Mushroom coffee is a blend of coffee and dehydrated mushroom powder. Why mushrooms, you ask? Because these mushrooms have many health and healing properties that can upgrade your morning beverage, increasing your ability to handle the stressors of your day. Some of the amazing benefits are that they can boost your immune system, give you sustained natural energy, relieve stress, help you focus, improve athletic performance, improve respiratory and liver function, fight cancer and tumors, are anti-viral, reduce hypertension, and can lower cholesterol. Can you see how some of these benefits might be useful to you? And an easy way to use these fabulous fungi is by adding them to your morning beverage. If you are normally a coffee drinker, you will find that these mushrooms taste pretty close to coffee and so by blending together coffee and mushrooms you get a great upgraded beverage with added health benefits. What kind of mushrooms am I talking about? Not the kind you typically find in your supermarket that you put on your salad, but medicinal mushrooms like Reishi, Chaga, Cordyceps, and Lion’s Maine.
Reishi, the mushroom of immortality, is known for its ability to boost immunity, fight viruses, regenerate the liver, improve respiratory function, lower cholesterol, and help you de-stress.
Chaga, known as the king of mushrooms, has powerful antioxidant value, is a strong immune system modulator, fights tumors and cancer, and decreases inflammation in the body.
Cordyceps is great to take before physical activity as it is an adaptogen that helps your body naturally boost energy without the crash that you get with caffeine. It is nourishing to the lungs and kidneys, increasing oxygen utilization throughout the body to decrease fatigue and improve physical endurance.
Lion’s Maine is shown to boost cognitive function, improving focus ability and memory. It’s great to have for studying or when under high mental demand.
Mushroom coffee can be great if you are trying to reduce your caffeine or coffee intake, if you want to heal your body, or if just want to feel like you have more super powers!
The naturally high mineral content in the mushrooms also balances out the acidity of coffee, making it much gentler on your digestive system and your pH. If you don’t want the coffee, you can just have the mushrooms by themselves. Add hot water over the dried powder to create your mushroom elixir. They generally taste similar to coffee, but a bit earthier and they can be bitter by themselves. Companies like Four Sigmatic make great blends of these mushrooms in easy single-serving packets. Because the use of these functional mushrooms is growing in popularity, there are now many different companies making their own blends and adding them into their food/beverage products. As with anything you put in your body, it’s important to use discernment in quality. Look into where the mushrooms came from, how they were grown or cultivated, and the type of processing used to extract the mushrooms as all these factors can influence their potency and health value.
