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Shiitake Mushrooms: Superfoods for 2024 Health and Wellness Routines

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Shiitake Mushrooms: Superfoods for 2024 Health and Wellness Routines

The All-Powerful Mushroom Superfood for Better Diets, Function, and Productivity

Shiitake mushrooms are all over the map for cooking today. Given their widely-recognized healing properties and strong vitamin count, it's only natural that they've moved west into popular health and wellness routines. They can be tossed into pastas, soups, and a whole mess of other recipes you might be looking to try. Even beyond that, there are a range of delicious supplement blends as well in powders, tinctures, gummies, and more.

But what really sets them apart from just your run-of-the-mill white button or cremini mushrooms? Does it really make that much of a difference?

 Today, we'll take a deep dive into what sets shiitake mushrooms apart from your average cooking mushrooms, and medicinal mushroom properties that you can be taking advantage of in your everyday diet from fungi-powered superfoods in supplements like Daily. 

 Shiitake Mushrooms - Medicinal Mushrooms Benefits - Troomy Nootropics in Whittier, CA

What are Medicinal Mushrooms?

Medicinal mushrooms (or adaptogenic mushrooms) are the highest performing mushrooms available today. While it's great to have any form of mushrooms in your daily routine, adaptogenic mushrooms go above and beyond just having strong vitamins and proteins.  This extra step they take goes through functional benefits you can get with each mushroom today. These functional benefits include:

  • Stress/anxiety relief
  • Immune support
  • Raw energy
  • Productivity boost
  • Antioxidant support

Are They Safe?

Absolutely! Adaptogenic mushrooms have zero hallucinogenic properties. You don't have to worry about your kitchen changing color or anything. One ailment that's been linked to consistent shiitake use is dermatitis. Lentinan is the portion of shiitake that's linked to this, and can come up as a rash, which sometimes may be perceived as an allergic reaction.

While it is rare to be allergic to shiitake, it's still worth being aware of allergic reactions that might pop up with asthma-related reactions in the body. Otherwise, there's minimal evidence of extremely rare allergies present in shiitake mushrooms.

Shiitake Mushrooms - Health Benefits of Medicinal Mushrooms - Troomy Nootropics

Shiitake Mushroom Benefits

Anti-Inflammatory Properties

Inflammation is extremely common in virtually every ailment. If you can't keep it in check, infections can spread, diseases develop, and a ton of other long-term damage can be sustained instead of rooting it out as early as possible.

Of course, inflammation is a natural reaction, and something the body does when healthy. The point of shiitake regulating is it so it can serve its purpose and not progress to something more damaging.

Eritadenine, which is a cholesterol-crusher present in shiitake, is great for balancing cholesterol levels in the blood. This foundation pairs perfectly with the beta-glucan support you get in absorbing cholesterol through the intestine, and reducing inflammation fast.

Cardiovascular, Heart Health

Heart health is vital to the rest of your body's function, especially when it comes to exercise and the development of various diseases. This support roots in that same cholesterol control that shiitake develops through eritadenine, as well as phytonutrients that keep blood vessel walls protected from plaque buildup.

These benefits end up positively impacting blood pressure and circulation, maintaining a higher quality of overall body function in exercise, daily routines, and more.

Immunity Support

Immunity's vital to all kinds of ailments that can press you when you're not feeling your best. For the body's control of immunity, polysaccharides are a really strong foundation you can build up through various supplements like shiitake.

They protect against cell damage primarily, but also can fight of microbes on a more advanced level. These anti-inflammatory polysaccharides also pair well with the inflammation properties sought in most medicinal mushrooms, like reishi, lion's mane, and others you might be considering to give a try as well. 

Breaking Down Cancer Cells

Cancer cells need to be kept in check and diminished as early in development as possible to keep you healthy. Fortunately, shiitake extends even to the cancer level of supporting your body's daily function. Through that immune system health improvement we talked about earlier, tumor growth may be slowed and actually fought naturally by those same lentinan sugar molecules. 

This is vital to early stages of cancer development, and is always a nice benefit to be on the lookout for in general health and wellness supplements.

Brain Function

Brain function's a huge part of mushroom-powered wellness in general. You need your cognition working at a high level to get work done on time, avoid brain fog, and keep your stress levels low.

Luckily with shiitake, you can get B vitamins into your diet plan fast, translating to adrenal function support and reduce risk of mild cognitive impairment. However, other sister mushrooms like lion's mane are fantastic pairings with shiitake for a stronger push to cognitive health boosting in your brain. Try 'em all, and find the perfect group of each to get the best results for your own needs.

Even with all these functional benefits that shiitake and other medicinal mushrooms offer, there's more to give in your body's wellness support as well. Take gut health, for example.

Gut Health - Strong Benefits of Medicinal Mushrooms - Troomy Nootropics in Whittier, CA

How Do Medicinal Mushrooms Impact Gut Health?

Medicinal mushrooms are fantastic for gut health due to their fibers and digestive support. Through that inflammation diminished through their eritadenine content, shiitake mushrooms can quickly elevate your gut health and regulate a ton of new health benefits into your diet seamlessly. 

What Is Gut Health?

Gut health is an essential element to your body's function. Whether you have "good" or "bad" gut health depends mainly on the bacteria that enters your body, yeast, and digestion. The majority of your immune system then depends on this relationship being strong, and your gut being able to take on added nutrients in order to avoid getting sick or developing autoimmune disorders.

To keep it in check and avoid these ailments, your diet is going to play a big role. Building up strong vitamin intake, proteins, and productivity-boosting function. For example, if your gut can adequately process and regulate protein throughout the body, a natural increase in energy and feeling at your best is going to be far simpler than if your gut's been damaged heavily and is put at a disadvantage.

Luckily, there are surefire, proven routes to keeping your gut healthy today.

How Do Medicinal Mushrooms Offer Better Gut Health?

 Medicinal mushrooms like shiitake are excellent contributors to better gut performance. The key issues for most folks' guts are:

  • Stress
  • Nutrition
  • Antibiotics/medication

Together, each of these are all functionally fought by medicinal mushrooms, promoting a healthier natural body state. Still, remember that these factors don't change overnight. If you're feeling stressed and start working in a shiitake mushroom supplement recommended for stress reducing to better your gut health, it'll likely take days, weeks, or months of regular use to start seeing a real change.

Overall, those benefits are well worth it in our book, and we've found strong ways to get started with medicinal mushrooms for increasing gut health.

How Can I Try Them?

There's a handful of routes to try mushrooms in different supplements. Now it just comes down to finding a recipe that you like, or a powder, tincture, gummy blend that makes daily health and wellness simple.

 Daily Mushroom Gummies - Health Benefits of Shiitake Mushrooms - Troomy Nootropics

Trying Medicinal Mushroom Supplements

Powders

Powders are a great place to start. They offer quick routes to getting mushrooms like shiitake into your diet without being overbearing in prep work.

Grab a handful of powder and toss it into your next meal. While it always needs something else to go with it, powder's an easy alternative to cooking raw mushrooms. Just be sure to avoid blends of powders with caffeine or added sugars.

Extract/Capsules

Shiitake mushroom extract is found in the majority of these supplements, but can be consolidated even further to tincture and capsule form.

For the most part, these are the most fast-acting blends of shiitake mushrooms for stronger body function. The only problem is they might end up tasting like medicine or just not being an enjoyable experience. If you like tinctures already, though, then this is a great place to start with mushroom-powered wellness.

Smoothies and Juices 

Smoothies are an excellent way to blend up shiitake mushrooms into a quick, punch-packing nutrient bomb. You can customize your recipe around all your favorite fruits and veggies, while still getting a ton of functional support from superfood mushrooms.

The trouble with smoothies though is there usually is a ton of prep time for the fruit and veggies. Unless you're ready to go with a straight raw mushroom and milk blend, then it's going to take a few extra minutes every day to get ready.

To get the best of both worlds, mushroom gummies are the way to go.

Mushroom Gummies

Mushroom gummies are the perfect medium for all the benefits of mushrooms and none of the prep work. You get all the qualities benefits of shiitake mushroom extracts with ease, delicious flavors, and organic ingredients. 

Fortunately, Troomy's got some high-quality blends of powerful medicinal mushrooms like shiitake to try!

Shiitake Mushrooms in Mushroom Gummies - Medicinal Mushroom Health Benefits - Troomy Nootropics in Whittier, CA

Mushroom Gummy Blends to Try Today!

Overall, shiitake's an incredible mushroom to get started with medicinal mushroom-powered wellness. They're easy to work into meals, and have a wide variety of supplements available today.

As we've assessed and found the best benefits you can look for in shiitake mushroom supplements, we recommend giving our Daily blend of gummies here at Troomy a try. This blend combines 14 of the most impactful mushrooms into one high performance daily-vitamin blend to help you get through the day with ease.

With organic ingredients, zero caffeine, and zero processed sugars, it's easier than ever to try deliciously fruity gummies today. So why wait? Find your "True Me" with Troomy today!

Alex Heining

About the Author

Alex Heining is a major supporter and activist of mushroom-powered wellness, and has been a leader on our Troomy Nootropics team since day one. As a graduate from the University of Oregon and marketer in the Los Angeles area, he constantly aims to increase activity and acquire more knowledge on ever-changing innovations in the fungi industry today.

Over our first year as a company, he’s combined his efforts with our top blending strategists to inform the Troomy community on developments in mushroom-powered wellness, while developing delicious, functionally-powerful gummies for daily use. Whether he’s in the weightroom, studying new extraction methods, or working on some new songs, he’ll always be ready to talk your ear off about different ways you can find your “True Me” with Troomy.

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