Q: Between hot water extraction and freeze dried, which method maintain the optimal medicinal benefits?

I’m thinking about buying reishi, maitake, shitake but was told that hot water extraction will destroy some of the medicinal benefits, is that true?

A: All of the references from the published medical and scientific research, and all the references from traditional herbalism, from China, Russia, Japan, Korea or Brazil, wherever medicinal mushrooms have been and are used as medicinal herbs, medicinal mushrooms with any mycelium are always prepared as a hot water extract.

Every active compounds we know to exist in medicinal mushrooms and mycelium have been discovered by analyzing hot water extracts.

Hot water extracts are the only form of mushroom supplement ever used or studied in the scientific research.

The only study that ever used an un-extracted , freeze dried mushroom supplement was an ongoing NIH study on breast cancer where they used a freeze dried Coriolus versicolor (Turkey Tail) mushroom supplement supplied by Fungi Perfecti.  However, after only 18 months, the freeze dried supplement was dumped from the 7 year study and replaced with a hot water extract.

This was announced at a Society for Integrative Oncology conference in NY, NY in November of 2010.  They switched to PSK, a hot water extract of Coriolus versicolor supplied by a Japanese company, Kureha Inc.

If there are heat sensitive compounds in mushrooms or mushroom mycelium they have never been part of the equation in explaining the immune health benefits of medicinal mushrooms or mycelium.  The only clinically validated method for extracting the beta glucans and other active compounds form medicinal mushrooms is hot water extraction.

The only reason companies make the unextracted mycelium powder (grown on grain and freeze dried) is that it only costs 50 cents a kilo to manufacture, and, after this powder is encapsulated it can be sold for $1,000.00 a kilo at retail, $500.00 a kilo at wholesale, and $350.00 a kilo to the distributor.

Thank you for your question,

Medicinal Mushroom Review