Also known as Polypore obliquus, or by its botanical name Inonotus obliquus, Chaga is a fungus from the Hymenochaetaceae family that grows on birch trees by settling in places where the tree is injured. It can also be found on alders, beeches, elms and oaks, but only Chaga harvested from birch trees is known for its properties, thanks to the active ingredients it derives from birch sap, in particular betulin and betulinic acid. It grows naturally on trees in taiga and boreal forests, and is found mainly in northern China, northern Russia, Canada and the Baltic States .
We have chosen an extract of wild-growing Chaga, hand-harvested in the forests of the Greater Khingan Mountains, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the far north of China, close to the Russian border. Birch trees are abundant in this heavily forested wilderness, and the cold, semi-arid climate is ideal for the development of Chaga.
For optimum concentration of active ingredients, our Chaga is only harvested from wild, living birch trees after several years' growth. Cultivated chaga, harvested too early or from dead trees, does not have the same richness of active ingredients. Chaga appears as a relatively shapeless, hard, dark mass attached to the tree and develops like a parasite over the years. It can persist for 10 to 80 years or more until the tree dies. The inside of the fungus is an ochre-brown to orange colour. Underneath this unattractive appearance, Chaga is exceptionally rich in active ingredients: polysaccharides and beta-glucans, betulin, betulinic acid, polyphenols and flavonoids, terpenes and triterpenes, sterols, melanin, etc.
Renowned for its medicinal properties, Chaga has been traditionally consumed for hundreds of years by the peoples of Siberia and Northern Europe, as well as the indigenous peoples of Alaska and Canada. The preferred method of use is decoction, meaning that the pieces of Chaga are boiled for a long time in water to extract the active ingredients.
Chaga pieces are very hard and are not edible as they are, nor is it advisable to consume them in the form of raw powder, as the mushroom's natural high chitin content reduces the assimilation of the active ingredients and can cause intestinal inflammation. On the contrary, once extracted with water, whether in the form of a decoction or a concentrated powdered extract, the active ingredients in Chaga are particularly interesting for their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. That's why it's important to choose a food supplement prepared from a concentrated extract of water-extracted Chaga, and not from raw Chaga powder. Concentrated extracts are normally titrated in polysaccharides, Chaga's recognised active ingredients. For optimum efficacy, we have chosen a highly concentrated extract with 30% polysaccharides. Known as a medicinal mushroom in the same way as Reishi, Cordyceps, Maïtake or Shiitake, Chaga has many traditional uses. In traditional Russian and Chinese pharmacopoeia, Chaga is recommended as a general tonic, but also in cases of gastric or intestinal irritation. In Japan, it is known as an immunomodulator and is also used to support chemotherapy. Cited by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his novel "The Pavilion of Cancer", Chaga is sometimes nicknamed "Solzhenitsyn's mushroom". Today, in the absence of human clinical data, it is not possible to make any claims about Chaga in Europe. Nevertheless, an increasing number of scientific studies are highlighting interesting properties for Chaga extracts: in vitro and sometimes in-vivo.
