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The medicinal compounds we seek in mushrooms are locked behind the cell wall of fungi, and those cell walls are made of chitin, which is the same tough structure that is found in the exoskeleton of insects, crustaceans and arachnids. Chitin is indigestible and only denatures through exposure to heat. This means extracting it in some form or another is essential if we want to break down those cell walls and access the medicinal compounds we seek in mushrooms.

Extract powders, as the name suggests, have already been extracted by Mógū Mushrooms, so all the beneficial constituents that you’re after are already bioavailable and ready for consumption. In all dietary supplements, extract powders require a concentration ratio to measure its potency. For example, our Lion's Mane dual extract measures a 12:1 ratio, which means it has taken 12 kilos of whole dried Lion's Mane to produce 1 kilo of extract, making the product 12 times more concentrated and thus, 12 times more potent than the raw whole mushroom. The higher the ratio, the more potent the extract will be.

Generally, if a product does not mention a ratio, or if it not labelled as an extract, whether it is 12:1, 10:1, 8:1, 5:1, etc.… it usually means it is 1:1 (one to one), and it is likely a dried and powdered whole mushroom.

Mushroom powder is simply a mushroom that is dried and blended into a fine powder, which has a ratio of 1:1. This can be confusing since mushroom "powder" looks similar to mushroom "extract powder", but there is a world of difference between these two forms of products in the mushroom industry.