Nutritional pharmaceuticals? There are a few words that, when put together, have the potential to pack power into our understanding of the body’s health regarding foods. These foods are usually natural and medicinally compelling, straight from the earth, vine, bush, tree, or water, and already have amazing properties that cause people to place them into categories such as “functional foods” or “superfood”… but their nutritional value is so specific that these natural (and sometimes rare) high-quality foods may yield special health benefits.
A few of the words to describe these foods include…
Health related words:
Medicinal
Pharmaceutical
Food related words:
Nutritional
Fungi (mushrooms)
When put together we get terms like “medicinal mushrooms” or “nutritional pharmaceuticals” we get a vision of just how important these foods are because they can help heal people or keep them healthy from many illnesses or diseases, or like medicinal mushrooms, have properties that tremendously boost the immune system, or have anti-cancer, anti-tumor, antibacterial, antiviral, and other constituents that promote health and wellness.
Another term that has become common is “nutraceuticals”, which is a shortened description of nutritional pharmaceuticals. Certain edible medicinal mushrooms qualify as nutraceuticals since they are being investigated worldwide for their pharmacological properties.
One of these mushrooms, which have been used for over 2,000 years by Asian cultures for both their nutritional and medicinal values, is Ganoderma lucidum, also known as Lingzhi (from China) or red Reishi mushroom.
Ganoderma lucidum in nutritional pharmaceuticals (nutraceuticals)
Red reishi mushroom
In a study by KS Bishop, CH Kao, et al., from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal, the fungus Ganoderma lucidum (Lingzhi), they said, was revered for 2,000 years as being “a medicinal mushroom for treating assorted diseases and prolonging life … [and that the] popularity of Lingzhi has escalated across the globe.”
Today this mushrooms is so well known, and so widely distributed, that it has become a “multi-billion dollar industry wherein Lingzhi is cultivated or collected from the wild and consumed as a tea, in alcoholic beverages, and as a nutraceutical to confer numerous health benefits.”
Lingzhi is today treasured as an ancient herbal remedy and is also being developed as not only a nutraceutical, but its constituents being part of clinical studies and pharmaceutical grade drugs for use in cancer patients as adjunct therapies. Today the realization of Ganoderma lucidum has hit the market as a 2.5 billion dollar industry (in the USA), not including other countries.
Medicinal mushrooms, or natural nutritional pharmacueticals (nutraceuticals) are becoming increasingly used as people are made aware of their fantastic health benefits as both a food and a potent natural medicine.
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The author of this story is a staff writer for National Nutraceuticals’ online news portals, such as Amino Acid Information Center at http://www.aminoacidinformation.com .
Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25794896
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