Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Medicinal Mushrooms

Hey' all, welcome to this week's show. As we have come to the letter M in my Encyclopedia bitterom Medicinal Herbs, I'm gonna give you a quick rundown, very brief rundown of some of the more common medicinal mushrooms. Now, there are really three or four really good books on the medicinal use of mushrooms. The Fungal Pharmacy is one of my favorites, Boss Stam. It's did a pretty good one, but it's not well it's not written by an herbalist, you can, I would just put it that way. It's written by a mushroom lover, a mushroom fanatic, who also has a strong interest in hallucinogenic mushrooms. So we'll give that one to take it with a grain of salt. It's a good book, very good book, But Fungal Pharmacy is probably my favorite. I got two or three others on my shelf, you know, all of them kind of come together to give you a pretty good overview of mushrooms. It's also it's important to note that the investigation into the medicinal properties of mushrooms is for the most part, very new. I mean, yeah, they've been used as herbal medicine for centuries, but no one really in the medicinal field, the pharmaceutical field, or whatever you want to call it, apothecary whatever, really took an interest in the medicinal use of mushrooms and other fun guy until very recently. And since they have, there have been some really amazing discoveries. I mean, like Lion's main mushroom that could help against als or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, the anti cancer properties, or turkey tale. I mean, you know, these are very serious conditions and as I always say, I never say this herbal cure of this disease. No, I never do that. I say look into it and make your own desis decisions. But this is really very interesting stuff. Chaga is another one that outside of Russia has been Sweden, I guess was basically unknown until recently. I mean it was just used basically to start fires in the mountains where I live. I mean it along with the you know, conk mushrooms and certain other really thick heavy polypores. You could take one, dry it out and take a coal from your fire and put a little hole in there, stick it in there. And it would burn for hours, so you could literally carry your fire with you from day to day if you were hiking. That was really seen to be about the only benefit of these mushrooms until very recently. Now we're coming to the conclusion that probably all mushrooms have some medicinal value. We just haven't discovered them all yet. So it's wintered right now. Lee's are off the tree, snow, absolutely covered in turkey tracks around my home, cold wind, you know, but there are still medisinal herbs we found in the world in the woods, and especially those that are medicinal mushrooms that grow on trees. You know, I am absolutely spoiled when it comes to mushrooms. You know, we get two hundred and seventy days of precipitation here a year. We have. I mean, I can go out just about any day and pick a basketful of oyster mushrooms, morels, chicken of the woods, my taki, matsataki inoki. Gosh, so many polypores, I mean, yeah, bolts and polypores that you know, can sometimes be kind of hard to identify. Uh, Chanta rails like crazy. Uh yeah, I'm just like in mushroom paradise, certainly, puffballs. What else, well, I'm trying to remember, honey mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms, just like what would be on my list. Just like look around for if I walked out in the woods on any given day, there are a lot. They are actually a whole lot. Wine caps, inky caps, shaggy manes. We're just covered in mushrooms. We're covered in mushrooms all the time. But if I had to say the most abundant mushroom in the mountains of North Carolina and probably just about everywhere, it's gonna be turkey tail. Turkey tail is tough, it's woody. I mean, you can't really eat it. It's slightly bitter. In China they make soup out of it, and that's a really good way to use it. Medicinally, it's usually turned into a tea. Turkey tail is tramedes vers. The color. Now, there's a false turkey tail that looks similar. If you see the two side by side, you can tell the difference. The false turkey tail, we usually have more white and green in it. Just it's different, maybe you know, sometimes very gray, but they're very closely related. Some studies have shown that the false turkey tail may have some anti fungal and antibiotic properties, but unlike the turkey tail, which is technically edible even though it's very tough, the false turkey tail is not considered to be edible because it can cause stomach upset. True turkey tail has been widely researched for its medicinal value, and like I said, it properly prepared it can be eaten. The primary difference the false turkey tail is smooth on the under side, whereas the true turkey tail is covered with tiny little pores on the underside. Traditionally, like I said, used in soups and teas, but often you'll see it dried and ground very finely and used in like a coffee substitute or putting a capsule. Medicinal Mushrooms by Christopher Hobbs is another good book, a really good one, and he listed turkey tail as uses in medicinal uses Improvement in the functioning of blood vessels, improved liver function, supportive spleen function, enhanced immune function, anti viral properties, anti tumor properties, lowered serum cholesterol levels, and potentially useful for cancer, diabetes, rheumatism, and hypertension. A lot of researchers been going to turkey tail, and it does seem to have a lot of promise for increasing survivability odds and cancer. Now, as I said, I never talked about cures for cancer or any other chronic condition, but certainly if this, if I had a need for it, I would be using turkey tail and chaga and several of these mushrooms daily. Of course, you know, all these diseases highly specialized. I can't say this works. You know, it may work for you, it may not. So the flavor is actually pretty good, Like I said, slice cooked and soup. I would I compare it to I don't know. It's just got sort of a slightly bitter, slightly woodsy mushroom flavor. If you like wood ear mushrooms cloud ears as they call them in China, definitely give it a try. It's so abundant. I mean, it's like, like I said, you need to be able to televisience between true turkey tail and fault turkey tail. You could go out and just harvet these harvest turkey tails by the bucket full just about anywhere in the Southeast at least, and absolutely makes an excellent stock with garlic ion's ginger like a bone broth. Strain it out and you'll get all the medicinal benefits and it's really delicious. Actually. Now another one is rishi organaderma lucidum, and this is one I always look for in the winter because really easy to see on the trees when the leaves are off. It can often be kind of high up on a tree, a bright reddish brown top that has sort of a lacquered, shiny look to it. And when the leaves are on the trees you may not see them, but when they're all gray, it just really stands out. Very very much used in traditional Chinese medicine. You know, when I was studying TCM, this was decades ago. I couldn't have been more than about twenty twenty five years old. I had a really good teacher, herbalist Chiegung Guy, acupuncturists and all that. And he was talking about different formulas using rishi mushroom and I'm like, you know those girl all around here, don't you? And he's like, what just I mean imported from China? They were so ridiculously expensive. I took him outside, pointed up and he was like blown away, I mean, and then when he found out jen Zing grows in the mountain to he was just like wow. You know. Rishi was known as the herb of immortality believe it or not, also called the herb of spiritual potency valued in China or Chinese herbalism. Legends say it was given to the Dallas dallast Dallas d T a O I s T by a mythical turtle. So a mythical turtle gave the Dallas the herb of spiritual potency or immortality. Uh yes, I can make you live forever. It may increase the vital force the chi as they call it. I don't know. It does have some really interesting properties anti tumor, anti cancer, immunosstimulation and inhibits platelet aggregation. It can contribute to DNA centenses and very in the spleen especially. It's a hormone precursor, and that may be that spiritual potency kind of thing. You know. It's adaptogenic, another reason it could be spiritual potency. You know, Adaptogenic herbs help the bid deal with stress. It's liver supportive and detoxifying, anti allergenic, anti hypertensive, antihistamin really good. Analgesic means it helps the pain, lung supportive, antibacterial, antioxidant, anti viral. There's more, but wait, there's more. Enhance his bone mirrow, nucleated cell proliferation, it's cardiotonic, It relaxes the automatic nerve system, the autonomic I should have said nerve system. It's expectrant and antitussive, which means it can help with coughs and congestion. Enhances NK cells those are called natural killer cells, which are part of your immune response. Improves adrena cortical function, increases production of interlucinto, protects against damage from radiation, and increases white cells and chemoglobin. So yeah, I mean the Rishi mushroom, which is like super common in the mountains in North Carolina, super expensive in Asia, really extremely useful. It's another very tough polypore or you know, tough leathery mushroom that grows on a tree. Usually in Chinese medicine. It will either be put in soups, into a tincture or actually candied. You can actually cut it thin and cook it down with sugar like sort of like candy ginger. That's kind of a common way to use it. Really really cool mushroom actually, and by no means rare, not in North Carolina. So chaga that's become very popular in the last couple of years. Let me get a zip of water here. Chaga, as I said, is that big, like polypoor that you could carry a coal in. And that's basically what it was used for. And in my area you know by natives in everybody, but actually very very adaptogenic herb grism birch trees most often may grow in some other trees. It stands out like a mass of a black fungal growth on like the silver or white mark of birch, so it's really easy to spot in the winter. Chaga finely ground can be used as a coffee substitute. It's actually pretty good. It's one of the few coffee substitutes I actually like, especially like a little pinch of cinnamon and pretty good. Actually, it's somewhat controversial among mushroom hunters and herbalists because it's really kind of fairly new to Western herbalism. I mean, it grows here, people have used it, but like I said, the most of the research in ta chaga comes from Russia. And Poland, where it's been used as a medicinal herb for centuries. Really again, Christopher Hobbs says it's anti cancer and has tumor inhibiting ability. I don't know. Maybe other traditional uses for this herb. Tuberculosis, Yeah, proves lung functions pretty cool, good for stomach ache, stomach diseases, liver diseases, heartworms, worms. I'm sorry, heart disease and worms. If you've got heartworms, you got a big problem. That's not gonna help with that. But heart disease and worms. It's considered to be a purifying, an eternally cleansing herb. You know, maybe it is, mate, it's not, I don't know. Now. Externally, it actually actually good for some genital infection, so it has helped with that, improves appetite and reduces pain in cancer patients. So that's according to several Russian studies. You know, I don't know. Chaga is strongly antioxidant, anti anti viral, and immune enhancing. Now with a very hard mushroom like chagun Like I said, you can grind it up and drink it as a tea or a coffee substitute, with a lot of these mushrooms. Lions Main especially is very good Shataki and reshie. Following that category, all of your more slightly tough mushrooms are very tough mushrooms. A double or triple extract is really the best way to do it. With a double extract, you're essentially going to make a tincture, then take all the mushrooms out of the tincture and boil them down to a decoction, of really strong decoction, and then combine them together. It's really that simple. Some of the components are alcohol soluble and some are water soluble. Now there's another process that Peter McCoy, who is like the world's leading expert on mushrooms. He and Trad Cotter in South Carolina. I mean, those dudes know, fun guy, I'm just telling you, and their books are phenomenal. Really, Peter McCoy's book and Trad's books are just I mean, you talk about fungal I mean, I call myself a plant geek. I cannot touch these guys when it comes to fungus. Okay, fun guy, I guess I should say so. Peter McCoy will do it. What do you calls a triple extract. First of all, you brew the mushroom in water, keffer, kafir, or kombucha. You actually use the fermentation process to break down the tissue of the mushroom to extract those nutrients. And it's really just as simple as making a batch of keffer or kombucha and putting the mushroom in there. You know, you want usually dry it first, but some you can use fresh. It depends on how woody they are. Basically how tough the fungi and bacteria in the probiotic beverage essentially predigests the mushroom tissue. Then you make your tincture, you're decoction, and you combine the three and that's it seems to be a really good way to do it. Like, you know, my buddy Matt Powers, permaculture teacher, when he talks about Peter McCoy, he's like, this is Jedi level, you know what I mean? It really wow. I can't say enough good about Peter McCoy and trad Cotter. I may not agree with them on anything politically or socially or any I mean, I don't know, I have no idea. I'm just saying even if I didn't I'm going to say that the statements would come in three, and he's really better known than the other two. Those three guys are like the mushroom experts. But anyway, you know, there are a lot of medicinal mushrooms. And I don't, by any means want to make you think that I have covered everything. No way. I probably need to do a whole show, and I have on my Southern Appalachian Herbs podcast on Lion's Main, on Chautaki and all that, but I wanted to give you a brief overview. I mean, lions Main for its neuroprotective and immune supporting properties absolutely is. I mean, it's just revolutionizing. I hesitated to say plant based medicine because a fungus is not necessarily a plant, but herbal medicine is a fungus in herb. I don't know, we'll call it herbal medicine. In this case. Lion's Man has so many good neuroprotective, immune supportive, antioxidant, cancer reducing, etc. Properties. It's just phenomenal. And it's another one I can find in the woods. I can go out there, I look for something looks like a big white, fuzzy ball in a tree that's a lion's man or a pom pom mushroom, or goes to many different but so many mushrooms do. Ushaitaki mushrooms you can buy in the grocery store have been studied in China for centuries as immune supportive and anti cancer properties. Like I said, my takis oyster mushrooms. Yeah, I've done a whole show on those. I mean, it is very likely that every single mushroom that isn't poisonous enough to kill you at least has medicinal properties. And we are just like barely scratching the surface. I guess it's in my book Rbal Medicine for Preppers. Yeah, I think it is. I have a long, longer section on mushrooms. But like I said, you know podcasts from probably three years ago, I went through a lot of them in detail. The main thing I want you to know is, you know this is herbal Medicine Preppers. Well, what was the book's name? Is Urban Medicine for Homesteaders, permaculture people, and preppers. I don't know. I never can keep straight my titles. But you know this podcast right here is urber Medicine for Preppers. It is very very important to recognize both the food, the nutritive value of mushrooms and the medicinal value of mushrooms. These are not like, you know, take it once and it's going to cure something. No way. These have to be incorporated into the diet and used over long term. Like if you had a sore throat, I might say, you know, get some sage, it's some mint, do something like that. You're gonna feel immediate relief. If you've gotten more like a chronic disease or a long term health problem. Mushrooms may actually help a lot, but there's not gonna be a one and done kind of thing. It's not gonna be like take it for a week, take it for a month. You're gonna have to use these mushrooms in your diet or you know as a tear, a tincture, double watch, triple extract whatever for years and you know that does. Actually that's a barrier for some people. A lot of people they want that quick fix. Mushrooms are not a quick fix. Only one I can really think would be Cortceps. Cort Aceps is a really weird mushroom. It grows out of insects bodies, okay it. First of all, so cordyceps are a little odd in the first place, but they're very strongly immune stimulating, and they actually increase the body temperature. They weren't great if you're trying to fight off a virus. They can break the fever. They can increase that immune response, really surprising. They increase the athletic performance, just a really remarkable. They look like coral. You can buy them now. They were almost impossible to find when I was just starting to learn about this stuff, you know, ten twenty years ago. But mushrooms, you of course have to be careful with the first thing I learned beforeage was mushrooms. I mean, I've always loved mushrooms. And when we moved back up in the mountains North Carolina, I was like fourteen fifteen, and I was just surrounded by mushrooms. The first thing I did was I went down to the county library and I got the Audubon Guide to Mushrooms of North America. I had no one to tell me about mushrooms. I mean the local mountain folks around there that were experts on herbal medicine, on gen seng and golden seal and all that knew nothing about mushrooms, very little anyway. I mean, a puffball is a puffball, and you know that's addible when everybody knew that. But most people of Western European descent were brought up with a fear of poisonous mushrooms. Now most people of Central and Eastern European descent or Asian descent were brought up being taught how to forage for mushrooms. I had to learn, and I'm not dead, so I don't want to scare you too bad. My advice is, learn the poisonous mushrooms first, get a good field guide for your area. Autumn field guide is absolutely not the best. In fact, it has a lot of flaws. There are much better ones, and really check with your major like Land Grant University, or your extension agent like the Botany program or the horticulture program or something like that. Ask for some recommendations on regional field guides. Phone apps are sometimes good, sometimes really really bad. Like sometimes I will use a phone app, I'll take a picture and let it give me a few suggestions. Then I will look up and up in the books to see or even there's a really good website it's mushroomfinder dot com. If I remember correctly, is that right Finder mushroom Expert. I can't remember. It's been around for years. It won't take long. Google will tell you how to find it pretty quickly. But anyway, a regional field guide really does help because mushrooms can vary greatly from country to country and region to region. Something can look very very similar that is very very different. So I really do recommend learning the most common edible mushrooms and the most common poisonous mushrooms first and always. With the edibles, you know, look for lookalikes. See you know this chantrell, beautiful orange chantrell can look very much like a jack Landern mushroom. Jack Lander's poison. It's the chantarel is not. You know, you need to if you see them side by side, these obviously are very different mushrooms like moreles. You know. Moreles are great, They're like the first spring mushroom. They're fantastic. There is a brain fungus they call it that really doesn't look like a morale at all if you see them side by side, but it looks enough to like it to be called a false morale, and it is toxic. So What you want to look for is what are your edibles in your area, the most common ones, not the far out ones, not the ones your experts need to look at, the ones you can identify really, really easily, and you'll find those. There's a book called A one hundred Edible Mushrooms is a great starting place, but it's just a starting place. Find those. I would say, learn learn two, learn maybe twelve no more edible mushrooms for your area, Learn their lookalikes if they have a toxic look alike, and not all mushrooms do. And then learn your top like twelve poisonous mushrooms for the area. And you know, even then you're probably going to make mistakes sometime. If you're unsure about a mushroom, remember just you can taste it a little bit, you can chew it, don't swallow it, and you'll probably live. I put that in quotes, you'll probably live. You do not want to be tasting death cap destroying angel Amanita may not kill you, but it probably could. Let's just put it as it could. There is the reason I put it in like strong statements is there's one in my region called the Gumphus g M P H us, which is a bizarre mushroom. It's actually like a brass colored like gold. It looks like metal. It looks like somebody left a brass Easter egg out on the lawn. Right. It's actually toxic to the touch. I mean, that's one you do not want to be putting in your mouth for any reason. There's others like the American Suelius. A couple of years ago, I went out to harvest King Belitze, one of my favorites. They're called Porcini's in Europe. They're just I love them. They're like amazing, right, They're like considered to be second only to truffles in terms of edibility and flavor. Just wonderful, and they grow in my area. So I went out to harvest my kings and mixed in amongst them were American Souelius, and it was raining and I could not or I didn't take the time. I guess I should say to tell the difference between the two of them, they do look almost identical. The Cuelius has a sticky, slimy cap and it has slightly slightly thinner hairer stem and it's uh has a little reddish tone to those hairs. I did not notice the difference. It's actually very subtle. And when their mushrooms are wet, you can't tell which one's sticky and not right, like it's one slimy when it's dry, the other's not well when they're both wet. There's another two. Don't go collecting mushrooms in the rain. So I collected a basketball and I had a mix. Fortunately, the sweeliest is not really poisonous, but it causes contact dermatitis. So as I'm cleaning my mushrooms, my hands turned beat red, and I knew I had a problem. No other you know problem, but that now if you are cautious, and I don't blame you, if you want to take an abundance of caution, you can certainly grow mushrooms. I have grown them in kits from field and forest from Mushroom Mountain, that's Strategic Cotters Company. You can buy tabletop kits that are like compressed sawdust that's inacuated with the fun guy. Or you can buy the spores directly from them. And you know, you can use your woodschipper and make your own woodship bed for growing wine caps or something. You can draw a holes and hardwood logs and grows shatakis. There are so many mushrooms you can grow these days, Chicken of the woods, shataki, mitaki wine caps, which are one of my absolute favorites. And of course you can always grow the common white button mushrooms Gerriicas species in pasteurized manure in your basement. People have been doing that since the twenties, and I mean, yeah, it works great. I love button mushrooms. Just because they're grown on poop does not matter. I mean, honestly, it's just vegetable matter that's passed through a cow or a horse that's sterilized and becomes compost. Nothing to worry about whatsoever. But tread especially, he's got I don't even know how many dozen really hard to find mushrooms spore cultures on his site that you can buy and grow. And this was like impossible ten or twenty years ago. If you get down to his place, it's maybe easily South Carolina. It's somewhere right outside of Greenville, Spartanburg area. He's got a beautiful property and he has an educational trail with these mushrooms, like hundreds of different species of mushrooms on that property, with a trail and a little sign that tells you it's great. It's really, I mean amazing actually, and he does workshops and everything. He teaches probably every week he's teaching people how to grow mushrooms. It's not hard. I've grown oysters. I've grown Lion's Maine actually wild harvested chanterells and propagated the spores. Myself did not order those. I grew chanterell's so many mushrooms. Yeah, So anyway, you do not have to go through the barrier of learning to forage for mushrooms. Now, I reck them in. You do, because you never know, and you may not when you may need that skill. And a lot of times when I've been out in the woods, you know, fishing or whatever, and I didn't really catch much, or maybe I got a couple of small trout when I found a nice patch of you know, some type of mushrooms, usually oysters or maybe some slippery jacks. That's an interesting bleat. They're really good. Another one that's easily mistaken for kings and suilius. It actually does have that slimy texture, which is what it's called slippery jack. But they have a wonderful flavor, and they don't cause contact dermatitis. Oh, there's been so many But anyway, my meal has been maybe a little bit of protein and a lot of mushrooms, right, And mushrooms do actually have a protein never eat well, you can. You can certainly eat raw mushrooms if they're like you know, white button mushrooms. A lot of edible mushrooms are not edible in raw. There's actually as safe as I would generally say morels are. There have been one or two instances where people ate them under cooked and died. I mean that's crazy to me, because you know, I mean, it's one of the most commonly eat mushrooms I know of. But cook your mushrooms mainly because your body can't digest them when they're all. If you eat a raw mushroom, you get like almost no nutritive value or medicinal value from it. You cook it and you can digest it. So mushrooms do not belong in a raw diet, especially because it might kill you. But also there's one other caveat and there are a couple of mushrooms that have a really weird interaction with alcohol, coming from mostly French heritage. I always think of mushrooms sweated down with like shallots and cream and a little bit of brandy, right, I mean, that's called duck cells. It's like they used to say that they didn't use mortar in France, they used duct cells. I mean literally, that mushroom paste goes into just about everything and it's delicious. It's just so good you wouldn't believe it. You take a nice fresh hot croissant and you put some duck cell in there and maybe a little slice of ham. But anyway, the wine caps and shaggy manes and there are several others actually inhibit certain liver enzymes that are necessary for your liver to process alcohol. So if you had, you know, you pick some nice fresh wine caps or shaggy manes or something and cooked them down, like I said, with duck cells, and you just put in like a little sip of brandy with it, or you had one glass of wine with your meal, you're going to get sick and you may even die. I mean it would be like your liver cannot process the alcohol at that point. So you want to be really careful with certain mushrooms in that regard. Overall, mushrooms are an excellent food source, wonderfully medicinal, at least those that are not poisonous, and of course some are very very poisonous. Be careful, and if you don't want to forage, definitely look into growing them field and forest or mushroom mountain or great places to start. Love those guys. Great success with everything I bought from both companies, and these days there are a whole lot of sellers online and you may find that it becomes a really nice cottage industry. There's actually a lot of money in growing mushrooms. So y'all have a great week, stay warm, We got more bad weather coming in, and I'll talk to you next time. The information this podcast is non intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The US government does not recognize the practice of verbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herbles. Therefore, I'm really just saying guy who studies IRBs. I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true. I can tell you what earths have been traditionally used for I can tell you my own experience and if I believe in herb has helped me, I cannot, nor would I tell you to do. To say, if you use an herb anyone recommends you are treating yourself. You take full responsibility for your health. Humans are individuals, and no two are identical. What works for me may not work for you. You may have an allergy of sensitivity and underlying condition that no one else even shares and you don't even know about. Be careful with your health by continuing to listen to my podcast or read my blog you read it. Be responsible for yourself, to your own research, make your own choices, and not to blame me for anything ever,