The Magic of Medicinal Mushrooms with Ron Teeguarden

Master Herbalist Ron Teeguarden, the father of the tonic herbal movement and founder of Dragon Herbs, sat down with writer Vivian Kanchian to discuss the deep holistic roots of reishi, cordyceps, and chaga mushrooms in this exclusive interview. — Shannon Ratliff

I fell in love with medicinal mushrooms for the first time at Ron Teeguarden’s shop in Los Angeles, called Dragon Herbs. I clearly remember strolling in feeling a little under the weather, as if I was on the verge of getting a cold. After a chat with an herbalist who recommended an immunity tincture, I dropped a few droppers full of the bitter extract into my mouth. Before I walked out of the store that day, I was already feeling better. This was over 20 years ago.

Having first discovered the magic of ancient tonic herbs in his twenties, Ron is a Master Herbalist who studied under the guidance of the renowned Taoist teacher Master Sung Jin Park. He has since authored three books on the topic, and together with his wife Yanlin, founded Dragon Herbs in 2000. Now in his seventies, this widely regarded father of tonic herbalism in the US still travels regularly to China to source the highest quality herbs and superfoods.

I arrive at his office on this unusually cold and wet L.A. evening and find him surrounded by fantastical spaceship-shaped mushrooms he has collected on his numerous travels. Excited as ever about discussing medicinal mushrooms, his enthusiasm is both contagious and inspiring.

Ron Teeguarden: I’m going to start sticking a couple herbs in my teapot because it’s hot now and then we can continue just cooking it for a while. This is just some slices of Duanwood Reishi, it’s bitter.

It’s not the thing I would usually serve to everybody. But this is just a test [to see] if you’re a mushroom girl.

Vivian Kanchian: Haha! Well, I’m possibly the biggest lover of mushrooms, without enjoying the actual taste of mushrooms. But I’m excited to try.

RT: Going back thousands of years there were mushrooms that did all kinds of stuff. You know, from poisoning people to enlightening them in one step, you know.

All the way up to maybe a thousand years ago, people discovered things like reishi and cordyceps being so healthy and so good for your mind… that the taste was not an issue. People who are real herbalists, they’re not drinking it for the taste. I mean, I try to blend everything in a way so it can taste pleasant or interesting. But the reishi mushrooms are just not a culinary delight. Yet, I recommend every person on the planet take reishi every day so long as we don’t break the chain, the ecosystem, you know – sustainability issues. But that’s been largely solved [with Reishi].

VK: Has it? How so? By lab-grown stuff?

RT: No, we don’t do lab stuff. Okay, so you want to talk about Reishi and examples of that?

VK: Yeah, about sustainability and I have a specific question actually, about Chaga. From what I understand, the chaga you get from a tree can’t really be duplicated in the lab. Is that right?

RT: Oh, I didn’t even know people are doing hot house chaga. That’s so far out of my scope.

There are things that have to be grown in some kind of situation similar to that. A few things like cordyceps are too hard to get wild from the snow line of Bhutan and Tibet. It’s way… four miles up, maybe five miles up. If you just tried to go up there, you would die.

VK: I went to Denver once and I practically died.

RT: Yeah, you understand. But…in the Himalayas, in Heaven Mountain, these places [are at] a different level. You’d have to have all those things that the Alpine climbers wear.

And the Chinese cordyceps are like $50,000 a pound, you know. So, whatever it was back 40 years ago, it’s doubled since I last checked. It’s just an extremely precious thing – real cordyceps from the real place. Cordyceps go back to certainly pre-dinosaur [times] – a couple hundred million years.

Our cordyceps come from Bhutan, and it takes [sherpas] seven days trekking up a mountain, on Himalayan paths with their yak to get to where they can spend two days and collect the cordyceps. And even then they’re going around on their hands and knees [so they don’t accidentally step on them]. Then [you begin to] understand the hardship and the craziness of it.

[The sustainability of cordyceps] has been preserved in Bhutan. They just don’t have any tolerance for non-ecological behavior. And they have limits on everything for sustainability, by decree of the king and the congress, on whatever [can and can’t be] cut down. And they can’t dump anything into the rivers anywhere – that kind of mentality.

We sell Bhutanese cordyceps because it’s just the nomadic tribes [that live in the mountains] who go there. They are peasants, but they’re rich because they can sell the cordyceps for $20,000. By the time it gets to Hong Kong or Shanghai or something, it’s $50,000 a pound for the decent whole pieces that haven’t had their heads broken off or something.

But Tibet is a different story because Tibet has a plane in front of it. It’s not coming straight up from just like the south side of the Himalayas. On the other side, you get the Tibetan Plateau and then it kind of gradually goes up until it really goes up. So, they can fly helicopters up there and they do cordyceps hunting tours. In May, companies just fly their helicopters [full of people up there]. And then they walk. See, in Bhutan, they’re not allowed to walk within a certain number of meters [of where cordyceps are found].

At a certain point, they have to crawl. Which is the traditional way to do it, but that’s not what they do in [Tibet]. So, you’ll never see anybody walking [in Bhutan] because that’s probably prison [time]. [Tibet is] not protecting the sustainability as much. First of all, those helicopters…they’re polluting this place where this precious stuff is and everything else up there. And there’s noise pollution and there’s a lot of factors.

[Once they land] there, people walk in and, they have a picnic or whatever they do. But they collect big bags of it and it’s worth a lot of money. So, the sustainability for cordyceps from Tibet is a gigantic problem. The government of China is very strict, and they have army up there with rifles but people just fly two miles over [because] it’s just worth the risk… they don’t get caught. They know what they’re [doing]. They’re professional nature bandits.

[So, because cordyceps have become so] popular, growing it in beds of appropriate nutrients makes sense for people because it does produce some health benefits.

But in general, like Reishi for example. It is illegal to sell Reishi mycelium in China. Because in China, they know too much. Even the common person, everybody. They’re experts on Reishi. Everybody knows, it’s not the mycelium. It’s the fruiting body [that is rich in medicinal compounds]. Actually, people go to prison. I know somebody, who… they gave this person like 15 years for selling Reishi mycelium and not putting it on the bottle. You know, China can be strict. But, that is actually how they feel.

Reishi, what we call Duanwood, or Duàn mù. Mù is the word for wood. When Yanlin and I were first going up to the mountains and seeing it growing on these plantations… 30 years ago now. She translated it to me as Duanwood. Duan, because that means original, authentic. And that’s kind of a big thing to me. Original sourcing.

VK: So you coined the term?

RT: Yanlin did. It was a great name for authentic wood. This is a principle in China. It’s how they do it. They go to the mountains, and it [Reishi] has to be grown in the mountains. There’s no flat land Reishi, not even a foothill Reishi. You go up to the mountains. China’s a very mountainous country.

So every mountain has different varieties of Reishi like Ganoderma lucidum, or Ganoderma sinensis, or close relatives that have been growing there for millions of years. Forests will typically have eight or ten species. And some of those hardwood species, when they hit a certain immunodeficient stage of their life.

You know, it’s a moment. When you’re walking through it, you’re probably inhaling the spores all the time. I think that’s why there’s breatharians in the mountains, people who eat so little. But they’re getting plenty of nutrition because they’re breathing what’s in the pollens and the spores. My physiology books don’t talk about the nutrition in the air. But, you can smell it in the air. You can smell [the] fungus. It’s not an emission of necessarily just gas. It’s reproductive stuff happening, you know. At all times in the forest.

People knew from tradition. Oh, this [type of] Reishi that grows on these trees, at this altitude, on this side of the mountain, where the fog rolls in in the morning and rolls out in the afternoon. That’s the one that can save a dying person’s life. Or, after generations of watching it, they knew which one makes people actually live longer. They would get those mushrooms for the emperor. Or the hermits would take it for themselves. You know, they learned through time.