In 2005, I went to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for a research trip, and along the way I saw people with sticks in their hands plucking at the grass, looking for something. When I asked the groundskeeper, he said that they were looking for Cordyceps. At that time, the price of cordyceps had soared to tens of thousands of yuan per kilogram, stimulating many foreigners and locals to look for it, causing serious damage to the local vegetation. Since then the price of Cordyceps has continued to soar, priced by the gram, and at its peak was several times the price of gold. This year, the price of cordyceps has dropped, but the price of bulk cordyceps is around 500 yuan per gram, which is still much more expensive than gold, and there are even so-called “extreme grasses” that are advertised in the media, selling for as much as 1,000 yuan per gram. The Chinese superstitiously believe in tonic products, naturally has its traditional cultural factors, always think that the ancient people think is good, it must be good. However, the history of Cordyceps being consumed by the Chinese is relatively short, and it is not even found in the “Compendium of Materia Medica”, which is regarded by many as a sacred text. It was only in the book “The Materia Medica from the New”, published during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, that the first record of Cordyceps was made. It is mainly used to cure cough (whether it is really effective is another matter), compared with today’s Cordyceps being treated as an antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-fatigue, anti-aging, immune regulating and other all-purpose tonic, health care products, it seems very unclass. The reason why the ancients treat Cordyceps as a panacea is because they think it is a worm in winter and a grass in summer, which is very magical, and the magical thing must have a magical effect. This is what the “Materia Medica” says: “Winter in the earth, the body is alive as the old silkworm, there are hairs can move. To summer is the hair out of the earth, even the body all turned into grass. If you do not take, to winter, it will turn into worms again.” We know today that this statement is wrong. Winter worm and summer grass is not magical at all, but a fungus parasitized on the larvae of a lepidopteran insect called bat moth, and it is impossible for the larvae to come back to life after being parasitized. Bat moth larvae spend the winter in the soil and are infected by the fungus, which grows inside the larvae and causes them to die. When the temperature returns, the fungal mycelium grows out of the head of the worm and emerges from the ground, and its ascospores look like grass. The corpse of the bat moth larvae and the parasitic fungus together become “Cordyceps sinensis” in Chinese medicine. This parasitic phenomenon is very common in nature, and there are more than 500 species of parasitic fungi called Cordyceps alone, but only one of them is considered by Chinese medicine to have truly miraculous effects, and that one is Cordyceps. However, to put it bluntly, Cordyceps is a caterpillar carcass plus a fungus, so what magical effect can it have? But there are people who believe that Cordyceps contains magical active ingredients. So let’s take a look at what’s actually in Cordyceps. In fact, the ingredients of Cordyceps are no different from other worms and fungi, mainly carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals, which are found in almost all foods, nothing magical. In the 1950s, someone found that Cordyceps had a special ingredient with about 7% of its content, named it Cordyceps acid, and thought it was the active ingredient of Cordyceps. Later it was found that the chemical structure of cordycepic acid was measured wrong, and a more precise determination revealed that it is mannitol, which is a very common and cheap chemical product, a kilogram is just a few tens of dollars. Mannitol is widely used in food and medicine, for example, mannitol is in chewing gum, and mannitol is used in some of the corkage for constipation. If Cordyceps acid is the active ingredient of Cordyceps, then chewing gum is equivalent to eating Cordyceps? Later on, someone found a very trace ingredient from the chrysalis, called cordycepin, which is considered the active ingredient of Cordyceps. In fact, it is still controversial whether Cordyceps really contains Cordyceps, some people can not detect it, some people do, but the content is also extremely low, only about 0.1%. The chemical name of cordycepin is 3′-deoxyadenosine, which is also contained in some molds and can now be synthesized chemically. 3′-deoxyadenosine can inhibit the synthesis of nucleic acids, so in theory it can inhibit the growth of tumors. It is believed that Cordyceps can fight cancer because of the presence of cordycepin. Indeed there are also a number of in vitro and animal experiments showing that cordycepin can inhibit tumors. For example, Japanese researchers found that if mice with melanoma were fed cordycepin for 14 days, the weight of the tumors decreased by 36%. Does this mean that eating cordyceps can really suppress tumors? Let’s do the math. The cordycepin dosage for that experiment was 15 mg per kg of body weight per day. Even if the results of the mouse experiment could be extended to human, that would mean a 65 kg weight cancer patient would have to eat 1 gram of cordycepin per day, based on the calculation that Cordyceps contains 0.1% cordycepin, 1 kg of Cordyceps per day, and a course of treatment for 14 days would mean eating 14 kg of Cordyceps, which would cost 7 million yuan at today’s prices, and the result would only shrink the tumor by 36%. Even if this treatment really works, it is the most expensive cancer treatment with very little effect. Even if you are a billionaire who can afford it, to eat 1 kg of cordyceps per day is equivalent to eating cordyceps as a meal, can you stand it? So Cordycepin, if it is the active ingredient of Cordyceps, is not going to be effective due to its extremely low content, by eating that much Cordyceps every day. Since cordycepin can be synthesized, perhaps it can be used directly as a chemotherapy drug in the future. In fact, there are now chemotherapy drugs with similar effects. But the anti-cancer principle of cordycepin is to inhibit the synthesis of nucleic acids, then like many chemotherapy drugs, it can kill normal cells while killing tumor cells, causing harm to the body. Understanding this, if you really believe that eating cordyceps can fight cancer, do you still dare to eat it? Others believe that the active ingredient of Cordyceps is its polysaccharide or other components. These are only very preliminary results of in vitro or animal studies, and are not considered conclusive evidence. In fact, there are no reliable clinical trials that have demonstrated any health or therapeutic benefits from eating Cordyceps. The researchers (mainly Chinese and Japanese) who are looking for the active ingredients are assuming that Cordyceps does have the legendary effects and then finding some new ingredient and assuming that it has those effects. So if we believe the results of these studies, then we have to believe that any of the trace components found in Cordyceps have miraculous effects such as anti-cancer, and the results of such studies are miraculous enough in themselves. Some people think that eating cordyceps has health benefits, but it is just a psychological effect. It’s always a shame to eat something so expensive and not feel a little bit of action. If you’re looking for a way to get the most out of your life, you’ll be able to get the most out of your life. According to reports, the wife of a fallen senior official was found to have chronic heavy metal poisoning, the test found that the cordyceps she usually used to nourish her body contained heavy metals, suspecting that someone had poisoned her, and from then on had persecution delusions, suspicion, which led to a series of major turmoil, eventually leading to the fall of the senior official. In fact, the heavy metals in the cordyceps she ate were probably not poisoned, but added by the vendor to increase the quantity of cordyceps, just to sell more money. If not for her superstitious belief in Chinese medicine, she ate cordyceps, there is no back those things.