Turkey Tail Mushroom

Earlier this month, Portland Healing Space owner, Danielle Lombardi, found these beautiful Turkey Tail mushrooms. Danielle is an acupuncturist and holistic pelvic care™ practitioner, as well as a trained herbalist in Chinese medicine.

In Chinese medicine, herbalism is one of the five branches of medicine. Danielle works with many Chinese herbal formulas in her practice, but also loves to forage in her local Pacific Northwest forests and harvest plants that she can process into medicine.

Turkey Tail, Trametes versicolor, also known as Coriolus versicolor and Polyporus versicolor, is a common polypore mushroom found throughout the world. It's easy to see where it got its name; the multiple colors, stripes and shapes are reminiscent of a wild turkey!

In Chinese Medicine, Turkey Tail is known as Yun zhi. It is used to treat cancer, boost the immune system, alleviate chronic cough, chronic fatigue, hepatitis, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and is used for qi and essence building. The Turkey Tail medicine Danielle has made is perfect to help your immune system stay strong during cold and flu season or get you back on your feet once you've been hit with a nasty bug. Portland Healing Space also carries People's Herbs Five Mushroom Formula which includes Turkey Tail among other powerful mushrooms for health and healing.

Mushroom biologist, Paul Stamets, talks about Turkey Tail in his 2011 TEDMED talk (begins around 7:46). Paul's group was funded with a 2.1 million NIH grant from to study the use of Turkey Tail as a highly successful adjunct therapy to radioactivity in breast cancer patients. As you can see, Turkey Tail Mushrooms are good to incorporate into your health and healing.

The mushroom biologist talks about the antimicrobial properties of fungi, how they can be used as potent insecticides, and how they may help boost the human immune system.