Shiitake Health Benefits

Shiitake are among the world’s healthiest foods. A couple ways shiitake health benfits can change your life… They help with both the immune system and the cardiovascular system. Furthermore, they provide several essential nutrients, have a long medical history, and add variety to many meals.

How do shiitake mushrooms assist the immune system? They appear to boost the immune system when needed, but it also seems to reduce the activity when needed. In other words, it keeps the immune system balanced. Perhaps even more impressive is the way shiitake mushrooms activate the macrophage cells. These are the cells that fight off potentially cancerous cells and can prevent the onset of cancer. In this way, shiitake mushrooms appear to serve as what researchers have called “an anti-cancer immunity”.

Shiitake helps your body in other ways as well. It serves your cardiovascular system by lowering cholesterol, preventing immune cell binding to blood vessels, and lowering oxidative stress (oxygen-based damage to blood vessels). This is thanks to three key anti-oxidants contained with the mushrooms: manganese, selenium, and zinc.
The medicinal properties of shiitake mushrooms have been praised by the Asian countries from which they originated for centuries. They were documented in some of the first herbal medicine books and are being studied even more today. Because it’s so easy to integrate into many meals to add both flavor and nutrition, it only makes sense.

Once you buy shiitake mushrooms, there are several ways you can add them to your diet. For example, you can put them in miso soup or sauté them with garlic and onion and serve them on their own or over meat. You can also sauté them with tofu and snow peas and serve them over soba noodles. With so many positive elements, shiitake mushrooms are a food that everyone should incorporate into their diet.