War on Cancer

byRalph W. Moss, PhD

Chaga Mushroom and Cancer

He could not imagine any greater joy than to go away into the woods for months on end, to break off this chaga, crumble it, boil it up on a campfire, drink it and get well like an animal. … Just as a dog goes to search for some mysterious grass that will save him. …

• Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

Inonotus obliquus is the scientific name for chaga mushroom, a black-and-brown parasitic fungus, of the Hymenochaetaceae family. It grows as a cork-textured mass on the living trunks of mature birch trees. Other common names are clinker polypore, cinder conk, black mass, and birch canker polypore. Unlike many fungi, chaga has almost no smell or taste. In cold parts of the world, especially in regions above the 45th parallel north, chaga is abundant and can be harvested in the wild using a chisel or saw to separate it from the tree. The fungus is then powdered or cut into dice-sized chunks. One can soak it in hot water to easily make a tea. Chaga is popular in the folk medicine of not just Russia, but North America, Finland, Poland, northeast China, and Japan. In Russia, it has allegedly been used as a treatment of cancer since at least the 16th century.

Like many folk remedies of long standing, there is probably a rational core to its use. More than 20 different bioactive compounds have been found in chaga mushrooms, some of them with activity against cancer.

On a personal note, my late friend, Harris Coulter, PhD, the celebrated historian of homeopathy (Divided Legacy), made his living as a simultaneous translator of Russian and English. In this capacity, he got to know the famous Russian Nobel laureate and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The latter told him that while in a Soviet prison camp he had cured himself of cancer with the help of this wild-crafted mushroom. That is the incident referred to in the above quote from his book Cancer Ward.

There are currently 135 scientific articles in PubMed on chaga mushroom; 44 of these relate to the treatment of cancer. None of these is a clinical trial. I have repeatedly seen references to a long-ago clinical trial, but have not tracked this down. However, for the sake of completeness, I am including the following statement found at many websites:

In a 48-patient human clinical trial in Poland in 1957, 10 patients treated with chaga showed a reduction of tumor size, a decrease in pain, a decrease in the intensity and the frequency of hemorrhaging, and a recovery accompanied with better sleep, appetite and feelings of improvement. Most of these patients were females treated with chaga for cancer of the genital organs or breast cancer.

Some of the laboratory work is quite interesting, even provocative. In January 2015, scientists in Yangling, China, isolated two lignin-carbohydrate compounds, dubbed IOW-S-1 and IOW-S-2, which have anticancer activity. A lignin is a complex chemical compound usually derived from the cell wall of plants (including trees). The carbohydrates in question bind to the lignins and make them water soluble. The substances were extracted using a hot-water method, but both water extracts and alcohol extracts have been found to have anticancer effects. (I shall say more about the extraction process in a moment.)

In the 2015 experiment, the anticancer compounds were extracted from chaga powder three times, with water at 60 ºC (140 ºF). Alcohol (ethanol) was subsequently used to further extract some components of the chaga. This is an important lead for anyone thinking of making their own chaga tea, for 140º F is hot, but not boiling. It is a good rule when preparing chaga tea to extract the beneficial chemicals without damaging or degrading them (as boiling water might do).

Both IOW-S-1 and IOW-S-2 can induce apoptosis (a form of programmed cell death) in cancer cells. “In addition, both carbohydrate–lignin complexes inhibited the activation of the nuclear transcription factor NF-kB in cancer cells,” the authors wrote (Wang et al. 2015). NF-kB, or nuclear factor kappa B, is a key regulator of inflammation.

In the laboratory, chaga has been found to be effective against melanoma (Youn 2014), cervical (Zhao 2014), colon (Lemieszek 2011), lung and breast (Nagajyothi 2014), sarcoma (Chung 2010), lymphoma, and leukemia (Patel 2012). It needs emphasizing that—despite many anecdotes—we do not know if the same would be true in the human clinical situation. But, by all accounts, chaga is relatively nontoxic, readily available in northern forests, and nonpatentable. I believe that this accounts for the fact that no one is rushing to test its actual effects in cancer. Clinicaltrials.gov currently lists no clinical trials of Inonotus obliquus.

How to Make Chaga Tea

Chaga is readily available over the Internet, including at Amazon.com. One can buy it in powder form or conveniently in capsules. However, I prefer to buy it in chunks, where I can judge for myself the freshness and quality of the product. The two main sources are from Siberia and Maine. Perhaps because I once lived in the state, I favor the Maine product. Chaga is common above the area of Rangeley, Maine.

One simply takes a chunk of chaga, puts it in a container, and pours a cup of hot water over it. You then let it sit for an hour or so. You do not want to use boiling water (212 ºF = 100 ºC). The above scientific articles states that water at 140 ºF to 160º F is best. The chaga cube can be reused twice after the initial extraction. Another scientific article indicates that of various water temperatures, 158 ºF (70 ºC) was optimal for the extraction of antioxidants. I tested this with a kitchen thermometer. This is not boiling but still too hot to comfortably keep your finger in for more than a few seconds.

As to alcohol (ethanol) extraction, this can be done with any good grade of commercial vodka, the stronger the better. Save the chaga chunks that have been subjected to water extraction, chop or grind them up, and put them into a vodka bath. This will get at certain beneficial compounds that cannot be extracted by water. You can then drop the desired amount of tincture into any leftover water extract. This will help keep the water extract from becoming moldy or contaminated. You can then reheat the mixture when you are ready to use it, as this will evaporate off any unwanted alcohol. The result is an extract of medicinal mushroom more powerful than what you are likely to buy online, at a fraction of the cost.

Why Some Docs Give Too Frequent Radiation

It is often claimed that decisions in oncology are made solely on the basis of the effectiveness of treatments. I cannot tell you how many times I have been scolded, “When there are clinical trials that prove the effectiveness of a treatment, it will quickly be implemented.” However, a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows that this is not necessarily true. Some doctors are refusing to adopt a treatment that is proven to save patients (and society) time and money.

The JAMA study is remarkable not just for what it says, but for who is saying it.

The study in question does not directly concern complementary medicine, but two competing forms of radiation therapy for cancer. As background, scientists have repeatedly shown that an abbreviated course of radiation following surgery for breast cancer is as effective at preventing recurrences as a longer, more expensive course of treatment. This is now the rule in Canada. But despite this, many US doctors have failed to change their outdated practices. The reasons, the authors imply, have nothing to do with efficacy and everything to do with money. Radiation oncologists in private practice (among the best paid of all physicians) get paid more for the longer course of treatment. In many cases, they ignore the clear benefit in terms of comfort and well-being of the women involved, not to mention the needs of society to marshal scarce medical resources, and continue to subject numerous women to a longer and more arduous course of treatment (Bekelman 2014).

The senior author of the paper is Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, a former top health advisor to President Obama and current chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He commented on the paper as follows: “For women as patients it’s much better to have the shorter course. They get done with radiation four weeks early, and for society it’s less expensive. The only person it’s not good for is the radiation oncologist. I think it’s a challenge for them.”

In 2011 the American Society for Radiation Oncology endorsed the shorter course of radiation treatment. It remarked at the time that this short course is “equally effective for in-breast tumor control and comparable in long-term side effects,” especially for women over the age of 50 who haven’t had chemotherapy or do not have lymph-node involvement.

But in 2013, only about one-third of patients who were approved for a short course of treatment (“hypofractionated radiation”) actually received it.

Hypofractionated radiation was significantly less expensive than the longer course of treatment: it was between 9.1% and 11.8% cheaper. The medical system could save about $4500 per patient if hypofractionation were the rule, instead of the exception.

Radiation oncologists have been very slow to adopt the less expensive guidelines. Bruce G. Haffty, MD, chairman of the department of radiation oncology at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, told the New York Times: “If a physician is doing five to seven weeks of radiation for 25 years, particularly if the physician is not a specialist and not in an academic medical center, you will be a bit leery about going to something new. Now you’ve got something that perhaps costs a bit less, but you wonder: Is it as effective?” (Kolata 2014).

But the equivalence of the two schedules now seems to be a matter of fact, not conjecture. In addition to inertia, some commentators are dancing around the most obvious explanation of oncologists’ lackadaisical response to this data: the old way of doing things is also more profitable. If the new way were $4500 more profitable per patient, I think we would see far more doctors (especially those in private practice) quickly adopting it.

References

Bekelman JE, Sylwestrzak G, Barron J, et al. Uptake and costs of hypofractionated vs conventional whole breast irradiation after breast conserving surgery in the United States, 2008–2013. JAMA. 2014;312(23):2542–2550. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.16616.

Chung MJ, Chung C-K, Jeong Y, Ham S-S. Anticancer activity of subfractions containing pure compounds of Chaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquus) extract in human cancer cells and in Balbc/c mice bearing Sarcoma-180 cells. Nutr Res Pract. 2010;4(3):177–182.

Lemieszek MK, Langner E, Kaczor J, et al. Anticancer effects of fraction isolated from fruiting bodies of Chaga medicinal mushroom, Inonotus obliquus (Pers.:Fr.) Pilát (Aphyllophoromycetideae): in vitro studies. Int J Med Mushrooms. 2011;13(2):131–143.

Kolata G. Long radiation treatments called unnecessary in many breast cancer cases. New York Times. Dec. 10, 2014.

Nagajyothi PC, Sreekanth TVM, Lee J, Lee KD. Mycosynthesis: antibacterial, antioxidant and antiproliferative activities of silver nanoparticles synthesized from Inonotus obliquus (Chaga mushroom) extract. J Photochem Photobiol B. 2014;130:299–304. doi:10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2013.11.022.

Patel S, Goyal A. Recent developments in mushrooms as anti-cancer therapeutics: a review. 3 Biotech. 2012;2(1):1–15. doi:10.1007/s13205-011-0036-2.

Wang Q, Mu H, Zhang L, Dong D, Zhang W, Duan J. Characterization of two water-soluble lignin metabolites with antiproliferative activities from Inonotus obliquus. Int J Biol Macromol. 2015;74C:507–514. doi:10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2014.12.044.

Youn M-J, Kim J-K, Park S-Y, et al. Potential anticancer properties of the water extract of Inonotus [corrected] obliquus by induction of apoptosis in melanoma B16-F10 cells. J Ethnopharmacol. 2009;121(2):221–228. doi:10.1016/j.jep.2008.10.016.

Zhao L-W, Zhong X-H, Yang S-Y, et al. Inotodiol inhabits proliferation and induces apoptosis through modulating expression of cyclinE, p27, bcl-2, and bax in human cervical cancer HeLa Cells. Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. Apr 2014;15:3195–3199.

Ralph W. Moss, PhD, is the author of 12 books on cancer-related topics. The former science writer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, for 35 years Moss has investigated the validity of many cancer treatments. He currently directs the Moss Reports, a library of reports for patients on over 200 different cancer diagnoses.