No Fungi - No Future! Medicinal mushrooms – QIDOSHA

No Fungi - No Future! Medicinal mushrooms

November 18, 2021of admin

In Asia, mushrooms have been used therapeutically for thousands of years and are also used as a remedy in TCM. The folk medicine of our culture was influenced and changed in the Middle Ages by the bans of the church and by Chernobyl. In contrast, the use of mushrooms in medicine has remained alive throughout Asia to this day.

We have made it our mission to anchor mushrooms more firmly in culture. Ötzi – the Iceman – carried medicinal mushrooms with him when he crossed the Alps and Hildegard von Bingen also mentions the power of mushrooms in her writings.

So it's basically nothing new: mushrooms were once an integral part of our culture and were used for medicinal purposes. Unfortunately, things have gone a bit wrong.

Our mushroom products have just been launched and are therefore brand new on the market. Certain ingredients, such as beta-glucans or triterpenes, dissolve using different extraction processes. Some ingredients are water-soluble, others only dissolve with alcohol. Our products are extracts, so they contain the polysaccharides and glucans that are relevant to the body in high concentrations. Mushrooms often taste bitter, which is why we decided to sell them in capsule form.

Mushrooms have a chitin shell that must be cracked so that the ingredients of the mushroom become bioavailable. We do this using the so-called shell-broken process: the polysaccharides/beta-glucans cannot be used in powder form because they are protected in the mushroom powder by cell walls made of chitin and the human body does not have chitinase to break down the chitin. During extraction, the above-mentioned cell connections are dissolved or broken down using hot water, which releases and concentrates the polysaccharides typical of mushrooms. The indigestible fiber portion (e.g. parts of the chitin) is then strained out and disposed of.

In this way, we ensure the best possible bioavailability of our products.

medicinal mushrooms

We always talk about a “natural balance”; this can also be said about fungi, because on the one hand there are the lower fungi (moulds or yeasts) and on the other hand the higher fungi.

Fungi were the first species on land. Plants only came to land millions of years later. In this sense, fungi are the foundation of the earth's formation. Every other species depends on them.

The mushroom kingdom is often associated with bad things - poisonous mushrooms, athlete's foot, mold and so on... all negative. Of the 14,000 mushrooms that we know of, around 2,000 are edible and around 700 of them contain pharmacologically active substances. Therefore, mushrooms can certainly do more than just harm us. It is worth taking a closer look here. In mushrooms we find all the active substances that we find in a plant, an animal or an insect.

Roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers are part of the fungal mycelium - the fungal body is the fruit of the fungus. Fungi are familiar with viruses, bacteria, and molds or yeasts. The higher fungi have developed substances over countless years to protect themselves from all of these. So we can expect something good from this, because as "mammals" we have the same enemies as the fungi.

Among the “higher fungi” there are

saprobiotics - The "garbage collection“ ensure a closed material cycle in an ecosystem. They break down the organic material that accrues and use the resulting organic molecules for their own energy and building material metabolism.Since they themselves are part of the food web of an ecosystem, these organic substances are fed into the biogenic material cycle. These include button mushrooms, oyster mushrooms and reishi.
parasites - The "health police", which mainly attacks previously damaged organisms and thus fulfils a similar function to the pike in the carp pond. The pike ensures a healthy population of its prey by specifically eating sick and weak ones. For example, the honey fungus (the largest living creature in the world - larger than the blue whale).
symbionts/mycorrhizal fungi - The "partner mushroom“ lives on give and take. The fungus spins its mycelium as a network around the root tips of the partner tree. These fine branches of the mycelium can absorb the minerals in the soil better than the roots of the tree. Symbionts can therefore be used very effectively in agriculture. The fungi then pass the minerals on to the tree, which needs them for its growth. In return, the tree supplies the fungus with carbohydrates, which it cannot produce itself. Around 90-95% of all plants on the planet form underground symbioses with fungi. The chanterelle, for example, is one of these fungi.

1g of forest soil contains about 1000m of mushroom mycelium