Tony Shields on The Art of Growing Mushrooms

This episode is brought to you by Noish Me Organics, your Gut health superstore. Today's conversation is going to center around the importance of mushrooms and how to grow mushrooms. But did you know mushrooms are actually amazing for the immune system and also for gut health. There are various varieties, medicinal mushrooms that have tons and tons of research behind them. So, guys, if you're interested in checking out the mushroom range at Nourish Me Organics, head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code Magic Mushrooms for 10%. Hey guys, Crib and govenda from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I've got a background in food science and today I am super excited. I found this guy on YouTube and his name is Tony Shields and he's from a company called was it High Cap Mushrooms? He's got it in the background there. I just gotta make sure I got it right. So fresh cap, fresh cap mushroom. So sorry, Tony. So, Tony, Tony, firstly, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. I've developed this fascination with mushrooms. Being a food scientist and being a, I guess having a background in microbiology, I've always had an interest in bacteria, but just recently I've just developed this fascination with mushrooms and having a crack at home trying to grow mushrooms myself and failing miserably. Went onto YouTube, searched how to grow mushrooms. Yours was like number one on YouTube. Started watching your videos and thought, this guy is so cool. He's so charismatic on video, he's such an engaging speaker and I've got to get him on and just it's for very selfish reasons. Much for me to learn more about mushrooms and how to grow them at home. So huge. Thank you, Tayden.

Awesome. Well, I'm really excited to be here and I'm glad you found me.

And what I typically do do at the start of my podcast is to get it from the horse's mouth. Who is Tony Shield?

Sure. Well, I've had kind of a lifelong fascination with mushrooms and with fungi and with mycology, and to be honest, I have no idea where that came from. I just always loved seeing mushrooms in the woods when I was hiking or seeing mushrooms growing around. I'd even love to see mushrooms at the grocery store. I just thought they were so fascinating. And even when I was really young, I thought it'd be so cool to go down to the garden center and get a mushroom kit, the same as you could get a flower pot or something like that. And I never saw anything like that. It was kind of simmered. In the background of my mind for a long time, until about eight or nine years ago, I decided to give a crack at growing mushrooms myself. Eight or nine years ago? It might as well be 100 years ago. In the world of the Internet, there wasn't as much good information around. There were certainly no good YouTube videos. There were just kind of some forums and stuff to learn how to do this stuff. So I just started messing around. And it was much like you said. It was much the same story as most people who try to grow mushrooms. You fail. First of all, you do a bunch of things wrong. But that's how I learned to kind of just keep taking the next step. And after a number of failures, I eventually got it right and I started growing mushrooms like I was going crazy. My wife was looking at me like, what are you doing? The house was full of petri dishes and grow bags and shelves with mushrooms and all sorts of stuff. Around 2015, I thought, you know what? Let's make a go at this and try to make it a career. Our original plan was to have a gourmet and medicinal mushroom farm. We were going to grow mushrooms and sell them as a fresh product into the market. We totally did that. It was amazing. We built a mushroom farm at home. We were growing mushrooms like crazy. When it came time to advance to the next step, to really expand the farm in the gourmet and the exotic side, we kind of took a step back because we thought we weren't sure if there was a market for this kind of thing. But as we were growing mushrooms, I put together this website, freshcatmushrooms.com it was really just a blog. I wanted to teach other people everything I was learning. That took on some wings on its own. Before you knew it, my interest in functional mushrooms and mushrooms for health blossomed. My wife has a background in food product development, and she's in food, nutrition, and science. So we put that together and we launched our first medicinal mushroom product, which is primarily what freshcap does today. We teach other people how to grow mushrooms, and we also sell our medicinal mushroom products. So that's kind of the short story of what freshcap is all about.

What an amazing origin story. And I love to listen to people's journeys and finding their passions and eventually coming onto. I think we might have lost audio.

Oh, no.

Hello. Yep. That's cool. We're good. So I love listening to the original stories because it's kind of so inspiring to listen to someone take a passion and then create something of value that they can then share with others. And I can totally relate, and I'm really fascinated. I've got to ask this question, burning question. What was the first mushroom type that you try to grow?

So the first type that I tried to grow was button mushrooms, also known as agarigous bisporas. And that's just the typical mushrooms you see at the grocery store. But that was, of course, when I didn't know a lot about the process. And, you know, that's a pretty difficult mushroom to grow from home. So the first mushroom I successfully grew was the blue oyster mushroom or pleurotus columbinus. And it's a super simple mushroom to grow. I just grew it in my backyard. And yeah, that feeling when you see the first fruits of your labor coming through the is where I grew. It was just, you know, that's, that's what kind of led me down the path of, of never turning back on mushrooms.

And, you know, it's fascinating that you mentioned button mushrooms, because one of the fascinations of me or developing the fascination for mushrooms is I came across a study, it was a couple of years ago, on particularly white button mushrooms and how good they are for gut health. So I think, because this is the Gut Health Gurus podcast, and I love to bring it back to gut health, but let's start with why mushrooms are good. So I'll just read this little abstract here. So using mushrooms as a prebiotic, meaning food for good bacteria in the gut, may help improve glucose regulation. So the summary, eating white button mushrooms can create subtle shifts in the microbial communities in the gut, which could improve the regulation of glucose in the liver, according to a team of researchers. They also suggest that better understanding this connection between mushrooms and gut microbes in mice could one day pave the way for new diabetes treatments and prevention strategies for people. So that's substantial. I mean, when you think about, firstly, a prebiotic having the ability to influence the gut microbiome, then you've got glucose regulation, you know, insulin, diabetes, huge global crisis at the moment. So you've got a product that's sustainable, it's relatively simple to make it. I'm not going to say it's easy because I've had lots of failures. We need guys like Tony Shield teaching us how to make it. But aside from the ones that I mentioned from that study, what are the other benefits of mushrooms?

Well, I mean, the benefits of mushrooms, like you said, they're just being kind of discovered all the time. I mean, I've seen a study that came out just recently talking about brain benefits to eating fresh mushrooms. I don't know if you saw that study, but that's fascinating. I like to think of each mushroom as kind of its own superhero. Turkey tail is really high in fungal beta glucan, so extracts of that mushroom are really good for supporting your immune system. Lion's mane is kind of thought of as the brain mushroom because it really helps support cognitive function, memory and focus and all that kind of thing. People like to use chaga mushroom, for example, because it's an extremely high antioxidant, one of the highest sources of natural antioxidant. So cordyceps is another example. And I got a fresh one here, I can show you. It's just this little kind of worm mushroom. This is Cordyceps militaris. And people use this for energy and for endurance and athletic performance. So, I mean, the health benefits of mushrooms are pretty wide in scope and new benefits are kind of being discovered all the time. So the other thing too is it really depends on how these mushrooms are processed. For example, fresh mushrooms are going to have a different amount of benefits from dried mushrooms or from mushroom extracts and different ways that mushrooms are extracted. So it does get pretty complicated. But I think overall the story is mushrooms are a fascinating health food that we need to be looking at a lot more.

Totally. And mushrooms are one of these products, especially the medicinal mushrooms. And you mentioned cordyceps, but right here before every podcast, this is my little podcast hack. Just a bit of lion's mane mushroom. And I use this just for cognitive boosting, you know, if I've got to get into some really heavy thinking type work, or if I'm going to a podcast, or if I'm going into a presentation or a speaking event, you know, I'll have a double packet of this, this type of mushroom. Yeah. And it helps me so much just to focus and concentrate. And cordyceps, you mentioned before, I use that usually pre or post workout. Am I doing the right thing there, Tony?

That's absolutely. I mean, as a natural pre workout, cordyceps is a fascinating, fascinating fungi to work with. And a lot of people do that. You know, they'll just add it to their pre workout smoothie or their post workout smoothie. And people are finding, you know, it's really helpful for endurance. And we work with some ultra runners, for example. So one of our mushroom powered athletes, Anthony Kunkel, a fascinating character, he runs 100 mile races and he used cordyceps over kind of a long term program to kind of help his endurance and Help him get through those long races. And I love the fact that you're drinking lion's mane in your coffee. Who would have thought, right? Mushroom coffee seems like such a weird concept, but there it is. And personally, I also like the lion's mane in my coffee. But the biggest benefit I've seen from mushrooms, I used to get sick all of the time, like every three to four months. I worked out of town a lot. I was always. Wasn't getting a lot of sleep and I was always sick. And it's such a drag because getting a good routine, maybe you're going to the gym or whatever, boom, you're sick for 10 days, you know, game over, kind of reset. And not a word of a lie. Since I started taking mushrooms almost three years ago, the mushroom extracts. I have not been sick once. And, you know, that could be a total fluke, but I'm not thinking. So I think it has a lot to do with the mushrooms because anytime I feel like maybe I'm getting run down, it feels like my immune system kind of kicks into gear. I might take a triple dose of mushrooms or whatever and then I'm, you know, I just get over it. It's been pretty amazing. And it's not just me. I speak to people all the time because of the work that we do and they're bringing up things, ways mushrooms are helping them that I never even would have thought of. Pretty fascinating part of the food supply to be looking at.

Totally. You mentioned immunity boosting. And typically if I'm feeling a bit run down, I feel an onset of a cold or something like that coming on, I dose up with chaga. Is that something that you'd recommend as well for immunity boosting?

Yeah, absolutely. Chaga has great immuno modulating potential and great way to boost the immune system. And, you know, that's what Taro is. Capulo writes about in his book Healing Mushrooms, which is a really good book if you ever want to read it. I don't know if you already have or recommend it, but he talks about taking chaga extract when he feels like he's getting sick. And you know, he says the same thing. He hasn't been sick in 10 years since he started taking mushrooms. So very cool story, I hear.

And Teras, is he the founder of Four Sigmatic, isn't it?

That's correct, yeah, he's the founder of four Sigmatic. Yeah.

Yeah, he's amazing. Amazing character. The first time I really started getting onto mushrooms was through the Tim Ferriss podcast. Huge fan of Tim Ferriss, and he promotes the Four Sigma stuff. And so that's when I first started getting interested in it. So it's so interesting. So we've come back full circle. The other thing is I do a lot of research. I've got another company called the Leo Microbiome and we do research on primarily what's happening in the gut microbiome through fecal stool analysis. And what we've recently started to investigate as well is the fungi. I think Americans call it fungi or fungus. We call it fungi. So my research is starting to look at yeast and fungi very closely and I think there's a substantial effect even though the yeast and fungi don't have as much relative abundance. I mean, they're not there in high levels as, say, bacteria. But the early research is suggesting that these yeasts, and they're 100 times bigger and fungi with mycelium networks, they're much bigger and larger. But they're. But I'm pretty sure in years to come it will show that these guys are having a huge role equally or even more so than bacteria in the gut. It's so complex and I'm not sure whether you've come across mycorrhizal fungi.

Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. The mycorrhizal fungi are the ones that typically live in symbiosis with other plants.

Yeah, yes. And we've started doing some research into the soil microbiome and the impact of, I guess a microorrazal fungi, which was originally from your old growth rainforest. And through modern agriculture we've managed to strip a lot of these mycorrhizal fungi out of the soil. But studies suggest by adding this mycorrhizal fungi back into the soil, there's so many benefits and one of it is just carbon sequestering. Imagine if everybody in the world, especially if you're into gardening, start to use mycorrhizal fungi, what impact it could have on, you know, the CO2 in the air or something.

Well, actually, I mean, that's an interesting one. I mean, it might help in the way that, you know, mycorrhizal fungi kind of act as an extension of the roots of the plant, so they really help the plants grow and help the plants live healthier, which would obviously help with the CO2. But mushrooms actually breathe much the same we do, so they, they use oxygen and they give off CO2. So it's, it's kind of the opposite there in terms of how the fungi are giving off CO2 and that actually bringing you back to Growing mushrooms a little bit. I've seen mushroom farms where on one side of the farm they have plants growing and aquaponics, and other side of the farm they have mushrooms growing. They can use the excess oxygen from the plant side to feed the mushrooms and the excess CO2 from the mushroom side to feed the plants. These things all kind of work together in symbiosis. And yeah, mycorrhizal fungi are another fascinating topic in mushrooms to look at.

Yeah, I love that concept of using different strategies and we're almost mimicking what's happening in nature. And I always go back to nature, you know, everything, whether it comes to design elements or the way things work. Nature is such a good example of how things work. You know, like, even if you look at how a plane functions, it's almost like using the design of a bird. You know, it's like how da Vinci sort of thought, you know, going back to nature and looking at the elements of nature. This is one of the clues as well that led me to coming to the hypothesis that, you know, like mycorrhizal fungi in the gut, these fungal and yeast type characters, which are eukaryotes, so they're very. They're almost similar to our cells, they're more kind of modern versus a prokaryote, like a bacteria, which is a simple organism. So my hypothesis is that these networks, again, form extensions in the gut and almost like a communication highway. I'm going into mad scientist territory, but that's my theory. Just looking at the soil and what's happening in an old rainforest and then comparing that to what's happening in the gut. So surely there's a lot of parallels there with the analogy.

Yes, I totally believe it. Another really interesting analogy is, you know, the mycelial network being kind of the Internet of the forest and the way that everything is connected through these fine threads of mycelium and, you know, being able to talk to each other throughout the forest. So, yeah, I love that analogy between, you know, fungi and different things in nature and things that we use and have every day. It's really cool.

Cool. So, as I mentioned before is really selfish reason. Reason for me to get you onto the podcast is because I've kind of gone all in in mushroom growing. So I can totally relate. When you mentioned my house is full of agar, full of plates, it's like I'm just like, I'm like starting that journey. So I've been like researching pressure cookers and researching how agar plates and I don't know why you mushroom guys always say tech. So there's like BRF tech and this tech and. And some guy's name's tech and everything. The tech team came on board. But I was even looking through your Facebook group and it's so fascinating. And there's some really interesting characters in there, the little videos and stuff that they make in post.

Oh, yeah.

Let's go into. My whole ethos is doing things as sustainable as possible, doing it yourself. It's a journey. It's so much fun. And you can get these mushroom growing kits where I think they've done a lot of the work for you, and you kind of cut a hole in the bag, spray water in it, and then a few days later or a week later, you see these mushrooms popping out. But I wanted to go further.

Sure.

Like for a beginner starting.

Yeah. Well, I like to think of it as there's kind of three different levels of mushroom growing. The first level, the easiest level, the most accessible, is kind of what you mentioned is these mushroom growing kits. And yeah, they're not, you know, sustainable in the long term, but it's great in that it gives people an idea of kind of how mushrooms grow so you can get these kits. You're exactly right. You put a slice in it, you soak it in some water to kind of rehydrate it, and if everything goes right and it stays humid enough, a really good chance that the mushrooms will start to fruit through that kit. But essentially all those kits are. Are mushroom fruiting blocks from a mushroom farm. And they just put a box around it and sell it. But you can make your own mushroom fruiting blocks and you can make them relatively easy. Which brings me to kind of level two of learning how to grow mushrooms on yourself. And that's by yourself, not on yourself. And that's. But that's using commercial grain spawns. So, you know, without going too deep into the weeds, how fruiting blocks are made is they're kind of a sterilized substrate, usually hardwood sawdust or soybean hulls or something like that, something for the mushrooms to feed on. And to that you'll add grain spawn, which is a grain that is covered in white mushroom mycelium or the culture of the mushroom. And when you add those two together, the mushroom culture will start to work its way through the substrate, eventually fully colonize that block, and then you have basically a mushroom grow kit. So that process is relatively easy. Like you mentioned, you get a pressure cooker, you sterilize the substrate, you know, you Try to find a clean area in your house, maybe a bathroom or whatever, and you inoculate it with the grain spawn. And if all goes well, you won't have contamination and it will grow. But you know, the difficult part and where you start to get into agar and, you know, more pressure cookers and the laminar flow hood, etcetera, is kind of level three. And that's when you're making your own grain spawn. That's kind of as far down the rabbit hole as you can go, but it's limitless possibilities. So basically, you take a mushroom culture that you get from either, you know, a friend who grows mushrooms or mushroom farm or there's plenty of places that sell them, you add it to sterilized grain to make your own grain spawn, and then you can add that, you know, kind of work your way backwards, add that to a fruiting block and grow mushrooms. So those are kind of the three levels. Some people try to jump in right at the hardest level and, you know, struggle their way down until they figure it out. And other people kind of take a step by step approach. And by the sounds of it, if you got agar plates going, it seems like you dove right in.

I absolutely dove off the deep end and failed miserably and wasted a fair bit of money on buying sterilized grain spawn, all that kind of stuff, or sterilized grain, I should say to then try and use spores. But then if we. I just want to try and keep it really simple.

For sure.

Say someone that's never heard of mushrooms before. Let's just define these concepts or these terms that you mentioned. So you mentioned there's some form of substrate in the form of grain that we feed the organism. And then you mentioned grain spawn. Now what's grain spawn?

So grain spawn. I like to use analogies just because people are a lot more familiar with the plant world. But I mean, you can kind of think of grain spawn as the seeds of the mushroom. So if you wanted to, you know, plant the seeds of a. Or you wanted to plant a tomato or whatever, you get a tomato seed and you'd put it in the soil. Whereas mushrooms, if you wanted to plant mushrooms, you would take the grain spawn and you would plant that into a substrate. So the substrate is analogous for the soil. The grain spawn is analogous for the seeds. And, you know, grain spawn is pretty simple. It's, it's literally what it sounds. It's, you know, either rye grain, rice grain, sorghum, millet, some type of cereal grain that's been hydrated. So it's got lots of moisture on the inside, but it's dry on the outside, then sterilized. So all of the other molds and yeasts and competing fungi and all the other kind of stuff that would be in cereal grain naturally has been killed off. And that's typically done in a pressure cooker or autoclave, etc. And then what you do is add the mushroom culture to that grain spawn. So grain or the culture, also known as mycelium, it's that white stuff that you see when you lift moss up in the forest floor. That's mycelium. And if you have a specific species and a specific type, that's called the culture. So basically, in three steps, culture goes into sterilized grain. It'll kind of work its way through that and use all the energy from the grain, and then the grain goes into the substrate, and that's how you actually grow mushrooms. So, you know, it sounds a lot more complicated than it is because there's terms like spawn, mycelium and culture and substrate and all this stuff, but, you know, you know, once you get a handle of it, it's not as complicated as it sounds, really. Mm.

And I have a burning question.

Sure.

So you mentioned culture. There's a culture. And then what's the difference between, say, the culture and a spore?

Ah, this is a really good question. And, you know, sometimes online especially, they're kind of used, you know, as synonyms, but they're not the same. So spores, I mean, most people know what spores are. They're the things that come out underside of the mushroom and they blow into the air and eventually grow mushrooms. But a spore only actually contains half of the genetic material that a mushroom needs to grow. So what happens is two spores get together and they both kind of sporulate, and they put out something called a hyphae. And when those two hyphae meet, if they're matching, they eventually turn into mycelium. And the mycelium is what is the culture. So, you know, the difference between a culture is the. The culture is mycelium. It contains all the genetic information needed to fruit the mushrooms, whereas a spore is kind of the initial stage, and each spore only contains half the genetic information, which is interesting, because if you try to grow mushrooms from spores, it can be done. Lots of people do it, obviously. But the genetics are a total crapshoot because you put the spores into a substrate and they all sporulate, and you have no idea what genetics you're going to get. It's going to be something that's good. Maybe not. Is it going to be something, you know, that. That is resistant contamination? Maybe not. Whereas the cultures, you know, they've been kind of perfected over the years and studied and, you know, cultures are known, you know, how it's going to fruit, you know, how it's going to perform, all that kind of stuff. And that's what they use in commercial mushroom farms. They would never start from spores. They'll start from a commercial strain or culture.

Thank you for clarifying that. That brings so much more clarity to my own mind. So it's almost like the spores, correct me if I'm wrong, but the spores, when you put it together, it's sexual reproduction, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't. Yeah, I mean, biological terms, I'm not sure if that's exactly it, but I mean, basically, yeah, it contains half the genetic information to become one. And then, you know, so, yeah, if you wanted to, you know, we can pause this or whatever, but I can grab. It's, you know, 10ft away. I can grab a petri dish that's got a culture on it if you want to take a look and see.

Yeah, go for it.

Okay. Quickly. I'll be right back. Okay. I just thought for all the people that end up watching this on YouTube, this may be making a little bit easier. So, you know, this. This is an agar dish, and this is. I think this is king oyster. But you feel that white stuff is mycelium, and that's kind of what we call a culture. So this is a known strain. I know exactly what the genetics are and how it's going to perform. And if I wanted to grow this king oyster mushroom, what I would do is I would cut a little piece of this agar plate and I would put it onto sterilized grain, and it would end up looking something like this. This is grain spawn, first generation grain spawn. And this is pink oyster, which is why it's got kind of a pink hue. And for all the people listening, it's basically just a mason jar that's full of grain with white mycelium growing all the way through it. And once this is fully colonized, I would break this up and I would put it into a bag of hardwood sawdust or some kind of substrate, which is this. And you can see the, you know, the mycelium is working its way. This is milky mushroom, but the mycelium is working its way through there, you know, colonizing all of that hardwood sawdust, eventually it will be fully colonized and it will look something like this. And this is another basically hardwood fruiting block. This is pink oyster again. And you can see all the mushrooms starting to fruit up there. So yeah, that's kind of the process in a nutshell.

So let's deconstruct that a little bit. I have a few follow up questions.

Sure.

So you started with, see you can either start with a. If you're growing on agar to put it on an agar, then you're cutting a piece of agar off that mycelium essentially and then putting it into the sawdust to fully colonize it. So what are the different steps and before we go down that path, actually, what's a plug? Sometimes you see. What's that?

Well, you know, some mushrooms, particularly shiitake mushrooms, are often grown outdoors on logs, which literally just, you know, 4, 6 inch wide hardwood log that's been cut and soaked. And what people do is they'll drill holes in the log and then stuff a plug into that as a way to inoculate the log. And the plugs, the plugs are literally just hardwood dowels. So they're just wood that's been, you know, colonized by mushroom mycelium, much the same as grain spawn, but instead of grain, it's these little wood dowels often known as plugs. And I think they make synthetic plugs as well that you can plug into logs. But usually they're hardwood dowels.

Okay, cool. That clarifies. So for the layperson listening, most likely they're not going to be growing on agar. So in what, what form would the mycelium come to them?

So yeah, the easiest way to do it is to just buy commercial grain spawn. And there's lots of different places. If you're in Canada or the U.S. i know a couple, it's pretty easy to get them. And typically they'll ship you a bag and it's about two and a half pounds of grain that'll be covered in white mycelium species. So you know what it's going to be, etc. And then you would add that to a substrate and it doesn't always have to be complicated like this sterilized hardwood sawdust. I mean, a lot of people will add the spawn to, you know, a five gallon bucket that is just hardwood shavings and it doesn't have to be sterilized. I do have a video on that if anybody's interested. But you know, that's probably one of the easiest ways to grow mushrooms at home. But yeah, I mean, for anybody listening, basically the process is you need to get some grain spawn that's, you know, nice, clean grain spawn of some species. Typically oysters are the easiest to grow and you need to get a substrate. So whether that be hardwood sawdust or soy hulls or something like that, typically hardwood sawdust is the best substrate and the least likely to contaminate for most mushrooms.

I just want to get this crystal clear for the audience.

Sure.

They've gone onto the Internet, they've bought the grain spawn. So someone's done all the work. They've got a very pure genetic species, or whatever you call it, that's reproducible. It's a known genetic. It's going to work. It's going to have consistent growing patterns, colors, all that jazz. And then they have to get the sawdust or the soy hulls from somewhere. And do they need to. Do they need to sterilize that before they add the grain spawn into it?

Mm. I mean, there's never a perfect answer. And like, yes, typically you do need to sterilize the hardwood sawdust because basically what we're doing when we're soaking the sawdust, we're adding the mushrooms, we're creating a perfect environment not only for the grain spawn and the mycelium, but we're creating an environment for bacteria, molds, fungi, other fungi, etc. But if we sterilize it, then, you know, the mycelium has no competition and it can just proliferate. But there are exceptions to this. Obviously, mushrooms grow in the woods and nothing is being sterilized out there. So, you know, one way people can grow mushrooms at home is just to make a simple garden bed. So you'd have a garden bed where you'd layer down straw like wheat straw or even sawdust shavings, and you'd make a layer cake. So you put, say, a layer of soaked wood chips and a thin layer of grain spawn, then another layer of soaked wood chips and another thin layer of grain spawn. And over the process of, you know, maybe three weeks to six weeks, the mycelium will work its way through those wood chips and there's a very good chance it'll fruit and you'll have a mushroom bed in your backyard without doing too much at all. That would probably be the easiest. Another really easy method, if you have the grain spawn, is to use a five gallon bucket. And I don't want to say it, but I'm going to call this the bucket tech. So you know, take a plastic five gallon bucket and, you know, pepper it in quarter inch holes, you know, maybe every two inches all around the bucket, and then put that aside and get a bunch of wood chips. And if you don't, you know, have access to wood chips, you can even just get them at the pet store. Quite often they sell them for hamster bedding or guinea pigs or whatever. And you want to look for hardwood, so stuff like aspen, stuff like birch, stuff like poplar. And the reason for that is because some species of trees, like the softwoods, you know, have antifungal properties, so they're not so good. So, yeah, just think, you know, hardwood sawdust chips or hardwood wood chips or sawdust, and you take those chips and you just soak them in a big tote of really, really hot water and you soak them overnight. And that's going to do a couple things. The hot water is going to pasteurize, so it's going to kill off a lot of that competing bacteria, etc. And the soaking is going to kind of soften up the chips and give the mushrooms a really good chance to kind of get in there and work their magic. So the next day, if you can imagine, you have soaked pasteurized hardwood chips, you have your grain spawn and you just start layering them in that bucket the same as you would in a garden. And the ratio is about 2 1/2 pounds of grain spawn for about 25 pounds of finished substrate. Once that bucket's full, that's pretty much all you need to do. You let it sit in kind of a cool dark place, maybe drape a bag over it or something so it doesn't dry out. And within, say, you know, two to three weeks, that bucket will be fully colonized with beautiful white mushroom mycelium. And then you can, you know, put it outside in some tall grass or maybe in a corner of your house or something, somewhere that's kind of humid, and the mushrooms will fruit right through those holes. And again, for both those techniques, I know it's like really hard to kind of explain this in audio format for both those techniques. You know, I got some articles that you can link to or whatever that kind of helps really solidify that idea in people's minds.

Yeah, sure. I think what we'll do is we'll link to the videos that you have on your YouTube channel and perhaps some articles with some pictures, because I agree it's pretty hard to get it fully over an audio version of the podcast.

Right, right.

Definitely agree with that.

But I guess the bottom line is you shouldn't be afraid to try it. Growing mushrooms is not as complicated as it sounds, and I definitely think everybody should give it a try.

Totally. Now, let's go into a bit more complexity. Now. This is for this section of the podcast is now perhaps for someone that's got a bit of experience in mushroom growing, they want to take it to the next level. That's not me. I'm totally novice. But I'm going to try and ask some questions that have been kind of on my mind.

Of course.

Okay, now, where do we start? Okay, so I've got some spores. Ideally, you've pretty much made it clear. Spores are not ideal. So we've got some spores to start with. We've colonized the spores onto some form of grain. So say, say, for instance, it's bran, rice, flour, or something like that, or brown rice or rye or whatever matter of grains. So we let that colonize. And how long does that colonization process typically take?

So, again, it depends on the species. So some are really quick, and they can colonize in a week or so. Something like a pink oyster is really quick. Most oysters are really fast, and some species take a little bit longer. But I guess if you wanted a window, it could be anywhere from a week to about three weeks to colonize. And again, that'll depend on how much you add. So if you, you know, if you add a lot of culture, a lot of mycelium, it might colonize a lot faster, and if you mix it better, it might colonize a lot faster. But I guess a broad range again is about a week to three weeks.

If you're going with spores, maybe a bit longer, because it takes time for these guys to hook up, mate.

You got to chat a little bit first, you know, whatever.

Yeah, that's it. So it starts to colonize. So how do we know when that process is completed?

So you'll know because it'll be what's called fully colonized. So as you're watching the mycelium kind of go through the substrate or the grains or whatever, you'll see it'll have a leading edge and it'll be kind of growing out all over the place. But once you can't see anything, you can't see any substrate. All you can see is pure white mycelium. It's ready to fruit. Paul Stamets, who's a pretty famous mycologist, book Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, which is a great book for people to read, by the way. He also Wrote a book called Mycelium Running, and it's this whole concept that it just wants to keep on going. So, you know, once it's fully colonized, you're ready to fruit those things.

Sunday, Paul Stamets. If anybody hasn't listened to his episode on the Tim Ferriss podcast, do yourself a favor and listen to the episode, because that guy is absolutely brilliant when it comes to the world of fungi. And I haven't checked out any of his books, but I definitely must. But, yeah, just a side note. Definitely, definitely Google Paul Stamets.

This is a really good book, too. If anyone wants to get into growing mushrooms. It's everything from the very beginner stuff all the way up to the technical stuff. And for people listening, it's called Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets. It's a little bit dated now, but still, if you read that book from COVID to cover, you'd know a thing or two about mushrooms for sure. Yeah.

Awesome. Wicked. Okay, so we've got a fully colonized. What do you call it, block or cake or whatever it is. So then what do we do with this cake? What's the next step?

Okay, so again, it depends on the species, but I'll try and keep it as general as possible. You know, mushrooms like to fruit in humid, cool environments for the most part. So in order to encourage the mushroom to fruit, you need to put it in a humid and cool environment. So if you had something like a cake, a really good place to fruit it is what's called a shotgun fruiting chamber. And this is just a simple tote that you can make with a bunch of holes in it and, you know, a clear lid and some perlite on the bottom to release some humidity. And it provides this perfect environment for the mushrooms to form little pins, eventually fruit. So that would be the number one thing. You also need to ensure that mushrooms get adequate light, because one common misconception is that mushrooms grow in the dark. And, you know, that's true for some species, like button mushrooms can grow perfectly fine in the dark. But most mushrooms, in order to grow normally, do need some light, and light can actually trigger them into fruiting. So, you know, it doesn't need to have a grow lamp or anything like that, but, you know, put it by a window or someplace that it's going to get some ambient light to kind of encourage that mushroom to start growing. And the, you know, the third most important thing. So you got humidity, you got light. The other really important thing is fresh air. So, again, Mushrooms as a mycelium is growing through the substrate, through the cake or whatever, it's producing a lot of CO2. So if you were to go inside this mushroom grow bag, it would have a really high concentration of CO2. But once you open it, the CO2 concentration drops. And that's another really good trigger for the mushrooms to grow. And if they don't get enough fresh air, you'll end up with these really long, kind of weird looking mushrooms with tiny little caps. And you can see that they're just looking for that fresh air. So, yeah, to sum it all up, to get your mushrooms to fruit, you want them to be fully colonized, number one. But then you want fresh air, you want light, and you want humidity.

Is there a particular frequency of, is that the right word? Frequency or warmness or coldness of light that's required?

Yeah, I mean, pretty much any kind of ambient light will work. But I know they've done some research on this where they're testing different frequencies. And, you know, the consensus seems to be that blue light is the best trigger for pinning. So sometimes you'll see growers using those rope lights like blue LED lights, especially for Cordyceps cultivation. Apparently it's really good for growing cordyceps. So, yeah, if you have to pick a color or spectrum, go for kind of a cool blue light, which makes.

Perfect sense because if you're talking about, I guess, the sunlight and where it's at its kind of highest, there's going to be a lot of blue light frequencies coming out, obviously near infrared and red light and full balance of different spectrums. But. But yeah, it makes perfect sense. It's like when you wake up in the morning, what gets you up? It's the blue light from the sun that triggers all your hormones and whatnot. Mushrooms are probably very similar.

Yeah, I guess so.

Yeah. Okay, so we've set up the cake in a tote with some perlite. And how long does that process typically take before we see pins?

Yeah, if you have the, you know, the right levels of humidity and all that kind of stuff, the mushrooms can start to pin in a couple days. You know, it doesn't take that long. Again, if you're growing something like, you know, a shiitake or whatever, it might take a little bit longer, but I mean, sometimes you might see pins before you even take the cake out of the jar, before you even take it out of the bag. So, you know, it really kind of depends on the species and how everything's growing. But generally, if you had a Cake or a fruiting block that had no pins whatsoever. If you put it into fruiting conditions, within a day or two, you might start to see little tiny primordia. And then the exciting part happens, because once they start to form into mushrooms, they grow really, really quick. You know, you'll come down in the morning, look at your mushrooms, and they're twice as big as they were yesterday. It's not like a plant where it takes months and months to grow. It all happens really quick. And within a week, you can go from small pins to fully sized harvestable mushrooms. And I guess that leads into another topic, which is probably the next question is when do you harvest your mushrooms?

Absolutely.

The general consensus, again is you want to harvest the mushrooms right before they drop their spores. Because once they do that, the job of the fruiting body is done. The mushroom has, you know, no longer a need to exist. So it starts to lower in quality and quickly kind of turns bad. You can tell when mushrooms are going to start dropping their spores because the cap starts to open up. So with oyster mushrooms, you'll see they have a lip on them. They'll start to, you know, open up, and it looks like they're about to shoot out their spores. With other species, like Pio Pino, for example, they have a little veil underneath the cap, and that'll start to peel off and the cap will start to open up. So, you know, after a couple times, you'll start to know when. When the best time is a harvest. And right before they drop their spores, you know, if they do drop their spores, not a huge deal. It might be a bit of a mess. You're gonna end up with a lot of spores all over the place. But that's all part of the fun, I guess.

If we take one step back. You mentioned an important criteria being humidity. How do we maintain the humidity of that fruiting chamber?

Ah, okay. So if, you know, if you have a shotgun fruiting chamber, they'll have. Naturally, the humidity will be kind of being released off the perlite because, you know, on the base of that, you've soaked that in water and it naturally gives off water. But a simple way to do it is just a spray bottle and, you know, a couple times, two or three times a day, maybe even more. If you can just open up the lid, spray it a bunch of times with the spray bottle, and fan it, and, you know, even off Amazon or whatever, you can get a cheap little hygrometer that you put in there, and it'll tell you kind of where, where you're at. And typically, if you're staying above about 80% relative humidity, you're going to be good to go. The danger, if you drop to a really dry environment for too long, the mushrooms will stop growing. They'll abort. And, you know, that does happen. So it is really important to kind of maintain that humidity while your mushrooms are growing. Another option is a simple sonic disc humidifier. So you can get those ones that you'd put in the corner of your room or whatever, and they're not too expensive, and you just plug them in and keep some water, and they will constantly be adding moisture to your growing chamber, and that really helps. And you can put it on a timer, too, so that every half an hour or something, it'll go for a few minutes and help keep that humidity up. But again, it's one of those things where at first you'll always be checking it and making sure it's not drying out, but after a few grows, you kind of get into the rhythm and know when you need to add moisture or not.

That's fantastic. I think that pretty much summarizes all the basic steps. Now let's take it to the real, I would say expert level. I'm not an expert. I'm still a goofy beginner. Expert level being, what is cloning?

Ah, so cloning. I mean, when you think of a mushroom fruiting body, it itself contains all the genetic information to keep going. I mean, basically the inside of a mushroom stipe or stem is mycelium. So cloning is basically just taking a copy of that culture, and people think it's taking a copy of that actual fruiting body, and it's not really. It's taking a copy of the culture. So cloning is just a way to keep expanding and keep a record of those mushrooms. So here's a perfect example of how cloning would work. If you saw a really nice mushroom in the forest, like an oyster mushroom or something, you decided that you wanted to try and grow it at home. You could take that fruiting body, you could bring it home, rip it in half. It's more complicated than this. But, you know, on a basic note, you kind of rip it in half. You scrape a little piece of tissue from the inside of that mushroom and put it on agar, and that agar will start to grow across the plate. And then you have your very own culture, your very own strain of mushrooms that you harvested from the wild that you can then put down to the bottom of the process, make grain, spawn, make a fruiting block, etc. And grow that mushroom. So, yeah, cloning is basically just a way to copy a mushroom culture.

I find that whole concept fascinating. It was pretty much when, I guess in my food science studies, when I first came across tissue culture. Tissue culture in plants is very similar to what you're describing in terms of cloning. Most people don't realize that bananas are all cloned.

Wow.

I did not know that from tissue culture. Every banana that you eat is. Especially if you're in a particular country and from a growing region, all those bananas from that growing region are cloned.

That is fascinating.

They're genetically identical because bananas like that don't grow naturally. So it's the same process that someone, for hundreds of years ago, whenever it was discovered a particular type of banana that was yellow and was sweet, and then people just kept cloning it because that's the attributes that they want. So a lot of the fruits and vegetables that we consume are actually cloned.

That's amazing. I didn't know that. But, I mean, coming from a mushroom perspective, that makes total sense, because, you know, you can think of a banana as a commercial strain, obviously, with something that grows well, and if you had to plant it from seeds every time, it would be a crapshoot. Again, you wouldn't know what you would get. Right?

Mm, yeah.

And the same applies to mushroom cultivation.

Exactly. Same sort of. Sort of technique or idea to keep consistency in the genetic traits of that particular plant. So you'll see that a lot in the food industry. The other question I had for you, okay, so if I found. I'm just fascinated by this concept. If I found, like, this beautiful pine mushroom in the forest and I'm walking past it, is it possible to clone that and then grow it?

Probably not. And that's because the pine mushroom is a mycorrhizal mushroom. And, you know, some mushrooms, believe it or not, have still kind of escaped our ingenuity and still can't really be cultivated. And those are basically the mycorrhizal mushrooms. I mean, there are some techniques where you can kind of, you know, find ways to cultivate them, but it's not really that easy. And that includes mushrooms. Delicious gourmet mushrooms like porcinis, are mycorrhizal mushroom. Chanterelles are mycorrhizal mushroom that can't be cultivated. Even morels are a mycorrhizal mushroom that some people have actually potentially figured out how to cultivate. So it depends on the species. The easiest ones to grow at home, the Easiest ones to cultivate are kind of the white rot fungi or the saprophytic fungi, and those are mushrooms that grow on decaying matter. And the reason that's easy is because that's really easy to replicate. Right. Whereas if you were to take a pine mushroom, you would have to somehow get that to grow symbiotically with the pine tree. And you know, that's a lot more difficult to do. So. Yeah, again, it depends on the species, which seems to be an answer for a lot of this stuff.

But I'm just thinking if someone could clone a truffle, that would be pretty cool.

Believe me, there are people working on it. Yeah.

Now we're pretty much come up to time. Couple more questions, if you wouldn't mind.

Sure.

Agar agartech.

Yes.

So this is a really advanced technique that you're going to use for colonization. You're going to use it for cloning. Now, what's the easiest recipe for agar and how do we make it?

Okay? I mean, agar is pretty simple. I guess the easiest one is you can, you can go to a commercial supplier and they'll sell like an agar mix and all you got to do is sterilize that. But if you just have stuff at home or from the grocery store, don't worry, you can still make agar. Agar? Agar, they say it twice, I don't know why, but you can actually a lot of the times find it at specialty grocery stores and you chop it all up. And that's the part of the agar that actually makes it gelatinous and hard and able to use on plates. But the mushroom mycelium also needs a source of nutrition and that's where you add something like, you know, potato dextrose or you add something like malt extract. So the easiest recipe, and this is the one that I use typically is 20 grams of malt extract and 20 grams of agar powder. And then for that you put that into one liter of water and you mix it all up and it'll be kind of just a, you know, soup or whatever and then you have to sterilize that. So I put it in a mason jar or a whiskey bottle or something like that and you put it in the pressure cooker and you sterilize it for 45 minutes at 15 psi. And when it comes out, you have the pure agar that's got no contamination whatsoever. And then you can use that to pour into petri dishes. And typically that needs to be done in a super sterile environment. So I do it in front of a laminar flow hood, which is kind of a big piece of equipment that makes a lot of this mycological work really easy. But you can also do it in what's called a still air box, which is basically just a tote with some holes for your hands. And you can work inside that box and keep everything super clean. So yeah, that's how you make agar. Once you learn how to make agar and agar dishes, really the sky's the limit. You can do, you can do pretty much anything in mycology. You, you can do some really exciting stuff. And again, it doesn't have to be as complicated as it sounds. If you don't have petri dishes, for example, you can use little mason jars. If you don't have parafilm, which is this film that used to wrap around the plates to kind of keep everything sterile, you can just use masking tape. If you don't have agar from an actual lab, you can use agar. Agar that you get at the grocery store. Obviously the real stuff works better, but there's always simple substitutions that you can make to kind of get started. And yeah, believe me, the first time I tried to make agar, I used gelatin, I think, and I made it in these pie shells and it didn't work. But you know, I learned what didn't work and eventually you find something that does and you'll grow a lot of mushrooms.

Couple of follow up questions there. Firstly with the recipe, often I see yeast.

Yes.

Is that something that's, that's required or is it recommended?

Yeah, it's not required. Nutritional yeast. So I don't know, I guess the difference between yeast and nutritional yeast, it's like these little flakes of nutritional yeast. And typically if, yeah, if it's 20 grams of agar and 20 grams of malt extract, there'll be one gram or two grams, sorry, of nutritional yeast. And you know, that's just a recipe that I got out of this book, Gorong Gourmet Medicinal Mushrooms. I found that it works really well. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how necessary it is and whether or not it's needed, but it's something that I've used a lot and it works really well. But again, there's lots of different recipes. You can use dog food. Instead of malt extract, you can use potato water. So you boil a bunch of potatoes, you know how the water gets kind of starchy, you can use that. And mushrooms love that. Some species of Cordyceps, people will use something like chicken broth instead of water. So, you know, there's lots of different recipes. I like to keep it simple, which is why I do the malt extract yeast agar. But yeah, so you could probably go without the yeast, but it doesn't hurt to add it either.

And just one more follow up question to that loop. When you say, for instance, you're using a mason jar.

Yes.

If it's something that's suitable for canning, it's going to withstand pressure. Do you need. Because I noticed that you put a little hole and you put some stuffing into that hole. Yeah. So if you don't do that step, is it possible for the glass to explode? Or if it's a pressure sensitive glass bottle, is that okay?

I mean, I think it should be okay. The main reason for the hole in the top, although it does help for the pressure cooking, is that it kind of acts as a filter. So as a mycelium is growing throughout this grain spawn, it needs to breathe. So that's what this poly stuffing on the top is. It acts as a filter so air can be exchanged back and forth, you know, when the contaminants stay on the outside and you stay super clean on the inside. But for a pressure cooker, if you didn't have this, it would be okay. Because when you're pressure cooking, you should make sure that it cools down slowly and that all the pressure is kind of released before you open it up. If you were to open it up when it was super hot and under pressure, then, yeah, you might end up breaking a jar or something. But if everything's pressured up slowly and pressured down slowly by, you know, heating and then cooling, you shouldn't have any issues with that. And the same goes with making agar. You want to make sure that it cools down. You know, you still want it warm when you pour your plates, but you got to let it cool down quite a bit before you take it out or else it'll boil all over the place, I hear.

So that slow up step and then down, down step, just to let the pressure settle. Kind of typical canning, canning rules, venting and all that of your pressure cooker and whatnot. It's probably very complex for most people, but hopefully the people that are a bit more advanced will get this section of the talk. So we're pretty much done. But what I like to do at the end of my podcast is if there was one thing, Tony, that you could do for your gut health or make it a bit more Open ended for you, for your health, what would it be?

Oh man. If I could do one thing for my health, what would it be? Well, you know, I guess everybody just wants to feel good all the time. So I mean, my happiest thing now is that I don't get sick anymore. So if I could keep that going, if I could, you know, stop from getting sick or, you know, getting run down with the flu, if I could keep that streak going, that would be kind of the one thing. Because if you're healthy and if you're happy, everything else becomes so much easier. All your goals are way easier to accomplish and everyone around you is happier as well. So basically to keep a strong immune system would be my number one.

And there's one question, a burning question actually that I wanted to ask you. It's slightly controversial, but I first came across. I know Tim Ferriss does a lot of work in this space because he's struggled with mental health and myself as well. Being someone that's essentially, when was it, eight years ago. I almost took my own life from anxiety and depression struggles. And I know Tim is a huge advocate of this in some states in America are starting to do a lot of research in terms of the, the psilocybin type mushrooms. So what's your thoughts on the future prospects of psilocybin mushrooms? On the treatment of. I know they're doing research on post traumatic stress disorder, but mental health in general, depression, anxiety, what's your thoughts on that?

Sure. I mean, first of all, yeah, my position on that is anything that we can do to make the world healthier, happier place, I want to get behind 100%. I mean, if they're doing research with psilocybin mushrooms, and I know they're finding benefits for mental health, for post traumatic stress disorder, for anxiety, like you mentioned, even for, you know, end of life care, I mean, these are things that as a society and as scientists we need to be looking at. You cannot just brush it under the rug because, you know, they were made illegal so many years ago. The unfortunate fact is they still are illegal. So that, you know, so that is what it is. But in the right clinical settings and if they're able to do research on these mushrooms, I mean, I'm personally fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by all things fungi. I think it's amazing that some people are starting to be brave enough to do this kind of research. And I think the more people that we can make healthier and happier, the better. And if mushrooms can play a role in Doing that, I'm behind that 100%. So, yeah, I think that's a fascinating topic that we're going to be seeing a lot more of that over the next few years. And you know, one of the, one of the books I read recently was Michael Pollan's new book, how to Change youe Mind. And I think he provides a really, you know, lucid explanation on a lot of the stuff. Not just mushrooms, but some of the other substances that are helping with, you know, mental disorders, etc. And yeah, I just think this topic is ripe for where we are as a society right now and I think it needs to be explored for sure, sure, totally.

Tony, full agreement what you're saying. I think in the right clinical context, with the proper aftercare. I think Polin talks about this as well. Having the right practitioner administering the substance and then having the pre and post follow up care as well is very important for that adoption into our society. And I think undeveloped, undoubtedly in the next few years we'll see more and more traction gaining. I do hope so, because anxiety and depression is a huge burden to society all across the world. It's huge in Australia, it's huge in America and the rest of the world. So let's hope that common sense prevails and people get access legally to these substances with a proper practitioner.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with you 100%. And actually one question that I'm kind of interested to ask you on this topic, the whole idea of the mind gut connection and how what we eat and what is in our stomach and what's going on in our gut can have a huge effect on what's going on in our brain. I just think that's such a fascinating topic as well and starting to be researched a lot more and more from your perspective and from a little bit of your experience experience, what kind of stuff are we eating that might be contributing to these mental health issues?

Yeah, totally. If people are interested, you can always go back. And I interviewed Professor Ted Dyden, who's. Diane. Sorry, he's the. I guess him. And there's another guy, what was his name? They're both from the Cork University. I'll link to it in the show notes. But they coined this term psychobiotic, meaning something that impacts. Or bacteria could be particular or some sort of probiotic that impacts how you feel. But in the simplest way to explain, the gut and the brain are connected via the vagus nerve and the enteric nervous system. So what goes on in the gut is impacting the brain and what happens in the brain is impacting the gut. So there's this bi directional connection. And the biggest thing I find the lowest hanging fruit is processed foods. So anything that's going to impact your gut flora, because primarily bifidobacteria are producing what we call tryptophan in the gut. And tryptophan is this amino acid that's a precursor for a lot of the hormones. Specifically, one that comes to mind is serotonin. So serotonin is converted into, sorry, tryptophan is converted into serotonin, which is then converted into melatonin. So it's how you feel, but then it's also the quality of your sleep. So the easiest way is to just cook food from scratch, grow mushrooms, fry them up, everything from scratch. Now that's the easiest way to get rid of all these chemicals and toxins and antibiotics that are coming through our food supply. Another obvious thing is water, water, a lot of countries fluoridate and chlorinate water. Now these substances are antibiotic in nature, so they're going to impact gut flora. So they're going to change that gut signature. So what we're trying to encourage is as much of your peacekeeping bacteria, specifically lactobacilli and bifidobacteria, because these are the ones that are involved that almost conversion and also production of tryptophan into serotonin and then melatonin. Simplest thing in layman's terms, if you are eating food from scratch, the biggest source of antibiotics in our bodies is actually coming from meat. So a lot of meat processing, chicken processing, farmed fish, they add these antibiotics because they get a mass benefit, so the animals grow bigger. So it's a commercial reason why they add it. So a simple way is to just be really conscious of what you're putting into your body because it's going to have this downstream effect on how you feel. And the mechanism that scientists are beginning to discover is this, this having this right signature to promote mental health. And I've even seen studies that now sciences, I think in Korea they did a study where they can look at your gut signature and determine the likelihood of you having anxiety and depression just from the species of bacteria in your gut.

Wow.

This is how powerful the science is becoming where in a sense, and we do a lot of research at Allele Microbiome where I can look at a stool chart now with someone's metagenomics and tell you with pretty much certainty that this person could likely suffer from anxiety and depression.

That's amazing.

That's what we're trying to do. Just trying to foster the right type of bacteria, but the first thing we need to do is just get out of the way. They stopped putting the toxins and stopped putting glyphosate. Glyphosate. Glyphosate Roundup is used to kill weeds, but it was actually registered as an antibiotic way before it was used as, you know, as a pesticide. Yeah. Or whatever they used for killing weeds. What's the proper word for it? Killing weeds?

Herbicide or herbicide.

Yeah, exactly.

Food supply.

Yeah, exactly. So glyphosate runs havoc in the gut, in your gut flora. So that's the simplest things. And then starting to include things like chocolate, which have a benefit, like raw cacao, which has a benefit on the Buford bacteria. Green tea, fermented foods, certain types of prebiotics like acacia fiber or what's the other one Gos, Galactooligosaccharides, or partially hydrolyzed guar gum. All these are great for encouraging bifidobacteria and lactobacillus, which is then going to help you to produce tryptophan. And then when you got the right amount of tryptophan, you could use something like sunlight, which helps the conversion of tryptophan into serotonin. So getting early morning sunlight in your eyes, not eating dinner too late at night. So my dinner time is like 3pm Intermittent fasting. So all these strategies help to foster a healthy gut ecosystem to maximize your mental health.

Wow. So basically, there's no silver bullet, but it seems like a lot of really basic advice. Right. Don't eat processed foods, drink more water, get sunlight. All that kind of good stuff.

Yeah, yeah. It's so cliched, but sometimes there's truth in the cliches. There's a reason why they become cliches, because, like old adages. So hashtag jerf. Just eat real food. Just get away from the processed crap and just eat food. And lots of fermented foods. Kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut. They're all laden with good bacteria for you. Amazing, Tony. Huge gratitude. So much knowledge, so much nuggets in this podcast. If people want to reach out to you and connect with you because you're such a charismatic guy, you're so giving and sharing of knowledge. How can people reach out to you and connect with you on the Internet?

Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me on. It was so great to be on the podcast. If you want to reach out to me. Freshcatmushrooms.com, we have a contact page. It goes right to my inbox and I read every one of those. You can also reach out to me on Instagram. We have freshcapped mushrooms, but my personal one ishcapped Tony, so you can reach out to me there. And I love getting DMs and interacting with the other people, so that's probably the two best places to catch me.

Cool, man. Such a fun conversation. Definitely keep in touch. I might shoot you an email if I get stuck in terms of mushroom exploration, but Tony, he's great to you, mate. Thank you so much, Tony.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Awesome.

Thank you.

Take care.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health Gurus podcast with the amazing Tony Shields from Fresh Capped Mushrooms. Guys, your support means the world to us, so leave us a kind review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. All the show notes are available at www.podcast.nourishmeorganics.com and this this show is sponsored by Nourish Me Organics, the Gut health Superstore. So guys, if you're interested in trying out mushrooms to help with your immune system or whether it's your gut health, nice Nourishment Organics have an amazing range of different types of medicinal mushroom teas from Four Sigmatic and also from Pete Evans. So head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code Magic Mushrooms for 10% off until next time.