Medicinal mushrooms – magically good for our health?

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mushrooms like Chaga, Reishi, Lion’s Mane and Turkey Tail are popping up all over the place at the moment, in supplements, powders, and even coffee. These are the so-called medicinal species of mushroom that have been used for centuries by our ancestors, and currently today in Traditional Chinese medicine. Sheila Dillon started taking these mushrooms a decade ago as part of diversifying her diet after becoming seriously ill, but they weren’t that easy to buy then. Now they seem to be everywhere. And some of the health claims you can find online attached to these medicinal species go way beyond what can currently be backed by modern science.

In this programme Sheila finds out how medicinal mushrooms went from ancient wild food, to the latest hot health and wellness trend. We hear from Professor Nik Money, mycologist at Miami University in Ohio, about Lion’s Mane and what we currently know about the claims that it’s supposed to be good for our brains. To taste the freshest UK-grown medicinal species in the flesh, Sheila visits specialist mushroom grower Forest Fungi in Devon. And she has a mushroom coffee with Dr Emily Leeming, Scientific Researcher at Kings College London, to discuss mushroom supplements, and what we know about the nutritional benefits of mushrooms and their impact on the gut microbiome.

Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Sophie Anton for BBC Audio in Bristol

Transcript

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0:45.0	Can mushrooms be medicine?
0:47.8	Or isn't you multi-billion pound industry a triumph of hype? Well, it's a story we've been investigating. Have a
0:56.2	listen. I'm in my local health food store. Looking at a supplement shelf I
1:01.5	see something that wasn't there six months ago.
1:05.0	A selection of mushroom powders. There's Reishi, Turkey Tail, and the hot supplement now of a mushroom that most of us had never heard of not
1:17.0	that long ago called Lions Main, supposedly good for your brain.
1:21.9	Is it? Well, we're going to try and find out in this
1:23.8	program. These are medicinal mushrooms used by our ancestors for centuries.
1:29.6	They're still used in traditional Chinese medicine and other holistic medical systems.
1:36.0	They've interested me since I got seriously ill over a decade ago.
1:41.0	I read what research there was and decided to add them to my diet but then they weren't easy to buy.
1:47.0	Now they're everywhere.
	...

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