You may have noticed an increase in the amount of exposure that has been given to the benefits of medicinal mushrooms in recent years; whereas a few years ago there was little information available at all. Much like the use of ginseng in the Orient, the medicinal mushroom varieties that have been used for many years in China are becoming popular in America too, as more info about their medicinal properties becomes known.
According to mushroom history, some of the oldest recorded uses were as remedies against intestinal parasites, as well as being used to stop bleeding and cauterizing wounds. The mushrooms used were polypores, named because they have pores rather than gills underneath the heads. No known species of the polypore fungi are poisonous and they are normally found to grow on trees, both alive and dead.
Other that a few notable exceptions as being used as a medicine in tea, poultices and other extracts, the polypores are considered inedible due to being very woody and fibrous, thus are not ranked as a medicinal mushroom variety.
Native American traditions tell about using the different kinds of fungi to combat diseases such as smallpox and others that appeared along with the arrival of Europeans. These include species like the reishi, turkey tail and chaga mushroom varieties, as well as the now very rare and endangered agarikon. The Agarikon is the oldest of the organic mushrooms used as medicine in historic European literature. As far back as 65 B.C., a Greek physician by the name of Dioscorides recorded the species in the Materia Medica as a natural remedy used to fight tuberculosis. More recently, K. Grzywnowics wrote an article claiming that according to Polish medicine, agarikon tea had been traditionally used for such things as a long life elixir, for lung conditions such as asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and to help stop open bleeding and to clean wounds.
There are three main species of mushrooms from Asia that are mentioned in almost all of the Chinese writings on mushrooms that you could read. The first one is the shiitake mushroom. It is one of the most widely researched of mushrooms and has been used for about a thousand years as an immune system booster. The next medicinal mushroom is the cordyceps and it is used as an aphrodisiac, as well as to aid in the physical prowess of athletes. Finally there is the reishi, which is known for bestowing immortality in China and Japan.
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