February 13, 2021

Best mushroom supplements brands: according to my research

🍄 Medicinal mushrooms

Medicinal mushrooms are everywhere right now - from anti-anxiety, anti-inflammatory to anti-cancer effects and everything in between. There seems to be no end to this fabulous fungus. But how do you find a good mushroom supplement? Turns out it's pretty difficult. 

Just to remind you, I am not a nutritionist, herbalist or any other IST and I'm also not receiving any compensation for any products mentioned. 

 

Mushroom supplement benefits:

There are a whole host of reasons why mushrooms are good for us. There are several hundred different types and I am going to wayyy oversimplify what I’ve read:
  • All mushrooms - great for immune system and fighting off infections.
  • Cordyceps - super energy booster, good one for recovering athletics, lungs 
  • Lions mane - brain health, nervous system & mood. Anti-dementia effects.
  • Turkey Tail - great for chemotherapy and radiation therapy
  • Reishii - anxiety, sleep, anti-cancerous, anti-inflammatory, auto-immune
All mushrooms are high in anti-oxidants, fibre, minerals B & D vitamins and low in calories and fat.
 
I stumbled across this diagram which is a great summary of when to take what:

👨‍🍳 Mushroom supplements  

As with all supplements, the best thing to do is to actually introduce a variety of mushroom foods into your diet.  Shiitake, grey oyster etc. should be relatively easy to come by in Ireland but I struggled to find any in supermarkets this week. Anyone found any? It’s best to cook mushrooms with fats like butter to help absorption. 
 
I found a good selection online here (available in Ireland).  They are not certified organic but I did reach out to the owners and they did assure me that no pesticides etc. are used. 
 

🤔 How to choose a mushroom supplement?

Mushroom supplements are an absolute minefield and it's too easy to pick a cheap sub-standard product. In fact, I would guess most of the products I looked at did not meet the below criteria. 
 
Here’s a checklist of what to look out for:
  • Is it certified organic?
  • Is it made from an extract? (make sure it says extract and not powder)
  • Is it made from the full mushroom (not just mycelium on grain). Look out for the words fruiting body and full-spectrum to make sure its not a cheap grain product.
  • Does it list the product components like the beta-glucans and triterpenoid compounds? 
  • Does the product have a third party certificate of analysis (COA) . Although these are hard to come by!
 

💊 Best mushroom supplement brands

So many companies are selling mycelium on grain, the cheap part of the mushroom which contains the least amount of medicinal value mixed with grains. Amazon for example, are full of these types of supplements. 
 
For this reason, I have chosen the true pioneers of mushroom supplements, owned by inspiring leaders in the field.

Which mushroom supplement? 

Yeah yeah i know, life is really busy, which of these? Difficult to say but I've outlined some thoughts below.

  • Four Sigmata looks good. It's mixed with coffee so it's not like taking another capsule but a drink. Saying that, you'd hope the coffee isn't rank. If you do go for this one, go for the elixir, its much higher % of mushroom than their basic version (1500mg vs. 250mg) . In fact, the 1500mg is the highest I saw out of all these products. 
  • Oriveda products are much more expensive than other mushroom products.  However, they are total nerds on their site and explain all their ingredients, extraction methods etc. and I'm totally digging it 😍. Yes they might be expensive but at least you would know what you're getting. 
  • Real mushrooms also seem like a good option. They do water extraction on most of their products (much cheaper than dual extraction) but they give scientific reasons for this choice. 
  • Host defence use alot of mycelium (cheaper part of the mushroom). They  would probably be my last choice from this list because of that.