The Turkey Tail Mushroom
This hardy mushroom gets its English name from the shape it grows in – multicoloured layered arches that resemble the splayed tail feathers of a turkey. It’s a bracket fungus, growing outwards in rounded beautiful shapes, in groups or rows on dead wood. It can be found in many different parts of the world, preferring temperate climates and humid surroundings, meaning it’s quite common here in the UK! It grows all year round but is at its best in the autumn.
The Ecological Role of Turkey Tail
Turkey tail is a key part of the woodland ecosystem, as a recycler of dead and dying trees – these kinds of mushrooms are called saprotrophs.
Turkey tail specialises in breaking down the lignin – the hard part of wood – returning valuable nutrients to the food chains. Mushrooms start the decomposing process, breaking down dead organic material into humus, minerals and nutrient resources that can be used by plants. They create and exude lots of different powerful enzymes that allow them to break down even tough material. By kickstarting this chain of events, mushrooms also make room for the next organisms to help out: animal biodiversity such as springtails, beetles and worms can gain access to the wood cavities and continue the healthy breakdown. In this way, Turkey tail and other saprotrophic fungi are very valuable to any ecosystem; they even release volatile organic compounds (aromatic smells) that attract wildlife to the area.
Lots of different fungi will be thriving in dead logs at this time of year, and they all have thin, elongated tubes called hyphae that pierce through the decomposing material. These hyphae make up the mycelium, the main body of a fungus. When the mycelium of different species of fungus encounter each other in the decaying wood, they don’t get along. In fact, they often go to great lengths to stop the opponent’s growth, sometimes even parasitising it! If you see dark lines inside decaying wood, they might just be the so-called spalting lines; the borders between different mushroom types formed by the fungi releasing defensive compounds.
From Forest Recycler to Ergotheonine-Rich, Medicinal Mushroom
Once the fungal mycelia are happy and comfortable with their growth conditions in the dead wood, they might start to put out fruiting bodies: the mushrooms we see on the surface. Their job is to reproduce and release spores, so they are filled with the best nutrients the fungi can offer.
One of these nutrients is ergothioneine; an amino acid that acts as a powerful antioxidant, and is deemed essential to humans, recently labelled the longevity vitamin. It is only produced by bacteria and fungi in the soil (Turkey Tail has high levels in its fruiting brackets!), plants and animals are unable to produce it themselves, so an ergothioneine rich environment is crucial for those antioxidants to be transported up the food chain and into animal and human diets. Studies show that growing crops in soil rich in fungal mycorrhizae significantly boosts the ergothioneine levels in the crops.
While a lot of the organic nutrients and biochemicals return to the soil once the fruiting bodies die off, the lucky mushrooms that get nibbled on up the food chain pass on their beneficial content directly to people and animals who consume them. Here in the UK, Turkey tail provides a tasty snack for several caterpillars. In traditional Chinese medicine it has been used as a health boosting supplement for millennia, often as a tea or a powdered extract (since humans can’t digest its fruiting bodies as they are).
Human History of Turkey Tail Consumption as a Medicinal Mushroom
Records of Turkey Tail use as a folk medicine date back to more than 3000 years ago, being described in the Shennong Emperor’s Classic of Materia Medica. As a globally successful organism, it has featured heavily in Chinese, Japanese and Native American medicine historically, usually as tea or broth. Records from those times describe it as beneficial to the spirit, vital energy, and bone and tendon strength. The medics of the Han Dynasty were definitely on to something, because Turkey Tail produces some compounds that are being actively used in cancer treatment today!
Turkey Tail Mushroom As a Natural Cancer Adjuvant
Cancer is one of the most heavily researched areas of medicine, being such a far-reaching health concern. According to the World Health Organisation, approximately 1 in 5 people develop cancer in their lifetime. The most efficient cancer control as of yet is chemotherapy (using a variety of small molecular weight compounds to kill cancer cells) and radiotherapy (localised radiation to kill cancer cells). Interestingly, many of the compounds used in chemo have their foundations in plant compounds, and some anticancer agents also stem from fungi (doxorubicin, daunomycin, mitomycin C, and bleomycin for instance. Many mushrooms also contain active compounds that act as powerful adjuvants alongside chemo and radiotherapy, either by enhancing the treatment potency or by reducing the side effects.
The Cancer-Fighting Compounds Found in Turkey Tail
Modern medicine use of Turkey Tail compounds as a cancer adjuvant started in the 1960s; the investigations into its bioactivity were kickstarted after a case of unexpected remission in a patient with metastatic cancer. Research led scientists to the identification of a particular kind of polysaccharopeptide which they named Krestin, and so the term used in medicine is PSK. Clinical trials were launched with good success rates, leading to Japanese institutions adding PSK to their chemotherapy protocols. PSP was found not long after (1983), and has become a staple in Chinese treatments of lung and gastrointestinal cancer. Immuno-oncology is now being pioneered in cancer research: helping the immune system detect malignant cells.
PSK and PSP are very similar in chemical structure, but are extracted from two different strains of Turkey Tail. Their primary mechanism is immunomodulation in cancer patients: they enhance the ability of the immune system to discover the tumour, targeting it better, and increase the effectiveness of the chemotherapy.
The Turkey Tail Cancer Hit List:Stimulates natural killer cells to target tumours Increases expression of tumour necrosis factor, an immune function that induces cell death in cancer cells Limits tumour spread Shortens duration of bone marrow suppression, a side effect associated with chemotherapy Increases white blood cell count, hemoglobin, neutrophils, and other immune cells Counteracts the immunosuppressing effects of cancer drugs like cyclophosphamide |
The reason Turkey Tail works so well alongside cancer therapy, is its ability to both help the treatment target the cancer cells to reduce tumours better, while also strengthening the immune system of the patient. Cancer treatments take a heavy toll on the body due to the high toxicity required to kill the malignant cells, so by helping to counteract some of the adversity the turkey tail also allows the body to manage the treatment better.
PSP and PSK are some of the most progressive studies carried out on medicinal mushrooms, ranging from in vitro cell studies of both human and animal cancer cell lines, through to animal studies and human clinical trials. Both compounds are commercially available and leaned on heavily in China and Japan, and ongoing monitoring and research shows considerable improvement in survival rates compared to chemotherapy treatment alone. Scientists continue to explore the specific modes of action and molecular interactions of PSP and PSK, to improve treatment and enhance the beneficial effects.
Extra Antioxidant Goodness
While proven to exhibit cytotoxic effects on cancer cells, Turkey Tail also has a few other tricks up its proverbial sleeve. It is both antibacterial and antiviral, and is shown to be good for gut health (increasing levels of helpful bacteria like Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, while reducing levels of the bad ones). As a powerful antioxidant with more than 30 different phenolic compounds, it also reduces inflammation in the body. This is also beneficial in cancer treatment; studies show significant decrease in superoxide release from red blood cells, and successful counteraction of the free radicals produced by cancer therapy agents.
How Regulation Shapes Access to Medicinal Mushrooms
Turkey Tail has an extensive history of safe use and a growing body of rigorous scientific research to back up its benefits; despite this the Food Standards Agency classified it as a “Novel Food” some time ago. This means it hasn’t been officially recognised as having 20 years of continuous use in food in the UK or EU prior to 15 May 1997. In our opinion, this change threatens access to proven support, creates unnecessary fear or confusion by suggesting a safe mushroom might be harmful, and undermines centuries of traditional knowledge. Far from protecting the public, reclassification could push people toward unreliable sources and weaken trust between communities and regulators, ultimately making people less safe.
Sources
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