The History and Benefits of Cordyceps Mushrooms

This is another mushroom that I could never find in the market. It turns out that there really isn’t any culinary use for this mushroom. You will see why.

The story of the Cordyceps mushroom definitely gives me mixed feelings. It’s an example of something pretty gruesome that turns around and becomes of great benefit. To us, anyway. 

This is because the Cordyceps mushroom is unabashedly parasitic on insects, especially when they are in the larval form. It invades its host and completely takes over its whole life and then when It has almost eaten up the whole body from within it, it makes the host crawl high to the surface of the dirt if it has been underground or up higher on a tree so when it sends a shoot of the fruiting body out, the spores can start the life cycle again by getting distribution.

When insects lay eggs, they lay an enormous number of eggs in hopes that a few offspring can survive to maturity. But this is part of the balance of nature because those thousands that don’t make it provide food for all the other wildlife. 

We are sort of used to that. It’s somehow more acceptable that one form just up and eats another life form, like a bird eating a caterpillar, but to get into its head and with pheromones and neurotransmitters totally make a zombie of the host and send rootlike mycelial fibers throughout to eat the whole thing slowly and then grow a fruiting body out of the head of the used up carcass. Well, that’s another thing entirely.

Although gross to most, this absolutely delights the horror movie people and there are themes and sketches all over the internet of “cordyceps” invading people. I hate horror movies. I will never understand how that could possibly be entertainment to somebody. To get a horror movie out of my head I always have to come up with a solution or a protection or something.

Well in the case of Cordyceps, they cannot invade humans. They can invade a variety of insects because they are not warm blooded. Besides the sheer size problem, cordyceps can’t function above room temperature, so they could never take over a human or any other mammal. So we are safe in this arena.

One scientific article I read suggests that there is a symbiosis, not just a parasitic relationship during the insect's life, but still in the end it winds up with a club-shaped fruiting body growing out of its head. But it suggests that this symbiosis gives rise to compounds derived from the combination of both the insect and the fungus that have proven to be useful to human health.

I ran into an enormous amount of confusion trying to get down to the matter of specific species and which one is best. After reading an enormous number of papers and articles which offered all kinds of guessing (they conflicted with each other), I am going to tell you what I have concluded about this.

Almost everyone agrees that the original Cordyceps mushroom that had been used for over 700 years (some references say up to 5,000 years) in Chinese and Tibetan medicine was the Cordyceps sinensis. Sinensis means originating from China. Cordyceps comes from Cord, meaning club, and ceps, meaning head, referring to the shape of the fruiting body having a clubbed head. Or it could refer to the club form growing out of the head of its host.

The long Chinese name for this: Dong chong xia cao, means Winter worm Summer Grass. It is also called Yartsa gunbu, adopted from the Tibetan language and means Winter Summer for short. And sometimes it is called Chong cao. I would have thought it would mean worm grass, but I guess because it is clearer it is translated to insect plant. 

We now know that fungus is closer to being an animal than a plant and now has its own Kingdom in taxonomy, the Fungus Kingdom, but these terms still serve as a description.

This whole thing refers to cordyceps being a caterpillar during the winter and then becoming a plant as the fruiting body grew from the ground and the dried-up caterpillar became kind of like a root, just under the surface.

In China and Tibet, as the mountains thawed, this “plant” covered the land and the Yaks, weak and thin from the long winter, migrated back up the mountain. Alpine herders and farmers noticed how the Yaks would go into a frenzy eating this “plant” and would quickly fill out, becoming muscular again and start their mating season. Rutting, as it is called, is a highly energetic and sometimes deadly competition between male Yaks for the right to mate with the female Yaks.

Witnessing this, farmers and herders started to make teas and powders and tinctures from this “plant” and they found it to increase their strength and endurance markedly. They gave it to their pack animals to make them able to carry more for longer as well. Then it gained popularity and became part of the TCM and Tibetan systems of medicine, used for over 20 different things.

In other parts of the world, other Cordyceps mushrooms were observed as far back as Carl Linneaus in 1753. He called it Clavaria militaris. Clavaria was the name already being used for mushrooms with a club-like fruiting body from the Latin clava, meaning club, and militaris goes back to soldier, war, and is where the word military comes from. Not hard to understand since it looked like the fungus did a hostile takeover of its host. C militaris in the temperate zone had a variety of insects it would parasitize, including crickets, cockroaches, beetles, ants, moths and butterflies.

The C. militaris is found in warmer temperate zones. This name was changed to Cordyceps militaris 80 years later for clarification from other club-shaped fruiting bodies with different characteristics.

In the tropics, there is a Cordyceps that is known to invade ants. It is called C. Ophioglossoides. It needs moist, hot air to thrive. Lately, there has been an attempt to stem the confusion over the different species by putting all of them into the genus Ophiocordyceps. Ha ha, I don’t think it worked. It only adds another name that confuses everybody. Ophio means snake in Greek.

With the popularity of Cordyceps increasing as the world learned about what it can do, especially its effect on sexual prowess, Cordyceps have been regulated since 1999 because of overharvesting. But it has become known as soft gold and has actually surpassed the price of gold, so there is a lot of illegal harvesting.

Continuous efforts have been made to try and mimic the nutrient base to grow cordyceps on artificial mediums like rice or barley cakes. There has not been much success with the Cordyceps of Asia, which need cold, or the Tropical Cordyceps that need moist heat, but finally a combination of nutrients has been discovered that can grow Cordyceps militaris in a sustainable way that doesn't involve an insect host. Hooray!

This allows it to be commercially grown and takes it from being the most expensive mushroom in the world to a much more affordable level.

But how does it compare to the naturally grown Cordyceps? Well, it is not as high in the varied fatty acids, and it doesn’t have as much Adenosine in it, but it has a lot more cordycepin and cordycepic acid, and it has been shown to act on the different body systems very similarly.

There is one paper that tells the exact differences for each important compound, which was interesting because it varies so much. It’s not just a straight statement that the natural one has more, and the cultured one has less. 

That makes sense because it is still a living thing using what it has at its disposal to create health for itself. And in the end, it doesn’t seem to make much difference in the overall health of the body. The natural and the cultured seem to accomplish the same thing, even if with different concentrations of components. I guess there is more than one way to skin a cat. (Incidentally, that idiom is about skinning catfish, not cats, and there are lots of methods to do that.)

Cordyceps is considered to be an adaptogen. It enhances overall health, kidney and liver function, sexual function, athletic performance, cognitive abilities, immune system function, and carbohydrate metabolism. 

It helps normalize sleep patterns and keeps you young.

It also thins the blood by slowing down clotting factors, which increases circulation and invigorates and helps with strength and fatigue. This could be useful in the post-world situation that many are still suffering from.

People scheduled for surgery are asked to stop taking Cordyceps three weeks before their surgery.

The active ingredients are:

• Cordycepin
• Cordycepic acid

Other things in Cordyceps include:

Superoxide dismutase SOD for short, and Glutathione peroxidase seem to be stimulated by cordyceps. These are super antioxidants. And don’t forget ergothionine, found in all mushrooms, that gets rid of mercury and heavy metals.

Proteins, amino acids and cyclic dipeptides, which are 4-membered rings made from 2 amino acids joined by peptide bonds. They are extremely useful in various metabolic processes in many systems of the body. They are important in cell signaling and immune system support. I would think they contribute greatly to the adaptogenic action of Cordyceps.

Carbohydrates in general.

Saccharides and sugar derivatives-meaning other compounds formed from the original sugar.

Sterols

Nucleosides, including adenosine. These make up the DNA, RNA and energy-storing compounds like ATP. Very basic and important to health.

28 Fatty acids saturated and unsaturated. They keep a body young and alive.

Fatty acid derivatives

Minerals including Potassium, Sodium, Calcium, Magnesium, Iron, Copper, Manganese, Zinc, Phosphorous, Selenium, Aluminum, Silicon, Nickel, Strontium, Titanium, Chromium, Gallium, Vanadium and Zirconium.-- wow that is a lot of minerals. I bet that has a lot to do with what this mushroom can do, especially regarding the immune system.

Well, now you are an expert on Cordyceps. I bet you will be glad to know that Herbal Roots now includes this in their store! I want to see how Cordyceps and Reishi work together. I already have the Reishi working. It has already done wonders for my mental clarity.

You know these mushrooms are game changers and I am looking forward to your feedback on what they do for you when you try them. Please let me know!