[Daniel] It's a great example over here. This is Ganoderma tsugae, we also call it the
hemlock varnish conch, because before the spores are on it, like you see here, it's got almost
like it's been polyurethane like a varnish on it. And it grows on our hemlock trees. Now it's
part of a small group of mushrooms we call Reishi, and they're a bunch of related species. In Asia
the most common one is Ganoderma lucidum. Here we often use in the Northeast,Ganoderma tsugae,
they all have the same mycochemistry and pharmacological action. It is an immunomodulator.
It's a tonic. It's a stress reliever or adaptogen. This is a mushroom that starts growing here in the
summertime and we harvest it late summer. And I do a two part medicine out of it, so some of the
mushroom I would I would cut it up into cubes and let it dry. The reason I put it in the Sun is when
the UV rays hit it, it actually starts to produce vitamin D2, which we convert into vitamin D3.
So
it actually starts to accumulate more of that, in the same way that our skin responds to
ultraviolet light as well. Now half of that I'll put into alcohol and make the tincture with.
The other half I'll boil in water and reduce down that decoction and then I later mix the two
together. And the reason is because the water extraction from this is going to contain all of
the immunomodulating properties, and the alcohol parts gonna pull the terpenes out, and those are
the adaptogenic parts.
Those are the parts that help our bodies adapt to environmental stresses.
When we put those two together we get a powerful medicine that's been revered throughout the world
for a very long time. It's, it's in the top ten, let's say in Chinese medicine, and it's definitely
in the top ten here in the United States in our modern herbal and tonic herbal systems
that are kind of evolving here in the West..