What Are the Health Benefits and Uses of Reishi Mushrooms?

Reishi mushrooms are an alleged superfood and they purportedly have healing properties. The health benefits of reishi mushrooms are that it is an immune booster and it has anticancer, antibacterial, and antiviral benefits.

There’s been a growing interest in the medical properties of mushrooms over the past few decades. The reishi mushroom is an ancient fungus, but it too has been swept up in the new mushroom craze.

Mushrooms are an alleged superfood, and they purportedly have healing properties—and make you immortal? Read on to find out if any of these claims (especially the last one) are justified.

Reishi mushrooms have many names around the world and have been around for thousands of years. “Reishi” is the Japanese name for the mushroom. The Chinese name is lingzhi, Ling Zhi, or Ling-zhi. The mushroom’s scientific name is Ganoderma lucidum. 

Regardless of what you call them, reishi mushrooms have a long history in eastern cultures. They first appeared over 2,000 years ago in China, where they were seemingly known as the Mushroom of Immortality.

What do reishi mushrooms look like?

Reishi mushrooms have a dusky red and orange color with a woody texture. Their colors are rich and vibrant, which inspired the name lucidum (“lucidus” means bright).

Reishi doesn’t have gills underneath like other mushrooms. They have pores, instead. They’re shaped like kidneys and typically sprout from the base of trees. 

Where do reishi mushrooms grow?

The majority of reishi mushrooms come from China. They don’t often grow outside of their environment, so growers had to get creative to produce reishi. In the wild, reishi grows on trees, stumps, or rotting logs. Farmers now encourage the growth of reishi using sawdust pellets packed in plastic bags.

The previous rarity of reishi gave it a noble status. Royalty were some of the few who could get their hands on this rare fungus. 

What do they taste like?

Mushrooms have a naturally earthy taste with hints of savoriness. Reishi mushrooms also contain chemicals called triterpenes, making them uniquely bitter.

You can buy reishi mushrooms in many forms. You can mostly find them as powder.

The most obvious way to prepare reishi is simply to put it into your food like any other mushroom if you don’t mind the bitter taste. You can also use this mushroom to make a drink like tea or coffee.

You can also get reishi dietary supplements in the form of pills, tablets, capsules, or tinctures to make consuming reishi easier. Creams and tonics might also help. 

So, there’s a type of reishi product for every occasion, but how healthy is it?

Reishi mushrooms have a long history of medicinal uses, but concrete research about their benefits is lacking in certain areas.

Immune booster

Many reishi supplements are advertised as supporting your immune system. There’s plenty of evidence supporting these claims. Reishi mushrooms have several chemical components that support your immune system, making you more resistant to harmful cells.

Antioxidants in reishi also protect your cells from oxidative damage. 

Potential anticancer benefits

Research has explored reishi’s ability to fight malignant cancer cells. Specifically, reishi boosts the immune system to support conventional cancer treatments that weaken your immune cells.

Results from research about reishi and its effect on cancer are mixed but may be beneficial. Reishi doesn’t help everyone, but studies suggest that it does have some immune boosting and anti-cancer properties. 

Cancer patients who received supplements of reishi for 12 weeks showed general improvements in cellular immunity. In another study involving lung cancer patients, cellular immunity and quality of life similarly improved. 

Potential antibacterial and antiviral effects

There's some evidence supporting the antibacterial and antiviral effects of reishi. The exact mechanisms aren’t fully understood, but reishi may interfere with viral absorption and inhibit viral replication.

According to one study, when they were used to help treat a viral infection, reishi mushrooms extract in hot water reduced the patients’ pain and promoted wound healing. 

Potential hypoglycemic effects

In one study and a collection of animal studies, regular use of reishi mushrooms in hot water decreased glycosylated hemoglobin and plasma glucose levels.

You can’t solely rely on reishi mushrooms to treat something like diabetes, though, so combination treatments would be necessary. Additionally, more evidence is needed about reishi and diabetes. 

Conclusive benefits

It’s difficult to say anything definitive about reishi. Nothing has been concretely proven in clinical studies, but the data that exists looks promising.

The aim of reishi research is to isolate its beneficial components and use them to develop medications and other treatments. Currently, though, there are many unknown factors.

While there aren’t major dangers or side effects when it comes to reishi mushrooms, they aren’t without their drawbacks. 

Many incidents of reishi mushroom side effects have been isolated, but some that have appeared include:

• Fulminant hepatitis
• Lethargy
• Anorexia
• Hepatotoxicity
• Vesiculobullous lesions
• Anagen effluvium
• Aplastic anemia
• Chronic diarrhea

A food allergy is also possible if you’re eating or drinking reishi mushrooms. Additionally, reishi can damage your liver and cause other problems.

There’s also a danger of harmful drug interaction if you take medications and also try reishi. For example, they can reduce the effectiveness of some chemotherapy drugs or cause heavy bleeding if you take anticoagulants.

There are even some instances of reishi mushrooms causing symptoms that they’re meant to treat, like inflammation. The side effects of reishi are rare, but many sources recommend avoiding reishi anyway because the benefits aren’t fully understood or deeply researched.

If you do try reishi, keep an eye on any new symptoms that may appear and tell your doctor immediately. 

Reishi mushrooms are a form of integrative (or, complementary) medicine. This means they should only be used alongside conventional treatment options and not as a full treatment by themselves.

Unfortunately, conclusions concerning reishi mushrooms are still unclear. The current data suggests great things for the future of reishi (though perhaps not immortality), and it’s generally safe. Still, the unknown variables and potential side effects mean that you should be cautious.