Herb of the Month: Ling Zhi 🍄 Reishi Mushroom

Chinese: Ling Zhi

English: Reishi Mushroom

📚 English - Reishi Mushroom

💊 Pharmaceutical - Ganoderma

❤️ Meridians - Heart, Lung, Liver

✨ Category - Nourish Heart, Calm Spirit

👅 Taste - Sweet

☀️ Temperature - Neutral

Functions:

• Nourishes the heart and quiets the spirit

• Stops coughing and arrests wheezing

• Tonifies Qi and nourishes the blood.

Indications:

• Insomnia, forgetfulness, fatigue, listlessness, and poor appetite.

• Coughing caused by cold, coughing with profuse sputum, accelerated respiration, chronic asthma, and difficulty sleeping due to dyspnea;

• Weak digestion, poor appetite, listlessness, loose stools, fatigue, dizziness, and soreness of the lower back.

Contra-Indications:

• Excessive conditions

Dosage:

• 3-15g in decoction, 1.5-3g as powder

Pharmacology:

• Pharmacology-

• Anticoagulant

• Antidiabetic

• Antihypertensive

• Antiplatelet

• Cardiotonic

• Cognitive

• Expectorant

• Hepatoprotective

• Hypotensive

• Immunostimulant

• Radiation (protective effect)

• Smooth muscle relaxant

• Vasodilator (coronary artery)

Ling Zhi- Reishi- The Mushroom of Immortality

Reishi is a coveted medicine used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for centuries. This medicinal mushroom is known for its adaptogenic powers and is commonly used to strengthen the immune system, treat cancer, protect the liver, and reduce stress. Known for its power to:

Calm the spirit and nourish the heart to treat insomnia, fright, palpitation

Tonifies the lung to treat wheezing and phlegmy cough

Boosts qi and blood, treating weak body (shortness of breath, lack of appetite, cold hands and feet,  among a long list of actions.

Reishi mushrooms literally translates to “herb of spiritual potency” in Chinese, Reishi grow on trees and are among the oldest mushrooms known to have been used in medicine. There is a reason reishi is known as the herb of spiritual potency and good fortune. The traditional wisdom says that reishi helps guide you around the obstacles standing in the way of you and enlightenment. Reishi has a gradual effect of calming the nervous system and changing the way one perceives life. The ancient Divine Farmer’s Materia Medica 250 CE tells us that this mushroom belongs in the highest class of herbs, a class that makes the body light, strengthens the qi, and prolongs life without aging. 

Research has found that Reishi can boost immune activity, support the production, health, and genetic expression of white blood cells, and increase the activity of a special type of white blood cells called Natural Killer Cells. Its the #1 most researched herb in the world, primarly for its immunological effects.