Mushrooms are among the oldest living organisms on Earth. Over millions of years of their existence, these poorly studied organisms have created and accumulated a large variety of biologically active substances in their fruiting bodies and mycelium, helping them to survive, defend and colonize various ecosystems. The Pacific Northwest is a unique area of our planet, with its own distinct varieties of ancient plants and fungi. Our distant ancestors and Indigenous Peoples knew about the medicinal properties of mushrooms and skillfully used them. Most of modern civilization has lost much of this ancient knowledge and with it, the wonderful healing qualities and medicinal benefits of fungi. In many universities around the world, scientists are currently studying various properties of mushrooms and their uses for medicinal purposes and the possibility of using them in various medical fields. Fungi participate in almost all processes of life; entering into symbiosis with plants and animals. They are an integral part of the human microbiota- a new ‘organ’ of the human body still yet to be fully studied and understood. This book offers information on over 200 medicinal mushrooms that grow in the Pacific Northwest rainforests of North America. This guide will be of much interest to mycobiologists, fungotherapists, phytotherapists, nutritionists, traditional healers, medical students, doctors, scientists, medicine/drug developers, food processing professionals, and generally people who are interested in alternative medicine.

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Svetlana Poltavets graduated from St. Petersburg State University, specializing in biology and writing a thesis on this topic. She has been fascinated by nature since she was a child because her grandmother often told her about the plants and trees in their garden and nearby forests. When she visited her grandma they often together went to the forests, groves, fields. From a young age, she used to go to the woods with her parents or neighbours for edible mushrooms in the Carpathians Lowland forests in Ukraine. Love for nature had passed on to Svetlana through several generations from her great-great-grandmother, who knew plants and fungi well and its usefulness for health. Eugene Poltavets, as a child was never truly interested in nature and biology in particular. Although he, together with his father and brother, spent a lot of time in the forests of the Karelian Isthmus. And only in adulthood, under the influence of his wife, genuine interest for nature came to him. The Poltavets began studying the application of fungi as one of the alternative methods of cancer prevention and treatment after the sudden death of Svetlana's younger sister a few years ago, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. They studied literature, scientific data about the use of various types of fungi as an alternative method of treating severe forms of cancer and other diseases. The result of this was this work. The world of mushrooms is huge and diverse. This book covers just its tiny part.