What if there was a way to ramp up the energizing effects of your morning cup of joe in a healthy and natural way? There are many benefits to drinking mushroom coffee, and this article will outline the 5 main ones.
If you’re frequently tired, you know that relying on caffeine is a delicate dance between drinking just enough to get the juices flowing and not overdoing it to the point of hand tremors.
But do you know how you can boost your energy without chancing a mid-day caffeine crash? Add a scoop of mushroom extract to your morning coffee or tea.
Tiredness can manifest through both physical and mental signs. From sore, weak muscles and slowed reflexes to brain fog, moodiness, and difficulty concentrating—fatigue is many-sided.
We’ll look at the different ways in which mushroom extracts in your coffee can:
Mushrooms are antioxidant powerhouses that help your body to maintain healthy inflammation responses, which could get derailed by chronic inflammation.
Persistent low-grade inflammation (1) keeps your body in a state of high alert, expending more energy than it has available—this creates a feeling of fatigue.
Inflammation is a natural part of how your immune system works to protect your body from harm. That said, chronic inflammation typically builds gradually, manifesting as feelings of tiredness, headaches, muscle aches, and joint pain. Therefore, you need to look at balancing out inflammation as a long-term game.
To counter the negative effects of unbalanced levels of inflammation in the body, current research (2) found that chaga mushroom extracts:
It makes sense to use chaga mushroom extract in your daily coffee or tea to help maintain healthy levels of inflammation in your body. This will support optimal energy levels and stave off fatigue.
However, it’s important to think of your entire system and lifestyle as working in tandem.
That’s why certain lifestyle changes may also ease fatigue-inducing inflammation. These lifestyle changes include:
This was Drew’s experience with chaga mushroom powder:
“It gave me energy. Prior to the use of Chaga… I could hardly wake up. Now I feel refreshed… I will be a lifetime customer.” — Drew, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Verified Real Mushrooms Customer
Expert tip: Mushroom coffee benefits are built on accumulation. To fully experience the beneficial effects of our 100% pure organic mushroom powders, we recommend taking a ½-teaspoon a day for a prolonged period of time.
Sometimes, because of age, poor diet, or hormonal changes, our metabolism may function sub-optimally. This impacts our energy levels, including our ability to exercise regularly and effectively.
Functional mushrooms, specifically Cordyceps, can enhance our metabolism and have an invigorating effect.
So, considering exercise boosts mood, focus, heart health, and better sleep, how can we support healthy metabolism in order to be more active?
A study on the effect of Cordyceps on the metabolism (3) found that regularly supplementing with these mushrooms:
Regularly supplementing mushroom extracts can aid your body in providing balanced energy, allowing you to stay active well into old age.
Here’s how two of our customers experienced their energy boost from Organic Cordyceps Mushroom Extract Powder:
“Helped me with my workouts. I noticed I didn’t run out of breath as quickly and I felt like I had more endurance.” — Daniel, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Verified Real Mushrooms Buyer
“It gives me energy in the morning before my workout.” — ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Beth D., Verified Real Mushrooms Buyer
Expert tip: Cordyceps sinensis (wild Cordyceps) is so rare and difficult to cultivate that you won’t find it in any supplements available in the North American market. But what you will find in your Cordyceps mushroom supplement is commercially cultivated Cordyceps militaris, which is cultivated at scale in a sterile medium and doesn’t harm any insects.
Make sure that your Cordyceps mushroom powder is extracted from the fruiting body and not the mycelium (vegetative body). One way to check this is to see the package details for measured amounts of beta-glucans.
The fruiting body yields higher beta-glucan content and has no starch filler, unlike most mycelium-derived products. If you want to get actual health benefits from your mushroom coffee, pay attention to your product label!
Speaking of beta-glucans, these compounds are the key structural component of mushroom cell walls. As active ingredients in mushrooms, they help the body and its systems manage chronic stress, which often causes fatigue.
Let’s briefly break down how they do this.
Good bacteria in the colon ferment dietary fiber, including beta-glucans. The process releases nutrients that support a healthy immune response and improved psychological well-being.
This ability to support our bodies in self-regulating natural stress responses and aiding relaxation without compromising your health is what makes mushrooms adaptogens.
In one study(4), beta-glucans extracted from oyster, shiitake, and reishi mushrooms were used as supplements over a 6-month period. The results showed that these mushrooms:
Stress and therefore fatigue may also negatively impact heart health.
How do we counter this?
An animal study (5) showed that supplementing with shiitake and maitake mushrooms also helped to manage blood pressure and cholesterol levels—leading to better heart health.
A medicinal mushroom complex that includes shiitake and maitake, like Real Mushrooms’s 5 Defenders supplement, is a great way to manage physical and mental stress. One of our customers shared their experience with this health-balancing effect:
“Since taking Five Defenders I’ve been less susceptible to catching colds and in general I feel stronger and more balanced.” — Ingrid, Verified 5 Defenders Buyer.
Expert tip: If coffee (caffeine) makes you a jittery mess, you can still benefit from the mushroom powders by adding them to smoothies, yogurt, hot chocolate, elixirs, and even baked goods.
You can get the benefits of mushroom extracts by adding them to coffee, or by adding them to other drinks, snacks, or meals. Here’s our free mushroom recipe book to help you get started on your mushroom supplementation journey today.
Traditional Chinese medicine used reishi mushrooms to ease restlessness and insomnia for hundreds of years, showing that even ethnomedicine recognized sleep as a key health marker.
All the obvious symptoms we typically link to tiredness, such as slower reflexes, reduced cognitive efficiency, and impaired memory, can point to poor sleep quality.
In fact, one study (6) showed that it takes longer than 7 days of full sleep to recover from the same number of days of restricted sleep.
Good sleep hygiene is essential because, without it, we lose the regenerative effects of sleep hormones like melatonin and growth hormone. We also get a high amount of stress hormones in the body, which wreak havoc on the body’s resilience, immune response, and metabolism.
So, how exactly do mushrooms aid in good sleep quality?
An animal study (7) found that reishi mushroom extracts increased total sleep time and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.
It’s no surprise since during NREM sleep, your body:
Our customer Steve definitely had this sleep-improving experience:
“I have been a light sleeper for a long time and relied on Melatonin and other sleep aids… I have been using Reishi extract exclusively for the past three months, and I am continuing to sleep noticeably better than before.” — Steve, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Verified Real Mushrooms Buyer
Expert tip: We recommend taking your Organic Reishi Mushroom Powder in the evening in your hot chocolate or tea to regulate your natural biorhythm and get you into a rejuvenating, deep sleep.
Balance these effects with the benefits of mushroom coffee in the morning. Simply add Organic Cordyceps Mushroom Extract and Organic Lion's Mane Mushroom to your brew to reset your biorhythm, wake the body up with an energy boost, and prime the brain for optimal functioning.
Many of us depend on our morning coffee or tea to wake our minds up and increase mental acuity. If you count yourself among this group, then you may have noticed that caffeine has its downsides.
Caffeine reduces the effects of adenosine, a brain chemical that makes you feel sleepy. Simultaneously, it increases the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline to give you energy (10). This is why many people struggle with sleepless nights, anxiety, and jitters after consuming caffeine.
Caffeine can also make you feel fatigued and irritable and even give you a headache after its effects wear off. This is often referred to as “crashing.” It typically occurs about five hours after consuming this stimulant (7,8,9).
One of the great benefits of lion’s mane, like the other medicinal mushrooms, is that it is a very effective adaptogen for promoting a healthy inflammatory response and supporting a healthy immune system. But it also has another unique characteristic.
Lion’s Mane has been receiving a lot of attention in relation to its effect on brain function and cognition. This is a relatively new use for this mushroom and is related to discoveries around its effect on Nerve growth factor (NGF) in the 1990s. More recent clinical studies have supported this discovery (11).
Human clinical studies have shown lion’s mane mushrooms can improve scores on anxiety and depression scales (12). Human studies have also demonstrated that lion’s mane can support better memory recall in aging people with mild memory issues (13,14).
Animal tests indicate compounds from lion’s mane may support nerve impulse transmission as well as support short and long-term memory (15). Interestingly, the same compounds were found to counter oxidative stress on the brain (15).
As many of our customers have noted, their cognition, memory, energy, and mood improved once they began supplementing with lion’s mane extract.
“I use Lions Mane in my coffee every morning, it helps calm my nervous system and is helping my anxiety greatly. I don't want to be without this in my daily routine! Also, I feel more energetic and less fatigued throughout the day.” - Annette, Real Mushrooms Verified Buyer
“From adding the lion's mane to my morning coffee I have really felt a benefit in my mental acuity.” - Dylan, Real Mushrooms Verified Buyer
Expert tip: Lion’s mane extract powder can be taken either as a replacement for caffeine or can be added to your caffeinated drink to help offset the potential for jitters and anxiety.
We’ve covered a lot of benefits but these immune-modulating, antioxidant, stress-relieving, and sleep-improving benefits of mushrooms are just the tip of the iceberg.
Let’s review, in the table below, how all these mushrooms work to boost energy:
Remember, the effectiveness and potency of your mushroom supplements depend on their extraction from fruit bodies, grown organically; which is a core value of Real Mushrooms.
You can use the mushroom extracts individually or try them in a super blend, such as our 5 Defenders Organic Mushroom Complex.
With this 100% pure, organic blend, you’ll get a powerhouse of nutrients from chaga, shiitake, maitake, reishi, and turkey tail mushroom extracts. Together they deliver more than 20% of the recommended daily intake of beta-glucans.
If you’re ready to boost your energy and reap the benefits of mushrooms, try our mushroom powders or mushroom capsules today.
Expert tip: Use our collection of mushroom coffee recipes to find unique ways to amp up your morning beverage game for whole health.
.Disclaimer: The information or products mentioned in this article are provided as information resources only, and are not to be used or relied on to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This information does not create any patient-doctor relationship, and should not be used as a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment. The information is intended for health care professionals only. The statements made in this article have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The information in this article is intended for educational purposes. The information is not intended to replace medical advice offered by licensed medical physicians. Please consult your doctor or health practitioner for any medical advice.