Chinese caterpillar. Amazing Tibetan yarsagumba mushroom. Key Ingredients of the Supplement

In the mountains of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and the northern regions of India, either a mushroom or an insect grows - yarsagumba. The literal translation of this name is: "Grass in summer, caterpillar in winter." The official name of this mushroom is Cordyceps Chinese(lat. Ophiocordyceps sinensis) is a genus of fungi from the family Ophiocordycipitaceae, belongs to the class Ascomycetes.

The description of this strange combination of two forms of life is found in ancient Chinese treatises. The Chinese believed that those lucky ones who were lucky enough to find a yarsagumba would have big changes in their fate, long-term male viability and attractiveness to the opposite sex.

Every summer, the Nepalese go in search of a magic potion. During the season, you can find empty Tibetan villages, because the collection time is limited to one month a year. Only children and old people do not hunt for a mushroom.

I must say that it is not easy to find this miracle of nature, yarsagumba grows only at an altitude of 3,500 m above sea level, in shady places. It is strange that oxygen deficiency, strong temperature drops not only do not kill yarsagumba, but also give it unique properties.

UNKNOWN ANIMAL

When spores hit the larva or caterpillar, they penetrate the head of the insect and germinate into its body. It is at this time that the integument of the caterpillar is most vulnerable after molting. At the same time, the plant eats the insect from the inside until it completely draws out all the juices from it.

But this does not happen immediately, because the yarsagumba needs to somehow rise to the surface of the earth. Therefore, the fungus affects the vital organs of the caterpillar last. In the end, yarsagumba subjugates the poor fellow's motor apparatus and forces the insect to move into upper layer soil. So the dead caterpillar freezes upside down a few centimeters from the surface.

Another one interesting feature fungus is that it so fills the caterpillar that it does not decompose and is not infected by any other microorganisms.

Firstly, there is simply no place for them, and secondly, yarsagumba has properties similar to those of an antibiotic. Therefore, in order to prepare medicines use both parts of the mushroom.

The dark brown mature plant looks a lot like a caterpillar with a twig coming out of its head. It even repeats the curve of the body of the dead insect. The fungus, as it were, consists of two parts: a bumpy light brown body of a caterpillar and a dark brown, with smooth surface plant body.

The height of yarsagumba varies from 4 to 8 cm, there are also larger specimens - up to 11 cm. Weight ranges from 300 to 500 mg. The thickness of the stem is from 3 to 4 mm. The mushroom is sweet in taste and has a pleasant smell.

AMAZING POTION

The first mention of this remedy in Tibetan medicine is contained in the work "On a Thousand Medicines" by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje (1439-1475). In Chinese sources, it was first mentioned in 1649.

The healing properties of this plant were discovered many centuries ago by shepherds who noticed the unusual activity of cattle that ate yarsagumba. Since then, the mushroom began to be mined and used as a tonic. But it was available only to the emperors of the Ming Dynasty. It is no coincidence that today a kilogram of yarsagumba costs from 7,000-8,000 dollars.

It is believed that if you constantly take drugs based on this fungus, you can prolong life. Yarsagumba contains many substances that contribute to this, but their action has not yet been fully studied.

A medicine prepared from the mushroom can defeat tuberculosis, relieve problems with the liver, kidneys, stomach, toothache, and back pain. Yarsagumba helps to cope with leukemia, saves from depression, restores the body after a long illness.

In addition, this natural aphrodisiac actively affects sex hormones and sexual arousal centers in the brain.

Research results have shown that yarsagumba helps restore full sexual health to 86% of women and 67% of men.

The Nepalese boil the chopped mushroom in milk or insist on alcohol, then add it to tea or soup. In Western countries, preparations based on yarsagumba are sold in stores specializing in traditional medicine.

RECORDS NAMED AFTER YARSAGUMBA

Despite the fact that yarsagumba has long been actively used in Chinese medicine, it was practically unknown in Western countries. The mushroom gained fame in 1993 after the Chinese championship in athletics when three world records were set at once in running at different distances.

And these achievements remain records to this day. The world community could not leave such amazing fact without attention.

Three athletes who set the record underwent doping tests, but nothing extraneous was found in their blood. Their trainer reported that the girls ate turtle blood soup with the addition of yarsagumba decoction. This information was confirmed by the adviser of the national Olympic team of China. It was then that the “yarsagum boom” began in the USA and Europe.

MUSHROOM FEVER

The hunt for yarsagumba is reminiscent of the times of the gold rush. By the way, this fishery is quite dangerous. Several people die during the season. Nar villager Nimchrng says: “A year ago, the leader of our village was killed. He was stabbed to death by a group of alien yarsagumba gatherers when he checked whether they had permission to collect valuable raw materials. The crooks were fishing illegally, so they killed him and even tried to escape with the collected yarsagumba.

For many locals, mushroom hunting is the only way to earn money. Moreover, those who entered the fishery before the deadline face a serious fine. Almost every collector produces about 1,000 pieces of yarsagumba per month, for which he can get about $ 3,000. By the way, only local residents have licenses to pick mushrooms. Outsiders have no right to do so.

It is clear that where there is something valuable, there will definitely be people who want to warm their hands on it. Yarsagumba is one of the items of smuggling, which means that the proceeds from its sale go past the state treasury.

The authorities of Nepal are going to establish a tax on the collection of mushrooms, amounting to $ 70 per season from one getter. Dealers buy Yarsagumba-infected larvae for $700 and sell them for $3,000. They guard the pickers, preventing them from taking out the goods. Caught violators are severely punished.

In addition to problems with the law, the poaching collection of yarsagumba entails environmental problems. Collectors do not stand on ceremony with nature in pursuit of profit. They do not look for a fungus among the vegetation, but plow the soil like a tractor, uprooting the grass. In addition, visiting guest performers manage to harvest mushrooms before the start of the season.

From year to year, the number of valuable mushrooms decreases. Experts warn: if this continues, yarsagumba will completely disappear.

Galina BELYSHEVA

Syn.: Himalayan Viagra, caterpillar mushroom, Tibetan mushroom, grass worm.

Ask the experts

In medicine

Cordyceps chinensis is not a pharmacopoeial plant and is not listed in the Register medicines RF. However, it is officially registered and approved for sale in Russia as a dietary supplement. Although medicinal properties cordyceps chinensis and have been the subject of numerous animal and in vitro studies, clinical studies of the therapeutic use of the plant have been conducted, the scientific community finds most of them methodologically incorrect and considers any statements about the established effectiveness of cordyceps premature. However, a number of large, randomized and well-controlled clinical trials still allow us to consider Cordyceps sinensis as a potential source of medicinal raw materials with a wide spectrum of action. The plant may be able to act as an immunomodulator, hepatoprotector, adaptogen, presumably has anticarcinogenic, bacteriostatic, anti-inflammatory properties, has a positive effect on the cardiovascular system, promotes male fertility.

Contraindications and side effects

Although cordyceps chinensis has no contraindications, it cannot be said for sure that it is safe for pregnant and lactating women, children, since there are no reliable studies on this subject. Before using the plant, you should consult with your doctor. Among side effects some patients report dry mouth, nausea, and diarrhea from the use of Cordyceps chinensis.

Classification

Botanical description

Like other fungi of the genus Ophiocordyceps, cordyceps sinensis consists of two parts: sclerotia and stroma. The fungus reproduces by spores, which, like a homing weapon, “shoot out” only when a caterpillar of a butterfly crawls past from the form of fine hop weeds. Adhering to the insect, spores dissolve skin covering and penetrate into the body, where they remain at rest until the caterpillar, on the eve of winter, begins to burrow into the ground to pupate.

Infected caterpillars always burrow into the ground like a soldier, head up. After the caterpillar is immersed in the soil, the spores enter the active phase, germinating into the flesh and eventually completely “eating away” the caterpillar, mummifying its body and filling it with sclerotia. A “stuffed” stuffed insect “sprouts” in late spring or early summer with a stroma.

The stroma of Chinese cordyceps is dark brown or black, less often yellow and reaches a length of 4 - 10 centimeters and about 5 mm in girth. On a slender bare, longitudinally striated or ribbed stem of the fungus, a club-shaped or spindle-shaped granular head is clearly visible. The aroma of the mushroom seems to many pleasant and delicate, the taste is sweetish.

Spreading

Chinese Cordyceps can be found only in the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas at an altitude of 3000 to 5000 meters.

Procurement of raw materials

Cordyceps Chinese is harvested exclusively by hand. In the summer, after the germination of fungal stroma, peasants from the surrounding villages go out to "hunt". They find fungi sticking out of the ground and carefully dig out the mummified body of an insect stuffed with cordyceps sinensis mycelium threads. Mushrooms with a long body placed on a thick "caterpillar" are recognized as the best raw materials. Peasants collect up to several tons of mushrooms a year, the price of which reaches 50 thousand dollars per kilogram.

Cordyceps powder is obtained from dried mushrooms, which are treated with ultraviolet radiation before grinding or sterilized at high temperatures. Some scientists believe that the active ingredients in mushrooms are destroyed in this way, and in order to obtain an effective dose, one has to eat capsules in which such a powder is packed, handfuls. Those who wish to receive a purified, concentrated and biologically active preparation, prefer to take Cordyceps Chinese extract. To do this, the fungus is placed in alcohol for a while, then the alcohol is evaporated and a fine powder is obtained from such a “liquid” Chinese cordyceps.

Due to the high cost of raw materials and the difficulties in obtaining it, scientists were able to isolate a strain from the wild Chinese cordyceps that can be cultivated industrially. In China, such a culture is grown in a liquid nutrient medium, and in the West they managed to grow cordyceps in laboratory conditions, using grain as a base.

Chemical composition

IN chemical composition cordyceps chinensis found all essential amino acids, polyamines, saccharides, as well as all sugar derivatives, fatty and other organic acids, sterols and vitamins, including B vitamins: B 1, B 2, B 12, vitamins E and K, as well as methanol , ethyl acetate, mannitol, ergosterol, adenine, adenosine, uracil, uridine, guanidine, guanosine, hypoxanthine, inosine, thymine, thymidine and deoxyuridine.

Pharmacological properties

Medicinal properties cordyceps chinensis has been the subject of many scientific studies, but too many of them are considered methodologically dubious, so all claims about the wide spectrum of the fungus are considered by the scientific community to be somewhat premature.

However, it can be argued that Cordyceps Chinese extract enhances the activity of cytokines and induces cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, reducing the proliferation of tumor cells, thereby making it possible to use Cordyceps Chinese in oncology. Experiments on mice have shown that when taking the fungus, the survival rate of animals after radio and chemotherapy increases.

Long-term clinical studies have been launched to study the use of cordyceps in heart disease. Animal experiments have confirmed the vascular-relaxant and vasodilating effects of the fungus. It reduces the heart rate, fights arrhythmia. Animal experiments have also confirmed the hepatoprotective effect of cordyceps.

In vitro studies have shown an increase in the phagocytic activity of macrophages, an increase in the enzymatic activity of acid phosphatase and a decrease in the expression of cyclooxygenase-2. Experiments on mice showed an increase in splenocyte proliferation, an increase in plasma corticosterone, and a decrease in the production of immunoglobulin E.

The bacteriostatic effect of Chinese Cordyceps on pathogenic bacteria, including streptococcus and Staphylococcus aureus, as well as pneumococcus, has also been confirmed by a number of in vitro studies.

Application in traditional medicine

Cordyceps chinensis is widely used in folk medicine. It is used for malignant neoplasms, in the complex treatment of cancer of the brain, liver, pancreas, kidneys, breast, leukemia. Healers recommend taking cordyceps as an immunomodulator and hepatoprotector, to remove toxic substances from the body, including radionuclides and medicinal compounds. Pills with mushroom powder are drunk with bronchitis, bronchial asthma, cough, shortness of breath, pneumonia and other diseases of the respiratory system. They are taken for pyelonephritis and glomerulonephritis, cystitis, kidney diseases and diseases of the genitourinary system. Cordyceps is considered effective in diseases of the cardiovascular system and is recommended for angina pectoris, coronary sclerosis, after myocardial infarction, with coronary disease heart to prevent thrombosis.

Historical reference

Although medicinal use Cordyceps chinensis originates in the mists of time, the first written mention of the fungus refers only to the 15th century. The Tibetan healer Zukar Namney Dorje wrote about him. In traditional Chinese medicine, the first healer to describe the effects of cordyceps was Ben Cao Beo Yao, who included the fungus in his Materia medica of 1694. He claimed that cordyceps is used in medicinal purposes since the Tang Dynasty, that is, since the 7th century.

The Chinese believe that the properties of Chinese Cordyceps, one of whose names translates as "caterpillar in winter, mushroom in summer", due to the peculiarities of its development, has an ideal balance of yin and yang, therefore it can fight many diseases. In traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicine, Cordyceps was used primarily to combat aging. Elderly nobles took it in the hope of longevity, to stimulate male strength, to treat cardiovascular diseases, as an immunomodulator. Cancer, hypoglycemia, asthenia, diseases of the liver and respiratory system were treated with cordyceps.

Chinese cordyceps is a very expensive mushroom. Its sale is one of the most important sources of income for many peasants in Nepal, Bhutan, and some northern states of India bordering the Tibetan Plateau. Sometimes during the collection there are very bloody conflicts between the inhabitants of different villages, sometimes ending in murders. Therefore, cultivated mushrooms will be able to solve not only the issue of the high cost of cordyceps and the purity of raw materials, but also the “mushroom wars”.

Literature

1. "Collecting dead caterpillars in the mountains of Tibet", the journal "Science and Life" No. 6, 2006 - 90 p.

The Himalayan mountains, along which the border of Nepal and Tibet lies, are considered one of the most lost corners of the planet. Foreign tourists go hiking along the so-called "Annapurna circuit" - a route that runs through snow-covered passes at an altitude of more than 5 thousand meters.

"It used to be considered a sin"

When a cold night falls on a Himalayan village, Sangay Gurung and his wife gather around the fire to cook a dinner of rice and vegetables. Sangai says he can sell me yarsagumba. He got a little bit of this valuable drug from his son, who earns it by collecting it.

53-year-old Sangay Gurung picking mushrooms
does not go. This is what his son does.

"Sangay Gurung himself is not happy about the fact that he got some fragile mummified caterpillars in which the fungus sprouted. "We believe that trading yarsagumba is a sin," he says. - According to Buddhist tradition, we should not collect it. So my grandfathers told me, and I obeyed them."

I'm 53 and have never harvested [Chinese cordyceps], but the younger generation is different,” adds Gurung. "They don't believe in sin or religion, so they make money from it."

Viagra of various actions

Over the past 500 years, Chinese cordyceps have earned a reputation in China as a powerful aphrodisiac. It grows only in the Himalayas at an altitude of more than 3.5 thousand meters. And the traditional harvest time comes in the spring, on the eve of the rainy season. Every year, hundreds of Tibetan merchants illegally cross the border into Nepal to buy yarsagumba from locals and then resell in China. The cost of 1 kilogram reaches 10 thousand dollars.

"The medical properties of yarsagumba are very diverse," says medical anthropologist Carol Dunham, who has worked in Nepal for 25 years. All this has led to the fact that yarsagumba has become the most expensive raw material in this remote region of the world, which does not have rich economic opportunities.

Yarsagumba can be found
at an altitude of more than 3.5 thousand meters

"Mushroom fishing" has become so profitable that local authorities even began to issue special permits for collection. In some areas, such permits are more expensive for people from outside the region. And somewhere outsiders are simply forbidden to engage in this profitable trade.

Mushroom places are protected with knives

For some residents of the mountain villages, yarsagumba became an opportunity to get rich, others brought grief. In June 2009, seven men from the Gorkha area were killed for picking mushrooms in a plot that was not theirs. The attackers used sticks and knives, and the bodies of the dead were thrown into a deep gorge.

Nal Pramad Upadhyay, who led the investigation into the case, says the five bodies were never found. “We got two of them from a very difficult place, we had to use ropes to lift them,” says the policeman. “It was a very big operation: we mobilized more than 80 police officers. As a result, 36 people from the small village of Nar were arrested. All of them are still awaiting the verdict of the court.

The building of the district department of education,
converted into prison

There is no prison in the area that can accommodate all the detainees, so the authorities assigned the building of the local education department to the detainees.

Since there is no prison in the region, the prisoners were put in the building of the local education department. In the past few months, 17 people have been released on bail. The rest sit behind barbed wire and play cards. Relatives bring them food.

"I think my brother will be released very soon," says Samma Tsering. "Every time I see him, he says he didn't do anything."

Since most of the men in Nar village are in prison, there is no one to work, says Samma. "Our land has fallen into desolation," she complains. "There is no one to plow, and we have not sown anything for two years." The verdict in the yarsgumba massacre case is expected in February. And in March, a new season for collecting a valuable mushroom will begin, about which in the old days it was said that it brings nothing but trouble.

For a handful of dried "roots" a Tibetan gets twenty dollars.

Collecting fungus on the mountainside.

The fungus Cordyceps sinensis lives at altitudes of 3000 meters or more, on the caterpillars of a certain type of butterfly. Having infected the caterpillar, which hibernates in the soil, the fungus gradually occupies the entire inside of its skin with its mycelium. In the spring, a stalk grows upward from a dead caterpillar, at the end of which spores ripen, carried by the wind and infecting new caterpillars. The stalk, together with the corpse of the caterpillar, before the appearance of experts in entomopathogenic fungi in these parts, was considered the root of some plant. According to local legend, shepherds first noticed it either a thousand or two thousand years ago. They noticed that yaks and sheep that eat this root become more resilient and active.

In China, for many centuries, all cordyceps collected in the mountains came to the imperial court. Cordyceps forced the whole civilized world to talk about itself only in 1993, when at the National Games in Beijing two people had not previously famous Chinese women literally crushed the world records for women in running at 1500, 3000 and 10,000 meters. To journalists' questions, the coach of the runners, whose records have not been broken to this day, replied that the success was due to the life-giving effect of the fungus.

Since then, the demand for Cordyceps has been growing every year worldwide. As the ecological damage caused to the Tibetan Plateau is growing. Demand for the Tibetan fungus was boosted by the SARS outbreak in Southeast Asia (2003), and prices for dried stalks reached $7,000 per kilogram - just half the price of gold. According to estimates, in 2002, two tons of dead caterpillars with a fungus growing from them were collected in Tibet, in 2003 - already six tons. English ecologist Paul Cannon, who studied the situation in the Jigme Dorji National Park in Bhutan, believes that cordyceps pickers put massive pressure on the landscape, fauna and flora, trample valuable plants, including medicinal ones. At a minimum, Cannon says, a collection licensing system should be developed, and even better would be artificial breeding of caterpillars and fungus. This could be done by local farmers, for many of whom cordyceps, harvested two or three months a year, is the main source of income for the whole year (of course, buyers pay them much less than the final price).

As for scientific medicine, it does not have unambiguous data on the value of the fungus. There are few studies, and some of them claim that Cordyceps extract accelerates the death of sick and old cells of the body, others that, on the contrary, it prolongs their lifespan. According to some reports, the substances contained in the fungus neutralize the destructive effect of oxygen free radicals (see "Science and Life" No.). According to a group of British researchers, the cordyceps-based drug activates aerobic metabolism, but there is no confirmation from other sources yet, and, somewhat suspiciously, the study was paid for by the American company that produces this very drug.