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THE EFFECT OF PROCESSING METHODS ON EFFICACY OF REISHI PRODUCTS

THE EFFECT OF PROCESSING METHODS ON EFFICACY OF REISHI PRODUCTS

Mar 12, 2020

YE LI

Boiling, grinding, extraction and concentration, spore cell-wall breaking are different reprocessing of Ganoderma lucidum raw materials, but their effect on the efficacy of Ganoderma lucidum is very different?

Water-boiling Method 

The purpose of the water-boiling method is to eat fruiting body slices. Just like making stewed chicken soup and pork rib soup, we add the fruiting body into the boiling water, so that the essence of the Reishi material is dissolved in the soup. This is the “primary hot water extraction” of Ganoderma.
 

Pork Chop Soup with Reishi and Lion’s Mane Mushroom

▲GanoHerb Ganoderma Lucidum Tea

 
Grinding Method
Ganoderma lucidum fruiting body is as tough as leather. We can’t cut it into pieces with common tools. It needs special equipment to grind it into fine powder. The fruiting body ground into powder is also called crude drug because it is not otherwise processed. Compared to the water-boiling method, which enables the dissolution of the active ingredients of Ganoderma lucidum into the water, the grinding method is to put all the ingredients together into the stomach for absorption and digestion, which can’t guarantee the absorption effect and varies from person to person.

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▲GanoHerb Ganoderma Lucidum Powder

Extraction and Concentration Method
 
Extraction and Concentration can be regarded as the improved version of the water-boiling method because it also dissolves the active ingredients with the solvent but it can extract more active ingredients by advanced equipment and processes and then can make capsules, powders or granules through concentration and drying.
 
Lingzhi water extract contains Ganoderma polysaccharides and nucleosides while Ganoderma ethanol extract contains Ganoderma triterpenes and Ganoderma sterols. As for how many active ingredients can be extracted, it depends on the extraction technology. Therefore, the same kind of Ganoderma extract can vary in the variety and content of active ingredients.
 
Anyway, compared with the water-boiling method or the grinding method, the extraction and concentration method has substantially enhanced the content of active ingredients in the unit dose. So plenty of liquid medicine or powder can be  replaced with only one capsule.
 

▲GanoHerb Lucidum Spore and Extract

 
Cell-wall Breaking Method or Cell-wall Removing Method
 
With regard to the processing method of spore powder, after years of “cell-wall breaking method”, the new term “cell-wall removing method” has recently appeared on the market.
 
Since the surface of the spore has a double-layer hard shell, researchers found that the active ingredients of Ganoderma lucidum are wrapped by the shell. The human body cannot absorb these active ingredients before the shell is broken. That’s the origin of the cell-wall breaking technology.
 

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▲Comparison between cell-wall broken powder and cell-wall unbroken powder

 
Although cell-wall unbroken spore powder is edible, many researchers have confirmed that active ingredients of more varieties and higher content are found in the cell-wall broken spore powder. Animal experiments also show that the efficacies of cell-wall broken spore powder on the immune system the is far beyond those of cell-wall unbroken spore powder. How to differentiate the cell-wall broken and cell-wall unbroken spore powder? Use the microscope.  

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▲Comparison of Ganoderma lucidum spores before and after breaking the cell-wall

 
In recent years, some sellers put forward the concept of removing the cell walls of spores by saying that the cell walls of spores are useless shells and cannot be digested. They reckoned that removing the shells of spores is good for showing the efficacies of spore powder.
 
In fact, the cell wall is composed of polysaccharides, spores’ polysaccharide ingredients are mainly from its cell wall. Polysaccharides cannot be digested by the intestines and will not produce heat, which is the reason why polysaccharides can stimulate the growth of intestinal probiotics and active the immune cells on the intestinal wall.
 
In other words, the cell wall of spores is not a burden to the intestinal tract but a source of efficacy and a good helper to maintain the intestinal health. It can’t be the useless thing that must be removed.