REISHI (ling chi)
In Japan, reishi is known as the "phantom mushroom" because of the difficulty in finding it. Although over 99 percent of all wild reishi mushrooms are found growing on old Japanese plum trees, fewer than ten mushrooms will be found on 100,000 trees. The art of growing reishi indoors was perfected by Shigeaki Mori, who developed an elaborate, two-year-long method of culturing wild reishi spores on plum-tree sawdust. The fruiting body of the mushroom is employed medicinally. Reishi grows in six different colors, but the red variety is the most commonly used. It is now cultivated commercially in North America, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. USES Reishi has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for at least 2,000 years and is regarded as the "elixir of life." It still ranks as one of the premier Chinese tonics and has been reported to boost energy, help the body resist disease and stress, and promote longevity. Contemporary Western herbalists regard reishi as an adaptogen and recommend it as an immune stimulant that activates several different phases of immune defense. It is used to treat allergies, altitude sickness, asthma (it is especially helpful for calming coughs in people with asthma who have colds), and mushroom poisoning, and it is effective against leukemia. It has also shown an ability to fight age-related intellectual decline. Benefits of reishi for specific health conditions include the following: * Alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver. Reishi helps to prevent alcohol-induced fatty liver and cirrhosis. It is beneficial for people in earlier stages of alcoholic liver disease who have not yet experienced severe loss of liver function. * Bronchitis and yeast infection. Reishi stimulates the maturation of immune cells known as macrophages, which engulf and digest infectious bacteria. This prevents secondary infections from developing into cases of chronic bronchitis. Mature macrophages also are active against yeasts, making reishi a valuable treatment for yeast infection. * Cancer. Reishi stimulates the body's production of interleukin-2, which fights several types of cancer, and it contains compounds called ganoderic acids, which act against liver cancer. Reishi counteracts the suppression of red and white blood cells that can result from cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan, Neosar) treatment by stimulating the creation of protein in the bone marrow. * Fibroids (uterine myomas). Reishi keeps the uterine lining from making both basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), a chemical that promotes fibroid growth, and histamine, a chemical that causes inflammation. * High blood pressure. There is evidence that reishi can lower both blood pressure and blood-cholesterol levels. Scientists at Oklahoma's Oral Roberts University found that compounds in reishi reduce the flow of nerve impulses through the sympathetic nervous system, the portion of the nervous system activated by emotional stress. Russian scientists screening mushrooms as potential cholesterol-lowering medications have found that reishi extracts stop the accumulation of cholesterol in the arteries of laboratory animals. Two controlled clinical studies have investigated the effects of reishi on high blood pressure in humans. Both found it could lower pressure significantly as compared with a placebo. The subjects with high blood pressure in the second study had not previously responded to medications. * Stress. Eastern physicians have recognized for centuries that reishi can reduce emotional outbursts during long-term stress. Exactly how reishi does this has not been studied, but it is likely due to the herb's effects on the central nervous system. Additionally, doctors at the Hijitaki Clinic in Tokyo have found that reishi helped to decrease physical pain dramatically in two people with neuralgia and two other people with shingles (herpes zoster). This quality may also help stop emotional outbursts. Other medical uses - Colorectal cancer, Kidney cancer.
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