A Special Article by Professor Hsu Rui-xiang of National Taiwan University | Why Do I Eat Reishi Mushroom?

This article is reprinted with the author’s permission from Ganoderma News Network, www.ganodermanews.com.
Oral Review and Approval: Xu Ruixiang; Compiled and Written by: Wu Tingyao

 

 

Starting from when I accompanied my mother to eat lingzhi 40 years ago.

 

The first lingzhi mushrooms I ever ate were wild; counting from then, I’ve been consuming them for 40 years now.

 

At first, my mother wanted to stabilize her blood pressure, so she started brewing and drinking reishi mushrooms. We just followed along and started drinking them too.

 

A sick person will naturally seek out things that make their body feel more comfortable—this is human instinct. Especially considering that my mother is a professor in the Department of Pharmacy.

 

My mother has a family history of hypertension and has been taking antihypertensive medication for a long time. However, these medications make her feel very uncomfortable. Every time before going to class and preparing for her lessons, she gets nervous, which causes her blood pressure to rise. After returning home and relaxing following class, her blood pressure drops dramatically, leaving her feeling extremely unwell. So when she came across an article published in Japan stating that reishi mushroom could help lower or regulate blood pressure, she decided to give it a try.

 

The first wild reishi mushrooms she ever ate were given to her by a student from the Department of Pharmacy at Taipei Medical College. This student had opened a traditional Chinese medicine shop in his hometown of Mituo, Kaohsiung, where he sold wild reishi mushrooms. After receiving them, my mother boiled the mushrooms and drank the broth—and found that it seemed to do quite well. It appeared that her previously imbalanced body had been readjusted thanks to the reishi mushrooms, which also helped stabilize her blood pressure indirectly. So, from time to time, she’d brew a pot of reishi mushroom tea to drink as a daily beverage. This was probably more than forty years ago, back when I was in college.

 

▲In 1984, my mother arranged the various Ganoderma lucidum specimens I had cultivated into a bonsai.

 

I started sourcing wild Reishi mushrooms from a specific source—my impression is that I bought them from Cai Zongtong. It was at the Taiwan Medicinal Plant Exhibition hosted by the Taiwan Provincial Museum in Xin Gongyuan that I met Cai Zongtong and his wife, Liao Shunu, who were there as exhibitors. At the time, they were both professors at China Medical University and had been studying Reishi mushrooms for many years. They shared with me their experience in the clinical application of Reishi, so for a while, all the wild Reishi mushrooms my family consumed came directly from them.

 

Later, I joined Professor Wang Xihua’s research lab and met Teacher Su Qinghua. Eleven years my senior, he knew many friends who were mushroom experts and often took us to mushroom farms for internships. My experience in mushroom cultivation was first sparked at Mr. Liu Hanqin’s mushroom farm in Shui Li.

 

After I became a graduate student, I gained the ability to cultivate Lingzhi mushrooms. At first, I grew them in the basement of my home—some on bag substrates and others on log substrates. The basement provided ideal conditions for Lingzhi growth, as it was humid and kept warm. However, since it lacked sunlight, most of the Lingzhi mushrooms I cultivated ended up taking on a antler-like shape. The photos of Lingzhi mushrooms in my first monograph, “The Mysteries of Lingzhi,” were taken from the ones I’d grown in the basement. The very first Lingzhi mushroom I harvested, I gave to my mom to try.

 

Looking back now, from initially accompanying my mom in consuming wild reishi mushrooms, to eating those I grew at home, and then to enjoying those cultivated on specific farms... gradually, eating reishi mushrooms has evolved from a mere habit into a genuine belief.

 

When people around you see that you’re doing well on lingzhi, they’ll naturally want to start taking it too. The thing is, I’ve been taking lingzhi since my youth—right from the very early stages of my life. Unlike many others who only start taking lingzhi when they get older or fall ill, their experience with lingzhi is bound to be quite different from mine.

 

Lingzhi to me

 

Today, whenever I encounter people of all kinds in any setting, they’re sure to chime in as soon as they hear that I’m doing research on reishi mushrooms.

 

This is precisely what makes Lingzhi so remarkable. Today, if you tell someone you firmly believe in God, even a Buddhist might not necessarily respond! But today, no matter what industry people are in, as soon as they hear that I’m conducting research on Lingzhi, the question they most often ask me next is: “What are the benefits of taking Lingzhi?” To put it simply, it’s just: “Why should I take Lingzhi?”

 

This is the question most people ask—and also the hardest to answer.

 

Some people will ask directly, “Why do you want to eat reishi mushroom? You’re so young—what’s the point of eating it?”

 

I usually reply, “I’ve been eating this with my mom ever since I was little— I’m just used to it.”

 

Those people will then ask again, “What are the benefits of eating Ganoderma?”

 

My usual response is: “I’m still young and can’t yet grasp the mysteries of reishi mushroom, but one thing I’m very clear about is that it’s something I’ve deeply experienced.”

 

Especially when I was in my forties and fifties, I’ve told many people that “my mind is remarkably clear.”

 

I remember a relatively high-ranking official once asked me, “What does it mean to have a ‘clear head’?”

 

I said, “When you wake up, after washing your face and brushing your teeth, you’ll feel like your mind is a polished mirror—whatever you want to think about will be clearly reflected on its surface.”

 

At this point, the middle-aged white-collar class starts to feel tempted—after all, how many people wake up with their minds still hazy and unclear?

 

Lingzhi to my parents

 

Some people will then ask further: Besides having a very clear head, what other benefits are there?

 

I told them that my dad used to completely disbelieve in this kind of stuff. But ever since he started taking lingzhi seriously in his 60s, he often tells people that he rarely catches colds now.

 

For elderly people, “rarely catching colds” is highly appealing. The fact that lingzhi boosts immune function is also a profound impression shared by those who have been taking lingzhi over a long period.

 

Some people even ask, “Why does your mom want to eat reishi mushroom?” I reply, “Because she wants to regulate her blood pressure!”

 

Regulating blood pressure is closely linked to cardiovascular health. If you think about it carefully, those of us who have been consuming Reishi mushrooms for a long time indeed have no recorded instances of myocardial infarction or stroke.

 

Although my parents were diagnosed with cancer in their 60s, they lived alongside it for the rest of their lives. During those 30 years they spent living with cancer, the disease never caused them any significant suffering or metastasis.

 

Let’s face it—these days, who doesn’t get cancer? If someone seems to be “free” of cancer, one possibility is that they simply haven’t lived long enough; another is that their cancer hasn’t been detected yet. The U.S. once conducted a study showing that the incidence rate of prostate cancer among men is remarkably high. Some people “don’t have” it only because they haven’t developed symptoms—or haven’t gotten themselves checked.

 

In the past, people wouldn't go to the hospital for checkups unless their health was seriously impaired to the point of interfering with their daily lives. Nowadays, however, many people undergo health checks simply because they’re “prompted by commercial demands”—that’s just looking for trouble where none exists. It’s like a tree that has lived for a long time will naturally develop a few growths or burls over time. As long as the tree remains healthy and thriving, why on earth would you bother touching it? You might even end up cutting it off, causing wounds that could become infected—and in the end, the tree could die even faster.

 

Lingzhi for Critical Illness

 

When people ask me why I take Lingzhi, I tell them that at first, I started taking it to accompany my mom; then it became a habit, and eventually it turned into a belief. When we’re talking about this topic, which kind of person will become closest to you the fastest? It’s those who are physically ill yet keep failing to get better—because this reflects a fundamental human instinct: our relentless drive to survive.

 

What kind of effects will lingzhi mushrooms have on people who consume them?

 

First and foremost, it’s important to emphasize that you must consume the whole Ganoderma lucidum—what’s known as “whole-herb” Ganoderma. In ancient times, people would brew a soup using the entire fruiting body of Ganoderma, rather than just a specific part of it. In other words, you should enjoy chicken soup made from the whole chicken, not egg-drop soup made with just eggs, nor merely chicken legs.

 

Once this substance enters the body, it’s the processes it triggers that truly help restore and strengthen your body’s fundamental vitality. It helps adjust the delicate balance among your immune system, endocrine system, and central nervous system—but these adjustments are subtle and gradual; they don’t take effect immediately after ingestion.

 

In other words, the fundamental concept of “supporting and strengthening the body’s foundation” is to maintain your life’s basic equilibrium. Only when life is stabilized around this fundamental equilibrium can true health be achieved. If the body is imbalanced and its foundational equilibrium is unstable, then health cannot be attained.

So for those with chronic illnesses who have been unable to recover or are seriously ill, if you tell them today that there’s a “miracle elixir” like this, they’ll readily accept it—even going to great lengths to get their hands on it and give it a try.

 

What does it mean to be healthy?

 

After all, medicine is meant only to treat illness; even if a particular drug truly can cure a disease, it won’t make you healthy. If you want to recover and achieve good health, you’ll have to rely on yourself.

 

But how exactly can we rely on ourselves? If we eat regularly at fixed times every day, get up and go to bed on time every day, and exercise daily without smoking or drinking alcohol, will we definitely avoid cancer? Or prevent a stroke? Not necessarily. These things are simply beyond our ability to predict.

 

So, what exactly constitutes “health”? In theory, health is a relatively abstract concept, yet we always strive to quantify it scientifically. The data obtained from these tests serve as reference values—statistically derived and summarized by medical professionals—to assess an individual’s physical condition.

 

So-called “normal values,” much like a score of 60 being considered passing, represent the midpoint—a bit better than neither perfect scores nor zero. With this data, doctors can determine how far you are from the “normal” range and decide how to treat you and prescribe medication, enabling health insurance to cover the costs. But whether you’re truly healthy or not—only you yourself really know that.

 

Take diabetes as an example. Why are there two to three hundred different medications available for diabetes? Because diabetes is merely the symptom—each person’s underlying cause is unique. Thus, doctors have no choice but to try one medication after another, starting with the one that has worked best for the largest number of patients. But regardless of which medication is ultimately chosen, the root cause is always a metabolic imbalance within your body.

 

It’s truly abnormal when your lifestyle and diet are irregular, yet you rely on medication to “normalize” those metrics. The various physiological indicators in your body actually reflect your overall physical condition. If your lifestyle is unhealthy and the test results show abnormal indicators, that’s only natural.

 

The real big problem lies in the serious illnesses that abnormal indicators can trigger in the body. Yet today, most people have become accustomed to using medication to manage the consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle—keeping their indicators as close to normal as possible and feeling at ease—but in doing so, they’re actually making things worse inside their bodies. At times like these, what the body really needs is a factor that can help you adjust, restore balance, and strengthen your foundation from within.

 

Lingzhi and Subhealth

 

So now we’ve moved from discussing a critically ill patient and the struggle for survival to addressing why people in a subhealth state should take Reishi mushroom. Between black and white, there’s inevitably gray—meaning that if your health index falls within an abnormal range, it indicates a tendency toward a less healthy state.

 

Among these individuals who are in a subhealth state, some have already (or are about to) meet the criteria for medication use. Looking at the bigger picture, while chemical drugs may temporarily alter physiological metabolic pathways to bring certain abnormal values closer to normal, in reality, these drugs often push the body’s metabolism into an even more abnormal state. Thus, there is an even greater need for something that can help restore and strengthen the body’s fundamental balance.

 

The ancients’ so-called “way of nourishing life” was quite simple: eat a light diet and maintain regular作息 patterns... But modern people simply can’t do that. Since they can’t, aside from seeing doctors and taking medication, they really need something to protect themselves, don’t they? This protection isn’t something you can achieve just by burning some incense at a temple—rather, it requires something real that actually works from within your body to provide a solid foundation.

 

That’s why, when I talk to people who are in a subhealth state about lingzhi, they’re usually open to it—but these individuals often find it hard to stick with it long-term. Many people, once their blood pressure returns to normal, simply stop taking their antihypertensive medications altogether. Some even get so busy that they forget all about their parents—let alone think about lingzhi!

 

Lingzhi for Healthy Individuals

 

Moving further toward the lighter side, some people really do lead regular lives and practice extreme self-restraint in their diet, believing themselves to be exceptionally healthy. Such individuals might ask: What benefit could lingzhi possibly offer them?

 

Can eating reishi mushroom help slow down aging? Most people wouldn't believe it until they reach that stage—instead, they’d rather believe in supplements like Shan Cun or Ke Bu. These are chemical compounds or natural extracts known for their anti-aging and antioxidant properties. However, once these substances enter the body, they invariably need a “lead agent” or “coordinating factor” to ensure they exert their intended effects while maintaining internal balance. And this key orchestrator is very likely reishi mushroom itself.

 

Lingzhi and the prolongation of life

 

“Treating illness” and “extending life” are two different logics.

 

The primary function of Reishi mushroom is essentially to distribute and coordinate—putting it in more mystical terms, it helps adjust your body’s constitution and energy. Why can it prolong life? Because it tunes your vital energy to the most optimal state.

 

What Western medicine absolutely cannot do is to rationally allocate the body’s energy. That’s why doctors are generally able to treat illnesses but find it much harder to prolong life. Today, if you suffer massive bleeding, suturing blood vessels or reattaching severed limbs—these are precisely the kinds of emergency procedures where Western medicine excels. But when a patient reaches the end stage of life and many bodily functions are already failing, how can we help them maintain their composure and ease right up until their last breath? That’s where true artistry—and profound expertise—come into play.

 

Just like today’s computers or smartphones come with battery-management software that automatically monitors your device’s power level and switches you from an energy-intensive mode to a power-saving mode when the battery is running low, Reishi mushroom is akin to that power-saving mode. It helps you conserve your vital energy, allocating it in the most rational way so that your body can function normally, allowing you to live a normal life and gradually make your way toward the end of your days—rather than experiencing a sudden, dramatic collapse all at once.

So next time I’ll be talking about what’s known as palliative care—or what’s called long-term care—ultimately, it all comes down to reishi mushrooms.

 

How can tomorrow’s lingzhi be as good as today’s?

 

Forty years ago, there were no standardized varieties of reishi mushrooms, so people used to buy wild reishi and boil it in water to drink. Now, of course, we prefer to consume artificially cultivated ones.

 

When people find out I’m doing research on reishi mushrooms, they’re bound to ask me why I choose to take them. So today, I’ll use the points I’ve just mentioned to answer not only why I take reishi mushrooms myself, but also why those I’ve encountered in the past who take reishi mushrooms decided to do so.

 

In a nutshell, the purpose of consuming Lingzhi is to hope that tomorrow will be better than today. “Better” doesn’t necessarily mean being younger tomorrow than you are today; rather, it means avoiding the “bad” things expected for tomorrow—slowing down the pace at which things go wrong, slowing down the aging process, or even having tomorrow just as good as today—that’s what “better” really means!

 

The biggest question now is: Do these ginseng sellers have the confidence to produce something like this? If the product you sell tomorrow isn't as good as it is today, how can you ensure that those who eat your products tomorrow will be better off than they are today?

 

So the next question is: How can tomorrow’s ganoderma be just as good as today’s? That depends on whether you’ve properly controlled the strain, managed the cultivation process, controlled the harvesting, controlled the extraction, and controlled the composition. Where are the company’s standards? If you can’t meet these standards, then you’re just muddling along with everyone else.

 

There’s no right or wrong when it comes to consuming lingzhi—eating the wrong kind of lingzhi can simply be considered bad luck. It’s like saying that those who believe in Jesus will attain eternal life, yet you can’t dictate which church you must attend; everyone just has to go with whatever fate brings.