Jenny Sansouci - The Healing Power of Medicinal Mushrooms and CBD

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Welcome to the Man Talk Show. I'm Connor Beaton and joining me today is Jenny Sansucci. Jenny is a Brooklyn based writer, certified health coach and the creator of the wellness blog HealthyCrush.com where she's been writing since 2008. She's a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and has been trained by Functional Medicine Dr. Frank Lipton. Jenny is also an author and she recently wrote a book called the Rebel's Apothecary, A Practical Guide to the Healing Magic of Cannabis, CBD and Mushrooms. Now this should give you a little bit of insight into what this episode is going to be all about. But interestingly enough, Jenny was sent on a journey after her father was diagnosed with, I believe stage four pancreatic cancer. She talks about it in the show and it sent her on a bit of a journey into.

Finding alternative sources of medicine to support him while he went through chemotherapy. And she shares a lot of this on her blog, a lot of this information around the different forms that they used. But in this podcast specifically we we are going to talk about the differences between cbd, between THC and look at non psychoactive mushroom strains and how these, she calls them medicinal mushrooms, functional mushrooms can be used for everyday health, wellness and nutrition. And this is something that I've actually been quite interested in in the last year or so. So part of my daily routine is, is taking things like Chaga, which are the, from what I can find, one of the highest sources of antioxidants, which are incredible for your body, which are incredible for fighting cancers, they are.

Wonderful for boosting your immune system. So we actually go through looking at what we could use things like CBD for, what things like THC are applicable for from a medical sense, health benefits, sense for sleep, for anxiety, for depressions. And we dive deep into the functional mushroom realm and kind of go through based on different things that you might be looking to elevate within your life. Whether you're looking to elevate your sleep or you're looking to elevate your mental cognition, we talk about the different options for you in the mushroom realm and Jenny is just a wellspring of information. We do touch a little bit on psychedelic mushrooms towards the end of the podcast, but we are certainly going to have her back on to dive deep into that form of conversation around psychedelic mushrooms. So without any further delay, please enjoy this podcast. Don't forget to rate and review. Subscribe goes a long, long way. Thanks for everybody that has been sharing the recent podcasts. I got A lot of great feedback from all of you about the Holistic Psychologist podcast and Leanne Rimes, who was recently on the show, and some of the other great guests. So thank you so much for sharing the podcast. I encourage you to continue that. It helps get us into the ears and onto the phones of other people. So with all that said, without any further, further delay, now that I've delayed it just a little bit, please welcome Jenny Sansucci.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm glad we're reconnecting.

Yeah. So for the, for the listener's sake, no, Jenny has not been on the show before. We recorded, like, right at the beginning of the pandemic last year. I think it was probably like March or April at some point.

And I don't know what happened to the audio file. It just like vanished into the ether and. And I was so disappointed because it was such a good conversation and I really loved our talk. But all things happen for a reason, as they say, as the cliche saying goes. So here we are. So let's dive in. Let's dive in. Let's start with. Tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Such a big question and a great question. I have a few, as all of us do, but I guess I'll start with the most relevant one because it's the reason that I wrote my book, which was the day that I found out my dad had stage four pancreatic cancer. That was definitely a before and after moment for me, probably the biggest, because it was really out of the blue. And, you know, anyone that has been diagnosed with cancer, especially stage four, especially pancreatic, it's hard to even describe what that moment feels like. If you've felt it, you know, or if someone that you love has cancer, it's like this heart dropping moment and like your heart just drops into your stomach and you're like, okay, my life has completely changed now. And that was Thanksgiving 2017. I had gone home for Thanksgiving to be with my family, and my dad had had, you know, some digestive issues and he had gone in for a scan just to see if there was any abnormalities. And we all went to the hospital together and we were all sitting in the, like, the cafeteria of the hospital, and my dad came out from the meeting and, and told us that he had stage four cancer. And it was.

Just thinking back to it almost brings me to tears. My sister and I, we didn't want to get upset in front of my dad because obviously he's Terrified. So we were like, all right, we need a second. So we went out to the parking garage in the hospital and just cried and just like, hugged each other and, you know, you don't know what's going to happen when you hear that kind of thing. So it was a really. Yeah, it was. We just knew our. Our lives were going to be completely changed, and they have completely changed. But luckily it's been, like, a really beautiful experience and a beautiful journey and so many gifts have come out of it. So it was. Yeah, that was really hard, but it totally changed my whole life. It. It gave me a purpose that I didn't have before, to really dive in and. And try to take care of my dad as. As much as possible. It changed, like, where I was living. I was at the time I was. Had moved to San Diego. My parents live in Massachusetts. And I was like, nope, I gotta go. I gotta go up there and take care of him. And I just dove into research and to try to find anything possible that could help him. And that's where my book came from. And I did not even expect to be writing a book. So that definitely changed the trajectory of my life.

That is certainly a defining moment. I appreciate you sharing it. And, you know, I think. And I think a lot of people can relate to that, you know, like, having. Having someone fall ill or. Or losing someone. And. And, you know, I think we. We have mutual friends in common who have been going through this as well in the last year. And it's one of those things where, you know, we find ourselves in the seat of, like, what do I do? How do I help? How do I contribute to, you know, this person that's going through this. This experience. And so, yeah, okay, so it, you know, you started to do some research where, like, how. Tell me a little bit more about how that. Not necessarily how it shifted your experience, but what did you start to dig into? Because I think the medical field and, you know, especially in and around cancer, like, there's so much information, and some of it's, you know, kind of contrary information. So what rabbit holes did that take you down? And. And what role did you start to sor. Of take on and adapt in order to support your dad?

Yeah. Well, it was interesting, the kind of shift that happened. You know, you go through this initial phase of shock and grief and despair when you get this kind of information. And then for me, that was, you know, I was. I was sitting in that for a little bit, and then all of a sudden there was a switch to Okay, I need to, I need to do something. I jumped into action mode like pretty quickly actually, because I was like, no, I'm not going to accept this. You know, I'm not accept what this statistical prognosis is for this kind of cancer. I know I can do something to help. You know, I've been in the nutrition and wellness world since 2008. I've been, you know, studied to, to be a health coach. I've worked with a functional medicine doctor, Dr. Frank Lippman, who actually wrote the forward to my book. And I have just had access to a lot of people that are, you know, functional medicine doctors, holistic doctors, nutrition experts, people that, that have really been, been studying the science of nutrition for a long time. And so I was like, okay, I need to start asking people for help. I need to start doing some research. I had never done any research into cancer, but I, you know, I know people who have and you know, before this, my, my wellness focus was really kind of just eating well and feeling great and more general, you know, for myself, like for my own well being. And, and this, this really turned me into, into a deep scientific researcher around plant medicine and cancer, which was totally unexpected. So I guess the first, when I first started researching, I started asking around to a few people. Medicinal mushrooms were one of the things that I knew I was going to look into because I had heard things about medicinal mushrooms in the immune system. And my dad, I knew he was going to go down the traditional chemotherapy route. There's people in the nutrition sector that go full on like juicing and don't do chemotherapy. And then there's the people that just do chemotherapy and traditional medicine and whatever their oncologist says. So there's, there's, you know, two ends of the spectrum, but then there's something in the middle where it's like, take the, if you're going to go down the traditional chemotherapy route or use traditional medicine, you know, in any sense for any illness, you can add things in, you know, from the, I guess alternative medicine side that can support your treatments. And so that's what we decided to do. I knew he was going to do that and I thought, okay, I know chemotherapy weakens the immune system. And the chemotherapy specifically that my dad is on and has been on now for over three years is a very strong one that a lot of people can't tolerate more than like 12 rounds of it. And then their immune system gets too weak and they have to take a break or it just ends up really, you know, destroying their body. So I was like, all right, the biggest thing I need to do is try to support his immune system somehow so he can stay strong through these treatments. And so the chemo can do what it needs to do while also his body, you know, staying healthy. So medicinal mushrooms were already in my mind. And when I say medicinal mushrooms, just for people who are not familiar, it's not psychedelic mushrooms, but another class of mushrooms that is. That has medicinal properties and can support the immune system, but you don't have any psychedelic effects. So that's one of the questions I get a lot people are like, do you mean, like, are you, like, just tripping all the time? No, like, I'm drinking lion's mane tea right now. And, yeah, so there's. There's a different class of mushrooms. And so I looked into that a little bit first. And then the second thing, obviously, we'll get into some details, but the second thing that I found that I wasn't expecting was cannabis. And when I started to research, you know, people who were using alternative therapies to not only help manage chemo side effects, which is probably the main thing that it's helped my dad with, but also, you know, there is, you know, people that say that it kills their cancer cells or that it's helped with their actual cancer. You know, I'm not a doctor, so I'm not saying, like, this is definitely how it works, but there are lots of anecdotal stories, and there have been studies showing that, you know, cannabis molecules can kill cancer cells in. In the lab. So I talked to my dad about it, and he had just watched a medical marijuana documentary, like, randomly, so he was already kind of down for it. And he try, let's try it. Let's see if we can, you know, get a medical card. In Massachusetts now, recreational cannabis is legal, but at the time, only medical cannabis was legal. So we got him a medical marijuana card really quickly. I got a caregiver card so I could pick things up for him at the dispensary. And we just went down that route pretty immediately. And so I looked into the different medicinal mushrooms that I thought could support his immune system. We did the medical cannabis for. For his chemotherapy side effects. And that combination has really helped him not only stay strong through, I mean, over 60 rounds of this really strong chemo at this point. Yeah. But also he's been able to avoid most of the most common side effects of chemotherapy. You know, nausea, a lot of pain. He's. He's avoided and, you know, fatigue and just like the weakening of the immune system. And there's so many things that people experience during chemo that just makes their quality of life terrible. He's, like, out doing yard work. He's, you know, having fun, enjoying his life. He's, like, playing cornhole with his friends and, you know, outside with masks on. But he's like, he's doing great and he's really stable. And, you know, with pancreatic cancer, being stable with your. When you're stage four is one of the best outcomes that you can hope for, really. There are people that completely cure their cancer. Of course, there's always those people. But it is a hard cancer to treat. So we feel really grateful and we think, we definitely believe that the cannabis and the mushrooms have played a role. And, you know, his doctors are astonished every time he goes in. They're like, we have nothing to say. Like, we have nothing to talk about in this meeting because you're just, like, still doing great. You know, he did take a break off of chemo for seven months, and he stayed stable most of the time. And then as soon as his numbers started to kind of creep up again, they. They put him back on chemo. So he's, he's, he's rocking it.

Amazing. Amazing. Well, you know, I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show. And I mean, outside of the incredible book that you wrote, Rebels Apoth. Apothecary, apparently, I can't say that's a hard word. We're going to leave that in Rebel Apothecary. There we go.

You know, outside of the, you know, amazing book you wrote, I wanted to talk about. And maybe just for the listener's sake, we can kind of break this down into kind of getting into the, the healing modalities and, and benefits of cannabis, of cbd, of the medicinal mushrooms that you were talking about, and just sort of separate that from the psychedelic mushrooms, which we can sort of talk about at the end if, you know, hopefully we'll have some time to dig into that. But let's. Why don't we start with, you know, I think CBD is probably the most common one that is really has sort of inundated the, the commercial space, the marketplace, and a lot of people have heard about it. Maybe if you can just break down a little bit, like, what is CBD for people that aren't maybe familiar with it, and then what is it generally used for? Why is it a beneficial. What's. What's the health aspect? What's the healthy aspect of the healing aspect of cbd, because I see it used for, like, it seems to have come onto the marketplace and it's like everything, you know, it's like sleep and, you know, nausea and pain relief and I mean, it's just like, it seems to be this, like, cure all or position as this cure all. And I'm curious to get, like, an expert opinion on, like, what is it actually sort of like, shown to. To really impact. So let's just start with cbd.

Yeah, totally. And it really is in everything. It's in, like, shampoo, it's in, like, pillowcases. Like, they just like, put it in everything, you know, like sleep on cbd, pillow, coffee shots.

I see it, like, all the time at coffee. So it's like a good way for them to charge a $5 add on. I know, like $5 for a freaking latte. And you want to charge. Yeah, okay. Anyway, let's. Let's take a chance.

Bring your own CBD to the coffee shop.

Yes. Yes.

So CBD is one of the compounds in the cannabis plant. There's hundreds of compounds in. In the cannabis plant, but THC and CBD are two of the most prevalent compounds. THC is the one that most people are probably familiar with as the one that gets you high. So if you are weed just to get high, there's probably a high amount of THC in it. In fact, most strains up until now, when the CBD boom started happening, most strains of cannabis that you'd find at dispensaries or elsewhere are super, super high in THC and really low in cbd. Now they're starting to have, you know, they're starting to breed different strains to be higher in CBD and to have almost no THC in them. But, so CBD is a non psychoactive compound within the cannabis plant that has. That has healing properties because. And THC does too. But we have a system in our body called the endocannabinoid system, and it actually works directly with the compounds in the cannabis plant, which is why it's so therapeutic. So we actually make our own compounds in the body that keep us in homeostasis, keep us in balance. And they're very similar to the compounds in the cannabis plant. They work with the same system. So these, the endocannabinoids that we make naturally help to, you know, regulate our pain response, regulate anxiety, our sleep cycles, and they can even regulate, you know, mood and depression. And there's. There's so many. And the nervous system and the immune system. And there's so many places where these receptors, we have these cannabinoid receptors throughout our body. So they weren't, you know, this system wasn't designed just for the cannabis plant. Like we make our own molecules, but the compounds in the cannabis plant just happened to work with it. So. So when you are taking something like C, B, D, it will sort of modulate the endocannabinoid system in the sense that it boosts our natural levels of these endocannabinoids. So if you have anxiety or you have pain, you may have naturally lower endocannabinoids in your body. Everyone has a different system, everyone has different natural levels of these molecules. So it's kind of just like digestion. Everybody has a different digestive system. Everyone has different things that work for them. Everyone has also a different. Scientists call it the endocannabinoid tone. So your natural tone, like how high these levels are in your body. So if you have.

Sorry, sorry to interject there. So can you, can, can you get your levels checked to, like, see how that looks like that tone? Like, how does, like, there's like, again, this is stuff that I don't really know a lot about, but it sounds like it's, it's a, such an important aspect of the body and, you know, maybe like immune system and nervous system and all these different components. So is that something that people can, can get checked or is this just something that you sort of have to play with certain doses to kind of get a sense of, like, what works for your body? Like, how. How do we tell what that tone is?

Yeah, that's a really good question. As of now, as of the time when I was writing the book, I went to a medical cannabis conference out in LA and I heard from this man called Dr. Machulam, who's like the godfather of cannabis medicine, and he was like, if we could measure these endocannabinoids, it would be a total game changer. It's ridiculous that we haven't figured out a way to measure them, but they are. And as of now, like, they may be like really close to being able to do that, but I know it's in process, but right now the way that we need to do it is to experiment. And that's why with CBD dosing, there is not a one size fits all dose, because everybody's different. So it's know you may take, you know, 10 milligrams of CBD and it may really help your anxiety. I may need 25 milligrams to help my anxiety. Or you may take, you know, 30 milligrams to help you sleep, and someone else may need 50 like it, you really do have to experiment, and it depends on, you know, what you're using it for. And there's all different methods of delivery for CBD that can work better for. For different ailments or different concerns. So.

So, for instance, if. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, no, I was going to say, like, can you give examples of those delivery methods? Just so that, again, there's. There's context there.

Yes. So. Well, before I go into delivery methods, one thing I do want to mention is, you know, people.

Think that having, you know, any amount of THC is going to get you high, but that's not true. If you have a tiny bit of THC in your CBD product. Like, if you're. If you don't want to get high, but you want to take advantage of. Of cbd, having a little bit of THC in there will actually help the CBD work better, because the compounds in the cannabis plant, they all work together. It's called the entourage effect. So if you have a product that's called Full spectrum, which means it has all of, or many of the different cannabinoids or cannabis molecules, the different ones from the plant in the product, it's going. They're all going to work together to kind of boost each other's effectiveness. So many people who have taken, like, a CBD isolate, which is just CBD with nothing else, are like, oh, the CBD didn't work for me. And it could be because you need some of those other compounds in there. CBD isolate can work, but people typically need a lot more in order for it to be effective, and then that just ends up being more expensive. So I would always recommend a full spectrum CBD product that has a little bit of THC in it. Unless you are, you know, in sober recovery and you just, like, absolutely don't want to, you know, touch thc, that's totally understandable. Or if you, you know, need to take drug tests for work, the. The THC will. Will show up on the drug test. So those are the kind of two instances where you were using an isolate could be better, but you have to experiment. So. And there's also CBD products called Broad Spectrum, which have other cannabinoids in it, but no thc. So it. It's still, in my opinion, better than an isolate. Uh, so if you can find a broad spectrum one, that's great, too. So for delivery methods, the one that I prefer is to take a tincture, and that's like an oil tincture that you put under your tongue. And that is one of the quickest delivery methods and one of the easiest ways to measure out your dose. Because, you know, if you're taking an edible, for instance, you really don't know how much is in there. Like, if they could say, oh, there's 25 milligrams of CBD in this edible. But, you know, when you're baking something like things can spread out, you don't know exactly how much is in there. It has to go through your digestive system first, too. So then it breaks down and you lose some of that medicine in the process. So if you're really wanting to. So it's fine to have edibles. If you just are like, I want some CBD in my system, and I don't really care how much it is, that's fine. But if you really want to get accurate with your dosing, I would suggest a tincture that has, like, you know, measurements on the. On the little tincture bottle that tells you, you know, how much is in one dropper full. And then experiment from there. Put it under your tongue. It should take about 15 minutes to kick in for most people, like, give or take. And then, you know, take. Start low. Start with like, 5 milligrams. I mean, some people only need 2 milligrams to feel relief, depending on what they're. What they need. And if you feel nothing, then you can, you know, up it a little bit and just keep measuring. And, you know, I always tell people to, to write it down. Like, how do you feel? What kind of relief are you looking for? For. Some people don't really know what exactly they're looking for. So I think it's important to get clear on that. Like, is it anxiety? Is it help with sleep? Is it. Is it chronic pain? Is it, you know, whatever you're. You're looking for, just get clear and then notice the effects of it. Notice if it worked, you know, an hour later. Check in with yourself, see if, if you feel any relief. And if you don't, you know, take. Take a little bit more. So, yeah, and just, you know, as they say, start low and go slow. So, you know, it's. You can always add more. And you want to take the minimum effective dose, right? Because you don't want to be just like cramming yourself with too much. And again, it gets expensive if you're just taking tons of it all the time. So, yeah, keep going up Slowly until you feel relief. So the tincture, I think, is really good for anxiety because it kicks in pretty fast. And I also take the tincture to help me with sleep, so I'll take it just right before I go to bed. Edibles, CBD Edibles can be good. I have a lot of CBD recipes in my book, actually, and CBD edibles can be good to, like, help keep you asleep because they take longer to kick in, but they also last longer. So sometimes, like, I'll take a little edible and a tincture because the tincture helps me fall asleep. And then the. The edible or a capsule is kind of considered an edible too, because it goes through your digestive system. Take a capsule and then that will sort of help you to get to sleep and then stay asleep. If CBD helps you sleep, it doesn't help everybody. It's sleep sleep. You know, for some people, it can be, you know, even stimulating, depending on what kind of product it is or what their system is like. So you just really do have to experiment with that stuff. What else? I mean, smoking, obviously, is what people think of when they think of, you know, cannabis. It's definitely not the. It's the quickest acting, but it's definitely not the healthiest because you're, you know, you're inhaling, you know, smoke into your lungs. But vaping with a dry herb vape pen can be. At least the doctors that I interviewed for my book said that that is, you know, the. One of the safest ways to inhale because you're not vaping in oil. So you're not inhaling oil into your lungs, which is. Is a concern. And, you know, there has been. There's been issues with vaping. But if you. A dry herb vape pen. I have a pax. It's called pax. You put the actual, like, CBD flower, like what you would think of when you, like, buy weed. It looks exactly like weed and is. But it's just CBD or it's very, very, very high cbd. And you put it into this little vape pen and it just heats up the actual flower and you inhale the vapors. So there's no oils involved and there's no smoke involved. So that's. And that's very quick. That's like, you know, within a couple of minutes to feel that kind of relief. So people use that a lot for pain if they have, you know, chronic pain also, like acute anxiety or panic. You know, people use. Use that kind of inhalation. So that's kind of the deal with, with inhaling. And then there's topicals, which you just rub onto your skin. And those can be really good for, like, arthritis or like a pain in a specific area of your body. You know, there's CBD massage oils that can be really relaxing. And I actually do one of. I don't use high THC products personally because I don't like the feeling of being high, but I do use high THC products for. For. With topicals for pain. And that, that really helps me without. Without actually getting it into my system enough to. To feel intoxicated.

Interesting. I, I definitely want to get more into that in a second, but can you just say a little bit about what happens when. So, like, for example, let's say somebody has anxiety and they, you know, do the, The. The vape of the cbd, which again, I, you know, I appreciate you just making the distinction between the CBD and the thc, because I think a lot of, A lot of people hear weed and all they think is, like, you're gonna get high. So I feel like there's a lot of. There's a lot of the cannabis industry is having to educate, you know, around the differences. Although I feel like a lot of people that listen to this show probably know most of the differences, but who knows? But, so, okay, so somebody has anxiety, they're experiencing anxiety, they use a vape pen with cbd. Like, from what we know, what is actually going on in the system, that creates a sense of soothing. Because I think that's sort of a bit of a mystery for a lot of people of, like, why. What's the correlate between taking CBD and actually feeling a sense of relief from. From anxiety?

Yeah, that's a great question. So before what I mentioned, the endocannabinoid system that's in our bodies having anxiety has been correlated with low levels of. We have two different cannabinoids that we produce in our bodies. One's called. Well, we have two that we. That have been highly researched. One's called anandamide and the other is called 2ag. And these two. Low levels of these have been associated with anxiety. So and, you know, heightened pain response and all the things that CBD helps with. It's because of these lower levels of these endocannabinoids. So when you're actually taking it and it helps your anxiety, it's because it's. It's heightening your natural levels of these. These cannabinoids in your body, these things that regulate anxiety and Keep you in balance. So that's, that's kind of the mechanism of action.

Cool. There you. There we go. I like, I actually had no idea. I've, I mean, I've tried CBD on a number of occasions and, and always found it to be quite relaxing. And I have noticed a big difference between the method of delivery, you know, between sort of like taking a, like a pill form of CBD versus vape versus, you know, a topical form. And so. Yeah, so that's, that's interesting. And I like the, what you said before, like go, like start low and go slow. I feel like that's going to be applicable for everything that we're going to talk about today.

Yes.

Especially when we get to the end and start talking about psychedelics.

Oh boy.

Yeah, which by the way, there, there has been some. I don't know if, if people have, have seen this, but I think it was Yale or, or Harvard. I'm, I'm gonna have to find it. I think it was Yale that just released like a huge study on the use of. Yeah, it was the Yale. Yale released a manual for psilocybin assisted therapy of depression. And it's an actual, it's an actual step by step guide for how to, to how to basically use psilocybin for treating depression clinically. So of course I downloaded that and have been going through it and I'm like geeking out on that. But we'll, we'll get to that later. Let's, let's move into to thc, the THC component of cannabis and what it's traditionally used for, what are the healing properties, how does that work? And maybe some like real life examples of what that can look like. Because I think again, this is sort of like one of those mystery things where a lot of people just think like, oh, you're just gonna smoke some weed and get high.

Right.

So let's, let's dig into the healing components of it.

Yeah. So just like cbd, THC works directly with our endocannabinoid system as well. And it's just has, it has some different effects in the sense that it works more with the, the part of our endocannabinoid system that's associated with the brain. So, so, so the, the psychoactive effects come from that, but it does still work with our natural levels of endocannabinoids as well to just regulate those. And so it. Traditionally people use thc. I mean, people do, you know, when people smoke weed. It's funny, some of the cannabis doctors I spoke To. They're like, all marijuana use or cannabis use is therapeutic. You know, people. Even if people are just using it to get high, they're doing it to relax or they're doing it to calm their anxiety or to just, like, chill out. So there is something that you're, you know, you're trying to treat if you' using it. And obviously, there's, you know, a spectrum there, too, of. Of abuse. And, you know, you can use it in ways that. That feel less therapeutic. But typically, people have seen a lot of success using THC for pain. Like, at least for. With. With the products that have a higher level of thc, it can help to, you know, regulate your pain more. So that's why I was saying the topical that I use. I broke my tailbone, like, five years ago now, maybe, And I still. I know it was. Yeah, it was. I was sledding in Finland, and I hit, like, a huge block of ice.

My God, like, just hearing that, my whole body's just like, oh, Lord, that must have hurt.

Yeah, it was really terrible. And so I still get aches and pains there, especially if I'm on a long flight or if I'm sitting and writing for hours, I still get pain there. And the high THC, topical, for me, has worked wonders for that pain. It's a. It's a transdermal product, which it means it gets more, you know, into the bloodstream. So there's a chance of feeling a little something from the THC versus just a topical, which doesn't go as deeply into the bloodstream. So that's something to keep in mind. But I've never had an issue with, like, feeling high from a transdermal product, but that really, really helps. And then nausea. THC is. Is one of the things that helps a lot with nausea. So my dad has seen a lot of success with his chemotherapy treatments with nausea and appetite. Those are the two biggest things. You know, you. You know, you hear about the munchies, or maybe you've experienced it if you. If you get high. But that's really helpful for cancer patients, you know, to. To have that appetite stimulation. And I think there's something about it that sort of suppresses the feeling of being full, something about. About that in the. In the system. So, you know, at first, my dad was having a lot of trouble eating, and a lot of cancer patients say that's the main thing that they have trouble with during chemotherapy, is they just have no appetite. So using a THC product can really help to stimulate the appetite and to curb the nausea. Because the combination of nausea and no appetite makes cancer patients lose a lot of weight. And that can weaken the immune system. You know, you need to have some meat on your bones to, to be able to handle those chemo drugs. So the thc, the THC product that my dad actually uses is called Rick Simpson Oil. It's. They call it RSO because Rick Simpson, Rick Simpson is the man who kind of first popularized this kind of oil. But he isn't, you know, associated with all of the oil that's at the dispensary. So they now call it rso, but it's a really, really thick, high potency cannabis oil, usually really high in THC. My dad uses a one to one ratio of CBD and THC and it's probably like 100 milligrams of THC and CBD in each dose that he takes.

It's a lot.

It's a lot. I know, but like, that's another place where you have to start low and go slow and you do develop a tolerance. So he is, he does feel like high from it for sure. But it is the kind of thing that you can work up to, to the point where you're not uncomfortable. But yeah, if you are using it for that purpose, you probably will feel high. But it really, really, really helps him. It helps his mood. It helps, like I said, his appetite, his nausea, pain, so many things. He's like always in a good mood and he, he was before, but I think it really helps and it helps to curb some of the, you know, cancer related anxiety, you know, that comes along with having that kind of, kind of diagnosis. So with the thc, it is in the medical dispensaries there are, you know, higher, higher THC products used really therapeutically versus some of the recreational or adult use dispensaries. They have a limit on how much, how much they can have in the product. So the medical, the medical community is. Yeah, is using higher levels. So yeah, so those are, those are some of the main, the main things that we've seen success with with thc.

Very cool. I think that's, that's a pretty solid description from like the medical side of things and the usage. And I'm curious, like, what was your experience positioning this to your dad? And you know, how did he receive it? Because I think about, you know, my parents being in that situation. I think for a lot of people it's like, how do I, how do I approach this subject? Like knowing that there's research, knowing that there's science knowing that there's a lot of people that have used these products and are, are benefiting from it. But then there's a lot of people who are just very sort of like anti quote unquote drug. Right. Which I find so interesting that we live in a, in a culture that is fine to consume opioids. You know, that's fine to, to sort of like put things like oxycontin and Percocets into our bodies as a means of pain reduction. But then they're, you know, often sort of like chemically modified etc. But then things like marijuana, you know, cbd, thc, there's often a lot of resistance. So I'm just curious to get your perspective, like, how did you position that? How was it met? And any advice for people that have family members who are, you know, maybe could benefit from going down this, this pathway?

Yeah, it's a, it's a good question and one that I hear from people a lot. You know, how do I bring this up to my parents? Thankfully, my dad was super open minded about it. You know, he, he was like, I used to, you know, smoke weed in college and I always thought of it as like a recreational drug. I never thought of it as anything else. So he was, he was already sort of like open to the idea of it. But I, you know, I had him. He watched a documentary about medical marijuana. There's another documentary called Weed People and that's really, really good to watch. Have you seen it?

No, but I love the name. I'm gonna have to watch it. Weed the People.

Yeah. And it's, it actually follows children that have had cancer and used medical cannabis. And that's, you know, obviously a touchy subject, like giving it to children, but it's, it's really interesting and it shows some of the therapeutic effects. And this actual. The oil, the, you know, Rick Simpson oil that I was talking about, the, the highly, highly concentrated oil, they use that in the documentary with the cancer patients. So something like that could be really good to introduce to someone who's really new to this and be like, oh, okay, there's something, there could be something to this. Because, you know, when you start to see they're using, you know, CBD and cannabis products for children with epilepsy and when you see children having seizures that have had seizures their whole lives and you know, it's really debilitating for their whole family and all of a sudden their seizures, seizures are greatly reduced or eliminated by these products. That's when my dad was like, oh, okay, there's, like, something here because you're seeing it. You're seeing, like, the children with seizures stop having seizures. It's. And Charlotte's Web is a CBD company that started because of a little girl named Charlotte that was, was having these seizures that was helped with cbd. So it's, There's a, There's a website called the Realm of Caring that's really good to check out, and they have different dosage guidelines and information for not only children, but, you know, anybody that is struggling with different ailments and cannabis and how cannabis can help. I think just providing resources. You know, as you mentioned, one of our mutual friends has, has. Has his mom has had cancer. And I sent him just tons of studies and articles and kind of just like an arsenal. Like, look, there's so much on the Internet. If you go on pubmed and search some of the studies, there are studies out there that show how helpful it can be. And there's so many testimonials of things. And, you know, obviously I wrote about a bunch of them in my book, so that's a good place to start. I, I, in the book, I really do approach it pretty gently, knowing that there's resistance to it, knowing that there's a negative stigma, and I put a lot of scientific research, research in there too. So I think just providing them with resources and be like, you know what, I'm not trying to push this on you, but here's some resources to check out that just might kind of shift your mindset around it that can really help. The one thing that is that you do need to make sure you check with your doctor is, you know, med. Some medications can interact with this stuff. So you want to. There's a website called Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. On their website, they have lists of drug interactions with, you know, all the different medicinal mushrooms and all different herbs and stuff. So you can check that to see if your medication is listed there, depending on what kind of supplement or herb or mushroom you're trying to take. But, you know, I know that cannabis can interact with blood pressure medication in the sense that it can lower your blood pressure. So if you're taking blood blood pressure medication that's already lowering your blood pressure, the cannabis can lower it even more. So that's something to think about. And there's. There's a few different things that it can interact with. So just like, get clear on that and do some research on that. And then the other part is talking to your doctor about it. You know, if you do have a serious condition. A lot of doctors are opening their minds up to using medical cannabis, but some aren't. So I would. I would suggest what we did was we brought it up to the oncologist. We printed out articles. I found some articles on pancreatic cancer and cannabis killing pancreatic cancer cells specifically. And so I brought those into the oncologist and I just brought in as much information as I could. And I said, you know, unless you think there's a really big reason why we shouldn't do this, we'd really like to try. And if they say no, I would just suggest finding out the exact reason. Reason why they say no, because it could be completely relevant and accurate, like a medication that it's going to interact with, or it could just be because there's a bias against it, or they just don't know enough against it or about it to be able to recommend it to you. So I would just make sure you find out. That's what I always tell people. If you're. If your oncologist or your doctor says don't use it, find out exactly why and make sure you agree with what they're saying. And you can get. You can get a second opinion if you need one.

Yeah. Love it. Love it. All right. Well, I think that's. That's probably good for the. The cannabis space. Let's. Let's talk about mushrooms. This is my. This is my jam.

This is my.

I'm like, yeah, I get excited about. I get excited about mushrooms.

Me too.

So let's. So maybe just sort of define medicinal mushrooms, because I think when I, you know, I think you were right when you talked about this in the very beginning. Sort of preface, like, I'm not talking about salicy, but I'm not talking about psychedelic mushrooms. What constitutes as medicinal mushrooms and why are they labeled as such? Because I think this is a very new space for a lot of people who, you know, see white button and brown button mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms on, you know, the shelf in the grocery store.

Right?

And then all of a sudden we're talking about medicinal mushrooms as something that's not psychedelic. And, you know, for, for some people, they're like, yeah, I'm on this. And for other people, they're like, what are you. What are you talking about? So let's, let's just unpack that.

Right? Okay. So, you know, there's the. There's the kind of mushrooms you see at the grocery store. Actually, shiitake is a medicinal mushroom, but you know, the ones that you see, like the button mushrooms, actually, button mushrooms, cremini mushrooms, and portobello mushrooms, which are the three that you most commonly see at the grocery store, are actually all the same mushroom, which I thought was insane. When I, when I learned that, I was like, my mind is blown. So they're just different ages. Like their caps have opened up at different stuff stages, which is so interesting. But those are like the edible mushrooms that don't have, you know, the medicinal property. They, they have nutrition in them, but they don't have the medicinal properties of the classification of medicinal mushrooms, which I talk about in the book, which is mushrooms that are safe for consumption, that have significant beneficial health, you know, beneficial health properties. So that are not psychedelic. So there's kind of like a middle ground. It's like they're not just the button mushrooms that you would see at a salad bar and they're not the psychedel mushrooms, but there's this middle class that a lot of people just don't know about, which is, some of them are edible, some are better used in like, tinctures or teas or powders. But they have significant benefits primarily for the immune system. All of these medicinal mushrooms that we're going to talk about have compounds called beta. Beta glucans, and they interact with our immune system. I mean, kind of similar to what I was talking about with CBD and cannabis, where it doesn't like stimulate the immune system, but it modulates it, it helps to keep you in balance. So it's not, it's not like boosting it, but it's, it's regulating it. So all of the medicinal mushrooms that we're going to mention have these beta glucans. And then each mushroom has its own different properties as well, but they all do contain these, these beta glucans, which are the, you know, the sweet spot for medicine.

Awesome. I think we should talk about some of the individual mushrooms, kind of like going through the difference between things like cordyceps and lion's mane. And if you can break down, you know, you're talking about drinking lion's mane tea before and like what, what each one of them is sort of used for. So let's talk about, let's talk about lion's mane first, because I think I like that one a lot.

Yeah.

Be selfish and start where I want.

Yes. Yeah. Lion's mane is one of my favorites. I mean, I always say that all of them are my favorites at different times. But lion's mane, I've been using a lot late lately because it's one of the mushrooms that can boost cognitive function and can help to support your memory. And it actually has been shown to repair the myelin sheath around nerve endings, which is kind of like the coating around a wire. So if you think about a wire that's frayed or like, you know, your, your iPhone charger that just, like, always gets frayed, that's like the myelin sheath around our nerves. So it can be really helpful for neuropathy, which is nerve pain in addition to cognitive function and brain health. And so I use it personally for, you know, boosting my focus and my, you know, cognition when I'm working. And that's why I'm drinking it now, so I can be more well spoken. But. But my dad has had really a lot of success with it for his neuropathy that comes with chemotherapy. Again, you can get, like, tingling and pain in your, in your hands and feet. And I was actually listening to, I believe it was, yeah, Tim Ferriss and Paul Stamets talking about this on Tim's podcast. And this was, you know, before I had given my dad any lion's mane, and he was talking about how it can, you know, repair nerve damage and can, can really help. Help with the nervous system in general. And I was like, interesting. So I went to my dad and I was like, would you be willing to try a new mushroom? Because he was really complaining about this neuropathy. And so I gave him lion's mane. And after two weeks of taking it, he, he was able to feel the difference, he said, between a dime and a quarter, like between his fingers, which he wasn't able to before. He was able to button his buttons again and he was able to put his contact lenses in again. Like little things that he wasn't able to do with, like, the tips of his fingers started to improve significantly from the lion's mane. So it's. I think lion's mane is just the coolest mushroom. And another thing that's cool about lion's mane is it's one of the edible mushrooms, meaning you can cook and eat it. Some of them, such as chaga and reishi, which we'll talk about, you can't really just cook and eat them just because of their texture. The lion's mane, you can. It looks like a lion's mane. I mean, have you ever cooked with lion's mane?

I have, yeah. When we were, when we were out in British Columbia last year, there was this grocery store that we found that had like, local or like, Organic. All these different types of mushrooms, like yellow oyster and lion's mane and ratio. Like, I mean, all this is this huge shelf and I was like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, we, we. Every single time we went in, I'd buy this, like, massive thing of lion's mane and we made some tea with it and we cooked with it and it was.

It was awesome.

Pretty damn awesome. Yeah.

Yeah. And because of the. It is hard to find. It is hard to find. But I've seen it at the farmer's market. I've seen it at point some. Some like gourmet grocery stores. I have seen it at Whole Foods a few times. And you can grow it actually pretty easily. It's. It's a pretty quick grow process. There's a company that I've ordered from called North Spore that I gave my dad some lion's mane grow kits from there. But you can find grow kits pretty easily. But yeah, you can just kind of saute it up with like butter or coconut oil or whatever you use, and it's delicious. So that's. That's something to experiment with. But yeah, the regenerative nerve properties are, you know, why it can be so helpful for brain health. So it's one of those ones that you can make some lion's mane tea before you sit down to write or sit down to read or work. And it's. There have been studies showing that it boosts cognitive function. So it's pretty exciting.

And if they do, they have a connection to, like, what sort of chemical compounds within the lion's mane is. Is producing those outcomes or is this still. Because I know a lot of this stuff is newer. Ish. Right. Like, I think when we talk about things like chaga and the antioxidants that are within it, you know, there's. There's some good research behind that, but I think it's some of these emerging mushrooms that are coming out and people are like, reporting these benefits and they're like, oh my gosh, like, what. Where is this coming from? But yeah, so with the lion's mane is. Do they know what within the mushroom is causing some of these outcomes?

Yeah, they do. And you know, with mushrooms, that's a good, good thing to mention is that there's certain compounds in the mushrooms that can be extracted with water. Lion's mane, there's compounds called Erin scenes in the lion's mane that can be extracted with water. And then there's the beta glucans that need to be extracted with alcohol. So actually lion's mane is one of the ones that might just have everything extracted with water. I'd have to double check, but either way, double extracted tinctures and powders are usually the way to go with medicinal mushrooms because you do have some compounds that can only be extracted with alcohol, some that can only be extracted with water. So you want to do have this double extraction product that is then combined to give you all the different medicines from the mushrooms. So each mushroom has, you know, like I said, the beta glucans, but then also these really specific other substances within them that, that can give you different health properties. So if you are looking for products, I would go with a double extracted product. Make sure it says on the label. Yeah. And some are actually triple extracted because you can do a hot water extraction, a cold water extraction and the alcohol extraction and you know, different enzymes and tri terpenes come out of those extractions too. So there's lots of. So nerdy.

Yeah. For, for the, for the like super geeks that are listening to this. Like yes. Triple extraction.

Yeah. But if you, if you know what one of my. If you really want to get nerdy about it, know exactly how everything is working, go to PubMed and just look up lion's mane or look up. If you want to look up the scientific names of each of the mushrooms, I list them all in the book because the scientific names are the ones that will be, you know, used across all of the studies because in every language the scientific names are the same. But you know, in. So that's something that you can get really nerdy on and just google the scientific names of the mushrooms and see all the different studies that have, have been done with each of them and how it's. How it's been working for people. So that's a good suggestion for people that want to get real into the nerdiness.

Awesome. Awesome. We'll, we'll try and have the links for that in the show notes. Okay, where do you want to go next, Jenny? Which, which ones? Like, what's your next favorite mushroom that you want to sort of unpack and talk a little bit about?

Well, I guess something that feels relevant right now because everybody's wanting to stay healthy and boost their immune system. I think Chaga is one of my current favorites. And Chaga has a huge amount of antioxidants. It's one of the most, the highest antioxidant foods out there. And so it's really, really good for, for the immune system in general. It's high in the beta glucans again, that can help to modulate the immune system. But if you. Chaga mushroom is one of the ones that's not edible, like, you can't just take it and eat it. It's like very dense. It looks like a cork kind of. And so one of the things that you can do with chaga is just put a chunk of. Of chaga into water and make tea out of it. And it can really help to keep you healthy. It's one of those kind of everyday mushrooms. Some of the mushrooms, I would say, you know, are used for really specific things and maybe you want to take them, you know, for a specific reason, like lion's mane. You might want to take it for, you know, specifically for focus and, and memory on a certain occasion. But chaga you can really take every day to kind of be a foundational mushroom. So that's one of my favorites. And so you take a chunk of chaga and put it in some water and just let it simmer for at least 20 minutes. But two hours is better because it'll extract more of the medicine and then just drink it and it's delicious. It's. You can add sweetener or your milk of choice if you want, but I just drink it plain. It actually has a compound in it called vanillin, which is a compound in vanilla. So it has like this slight subtle vanilla taste, if you are really sensitive to taste. So I think it's delicious. So chaga. But that's just the water extraction. So if you really want to get everything out of the chaga mushroom, I will take a chaga tincture and kind of put it into my tea. So I'll, you know, I have a. I have a triple extracted chaga tincture from a company called Catskill Fungi that I love. And I'll take a little bit of that tincture, put it into my chaga tea, and just really go for it.

This is great. We're just totally nerding out. I hope that people appreciate the level of, of like nerdism that's happening on this, on this interview today. Yeah, I mean, I was gonna ask about, you know, I see a lot of co packaging, I want to say, of, of some of these mushrooms that are being used. I know that like, like Aubrey Marcus has a product called Alpha Brain where he's sort of combining nootropics with lion's mane and cordyceps and these types of things. You know, I think in my, in my coffee in the morning, I'll use Laird Hamilton. The Surfer has products now where it's, you know, it's like mushrooms.

Like superfood creamers, which is really interesting. So it's, it's not, it's non dairy, but it's got, you know, different types of mushrooms in it along with MCT oils and stuff like that. Is what are your thoughts on, on combining the mushrooms like that? Is there a benefit to it? Is there a downside to combining them with like these, you know, fats that we need, like MCT oil? Just. I'm just kind of curious because as these things become more popular, people are sort of like combining them with all these different substances and combining all the mushrooms. And I'm just kind of curious to get your thoughts on does that degrade the impact of them or is that fine?

That's a really good question. I, it does. I do not think it's non beneficial to, to take products like that. One of the things I think you're probably going to get less of a medicinal dose having it in a product like that that might just have like a little bit of it in there versus taking a tincture which is probably going to be highly concentrated or you know, taking a packet of, you know, four Sigmatic has the packets of just highly concentrated mushroom powder. And so if you're just doing that and it's basically just the mushroom powder, it's probably going to be a higher dose. So if you're just wanting to add some medicinal mushrooms into your life and just kind of boost your overall wellness and your immune system and just kind of stay healthy, having a blend of mushrooms is awesome. And even a small amount, I think it's always beneficial to have some. If you're really wanting to get like a medicinal dose, then I would take it. It doesn't even necessarily have to be separately, you can take them all together, but you may want something a little more concentrated. But no, there' no downside to taking it. I tell people all the time to, you know, throw it into some smoothies or your coffee. Yeah. So however you can get the mushrooms, they, they want us to use them. So use them in, in any way you can. But yeah, the concentrated dose is more medicinal for sure. Like I wouldn't give my dad like just a small dose that was already mixed up in something else. I would, I would want to give him, you know, a high dose.

Yeah, yeah. So it's really, really depending on like the, the usage and the outcome that you're looking for based on what product you're going to source.

Totally. And if you're just you know, making a superfood smoothie or something, and you know, you're throwing in like your spirulina or whatever else, and you add some mushroom product into there, that's totally great. It's always going to boost. Boost it to have those in there. Yeah.

Awesome. So let's just close off this section by maybe, if you can, listing off some of the other medicinal mushrooms and. And the benefits from what we know so far.

Yes. So for a quick fire, reishi is another really awesome one. For the immune system, it can also be. So reishi and chaga are two kind of everyday mushrooms that, you know, they've used reishi a long time in Chinese medicine for longevity. And it's very good for the nervous system. It can help you relax. So if you want to do a reishi tea at night, if you're someone who, you know, like drinks a glass of wine to fall asleep and you want to kind of shift over to something else, you could take some reishi tea.

That was. That was smooth, by the way. I like this leg just smoothly layered that. Because I think. I mean, I think, you know, in. During the pandemic, we've seen alcohol sales skyrocket. I think a lot of people are. That are at home. Let's just have a glass of wine before bed. And I think it's very, very common.

Yeah, Reishi. I have, you know, reishi. And even if you want to add a little dropper full of CBD into your reishi tea and just kind of get an extra dose of relaxation, that's a really nice kind of, you know, nighttime thing to do. So reishi is very good for that. We also have turkey tail, which is awesome for the. It's a very good one for the immune system. And there's been studies with turkey tail and breast cancer, specifically killing breast cancer cells and helping the immune system, you know, during chemotherapy. Turkey tail has been used in China and Japan in cancer hospitals with chemotherapy to keep the immune system strong. So chemotherapy turkey tail is a good one to. To. To look into if you're. If you're really wanting to help your immune system out. I mean, all of them are, but, you know, they're. They're all good for different things. Turkey tail is another one that you can't really cook with. You gotta use it in a tincture or a powder because it's like very leathery. So you're not gonna wanna just go eat it, but you can make a tea out of it as well. Shiitake. That's another medicinal mushroom that you're very likely to see at the grocery store that you can just add more into your life very easily just by cooking with it. Switch out your button or cremini mushrooms for shiitake, and you're just getting a bigger dose of. Of the medicine. And there's a supplement called AHCC that's derived from shiitake mushrooms that they also use in cancer hospitals in China and Japan to keep the immune system strong. So that's been a mushroom that's been used for a very long time for health. So shiitake is awesome. And that's just the kind of the number one thing I would say as like, an easy way to start getting more medicinal mushrooms is to eat more shiitakes. It's also shown to be antiviral. I'm not going to say it does anything for Covid, because I don't know. But it has been shown to be antiviral, so that's a good one to add into your life. What else? What am I missing? Oh, maitake. Maitake is another awesome one to cook with. Very good for the immune system and also can help lower your blood sugar. So if you, you know, can be. Be helpful. Again, I'm not a doctor, but I know that some doctors do use it with, you know, patients that have high blood sugar to help them regulate that. What else am I. What am I missing?

Which one? I remember watching an interview with Paul Stemitz and he was talking about there's certain mushrooms that you shouldn't cook with or that they shouldn't get above a certain temperature, like. Or something like that. I remember. I remember seeing that and I was like, oh, that seems controversial. Yes. And the way that he talked about it was sort of like in, like, this secrets to like, jet fuel or some. And I was like, what are you talking about?

I know. He was like, I can't. Actually, I can't tell you about that. It was. It was. I know. When I saw that, I was like.

Like what?

Yeah, like, I can't make a comment about that. So I did write about that in the book, actually, because I was like, this is really. I need to find out what this is. So the button cremini and portobello mushrooms that we were mentioning before have a compound in them called a garotene. And that compound, if eaten raw, it has been shown to potentially be carcinogenic. And so if you cook them really, really well. Dr. Andrew Weil has. Has an article about this, and I think I quoted him in the book about this if you cook it really well at high temperatures, the agaritine will be cooked out. And it's not even. It's not even proven that this is a really. Something really to be concerned about. But that is what I believe that he was referring to with those mushrooms. So I would just not eat them raw. Just don't eat them. Just cook them really well, and you're fine. You know.

Who eats raw mushrooms?

I know. Like, that's the thing. Like, I was. You know, if you go to, like, it's so. Like, they're just chalky. Like, if you go to a salad bar, like, put raw mushrooms on your salad, it's like, why.

Why are you doing that with your life?

No, like, eat something delicious. Have some shiitakes.

There's gonna be people listening to this. That's like, I love eating raw mushrooms.

I know.

I've never. I've never been a friend.

The one that I forgot is cordyceps, which is also one of my favorite ones. I don't know how I forgot about it, but cordyceps mushroom is the mushroom for energy. It can help, like, oxygenate our blood. It can help boost the ATP in our cells, which can be good for energy and stamina. A lot of ATH take cordyceps before they, you know, work out or just to give them. Give them some more stamina. And it's also been shown to help with, you know, sex drive and libido. Again, both sexes. So that's. If you have a low sex drive. I would start adding some cordyceps to your coffee or tea and see if that helps.

Yeah, I was gonna say. Wait, say more about that. Say more. Say more about. I feel like the listeners are like, hold on. Mushrooms that help my sexual sex drive? Like, yeah, tell me. Tell me more. So what. How does. How does that function?

Well, I mean, as far as how it. How it functions with sex drive, I actually don't. I don't know the answer to that. But I do know that the way that they found it out was. I think it was in the Himalayas. They were. There was cordyceps growing. Cordyceps actually grows on insects. So the cordyceps that you buy in the store is not grown on insects. It's cultivated. But naturally in the wild, it grows on insects. And so they were seeing their cows eating these cordyceps mushrooms off of the insects and their, like, energy and stamina and sex drive and, like, reproductive function was, like, skyrocketing. So they started to cultivate these mushrooms and give it. To give it to people. And it does help. And it's also been shown to help with like, with reproductive. Reproductive. Reproductive function and possibly fertility and postpartum exhaustion. They use it for. And a lot of different things. So, yeah, it's definitely one to check out for for all of those related things.

So wild, isn't. I remember watching this document. It was maybe it was a documentary. It was I think maybe like BBC or Planet Earth or something like that. And it was showing this fungus that would infect ants and it turned the, like the little ants into zombies and it would basically, it would. It would hijack the brain and the nervous system of the ant, the fungus, and it would take over the ant and it would cause the ant to try and get back into either. Back into the.

I'm totally blanking on the name, like back into where all the other ants are.

I wanted to say the ant hill.

Yeah. Infect all the other ants or it would get it to go up to a high place like on a branch of them like that, and then it kills the ant and the spore breaks through the head of the ant and then the. And then the spores sort of like go out and, you know, infect their ants.

That is cordyceps. Yeah, yeah. What it's. Isn't that. It's so nice. I know. And so, yeah, they call it, they call it the caterpillar fungus because it will infect insects like caterpillars and, and it grows out of them. But like for all the vegans out there, don't worry because insect grown cordyceps is very, very rare. And now they have learned how to cultivate it like on grains and you know, in, in growing facilities. So it doesn't have anything to do with insects, most likely.

So what a wild. Like what. I mean, mushrooms are so, so interesting. Can you explain? Because I think is there benefits to consuming mycelium, which is from my understanding the underground component and sort of like network of mushrooms, which I think doesn't get talked about quite quite often enough. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, yeah. That's actually a big controversy in the mushroom world. I found like researching mushrooms for the book. I was like, wow, there's a lot of like underground controversy.

Mushroom world, mushroom madness.

I know, Seriously. So, yeah, so the part of the mushroom that you're used to seeing that you're eating is called the fruiting body. And it's basically the reproductive of part of the mushroom. So the mycelium that's underground is the roots of the mushroom. So if you think about a tree, you've got the tree that's growing out of the ground, and then you've got the root system underground. And that's what it's like for mushrooms, too. The mycelium is weaved all throughout the forest, and it's, you know, how the mushrooms get nutrients. And so when they fruit out the. The fruiting body, that's what you see that you would, you know, take and eat. But there's a lot of products that are made just with the mycelium, and there's products that are made just with the fruiting body, and then there's products that have both, and there are benefits to both. The mushroom scientists that I spoke to for the book, most of them recommend fruiting body products because there's a higher concentrated amount of the medicinal compounds in the fruiting body. Because if you think about it, it's the root system kind of just concentrating itself together and then sprouting up. And so it's. It's concentrated mycelium is what the fruiting body is. So there's going to be higher levels of compounds there. But there are proponents of using mycelium as well. And I wouldn't say they're not beneficial. I would say that from the people that I've spoke to, the fruiting bodies are more concentrated. But if you have a combination of the two or, Or a fruiting body product, then I think that that's. Yeah, that's what. And the thing with mycelium is that if you just have a mycelium product, it's usually grown on grain, like a grain substrate where, you know, the mushrooms grow out of the grains. And a lot of mycelium products have grains mixed in with them. So you don't really know. It's like a combination of mycelium and grain. And that's why a lot of people are sent, you know, say, fruiting body products only because they don't have that grain mixed in.

Hmm. Okay, interesting. Um, I wanted to shift gears. I don't know if we're gonna have time to talk about psychedelics, but by the time that we finish, we've been.

Talking for a while.

We've. We've been in on it. So we might have to have you back on to. To discuss just that. That one area. But talk to me a little bit about adaptogens and how that fits. Fits into the picture. Like, where. Where does that fall in? Because I hear that term, I hear that concept being used a lot. Does that have anything to do with mushrooms? Like what does that, what role do adaptogens play?

Well, all, all of the medicinal mushrooms that we talked about are considered adaptogens. And the, the word adaptogen basically just means it adapts with your body to regulate it in the way that, that you need it to be regulated. So you know, we talked about CBD kind of like regulating our, our natural levels of, of endocannabinoids and these mushrooms, regulating our immune system and our stress response. Adaptogens kind of go in and, and do what is needed to bring you into homeostasis. So all of them would, would be adapted.

So we've been talking about that the whole time. Yeah, I just have no idea.

Cool. Yeah, totally.

That's good.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Well, I think we'll, we'll pause there. Tell the good people where they can go and order your book because it's phenomenal. It's such a good wealth of, of information and resources. Where can they follow along on your journey? Where can they order the book?

Thank you. Yeah, well, you can order the book from any bookseller pretty much. You can get it on Amazon. I have a site, rebels apothecary.com where there's a bunch of different booksellers listed. So you can go there and click on one of those booksellers. And I have some little free gifts that you get, like a dosing guide and some product guide and stuff that you can get if you order the book from that page. I also have a free chapter, the immune chapter, I give away for free on my blog, which is is HealthyCrush.com so if you head over there, you can just download a free chapter if you just want to check it out and you're not sure if you want to buy it, but other than that, you can find me on Instagram at Jenny Sansousi J E N N Y S A N S O U C I and I think that's probably it.

Sweet. Well, on the show and talking everything, cannabis and.

Mushrooms and mycelium and all this is phenomenal. I love this conversation. And we'll definitely have to have you back on and we' will, will talk about the, the magic of psilocybin at some point because I've been having more of those discussions lately, so maybe more of that to come soon. So for everyone that's out there, we'll have the links for Jenny's work in the show notes. Head on over and check out her, her book. It is phenomenal. It's worth the read. And don't forget to leave us a rating review Share this episode with somebody that you know would be interested in this conversation, that wants to learn more about this, and maybe even share it with a family member as a resource. Based on what we were talking about before, if you're wanting to broach that conversation about using these things like cannabis and medicinal mushrooms for healing purposes. So until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

Sam.