No Fungi - No Future! medicinal mushrooms – QIDOSHA

No Fungi - No Future! medicinal mushrooms

November 18, 2021from admin

In Asia, mushrooms have been used therapeutically for thousands of years and they are also used as medicines 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 task to anchor mushrooms more in culture again. 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: the mushrooms were once an integral part of our culture and were used for medicinal purposes. Unfortunately, something has come off.

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

Fungi have a chitin shell that has to be cracked in order for the fungus' ingredients to become bioavailable. We do this using the so-called shell-broken process: the polysaccharides/beta-glucans cannot be used in powder form, as they are protected in the mushroom powder by cell walls made of chitin and the human body has no chitinase to break down the chitin . During the extraction, the above Cell connections are dissolved or broken down with hot water, which releases and concentrates the polysaccharides typical of fungi. Then the indigestible dietary fiber (e.g. parts of the chitin) is strained out and disposed of.

In this way we create the best possible bioavailability for the products.

Vital mushrooms

We always talk about a "natural balance"; one can also speak of the same with the fungi, because on the one hand there are the lower fungi (mold fungi or yeast fungi) and on the other hand the higher fungi.

The fungi were the first species on land. Plants only came to land millions of years later. Seen in this way, fungi are the foundation of earth 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 negatively connoted. Of the 14,000 mushrooms that are now known, about 2,000 are edible and about 700 of them contain pharmacological active ingredients. Therefore, the fungi can certainly do more than harm us. It's worth delving deeper here. In the fungi we find all the active ingredients that we find in a plant, animal or insect.

Roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers belong to the mushroom mycelium - the mushroom body is the fruit of the mushroom. Fungi know viruses, bacteria and molds or yeasts. The higher fungi have built up substances over endless years to protect themselves from all this. So we can expect something good here, because we as "mammals" have the same enemies as the mushrooms.

Among the "higher mushrooms" there is

Saprobionts - The "garbage disposal" ensure a closed material cycle in an ecosystem. They break down the organic material that occurs and use the resulting organic molecules for their own energy and building 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 mushrooms, oyster mushrooms or Reishi.
Parasites – The "health police", which mainly attacks pre-damaged organisms and thus fulfills a similar function here as the pike in the carp pond. This ensures a healthy population of its prey by specifically targeting sick ones and weak eats. For example the honey fungus (largest creature in the world - larger than the blue whale).
symbionts/ mycorrhizal fungi – The “partner fungus” thrives on give and take. The fungus spins its mycelium as a wickerwork 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. Symbiotes can therefore be used very sensibly 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 the fungus cannot build up itself. About 90-95% of all plants on the planet enter into underground symbioses with fungi. The chanterelle, for example, is one of these mushrooms.

1g forest soil contains about 1000m mushroom mycelium