- Hi, I'm Sage.
Welcome back to the Addictive Wellness channel.
Today, we're going to be talking about an herb
that I have been wanting to make a video about
for quite a long time.
This is not an herb in the sense that it comes from a plant,
as many people associate the term herb.
But it doesn't come from an animal either.
This is actually coming from a fungi,
and it's one of the most powerful herbs in the world.
If I was to pick a top three or four herbs
that I would recommend to somebody not knowing anything
about their particular health situation,
but just something that almost anybody
can really benefit from, this would be one of them.
Today, we are talking about cordyceps.
Now, cordyceps is more than just one thing.
It's a genus of fungi
that consists of more than 400 different species.
Now most of what we're going to talk about today
is a specific species, specific variety,
called cordyceps sinensis CS-4.
Now this is of course, I mean it has been consumed
going back thousands of years in China.
It grows in the wild.
Now this is different than how it grows in, when cultivated,
but in the wild, it grows on the bodies of insects.
It takes over their body,
and this is a part of its life cycle,
it takes over their body, controls their muscles,
and then, keep in mind,
it does not have this effect on humans, insects only.
The spores land on the insect,
it takes over their body, controls their muscles,
makes them climb up to the highest point
in the local environment, then kills them
and grows out of its head and shoots spores off
to infect as many others in the,
in the local environment as possible.
Now you can imagine that going through nature
and finding these cordyceps and collecting them
is a very laborious, tedious process,
and for that reason, cordyceps is the most expensive herb
in the world.
You want to buy a kilo of wild cordyceps,
it's going to cost you about $20,000.
Doesn't come cheap.
So up until just a couple decades ago,
wild cordyceps was the only way you could get it,
and therefore it was reserved
really just for very, very wealthy people,
and it was a prized herb amongst royalty in China.
Nowadays though, fortunately,
we live in such an amazing and just wonderful time,
that cordyceps can be grown in a cultivated manner.
The way cordyceps sinensis CS-4 is most often grown
is that it is cultivated, and, and,
it's cultivated by the way of fermentation,
and so this allows a lot of cordyceps to be grown, and,
in a much more cost effective way
than crawling through the jungle or over grasses
and looking around where there may be one cordyceps here
and one little cordyceps there.
So, we live in an amazing time
to be able to have access to cordyceps
and have it be relatively affordable.
Now, what does cordyceps do?
Why is it in such high demand?
It's an incredible herb amongst people who are athletes
or just enjoy being physically active,
and like to have energy and like to have mental clarity
and mental focus, both energy on a physical
and a mental level.
It works in a number of ways.
One, it has a compound in it,
the one of the main compounds in cordyceps
is called cordycepin, is one of the main active compounds.
And it, essentially, is very, very similar to ATP,
adenosine triphosphate.
This is the compound produced by your mitochondria,
the power plants in your cells,
so this is pure cellular energy.
Cordycepin acts very similar to it,
and ends up increasing ATP levels in the body,
so when you have more energy for all the cells in your body,
basically, not only are you going to feel more energy,
but everything in your body
in terms of healing and detoxification, so many things,
it's all going to start working better
when you have more cellular energy.
Everything just functions better.
And then, it also is found
to change the way the body uses oxygen.
It improves the oxygen utilization,
especially if you're doing exercise.
So, there's a funny story, because back in the,
going from the early 90s all the way up to the early 2000s,
there was a group of female Chinese athletes,
they were mostly runners,
and they were highly suspected
of using performance-enhancing drugs
because they were just demolishing the competition,
and they were tested and their test came back clean,
and eventually it came out
that these ladies were just using cordyceps,
and it's amazing, but it makes sense
once you look at the science
of what cordyceps is actually doing.
Not only does it change the way the body is using oxygen,
but it's also creating an increase in VO2 max levels.
So, there was a study done where people,
adults consumed three grams a day over a six-week period,
and this led to a 7% increase in VO2 max,
which is quite significant.
And then there have been a number of studies
done on humans for various purposes,
but you always find more studies done on animals
because they're less expensive to do, right?
And of course these don't always convert
to the same results in humans,
but it's a great way to look and get an idea
of what these herbs could be doing,
that we will likely see in 20 or 30 years,
replicated in human studies, but it's a way to
be on the cutting edge and start getting the benefits
without having to wait 20 or 30 years to find out
that it was true after all.
Now of course you want to take it
and see if these things kind of turn out to be true
in your own life,
see if you do have more energy and more endurance
and maybe some more mental energy as well,
but it's always a functional thing I think
to look at the animal studies
and see what kind of results are coming out.
So, animal studies, what've they found?
Well, they've shown improved memory,
improved sexual function,
they took diabetic mice and they found
that they were able to decrease their blood sugar,
and also decrease LDL and triglycerides in mice,
so cordyceps also shows promise
as a very beneficial cardiovascular herb,
so that's also really great.
So we talked about energy, we talked about endurance,
all this physical stuff, but,
we haven't yet talked about
one of the other really interesting aspects of cordyceps,
which is its immunological activity.
Now cordyceps along with a lot of these other fungi
that we talk about, things like reishi, chaga,
maitake, shiitake, even things like agaricus
coming out of Brazil,
these fungi all have these long chain sugars
called beta-glucan polysaccharides,
which effectively act as an operating system upgrade
for the immunity,
so there's a lot of fantastic research done on cordyceps
in many different areas of immunological function
and dealing with various diseases.
Of course we're very careful,
saying that these were done in studies,
and we're not making these specific claims
about any of our products,
but it's fascinating to go out there
and look at the science and get an idea
of what could be possible.
So, I know I personally love cordyceps.
I feel it gives me a great boost in energy and endurance
and, especially when I'm,
if I'm going hiking or going surfing,
I just kind of feel I don't run out of energy as quickly,
I just, normally where I would be
paddling and paddling, paddling,
eventually okay, I got to take a break
and chill out in the water for a bit
and then I'll keep paddling to get further, I,
that, that break doesn't really feel necessary anymore,
I can just keep going and digging away, and the,
the fatigue doesn't really kick in,
the muscles don't burn the same way, you just,
you kind of feel you have this deeper breathing,
it's this, traditionally in China it's a,
it's a lung herb, it works on the lung meridian
and the lung organ system,
so it is traditionally used in that way too,
this is not, it's, we're seeing in science now,
but this is not new if you ask
practitioners of Chinese medicine
and Daoist tonic herbalists.
And, in China it's also regarded as a Jing tonic.
This Jing, you can watch our video
that we made about the three treasures,
and your Jing is your core kidney adrenal energy,
it's like your energy savings account,
it's your reserves that you're tapping into
if you are burning the candle at both ends,
living excessively and not living in balance with nature,
and cordyceps is one of the amazing herbs
for helping to replenish that.
It's balanced in terms of having both Yin Jing
and Yang Jing.
And so it's an incredible herb
for building that core vitality.
So, we covered a lot of things about cordyceps
that make it such an incredible herb,
and I am curious to know if, if you tried it
or if something you're curious to try,
what your experience has been with it,
leave a comment below, let us know,
and I look forward to reading them
and hope to see you guys again soon.
Have a beautiful day, and see you next time.