According to recent scientific and medical research, "mushrooms may be champion disease fighters and even help chronic degenerative disease". Certain mushrooms are now touted by many experts to have numerous health benefits including lowering cholesterol, purifying the blood, providing antioxidants, slow down the aging process and boosting immunity.

One of the best and most powerful of all the medicinal mushrooms is a rare, precious medicinal mushroom called Chaga. With a mystical history, Chaga (Inonotus Obliquus) has been referred to for centuries as the 'King of Herbs". Siberian Chaga contains significantly more antioxidants than any other medicinal fungi or mushroom.

"Anti-biotics" such as Penicillin, which fight many types of infections caused by pathogens were derived from "fungi" that is considered a distant cousin of Chaga.  This botanical family of fungi also have powerful nutrients to maintain our health and immunity. 

For centuries, Chaga has been revered for its life enhancing properties  It is used in Asia for the treatment of some forms of tumors, common stomach ailments and digestive disorders, as well as many viral and bacterial concerns. As a folk medicine, Chaga was ingested by the local people of the Siberian mountain regions in tea or powder form, inhaled from smoke, and applied to the skin for healing of injury or rash. Indigenous people from that area had low incidence of degenerative diseases including cancers and have been documented to live beyond 100 years of age.

For millennia, Ancient Medical Masters, documented and revered medicinal mushrooms as the superior "King of Herbs" for creating "Chi" or life-energy balance, the key to general health, healing, and longevity. They often brewed Chaga tea from crushed granules as a remedy for sickness and for the overall balancing of the body's immune system. Today, Chaga is wildly touted and sought after throughout Asia as a "cure-all" and potent immune booster.

Chaga, is a polypore fungus (Polyporaceae or Gym enochaetaceae family), which grows on birch trees. The fungus produces a black perennial woody growth called a "conk" and is a member of the Basidiomycetes (true mushrooms). Chaga contains an extraordinary amount of phyto-nutrients such as beta glucans, (a unique family of sugars called polysaccharides), special chemicals such as betulinic acid, (which shows promise for certain types of cancer), special pigments including melanins, antiviral compounds, amino acids and nucleosides.

Because of its irregular shape and the way it is harvested, until now Chaga has generally been sold as dried, cut pieces of varying size. To find high potency Chaga, it can only be harvested in the wild. Many attempts to grow Chaga under commercial harvesting techniques have failed to reproduce the viable potency and quality.

Unlike most mushrooms, Chaga is a polypore, a fungus with pores instead of gills. It has the outward appearance of a black, irregular, cracked mass, grows on tree trunks and is most often sterile. As Chaga becomes known to the Western world, it is now being artificially cultivated and often extracted in alcohol tinctures. The purest and most potent Chaga is not cultivated but rather "wild-crafted", or grown naturally in the wild.

Siberian Chaga, naturally found in the birch forests of the Siberian mountain regions, is the most potent of all the varieties of mushrooms. Chaga is a symbiotic fungus that enters a wound on a mature tree then grows under the bark until it blisters through the bark forming a grotesque black charcoal-like conk on the tree trunk; hence the Latin epithet "Obliquus". The Chaga conk grows with the tree over a 5 to 7 year period, thriving in the harsh Siberian winter environments, absorbing life-sustaining nutrients from the birch tree, until the conk flower fully ripens, falling to the forest floor, followed shortly by the death of the host tree, completing a 20 year micro-ecological cycle.

This superior grade of Chaga is harvested once every 20 years from selective birch trees. Out of 10,000 aged trees, perhaps only 2 or 3 will have Chaga growth. Birch trees make the most acceptable host for the symbiotic relationship between Chaga and birch tree.

Then out of 100 birch trees harvested for Chaga only 2-3 receive the designation and certification of "superior grade" Chaga. Siberian Chaga is harvested under contract provided by the province of Siberia and the Russian Health Ministry. Now, exclusively through Chaga International, a superior grade extract of the most revered natural healer's mushrooms has been created and made available to the global marketplace.

All information contained on this website is based on research and testing to date and is for informational and educational purposes and is not intended to make any unsupported medical claim or the claim that any product is intended to cure or prevent any disease. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Any serious health concern should be treated by a qualified medical practitioner. Pregnant or nursing mothers should consult their physician prior to using any nutritional supplement.