Ganoderma lucidum, “Mushroom of Immortality,” Can Improve Sleep
Ganoderma lucidum (also known as Lingzhi) has been regarded in Asian countries as a medicinal mushroom with amazing health benefits. In Chinese medicinal book "Shen Nong's Materia Medica", which was written in the late Eastern Han Dynasty (184-220 AD), it was documented that “Lingzhi is good for health, is non-toxic, improves ‘qi’ (or spirit) and lightens body, prevents senility and prolongs life so as to make one an immortal.” This mushroom has been seen by many in China as having magical power. In Chinese art, lingzhi symbolizes great health and longevity, and it is a symbol for good luck in the traditional culture of China. When it is translated into western culture, lingzhi has been referred to as “mushroom of immortality.”
The active constituents found in lingzhi include polysaccharides, dietary fibers, oligosaccharides, triterpenoids, peptides and proteins, alcohols, phenols, mineral elements (such as zinc, copper, iodine, selenium, and iron), vitamins, and amino acids. The bioactive components found in the lingzhi mushroom have numerous health properties to treat disease conditions such as hepatopathy, chronic hepatitis, nephritis, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, arthritis, neurasthenia, insomnia, bronchitis, asthma, gastric ulcers, atherosclerosis, leukopenia, diabetes, anorexia, and cancer (1).
In China, lingzhi has been used as a tranquilizing agent to treat insomnia for thousands of years. A few of my friends talked about how lingzhi helped them improve their sleep. My curiosity prompted me to do a PubMed search to look at the research findings on this topic.
With the well-known health benefits of lingzhi in China, I was surprised to find only few research papers studying the effect of lingzhi on sleep on PubMed, and these published research papers had been done by, of course, Asian scientists.
A group of scientists from China extracted fruiting bodies of Ganoderma lucidum into Ganoderma lucidum extract. They fed rats this extract orally for 3 days, and on the third day, they conducted sleep recordings on these rats. Feeding 3 days of Ganoderma lucidum extract (80 mg/kg) significantly prolonged total sleep time doubling the sleep time from ~60 minutes in control group to ~120 minutes in the treatment group and enhanced quality of sleep in these rats. This data confirmed that Ganoderma lucidum had hypnotic effects (i.e., An Shen in Chinese medicine) so that it could be used as a sleep-promoting agent, and supported what had been documented in the thousands-year-old Chinese medicine (2).
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study aimed to investigate the efficacy and safety of a polysaccharide extract of Ganoderma lucidum was conducted in 123 Chinese patients with neurasthenia, who were randomized to receive Ganoderma lucidum or placebo orally at 1,800 mg three times a day for 8 weeks. Efficacy assessments comprised the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) improvement of severity scale (a 7-point scale that requires the clinician to rate the severity of the patient's illness at the time of assessment, relative to the clinician's past experience with patients who have the same diagnosis) and the Visual Analogues Scales for the sense of fatigue and well-being. Ganoderma lucidum treatment for 8 weeks resulted in significantly lower scores after 8 weeks in the CGI severity score and sense of fatigue (meaning symptoms less severe and feeling less fatigue), with a respective reduction of 15.5% and 28.3% from the beginning of the study, whereas the reductions in the placebo group were 4.9% and 20.1%, respectively. The sense of well-being increased from baseline to 38.7% in the Ganoderma lucidum group compared with 29.7% in the placebo group. There was a percentage of 51.6% (32 of 62) in the Ganoderma lucidum group rated as more than minimally improved compared with 24.6% (15 of 61) in the placebo group. These findings indicated that Ganoderma lucidum was significantly superior to placebo with respect to the clinical improvement of symptoms in neurasthenia (3).
Research on Ganoderma lucidum needs to continue so that its medicinal benefits can be better known in the countries outside of Asia. Both animal studies and human clinical studies can provide scientific support for the benefits of Ganoderma lucidum, however, the cost of such clinical research in humans can be prohibitive considering how expensive the Ganoderma lucidum has been in Asian countries.
A good night’s sleep can be influenced by many factors which may take some personal testing before anybody can claim whether something is working or not for their conditions. We can try some different sources of lingzhi and experience the magical effect of the “mushroom of immortality” in real life.
References:
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Batra P, Sharma AK, Khajuria R. Probing Lingzhi or Reishi medicinal mushroom Ganoderma lucidum (higher Basidiomycetes): a bitter mushroom with amazing health benefits. Int J Med Mushrooms. 2013; 15(2): 127-43.
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Cui XY, Cui SY, Zhang J, Wang ZJ, Yu B, Sheng ZF, Zhang XQ, Zhang YH. Extract of Ganoderma lucidum prolongs sleep time in rats. Journal of Ethnopharmacology. 2012; 139: 796–800.
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Tang W, Gao Y, Chen G, Gao H, Dai X, Ye J, et al. A Randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of a Ganoderma lucidum polysaccharide extract (ganopoly) in neurasthenia. J Med Food 2005; 8: 53–8.