts

The Essential Points

1. Medicinal mushrooms and mushroom mycelium MUST be extracted with hot water to guarantee bioavailability and to create the potency needed for therapeutic effectiveness. (Hot water extracts are dehydrated then encapsulated). Although hot water extraction is used in 100% of the thousands of independent references, both herbal and medical, 95% of the mushroom supplements available in the U.S. and Canada are ground up mushrooms (un-extracted), mycelium grown on grain (un-extracted), or tinctures. These supplements are 1/30th to 1/50th the strength of a hot water extract and are significantly less potent than the materials used in traditional herbalism or the clinical research. The primary actives, the polysaccharides (beta glucans) are found inside indigestible cell walls (made of chitin). Only hot water extraction can liberate the actives, maintain their structural integrity, and concentrate them to defined and therapeutically useful levels. The good news is that every mushroom label, whether thru inclusion or omission, contains the information needed to determine potency and quality. Hot water extracts (except the Maitake Fractions), will list the polysaccharide (beta glucan) levels, as a percentage, on the label. None of the un-extracted mushroom products or tinctures list polysaccharide/beta glucan levels on their labels. If potency information is missing the supplement should probably be avoided. Optimal potency levels for the different mushroom extracts, as defined in the research, are presented later in this document. 2. Mushroom supplements should be taken twice daily, A.M. and P.M., on an empty stomach. 3. There are no references on the use of medicinal mushroom extracts by pregnant women or nursing mothers, we recommend that medicinal mushroom extracts not be used in these cases. 4. Mushroom extracts can be taken daily for long periods of time, even years, without negative side effects. For...