Hoelen

Poria cocos

Hoelen Fu-ling Poria Tuckahoe Uses Considerations

Hoelen is a mushroom that grows underground on the roots of pines and other trees around the world. In many parts of the world, hoelen is used as a food rather than as a medicine. This was true in the nineteenth century, when hoelen was known as tuckahoe in the eastern and southern United States. A single mushroom could grow to weigh between fifteen and twenty pounds (seven to nine kilograms). Since large mushrooms could be ground into bread flour, the herb became better known as tuckahoe bread.

USES

Hoelen is a healing mushroom and a very good source of potassium. It is also an effective diuretic and has antibacterial properties. It is used in both Native American medicine and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to treat kidney ailments. Hoelen has also been used in TCM for lowering blood sugar and controlling stomach acids.

Benefits of hoelen for specific health conditions include the following:

• Kidney disease. Hoelen relieves the chronic kidney inflammation of glomerulonephritis. This is an autoimmune condition that results when the body produces antibodies that attack its own tissues. Sometimes, these antibodies accumulate in the kidney, which becomes clogged and loses its ability to retain essential products. Proteins begin to leak out into the urine, a process that can quickly progress to kidney failure. One of hoelen's main constituents, pachyman, can halt this process by preventing the accumulation of antibodies. If a person with this problem uses hoelen as a nutritional supplement for several weeks, he or she no longer needs to use steroid medications to counteract kidney inflammation, which is beneficial because steroids can have undesirable side effects such as fatigue, puffiness, weight gain, and behavioral changes.
• Lupus. While pachyman keeps errant immune cells from accumulating in the kidney, another complex carbohydrate in hoelen, called poriatrin, acts to prevent the formation of antibodies in the first place. Poriatrin also stops the production of cytokines, chemical messengers that immune cells use to coordinate attacks on tissues. In addition, poriatrin stops the activity of related chemical messengers, such as the interleukins and tumor necrosis factor.

CONSIDERATIONS

Dried or fresh hoelen can be taken daily in food, or it can be brewed into tea. Improvement in chronic conditions may take three to four months of consistent use. Only one case of side effects caused by hoelen, in which an allergic reaction resulted in hives and stomach upset, appears in the medical literature.

Since hoelen benefits people with autoimmune kidney disease through several different mechanisms, eating the unprocessed mushroom is preferable to taking extracts.