Four people hospitalised after eating toxic mushrooms

HELSINGIN SANOMAT ^ | August 26, 2009

[Shermy]

Destroying Angel

Amanita

[KoRn]

.

[Shermy]

Ping.

[KarlInOhio]

All wild mushrooms are dangerous. Even non-toxic ones like morels are potentially deadly if you are caught poaching someone else's secret mushroom patch. But at least your body will feed next years batch.

[WayneS]

If I am not mistaken, the equally poisonous Amanita Muscaria can be found here in North America.

[muawiyah]

Poisoned by Amanita Virosa with its distinctive pattern. See the colors:

Then there's that all time favorite, the mildly (?) psychedelic Amanita Muscaria , beloved by the ancients as Soma

See the Colors:

[dog breath]

Amantia Mucaria is a psychoactive mushroom found in the entire Northern Hemisphere. it has had a long history in the pre-Christian religious practices of Europe as a hallucinogenic. I wondered if that is what they thought that they were eating.

[martin_fierro]

"Because it's just too hard to go to the supermarket" Ping.

[muawiyah]

To get suitibly nauseus from Amanita Muscaria you'd have to eat what amounts to half a bed load for a Ford 350. This particular mushroom, which looks remarkably similar to the uninitiated, only takes a bite.

North American Amanita Muscaria is not considered a big time psychedelic product ~ something is missing in the soil, PLUS there are 238 FAR MORE POWERFUL psychedelic mushrooms and plants readily available in the Americas.

Early "still semi-pagan" Sa'ami settlers abandoned the use of Amanita and adopted Peyote in fact.

[muawiyah]

You are so right. Good mushrooms are hard to find ~

[MGBGUN]

Funny, I used to roam the cow pastures back in the 70’s and the ‘schrooms we picked looked nothing like any of those pictures. And believe you me, they were the “trippin” kind.

[Pearls Before Swine]

If I am not mistaken, the equally poisonous Amanita Muscaria can be found here in North America.

Muscaria is nothing to be trifled with, but its not nearly as poisonous as the Amanita in this article. It was a shamanic mushroom in, I believe, Siberia.

[Vinnie]

My wife and I went to an Asian market last weekend. The mushroom assortment was huge.

Some years ago my sons and I bought several mushroom identification books and thought we were ‘ready’.
But alas, I didn’t have the stones to try one of my id’ed specimens.
I’ll leave it to the experts.

[TigersEye]

That is the first or second deadliest mushroom in the world. They will be treated with milk thistle seed or they will likely die.

[Scythian]

NAC + Milk Thistle, stat, eating mushrooms is dangerous busienss.

[muawiyah]

No doubt they were North American mushrooms and not Eur-Asian. There's a mushroom in China called "Straw Mushroom" which is the all time favorite. It looks exactly like a quite poisonous variety that grows in the United States.

North America has different soil conditions than Asia, different climate, and different species histories.

[TigersEye]

I don’t know what NAC is. Is that different from the MARS treatment described in the article? I don’t know about a liver transplant being sufficient if the MARS treatment fails. IIRC Amanita virosa also causes kidney failure. Milk thistle. The French have substantiated its success. It not only stops the tissue destruction it stimulates liver regeneration. Nothing else does that I know of.

[Scythian]

NAC (N-Acetyl-Cysteine) - An aboslute miracle of an amino acid, given to those who OD on acetaminophen to protect the liver. But, it’s main role is for building Glutathione (powerhouse of your immune system) and detoxing free radicals, including heavy metals like Lead and Mercury. I take it every day ... Oh, and it’s almost impossible to get the flu while on it (google it)

[discostu]

Which brings up an interesting historical question. By and large the easier a mushroom is to grow/ find the more likely it is to be toxic, so who are the people that found the good mushrooms and why were they willing to take the chance.

[TigersEye]

That's good to know about. I will look it up. I haven't had a cold in over 35 years or the flu in over 25 years so I don't worry much about that. I also have Osha (ligusticum porteri) root which will kill the flu immediately if taken at the first sign of it. If that doesn't do it Gan Mao Ling (a Chinese Patent Formula) will.

Milk thistle seed is a must-know herb for most toxic poisoning affecting the liver. It should be combined with psyllium seed (Metamucil) to carry the toxins out of the body or the blood stream will just take them up again from the intestines.