Mushroom supplements to boost immune system

[tea]

I was in touch with a researcher and manufacturer based in China/Japan around 6 years ago before all the "starch mushroom" info was everywhere on reddit and the internet, and this was the reply I received.

 

**Activated cordyceps mushroom mycelium preparation of the CS4 strain.
Other ingredients: Vegetarian capsules (pullulan) and organic myceliated brown rice. 

"This is from their label. Myceliated brown rice is the answer to the problem. In the USA they grow Cordyceps Sinensis on rice, in China Cs4 it is cultured by fermentation, a completely different growing method. In China only the cordyceps is processed and there is no substrate of brown rice as a growing base. Also in China the strain has to be certified and Government checked every year to ensure that the strain is genuine. I would doubt firstly that Mushroom Harvest even has the correct strain and secondly 90% of what you are taking is brown rice flour, not the fruiting body of CS4 which is what you are after. Simply it’s a crap product and most retail products from producers in the USA are the same. We tested many of them and basically they would only be useful as an animal supplementary food at high doses say  2kg per day for pigs. In China they use rice to grow Cordyceps militaris, once mature the fruiting body is separated from the growing base. The fruiting body is then freeze dried and powdered, the rice substrate is sold to pig farmers."

This was coming from someone with no bias who worked with medicinal mushrooms for decades. I believe wholeheartedly Stamets is selling mycelium because it's cheap and they can easily grow it, not because it's better in any way.

 

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by tea

[Ron Put]

4 minutes ago, tea said:

I was in touch with a researcher and manufacturer based in China/Japan around 6 years ago

But then:

4 minutes ago, tea said:

This was coming from someone with no bias

Hm, a "researcher and manufacturer based in China" who has "no bias" against a competing product?!

Am I misunderstanding something?

[Gordo]

16 minutes ago, Ron Put said:

But then:

Hm, a "researcher and manufacturer based in China" who has "no bias" against a competing product?!

Am I misunderstanding something?

In addition, the China guy is also selling mycelium and just calling it fruit bodies so he can charge more, and his version is contaminated due to the air pollution in China which mushrooms soak up like a sponge. 😉

 

[Ron Put]

14 minutes ago, Gordo said:

In addition, the China guy is also selling mycelium and just calling it fruit bodies so he can charge more, and his version is contaminated due to the air pollution in China which mushrooms soak up like a sponge. 😉

 

Yep, I wasn't going to get into a debate about the pollution factor, but it's the reason why if given a choice, I'd never buy dried mushrooms from China.

[tea]

This person wasn't selling products available to me or anyone in the United States. I don't even know what particular mushroom companies he worked with. I had just read some insightful posts from him online discussing mushroom quality and bioactivity and his companies' research, so I reached out to him with some questions because I was searching for sources for high quality mushrooms. He directed me to some reputable, large-scale-production suppliers in China that I could source from, because I was struggling to navigate the Alibaba mushroom minefield.

Also, cs-4 liquid culture mycelium is not the same as other mycelium products, and has been proven to have comparable or higher levels of most of the active compounds found in wild cordyceps. And this is without even being a concentrated extract. that is not quite the same as a mycelium product that has to be concentrated 10, 20-fold just to show a high percentage of polysaccharides and can't be standardized to anything else. CS-4 has like 30 years of research behind it, many clinical trials. It is the exception to mycelium products not the rule.

I think we can dismiss to some extent the "mushrooms in China are full of pollution". It's very easy to find certified organic mushrooms grown far from areas of high pollution, and also, cordyceps militaris is grown indoors in labs, and liquid culture mycelium is grown in labs in huge sealed vats, not out in the open. But be afraid of pollution all you want and purchase impotent US grown products.

Would you refuse to use Indian grown Ashwagandha or curcumin extracts? Do you you scoff at the idea of drinking high quality Chinese teas? If so, I'm sorry.

Edited June 17, 2020 by tea

[Ron Put]

I avoid Chinese tea, for the same reason.  India is better in some regions, so depending on the source, I'd be more likely to consider Indian sourced products. I buy plenty of Chinese products and personally am a fan China and Chinese culture, and admire much about the people (but not their government), so nothing personal.

But speaking of mushrooms and their inordinate ability to soak up pollutants, this is from China Daily:

Mushroom as pollution mask

Edited June 17, 2020 by Ron Put

[Sibiriak]

7 hours ago, tea said:

In the USA they grow Cordyceps Sinensis on rice [...] Imet China they use rice to grow Cordyceps militaris

Stamets in the video posted by Gordo recommends C. militaris over sinensis.     He makes some interestesting points about the research on C. sinensis -- how it got confused by various  of other fungal strains getting involved,  the positive role of Chinese scientists etc.  Starts at around 1:36:47.   He does recommended, and presumably sells,  C. sinensis mycelium, not fruiting body material.

Quote

I believe wholeheartedly Stamets is selling mycelium because it's cheap and they can easily grow it, not because it's better in any way. 

I'm  sure you believe it, but I don't get that impression after watching his video.  To me he seems like a guy that was into shrooms when younger,  that made some discoveries, did a lot of research,  and  got obsessed about mycelia and built his life around that, including his financial life.  So yes, he's he is biased,  and a bit  unbalanced,  but that doesn't mean he doesn't believe in the value of what he's doing and selling. 

In any case,  I'd rather stick with scientific facts and argument about efficacy and quality  than engage in pure speculation about  personal motives.

Stamets discusses some recent research on Turkey Tail mycelium grown on rice in the video starting around 1:34:00.  The basic idea is that the mycelium grown on rice "bio-ferments" the rice to then produce a unique immunological response that up-regulates a number of anti-inflammatory cytokines.  The mycelium doesn't do that; that mushrooms don't do that; but the rice that is bio-fermented via mycelium does, the transformation having made a novel product (similar to fermented milk, bean etc products etc.)  That's his  theory.  How valid and valuable it is  is debatable, of course.

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by Sibiriak

[tea]

Yes, the comparison to "Saccharomyces yeast-based fermentate EpiCor®, which is composed of the fungal cell walls as well as secreted metabolites produced during the fermentation. The aqueous extract of the dried fermentate has well-documented immune activating, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties" is interesting, I had not read that before. I have some epicor open right now, but never noticed much benefit for my seasonal rhinitis. 

My main issue lies with the lack of testable biomarkers in mycelium products. Maybe it has epicor like bioactives in it, or maybe it doesn't, but I'm not going to trust the speculation until there is more conclusive evidence, and I'm not buying a mushroom product for just polysaccharides and beta glucans. When you can buy 1000 grams of lab tested cordyceps with 0.3% adenosine for $40, similarly priced lb of 4:1 organic cordyceps militaris, or organic reishi and lions mane extracts from Terrasoul - why would you deliberately choose to pay $45 for 60 grams of something that's best show of clinical efficacy required dosing 6 to 9 grams with speculation that 12 grams may have been even better?

[Sibiriak]

7 hours ago, tea said:

"Saccharomyces yeast-based fermentate EpiCor®, which is composed of the fungal cell walls as well as secreted metabolites produced during the fermentation. The aqueous extract of the dried fermentate has well-documented immune activating, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties..."

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12906-019-2681-7

I looked into EpiCor a while back--  those immune-activating etc effects are actually NOT really "well-documented".   (Just as they are NOT for Stamets' mycelium fermentate either. ) If you look at the very  small number of studies cited in that article,  you see they're all sponsored by Embria Health Sciences Inc.,  the manufacturer of EpiCor.   

That doesn't completely invalidate them,  but it raises big red flags for me when virtually all the evidence is coming from a single extremely biased source.  As I wrote previously,  both arguments about mycelium , pro and con, look pretty slim on  evidence.

The Turkey Tail study touted by Stamets was of course funded by Stamets.

And it looks like the same laboratory, NIS Labs,  carried out BOTH the Stamets Turkey Tail study  and  the  EpiCor studies. 

NIS Labs  advertises itself as an " independent contract research lab specializing in natural products research".  It wouldn't be unreasonable  to surmise that they are in the business of producing research that meets the needs of  the supplement companies that pay them.

Being a  " contract research organization" (CRO), NIS Labs is by definition   "a company that provides support to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries in the form of research services outsourced on a contract basis."

In fact, the NIS Labs web site states quite openly:

Quote

At NIS Labs, we offer customized protocols designed to support the marketing claims of natural products. 

 

Back to mushroom products:

Quote

My main issue lies with the lack of testable biomarkers in mycelium products. 

[...]I'm not buying a mushroom product for just polysaccharides and beta glucans. When you can buy 1000 grams of lab tested cordyceps with 0.3% adenosine for $40

That argument is valid only to the extent that a measurable bioactive substance like adenosine has in fact been proven to be THE key to all the sought after health benefits, rather than simply one of many potentially important substances, and possibly one of lesser importance depending on the particular effect being sought.

In my experience,  many of the alleged "testable biomarkers" for supplements (actually, "biomarker" may not be the best term) are extremely dubious as infallible indicators of efficacy.  (Marketing claims for various extracts of tumeric, boswellia, garlic, green tea and many other natural substances come to mind. )

Supplement companies often try to make their products seem uniquely powerful by singling out certain active ingredients,  claiming increased presence/bioavailability of those elements, and  patenting their product formulations/methodologies if possible.    Of course, adenosine may in fact be the crucial  factor in cordyceps,  I don't know.  What I do know is that whenever I've looked into  such claims,  things have often turned out to be much more complicated and unclear, and the evidence minimal,  contradictory or inconclusive.

In any case,  your points are well-taken,  though a lot of comparisons are being made between different unique substances, and different sought after effects.  What may be true for cordyceps may not be true for Turkey Tail etc.  And I didn't intend  myself to put so much focus on one personality, Stamets, who I didn't know anything about at all before reading this thread.

 

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by Sibiriak

[Shezian]

On 4/26/2020 at 3:15 AM, Ron Put said:

I just looked at my WBC count and it's 4.6. Three years earlier, which is before I started reducing calories and eating within an ~8hr window, my WBC was 5.6. My BMI was around 20 three years ago and it's 19 today. So, it appears that CR lowers WBC count.

WBC at the lower end appear beneficial to longevity. You can plug in various numbers and see how it impacts your predicted Phenotypic Age based on the Levine spreadsheet I posted a while back.

Just reading back on your lower WBC, l guess l was talking more about the Natural Killer Cells. Are these also lower in Caloric restrictors? My normal routine white blood  test was and has always been normal, it wasn't until it was broken down and tested separately that it showed low Natural Killer Cells.  Thankfully they have returned normal, and it was stated on my Blood test paper it was as a result of some kind of virus.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Shezian

[Shezian]

On 4/25/2020 at 11:23 PM, drewab said:

It is certainly true for me. Out of curiosity I looked back to several blood tests I have had done over the past 6 months and this was my WBC count. The range indicated is 4.0-11.0 at the lab I go to.

• April 2020 - 4.5 (borderline low)
• Late January 2020 - 2.8 (below range)
• Early January 2020 - 3.4 (below range)
• December 2019 - 3.3 (below range)

Is this necessarily a bad thing? I'm not entirely sure but I do know that it's very common amongst CRON-ies and seems fairly common amongst those on a plant-based diet. The other biomarkers regularly low on my bloodwork is my platelet count, as well as testosterone. As for the topic of consuming mushrooms, I regularly use them in a culinary sense and have been gifted a lot of products from Four Sigmatic (mushroom coffee extracts) for Christmas. While I have consumed a variety of their non-caffeinated products including their lion's mane, chaga, and reishi, as well as their caffeinated mushroom coffee, green tea, and cocoa mix, it is not something I would recommend to purchase.  On a side note, you know you're a bit different when people buy you 6 boxes of mushroom coffee for Christmas. 

Do you know if thats the same for Natural Killer cells or your overall white blood cells? My concern was more because it was my NKC that were slightly low. Thankfully back to normal. The blood test paper stated it was because of a viral infection l had. Thankfully they have since returned in the normal range.