Health and wellbeing

purbeckgazette.co.uk Major health benefits of mushrooms

By Fiona Chapman

IT IS mushroom and toadstool season, and the damp weather has really encouraged all the fungus to grow and amazing mushrooms are popping up all over the place.

I have a very healthy respect for mushrooms as they can be deadly. I will pick field mushrooms, making sure they peel, and fry those up – delicious with butter and a pinch of salt.

Any others I leave well alone and just enjoy looking at. One day, I will go on a course to learn how to identify mushrooms as they are extremely beneficial for us humans and vitally important to the environment and communication between trees and other plants.

Herbalists use lots of medicinal mushrooms as they really are very powerful, mainly because they are fantastic for our general immunity.

Many have been shown to help with all sorts of cancers either as prevention or run alongside conventional medicine to treat cancer. They can help with side-effects from chemotherapy and radiotherapy and stimulate the white blood cell count – white blood cells being our disease-fighting cells.

Just eating normal mushrooms is good for you but shitake, which you can buy in supermarkets, is great for its anti-cancer and anti-viral properties, as well as for cholesterol control.

I use gandomera lucidum or reishi quite a bit, which traditionally was known as the ‘mushroom of immortality’. Again, it is used for cancer treatment and prevention.

It is also very good for allergies as it not only tackles the underlying over-activity of the immune system to substances the body should be

Shitake mushrooms

Photo by Connie Tucker, Pixabay

able to tolerate, but it has anti-histamine and antiinflammatory properties.

These anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory substances can benefit those with autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis.

Reishi is good for liver disease, cardiovascular and respiratory health, as well as insomnia and anxiety. It helps to lower cholesterol and blood pressure and has blood-thinning effects, so is contraindicated if on anti-coagulants.

You can buy it as a powder but it is disgusting – says me, who is quite used to eating all things bitter and unpalatable. I find the best way to take it is as tincture but you need to make sure it has been processed properly.

There are water-soluble properties in the mushrooms which are very important and then oil-soluble substances which are extracted by alcohol, so you need to make sure you buy a dual extract tincture. nFiona Chapman is a

naturopathic herbalist (Pellyfiona@gmail.com)

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This season marks change

Main photo by Valentin; acorns, below, by Julita, Pixabay

Nature is medicine as I remember mum amid chaos of late autumn

by Dr Susie Curtin

TODAY the sky is the colour of my mood – dark, heavy and full of tears.

But knowing that nature is my medicine, I automatically reach for my walking boots.

For going out is a way of getting ‘in’ and releasing the grey mischievous thoughts that dampen my spirits. Even just a few minutes of walking in this beautiful autumn countryside and I know I will feel lighter and freer.

Heading up the fields towards Duncliffe Woods, my feet crunch over shining piles of acorns. I have never seen so many.

Above my head the oak trees are still wearing their green coats, only the edges of their leaves are painted in turmeric hues. As yet, we have had no frost to colour them crimson.

It was the warmest October I have ever experienced but still I am surprised by the muted autumn colour. Apart from, that is, the pink orange of spindle berry flowers, the ruby red rose hips that gleam from the hedgerows and the cinnamoncoloured bracken that is spicing up the understory. The unexpected spots of colour in life that bring us joy.

As I reach the summit of this ancient conical landmark that towers over the vale, the grey clouds part just for a minute and sunbeams streak through the trees – their wet leaves glistening with tiny crystals as the light gently embraces the dew. I think of my mother and smile. It is ten years to the day that she died, a decade of time that has rolled past me.

Although she loved the autumn hues, she thought it a messy time of year and would vigorously sweep the leaf-litter that ‘untidied’ her garden.

Instead, I cherish the chaos of falling leaves and the carpet of colour they lay. Autumn reminds me of how beautiful change can be.

Moving closer to my favourite beech trees, I notice the abundance of fungi flourishing in the warm damp weather.

Magical and mistrusted, fungi belongs to a biological kingdom all of its own. There are about 80,000 known species that also include rusts, molds and mildews. They are the principal decomposers in nature and come in an astounding array of shapes and colours that decorate the woodlands, helping to regenerate the nutrients of decaying matter, bringing new life from old and allowing root systems to connect and communicate underneath our feet.

Being here on top of the Vale leaning against these ancient old trees, I too feel connected to something greater than the chores and tick lists of the everyday.

A lovely poem by Angie Weiland-Crosby reminds me of how ‘everyone needs a place to retreat, a spot where the world goes quiet enough for the soul to speak’. I had made time to remember my dear mother and used this incredibly peaceful place to lift my spirits.

Now steadily making my way home to work in my garden, I vow to plant some winter violas and pansies to bring cheerful spots of colour and deter the winter grey.

n Dr Susie Curtin (email curtin.susanna@gmail.com)