Melanin: The Holy Grail of Radioprotective Food Compounds

This pigment-producing molecule displays some almost unfathomable properties in other species

Chaga mushrooms are very nutritionally dense mushrooms, and contain an immense amount of melanin, and it was known by the Siberians as the "gift from God" and the "mushroom of immortality," by the Japanese as  "the diamond of the forest," and by the Chinese as the "king of plants." exebiche/Shutterstock

Could the melanin found in our bodies and in foods like mushrooms help to mitigate the increasingly dire quantities of radiation we are exposed to daily?

Over the course of the past decade, one of the most interesting concepts I have run into while scouring the biomedical literature is the possibility that melanin’s biological role in the human body may extend far beyond simply protecting us against UV radiation.