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The Best AHCC Supplements for Your Needs

The shiitake mushroom extract that is known as AHCC is quickly becoming a popular dietary supplement, based upon the many useful ways that people who are devotees to its benefits say that it has made their lives better. AHCC supplements are easily found online, in pharmacies, and anywhere dietary supplements are sold.

The Shiitake Mushroom

Since the infancy of medicine, societies worldwide have been using mushrooms as a medicine, perceiving that they hold beneficial effects on the immune system. In ancient Greece, the physician Hippocrates was one of the first who identified a mushroom as a useful medicine. One mushroom he recommended was fomes fomentarius, or “hoof fungus”, a species that could be given to patients to reduce inflammation.

AHCC is a compound that was isolated from the mycelium of mushrooms in the phylum that includes shiitake in the early 1990s. The properties of AHCC were such as to give scientists a reason to believe that it might be useful in the treatment or prevention of several diseases that commonly plague adults. This hypothesis has found mixed results, but several interesting connections have been made in the use of AHCC as a preventative supplement.

For Immune System Support

There have been multiple studies done on the ways that AHCC affects the human immune system. It has been found to stimulate the production of several white blood cells, thus potentially increasing the body’s ability to fight disease from the most basic building blocks of the immune system. The effects that AHCC has had on immunity is a primary reason that the Japanese use it so frequently and rely upon it as a useful medicine.

For HPV

HPV is one of the most commonly spread STDs, and can eventually lead to cervical cancer. When AHCC was considered a possible treatment, there were a few studies done to evaluate a possible connection between the treatment of human papillomavirus with AHCC.

In one interesting study, ten HPV-positive women took what was considered therapeutic doses of AHCC every day for several months. In what were surprising results, a full half of them had a negative HPV test result when retested after the course of AHCC.

Although this was a very small test group, and it can’t be proven from such a small study that there could have possibly been another factor that caused the result, it was eye-opening enough to definitely warrant further study to obtain a bigger sample and more testing on the effects of taking supplemental AHCC on people with positive HPV.

For Neurological Health

Since AHCC seems to stimulate the growth of dendrites in the neurological system, many feel that it is possible it could be of benefit to those who suffer from ailments of the neuro system such as organic brain disease and Alzheimer’s, among others. There is no direct evidence to prove this is true, but the strong effect it seems to have on cell growth with nerve cells deserved further study, at the very least.

To Fight Free Radicals

The free radical theory postulates that there are substances that when exposed to our body, attack our healthy cellular makeup, causing damage to DNA and other problems - that may be the cause of many cancers. The use of AHCC as an agent to defend the body against free radicals is a possible way that taking supplements could prevent cancers of many types.