Arizona Mushroom Week:

Dr. Anna Sitkoff on Medicinal Mushrooms

The 2021 monsoon season has truly been one for the record books and we want to celebrate by sharing even more amazing mushroom knowledge and information with AMS members!!!

Join us on Monday, August 16th at 4:00 PM for a very special free Zoom discussion by Dr. Anna Sitkoff. Dr. Sitkoff researches medicinal properties of fungi and is putting to use our collective growing knowledge of the medicinal uses of mushrooms and plants in her practice as a naturopathic physician.

Dr. Sitkoff's talk will focus on the medicinal properties of mushrooms. There are thousands of research articles exploring the medicinal qualities of mushrooms and a number of lifestyle brands that promote mushrooms as a pop culture trend. With so much information available it can be difficult to navigate and determine what is most applicable. This talk delves into mushroom biochemistry, how the constituents in mushrooms interact with human physiology to have a medicinal effect, and how to best extract these constituents with various medicine making techniques. You will leave this discussion with an understanding of the common uses of medicinal mushrooms, the most up-to-date research, ubiquitous mushroom constituents and how to extract these constituents and utilize them for both oral and topical applications.

Dr. Anna Sitkoff is a naturopathic physician currently practicing in Port Townsend, Washington. In addition to being a naturopathic doctor, she is an avid researcher, botanical medicine enthusiast and exceptionally curious applied mycologist. She has spent many years learning about the mushrooms through many lenses. While she was a student at Bastyr, she led a research project which explored the immune modulating and anti-cancer properties of the rosy polypore, Fomitopsis cajanderi. Outside of the lab she has experimented with many different extraction techniques which she has written about extensively on her blog, reishiandroses.com. She loves to read through the most recent medicinal mushroom literature and summarize findings on her blog as well, with the attempt to provide this information in an understandable manner to the general public. Now, as a practitioner she is able to apply this knowledge in practice and utilize mushrooms as therapeutic agents on a daily basis. 

Dr. Anna Sitkoff is also cofounder of the medicinal mushroom supplement company, Lucidum Medicinals. This company's goal is to provide high quality mushroom supplements to medical practitioners and is targeted at educating these practitioners about the most effective ways to use mushrooms in their practices. Her blog can be found at: reishiandroses.com