Introduction
Mushrooms are a flavorful and nutritious food group. Good sources of B-Vitamins Thiamine, Riboflavin and Niacin. They contain all the essential amino acids. Mushrooms have also been used for thousands of years as some of the most effective, yet benign, of many plants that formed the Oriental herbal tradition. Garuda International offers many species of the highest quality mushroom extract powders available in the world today. All are certified organically grown and some have standardized levels of active compounds. These are perfect powdered materials for formulating dietary supplements and natural cosmetics. Chaga (Inonotus obliquus]/i]) is a highly prized medicinal fungus that has been used in Siberian folk medicine as a cleansing and disinfecting substance. It is a parasitic fungus growing on birch, alder, beech and other hardwood trees throughout North America and Europe. The fungus produces a thick mass on the trunks of trees sometimes measuring up to 40 cm thick and 1.5 meters in length. Commonly referred to as a mushroom, chaga is actually a hard sterile conk that is a canker disease on birch trees. Birch trees contain precursor compounds such as the triterpenoid betulin. Chaga draws betulin and other precursors directly from the birch tree and turns them into inotodiol, trametenolic acid and betulinic acid. Inotodiol has shown the strongest activity according to research.

Benefits
Chaga is rich in triterpenes. The main compounds are lanosterol-type triterpenes related to inotodiol. Other compounds isolated from Chaga include betulin, polysaccharides, and soluble lignins.

Advantages
Today, we use modern extraction techniques to concentrate the active components from the fungal masses. The highest quality fungal cankers are removed from birch trees (betula pubescens) in eastern europe, cleaned and shipped to north america where they are sorted. Chaga is extracted using a proprietary process that concentrates the active compounds. The finished powdered extract is standardized to a minimum 0.15% inotodiol content.

Quality Assurance
Mushroom extracts can be considered some of the first nutraceuticals - food concentrated into medicinal form. Garuda's extracts are carefully produced according to gmp standards from select raw materials. Many of our extracts are standardized to contain guaranteed levels of active compounds.

Applications
Chaga extract powder can be used to formulate various types of dietary supplement tablets and capsules. The powder can also be included in herbal tea blends. Chaga can also be blended with other medicinal mushroom extracts and powders from different species such as garuda's reishi (ganoderma lucidum), shiitake (lentinula edodes) or maitake (grifola frondosa).

References
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