Chaga vs. AHCC
If you’re familiar with medicinal mushrooms and/or superfoods, you’ve probably heard of chaga. Cultivated in the northernmost regions of the world and used as a folk remedy by generations of Alaskans and Siberians, chaga has been proven to fight disease, combat cancer, reverse aging through the elimination of free radicals, and much more. Users of medicinal mushrooms may be curious to see how chaga compares to other mushrooms and mushroom extracts, such as AHCC.
The answer is that chaga is a great complement to AHCC, augmenting the positive effects of that extract with its own nutritional value. Read on to learn how combining chaga with AHCC can help you.
Chaga vs. AHCC
AHCC, short for Active Hexose Correlated Compound, is a nutritional supplement that is produced by shiitake, a mushroom related to chaga. AHCC is created in the shiitake’s mycelium, the vegetative portion of the mushroom. While AHCC can be consumed by eating shiitake mushrooms, some vendors have begun extracting AHCC to sell as a super-concentrated supplement for greater potency and portability.
AHCC is structurally similar to chaga in that it consists of polysaccharides, complex compounds that include beta-glucans and alpha-glucans. Indeed, acetylated alpha-glucans are unique to the makeup of AHCC and cannot be found elsewhere in nature. 20 percent of the makeup of AHCC consists of acetylated alpha-glucans. In China and Japan, AHCC is a popular illness remedy and is available over-the-counter.
There are a number of synergistic effects you can take advantage of by using both chaga and AHCC. The first is improved immunity to disease. Clinical studies into AHCC has shown that it has immunostimulatory effects similar to chaga. When present in the bloodstream, AHCC has the ability to stimulate the production of cytokines, messengers that convey information between white blood cells, allowing them to react faster to infections. This is identical to how chaga is able to kick-start the immune system into action, making both substances ideal for when you are sick.
Another way in which AHCC and chaga work together is through their anti-cancer properties. Polysaccharides have been shown to reduce the chance of developing cancer and to destroy tumor cells when they appear, and both AHCC and chaga are rich in both. This quality is why AHCC (as well as shiitake mushrooms themselves) is often used as a cancer remedy in Japan. In combination with chaga, AHCC can help cancer sufferers recover from their illness.
Not only that, AHCC has been shown to help ameliorate the negative effects of more conventional cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy. Treatments such as chemotherapy often result in lasting damage to the body, harming the immune system and causing long periods of nausea, sickness, and debilitation. Like chaga, AHCC can help ease these effects and allow the sufferer to recover from their cancer treatment more rapidly.
In addition to this, like chaga, AHCC has been suggested to possess anti-inflammatory effects. While some inflammation is necessary for the body to combat infections, chronic inflammation has been linked to heart disease and other ailments. Consuming AHCC has been shown to lower inflammation in the body’s tissues, meaning that you can enjoy an even stronger anti-inflammatory effect when combining it which chaga.
One major issue with existing AHCC research is that it is not as thorough as chaga research, so many claims about AHCC remain unverified to a certain extent. While chaga has been extensively studied in recent decades, it is only in the past few years that AHCC has been sold as a separate supplement, extracted from shiitake mushrooms. While the effects of shiitake are better known, AHCC is still something of a blank spot in mushroom research, so you should do your due diligence before using the substance.
Having said this, AHCC has built a strong reputation in the relatively short time it has been available for purchase. If you are interested in enhancing the effects of your chaga, it is worth adding AHCC to your diet.
Conclusion
AHCC has only been known to the wider world for a short period of time, even shorter than chaga. Despite this, it has already been shown to possess a wide range of positive benefits, ranging from anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties to its ability to strengthen the immune system. Chaga also possesses these properties, meaning that if you combine these two great foods, you can double your resistance to disease, cancer, and more.
Chaga has been used as a folk remedy for millennia for a reason: no other food offers its sheer nutritional value. By combining it with AHCC, you can further enhance chaga’s value and shore up your body’s defenses against common and uncommon ailments. Chaga combined with AHCC is a nutritional stack that will harden your body against disease, help combat cancer, and reduce dangerous inflammation, allowing you to live life on your terms.