[# Alchemy Dose: Full Knowledge Base (llms-full.txt)
> Premium functional and adaptogenic mushroom products from India. Single-ingredient, whole fruiting body extracts (never mycelium on grain), whole dried mushrooms, and mushroom coffee and matcha blends. Founded in 2021 by Erwin Khurana. Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107. Ships across India and worldwide. Website: https://alchemydose.com
## About Alchemy Dose
Alchemy Dose makes single-species mushroom extracts, dual-extracted with hot water and ethanol (hot-water only where a mushroom's compounds are water-soluble), from the whole fruiting body with no grain, mycelium, or fillers. Named compounds are disclosed as certificate-of-analysis minimums per batch, and every batch is lab-tested in India for heavy metals. The brand describes what is in each mushroom and how to use it, not health outcomes. These products are foods and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
The name is a nod to D.O.S.E: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins.
Compliance: Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107. Extracts are sourced from USDA-equivalent and EU-equivalent organic-certified suppliers. Wild mushrooms are sourced through Forest-Department-licensed local suppliers in the Himalaya.
---
## Products
### Mushroom Coffee and Matcha
**MycoSynergy Mushroom Coffee, 5-Mushroom Blend with Suntheanine**
https://alchemydose.com/products/super-shroom-coffee
Premium Indian Arabica coffee blended with Lion's Mane, Cordyceps, Reishi, Turkey Tail, and Chaga fruiting-body extracts, plus 100mg of Suntheanine (a patented L-theanine) per serving. Available at 500mg or 1000mg of mushroom extract per serving.
**Ceremonial Matcha + 5 Mushrooms and Suntheanine Blend**
https://alchemydose.com/products/mushroom-matcha-mycosynergy
Ceremonial-grade Japanese matcha from Shizuoka, shade-grown and stone-milled. Available plain, or blended with five mushroom fruiting-body extracts at 500mg per serving and 100mg of Suntheanine. Whisk with hot water or make a latte.
### Mushroom Extract Powders (single species, whole fruiting body)
**Cordyceps Militaris Extract**
https://alchemydose.com/products/cordyceps-militaris-extract
8:1 dual extract from the whole orange fruiting body, never mycelium on grain. Cordycepin greater than or equal to 0.35% and polysaccharides greater than or equal to 51.34% per batch Certificate of Analysis. Lab-tested per batch for heavy metals.
**Lion's Mane Extract**
https://alchemydose.com/products/lions-mane-extract
Hericium erinaceus, whole fruiting body, 8:1 dual-extracted in water and ethanol, never mycelium on grain. Beta-D-glucans greater than or equal to 26.20% and hericenones per batch Certificate of Analysis. Lab-tested per batch for heavy metals.
**Reishi Extract**
https://alchemydose.com/products/reishi-mushroom-extract
Ganoderma lucidum (Red Reishi, known as Lingzhi in Chinese tradition), 15:1 dual extract from the whole fruiting body. Triterpenes greater than or equal to 6.13% and polysaccharides greater than or equal to 25.11% per batch Certificate of Analysis. Lab-tested per batch for heavy metals.
**Chaga Extract**
https://alchemydose.com/products/chaga-mushroom-extract
Inonotus obliquus, 8:1 dual extract (hot water and ethanol) from the birch conk fruiting body, never mycelium, grain, or fillers. Beta-glucans greater than or equal to 12.50% and polysaccharides greater than or equal to 17.38% per batch. Because Chaga draws compounds from the birch tree it grows on, every batch is lab-tested for heavy metals.
**Turkey Tail Extract**
https://alchemydose.com/products/turkey-tail-mushroom
Trametes versicolor, 12:1 hot-water extract from the whole fruiting body. Beta-glucans greater than or equal to 47.53% and polysaccharides 57.66% per batch. Single species, no mycelium on grain, no fillers. Lab-tested per batch for heavy metals, microbes, and pesticides.
### Whole Dried and Wild Mushrooms
**Wild Himalayan Cordyceps Sinensis (Keedajadi / Yarsagumba)**
https://alchemydose.com/products/cordyceps-sinensis
Wild Ophiocordyceps sinensis, hand-collected by Bhotiya and Garhwali communities at 11,000 ft in Pithoragarh and Chamoli, Uttarakhand. Authenticated and graded by Alchemy Dose across grade-and-size variants. Documented in Tibetan and Chinese traditions for centuries.
**Wild Himalayan Gucchi Mushrooms (Premium Morels)**
https://alchemydose.com/products/morels-gucchi-mushroom
Wild Kashmiri Morchella esculenta, dried, in three cap-size grades, sold in 30g and 60g packs. Prized in the kitchen for biryani, gravies, and sauces.
**Dried Cordyceps Militaris Mushroom**
https://alchemydose.com/products/dried-cordyceps-militaris
Whole dried Cordyceps militaris fruiting body, bright orange, never powdered. Contains cordycepin and beta-D-glucans. Simmer into broth or steep as tea. Lab-tested per batch.
**Dried Lion's Mane Mushroom**
https://alchemydose.com/products/dried-lions-mane-mushroom
Whole dried Hericium erinaceus fruiting body, never mycelium grown on grain. Rehydrates in twenty minutes and sears like a steak, with a mild, faintly seafood flavour chefs compare to crab. For cooking, brewing, and slow braises. Lab-tested per batch.
### Storage and Apparel
**UV Biophotonic Violet Glass Jar**
https://alchemydose.com/products/biophotonic-uv-glass-jar
Violet biophotonic glass jar for storing mushroom powders, herbs, oils, and skincare. Blocks harmful light while allowing beneficial light through, preserving potency and extending shelf life. Airtight, refillable, recyclable.
**Mushroom Spore Print T-Shirt**
https://alchemydose.com/products/mushroom-spore-print-art-t-shirt
Oversized t-shirt featuring a real mushroom spore print with white rainbow reflective ink on 240GSM French Terry cotton. Sizes XS to 3XL.
---
## Collections
- Mushroom Extract Powders: https://alchemydose.com/collections/mushroom-extracts, Five single-species extract powders (lion's mane, cordyceps militaris, reishi, chaga, turkey tail), whole fruiting body, compounds disclosed per batch.
- Whole Dried and Wild Mushrooms: https://alchemydose.com/collections/whole-dried-mushrooms, Wild Keeda Jadi from Uttarakhand, Kashmiri Gucchi morels, dried lion's mane, and dried cordyceps militaris.
- Mushroom Drinks: https://alchemydose.com/collections/mushroom-drinks, MycoSynergy mushroom coffee and ceremonial mushroom matcha.
- Lion's Mane: https://alchemydose.com/collections/lions-mane, Hericium erinaceus as a dual extract and whole dried. Beta-D-glucans greater than or equal to 26.20%.
- Cordyceps and Wild Keeda Jadi: https://alchemydose.com/collections/cordyceps-keedajadi, Cordyceps militaris extract, whole dried militaris, and wild Himalayan Keeda Jadi. Cordycepin greater than or equal to 0.35%.
- Ganoderma Lucidum (Reishi): https://alchemydose.com/collections/ganoderma-reishi, Red reishi / lingzhi. 15:1 dual extract, triterpenes greater than or equal to 6.13%.
- Gucchi and Dried Morels: https://alchemydose.com/collections/gucchi-morels, Wild Kashmiri Gucchi and dried Himalayan morels (Morchella esculenta), graded by cap size.
- Chaga: https://alchemydose.com/collections/chaga-mushroom, Inonotus obliquus, the birch fungus. 8:1 dual extract, beta-glucans greater than or equal to 12.50%.
- Turkey Tail: https://alchemydose.com/collections/turkey-tail-mushroom, Trametes versicolor. 12:1 hot-water extract, glucans greater than or equal to 47.53%.
- Mushroom Matcha: https://alchemydose.com/collections/mushroom-matcha, Ceremonial-grade Japanese matcha with five mushroom extracts and Suntheanine.
- Storage and Apparel: https://alchemydose.com/collections/accessories, UV biophotonic violet glass jars and mushroom spore print apparel.
---
## Mushroom Guide: Gucchi (Morchella esculenta)
Source: https://alchemydose.com/blogs/news/unlocking-the-mysteries-of-morel
The Gucchi mushroom, also written Guchi, Guchhi, or Gucci mushroom, known as Kashmiri Gucchi in the valley and Himachali mushroom in the hills, and called the morel or Morchella esculenta in English, is the most expensive mushroom sold in India. In Hindi it is गुच्छी. It grows wild in the Himalayan forests of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, appears for a few weeks each spring, and is found on foot.
**What it is.** Gucchi is the Indian name for the morel, a wild mushroom of the genus Morchella, most commonly Morchella esculenta. The cap is conical and covered in deep pits and ridges like a honeycomb, and the whole mushroom is hollow from tip to stem base. It fruits after the snow melts, in a window that opens and closes within weeks, and grows in a relationship with the soil and trees that has not been reproduced in the Himalaya, which is why the wild harvest is the only harvest there.
**The many names.** Gucchi, Guchi, Guchhi (across northern India); गुच्छी (Hindi); Gucci mushroom (a frequent misspelling, unrelated to the fashion house); Kashmiri Gucchi (Jammu and Kashmir); Himachali mushroom (Himachal Pradesh); Morel or Morchella esculenta (English and scientific).
**Why it is so rare.** The wild Himalayan crop cannot be farmed. The fruiting window is only weeks each spring. It is found on foot by trained foragers. The annual yield is small while demand is high.
**Price.** Premium dried wild Himalayan Gucchi sells for ₹25,000 to ₹40,000 per kilogram; lower grades trade nearer ₹18,000 to ₹25,000. Prices move a great deal from one spring to the next. Anything offered at ₹10,000 per kilogram is broken pieces, a lower grade, or not what it says it is. Because the flavour is intense and dried morels swell when soaked, Alchemy Dose sells in 30g and 60g packs across three size grades.
**Wild or cultivated.** Wild Himalayan Gucchi cannot be farmed and is foraged every year by hand from Kashmir, Himachal, and Uttarakhand. Morchella species are now grown commercially elsewhere, principally in China, under controlled conditions; these are genuine morels of the same species but are not wild, not Himalayan, and cost a fraction as much. Alchemy Dose sells both and labels which is which.
**GI tag.** Not yet granted. In 2021 an application (number 737) was filed with the Government of India's Geographical Indication Registry seeking GI status for Gucchi from Doda district, Jammu and Kashmir; the applicant is the Borderless Foundation, and the application is in final examination at the GI Registry in Chennai. No Gucchi sold today can honestly be called GI-certified.
**Where it comes from.** Foraged from the forests of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand during the spring window (roughly March to May), within a regulated framework. Alchemy Dose sources wild Gucchi through Forest-Department-licensed local suppliers working with trained foragers.
**The three grades.** Tiny Treasures (1 to 2 cm) for omelettes, scrambles, and garnishes. Mighty Midsize (3 to 5 cm), the all-rounder, for pulao, biryani, gravies, and pasta. Giant Gourmets (6 to 9 cm), the showpiece, for stuffing, grilling, and searing.
**Nutrition.** Gucchi is a food. Like other mushrooms it is low in fat and contains protein, dietary fibre, and minerals including potassium, iron, copper, and zinc, alongside polysaccharides in its cell walls. It is eaten because it tastes extraordinary, not because it treats anything. Alchemy Dose makes no health or medicinal claim for it.
**How to cook.** Rinse briefly in cold water, soak in warm water for twenty to thirty minutes until supple, strain and keep the soaking liquid (it carries most of the flavour), and always cook morels through. The famous dish is Kashmiri Gucchi pulao; it is equally good in biryani, cream gravy, stuffed, or seared in butter with salt.
**How to spot a fake.** A true morel is hollow from tip to stem base in one continuous chamber. The surface has irregular pits and ridges, not brain-like folds. Dried Gucchi is startlingly light. A seller who can name the state, grade, season, and size band is more likely genuine.
---
## Mushroom Guide: Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor)
Source: https://alchemydose.com/pages/about-turkey-tail
**What it is.** Turkey tail (Trametes versicolor) is a thin, fan-shaped shelf fungus that grows on dead hardwood, banded in rings of brown, tan, and cream that resemble a wild turkey's tail feathers. It is one of the most common mushrooms in the world and one of the most studied. The Alchemy Dose extract is a concentrated powder from the whole fruiting body, hot-water extracted and lab-tested, with no mycelium on grain and no fillers.
**Not the bird.** Turkey Tail here is the mushroom, Trametes versicolor, not the smoked turkey tails sold as food and nothing to do with the bird. Older scientific papers call it Coriolus versicolor, the same mushroom under its earlier name.
**What is inside (compound identity, not effects).** Beta-glucans are the branched polysaccharides Turkey Tail carries in unusually high amounts and the fraction measured on every batch. Polysaccharides are the broader water-soluble family and the largest measured fraction. PSK (polysaccharide-K) and PSP (polysaccharide-peptide) are the protein-bound polysaccharide compound classes Trametes versicolor is known for in the literature; they are named as compounds found in the mushroom, and because the Certificate of Analysis does not assign them a percentage, none is printed.
**Lab-verified composition.** From Certificate of Analysis batch BE20250705, a hot-water 12:1 extract of whole fruiting body with no carriers: beta-glucans 47.53% (measured by phenol-sulfuric assay), polysaccharides 57.66%. Every batch is lab-tested for heavy metals and active compounds.
**Why hot water, not alcohol.** The compounds Turkey Tail is prized for, its beta-glucans and the PSK and PSP polysaccharides, are water-soluble. Hot water extracts them; an alcohol step adds a label word and cost but not the compounds that matter for this species. Alchemy Dose hot-water extracts at 12:1 (twelve kilograms of dried fruiting body to one of finished powder).
**Research.** Hundreds of papers on PubMed, almost all early-stage laboratory research on the polysaccharide compounds PSK and PSP. This is compound research, not evidence about a finished consumer product, and no claim is made that the extract treats, cures, or prevents any disease.
**Tradition.** In China it was Yun Zhi, the "cloud mushroom", recorded over 2,000 years. In Japan it was Kawaratake, the "tile mushroom". Korean tradition knew it too. Shared as history and culture, not a health claim.
**How to take.** Stir 1 to 2 grams of extract powder into hot water, coffee, tea, a smoothie, or a broth. Mild, earthy, faintly woody taste. Caffeine-free; most people take it daily.
---
## Mushroom Guide: Reishi / Ganoderma Lucidum
Source: https://alchemydose.com/pages/about-reishi
**What it is.** Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) is a hard, woody, kidney-shaped shelf fungus that grows on hardwood trees, with a glossy red-brown cap (lucidum means shining). In China it is called Lingzhi, the "spirit mushroom", used in traditional practice for more than 2,000 years. The Alchemy Dose extract is a concentrated powder from the whole fruiting body of the red-capped variety (Red Reishi), dual-extracted and lab-tested.
**The many names.** Ganoderma lucidum (botanical); Reishi (Japanese); Lingzhi 灵芝 (Chinese, "spirit mushroom"); Yeongji (Korean); Red Reishi (the prized red-capped variety); Mushroom of Immortality (a historical cultural name).
**What is inside (compound identity, not effects).** Triterpenes and ganoderic acids are the family Reishi is named for, with more than 130 characterised; they are fat-soluble, so an ethanol step is needed to capture them, which sets Reishi apart from most mushrooms. Beta-D-glucans and other polysaccharides make up the water-soluble fraction. Reishi also carries sterols including ergosterol.
**Lab-verified composition.** From Certificate of Analysis batch BE20251209, a 15:1 dual extract of whole fruiting body with no carriers: polysaccharides 25.11%, triterpenes 6.13%, beta-glucans 20.07%. Triterpenes at 6.13% are the highest of any extract in the Alchemy Dose range and are only reachable with the ethanol step.
**Why dual-extract (15:1).** Reishi holds two kinds of compounds that will not come out the same way. A hot-water step pulls the water-soluble polysaccharides and beta-D-glucans; an ethanol step pulls the fat-soluble triterpenes and ganoderic acids that water leaves behind. Fifteen kilograms of raw Reishi go into one kilogram of finished extract.
**Fruiting body, never mycelium.** Made from the whole kidney-shaped fruiting body, the part that holds the ganoderic acids, with no mycelium grown on grain and no fillers.
**How to take.** Deep, earthy, bitter taste (from the triterpenes, a sign of a real fruiting-body extract). Stir 1 to 2 grams into hot water, tea, or broth. In Chinese tradition it was taken in the evening as a wind-down ritual. Caffeine-free.
**History.** In the Shennong Ben Cao Jing, the oldest Chinese materia medica, Reishi was ranked the number-one "superior herb", above ginseng. Shared as history and culture, not a health claim.
Composition references (identity only): Wachtel-Galor et al., in Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects, 2011 (PMID 22593954); Paterson, Phytochemistry, 2006; Kubota et al., Helvetica Chimica Acta, 1982.
## Mushroom Guide: Cordyceps Militaris
Source: https://alchemydose.com/pages/about-cordyceps-militaris
The Ultimate Guide to Cordyceps Militaris & Cordyceps Sinensis | KeedaJadi
### What Is Cordyceps Militaris?
Cordyceps militaris (Cordyceps militaris) is a bright orange, club-shaped fungus. Unlike its famous wild cousin, it is cultivated in clean, controlled indoor conditions on a grain substrate, which is what makes a consistent, affordable, high-cordycepin extract possible in the first place.
Our Cordyceps militaris extract is a concentrated powder made from the whole orange fruiting body, dual-extracted and lab-tested. It is the cultivated species that modern research studies most, and it carries the compound Cordyceps is best known for.
### Militaris Is Its Own Species
One thing worth clearing up, because even sellers get it wrong. Cordyceps militaris is its own species. It is often confused with the wild caterpillar fungus, Ophiocordyceps sinensis (Keedajadi), but the two are different species in different genera, not a wild-versus-cultivated version of the same mushroom. Militaris is the one grown in cultivation, and it is naturally higher in cordycepin than the wild species.
### What Is Inside Cordyceps Militaris Extract
Cordyceps militaris is studied mainly for its compound chemistry. These describe what is in the mushroom, not what it does in the body.
**Cordycepin The signature compound**
Cordycepin, also called 3'-deoxyadenosine, is the nucleoside compound Cordyceps militaris is named for, and the one it naturally carries in higher amounts than the wild species. It is alcohol-soluble, so an ethanol step is needed to capture it.
**Adenosine Nucleoside**
A related nucleoside compound, part of the characteristic Cordyceps profile and captured alongside cordycepin.
**Polysaccharides Water-soluble**
The water-soluble fraction is rich in polysaccharides, the broad compound family studied across functional mushrooms. In our extract this is the largest measured fraction.
**Mannitol Historically "cordycepic acid"**
Cordyceps also carries mannitol, the sugar alcohol historically referred to in older texts as cordycepic acid.
**Lab-Verified Composition**
From our Certificate of Analysis, batch BE20251006. 8:1 dual extract, whole fruiting body, no carriers.
Cordycepin at 0.35%, HPLC-verified, is the compound that sets cultivated militaris apart from the wild species, and it works in small amounts. Polysaccharides are the largest measured fraction at 51.34%. We publish only the compounds our lab actually measures. Every batch is lab-tested for heavy metals and active compounds.
### Why We Dual-Extract Our Cordyceps
Cordyceps holds two kinds of compounds that will not come out the same way. A single hot-water brew pulls only half of them.
**Hot Water Step**
Pulls out the water-soluble polysaccharides.
**Ethanol Step**
Pulls out the cordycepin and adenosine nucleosides that water leaves behind.
Our Cordyceps militaris is an 8:1 dual extract, hot water plus ethanol, so both fractions end up in the powder. Eight kilograms of raw Cordyceps go into one kilogram of finished extract.
### Cordyceps Militaris vs Keedajadi (Sinensis)
You may see both sold as "Cordyceps". They are different species with different strengths, and we carry both.
Feature | Cordyceps Militaris | Keedajadi (Sinensis) Species | Cordyceps militaris, its own species | Ophiocordyceps sinensis, a different genus How it grows | Cultivated indoors on grain, year-round | Wild, on Himalayan caterpillars, seasonal Cordycepin | Higher, 0.35% in our extract (HPLC) | Lower, per Kim 2005 Consistency | Standardised batch to batch | Varies by season and source Price | Affordable and widely available | Rare and premium, often many times the price At Alchemy Dose | This extract, plus dried militaris | Sold as our wild Cordyceps sinensis
### Is This the "Last of Us" Fungus?
Short answer, no, and here is why. The fungi that take over insects belong to the Ophiocordyceps genus, and they are extremely specialised. Each one targets a specific insect, and they cannot develop in mammals, because our body temperature, around 37 degrees, is simply too warm for the fungus. Cordyceps militaris infects insects too, never people. It has been eaten as a food and brewed in tradition for more than 300 years and is FSSAI licensed. The takeover scenario in the show is fiction.
### How to Take Cordyceps Militaris
Stir 1 to 2 grams of extract powder into hot water, coffee, tea, or a smoothie. Cordyceps has a mild, faintly savoury taste. In tradition it was a daytime tonic, so unlike Reishi, which is an evening mushroom, many people take Cordyceps in the morning. It is caffeine-free.
### Cordyceps in Tradition
Cordyceps appears in classical Chinese materia medica, including the Ben Cao Cong Xin of 1757, and in Tibetan medical tradition, as part of Asian herbal practice for more than 300 years. The wild caterpillar-fungus romance, the "winter worm, summer grass", belongs to the rarer Himalayan species, Keedajadi. Militaris is the cultivated cousin that modern research studies most, because it can be grown to a consistent standard. We share this as history and culture, not as a health claim.
### Cordyceps Militaris: Quick Answers
Q: What is Cordyceps militaris? A: Cordyceps militaris is a bright orange, club-shaped fungus grown in cultivation on a grain substrate. It is its own species, best known for the compound cordycepin, and it is sold as both a dried fruiting body and a concentrated extract powder.
Q: Is Cordyceps militaris the same as Keedajadi (Cordyceps sinensis)? A: No. They are different species. Militaris is cultivated, consistent, affordable, and naturally higher in cordycepin. Keedajadi is the wild Himalayan caterpillar fungus, rare and premium. We sell both, so you can choose.
Q: How do you take Cordyceps militaris powder? A: Stir 1 to 2 grams into hot water, coffee, tea, or a smoothie, usually in the morning. It is caffeine-free with a mild savoury taste, and most people take it daily.
Q: Does Cordyceps affect testosterone? A: This comes up because of early animal research on the endocrine system. Human evidence is limited, and we make no claim that our product changes hormone levels. Anyone with specific hormone concerns should speak to a healthcare provider.
Q: Is Cordyceps militaris safe? A: For most healthy adults it is well tolerated, and it has a long history as a food. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are on any medication, speak to a doctor before regular use.
Cordyceps militaris is a food and is not for medicinal use. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are on any medication, consult a doctor before use. Marketed by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
Composition references (identity only): Kim et al., 2005, PMID 16242862 (cordycepin content, cultivated militaris compared with wild sinensis). Compound identity and Certificate of Analysis values (polysaccharides 51.34%, cordycepin 0.35%, adenosine 0.29%) per batch BE20251006. Cordyceps militaris has over 1,200 published papers on PubMed.
---
## Mushroom Guide: Lion’s Mane
Source: https://alchemydose.com/pages/about-lions-mane
The Complete Guide to Lion's Mane, the Mushroom
### What Is Lion's Mane (Hericium erinaceus)?
Lion's Mane (Hericium erinaceus) is an unusual white mushroom that grows as a soft, rounded cushion covered in long downward-hanging spines, with no cap and no stem. It is a "tooth fungus", and those cascading white spines are where the lion's mane name comes from. Our Lion's Mane extract is made in India for the India market from the whole fruiting body, dual-extracted and lab-tested.
Our Lion's Mane mushroom extract is a concentrated powder made from the whole fruiting body of Hericium erinaceus, never mycelium grown on grain. It carries a published Certificate of Analysis, which most Lion's Mane sold in India does not.
### Lion's Mane, Yamabushitake, Hou Tou Gu: The Many Names
### What Is Inside Lion's Mane Extract
Lion's Mane is studied mainly for its compound chemistry. These describe what is in the mushroom, not what it does in the body.
**Hericenones The fruiting-body compound**
Hericenones are the compound class specific to the Lion's Mane fruiting body, first isolated in 1991. They are the compounds researchers most associate with Lion's Mane, and they are studied in the laboratory in relation to the nerve growth factor pathway.
**Beta-D-Glucans & Polysaccharides Water-soluble**
The water-soluble fraction is rich in beta-D-glucan and other polysaccharides, the broad compound family studied across functional mushrooms.
**Triterpenoid Saponins Alcohol-soluble**
Lion's Mane also carries triterpenoid saponins, which are fat-soluble, so an ethanol step is needed to capture them alongside the water-soluble compounds.
**Lab-Verified Composition**
From our Certificate of Analysis, batch BE20260201. 8:1 dual extract, whole fruiting body, no carriers.
Beta-glucans lab-verified at 26.20%, which is above 25%, alongside 30.22% total polysaccharides and 2.11% triterpenoid saponins. We print the real numbers rather than a rounded-up claim. Every batch is lab-tested for heavy metals and active compounds.
### Why We Dual-Extract Our Lion's Mane
Lion's Mane holds two kinds of compounds that will not come out the same way. A single hot-water brew pulls only half of them.
**Hot Water Step**
Pulls out the water-soluble beta-D-glucans and polysaccharides.
**Ethanol Step**
Pulls out the fat-soluble hericenones and triterpenoid saponins that water leaves behind.
Our Lion's Mane is an 8:1 dual extract, hot water plus ethanol, so both fractions end up in the powder. Eight kilograms of raw Lion's Mane go into one kilogram of finished extract.
### Fruiting Body, Never Mycelium
This matters more for Lion's Mane than almost any other mushroom. Hericenones live in the fruiting body, the white spined mushroom itself. A different compound group, erinacines, is found only in the mycelium, the root-like network grown on grain that many cheaper products actually sell. Because we use the whole fruiting body and never mycelium on grain, our extract carries the hericenones and none of the grain starch that comes with a mycelium shortcut.
### How to Take Lion's Mane Extract
Stir 1 to 2 grams of extract powder into hot water, coffee, tea, or a smoothie. Lion's Mane has a mild, savoury, faintly seafood-like taste, which is why some people cook with it too. It is caffeine-free and has no fixed time of day, so it fits a morning coffee or an afternoon cup equally well. Many people take it daily and give it several weeks.
### Lion's Mane and the Mountain Monks
In Japan, Lion's Mane is called yamabushitake, the "mountain priest mushroom", named after the Yamabushi ascetic monks who reportedly carried the dried mushroom on long mountain pilgrimages. In China it is hou tou gu, the "monkey head mushroom", recorded in the classical Compendium of Materia Medica of 1596, and it is still cooked as a food across East Asia. We share this as history and culture, not as a health claim.
### Lion's Mane: Quick Answers
Q: What is Lion's Mane mushroom? A: Lion's Mane (Hericium erinaceus) is a white, spined "tooth fungus" that grows as a rounded cushion with no cap or stem. It is both a culinary mushroom and one of the most researched functional mushrooms, studied for its hericenone and beta-glucan compounds.
Q: Where can I buy Lion's Mane in India? A: Right here. Our Lion's Mane extract is made for the India market, dual-extracted from the whole fruiting body, and ships across India with a published Certificate of Analysis, which most Lion's Mane sold in India does not carry.
Q: What is the difference between fruiting body and mycelium Lion's Mane? A: The fruiting body is the actual white spined mushroom and holds the hericenones. Mycelium is the root-like network, often grown on grain, and it carries different compounds plus leftover starch. We use the whole fruiting body only.
Q: How do you take Lion's Mane powder? A: Stir 1 to 2 grams into hot water, coffee, tea, or a smoothie once a day. It is caffeine-free with a mild savoury taste, and most people give it several weeks of daily use.
Q: Is Lion's Mane safe? A: For most healthy adults Lion's Mane is well tolerated, and it has a long history as a food in Japan and China. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are on any medication, speak to a doctor before regular use.
Lion's Mane is a food and is not for medicinal use. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are on any medication, consult a doctor before use. Marketed by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
Composition references (identity only): Kawagishi et al., first isolation of hericenones from the Hericium erinaceus fruiting body, 1991. Compound identity and Certificate of Analysis values (beta-glucans 26.20%, polysaccharides 30.22%, triterpenoid saponins 2.11%) per batch BE20260201. Hericium erinaceus has over 1,500 published papers on PubMed.
---
## Mushroom Guide: Chaga
Source: https://alchemydose.com/pages/about-chaga
The Complete Guide to Chaga
### What Is Chaga Mushroom (Inonotus obliquus)?
Chaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquus) is a slow-growing fungus that forms a hard, black, charcoal-like mass called a conk on birch trees in cold climates. It can take 10 to 15 years to mature, and that deep black colour comes from melanin. Chaga has been brewed as a forest tea in Russia, Siberia, and Northern Europe for centuries.
Unlike a typical cap-and-stem mushroom, Chaga looks more like a piece of dark, cracked mineral. Our Chaga mushroom extract is a concentrated powder made from the whole Chaga fruiting body, dual-extracted and lab-tested, so you get a caffeine-free daily brew without simmering raw chunks for hours.
### Chaga Mushroom vs Chagas Disease
A quick clarification, because search engines confuse the two. Chaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquus) is a fungus that grows on birch trees and has been used as a traditional tea. Chagas disease is a completely unrelated tropical infection caused by a parasite in Central and South America. Different organism, different topic. If you were looking for the mushroom, you are in the right place.
### What Is Inside Chaga Mushroom Extract
Chaga is studied mainly for its unusual compound chemistry. These describe what is in the mushroom, not what it does in the body.
**Melanin The black pigment**
Chaga is one of the richest natural sources of melanin, the pigment behind the conk's black exterior. A 2019 study in Biomolecules characterised Chaga melanin and its antioxidant activity as a compound.
**Beta-D-Glucans & Polysaccharides Water-soluble**
The water-soluble fraction is made of beta-D-glucan and other polysaccharides, the same broad family of compounds studied across functional mushrooms.
**Betulin & Triterpenoids Drawn from birch**
Chaga takes up betulin, a triterpene compound, from the birch bark it grows on, alongside other triterpenoids. These are fat-soluble, which is why the extraction method matters.
**Phenolic Compounds Polyphenols**
Chaga also carries a range of phenolic compounds. A 2022 study in Biomolecules found conks grown on birch are richer in polyphenols, flavonols, and glucans.
**Lab-Verified Composition**
From our Certificate of Analysis, batch NG20240720. Whole extract, no carriers.
Chaga's beta-glucan level is naturally lower than our other extracts because its profile is led by polyphenols and melanin instead. That is correct for the species. Every batch is lab-tested for heavy metals and active compounds.
### Why We Dual-Extract Our Chaga
Chaga holds two kinds of compounds that will not come out the same way. A single hot-water brew, the way most people make Chaga tea at home, misses half of them.
**Hot Water Step**
Pulls out the water-soluble polysaccharides and beta-D-glucans.
**Ethanol Step**
Pulls out the fat-soluble betulin and triterpenoids that water leaves behind.
Our Chaga is an 8:1 dual extract, hot water plus ethanol, so both fractions end up in the powder. Eight kilograms of raw Chaga go into one kilogram of finished extract.
### Fruiting Body, Never Mycelium
This is where a lot of Chaga on the market quietly falls short. A 2025 analysis in Planta Medica tested 18 marketed Chaga supplements and found 8 of them, almost half, were actually ground mycelium grown on grain, missing the triterpenoid and phenolic markers of real Chaga. Ours is made from the whole Chaga conk, never mycelium on grain, never fillers.
### How to Make Chaga Tea from Extract Powder
Whole Chaga chunks need one to four hours of simmering. Extract powder is ready in seconds. Pour 200 to 250 ml of hot water, just off the boil, over 1 to 2 grams of Chaga extract powder and stir. It has a mild, earthy taste with a faint note of vanilla, and it is naturally caffeine-free, so it suits any time of day. You can also stir it into coffee, a smoothie, or broth.
### Chaga Mushroom: A Note on Heritage
The Khanty people of western Siberia are among the first recorded to use Chaga, brewing the black conk into a slow forest tea and calling it a "gift from God". Across Russian, Siberian, Finnish, and Baltic folk tradition it was a foraged winter tonic, and it picked up names like "King of Mushrooms" and "Diamond of the Forest". We share this as history and culture, not as a health claim.
### Chaga Mushroom Extract: Quick Answers
Q: What is Chaga mushroom used for? A: Traditionally, Chaga was brewed as a daily forest tea and a warming winter ritual across Russia and Siberia. Today people take Chaga extract as a caffeine-free daily drink, on its own or stirred into coffee. We describe these traditional uses and do not claim the product produces any specific health outcome.
Q: How do you identify real Chaga? A: Real Chaga is a hard, black, deeply cracked conk on the outside, with a rust-orange to amber interior, growing on birch. It looks like burnt charcoal, not a soft cap-and-stem mushroom. In powder form, the marker of quality is whether it is made from the fruiting body rather than grain-grown mycelium.
Q: Is Chaga caffeine-free? A: Yes. Chaga contains no caffeine and is not a stimulant, so it can be taken in the morning or the evening.
Q: When is the best time to take Chaga? A: Any time. Because it is caffeine-free, Chaga has no time-of-day preference. Many people take it in the morning as a daily ritual, similar to green tea or matcha.
Q: Is Chaga safe? A: For most healthy adults Chaga is well tolerated. Because Chaga draws compounds from its environment, sourcing and testing matter, which is why we lab-test every batch for heavy metals. If you take blood-thinning medication, have a kidney condition, or are pregnant or breastfeeding, speak to a doctor before regular use.
Chaga is a food and is not for medicinal use. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. If you take blood-thinning medication, have a kidney condition, or are pregnant or breastfeeding, consult a doctor before use. Marketed by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
Composition references (identity only): Drenkhan et al., Biomolecules 2022, PMID 36139017 . Avula et al., Planta Medica 2025, PMID 40854436 . Beltrame et al., Journal of Fungi 2021, PMID 33800424 . Burmasova et al., Biomolecules 2019, PMID 31238558 .
---
## Science: Active Compounds and Beta-D-Glucans
Source: https://alchemydose.com/pages/beta-d-glucans
### What Are Beta-D-Glucans? A Guide to Every Compound on the Label
A fibre, a branching pattern, and a number that can be faked
Beta-D-glucans, polysaccharides, triterpenoids, ganoderic acids, cordycepin, adenosine, mannitol, betulin, melanin, hericenones, erinacines, PSK and PSP. What each compound is, which mushroom it belongs to, how a laboratory finds it, and exactly how much is in each of our extracts.
By Erwin Khurana, Founder, Alchemy Dose
Erwin founded Alchemy Dose to source functional mushroom extracts from the producers who make them best, wherever in the world that is, alongside wild mushrooms foraged in the Himalaya, and to formulate his own products from them. The aim is high-quality extracts, tested per batch, and honest products built on top of them. He writes about mushroom chemistry, how an extract is actually made, and how to read a certificate of analysis rather than a label.
- What a Beta-Glucan Is
- Beta-Glucan Foods
- The Branch That Separates Fungi
- Why Hot Water, Not Alcohol
- How It Is Measured
- The Grain Problem
- What Is In Our Extracts
- What a Figure Can Tell You
- Glucans, Polysaccharides, Triterpenoids
- Every Other Compound
- The Bottom Line
A beta-D-glucan is a dietary fibre. It is a chain of glucose sugars joined by links your body carries no enzyme to cut, wound into a branched shape that belongs to fungi and not to grain. Every number on this page is transcribed from a batch certificate. The rest of it is chemistry.
### What a Beta-Glucan Is
A beta-glucan is a chain of glucose molecules joined end to end. Glucose is a simple sugar. Link enough of them together and you no longer have a sugar, you have a polysaccharide, which is a long-chain carbohydrate.
Your body cannot break these particular links. That makes beta-glucan a dietary fibre . It passes through you largely intact, which is the ordinary and unremarkable behaviour of fibre.
The full name, beta-D-glucan, tells you two things. Beta describes the geometry of the bond between one glucose and the next. D describes which of the two mirror-image forms of glucose is used. Both matter, and the first matters most.
### Beta-Glucan Foods
Beta-glucans are not rare. They are in your kitchen already. What differs between sources is not whether the fibre is present, but how the chain is put together.
Search interest in beta glucan foods almost always lands on oats. That is fair. Oats are the cheapest and most widely eaten source there is. But an oat beta-glucan and a mushroom beta-glucan are not interchangeable molecules, and the difference is a shape.
### The Branch That Separates Fungi
In oats and barley, the glucose units are joined in a long, mostly straight line: beta-(1→3) and beta-(1→4) links, one after another.
In mushrooms and yeast, the backbone is beta-(1→3), and every so often a side chain hangs off it at a beta-(1→6) link. The chain is branched. That branching pattern is the structural signature of a fungal beta-glucan, and it is the reason mushroom beta-glucans are studied as a separate class from cereal ones.
Two labels can both say beta-glucan. One is a chain from a grain, and one is a branched chain from a fungus.
### Why Hot Water, Not Alcohol
Beta-glucans are water-soluble . Heat the fruiting body in water and they come out. That is the whole reason hot-water extraction exists, and it is why an extract of turkey tail, whose certificate is dominated by glucans, is made with water and nothing else.
Triterpenoids behave in the opposite way. They do not dissolve in water and need ethanol. A mushroom that carries both, such as reishi or chaga, is therefore extracted twice: once in hot water, once in ethanol, and the two liquids are combined. That is a dual extract, and it is a description of a process, not a grade of quality.
### How It Is Measured
This is where the number on a label is either earned or invented.
Glucose chains come in two joineries. Beta is the one in mushroom cell walls. Alpha is the one in starch and glycogen, and starch is what a grain of rice or a kernel of corn is largely made of.
An assay of the kind used for mushroom and yeast beta-glucan, such as the Megazyme K-YBGL method, measures total glucan, then separately measures alpha-glucan, and reports beta-glucan as the difference between the two. It is subtraction. It exists precisely because the two are otherwise easy to confuse.
What is reported | What it can contain Polysaccharides | Any long-chain carbohydrate. Beta-glucan, alpha-glucan, starch, mannitol. A broad and permissive number Total glucan | Beta plus alpha, together. Higher than beta alone, always Alpha-glucan | Starch and glycogen. In a mushroom product it is usually the grain it was grown on Beta-glucan | Total glucan minus alpha-glucan. The figure worth reading
### The Grain Problem
Some mushroom products are not made from the mushroom. They are made from mycelium grown on grain, the fungal root network cultured on a bed of rice or oats, then dried and milled with the grain still in it.
Grain is starch. Starch is alpha-glucan. A product like that can honestly report a large polysaccharide percentage and a large total glucan percentage while carrying very little of the branched fungal beta-glucan the buyer thinks they are paying for.
If a product reports polysaccharides and not beta-glucan, that is a choice. Ask what the beta-glucan figure is. If a product reports total glucan without the alpha figure beside it, the subtraction has not been shown to you.
Every Alchemy Dose extract is made from the whole fruiting body, never mycelium grown on grain. That sentence is a sourcing statement, and the assay is what makes it checkable.
### What Is In Our Extracts
Four extracts carry a glucan figure on the certificate. Each one is transcribed here exactly as the laboratory printed it.
Bars are scaled against the highest disclosed figure, Turkey Tail at 47.53 percent. Turkey Tail's certificate reports total glucans rather than beta-glucan specifically, and it is labelled that way rather than quietly upgraded. Nothing here is an outcome or a promise. These are four numbers, printed on four certificates.
**Cordyceps militaris is read on a different axis**
Every species is defined by a different compound, and glucan is not the one that defines Cordyceps militaris . Its certificate leads with the two compounds the species is known for, and with the polysaccharide family that carries them.
Polysaccharides ≥ 51.34% · the highest polysaccharide figure in our range
Cordycepin ≥ 0.35% · the nucleoside the species is named for, by HPLC
Adenosine ≥ 0.29% · Mannitol ≥ 21.16%
Reporting cordycepin costs more than reporting a glucan percentage, because it needs chromatography rather than an enzyme assay. It is also the figure that tells you whether you are holding Cordyceps militaris at all.
Figures are stated as disclosed minimums, using the symbol ≥, because a certificate describes the batch that was tested and the next batch is a different batch. A brand that prints a single fixed percentage on every pouch for three years is printing a marketing figure, not a measurement.
### What a Beta-Glucan Figure Can Tell You
Search for beta glucan benefits and you will find a great deal of writing about what a fibre might do. This page is about something narrower and more checkable: what the fibre is, where it came from, how a laboratory found it, and how much of it was in the batch you are holding.
- The molecule. A glucose chain your body cannot digest
- The structure. beta-(1→3) backbone, beta-(1→6) branches
- The source. Fungal cell wall, not grain starch
- The method. Total glucan minus alpha-glucan
- The batch. The figure describes the batch that was tested, and is transcribed from its certificate
That is the full extent of what a number on a certificate can honestly do. It is also the part we can prove, and the part almost nobody prints.
### Glucans, Polysaccharides, Triterpenoids
Three words that get used interchangeably on labels, and should not be.
When a label says polysaccharides 40 percent, it has told you about the family and not the member. That is not a lie. It is a wider net.
### Every Other Compound
A certificate of analysis is a short list of nouns. Here is what each one is, what it does inside the fungus, and why a laboratory bothers to look for it. Nothing in this table is a health claim. It is chemistry, and it is checkable.
Every one of these words appears on a mushroom label somewhere. Only some of them mean what a buyer thinks they mean.
Compound | What it is | What it does in the fungus | Why it is on a certificate Beta-D-glucans | A fibre. A long chain of glucose with side chains branching off it. Your body has no tool that can cut those links, so it passes through you | Scaffolding. It builds the cell wall, alongside chitin. It is what holds a mushroom up | The number worth reading. It is the one figure that separates fungal fibre from the grain a product was grown on Polysaccharides | A family name, not a compound. Any long chain of sugar, whatever its shape. Beta-glucan is one member of the family | Found in the cell wall and inside the cell. Every species has them | A wide net. A large polysaccharide figure can be mostly starch. Ask what the beta-glucan number underneath it is Alpha-glucan | The same glucose, joined the other way round. Starch and glycogen. This is the joinery your body can digest | Usually nothing, because it usually is not from the fungus. It is the rice or oats the mycelium was grown on | You subtract it. Beta-glucan is total glucan minus alpha-glucan. A large alpha figure means a large amount of grain in the jar Triterpenoids | Not a fibre. An oil. Bitter enough to taste | Chemical defence. The bitterness that discourages whatever would otherwise eat it | Water will not draw them out. Only ethanol will. Their presence is the entire reason reishi and chaga are extracted twice Ganoderic acids | A named group inside the triterpenoid family, called after the genus Ganoderma | Part of what makes reishi taste bitter | Reishi's identity marker. Measured against an oleanolic acid standard, not by an enzyme assay Betulin | A triterpene the chaga does not make. It draws it from the birch it grows on, the way a plant draws minerals from soil | Nothing. It belongs to the birch. Chaga borrows it | Evidence the chaga grew on birch. A chaga taken from another host tree reads differently Melanin | A pigment. The same family of pigment that colours human skin and hair | Sunscreen and armour. It is why the outer crust looks burnt | It is why chaga is black. A visual identity check, before any assay is run Cordycepin | 3′-deoxyadenosine. A near-copy of adenosine with one piece missing. Not a fibre, not a sugar | A compound only a small number of fungi make. Cordyceps militaris is one of them | Expensive to measure, because it needs chromatography rather than an enzyme. It is the figure that proves the species Adenosine | One of the letters life writes RNA with. It is in every living thing, including you, right now | Ordinary cell chemistry. Nothing about it is special to mushrooms | Reported beside cordycepin because they are chemical siblings and come off the same chromatogram. Adenosine on its own proves nothing Mannitol | A sugar alcohol. Historically called cordycepic acid, which was a misnaming. It is not an acid | The fungus uses it to manage the water inside its cells | One of the largest figures on the cordyceps certificate. Knowing what it is stops the polysaccharide number being read as fibre Hericenones | Aromatic compounds, meaning ring-shaped. Named after Hericium, lion's mane | Present in the mushroom itself, the white shaggy part you would pick | They belong to the fruiting body. A product made from lion's mane mycelium grown on grain cannot carry them Erinacines | Diterpenoids. A different chemical family from hericenones, despite the similar name | Made by lion's mane mycelium in laboratory culture. The mushroom does not make them | The clearest tell in this category. A fruiting-body product cannot honestly print this word. Ours does not PSK and PSP | Polysaccharides with a protein attached. Fibre with a protein bound to it | Fractions isolated from turkey tail, Trametes versicolor | Neither is a routine certificate line. They are named here only so you recognise the words if you meet them elsewhere
**What the published literature actually establishes**
Four papers, all indexed on PubMed. Each is cited here for what it measured, not for any outcome in a person.
McCleary and Draga developed the method behind the Megazyme assay. Total glucan is measured after acid hydrolysis, alpha-glucan is measured separately using glucoamylase, and beta-glucan is determined by the difference . Their paper is also where alpha-glucan is defined for this purpose as starch and glycogen, which is why grain in a jar reads as alpha. They further found that Ganoderma lucidum needed the stronger acid to read correctly.
J AOAC Int, 2016. PMID 26957216. DOI
Li and colleagues state the distinction directly: mushroom mycelium has an identity separate from the mushroom, because hericenones are extracted from the fruit body and erinacines from the cultured mycelium. A label that advertises erinacines is describing mycelium, whatever the picture on the front shows. The paper is a rodent feeding study, and we cite it only for that structural statement.
Food Chem Toxicol, 2014. PMID 24810469. DOI
Yu and colleagues compared cultivated Cordyceps militaris against wild Cordyceps sinensis and reported that cordycepin and adenosine content were both higher in the cultivated species. It is the reason our militaris extract discloses cordycepin and our wild Keeda Jadi does not lead with it. We cite this paper for composition only.
J Agric Food Chem, 2006. PMID 16608242. DOI
Guo and colleagues grew Cordyceps militaris fruiting bodies on two different substrates and measured cordycepin, adenosine, polysaccharides and mannitol in each. Every figure moved. Cordycepin was higher on one substrate. Adenosine, polysaccharides and mannitol were higher on the other. Nothing about the species changed. Only what it was grown on.
Which is the whole argument of this page. What a mushroom is grown on ends up in the assay. Ask what the substrate was.
Int J Med Mushrooms, 2016;18(4):327-36. PMID 27481299. DOI
Cordycepin needs chromatography. Beta-glucan needs an enzyme assay. Triterpenoids need ethanol. A brand that reports only one number has told you which test it was willing to pay for.
### The Bottom Line
A beta-glucan is a fibre made of glucose. In oats it runs straight. In mushrooms it branches, and the branch is what makes fungal beta-glucan its own thing. It dissolves in hot water, which is why mushroom extracts are made with hot water.
A laboratory finds it by measuring all the glucan, then subtracting the starch. Products built on mycelium grown on grain carry that starch into the jar, which is why the polysaccharide number can be high and the beta-glucan number low.
Ask for the beta-glucan figure and the batch it came from. If a brand cannot give you both, it has told you the answer.
**Five Single-Species Extracts**
Lion's mane, cordyceps militaris, reishi, chaga and turkey tail. Whole fruiting body, never mycelium grown on grain, every compound figure disclosed per batch.
- McCleary BV, Draga A. "Measurement of β-Glucan in Mushrooms and Mycelial Products." J AOAC Int, 2016;99(2):364-73. PMID: 26957216 . doi:10.5740/jaoacint.15-0289 . The basis of the Megazyme K-YBGL assay. Alpha-glucan is defined as starch and glycogen; beta-glucan is reported as total glucan minus alpha-glucan.
- Li IC, Chen YL, Lee LY, Chen WP, Tsai YT, Chen CC, Chen CS. Food Chem Toxicol, 2014;70:61-7. PMID: 24810469 . doi:10.1016/j.fct.2014.04.040 . A 28-day rodent feeding study. Cited here for one structural statement only: hericenones are extracted from the fruit body and erinacines from the cultured mycelium.
- Yu HM, Wang BS, Huang SC, Duh PD. J Agric Food Chem, 2006;54(8):3132-8. PMID: 16608242 . doi:10.1021/jf053111w . Reports cordycepin and adenosine content higher in cultivated C. militaris than in wild C. sinensis . Cited here for composition only.
- Guo M, Guo S, Yang H, Bu N, Dong CH. Int J Med Mushrooms, 2016;18(4):327-36. PMID: 27481299 . doi:10.1615/IntJMedMushrooms.v18.i4.60 . Measured cordycepin, adenosine, polysaccharides and mannitol in C. militaris fruiting bodies grown on two different substrates. Cited here for composition only.
- Batch certificates of analysis held by Alchemy Dose for Lion's Mane, Reishi, Chaga, Turkey Tail and Cordyceps militaris. Figures on this page are transcribed from those certificates and stated as disclosed minimums.
- Structural note: cereal beta-glucans are predominantly beta-(1→3)(1→4)-linked; fungal and yeast beta-glucans carry a beta-(1→3) backbone with beta-(1→6) branching.
NOT FOR MEDICINAL USE. This product is a food and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Consult a qualified practitioner before use if pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or managing a medical condition. Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
---
## The Mushroom Guide: Powders, Extracts, and Labels
Source: https://alchemydose.com/pages/mushroom-guide
FUNCTIONAL MUSHROOMS
### A Guide to Functional Mushrooms and Adaptogens
**What Does Adaptogen Mean?**
Adaptogen is a category, not an outcome. It describes how a plant or fungus has traditionally been classified, and it tells you nothing on its own about what any particular extract contains. Functional mushrooms are the fungi that fall under that heading: lion's mane, cordyceps, reishi, chaga and turkey tail.
What is worth reading is one level down, in the compounds. Four classes account for almost everything a certificate of analysis will report, and each is drawn out of the mushroom a different way.
**The Four Compound Classes**
_Beta-D-Glucans_
The branched fibre in fungal cell walls. Water-soluble, which is why extracts start with hot water. How it is measured .
_Triterpenoids_
Not water-soluble. They need an ethanol step. Ganoderic acids in reishi, betulin in chaga. Read more .
_Polysaccharides_
The wider family of long-chain carbohydrates. Beta-glucan is one member of it, so the two numbers are not the same. The difference .
_Cordycepin_
A nucleoside, not a fibre. Measured by chromatography rather than an enzyme assay, which is why fewer brands report it. Found in Cordyceps militaris .
**Fruiting Body or Mycelium**
The single most useful thing to check on a label. A whole fruiting body extract is made from the mushroom. A mycelium grown on grain product is made from the fungal root network cultured on rice or oats, and the grain comes along with it. Grain is starch, starch is alpha-glucan, and a large polysaccharide figure can be mostly that.
See how a laboratory tells the two apart, and how we choose what goes in the jar . Every Alchemy Dose extract is made from the whole fruiting body, never mycelium grown on grain, with its compound figure disclosed per batch.
**Where the Word Came From**
Reishi appears in the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing roughly two thousand years ago. Keeda Jadi is recorded in Tibetan practice. Lion's mane is Yamabushitake in Japan, named for the mountain ascetics. We describe these traditions as history and culture, not as health claims, and we publish the compound figure from each batch so you can read the mushroom rather than the marketing.
NOT FOR MEDICINAL USE. These are foods and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
ALWAYS READ THE LABEL
### How To Read A Mushroom Label
There are thousands of mushroom species. A handful are used as functional mushrooms, and two jars of the same species can hold entirely different things.
Four questions separate one mushroom product from another. Nothing on a front label answers them. All four are answered on a certificate of analysis, if the brand publishes one.
_Which Species_
Each mushroom is defined by a different compound. Lion's mane is not reishi with a different label.
_Which Part_
The mushroom, or the fungal root network grown on rice? Grain is starch, and starch inflates the number.
_Which Extraction_
Hot water pulls the glucans. Ethanol pulls the triterpenoids. A dual extract does both. It is a method, not a grade.
_Which Number_
Polysaccharides is the family. Beta-glucan is the member. A brand reporting only the family has told you which test it paid for.
Every Alchemy Dose extract is made from the whole fruiting body, never mycelium grown on grain, and every compound figure is disclosed per batch . Here are the species we work with.
### How A Mushroom Extract Is Made
Which solvent you use decides which compounds you get. That is the whole of it. A dual extract is a description of a process, not a grade of quality.
Simmering in hot water dissolves the water-soluble fraction. This is how the glucans come out, and it is why a turkey tail extract needs nothing else.
Draws out: beta-D-glucans, polysaccharides Leaves behind: triterpenoids, sterols
Ethanol dissolves what water cannot. Ganoderic acids in reishi, betulin drawn from chaga's birch host, and the sterols alongside them.
Draws out: triterpenoids, sterols Leaves behind: beta-glucans, polysaccharides
Hot water first, then ethanol, and the two liquids combined. Used where a species carries both fractions, as reishi and chaga do.
Draws out: both fractions Worth paying for: only when the species has both
Compound | Hot water | Ethanol | Where it is Beta-D-glucans | Yes | No | Every species Polysaccharides | Yes | No | Every species Triterpenoids | No | Yes | Reishi, chaga Ganoderic acids | No | Yes | Reishi Betulin | No | Yes | Chaga, from its birch Cordycepin | Yes | Yes | Cordyceps militaris
Extraction breaks down chitin, the fungal cell wall, and separates the compounds held inside it. A single hot-water extract is the right method for turkey tail. A dual extract is the right method for reishi. Read what each compound is, and how a laboratory measures it, in our compound guide, then read the figure we disclose per batch .
---
## Article: Gucchi Mushroom Price in India
Source: https://alchemydose.com/blogs/news/gucchi-mushroom-price-india
### Gucchi Mushroom Price in India: What Each Grade Costs in 2026
You are not paying for a mushroom. You are paying for a mountain and a season
What Gucchi actually is, why it cannot be farmed, how it is graded by cap size, and how to tell a real dried morel from a fake.
By Erwin Khurana, Founder, Alchemy Dose
Erwin founded Alchemy Dose to source functional mushroom extracts from the producers who make them best, wherever in the world that is, alongside wild mushrooms foraged in the Himalaya, and to formulate his own products from them. The aim is high-quality extracts, tested per batch, and honest products built on top of them. He writes about mushroom chemistry, how an extract is actually made, and how to read a certificate of analysis rather than a label.
Gucchi is one of the most expensive mushrooms sold anywhere in the world, and the price is not a markup. It is the honest cost of a food that no one has been able to farm, that grows for a few weeks a year, and that has to be found on foot. This page explains where the number comes from, and how to make sure the one you buy is real.
This is a page about a wild food. It covers what Gucchi is, how it is graded, what it costs and why, and how to tell a genuine dried morel from the several things sold in its place. It makes no health claims, because Gucchi is a delicacy, not a medicine.
### What Gucchi Actually Is
Gucchi, also spelled guchhi, is the Himalayan name for the morel, Morchella esculenta and its close relatives. It is instantly recognisable: a tall, hollow, honeycombed cap of ridges and pits, the colour of toasted bread, sitting on a pale hollow stem.
It grows wild across the higher reaches of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, appearing in spring as the snow retreats. In Kashmiri kitchens it is the prize of a wedding pulao. Elsewhere it is called sponge mushroom, for obvious reasons. What it is not, anywhere, is a cultivated crop.
### Why It Cannot Be Farmed
Almost every mushroom you can buy cheaply, the button, the oyster, the shiitake, is farmed. Morels are the great exception, and that is the single biggest reason for the price.
Morels have a complicated, poorly understood relationship with soil, tree roots, weather and, in many cases, ground that has recently burned. Attempts at reliable commercial cultivation have largely failed or stayed uneconomic. There is no shed in which Gucchi is grown to order. Every genuine Himalayan Gucchi in a jar was found in a forest by a person.
So the supply is fixed by nature, not by demand. When a food cannot be scaled to meet the people who want it, the price is what closes the gap.
### The Harvest
The season is short, a few weeks in spring once the snow has gone. Foragers walk high forest slopes reading the ground, because morels are the same colour as the leaf litter they hide in and a good patch one year may be empty the next.
What is gathered fresh is then strung and dried, because fresh morels do not keep and drying concentrates the flavour that makes them worth the walk. Fresh morels lose most of their weight as they dry, so the light, papery caps in a jar represent several times their weight in fresh mushrooms, and a great deal more in time.
### What You Are Actually Paying For
Put the pieces together and the cost stops looking like a luxury tax and starts looking like arithmetic.
- Rarity. No cultivation. Supply is whatever the mountains gave that spring.
- Labour. Every cap is found and picked by hand, often at altitude, across a season that lasts weeks.
- Yield. Fresh morels dry down to a fraction of their weight, so a jar of dried Gucchi sits on top of a much larger fresh harvest.
- Grading. Caps are sorted by size and quality after drying, and the largest, cleanest ones are scarce.
### How Gucchi Is Graded
Dried Gucchi is graded by the size of the cap. Bigger caps are rarer, hold their shape better on the plate, and cost more per gram. Our own grading runs in three tiers.
Grade | Cap size | 30 g | 60 g Tiny Treasures | 1 to 2 cm | ₹750 | ₹1,470 Mighty Midsize | 3 to 5 cm | ₹1,050 | ₹2,070 Giant Gourmets | 6 to 9 cm | ₹1,350 | ₹2,670
The size is not about strength or flavour intensity, which are broadly similar across grades. It is about scarcity and presentation. A whole six-centimetre morel on a plate is a rarer thing than a small one, and priced accordingly.
### The Real Price
Translate those pack prices to a per-kilogram figure and the scale of it becomes clear.
At the 60 gram size, the small grade lands near ₹24,500 per kg and the giant grade near ₹44,500 per kg . Indian reporting routinely places Gucchi around ₹30,000 per kg and calls it the country's, and often the world's, most expensive mushroom. Our range sits exactly where a genuine, size-graded wild morel should.
If you find dried Gucchi being sold for a small fraction of this, the right response is not delight. It is suspicion, because at that price something in the story is not true.
The Better India; India.com; Village Square. Reporting on Gucchi (Morchella esculenta) as India's, and among the world's, most expensive mushrooms, priced up to around ₹30,000 to ₹40,000 per kg.
Grade prices from Alchemy Dose, regular list pricing by cap size.
### Spotting Real Dried Gucchi
Because the price is high and the supply is wild, the category attracts adulteration. A few checks separate the real thing from the rest.
- Hollow throughout. Tear one open. A true morel is hollow from cap to stem, a single empty chamber
- Honeycomb pits. Irregular ridges and pits, not wrinkles or folds
- Light for its size. Properly dried caps are papery and weigh almost nothing
- Earthy, nutty aroma. Deep and mushroomy, not musty or chemical
- Heavy or gritty. Weight added with trapped sand or soil, or soaking
- Solid or cottony inside. A stuffed or chambered interior is not a true morel
- Too cheap. A price far below the market means the story does not hold
- Uniform and perfect. A wild harvest is not identical cap to cap
### True Morel vs False Morel
True morels are Morchella . False morels are a different fungus, Gyromitra, and they are toxic. They contain gyromitrin, which the body converts to a harmful compound, and they should not be eaten.
The tell is the shape. A true morel has an orderly honeycomb of pits and ridges and is hollow inside . A false morel has a wrinkled, brain-like or saddle-shaped cap and is not cleanly hollow . If it looks folded rather than pitted, leave it.
This is the real reason to buy Gucchi from someone who can tell you where it was foraged and who graded it, rather than from an anonymous sack in a market.
### How to Cook It
Dried Gucchi is rehydrated before cooking. Rinse the caps, then soak them in warm water until soft. Keep the soaking liquid, let the grit settle, and use the clear liquor above it, because that is where a lot of the flavour went.
Morels are always cooked, never eaten raw. Raw or undercooked morels can upset the stomach, and thorough cooking is part of preparing them properly. Sauteed in ghee, folded into a pulao, or simmered into a cream sauce, a little goes a long way.
### Buying Gucchi in India
Five questions worth asking whoever you buy from.
- Where was it foraged, and in which season? Vagueness is a warning.
- Is it graded by cap size, and which grade is this?
- Are the caps hollow throughout when you tear one open?
- Does the weight feel right, light and papery rather than heavy and gritty?
- Does the price match the market, rather than sitting suspiciously below it?
Gucchi is the wild counterpart to the other Himalayan treasure we sell, Keeda Jadi, and both are bought on provenance rather than a percentage on a label. For gucchi's nutrition and how to cook it, see our guide to gucchi mushroom benefits and how to cook it . For the wider map of what we make and forage, see the functional mushrooms guide .
### The Bottom Line
Gucchi is expensive because it is wild, because it cannot be farmed, and because a person has to walk into the mountains to find it during the few weeks a year it appears. The price is not a story someone tells you. It is the harvest, the season and the labour, converted into a number.
Buy it for the flavour, and for the place it comes from. Check that it is hollow, honeycombed and light, and that the price makes sense. That is all it takes to buy the real thing.
Wild Himalayan Gucchi
Premium morels, graded by cap size. Foraged, not farmed.
Wild Keeda Jadi
Himalayan Cordyceps sinensis. The other wild high-altitude treasure.
Dried Lion's Mane
Another whole mushroom for the kitchen. Cook it like seafood.
- Grade prices from Alchemy Dose, Wild Himalayan Gucchi Mushrooms, regular list pricing by cap size (Tiny 1 to 2 cm, Midsize 3 to 5 cm, Giant 6 to 9 cm).
- The Better India. Reporting on Gucchi as India's most expensive mushroom, priced up to around ₹30,000 to ₹40,000 per kg.
- India.com. This rare Indian mushroom costs around ₹30,000 per kg and grows in the Himalayas.
- Village Square. Why Gucchi (Himalayan morel) is among the world's priciest mushrooms.
- Botanical identity: Morchella esculenta and related morels; false morels are Gyromitra species, which contain gyromitrin and are toxic.
- FSSAI. Food Safety and Standards (Advertising and Claims) Regulations, 2018.
A WILD FOOD. Gucchi is a culinary mushroom. Always cook morels thoroughly and never eat them raw. Consult a qualified practitioner before use if pregnant, nursing, or managing a medical condition. Marketed by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
**Wild Himalayan Gucchi Mushrooms**
Premium morels foraged in the Himalaya and graded by cap size, from Tiny Treasures to Giant Gourmets. Hollow, honeycombed and light, the way a real dried morel should be. Priced to the grade, not to a story.
---
## Article: Cordyceps Militaris Price in India
Source: https://alchemydose.com/blogs/news/cordyceps-militaris-price-india
### Cordyceps Militaris Price in India: What Drives the Cost of a Real Extract
The cheap powder and a real extract share a name, not a product. The price gap is the difference.
What fruiting body, measured cordycepin, the extraction ratio and a per-batch COA actually add to the price, and how to read a cordyceps militaris price per kg number before you trust it.
By Erwin Khurana, Founder, Alchemy Dose
Erwin founded Alchemy Dose to source functional mushroom extracts from the producers who make them best, wherever in the world that is, alongside wild mushrooms foraged in the Himalaya, and to formulate his own products from them. The aim is high-quality extracts, tested per batch, and honest products built on top of them. He writes about mushroom chemistry, how an extract is actually made, and how to read a certificate of analysis rather than a label.
Search cordyceps militaris price and the numbers are miles apart, from a few hundred rupees for a pouch of powder to several thousand for a small jar of extract that looks, at a glance, like the same thing. It is not the same thing. With Cordyceps militaris, the price gap is the product difference, and once you can see what sits behind it, the cheap end stops looking like a bargain.
This page is about composition and cost, in that order. It explains what you are actually paying for in a real Cordyceps militaris extract, why the cheapest products are cheap, and how to read a price before you trust it. It is written for someone buying a jar to use, not a pallet to resell, so it stays out of the wholesale and cultivation market entirely. And it describes what is in the product, never what the product does in your body.
### What Cordyceps Militaris Actually Costs
There is no single price, because the words cover very different things. The same two words, Cordyceps militaris, sit on a three-hundred-rupee pouch of milled biomass and on a tested, concentrated extract many times that price. Stretch the term to its wild cousin, Cordyceps sinensis, the Himalayan keeda jadi, and you reach lakhs per kilogram. A number on its own tells you almost nothing until you know which of these you are looking at.
A quick word on the phrase cordyceps militaris price per kg, because it is the one people search. A per-kilogram figure almost always describes bulk raw material, usually milled mycelium on grain, priced for people buying sacks of it to process or resell. It is a wholesale unit, not a shelf price, and it is a poor guide to what a finished extract should cost. For someone buying a jar to take, the honest unit is the price per gram of real, tested extract, or the price per serving. Everything below is about that.
Four things move the real price. Most of the rest is packaging.
### Fruiting Body vs Mycelium
This is where most of the price gap lives, so it is worth being exact.
The fruiting body is the mushroom itself, the golden-orange club that Cordyceps militaris pushes up when it is grown out fully. Growing it takes weeks, controlled conditions and space, and then it is harvested and dried. That time and yield is why it costs more.
The cheaper route is mycelium on grain . The fungus is grown as a mat of fine threads through a tray of cooked rice or other grain, and then the whole thing, grain included, is dried and milled to a powder. It is fast and cheap, but a large share of the final weight is the grain starch it grew on, not the fungus. Sold by weight, that is exactly the point.
Fruiting body | Mycelium on grain What it is | The actual mushroom, grown out and dried | Fungal threads grown through cooked grain, milled whole What you get by weight | Mostly fungus | Largely grain starch Cordycepin | Present and measurable | Often low, and usually not measured Relative cost to make | Higher | Low Usually sold as | Extract, or dried whole | Cheap powder or capsules
A real Cordyceps militaris extract starts from fruiting body. When a product is vague about which it is, or lists rice, oats or grain in the ingredients, it is almost always the mycelium route, and the price will say so.
A cheap powder and a real extract can both put Cordyceps militaris on the front. The Latin name is free. What it does not tell you is the part of the organism you are paying for, or how much of the jar is grain.
When one product is a fraction of another's price, assume the difference is real, and look for the part used and a measured cordycepin figure before you decide which one is overpriced.
### What Cordycepin Has to Do With It
Cordycepin is a compound found in Cordyceps militaris . For the purpose of a price, the only thing that matters about it here is that it is measurable. It is the marker labs use to identify the species and to grade a batch, and it appears on a good certificate of analysis as a number. We are describing a compound that is present and measured, nothing more.
Two facts about that number drive cost. First, Cordyceps militaris naturally carries far more measurable cordycepin than the wild Cordyceps sinensis, which is much of the reason cultivated militaris exists as an ingredient at all. If you want the chemistry rather than the price, we set it out in cordyceps militaris vs sinensis and cordycepin . Second, reaching a high, verified cordycepin figure takes selected strains, real fruiting body, a proper extraction and then the assay itself, and every one of those is a cost. Products that never mention cordycepin have usually skipped some of that, and the silence is itself a price signal.
_Cordycepin content differs sharply by species_
Compositional review, Cordyceps militaris compared with Cordyceps sinensis.
Analytical reviews of the genus report that cultivated Cordyceps militaris carries substantially higher measurable cordycepin than wild Cordyceps sinensis, which is why the cultivated species is the usual source when a defined, measurable cordycepin figure is the aim. This is a statement about how much of the compound is present, not about what it does.
### Extract, Dried, or Powder
Consumers meet Cordyceps militaris in three forms, and price maps onto them cleanly once you know what each one is.
- Dried whole fruiting body. The actual mushroom, dried and sold by weight. You are paying for biomass, and the golden clubs are the most recognisable, premium form. This is what our dried Cordyceps militaris is.
- Extract. Fruiting body reduced and concentrated at a stated ratio, so a small amount carries the material of much more raw mushroom. You are paying for that concentration and the fruiting body behind it. Our Cordyceps militaris extract is a fruiting-body extract with cordycepin measured per batch.
- Powder. The ambiguous one. It can be milled fruiting body, or milled mycelium on grain, and the two sit at very different prices. When a powder is startlingly cheap, that usually is the answer to which one it is.
The extraction ratio is where price and honesty meet. A 10 to 1 extract means ten kilograms of raw fruiting body went into one kilogram of finished extract, so before labour, testing or packaging, the raw-material cost is already ten times that of the starting mushroom. A bigger ratio printed on a cheaper jar, with no fruiting body named behind it, is just a bigger number.
### Reading the Label and COA
You can settle most of the price question at the label, and the rest at the certificate. Five things to find, roughly in order of how much they tell you.
- Part named. Fruiting body, stated plainly
- Ratio stated. A real number like 10 to 1, not just "extract"
- Cordycepin measured. A figure, per batch, on the COA
- Batch-linked COA. A certificate with a batch number they will show you
- Species in full. Cordyceps militaris, named as such
- Part vague. No mention of fruiting body, or grain in the ingredients
- No ratio. Or an inflated one with nothing behind it
- No cordycepin figure. The compound is simply not mentioned
- No COA. Or a generic one not tied to your batch
- Just "mushroom". Species or part left comfortably unclear
The single fastest check is the cordycepin figure. A product that measures it and prints it per batch has done the expensive parts of the job. A product that does not mention it usually has not, and has priced accordingly.
Here is what a real certificate looks like, using our own Cordyceps militaris extract as a worked example rather than a claim. Every figure below is measured per batch by HPLC and printed against a batch number, and each one describes only what the extract contains, never what it does.
Composition of the Alchemy Dose Cordyceps militaris fruiting-body extract, led by Polysaccharides 51.34%, with Cordycepin, Adenosine and Mannitol measured alongside. Lab-tested in India per batch under FSSAI License No. 13322999000241. These are identity figures for what is in the extract, not statements about what it does.
### Why the Cheap Ones Are Cheap
Cheap Cordyceps militaris is not a discount on the same thing. It is a different thing, and the low price is honest about that if you read it correctly.
The cheapest products are mycelium grown on grain, milled whole, so a large part of what you weigh out is starch. Cordycepin is rarely measured, because measuring it costs money and the figure would not flatter the product. There is usually no per-batch certificate, for the same reason. And the extraction ratio, if one is quoted at all, may not correspond to much real fruiting body. Strip those costs out and the price falls, exactly as you would expect.
Low cordyceps militaris price per kg figures almost always come from the bulk and cultivation market, where sacks of raw biomass change hands between processors. That is a different trade from buying a finished jar to take, and its numbers do not translate to a shelf price.
As a consumer, ignore the per-kilogram wholesale figure. Compare the price per gram of real, tested extract, or the price per serving, and compare like with like: fruiting body against fruiting body, measured cordycepin against measured cordycepin.
### Buying in India
When you look for Cordyceps militaris for sale, the same short checklist separates a fair price from a cheap-looking one, whatever the number on the front.
- Is it fruiting body, stated plainly? If it is vague, assume mycelium on grain.
- Is there a measured cordycepin figure, per batch, not just the species name?
- Is the extraction ratio stated as a real number, like 10 to 1?
- Will they show you a certificate of analysis with the batch number?
- Does the price make sense for the part used, rather than simply for the weight?
Our own range is built around those answers. The Cordyceps militaris extract is a fruiting-body extract at a stated ratio with cordycepin measured per batch, and the dried Cordyceps militaris is the whole fruiting body by weight. Both sit in the Cordyceps and keeda jadi collection, alongside the wild species. If your search actually led you to the Himalayan wild cordyceps sinensis, keeda jadi, that is a different organism at a different price, long prized in traditional systems and worth understanding on its own terms.
### Frequently Asked Questions
**How much should Cordyceps militaris cost in India?**
As rough orientation rather than a fixed rate, the cheapest powders and capsules, usually mycelium on grain, sell for the lowest price per gram and are cheap for a reason. An honestly made fruiting-body extract with a stated ratio and measured cordycepin sits well above that per gram, and dried whole fruiting body is higher again by weight. Exact numbers move with harvest, strain and batch, so compare the part used and the cordycepin figure rather than the headline price.
**Why is some Cordyceps militaris so cheap?**
Almost always because it is mycelium grown on grain and milled whole, so much of the weight is starch, with cordycepin unmeasured and no per-batch certificate. Those omissions are real cost savings, and the low price reflects them.
**What does "cordyceps militaris price per kg" actually refer to?**
Usually bulk raw material sold between processors, not a finished consumer product. It is a wholesale unit and a poor guide to shelf price. If you are buying a jar to use, look at the price per gram of tested extract, or per serving, instead.
**Is cordycepin the same as cordyceps?**
No. Cordyceps militaris is the mushroom; cordycepin is one compound found and measured in it. On a label, cordycepin appears as a measured figure that helps identify the species and grade the batch. It is a compositional marker, described here only as present and measured.
**Fruiting body or mycelium, how do I tell which I am buying?**
Read the part used and the ingredients. "Fruiting body" stated plainly is one thing; words like mycelium, myceliated grain, or rice and oats in the ingredient list point to the other. If it is left vague, price and caution both suggest assuming mycelium on grain.
**Is Cordyceps militaris the same as keeda jadi or Cordyceps sinensis?**
No. Keeda jadi, yarsagumba or Cordyceps sinensis is the wild Himalayan species, a different organism that commands a far higher price. Cultivated Cordyceps militaris is the more affordable, measurable source of cordycepin. We compare them in cordyceps militaris vs sinensis and cordycepin and cover the wild species in wild cordyceps sinensis, keeda jadi .
The mushrooms described here are foods and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Consult a qualified practitioner before use if pregnant, nursing, or managing a medical condition. Marketed by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107. Lab-tested in India per batch under FSSAI License No. 13322999000241.
---
## Article: Functional Mushrooms in India: How to Read a Label
Source: https://alchemydose.com/blogs/news/functional-mushrooms-guide-india
### Functional Mushrooms in India: How to Read a Label and Choose
There is no such thing as a functional mushroom. There are mushrooms, and there are honest labels
The one question that sorts the whole category, the one number worth reading, and a route through every species we make.
By Erwin Khurana, Founder, Alchemy Dose
Erwin founded Alchemy Dose to source functional mushroom extracts from the producers who make them best, wherever in the world that is, alongside wild mushrooms foraged in the Himalaya, and to formulate his own products from them. The aim is high-quality extracts, tested per batch, and honest products built on top of them. He writes about mushroom chemistry, how an extract is actually made, and how to read a certificate of analysis rather than a label.
"Functional mushroom" is a marketing phrase, not a scientific category. No regulator defines it, and no line in nature separates a functional mushroom from an ordinary one. What actually separates the products on the shelf is far more concrete, and once you can see it, the whole category becomes easy to read.
This is the guide we wish existed when we started. It does not tell you what these mushrooms do in your body, because we are not permitted to and the evidence would not carry it. It tells you what they are, how to tell a serious product from a well-marketed one, and where each species fits.
### What "Functional" Actually Means
The term covers a handful of mushrooms taken as extracts rather than eaten as food, usually Lion's Mane, Reishi, Cordyceps, Turkey Tail and Chaga, plus a few wild specialities. They have long histories in East Asian and Himalayan traditions, and a body of mostly early-stage research.
What the word "functional" does not mean is that a function has been proven and is permitted to be claimed. Under the FSSAI rules a health claim on a food must be substantiated, and for most of these the human evidence is small and preliminary. So we treat the whole category as food, describe composition, and leave the promises to others.
### The Question That Sorts It All
Is it fruiting body, or mycelium grown on grain? This single question separates most good products from most poor ones, across every species in the category.
Mycelium grown on grain cannot be separated from the grain, so both are milled together and a large fraction of the powder is starch. Fruiting body is the mushroom itself. Words that signal mycelium: myceliated grain, mycelial biomass, full-spectrum, or rice and oats in the ingredients.
Every extract we make is whole fruiting body, never mycelium on grain. It is the first thing to check on anyone's label, and the reason a certificate that omits a beta-glucan figure is telling you something by its silence.
### The Number That Matters
The one figure worth reading is beta-glucans, measured enzymatically. Beta-glucan is fungal cell wall, the actual mushroom. Its close cousin alpha-glucan is starch, from the grain. A good certificate measures both and reports the beta figure, because that is the one that describes the fungus.
Beware the word polysaccharides used on its own. It counts beta-glucan and alpha-glucan together, so a mostly-grain powder can post a big polysaccharide number that is largely starch. The full version of this argument, including how the assay works, is in our beta-glucans guide .
McCleary BV, Draga A. Measurement of beta-glucan in mushroom and mycelial products by enzymatic assay; and the Megazyme K-YBGL procedure, which measures beta-glucan and alpha-glucan separately so that starch is not counted as fungus.
### Method Follows Chemistry
The other thing that separates serious products is whether the extraction method suits the mushroom. Different species keep their interesting compounds in different places, and a good maker changes the method to match. A brand that runs every mushroom through an identical process has not thought about any of them.
Species | Marquee compound | Extraction | Our figure, per batch Lion's Mane | Hericenones | Dual, water and ethanol | Beta-D-glucans 26.20% Reishi | Triterpenoids | Dual, 15 to 1 | Triterpenes 6.13% Cordyceps militaris | Cordycepin | Dual, 8 to 1 | Cordycepin 0.35% Turkey Tail | Beta-glucans | Hot water, 12 to 1 | Beta-glucans 47.53%
Reishi must be dual-extracted because its triterpenoids are not water-soluble. Turkey Tail is hot-water only because its value is. Both facts are just chemistry, and both are on their own pages.
### The Species, One by One
Each of these has a full page of its own. Composition, method and honest limits, one mushroom at a time.
Lion's Mane
Hericenones, the label problem, and beta-D-glucans 26.20 percent.
Reishi
Triterpenes, the bitterness test, and why ethanol is not optional.
Cordyceps
Militaris vs sinensis, and where the cordycepin actually is.
Turkey Tail
PSK, PSP, and beta-glucans 47.53 percent, the highest we make.
Chaga
Inonotus obliquus, the wild birch fungus, and what the research covers.
Beta-Glucans
The number that matters, and how the enzymatic assay works.
### The Two Wild Ones
Two of our materials are not extracts at all. They are wild, uncultivable Himalayan foods bought on provenance rather than a percentage, and they follow a different logic entirely.
Gucchi, the Himalayan morel, and Keeda Jadi, the wild caterpillar fungus, cannot be farmed and carry no certificate of analysis. For them the question is not a beta-glucan figure but authenticity: is it the real species, from a real place, in the right form. Both have their own guides.
### How to Read Any Label
Put the whole guide into one checklist, and it works on any brand, any species.
- Fruiting body or mycelium? If vague, or if grain is in the ingredients, assume mycelium.
- Is there a measured beta-glucan figure, per batch, or only a polysaccharide number?
- Does the extraction suit the species? Ethanol for Reishi's triterpenes, hot water for Turkey Tail's glucans.
- Measured or promised? A per-batch assay result beats a standardised minimum.
- Will they show you the certificate, with a batch number on it?
If a brand cannot answer these, the claims on the front of the pack are decoration. If you want the idea behind why "adaptogen" language makes this harder to see, we took that word apart separately.
### Where the Research Stands
### What We Can and Cannot Say
- The species and part. Whole fruiting body, named to species
- The compounds. Which are present, and where they sit
- The figures. Beta-glucans, triterpenes or cordycepin, per batch
- The method. Extraction chosen to suit each mushroom
- What any of them does in your body. The evidence does not support a claim
- That "functional" is a proven function. It is a marketing word
- A therapeutic dose. These are foods
- That a big polysaccharide number is quality. It may be starch
### The Bottom Line
Forget the word functional. Ask whether it is fruiting body, whether there is a measured beta-glucan figure, and whether the extraction suits the mushroom. Those three questions sort this entire category, and every page linked here is just one species answering them in detail.
We would rather hand you that skill than a promise. The promise would be easier to sell. The skill is more useful, and it has the advantage of being true.
Lion's Mane Extract
Whole fruiting body. Beta-D-glucans 26.20 percent, per batch.
Turkey Tail Extract
Beta-glucans 47.53 percent, the highest figure we make.
MycoSynergy Coffee
The five extracts and Suntheanine, in 100 percent Arabica.
- Megazyme K-YBGL Mushroom and Yeast Beta-Glucan assay procedure, for the enzymatic determination of beta-glucan and alpha-glucan.
- Kawagishi H, et al. Isolation of hericenones from the fruiting body of Hericium erinaceus . Tetrahedron Letters, 1991.
- Baby S, et al. Secondary metabolites of Ganoderma (ganoderic-acid triterpenoids). Phytochemistry, 2015. DOI 10.1016/j.phytochem.2015.02.015.
- Cunningham KG, et al. Cordycepin, isolated from Cordyceps militaris . Nature, 1950.
- FSSAI. Food Safety and Standards (Health Supplements, Nutraceuticals, Food for Special Dietary Use) Regulations, 2016; and Advertising and Claims Regulations, 2018.
- Alchemy Dose Certificates of Analysis: Lion's Mane (beta-D-glucans 26.20%), Reishi (triterpenes 6.13%, polysaccharides 25.11%), Cordyceps militaris (cordycepin 0.35%, polysaccharides 51.34%), Turkey Tail (beta-glucans 47.53%, polysaccharides 57.66%).
NOT FOR MEDICINAL USE. These products are foods and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Consult a qualified practitioner before use if pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or managing a medical condition. Marketed by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107. Lab-tested in India per batch under FSSAI License No. 13322999000241.
**MycoSynergy Mushroom Coffee**
The five functional mushroom extracts, all whole fruiting body, blended with Suntheanine L-theanine into 100 percent Arabica instant coffee. One honest cup, built on the same certificates as everything in this guide.
---
## Article: Cordyceps Militaris vs Sinensis: Cordycepin and the Research
Source: https://alchemydose.com/blogs/news/cordyceps-militaris-cordycepin-research
### Cordyceps Militaris: Cordycepin and What the Studies Show
Five papers, read carefully
What was measured. In whom. At what dose. And what was never tested at all.
Cordyceps militaris is one of the most discussed fungi in the functional mushroom category. It is also one of the most misrepresented. This article sets out what the published literature examined, and where it stops.
Some sellers say it increases oxygen uptake. Others gesture at a story from Beijing in 1993. A few imply things no published paper supports.
We read five papers and one piece of sporting history. Below is what each one measured, in whom, at what dose, and what its authors themselves flagged as a limitation. We have not omitted the inconvenient parts. Where a study does not support a conclusion, we say so.
### What Is Cordyceps Militaris?
Cordyceps militaris is a bright saffron-orange, club-shaped fungus. Unlike its wild Himalayan relative, it is cultivated on a controlled substrate, which makes it consistent, traceable and vegetarian-friendly. The whole fruiting body is used.
Cordyceps as a genus contains several hundred described species. Two matter commercially. Cordyceps militaris, the cultivated one, and Ophiocordyceps sinensis, the wild caterpillar fungus known in India as Keeda Jadi and in Nepal as Yarsagumba.
Both appear in classical Tibetan and Chinese practice, where the wild species in particular was recorded among the rarest and costliest of mountain materials. Those are historical descriptions of how it was regarded. They are not statements about what a modern extract does in the body.
### Cordycepin and Adenosine: The Compounds That Are Actually There
These are the compound classes identified in Cordyceps militaris fruiting body. They describe what is in the mushroom, not what it does in a person.
- Cordycepin (3'-deoxyadenosine). A naturally occurring nucleoside analogue of adenosine, differing by a single hydroxyl group.
- Adenosine. A nucleoside that appears throughout cellular energy chemistry. It is the A in ATP.
- Polysaccharides. Long-chain sugars found in fungal cell walls.
- D-mannitol and sterols. Present in smaller quantities.
Cordycepin content is the number most worth asking a seller for, and the one most rarely given. Our batch discloses cordycepin at 0.35 percent and polysaccharides at 51.34 percent. Beta-glucans were not measured on this batch, so we do not quote a beta-glucan figure for this product. Where a number does not exist, we do not print one.
### Militaris vs Sinensis: The Comparison Nobody Makes Honestly
_Comparative cordycepin content across Cordyceps species_
Kim and colleagues compared cordycepin content across cordyceps species and reported that cultivated Cordyceps militaris contained substantially higher cordycepin than wild Cordyceps sinensis .
This is worth saying plainly, because it is not the story the wild-harvest premium implies. If cordycepin alone is what you want, the cultivated species carries more of it. What the wild fungus offers is something else. It is the original, it cannot be farmed, and it grows only where it grows.
### Hirsch 2017: A Six-Mushroom Blend, Not Cordyceps Alone
_Mushroom blend containing Cordyceps militaris improves tolerance to high-intensity exercise_
What was given: 4g/day of PeakO2, a blend of Cordyceps militaris plus Reishi, Lion's Mane, Shiitake, King Trumpet and Turkey Tail, or placebo, for one week. Ten volunteers continued to three weeks.
What was reported: no significant change at one week. At three weeks, in the ten remaining subjects, the authors reported improved oxygen uptake and ventilatory threshold against placebo.
The three-week result came from ten people (six treatment, four placebo), not twenty-eight. The supplement was a blend of six species, not Cordyceps. It was grown on grain substrate, not a fruiting body extract. And the study was funded by Compound Solutions Inc., which manufactures PeakO2.
Any brand citing this study as evidence for a single-species fruiting-body extract is citing something it did not test.
### Chen 2010: Fermented Mycelium, Older Adults
_Effect of Cs-4 on exercise performance in healthy older subjects_
Twenty healthy adults aged 50 to 75 received Cs-4 at roughly 1g/day or placebo for twelve weeks. The authors reported improvements in metabolic and ventilatory threshold. Maximal oxygen uptake did not change significantly.
Twenty subjects. An older population. And Cs-4 is fermented mycelium of Paecilomyces hepiali, which is neither Cordyceps militaris nor a fruiting body. The headline measure did not move.
### Singh 2013: Cell Culture, Not People
_Cordyceps sinensis increases hypoxia tolerance via Nrf2 and HIF-1 in human lung epithelial cells_
A549 cells were held at 0.5 percent oxygen for 48 hours. Under those conditions, Cordyceps sinensis extract increased HIF-1 protein and downstream markers. Under normal oxygen, it did nothing, which suggests the effect is specific to low-oxygen conditions.
This is cells in a dish . A549 is a cancer-derived cell line. There were no people, no oral doses, and no tissue. Cell-culture results describe a possible mechanism. They are not a finding about anyone who swallows a capsule, and we will not present them as one.
### Xu 2016: Confirming the Chemistry
_Simultaneous determination of nucleosides and nucleobases in Cordyceps by HPLC_
Cordycepin differs from adenosine by a single hydroxyl group. Adenosine sits at the centre of cellular energy chemistry. A close analogue interacting with those pathways is a coherent hypothesis.
This paper confirms chemical identity. It does not test what that chemistry does in a person, and it makes no such claim.
### Not a Study: The 1993 Story
_1993 Chinese National Games_
Female distance runners coached by Ma Junren broke three world records: Qu Yunxia over 1,500m, Wang Junxia over 3,000m and 10,000m. The 10,000m mark stood for twenty-three years. Ma told reporters his athletes drank a cordyceps tonic.
In 2000, six of Ma's athletes were withdrawn from the Sydney Olympics after failing drug tests. Ma was dismissed. In 2016, a 1995 letter surfaced in which athletes said they had been forced to take banned substances.
Whatever happened in Beijing in 1993, it cannot be attributed to a mushroom . Any brand that tells you this story without the second half is selling you something.
### Reading the Evidence Without Flattering Ourselves
- Hirsch 2017: improvements at three weeks, in ten people, on a six-species blend
- Chen 2010: threshold changes over twelve weeks, on fermented mycelium
- Singh 2013: HIF-1 response under low oxygen, in cell culture
- Xu 2016: cordycepin confirmed as an adenosine analogue
- Kim 2005: militaris carries more cordycepin than sinensis
- No study used a single-species fruiting-body extract of Cordyceps militaris
- Sample sizes of ten and twenty. Not populations
- Hirsch was funded by the supplement's manufacturer
- Singh was cells in a dish, from a cancer-derived line
- The 1993 story is not evidence, and involves doping
### Side Effects and Cautions
Cordyceps militaris is eaten as a food in East Asia and is generally well tolerated. It is still worth knowing the following.
- People with a known mould or fungal allergy should avoid it.
- Anyone taking prescribed medication, anyone pregnant or nursing, and anyone managing a medical condition should speak to a qualified practitioner before starting any supplement.
- Published human trials are small and short. Long-term data does not exist. Nobody can tell you what daily use over a decade looks like, because nobody has studied it.
If a brand tells you there are no considerations at all, that brand is not reading the literature either.
### What We Actually Sell
Hirsch used a six-species blend grown on grain. Chen used fermented mycelium. Neither tested what we sell.
Our Cordyceps Militaris Extract is dual-extracted 8:1 from the whole orange fruiting body, never mycelium on grain. Cordycepin 0.35 percent. Polysaccharides 51.34 percent. Disclosed per batch. Beta-glucans were not measured on this batch and we quote no figure for them.
We chose a higher-concentration, single-species fruiting-body format deliberately. We also think you deserve to know that the studies people cite for it were run on something else.
### The Bottom Line
The research on Cordyceps militaris is real, and it is thin. Two small human trials, neither on a single-species fruiting-body extract. One cell-culture paper. One analytical confirmation. One sporting anecdote that should be retired from marketing entirely.
What does not exist: large trials, dose-response curves, long-term data, or a single study on the format most brands actually sell.
For centuries, communities living at extreme altitude valued this fungus. Modern chemistry has begun to describe what is inside it. That is where the honest account ends today, and we will update this page when it changes.
That is the Alchemy Dose standard.
- Hirsch KR, et al. "Cordyceps militaris improves tolerance to high-intensity exercise after acute and chronic supplementation." J Diet Suppl, 2017; 14(1):42-53. PMID: 27408987 . Funded by Compound Solutions Inc.
- Chen S, et al. "Effect of Cs-4 on exercise performance in healthy older subjects." J Alt Comp Med, 2010; 16(5):585-590. PMID: 20804368
- Singh M, et al. "Cordyceps sinensis increases hypoxia tolerance by inducing heme oxygenase-1 and metallothionein via Nrf2 activation in human lung epithelial cells." BioMed Res Int, 2013; 2013:569206. PMID: 24063008
- Xu J, et al. "Simultaneous determination of nucleosides and nucleobases in Cordyceps using HPLC." J Anal Methods Chem, 2016; 2016:8509856. PMID: 27274781
- Kim HG, et al. Comparative cordycepin content across Cordyceps species. PMID: 16242862
- 1993 Chinese National Games. Wang Junxia (Britannica). Yuan Weimin memoir (2009). Tencent Sports (2016).
NOT FOR MEDICINAL USE. This product is a food and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Consult a qualified practitioner before use if pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or managing a medical condition. Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
**Cordyceps and Wild Keeda Jadi**
Whole fruiting body, dual-extracted 8:1. Cordycepin 0.35 percent and polysaccharides 51.34 percent, disclosed per batch. Never mycelium on grain. Alongside wild Himalayan Keeda Jadi, hand-collected in Uttarakhand.
---
## Article: Hericenones in Lion’s Mane (Hericium erinaceus)
Source: https://alchemydose.com/blogs/news/hericenones-lions-mane-hericium-erinaceus
### Hericenones, Erinacines, and the Lion's Mane Label Problem
The compound on the label often cannot be in the jar
A guide to Hericium erinaceus. What is in the fruiting body, what is only in the mycelium, and why a bigger beta-glucan number can mean a smaller mushroom.
By Erwin Khurana, Founder, Alchemy Dose
Erwin founded Alchemy Dose to source functional mushroom extracts from the producers who make them best, wherever in the world that is, alongside wild mushrooms foraged in the Himalaya, and to formulate his own products from them. The aim is high-quality extracts, tested per batch, and honest products built on top of them. He writes about mushroom chemistry, how an extract is actually made, and how to read a certificate of analysis rather than a label.
There is a compound named on a great many Lion's Mane labels that, in most cases, cannot possibly be in the product. It is called erinacine, and once you know where it comes from you can read this entire category differently.
This page is about Hericium erinaceus, the mushroom. What it is, what is in it, and how to tell a serious product from a well-marketed one. It makes no claims about what it does in your body, because we are not permitted to, and because the published evidence would not carry them.
### What Is Lion's Mane?
Lion's Mane, written just as often as lions mane, is the common English name for Hericium erinaceus . It is a white, cushion-shaped fungus that grows on hardwood and hangs in cascading spines one to four centimetres long. It looks like nothing else in the forest.
In Japan it is yamabushitake, after the mountain-dwelling yamabushi monks. In China it is hou tou gu, monkey head mushroom. It has been eaten as a food in both countries for centuries, and it is still served sliced and seared, where it takes on the texture of crab.
### Hericenones and Erinacines
Two compound families are associated with this species. They are chemically distinct, and they come from different parts of the organism.
Hericenones | Erinacines Chemical class | Aromatic compounds | Diterpenoids Found in | The fruiting body | The mycelium First isolated | Kawagishi and colleagues, 1991 | Kawagishi and colleagues, 1994 In a fruiting-body extract | Present | Not present
Hericenones were isolated from the fruiting body of Hericium erinaceus by Kawagishi and colleagues in 1991, and published in Tetrahedron Letters . Three years later, the same group isolated a different family of compounds, the erinacines, from the cultured mycelium of the same species.
That is the whole of it. One compound family lives in the mushroom. The other lives in the threads.
Kawagishi H, et al. Isolation of hericenones from the fruiting body of Hericium erinaceus . Tetrahedron Letters, 1991.
Kawagishi H, et al. Isolation of erinacines from the cultured mycelium of Hericium erinaceus . Tetrahedron Letters, 1994.
### The Label Problem
If a product says it is a fruiting-body extract and also advertises erinacines, then one of those two statements is untrue.
Either it is not fruiting body, or the erinacines are not there. It cannot be both. This is not a matter of opinion, or of extraction skill. It is where the molecule is made.
We sell a fruiting-body extract. It contains hericenones . It does not contain erinacines, we do not claim erinacines, and we would be lying if we did.
### Fruiting Body or Mycelium, and Why It Costs More
A fungus has two parts. The mycelium is the thread-like network growing through its substrate. The fruiting body is the mushroom you can see.
Growing mycelium is fast and cheap. Sterilise a bag of grain, usually rice or oats, inoculate it, harvest in weeks. Growing a fruiting body takes months and is considerably harder.
The difficulty is that mycelium cannot be separated from the grain it grew on. Both go into the mill together. A large fraction of the finished powder, frequently most of it, is starch.
Words that signal it: myceliated grain, full-spectrum, mycelial biomass, or an ingredient list that mentions rice or oats. And the absence of a beta-glucan figure.
### Where the Research Stands
Rather than summarise findings we are not permitted to characterise, here is the honest shape of the literature.
### The 38 Percent Question
Two of the best-selling Lion's Mane products in India headline "over 38 percent beta glucans." Our disclosed figure is 26.20 percent . A shopper comparing labels would reasonably conclude that ours is the weaker product.
Here is what those two numbers actually are.
- "Over 38 percent" is a specification . A minimum the manufacturer has committed to, often achieved by standardising the extract against a target. It tells you what the product is required to contain.
- "26.20 percent" is a measurement . It is what one enzymatic assay found in one batch, and it is printed because that is what the assay found.
A specification can be met. A measurement can only be reported. They are not the same kind of statement, and putting them side by side compares a promise to a fact.
We could standardise, publish a higher figure, and match anybody. We would rather publish what the assay found in your batch. If that number is lower than a competitor's stated minimum, that is the trade we have chosen, and now you know we chose it.
### The Question We Will Not Answer
Every competitor in this category sells Lion's Mane on a health promise. One of the largest sells it under a product name that is a promise.
We are not going to make that promise. Under the FSSAI Advertising and Claims Regulations, a health claim on a food supplement must be substantiated, and an unsubstantiated one is an offence. The published human literature on Hericium erinaceus is small, short, and preclinical in the main. It would not carry the weight this category puts on it.
So this page tells you the species, the part of the fungus, the compound family that is genuinely present, the extraction method, and the assay result. It stops there, and it stops there on purpose.
If you would like to understand why the word "adaptogen" makes this problem worse rather than better, we took that word apart separately.
### Reading a Lion's Mane COA
**Polysaccharides is not the number**
A polysaccharide is any long-chain sugar. Starch is a polysaccharide. A powder that is mostly ground rice can honestly report a high polysaccharide figure.
The number that describes the fungus is beta-glucans, measured enzymatically, with alpha-glucans measured separately and subtracted. A certificate that reports polysaccharides and not beta-glucans is telling you something by leaving it out.
**Ours**
Our Lion's Mane is dual-extracted from the whole fruiting body, in water and in ethanol. Hot water draws out the beta-glucans. Ethanol draws out the hericenones and the sterols, which water leaves behind. Never mycelium, never grain.
Beta-D-glucans: 26.20 percent. Disclosed per batch. Hericenones are named because they are present, and no percentage is printed for them, because none was measured.
### Lion's Mane vs Reishi vs Cordyceps
Three different fungi, three different compound families, three different reasons people buy them. Composition only. No outcomes.
Lion's Mane | Reishi | Cordyceps militaris Species | Hericium erinaceus | Ganoderma lucidum | Cordyceps militaris Marquee compound | Hericenones | Triterpenoids | Cordycepin Disclosed figure | Beta-D-glucans 26.20% | Triterpenes 6.13% | Cordycepin 0.35% Taste | Mild, faintly seafood | Very bitter | Earthy, faintly sweet Why ethanol? | Hericenones, sterols | Triterpenoids, not water-soluble | Sterols Eaten as a food? | Yes, widely | No, too bitter | Rarely
Ethanol matters most for Reishi, because triterpenoids are not water-soluble. Any brand that dual-extracts every species identically has not thought about the chemistry. Read more on Reishi, and on what the Cordyceps studies actually show .
### Side Effects and Cautions
Lion's Mane is eaten as a food across East Asia and is generally well tolerated. That is not the same as risk-free.
- People with a known mould or fungal allergy should avoid it.
- Anyone taking prescribed medication, particularly anticoagulants or medication for blood sugar, should speak to a doctor first.
- Anyone pregnant or nursing, or scheduled for surgery, should consult a qualified practitioner.
- Human trials are small and short. Long-term data does not exist.
Any brand that tells you there are no considerations at all has not read the literature either.
### Buying Lion's Mane in India
Three formats dominate. They are not interchangeable.
- Dried Lion's Mane mushroom. The whole fruiting body, dried. A food. Cook it. Lower concentration per gram, because it is the mushroom rather than a concentrate.
- Lion's Mane powder or extract. Concentrated. Ask for the beta-glucan figure, and whether it is per batch or a minimum.
- Lion's Mane capsules. Convenient. Also opaque. You cannot see what is in a capsule, so the certificate matters more, not less.
Five questions worth asking whoever you buy from.
- Fruiting body or mycelium? If the answer is vague, it is mycelium.
- Beta-glucan percentage, and is it per batch or a stated minimum?
- Does the label mention erinacines? If it does, and it says fruiting body, walk away.
- What was the extraction method, and why that method for this species?
- Will you show me the certificate?
- The species. Hericium erinaceus, whole fruiting body
- The compound family. Hericenones present. Erinacines absent
- The figure. Beta-D-glucans 26.20 percent, per batch
- The method. Dual extraction, water and ethanol
- The substrate. None. No grain, no rice, no filler
- What it does in your body. The evidence does not support a claim
- A therapeutic dose. This is a food
- Long-term effects. No study exists
- That 38 percent beats 26.20 percent. A minimum is not a measurement
- That erinacines are in a fruiting-body extract. They are not
### The Bottom Line
Lion's Mane is a mushroom. It has been eaten for centuries. It grows on hardwood. Its fruiting body contains hericenones and beta-glucans, and its mycelium contains something else entirely.
Most of what is written about it is a promise. This page is a description. We think the description is more useful, and it has the advantage of being true.
Lion's Mane Extract
Whole fruiting body. Beta-D-glucans 26.20 percent, disclosed per batch.
Dried Lion's Mane
The whole mushroom, dried. Cook it. Not a concentrate.
Reishi Extract
Ganoderma lucidum. Triterpenes 6.13 percent, disclosed per batch.
- Kawagishi H, et al. Isolation of hericenones from the fruiting body of Hericium erinaceus . Tetrahedron Letters, 1991.
- Kawagishi H, et al. Isolation of erinacines from the cultured mycelium of Hericium erinaceus . Tetrahedron Letters, 1994.
- FSSAI. Food Safety and Standards (Health Supplements, Nutraceuticals, Food for Special Dietary Use) Regulations, 2016; and Advertising and Claims Regulations, 2018.
- Megazyme K-YBGL. Enzymatic assay for the determination of beta-glucan and alpha-glucan in mushroom preparations.
- Alchemy Dose Certificate of Analysis, batch BE20260201. Beta-D-glucans 26.20 percent.
NOT FOR MEDICINAL USE. This product is a food and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Consult a qualified practitioner before use if pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or managing a medical condition. Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
**Lion's Mane Mushroom Extract**
Whole fruiting body, dual-extracted in water and ethanol. Beta-D-glucans 26.20 percent, disclosed per batch rather than quoted as a minimum. Hericenones, named because they are there. No erinacines, because they cannot be.
---
## Article: Ganoderma Lucidum (Reishi): Lingzhi, Triterpenes, and What Is Known
Source: https://alchemydose.com/blogs/news/ganoderma-lucidum-reishi-research
### Ganoderma Lucidum (Reishi): Lingzhi, Triterpenes, and What Is Known
Six names, one fungus, and a great deal of nonsense
The chemistry, the extraction that most sellers skip, our full certificate including the number that does not flatter us, and the questions this page refuses to answer.
By Erwin Khurana, Founder, Alchemy Dose
Erwin founded Alchemy Dose to source functional mushroom extracts from the producers who make them best, wherever in the world that is, alongside wild mushrooms foraged in the Himalaya, and to formulate his own products from them. The aim is high-quality extracts, tested per batch, and honest products built on top of them. He writes about mushroom chemistry, how an extract is actually made, and how to read a certificate of analysis rather than a label.
In India, roughly 13,000 people a month search for "ganoderma." About 880 search for "reishi." It is the same fungus. Nearly every brand in the country, including ours until recently, puts the smaller word on the label.
That is a small illustration of a larger problem. More has been written about Ganoderma lucidum than about any other mushroom, and a great deal of it is false. This page tries to be the exception. It describes what the fungus is, what is in it, how we extract it, and exactly what our laboratory found, including a figure that costs us a marketing claim.
It makes no health claims. Not one.
### Six Names, One Fungus
The naming tells you where the speaker is standing.
Name | Origin | Meaning Ganoderma lucidum | Scientific | "Shining skin." The lacquered surface Lingzhi | Chinese | Spirit mushroom Reishi | Japanese | The name most of the world uses Yeongji | Korean | The same fungus Red Reishi | Trade | The red-capped variety, the one sold Mushroom of Immortality | Heritage | A cultural epithet, and nothing more
That last one is a name people gave it two thousand years ago. It is not a description of what it does, and no honest seller uses it as one.
### What Is Ganoderma Lucidum?
A glossy, red-brown to maroon, kidney-shaped shelf fungus that grows on hardwood. The cap looks varnished, almost wet, even when it is bone dry. It is woody rather than fleshy. Nobody sautés Reishi, because it is far too bitter and far too tough to eat.
It is cultivated extensively across East Asia. Ours is sourced from USDA and EU organic-certified suppliers, and we do not name farms or countries, because a supplier list is not a quality claim.
### The Most Lied-About Mushroom in India
For two decades, network-marketing sellers have moved Ganoderma coffee and Ganoderma capsules through Indian households on the strength of claims about serious illness. Those claims are not supported by the evidence, and we will not repeat them.
If a seller tells you a mushroom treats a named illness, they are breaking Indian law. It does not matter how sincere they are, how many studies they cite, or whether a relative swears by it.
That is true of us as well. Which is why this page does not do it.
The consequence is that Ganoderma arrives pre-poisoned. The word carries so much bad claim that honest description sounds like understatement. We are going to describe it anyway.
### Triterpenes and Ganoderic Acids
These are the compound classes identified in Ganoderma lucidum fruiting body. They describe what is in the fungus, not what it does in a person.
- Triterpenes, and within them the ganoderic acids . Over 130 distinct ganoderic acids have been characterised. They are the source of the bitterness, and they are what Reishi is chemically known for.
- Polysaccharides, including beta-glucans. Long-chain sugars from the cell wall.
- Sterols, including ergosterol.
Kubota and colleagues first characterised the Reishi triterpenes in 1982. Wachtel-Galor and colleagues published a comprehensive review of the genus in 2011, and it remains the best single starting point for anyone who wants to read the field rather than the marketing.
### Why Hot Water Is Not Enough
This is the single most useful thing on this page, and almost nobody selling Reishi in India will tell you.
Ganoderic acids are alcohol-soluble. Hot water does not pull them out.
Polysaccharides are the opposite: water-soluble, and ethanol leaves them behind. So a Reishi product made by one method has, by definition, half the compound profile.
- Hot water pulls the polysaccharides and beta-glucans
- Ethanol pulls the triterpenes, the ganoderic acids and the sterols
- Both fractions are then recombined
- Water only: no meaningful ganoderic acid content
- Alcohol only: no meaningful polysaccharide content
- Dried, powdered whole mushroom: neither is concentrated at all
Two of the best-known Reishi products in India are a dried whole mushroom and a single-method powder. Neither publishes a certificate. Ask what method was used, and then ask what that method leaves behind.
Ours is a 15:1 dual extract, hot water and ethanol, from the whole fruiting body. Never mycelium on grain.
### Our Certificate, In Full
Batch BE20251209. Every figure as the laboratory reported it, unrounded.
Metric | Result | Method Triterpenes | ≥ 6.13% | Oleanolic acid spectrophotometric Polysaccharides | ≥ 25.11% | Megazyme K-YBGL Beta-glucans | ≥ 20.07% | Megazyme K-YBGL Ergosterol | 0.53% | As reported Lead | 0.0892 mg/kg | EU EN 15763 Cadmium | 0.0983 mg/kg | EU EN 15763 Arsenic | 0.549 mg/kg | EU EN 15763 Mercury | 0.00603 mg/kg | EU EN 15763 Microbiology | All pass | As reported Pesticides | Below limit of quantification | As reported
**Three things worth pointing at**
Triterpenes at ≥ 6.13 percent. Our specification is above 4 percent, and this is the highest triterpene figure of any extract we sell. It is also the number a water-only extract cannot produce.
Beta-glucans at ≥ 20.07 percent. That is below 25 percent. A great many Reishi products advertise "over 25 percent beta-glucans." We will not, because our assay says 20.07, and 20.07 is not more than 25. Our polysaccharide figure, ≥ 25.11 percent, does clear that bar, and those are different molecules. Anybody blurring the two is hoping you will not notice.
Arsenic at 0.549 mg/kg. The limit is 1.0. We are comfortably inside it and we are also, honestly, on the higher side of comfortable. Mushrooms accumulate what is in their substrate. We would rather print the number than round it away.
Because a certificate you only show when it flatters you is not a certificate. It is an advertisement.
### What This Page Will Not Say
You came here, quite possibly, because you read something elsewhere about this mushroom and a condition, a mood, or a measurement in your blood.
We are not going to discuss it. Not to confirm it, and not to hedge it into something that sounds like confirmation.
PubMed lists over four thousand published studies on Ganoderma lucidum . Most human trials to date have been small. The compounds are well characterised. Larger independent human trials are still emerging. We do not claim our product treats, cures or prevents anything.
What we can tell you is the species, the part of the fungus, the extraction method, and what the laboratory measured. That is above, in full.
If you want to understand why the word "adaptogen" makes this problem worse rather than better, we took that word apart separately.
### A Question People Actually Ask
_"Does Reishi lower testosterone?"_
People search this. It deserves a straight answer rather than silence.
Some preclinical work, in cell culture, has examined anti-androgenic activity in Ganoderma lucidum extracts. That is cells in a dish. There is no human data. It is not a reason to take this mushroom, and it is not a reason to avoid it.
If you are managing a hormone-related condition, or taking medication for one, speak to a doctor before adding any supplement. That advice does not depend on the cell-culture literature. It is simply true.
### Shen Nong and the Emperor
The Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, the oldest Chinese materia medica, compiled during the Eastern Han between roughly 25 and 220 CE, ranked lingzhi among the superior herbs. Above ginseng.
Two centuries earlier, in 219 BC, the first emperor of unified China sent a courtier named Xu Fu east across the sea with a fleet and some three thousand young men and women, to find a plant of immortality. The fleet never returned.
Sima Qian records that the emperor sought "a plant of immortality." The same tradition later named lingzhi the immortality herb. Those are two facts in one cultural lineage. Nobody knows what Xu Fu was sent to find, and any brand that shows you an emperor holding a Reishi is illustrating a story, not a record.
### Cautions
Reishi has been consumed as a tea in East Asia for centuries. That is not the same as risk-free.
- People with a known mould or fungal allergy should avoid it.
- Anyone taking an anticoagulant or antiplatelet medication should speak to a doctor first. This is the caution most worth taking seriously.
- Anyone pregnant or nursing, anyone scheduled for surgery, and anyone managing a medical condition should consult a qualified practitioner.
- Human trials are small and short. Long-term data does not exist.
- Do not give it to pets without a veterinarian's guidance.
Any seller who tells you there are no considerations at all has not read the literature either.
### Buying Ganoderma in India
Four formats, and they are not interchangeable.
- Dried whole Reishi. Woody, bitter, slow. Simmered as a tea. Nothing is concentrated.
- Reishi powder. Ground mushroom, or a single-method extract. Ask which, and ask which method.
- Ganoderma capsules. Convenient, and opaque. You cannot see inside a capsule, so the certificate matters more, not less.
- Dual extract powder. Both fractions. Ours.
Five questions worth asking whoever you buy from.
- Fruiting body or mycelium? If the answer is vague, it is mycelium.
- What is the triterpene percentage? For Reishi this is the number that separates products.
- What extraction method, and why that one for this species?
- Is your beta-glucan figure per batch, or a stated minimum?
- Will you show me the certificate? Then read it.
### The Bottom Line
Ganoderma lucidum is a woody, bitter shelf fungus with a lacquered cap. It contains triterpenes, more than 130 characterised ganoderic acids, polysaccharides and sterols. Ganoderic acids need ethanol. Polysaccharides need water. A serious extract uses both.
Ours measures ≥ 6.13 percent triterpenes, ≥ 25.11 percent polysaccharides, and ≥ 20.07 percent beta-glucans, which is less than several competitors advertise, and which we have printed anyway.
Everything else you have read about this mushroom is somebody's claim. This is a description.
Reishi Extract
15:1 dual extract. Triterpenes ≥ 6.13 percent, disclosed per batch.
Ganoderma Collection
Everything we sell under the name Reishi, Lingzhi or Ganoderma.
Triterpenoids
What they are, why they are bitter, and why ethanol matters.
- Kubota T, et al. First characterisation of the Reishi triterpenes, 1982.
- Wachtel-Galor S, Yuen J, Buswell JA, Benzie IFF. "Ganoderma lucidum (Lingzhi or Reishi): A Medicinal Mushroom." In: Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects, 2nd edition. CRC Press, 2011. PMID 22593954 (NCBI Bookshelf NBK92757)
- Paterson RRM. Phytochemistry, 2006; 67(18):1985-2001. Compound profile of the genus.
- Sima Qian. Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), Chapter 6, compiled c. 94 BC.
- Alchemy Dose Certificate of Analysis, batch BE20251209, 15:1 dual extract. All figures printed above as reported.
NOT FOR MEDICINAL USE. This product is a food and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Consult a qualified practitioner before use if pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or managing a medical condition. Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
**Ganoderma Lucidum (Reishi) Extract**
Whole fruiting body, 15:1 dual-extracted in hot water and ethanol. Triterpenes ≥ 6.13 percent, polysaccharides ≥ 25.11 percent, beta-glucans ≥ 20.07 percent. Disclosed per batch, including the figure that is lower than our competitors advertise.
---
## Article: Chaga Mushroom (Inonotus obliquus): What the Research Covers
Source: https://alchemydose.com/blogs/news/chaga-mushroom-benefits-complete-science-backed-guide
### Chaga Mushroom: The Birch Fungus, Honestly
It is not a mushroom, and that is the least of it
What Chaga actually is, why the compound everyone names comes from the tree rather than the fungus, and why its glucan figure looks nothing like a true mushroom's.
By Erwin Khurana, Founder, Alchemy Dose
Erwin founded Alchemy Dose to source functional mushroom extracts from the producers who make them best, wherever in the world that is, alongside wild mushrooms foraged in the Himalaya, and to formulate his own products from them. The aim is high-quality extracts, tested per batch, and honest products built on top of them. He writes about mushroom chemistry, how an extract is actually made, and how to read a certificate of analysis rather than a label.
It looks like a lump of burnt charcoal welded to the side of a birch tree. Break it open and the inside is amber and grainy, the colour of old honey. It grows in forests cold enough to kill you.
Almost everything written about Chaga in the last decade is exaggerated, and a good deal of it is unsupportable. This page is the plain description, and it starts with a fact that the entire industry gets wrong.
### Chaga Is Not a Mushroom
A mushroom is the fruiting body of a fungus. It is the spore-bearing structure, the reproductive organ.
The black conk you buy as Chaga is not one . It is a sclerotium, a dense sterile mass of fungal tissue and birch wood, produced by Inonotus obliquus as it slowly consumes its host. It makes no spores. Mycologists call it a canker. Calling it a mushroom is a marketing convenience.
The actual fruiting body of Inonotus obliquus is something else entirely: a thin, pored, resupinate layer that forms under the bark, usually only after the tree has died. Almost nobody has ever seen one. Nobody sells it.
Because a seller who does not know what part of the organism they are selling is unlikely to know how it was extracted, where it grew, or what is in it. It is a small test, and a lot of people fail it.
### Chaga and Chagas Disease Are Unrelated
This confusion is common enough, and alarming enough, to settle immediately.
Chagas disease is a parasitic infection caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, transmitted by triatomine insects, endemic to parts of Latin America. It has nothing whatever to do with fungi.
Chaga is a birch fungus from the cold forests of the northern hemisphere. The names differ by one letter and share no connection at all: not the organism, not the geography, not the biology.
### What Is Chaga, Exactly?
Inonotus obliquus is a wood-decay fungus that infects birch, and occasionally alder and beech, through a wound in the bark. It grows inward for years. The conk that erupts outward is black and cracked because it is armoured with melanin, and the interior is rust-orange because it is made largely of digested birch.
A single conk may take ten to twenty years to reach harvestable size. It grows in the boreal forests of the northern hemisphere, where winters are long and hard.
It has been taken as a daily tea in northern traditions for a very long time. That is a statement about history, not about health.
### What Is Inside It
These are the compound classes identified in Inonotus obliquus . They describe what is in the fungus. They say nothing about what it does in a person, and this page publishes no percentage for any of them, for a reason given below.
Compound | What it is | Where it comes from Betulin | A triterpene | The birch tree, taken up and modified by the fungus Melanin | The black surface pigment | The fungus Polysaccharides | Long-chain sugars, including beta-glucans | The fungal cell wall Inotodiol | A lanostane triterpenoid | The fungus
Note the first row. It is the whole of the next section.
### The Birch Problem
Betulin is named after Betula, the birch. It is a compound of the tree's bark, not of the fungus. Inonotus obliquus acquires it by growing inside a birch for two decades and taking it up.
Chaga cultivated on grain has no birch, and therefore no betulin.
You cannot grow the compound out of rice. If a product is fermented mycelium on a grain substrate and its label names betulin, one of those two statements is false.
This is the same trap as erinacines on a Lion's Mane fruiting-body extract, and it is the reason we wrote about that one too . The lesson repeats: ask where the compound is made, not just whether it is named.
### About That ORAC Number
_"The highest ORAC score of any natural food"_
You will read this on nearly every Chaga page in existence. Here is what it is worth.
ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. It is a test-tube measurement of how well a substance mops up free radicals in a cuvette.
In 2012, the United States Department of Agriculture withdrew its ORAC database entirely. Its stated reason was that the values were being misused, and that an antioxidant capacity measured in a test tube has no established relationship to any effect in the human body.
So when a brand tells you Chaga has the highest ORAC score ever measured, it is quoting a number from a database its own authors retired, about a property that was never shown to matter.
We do not publish an ORAC score.
### The 35 Percent Question
A leading Indian Chaga brand headlines "35 percent beta-glucans" on its packaging.
We disclose glucans ≥ 12.50% and polysaccharides ≥ 17.38% for Chaga, per batch.
Ours is lower, and that is the point. Chaga is a sclerotium of fungal tissue and digested birch, not a fruiting body, so its glucan content is naturally far below that of a wood-decay fungus like Turkey Tail. Comparing the two is not a comparison at all.
Our Lion's Mane discloses beta-D-glucans at ≥ 26.20 percent. Our Reishi discloses triterpenes at ≥ 6.13 percent, and a beta-glucan figure that is lower than several competitors advertise.
We print those because we measured them. We do not print a Chaga number because we have not.
A number without a certificate behind it is not a specification. It is a decoration.
### What This Page Will Not Say
Chaga is the most aggressively over-claimed fungus in the wellness industry. You have almost certainly read that it does something dramatic to a serious illness.
We will not discuss it. The evidence does not support any of it, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
The published Chaga literature is almost entirely cell culture and animal models. Where a study exists, it was run on an extract prepared in a particular way, at a dose nobody consumes, in an organism that is not you. Reporting its outcome next to a product is a claim, however many qualifiers surround it.
So this page tells you what the organism is, what part of it you are buying, where its compounds come from, and what we have and have not measured.
### How to Make Chaga Tea
Chaga has been prepared as a simmered decoction for centuries, because its cell walls are tough and hot water is needed to open them.
With extract powder: stir half a teaspoon into a cup of hot water or milk. It dissolves. The taste is mild, earthy, faintly like coffee, with none of the bitterness of Reishi.
With whole chunks: simmer, do not boil. Add a small piece to a litre of water, bring to a gentle simmer, and hold it there for one to two hours until the water turns the colour of weak tea. Strain. The same chunk can be simmered several times before it is spent.
Traditionally it was drunk daily and without ceremony, as a hot drink in a cold place.
### Cautions, Including One Serious One
Chaga is high in oxalates. There are published case reports of kidney injury following heavy, prolonged Chaga consumption.
If you have kidney disease, a history of kidney stones, or are advised to follow a low-oxalate diet, do not take Chaga without speaking to your doctor first.
Beyond that:
- People with a known mould or fungal allergy should avoid it.
- Anyone taking an anticoagulant or antiplatelet medication should speak to a doctor first.
- Anyone pregnant or nursing, or scheduled for surgery, should consult a qualified practitioner.
- Anyone on prescribed medication of any kind should ask before adding a supplement.
- Human trials are small and few. Long-term data does not exist.
We have put the oxalate warning at the top of this list because most sellers do not mention it anywhere.
### Buying Chaga in India
Three formats.
- Whole chunks. Simmered as tea. Slow, traditional, and the format that tells you least about what you are getting.
- Chaga powder. Ground conk, or a single-method extract. Ask which.
- Chaga extract. Concentrated. Ours is dual-extracted at an 8:1 ratio in hot water and ethanol, from the conk, never mycelium on grain.
Five questions worth asking.
- Was it grown on birch, or fermented on grain? If grain, there is no betulin.
- Whole conk, or mycelium? If the answer is vague, it is mycelium.
- What extraction method, and why that one?
- If you name a percentage, will you show me the certificate that supports it?
- Does the label name a compound that belongs to a different species entirely? It happens more often than you would think.
- The organism. Inonotus obliquus, the sterile conk
- The host. Birch, which is where the betulin comes from
- The compounds, named qualitatively: betulin, melanin, polysaccharides, inotodiol
- The method. 8:1 dual extraction, hot water and ethanol
- The substrate. None. No grain, no rice, no filler
- What it does in your body. The evidence does not support a claim
- A beta-glucan percentage from us. No certificate, no number
- That the ORAC score means anything. The database was withdrawn in 2012
- That grain-grown Chaga has betulin. It cannot
- Long-term effects. No study exists
### The Bottom Line
Chaga is a sterile black conk of fungal tissue and digested birch, grown over two decades on a living tree in a cold forest. It contains melanin, polysaccharides, inotodiol, and betulin that it took from the tree.
It is not a mushroom. It has no relationship to Chagas disease. Its famous antioxidant score comes from a database its own publishers retired. And we do not print a percentage for it, because we have not earned one.
Everything else you have read is somebody's claim.
Chaga Extract
8:1 dual extract from the conk. Never mycelium on grain.
Chaga Collection
Everything we sell under the name Chaga or Inonotus obliquus.
Triterpenoids
Betulin, inotodiol, and why ethanol is part of the method.
- United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) database withdrawn, 2012, on the grounds that in-vitro antioxidant capacity has no established relationship to effects in the body.
- Chagas disease: World Health Organization fact sheet. A parasitic infection caused by Trypanosoma cruzi . Unrelated to Inonotus obliquus .
- Alchemy Dose. No certificate of analysis is currently held for Chaga. No compound percentage is published on this page.
NOT FOR MEDICINAL USE. This product is a food and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Chaga is high in oxalates and is not suitable for people with kidney disease or a history of kidney stones. Consult a qualified practitioner before use if pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or managing a medical condition. Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
**Chaga Mushroom Extract**
The whole conk, dual-extracted 8:1 in hot water and ethanol. Betulin, melanin, polysaccharides and inotodiol, named because they are there and not quantified because we have not measured them.
---
## Article: Keeda Jadi (Yarsagumba): The Himalayan Caterpillar Fungus
Source: https://alchemydose.com/blogs/news/keeda-jadi-yarsagumba-cordyceps-sinensis
### Keeda Jadi (Yarsagumba): The Complete Guide
Half caterpillar. Half fungus. Entirely wild.
What Ophiocordyceps sinensis is, where it grows, how it is collected, what is inside it, and how to tell the real thing from a fake.
Keeda Jadi is the Indian name for Ophiocordyceps sinensis . You will also see it written keedajadi, keera jadi, kira jari or kheeda jadi . In Nepal it is yarsagumba . In Tibetan it is yartsa gunbu, which means summer grass, winter worm. In Hindi, कीड़ा जड़ी . In English, the caterpillar fungus .
Every one of those names describes the same object. A ghost moth caterpillar, hollowed out and preserved by a fungus, with a single dark stalk growing out of its head.
This page is what we know, and where the knowing stops. It contains no health claims, because none can be substantiated. What it does contain is everything else: the biology, the provenance, the season, the compounds, the honest comparison against the cultivated species, and the reason a kilogram of it can cost more than a kilogram of gold.
### What Is Keeda Jadi?
Ophiocordyceps sinensis is a fungus that parasitises the larva of a ghost moth. It is not cultivated. Every strand sold anywhere in the world was found by a human being on their hands and knees in an alpine meadow.
Note the genus. It is Ophiocordyceps, not Cordyceps . The species was reclassified out of Cordyceps in 2007 on genetic grounds. Sellers still call it Cordyceps sinensis, and so does most of the internet, which is why we use both names on this page.
### Its Many Names, and Why They Matter
Provenance is written into the naming. Each name tells you where the speaker is standing.
- Keeda Jadi (कीड़ा जड़ी). India. Literally insect-herb.
- Yarsagumba (यार्सागुम्बा). Nepal. From the Tibetan.
- Yartsa gunbu. Tibet. Summer grass, winter worm.
- Dong chong xia cao. China. The same phrase, in Mandarin.
- Caterpillar fungus. English, and the only name that describes what it actually is.
If you are searching for this in India, you are most likely typing keeda jadi or keedajadi . Both return the same thing. So do the spellings keera jadi, kira jadi and kheeda jadi . Nobody is misspelling anything. Devanagari does not map cleanly onto the Roman alphabet, and no single transliteration is correct.
### The Caterpillar Fungus: What Actually Happens
The lifecycle begins underground and takes the better part of a year.
Spores of Ophiocordyceps sinensis reach the larva of a ghost moth as it feeds on roots beneath the alpine turf. The fungus colonises the larva slowly, replacing its tissue with mycelium while leaving the outer cuticle intact. By late winter the caterpillar is a hollow shell, saffron-orange, and perfectly preserved in shape. Its segments are still visible. So are its legs.
Then, as the snow retreats, a single dark grey-brown stroma pushes out of the head end of the caterpillar and breaks the surface of the soil. That thin wiry stalk, a few millimetres across, is the only part a collector can see. Everything else is still buried.
This is why the harvest window is measured in weeks. Before the snow goes, nothing is visible. Once the grass grows, the stroma disappears into it.
### Where It Grows: Uttarakhand, Nepal, Tibet
Wild Keeda Jadi grows in the alpine meadows above the treeline, across the Tibetan plateau and the Himalayan arc. In India, that means Uttarakhand, principally the Pithoragarh and Chamoli districts. It is also found in Sikkim, in Nepal, and in Bhutan.
It grows nowhere else. Despite decades of attempts, Ophiocordyceps sinensis has never been farmed at commercial scale. That single fact governs everything about its price, its scarcity, and its conservation status.
### How Keeda Jadi Is Collected
In Uttarakhand the season opens roughly in May and closes in June. Collectors from the Bhotiya and Garhwali communities move up to the meadows and search on hands and knees, looking for a stalk a few millimetres wide against brown grass. A good day might yield a handful.
The whole fungus is lifted with the soil intact, then cleaned by hand. Nothing is powdered. Nothing is extracted. What you buy is the object itself.
Our Keeda Jadi is bought directly from collector cooperatives and graded by size and condition into Collector, Select and Classic tiers.
### What Is Inside It
These are the compound classes identified in Ophiocordyceps sinensis . They describe what is in the fungus, not what it does in a person.
- Nucleosides, including adenosine and cordycepin.
- Polysaccharides, long-chain sugars found in fungal cell walls.
- D-mannitol (sometimes called cordycepic acid).
- Sterols, present in smaller quantities.
Olatunji and colleagues published an extensive review of the genus in Fitoterapia in 2018, cataloguing the traditional uses, the phytochemistry and the pharmacological literature. It is the best single starting point if you want to read the field rather than the marketing.
### Sinensis vs Militaris: The Comparison Nobody Sells You
_Comparative cordycepin content across Cordyceps species_
Cordycepin is the compound most often named in cordyceps marketing. Kim and colleagues compared its concentration across species and reported that cultivated Cordyceps militaris contains substantially more cordycepin than wild Cordyceps sinensis .
Read that again, because it cuts against the price. If cordycepin is the thing you want, the cultivated species carries more of it, costs a fraction as much, and is available all year.
What the wild fungus offers is not a bigger number. It is the original organism, in the form it takes in the ground, from a place it cannot be moved from. Whether that is worth the difference is a decision only you can make, and we would rather you made it knowing this.
Further reading: our full breakdown of what the Cordyceps militaris studies actually show, and the species page for Cordyceps militaris .
### People Search for "Yarsagumba Benefits." Here Is the Honest Answer.
Thirteen hundred people a month in India search that phrase. They deserve a straight response rather than a sales page.
There is no proven health benefit of Keeda Jadi that we are permitted to claim, and none that the published evidence would support if we were.
What exists is this. A long and well documented history of use in Tibetan and Chinese practice, where the fungus was recorded among the rarest of mountain materials and was reserved for people who could afford it. A modern literature that is mostly preclinical, mostly small, and mostly conducted on extracts rather than the whole dried fungus. And a body of chemistry that describes what is present without establishing what it does.
Anyone telling you it will do a specific thing to a specific organ is either guessing or breaking the law. In India, health claims on food supplements are governed by the FSSAI Advertising and Claims Regulations, and a claim without substantiation is an offence. We take that seriously, and we would rather lose the sale.
### Real or Fake: How to Check
Adulteration is common, because the price makes it worthwhile. Fakes are moulded from flour and starch, or are a different, cheaper insect-fungus pairing sold under the same name. Some strands are weighted with wire or lead to sell heavier.
Four things to look at before you buy anything.
- The stroma emerges from the head end. Not from the middle, not from the tail. If it does not, it is not Ophiocordyceps sinensis .
- The caterpillar is segmented, with visible legs. Count them. A moulded fake has smooth or vague segmentation.
- Break one. The interior of a real strand is white and fibrous, and shows a dark line running through it. Flour fakes are uniform.
- Weight. A real strand is startlingly light. Metal-weighted fakes are not.
Buy from someone who will tell you the district, the season and the grade. If they cannot, they do not know where it came from.
### Is Yarsagumba Banned in India?
No. Possession and personal use are not banned.
What is regulated is the harvest . Collection is controlled at state level in Uttarakhand, with permits issued to local collectors and cooperatives, and quantities monitored. Export is restricted. The intent of the rules is conservation rather than prohibition.
The confusion usually comes from Nepal, where collection was formally banned until 2001 and is now permitted under licence, and from periodic seizures of undocumented cross-border consignments.
### Wang Junxia, 1993: The Story, and the Rest of It
_Chinese National Games, Beijing, 1993_
Female distance runners coached by Ma Junren broke three world records in a week. Qu Yunxia over 1,500m. Wang Junxia over 3,000m and 10,000m. The 10,000m mark stood for twenty-three years. Ma told reporters his athletes drank a cordyceps tonic, and the fungus has been sold on that sentence ever since.
In 2000, six of Ma's athletes were withdrawn from the Sydney Olympics after failing drug tests. Ma was dismissed. In 2016, a letter written by the athletes in 1995 surfaced, in which they said they had been forced to take banned substances for years.
Whatever happened in Beijing in 1993, it cannot be attributed to a mushroom. Any brand that tells you this story without the second half is selling you something.
### Side Effects and Cautions
Keeda Jadi has been consumed in the Himalaya for centuries and is generally well tolerated. That is not the same as being risk-free, and the following is worth knowing.
- People with a known mould or fungal allergy should avoid it.
- Anyone taking prescribed medication, anyone pregnant or nursing, and anyone managing a medical condition should speak to a qualified practitioner first.
- Adulteration is the real risk. Documented cases of lead poisoning have arisen from metal-weighted counterfeit strands, not from the fungus itself.
- Long-term human data does not exist. Nobody can tell you what daily use across a decade looks like, because nobody has studied it.
### How Keeda Jadi Is Prepared
Traditionally, whole strands are simmered. One to two strands are rinsed under cold water, added to about a cup of water, and simmered gently for ten to fifteen minutes until the liquid reduces by roughly half. The tea is drunk and the rehydrated strand is eaten whole.
Nothing is discarded. In Tibetan and Himalayan kitchens the strands are also added to broths and to chicken or mutton stock, where they simmer alongside the meat.
This is a preparation method, not a dose. We do not publish a dosage, because a dosage implies a therapeutic purpose, and this is a food.
### Why Keeda Jadi Costs What It Costs
_The demise of caterpillar fungus in the Himalayan region due to climate change and overharvesting_
Hopping and colleagues gathered harvester and climate data across four countries and reported that yields are declining, and that the fungus requires the specific cold conditions that a warming Himalaya is removing.
In 2020 the IUCN assessed Ophiocordyceps sinensis as Vulnerable on its Red List.
So: a thing that cannot be farmed, is found only by hand, in a window of weeks, in a few valleys, by communities whose livelihoods now depend on it, and which is getting scarcer.
That is the price. Not a marketing position. Arithmetic.
- The species, Ophiocordyceps sinensis, and how to verify it
- The district, Pithoragarh and Chamoli, Uttarakhand
- The season, May into June
- The compounds identified in the literature
- The IUCN status, Vulnerable, assessed 2020
- What it does in your body. The evidence does not support a claim
- A dosage. This is a food, not a medicine
- Long-term effects. No study exists
- That it beats militaris on cordycepin. It does not (Kim 2005)
- That 1993 proves anything. It proves a doping scandal
### A Thousand Years, One Short Spring
Keeda Jadi is not a formula. It is a fungus that colonises a caterpillar beneath Himalayan turf, is found by hand in a few short weeks, and cannot be made in a laboratory by anyone, at any price.
That is the whole story, and it is enough.
- Olatunji OJ, et al. "The genus Cordyceps: an extensive review of its traditional uses, phytochemistry and pharmacology." Fitoterapia, 2018. PMID: 29775778
- Kim HG, et al. Comparative cordycepin content across Cordyceps species. PMID: 16242862
- Hopping KA, Chignell SM, Lambin EF. "The demise of caterpillar fungus in the Himalayan region due to climate change and overharvesting." PNAS, 2018. PMID: 30348756
- Pouliot M, Pyakurel D, Smith-Hall C. "High altitude organic gold: the production network for Ophiocordyceps sinensis from far-western Nepal." J Ethnopharmacol, 2018. PMID: 29474899
- IUCN Red List. Ophiocordyceps sinensis, assessed Vulnerable, 2020.
- 1993 Chinese National Games. Wang Junxia (Britannica). Yuan Weimin memoir (2009). Tencent Sports (2016).
NOT FOR MEDICINAL USE. This product is a food and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Consult a qualified practitioner before use if pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or managing a medical condition. Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
**Wild Himalayan Keeda Jadi**
Hand-collected in the Pithoragarh and Chamoli districts of Uttarakhand during the spring window. Whole dried strands, never powdered. Graded Collector, Select and Classic. Bought directly from collector cooperatives.
---
## Sourcing and Compliance
Extracts are sourced from USDA-equivalent and EU-equivalent organic-certified suppliers, whole fruiting body only, and lab-tested in India per batch for heavy metals. Wild mushrooms (Keeda Jadi and Gucchi) are sourced through Forest-Department-licensed local suppliers in the Himalaya. Named compounds are disclosed as certificate-of-analysis minimums per batch. These products are foods and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Marketed and sold by Nutradose Private Limited under FSSAI License No. 13326999000107.
Contact: connect@alchemydose.com | https://alchemydose.com/pages/contact-us | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/alchemydose
]