Excellent question. I fully support the ongoing use of mushrooms to keep the immune system alert to threats and recommend them for preventing flu. The confusion regarding ongoing use of mushrooms and over-stimulation of the immune system is due in part to an imperfect view of how the immune system functions. Our immune system is an incredibly complex system that functions by identifying threats, classifying threats, and using selective mechanisms to destroy the threats. However, it is easy to start viewing our body's defense system simply as an army that needs to be "activated" to destroy pathogens or "suppressed" if the army's activities are causing undue civilian damages (allergies or auto-immune conditions). Often, what we view as an overactive immune system is better described as a system out of balance. An individual may find that they never get colds (immune system working well) at the same time as they find they have cancer (immune system failure) or allergies (overactive immune system). Such a person may be best described as having an immune system out of balance.

Medicinal mushroom are adaptogens. This means that they help restore balance. Medicinal mushrooms do not "stimulate" the immune system. When the immune system is overactive, like the inappropriate immune reaction to dust and pollen called allergies, mushrooms (taken long term ) will reduce sensitivities. This action is not due to mushrooms suppressing the immune system. Immune suppression is more aptly applied to anti-histamines. Anti-histamines are used specifically to suppress the symptoms arising from the allergic immune response, they do nothing to correct the underlying imbalance. Mushrooms, on the other hand, appear to shift the immune system away from inappropriate activities to desirable activities. The mushrooms act intelligent, which makes their activities somewhat amazing and certainly unlike any drugs. The adaptogenic activity of mushrooms is well documented, but how they restore balance isn't well understood, in part because we don't completely understand how the immune system functions.

Medicinal mushrooms appear to activate surveillance activities of the immune system. One of the things they do is stimulate natural killer cells. NK cells identify and destroy abnormal cells in the body. These abnormal cells could be cancerous or they could be infected with a virus. Let's consider the bird flu. Since it is an influenza virus, its incubation period is about four days. What if during that time the immune system was able to identify and kill all the cells that had been infected with the virus. This is what we call not getting the flu. You actually got the flu, but your immune system effectively eliminated the virus before symptoms occurred. If we did a blood test on you a month later we would find that you had antibodies against the H5N1 virus. This is what happens to many people exposed to the flu. Yes, even the bird flu.

Mushrooms stimulate the immune system's ability to detect and destroy threats. They do not stimulate the entire immune system. They are appropriate to use in preventing disease and can be used during infections to gently support the immune system. I designed MycoPhyto to also have anti-viral properties making it an ideal choice for flu prevention. On the other hand, there are other herbs that do act to directly stimulate the immune system. These include poke root and wild indigo. These herbs don't have immune modulating qualities like mushrooms. These two herbs act as mitogens. They simply increase the number and activity of immune cells. For a lingering cold or flu they give a boost that would help clear the infection, but they could be very dangerous to use when the immune system is overactive or the body is overwhelmed by an infection. You wouldn't want to use them in someone confined to bed with a high fever and difficult breathing due to copious mucus in the lungs. Poke and wild indigo would be contraindicated in a serious case of Avian Flu, but even in such a case, mushrooms should not be harmful. However, with life threatening flu, more heroic efforts should be considered first.

Mushrooms are ideal for activating the immune system. They increase the body's ability to identify and destroy pathogens, before you get sick. I hope you find this information useful.

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