Hey everyone, I'm Inonotuus, and this is what I look like:


I'm interested in everything related to psychoactive, medicinal and edible plants and fungi. Synthetics are fascinating too, I'm not a competent enough chemist to synthesize anything, but I have done plenty of experiments extracting plants, everything from crude water/alcohol type extracts to obtaining high purity alkaloids. I hope to learn more about extractions and chemistry in general from this site, and offer a little of my knowledge where its applicable.

Looking at some threads, I see familiar faces already.

Actually it's the chaga fungus, but close enough. 

P.S. Do I have to do the verification thing every time, or does it go away after a certain number of posts? I'm only a little better than a computer at getting the letters right.

It did go away after 5 posts, thank goodness!

Chaga is a fun one... it has the highest ORAC score (a measure of antioxidant potential) of anything yet tested that I know of, even beating out cacao. If blueberries are around 25-50 on the ORAC scale, cacao and chaga hit the 1000-1200 range!

Siberian shamans used to mainly use the spongy orange interior as an adaptogenic tonic and magical herb, but many of the potent anticancerous and medicinal properties are actually concentrated in the hard, brown-black exterior portion.

Some other medicinal actions of chaga include:
- antibacterial
- antiinflammatory
- antitumor
- antiviral
- regulates blood sugar
- immune system modulator
- liver tonic

I haven't researched plants or substances for their life extending properties so much, but adaptogens are some of my favourite things to work with.

If you're into life extension though, are you taking any bee products? Propolis and royal jelly are both excellent, and even better is the venom from bee stings. Bee keepers generally have a very long life, and back in the day it wasn't uncommon for them to live 100-125 years!

If you're not into getting stung, you can sometimes find honey with bee sting venom in it, though it's usually very expensive and not as effective as actually getting stung. They stimulate the bees to sting using an electro-shock (and I don't know if I'm really down with that!). Also you used to be able to get Apis extract tincture, which was made by getting a swarm of bees into a jar, shaking them up till they were angry, and then pouring high-proof liquor over them to draw out the venom. Sounds like it would be scary to make, and probably not a product you're going to find on the market anymore.