A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn
In the winter of 1997 I drove home from night class at OCOM where I was working on my master’s degree. That evening we had studied the yang tonics. The last one we had talked about was cordyceps. It was a substance I was familiar with already since I was working in a Chinese herb company that imported a few tons of the stuff every year and sold it to manufacturers. But here I was studying it in a more focused way, reading Bensky and listening to the teacher. When I drove home I flipped on the TV; it was set to the public television channel. The very first image that popped up on the screen was of a Tibetan woman carefully digging up cordyceps. Fascinating timing. I take note of synchronicities of this sort and took it here to mean that cordyceps would play a key role in my professional life, and that has been the case.
Of course it is a very strange fungus indeed, growing as it does on an insect. Its Chinese name, dongchongxiacao, translates as “winter insect, summer grass.” The insect inhales spores of the cordyceps and then burrows underground before the snows; while covered by snow the fungus becomes active and claims the insides of the insect as its food. With the spring thaw, the fruiting body emerges from the head of the insect and pushes through the earth. It is slightly like the shape of grass, though a bit more cylindrical. It is harvested by digging up the entire body of the insect and fruiting body of the fungus. What a strange world this is!
I supplied cordyceps to both of my parents for many years. My mother made it 18 years after diagnosis of a rare cancer that typically is not survived. She did do the standard radiation and chemotherapies, but, again, even for those who do those standard treatments survival is not expected beyond a few years. She was the only patient her oncologist had ever seen NOT lose her hair on that particular chemo agent. She passed at 93. My father lived to a relatively healthy 95 years of age, taking cordyceps and other medicinal mushrooms the last 20 years of his life. His parents, by the way, died in their 60s and 70s, so he does not come from a line that is long-lived.
My stepson had a naturopathic clinic in Connecticut. One of his areas of focus was pediatrics. I regularly sent him cordyceps powdered extract to use with his asthma cases. He used it to make a glycerine-based liquid form of cordyceps. It alone was enough to shift many cases of pediatric exercise-induced asthma.
I thought it interesting as a student that cordyceps was in the single herb texts but did not appear in any of the formulas in the formula texts. I am not sure if this holds true in more up to date versions of Bensky. The reason for this, it seemed to me, was that cordyceps was really a medicinal food—a very, very safe food—and not a substance Chinese herbalists had traditionally added to herb formulas. A quick search on google turns up many traditional recipes for cordyceps soups. Some utilize fowl, others pork. I myself include a good dose of cordyceps in my Thanksgiving turkey stuffing.
Cordyceps emerged on the world scene in 1993 in Germany at an international track meet. Some relatively unknown female runners from China broke world records in long
distance events. Everyone cried “doping” but that was not the case, as the runners tested clean. Their coach explained that their success was due to cordyceps as a regular part of the training diet. Overnight the market worldwide for cordycceps exploded, and the price for wild cordyceps went through the roof, where it remains still. Every elite athlete wanted to be on it. Cordyceps science has advanced quite a bit since then and high quality lab-grown material has long been available, and the price for it is affordable.
What is cordyceps good for, you might ask? If one goes by traditional understanding, it is a superb tonic for restoring strength after protracted illness; it strengthens lowered sexual energies; it is helpful in improving Lung and Kidney functions. I mentioned already asthma, but I also have seen good improvements in cases of COPD. In China many patients on the kidney transplant list use cordyceps to bolster their remaining kidney function. Travelers going to high altitudes often report benefit from using cordyceps—it is shown in some research to increase the ability of the blood to carry oxygen (this might explain its benefit to long distance runners).
The 100% Certified Organic Empowered Cordyceps sold by People’s Herbs (available from Blue Poppy) is by far the best cordyceps product I know of on the market. It contains the much-researched CS-4 strain from China but also other strains. It is a mix of powdered extracts and mycelium powders. All ingredients are organically grown in the US. And it is affordable. If you have patients who need a gentle boost, this is a product you might consider adding to their regimen.