ALINESS Shiitake 400mg (Extract) 90 Vegan Capsules

What is Shiitake?
Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) is a species of fungus related to our native mushroom. According to its botanical name, it is native to Southeast Asia and occurs naturally in countries such as Japan, China, Vietnam and Korea. The common name Shiitake is a combination of two Japanese words (Shii meaning "beech" (tree) and Take meaning "mushroom") and refers to the conditions in which the mushroom grows. Shiitake grows most often on decaying beech tree trunks.

Although the common name Shiitake comes from Japan, with which it is currently associated, the tradition of cultivation and use of this mushroom is actually related to China, where it was used in ancient times, among others, in traditional folk medicine.

Shiitake mushrooms, associated by many people mainly as an addition to Asian cuisine, also nowadays have a much wider, health-promoting application. Similarly to other medicinal mushrooms, they are rich in polysaccharides - among them beta-glucans, which are particularly beneficial to health. They also contain other valuable components - B group vitamins, vitamin D (ergocalciferol) and numerous minerals - micro and macro elements.

Beta-glucans and polysaccharides
Polysaccharides are a large group of chemical compounds with long chain molecules, made up of repeating sugar units. Due to their structure, polysaccharides can therefore be seen as biopolymers, occurring naturally in plant and animal organisms. Polysaccharides include starch, cellulose, glycogen or chitin. The individual polysaccharides exhibit different properties and thus also play different roles, depending on the way in which the monomeric sugar units are bound together and also on their type.

There is another subgroup of polysaccharides that is specific to fungi - beta-glucans. Beta-glucans are part of the cell walls of fungi and are one of the main structural elements of their fruiting bodies.

Beta-glucans are structurally different from other polysaccharides we know from everyday life, such as starch or cellulose. These structural differences have a direct impact on their properties - thanks to them, beta-glucans are a valuable ingredient of dietary fibre, for instance, and they also show other forms of biological activity - they affect, among others, the level of "bad" LDL cholesterol.

What distinguishes our extract? / Double standardisation
When choosing supplements, it is worth checking what the extract is standardised for. Although many products are based on highly standardized extracts, they usually only refer to the total polysaccharide content. There is no information about the content of beta-glucans, whereas beta-glucans are the most important polysaccharide fraction with health-promoting properties.

The information about the total polysaccharide content does not, therefore, determine the high quality of an extract, even if it is 40, 50 or more percent. The majority of these may be useless types of starch (i.e. alpha-glucans) or the polysaccharide content may be artificially high due to the presence of maltodextrin, which is also a biologically inert polysaccharide, and is sometimes added as a carrier to stabilise the extract.

Aliness Shiitake 400 mg is based on a high quality, dual standardized Lentinula edodes mushroom fruiting body extract, which guarantees active ingredients of at least 40% of all naturally occurring polysaccharides and 20% beta-glucans. The high beta-glucan content ensures the effectiveness and full spectrum of the extract.

Aliness Shiitake 400 mg does not contain any animal ingredients, making it suitable for vegans. The product does not contain any artificial technological additives, preservatives or colours.