10 amazing facts of mushrooms revealed
Nature is full of wonders. Medicinal mushrooms prove these words. The term medicinal mushroom refers to certain types of normal mushrooms that are used for medicinal purposes. In fact, this definition is a bit vague. Even normal mushrooms contain such a wealth of nutrients that we can confidently call them medicinal mushrooms — a word that has not yet been precisely defined by law.
For many thousands of years people have been using mushrooms — from the tinder sponge for making a fire to the mushroom of immortality, which is said to prolong life as a tonic. Here you find the 10 most exciting secrets of mushrooms in general and medicinal mushrooms in particular.
1. Mushrooms were the key to life on earth
We all owe our lives to mushrooms (1). This is the result of a study by scientists from the University of Leeds, UK, published in 2018. They discovered that the earth owes its oxygen-rich air to fungi. Around 500 million years ago, our planet enriched its atmosphere with abundant oxygen.
Fungi played a key role in this: They managed to remove phosphorus from rocks. They then transferred this trace element to plants. This enabled them to carry out photosynthesis to a greater extent and in turn produce carbon, which they passed on to the fungi. Today we know that mushrooms don’t just strengthen plants. People also benefit immensely from the various medicinal and vital mushrooms. For example, you can prevent illness by strengthening the immune system.
The world looked completely different in the Paleozoic era. For example, there was no earth as we know it today. Plants didn’t have roots to hold water. Today’s flora and fauna could only develop when there was plenty of oxygen in the air. The researchers verified their theory with a computer model. The simulation showed that fungi could actually change the atmosphere dramatically in this way.
2. Medicinal mushrooms are more animals than plants
In the systematics of biology, mushrooms form their own realm alongside animals and plants. In fact, mushrooms have a lot in common with insects. Instead of cellulose like plants, fungi use the polymer chitin in their cell walls. When the French Henri Branconnot discovered chitin in 1811, he first called it fungine (2). Chitin also forms the exoskeleton of arthropods, which include shellfish like lobsters and crabs.
In contrast to plants, fungi do not photosynthesise. They rely on the use of enzymes to break down existing biomass into nutrients and to utilise them — similar to the digestion of animals. Like animals, they use glycogen (3), not starch, to store energy. The chitin in medicinal mushrooms poses problems for human digestion, by the way. It’s hard to digest and can prevent the nutrients from being absorbed. The solution: to grind medicinal mushrooms into powder. This is why certain hard types of medicinal mushrooms work better than extracts.
3. The largest living thing in the world is a mushroom
A large part of the biomass on planet earth consists of mushrooms and a large part of this consists of medicinal and vital mushrooms. Even the common meadow mushroom provides us with so many nutrients that we can confidently call it a medicinal mushroom. What we commonly refer to as mushrooms is just the edible fruiting body of these living things. In fact, mushrooms are mostly made up of the root tissue, the mycelium. It grows underground and can take on gigantic proportions.
The largest known creature in the world is a honey mushroom in Arizona, whose scientific name is Armillaria ostoyae (4). It was discovered through aerial photography because it caused numerous trees to die. This mushroom covers nine square kilometres. Its mycelium weighs an impressive nine tons. Experts estimate that this mushroom has existed for around 2400 years. This makes it one of the oldest living things on earth.
4. There are more types of medicinal mushrooms than plants
Scientists are still puzzling over how many types of mushrooms there are. In 1991 around 70,000 different species were officially known (5). Back then, scientists estimated the possible biodiversity at 1.5 million. In 2014, researchers published a study that found this number to be greatly inflated (6).
However, these scientists only referred to fungi that live in the soil, not unicellular organisms such as yeasts. Another study appeared three years later. She estimates the number of all mushrooms at 2.2 to 3.8 million (7). Plants just can’t keep up. Around 374,000 plant species are currently known (8). In light of this, we dare to make the following assertion: There are more types of medicinal mushrooms than plants.
5. Medicinal mushrooms support people like bacteria
Most people now know that our bodies depend on bacteria. Bacteria play an important role on the skin, in the mouth and in the intestines. Fungi, which are part of the human micro-biome, have been neglected by science (9).
In the mouth alone there are an average of 15 different types of mushrooms, some of which deserve the name medicinal mushrooms thanks to their positive effects (10). This also applies to the medicinal mushrooms in the human intestine. In a study published in 2013, the scientists reported 66 different types of fungus in the digestive system (11). Like bacteria, fungi support numerous metabolic functions.
6. People worshiped medicinal mushrooms in the Stone Age
As early as the Stone Age, people knew about the useful properties of medicinal and medicinal mushrooms and evidently adored them. This was shown by Ötzi, the glacier mummy discovered in 1991 on the Hauslabjoch in South Tyrol (12). Ötzi had two pieces of birch pork with him, each carefully tied on a leather strap. One piece was even specially decorated. He carried the tinder sponge in a leather pouch that also contained flints.
7. Thanks to mould, we have antibiotics
For a long time, infectious diseases often resulted in death. Even a small scratch could be fatal if it caught fire. It was only antibiotics that banished the risk of infection. Moulds of the genus Penicillium were responsible for the development of antibiotics.
The British doctor Alexander Fleming discovered as early as 1928 that an extract from this mould could kill bacteria (13). But he failed to produce a stable mould for mass production. Penicillin was initially forgotten.
But with the onset of World War II, scientists in England, the United States, France, the Netherlands and Germany began to work increasingly on the mass production of penicillin. Merck in the USA succeeded in patenting the production. The Dutch also managed to produce penicillin on a large scale. The knowledge gained in the process led to numerous antibiotics being developed in the 1940s and 1950s.
8. Vital mushroom of immortality exclusively for the elite
Healers in ancient China believed that the Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) contained magical powers. They discovered the Ling Zhi over 2,000 years ago in the Changbai Mountains. The Chinese name Ling Zhi can be translated as mushroom of life. It was considered a symbol of luck and everlasting life and was extensively sung about and written about (14). The mushroom was very rare back then. That is why it was reserved for members of the imperial family and high-ranking personalities. Today these medicinal mushrooms are grown commercially — many people now benefit from Reishi, one of the most popular medicinal mushrooms.
9. Medicinal mushrooms led to the shroom boom
In Asia, on the other hand, medicinal and medicinal mushrooms have long been used as medicine, including to fight cancer (15). In the countries of the European Union, medicinal and medicinal mushrooms and myco-therapy are not yet recognised. However, this does not prevent people around the world from being interested in the various uses of mushrooms.
Experts are now even talking of a ‘shroom boom’. Between 2015 and 2018, inquiries about medicinal and vital mushrooms on the Google search engine increased by more than 3,000 percent (16). In Europe and Germany there are now numerous companies that sell extracts and powders of various medicinal mushrooms.
10. You can easily fortify mushrooms with vitamin D
Many people suffer from a deficiency in vitamin D. Scientists argue about the exact number. A study published in 2016 on vitamin D deficiency in Europe gives figures between 8.3 and 40.4 percent — depending on the amount of vitamin D in the body is considered adequate (17). What is certain is that vitamin D is involved in numerous metabolic processes throughout the body. In addition to building and maintaining bone mass, vitamin D plays an important role in the immune system and cell growth, among other things (18).
So it’s interesting that you can easily add vitamin D to plain white mushrooms from the supermarket (19). These mushrooms are grown in the dark. Therefore, they contain relatively little vitamin D. You can increase their vitamin D content up to 30 times if you put them in the sun with the lamellas facing up. After three hours you have reached the maximum amount of vitamin D and now you deserve the name medicinal mushrooms even more — even without enriched vitamin D, they are real nutrient bombs. By the way: if you leave the mushrooms in the sun for more than three hours, the vitamin content will decrease again.
Sources:
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