Nature’s cancer antidote ‘Turkey Tail Mushroom’
Turkey Tail mushrooms are popular for their colorful stripes and powerful fungus and can be found in the northern forests of Europe, USA, China, Canada, and Japan.
Turkey Tail mushrooms are known as Chinese medicinal tea since people in Japan and China drink boiled tea with Turkey Tail mushroom.
Recently, the researchers at Bastyr University and University of Washington are working on a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to find out if Turkey tail mushrooms can help to boost the immune system of cancer patients after chemotherapy.
After many years, FDA finally has approved the clinical trial that would allow patients with advanced stages of prostate cancer take Turkey Tail extract during chemotherapy.
This is when another study trail about affectivity of turkey tail extract with vaccine treatment in women with breast cancer is still pending.
According to Bastyr’s University website, the leading investigator of the study, Leanna J. Standish, PhD, "we didn't discover turkey tail. It's been used in Asia for thousands and thousands of years, and it turns out to be a really potent immune therapy. The significance, I think, is that we're bringing a new medicine to cancer patients in the U.S."
However, previous studies by Bastyr University and University of Minnesota have shown that turkey tail supplements could be beneficial for breast cancer therapies by enhancing the immune system of cancer patients.
In fact, the study findings show that women who (with advanced stages of cancer) took turkey tail on a daily basis had better chances of recovery without any side effects than those who did not.
"One of the things chemotherapy does is suppressing the immune system, so our question is whether patients taking the extract can maintain healthier immune function," says Masa Sasagawa, ND, a senior project manager at the Bastyr University Research Institute.
Turkey Tail mushrooms are most popularly known as being the natural source of the anti-cancer polysaccharide PSK (polysaccharide K):
Polysaccharide PSK is a high molecular weight carbohydrate found in the mycelium of Turkey Tails and the fungi and can facilitate production of cytotoxic alkaloid isolated from a marine Penicillium in order to create dideoxyverticillin.
If scientists manage to produce this at a high stable concentration and in large quantities, this would be a great new weapon against fighting cancer cells.
"The FDA wants to know what the 'mechanism of action' is," says Dr. Sasagawa. "But it's very difficult to determine, because turkey tail is a natural product and not a single compound."
Unlike synthetic drugs, mushrooms contain many elements that each can haves a significant effect on the immune system. Also, natural products like turkey tail mushrooms are harvested from year to year and detailed research studies require consistency.
In addition, there is a safety concern, if you want to grow mushrooms in a soil contaminated with toxins and heavy metals.
In order to achieve full safety and consistency, the research team has found a pharmaceutical-grade turkey tail product made in Japan widely used for treatment of cancer for more than 30 years.
They found that protein-bound polysaccharide K (PSK) in the solution was a powdered turkey tail derivative produced in Japan using a hot-water extraction method. Therefore, the participants of the clinical study are taking powdered PSK dissolved in water.
"There is a lot of knowledge accumulated by naturopathic doctors over the years, and with the help of NCCAM we've been able to investigate howsome of these medicines operate," says Mark Martzen, PhD, CIP, senior director of research development at Bastyr. "It's given us critical insight into how things work at the molecular level."
If that’s the case, big Pharma will be the first one looking into creating a pharmaceutical drug from the essential compounds of turkey tail mushroom:
Although it’s great news that Chinese and herbal medicine are natural and inexpensive methods for curing diseases like cancer, the fact is that giant Pharmaceutical and medical companies will be the first to exploit this knowledge and use it for selling more pharmaceutical drugs.
A drug that like all other drugs will seek FDA’s approval and will eventually be nutritionally ruined and patented for the sake of corporate profit.
In the last few years, pharmaceutical and drug companies have tried so hard to ignore studies about natural and herbal remedies and in a desperate attempt they have even created thousands of fake documents to push for pharmaceutical drugs instead of natural, herbal and alternative therapies.
FDA who with a long history of raiding organic farms and banning information about natural supplements like colloidal silver refuses to go after giant pharmaceutical companies who are making money off of toxic drugs, often at the expense of the American people.
In fact, conventional medical system is one of the leading causes of deaths in the United States and just in US, annually,12,000 people die due to unnecessary surgeries, 7,000 people die due to medical errors, 20,000 people die due to other errors, 80,000 people die from infections acquired at the hospitals and 106,000 people die from adverse side effect of medications.
Wwe do not know about the potential dangers of pharmaceutical drugs until it’s too late (for instance when a drug starts killing people), keep in mind that the pharmaceutical industry systematically hides this information from the public.
Even when a drug is banned for having severe side effects or killing people, giant Pharma find ways to release the same drug under a different name into the market.
The giant pharmaceutical companies have been caught buying clinical trials, bribing doctors and distorting science. In fact, many doctors who frequently recommend pharmaceutical drugs have strong ties to Big Pharma.
Are we that naive to think that billions of dollars of contributions from these giant companies (who are polluting our food, air and environment), won’t tilt or at least steer the findings of these so called ‘scientific studies?’
Most disturbingly, peer review articles published in some well-respected medical journals are actually written by those who are making profit by selling drugs with severe side effects. (Science Journal hires former Monsanto’s employee to approve GMO articles)
Majority of big donators to our schools and universities are giant Pharmaceutical, biotech, chemical and oil companies.
You would think that at least the academic research are non-biased and natural, considering that our government is deeply in bed with giant oil, drug, biotech, chemical and pharmaceutical companies.
But the fact is that every year, hundreds of millions of dollars from giant biotech, chemical and oil companies are invested in our schools. Millions of dollars are funded by oil companies to explore alternative energy sources which results in exploration of more oil fields for giant oil companies.
Are we that naive to think that billions of dollars of contributions from these giant companies (who are polluting our food, air and environment), won’t tilt or at least steer the findings of these so called ‘scientific studies?’
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