Cancer and Mushrooms...Immune Support!

(NaturalNews) Welcome to part one of my exclusive interview with George Vaughan, M.S. George is a botanist specializing in mycology and the founder of Mushroom Harvest (www.mushroomharvest.com), a company offering certified organic whole medicinal mushroom powders in bulk powder and capsule form.Working from a private acreage in the forested hills of Southeast Ohio, this mushroom connoisseur cultivates and distributes his own ultra-potent proprietary strains of the most powerful medicinal mushrooms in the world. With over 20 years of mycological experience to his credit, you can be sure the mushrooms produced by George and the Mushroom Harvest team easily stand among the most powerful healing and disease busting weapons found in nature.In the NaturalNews spirit no product, money, or anything else has changed hands between anyone associated with Mushroom Harvest and myself. Further, I have no interest - financial or otherwise - in the sale of any product supplied by Mushroom Harvest. This interview is based solely on product merit and the company's outstanding dedication to service and quality. As an exclusive offer, however, Mr. Vaughan is offering a special 20% discount to NaturalNews readers who are lucky enough to catch this article. Read on for details.Adam: Hi George. I'd like to start at the beginning. What sparked your interest in mushrooms, or more specifically medicinal mushrooms?George Vaughan: I first became interested in mushrooms by hunting for them in the woods. I later developed an interest in natural healing and started college as a pre-med with the intention of applying to Bastyr Naturopathic College. I eventually became very interested in the biology of not just animals, but plants and fungi as well. My interests eventually intertwined as I began learning of the medicinal properties of mushrooms.Adam: Great! You offer mushrooms in their whole, unadulterated form – straight from Mother Nature. Can you tell me why you chose this route over the seemingly more profitable extract method? I have seen mushroom extract go for upwards of eighty dollars for a small bottle of capsules.Vaughan: There are numerous reasons, because there are numerous constituents. We offer the whole mushroom so that the whole range of medicinal benefits from the mushrooms is available in the product. Many extracts are just focused on the 1,3 beta-glucan constituents, which are the main immune stimulating constituents of the mushrooms. However, there are many other constituents in these mushrooms that have medicinal properties as well from lowering cholesterol to relieving asthma.Adam: So with the whole food you are getting the full spectrum of bioactive compounds, whether they are known by science or not. An extract will not necessarily include anything but a higher concentration of the intended compound, such as a particular beta-glucan like you mentioned. Because you are getting that full spectrum of compounds in a balanced ratio, the whole food seems like the best method for prevention of disease. Perhaps extract would be useful in the reliable treatment of a specific ailment. Is that accurate?Vaughan: It depends on the ailment. Many of these compounds work synergistically and are more effective when taken together than when isolated and taken alone. In a disease such as cancer, the beta-glucans will help to increase the number of white blood cells to attack it. The essential sugars, such as Mannose, will help the WBC's recognize the cancer cells, and some of the triterpenes will be directly cytotoxic to the cancer cell. In the case of cancer, there are several compounds that help to combat the cancer in different ways. In the case of neuron re-growth, an extract focused on the diterpenes of Lion's Mane would allow the patient to consume a smaller amount of the medicinal preparation.Adam: Wow, so I guess it's not quite as simple as I thought!You offer your powder in both pre-encapsulated and bulk powder form. The capsules are pretty obvious, but what are some of the ways the powder can be consumed, and how does this fit into your own routine?Vaughan: The powder can be swished down with water, mixed with applesauce or oatmeal, blended into fresh juices, added to soup, or used to make teas or extracts. People take them in all sorts of ways. I usually consume 1 to 2 teaspoons of the powder before breakfast and dinner.Adam: Or for the smoothie fans out there, it can go right in your smoothie!Vaughan: Exactly! That's a very popular way to take the powder.Adam: You mentioned extract, and I'd like to focus on that for a second. If people make their own extract or tea, they can save a lot of money and still get the advantage of concentrated components. Is this hard to do?Vaughan: No, making an extract isn't hard to do. The traditional way of preparing medicinal mushrooms has been to simmer them in water for 1 - 2 hours until the water has been concentrated down by half, i.e. a hot water extract. The most typical way of producing extracts with a long shelf life is to make a double extract by first soaking the mushrooms in 90 - 95% alcohol for 2 weeks, removing the mushrooms and then simmering them in water for 1 - 2 hrs. Once the hot water extract has cooled, it is combined with the alcohol extract. The alcohol needs to make up at least 20% of the extract to prevent spoilage.Adam: Very useful information. Now I would like to focus on what I see as your flagship product, the 14-mushroom blend. Can you list the different species of mushrooms included in this blend?Vaughan: Blazei, Cordyceps, Enoki, True Tinder Polypore, Agarikon, Reishi, Maitake, Lion's Mane, Chaga, Shiitake, Oyster, Birch Polypore, Suehirotake and Turkey Tail.Adam: Wow, that was fast! I see you have been taking your Lion's Mane.I've done my fair share of research, and that is virtually every medicinal mushroom I have read about and then some. Personally, I haven't seen anything like that offered anywhere else.Vaughan: We wanted to be able to offer a blend that would be a really potent immune stimulator. Studies have shown that a combination of medicinal mushrooms usually results in a stronger immune response than any one mushroom taken alone. The various medicinal mushrooms all have slightly different 1,3 beta-glucans which all illicit a different response from the immune system.Adam: So it doesn't get much better than 14 different species all improving your health in their own way, and even synergizing with each other! Broadly speaking, what kind of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other medicinally useful compounds are present in this blend? What are your mushrooms made of?Vaughan: Mushrooms are extremely good at absorption and tend to be very rich in minerals and vitamins. All of these mushrooms are especially rich in ergosterol, which is a precursor to vitamin D. In addition to the 1,3 beta-glucans, there are many other constituents in these mushrooms that have medicinal properties including triterpenes, diterpenes, essential sugars, glycoproteins, and potent antioxidants.There are hundreds of different triterpenes that have been found in the different medicinal mushrooms. Over 120 different triterpenes have been isolated from Reishi alone. These different triterpenes have been found to have unique properties varying from triterpene to triterpene. Triterpenes have been found to protect the liver, protect the kidneys, lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, inhibit histamine release and be anti-inflammatory, provide relief from asthma and allergies, and interfere with the replication of HIV. Some triterpenes have been found to induce apoptosis in cancer cells, and others have been found to be directly cytotoxic to cancer cells. As mentioned earlier, the diterpenes of Lion's Mane have been shown to support the nervous system and stimulate the production of nerve growth factor and thus facilitate the growth of neurons. Some studies are indicating that Lion's Mane improves memory and may even slow the onset of dementia.Many of these mushrooms are also rich in the "essential sugars" that are the building blocks for very significant parts of the immune system including antibodies and receptor sites used for communication between the various white blood cells. Essential sugars make up 3 – 10% of each antibody our bodies produce. Some of these essential sugars, such as Mannose, are found in medicinal mushrooms in long chains. Many people seem to have a deficiency in these essential sugars which leads to a decreased ability of the immune system to produce antibodies and recognition sites leading to an impairment of the immune system's ability to communicate and for white blood cells to recognize microbes and cancer cells.Mushrooms are also very rich in a variety of antioxidants. The ORAC values of many of the medicinal mushrooms have been shown to be as high or higher than the superfruits, such as goji berries, - 50,000 for chaga (higher than mangosteen juice), 15,000 for maitake (similar to Noni juice), 12,000 for cordyceps and 4,000 for reishi (similar to pomegranates and higher than blueberries). You can see these mushrooms are just loaded with beneficial constituents, and this is why we prefer to offer the whole mushroom rather than to isolate any single component.Adam: So needless to say, here is a man who knows his mushrooms! Not only that, but your enthusiasm is contagious. Mushrooms really are miraculous little things, aren't they? Some people call them the food of the gods.Vaughan: Food of the gods, yes. Whether you look at them from a culinary perspective, a medicinal perspective or a biological perspective, they truly are amazing.Adam: Plus all of your mushrooms are certified organic, right?Vaughan: That's correct. We grow all of the mushrooms in our products here at our certified organic farm in Southeast Ohio. There are no imported ingredients in any of our products. Some of the "organic" mushroom products on the market displaying the USDA organic symbol are actually made from mushrooms grown in China. Though it would be significantly more profitable for us to buy the mushrooms from China and then just package them, we would rather make a product that we know is as pure and potent as possible. Even the grain we use to grow the mushrooms with is from certified organic farms here in the U.S. It is not required to use certified organic grain to be able to have your mushrooms certified as organic, but once again we don't want to produce a product we don't believe in. Mushroom growers have an exemption from the organic grain requirement that organic dairy and beef producers have to follow. But why? As I stated earlier, mushrooms are extremely good at absorption. We don't want to be growing mushrooms with grain that has been sprayed with pesticides and other chemicals. That just doesn't make sense to me when people are using mushrooms for healing.Adam: Excellent. And it's dedication like that which makes your company NaturalNews material. Before we go on, I would like to mention that many of our readers here at NaturalNews are raw foodists, or follow raw principles. Is this a raw product, or do you use heat sterilization? What are your thoughts on heat sterilization, and what kind of effects does it have on a mushroom?Vaughan: We have both steamed and un-steamed powders available. The logic behind steaming the mushrooms is to "activate" them by helping to loosen the 1,3 beta-glucans off of the cell walls and make them more available. I wouldn't be surprised if the steaming does destroy some beneficial non-heat stable properties that we don't know about yet. The previously mentioned constituents are all heat stable up to 300F, but I imagine there is still a lot that hasn't been discovered about mushrooms yet. If someone prefers to take raw mushroom powders, taking the powders on an empty stomach 30 minutes before meals will help to cleave the 1,3 beta-glucans off the walls. This is basically submitting them to an acid treatment in the stomach which helps to break the bonds.Adam: Interesting. Speaking of sterilization, do you perform bacterial assays on your powders to make sure we aren't getting more than we bargain for?Vaughan: Yes, all the powders, steamed and un-steamed, are sent off to a third-party lab that tests them for a variety of microbes. That is just a routine part of our Sanitary Standard Operating Procedures and part of HACCP program. We don't clear any lot of powders for shipment until we have received the test results back from the lab. We test for total bacterial counts, mold, yeast, E. coli, Clostridium, Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus. Fortunately, growing the mushrooms ourselves allows us to make sure they are grown in as clean of a manner as possible.Adam: Great. Can you give us your website and contact phone number?Vaughan: Our website address is (www.mushroomharvest.com) and our phone number is (740) 448-7376.Adam: And you have put forth a special, NaturalNews exclusive offer for those readers who catch this interview. How can readers take advantage of this offer?Vaughan: If a reader would like to order and receive the NaturalNews Reader Discount of 20%, they can just call (740) 448-7376, place their order over the phone and let us know that they are a NaturalNews reader.Stay tuned in the next few days for the second half of this NaturalNews exclusive interview with George Vaughan, an authority in medicinal mushrooms and the founder of Mushroom Harvest (www.mushroomharvest.com) , a supplier of ultra-potent strains of the most powerful organic medicinal mushrooms in the world. In part two, we will talk in detail about a few of the different species found in George's one-of-a-kind 14-mushroom blend and what makes his mushrooms the most effective on the market.
About the authorAdam Miller is a student of life who has dedicated literally thousands of hours of personal research on top of formal institutional training in Dietetics to learn the secrets of achieving vibrant health and extended lifespan. His passion and dedication is in bringing the best ideas for self-empowerment through nutrition and nutraceuticals as well as alternative therapies, technology, and information to the public through various means.