Dried Reishi Mushrooms

What Are Reishi Mushrooms?

Reishi or Ganoderma mushrooms go by many different names. In Asia they’re known by the names lingzhi, ten thousand year mushrooms and the mushroom of immortality. In North America they’re known as varnish shelf mushrooms, artist’s conk or bear bread.

There are about 80 different species of reishi mushrooms for sale online in the world. All are shelf or bracket fungi that grow on trees. Different regions and climates will have different types of reishi mushrooms that look a bit different. However their medicinal properties are mostly all the same. Some scientists even think there’s only a few species that take on a different appearance depending on their habitat or the type of tree that they’re growing on.

All reishi species grow on trees that are dead or dying. The medical mushrooms for sale online will continue growing every year until the wood has completely rotted away. You can come back to harvest them again and again.

What Do Reishi Mushrooms Look Like?

Reishi can be one of the easiest mushrooms to identify because they often have quite a unique appearance. If you see a shelf mushroom with a deep red body and colors that lighten to orange, yellow and white toward the edges of the cap, you can be confident that you’re looking at a reishi magic mushrooms for sale online usa

Reishi mushrooms are a type of shelf mushroom that you can find growing horizontally out of the trunks of trees. They don’t have any noticeable stem like mushrooms that grow out of the ground. Older specimens may fade to a brown color and be harder to identify. However their scallop-shaped cap with tree-like rings on the top is a pretty good indication.

There aren’t any poisonous mushrooms that look similar to reishi mushrooms, so they’re good for even beginners to try and collect. The worst-case scenario is that you’ll end up with a similar-looking mushroom that offers a lot of extra fiber to your diet but no real medicinal benefits.

How to Cook With Reishi Mushrooms

While they’re technically edible, all but the youngest reishi mushrooms are going to be far too woody and tough to eat on their own. Even if you diced them up very finely and cooked them, it will taste like you’re eating a cork. Mature reishi mushrooms have a hard outer shell that makes them completely inedible.

How to Prepare Reishi Mushroom

You could try adding dried reishi powder to smoothies or sprinkling it into recipes for some of the medicinal benefits. However the traditional way to consume reishi is to make it into a tea.

This isn’t the convenient bag of tea that you’re used to steeping for just a minute or two. Fresh reishi mushrooms will need to be boiled for half an hour to extract all of the medicinal compounds. Dried reishi will need to be boiled for at least an hour or two. The mushroom needs to be thinly sliced for best extraction of the medicinal properties.

Reishi Mushroom Health Benefits

What is reishi mushroom good for? Maybe you’ve heard friends or family members talk about the fungi, but aren’t exactly sure what its use is.

There are an endless number of medicinal claims that have been made about reishi mushroom benefits. Some have been well-studied and proven, while others currently lack any scientific evidence to support them.

The lab studies so far have identified some interesting compounds in reishi mushrooms.

Beta-glucans – These compounds may be able to help stop the spread and growth of cancer cells. In animal testing, animals fed beta-glucans had more active and stronger immune systems.

Triterpenes – These substances have anti-allergy and blood pressure lowering effects.

Sterols – Act as precursors to human hormones in the body.

Reishi mushrooms have been shown to slow blood clotting. One study also suggests that reishi extracts can help with urinary tract problems. One study even suggests that the reishi mushroom may be helpful in lowering cholesterol. Although so far this has only been tested on animals.

Untested claims of the reishi mushroom include potential uses in treating HIV and AIDS, fatigue and other medical conditions.

Reishi mushrooms are considered an adaptogen, which is a plant or fungi that can help the body resist or cope with physical and mental stress. Lastly, reishi may be used to treat diabetes and insulin resistance.

More scientific studies need to be completed before we can say definitively what the benefits of this mushroom are. However preliminary research suggests it likely has anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial, antioxidant and analgesic (pain-relieving) properties.