Organic Tremella Mushroom Extract Supplements

What is Tremella?

Tremella is the snow fungus, a translucent white cluster of soft frills that looks more like coral than a mushroom. It has been cultivated in China for centuries and eaten as a sweet soup simmered with rock sugar and goji berries, which is still how most of the world consumes it.

It is the one mushroom in our range with a beauty tradition rather than a medicinal one. The court records are unusually specific about that: it was eaten for the skin, by people whose appearance was their position, and it held that reputation for a thousand years.

Why is Tremella called the beauty mushroom?

Because of what its polysaccharides do with water. They hold many times their own weight in it, which is why a Tremella soup thickens and sets as it cools, and why the fungus has been associated with moisture and a plump, hydrated complexion for as long as anyone has written about it.

That water-holding behaviour is the same property that made hyaluronic acid a household name in skincare, and it is why Tremella is so often described as a plant-based answer to it. The mechanism is the reason for the tradition, not a modern explanation invented to justify it.

What does the research show?

This is an emerging area and the early work is encouraging. Laboratory studies have looked at Tremella polysaccharides in skin cells and at their remarkable capacity to bind and hold water, which is a promising direction and one we follow closely.

What Tremella has in abundance is the longest continuous record of use for skin of anything we sell. Over a thousand years of people choosing it, in a culture that documented its food and medicine carefully, is a form of evidence that no new ingredient can manufacture. Human trials would be a welcome addition and we will publish them when they arrive.

How much should I take?

One serving daily. That is 1,660 mg of the extract powder or 900 mg in capsule form, which is three capsules. The 100 g pouch holds 60 servings and the 120-capsule bottle holds 40. Time of day does not matter.

Powder or capsules?

Tremella is the most neutral tasting extract we sell, close to tasteless with a faint sweetness, so it disappears into coffee, tea, a smoothie or yoghurt without a trace. That makes the powder the easy choice for most people.

It also thickens a drink very slightly, which is the polysaccharides doing exactly what they are taken for. Some people like that in a smoothie. If you would rather not have it, the capsules give you the same extract with none of the texture.

How is it extracted?

Hot water, at 10:1. Ten kilos of dried fruiting body reduce to one kilo of extract. Hot water is how Tremella has always been prepared, because the traditional dish is a long slow simmer, and it is what releases the polysaccharides that make the soup set.

Ours is fruiting body only, with no grain, no substrate and nothing added to make up weight, and every batch is tested to a minimum of 10% beta-D glucans.

What to look for in a Tremella extract

• Fruiting body, not mycelium grown on grain.
• A stated extract ratio printed on the pack.
• A beta-glucan percentage rather than a vague "polysaccharide" number.
• A batch number and a certificate of analysis you can actually open.