The Importance of Edible Medicinal Mushrooms and Their Potential Use as Therapeutic Agents Against Insulin Resistance
In the last decade, there has been considerable interest in the efficiency of non-pharmacological treatments in disease prevention and their use as complementary treatments [1,2,3]. Sufficient physical activity and proper nutrition with adequate amounts of dietary components or, if needed, supplementation, are well-known regulators of homeostasis, and metabolic and immune processes, which enable the prevention and reduction of diseases and their progression [4,5,6,7,8,9,10].
Edible mushrooms are part of diets all over the world, and have also been used as medicine for thousands of years, mainly in Asia and Japan [11]. Their known pharmaceutical properties (i.e., anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-diabetic) have made them a widely investigated target both in basic research and clinical trials [12,13,14].