Medicinal Mushrooms 101

Written by Kiki Athanas, In-House Wellness Expert @ Calii Love and Founder of MEByKiki.com.

Mushrooms, they’re all the rage amongst health nuts these days!

Not your basic button kind – but not your crazy psychedelic kind either (although both have their place!). In today’s post, I’m diving deeper into “medicinal mushrooms”, which are quickly becoming the hot new health trend and with good reason. Medicinal mushrooms boast endless benefits, and with this magical kingdom, the science is well and truly there to back what otherwise might seem like claims that are too good to be true!

But wait – what’s the difference between regular “food” mushrooms vs these medicinal varieties I’m mentioning?

While everyday mushrooms are great too – loaded with antioxidants and help boost your immune system, medicinal shrooms contain indigestible fibre (and usually don’t make for the tastiest of cooking ingredients!). You can think of them more like supplements – they support your body and strengthen your response to stressful situations. In fact, if you’re dealing with a health concern like low energy, inflammation, adrenal fatigue, overall stress, etc., there is very likely a mushroom that you can add into your diet that addresses those symptoms at the root.

How to add them into your diet?

Usually these medicinal mushrooms come in the form of powdered extracts, tinctures, or in capsules. If you’re a
DIY-er, you could even harvest and dry your own for making tea concoctions – but that can be quite involved and
you really do need to know what you’re doing…so I prefer to let the experts handle that part, and I take care of incorporating them into my life in the easiest and tastiest way possible!

Here are my 3 favourite ways to get my daily dose of shroom goodness in:

1. Add cordyceps to your morning GO TIME elixir.

Cordyceps have been shown to increase the body’s production of the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is essential for delivering energy to the muscles. Essentially, this supports the way your body uses oxygen, especially during exercise. It’s the perfect boost to your morning tonic – which I suggest is a matcha (not coffee!) for countless other reasons…

2. Add reishi to a salad dressing.

Reishi tastes gross, and it’s supposed to. In fact, the more bitter the reishi, the more chance you’ve found a good source (more on how to find a good mushroom that will actually work here). I like to lean into the bitter goodness by incorporating it into a dressing with bitter greens – this sort of digestive stimulation and support is not done often enough in the standard North American diet. Furthermore, reishi’s prebiotic content supports the production of healthy gut bacteria, making for a happy tummy and thus a happy mind-body.

3. Add chaga to a chocolatey tonic.

Known as the “King of Medicinal Mushrooms“; chaga is the second most antioxidant-rich food in the world aside from chocolate. Best of all? It’s earthy almost caramel like flavour goes perfectly with antioxidant runner up chocolate. There’s no better way to upgrade your hot cacao bevvy than with some immune-boosting fungi.

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