Showing posts with label PAUL STAMETS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PAUL STAMETS. Show all posts

08/08/2019

Mushrooms as Medicine with Paul Stamets

Lion's Mane mushroom: Unparalleled benefits for your brain and nervous system

Lion's Mane mushroom: Unparalleled benefits for your brain:

Lion's Mane is nature's gift to your nervous system! It's the only mushroom possessing not one but TWO potent nerve growth factors, showing potential benefits for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, multiple sclerosis, leg cramps, anxiety and more.

What if there were one natural treatment that could restore brain function, regrow damaged nerves and reverse the progression of multiple sclerosis? There may be! Lion's mane mushroom has been used medicinally in Asia for centuries, but for some reason it's one of the best-kept secrets in the West.

Besides being called "lion's mane," Hericium erinaceus, is known by several other names including bearded tooth mushroom, bearded hedgehog, bearded tooth fungus and others. In Japan, it's known as yamabushitake, which means "mountain priest mushroom." It has a variety of other names, depending on the country.

In Asia, it is said that lion's mane gives you "nerves of steel and the memory of a lion," and from what science is revealing, that's apt prose. Thus far, evidence exists that lion's mane mushroom confers the following health benefits:
Improved cognitive function
Nerve regeneration, remyelination, and increased Nerve Growth Factor (NGF)
Improved digestive function and relief from gastritis
Immunosupportive, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant
Anticoagulant; mild ACE inhibitor; improved lipid profile

The science about lion's mane is in its infancy, but evidence already points to unparalleled therapeutic benefits for numerous diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system, summarized in the table below, and the list seems to be growing by the day.

Conditions That May Benefit from Lion's Mane Mushroom
Dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
Parkinson's disease
Peripheral neuropathy
Muscle cramps and spasms
Multiple sclerosis (MS)
Stroke recovery
Seizures and seizure-like post-stroke episodes
Anxiety and Depression
Mother Nature's First "Smart Mushroom"

According to world renown fungi expert Paul Stamets, lion's mane may be the first "smart mushroom," providing support specifically for cognitive function, including memory, attention and creativity. It is reported that Buddhist monks have consumed Lion's mane tea for centuries before meditation in order to enhance their powers of concentration.

11/12/2018

Paul Stamets' epiphany that mushrooms could help save the world's bees

Paul Stamets' epiphany that mushrooms could help save the world's bees -- Science:

Years ago, in 1984, Stamets had noticed a "continuous convoy of bees" traveling from a patch of mushrooms he was growing and his beehives. The bees actually moved wood chips to access his mushroom's mycelium, the branching fibers of fungus that look like cobwebs.

"I could see them sipping on the droplets oozing from the mycelium," he said. They were after its sugar, he thought.

Decades later, he and a friend began a conversation about bee colony collapse that left Stamets, the owner of a mushroom mercantile, puzzling over a problem. Bees across the world have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Parasites like mites, fast-spreading viruses, agricultural chemicals and lack of forage area have stressed and threatened wild and commercial bees alike.

Waking up one morning, "I connected the dots," he said. "Mycelium have sugars and antiviral properties," he said. What if it wasn't just sugar that was useful to those mushroom-suckling bees so long ago?