Do medicinal mushrooms have detoxification & antioxidant properties great enough to measure clinically?
I’m thinking about adding various mushrooms to my daily supplement/herb regimen because of how good they are for your immune system and how you can take most of them long term safely. BUT I don’t want to take them if they also don’t have clinically proven, measurable antioxidant/detoxification properties to them (I only take supplements and tonic herbs that have multifaceted uses like for- detoxification, antioxidants, and immune system).
I did some research and read somewhere that chaga mushrooms have powerful antioxidants in them but couldn’t find any proof for that. I haven’t found the info I’m looking for, maybe someone knows more… I hope.
FALSE. And I’m not here to debate the overall validity of herbs/supplements with you. EXTENSIVE studies have been done especially in other countries on many herbs, so don’t be so ignorant. For example, it was found that tumeric supplementation significantly increases key detoxification enzymes in the human body by a minimum of 2 fold (and the increases were scientifically measurable). Fish oil is another supplement that has been proven to work. Don’t be so ignorant. You probably don’t know anything about herbs or care. The only reason that the FDA doesn’t approve supplements is because they are practically owned by big Pharm and the govt doesn’t do all the testing on phytotherapy like in other countries (China, Germany, Japan for example). There are governments out there that do TONS of scientific research on herbs and their ministries of health have approved TONS of herbs for medicinal use. I’m sorry that people have to be so ignorant…
Filed under: Alternative Medicine
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Actually, you have some very well written answers here….
There has been extensive mycological research done. There are entire journals dedicated to the subject – And if you spent the time doing a pubmed search on the matter instead of flaming about this, you would have known that….
Enter the latin name of whatever you like and hit search
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
The FDA is a lot of things – owned by big pharma isn’t one of them…
And its the NIH (and the 27 agencies under them) and the AHRQ that funds most research in this country.
http://www.nih.gov/icd/
http://www.ahrq.gov/
The NIH directly funds billions of dollars of research into natural remedies every year, and much more than that indirectly. The same is true of the AHRQ as well
I’m sorry the ignorant tend to be so arrogant.
Eat the mushrooms. Do what you will. Just don’t expect miracles.
I find it hard to believe you did ANY research if you’re taking supplements/herbs for their antioxidant/detoxification properties and immune system boosting. Antioxidants aren’t all they are hyped to be(link will have more info). You don’t need to "detox" your body. You come equipped with a liver, kidneys and a digestive tract that does an excellent job all on it’s own. Any herbs that says it will "boost the immune system, increase energy etc" are intentionally vague because they aren’t allowed, by the FDA, to make any actual health claims. Testimonials are useless and correlation doesn’t mean causation.
They aren’t clinically proven(as you asked for) and their content(possibly harmful) isn’t regulated by anyone but the company who is selling them. Just because something is "natural" doesn’t mean they are good for you. These are untested drugs, whose potency and efficacy are unproven. Any herbs used in Tradition Chinese Medicine is not equivalent to a clinical trial, in case that is brought up.
Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was answering a true believer. You can wait for some guy to tell you what you want to hear, then.
Be careful of who you are calling ignorant. Nate has given you a scientifically accurate answer. And the FDA is NOT "practically owned by big Pharm", that is conspiracy theory nonsense.
‘Detox’ has no meaning outside of the clinical treatment for drug addiction and poisoning. The human body has evolved to get rid of unnecessary substances through your liver, kidneys, and colon. It isn’t possible to improve their function without medical assistance.
Herbs are crude drugs. Their quality and active ingredient quantity varies and are also subject to seasonal variation. By and large their efficacy, safety, side effects and interactions are unestablished. They are unstandardized and uncontrolled. Many have been found to be contaminated with heavy metals. They are mostly handed out by people with little or no medical training. The medline site is a good source of research on herbs, check it out.
Mushrooms are not overly nutritious, they do contain vitamins such as thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, biotin, cobalamins, and ascorbic acid, and are high in fiber. They taste good too.
The wiki page on Chaga mushrooms contains several links to medicinal research, so perhaps you can find more info there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaga_mushroom#Research
Oh, and you can’t ‘boost’ the immune system.