Fantastic fungii

Saw an amazing doco last night which certainly made me sit up and take notice.
Fantastic Fungi highlights how critical fungi are in the earths eco system. They are in fact a completely different species to plants and animals.

The reason I have posted the story in this thread is because the doc raised many new investment opportunities. These ranged from natural insecticides, valuable drugs to cleaning up of toxic wastes.

If you already have a deep knowledge of the fungi world then you won't learn much more. But frankly I would be surprised if most people on ASF wouldn't appreciate this are much more after watching the show.

There is a website called fantastic fungi and there will be a free online forum in October which would be an opportunity to check out some of the investment opportunities as well as the broader issues raised.

This Ted Talk from 2008 is a short earlier story . It incorporates a number of the opportunities fungi offer for pollution rehabilitation.

There's some nutrient in mushrooms that you can't get from anything else, forgotten the name - just one mushroom a day will get you enough of it I read. Coincidentally I watched part of this video recently:

Mushrooms and Immunity (short read)

finicky said:

There's some nutrient in mushrooms that you can't get from anything else, forgotten the name - just one mushroom a day will get you enough of it I read. Coincidentally I watched part of this video recently:

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Great find.

The magic of mushrooms (I thinks these's a pun there, lol).
I really, really like mushrooms, always have, even dabbled with the "blue meanie" variety in my youth. and where would we be without the fungal spores that make blue vein cheese (and much more)?

Naturally with Italian heritage I've always some:

Boletus edulis–known as porcini, cep, Steinpilz, or penny bun

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mushrooms on hand and guess what's on the menu tonight?
Mushroom risotto (Arborio rice with porcini, portabello and Swiss brown), yum!

This interesting case study appeared in my email. It concerns fungi so I thought to pop it into this thread as another extraordinary example of these "fun guys".

"Inexplicably Drunk: A case of an Underdiagnosed Condition?



Medscape article

Turns out that a course of antibiotics interfered with his normal gut microbiome and allowed two species of yeast (fungi) to develop. These fungi converted ingested carbohydrates to alcohol.

Opportunistic little guys, aren't they!

Hmmm, that reminds me of a fun guy named Sunny.

I worked with the guy and he always looked like he was on a bit of a wild ride in life.
I saw him eating mouldy (white) bread one day at lunch time, he said he liked it with a wry smile. I wondered what I was missing at the time...

I found that rather odd.
I've since found out that bread mould produces LSD... but apparently wholemeal bread is far superior for the correct mould.

Sunny didn't last long in the job, nice enough guy, came from hippy parents from Byron Bay way.
Liked his skate board as transport and came to work one day missing much bark after getting the "death wobbles", a skateboarding phenomenon from going to fast.
Happy go lucky kid.
Used to sing this to him for fun.

Came cross this recent book on the role that Fungi play in connecting life. Fascinating.

The review offers an excellent synopsis.

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake review – a brilliant 'door opener' book​

Mushrooms in the Baikal Nature Reserve, Tankhoi, Russia. Photograph: Andrei Ogorodnik/TASS
Eating rubbish and the interpenetration of life ... this entrancing study of fungi changes our view of the world

Richard Kerridge
Thu 27 Aug 2020 16.30 AEST
Last modified on Tue 1 Sep 2020 20.25 AEST

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” So said the nature writer John Muir. His statement is spectacularly true of fungi. Mostly, they come to our notice as mushrooms, moulds, wood-rot, infections and antibiotics but, invisibly, they are inside us and all around us.

Fungi live in all kinds of organisms, on surfaces, in and below the soil, in the air, in water, in deep ocean floors and inside solid rock. In these places, fungi are not merely present. They are structural. Their interaction with other matter has played an essential role in making the world we inhabit. The symbiotic merging of algae and fungi to form lichens enabled the rootless ancestors of all our plants to emerge from water. Ninety per cent of all plants depend on fungi for minerals. Fungi can eat most rubbish, and even oil spills. We can use them in numerous ways (drugs, cooking, even furniture building). And when we look closely, we meet large, unsettling questions.

Merlin Sheldrake, a mycologist who studies underground fungal networks, carries us easily into these questions with ebullience and precision. His fascination with fungi began in childhood. He loves their colours, strange shapes, intense odours and astonishing abilities, and is proud of the way this once unfashionable academic field is challenging some of our deepest assumptions. Entangled Life is a book about how life-forms interpenetrate and change each other continuously. He moves smoothly between stories, scientific descriptions and philosophical issues. He quotes Prince and Tom Waits.

There are more than 2 million species of fungi. Most, he explains, take the form of multi-cellular filaments called hyphae, which grow at their tips, branch in all directions, mate, fuse, entwine and tangle, creating the networks known as mycelia. The fungi we see, the mushrooms, brackets and moulds, are the fruiting bodies that sprout from the mycelia to release spores: 50 megatonnes each year. Spores concentrate in the atmosphere, sometimes changing the weather: a droplet forms on one, which then traps more moisture, becoming the nucleus of a raindrop or hailstone.

I've picked up my consumption of mushrooms this year but limited to button mushrooms from my country town IGA (the locals wouldn't buy the Shitaki and other varieties so the store stopped stocking them). So I take a daily Reishi mushroom capsule that I get on iHerb and am looking for a source for Shitaki.
Interesting that mushrooms alone stimulate production of a chemical that shows up in bodily secretions that coat airways and the alimentary tract and that is hostile to invading pathogens - maybe the Covid virus?

One of the very important values of mushrooms was their medicinal properties. In particular the use of some mushrooms to treat severe depression and PTSD. The program I referenced noted a number of clinical studies that were already showing great promise.

Those studies have now strengthed the value of magic mushrooms and other varieties as effective one off treatments.

Excellent in depth story.

Will the magic of psychedelics transform psychiatry?​

The acid test: research is increasingly demonstrating the therapeutic value of psychedelics. Illustration: Lisa Sheehan
Psychedelics have come a long way since their hallucinogenic hippy heyday. Research shows that they could alleviate PTSD, depression and addiction. So will we all soon be treated with magic mushrooms and MDMA?

Mattha Busby
Sun 7 Nov 2021 21.00 AEDT


Imagine a medicine that could help people process disturbing memories, sparking behavioural changes rather than merely burying and suppressing symptoms and trauma. For the millions suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, such remedies for their daily struggles could be on the horizon. Psychiatry is rapidly heading towards a new frontier – and it’s all thanks to psychedelics.

In an advanced phase trial published in Nature in May, patients in the US, Israel and Canada who received doses of the psychedelic stimulant MDMA, alongside care from a therapist, were more than twice as likely than the placebo group to no longer have PTSD, for which there is currently no effective treatment, months later. The researchers concluded that the findings, which reflected those of six earlier-stage trials, cemented the treatment as a startlingly successful potential breakthrough therapy. There are now hopes that MDMA therapy could receive approval for certain treatments from US regulators by 2023, or perhaps even earlier – with psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, not far behind in the process. (A small study at Johns Hopkins University, published last year, suggested it could be four times more effective than traditional antidepressants.)

Not quite fungi.. Actually probably very close.

How quickly can mould literally make a place uninhabitable ? Spread onto everything in site. This story is probably repeated with many of the unfortunate people who were flooded in the past few years. Some takeaway lessons worth remembering.

This all happened over the summer break.

basilio said:

Saw an amazing doco last night which certainly made me sit up and take notice.
Fantastic Fungi highlights how critical fungi are in the earths eco system. They are in fact a completely different species to plants and animals.

The reason I have posted the story in this thread is because the doc raised many new investment opportunities. These ranged from natural insecticides, valuable drugs to cleaning up of toxic wastes.

If you already have a deep knowledge of the fungi world then you won't learn much more. But frankly I would be surprised if most people on ASF wouldn't appreciate this are much more after watching the show.

There is a website called fantastic fungi and there will be a free online forum in October which would be an opportunity to check out some of the investment opportunities as well as the broader issues raised.

https://www.netflix.com/au/title/81183477

Fungi Global Summit

fungiglobalsummit.com

Spore's the pity: how Fantastic Fungi flags up man's abuse of nature

The team behind a new documentary full of incredible footage of the secret life of mushrooms explain how fungi could help us stave off future pandemics

www.theguardian.com

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Fungi aren’t just a different species, they are a whole different kingdom of life. Very interesting organisms.

basilio said:

Not quite fungi.. Actually probably very close.

How quickly can mould literally make a place uninhabitable ? Spread onto everything in site. This story is probably repeated with many of the unfortunate people who were flooded in the past few years. Some takeaway lessons worth remembering.

This all happened over the summer break.

NSW school to be demolished after extensive mould outbreak in carpet, chairs and plasterboard

Willyama High School at Broken Hill set to be rebuilt, education minister Prue Car says

www.theguardian.com

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Yep, mould is fungi.