Chaga Mushroom: Side Effects and Dosages

Many people curious about chaga tea often ask about chaga side effects. Chaga tea is one of the easiest and safest ways to improve your health, as its benefits to circulatory, immune, and liver wellness are scientifically documented and strong. However, everything in life has a downside of some kind, and if you have chronic health conditions or other issues, you should know the facts about how chaga may affect your body.

Here are the known side effects of chaga and how you can deal with them.

What Are Chaga Side Effects?

Chaga consumption is not generally known to produce serious side effects on its own, though there are a number of precautions you should take before you begin consuming chaga. While chaga is generally safe to consume, if you have health issues or take any kind of medication, you should consult with a doctor before you begin taking chaga.

Bleeding and Clotting

The most notable side effects that occur as a result of consuming chaga are usually the result of how it interacts with other medications or substances. In particular, chaga may affect blood-thinning drugs such as aspirin due to its unique properties. Chaga’s agglomeration of anti-aggregant substances such as polysaccharides and minerals can possibly have synergistic effects when combined with other blood-thinners. Because of this, you should be careful when combining it with these medications.

As an extension of this, chaga may also slow blood clotting due to its blood-thinning properties. Because of this, if you have to undergo surgery, you should stop consuming chaga at least two weeks prior.

Diabetes

While chaga has been shown to aid diabetes sufferers in some ways, other research suggests that it may negatively interact with insulin and other similar medications. Because chaga affects blood sugar levels, it may worsen or bring on hypoglycemia in some users.

Pregnancy

At the moment, pregnant women are advised to avoid using chaga due to a lack of definitive information on how it affects child development and birth. While there is no information at the moment to suggest that chaga is harmful to pregnant women, it is better to be cautious and avoid using it.

Auto-Immune Disorders

Individuals suffering from auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis are advised to avoid chaga due to its effects on the immune system. Because chaga makes the immune system more active, individuals who are being attacked by their own immune systems risk increased damage to their bodies by taking it. Like with pregnancy, there is a general lack of literature on chaga’s effects on auto-immune disorders, but it is better to be cautious and avoid it if you suffer from one.

Chaga and the Reishi Mushroom

Because chaga’s side effects are not well understood at this time, some chaga enthusiasts have looked to similar fungi in an attempt to extrapolate how chaga might negatively affect the human body. The reishi mushroom, which is related to chaga, is one such fungus. Side effects of consuming reishi include dry mouth, itchiness, nausea, bloody stool, and nosebleeds.

As far as food products go, chaga is relatively safe, with few side effects experienced by the vast majority of users. However, if you suffer from one of the conditions mentioned earlier, you should be careful when using chaga. Additionally, be aware that the high amount of beta glucans present in chaga has varying effects on individuals. Beta glucans make it easier for the immune system to fight cancer cells by recognizing and destroying them before they can spread.

Chaga is Not a Hallucinogen

A common myth about chaga is that it has hallucinogenic or narcotic effects when consumed. Despite being a fungus, chaga has little in common with magic mushrooms and thus does not confer any sort of high or trip when you consume it. If you are looking for a new (and legal) drug experience, chaga will not provide you with the high that you’re looking for.

Side Effects from Low-Quality Chaga

While chaga itself has few documented side effects, consuming poor-quality chaga is a risky and dangerous undertaking. This is because many chaga retailers cut corners in order to make more money, selling a product that is lower in nutritional content and/or contaminated. Due to the nature of this corner-cutting, it is impossible to precisely predict the kinds of side effects that you could experience from bad chaga.

For example, unscrupulous chaga pickers have been known to mix their chaga with sand or dirt in order to make their loads heavier, allowing them to sell them for more money. Another common practice is submerging chaga in dirty, stagnant water to make it bulkier. These practices lead to bacteria and other impurities getting into the chaga. Some pickers have also been caught mixing their chaga with other mushrooms, which can be potentially lethal depending on which type of mushrooms they use.

Because of this, you need to be careful where you purchase chaga. Always do your research to ensure that a shop or website is reliable and sells a good-quality product.

Moderation

One way to guard yourself against potential chaga side effects is to be careful with your consumption habits. For example, immediately going from no chaga to ten cups of it a day may upset your body’s natural equilibrium. If you want to incorporate chaga into your diet, you should do so gradually, increasing your intake until it’s at the level you want.

Summary

Chaga is a very safe substance to consume, which is why indigenous peoples in the Northern Hemisphere have been using it for years to cure a wide variety of ailments. However, you should always do your research and make decisions carefully based on your particular health situation.

The easiest way to ensure that you have a good experience with chaga is to only buy from trusted retailers, who purchase their chaga from ethical pickers who don’t cut corners. By doing your homework beforehand, you can ensure that your experience with chaga tea is a pleasant one.