Ground raw Chaga has its benefits, however, chances are that it will pass through your digestive system with minimal absorption, since the human digestive tract lack the enzymes to completely break down the raw, woodsy Chaga mushrooms. It would take us 8-10 hours to absorb all the active ingredients, where as in reality, it will pass through our gastrointestinal tract much quicker than that. Extract is not technically the raw mushroom – it’s actually a collection of all the active ingredients the Chaga mushroom released while we processed it. Plus, Chaga extract dissolves in water easily, and is therefore much easier to digest, allowing for a much better absorption by our body.
Here’s an example that may help you understand the benefits (other than we just mention above ) of using extract chaga powder vs. raw chaga – if you like coffee, there are several ways you can get it. You may plant and grow a coffee tree, harvest the coffee berries, extract the coffee beans, wash them, dry them, roast them, grind them, and brew your coffee with a sense of deep satisfaction, because you just made everything from scratch! You may also save yourself the time by simply buying coffee at the store and drinking it – a much shorter process, though just as effective.
We must note that based on our observations, the active ingredients as an effective and proven natural remedy in raw Chaga mushroom start to degrade after one year (another reason why the extract is better to use – it stays effective for two years). Keep in mind that if you buy raw Chaga mushrooms, it may be hard to estimate how old they are, so the chances of one buying an old mushroom are pretty unpredictable. We have a stringent quality check process in place that we employ when manufacturing our Chaga extract, which helps tremendously to avoid any low-quality/old product. Oddly enough, once in a while we see situations where customers are charged high premium prices for raw Chaga mushroom, although the extract is much more potent, and also priced lower.
Bioavailability Of Medicinal Mushroom
Supplements
When you buy a dietary supplement, you
automatically assume that you will benefit from it. But this assumption is not
always justified: quite a few supplements contain limited or no bioavailable
bioactive ingredients at all. ('Bioavailable'
meaning: the human body is able to digest and absorb the ingredient.)
The average consumer will not be aware of this limited bioavailability (this information is never revealed on the
supplement's label) so is basically wasting his money. Examples of ingredients with limited or no
bioavailability are e.g. resveratol, green tea extract
(ECGC) and betulinic acid. We
want to discuss a whole group of supplements that are mostly useless unless
they've been subject to processing: medicinal mushroom supplements (sold in the form of capsules, powder,
tablets, and aqueous solutions/tinctures). Medicinal mushrooms became very
popular during the past 10 years, not in the least because of health gurus like David Wolfe, Cass Ingram and Daniel Vitalis.
Examples of medicinal mushrooms are Reishi, Chaga, Cordyceps, Maitake and
Coriolus, to name a few popular ones.
To cut straight to the conclusion: unless mushrooms (both raw and dried) have been subjected to an extraction process they are basically indigestible and you will not experience noteworthy therapeutic effects. The majority of mushroom products on the market have not been subjected to an extraction process. The bioavailability of the active ingredients is low at best (± 1/30th to 1/50th of a genuine extract) and the term 'extract' is often used in a deceiving way.
To cut straight to the conclusion: unless mushrooms (both raw and dried) have been subjected to an extraction process they are basically indigestible and you will not experience noteworthy therapeutic effects. The majority of mushroom products on the market have not been subjected to an extraction process. The bioavailability of the active ingredients is low at best (± 1/30th to 1/50th of a genuine extract) and the term 'extract' is often used in a deceiving way.
Technical background
The reason for the limited bioavailability is
very simple: mushroom cells are made of chitin, the same material that covers e.g.
insects, lobsters and crabs. Chitin is the hardest all-natural material known
to man. Locked in the chitin cell-walls of medicinal mushrooms are the
bioactive and therapeutically interesting components.
Humans cannot digest chitin properly; the enzyme chitinase, needed
to break down chitin, is not very active in our stomach acid; until recently it
was considered to be absent, even. The therapeutic effects of
non-extracted mushrooms are therefore negligible. This is also the
reason traditional medicine systems that include medicinal mushrooms in their
repertoire (like Traditional
Chinese Medicine), only use them in decoctions, teas or soups, never
simply dried/powdered, in tinctures or raw. Scientific research, always present in the description of the
mushroom products, is always using extracts.
Extraction procedures
The most common and cheapest extraction
technique is hot-water extraction: the hot water will 'melt' the chitin
and release the water-soluble bioactive components. As a second step ethanol
extractionis used in more sophisticated mushroom products: this will
release the non-water solubles as well; basically, all bioactives will become
bioavailable when this step is also included. Do not confuse this with
an alcohol tincture: simply adding mushroom powder to alcohol will not have
a lot of effect. Unlike cellulose (herbal
products) chitin does not degrade in alcohol.
Most consumers will have no knowledge of these technical details. You only have the supplement-facts label and a website/brochure filled with power-statements. In brief: you can trust the first one (by law it is prohibited to exaggerate or lie on that label) and the second one you can consider mainly marketing talk, which can have varying levels of truth. The good thing is that the label will tell you everything you need to know.
Most consumers will have no knowledge of these technical details. You only have the supplement-facts label and a website/brochure filled with power-statements. In brief: you can trust the first one (by law it is prohibited to exaggerate or lie on that label) and the second one you can consider mainly marketing talk, which can have varying levels of truth. The good thing is that the label will tell you everything you need to know.
Supplement facts label of Aloha
Medicinals' Chaga GOLD: this is not an extract but just
encapsulated powder
Remember, only if the label gives you details like "40% polysaccharides" "10 mg ergosterol" "2% betulinic acid" you can be sure you have a genuine extract. General statements like "contains a high level of beta-glucans", "over 200 phytonutrients!" "contains PSP/PSK" are only found on non-extracted products; genuine extracts will always state the exact numbers. Simply, because they can, plus it provides them with a USP (Unique Selling Point). Non-extracted mushroom products are very difficult to analyze.
Extracts or no extracts ?
Finally, the use of the term 'extract' can
be very deceiving. Genuine mushroom extracts are in general the result of
solvent extraction (hot water,
maybe also ethanol). The bioactives are freed, diluted and concentrated
in the solvent and then isolated.
However, we came across several 'extracts' that used terms like "10:1 extract". This is misleading, because it basically refers to drying or concentrating a large amount/size to a smaller amount/size. It cannot be considered an indication of potency if there is no further specification of bioactives as described above. In this particular case we can state that e.g. 10:1 means it is simply a dried and powdered mushroom: mushrooms are often ± 90% water, so a completely dry mushroom has been reduced to 10% of its original weight.
Supplement facts labels of Oriveda (above) and
Mushroom science (below it) products. Genuine extracts.
Supplement facts label
of Planetary Herbals' Chaga Full Spectrum: this is not an extract
but just encapsulated powder
Supplement facts label
of Mushroom Wisdom's Super Coriolus: all of their products appear
to be a combi of Maitake extract and concentrated dried powder of another
mushroom; here the Coriolus Versicolor. One capsule is 1000mg - only 10 mg (the
10% proteoglucan) can be considered bioactive
Certificates of Analysis
To get 100% certainty about the quality of the product you're about to buy, requesting a COA (Certificate of Analysis) is also an option, in particular when dealing with online sellers. Few sellers will share the original COA (issued by the producer) with you, though. Statements about proprietary information are a common way to avoid giving any verifiable details; in our opinion this can be considered a red flag. If they do not want to reveal their manufacturer, blocking the manufacturer's name on the COA would be sufficient, for instance. Instead, they prefer to keep all the facts (heavy metal contamination, levels of bioactives -or the lack thereof-, etc.) under the blanket. We might dedicate a future article to this subject.
An example of very deceiving marketing
One American producer, Aloha
Medicinals, put the COA of all their products online to backup their claims
about potency. In itself this is very good, but when we had a closer look it
turned out that
This is very deceiving, since most consumers will not know what this pretreatment implies and will assume they are buying a high-potency extract. Instead, they get mostly undigestible encapsulated mushroom powder. An example of such a COA can be found here.
§ almost all COAs were issued by Atlas Bioscience, recently unmasked as a 'dry lab', which makes us question their reliability
§ several of their COAs revealed that prior to analysis an enzyme treatment with chitinase took place, meaning the results of the analysis are no longer of the product being offered for sale, but of an extracted version of that product.
This is very deceiving, since most consumers will not know what this pretreatment implies and will assume they are buying a high-potency extract. Instead, they get mostly undigestible encapsulated mushroom powder. An example of such a COA can be found here.
Conclusion
We came to the conclusion that the
majority of mushroom products sold are non-extracted, mostly indigestible
products that will not result in any noteworthy therapeutic effects. Some
sellers even try to pass 'non-extracted' off as a preferable thing ["Exposing (…) to high heat destroys
many of the interesting metabolites. Our raw philosophy is that the synergistic
effect of all raw nutrients is superior to the cooked, isolated effects of a
few nutrients." - The Longevity Warehouse, on their website] An
interesting philosophy, except you cannot digest a single one of those
nutrients properly. With the information in this article you now also know better. The
supplement-facts label can help you to make the right choice.
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