Turkey Tail mushroom extract Kawaratake or isolate PSK fights cancer

Polysaccharide K, or simply PSK isolated from Turkey Tail mushrooms, has been found effective at treating cancer. The product is commercially known as Krestin. Turkey tail mushroom extract also known as Kawaratake in Japan is commonly used to treat cancer worldwide.

This mushroom is known to the Chinese for thousands of years and used as a Chinese medicine to treat various diseases. The Japanese government approved use of preparations of this Turkey Tail Mushroom to treat several forms of cancer in the 1980s.

A Canadian review of 28 studies published in the journal Integrative Cancer Therapies has concluded PSK indeed helps fight lung cancer. The review was supported by the University of Toronto and the Canada Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

What this PSK does is boost the immune system responses among other things, to inhibit cancer tumor growth. A good immunity has an effect against cancer metastasis or spreading of cancer cells to other parts of the body.

The review points out that use of PSk significantly increases the survival rates for lung cancer patients at the 1, 2 and 5 year mark. This product even helps patients who have been undergoing radiation and chemotherapy.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved in 2012 a clinical trial to test the efficacy of Trametes versicolor on Stage IV breast cancer patients.

Early studies show that PSK supplementation increases the number and effectiveness of natural killer cells (NK cells) and other T cells. NK cells are important for cancer treatment. They go out and find cancer cells and destroy them in a natural way.

The efficacy is dose-dependent and there is no side effect associated with this supplement. More importantly, PSK seems to be able to help eliminate cancer stem cells.

The existence of cancer stem cells is why the conventional treatments like radiation and chemotherapy cannot completely eliminate cancer. Cancer stem cells make new generations of cancer cells.

According to 14-year-long study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the average 5-year survival rate for cancer patients who are treated with chemotherapy alone is 2.1%.

Radiation and chemotherapy can only make cancer stem cells more aggressive. That is why after a couple of years of conventional treatments, cancer will come back in about 30% in early stage cancer patients. When cancer comes back or spread to other organs, the patients have stage 4 cancer, which is lethal and no drugs can treat that disease.

Turkey tail mushrooms can help destroy cancer stem cells. Researchers at Queensland University of Technology in Australia reported in 2012 that polysaccharopeptide (PSP), a component from turkey tail mushroom is 100% effective in suppressing prostate cancer development.

Similar anticancer activity was also found against breast cancer stem cells by Bastye University researchers. (JKZX.COM)