Reishi Mushroom
Ganoderma lucidum
Also known as: Lingzhi, Mushroom of Immortality
Overview
Known as the "mushroom of immortality," reishi has been used in Chinese medicine for roughly 1,800 years. Its triterpenes and beta-glucans have well-documented immune-modulating activity in laboratory and animal studies. The human evidence is thinner: a handful of small trials report changes in immune cell counts and activity, but the largest pooled analysis to date found no significant effect on inflammatory markers and rated the overall certainty of the evidence as very low.
Proposed mechanism
Human trials show measurable immune-cell changes: a randomized placebo-controlled trial of a purified Reishi beta-1,3/1,6-glucan raised natural killer (NK) cell counts and cytotoxicity along with T-lymphocyte subsets (CD3, CD4, CD8) — though that trial was industry-funded and tested an isolated beta-glucan rather than whole mushroom. A Cochrane review of Reishi in cancer patients found similar small increases in T-cell subsets but rated the underlying trials poor quality and NK activity only marginally elevated. Cytokine effects in humans are inconsistent, with different trials reporting opposite changes in the same markers, so Reishi is better described as shifting immune measures than as reliably lowering inflammation. Two other commonly cited mechanisms — macrophage activation and ganoderic-acid inhibition of mast-cell histamine release — have been shown only in cell-culture and animal studies (the histamine work dates to the 1980s) and have not been tested in humans.
Mechanisms describe how researchers think a compound may act, often from laboratory work — a proposed mechanism is not proof of a clinical effect in people.
Traditional & studied uses
Related pathways
Pathway tags are a research aid for browsing the glossary — they are not a claim that this ingredient treats any condition.