Medicinal use
Since the 16th century, there are records of chaga mushroom being used in folk medicine and the botanical medicineof the Eastern European countries as a remedy for cancer, gastritis, ulcers, and tuberculosis of the bones. A review from 2010, stated, "As early as in the sixteenth century, Chaga was used as an effective folk medicine in Russia and Northern Europe to treat several human malicious tumors and other diseases in the absence of any unacceptable toxic side effects. Chemical investigations show that I. obliquus produces a diverse range of secondary metabolites including phenolic compounds, melanins, and lanostane-type triterpenoids. Among these are the active components for antioxidant, antitumoral, and antiviral activities and for improving human immunity against infection of pathogenic microbes. Geographically, however, this fungus is restricted to very cold habitats and grows very slowly, suggesting that Chaga is not a reliable source of these bioactive compounds. Attempts for culturing this fungus axenically all resulted in a reduced production of bioactive metabolites."[3] Cultivated Chaga results in a product with a very different composition of active components, in particular the phyto-sterols.[4]
Additionally, Betulinic acid is absent in cultivated Chaga because wild Chaga grows on birches, which supply Betulin and betulinic acid (compounds that are now being studied for use as a chemotherapeutic agent). While the Betulin found in birch bark is indigestible by humans, the Chaga mushroom converts it into a form that can be digested orally. In an animal study, researchers found betulin from birch bark lowered cholesterol, obesity and improved insulin resistance.[5]
In 1958, scientific studies in Finland and Russia found Chaga provided an epochal effect in breast cancer, liver cancer, uterine cancer, and gastric cancer, as well as in hypertension and diabetes.[6] In 1973 in interesting case study including 50 patients about the effect of a Chaga extract on psoriasis was published in the Russian journal Vestnik Dermatologii i Venerologii. The outcome was almost 100% successful.[7]
In China, Japan and South-Korea hot water extracts of the non-linear, complex (1<-3) and (1<-6) ß-glucan polysaccharides that are found in Chaga and other mushrooms from the family Hymenochaetaceae are being produced, sold and exported as anti-cancer medicinal supplements. The biologic properties of crude preparations of these specific β-glucans have been studied since the 1960s. Although these molecules exhibit a wide range of biologic functions, including anti tumor activity, their ability to prevent a range of experimental infectious diseases has been studied in the greatest detail.[8] Recent scientific research in Japan and China has been focused more on the anti-cancer potential and showed the effects of these specific polysaccharides to be comparable to chemo therapy and radiation, but without the side effects.[9][10] Further research indicated these polysaccharides have strong anti-inflammatory[11] and immune balancing properties,[12] stimulating the body to produce NK (natural killer) cells to battle infections and tumor growth, instead of showing a direct toxicity against pathogens. This property makes polysaccharide-based supplements stand out from standard pharmaceuticals - no side effects will occur / develop; the body is healing itself.[13] Herbalist David Winston maintains that it is the strongest anti-cancer medicinal mushroom. Russian Literature Nobel Prize laureate Alexandr Solzhenitsyn wrote two pages on the medicinal use and value of chaga in his autobiographical novel, based on his experiences in a hospital in Tashkent, "Cancer Ward" (1968).
Although the majority of research has been performed in vivo and in vitro, there have been a few human clinical trials. In a 48 patient human clinical trial in Poland in 1957, ten patients treated with chaga showed a reduction of tumor size, a decrease in pain, a decrease in the intensity and the frequency of hemorrhaging, and a recovery that was accompanied with better sleep, appetite and feelings of improvement. Most of these patients were females treated with chaga for cancer of the genital organs or breast cancer
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