There is an overwhelming desire within me to do something about a terrible illness that has affected so many of my family, friends and patients. That disease is Cancer, it is getting worse and worse and every day I am met with more victims, either hopeless or better hopeful that their medicine or surgery will do the trick. I know very well not to go anywhere near a cancer patient and their oncologists treatment protocol, that is, and stays between them, but I do want to make a difference in an area that I feel is lacking in every aspect of society I encounter. Prevention.
If cancer is, and we can confirm it with a quick Google search, so utterly devastating to individuals and society as a whole then why is there not a greater public initiative to remove cancer-causing behaviours and risks, yes we all see the warning signs on the cigarette boxes, no more lead in petrol etc. but these are years behind the freely available and current science, we know better and a society needs to do better. The amount of energy, resources and money we spend on cancer treatment is staggering and I sometimes ponder what impact it would have if governments spent that kind of effort on healthy eating, exercise programs and health promoting behaviours. We are focusing on the end result and not looking at the reasons WHY we are suffering from these conditions, that's where we need to go, that's where I am going. I am particularly interested in medicinal mushrooms and their ability to promote immune function and fight cancer BEFORE it develops. Let me tell you about a cute little mushroom called Turkey Tail, it's inside my product called Mycomatrix 6-in-1 Mushroom fusion and I am very excited about it. Trametes Versicolor , its scientific name is making big strides in the research and Pubmed and Google scholar is rapidly filling up with promising research, most exciting to me was the article published in the Journal of Biomedical Research by patel et al where this was stated: "The mounting evidences from various research groups across the globe, regarding anti-tumor application of mushroom extracts unarguably make it a fast-track research area worth mass attention." This is extremely exciting! Mushrooms are potentially cancer fighters! Another article by Paul Stamets, a world renowned Mycologist ended with "My hypothesis is that that the documented immune modulation activity of the turkey tail mushrooms enhanced the ability of the patient's immune system to discover the tumor, thereby increasing the effectiveness of the chemotherapy. This is consistent with some of the basic science research describing medicinal mushrooms as modulators of molecular targets in cancer treatment." What he is saying is that medicinal mushrooms, turkey tail in particular up regulated the immune system and assisted in the chemotherapy treatment of breast cancer, it made the chemo work better.
There are many more studies but for the sake of brevity I will end this blog here and leave the information with you, could a mushroom supplement benefit you in its preventative capacity as well as its therapeutic ability? The choice to use it or not lies with you.