Meat, Hidden Fungus,Crouching Caterpillar-Ancient Chinese Secrets Give Chinese Woman Athletes the Edge

Wang Junxia

With the London 2012 Summer Olympics fast approaching, it will be very interesting to see how all the athletes perform.  Recently, the Chinese woman volleyball players suffered stunning and unexpected losses at the 2012 FIVB World Grand Prix finals. According to several Chinese media reports, the coach of the Chinese women's Olympic volleyball team was very upset over his players' losses.

The cause of the slump? The players hadn't eaten any meat in three weeks, according to the coach. The volleyball team had been on the road, so they didn't have access to the specially sourced meat they eat at their training base.

I guess the coach forgot to give the team their caterpillar milkshakes! 

In the 1990s, a team of unknown Chinese female track and field athletes stunned the world by annihilating long-standing records.

Track & Field News : "They [the Chinese] appear to have come up with the greatest quantum leap in human performance in history.“How did they do it?  Coach Ma Junren attributed success to: “Hard work and ancient Chinese secrets—turtle’s blood and caterpillar milkshakes.”

On grasslands of Himalayan Plateau

 lives a caterpillar that according to legend, can transform itself from animal to plant and back again.  Tibetan herders discovered thousands of years ago that when yaks ate the fruiting bodies of the plants that grow from the head of caterpillar larvae, they seemed to have more energy to climb the mountain trails.

Winter Worm Larvae and Fungus

The herb, Cordyceps sinensis, is the name of the fungus that grows on caterpillar larvae. In its native habitat, the spores of Cordyceps infect and get into the body of caterpillar larvae. When the fungus grows in the body it kills the larvae in the winter, and eventually fungus fully consumes the larvae and sprouts into a little plant in the summer. The Chinese name Dong Chong Xia Cao literally describes the life cycle of Cordyceps. Cordyceps sinensis (Dong Chong Xia Cao, 冬虫夏草) or Yartsa Gubu (Tibetan) is perhaps the rarest and most precious herb in traditional Chinese medicine. Cordyceps has been used for the general health well being by Chinese for centuries, but remained unknown for the rest of the world until in 1992 Olympics when the Chinese women's track team athletes broke multiple world records and attributed their success in part to Cordyceps they took as an herbal dietary supplement. 

Modern studies suggest Cordyceps may enhance the immune function of our body, may stimulate progesterone production, boost energy and endurance (Rajesh Kumar, P.S. Negi, Bhagwat Singh, Govindasamy Ilavazhagan, Kalpana Bhargava, Niroj Kumar Sethy (2011). "Cordyceps sinensis promotes exercise endurance capacity of rats by activating skeletal muscle metabolic regulators". Journal of Ethnopharmacology 136: 260-266.)

It will be interesting to see how all the athletes, particularly the Chinese woman, perform at the London Olympics.  We might discover some more ancient Chinese herbal secrets as a result!  Pass the Cordyceps si'l vous plait.