Wild Siberian mushroom - Chaga extract

Documented as early as 4600 years ago, ancient Asian folk medicine practitioners relied upon Chaga, a medicinal mushroom, to maintain a healthy life energy balance (“Chi”), preserve youth, promote longevity, and boost the body’s immune system to fight viral, bacterial, fungal and parasitic maladies. As a folk medicine, Chaga was ingested by the local people of the Siberian mountain regions in tea or powder form, inhaled from smoke, and applied to the skin for healing of injury or rash. Indigenous people from that area have been documented to live beyond 100 years of age.

The Chinese Monk Shen Nong, in his work Shen Nong Ben Cao Jin, the first of the three ancient medical books that serve as the foundation of Traditional Chinese Medicine, proclaimed Chaga as a superior class medicinal herb, for its diverse and complete homeopathic properties . Since then, Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners have applied Chaga as a remedy for serious human virus and disease, including anti-viral applications such as influenza, anti-inflammatory treatment of stomach ulcers, the arrest and reversal of tumor growth, balancing the endocrine system in the treatment of diabetes, anti-oxidant uses in detoxifying the body, and as a daily supplement for the overall balancing of the body’s immune system and genoprotective properties increasing longevity.

Siberian Chaga, Inonotus Obliquus, naturally found in the black birch forests of the Siberian mountain regions is the most potent of all the varieties of Chaga mushrooms. Chaga is a parasitic carpophore that enters a wound on a mature tree then grows under the bark until it blisters through the bark forming a grotesque black charcoal-like conk on the tree trunk, hence the Latin epithet “Obliquus”. The Chaga conk grows with the tree over a 5 to 7 year period, thriving in the harsh Siberian winter environment, absorbing life-sustaining nutrients from the black birch tree, until the conk flower fully ripens, falling to the forest floor, followed shortly by the death of the host tree, completing a 20 year micro-ecological cycle.

Russian culture has embraced the medicinal uses of Siberian Chaga, and its uses have spread westward to the Urals and Baltic regions of the European continent. In the 12th Century Tsar Vladimir Monamah was treated with Chaga (for symptoms most probably of lip cancer). Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn was awed by the healing powers of Chaga to treat cancer during the 1950s in his investigative research of patient treatment in provincial Siberian hospitals in his famous work, The Cancer Ward. Today, Chaga tea is commonly used in Russian cultures as a family cupboard remedy to support a healthy immune system and as a powerful antioxidant.

The post-antibiotic world of Western Medicine is now beginning to study, evaluate, and test Chaga for the active compounds underlying its historically understood homeopathic benefits. As with many other natural medicinal foods and herbs, the modern medical and scientific community is coming to understand that whole supplements like Chaga, offer a complex balance of active compounds, delivery mineral structures, and co-agents, more effective to sustaining a healthy immune balance than isolated compounds synthesized from these natural products.

The primary active compounds discovered in Siberian Chaga are a variety of triterpenes and sterols, including Lanosterol, Ergosterol Inotodials, Saponins, and Polysaccharides. Modern research is now beginning to demonstrate that these compounds are effective for human maladies treated by folk medicine practitioners with natural products, without toxic side-effect, for millennia.

After being ignored for hundreds of years by western pharmacologists, Chaga is currently enjoying a resurgence as a possible treatment for a wide variety of diseases and health problems, including chronic fatigue syndrome, the flu, stomach problems, and even HIV and certain types of cancer. Recent studies in the U.S., Russia, and other countries have shown Chaga to have anti-tumor benefits related to the mammary glands and female sex organs; studies in Finland have demonstrated that inotodial, one of the most active ingredients in Chaga, was effective against influenza virus and various cancer cells; and Japanese research not only found similar antiviral activity, but also discovered that Chaga shows activity against HIV (protease inhibition). Chaga has even been classified as a medicinal mushroom under World Trade Organization (WTO) codes.

Arguably, the most well known western research conducted on the use of Chaga has been performed by Dr. Kirsti Kahlos and her team at School of Pharmacology, at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Dr. Kahlos’ team conducted studies validating the immuno-modulating impact of Lanosterol-linked triterpenes effective as a flu-vaccination and for anti-tumor applications.

Institutional studies at the University of Tokyo, Japan have determined effectiveness of Inotodials in the destruction of certain carcinosarcomas and mammary adenocarcinomas. The Melanin complex produced by the Chaga mushroom demonstrates high antioxidant and genoprotective effects ( Melanin Complex from Medicinal Mushroom Inonotus Obliquus, Journal of Medical Mushrooms, 2002, vol. 4) . The polysaccharide beta-glucan, also present in Chaga, is proven to be effective at inhibiting mutagenic and immuno-modulating effects of cancerous tumors by triggering immune system response (SP Wasser, 2002, Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Israel).


The following article was published by the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) a joint venture by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.

Established in 1988 as a national resource for molecular biology information, NCBI creates public databases, conducts research in computational biology, develops software tools for analyzing genome data, and disseminates biomedical information - all for the better understanding of molecular processes affecting human health and disease



Chaga mushroom extract inhibits oxidative DNA damage in human lymphocytes as assessed by comet assay.

Park YK, Lee HB, Jeon EJ, Jung HS, Kang MH.
Department of Medical Nutrition, Kyunghee University, 1 Hoekidong, Dongdaemoonku, Seoul 130-701, South Korea.

The Chaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquus) is claimed to have beneficial properties for human health, such as anti-bacterial, anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities. The antioxidant effects of the mushroom may be partly explained by protection of cell components against free radicals.

We evaluated the effect of aqueous Chaga mushroom extracts for their potential for protecting against oxidative damage to DNA in human lymphocytes. Cells were pretreated with various concentrations (10, 50, 100 and 500 microg/mL) of the extract for 1 h at 37 degrees C. Cells were then treated with 100 microM of H2O2 (Hydrogen Peroxide) for 5 min as an oxidative stress. Evaluation of oxidative damage was performed using single-cell gel electrophoresis for DNA fragmentation (Comet assay). Using image analysis, the degree of DNA damage was evaluated as the DNA tail moment.

Cells pretreated with Chaga extract showed over 40% reduction in DNA fragmentation compared with the positive control (100 micromol H2O2 treatment). Thus, Chaga mushroom treatment affords cellular protection against endogenous DNA damage.

The Siberian Chaga formula is extracted from premium grade Siberian Chaga harvested from black birch forests existing in the most extreme climactic conditions of Western Siberia. The extreme nature of the Siberian winters appear to be the environmental quality that yields premium Chaga mushrooms high in anti-oxidant value.

A low pressure aqueous extraction technique is used to ensure the preservation of the active compounds of the Chaga mushroom. To ensure the purity and preservation of natural compounds produced by the Chaga mushroom, energized Pi- water in the aqueous extraction process is used. The Pi-water (Pi-Water has the same function and energy as your body water), is uniquely suited to preserve the anti-oxidant value of the Chaga extract throughout the bottling process until consumption by the consumer. This formula is further enhanced with mineral compounds to facilitate delivery of anti-oxidant compounds to the cells.

NO ALCOHOL IS USED IN THE EXTRACTION PROCESS.