Coriolus Super Strength - Turkey Tail

Adults, take 1-3 capsules, twice daily, on an empty stomach.

Hot water extracts of Coriolus Versicolor are one of the most effective and bestselling immune support supplements in the world, and the most widely used immune support supplement in Japan.*

The immune health benefits of hot water extracts of Coriolus have been verified in hundreds of studies and multiple human clinical trials, making Coriolus Versicolor one of the most thoroughly researched medicinal mushrooms ever studied or used for immune support.*

Coriolus Versicolor is known as Yun zhi in China and Kawaratake in Japan. In the U.S., it is also known as the Turkey Tail mushroom and by its scientific name, Trametes Versicolor. Coriolus Versicolor is likely the most common shelf fungus in the world.

The NIH funded a seven year study on Coriolus versicolor at Bastyr University in Seattle, Washington. The study started out using an unextracted Turkey Tail mushroom supplement made by another U.S. based mushroom company for the first eighteen months, but dropped that unextracted supplement from the study in 2010 and replaced it with PSK, a hot water extract of Coriolus versicolor made in Japan.

This was to be expected; the researchers used data from studies on hot water extracts to get the NIH grant money to begin with. It was surprising that the researchers chose to study unextracted mushroom powder at all. There is no data on unextracted mushroom or mycelium powder in the scientific literature and unextracted medicinal mushrooms have never been used in traditional herbal practice.

Mushroom Science’s Coriolus Super Strength formula is carefully prepared with a multistep hot water extraction process, and delivers the same concentration of immune supporting polysaccharides as the PSK tested in the highly regarded Japanese research (also known as Krestin, or Polysaccharide K).*

Coriolus versicolor extracts have been available for decades in herb shops in the Chinatown sections of cities like San Francisco. A Mushroom Science employee first purchased one there in 1989, but they were not the same potency as the PSK used in the Japanese research. Starting in 1994, Mushroom Science was the first company to offer a Coriolus extract that did match the potency of the PSK used in the Japanese research (a.k.a. Krestin).

There are some companies claiming that PSK and PSP can only be extracted from the mycelium (the vegetative stage), and not from the mushroom (the fruit body), however, this is not true. In the original U.S. Patent filed on the extraction process for making PSK (now expired), the inventors make the following statement; “The term “fungus belonging to the Coriolus genus” used herein is to be understood as referring to the fruit bodies and/or mycelia of the above mentioned species of fungi” (U.S. Patent 4,229,570, Oct. 21, 1980).

 *These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Hundreds of studies have been conducted and published on the immune supporting properties of the 1-4, 1-3, 1-6 linked beta glucans extracted from the cell walls of Coriolus versicolor, including multiple human clinical studies.*

There are no scientific or herbal references supporting the use of un-extracted mycelium powder (mycelium grown on rice), or tinctures (liquid supplements preserved in alcohol, also referred to as cold water extracts ).

Mushrooms or Mycelium?

As mentioned in the Product Description area some companies claim that PSK and PSP can only be extracted from the mycelium, not the mushrooms, which is not true according to the U.S. Patent filed by the original inventors of PSK.

It is true that the pharmaceutical company that first manufactured PSK for the Japanese market preferred to extract PSK from mycelium grown through liquid fermentation, also known as submerged culture, because this process does make more sense for their business model.

The pharmaceutical company already owned the equipment needed to produce the mycelium, the stainless steel fermenters or bio-reactors, and they are able to grow a batch of mycelium in 48-72 hours, producing the raw material quickly, when needed.

It can take up to 4-5 months to grow a crop of Coriolus versicolor mushrooms on wood.  However, this is the method we prefer.  Wood is what the mushrooms grow on in nature, and it provides a far more complex nutrient base than mycelium grown on rice or grown in liquid.

In the U.S.Patent detailing the extraction process the inventors offered “Proofs” of the extraction process, where they extracted “PSK” from both the mycelium and the mushroom fruit bodies.  However, the PSK extracted from the mushrooms had higher levels of immune activity as compared to the PSK extracted from the mycelium.*

Clinical Research

The research shows that the polysaccharide portion of the extract enhances the cell-mediated immune response.* The 1-4, 1-3, 1-6 linked beta glucans that make up the backbone of the polysaccharide molecule act as a biological response modifier and have been found to support and enhance Natural Killer Cell function, to stimulate depressed lymphocyte proliferation, and to support the healthy growth of white blood cells.*

The research also shows these constituents to be effective at supporting normal cell growth, improving cell-mediated cytotoxicity, and increasing interleukin-2 production and T-cell proliferation.*

Extraction Information

Hot-water extracts from both the fruit body and the mycelium are used in current clinical practice and the published research. The active constituents, the protein-bound polysaccharides and the polysaccharide peptides, are found in the cell walls of both, although extracts from the fruit body (the mushroom), have shown higher levels of immune activity.*

Coriolus Super Strength is isolated using a multi-step hot-water extraction process, creating the highest possible concentrations of the polysaccharides examined in the Japanese research on PSK.  As these compounds are difficult to extract and easily degraded with excessive heat, NMR and linkage analysis are used to ensure product quality.

 *These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.