64. Jeff Chilton: The Medicinal Magic of Mushrooms

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in healthcare. Hello redefiners, wow, me and Altamash are super excited to be back, recording, publishing episodes, creating value, and teaching more of the science and ways that we can put the health back in healthcare. Now we took a break for the last two months, a lot has happened for Altamash and myself, and we'll touch on those things in future episodes, and some of the things that we're changing here at Medicine Redefined in the near future. But for now, let's get to this episode because it is going to be powerful. So our guest today is Jeff Chilton, and he studied ethno-micology at the University of Washington in the late 60s, and in the early 70s he began a 10-year career as a large-scale commercial mushroom grower. Jeff is the co-author of the Mushroom Cultivator, which was published in 1983. And then in 1989, he established Namix. This is the first company to supply medicinal mushroom extracts to the nutritional supplement industry. In the late 90s, he organized the first organic certification workshop for mushroom production in China. He is a founding member of the World Society for Mushroom Biology and Mushroom Products, and he is a member of the International Society for Mushroom Science. Mushrooms extracts are used by many supplement and food companies and are noted for their high-quality based on scientific analysis of their active compounds. So a lot right there, Jeff is a wonderful person. You're going to get to understand why he went into the field of mythology and understanding mushrooms. And just to be clear, we're not talking about psychedelics. We're talking about mushrooms that you eat that you can find at some select grocery stores. So things like Rishi, Lyance, Maine, Chaga, even Shitake, which I know most of you have heard about. So mushrooms have a lot of cool properties to them. And throughout this episode, we're going to learn exactly what those are and what you should look for if you are going to buy a mushroom supplement. All right, let's get to it, guys. All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Medicine Redefined. We got a special guest, Jeff with us. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on to our podcast. Hey, thank you very much for having me. I'm really excited to be here talking to you guys. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, today's conversation is going to be a little different than kind of the previous episodes, right? We were talking about cardiovascular health, sleep, we talk about gut health a lot of times. And today we're going to be talking about mushrooms. But what a lot of people might not know is that mushrooms are kind of related to all of those things, right? I mean, there's been a huge boom lately. There's an Netflix documentary called Fantastic Fun Guy that came out. And I feel like I've been hearing a lot more about mushrooms in a quote unquote biohacking space, but I think that's kind of unfair to give mushrooms, you know, just that kind of credit. I think it spans more than just that. But I really, you know, want to start with your journey. It's not every day you come across somebody who's an expert in mushrooms. So what really got you fascinated in this realm? Well, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and, you know, the Seattle area. What are we known for? Rain. Mushrooms love. Damnness. We have one of the best climates in the world here in the Pacific Northwest for mushrooms. I grew up around mushrooms, hunted them as a kid with family friends. And then when I went to university, University of Washington in the late 60s, I studied anthropology, but I also studied myology while I was there. And that's one of the few universities in the US that actually had a myology department. It's not exactly something of a lot of people study. So I put the two together and it was ethno-micology, which was studying the use of mushrooms for food, for medicine, and also in shamanic healing. But look, what do you do when you graduate from university with a degree in anthropology? It's not like there's like hundreds of jobs out there waiting for you. So I went to my myology professor said, I'd really loved to learn how to grow mushrooms. He said, there's a mushroom farm, 60 miles down the road. I went down there, the only mushroom farm in Washington state. Got a job. So excited. I was there for the next 10 years. It was a very, very large mushroom farm. And have either of you guys ever been to a mushroom farm? I had it. No, I don't think either of us have it. Well, you know, it's so interesting because most of us have seen corn fields and wheat fields. And we know how food is grown. But mushrooms, for the most part, especially in North America, are grown indoors in very, very large warehouse-like buildings. So you could drive right by and you would never even know it's there. But it's a real, it's really interesting how mushrooms are grown and so I just loved every minute of it. So 10 years there, literally, living with mushrooms. Well, so I mean, 10 years, it's a long time. I'm sure you've seen it kind of the ins and outs, you know, and I know we're going to talk about your travels to China, right, seeing mushrooms, kind of from all over the world, I guess, right? You're talking about Seattle right now. You're down under in Australia, which I know there's a lot of supplements, at least, that come out of there. But let's take it back to the basics, right? If you had to explain to somebody what a mushroom is, how would you do that? Well, you know, first of all, mushrooms have their own kingdom. So they're not in the plant kingdom. They're not in the animal kingdom. They sit right in between. And interestingly enough, we share some attributes with mushrooms. The storage carbohydrate for humans and mushrooms is glycogen. Mushrooms do not have starch. That's the storage carbohydrate for plants. So very distinct. We breathe in oxygen, exhale, carbon dioxide, so do mushrooms. So we share certain attributes. But look, what we call a mushroom, let me just explain this a little bit, because you know how it is, you're walking along out there and you go, oh, look, a mushroom. Where did that come from? It wasn't there yesterday. Okay. How do we grow mushrooms? Mushrooms don't have seeds. How do we grow mushrooms? Mushrooms have spores. Those spores from a mushroom in the wild, they float out into the environment. They land on the ground. They land in wood when conditions are right, which mean sort of warm but moist conditions. The spore will germinate into a very fine filament. That filament is called a hypha. When multiple of these hyphae come together and fuse, they will form a network. And this network is called mycelium. Mycelium is the vegetative body. Think of mycelium as like the root system or the tree. That's the vegetative body of this organism. Now what the mycelium does, which is really cool, it is out there breaking down organic matter. So it's repurposing all of those, think about everything that falls to the ground every year, leaves, branches, plants which die and come down. Somebody's got to break that down, otherwise we would be up to here in all this organic matter. That's what this mycelium is doing and normally we don't see it because it is either underground or it's buried in it's what we call substrate like a piece of wood. So wind conditions are right, which is in the Pacific Northwest and most other places is the fall, temperatures drop, rains come, humidity goes up, up comes this mushroom. It will go through a number of stages to reach maturity, which is up it comes the cap forms, it opens up underneath the cap, our gills, on those gills spores or produce. Now we have this life cycle. And this is super important because when you are buying a supplement, for example, that supplement is required that they tell you what is the plant part that you're getting. So in other words, with ginkgo, you want the leaf, with ginseng, you want the root, with echinacea, you want the flowers. It's super important because each one of those particular stages is going to have specific amounts of the compounds that we're looking for. So with this organism that we call a mushroom, there's three stages to this organism, spore, mycelium and mushroom. And again, we generally, as humans, focus on the mushroom because that's what we have traditionally eaten, a great food, and that's what we primarily use for supplement purposes. And that's what's been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. So three plant parts, spore, mycelium, mycelium vegetative body, mushroom is a fruiting body. And think of it again as kind of like the tree producing the fruit, which would be our mushroom, again, or that mycelium, think of them as a root structure that is producing this fruit body, which we call a mushroom. Thanks for that, Jeff. I mean, I know that we're going to dive a little bit deeper into the therapeutic properties for individuals, but it sounds like from an ecosystem perspective that it's quite therapeutic for the environment as well. And so I appreciate that sense of it. And just to be clear for the listeners, I think that when you hear the word mushrooms, most people's minds will go either towards its psychoactive properties or the medicinal properties, right? And the focus of today's conversation is going to be the medicinal aspect as you just touched on. But from both sides, the discussion has really ramped up, right? Obviously from the psychoactive properties and the psychedelic discussion, both recreationally but also from the medicinal component. But what we're talking about is the nutritional value and how, as you touched on, the medicinal component from ingesting it, what sparks that interest? Like why is the volume of that conversation getting louder and louder? Well, you know what? I like to call mushrooms the forgotten food. I call them the missing dietary link. And we're just kind of catching up in North America in Europe, in Asia. They've been eating mushrooms for thousands of years. They've got a real tradition of eating mushrooms. I don't know where we lost it in North America. So in a sense, I mean, listen, in 1973, when I went to the mushroom farm, classical nutritionists in North America were saying, you know what? Mushrooms are really flavorful, very tasty, but they have no nutritional value and they're just like a garnish or something. Why did they say that? Low in calories. If your food did not have calories, they're like, this is a non-food. Mushrooms are really a fabulous nutrient-dense food, great amount of protein, 20 to 40 percent, mostly carbohydrate, but very slow-acting non-starchy carbohydrates. They have compounds, one called manatol, which is very slow, difficult to digest, trihalosis, another carbohydrate. So they have good carbohydrates. And part of it with mushrooms is that they're very, very high in fiber, cheat. Do we need fiber or not? Well, yes, of course we do. So great carbohydrate profile, low in fat, high in potassium and phosphorus, good amount of B vitamins, B, 1, 2, and 3, great food. And just so to be clear here, every mushroom has got a different nutritional profile. So it's not like saying, okay, here we have an apple and pretty much the nutritional profile is going to be the same for most apples. No, every single species will have a little bit different profile, but in general, those are the essential attributes of mushrooms. And one of the things that's so important is that they do not contain starch. And you know what it's like for high glycemic index products, you eat a big potato or something or mashed potatoes and it's just like, man, the glucose levels go up and then come down the other side. It's just like sugar hit, whereas mushrooms know, slow to digest, and that's really what we're looking for in a food is something that is slowly going to work through. Not some really something quick hit where the glucose level goes up and we're like this and then the next thing you know we're crashing. No, great food, I highly recommend mushrooms to people as like, look, if you're going to use mushrooms in any way, supplement food, start out, eat mushrooms, and then look later to a supplement, do you guys, have you ever eaten shatake mushrooms? I don't think so. I have, yeah. Kind of sweet, right? I think. Well, well, it's, I wouldn't call it sweet, but it's got a wonderful, wonderful flavor. And you know, look, in 1973, in the market, there was only one mushroom that we had in North America and that was the button mushroom, which is what this farm grew. We grew two million pounds of that every year. But today in the markets, there are at least six or seven different species of mushroom that you can get on your local market. Shatake is one of them and it is such a wonderful flavor. I recommend that to everybody and I just say to everybody, look, put mushrooms into your diet. It is the missing dietary length. So Jeff, when we talk about, all right, let's just get into eating mushrooms at least or taking mushrooms. You know, you mentioned some of the ingredients that, you know, mushrooms are great for, including fiber, which, you know, back in the day, when we first started, we had a podcast with Will Bullsewitch, who's kind of like the fiber GI guy and really, really talks about it. And even his book, he mentions mushrooms. But why is it that, you know, we only maybe have, you know, you go to the grocery store, there's probably two or three mushrooms, right? There's like white cap, portabella, and then maybe shatake, right? And I think that's the profile that most people know. But what are some of the other mushrooms out there that we could, should, that we should be, like, putting into our diet? Well, you know, what's really interesting is, you know, we're also talking today about medicinal mushrooms. Some of these mushrooms that are in the market as foods also have these medicinal values. My talking, lions main, man, if you're lucky to get lions main out there, you know, fresh lions main, delicious mushrooms, oyster mushrooms. So, so we can get the beneficial compounds in mushrooms, not just from supplementing, but just from eating them. And here's what's interesting about a mushroom is that the cell wall of a mushroom, 50% of the cell wall is made up of a compound called a beta glue can. The beta glue cans are the most important medicinal compound in mushrooms. Those are the compounds that give mushrooms their immunological potentiation. And that's how you should really think of mushrooms is they can potentiate our immunity and they do that through this beta glue can. And we actually have a receptor site for beta glue cans in our lower intestines. So whether you're eating a mushroom or supplementing with a mushroom, those beta glue cans are going to hit those receptor sites and that will potentiate immune cells if we need them. Because what it really does is mushrooms are kind of sitting there in the back on great food value, okay, but this immunological potentiation that mushrooms have. Look at them in a sense kind of like this for the same reason that maybe you're going to take vitamin C or take vitamin D. Well, why does somebody do that? Why do they take vitamin D or vitamin C? I mean, don't you get it your diet? Well, maybe you do, maybe you don't, but you do it because you're in a prevention mode. And that's the way I like to look at mushrooms is there are they are a food or a supplement that are there for prevention. You want to be taking them in a regular way, just like you would be taking your vitamins. And look, I'm a firm believer in a concept that is food as medicine. And in that sense, everything we eat, you know, the nutrient value is really important, but that's kind of the foundation of our health. Diet is really the foundation and putting mushrooms into your diet is just going to give you that extra added protection against health challenges. Yeah, absolutely. Can you explain what you mean by immunogenic potentiation? Now, I'm assuming it means mushrooms being adapted, but if you would explain that to the layperson, how would you explain that? Well, you know, specifically when I say potentiation, what that means is that it will stimulate the production of immune cells like natural killer cells, like macrophages, like T cells. So in other words, these are our cytokines that get produced whenever there's a challenge to us in some way, then the immune cells, you know, our immune system is there to basically protect us against any of these environmental or challenges that we have to our health. And so that's essentially when I say potentiation, that's what it's doing. You could look at it in a way kind of like stimulation, but I like the term potentiation better. It's just a better way to frame this protection that it gives us. So Jeff, for that, you know, the potentiation aspect, the specific mushroom that you mentioned, was it, which one was it again? It's not lion's mane, right? Well, well, I mentioned, um, um, she, um, I mean, I mean, I mean, I'm congratulating benefits. Uh, yeah. Okay. Well, so, you know, one of the common things that people say, when, when you, you gave the analogy of vitamin D and vitamin C as, um, supplements, you know, when, when somebody can feel like a cold symptoms coming on, right, or just like a viral URI type of situation, they'll just front load with lots of vitamin C and D. And what we know is that that's not the intended purpose of it, that they don't tend to work that way. Would you say that this is similar to that, dissimilar to that, you know, they, they see that come in, they feel a little sore throat and they just take loads of shittaki mushrooms. Is that kind of what we're talking about or the protein aspect that has to be a routine part of your diet? That's exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, you, you don't want to look at these as OG, you know, I feel a cold, so I'm going to all of a sudden take all these things and that's going to keep it from, um, moving forward. Absolutely. I mean, that, I, I consider sort of like wrong thinking and a lot of people, you know, the, in a way, that's kind of a pharmaceutical model, isn't it? OG, if I can take this drug right away, maybe that will, you know, for example, that's how an aspirin works, that's how an ibuprofen works. Oh, God, I've got this pain on my shoulder. Let me just take an IBU hour later, the pain goes away, the inflammation goes away. So that's kind of a model that we all have that we think, oh, that's all we have to do is take this, whatever it is and that it's kind of from that pharmaceutical model and food and supplements, don't really work that way. You really have to utilize them in an, in an ongoing, standard way. And that's why I say mushrooms are something that you look at as prevention. You incorporate them first off and incorporate them into your diet. If you want to go beyond that, then look at them for supplementation and then you can evaluate that down the line and say, hey, you know, can, do I feel like my health has been any better? Did I get fewer colds because mushrooms are antiviral as well? Do I feel, you know, maybe you're taking cortiseps? Do I feel like I've gotten more energy in a regular way? So this is the best way to do that, but, you know, look, there's so many things that affect our health, whether it's mental health or physical health, it's really difficult to figure something like that out and, but, you know, for example, how do you know that that vitamin C or vitamin D that you're taking every day has any effect at all? You really don't in a way we have to make those kind of decisions, just like we make decisions with food and go, okay, yeah, I'm eating these certain foods or I'm eating organic foods and I think because I'm eating organic foods, ultimately, I'm going to be getting fewer chemicals. Well, is that going to affect you? Well, maybe you'll never feel that, but who knows? Maybe you'll live two or three years longer because you've got fewer of those toxic chemicals that you've consumed over the course of a lifetime. When you think about the fact of what chemicals are we getting from the food that we're eating that we're not being told, oh yeah, you're eating these pesticides, you're eating these other glyphosate or something like that. We don't know, but wouldn't you rather have the confidence that the food you're eating is at least free of those chemicals? Absolutely, and you know, Jeff, I mean, I can attest to this. I've been taking Rishi and Linesmane for some time now, and I mean, those two, for sure, compared to maybe Chaga, Turkey, Tail, Shataki, I know it's a palpable difference, and I know Ultimoch wanted to kind of go into these other types of mushrooms and ask you about those. But Rishi, man, my lucid dreams that night I wake up and I'm like, well, like, what world, I just entered the Metaverse or something, for that really full experience of that. And then Linesmane for my wife and I, like, it's very palpable. I mean, if she has a presentation at work, she'll take some Linesmane and she's just hyper focused. And I'm the same way in the morning where I'll take that, and I've noticed my anxiety going into the hospital, like, really go down on my drive over. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, so that's exactly what I want to talk a little bit more about, right? Yeah. Sorry about that. Now, I think that, I like Darsh, I'm a little bit more like a better word new when it comes to that, right? So my understanding of this is not as robust as both you guys, but from the common ones that I hear about is exactly, like, Darsh mentioned, Linesmane, a lot of people will refer to it as a new tropic, right, or for anxiety purposes. Other ones, like he talked about Rishi, cortiseps in the sports medicine world where I live, some people will talk about it as a pre-workout supplement, often you're alluded to the energy component of it. Chaga, you guys mentioned as well. If we could, I would love to hear from your perspective, take a top-down approach, if you could go one by one, starting with the one that maybe has the most robust data or evidence with respect to, like, human studies behind it. I think that would be a good way to do it if that's okay. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think where we can start is, like, people sometimes ask me, well, if there's one mushroom you could choose, which would it be? And I always say Rishi. And the reason for that is, what's really interesting is that we have done years and years of testing on all of the medicinal mushrooms, and this has been beta-glucan testing, and again, like I'm saying, beta-glucans are really the key medicinal component in the mushrooms. Well, interestingly enough, Rishi mushroom and turkey tail are the two species that have the highest levels of beta-glucan. So, Rishi, right off the bat, a high level of beta-glucans, and then it's got another class of compounds in there called triturpenoids. If you ever tasted a Rishi mushroom or a Rishi product, it should be bitter. Rishi is really bitter. I mean, a Rishi extract, like one of the extracts that we produce of Rishi is really 16 to one very strong, man, it's like concentrated bitterness. That's when you know for sure that you've got a Rishi product. So Rishi, to me, is the number one, and it is good for not only the immunological aspect, but the triturpenes are very good for liver function. And also, Rishi is used for sleep and for calming a person down, and a lot of people take it for insomnia or just being able to calm down and stress relief that. So Rishi, number one, highly regarded in China, there's whole mythologies built up around Rishi. You see it in their art and everything. Chordiceps is something that traditionally has been used for fatigue, used for high altitude, and also for people who are having difficulty overcoming some illness, some long illness, and they just can't seem to get over the hump with it, they'll give them cordiceps. So the fatigue factor is the reason why athletic products have sort of gravitated to cordiceps and put it out, and people use it for that purpose. So cordiceps is certainly something that traditionally has been used in a similar fashion, especially the whole idea of fatigue. Lions, man, it's interesting that you brought up nitropic because I will mention nitropic sometimes. Sometimes the people I talk to, they're like, you know, and I'm like, well, nitrile bicks, right? And it's an interesting concept, and lion's mane is there because lion's mane research has shown that lion's mane will stimulate what's called nerve growth factor, and that's something that we produce. It helps to organize and stimulate production of neurons. As we grow older, we tend to produce less of this nerve growth factor. So lion's mane stimulates the production of that, so that's really good. Lion's mane is really interesting because very few herbal products have clinical trials behind them. In Japan, they've done a couple of interesting clinical trials where they have actually a control group, they give people, there's the control that just takes a placebo, and then they give people only three grams of lion's mane powder. They give them a battery of tests after 120 days, they test them again. The people taking the lion's mane tested better than the control group. Then the interesting part about this particular study was that after, then they stopped taking lion's mane, they tested it again 30 days later, and the group that had been taking lion's mane drop back down to the same level as the control group. And you're sort of going, wow, that's kind of interesting, right? But the thing about herbal medicine and herbal products is that there's not a lot of clinical trials out there because it's expensive, and companies are not willing to put out that kind of money. So we rely a lot of times on in vitro and in vivo testing, and also, like for example, when I decide what kind of which particular mushroom species we're going to sell, God, I've got a book, it's got 270 different species in it that have medicinal properties. Where do you go from that? What, 270? No, no, so I look at those, I go, okay, what are they still using today of these mushrooms in traditional Chinese medicine? Okay, about 10 or so, then I go out and I look at the scientific research on each one of those species, and if there's a solid body of scientific research, put the two together and I'm like, okay, yeah, these are the 10 most important medicinal mushrooms out there. We just talked about those three, another one that is very popular and see we've got she lions main, corniceps, the other one, of course, that's kind of a, what I would say is kind of our top four sellers right now is Chaga. Have you ever seen a Chaga? Chaga, it's not even a mushroom. Chaga is this growth off the side of a tree that's caused by a fungus, and it's been used in traditional medicine across Russia and the Eastern Europe for stomach issues, and you harvest it while, it's the only mushroom that we actually wildcraft, and again, I call it a mushroom, it's not really a mushroom, it's just, it's this black really gnarly growth and traditionally used as a tea, but if somebody's got stomach issues of any sort, I highly recommend Chaga, and the one thing that I would just caution your listeners on and that is look, you go out on the internet right now and Chaga is the king of mushrooms, it's a panacea, there's nothing it can't cure, God, I hate that, it's just like, it's just drives me nuts. In my career, I've seen four kings of mushrooms out there. My son and I have decided that we're going to crown a new king, and we're going to crown lion's mane as the new king of mushrooms and just say, sorry Chaga, your time is done, it's lion's mane as the new king, so you know, it's just like the hype sometimes around products, please do not believe the hype. Chaga's got its place, it's not a panacea, there's two or three things that it does well, and that's what I like to focus on, because if you look at the research, there are so many different benefits that they've shown in In vivo and in vitro testing, but that doesn't always translate to the benefits that we would get as humans, and that's where it's important to look at traditional Chinese medicines and say, what do you use this for? Well, they're not going to say, oh yeah, we've got a hundred different things we use this for. No, no, no, that's not how it works. There's a few things they use it for, like I was at a conference in China in the mid-90s, it was a Rayshi conference, there was a traditional Chinese medicine doctor there, I said, well, so Rayshi, what do you think, and he goes, it's my main herb that I use for the liver. And I'm like, okay, here's a testimonial from somebody who's on the front lines of traditional Chinese medicine, and he's telling me that he uses Rayshi for the liver, that's his major herb that he uses for the liver, that is meaningful to me. Well, I'll tell you what, Jeff, I really appreciate that sentiment, that we can't really denote any of these as a panacea for all, right? We really have to be specific when we're talking about what it is that we're addressing, and then obviously, we've talked a lot about the supplementation, dosing, food, that's also important, efficacious dosing and therapeutic dosing, but I want to come back to your point about all these herbal supplements and the lack of data or robust human trials. I think I agree with the state that you made, but by the same token, it begs a question that's like, what is the safety profile, right? Because I think I remember you mentioning on a different podcast that not all of these are innocent, right? Some mushrooms can be quite poisonous, and if you don't know what you're doing, you can't just go and pick up wild mushrooms to start eating them, and I remember you talking a little story about a lot of the individuals who migrate to this country and they're home countries. They had this because grandpa was picking it up, and then those are the ones that end up having some adverse outcomes, and like really proven possibly even fatal outcomes. So, you know, that begs a question is in the absence of human trials, like how do we figure out the safety profile of these supplements of, you know, different amounts of intake of mushrooms? Well, well, first of all, anybody out there that is hunting wild mushrooms do not ever eat anything you find unless you have an absolute expert there that knows what he's doing and can tell you and testify to the fact that, yes, this mushroom that we're picking right now is edible. The other side of that, too, is, look, doesn't matter what food you are eating if you're eating it for the first time, I always advocate to people, don't eat a lot of it, God, because there's 5% of the people out there that are allergic to whatever food it is out there, and you may end up eating a large amount of these things. The next thing you know, you go, my stomach doesn't feel so good, just try a small amount to start with and never, ever eat a mushroom that you haven't identified clearly with an expert. Now, the other issue that I think is really important, and I really want to talk to you about this, and that is the quality of mushroom products in the marketplace, and there's something going on there that is really unfortunate. We talked about the different stages, the different parts of this organism, spore, mycelium mushroom. Mushrooms are very expensive to grow. You go into the marketplace, and as a mushroom growing, maybe I get $5 a pound for my fresh mushrooms, but supplements are dried powder, mushrooms are 90% water. Now I have to get $50 for that same pound of mushrooms. The economics do not work in North America for growing mushrooms. Did you know that every single mushroom you've ever eaten has been picked by hand? I mean, literally, on the mushroom farm I worked on back in the day, we had approximately 100 people there that were harvesting, and they harvested every single day of the year. Mushrooms do not sleep, they keep growing. You have to have somebody there all the time, harvest these things, because you have crops in every stage of development over a 90-day cycle. Mushrooms are expensive to grow. That's why I went to China, and I first went over there in 1989 to an international mushroom conference. China today grows 85% of the world's mushrooms. They have research institutes. They have tens of thousands of growers. I visited farms, production factories, research stations, went to conferences all throughout the 90s, and built up a lot of a network of people. In 1997, I went to China, and I took the largest organic certifier in the United States with me. We had the very first workshop for organic production of mushrooms in China in 1997. We grow all of our mushrooms, and they're in process them. Because they're so expensive, companies in the United States will grow the mycelium stage, and they will grow it on sterilized grain, and then when it is fully grown out, this mycelium covers all this sterile grain, it's done in a lab. They will dry it, grind it to a powder, grain in all, and sell it as a supplement. The problem with that is that you have very little fungal matter in there. It's mostly grain powder. When we put these products into tests, and in 2015, I published a study where we took 95 samples, 40 of which were these types of products that I bought off the internet when we tested them. What it showed was that they had very low levels of beta-glucans. Around 5% when in fact normal mushroom products should have 25% to 60% beta-glucan. This test also measured the amount of starch in products. Normal mushroom products have no starch, they have glycogen, so just a couple percent of glycogen in a normal mushroom product. These products had starch levels of 30% to 60%, because they had the grain in there. Do you either of you ever know what campaign is? Yeah. Bad it. Yep. Do you know how it's made? I always thought it was almost like tofu, but no, it's not soy, is it? Like soy based? I don't think so, actually. No, not too short of that. Well, what campaign is cooked soy beans? They're like sort of cracks in two halves, and they cook the soy beans, and then they actually put inoculate them with a fungus. What happens is that the fungal mycelium will grow and colonize this cooked soybean. When you're eating tempeh, you're actually eating mycelium. It's kind of cool, it's a great food. If you cut open that tempeh, you'll realize right away it's mostly soy. Well, that's what these companies are doing. They're growing out a tempeh-like product. They grind it to a powder. They sell it and call it a mushroom. So literally, and I'm not kidding here, 50% of the so-called mushroom supplements are fungal tempeh. They're mostly grain powder, and when you're going into a whole foods or whatever natural foods are looking at the supplement section, God, you have so many mushroom products, and you're like, how do I know what is real? Because on the label, you're seeing a picture of a mushroom, and it says, rachy mushroom, shatake mushroom, it could be this grain powder. And the most popular supplement out there, mushroom supplement out there, is made from this grain powder, and it's mostly just starch. It's the most expensive product out there because you're not really getting hardly any fungal matter. You're getting mostly grain starch, and how you can actually tell is if it says made in the USA, you know that's what's going on. That's what you're getting if it says made in the USA. Also it says, you know, what a real product should also tell you is the amount of beta glucose in the product. That's something that we do with every single batch that we produce. We test them for beta glucose, we test them for two other compounds, one called agosterol, one called aerothione. So we have a profile that matches the actual mushroom. Man, these products are mostly starch. For example, we measured some of these products with a, what's called approximate analysis. That's a nutritional analysis, protein, carbohydrate, fats, and then we had an actual corticeps profile, the actual mushroom profile, and then we profiled three different of these products and the grain that they were grown on. The profile of those products matched the grain, whether it was the protein, the carbohydrate matched the grain perfectly. So what I'm trying to tell your listeners here is be very careful, even take out the caps that we have one of those products right now, or you don't know, open it up, taste it. Most of those products will taste really bland, they'll taste kind of like a flour, a grain flour. So, if you're buying a supplement, be very careful and remember, it doesn't matter that it says organic, kosher, made-in-a-jeep, GMP facility, all the other vegan, non-chamel, it can still be those products because they're manufactured on an organic grain. So be very careful, or you will end up with what I just call a facsimile product and unfortunately labeling of these products, they actually say mushroom, instead of saying what it actually is, which is fungal kempay. Absolutely, and so I can see a lot of these supplement companies hiding behind the non-GMO of the vegan and putting their price points maybe just as high as these other companies that are doing it correctly to make it seem legitimate. But just for the listeners, I know a bunch of them are probably going to hit, go back two minutes and just listen exactly what you said because it was very high yield. Can you just give us a recap in terms of if somebody were to buy a supplement online or in the store, what is the list of things that they should do and the things that they know to avoid? If it says grown in the USA, you know it's not a mushroom. It is the mycelium grown on grain. Look too, some of these, there are a few companies that will actually, in the fine print on that supplement facts label, in the other, some of them will actually say, myceliated rice, myceliated oats, okay, right away, you know that that's what that product is. Other things to look for is does it say in the facts panel, mycelium there? Sometimes they'll say it's full spectrum, oh it's got mycelium, it's got mushroom, it's got spores, oh that's another kind of a giveaway look. Look for it, if it says made in the USA, that's really the key and look in the other, the fine print to see whether it lists the actual grain because and look, not all companies will reveal that. A lot of the companies, a lot of companies, they just buy their own material and somebody sells them their own material and says it's mushroom, they just go ahead and make their label that way and say it's mushroom and so you, you don't really even know unless they actually reveal that it's made in the USA, you know, and look, we all want to be local vores, I totally support buying local and if we can get it local without all of the thousands of miles of transportation and all the rest, good, better, absolutely, but at the same time, if you're buying a facsimile product that's not even real just because it's made locally, you're not even getting the real product and that's what's unfortunate because, you know, listen, some people are taking these things and they have life threatening illnesses, they're taking it because it will help their immune system while they're going through some kind of therapy that's really difficult and tears their immune system down. So, so it's unethical and mad, it's just unfortunate that this is something that you have to be thinking about when you go out looking for a mushroom supplement. Thanks for sharing those tips Jeff, I think, you know, anybody who has been doing this for long enough knows that this, the supplement industry, I mean, you can get really, really messy. I mean, for all the reasons that you mentioned and finding a good quality supplement as Darcia alluded to can be extremely hard. So I think we appreciate that, but, you know, right at the outset, you did mention that in these are supplemental and incorporating into your diet is probably your best bet. So then the question becomes, if somebody is, we'll go to the grocery store and they decide that this is something they want to implement more in their diet, and pick up different mushrooms, you mentioned the variety and the host of different benefits that come with, how does someone go about picking their appropriate type and then how would they incorporate that into their diet? Well, you know, the great thing about mushrooms is that they're so versatile. God, you can, you can use them in just about anything. I mean, mushrooms can be, can be just fried up alone. And one of the things I always tell people is, look, if you're going to cook mushrooms, especially if you're just going to fry them up or something like that, use a high heat. Man, if you use a low heat, mushrooms are 90% water, like most vegetables, you throw them in a pan of the heat's too low. All the water comes right out of them and now they're sitting in a puddle of water, warm water. And it's just like unless you want to make a gravy, that's not the way to cook them. Cook them on a high heat, brown them a bit. That's what I like to do. And, you know, use your favorite oil of your frying them and and very tasty that way. But you can put mushrooms into soups, you can put mushrooms into omelets, you can put them into stir fries. There's really no place you can't put them. So they're a very versatile food. And if you want to, the other thing too is, look, try something. Try some shiitakeye. Try some oyster mushrooms. And again, when you first eat them, don't eat a lot of them. Just eat enough to go, do you like the flavor? Does it agree with you? Is everything good after you've eaten the meal? These are all things that you need to consider. You know, you know, getting back to the whole poisonous things. One of the issues with the people eating poisonous mushrooms is that they come home, they they they fry up a lot of these things. They taste good because some of them, some of them taste good. They taste good. They eat a lot of them. And that's just like no, no, no, no, no. That's that is a very bad thing to do. And that's even true. Just when you're eating a new edible mushroom that you buy in the supermarket, don't eat a lot of them. Eat enough to get a sense of the flavor, put it in whatever dish you like. I I'm a meat eater. I you know, if I'm going to eat a piece of meat or something, I'm always frying up mushrooms to go with it because it goes really well with any kind of meat. It's just very versatile. I mean, throw them on a hamburger or what I do too with like a hamburger, I will chop up mushrooms and onions and I'll work it into my my ground round and and then fry it all right in that piece of meat. So so they're just a versatile versatile food that can be used in so many ways. Try different species. See if you like them. The the the agaricus mushroom look the button mushroom. I still really like it and I I lived with that mushroom for 10 years. I ate a lot of them. I still like that mushroom. It's a great mushroom. Very flavorful. What's really interesting too, you know, you mentioned that you've got the portobello. You've got the standard button and then you've got sometimes you'll see what's called the cramini. Those are all the same species. The the portobello is just that button mushroom that has been allowed to mature and grow large and the reason why though that's a button, a button basically is an immature mushroom is that it's got great shelf life in that stage. When you put out a mushroom that has actually developed and the caps opened up, now that is going to spoil much quicker. It's going to dry out much quicker. That's why they harvest all of those agaricus mushrooms in the button stage. Gotcha. Well, I couldn't agree with you more, Jeff. I mean, I don't eat meat and we use mushrooms by wife and I as a meat alternative and like in a lot of our dishes, you know, just with the texture, the flavor and the great part is that it kind of soaks in all the other flavors too. The oils and like the soy sauce, whatever you might use, it really soaks that flavor in. So it's a really versatile fungi. I guess you can say I was going to say vegetable or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll keep it up on that. Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting about that too because in the 1800s and throughout history, people were out there harvesting wild mushrooms. And some wild mushrooms are very large and meaty. In England, they used to call mushrooms poor man's meat because you can imagine, you know, a lot of people didn't have a lot of meat, but they could harvest these mushrooms in season. And you've got something that's firm and meaty and flavorful. It's just kind of interesting, you know, poor man's meat. Awesome. Well, Jeff, this has been fascinating. I really want to ask you though, like what is next for you? What's next for your business? Oh, man, you know, what the whole category has just exploded. And you know, you know, a lot of people, you know, for example, I'll just give you an example, you're walking along a path that you walk on kind of every day going to wherever. And one day you go, oh, wow, look at that. There's a mushroom. Where'd that come from? It wasn't there yesterday. Actually, it was. It was there. It just wasn't big enough for you to notice because it'll take, you know, two weeks for that mushroom to go from a very small little what we would call a pin all the way up to a fully mature mushroom. And that's kind of the way it's gone with with the mushroom category in North America. I mean, back in 1973, we only had one mushroom in the marketplace. And it's taken that long 50 years, let's say, of slow, steady people eating mushrooms, for example, and or supplementing. My company was started in 1989. Nobody had a mushroom supplement in their product line at that point in time. I had to do a lot of education to get people to where they knew about mushrooms. And actually we're putting them into their product line. It took time. So now just in the last five, six years, it's just kind of interesting. It's kind of what I would say, mushrooms have reached escape velocity. It's that kind of thing if you go like, well, where did these come from? Well, they've been there all along. And now all of a sudden, people are taking notice. You know, there's just a lot more too. I think a lot more people are paying attention to diet. You know, your generation, for example, I mean, much more into diet and eating right, right? I mean, compared to before and, you know, not only that part of what you're doing too, I'm sure as you go into a market and kind of going into the center aisles, it's like, why would I do that? You know, I mean, the issue today is processed foods. There are too many processed foods, you know, and that's the whole thing that to me bothered me the most about the whole reaction to COVID was it's like, look, it has been demonstrated that people who are overweight are the ones that are having the most issues. Those are the people that are eating from the center aisles. They're not the ones that are eating all the vegetables and having a good diet. Why aren't we addressing that perfect time to be addressing that? Just like the whole thing of a vitamin D showing that so many of these folks were also vitamin D deficient. God, you know, hand out vitamin D on the street corner for God's sake. At any rate, we're finally at a point where enough people are looking at diet and hopefully more people will change and the big issue for me more than I think moving away from meat or anything like that is how is our food being produced? You know, why do we have so many processed foods and why are so many people eating processed foods when they should be eating fresh, hope some food grown properly and again fresh and that is so important and that's where, you know, fresh mushrooms, wonderful food and I highly recommend the people to put those into your diet. It truly is the forgotten food and missing dietary link. Well, Jeff, you kind of answered the very last question which is arguably the most important question of the show is, you know, how do we add the health back and health care? I'll give you another opportunity to summarize that but before we do that, where can our listeners find you? How can they connect with you and if they want to learn more about mushrooms and supplementation and that kind of stuff? Well, we have two divisions in the company. One is where we sell raw materials to other companies. So we sell the bulk powders, they put it out in capsules bottles, they're labeled. That's namix, n-a-m-m-e-x.com. We actually have a menu there called education. Got tons of great information. Please come to namix site. Look at that. I've got some great slideshows there that show how we grow our mushrooms, how we process them. So come to namix and check out our educational area. And then the other site you can come to is our retail site called realmushrooms.com. It also has fantastic educational pieces there. So you've got information that can teach you about all sorts of whether it be the specific mushroom species or mushrooms in general. Lots of information there. Please come to those two sites and a lot more to learn. And again, we will make sure we leave all that in this. Perfect. Yeah. And I just again, just please try mushrooms. If you don't eat mushrooms now, I mean, darsht like you're saying, man, it's just a great food. Especially for vegans or vegetarian, great protein in mushrooms too. And just a really good nutritional profile. So work mushrooms into your diet and try them out. Wonderful food. Yep. But as you said, start low, go slow, type of solution, lunch, like anything else, and type trade up. Absolutely. So we'll be sure to link all that. And here is the final question for you. Like I said, you already touched on it a little bit. But you've been somebody who's been thinking about this stuff, what we're putting into our bodies for several decades now, you developed this awesome company to do that. So you know, I really get the sense that you're going to have a good insight into this. And a lot of times we think about adding the health back to healthcare and how we can do that. And so I'd love to get your take on what that means to you and how we can do that. Well, you know, you know, part of it for me is like, look, if we have a very good diet, which I consider to be the foundation of our health, with that diet. And of course, you know, you need to exercise. You need to be in a place where you've got fresh air and clean water and all of that. But we can get away from, you know, so many of my peers at my age there on all sorts of pharmaceutical drugs. And I just feel like if you can have a good diet, you can stay healthier and not have to end up in this position where you're on all sorts of pharmaceuticals or you just, you know, you're just not well. So diet and mushrooms should be a part of that can help you live a healthier life. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Jeff, you know, you're super passionate. So honestly, thank you. I know you're coming from Australia and metaphorically and literally, you know, mushrooms fun guy traverse more than I can see. So truly appreciate you. I know we had it like come more of a superficial talk. We try to go in death. But I'm sure others will definitely go to your website and learn more. So thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you guys very much. It's just been my pleasure to talk to you. All right. So I hope your view on mushrooms has changed, you know, maybe before listening to this episode, we just kind of thought of mushrooms as a food that we might see in salads or soups or maybe we're craving a meaty texture and we kind of just throw it a pan and eat. But now that we know into after listening to Jeff, mushrooms are so much more than just a food. They are truly a super food. And personally, I've been using mushroom extracts. I've tried Jeff's supplements as well. And the biggest thing I've noticed with these mushrooms is that you can feel a palpable difference whether it's lion's mane, racie, chaga, or even turkey tail. So if you are interested in getting some of these supplements, please check out our show notes. We have the website's link for Jeff's supplements. All right. And of course, guys, if this was a value to you, please, please be sure to send it to one other person. We are back in recording and we are trying to grow this community and again, trying to make healthcare accessible and also just teach about the future of healthcare. All right. The disclaimer, everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute the practice of medicine, but we are not providing medical advice. No physician patient relationship is formed and anything discussed in this podcast is not represented views of our employers. We recommend that you seek the guidance of your personal physician regarding any specific health-related issues. We'll see you next time.