Fungi are not plants
The health importance of mushroom consumption
Mushrooms are not plants though people once considered them part of the plant world. They belong to a separate kingdom, and their structure is more similar to human than plant.
There are crucial differences between mushrooms and plants. The fungi cell membranes, as well as molluscs and arthropods, are built mostly of chitin, while plant cell membranes contain cellulose. Fungi absorb and digest nutrients from their substrate as opposed to plants that possess chlorophyll to conduct photosynthesis.
Fungi store energy in the form of glycogen just like animals, while plants store energy in the form of starch.
Fungi and humans share about 30% of their DNA.
The cellular proteins of fungi and humans (and animals) are similar in structure. Humans produce cholesterol and fungi produce ergosterol, but a common component of both the sterols is lanosterol. Phytosterols from plants contain cycloartenol — and there is a significant difference.
Since fungi are evolutionarily closer to humans, their metabolites correspond more precisely to us in terms of health. They are more compatible to us than the metabolites from plants.
In general, the more similar a substance we take into the body for health purposes to natural human metabolites (which the body continuously produces), the more that substance suits us. The body accepts it more easily and enters into interaction or cellular communication with it. It does not show the intention to reject it, nor to direct reactions towards its neutralization in the organism, so it doesn’t cause harmful side effects.
The more compatible a substance is, the less amount of it is needed for a certain health purpose.
An example is the human interferons obtained from the blood of a donor to stimulate an immune antiviral reaction which is known to act in minute doses without harmful side effects, due to compatibility.
Today it is known that the ancient medicine of the early Neolithic was more advanced than we once thought. Humans lived for decades after severe injuries causing immobility and infections. This shows that society of the time had significant medical knowledge. Medicinal plants and mushrooms played an important role, and the oldest evidence of the use of mushrooms for eating and healing is from the cave of El Miron in Spain, estimated at 17,000 BC.
Genetic analysis has found there were several types of spores of various fungi found on the dental plaque of a 40-year-old woman. We have consumed fungi since the very beginnings of the human race, our body has adapted to mushroom consumption, and in the long line of inheritance, it has created interactions in the immune system with their metabolites.
When we ingest the metabolites from fungi, the mechanisms of our immunity recognize them as known substances and interact with them. Therefore, surprisingly low concentrations of fungal metabolites are sufficient for human immune response or protection of healthy cells in chemotherapy.
The fungi metabolites are a call to human organism to activate the immunity mechanisms which still exist as a part of latent acquired immunity but have been forgotten or neglected due to lifestyle or exposure to harmful substances-toxins.
Every living human being has come to be as a result of thousands of generations of successful ancestors, some of whom survived serious diseases, recorded it in their genome, and passed it on to their descendants. They transmitted their ability to defeat infections, viruses, parasites, severe injuries, hunger, cancer, etc. We should all carry the records of these victories within ourselves. However, sometimes we do not express them, because we are thrown out of balance by the presence of toxins, viruses, bacteria, stress, biological cell imperfections, etc.
By taking in some of the compounds known to our successful ancestors, we remind our body of the health mechanisms written in our genome and awaken the dormant mechanisms of our immunity.
More than 60% of today’s conventional anticancer drugs are derived directly from plants or microscopic fungi, with medicinal mushrooms for this purpose being the most researched in recent years as a stand-alone drug or coordinator of existing drugs.
Many studies have proven that the combination of conventional drugs with fungal extracts has a more positive, potent, and more precise effect in chemotherapy than conventional drugs alone.
That is why mushrooms are rightly regarded “synergizers” for existing drugs.
They enhance the precision of a conventional drug while protecting healthy cells from drug toxicity and reducing the severe side effects of toxic oncology therapies.
In Far Eastern countries, they are already commonly prescribed before, during and after oncology therapy.
Their strength is in acting independently, but the added value lies in the fact that they fit into the existing conventional therapies, unlike most alternative therapies that oppose drugs and put the patient in a situation to choose one or the other.
Mushrooms are an aid to conventional medicine as they complement it and make it more successful.
The reason is, among other things, in the molecular structures of drugs derived from the natural world. The metabolites of fungi interact with them; in a way, they know them. Many of these interactions are unexplained due to hundreds of microquantities of fungal metabolites, and some primary metabolites (especially beta-glucans) are now known to protect healthy cells from toxins and coordinate cellular immunity. Science considers all of those processes a “synergistic” (positive) effect.