Functional fungi: can medicinal mushrooms really improve people’s health?

The boom in sales of mushroom products has led to many claims for their wellbeing and curative properties, but is there any scientific evidence to back them up?Veteran broadcaster Sheila Dillon, who was diagnosed with cancer of the bone marrow in 2011, shared some personal information while presenting a recent episode of BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme. She began taking mushroom supplements after discovering that patients in Japan were given them to help deal with the effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and that there was, she told listeners, “a good deal of evidence” that they did. The last time she saw her oncologist, he told her she was “in danger of becoming a super-responder”.Dillon said she did not know if there was a link between the supplements and her successful treatment. She is, nonetheless, far from alone in being open to the idea that fungi could have far more potential to treat health conditions than is acknowledged in mainstream western medicine. One market resear