Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCPPresident at Five Journeys, Functional Medicine & Wellness Provider, Best Selling Author, Passionate Champion for Health

Best Way to Consume Mushrooms

25 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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1:18

This YouTube transcript (Wendie Trubow, MD) distinguishes types of mushrooms—regular edible mushrooms; edible medicinal species (e.g., maitake, lion's mane, oyster, shiitake); and woodier medicinal/polypore species that grow on trees (e.g., chaga, reishi, cordyceps). The speaker advises that woodier medicinals are often best consumed as a boiled medicinal broth (used for drinking or cooking grains) or as powdered/double-extract tinctures, and emphasizes choosing the form people will actually use daily for effectiveness.

Chapters

So it's not just a one size fits all. They don't know that's where the dried mushrooms would come in. Not the. See, I need a map here. I'm very like, okay, yeah. So the thing with mushrooms is that we have our edible mushrooms and we have the edible medicinals like maitake lines main oyster shiitake like we've been talking about. And then there's the medicinals that are too woody to eat, like chaga and reishi. I guess cordyceps would be in that category, even though technically it's like softer and you could probably just cook it up and eat it, but most people don't do that. And then other kind of polypore hard mushrooms that are going to be mostly growing on trees. And so those ones you're not going to saute and cook and eat, but you can boil them into a broth, like a medicinal broth, and you can drink that throughout the day, or you can use that broth water to cook your grains. And so I think that's a really good way to get those medicinals on a daily basis if you're preferring to be consuming them as, as more of a food thing. But otherwise, like most people are not going to do that. The most effective way to use mushrooms is whatever you're more likely to do on a daily basis. And most people are just not going to eat mushrooms on a daily basis. And so those woodier medicinals, I think most people benefit from just getting them in a, a powdered extract or a, a double extract tincture.