The Last of the Fungus

&gt; Most modern scientific experimentation has failed to demonstrate any lasting medicinal potency in the fungus,<p>Lasting is a weird weasel word here. Cordyceps are well studied, and they do have acute effects that have been measured in many studies. They increase athletic endurance and are stimulating.<p>Is the author minimizing the effects to try to prevent the ecological effects of over harvesting?<p>Most cordyceps supplements today contain cordyceps militaris spawned on grain. Sinensis is sometimes claimed to be more potent than easier-to-cultivate militaris - I wouldnt be surprised if the romanticism of the &quot;wild and rare&quot; version is overblown, but the claim that it doesn&#x27;t have demonstrable potency seems implausible and strange.

My dad believes that garlic is the best antibiotic, so he eats a lot whenever he gets sick (he doesn&#x27;t care if it&#x27;s a viral infection, because garlic conveniently also boosts the immune system).<p>Thank goodness garlic is cheap and easily available, and he doesn&#x27;t fund some bizarre economy by buying rare, weird-looking foodstuffs with purported magical properties.

&gt; I, too, grew up in this part of the world—my hometown in the Sichuan lowland was only a day’s drive away. But I was naive enough to think that training on an elliptical machine was adequate preparation to hunt caterpillar fungus in person<p>Yeah hiking up in those mountains really sneaks up on you. I work in agriculture scouting fields and so I’m reasonably capable of all day long activity in adverse conditions carrying light equipment.<p>I started off full throttle “it’s just normal walking on gravel except up a bit”, only to find there’s an invisible wall you cross passing a certain elevation where suddenly exhaustion hits and taking single steps is a big drain. It was actually kind of funny. It’s the kind of sudden exhaustion you get when trying to walk over grown soybeans, but with nothing in the way.

Paul Stamets on Joe Rogan (crazy stuff, apolitical topics are all I can stand, then only barely...) mentioned that Cordyceps sinensis seems to have different fruiting forms, and in the wild it often grows with another fungi so you get very different expression.<p>I&#x27;m not a TCM believer, but dispassionate studies Stamets mentioned also have shown that growing some fungi on grain vs. hardwood causes large swings in the production of some compounds by the mycelium. &quot;You are what you eat&quot; applies to plenty of things, and I think there&#x27;s just a huge bias we have that &#x27;some dumb white fuzz&#x27; can&#x27;t have all this hidden complexity.

This is a fantastic piece, and is written so well! I wish more could be done to educate folks along the way. Imagine 1&#x2F;10th of a country&#x27;s GDP depending on the fungi, and it&#x27;s not just hard to source, but its efficacy on certain aspects is questionable.

What an engagingly-written and interesting piece. I really enjoyed the glimpse into the lives of ordinary people somewhere where I may never get the opportunity to travel to.

This article is worth reading start to finish. It&#x27;s about more than fungus, it&#x27;s about how a scientist can try to impact society and the limitations of it.

<i>Market price of caterpillar fungus equates to a full tenth of Tibet’s gross domestic product—more than its mining and other industrial sectors combined.</i><p>And this is the first I&#x27;ve heard of it.<p>This is potentially economically devastating. And I have no idea how to feel about the actual practice, though I&#x27;m taken aback at the idea of trying to intentionally parasitize live caterpillars in order to domesticate the product.

Totally aside from the point of the article I noticed he used the phrase &quot;I played Cassandra&quot;. Can anyone tell me what this means? Searching brings up nothing.

Vegetable caterpillars in Aotearoa NZ formed part of traditional tattooing when pigments when dried then ground up.