Place mushrooms in sunlight to get your vitamin D (2012)

https://fungi.com/blogs/articles/place-mushrooms-in-sunlight-to-get-your-vitamin-d

by cameron_b • 3 years ago

187 117 3 years ago

fungi.com

low_common• 3 years ago

Why not just go on a daily walk to get your Vitamin D?

jszymborski• 3 years ago

It's dark out for most of the day in some climates. In others, it's dark out for much of the year.

goda903• 3 years ago

Not just the darkness, but the necessary UV wavelengths literally can't reach you in the middle of that day without a cloud in the sky for some parts of the year at higher latitudes.

goda903• 3 years ago

At higher latitudes you can only get vitamin D from the sun for a few months of the year. In winter, the sun is too low in the sky, and the UV wavelengths needed to produce the vitamin D is entirely blocked by the atmosphere(though unfortunately the UV for sunburns is not).

This is a method of "storing" summer vitamin D for winter consumption.

n4r9• 3 years ago

For the UK: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-...

During the autumn and winter, you need to get vitamin D from your diet because the sun is not strong enough for the body to make vitamin D.

Likely applies to many other countries.

cameron_b• 3 years ago

That's always a great option, but weather and seasonal differences can keep large portions of the world from achieving healthy levels of Vitamin D.

pwenzel• 3 years ago

I live in Minnesota and the sun just came out in the beginning of May. I feel like I haven't felt real sun exposure since maybe October of last year. Let me tell you, I definitely take vitamin D supplements in the cold season!

As an aside, I also drink Mushroom Hero tea all winter. Love that stuff.

dukeyukey2• 3 years ago

Just to compare, Minneapolis gets an average on 2700 hours on sunshine a year. London, home to 9 million people including me, gets about 1700.

Like damn.

dukeyukey2• 3 years ago

You literally cannot absorb significant amounts of vitamin D over winter in vast swathes of the world, including most of Europe.

lm28469• 3 years ago

You literally cannot absorb vitamin D

Escapado• 3 years ago

German reporting in. According to Weatherspark [1] starting November to March around 70% of the days are cloudy and it's cold so you would barely expose 15% of your body to the remaining sun. In feburary, around midday, on a cloudy day you don't make enough vitamin d. And even on a cloudless day it takes more than 4 hours around midday to get the daily recommended dose. [2]. Being a dog owner I spend a lot of time outside, also during midday and 3/4 of the year I go for a run around midday every other day. Last year in january I was diagnosed with severe vitamin D deficiency at around 6ng/ml. Took a few months to get that back to normal using supplements.

[1] https://weatherspark.com/y/68301/Average-Weather-in-Hamburg-... [2] https://fastrt.nilu.no/VitD_quartMEDandMED_v2.html

persedes• 3 years ago

In NC USA, even with regular walks, running and biking my Vitamin D levels were too low.

Broken_Hippo2• 3 years ago

I wear long sleeves or a light jacket for most of the summer, so it doesn't always matter. And it is pointless in winter - 4.5 hours between sunrise and sunset, with the sun at a low angle. I'm fairly far north.

andreasscherman2• 3 years ago

You would be surprised how seldom you can get Vitamin D from the sun for many places! https://whencanigetvitamind.com

nibbleshifter2• 3 years ago

In much of the northern hemisphere for most of the year this is insufficient. Even a really long walk.

robg• 3 years ago

My body stopped making Vitamin D on its own. Taking D3/K supplements was a life saver and for seasonal affective disorder. And now I seem to be back to typical levels with just sun exposure.

Namari3• 3 years ago

How do you know for sure your body stopped producing Vitamin D? Are you going out in the morning? That's when your get vitamin D, almost nothing in the afternoon.

deweller• 3 years ago

Where are you getting this information? My understanding is that Vitamin D production in the body is correlated with the directness of the exposure to the sun - therefore the most D is made at solar noon.

Broken_Hippo2• 3 years ago

How do you know for sure your body stopped producing Vitamin D?

Not who you are asking, but most folks find out with blood tests. It is also pretty common for folks to produce less as they age, and it isn't a small difference.

Are you going out in the morning? That's when your get vitamin D, almost nothing in the afternoon.

This just isn't true. How much you get is going to depend on the angle and strength of the sunlight, the amount you get, the amount of skin exposed, and the color of your skin. (dark skin produces less than light skin, and makes it difficult to produce enough the further north/south you are).

goda903• 3 years ago

This is touched on in the article, but these mushrooms would have vitamin D2. Studies find that supplementation with vitamin D3 is more effective(lower dose for the same effect) and longer lasting on blood vitamin D levels than vitamin D2. So frequently eating enough of the mushrooms would be important if facing a vitamin D deficiency.

skadamou2• 3 years ago

Here's the central finding

"Here is a simple experiment we did one summer afternoon in Kamilche Point, Washington. We compared several forms of organically grown shiitake mushrooms, which had starting level of 100 IU/100 grams. We compared the vitamin D levels of three sets of mushrooms, all from the same crop. The first was grown and dried indoors. The second set was dried outdoors in the sunlight with their gills facing down. The third set of mushrooms was dried outdoors in the sunlight with their gills facing upwards for full sun exposure. The most vitamin D was found in shiitake dried with gills up that were exposed to sunlight for two days, six hours per day. The vitamin D levels in these mushrooms soared from 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 grams (see chart). Their stems, though, produced very little vitamin D, only about 900 IU. Notably, vitamin D levels dropped on the third day, probably due to over-exposure to UV."

It's worth noting that this is Paul Stamets' work. He's definitely worth the google search if you've never heard of him and are into this sort of thing - super interesting guy. He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.

beerpls2• 3 years ago

“He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.”

As someone who was educated as a scientist, you should reevaluate this opinion.

There are plenty of brilliant professional scientists. There are also a lot of idiots in science.

There are also a lot of brilliant people who decided that the scientific path was too restrictive or outright false, so they (brilliantly) invested their own scientific life force externally

Having a science degree doesn’t make one less fallible to mistakes. If anything it makes people more likely to fudge to get ahead.

soperj2• 3 years ago

As someone who was educated as a scientist, you should reevaluate this opinion.

I would take a lot of science with a grain of salt too. Looking at the recent peanut butter allergy studies for example. Original 2016 study used 10 jewish children in Britain vs. 10 jewish Children in Israel. This study caused policy change around the world. Australia went from under 25% to over 80% of people feeding their children peanut butter under the age of 1. It had no discernible effect on allergies to peanut butter at all. They've followed it up with a larger study, 100 jewish kids in Britain vs. 100 jewish kids in Israel to prove out their original theory.

skadamou2• 3 years ago

I am open to the idea that someone from a background outside of academia could come up with some really brilliant scientific work. I just know that I am not capable of discerning what is solid science in fields different from my own so I typically rely on signals like an academic background (although not exclusively) to help me gauge the trustworthiness of a claim.

tvink• 3 years ago

The person in question is definitely a good example of someone you SHOULD take with more than a grain of salt. From what I could gather (mainly from /r/mycology) he's not really well respected in his field, and seems to be rather a salesman who draws premature conclusions and evangelises them. The Netflix documentary with him also had my "this sounds too good to be true" sensors going off more or less constantly.

cwkoss• 3 years ago

Stamets makes some extraordinary health claims about mushrooms that afaik have never been clinically tested (ex. anticancer and antiviral applications). I think a grain of salt is appropriate in this case - but he could be entirely right!

AlanYx• 3 years ago

For someone not educated as a scientist, he has a remarkably solid history of academic publications. Pretty inspiring actually.

simple102• 3 years ago

It's interesting the vitamin D level dropped if over exposed to UV. I wonder what caused the drop.

JLCarveth2• 3 years ago

perhaps UV?

sva_• 3 years ago

It's unstable under overexposure of uv light

https://www.sysrevpharm.org/articles/the-effect-of-temperatu...

aksss3• 3 years ago

I think vit. D is generated from a reaction of a protein with UVB.

UVA is rather destructive, so I would assume that’s what’s going on — to much UV-A on a part of the shroom that by design is shielded from direct exposure, is basically breaking everything down.

That’s my .02.

verisimi2• 3 years ago

Sounds so simple.... But how can one check vitamin D iu's for oneself? What machine is used, and how does it work?

Or is this a public relations piece from the mushroom marketing board?

JLCarveth2• 3 years ago

I would guess a GC MS[1]

- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mas...

godelski5• 3 years ago

Interestingly enough I did a deep dive on mushrooms and vitamin D about a month ago. You can easily find a lot of papers that demonstrate sunlight and vitamin D with mushrooms, so don't take the unofficial training as a knock (we should always be skeptical, but verification exists).

It's all about UV light. Some producers are now using UV to help increase the vitamin D of their mushrooms (along with killing bacteria) but they can also quickly lose it when in the fridge. So just set them out on the windowsill 15-90 minutes before you use them. The more the better. Surprisingly this even works for dried mushrooms, so just build the habit. If you don't, you basically shouldn't expect to be getting meaningful amounts of vitamin D from your mushrooms. The effects are this large.

In addition to this, make sure when you cook, that you start your mushrooms dry. This isn't a vitamin D thing, but most people cook their mushrooms wrong. They have a lot of water in them to begin with. Start dry, then when you add things they will soak up surrounding flavors and have a better texture (people's main concern), being more meaty than spongy/slimy.

tptacek2• 3 years ago

Is this a problem a lot of people have, the slimy mushroom thing? I don't do anything special or careful at all with mushrooms; I rinse them off, maybe halfheatedly salad-spin them, chop them up and put them in a hot pan with some fat. I've never had a slimy one.

r00fus• 3 years ago

In addition to this, make sure when you cook, that you start your mushrooms dry. This isn't a vitamin D thing, but most people cook their mushrooms wrong. They have a lot of water in them to begin with. Start dry, then when you add things they will soak up surrounding flavors and have a better texture (people's main concern), being more meaty than spongy/slimy.

This is how they do it in Chinese soups, but honestly I haven't personally seen other cultures use dried mushrooms.

emrah• 3 years ago

Glass blocks UV radiation I believe, so you'll need to lay them outside to get sunlight directly

cushpush• 3 years ago

I actually appreciate his wealth of knowledge (Paul Stamets) and his presentation of facts, often I learn a lot and his holistic approach is something that most universities would find impossible to implement as curricula. While not a classically-trained scientist, he is an erudite scholar of the highest caliber and his continual contributions to science and furthering our understanding of the natural world more closely correlates to the inceptive motivations of Science than would be found in the modern day tower of ivory.

kadoban2• 3 years ago

The vitamin D levels in these mushrooms soared from 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 gram

Isn't 46000 IU well into the dangerous range? This procedure sounds like an easy way to poison your liver.

The number I found says 4000 IU is a recommended max. You could say that you should only eat <10 grams then, but how much variability is there in the amount?

jjcon• 3 years ago

According to this at least 5k to 50k daily appears to be safe:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30611908/#:~:text=In%20summa....

Not sure what happens if you eat 10 mushrooms though

hanniabu• 3 years ago

When it's from food the tolerance is much higher. It's a bigger danger when taking supplements.

valarauko• 3 years ago

In many countries, the standard of care for low vitamin D is a bolus dose of 60K IU once a month is perfectly fine. It's only a problem if you were eating this much every day.

tomjakubowski• 3 years ago

The "100 IU/100 grams" starting point is with fresh mushrooms, before they were dried. It's not clear to me from the article whether "46,000 IU/100 grams" is per 100g of the fresh mushroom input or per 100g of the dried mushroom output. Mushrooms are ~80-90% water so it makes a big difference.

rcme• 3 years ago

It makes a big difference, but even if you removed 90% of the fresh mushroom's weight without changing vitamin D levels, you'd still only have 1000 IU / 100 grams.

jlpom• 3 years ago

He posted fake news about trace of life on Mars on twitter

beambot2• 3 years ago

He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.

Credentialing doesn't / shouldn't matter for science. The science should stand on it's own as long as you follow the scientific method, document your assumptions & results, and do work that is reproducible. Bonus points for good peer review. We should reserve the "grains of salt" for people who are sloppy or have been provably bad actors. </soapbox from someone who is "educated as a scientist">

ablyveiled4• 3 years ago

One of the problems with supplementing vitamin D is that vitamin D is made from cholesterol. There are certainly some benefits to supplementing vitamin D, but if you get it exogenously rather than manufacture it, your cholesterol will be higher.

Not that cholesterol is anywhere close to the demon it's made out to be, but there is a (much higher than generally accepted) point of having too much where mortality risk increases.

mkmk• 3 years ago

Dietary cholesterol isn't really a major contributor to blood cholesterol, especially if you're getting it in foods that are not full of saturated fats.

ablyveiled4• 3 years ago

People eating ketogenic/carnivorous diets for autoimmune or blood sugar issues have much higher LDL volumes (although their LDL particles are also fluffier and less oxidized)

zouhair• 3 years ago

there is a (much higher than generally accepted) point of having too much where mortality risk increases.

Source?

ablyveiled4• 3 years ago

I haven't Indexed It in my Memex or anything, but look into the work of Paul Mason or Ray Peat (to look into "pro-cholesterol" thought generally)

https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/cholesterol-longevity....

chrisbrandow• 3 years ago

Iirc, the amount of cholesterol that is converted to vitamin D from your bloodstream is still fairly small relative to overall cholesterol levels.

ablyveiled4• 3 years ago

I'm sure. Just trying to illustrate that there's no total replacement for the "real thing".

You may say "of course", but we have people like Bryan Johnson running on drug/supplement cocktails, in a "scientistic" pursuit of Goodhart's Law.

I just hope that he falls apart visibly rather than invisibly, so others don't try to follow in his footsteps.

https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.co/

havaloc• 3 years ago

When I first read this I thought it was a deep fake, due to the character Paul Stamets on Star Trek Discovery named after the Mycologist.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Paul_Stamets

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Paul_Stamets_(mycologis...

71a54xd• 3 years ago

I thought the same thing!!!

TaylorAlexander• 3 years ago

Nit but if you have an article with a fake name in the byline that's not a deepfake. That would just be an alias or misinformation but a deepfake gets its name from the deep neural net used to create fake images of real people.

euroderf• 3 years ago

No articles lately on whether D3 deficiency increases vulnerability to Covid.

simple102• 3 years ago

The vitamin D in the mushrooms is D2.

Here's a D2 vs D3 study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9372493/

Roughly twice as much D2 is needed to achieve the same blood serum levels compared to D3

naikrovek• 3 years ago

Never ingest D2 because it is inferior. got it.

more_corn2• 3 years ago

45,000 IU is quite a lot though. I think the highest supplement of D3 you can buy is 10,000 IU.

There’s also a question about if D3 protects against heart disease (saw the article on pubmed) don’t have it handy. The different D vitamins might behave differently.

The key insight is you can get vitamin d from sun dried mushrooms. I would not have expected that.

withinboredom• 3 years ago

Can someone explain why vitamin D is “essential” beyond hocus pocus sales pitch that I got when I googled it?

htag• 3 years ago

1. Many people do not get enough sun exposure to create their own vitamin D.

2. Some bodies produce more Vitamin D for the same amount of sun exposure as other bodies. For example, darker skin produces less vitamin D.

3. Some bodies convert Vitamin D into other useful compounds less efficiently than others. This is commonly done in the liver and kidneys.

4. Those with Vitamin D deficiencies have problems with their muscles, bones, and immune systems. We do not fully understand the impact of Vitamin D, but it also seems to have an impact on mental health, and is a key part of SAD.

olddustytrail• 3 years ago

All vitamins are essential, that's pretty much where the name comes from: "vital amine" (not to be confused with must see Japanese cartoons).

There are diseases associated with shortage of vitamins, such as scurvy for vitamin C, or rickets for D.

more_corn2• 3 years ago

Um… search pubmed for vitamin D. It plays an essential role in arming and activating the immune system. Low vitamin d is associated with increased risk of cancer heart disease and overall mortality.

Karawebnetwork• 3 years ago

Contrary to popular belief vitamin D is a hormone. Hormones are your body's chemical messengers. Having a deficiency in a hormone can have a lot of negative effects.

There are two sources of vitamin D: food & supplements and synthesis by the body in the skin on exposure to ultraviolet rays from the sun. Since a lot of us spend a lot of time indoor or behind glass (which blocks the necessary wavelengths) it's important to monitor it.

People with darker skin also need more sun exposure to get the required healthy levels. People living in areas where winters are very dark and very long are also at risk of deficiency.

maxk422• 3 years ago

Vitamin D is a precursor to a wide range of essential human hormones including both estrogen and testosterone.

WaitWaitWha• 3 years ago

So, for those who just want to get the Vitamin D, from the article:

    1) Obtain fresh Organic shiitake, maitake, button, oyster, shimeji or other mushrooms.
    2) On a sunny day in June, July or August, slice the fresh mushrooms. Place them evenly on a tray exposed directly to the sun from 10 am to 4 pm.
    3) Before nightfall, cover the mushrooms with a layer of cardboard to block moisture from dewfall.
    4) The next clear day repeat exposure to the sun from 10 am to 4 pm.
    5) Remove the mushrooms and finish drying (if necessary in a food dehydrator until they are crispy).
    6) When thoroughly dry, store in a glass jar or sealed container. Adding a tablespoon of uncooked rice as a moisture absorber will help keep the mushrooms dry. The mushrooms should be good for a year or more, depending upon conditions.
    7) Take 10 grams daily per person, about a small handful. Rehydrate in water for one hour. The mushrooms will swell. Then cook as desired.

For the rest of us:

    1) Obtain mushrooms.
    2) slice the fresh mushrooms. Place them evenly on a tray exposed directly to the sun from 10 am to 4 pm.
    3) Take them inside before nightfall, so they do not get dew on them.
    4) The next clear day repeat exposure to the sun from 10 am to 4 pm.
    5) Remove the mushrooms and finish drying (probably in the oven on warm setting).
    6) When thoroughly dry, store in a sealed container.
    7) Eat about a small handful a day. You can rehydrate in water for one hour. The mushrooms will swell. Then cook as desired.

Mistletoe2• 3 years ago

There is another option which is just take a vitamin D supplement because there should be no difference. Or even better get sun because there does seem to be a difference there and your body autoregulates the vitamin D.

Etheryte• 3 years ago

Last time this discussion came up, someone pointed out there's a significant difference actually. If I recall correctly, there's three different kinds of vitamin D, D1, D2 and D3, and there's a fairly big gap in the bioavailability of synthetic vs animal-based vitamin D. I can't find that comment right now though, so take this with a pinch of salt.

tedunangst• 3 years ago

What happens if I eat the mushrooms after one day in the sun?

snapcaster2• 3 years ago

Does anyone have any idea how consuming this "Vitamin D enriched mushroom" can be compared to taking a vitamin D supplement? Are they absorbed by the body in the same way? Also wondering compared to just being out in the sunlight yourself

maxk422• 3 years ago

Mushrooms produce vitamin D2. Animals produce vitamin D3 endogenously. There's no medical literature in aware of showing that vitamin D2 is equally useful to the human body.

snapcaster2• 3 years ago

Didn't realize this distinction thanks! got some reading to do

nikolay• 3 years ago

But vitamin D2 is useless.

mattgrice• 3 years ago

PSMS (Puget Sound Mycolological Society) member here... Stamets is widely regarded as a crank and makes a lot of mostly unsubstantiated claims about fungi. He is a fun guy (lol fungi) to talk to but you can't take anything he says too seriously. At least without further research of your own. Stamets is an interesting speaker, as far as I know always welcome at PSMS events, but the default impression most people in the pacific northwest mycology community have of stamets is that he confabulates a lot.

WhereIsTheTruth• 3 years ago

if you can eat them raw!

cooking them looses most of their benefits

miked85• 3 years ago

loses too.

Place mushrooms in sunlight to get your vitamin D (2012)

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