Just as each one of us has a unique fingerprint, we also have a unique structure of intestinal bacteria and other organisms. This individual bio-system in our digestion is called a microbiome. There are no two identical microbiomes. In that sense, each of us is a unique ecosystem.

Our microbiome depends on the food we eat, but we also inherit it from our mothers and it develops for generations, embracing new strains while we travel and with everything new we take into the organism. Today we know that the richness and balance of microbiome are directly related to our health.

The lack of some essential bacteria or intestinal imbalance has a direct effect on the immune-mediated and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis or type 1 diabetes, and the research in this direction with the purpose of more effective therapies for cancer has already started off. *

In general, our intestinal bacteria like the food consumed by the generations before us. They are literally part of our immunity and of utmost importance to our health.

Among the hundreds of medicinal mushrooms that we can potentially choose to consume, we should take the ones that our microbiome recognizes and can put to best use. This often means the local ones or the local ones from the place where our ancestors came from.
The synergic effect of those mushrooms is stronger. “Local” in this case refers to regions and continents, so medicinal mushrooms from Croatian forests suit the European microbiome. In addition, there are cosmopolite mushrooms that universally correspond to microbiomes of different geographical origin.

Mushrooms, along with animal proteins, were the most readily available and most familiar food throughout human history. Our metabolism has adapted to interact with them in an endless long-term adaptation. This makes them known and usable material for hundreds of intestinal bacteria that used their metabolites.