Lingzhi – Benefits for your liver

Lingzhi is good for the liver as the liver is a very important organ in your body. Like the other organs in your body, the liver serves a lot of functions to ensure your body is functioning properly. The following are just a few important things your liver does for you:

• Processing food digested from the intestine
• Regulating the level of amino acids, glucose and fats in the blood
• Production of bile
• Fighting infections in the body
• Ridding the blood of particles and infections which includes bacteria
• Getting rid of harmful drugs and toxins from the blood stream
• Storing vitamins, iron and other important nutrients
• Synthesizing food and turning it into energy
• Production, breaking down of and also regulating various hormones in the body
• Producing essential enzymes and proteins which are involved in the chemical reactions in the body such as blood clot and repairing of damaged tissues

Remember that this is only a small list of over hundreds of different functions in the liver. Now, imagine your liver collapsing. What is going to happen to you? Fatal? Almost definitely yes. Do you need to protect your liver? Since the liver is an essential component in your survival, the answer is obvious. If you want to find out how, read on about lingzhi. Lingzhi can protect and save your liver.

Lingzhi – Works wonders

Lingzhi, undenialbly work wonders as now it has been shown that Lingzhi (Ganoderma lucidum) can do wonders for liver health. Lingzhi and its water extracts has been found to demonstrate anti-hepatotoxic activity. In a study on a rats with CCl₄ (Carbon tetrachloride) -induced chronic liver injury, the water extract from Lingzhi were found suppress the condition, leading to a decrease in glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (GOT) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels in serum. So you now know why lingzhi helps your liver.

Hot water extract of Ganoderma lucidum or Lingzhi has also been reported to show positive results on ethanol-induced liver damage, probably due to its superoxide scavenging activity. Animals treated with such extract also showed decreased levels of malonic dialdehyde. A Ganoderma lucidum or lingzhi extract has been shown to improve liver fibrosis induced by CCl₄, leading to an increase in plasma albumin and the albumin/globulin ratio, a drop in the hepatic hydroxyproline and decreased activities of transaminases.

You need to be very careful with lingzhi however. While a controlled human supplementation study for lingzhi did not show any evidence of liver, renal or DNA toxicity from usage of Lingzhi, two reports have described some liver toxicity effects. These effects could have stemmed from foreign components in the Lingzhi powder formulation – it is very common in Chinese herbal medicine preparation to add other plants or ingredients other than lingzhi.

LingZhi – Tips

Lingzhi Hot Tip: Always be very wary of any labels that mention “Proprietary Blend” for lingzhi products. It could contain a minimal amount of Ganoderma lucidum and more of other foreign substances.