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Mushrooms have been valued in traditional Chinese medicine for over three thousand years because of their numerous health benefits. Reishi, shiitake, and the fan-like Coriolus versicolor mushroom are popular throughout Asia for their potent medicinal properties and for the boost they provide to one’s health. But before one could enjoy their benefits, these mushrooms have to undergo the hot water extraction process. Even with all the technological advances in science today, mankind still gets the benefits of medicinal mushrooms the same way it did thousands of years ago – through hot water extraction. It is a process which uses hot water to break down the indigestible cell walls within the mushroom to get more nutrients out. Hot water extraction is the only medicinal mushroom extraction method used in published medical and scientific research. The cell structures of mushrooms like Coriolus Versicolor are made up of a network of cells divided by solid cell walls. These cell walls are made from an indigestible fiber called “chitin”. Behind this indigestible cell wall is where you would find the most concentration of nutrients in a mushroom. When a person eats the mushroom, his digestive system wouldn’t be able to break down the chitin, making all the nutrients locked up inside it end up as body waste. This is where hot water extraction becomes really handy – it can break down the chitin and force the nutrients out of the mushroom. Chitin dissolves under extreme temperatures, releasing the polysaccharides within into the hot water. Hot water extraction is a vital process to get the most potency out of mushrooms and even other herbs. With the chitin still intact, the body can only get a concentration level of up to two percent. This level of concentration is too low to have an effect on the body. The hot water extraction method, on the other hand, allows you to produce extracts with a concentration level of 20:1, which is significantly higher than the concentration level you get from eating the mushroom straight. While hot water extraction has generally remained the same for years, modern methods have incorporated newer procedures, such as fractional precipitation, ion-exchange chromatography, and gel filtration to achieve further polysaccharide filtration. But in its simplest sense, hot water extraction can be as easy as making a cup of tea.
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coriolus, versicolor, mushroom,
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