Latest news with #HimalayanViagra
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'Himalayan Viagra': the world's most coveted fungus
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. On the hit zombie TV show "The Last of Us", cordyceps fungus mostly turns people into "superstrong killing machines", said Bloomberg. But in traditional medicine, the chilli-shaped fungi are "prized as a panacea" and "an aphrodisiac" – so much so that one species found throughout the Himalayas, cordyceps sinensis, is "worth four times its weight in gold". But the booming demand for this so-called "Himalayan Viagra" is taking its toll on a vulnerable region. In the remote, high-altitude pastures of Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and India, the cordyceps is known by the Tibetan phrase yartsa gunbu ("summer grass, winter worm"). It is believed to strengthen lungs and kidneys, as well as increase vitality. It's also prized in traditional Chinese medicine as an aphrodisiac. And it's lately had "something of a modern coming-out party", said Bloomberg. In 1993, a Chinese track coach attributed "a series of record-breaking runs" to a tonic made from the fungus. Since Nepal legalised trade in 2001, it has become a "coveted gift" in China, South Korea and Japan: "a way to show off". Cheap supplements promising "synthetic slivers of cordyceps" can be bought everywhere from Whole Foods to Amazon. In 2013, researchers estimated that the global market was worth as much as $11 billion (£8.7 billion) a year. It is "the world's most highly prized parasite", said Oryx Journal, and one of the most important sources of income in the extremely poor region. But little is known about its trade, while its harvest and sale is "often illegal and unsustainable". In 2020, the non-profit organisation International Union for Conservation of Nature listed yartsa as vulnerable to extinction, saying it had declined by at least 30% over 15 years. Its price and scarcity means yartsa "hasn't been studied much in the West", said New Scientist. But researchers in China, Nepal and India have documented its potential benefits for liver, kidney and cardiovascular disease, as well as possible "anti-inflammatory and anti-viral effects". Scientists at the University of Oxford are also studying its potential as an anti-cancer drug. The increasing demand for yartsa is having "a huge ecological impact" on the region, which is already "warming at double the global average rate". Digging for the fungus increases erosion and harvesting methods can pollute rivers and lead to deforestation. It's also dangerous for the people gathering yartsa on treacherous terrain that's vulnerable to flash floods and avalanches, said Bloomberg. In 2023, more people died hunting yartsa than "summiting Mount Everest". The yartsa trade also "relies significantly on child labour", and the potential pay-offs are fuelling smuggling and turf-war violence. "People fight and die over it, and we're not even sure it works," said Rajendra Bajgain, a member of Nepal's House of Representatives. "Yartsa needs regulation, and we need to shore up our borders. What's really unbelievable is how many people come from China to buy it and smuggle it home. It's out of control."
Bloomberg
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
Businessweek The Sex Mushroom Hunters of Nepal
Listen: The Last of Us Mushrooms, Prized as Sex Aids and More, Have Created a Multibillion-Dollar Market 00:00 13:57 ✕ Locals from remote Jumla, Nepal, searching for mega-valuable mushrooms in the country's highlands. Cordyceps fungi sell in Beijing for $136,000 a pound and have made their way into Whole Foods. They underpin entire communities in the Himalayas, but that comes with a lot of downsides. By Adam Popescu Photographs by Purnima Shrestha for Bloomberg Businessweek February 7, 2024 at 5:00 AM EDT Share this article We've got a couple of months before the second season of The Last of Us premieres, but with Valentine's Day just around the corner, there are other uses for the dread fungus cordyceps that may be of interest. On the video-game-inspired HBO show, the mushrooms mostly turn people into superstrong killing machines. In the world of traditional medicine, they're prized as a panacea and—or perhaps especially—as an aphrodisiac. Throughout the Himalayas a species called cordyceps sinensis, which grows from the corpses of ghost moth larvae that inhale its spores, is worth four times its weight in gold. Traditional medicine says it cures almost anything. Recently people have taken to calling it Himalayan Viagra. The mushroom's connection to a fictional zombie apocalypse is less obvious at the extremely high altitudes where cordyceps is picked from the ground in Nepal, China, India and Bhutan. In those places it's better known by other names. The Tibetan phrase for it is yartsa gunbu (literally 'summer grass, winter worm'). Another popular appellation is 'caterpillar fungus.' Ranging from bright orange to dark brown, the mushroom looks like a deformed matchstick and smells putrid. Dug from the ground and painstakingly cleaned by comb and toothbrush, it's taken whole in tea, crushed and added into pills or drowned in whiskey. In the US it's easiest to find the mushroom on or at Whole Foods, where cheap supplements promise synthetic slivers of cordyceps for as little as $19 per 90-pill bottle, just a tiny fraction of a market that researchers at Stanford University estimate to be worth as much as $11 billion annually. Most of what enters the US market are fakes, however, look-alikes that aren't associated with sexual potency or the other desirable effects, according to Daniel Winkler, a German mycologist who spent 20 years leading tours across Tibet. In Beijing the good stuff sells for as much as $136,000 a pound. I went to Nepal last spring to get a look closer to the source. Every shop in Kathmandu's market seemed to be selling the mushrooms, and everywhere there were foreign buyers. As a motorbike zoomed past men in Gucci tracksuits speaking Mandarin, a stoop-shouldered merchant named K.C. Bastola shifted jars of tea, saffron and pink salt to present three jars of high-, middle- and low-grade fungus. 'The bigger the yartsa, the better,' he said, holding quality pieces priced at $10 each, five times the average daily wage here. 'Good for joints, sex, heart, liver. This is what rich Chinese come for. This is our mountain medicine.' In his shop and another nearby, the mushrooms would price out to a relatively affordable $4,000 a pound. Much like cocaine in Bogotá, the price is much lower near the source. The mushrooms have yet to be beautified and repackaged as luxury goods by a series of middlemen. Over the past couple of generations, the pursuit of Cordyceps sinensis has become more fraught. This past year more people have died hunting yartsa than summiting Mount Everest. On rugged terrain as high as 15,000 feet, extreme cold, flash floods and avalanches are all killers. But as in most zombie fiction, the real monsters are men. The Dalai Lama has called cordyceps farming a crisis for Buddhist culture because it leads to profit-minded violence—gangs have been known to steal and kill for the cash crop. Even absent a turf war, the business relies significantly on child labor. Whole villages pick up and venture to high altitude for days on end of backbreaking searches on all fours. Each spring, schools close as tarp cities open. The Nepali village of Purano Mugu, where almost 100 families depend on the mushrooms to make a living. Purano Mugu is a day's walk from the Chinese border, an opportunity for China residents to circumvent stricter controls of the commodity. Nine-year-old Birenda Rawat is elated as he spots a fresh group of mushrooms. Child labor is a common feature of mushroom picking in the region. It's backbreaking work that often involves hunting on hands and knees. Rawat searches for more mushrooms with Tara Rawat (no relation). As of late June, he'd found 45 over the course of the season. The region's extreme poverty makes the mushrooms on offer difficult to refuse. Tek Bahadur Budha, a Nepali who lives near the Tibetan border, makes $15,000 a year hunting and trading them. That's enough for him to support a family of five, including two kids studying in the capital. He has no plans to stop. 'The main challenge is getting a fair price,' Budha says, because his family needs to eat, while his buyers are generally middlemen who can afford to buy low and sell high. Wild Cordyceps sinensis is so valuable in part because the market is flooded with fakes. Even some researchers attempting to divine the mushroom's health value in laboratory settings have cheaped out and used imitations, says Winkler, the mycologist. Studies that verifiably used the real fungus are rarer, and they've tended to focus on inflammation and cardiovascular response. An eight-week study looking for evidence that regular doses of the mushrooms can boost sex drive found no significant link beyond the participants feeling more energetic. 'Tibetans pretty much laugh it off and say that's not how it's used traditionally,' says Kelly Hopping, an associate professor of human-environment systems at Boise State University. American academia has its believers. 'It's really an amazing medicine that deserves more attention,' says Tawni Tidwell, a biocultural anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison's Center for Healthy Minds, where she specializes in pharmacological innovations in Tibetan medicine. Tidwell, who spent years studying across the Indian subcontinent, says the mushrooms don't supercharge her sex drive—she just feels energized after taking them—but she has seen dramatic results in other people's libidos. 'Men report their erections are more functional, stronger and longer,' she says. 'It works for women, too.' The placebo effect may be a factor here, allowed Tashi Tsering, a traditional Tibetan doctor I met at a clinic in the Nepali town of Boudha. 'Faith helps,' said Tsering, who donned a pair of Men in Black Ray-Bans and served me a steaming cup of yartsa tea. Waiting for his own drink to cool as the sound of honking cars, barking dogs and a Hindi love song floated up from the street, he pulled out a stash of orange fungus that he said came from very high altitude. 'The larger the size, the more valuable the medicine,' he said, sounding much like Bastola, the shopkeeper. And, contra Professor Hopping: 'It's very good for sex.' Tsering described five cosmic elements—earth, fire, water, air and space—that he said yartsa helps to harmonize. What he didn't mention, and what I learned the hard way, is that one cup of yartsa tea can send a person scrambling for the bathroom. Use sparingly if you want to keep your Valentine's celebration from taking a dark turn. Yartsa has been used in traditional medicines of its home region for centuries, but it had something of a modern coming-out party in 1993, after a Chinese track coach attributed a series of record-breaking runs to a tonic made from the fungus (and turtle's blood). In China, South Korea and Japan, cordyceps has become a coveted gift and a way to show off, especially around holidays. Why do wealthy people—many young and modern—buy into this ancient idea? 'Wildness is the appeal,' says Tashi Dorji, a senior livestock and rangeland specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu. He grew up in a herding community in Bhutan and now studies mountain resources and veterinary medicine. Dorji says he takes yartsa when he has a fever. 'Whether or not it works, I'm not sure,' he says. 'But psychologically it does.' Unlike Nepal, China taxes yartsa sales and restricts who can gather it. Many people skirt these laws by crossing the border from China into Nepal, where they stuff suitcases with the fungus and fly or drive it home. 'Harvesting caterpillar fungus is a critical part of livelihoods in the Himalayas,' says Uttam Babu Shrestha, founding director of Nepal's Global Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies. Isolated communities and nomads can now make more money in a month of gathering mushrooms than they can in a year farming anything else. After fungus is collected, traders like Budha bring it to Kathmandu or smuggle it into China, some by car and some on foot. Once they reach big cities such as Beijing or Kathmandu, they sell the yartsa to merchants, who grade it based on size and quality, then package it in elaborate displays for sale. 'It's like fashion,' said Yi Shaoliang, a Chinese biodiversity specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. 'If everyone says it has value and everyone wants it, you will, too.' Looking out at Kathmandu's gray skies in his cluttered office, Yi told me that while many claims 'are probably exaggerated,' there was 'enough truth or people wouldn't use it. But it's more cultural than medical, like witchcraft.' He laughed when asked if he's tried yartsa. 'One time,' he said, glossing over its effects beyond feeling 'my body heating up.' Biotech researchers have so far been most interested in the mushroom's links to improvements in cholesterol levels and immune response. Scientists at the University of Oxford and the biopharma company NuCana Plc are even evaluating a synthetic derivative for its potential as a weapon against cancer. Shrestha and other experts caution that the mushroom harvest comes with major ecological costs as well as the social ones. The Himalayas are too fragile to sustain the roughly 300,000 pounds picked each year. The nonprofit International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed Cordyceps sinensis as vulnerable to extinction. Beyond the sustainability of the fungus itself, digging increases erosion and can exacerbate snowmelt in the region, helping to accelerate climate change. At the Kathmandu Marriott, Rajendra Bajgain, a member of Nepal's House of Representatives, said the mushroom's big-money draw was destroying communities and fueling smuggling. 'People fight and die over it, and we're not even sure it works,' he said as he finished his Americano and leaned in. 'This government isn't doing enough. Yartsa needs regulation, and we need to shore up our borders. What's really unbelievable is how many people come from China to buy it and smuggle it home. It's out of control.' Later that day, I saw what Bajgain meant. While I was in Bastola's stall, a Chinese man in a Gucci tracksuit entered and pointed to the jars. 'I want that,' he said in halting English, whipping out a wad of rupees. 'All, please. I take all caterpillar fungus.' Bastola's eyes lit up as he weighed the goods. He closed early that day. 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