Beta Glucans In Functional Mushrooms

Beta-glucan is a soluble fiber that's associated with numerous health benefits. Beta-glucans have been subject to in-depth medical research and have been proven to help lower cholesterol, balance your blood sugar, and may potentially help enhance your immunity. 

In light of this, we're going to take a comprehensive dive into the wonderful benefits of beta-glucans and how functional mushroom supplements can be a pretty easy and health-boosting way to incorporate beta-glucans into your system.

But first…

Let's Understand What Beta Glucans Are

There are two primary groups of dietary fiber:

• - Soluble fiber
• - Insoluble fiber

Soluble fibers quickly absorb water and emerge into a viscous substance with an almost gel-like structure. Insoluble fibers, however, take a lot of time to dissolve. Insoluble fibers gradually absorb liquids as they make their way through your digestive tract.

Beta-glucan is a special kind of soluble dietary fiber. It is also typically found in a variety of microorganisms such as the cell walls of bacteria, fungi, plants, etc. In addition, beta-glucan potentially provides a wide variety of health benefits such as helping combat inflammation, regulating your blood sugar levels, lowering cholesterol, and much more.

How Beta Glucans Function

Like different kinds of soluble fibers, beta-glucan is also closely associated with keeping you fuller for longer. Because beta-glucan doesn't let the food travel quickly down to your digestive tract, it helps increase your satiety levels. This is why a fiber-fused diet is mostly recommended for people looking to lose weight.

Moreover, beta-glucans also slow down your body's ability to absorb the sugar in the bloodstream. What this does is help manage the amount of glucose in your circulation, thereby, regulating it.

Powerful Reasons Why You Should Incorporate a Beta-Glucan-Enriched Diet

Optimizes Your Cardiovascular Health

According to research, it was identified beta-glucans can help combat symptoms associated with cardiovascular disorders and keep your heart healthy. Beta-glucans act like a sponge, gradually absorbing all the bad cholesterol (LDL) in your bloodstream. LDL is one of the primary causes of congestive heart disease.

In a group study, scientists were able to determine that incorporating a diet rich in beta-glucans or at least consuming 3 grams of fiber for two months, helped significantly minimize total LDL count by up to 15%. Moreover, the same research also identified that beta-glucans were also able to reduce the total amount of cholesterol in the body by up to 9%, in the volunteers. 

In addition to this wonderful health advantage, you'd also be surprised to know that beta-glucans also contain various types of antioxidants. These are enzymes that combat and potentially reduce the damage caused by free radical cells. Plus, antioxidants also help lower inflammation.

Blood Sugar Regulation

There is also research that indicates beta-glucans can potentially help enhance your body's ability to manage your blood sugar levels. In one scientific review, it was seen that consuming 2 to 3 grams of beta-glucan for 1-2 months allows your body to optimize your blood sugar absorption and regulation while at the same time, minimizing the amount of sugar in your bloodstream.

This is essentially why functional mushroom supplements can be a great way to manage symptoms associated with type-2 diabetes as they contain a healthy dose of beta-glucans and are easy to incorporate into your diet.

In another study, it was also identified that enriching carbohydrate foods with beta glucan may also help reduce your insulin levels after consuming a meal.

May Help Boost Your Immunity

While there's limited research into whether beta glucan can help optimize your immune system and more studies are required in humans, scientists, however, have determined that beta-glucan may play a role in stimulating your nervous system.

A lot of research involving animals has conclusively shown that beta-glucan could potentially energize immune cells, quickly and successfully combating infection. Moreover, animal-based testing has also identified that beta-glucan may also play an instrumental role in helping the brain activate various immune-boosting cells such as monocytes and neutrophils.

How To Add More Beta Glucan in Your System

Beta-glucans have to be ingested either through different foods or in a form of a supplement as our bodies don't naturally produce this soluble fiber. Sure, there are a variety of different types of foods that contain beta-glucans. For example, oats and barley are excellent sources of beta-glucan.

However, you need to eat a certain amount of oats and barley to get the required dosage of beta-glucans in your system. And you will also have to prepare meals every day. This is specifically why the ideal way to consume beta-glucans is in the form of functional mushroom supplements. Functional mushrooms such as turkey tail, shitake, maitake, and reishi contain plenty of beta-glucan.

Plus, because mushroom supplements come in the form of capsules, they can be a simple way to add beta-glucan to your system without needing to spend time cooking meals or preparing ingredients. Plus, quality mushroom supplements are plant-based and are made using the entire fruiting body of the mushrooms.

And apart from consuming the required amount of beta-glucan, functional mushroom supplements are a great source of numerous other vitamins and minerals such as thiamin, B12, niacin, and much more. These supplements can be a great way to boost your energy, detoxify and control your blood sugar levels. 

Moreover, you can also use mushroom supplements in powder form and use it to prepare teas, soups, and other easy-to-make meals.

Though there's still plenty of research needed to fully identify the wide scope of benefits provided by beta-glucan, at the moment, medical researchers do state that beta-glucan can potentially help enhance your gut health, regulate your blood sugar, help combat cardiovascular disease, and potentially boost your immunity.

Bottom Line

So, there you go. An in-depth dive into understanding beta-glucan and the many health benefits you can enjoy by consuming the soluble fiber daily.

At Wellnest Store, our functional mushroom supplements contain 30% of beta-glucans, which means you won’t need to rely on other food sources that contain soluble fiber.

References:

1. https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-beta-glucan

2. https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-beta-glucan

3. https://sunwarrior.com/blogs/health-hub/benefits-of-beta-glucan"

4. https://sunwarrior.com/blogs/health-hub/benefits-of-beta-glucan

5. https://www.fxmedicine.com.au/blog-post/beta-glucans-medicinal-actives-mushrooms

6. https://www.fxmedicine.com.au/blog-post/beta-glucans-medicinal-actives-mushrooms