Banking on Birch: Mushrooms, Moose, and Medicine

When Worlds Collide Part II: My Almost Pre-Diabetes Diagnosis

Richard Davis climbing a birch tree infected with chaga.

“A moose tried to walk into my house,” Richard Davis says with his soft, matter of fact voice. “So, I run back in the house, and start bangin’ on a shovel. It just stood there eating the twigs off my trees.” 

It’s early November in Southern California, and the mornings are getting cool enough that I’ve pulled a sweater out of my bottom drawer, but at Richard’s house, there is already a foot of snow on the ground. By December, he will have less than four hours of sunlight each day. 

Such is life at Richard’s cabin in Fairbanks Alaska tucked into a birch-forested suburb a few miles outside of town. Born and raised in the “Last Frontier State,” he works for a local bank by day. But in his free time, he’s a chaga hunter, rummaging around the Yukon with a backpack, an ax, and a love of mushrooms. 

“Way more people have been kicked by a moose out here than mauled by a bear.”

Moose wandering into Richard’s backyard.

I met Richard online. He actually reached out to me after reading my Medicinal Mushroom article last June. He couldn’t wait to talk about chaga.

“It’s an adaptogen you know.” He paused for a moment, as if I should know what that word meant. Turns out adaptogens help the body resist stress or repair its damage. 

“There are a ton of studies out there that say it works,” he said. “It’s pretty mysterious.”  

Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) is a parasitic fungus that primarily grows on birch trees in cold climates like Russia, Northern Europe, Canada–and apparently–Richard’s backyard. It’s actually a dense mass of mycelium that begins to grow on the tree from the inside out, and looks a lot like a charcoal wart when it breaks through the bark and hangs off the trunk. Long considered medicinal in Russia, it’s been researched by countries all over the world for its anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory benefits. Chaga is rich in compounds called polyphenols, triterpenes, and beta-glucans. But its secret weapon may be chaga’s off-the-charts antioxidant levels, which are 30 times greater than blueberries.

When Richard reached out, I was particularly interested in what Chaga could do for my pre-diabetes diagnosis. And since I was already strapped to a continuous glucose monitor to record my blood sugars (read The Worried Well if you’re not caught up), I thought I might design my own clinical trial, and put it to the test.

Richard agreed to send me some chaga tea and tinctures. And–full caveat–he sent them free of charge. While I waited for the care package, I continued to monitor my blood sugars on a low carbohydrate diet for two weeks. According to the Dexcom device I wore–and the data it was beaming to my phone–my fasting blood sugar hovered around 100 mg/dl each day, on the high side of normal. When I ate something with carbohydrate in it, my blood sugar would quickly climb to 160 mg/dl or more, but then return to 100 mg/dl within an hour. Accounting for all the ups and downs, my average blood sugar for the first two weeks was 116 mg/dl. That was just one point below the threshold for a pre-diabetes diagnosis. My doctor was right. I “almost” had pre-diabetes. Could a daily dose of chaga help get me closer to healthy levels?

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Give Shrooms a Chance 

The chaga arrived a few days later. Richard had sent several bags of tea and a bottle of his double-extraction tincture. After opening the box, I started to boil some water and squirt two droppers of tincture in a cup of water. I’d been warned that chaga extracts could be bitter, but my chaga shot glass tasted mild, nutty, and with a hint of toast. There was no strong aftertaste at all. With the kettle ready, I poured my first pot of tea and found it very pleasant, like a weak oolong or Chinese red tea. I had no problem finishing the entire pot. If this was what medicine tasted like, I was ready for an extra dose. 

But, before I went too far with my experiment, I needed to do my due diligence. My endocrinologist friend, Fran Kaufman, MD, had warned me that mushrooms were dangerous. But of course, she didn’t have specific info about chaga.

I then bumped into William Padilla Brown, a self-taught mycologist, researcher, and cultivator who is now quite the guru on Instagram for his work in the field. He had just given a hypnotizing talk on the interconnected world of truffles when I asked him about my chaga habit.  

“3000 mills a day is a lot,” he said about my estimated dose. “You got any problems with kidney stones? You know the oxalates.”

I didn’t know what to say. Kidney stones? Aren’t those painful? And what are oxalates?

“Mad painful, brother!” Will said, pulling his mop of hair away from his face. “Yo, you need to make sure you’re keeping your shit tight if you’re going to do this for the long haul. But I have mad respect for you.”

I felt a little pride for my little experiment.

But Fran and Will are right. The risks are real. Long-term use of chaga can cause kidney stones. And even online chaga enthusiasts warn folks already on diabetes medications that chaga can cause hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, which can be very dangerous. But since I was only doing the test for a few weeks, and I wasn’t on any medications, I figured I’d give it a go.  

The next week, I ate the same low carb diet, put on another glucose sensor, and drank a pot of chaga tea each morning and two squeezes of the tincture dropper at lunch. From what I’d read, I didn’t expect immediate results. Natural remedies often take a while to build up in your system before they work. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t eager to watch my CGM device every morning, wondering when the numbers might go down.  

Much to my surprise, the average blood sugar went down a point the next day. Assuming that was well within the standard deviation of the device, I didn’t think much about it. But I was excited. And the trend continued. Over the next two weeks, I watched my average blood sugar drop another 14 mg/dl. That was a 12% decrease. Even more exciting, I was now well below the pre-diabetes definition. 

Excited by the results, I got on the phone to tell Richard the good news. He was impressed.  

"It's stories like yours about the health benefits that keep me doing this,” he said. “Before, I dabbled in import/export, selling things like gardening products. You never get a thank you note for importing lawn chairs,” he laughed. "A lawn chair isn't exactly life-changing."

As I hung up the phone and poured myself another cup of chaga tea, I couldn't help but smile. The real story isn't in the data—it's about a banker in Fairbanks who spends his free time dodging moose and harvesting black gold from birch trees, turning what most people would walk right past into something that just might change someone's life. Sometimes the best medicine doesn't come with a prescription—it comes with a story about a man in Alaska who'd rather get a thank-you note for his mushrooms than sell another lawn chair.

You can check out Richard at AlaskaChaga or on Substack

Richard Davis

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Important note: While promising, most chaga research is still in early stages, and most studies have only been conducted on animals rather than in humans. Even though I was willing to be a guinea pig, anyone interested in using chaga should consult their healthcare provider, especially if taking medications already, as fungi can interact with some drugs.

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