Chaga mushroom
Encyclopedia
Inonotus obliquus, commonly known as Chaga mushroom (a Latinisation
Latinisation (literature)
Latinisation is the practice of rendering a non-Latin name in a Latin style. It is commonly met with for historical personal names, with toponyms, or for the standard binomial nomenclature of the life sciences. It goes further than Romanisation, which is the writing of a word in the Latin alphabet...

 of the Russian term 'чага'), is a fungus
Fungus
A fungus is a member of a large group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds , as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, Fungi, which is separate from plants, animals, and bacteria...

 in Hymenochaetaceae
Hymenochaetaceae
The Hymenochaetaceae are a family of fungi in the order Hymenochaetales. The family contains several species that are implicated in many diseases of broad-leaved and coniferous trees, causing heart rot, canker and root diseases, and also esca disease of grapevines...

 family. It is parasitic
Parasitism
Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host. Traditionally parasite referred to organisms with lifestages that needed more than one host . These are now called macroparasites...

 on Birch
Birch
Birch is a tree or shrub of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae. The Betula genus contains 30–60 known taxa...

 and other trees. The sterile conk is irregularly formed and has the appearance of burnt charcoal. It is not the fruit body
Sporocarp (fungi)
In fungi, the sporocarp is a multicellular structure on which spore-producing structures, such as basidia or asci, are borne...

 of the fungus, but a big mass of mycelium
Mycelium
thumb|right|Fungal myceliaMycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. The mass of hyphae is sometimes called shiro, especially within the fairy ring fungi. Fungal colonies composed of mycelia are found in soil and on or within many other...

, mostly black due to the presence of massive amounts of melanin
Melanin
Melanin is a pigment that is ubiquitous in nature, being found in most organisms . In animals melanin pigments are derivatives of the amino acid tyrosine. The most common form of biological melanin is eumelanin, a brown-black polymer of dihydroxyindole carboxylic acids, and their reduced forms...

. The fertile fruit body can be found very rarely as a resupinate (crustose) fungus on or near the clinker, usually appearing after the host tree is completely dead. I. obliquus grows in birch forests of Russia, Korea, Eastern and Northern Europe, Northern areas of the United States, in the North Carolina mountains and in Canada. The Chaga mushroom is considered a medicinal mushroom that has a place in Russian and Eastern European folk medicine
Folk medicine
-Description:Refers to healing practices and ideas of body physiology and health preservation known to a limited segment of the population in a culture, transmitted informally as general knowledge, and practiced or applied by anyone in the culture having prior experience.All cultures and societies...

.

Name

The name Chaga comes from the Russian word of the mushroom (anglicized from Czaga), which in turn is purportedly derived from the word for the fungus in Komi-Permyak
Komi-Permyak language
Komi-Permyak language is one of two regional varieties of the pluricentrical Komi language, the other variety being Komi-Zyrian.Komi is a Uralic language closely related to Udmurt....

, the language of the indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

 in the Kama River Basin
Kama River
Kama is a major river in Russia, the longest left tributary of the Volga and the largest one in discharge; in fact, it is larger than the Volga before junction....

, west of the Ural Mountains
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...

. It is also known as the Clinker Polypore, Cinder Conk, Black Mass and Birch Canker Polypore.

In Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

 the name is kreftkjuke which literally translates as cancer polypore, referring to the fungus' appearance or to its alleged medicinal properties.

In England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 it is known as the Sterile Conk Trunk Rot of Birch,, which refers to the growth of the fruiting bodies, which grow under the outer layers of wood surrounding the sterile conk once the tree is dead, in order to spread the spores. In France it is called the Carie Blanche Spongieuse de Bouleau (spongy white birch tree rot) and in Germany it is known as the Slate Inonotus (Schiefer Schillerporling). The dutch name is Berkenweerschijnzwam (birch mushroom glow).

It has also been known by other Latin names, such as Polyporus obliquus and Poria obliqua.

Medicinal use

Since the 16th century, there are records of chaga mushroom being used in folk medicine
Folk medicine
-Description:Refers to healing practices and ideas of body physiology and health preservation known to a limited segment of the population in a culture, transmitted informally as general knowledge, and practiced or applied by anyone in the culture having prior experience.All cultures and societies...

 and the botanical medicine of the Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

an countries as a remedy for cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

, gastritis
Gastritis
Gastritis is an inflammation of the lining of the stomach, and has many possible causes. The main acute causes are excessive alcohol consumption or prolonged use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin or ibuprofen. Sometimes gastritis develops after major surgery, traumatic...

, ulcers
Peptic ulcer
A peptic ulcer, also known as PUD or peptic ulcer disease, is the most common ulcer of an area of the gastrointestinal tract that is usually acidic and thus extremely painful. It is defined as mucosal erosions equal to or greater than 0.5 cm...

, and tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 of the bones. A review from 2010, stated, "As early as in the sixteenth century, Chaga was used as an effective folk medicine in Russia and Northern Europe to treat several human malicious tumors and other diseases in the absence of any unacceptable toxic side effects. Chemical investigations show that I. obliquus produces a diverse range of secondary metabolites including phenolic compounds, melanins, and lanostane-type triterpenoids. Among these are the active components for antioxidant, antitumoral, and antiviral activities and for improving human immunity against infection of pathogenic microbes. Geographically, however, this fungus is restricted to very cold habitats and grows very slowly, suggesting that Chaga is not a reliable source of these bioactive compounds. Attempts for culturing this fungus axenically all resulted in a reduced production of bioactive metabolites."Cultivated Chaga results in a product with a very different composition of active components, in particular the phyto-sterols. Betulinic acid is absent because cultivation is not using birches, the supplier of the betulin content in Chaga. In 1958, scientific studies in Finland and Russia found Chaga provided an epochal effect in breast cancer
Breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...

, liver cancer
Hepatocellular carcinoma
Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common type of liver cancer. Most cases of HCC are secondary to either a viral hepatitide infection or cirrhosis .Compared to other cancers, HCC is quite a rare tumor in the United States...

, uterine cancer
Uterine cancer
The term uterine cancer may refer to any of several different types of cancer which occur in the uterus, namely:*Uterine sarcomas: sarcomas of the myometrium, or muscular layer of the uterus, are most commonly leiomyosarcomas.*Endometrial cancer:...

, and gastric cancer, as well as in hypertension
Hypertension
Hypertension or high blood pressure is a cardiac chronic medical condition in which the systemic arterial blood pressure is elevated. What that means is that the heart is having to work harder than it should to pump the blood around the body. Blood pressure involves two measurements, systolic and...

 and diabetes. In 1973 in interesting case study including 50 patients about the effect of a Chaga extract on psoriasis
Psoriasis
Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease that appears on the skin. It occurs when the immune system mistakes the skin cells as a pathogen, and sends out faulty signals that speed up the growth cycle of skin cells. Psoriasis is not contagious. However, psoriasis has been linked to an increased risk of...

 was published in the Russian journal Vestnik Dermatologii i Venerologii. The outcome was almost 100% successful.

In China, Japan and South-Korea hot water extracts of the non-linear, complex (1<-3) and (1<-6) ß-glucan
Beta-glucan
β-Glucans are polysaccharides of D-glucose monomers linked by β-glycosidic bonds. β-glucans are a diverse group of molecules that can vary with respect to molecular mass, solubility, viscosity, and three-dimensional configuration...

 polysaccharide
Polysaccharide
Polysaccharides are long carbohydrate molecules, of repeated monomer units joined together by glycosidic bonds. They range in structure from linear to highly branched. Polysaccharides are often quite heterogeneous, containing slight modifications of the repeating unit. Depending on the structure,...

s that are found in Chaga and other mushrooms from the family Hymenochaetaceae are being produced, sold and exported as anti-cancer medicinal supplements. The biologic properties of crude preparations of these specific β-glucans have been studied since the 1960s. Although these molecules exhibit a wide range of biologic functions, including anti tumor activity, their ability to prevent a range of experimental infectious diseases has been studied in the greatest detail. Recent scientific research in Japan and China has been focused more on the anti-cancer potential and showed the effects of these specific polysaccharides to be comparable to chemo therapy and radiation, but without the side effects. Further research indicated these polysaccharides have strong anti-inflammatory and immune balancing properties, stimulating the body to produce NK (natural killer) cells to battle infections and tumor growth, instead of showing a direct toxicity against pathogens. This property makes polysaccharide-based supplements stand out from standard pharmaceuticals - no side effects will occur / develop; the body is healing itself. Herbalist David Winston
David Winston
David Winston RH is an American herbalist and ethnobotanist. He has been in practice and teaching since 1977 and has written several books on the subject. He works in the Cherokee, Chinese and the Western eclectic herbal traditions...

 maintains that it is the strongest anti-cancer medicinal mushroom. Russian Literature Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 laureate Alexandr Solzhenitsyn wrote two pages on the medicinal use and value of chaga in his autobiographical novel, based on his experiences in a hospital in Tashkent
Tashkent
Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.-Early Islamic History:...

, "Cancer Ward" (1968).

Betulin
Betulin
Betulin is an abundant naturally occurring triterpene. It is commonly isolated from the bark of birch trees and forms up to 30% of the dry weight of the extractive . The purpose of the compound in the bark is not known...

 and betulinic acid
Betulinic acid
Betulinic acid is a naturally occurring pentacyclic triterpenoid which has anti-retroviral, anti-malarial, and anti-inflammatory properties, as well as a more recently discovered potential as an anticancer agent, by inhibition of topoisomerase...

, are compounds found naturally in chaga and birch trees. The compounds are now being studied for use as a chemotherapeutic agent. Whereas Betulin as it is found in birch bark is indigestible by humans, the Chaga mushroom converts it into a form that can be digested orally. In an animal study, researchers found betulin from birch bark lowered cholesterol, obesity and improved insulin resistance.

Although the majority of research has been performed in vivo and in vitro, there have been a few human clinical trials. In a 48 patient human clinical trial in Poland in 1957, ten patients treated with chaga showed a reduction of tumor size, a decrease in pain, a decrease in the intensity and the frequency of hemorrhaging, and a recovery that was accompanied with better sleep, appetite and feelings of improvement. Most of these patients were females treated with chaga for cancer of the genital organs or breast cancer.

Preparation

Chaga is usually grated into a fine powder and used to brew a beverage resembling coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

. For medicinal use, an extraction
Extraction (chemistry)
Extraction in chemistry is a separation process consisting in the separation of a substance from a matrix. It may refer to Liquid-liquid extraction, and Solid phase extraction....

 process is needed to release the major active ingredients, the polysaccharides—which are found in the mostly indigestible chitin
Chitin
Chitin n is a long-chain polymer of a N-acetylglucosamine, a derivative of glucose, and is found in many places throughout the natural world...

 cellwalls of the Chaga. Humans lack the enzyme chitinase
Chitinase
Chitinases are hydrolytic enzymes that break down glycosidic bonds in chitin. As chitin is a component of the cell walls of fungi and exoskeletal elements of some animals , chitinases are generally found in organisms that either need to reshape their own chitin or dissolve and digest the chitin of...

 and therefore cannot fully digest raw mushrooms or derivatives of these. Scientific studies and research are in general also based on highly concentrated extracts. Currently three extraction processes are used, each with a different outcome.
  • Hot water extraction. This is the most common and cheapest way. All water soluble components will be present in the resulting extract. Non-water soluble components, like phyto-sterols, betulinic acid and betulin, will be absent. Several extraction rounds can result in very high levels of polysaccharides, up to 50%. Polyphenol
    Polyphenol
    Polyphenols are a structural class of natural, synthetic, and semisynthetic organic chemicals characterized by the presence of large multiples of phenol structural units...

    ic components are also present.
  • Alcohol
    Alcohol
    In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....

     / ethanol
    Ethanol
    Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...

     extraction. This will isolate the non-water soluble components, like betulinic acid, betulin and phyto-sterols.
  • Fermentation
    Fermentation (food)
    Fermentation in food processing typically is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohols and carbon dioxide or organic acids using yeasts, bacteria, or a combination thereof, under anaerobic conditions. Fermentation in simple terms is the chemical conversion of sugars into ethanol...

    method. Being the most time consuming and therefore the most expensive (to purchase), this method is not used very often. Because fermentation methods are not standardized (many types of bacteria and fungi can be used in the process) the outcome is also not standardized.


Extracts with a therapeutic value usually combine two methods, in general hot water extraction and alcohol / ethanol extraction. This will result in the most valuable components being present. Cheap mass produced extracts are in general hot water based low percentage (4-20%) polysaccharide extracts with limited therapeutic value. The information on the label will usually reveal a lot, be it by inclusion or exclusion of components.

Research

In 1998 there was a study in Poland that demonstrated Chaga's inhibiting effects on tumor growth. Noda and colleagues found that betulin seems to work highly selectively on tumor cells because the interior pH of tumor tissues is generally lower than that of normal tissues, and betulinic acid is only active at those lower levels. Fulda et al. found in 1997 that once inside the cells, betulinic acid induces apoptosis (programmed cell death) in the tumors. In 2005, I. obliquus was evaluated for its potential for protecting against oxidative damage to DNA in a human keratinocyte cell line. The study found that the polyphenolic extract protected these cells against hydrogen peroxide-induced oxidative stress. Another study that year found the endo-polysaccharide of Chaga produced indirect anti-cancer effects via immuno-stimulation. The mycelial endo-polysaccharide of I. obliquus was identified as a candidate for use as an immune response modifier and indicate that the anti-cancer effect of endo-polysaccharide is not directly tumorcidal but rather is immuno-stimulating. It also has anti-inflammatory properties. Saitoh Akiko published on the antimutagenic effects of Chaga in 1996. Mizuno et al. published on the anti-tumor and hypoglycemic activities of the polysaccharides from the sclerotia and mycelia of Chaga. Due to the hypoglycemic activity of polysaccarides caution may be taken by those with hypoglycemia.

Literature

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