Category Archives: Transhuman News

Study and use of supposed medicinal properties of plants

Herbal medicine (also herbalism) is the study of pharmacognosy and the use of medicinal plants, which are a basis of traditional medicine.[1] There is limited scientific evidence for the safety and efficacy of plants used in 21st century herbalism, which generally does not provide standards for purity or dosage.[1][2] The scope of herbal medicine commonly includes fungal and bee products, as well as minerals, shells and certain animal parts. Herbal medicine is also called phytomedicine or phytotherapy.[3]

Paraherbalism describes alternative and pseudoscientific practices of using unrefined plant or animal extracts as unproven medicines or health-promoting agents.[1][2][4][5] Paraherbalism relies on the belief that preserving various substances from a given source with less processing is safer or more effective than manufactured products, a concept for which there is no evidence.[4]

Archaeological evidence indicates that the use of medicinal plants dates back to the Paleolithic age, approximately 60,000 years ago. Written evidence of herbal remedies dates back over 5,000 years to the Sumerians, who compiled lists of plants. Some ancient cultures wrote about plants and their medical uses in books called herbals. In ancient Egypt, herbs are mentioned in Egyptian medical papyri, depicted in tomb illustrations, or on rare occasions found in medical jars containing trace amounts of herbs.[6] In ancient Egypt, the Ebers papyrus dates from about 1550 BC, and covers more than 700 compounds, mainly of plant origin.[7] The earliest known Greek herbals came from Theophrastus of Eresos who, in the 4th century BC, wrote in Greek Historia Plantarum, from Diocles of Carystus who wrote during the 3rd century BC, and from Krateuas who wrote in the 1st century BC. Only a few fragments of these works have survived intact, but from what remains, scholars noted overlap with the Egyptian herbals.[8] Seeds likely used for herbalism were found in archaeological sites of Bronze Age China dating from the Shang dynasty[9] (c. 16001046 BC). Over a hundred of the 224 compounds mentioned in the Huangdi Neijing, an early Chinese medical text, are herbs.[10] Herbs were also commonly used in the traditional medicine of ancient India, where the principal treatment for diseases was diet.[11] De Materia Medica, originally written in Greek by Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 4090 AD) of Anazarbus, Cilicia, a physician and botanist, is one example of herbal writing used over centuries until the 1600s.[12]

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80 percent of the population of some Asian and African countries presently use herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care.[13]

Some prescription drugs have a basis as herbal remedies, including artemisinin,[14] digitalis, quinine and taxanes.

In 2015, the Australian Government's Department of Health published the results of a review of alternative therapies that sought to determine if any were suitable for being covered by health insurance; herbalism was one of 17 topics evaluated for which no clear evidence of effectiveness was found.[15] Establishing guidelines to assess safety and efficacy of herbal products, the European Medicines Agency provided criteria in 2017 for evaluating and grading the quality of clinical research in preparing monographs about herbal products.[16] In the United States, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health of the National Institutes of Health funds clinical trials on herbal compounds, provides fact sheets evaluating the safety, potential effectiveness and side effects of many plant sources,[17] and maintains a registry of clinical research conducted on herbal products.[18]

According to Cancer Research UK as of 2015, "there is currently no strong evidence from studies in people that herbal remedies can treat, prevent or cure cancer".[3]

The use of herbal remedies is more prevalent in people with chronic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, asthma, and end-stage kidney disease.[19][20][21] Multiple factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, education and social class are also shown to have association with prevalence of herbal remedies use.[22]

There are many forms in which herbs can be administered, the most common of which is a liquid consumed as a herbal tea or a (possibly diluted) plant extract.[23]

Herbal teas, or tisanes, are the resultant liquid of extracting herbs into water, though they are made in a few different ways. Infusions are hot water extracts of herbs, such as chamomile or mint, through steeping. Decoctions are the long-term boiled extracts, usually of harder substances like roots or bark. Maceration is the cold infusion of plants with high mucilage-content, such as sage or thyme. To make macerates, plants are chopped and added to cold water. They are then left to stand for 7 to 12 hours (depending on herb used). For most macerates, 10 hours is used.[24]

Tinctures are alcoholic extracts of herbs, which are generally stronger than herbal teas.[25] Tinctures are usually obtained by combining pure ethanol (or a mixture of pure ethanol with water) with the herb. A completed tincture has an ethanol percentage of at least 25% (sometimes up to 90%).[24] Non-alcoholic tinctures can be made with glycerin but it is believed to be less absorbed by the body than alcohol based tinctures and has a shorter shelf life.[26] Herbal wine and elixirs are alcoholic extract of herbs, usually with an ethanol percentage of 1238%.[24] Extracts include liquid extracts, dry extracts, and nebulisates. Liquid extracts are liquids with a lower ethanol percentage than tinctures. They are usually made by vacuum distilling tinctures. Dry extracts are extracts of plant material that are evaporated into a dry mass. They can then be further refined to a capsule or tablet.[24]

The exact composition of an herbal product is influenced by the method of extraction. A tea will be rich in polar components because water is a polar solvent. Oil on the other hand is a non-polar solvent and it will absorb non-polar compounds. Alcohol lies somewhere in between.[23]

Many herbs are applied topically to the skin in a variety of forms. Essential oil extracts can be applied to the skin, usually diluted in a carrier oil. Many essential oils can burn the skin or are simply too high dose used straight; diluting them in olive oil or another food grade oil such as almond oil can allow these to be used safely as a topical. Salves, oils, balms, creams, and lotions are other forms of topical delivery mechanisms. Most topical applications are oil extractions of herbs. Taking a food grade oil and soaking herbs in it for anywhere from weeks to months allows certain phytochemicals to be extracted into the oil. This oil can then be made into salves, creams, lotions, or simply used as an oil for topical application. Many massage oils, antibacterial salves, and wound healing compounds are made this way.[27]

Inhalation, as in aromatherapy, can be used as a treatment.[28][29][30]

Consumption of herbs may cause adverse effects.[32] Furthermore, "adulteration, inappropriate formulation, or lack of understanding of plant and drug interactions have led to adverse reactions that are sometimes life threatening or lethal."[33] Proper double-blind clinical trials are needed to determine the safety and efficacy of each plant before medical use.[34]

Although many consumers believe that herbal medicines are safe because they are natural, herbal medicines and synthetic drugs may interact, causing toxicity to the consumer. Herbal remedies can also be dangerously contaminated, and herbal medicines without established efficacy, may unknowingly be used to replace prescription medicines.[35]

Standardization of purity and dosage is not mandated in the United States, but even products made to the same specification may differ as a result of biochemical variations within a species of plant.[36] Plants have chemical defense mechanisms against predators that can have adverse or lethal effects on humans. Examples of highly toxic herbs include poison hemlock and nightshade.[37] They are not marketed to the public as herbs, because the risks are well known, partly due to a long and colorful history in Europe, associated with "sorcery", "magic" and intrigue.[38] Although not frequent, adverse reactions have been reported for herbs in widespread use.[39] On occasion serious untoward outcomes have been linked to herb consumption. A case of major potassium depletion has been attributed to chronic licorice ingestion,[40] and consequently professional herbalists avoid the use of licorice where they recognize that this may be a risk. Black cohosh has been implicated in a case of liver failure.[41]Few studies are available on the safety of herbs for pregnant women,[42] and one study found that use of complementary and alternative medicines are associated with a 30% lower ongoing pregnancy and live birth rate during fertility treatment.[43]

Examples of herbal treatments with likely cause-effect relationships with adverse events include aconite (which is often a legally restricted herb), Ayurvedic remedies, broom, chaparral, Chinese herb mixtures, comfrey, herbs containing certain flavonoids, germander, guar gum, liquorice root, and pennyroyal.[44] Examples of herbs that may have long-term adverse effects include ginseng, the endangered herb goldenseal, milk thistle, senna (against which herbalists generally advise and rarely use), aloe vera juice, buckthorn bark and berry, cascara sagrada bark, saw palmetto, valerian, kava (which is banned in the European Union), St. John's wort, khat, betel nut, the restricted herb ephedra, and guarana.[33]

There is also concern with respect to the numerous well-established interactions of herbs and drugs.[33][45] In consultation with a physician, usage of herbal remedies should be clarified, as some herbal remedies have the potential to cause adverse drug interactions when used in combination with various prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, just as a customer should inform a herbalist of their consumption of actual prescription and other medication.[46][47]

For example, dangerously low blood pressure may result from the combination of an herbal remedy that lowers blood pressure together with prescription medicine that has the same effect. Some herbs may amplify the effects of anticoagulants.[48]Certain herbs as well as common fruit interfere with cytochrome P450, an enzyme critical to much drug metabolism.[49]

In a 2018 study, FDA identified active pharmaceutical additives in over 700 of analyzed dietary supplements sold as "herbal", "natural" or "traditional".[50] The undisclosed additives included "unapproved antidepressants and designer steroids", as well as prescription drugs, such as sildenafil or sibutramine.

A 2013 study found that one-third of herbal supplements sampled contained no trace of the herb listed on the label.[36] The study found products adulterated with contaminants or fillers not listed on the label, including potential allergens such as soy, wheat, or black walnut. One bottle labeled as St. John's wort was found to actually contain Alexandrian senna, a laxative.[36][51]

Researchers at the University of Adelaide found in 2014 that almost 20 percent of herbal remedies surveyed were not registered with the Therapeutic Goods Administration, despite this being a condition for their sale.[52] They also found that nearly 60 percent of products surveyed had ingredients that did not match what was on the label. Out of 121 products, only 15 had ingredients that matched their TGA listing and packaging.[52]

In 2015, the New York Attorney General issued cease and desist letters to four major U.S. retailers (GNC, Target, Walgreens, and Walmart) who were accused of selling herbal supplements that were mislabeled and potentially dangerous.[53][54] Twenty-four products were tested by DNA barcoding as part of the investigation, with all but five containing DNA that did not match the product labels.

In some countries, formalized training and minimum education standards exist for herbalists, although these are not necessarily uniform within or between countries. In Australia, for example, the self-regulated status of the profession (as of 2009) resulted in variable standards of training, and numerous loosely formed associations setting different educational standards.[55] One 2009 review concluded that regulation of herbalists in Australia was needed to reduce the risk of interaction of herbal medicines with prescription drugs, to implement clinical guidelines and prescription of herbal products, and to assure self-regulation for protection of public health and safety.[55] In the United Kingdom, the training of herbalists is done by state-funded universities offering Bachelor of Science degrees in herbal medicine.[56] In the United States, according to the American Herbalist Guild, "there is currently no licensing or certification for herbalists in any state that precludes the rights of anyone to use, dispense, or recommend herbs."[57] However, there are U.S. federal restrictions for marketing herbs as cures for medical conditions, or essentially practicing as an unlicensed physician.

Over the years 201721, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued warning letters to numerous herbalism companies for illegally marketing products under "conditions that cause them to be drugs under section 201(g)(1) of the Act [21 U.S.C. 321(g)(1)], because they are intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease and/or intended to affect the structure or any function of the body" when no such evidence existed.[58][59][60] During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA and U.S. Federal Trade Commission issued warnings to several hundred American companies for promoting false claims that herbal products could prevent or treat COVID-19 disease.[60][61]

The World Health Organization (WHO), the specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that is concerned with international public health, published Quality control methods for medicinal plant materials in 1998 to support WHO Member States in establishing quality standards and specifications for herbal materials, within the overall context of quality assurance and control of herbal medicines.[62]

In the European Union (EU), herbal medicines are regulated under the Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products.[63]

In the United States, herbal remedies are regulated dietary supplements by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) policy for dietary supplements.[64] Manufacturers of products falling into this category are not required to prove the safety or efficacy of their product so long as they do not make 'medical' claims or imply uses other than as a 'dietary supplement', though the FDA may withdraw a product from sale should it prove harmful.[65][66]

Canadian regulations are described by the Natural and Non-prescription Health Products Directorate which requires an eight-digit Natural Product Number or Homeopathic Medicine Number on the label of licensed herbal medicines or dietary supplements.[67]

Some herbs, such as cannabis and coca, are outright banned in most countries though coca is legal in most of the South American countries where it is grown. The Cannabis plant is used as an herbal medicine, and as such is legal in some parts of the world. Since 2004, the sales of ephedra as a dietary supplement is prohibited in the United States by the FDA,[68] and subject to Schedule III restrictions in the United Kingdom.

Herbalism has been criticized as a potential "minefield" of unreliable product quality, safety hazards, and potential for misleading health advice.[1][5] Globally, there are no standards across various herbal products to authenticate their contents, safety or efficacy,[36] and there is generally an absence of high-quality scientific research on product composition or effectiveness for anti-disease activity.[5][69] Presumed claims of therapeutic benefit from herbal products, without rigorous evidence of efficacy and safety, receive skeptical views by scientists.[1]

Unethical practices by some herbalists and manufacturers, which may include false advertising about health benefits on product labels or literature,[5] and contamination or use of fillers during product preparation,[36][70] may erode consumer confidence about services and products.[71][72]

Paraherbalism is the pseudoscientific use of extracts of plant or animal origin as supposed medicines or health-promoting agents.[1][4][5] Phytotherapy differs from plant-derived medicines in standard pharmacology because it does not isolate and standardize the compounds from a given plant believed to be biologically active. It relies on the false belief that preserving the complexity of substances from a given plant with less processing is safer and potentially more effective, for which there is no evidence either condition applies.[4]

Phytochemical researcher Varro Eugene Tyler described paraherbalism as "faulty or inferior herbalism based on pseudoscience", using scientific terminology but lacking scientific evidence for safety and efficacy. Tyler listed ten fallacies that distinguished herbalism from paraherbalism, including claims that there is a conspiracy to suppress safe and effective herbs, herbs can not cause harm, that whole herbs are more effective than molecules isolated from the plants, herbs are superior to drugs, the doctrine of signatures (the belief that the shape of the plant indicates its function) is valid, dilution of substances increases their potency (a doctrine of the pseudoscience of homeopathy), astrological alignments are significant, animal testing is not appropriate to indicate human effects, anecdotal evidence is an effective means of proving a substance works and herbs were created by God to cure disease. Tyler suggests that none of these beliefs have any basis in fact.[73][74]

Up to 80% of the population in Africa uses traditional medicine as primary health care.[75]

Native Americans used about 2,500 of the approximately 20,000 plant species that are native to North America.[76]

In Andean healing practices, the use of Entheogens, in particular the San Pedro cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi) is still a vital component, and has been around for millennia.[77]

Some researchers trained in both Western and traditional Chinese medicine have attempted to deconstruct ancient medical texts in the light of modern science. In 1972, Tu Youyou, a pharmaceutical chemist, extracted the anti-malarial drug artemisinin from sweet wormwood, a traditional Chinese treatment for intermittent fevers.[78]

In India, Ayurvedic medicine has quite complex formulas with 30 or more ingredients, including a sizable number of ingredients that have undergone "alchemical processing", chosen to balance dosha.[79] In Ladakh, Lahul-Spiti, and Tibet, the Tibetan Medical System is prevalent, also called the "Amichi Medical System". Over 337 species of medicinal plants have been documented by C.P. Kala. Those are used by Amchis, the practitioners of this medical system.[80][81] The Indian book, Vedas, mentions treatment of diseases with plants.[82]

In Indonesia, especially among the Javanese, the jamu traditional herbal medicine may have originated in the Mataram Kingdom era, some 1300 years ago.[83] The bas-reliefs on Borobudur depict the image of people grinding herbs with stone mortar and pestle, a drink seller, an herbalist, and masseuse treating people.[84] The Madhawapura inscription from Majapahit period mentioned a specific profession of herbs mixer and combiner (herbalist), called Acaraki.[84] The book from Mataram dated from circa 1700 contains 3,000 entries of jamu herbal recipes, while Javanese classical literature Serat Centhini (1814) describes some jamu herbal concoction recipes.[84]

Though possibly influenced by Indian Ayurveda systems, the Indonesia archipelago holds numerous indigenous plants not found in India, including plants similar to those in Australia beyond the Wallace Line.[85] Jamu practices may vary from region to region, and are often not recorded, especially in remote areas of the country.[86] Although primarily herbal, some Jamu materials are acquired from animals, such as honey, royal jelly, milk, and Ayam Kampung eggs.

Herbalists tend to use extracts from parts of plants, such as the roots or leaves,[87] believing that plants are subject to environmental pressures and therefore develop resistance to threats such as radiation, reactive oxygen species and microbial attack to survive, providing defensive phytochemicals of use in herbalism.[87][88]

Indigenous healers often claim to have learned by observing that sick animals change their food preferences to nibble at bitter herbs they would normally reject.[89] Field biologists have provided corroborating evidence based on observation of diverse species, such as chickens, sheep, butterflies, and chimpanzees. The habit of changing diet has been shown to be a physical means of purging intestinal parasites. Sick animals tend to forage plants rich in secondary metabolites, such as tannins and alkaloids.[90]

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English author and biogerontologist

Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey (; born 20 April 1963)[4][5] is an English author and biomedical gerontologist.[6][7][8][9] He is the author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging (1999) and co-author of Ending Aging (2007). He is known for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today not to die from age-related causes.[10] As an amateur mathematician, he has contributed to the study of the HadwigerNelson problem in geometric graph theory, making the first progress on the problem in over 60 years.[11]

De Grey is an international adjunct professor of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology,[12] a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America,[13] the American Aging Association, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.[14] He has been interviewed in recent years in a number of news sources, including CBS 60 Minutes, the BBC, The Guardian, Fortune Magazine, The Washington Post, TED, Popular Science,Playboy, The Colbert Report, Time, the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, and The Joe Rogan Experience. He was the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation, but was fired in August 2021 after allegedly interfering in a probe investigating sexual harassment allegations against him.[15]

De Grey was born and brought up in London, England.[16] He told The Observer that he never knew his father, and that his mother Cordelia, an artist, encouraged him in the areas in which she herself was weakest: science and mathematics.[17] De Grey was educated at Sussex House School[18] and Harrow School. He attended university at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in computer science in 1985.[19]

After graduation in 1985, de Grey joined Sinclair Research as an artificial intelligence researcher and software engineer. In 1986, he cofounded Man-Made Minions Ltd to pursue the development of an automated formal program verifier. At a graduate party in Cambridge, de Grey met fruit fly geneticist Adelaide Carpenter whom he would later marry. Through her he was introduced to the intersection of biology and programming when her boss needed someone who knew about computers and biology to take over the running of a database on fruit flies.[20] He educated himself in biology by reading journals and textbooks, attending conferences, and being tutored by Professor Carpenter.[21][22] From 1992 to 2006, he was in charge of software development at the university's Genetics Department for the FlyBase genetic database.[23]

Cambridge awarded de Grey an honorary Ph.D. by publication in biology on 9 December 2000.[19][24] The degree was based on his 1999 book The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging, in which de Grey wrote that obviating damage to mitochondrial DNA might by itself extend lifespan significantly, though he said it was more likely that cumulative damage to mitochondria is a significant cause of senescence, but not the single dominant cause.

In 2005, de Grey argued that most of the fundamental knowledge needed to develop effective anti-aging medicine already existed, and that the science is ahead of the funding. He described his work as identifying and promoting specific technological approaches to the reversal of various aspects of aging, or, as de Grey put it, "... the set of accumulated side effects from Metabolism that eventually kills us."[25]

As of 2005[update], de Grey's work centered on a detailed plan called strategies for engineered negligible senescence (SENS), which is aimed at preventing age-related physical and cognitive decline. In March 2009, he cofounded the SENS Research Foundation (named SENS Foundation until early 2013), a non-profit organisation based in California, United States, where he served until 2021 as Chief Science Officer. The foundation "works to develop, promote and ensure widespread access to regenerative medicine solutions to the disabilities and diseases of aging,"[26] focusing on the strategies for engineered negligible senescence. Before March 2009, the SENS research program was mainly pursued by the Methuselah Foundation, cofounded by de Grey.

A major activity of the Methuselah Foundation is the Methuselah Mouse Prize,[27] a prize designed to incentivize research into effective life extension interventions by awarding monetary prizes to researchers who stretch the lifespan of mice to unprecedented lengths. De Grey stated in March 2005 "if we are to bring about real regenerative therapies that will benefit not just future generations, but those of us who are alive today, we must encourage scientists to work on the problem of aging." The prize reached 4.2 USD million in February 2007.

In 2007, de Grey wrote the book Ending Aging with the assistance of Michael Rae.[28]

In a 2008 broadcast on Franco-German TV network Arte, de Grey claimed that the first human to live 1,000 years was probably already alive, and might even be between 50 and 60 years old already.[29]

In 2012, de Grey inherited a considerable fortune of more than US$16 million, US$13 million of which he donated to the SENS Research Foundation.[30]

De Grey is a cryonicist, having signed up with Alcor.[31]

On 8 April 2018, de Grey posted a paper to arXiv explicitly constructing a unit-distance graph in the plane that cannot be colored with fewer than five colors, increasing the previously known lower bound by one. The previous lower bound of four was due to the problem's original proposal in 1950 by Hugo Hadwiger and Edward Nelson.[32] De Grey's graph has 1581 vertices, but it has since been reduced to 510 vertices by independent researchers.[33][34][35]

De Grey was formerly Vice President of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics, a startup in the longevity space helmed by Michael D. West, PhD. De Grey was appointed to the position within the company in July 2017.[36][37][38]

In 2005, MIT Technology Review, in cooperation with the Methuselah Foundation, announced a $20,000 prize for any molecular biologist who could demonstrate that SENS was "so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate." The judges of the challenge were Rodney Brooks, Anita Goel, Vikram Sheel Kumar, Nathan Myhrvold, and Craig Venter. Five submissions were made, of which three met the terms of the challenge. De Grey wrote a rebuttal to each submission, and the challengers wrote responses to each rebuttal. The judges concluded that none of the challengers had disproved SENS, but the magazine opined that one of the submissions had been particularly eloquent and well written, and awarded the contestant $10,000. The judges also noted "the proponents of SENS have not made a compelling case for SENS", and wrote that many of its proposals could not be verified with the current level of scientific knowledge and technology, concluding that "SENS does not compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists; but neither is it demonstrably wrong."[39] The critics single out three proposed therapies for criticism: somatic telomerase deletion, somatic mitochondrial genome engineering, and the use of transgenic microbial hydrolase.[40]

Later in 2005, he was the subject of an associated critical editorial article in the MIT Technology Review, which viewed his theories as oversimplifying anti-aging as a scientific goal, and expressed concern at a lack of ethical and moral considerations towards anti-aging research.[41]

A 2005 article about SENS published in the viewpoint section of EMBO Reports by 28 scientists concluded that none of de Grey's hypotheses "has ever been shown to extend the lifespan of any organism, let alone humans".[42] The SENS Research Foundation, of which de Grey was a cofounder, acknowledged this, stating, "If you want to reverse the damage of aging right now I'm afraid the simple answer is, you can't."[43] Moreover, de Grey argues that this reveals a serious gap in understanding between basic scientists and technologists and between biologists studying aging and those studying regenerative medicine.[44]

The 31-member Research Advisory Board of de Grey's SENS Research Foundation have signed an endorsement of the plausibility of the SENS approach.[45] In 2021, the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), showcased a SENS research project and provided a grant for the research.[46][47]

In August 2021, following allegations of sexual harassment by two women, de Grey was put on administrative leave by SENS.[48]

Both women describe situations in which de Grey, {...} explicitly spoke with them about sex. According to Haliouas account, he even told her that it was her responsibility to sleep with SENS donors to encourage financial contributions. Deming was only 17 when, she alleges, de Grey told her he wanted to speak with her about his adventurous love life. Deming says that when she recently became aware that this was not a one-off incident, she was angry to realize that Aubrey inappropriately propositioned more than one woman over whom he was in a position of power, many in the community knew about it, and no one did anything, she writes.[49]

Days later, the SENS board of directors decided to remove de Grey from his position as chief science officer, severing all ties with him following the report that he had allegedly attempted to interfere with the sexual harassment investigation.[50]

The independent investigator determined that de Grey made sexually inappropriate remarks to both Deming and Halioua. The investigator also decided de Grey's attempt to communicate with Halioua via a third party constituted interference, although de Grey stated he believed that phase of the investigation had concluded. The investigator found that various other allegations against de Grey were not substantiated.[51][52]

In March 2022, the SENS Research Foundation released a statement regarding de Grey's employment affirming that while his actions "did substantiate instances of poor judgment and boundary-crossing behaviors, Dr. de Grey is not a sexual predator."[53]

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Indo-European language

Greek (Modern Greek: , romanized:Ellinik; Ancient Greek: , romanized:Hellnik) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records.[2] Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years;[3][4] previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary.[5] The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.

The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon. Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek.[6][7] Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics.

During antiquity, Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world. It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek.[8] In its modern form, Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora.

Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary.

Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC,[9] or possibly earlier.[10] The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC,[11] making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages.

The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods:

In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia: the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki, the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa, meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek, used today for all official purposes and in education.[14]

The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language.[15] It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, "Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English".[16]

Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near the Greek-Albanian border.[13] A significant percentage of Albania's population has some basic knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey, though very few remain today.[2] A small Greek-speaking community is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and throughout the European Union, especially in Germany.

Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, in what are today Southern Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, and Libya; in the area of the Black Sea, in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia, Monoikos, and Mainake. It was also used as a liturgical language in Christian Nubian kingdom of Makuria which was in modern day Sudan.

Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population.[18] It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish).[19] Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages.[20] Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania and used co-officially in some of the municipalities in Gjirokastr and Sarand.[21] It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, Greek is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine.[22]

The phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to the modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it.

Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and a fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts. The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details):

In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes, a limited but productive system of compounding[23] and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in the nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive). The verbal system has lost the infinitive, the synthetically-formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood. Many have been replaced by periphrastic (analytical) forms.

Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual, and plural in the ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language).[note 2] Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun.

The inflectional categories of the Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for:

Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow the noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language. Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks the infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO.

Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks,[24] some documented in Mycenaean texts; they include a large number of Greek toponyms. The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian, and Turkish. During the older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from South Slavic (Macedonian/Bulgarian) and Eastern Romance languages (Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian).

Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics, physics, astronomy, democracy, philosophy, athletics, theatre, rhetoric, baptism, evangelist, etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as a basis for coinages: anthropology, photography, telephony, isomer, biomechanics, cinematography, etc. Together with Latin words, they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary; for example, all words ending in logy ("discourse"). There are many English words of Greek origin.[25][26]

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian,[27] which most scholars suggest may have been a dialect of Greek itself,[28][29][30] but it is poorly attested and it is difficult to conclude. Independently of the Macedonian question, some scholars have grouped Greek into Graeco-Phrygian, as Greek and the extinct Phrygian share features that are not found in other Indo-European languages.[31] Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian) or the Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan), but little definitive evidence has been found for grouping the living branches of the family.[32] In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian by some linguists. If proven and recognized, the three languages would form a new Balkan sub-branch with other dead European languages.[33]

Linear B, attested as early as the late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek.[34] It is basically a syllabary, which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A, has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language).[34] The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek, is the earliest known form of Greek.[34]

Another similar system used to write the Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet.[35]

Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet, with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit a faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill.

The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase (majuscule) and lowercase (minuscule) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form () used in the final position of a word:

In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs: three different accent marks (acute, grave, and circumflex), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on the stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks (rough and smooth breathing), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis, used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of the acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography.

After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system), is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek.

In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (), known as the ano teleia ( ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing , (,ti, 'whatever') from (ti, 'that').[36]

Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries.[37] Boustrophedon, or bi-directional text, was also used in Ancient Greek.

Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script, especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics. The term Frankolevantinika / applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe was under the control of the Frankish Empire). Frankochiotika / (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios. Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications.[38]

The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy.

The Yevanic dialect was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet.[39]

Some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet. The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina. This usage is sometimes called aljamiado, as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet.[40]

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek:

Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet:

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

Society

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Species of flowering plant

Gynostemma pentaphyllum, also called jiaogulan (Chinese: , Pinyin: jiogln, literally "twisting blue plant"), is a dioecious, herbaceous climbing vine of the family Cucurbitaceae (cucumber or gourd family) widely distributed in South and East Asia as well as New Guinea. Jiaogulan has recently been incorporated into traditional medicine.

Among many common names are five-leaf ginseng, poor man's ginseng, miracle grass, fairy herb, sweet tea vine, gospel herb, and southern ginseng.[1]

Jiaogulan belongs to the genus Gynostemma, in the family Cucurbitaceae, which includes cucumbers, gourds, and melons.[2][3] Its fruit is a small purple inedible gourd. It is a climbing vine, attaching itself to supports using tendrils. The serrated leaflets commonly grow in groups of five (as in G. pentaphyllum) although some species can have groups of three or seven leaflets. The plant is dioecious, meaning each plant exists either as male or female. Therefore, if seeds are desired, both a male and female plant must be grown.

Gynostemma pentaphyllum is known as Jiaogulan (Chinese: in China. The plant was first described in 1406 CE by Zhu Xiao, who presented a description and sketch in the book Materia Medica for Famine as a survival food rather than a medicinal herb.[4] The earliest record of jiaogulan's use as a drug comes from herbalist Li Shizhen's book Compendium of Materia Medica published in 1578, identifying jiaogulan for treating various ailments such as hematuria, edema in the pharynx and neck, tumors, and trauma. While Li Shizhen had confused jiaogulan with an analogous herb Wulianmei, in 1848 Wu Qi-Jun rectified this confusion in Textual Investigation of Herbal Plants.

Modern recognition of the plant outside of China originated from research in sugar substitutes.[1] In the 1970s, while analyzing the sweet component of the jiaogulan plant (known as amachazuru in Japan), Masahiro Nagai discovered saponins identical to those in Panax ginseng.[5] Continued research has described several more saponins (gypenosides) comparable or identical to those found in ginseng.[1] Panax ginseng contains ginsenosides while gypenoside saponins have been found in jiaogulan.[1]

G. pentaphyllum is one of about 17 species in the genus Gynostemma, including nine species endemic to China.[2] However, G. pentaphyllum has a wide distribution outside of China, ranging from India and Bangladesh to Southeast Asia to Japan and Korea as well as to New Guinea.[3] In China, it grows in forests, thickets, and roadsides on mountain slopes at elevations of 3003,200m (98010,500ft) above sea level.[3]

Jiaogulan is a vine hardy to USDA zone 8 in which it may grow as a short lived perennial plant.[1] It can be grown as an annual in most temperate climates, in well-drained soil with full sun. It does not grow well in cold climates with temperatures below freezing.[1]

Constituents of G. pentaphyllum include sterols, saponin, flavonoids, and chlorophyll.[1] Gypenosides have been extracted from its leaves.[1] Some saponin compounds are the same as those found in ginseng roots.[1] While there have been in vitro studies on toxicity, there have been no clinical trials, therefore no information is available about human toxicity.[1]

The plant is used in folk medicine, typically as an herbal tea, but may be used as an alcohol extract or in dietary supplements. It has not seen widespread use in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), being adopted only in the past 20 years,[1] because it grows far from central China where TCM evolved; consequently, it was not included in the standard pharmacopoeia of the TCM system. Before then, it was a locally-known herb used primarily in mountainous regions of southern China and in northern Vietnam. It is described by the local inhabitants as the "immortality herb" (, xin co), because a large number of elderly people within Guizhou Province reported consuming the plant regularly.[1][6] In the European Union, jiaogulan is considered a novel food following a 2012 court ruling that prohibited its sale as food.[7]

Some limited research has assessed the potential for jiaogulan to affect such disorders as cardiovascular diseases, hyperlipidemia, or type 2 diabetes,[8] but these studies were too preliminary to allow any conclusion that it was beneficial. A small trial suggested mild anxiety reducing effects, though these were not statistically significant.[9]

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Species of fungus

Species of fungus

Lingzhi, Ganoderma lingzhi, also known as reishi, is a polypore fungus ("bracket fungus") native to East Asia belonging to the genus Ganoderma.

Its reddish brown varnished kidney-shaped cap with bands and peripherally inserted stem gives it a distinct fan-like appearance. When fresh, the lingzhi is soft, cork-like, and flat. It lacks gills on its underside, and instead releases its spores via fine pores (80120 m) in yellow colors.[1]

The lingzhi mushroom is used in traditional Chinese medicine.[1][2] There is insufficient evidence to indicate that consuming lingzhi mushrooms or their extracts has any effect on human health or diseases.[3][4][5]

In nature, it grows at the base and stumps of deciduous trees, especially that of the maple. Only two or three out of 10,000 such aged trees will have lingzhi growth, and therefore its wild form is rare.[citation needed] Lingzhi may be cultivated on hardwood logs, sawdust, or woodchips.

Lingzhi, also known as reishi from its Japanese pronunciation, is the ancient "mushroom of immortality", revered for over 2,000 years. Uncertainty exists about which Ganoderma species was most widely utilized as lingzhi mushroom in ancient times, and likely a few different common species were considered interchangeable. However, in the 16th century Chinese herbal compendium, the Bencao Gangmu (1578), a number of different lingzhi-like mushrooms were used for different purposes and defined by color. No exact current species can be attached to these ancient lingzhi for certain, but according to Dai et al. (2017),[6] as well as other researchers, and based on molecular work, red reishi is most likely to be Ganoderma lingzhi (Sheng H. Wu, Y. Cao & Y.C. Dai, 2012).[7][1] This is the species that is most widely found in Chinese herb shops today, and the fruiting bodies are widely cultivated in China and shipped to many other countries. About 7-10 other Ganoderma species are also sold in some shops, but have different Chinese and Latin names, and are considered different in their activity and functions. The differences are based on concentrations of triterpenes such as ganoderic acid and its derivatives, which vary widely among species. Research on the genus is ongoing, but a number of recent phylogenetic analyses have been published in the last number of years.[8]

Petter Adolf Karsten named the genus Ganoderma in 1881.[9] English botanist William Curtis gave the fungus its first binomial name, Boletus lucidus, in 1781.[10] The lingzhi's botanical names have Greek and Latin roots. Ganoderma derives from the Greek ganos (; "brightness"), and derma (; "skin; together; shining skin").[11] The specific epithet, lingzhi, comes from Chinese, meaning "divine mushroom."

With the advent of genome sequencing, the genus Ganoderma has undergone taxonomic reclassification. Prior to genetic analyses of fungi, classification was done according to morphological characteristics such as size and color. The internal transcribed spacer region of the Ganoderma genome is considered to be a standard barcode marker.[12]

It was once thought that Ganoderma lingzhi generally occurred in two growth forms: a large, sessile, specimen with a small or nonexistent stalk, found in North America, and a smaller specimen with a long, narrow stalk, found mainly in the tropics. However, recent molecular evidence has identified the former, stalkless, form as a distinct species called G. sessile, a name given to North American specimens by William Alfonso Murrill in 1902.[8][13]

Environmental conditions play a substantial role in the lingzhi's manifest morphological characteristics. For example, elevated carbon dioxide levels result in stem elongation in lingzhi. Other formations include antlers without a cap, which may also be related to carbon dioxide levels. The three main factors that influence fruit body development morphology are light, temperature, and humidity. While water and air quality play a role in fruit body development morphology, they do so to a lesser degree.[14]

Ganoderma lingzhi is found in East Asia growing as a parasite or saprotroph on a variety of trees.[15] Ganoderma curtisii and Ganoderma ravenelii are the closest relatives of the lingzhi mushroom in North America.[16]

In the wild, lingzhi grows at the base and stumps of deciduous trees, especially that of the maple.[17] Only two or three out of 10,000 such aged trees will have lingzhi growth, and therefore it is extremely rare in its natural form.[citation needed] Today, lingzhi is effectively cultivated on hardwood logs or sawdust/woodchips.[18]

Depending on environmental or cultivation conditions lingzhi may resemble antlers, with no umbrella cap.

In the chronicles of Shiji 1st c. BC from Sima Qian, is attested the initial use of nearby separately related words with zhi woody mushroom and ling divine spirit in the poems of Emperor Wu of Han. Later, in the 1st c. CE through the poetry of Ban Gu, occurred the first combination of the hieroglyphs together into a single word, in an ode dedicated to Lingzhi.[20][21]

Since ancient times, Taoist temples were called the abode of mushrooms and according to their mystical teachings, the use of woody mushrooms zhi (Ganoderma) or lingzhi spirits mushroom, in particular making from it a concentrated decoction of hallucinogenic action,[20] gave followers the opportunity to see spirits or become spirits themselves by receiving the magical energy of the immortals xians, located on the fields of grace in the heavenly mushroom fields zhi tian.[22]

In the philosophical work Huainanzi, it is said about the lingzhi mushroom as the personification of nobility; from which shamans brewed a psychedelic drink.[23][24]

The Shennong bencao jing (Divine Farmer's Classic of Pharmaceutics) of c.200250 CE, classifies zhi into six color categories, each of which is believed to benefit the qi, or "life force", in a different part of the body: qingzhi (; "Green Mushroom") for the liver, chizhi (; "Red Mushroom") for the heart, huangzhi (; "Yellow Mushroom") for the spleen, baizhi (; "White Mushroom") for the lungs, heizhi (; "Black Mushroom") for the kidneys, and zizhi (; "Purple Mushroom") for the Essence. Commentators identify the red chizhi, or danzhi (; "cinnabar mushroom"), as the lingzhi.[25][26]

Chi Zhi (Ganoderma rubra) is bitter and balanced. It mainly treats binding in the chest, boosts the heart qi, supplements the center, sharpens the wits, and [causes people] not to forget [i.e., improves the memory]. Protracted taking may make the body light, prevent senility, and prolong life so as to make one an immortal. Its other name is Dan Zhi (Cinnabar Ganoderma). It grows in mountains and valleys.[27]

In taoist treatise of Baopuzi from Ge Hong indicated the zhi-mushroom (lingzhi ) is used for immortality.[28][25][26]

The (1596) Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica) has a Zhi () category that includes six types of zhi (calling the green, red, yellow, white, black, and purple mushrooms of the Shennong bencao jing the liuzhi (; "six mushrooms") and sixteen other fungi, mushrooms, and lichens, including mu'er (; "wood ear"; "cloud ear fungus", Auricularia auricula-judae). The author Li Shizhen classified these six differently colored zhi as xiancao (; "immortality herbs"), and described the effects of chizhi ("red mushroom"):

It positively affects the life-energy, or Qi of the heart, repairing the chest area and benefiting those with a knotted and tight chest. Taken over a long period of time, the agility of the body will not cease, and the years are lengthened to those of the Immortal Fairies.[29][30]

Stuart and Smith's classic study of Chinese herbology describes the zhi.

(Chih) is defined in the classics as the plant of immortality, and it is therefore always considered to be a felicitous one. It is said to absorb the earthy vapors and to leave a heavenly atmosphere. For this reason, it is called (Ling-chih.) It is large and of a branched form, and probably represents Clavaria or Sparassis. Its form is likened to that of coral.[31]

The Bencao Gangmu does not list lingzhi as a variety of zhi, but as an alternate name for the shi'er (; "stone ear", Umbilicaria esculenta) lichen. According to Stuart and Smith,

[The Shih-erh is] edible, and has all of the good qualities of the (Chih), it is also being used in the treatment of gravel, and said to benefit virility. It is specially used in hemorrhage from the bowels and prolapse of the rectum. While the name of this would indicate that it was one of the Auriculariales, the fact that the name (Ling-chih) is also given to it might place it among the Clavariaceae.[31]

In Chinese art, the lingzhi symbolizes great health and longevity, as depicted in the imperial Forbidden City and Summer Palace.[32] It was a talisman for luck in the traditional culture of China, and the goddess of healing Guanyin is sometimes depicted holding a lingzhi mushroom.[30]

The Old Chinese name for lingzhi was first recorded during the Han dynasty (206 BC 9 AD). In the Chinese language, lngzh () is a compound. It comprises lng (); "spirit, spiritual; soul; miraculous; sacred; divine; mysterious; efficacious; effective)" as, for example, in the name of the Lingyan Temple in Jinan, and zh (); "(traditional) plant of longevity; fungus; seed; branch; mushroom; excrescence"). Fabrizio Pregadio notes, "The term zhi, which has no equivalent in Western languages, refers to a variety of supermundane substances often described as plants, fungi, or 'excrescences'."[33] Zhi occurs in other Chinese plant names, such as zhm (; "sesame" or "seed"), and was anciently used a phonetic loan character for zh (; "Angelica iris"). Chinese differentiates Ganoderma species into chzh (; "red mushroom") G. lingzhi, and zzh (; "purple mushroom") Ganoderma sinense.

Lingzhi has several synonyms. Of these, ruco (; "auspicious plant") (ru ; "auspicious; felicitous omen" with the suffix co ; "plant; herb") is the oldest; the Erya dictionary (c. 3rd century BCE) defines xi , interpreted as a miscopy of jn (; "mushroom") as zh (; "mushroom"), and the commentary of Guo Pu (276324) says, "The [zhi] flowers three times in one year. It is a [ruicao] felicitous plant."[34] Other Chinese names for Ganoderma include ruzh (; "auspicious mushroom"), shnzh (; "divine mushroom", with shen; "spirit; god' supernatural; divine"), mlngzh () (with "tree; wood"), xinco (; "immortality plant", with xian; "(Daoism) transcendent; immortal; wizard"), and lngzhco () or zhco (; "mushroom plant").

Since both Chinese ling and zhi have multiple meanings, lingzhi has diverse English translations. Renditions include "[zhi] possessed of soul power",[35] "Herb of Spiritual Potency" or "Mushroom of Immortality",[36] "Numinous Mushroom",[33] "divine mushroom",[37] "divine fungus",[38] "Magic Fungus",[39] and "Marvelous Fungus".[40]

In English, lingzhi or ling chih (sometimes spelled "ling chi", using the French EFEO Chinese transcription) is a Chinese loanword. It is also commonly referred to as "reishi", which is loaned from Japanese.[41]

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives the definition, "The fungus Ganoderma lucidum (actually Ganoderma lingzhi (see Ganoderma lucidum for details), believed in China to confer longevity and used as a symbol of this on Chinese ceramic ware.",[42] and identifies the etymology of the word as Chinese: lng, "divine" + zh, "fungus". According to the OED, the earliest recorded usage of the WadeGiles romanization ling chih is 1904,[43] and of the Pinyin lingzhi is 1980.

In addition to the transliterated loanwords, English names include "glossy ganoderma" and "shiny polyporus".[44]

The Japanese word reishi () is a Sino-Japanese loanword deriving from the Chinese lngzh (; ). Its modern Japanese kanji, , is the shinjitai ("new character form") of the kyjitai ("old character form"), . Synonyms for reishi are divided between Sino-Japanese borrowings and native Japanese coinages. Sinitic loanwords include literary terms such as zuis (, from ruco; "auspicious plant") and sens (, from xinco; "immortality plant"). The Japanese writing system uses shi or shiba () for "grass; lawn; turf", and take or kinoko () for "mushroom" (e.g., shiitake). A common native Japanese name is mannentake (; "10,000-year mushroom"). Other Japanese terms for reishi include kadodetake (; "departure mushroom"), hijiridake (; "sage mushroom"), and magoshakushi (; "grandchild ladle").

The Korean name, yeongji (; ) is also borrowed from, so a cognate with, the Chinese word lngzh (; ). It is often called yeongjibeoseot (; "yeongji mushroom") in Korean, with the addition of the native word beoseot () meaning "mushroom". Other common names include bullocho (, ; "elixir grass") and jicho (; ). According to color, yeongji mushrooms can be classified as jeokji (; ) for "red", jaji (; ) for "purple", heukji (; ) for "black", cheongji (; ) for "blue" or "green", baekji (; ) for "white", and hwangji (; ) for "yellow". South Korea produces over 25,000 tons of mushrooms every year.

The Thai word het lin chue () is a compound of the native word het () meaning "mushroom" and the loanword lin chue () from the Chinese lngzh (; ).

The Vietnamese language word linh chi is a loanword from Chinese. It is often used with nm, the Vietnamese word for "mushroom", thus nm linh chi is the equivalent of "lingzhi mushroom".

Ganoderma lucidum contains diverse phytochemicals, including triterpenes (ganoderic acids), which have a molecular structure similar to that of steroid hormones.[45] It also contains phytochemicals found in fungal materials, including polysaccharides (such as beta-glucan), coumarin,[46] mannitol, and alkaloids.[45] Sterols isolated from the mushroom include ganoderol, ganoderenic acid, ganoderiol, ganodermanontriol, lucidadiol, and ganodermadiol.[45]

A 2015 Cochrane database review found insufficient evidence to justify the use of G.lucidum as a first-line cancer treatment.[3][4] It stated that G.lucidum may have "benefit as an alternative adjunct to conventional treatment in consideration of its potential of enhancing tumour response and stimulating host immunity."[4] Existing studies do not support the use of G.lucidum for treatment of risk factors of cardiovascular disease in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus.[5]

Because of its bitter taste,[47] lingzhi is traditionally prepared as a hot water extract product for use in folk medicine.[32] Thinly sliced or pulverized lingzhi (either fresh or dried) is added to boiling water which is then reduced to a simmer, covered, and left for 2 hours.[48] The resulting liquid is dark and fairly bitter in taste. The red lingzhi is often more bitter than the black. The process is sometimes repeated to increase the concentration. Alternatively, it can be used as an ingredient in a formula decoction, or used to make an extract (in liquid, capsule, or powder form).[49]

Lingzhi is commercially manufactured and sold. Since the early 1970s, most lingzhi is cultivated. Lingzhi can grow on substrates such as sawdust, grain, and wood logs. After formation of the fruiting body, lingzhi is most commonly harvested, dried, ground, and processed into tablets or capsules to be directly ingested or made into tea or soup. Other lingzhi products include processed fungal mycelia or spores.[48] Lingzhi is also used to create mycelium bricks, mycelium furniture, and leather-like products.[50]

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