White Button Mushrooms for Prostate Cancer [Video]

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

A regular intake of mushrooms is said to make us healthier, fitter, happier, and help us live longer. But what is the evidence for all of that? Mushrooms are widely cited for their medicinal qualities, yet very few rigorous human intervention studies have been done.

There is a compound called lentinan, extracted from shiitake mushrooms. To get about an ounce, you have to distill around 400 pounds of shiitakes. That’s like 2,000 cups of mushrooms. But then, you can inject the compound into cancer patients, and see what happens. The pooled response from a dozen small clinical trials found that the “objective response rate” was significantly improved when lentinan was added to chemo regimens for lung cancer. Objective response rate means …