Is Chaga Mushroom an Antioxidant? What's Chaga's ORAC?
ORAC stands for oxygen radical absorbance capacity. It's a measure of something's ability to act as an antioxidant.
Chaga has an ORAC score of 146,700 μ mol TE/100g. By comparison, Acai berry has a lower score, at 102,700 μ mol TE/100g.
It can be hard to understand what this actually means unless you're a biochemist, but it's safe to say that Chaga has a tremendous capacity to act as an antioxidant.
Antioxidants are mentioned constantly in food and beverage marketing, but most people have little understanding of what they actually do. In simple terms, antioxidants protect cells from oxidation, which causes damage.
When you're exposed to pollution, radiation, and even stress, your cells can be damaged by free radicals and other byproducts. Antioxidants shield the cells from this damage and subsequent mutations. This lets the body be more resilient down to the cellular level, and helps it avoid cancer, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and more.
Oxidative stress, cell damage, and DNA mutations are inevitable. We all have some level of pre-cancer. It's about taking care of our bodies well enough and priming them to be strong enough to never allow disease to manifest.