{"id":112808,"date":"2023-10-09T10:56:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-09T15:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/08b67ef4d4.nxcli.io\/?p=112808"},"modified":"2023-10-09T10:56:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T15:56:00","slug":"medicinal-mushrooms-and-the-horse-a-veterinarians-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nouvelleresearch.com\/index.php\/articles\/112808-medicinal-mushrooms-and-the-horse-a-veterinarians-perspective","title":{"rendered":"Medicinal Mushrooms and the Horse; A Veterinarian’s Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Medicinal mushrooms have been utilized for centuries in alternative medical cultures and more recent research has substantiated their clinical benefits for horses and other species.\u00a0 There are many different types of medicinal mushrooms and each has their unique benefits, while retaining a generic benefit across the board for enhancing the immune response.\u00a0 Mushrooms were one of the first whole-food herbal substances that I investigated years ago in clinical practice in the horse and they are still one of my favorites for a variety of reasons. <\/p>\n

Around the year of 2006, I began my exploration of alternative medicine and herbs.\u00a0 This was instigated by own health crisis at the time and a need to explore options.\u00a0 Medicinal mushrooms were the first herbal substances that I utilized and explored in myself and my equine patients.\u00a0 At the time, I was contending with a high caseload of colitis cases in the horse, with many requiring hospitalization in our facility.\u00a0 As par for the course with colitis cases, the horses had diarrhea, dehydration, a reduced appetite and varying degrees of septicemia or bacterial infection.<\/p>\n

I was currently taking medicinal mushrooms myself, using a blend that is very similar to the one that we still offer and utilize.\u00a0 Given the benefits that I had come to understand in viewing research on these incredible substances, I opted to use them in my equine patients in the hospital.\u00a0 I believed that I had nothing to lose and these whole foods had much to offer.<\/p>\n

What was amazing was that first, they were readily accepted by the horses in their feed, as most mushrooms have a naturally sweet taste and odor.\u00a0 My patients consumed them readily and as the days past, not only had their appetite resumed, but their feces were no longer loose.\u00a0 What was once loose and watery with a foul smell, was now semi-formed with a reduced odor.\u00a0 The horses that were on the mushroom blend recovered more rapidly than I had experienced in the past with traditional therapies of antibiotics and intravenous fluids alone.\u00a0 In fact, within 72 hours, most of those horses on the mushrooms were off their IV fluids and transitioned to oral medications.\u00a0 The average patient was discharged about 3 days sooner than those not on the mushrooms.<\/p>\n

What was happening in those horses on the mushroom blend?<\/p>\n

Those were the days prior to my understanding of the digestive microbiome and the influence upon the horse and their health.\u00a0 Thus, I had not been performing fecal cultures<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, but looking back, the clinical response with the fecal transformation was enough to tell me that the digestive microbiome was shifting for the positive.\u00a0 What I didn’t understand at the time was how this positive shift impacted their health, their inflammatory status, and their immune response.\u00a0 Just shifting that microbiome in their gut was enough to shift the entire body for the positive.<\/p>\n

After this experience, I began to investigate further and upon speaking with researchers, it became evident that through the use of medicinal mushrooms, we were altering the gut microbiome and influencing overall health.\u00a0 This is huge, and I mean huge, because in looking at recent research, it is plainly evident that almost every health ailment in the horse and in people, is likely linked back to in imbalance in the gut microbiome.\u00a0 Shift it to the positive and you change the entire dynamics of the situation.\u00a0 Something that my standard therapies of pharmaceutical medications was not able to achieve.<\/p>\n

Given the overall response to medicinal mushrooms in the horse, I began to use them in almost every clinical situation that I encountered as a veterinarian and still do to this day.\u00a0 I used them in wound therapy to aid healing.\u00a0 I used them in various infectious situations from colitis to bronchitis and pneumonia, not to mention allergies and skin infections.\u00a0 I also used them very successfully in cases of Lyme disease and EPM, when traditional therapies had failed us or the horses had relapsed.<\/p>\n

Again, the responses were very favorable in every situation.\u00a0 There seemed to be nothing that these medicinal mushrooms would not benefit.<\/p>\n

Here is a run down of the clinical benefits, again with different species being stronger or more effective in certain categories:<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n