Chaga Mushrooms’ Immune & Anticancer Potential
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
What Do Chaga Mushrooms Do?
Chaga mushrooms, which also go by other delightful names including “sterile conk trunk rot” and “black mass”, are a type of fungus that grow on birch trees in cold climates such as Alaska, Northern Canada, Northern Europe, and Siberia.
They’ve enjoyed a long use as a folk remedy in Northern Europe and Siberia, mostly to boost immunity, mostly in the form of a herbal tea.
Let’s see what the science says…
Does it boost the immune system?
It definitely does if you’re a mouse! We couldn’t find any studies on humans yet. But for example:
- Immunomodulatory Activity of the Water Extract from Medicinal Mushroom Inonotus obliquus
- Inonotus obliquus extracts suppress antigen-specific IgE production through the modulation of Th1/Th2 cytokines in ovalbumin-sensitized mice
(cytokines are special proteins that regulate the immune system, and Chaga tells them to tell the body to produce more white blood cells)
Wait, does that mean it increases inflammation?
Definitely not if you’re a mouse! We couldn’t find any studies on humans yet. But for example:
- Anti-inflammatory effects of orally administered Inonotus obliquus in ulcerative colitis
- Orally administered aqueous extract of Inonotus obliquus ameliorates acute inflammation
Anti-inflammatory things often fight cancer. Does chaga?
Definitely if you’re a mouse! We couldn’t find any studies in human cancer patients yet. But for example:
While in vivo human studies are conspicuous by their absence, there have been in vitro human studies, i.e., studies performed on cancerous human cell samples in petri dishes. They are promising:
- Anticancer activities of extracts and compounds from the mushroom Inonotus obliquus
- Extract of Innotus obliquus induces G1 cell cycle arrest in human colon cancer cells
- Anticancer activity of Inonotus obliquus extract in human cancer cells
I heard it fights diabetes; does it?
You’ll never see this coming, but: definitely if you’re a mouse! We couldn’t find any human studies yet. But for example:
- Anti-diabetic effects of Inonotus obliquus in type 2 diabetic mice
- Anti-diabetic effects of Inonotus obliquus in type 2 diabetic mice and potential mechanism
Is it safe?
Honestly, there simply have been no human safety studies to know for sure, or even to establish an appropriate dosage.
Its only-partly-understood effects on blood sugar levels and the immune system may make it more complicated for people with diabetes and/or autoimmune disorders, and such people should definitely seek medical advice before taking chaga.
Additionally, chaga contains a protein that can prevent blood clotting. That might be great by default if you are at risk of blood clots, but not so great if you are already on blood-thinning medication, or otherwise have a bleeding disorder, or are going to have surgery soon.
As with anything, we’re not doctors, let alone your doctors, so please consult yours before trying chaga.
Where can we get it?
We don’t sell it (or anything else), but for your convenience, here’s an example product on Amazon.
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Gut Health for Women – by Aurora Bloom
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
First things first: though the title says “For Women”, almost all of it applies to men too—and the things that don’t apply, don’t cause a problem. So if you’re cooking for your family that contains one or more men, this is still great.
Bloom gives us a good, simple, practical introduction to gut health. Her overview also covers gut-related ailments beyond the obvious “tummy hurts”. On which note:
A very valuable section of this book covers dealing with any stomach-upsets that do occur… without harming your trillions of tiny friends (friendly gut microbiota). This alone can make a big difference!
The book does of course also cover the things you’d most expect: things to eat or avoid. But it goes beyond that, looking at optimizing and maintaining your gut health. It’s not just dietary advice here, because the gut affects—and is affected by—other lifestyle factors too. Ranges from mindful eating, to a synchronous sleep schedule, to what kinds of exercise are best to keep your gut ticking over nicely.
There’s also a two-week meal plan, and an extensive appendix of resources, not to mention a lengthy bibliography for sourcing health claims (and suggesting further reading).
In short, a fine and well-written guide to optimizing your gut health and enjoying the benefits.
Share This Post
-
Statins: Study Insights
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Q: Can you let us know about more studies that have been done on statins? Are they really worth taking?
That is a great question! We imagine it might have been our recent book recommendation that prompted it? It’s quite a broad question though, so we’ll do that as a main feature in the near future!
Share This Post
-
Atomic Habits – by James Clear
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
James Clear’s Atomic Habits has become “the” go-to book about the power of habit-forming. And, there’s no shortage of competition out there, so that’s quite a statement. What makes this book stand out?
A lot of books start by assuming you want to build habits. That can seem a fair assumption; after all, we picked up the book! But an introductory chapter really hammers home the idea in a way that makes it a lot more motivational:
- Habits are the compound interest of productivity
- This means that progress is not linear, but exponential
- Habits can also be stacked, and thus become synergistic
- The more positive habits you add incrementally, the easier they become because each thing is making your life easier/better
For example:
- It’s easier to save money if you’re in good health
- It’s easier to sleep better if you do not have financial worries
- It’s easier to build your relationship with your loved ones if you’re not tired
…and so on.
For many people this presents a Catch-22 problem! Clear instead presents it as an opportunity… Start wherever you like, but just start small, with some two-minute thing, and build from there.
A lot of the book is given over to:
- how to form effective habits (using his “Four Laws”)
- how to build them into your life
- how to handle mishaps
- how to make sure your habits are working for you
- how to see habits as part of your identity, and not just a goal to be checked off
The last one is perhaps key—goals cease to be motivating once accomplished. Habits, on the other hand, keep spiralling upwards (if you guide them appropriately).
There’s lots more we could say, but it’s a one-minute book review, so we’ll just close by saying:
This book can help you to become the kind of person who genuinely gets a little better each day, and reaps the benefits over time.
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
Eat To Avoid (Or Beat) PCOS
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Polycystic ovary syndrome, PCOS, affects very many people; around 1 in 5 women. It can show up unexpectedly, and usually the first-identified sign is irregular vaginal bleeding. We say “vaginal” rather than “menstrual” as it’s not technically menses, although it’ll look (and can feel) the same.
Like many “affects mostly women” conditions, science’s general position is “we don’t know what causes it or how to cure it”.
Quick book recommendation before we continue:
Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World – by Dr. Elinor Cleghorn
…is a top-tier book about medical misogyny. We’d say more here, but well, you can read our review there 🙂
What doesn’t work
Since PCOS is characterized by excessive androgen production, it is reasonable to expect that foods containing phytoestrogens (such as soy) may help. They won’t. The human body can’t use those as estrogen, and in fact, consuming unusually large quantities of phytoestrogens can actually get in the way of your own (or bioidentical) estrogen, by competing for the same receptors but not really doing the job.
But, you won’t get that problem from moderate consumption of soy; the warning is more for those tempted to self-medicate with megadoses, or are opting for dubious supplements such as Pueraria mirifica ← will have to do a research review on that one of these days, but suffice it to say meanwhile, it has some serious drawbacks
See also: What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?
What can work
There are some supplement-based approaches that actually can help, and those are the ones that rather than trying to manufacture estrogen out of thin air, work to reduce testosterone and/or reduce the conversion of free testosterone to its more potent form, dihydrogen testosterone (DHT); here are two examples:
- Licorice, Digestion, & Hormones
- One Man’s Saw Palmetto Is Another Woman’s Serenoa Repens ← this one has the most evidence of the two
What will work
…or at least, barring additional confounding factors, what the evidence strongly supports working. Here’s where we get into diet properly, and there are three main dietary approaches:
Low-GI diet: focus on high-fiber, low-carb foods (e.g. whole grains, legumes, berries, leafy greens). Eating this way results in improved insulin sensitivity, lower fasting insulin, cholesterol, triglycerides, waist circumference, and (for women) yes, lower testosterone levels.
See: What Do The Different Kinds Of Fiber Do? 30 Foods That Rank Highest
High antioxidant diet: focus on foods rich in antioxidants (e.g. vitamin A, α-tocopherol specifically, vitamins C and D, and polyphenols) as these lower PCOS incidence.
See: 21 Most Beneficial Polyphenols & What Foods Have Them
Ketogenic diet: focus on high-fat, very low-carb foods (e.g. fatty fish, dairy, leafy greens). This significantly reduces androgen levels, improves insulin sensitivity, and regulates hormones. But… It’s recommended for short-term use only due to its negative health impacts from poor (i.e. narrow) nutritional coverage:
See: Ketogenic Diet: Burning Fat, Or Burning Out?
It is also reasonable to supplement, for example:
❝Omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D have powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that significantly improve insulin sensitivity and reduce androgen levels in metabolic syndromes like PCOS. A higher intake of omega-3 and vitamin E also alleviates mental health parameters and gene expression of PPAR-γ, IL-8, and TNF-α in women with PCOS.
Dietary supplements, such as antioxidants like N-acetylcysteine (NAC), vitamin D, inositol, and omega-3 fatty acids, and mineral supplements (zinc, magnesium selenium, and chromium) help in reducing insulin resistance. These supplements also enhance ovulatory function and decrease inflammation in PCOS patients.
Omega-3 fatty acid supplements improve biochemical parameters LH, LH/FSH, lipid profiles, and adiponectin levels and regularize the menstrual cycle in women with PCOS. A recent RCT also indicated that probiotic/symbiotic supplementation significantly improves triglyceride, insulin, and HDL levels in women with PCOS.❞
Source: The Role of Lifestyle Interventions in PCOS Management: A Systematic Review
Want to know more?
You might like this book that we reviewed a little while back:
PCOS Repair Protocol – by Tamika Woods
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Veg in One Bed New Edition – by Huw Richards
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
We all know that growing our own veg is ultimately not only healthier on the plate, but also a very healthy activity. Cheaper too. So why don’t more of us do it?
For many of us, it’s a matter of not having the skills or knowledge to do so. This book bridges that knowledge-gap.
Richards gives, as promised, a month-by-month well-illustrated guide to growing a wide variety of vegetables. He does, by the way, assume that we are in a temperate climate in the Northern Hemisphere. So if you’re not, you may need to make some adjustments.
The book doesn’t assume prior knowledge, and does give the reader everything we need from an initial basic shopping list onwards.
A particular strength of this book is that it’s about growing veg in a single raised bed—this ensures keeping everything very manageable.
Bottom line: if you have ever thought it would be good to grow your own veg, but didn’t know where to start and want something practical for a beginner, this is an excellent guide that will get you going!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
The Gut-Healthiest Yogurt
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Not only is this yogurt, so it’s winning from the start with its probiotic goodness, but also it’s full of several kinds of fiber, and gut-healthy polyphenols too. Plus, it’s delicious. The perfect breakfast, but don’t let us stop you from enjoying it at any time of day!
You will need
- 1 cup yogurt with minimal additives. Live Greek yogurt is a top-tier choice, and plant-based varieties are fine too (just watch out, again, for needless additives)
- 7 dried figs, roughly chopped
- 6 fresh figs, thinly sliced
- 5 oz chopped pitted dates
- 4 tbsp mixed seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, and chia are a great combination)
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Soak the dried figs, the dates, and half the seeds in hot water for at least 5 minutes. Drain (be careful not to lose the chia seeds) and put in a blender with ¼ cup cold water.
2) Blend the ingredients from the last step into a purée (you can add a little more cold water if it needs it).
3) Mix this purée into the yogurt in a bowl, and add in the remaining seeds, mixing them in thoroughly.
4) Top with the sliced figs, and serve (or refrigerate, up to a few days, until needed).
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- Dates vs Figs – Which is Healthier?
- The Tiniest Seeds With The Most Value
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
