Chaga (Ground)

Chaga grounds, wild harvested in Alaska, and sourced from the Chaga Co-op, Alaska’s only ethical wild-foods foraging cooperative.

Chaga is the king of the medicinal mushrooms! It has the highest antioxidants of any herbal supplement!

Chaga contains:

Vitamin D, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Manganese, Phosphorus, Potassium, Zinc, Beta-glucans, Polysaccharides, Triterpenoids, Melanin, Amino Acids, Superoxide Dismutase , Anti-oxidants, Inotodiol, Betulinic Acid.

This is just the begining! Chaga contains over 215 biologically active compounds. It is a natural whole food, wild-only, and can’t be compared to other mushrooms.

What is Chaga?

Chaga is a type of fungus that grows on the bark of birch trees in cold climates, particularly in northern regions like Siberia, Canada, and Alaska. The scientific name for chaga is Inonotus obliquus. It has been used in traditional medicine for centuries, especially in Russia and other northern European countries.

Chaga is known for its distinctive appearance, resembling a dark, irregularly shaped mass with a rough and cracked exterior. The interior of chaga is orange-brown, and it is this part of the fungus that is typically used for medicinal purposes. It is rich in various bioactive compounds, including antioxidants, and is used to make teas, extracts, or tinctures.

This tea has been studied extensively worldwide for its incredible properties, which we have experienced ourselves.

What makes us different?

In the medicinal mushroom industry, there are many fraudulent companies claiming to sell “mushrooms”. However, many companies are only selling the fungal mycelium, which is cheaper to produce, and nutritionally inferior to the fungal fruit-body, also known as the “mushroom”.

Mycelium is grown on a substrate of grain, rice, or oats. There is no way to separate the mycelium from its substrate, so the entire substrate is used to produce the mushroom product. As a result, many “medicinal mushrooms’ products are actually 90% grain, 10% mycelium, and contain no mushrooms. This is an important thing to know and understand about the industry when sourcing your supplements.

Chaga is an interesting case because it can only be wild-harvested. The fungal mycelium CAN be cultivated, but the nutritional inferiority of chaga mycelium compared to the wild conk is greater than all the other medicinal mushroom species. This has to do with what chaga actually is. Despite being called a “mushroom”, which refers to the fungal reproductive fruit-body, chaga is a conk formed by the fungus Inonotus obliquus. Here in Alaska, this fungus grows only on LIVING Birch trees and slowly begins breaking down the medicinal birch tree’s compounds into a highly concentrated, nutritious, and bio-available stored food mass. This mass is what we call “chaga” and has been traditionally harvested, brewed into tea, and used for it’s wonderful flavor and benefits for thousands of years.

When the birch tree finally dies, only then does the fungus draw upon its conk to reproduce, and produce the mushroom fruit-body. This is a rare sight to behold, and with the help of the Chaga Co-op, we are conducting research into this ephemeral process.