About Chaga
Chaga (Lat.: Inonotus obliquus) has long earned the right to be called one of the most mysterious medicinal fungi currently known to the Russian and foreign science. In the USA, Europe, South Korea and Japan, the Internet is full of articles about the Russian Chaga often referred to as the Mushroom King!, Sensational Mushroom!, Panacea Mushroom!.
Chaga is a birch fungus - a parasite that forms and develops on the trunk of a birch and feeds on its juices. In folk medicine of different countries, the birch mushroom was used back in the 16th century for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, cancer, as a general strengthening and tonic agent. In 1955, the Pharmacological Committee of the USSR Ministry of Health allowed the use of chaga in scientific medicine.
The widespread use of chaga in official and folk medicine has long been constrained by the problem of determining the quality of raw materials and products of its deep processing, insufficient research on the medicinal properties of chaga extracts. Studies of the medicinal properties of an aqueous extract of chaga, carried out in the past 20 years, have significantly expanded the field of its application. The main active substances that determine the specific actions of the extract have been identified. The technological possibilities of deep processing of the mushroom with the manufacture of finished products of various forms have expanded. The demand for chaga in China, South Korea, India, the USA and other countries has increased many times and continues to grow. The use of chaga is expanding in Russia.
Chaga forms on the trunk of a birch in the form of solid, large, about 40 to 50 cm in diameter, 10 to 15 cm thick, heavy growths weighing from 2 to 5 kg, oval or round, with a deeply cracked black surface. It does not have mycelium and reproduces by spores that are carried by the wind, fall into a crack or damage on the trunk of a birch and begin to germinate there. A shapeless growth forms protruding from under breaking bark. Under favorable conditions, Chaga may grow up to fifteen years
The mushroom consists of three parts: the outer black layer is called sclerotium, the second layer is called the "fruit body", the third soft porous layer is adjacent to the tree trunk - the "ballast layer". More than 80% of biologically active substances are contained in the first two layers.
Geographically, the mushroom is widespread. It grows almost everywhere in birch forests. The most valuable are mushrooms in the birch forests of Siberia, which is explained by large temperature drops.
