Ganoderma lucidum, commonly referred to as the’mushroom of immortality’, has long been used as an effective and natural medicinal mushroom in Asia. This fungus has been shown to boost your immune system while fighting cancer cells; plus it contains beta-glucans that may stimulate natural insulin production for lower blood pressure and cholesterol balance, plus powerful anti-inflammatory properties which could benefit diabetics or those with heart disease. If you want an easy way to harness its benefits here’s a method for creating tasty and healthy Ganoderma tea!

Lingzhi (Ganoderma lucidum) is a popular traditional Chinese herbology herbal remedy and clinical trials have demonstrated its hypoglycaemic, antihypertensive, lipid-lowering and antioxidant benefits. Results may differ between studies due to variations between formulations or study populations – more research needs to be conducted in order to isolate and identify those components within G. lucidum which have proven biological activity and conduct large controlled clinical trials with standardised preparations that contain active constituents with relevant clinical benefits.

Triterpenes with various biological activities have been isolated from G. lucidum’s spores, fruiting bodies and mycelium for further investigation (Seo et al., 2013). Polysaccharides extracted from its spores contain glucose as well as other monosaccharides such as xylose, mannose, fucose and galactose in various conformations; these polysaccharides may provide immunomodulatory and anticancer activities (Xu et al., 2011).

Polysaccharides derived from G. lucidum have been shown to increase insulin secretion and decrease hepatic glucose output in both normal and alloxan-induced hyperglycaemic mice (Fudan-Yueyang Ganoderma lucidum; FYGL), thus exerting hypoglycaemic effects. Furthermore, its polysaccharides inhibit activation of Akt and AMPK while inducing glycogen synthase kinase-3b expression and glycolysis in hepatocytes; FYGL has also shown to improve metabolism while decreasing adipose tissue and muscle glycogen storage through upregulation of GLUT4 while downregulating GSK3 and GTPase 1B expression levels (Ma et al. 2015).

G. lucidum organic fractions have been demonstrated to lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels both ex vivo and in vivo in experiments performed on hepatocytes, hamsters and minipigs. Oxygenated lanosterol derivative-containing fractions demonstrated particularly effective at this goal with 2.5 and 5% dried G. lucidum powder showing decreases in ex-vivo HMG-CoA reductase activity as well as total cholesterol, triglycerides and HDL levels respectively (Berger et al. 2004).

G. lucidum has been found to exhibit cardioprotective effects, including normalising cardiac ejection fraction and decreasing ventricular hypertrophy in a transverse aortic constriction-induced mouse model of heart failure (Xie et al., 2016). Furthermore, oral administration of G. lucidum spore oil improved left ventricular ejection fraction as well as correcting left ventricular hypertrophy as well as decreasing expression of circular RNA Foxo3 expression (Xie et al. 2017).