I found a verrry interesting item while reading “Jaymun’s Journey” (see: http://tinyurl.com/l5te4c Thanks, Dave! Incidentally, I am so thankful and happy that Jaymun is home now, what a relief!), which then led me to the following abstract: http://tinyurl.com/klxuvf Wowiezeewie!

In September, I will ask Sherlock if she can get me the full study…in the meantime, we will have to be content with what can be gleaned from the abstract, such as this glorious titbit: Ganoderma lucidum extract has a profound activity against leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma cells and may be a novel adjunctive therapy for the treatment of hematologic malignancies. Profound effect??? That sounds super…but what is this stuff?

Well, ganoderma lucidum is a mushroom species…a fungus that has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 4,000 years, making it one of the oldest mushrooms known to have been used in medicine, as we can read in its write-up in Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/n5szkn Perhaps many of you will recognize, as I did!, the Japanese word for this mushroom: Reishi. Ah yes. It seems to be another one of those fix-all-and-more remedies…it is used to treat conditions as diverse as rheumatism, heart problems, asthma, fatigue, psoriasis, high blood pressure, HIV and…cancer. And more…

I urge you to have a look at the above Wikipedia link. The “History” section is absolutely fascinating. For instance, the oldest book in oriental herbal medicine (2,000 years old!) states the following: “The taste is bitter, its energy neutral, it has no toxicity. It cures the accumulation of pathogenic factors in the chest. It is good for the Qi of the head, including mental activities… Long term consumption will lighten the body; you will never become old. It lengthens years.” Uhm…never become OLD?!!! Words escape me at the moment…

In Chinese, by the way, it is called “lingzhi,” which means “herb of spiritual potency” and my personal favourite: “mushroom of immortality.” 🙂

Wikipedia also provides suggestions on how to cook this mushroom as well as a list of scientific studies backing its rather impressive anti-this and anti-that properties. Can you tell that I am excited? 🙂 There are also heaps of studies on the mushroom of immortality in PubMed…I have already found a reliable source and will buy some of the, er, immortal extract, even though I don’t have the time now to go through any of these studies (but what I have read is enough to convince me to give it a whirl…)…

Finally, I would like to add that 24 hours from now Stefano and I will be on a flight for the U.S. We are spending our three-week summer holiday in my home state of Massachusetts. Yaaay! I can’t wait!

I will have access to my blog and e-mail account during this period (we are staying at my parents’ house, mostly), so I won’t “disappear” as I was forced to do last summer, when we went to France. But hey, after all, we will be on holiday, so I doubt I will be doing much research! A more likely scenario: Margaret (and Stefano, of course!) on a whale-watching boat or wandering through one of the Mass Audubon wildlife sanctuaries. But I will certainly stop by the blog now and again to say “hi there!” and post a few of the glorious photos that I plan to take…well, I have some packing to do, sooo…ciao for now!