Glossary
The words, plainly.
Scientific terms from the bottle and the method. Dotted links in the copy land here. This is a kitchen glossary, not a paper.
- chitin
- The tough polymer that builds mushroom cell walls — the same family of stuff as a crab shell. Hot water and alcohol barely open it. Koji enzymes do.
- koji
- Rice (or another grain) colonized by Aspergillus oryzae, the domesticated mold behind miso, sake, and shoyu. Grown so it will pour out enzymes. That is the first worker in this bottle.
- Aspergillus oryzae
- The koji mold. A thousand-year-old kitchen organism. It secretes amylases, proteases, cellulases, and β-glucosidase — hydrolases that take food, and mushrooms, apart.
- cordycepin
- 3′-deoxyadenosine. A nucleoside analog that Cordyceps militaris is famous for. Studied for energy signaling, immune tone, and a short half-life in the body — which is one reason people ferment the mushroom instead of swallowing the powder dry.
- adenosine
- A nucleoside the body already uses to talk about energy, blood flow, and sleep pressure. Cordyceps carries it alongside cordycepin.
- nucleosides
- Small molecules built from a sugar and a base. Cordycepin and adenosine are the two that matter in this bottle. Fermentation keeps them moving after the cell wall is gone.
- hericenones
- Aromatic compounds in the lion's mane fruiting body. Researchers follow them for their relationship to nerve-growth-factor pathways. This is why we use the mushroom you can see, not grain spawn.
- erinacines
- Related lion's mane compounds, more often found in the mycelium than in the fruiting body. We extract the fruiting body — hericenones are the ones in the cascade.
- nerve growth factor
- A protein the body uses to keep neurons alive and growing. Lion's mane research often points here. We do not claim to bottle NGF. We bottle the mushroom whose compounds are studied for that path.
- beta-glucans
- Long sugar chains in fungal cell walls. Studied for immune modulation — helping the system find a middle, not simply 'boosting' it.
- β-glucosidase
- A koji enzyme that clips glucose off larger molecules. Part of taking the mushroom wall apart so what was bound becomes soluble.
- cellulases
- Enzymes that break cellulose and related wall material. Koji makes them. Mushrooms have walls. This is not a mystery.
- proteases
- Enzymes that break proteins. Koji is famous for them — they are why miso tastes like it does, and why a mushroom ferment is more than a tea.
- amylases
- Enzymes that break starches into sugars. Koji makes them in quantity. They matter more on the rice the mold is grown on than in the mushroom itself.
- polysaccharides
- Long chains of sugars. In mushrooms they include the beta-glucans. Water extracts some of them. Koji helps with the rest.
- fruiting body
- The mushroom you can see — the cascade, the club, the cap. Not the grain it was grown on. If a label says 'full spectrum' and the jar is mostly rice, that is mycelium-on-grain, not this.
- mycelium
- The vegetative web of a fungus. Real, and not what we bottle. 'Mycelium-on-grain' sold as a mushroom extract is mostly the grain.
- maltodextrin
- A cheap starch powder used to turn extracts into bulk and to make a label weigh more. Not in this bottle.
- cytokines
- Signaling proteins the immune system uses to talk. Some fermented-cordyceps trials watch selected cytokines fall. That is a marker, not a diagnosis.
- natural killer cells
- Immune cells that clear stressed or infected cells. A controlled eight-week trial of a fermented Cordyceps militaris beverage in healthy adults watched their activity rise. Not a drug claim. A reason fermentation is not a flavor trick.
- immunomodulatory
- Helping the immune system find a middle — supporting an under-active response, cooling an over-active one. Different from 'boosting.' Cordyceps literature uses this word on purpose.
- Cordyceps militaris
- The orange-club cordyceps we grow. Not a mystery powder, and not Ophiocordyceps sinensis harvested off a wild caterpillar. Fruiting bodies, orange through.
- Hericium erinaceus
- Lion's mane. The cascade mushroom. Fruiting-body hericenones live here.