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Reishi Mushrooms: Which Benefits Do They Really Have?

Plus: the Blue Zone puzzle's extra piece

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The 10almonds Team
July 03, 2023

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

❝Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.❞

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⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

  • Reishi mushroom is enjoyed as a supplement for an assortment of reasons, including:

    • Immune health

    • Cardiovascular health

    • Protection against cancer

    • Antioxidant qualities

    • Reduced fatigue and anxiety

  • In today’s main feature, we review the science for each of these health claims!

  • Sleep is an incredibly important (and most often neglected) factor in good health and healthy longevity

    • Today’s sponsor, Beam, have a sleepy supplement-laden super-healthy 15-calorie hot chocolate to offer (with a 40% discount for 10almonds subscribers)

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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👀 WATCH AND LEARN

What Happens To Your Body When You Start Exercising Regularly

Leading a more active lifestyle takes time, effort, and consistency—especially as we get older—but it's really worth it.

Here's what will happen to your body when you exercise regularly:

💊 MAIN FEATURE

Reishi Mushrooms

Another Monday Research Review, another mushroom! If we keep this up, we’ll have to rename it “Mushroom Monday”.

But, there’s so much room for things to say, and these are fun guys to write about, as we check the science for any spore’ious claims…

Why do people take reishi?

Popular health claims for the reishi mushroom include:

  • Immune health

  • Cardiovascular health

  • Protection against cancer

  • Antioxidant qualities

  • Reduced fatigue and anxiety

And does the science agree?

Let’s take a look, claim by claim:

Immune health

A lot of research for this has been in vitro (ie, with cell cultures in labs), but promising, for example:

(that is the botanical name for reishi, and the Chinese name for it, by the way)

That’s not to say there are no human studies though; here it was found to boost T-cell production in stressed athletes:

Cardiovascular health

Here we found a stack of evidence for statistically insignificant improvements in assorted measures of cardiovascular health, and some studies where reishi did not outperform placebo.

Because the studies were really not that compelling, instead of taking up room (and your time) with them, we’re going to move onto more compelling, exciting science, such as…

Protection against cancer

There’s a lot of high quality research for this, and a lot of good results. The body of evidence here is so large that even back as far as 2005, the question was no longer “does it work” or even “how does it work”, but rather “we need more clinical studies to find the best doses”. Researchers even added:

❝At present, lingzhi is a health food supplement to support cancer patients, yet the evidence supporting the potential of direct in vivo anticancer effects should not be underestimated.❞

Check it out:

Just so you know we’re not kidding about the weight of evidence, let’s drop a few extra sources:

By the way, we shortened most of those titles for brevity, but almost all of the continued with “by” followed by a one-liner of how it does it.

So it’s not a “mysterious action” thing, it’s a “this is a very potent medicine and we know how it works” thing.

Antioxidant qualities

Here we literally only found studies to say no change was found, one that found a slight increase of antioxidant levels in urine. It’s worth noting that levels of a given thing (or its metabolites, in the case of some things) in urine are often quite unhelpful regards knowing what’s going on in the body, because we get to measure only what the body lost, not what it gained/kept.

So again, let’s press on:

Reduced fatigue and anxiety

Most of the studies for this that we could find pertained to health-related quality of life for cancer patients specifically, so (while they universally give glowing reports of reishi’s benefits to health and happiness of cancer patients), that’s a confounding factor when it comes to isolating its effects on reduction of fatigue and anxiety in people without cancer.

Summary:

  • Reishi mushroom’s anti-cancer properties are very, very clear

  • There is also good science to back immune health claims

  • It also has been found to significantly reduce fatigue and anxiety in unwell patients (we’d love to see more studies on its benefits in otherwise healthy people, though)

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❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Healthy Hot Chocolate for Better Sleep

Can it really be true? Yes, it can:

Beam’s Dream powder is packed with rest-promoting ingredients, like CBD, magnesium, l-theanine, melatonin, and reishi mushroom.

And, at 15 calories per cup, you can enjoy dessert and a better night's sleep.

We’ve talked before about the importance of good quality sleep for health and longevity, and it really is an area of health that people forget to invest in.

PS: 10almonds subscribers can use the code "SMILE" to enjoy a 40% discount!

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Blue Zones, Second Edition: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest - by Dan Buettner

Eat beans & greens, take walks, have a purpose; you can probably list off the top of your head some of the "advices from Blue Zones", so what makes this book stand out?

This is perhaps one of the most thoughtful investigations; the author (a National Geographic researcher) toured and researched all the Blue Zones, took many many notes (we get details), and asked a lot of questions that others skipped.

For example, a lot of books about the Blue Zones mention the importance of community—but they don't go into much detail of what that looks like... And they certainly don't tend to explain what we should do about it.

And that's because community is often viewed as environmental in a way that we can't control. If we want to take supplements, eat a certain way, exercise, etc, we can do all those things alone if we want. But if we want community? We're reliant on other people—and that's a taboo in the US, and US-influenced places.

So, one way this book excels is in describing how exactly people foster community in the Blue Zones (hint: the big picture—the form of the community—is different in each place, but the individual actions taken are similar), with particular attention to the roles actively taken on by the community elders.

In a similar vein, "reduce stress" is good, but what mindsets and mechanisms do they use that are still reproducible if we are not, for example, Okinawan farmers? Again, Buettner delivers in spades.

Bottom line: this is the Blue Zones book that digs deeper than others, and makes the advices much more applicable no matter where we live.

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Wishing you the very best start to the week,

The 10almonds Team