Paul Stamets Quotes

Maitake mushrooms are known in Japan as 'the dancing mushroom.' According to a Japanese legend, a group of Buddhist nuns and woodcutters met on a mountain trail, where they discovered a fruiting of maitake mushrooms emerging from the forest floor. Rejoicing at their discovery of this delicious mushroom, they danced to celebrate.

- Paul Stamets

Although the trends are promising and reishi mushrooms exhibit a number of interesting medicinal properties, modern scientific techniques have yet to affirm its traditional 'panacea polypore' status.

- Paul Stamets

Nitric oxide production by immune cells is one of the key mechanisms that our bodies use to destroy diseased cells. Enhancement of these types of immune responses is seen consistently with many medicinal mushrooms that have been tested by cancer researchers.

- Paul Stamets

Mushrooms are miniature pharmaceutical factories, and of the thousands of mushroom species in nature, our ancestors and modern scientists have identified several dozen that have a unique combination of talents that improve our health.

- Paul Stamets

My family is delighted every time I cook maitake. Our taste buds awaken in anticipation of its rich, deep and nuanced flavors.

- Paul Stamets

If you look on the fungal genome as being soldier candidates protecting the U.S. as our host defense, not only for the ecosystem but for our population... we should be saving our old-growth forests as a matter of national defense.

- Paul Stamets

For many years, I have sought and studied Agarikon, an unusual mushroom native to the old growth conifer forests of North America and Europe.

- Paul Stamets

Disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, oil spills and radioactive fallout cause massive death of people, pigs, bats and birds. These disasters also impact the immune health of survivors. All harbor viruses.

- Paul Stamets

Chaga is one of the weirdest mushrooms you may ever see. A fungal parasite found on birch trees, Chaga is a hardened, blackened, crusty formation that looks like a bursting tumor.

- Paul Stamets

While reishi mushrooms have historically been prepared as teas or infusions, other modern preparations include capsules, tinctures, and fractionated extracts of mushrooms, mycelium, and spores.

- Paul Stamets

Known colloquially as 'winter,' 'golden needle,' and 'velvet foot' mushrooms, enoki mushrooms grow across much of the world, inhabiting dead conifer trees and stumps, and generally appearing throughout the late fall and winter months.

- Paul Stamets

Mycologists are few and far between. We are under-funded, poorly represented in the context of other sciences - ironic, as the very foundation of our ecosystems are directly dependent upon fungi, which ultimately create the foundation of soils.

- Paul Stamets

Some people think I'm a mycological heretic, some people think I'm a mycological revolutionary, and some just think I'm crazy.

- Paul Stamets

Mushrooms provide a vast array of potential medicinal compounds. Many mushrooms - such as portobello, oyster, reishi and maitake - are well-known for these properties, but the lion's mane mushroom, in particular, has drawn the attention of researchers for its notable nerve-regenerative properties.

- Paul Stamets

The virus-to-cancer connection is where medicinal mushrooms offer unique opportunities for medical research.

- Paul Stamets

Turkey tail mushrooms have been used to treat various maladies for hundreds of years in Asia, Europe, and by indigenous peoples in North America. Records of turkey tail brewed as medicinal tea date from the early 15th century, during the Ming Dynasty in China.

- Paul Stamets

Growing the mycelium of the Chaga mushroom under laboratory conditions provides an ecologically friendly alternative supply of this unique medicinal mushroom.

- Paul Stamets

Mushrooms have many helpful nutrients, including beta glucans for immune enhancement, ergothioneines for antioxidative potentiation, nerve growth stimulators for helping brain function, and antimicrobial compounds for limiting viruses.

- Paul Stamets

In the wild, an enoki mushroom is often squat-looking and its stem is rarely more than twice as long as the cap is wide. When they are grown by farmers and hobbyists, however, their stems elongate, the caps are smaller, and a forest of golden colored needle-like mushrooms shoot up all at once.

- Paul Stamets

The majority of modern medicines originate in nature. Although some mushrooms have been used in therapies for thousands of years, we are still discovering new potential medicines hidden within them.

- Paul Stamets

My team and I have discovered, over decades of study, that mushroom mycelium is a rich resource of new antimicrobial compounds, which work in concert, helping protecting the mushrooms - and us - from microbial pathogens.

- Paul Stamets

Maitake can achieve humongous sizes, sometimes up to 50 pounds per specimen! Massive maitake can form annually from dying dendritic tree roots for many years, even decades.

- Paul Stamets

Traditionally, our ancestors boiled mushrooms in water to make a soothing tea. Boiling served several purposes: killing contaminants, softening the flesh, and extracting the rich soluble polysaccharides.

- Paul Stamets

In the past, mushrooms were maligned as nutritionally poor. Since they are about 80 to 90 percent water when fresh, their net concentrations of nutrients can be underestimated. Like grains, however, mushrooms should be weighed when dry to get their correct nutrient value.

- Paul Stamets

We evolved living in more sunlight than today. We make our own vitamin D when sunlight hits our skin cells. Many people living in the northern hemisphere, however, suffer from lower levels of vitamin D during the fall, winter and spring.

- Paul Stamets

Today, reishi stands out as one the most valuable of all polypore mushrooms in nature for the benefit of our health. Many naturopaths and doctors prefer organically-grown reishi from pristine environments because they are more pure.

- Paul Stamets

Lion's mane may be our first 'smart' mushroom. It is a safe, edible fungus that appears to confer cognitive benefits on our aging population.

- Paul Stamets

Through trial-and-error and observable outcomes, our ancestors narrowed the field of edible mushroom candidates to just a few with remarkable, health-supporting properties.

- Paul Stamets

Chaga mycelium is relatively easy to grow by using methods already practiced elsewhere in the mushroom industry. Its mycelium is initially an off-whitish color, deepening with age.

- Paul Stamets

Nature is a numbers game. We need all the support we can get as our immune systems and health are under assault from pollution, stress, contaminated food and age-related diseases as our lifespans increase.

- Paul Stamets

Life exists throughout the cosmos and is a consequence of matter in the universe.

- Paul Stamets

Although oyster mushrooms have been studied extensively and support health in a number of ways, it is also extremely important to always cook oyster mushrooms!

- Paul Stamets

Of all mushrooms commonly consumed, oyster mushrooms in the genus Pleurotus stand out as exceptional allies for improving human and environmental health. These mushrooms enjoy a terrific reputation as the easiest to cultivate, richly nutritious and medicinally supportive.

- Paul Stamets

Chaga is significant in ethnomycology, forest ecology, and increasingly in pharmacognosy. Its long-term human use and cultural eastern European and Russian acceptance should awaken serious researchers to its potential as a reservoir of new medicines, and as a powerful preventive ally for protecting DNA.

- Paul Stamets

Lion's mane mushrooms are not your classic-looking cap-and-stem variety. These globular-shaped mushrooms sport cascading teeth-like spines rather than the more common gills.

- Paul Stamets

Fungi are the grand recyclers of the planet and the vanguard species in habitat restoration.

- Paul Stamets

Enoki mushrooms, a tasty variety commonly sold in grocery stores, were one of the first mushrooms studied for preventing cancer.

- Paul Stamets

Agarikon contains antiviral molecules new to science. Researchers for pharmaceutical companies may have missed its potent antiviral properties. Our analyses show that the mycelial cultures of this mushroom are most active but that the fruitbodies, the natural form of the mushroom, are not.

- Paul Stamets

From dead plant matter to nematodes to bacteria, never underestimate the cleverness of mushrooms to find new food!

- Paul Stamets

Vitamin D from mushrooms is not only vegan and vegetarian friendly, but you can prepare your own by exposing mushrooms to the summer sun.

- Paul Stamets

If you do not know where the mushroom products you are consuming are grown, think twice before eating them.

- Paul Stamets