Coffee is delicious, aromatic and a beautiful early morning ritual. It’s not something you want to give up! Sure, coffee has some health benefits - like liver detoxification and fat burning - but some people also experience the downsides, like difficulty sleeping, adrenal exhaustion, amplified anxiety, indigestion and energy dips. For this reason, more and more people are giving up this beloved beverage, but what if you don’t have to?
A recent trend in the health industry has worked out a way you can have our coffee and drink it too. By adding one ingredient to your coffee you can elevate and extend the benefits of coffee while eliminating the downsides.
What is this new addition to your morning coffee? Medicinal Mushrooms.
Medicinal mushrooms are ancient herbs used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. They are potent and powerful elixirs used to create homeostasis in the body. These herbs are adaptogenic, meaning they increase your body’s ability to adapt to stress, including emotional, physical and environmental stress.
Luckily, they don’t taste like herbs or mushrooms in your coffee. Most of these mushrooms have a rich, smooth and earthy taste to them, which keeps your coffee tasting like coffee.
The Finnish founder, Tero Isokauppila, of certified organic brand Four Sigmatic, and the pioneer of mushroom coffee, got this idea from his grandparents. He explains, “during World War ll the Finnish used to substitute their coffee with Chaga”, a medicinal mushroom that’s very dark, bitter and energising. This knowledge sparked his idea to combine the two, to preserve the taste of coffee and add the benefits of the mushrooms.
Mushroom coffee is changing peoples lives.
Adding mushrooms to your coffee reduces anxiety because the mushrooms allow energy to be released at a cellular level. This counteracts the effects of an overstimulated nervous system that’s created with coffee.
Coffee also stimulates the adrenal glands, which triggers the release of cortisol, a stress hormone, but because the mushrooms support the adrenal glands, the crashing effects of coffee are mitigated so you can sustain your energy throughout the day.
Medicinal mushrooms also reduce oxidative stress and aging due to their extremely high antioxidant content. With mushrooms such as chaga, reishi, lion’s mane, and cordyceps all shown to have more antioxidants than acai, blueberries, cacao!
All of the aforementioned mushrooms are also anti-inflammatory, antifungal, and healing for the gut. With some shown to also be anti-cancer!
What is mushroom coffee exactly?
Mushroom coffee is not another coffee substitute, it is fortified coffee. As mentioned, it’s the combination of coffee and medicinal mushrooms. Four Sigmatic do a 50:50 split, a half coffee and half mushroom combination ready for you to brew. This means you have half the caffeine, but with extra energy and increased health benefits, without the drawbacks.
There are many different types of mushrooms with different benefits, so you can buy different combinations based on your constitution.
