What is CHAGA? - Inonotus obliquus or Chaga is a sterile conk growing on birch trees as parasite. It is a quite rare mushroom occurring especially in boreal forests of Europe, Asia and North America.
History - According to FUNGI Mag. -R. Dale Rogesr, Chaga has been widely used in folk medicine in Russia and other East European countries for a wide variety of health concerns. Chaga has been used for various cancers in Russia since 16-th century, including tumors, associated with angiogenesis, the buildup of blood vessels that feed and nourish the cancerous growths. In western Siberia chaga has been widely used for treating tuberculosis, liver conditions and stomach problem, including gastritis, and ulcers.
Dried CHAGA Mushrooms (photo credits: google.com)
PREPARATION
Tea: Steeping ground or powdered chaga in the usual way makes a pleasant tea. For the best medicinal benefit there is evidence that decocting it by boiling for at least 15 minutes and up to two hours is best. In either case, the tea is surprisingly good with a more tea-like (than mushroom) flavor because of its tannic qualities. It brews up darker than you would expect and blends very successfully with other teas and spices. As far as mushroom teas go, it is "choice." [source: FUNGI Mag. -David Spahr]
Alcohol Extract: A tincture of chaga can be made using alcohol and water. That makes 80 or 100 proof vodka a good choice for making the tincture.
1. Fill up a container, such as a bottle or jar, at least 1/2 with chaga powder
2. Fill it to the top with vodka
3. Allow it to sit for a few days or up to 2 weeks
4. Strain off the liquid and run it through an unbleached coffee filter then squeeze the filter when it has been stopped dripping.
That yields a single extraction.
5. You may take the leftover single extracted chaga mash and boil in water.
6. Reduce the liquid by half and add it to your first extraction making a stronger double extraction mantaining an alcohol concentration of at least 25% [source: FUNGI Mag. -David Spahr].
Hot Water Extract: Hot water extraction is the most common and the cheapest method. It can be compared to the traditional tea-making process. All water-soluble components will be present in the resulting extract. Water-insoluble components, such as phytosterols, betulinic acid and betulin, will be absent. Several extraction rounds combined with modern pharmaceutical techniques can result in high levels of polysaccharides, up to almost 60%. The ß-D-glucans, the bio-active part of these polysaccharides, might add up to ±20 % [source- Wikipedia]. Check out this video on how to prepare step by step chaga hot water extract.
Stalking the wild Chaga Mushroom with Daniel Vitalis part 2/2
According to Dale Rogers, one of the most widely used marketing tools for selling chaga is based on reported ORAC scale. Known as the Oxygen Radical Absorbent Capacity test, this is a laboratory measure of the capacity of any food or supplement to measure the amount of free oxygen radicals they can absorb. It is often compared to goji or wolf berry in advertising and suggests that a gram of chaga has an ORAC score of 36,557 compared to goji at 258 and blueberry at only 24.5.
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