The Red Reishi Mushroom. Have you considered using this potent herb to treat hypertension? It has been shown to significantly, lower blood pressure in patients who did not respond to anti-hypertension drugs, help lessen arrhythmia, lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels, and reduce the stickiness of platelets, thought to be due to the ganoderic acids action in reishi.
On your first glimpse of it, one would imagine it to be poisonous. The red, glazed appearance doesn’t look appealing and nature often displays poisonous plants and animals in bright red, yellow, blue and black colors. But this therapeutic reishi mushroom is far from poisonous. To be correct, it has no known toxicity.
Polysaccharides are said to be the most active ingredient in the red reishi mushroom, helping to reduce blood pressure, but adding to that, the mushroom also contains a natural ACE inhibitor, triterpenes. They work by inhibiting angiotensin converting enzymes. These enzymes are responsible for converting the chemical angiotensin 1 into angiotensin 11 which causes the surrounding muscles of the blood vessel to contract pushing the blood pressure up. So the action of this natural inhibitor results in the blood vessels dilating to release pressure.
Learn more about the health benefits of Ganoderma Red Mushrooms – The Health Manna. Among the health products now available to increase your body’s natural healing abilities are these humble yet highly therapeutic reishi mushrooms.
Another noted ingredient is Coumarin, an anticoagulant. A phytochemical, which is also a precursor for some anticoagulants like warfarin, so if you are taking any blood-thinning medications it would certainly pose a danger to take reishi along with it. Consult your doctor!
For those of you who are helping yourself the natural way, you also need to consult a herbal practitioner to guide you on dosage and preparation of reishi
A mild osmotic diuretic called Mannatol is another ingredient that makes the reishi mushroom beneficial for hypertension, which acts in the kidneys to dispel excess fluid.
Be aware that prolonged use of reishi can cause upset stomach, dry mouth, dizziness and nose bleeds, so don’t take it for straight long periods of 6 months or more but rather in short sessions.
If you have a garden or an allotment as I am now applying for, you could take up the hobby of growing your own. There are plenty of websites you can visit that offer starter kits. They contain the reishi spores in plugs that you then insert into logs, or sawdust. I think they would make very attractive garden ornaments, especially in a damp, shady part of the garden that usually gets left bare.
They are quite tough with a very bitter taste and you cannot eat them like other mushrooms. To prepare them as a tincture or tea, you need to simmer them in water for a couple of hours to extract the ingredients that give reishi its famous therapeutic status.