Posts Tagged ‘mycelium’

mushroom capsules

Taking a mushroom product in capsule or powder form has distinct advantages because most mushroom products are made from the mycelium, the feeding body of the mushroom that grows underground. Mycelium is a potent substance, nature’s way of concentrating the beneficial compounds of mushrooms. When you buy a culinary mushroom, however, you buy the fruit-body. Fruit-bodies do not always contain the potent concentrations of polysaccharides that are found in mycelium. (Mycologists are currently perfecting cultivation techniques whereby the fruit-body of mushrooms can contain potent concentrations of polysaccharides.)

What’s more, medicinal mushroom products are more hygienic. The organically grown mycelium powder is sterilized before it is pressed into pills or poured into capsules. Because nonorganic, store-bought mushrooms are often sprayed with pesticides, eating them regularly may actually be harmful. For that reason, I recommend buying culinary mushrooms at special food stores and other places where organic products are sold. Taking medicinal mushrooms in pills or capsules is easier on the digestive system, too. The mycelium finds its way into the body faster than the fruitbodies of mushrooms do.

SOURCE: Healing Mushrooms, Effective Treatments for Today’s Illnesses

mushrooms

What we call a “mushroom” is the fruit-body of a fungus, the reproductive part of the fungus that grows above ground and releases spores, the seedlike elements from which new fungi are made. Much as fruit is the reproductive organ of a fruit tree, a mushroom is the reproductive organ of a fungus.Typically, spores sprout from the gills, the thin brown tissue found on the underside of the mushroom cap. Borne by the wind, some kinds of spores are capable of traveling great distances from the fruit-body to start their own fungus colonies. Mushrooms produce prodigious numbers of spores.

A giant puffball, for example, may produce 20 trillion: it has been calculated that if every spore from the giant puffball sprouted and grew to maturity, it would form a mass three times the size of the sun!

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