Making Our Arteries Less Sticky

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM · June 25, 2012 · Volume 9

4.8/5 - (34 votes)

Mushrooms appear to have an anti-inflammatory effect on human arterial lining cells in vitro, which may help stop the inflammatory cascade, thought to be integral to the progression of atherosclerotic (artery-clogging) heart disease. The effects of shitake, crimini, oyster, maitake, and plain white button mushrooms are compared.

Discuss

Transcript

We’ve covered how to prevent the first step of atherosclerosis: decrease the level of bad cholesterol in our blood. What about blocking some of these other steps downstream?

“Both common and specialty mushrooms inhibit adhesion molecule expression and in vitro binding of monocytes to human aortic endothelial cells in a pro-inflammatory environment.” So, that means mushrooms may help block both this step, and this step.

Basically, what these researchers at Arizona State did was take the lining of a human artery, soaked it overnight with either nothing—the control group—or shiitake mushrooms, cremini mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, maitake mushrooms, or plain white button mushrooms. Then, they took away the mushrooms, washed the artery off, and added some monocytes, before and after inflammation.

So what we’d like to see is these bars come down—less monocyte adhesion. So, instead of being sucked into the walls of our arteries, they can go off and do their business elsewhere.

Which mushroom do you think worked the best? They all worked, but in another victory for this little funguy, plain old cheap white button mushrooms worked the best. And under inflammatory conditions, they found the same thing, but shiitake didn’t even seem to work much at all.

“The health implications are that diverse mushrooms, including common and specialty mushrooms can protect against cardiovascular disease by interfering with events that contribute to atherogenesis.”

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Serena.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Sources

Acknowledgements

Images thanks to sweetbeetandgreenbean and NASA via flickr.

Topics

We’ve covered how to prevent the first step of atherosclerosis: decrease the level of bad cholesterol in our blood. What about blocking some of these other steps downstream?

“Both common and specialty mushrooms inhibit adhesion molecule expression and in vitro binding of monocytes to human aortic endothelial cells in a pro-inflammatory environment.” So, that means mushrooms may help block both this step, and this step.

Basically, what these researchers at Arizona State did was take the lining of a human artery, soaked it overnight with either nothing—the control group—or shiitake mushrooms, cremini mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, maitake mushrooms, or plain white button mushrooms. Then, they took away the mushrooms, washed the artery off, and added some monocytes, before and after inflammation.

So what we’d like to see is these bars come down—less monocyte adhesion. So, instead of being sucked into the walls of our arteries, they can go off and do their business elsewhere.

Which mushroom do you think worked the best? They all worked, but in another victory for this little funguy, plain old cheap white button mushrooms worked the best. And under inflammatory conditions, they found the same thing, but shiitake didn’t even seem to work much at all.

“The health implications are that diverse mushrooms, including common and specialty mushrooms can protect against cardiovascular disease by interfering with events that contribute to atherogenesis.”

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Serena.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Images thanks to sweetbeetandgreenbean and NASA via flickr.

Doctor's Note

For more magic from plain white mushrooms, see Vegetables Versus Breast Cancer and Breast Cancer Prevention: Which Mushroom is Best? Just make sure to cook them. In terms of anti-inflammatory foods in general, check out Anti-Inflammatory Antioxidants; Garden Variety Anti-Inflammation; and Dried Apples Versus Cholesterol. In terms of pro-inflammatory foods, see my four-part video series Improving Mood Through Diet; Inflammatory Remarks About Arachidonic Acid; Chicken, Eggs, and Inflammation; and Chicken’s Fate is Sealed. If you missed it the first part in this series, check it out: Blocking the First Step of Heart Disease.

For further context, see my associated blog posts: The Most Anti-Inflammatory Mushroom; Ergothioneine: A New Vitamin?; Plant-Based Diets for Rheumatoid Arthritis; Mushrooms for Breast Cancer Prevention; Vitamin D from Mushrooms, Sun, or Supplements?; and Mushrooms and Immunity.

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