Shiitake Mushrooms

[surfsteve]

I used to eat a lot of shiitake mushrooms a few years ago and thought maybe I should try them again to get some more variety in my diet. I quit ordering them after the batch I got was really woody but it had more to do with the batch I ordered. This time I ordered some from Ebay that claimed to be grade A++. They were very good. Not even a hint of woodiness. So good in fact that I ate them right out of the bag and gorged myself on them. Boy was I sorry. A few hours later I was shitting my brains out and had such bad gas that my girlfriend threatened to kick me out of her house.

To be honest at the time I wasn't even sure it was the mushrooms but after googling I found out that eating too many can cause that effect. One good thing I noticed that my teeth felt really clean. I think what happened was that the mushrooms changed my intestinal flora and suddenly killed off a bunch of bad bacteria. This all happened three days ago and I've been afraid to touch them since but I got a feeling that I should and that a few of them in moderation will be very good for me.

I also noticed a change in my saliva and can taste the mushrooms in it even three days later. That means that the effect must be systemic. Thinking back I can remember getting diarrhea after eating shiitakes before but nothing as bad as a few days ago. Perhaps it was due to the quantity I ate and the fact that I hadn't eaten them in years. To be honest I wasn't positive it was the mushrooms and was suspecting it may have been due to chlorella which I also started taking a couple days prior to eating the mushrooms but I already knew to beware of chlorella so I didn't take that much at all. I'm reasonably sure now that it was due to the mushrooms because I can taste them on my saliva and my girlfriend claims she can smell them on my breath days later. The whole experience wasn't really that bad for me and the worst part was my girlfriend complaining about all the bad gas they gave me. I got a feeling that the gas wouldn't be that bad if I ate that many again because the mushrooms cleaned me out. But just to be safe I will probably eat them in moderation from now on. I think maybe this batch is also more potent than the ones I got before. Time will tell I guess.

[surfsteve]

It's been a while since I ate the shiitake mushrooms and still have diarrhea.  I doubt there are any mushrooms left inside my body so I am suspecting that maybe there was some kind of parasites on them.   Funny. This is my second year of eating raw meat and I never had a problem with it. Who knew that it would be mushrooms that would cause me problems? It's either them or it's a very strange coincidence. When I was a kid I got the flu after eating chicken one time. I doubt the chicken was the cause but for years I stopped eating it because my mind had made the association.  Just to be safe I put the mushrooms in my deep freeze where I store my meat. That should kill off any parasites that may have been on them.  I was also wondering if maybe it could be from the spores from them. I never heard of that but I suppose anything is possible. I am eating some candied ginger right now and plan on consuming anything else I can find that will eradicate whatever this is and take some acidophilus to repopulate with some friendly bacteria. Thinking back I've also been craving pickles. Maybe that was my body trying to tell me something.

[surfsteve]

According to this article Shiitakes can dissolve biofilm.

Link omitted

[surfsteve]

I guess my digestive system is back to normal. Looking back I wonder if it had anything to do at all with the shiitake mushrooms and wasn't just some sort of coincidence. Yesterday my girlfriend came down with the same thing and we have totally different diets. She also told me a bunch of her friends had it and that it seems to be making it's rounds.

I still can't get over how good and clean my teeth felt after eating shiitakes. I do think that there is something to them dissolving biofilm. Just to be safe I'd like to keep them in the deep freeze for a couple weeks. I also read that papain and bromelain, extracts from papaya and pineapple, dissolve fiofilm so maybe I'll try those again. I think my teeth were really starting to feel cruddy when I went off raw food for a while and that maybe it's just going to take a bit for them to catch up. After all it did take a while after going off it before I started feeling cruddy. Thinking back I did use papain and bromelain in my meat smoothies to aid in digestion along with lots of vinegar and should probably start adding them back. I never attributed my teeth feeling clean to them and always thought it was due to the raw meat alone.   

I came across many interesting links while researching shiitake mushrooms but didn't mention anything about them as I am unable to post links. Not sure what I should do about it. I don't like quoting something without giving credit to the link I got it from so I'm kind of in a state of limbo.

[Robinlove]

This makes me nervous...

But Im cooking my mushrooms (gasp!!). I'm.making a concentrate of reishi, chagga, and cordycep, and so far have had zero issue with it. I've been adding  ( after fully cooled) t to a raw milk, raw egg, raw cacao, and raw honey mixture.

I think I want to keep ingesting medicinal mushrooms but j want to cook them and have them be the only cooked thing I eat. I was never able to handle them raw, and I can't think.of a single traditional recipe anywhere calling for them where they are not boiled (teas... Tinctures... Etc). I'm fine with them being the ooh less than one percent of my diet and it's cooked.

[surfsteve]

I've eaten regular fresh mushrooms form the supermarket many times raw on salads and never had a problem with them. It could be just that I ate too many. I've read shiitakes can do that to you. I just froze mine as a precaution. Freezing wont kill the spores of the mushrooms, (they can even survive being in outer space,) but according to Weston Price Foundation it kills parasites. Cooking does kill the spores though along with bacteria and virtually everything else!

[Robinlove]

I can't do them raw. I'm ok with eating medicinal mushrooms in a cooked extract. Although today in overdid the chocolate and accidentally got high on the caffeine and it was stupid uncomfortable.

[Fenrir]

I love shiitake mushrooms there my favorite ive had though ive only had the white grocery store ones, portabellos and oysters. Ive had portabellos raw and there alright but i get easily sick of them i can only eat half of a large one before i cant handle any more of the tatse, shiitakes on the other hand tast great to me and it seems like everything ive ever read about them is extremely positive. There the only kind ive been buying recently and i dont even wash them, there not organic because the kroger near me only carries the one kind but ive read they cant use very many pesticides on mushrooms because theyre extremely senstive to such things and would look unnatractive to the consumer, this could be incorrect however.
Either way they never give me much digestive trouble in the 1-2 ounce quantity i eat them in i never feel sick from them but if i dont chew them well enough i can see them in my poop. I would say shiitakes are a great addition to a diet. I would be hard pressed to find the article again but i read that when looking at food remains in a preserved ancient persons teeth all they found was meat and mushrooms there was no other plant material they could detect, this of course only speaks for that specific person in that environment but i think it does say something of their healthful qualities that it was the one plant food the people were incorporating into their diet.

[Fenrir]

I dont think this is the exact article i read but its something,

-https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/neanderthal-teeth-tell-tales-of-diet-and-medicine/%3famp=1

It talks about more than one specimen with one being meat heavy and the other eating primarily vegetation, one thing in common however is they both eat mushrooms. I think it speaks that the one that was eating predominately meat free also had a dental abcess and bad bacteria in their colon, but mushrooms i think can be a boon for good health.

[surfsteve]

Funny. I was taking inventory of my deep freezer and I still have that bag of shiitakes in there wondering if I should do anything with them. They did not seem appetizing to me so I left them in because I have plenty of room in there right now but I was wondering if they would keep dry out of the freezer if something goes on sale and I need to take them out after keeping them in the freezer for so long and am concerned that maybe they picked up too much humidity. The thought of them in soup still sounds appetizing. Maybe just because it's been so long since I've had something cooked other than an occasional cup of coffee every few days or weeks. I've also been thinking about dried foods in general and how they aren't as nutritious as fresh and that they are the closest thing in my diet to junk food which several years ago was chips and then became cooked foods in general and how dried has become the new cooked for me. Whenever I am craving something less healthy I have a few sun dried tomatoes or some beef heart jerky. When I think that I just started raw food as an experiment it reminds me how far I've come and how now it seems to have gone from an experiment to a way of life. I think I owe a lot of the success for that due to this forum and am thankful for it.