Anymore, it seems that the mere mention of medicinal substances that are not dispensed by a doctor is cause for threats of criminal charges. (In actuality, there is no crime in anything related to practicing medicine without credentials. It is all just threats and bullying.)

The myth has been perpetuated that herbs are dangerous, and that anything that has any kind of health benefit has to be screened by scientists and approved by the FDA before you are allowed to suggest that it might have benefit. Anything that CAN be proven to have a benefit is rushed off to be dissected, extracted, concentrated and adulterated, and the original food item is quickly taken out of circulation and banned from being sold. After all, if it DOES help an illness, you can't possibly trust people who do not have a medical degree to use it - even if it is a food they've been eating all their lives (unless of course it is some kind of industrial food production waste product like Oat Bran that the grain industry wants to shove into a price increase - in that case, they'll devise "supportive evidence" to show what a good idea eating it is, when in fact the testing showed that whole oats helped, not that tossing oat bran into your bread was a magic answer).

I am, admittedly, a bit of a cynic.

Historically, it was known that pretty much all foods had some kind of benefit (especially if we eat them). Not because they had any magical properties or special medical value, but simply because they were foods that helped encourage the body to heal or to stay well. Chicken soup for recovering from the flu, or when you had a cold. No magic there, nothing suspicious, just good nourishment that was easy to digest, and that provided the nutrients that people who had just been ill were most likely to be low on.

Of course, nobody analyzed that, they just knew that chicken soup felt better when you were recovering than steak and potatoes. When scientists did finally analyze that (almost certainly at the behest of the chicken soup industry - studying no doubt, homemade chicken soup, in an effort to promote the canned soup industry), they found that there is valid reason to suppose that chicken soup may aid in recovery from colds, flus, and stomach bugs. But then, Grandma knew that all along, only she didn't need a canned soup company to tell her so, or to provide the soup in question. She knew because her mother fed her soup when she was sick, and taught her how to make it so she could care for her own family.

People used to eat mushrooms. They gathered them in the wild, and taught their children how to do so. They ate them because they were "free food", easily gathered when one was out and about, often when doing other things such as gathering berries or firewood. Mushrooms sold at the markets were also relatively inexpensive, gathered by peasants who needed some extra cash, and sold direct to the customer, without a middle man taking the majority of the profits.

They knew that some mushrooms helped certain conditions. Mushrooms were gifts of God, like herbs and berries and roots, to be used with wisdom and thanksgiving, and which could help when one needed to treat a certain illness. Of course, there was a lot of folktale mixed in with the genuine pearls of wisdom, but it was accepted that mushrooms could have powerful healing capacity when used properly.

Mushrooms in general (with the exception of the "white pretender", the commercial White Button Mushroom - incidentally a manmade food) have a range of benefits, to one degree or another. Most edible ones help with healing skin, avoiding problems such as ovarian cysts (and PCOS), or uterine fibroids. They also helps your body to alleviate damage done by chemicals to your intestines, circulatory system, pulmonary system, and skin. Most mushrooms, to one degree or another, possess these benefits. Many have other benefits as well, from small to great.

It isn't that they have "pharmacologically active" components, so much as that they have nutrients in an absorbable form, which much of the food which we eat is lacking. They do these things for us because they provide the nutritional support for that to happen. Most of the food we eat is chemically embalmed or destroyed completely by heat. Mushrooms are often eaten fresh or prepared fresh, or used dried, both methods preserving the active elements which support good health.

Some do have amazing capacity to heal or mitigate the various conditions that beset us in life.

So do other healthy foods and herbs. Good, whole, clean foods, all have the capacity to heal the body in one way or another. (Geez, I sure want a Pop Tart about now!) I think that it is not mushrooms particularly that we need to heal our ailing populations, but merely clean and fresh food, enjoyed with the bran on, skin intact, germ in place, fat balanced, and yolks in. When we denude our food, castrate and decapitate the wholesome grains and vegetables, sterilize out all the healthy probiotics, and then chemify everything with poisons, it is no wonder that food now hurts instead of healing us.

Fresh food contains elements that scientists cannot even begin to analyze. They gather around their microscopes, identify the most visible elements of nutrition, and completely ignore the less visible ones. They are the micronutrients and compounds which are responsible for not just keeping us alive, but for regulating the body so that things stay in balance. They help us maintain healthy weight, keep from having chronic headaches, reduce fatigue and asthma, regulate blood sugar and metabolism, keep our hearts and veins healthy, slow the age related degeneration of the brain, keep the immune system strong in fighting disease while reducing instances of auto-immune illness, and they help our bodies heal and compensate for the damage that the chemical exposures in this world inflict on our bodies.

Good food always does that. Mushrooms do most of what they do simply because they are good food. No magic there. No threat to the medical profession there, unless they are so scared of people getting well that they fear for their job security and WANT more sick people.

Mushrooms are one of the last foods you can buy that is gathered in the wild, and which is frequently sold by small businesses direct to the customer.

One might say that it is more accurate to claim that a mushroom a day keeps the doctor away than to claim the same for apples. And that still isn't strictly true - you'll still probably need the occasional visit for serious illness. But a mushroom a day might just keep you from having to carry a day planner to schedule your medical appointments.

When we note at the bottom of the page something that a mushroom might be good for, we are basing that on research, historical evidence, traditional usage, and logical conclusions based on our knowledge of that particular mushroom and its nutritional make-up. But don't take our word for it - do your own research.

We only carry mushrooms that are considered to be clearly edible, or specifically medicinal. If we find reports of allergic reactions being more common, we may carry it and post a warning. If there are confusing stories about people potentially becoming ill from it, with intestinal distress, or other serious after-effects, we research WHY it has done so, and post the info. In spite of that, you still may have an allergic reaction to a mushroom, or you may have a problem because of other factors in your body that are different than the general public. Again, do your own research and don't take our word for it.

And by all means, if you have a serious medical condition that might be negatively influenced by consumption of a mushroom that is classed as edible, please check with your doctor, who is certain to either dismiss the mushroom as just a mushroom, or go into a full scale panic and warn you never to eat a mushroom you did not buy in the grocery store.