You may like mushrooms on your steak, mushrooms on a hamburger or especially sliced mushrooms on a lettuce salad. But, mushrooms in coffee? Remove the image of slices of mushroom in your cup of java and let’s start over. There is a mushroom that grows only in a remote part of China that is a folk medicine. Recent research shows that the ganoderma mushroom may help strengthen the immune system of people with cancer. But if you take ganoderma you might get a dry nose and throat as well as nausea. And ganoderma may interfere with chemotherapy meds or anticoagulants. Organic ganoderma coffee combines the benefits of this medicinal mushroom with healthy organic coffee. And there are other kinds of organic coffee with mushrooms.

Cordyceps

Cordyceps is a kind of mushroom that grows throughout the world. Some of these contain chemicals with biologic properties. For example the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine used after organ transplants is extracted from a variety of Cordyceps. One variety of organic coffee with mushrooms is simply a Cordyceps powder that is prepared like one prepares coffee. This is similar to making chicory coffee instead of real java. The same arguments that apply to ganoderma apply to Cordyceps. Is this a coffee variety or replacement or is it a medicine?

What we said about ganoderma applies to Cordyceps as well.

Is This an Herbal Supplement or an Unregulated Drug?

For more than a century the United States has had laws requiring that medications do not cause any harm. For forty years the law has required that medications do what they claim to do. These laws, unfortunately, do not apply to dietary supplements. Thus products like ganoderma are commonly marketed in such a way as to suggest that they have numerous benefits to your health. However, if you read the fine print they never really say that. If they make clear claims about the effectiveness of their products the Food and Drug Administration will require them to provide proof or take their products off the market. Thus the way these products are marketed is to provide “testimonials” about how someone felt better or suggests this product to friends. This level of “proof” is not scientific and not based on research. So, go ahead and try some organic ganoderma coffee but be aware that while there is a ton of proof that coffee is good for your health you may be wasting your money by adding the mushroom from China.

The health benefits of coffee are many and researchers seem to find more every day. Coffee is known to reduce the risk of type II diabetes, various forms of cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and the risk of depression and suicide. There is little to evidence that combining organic coffee with mushrooms improves the health benefits of coffee. There is evidence that drinking coffee helps you live longer and although mushrooms in your coffee may not reverse that effect there is no evidence that they will help either.