Mushroom Magic

What a strange wild magical world mycelium networks and mushrooms are! Did you know that fungi DNA is more similar to animal DNA than plants? Because of this, mushrooms produce Vitamin D when laid out in the sun, just like our skin. So you can actually increase your Vitamin D intake by letting your mushrooms sunbathe before eating them 😜

Mushrooms can be super toxic or deeply healing and nourishing for humans. I’m interested in medicinal mushrooms like Reishi, Shiitake, Turkey Tail, Cordyceps, and Chaga for their healing and immune building properties.

I study with an incredible herb farmer and herbalist Susanna of Ravencrest Botanicals. Among many things, she’s taught me the proper way to work with adaptogenic medicinal mushrooms and it turns out, the dosage really matters!

Adaptogens work to slowly build the immune system over time. So taking them consistently everyday for months, in fairly high doses is essential for properly supporting immune function. It’s best to make a daily mindful practice of working with the mushrooms, thanking them for their medicine.

Here I’m decocting some Reishi and Chaga in water in a slow cooker for hours, like 12 hours! To get the most benefit from these, I’ll also extract them in alcohol to create a double extraction tincture. Some medicinal properties are extracted in water and others in alcohol, so to get all of them a double extraction is needed.

If you have access and the knowledge to harvest your own medicinal mushrooms and make your own medicine, that's awesome! If not, here are a couple really good sources to get started...

A great source of Chaga chunks to boil and/or tincture yourself
My favorite medicinal mushroom tincture

Have you incorporated any medicinal mushrooms into your self care regimen? What have your experiences been?