Great Throughts Treasury

"Mushrooms have many helpful nutrients, including beta glucans for immune enhancement, ergothioneines for antioxidative potentiation, nerve growth stimulators for helping brain function, and antimicrobial compounds for limiting viruses."

"Mushrooms can be invisible to the naked eye and they can be right in front of you. And people just can't see them. There have been many times that I have naturally sat down in the woods, mushroom hunting and not being able to find mushrooms. I am sitting there quietly in the forest resting. I look over and the very mushrooms I'm looking for are right by my feet sometimes."

"My family is delighted every time I cook maitake. Our taste buds awaken in anticipation of its rich, deep and nuanced flavors."

"Mushrooms provide a vast array of potential medicinal compounds. Many mushrooms - such as portobello, oyster, reishi and maitake - are well-known for these properties, but the lion's mane mushroom, in particular, has drawn the attention of researchers for its notable nerve-regenerative properties."

"My eco or myco challenge would be for every listener out there to indeed go sit with nature and then explore with your hands. Dig into the soil. Smell the richness of the soil and find these mycelial lenses that are all around you. Every mycelial lens outgases fragrant signatures. The forest ecosystems smell so good largely because of the fragrances of the mycelium that are outgassing."

"My book ?Mycelium Running? is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet. It is a powerful book. It's one book I think in a series of manuals that people can use to help reverse course or change course. Smallpox doesn't care if you are Republican or Democrat. Smallpox doesn't care about borders. These bioepidemics are going to have a great leveling effect politically speaking because once they emerge out of the landscape we are going to all have to work together very, very rapidly."

"My team and I have discovered, over decades of study, that mushroom mycelium is a rich resource of new antimicrobial compounds, which work in concert, helping protecting the mushrooms - and us - from microbial pathogens."

"Mycelium conforms to string theory and the organization of matter in the universe follows strings of matter. As we go further out in larger and larger dimensions we see these same types of mycelial archetypes throughout nature. Networks are resilient. They survive catastrophes. They are able to re-grow and survive. That is the way of nature. I have the sense that we are part of this larger fabric. We call it same self-recognition. The mycelium grows. It achieves a fabric like structures that gives it the ability to be able to navigate through very complex ecosystems. There are so many examples. I have been fortunate in that this is my time. I am the mycelial messenger perhaps. There are a lot of other - thousands of other people before me and thousands of other people that will come after me. My trust and belief in the deep intelligence of Nature keeps bringing rewards that shock people and that have been verified scientifically and that open up many new opportunities."

"Mycelium is Earth?s natural Internet."

"Mycelium Running: How mushrooms can save the world."

"Nature is a numbers game. We need all the support we can get as our immune systems and health are under assault from pollution, stress, contaminated food and age-related diseases as our lifespans increase."

"Now if we lost our old-growth forests, if we lost that species that grows exclusively in that forest as they have in Europe, and there was a smallpox epidemic, and after 1980, no one has been immunized against smallpox, we are extremely susceptible to a smallpox epidemic. If we had lost the biodiversity within the forest that has the species that potentially could fight smallpox, millions of lives would be at stake. So we can't say now whether it will be clinically applicable. But all indications thus far are extremely positive. The Bioshield Program is funded with $4 billion or $5 billion and they have some of the best testing protocols of any laboratory in the world. We have passed all of their major benchmarks."

"Mycologists are few and far between. We are under-funded, poorly represented in the context of other sciences - ironic, as the very foundation of our ecosystems are directly dependent upon fungi, which ultimately create the foundation of soils."

"Nitric oxide production by immune cells is one of the key mechanisms that our bodies use to destroy diseased cells. Enhancement of these types of immune responses is seen consistently with many medicinal mushrooms that have been tested by cancer researchers."

"Of all mushrooms commonly consumed, oyster mushrooms in the genus Pleurotus stand out as exceptional allies for improving human and environmental health. These mushrooms enjoy a terrific reputation as the easiest to cultivate, richly nutritious and medicinally supportive."

"Prevention is a lot better than treating after the fact. Every hour that we spend trying to prevent these bioepidemics and lots of species going down the toilet frankly, will be time very, very well spent."

"Rather than going to molecular modeling and great computers and being able to play God, which I know incentivizes researchers and scientists because they can pull all these patents, I think it's much better that we go full circle and we look at the very habitats that have given us life and understand the complexity in the relationships."

"The fungi are the leading edge organisms in nature. Just as the first organisms came to land over 1.3 billion years ago, these fungi are edge runners. And being edge runners they like interface environments. As they go across a habitat, they built food webs that support all sorts of other organisms that ride upon them. So people need to understand that these fungi are extremely powerful environmental healers. And when we engage them purposely, then they can be fantastic allies for helping us repair the ecosystems that we have so severely damaged."

"Shivers went up and down my spine. It was too dark. I didn't have a flashlight. I pulled out my wallet and I threw some paper on the ground thinking, ?I?ll come back because what I felt, felt like one of these mushrooms that I was seeking.? The next morning I came back and there was a second collection of this species called Psilocybe sylvatica, which means woodland mushroom, ever collected. How does that happen? I mean, how does that happen? The improbability of that is beyond mathematics. Yet it happened. So mushrooms have called to me and I think they can call to many people. If we seek them they will find us more so than we find them."

"The majority of modern medicines originate in nature. Although some mushrooms have been used in therapies for thousands of years, we are still discovering new potential medicines hidden within them."

"Some people think I'm a mycological heretic, some people think I'm a mycological revolutionary, and some just think I'm crazy."

"That's what I think is happening. It is a growing plague of deforestation that is occurring around our planet. Once the CO2 levels hit 10,000 parts per million, all large animals will die off. That trend is a trend towards which we?re going right now. I wish people would spend more attention to this issue rather than so much of the political cacophony that dominates the airwaves."

"The opposite trend will be obvious to listener as a form of ecological suicide. We are engaged, right now, in ecological suicide. If you put a dome over Shanghai, how long would that city survive? One day. Maybe two days. There are regions of this world that, if you amplified them as an example of an ecosystem, there would be no life, certainly not life, as we know it."

"The structure of the mycelium mimics that of the computer Internet. I first proposed this in the mid-1990s that mycelium is Earth's natural Internet. As you walk upon these membranes of cells, these are neurological landscapes that infuse all soils. They are sentient. They are aware that you're there. As you leave your footsteps, the mycelium reaches up and responds by grabbing newly available broken twigs or sticks etc."

"The virus-to-cancer connection is where medicinal mushrooms offer unique opportunities for medical research."

"Then the mycelium is also producing all of these crystals that take CO2 out of the atmosphere. By investing in the fungal lifecycles we not only take CO2 out of the atmosphere, but we build humus. So the carbon sink and the carbon bank of soils is increased. As soils are increased, they have a better carrying capacity of more biodiversity and we reinvest then in ecosystems that can further support life."

"There were at least two cataclysmic events that steered evolution on this planet. 250 million years ago there was a huge asteroid impact. When that occurred, enormous amounts of debris were jettisoned into the atmosphere. The earth became shrouded in dust. The skies darkened and sunlight was cut off from the face of the earth for years, decades, we really don't know how long. Because there was no sunlight plants died. Large animals died. More than 90% of the species actually went extinct and fungi inherited the earth. The organisms that paired with fungi survived obviously because most of these fungi did not require light. So life then again began to proliferate. Lots of species then evolved. Then we marched forward again until 65 million years ago and BAM, we got hit again. There is a recurring theme here folks. So again, with the second asteroid impact the earth was shrouded in dust. The sunlight was cut off and fungi re-inherited the earth."

"Through trial-and-error and observable outcomes, our ancestors narrowed the field of edible mushroom candidates to just a few with remarkable, health-supporting properties."

"Time is short. We are going to lose 50% of the species on the earth in the next hundred years, of species that we know. What about the species that we don't know? Over 90% of the species in the kingdom of fungi are unknown. We only know about 10% of all the species that are out there. So we have a little bit of knowledge. And the little bit of knowledge that we have and what we know about it and how rapidly we are losing these candidate species means that we are losing tools in our biological tool chest."

"Today, reishi stands out as one the most valuable of all polypore mushrooms in nature for the benefit of our health. Many naturopaths and doctors prefer organically-grown reishi from pristine environments because they are more pure."

"There are some things that are implicitly true in life. I have to say I have found a deep well of knowledge. Literally every day that I wake up I am happy to be alive because I know my life has meaning and I can save thousands of lives if not thousands of species."

"Those two asteroid impacts steered the cooperation or symbiosis of animals and plants with fungi. So we exist today in collaboration with fungi. They are the construct of the food web. Fungi are the grand molecular disassemblers of nature. They break down plant, animal and mineral into soil. So these are the great soil magicians of nature. And most everybody knows that the topsoil on the earth is incredibly thin and yet it supports hundreds of millions of different species that live in the very top 6 inches. This thin skin that has given us life is greatly threatened. As we lose biodiversity, especially with fungi, we begin to unravel the very food networks that have given rise to us."

"Traditionally, our ancestors boiled mushrooms in water to make a soothing tea. Boiling served several purposes: killing contaminants, softening the flesh, and extracting the rich soluble polysaccharides."

"Turkey tail mushrooms have been used to treat various maladies for hundreds of years in Asia, Europe, and by indigenous peoples in North America. Records of turkey tail brewed as medicinal tea date from the early 15th century, during the Ming Dynasty in China."

"Understand these mycelial lenses and how vast they are and then identify, if you can, target 10 edible mushrooms that you can learn how to identify. They are very easy. Morels are very easy. Shaggy Mane?s very easy. Choose the 10 most common edible mushrooms in your area. Learn how to identify them. And then take children into the woods. When you're picking the mushrooms, show the mushrooms come from this hidden, invisible network just beneath the surface of the soil and that these fungi create the very soils that give us life."

"Vitamin D from mushrooms is not only vegan and vegetarian friendly, but you can prepare your own by exposing mushrooms to the summer sun."

"What is most unfortunate is that we are recognizing the role and the importance of these organisms as they are becoming extinct. And like rivets on an airplane, how many species will we lose before we have catastrophic failure? I think that we are top-heavy right now from an evolutionary sense. We are losing the very ground support network that has given us life. If we are not careful, the rule of nature is that when a species exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, nature revolts."

"When the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago and coalesced out of stardust, the first organisms first appeared in the ocean. The very first organisms on land were fungi. They marched onto land 1.3 billion years ago and plants followed 600 million years later."

"While reishi mushrooms have historically been prepared as teas or infusions, other modern preparations include capsules, tinctures, and fractionated extracts of mushrooms, mycelium, and spores."

"We evolved living in more sunlight than today. We make our own vitamin D when sunlight hits our skin cells. Many people living in the northern hemisphere, however, suffer from lower levels of vitamin D during the fall, winter and spring."