Mushroom Medicine
- Black Swamp Mushroomery, Ltd.
- Feb 27, 2023
- 3 min read
Mushroom Medicine
As we discovered last week, ethnomycology is the study of human use of mushrooms. From time immemorial man has had an affinty for fungi and their seemingly strange, almost otherworldly characteristics. Man's uses for mushrooms are hardly limited. There are mushrooms designed to kill, some that provide valuable food sources, some that act as natural dyes, and still others that provide irreplaceable medicines. As far back as 450 BCE, ancient Greek physician Hippocrates recognized the amadou mushroom (Fomes fomentarius) as a potent anti-inflammatory and for cauterizing wounds. This same mushroom, sometimes nicknamed the tinder fungus, helped early man stay alive by sheltering the burning embers of a fire from wind and weather, allowing for the long distance transportation of a heat source. Read more about Otzi the iceman for more information on how long we have used this fungus.
As covered in the book Radical Mycology by Peter McCoy, the remains of an 18,700 year old woman were discovered in a cave near Cantabria, Spain in 2010. It was an amazing find for archaeologists as finding a female ritualistic burial tomb was rare and a Paleolithic period Magdalenian one at that was a rare find indeed! While she was laid to rest with several lavish and colorful flowers and adornments, it was on her teeth that several spores were discovered from the Agaricales and Boletaceae families. Ethnomycologists were equally intrigued by this find as it helped solidify the theory that mushrooms have been in use by humans for tens of thousands of years. This pushed back the known use of mushrooms by humans more than 10,000 years than otherwise previously recognized.
Now in more modern times we still find very valuable and potent medicines in the fungal kingdom. Many know the story of the discovery of penicillin by Dr. Marie Curie. (Not that this should be brushed over non-chalantly, she only won not one but two nobel prizes in both physics and chemistry. In the early 1900s. As a female. Then later went on to make countless medical and scientific discoveries to include a mobile x-ray unit in World War I. She was and still is the only person to be awarded Nobel Prizes in two scientific categories, but you know, no biggie.) Penicillin however, merely scratches the surface of what fungi are capable of! There are medicinal compounds created by mushrooms, molds, and yeasts that are immunomodulating, anti-bacterials, anti-inflammatories, anti-cancer, anti-virals, antioxidants, radical scavenging, anti-hyperlipidemic or anti-hypercholesterolemic, hepatoprotective, and anti-diabetic just to name a few. (3) So far more than 150 novel enzymes have been discovered from mushrooms. Capturing and synthesizing these valuable compounds is what has saved many a life in the last century or more.
So how and why do fungi produce these chemicals and enzymes that benefit the human species? Similar to medicines that come from botanicals, many of the chemicals that fungi produce to flourish in the wild are also active in humans. It is likely the mushroom's relationship with the soil and plant microbes that make them medicinal in the first place. The mycelium under the surface of the soil is under constant attack by millions of microbes around it and as a result, the mushroom fights back via the creation and evolution of these medicinal substances. Phylogenetically speaking - mushrooms are more closely related to the animal kingdom than the plant kingdom. This, in combination with human/mushroom evolution, has greatly contributed to man's physiological reactions to the medicines these fungal pharmacies provide. Modern science now recognizes that we are an ecosystem, that we live in an ecosystem, and we are born from an ecosystem. In order to continue on this Earth and to reap the benefits of our natural world, we must protect it and nourish it. See you next time and MushLuv!
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