How to choose the best mushroom supplements!

This topic had a lot of success, but I’ve kind of finished all my knowledge about it.

The last thing I want to share with you is the importance of choosing a good supplement, to have the best way of taking care of yourself. A lot of supplements contain: artificial ingredients, sugar, all kind of additives etc. I’ve gathered the information from various blogs and hope it is useful. 🙂

The raw mushrooms have a different impact on us. But each one is good in a way, and less in other.

Mushrooms and mushroom supplements come in many different forms for health and wellness. These functional foods can be raw, powdered, liquid, and infused into other products. Each has their own sets of advantages and disadvantages.

Raw

• Unlike consuming fruits and vegetables, raw mushrooms are not a superior form to consume if you’re looking to reap the health benefits from medicinal mushrooms discussed above. The polysaccharides, antioxidants, and metabolites can be better activated and concentrated using methods described below under the “liquid” category. It is for this reason that if you are experiencing a health crisis or simply looking to improve the functions of your mind and body, raw should not be your first choice.

Powdered

• Like most other nutritional supplements, mushrooms also come in the powdered form as gel caps or loose. While the gel caps are preferred for daily convenience, the powder can be added to smoothies, juices, or sprinkled on food after it is cooked.

Liquid

• If you are looking for rapid absorption into the digestive system, a liquid mushroom supplement form is a great choice. In addition, the liquid option offers perhaps the greatest versatility due to the fact that it can be added to coffee, tea, smoothies, soups, salad dressing, and just about anything else you can imagine.
• Regarding extraction methods, there are three methods used each focusing on distinct end results:

1. Cold water extraction is used to extract extracellular metabolites.

2. Hot water extraction is used to the extract the immune-stimulating polysaccharides.

3. Ethanol/alcohol extraction is used to isolate antioxidants and smaller compounds that are more specific in their bio-activity.

Liquid mushroom rising out of the depths.

Infused

• This isn’t so much a category as it is a mere spin off of the liquid and powdered methods. Due to the popularity of mushrooms as a versatile and functional food, manufacturers are going the “value added” route by offering mushroom-infused versions of already existing products. For example, there has been a recent surge of popularity in the mushroom infused coffee bean market. A breakthrough method now allows the infusion of a mushroom strain directly into the whole coffee bean.

Labels & Production of Medicinal Mushrooms

What to Look For

Like most food and supplement production, it is now no longer a question that things must be organic. In addition, the “non-GMO” designation is also strongly considered for numerous reasons. Beyond that, mushrooms are good detoxifiers and accumulators of certain environmental particles and elements. Therefore, it is highly recommended to seek out growers and producers that follow strict methods and practices to ensure product purity.

Unfortunately MOST „mushroom” products on the market do not source their products from actual mushrooms.

Instead, they use mycelium – a sterile, laboratory grown, vegetative part of the fungal organism. To make matters worse, this mycelium is grown on grains like rice, oats, or barley rather than precursor-rich wood on which mushrooms grow in nature.

Precautions: Clean Foods Equal Healthy People

Due to the makeup and properties of some mushrooms, there are dangers that consumers should be aware of. The concept of clean foods also applies to mushrooms due to our current environment. Of particular concern are heavy metals and radiation. Food and water contamination from heavy metals is a major problem. The soil and air has been affected by industry and pollution, and that directly impacts our food, water and physical bodies.

Certain mushrooms hyper-accumulate heavy metals which make them great environmental detoxifiers. However, for internal use, these same mushrooms should be laboratory cultivated to avoid toxins they’ve taken in.

There is no ignoring Fukushima was perhaps the worst nuclear disaster in history. Certain mushrooms are known to hyper-accumulate radioactive particles. As with mushrooms that gather heavy metals from the environment, this is great news for cleanup purposes. For this same reason it is vital to choose mushroom supplements from cultures grown in controlled conditions.

A final note on safety: there are many species of mushrooms that are highly poisonous to humans. It is strongly advised that individuals do not wild gather mushrooms for consumption unless you have done extensive research. Regardless, for the reasons detailed in this article, it is still better if you leave your mushroom supplementation to professional, knowledgeable, and qualified producers who are using strict methods of extraction and preparation.

XOXO