Daoist Elixir of Immortality
Performance-Enhancing Substance
Chinese athletes are said to get a competitive edge from — perfectly legal — mushroom extracts to win more Olympic golds. A leading Japanese politician takes three different kinds of Asian healing mushrooms for breakfast every day.
One of the most important of these mushrooms is Reishi. You see them in Chinese paintings of Daoist sages and also ancient Chinese emperors.
These are the gnarly, strange-looking fungi, often purple, sometimes shown as green, brown, black or red. Continue reading