Conscious Choice: Mushroom with a View

September 2004

Mushroom with a View

Paul Stamets has a vision of a brave new mycological future world in which one of nature’s oldest organisms can help us survive modern times

by Silja J. A. Talvi

It doesn’t take long after meeting Paul Stamets to realize that mushrooms are truly at the center of everything in his life. There is an unblinking, blazing intensity in his gaze as Stamets begins to explain the tremendous “mending influence” of mushrooms — the myriad forms of fleshy fungi that thrive all across the world.

Stamets is, for all intents and purposes, a mushroom visionary with a firm grasp of the healing, environmental and planet-saving potential of mushrooms. Mushrooms are also delicious consumables, and it’s this that Stamets uses as an initial talking point with mushroom neophytes.

Boring button mushrooms are cheap and ubiquitous, but they are simply one variety of the estimated 150,000 species of mushrooms in the world. Highly prized chanterelles, morels, oyster mushrooms and shiitakes are familiar to gourmands across the world, who treasure their texture, distinct flavors and versatility in international cuisine. But to restrict mushrooms to the realm of foodstuffs is to miss a greater mycological truth, according to Stamets, the author of several books including the medicinal mushroom bible, Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (Ten Speed Press, 1993, 2000).

Stamets is the founder of a unique Washington-based mushroom cultivation and product company, Fungi Perfecti. As scientific and medical research has begun to demonstrate over the last few decades, mushrooms can, in fact, be a powerful tool in combating disease and diabetes; lowering blood pressure; supporting the immune system; filtering environmental pollutants; as well as serving their primary natural function of ensuring healthy forests and ecosystems through an ongoing and complex decomposition and recycling process.

Mushrooms, mushrooms and more mushrooms surround Stamets everywhere he goes. His wife, Dusty Wu Yao, shares Stamets’ passion, and so even their camping vacations and trips revolve around locating and studying fungi wherever they can find them. All of this may seem like a lot of emphasis on the fungal denizens of tree trunks and forest floors, the very idea of which repulses the kinds of people that Stamets refers to as “mycophobes.” On the contrary, as Stamets contends, we haven’t even begun to pay enough attention to what mushrooms can do for us, our society and our environment. If we were to truly tap into their power, Stamets insists, we could eventually achieve a kind of “mycotopia,” or a physical environment in which ecological equilibrium can be achieved and maintained by the “judicious use of fungi for the betterment of all life forms.”

If mushrooms hold the promise of a better future for humankind, then Stamets is a mushroom messenger unlike any other.

As humans, Stamets points out, we are more closely related to fungi than we realize, having shared a common ancestor more than 460 million years ago. As a result, both animals and fungi developed defenses against “mutual microbial enemies,” which is why fungi have provided us with such an abundance of fungal-based antibiotics.

Mushrooming of penicillin

If we need reminding of the historic importance of fungi, says Stamets, just look to the antibiotic penicillin, derived from penicillium notatum, the fungus from which Alexander Fleming created the life-saving medicine in 1928.

“Mushrooms don’t like to rot, so they produce natural antibiotics,” explains Stamets. “The mycelium produces these sweats of enzymes, and in these sweats are very potent antibiotics that are antiviral, antibacterial, antiprotozoal and antifungal.”

According to recent in-vitro studies, more than 75 percent of polypore mushrooms (shelf or hoof-shaped mushrooms that typically attach themselves to trees and have pores instead of gills) possess antimicrobial properties. Even early humans seem to have figured out what Stamets and other mycologists are now emphasizing about the healing properties of polypores in particular.

Take, for instance, the 1991 discovery of the 5,300-year-old Ice Man in the Alpine Mountains bordering Italy and Austria: his body was discovered with tinder fungus and birch polypore. Experts suggested the Ice Man used the fungi to help rid his body of toxins, as well as to transport embers over long distances. (Birch polypore can even be made into felt-like clothing and hats, a tradition still kept alive in the Transylvania region.)

Stamets’ love affair with mushrooms began nearly 30 years ago, while he was still a young hippie and a hard-working logger who watched several of his friends die in the field from work-related injuries. The deaths of his friends, in fact, forced Stamets to start considering a new direction in his life, which initially took the form of an obsessive fascination with the use, identification and history of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Magic mushrooms attracted Stamets, and, in essence, helped to kick off a multifaceted career in mycology.

“Mushrooms are my avocation and my vocation,” he says proudly. “I owe them a debt of gratitude.” After the publication of his first book about psilocybe mushrooms in 1978, Stamets received a B.S. in taxonomy from Evergreen State College, and then continued at the school pursuing postgraduate studies in microbiology and electron microscopy.

By 1980, he had already founded Fungi Perfecti, a mail-order business dedicated to promoting the cultivation of high-quality gourmet and medicinal mushrooms. Today, Fungi Perfecti is a successful, family-owned business located in a carefully tucked-away spot in the forest outside of Olympia. From its humble origins, Fungi Perfecti has grown exponentially as a company, and now provides an extensive selection of mushroom cultivation supplies as well as fungi-based organic extracts, teas, indoor and outdoor mushroom patches, popular proprietary supplements and advanced laboratory equipment for true mushroom enthusiasts. With the support of seven dedicated full-time employees, Stamets heads up an operation that includes five in-vitro propagation laboratories complete with high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtering systems, advanced air circulators and misters, and laminar flow vent hoods that defy expectations that anyone might have that this is just another “mushroom farm.”

Fungal fast-forward

The advent of Web-based ordering dramatically increased demand for Stamets’ medicinal mushroom products as alternative health supplements. Today, Stamets serves as an advisor to the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Medical School in Tucson, Ariz., founded by natural medicine leader and bestselling author Dr. Andrew Weil.

Stamets’ company is now a leading supplier for naturopaths, doctors, and other supplement manufacturers seeking high-quality organic reishi, shiitake, chaga, lion’s mane, zhu ling and other mushrooms valued for their therapeutic properties.

Stamets’ recent proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) resulted in the award of $300,000 toward a clinical study on the value of oyster mushrooms as an adjunct therapy with AIDS patients. The study, which will begin this summer at San Francisco General Hospital, seeks to prove the theory that oyster mushrooms can be used to offset the often damaging and disfiguring side effects of protease inhibitor medications.

“Protease inhibitors interfere with lipid metabolism in the liver, so that while you can keep the virus in check, the drugs can end up causing an accumulation of bad fats, heart disease, and all kinds of secondary illnesses as a consequence,” explained Stamets.

Research has already shown oyster mushrooms can reduce LDL cholesterol levels (the bad stuff), says Stamets, so the NIH-funded study has potential to improve the quality of life for countless HIV/AIDS patients. Over the years, Stamets has discovered new varieties of mushrooms (including several Pacific Northwest-native psilocybes), and patented a “mycopesticide,” a fungus-based technology that combats carpenter ants, fire ants, termites and other pests without the use of toxic chemicals. He reports being offered a nine-figure amount for rights to that patent.

Stamets and his staff have located old-growth forest fungi in the Pacific Northwest that seems to produce enzymes that can break down the deadly neurotoxin VX. Saddam Hussein is believed to have authorized the use of VX gas dozens of times during the reign of the Baathist regime, including in 1988, when a chemical attack simultaneously killed thousands of Kurds at a time when the U.S. government seems to have found it more convenient to look the other way.

There was some initial interest on the part of defense think tanks when Stamets’ findings were published in 1999 in the leading military trade publication, Jane’s Defense Weekly. Interest in Stamets’ discovery has intensified since Sept. 11, in the wake of concerns over large-scale biochemical attacks on U.S. soil.

New take on national security

The potential uses of fungi for homeland security have changed the way that some conservative politicians think about the preservation of old-growth forests.

The sad fact that it would take the specter of biochemical attacks to preserve what remains of our old-growth forests doesn’t bother Stamets. If that’s what it takes to unite right and left in the preservation of ecosystems, he muses, then so be it.

“When I present the information that within the old-growth forest mushroom genome we have candidate species with remarkable properties, antibiotics, enzymes and other compounds that could protect us against biochemical agents,” says Stamets, “I have not met a Republican yet who wants to cut the old-growth forests.

Stamets frames his argument to conservatives by explaining that the continued destruction of old-growth forests — in addition to the effects of pollution, global warming and topsoil erosion on ecosystems — has the effect of limiting our potential for discovering new medicines, new cures and new ways of defending against potential terrorist attacks.

“We need biodiversity even within a single species,” he says. “Nature does not survive on one strain alone. What matters is the plurality of strains and species and the complexity of the genome.”

And if it can protect us from terrorism, all the better and plainer.

Millions of mushrooms

There are an estimated 1 to 2 million species of fungi in the genome, only 10 percent of which take the form of fleshy fungi.

“That’s our estimation based on DNA work done over the past five years,” explains Stamets, who is the director of The Mushroom Genome and Mycodiversity Preservation Project ( www.mycodiversity.org). “We’ve identified 14,000 species of mushrooms thus far. What that means is that our ignorance exceeds our knowledge: We only know 10 percent or less of the mushroom species out there.”

Some species of fungi are known to remain residents in the ecosystem for decades or even hundreds of years before they sprout into mushrooms. In fact, the largest organism in the world, the Honey Mushroom, is spread over 2,400 acres and is believed to be 2,200 years old.

“The fungus has been there longer than the forest,” says Stamets.

The interlacing mosaics of mycellial colonies all around us are what Stamets affectionately refers to as the earth’s “natural Internet,” a kind of neural network of billions of tons of communicating cells. A lack of understanding of the complexity of that fungal system has led to something that Stamets calls a “mycologically myopic view” of fungi and their role in the ecosystem. “We live 75 years, on average, so we look at nature in the context of our own lifetimes,” he says. “But fungal systems work over thousands of years, decomposing and recycling forests, filtering waste and creating thicker soil which, in turn, has greater carrying capacity for greater diversity.

All of which worries Stamets: “I see nature as a bank of wealth, and it can only stand so many withdrawals before the bank account is overdrawn.”

Cutting old-growth forests is an example of punching the withdrawal button too often.

“We are overdrawing the bank account and shortchanging future generations,” says Stamets. “We are postponing the remedies that need to be put into place now for the benefit of people whose primary interest is in their own pocketbooks.”

The destruction of forests in the form of logging clear-cuts — and even controlled burns of forests to prevent bigger fires — has resulted in devastating and even irreversible consequences for our friendly fungi and our planet. Modern-day environmentalists have, of course, been making this case for decades, pointing to the rapid rate of the endangerment and extinction of animal species as a primary argument. But Stamets believes that the ultimate salvation of remaining old-growth forests may indeed hinge on a deeper understanding: “that of the role of fungal networks in keeping all of us alive.”

“These are healing membranes,” Stamets says softly. “And we are at the dawn of a mycological revolution.”

Silja J. A. Talvi is an award-winning writer based in Seattle. She is a regular contributor to Evergreen Monthly.

Get More Info

Fungi Perfecti (a registered trademark) can be found at www.fungi.com. Paul Stamets’ forthcoming book, Mycelium Running (Ten Speed Press), will be published later this year.

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