Chaga is a unique organism, but not a pretty one. It naturally grows on white birch trees in cold climates and produces a very large black bulbous structure known as a sclerotium. Get your head out of the gutter! I said sclerotium. The sclerotium is actually a mycelial mass (see figure below). That’s the part of the fungus you don’t normally see with most mushrooms as it is underground. Chaga is different. What you see on the tree is that otherwise hidden network, condensed and exposed. At Brain Wave, we cultivate chaga on a superfood substrate, allowing us to isolate the mycelia without a birch tree, but with all the good stuff.
Chaga is associated with a wide range of health benefits, but here we will focus on two: balance and beauty.
What do I mean by balance? Metabolic balance. Chaga helps control blood sugar and cholesterol for balanced health. A recent study showed that chaga extracts helped control blood sugar in a mouse diabetes model (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39523023/). This was exemplified by improved glucose tolerance and increased insulin levels. Moreover, animals on chaga extract had increased HDL (good cholesterol) and decreased levels of LDL (bad cholesterol). These results have been demonstrated time and time again (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33640441/; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38628208/) showing the power of chaga in blood sugar and cholesterol homeostasis.
Now let’s talk about beauty. More specifically, skin health. Chaga has the ability to reverse skin ageing. Inonotus obliquus polysaccharides (IOPs) from chaga are very well studied for their ability to prevent oxidative stress that damages skin. An interesting study shed some “light” on this by showing that IOPs from chaga protected skin from UV damage (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37830196/). Another recent study highlighted that chaga can mediate skin damage associated with atopic dermatitis (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41581894/). Inotodiol, a lanostane-type triterpenoid from chaga was also shown to have anti-ageing effects on skin cells by modulating the synthesis of collagen and hyaluronic acid, two key components of healthy, resilient skin (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37628993/).
The figure below from (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37628993/) showcases these results. The top panels (A and B) show that increasing amounts of inotodiol from chaga decreased inflammatory cytokines. This is seen by the reduction in the brightness of the IL-8, IL-6, and TNF-a bars to the right that coincides with increases in inotodiol. TNF-a is an inflammatory cytokine that can damage skin. Graphs C and D quantify the TNF-a expression in skin cells with increasing amounts of chaga.
Taken together, these studies highlight chaga’s potential to support both internal balance and external appearance. You’ll feel better and look better.
Signing off,
Dr. Andy