Cordyceps, a genus of fungus, has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat an assortment of conditions including fatigue, respiratory and kidney diseases, renal dysfunction, and cardiac dysfunction (Zhu, Halpern, & Jones, 1998b). More recently, the benefits of cordyceps for athletic performance have been evaluated. Cordyceps first gained attention in 1993, when world record-breaking performances of Chinese female athletes were attributed to a vigorous training and nutrition regimen that involved cordyceps supplementation (Hersh, 1995). Though the performance of these athletes was surrounded with skepticism, interest in potential ergogenic effects of cordyceps has remained. In nature, cordyceps grows as a parasitic fungi on caterpillars (Zhu, Halpern, & Jones, 1998a; Zhu, et al., 1998b), making it rare and expensive. As a result, synthetic cultivation techniques have been more recently utilized for mass production. Cordyceps sinensis, the most commonly supplemented species of cordyceps, has been mass-produced and marketed as Cs-4. Found to have similar components as sinensis, synthetically cultivated cordyceps militaris may yield larger quantities of the active constituents (Kim & Yun, 2005) making it an effective counterpart to sinensis.
Read more via: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:171623da-adcd-4b1c-834f-09a3f9fa9562