Cracking The Code On Nature's Best Kept Secret: Medicinal Mushrooms.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

So there's a big difference between mushrooms and from the roughly about 1.5 million mushrooms around the world. You know, now we know that there's a little bit over 300 mushrooms that have these health benefits for medicinal purposes. And actually about half of the top best selling drugs in the world are derived from fungi, but they would only take this one compound, fentanic acid, out of it. And the reason being is that they want a patent for it, obviously to protect themselves and their innovation, which you cannot get for Whole Foods. And actually the funny part is that people who have Candida really good against Candida, so they're actually antifungal. We try to avoid sweeteners in this case. Like you said, mushrooms have been used against things like cancer and other things like that, and they feed on sugar. So us adding sugar to a lot of these products will become counterproductive.

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And as happens to me quite often, I'll often get packages in the mail with different combinations of supplements and herbs and essential oils and you name it. And two nights ago, I actually received just such a package in the evening as I was getting ready to drive to tennis. And so I was actually opening this package as I'm driving to my tennis match and I open it and I basically see the word cordyceps and it was like this powdered cordyceps extract. So I'm thinking, great. And it's actually made by this company called Four Sigma Foods. And I've tried some of their stuff before and we're going to be talking about their stuff, about mushrooms, about things of that nature on today's call. But I popped a couple of packets of it and I thought, huh, it tastes kind of like mushrooms and kind of like coffee. And then I took a little bit of a closer look and noticed that it was in fact mushroom coffee. And since I'm a guy who typically doesn't really drink coffee after about 9am in the morning and this was about 6pm I have to say I was on fire for my tennis match. But I also had to have some magnesium and some things to calm me down later in the Day. So one warning I can give to folks as you're listening in. Before you try anything that we're about to hear and talk about, make sure that you read the label carefully. So that being said, the guy who I have on the call today, his name is Taro. Taro. I'm not even going to try to pronounce your last name, dude, because it's, I don't know, ISO. Kappila, Is that correct?

Yeah, close enough. I think even it's a Finnish name and I think even Finns get it wrong. So you're all good.

I was kind of close anyways, so Taro is the co founder and he's the president of Four Sigma Foods and Four Sigma Foods. What they say is that they're dedicated to democratizing the healing power of mushrooms by making them accessible to everyone. And they basically have these superfood mushroom teas and mushroom coffees and mushroom chocolates and all sorts of things that I've actually been trying and kind of liking. I'm not quite sure how they work so I thought I'd get Tara on the call to actually talk about it. Most of my experience with mushrooms has actually been trying to figure out as I'm walking through the forest if something is going to kill me or not. And so this is certainly a different experience to have it arrive packaged in a powdered format. So Terrell, before we get into this stuff and how it actually works, can you fill me in on how you actually got interested in mushrooms or as the kids say these days, shrooms.

Yeah, yeah, totally. So yeah, I grew up in Finland at our family farm. So we've had this family farm since like 16, 19 and growing up there, obviously Finland is the, you know, it's, the ecosystem is pretty close to things like Vermont and Maine and there's a lot of mushrooms there and. And my dad is an agronomist and my mom cheeses like physiology, anatomy. So we were foraging early on and I was actually then I went to the like environmental school my great granddad helped to found. And yeah, that's kind of the way the basis is found for kind of edible mushrooms now as we're tuning into a lot of the mushrooms are actually kind of inedible tree mushrooms so they're a little bit of a different story but that's where it started from. And about 10 years ago I started my first mushroom venture when I was in college for another culinary mushroom called Mochitake. But it's kind of where it all begins. But just like with everything you're just constantly learning. And the more I've been learning about health and wellness, the more amazed by the properties found from mushrooms. And with you as well is like, you like to read a bunch of stuff and it's sometimes hard to find research on whole foods. You can find more research on individual compounds or minerals, but found in their whole food form. It's a little bit difficult to find really good research on them, even if you believe that they work and you feel them in your own body. With mushrooms, I just found so much research every year, so I'm kind of like convinced of that part and hence the mission of, you know, popularizing these foods. And I think obviously, you know, there's good and bad kind of mushrooms, but I just find that they kind of suffered from food racism.

Did you ever eat the bad kind of mushroom? Have you ever been poisoned in your journeys into, like, wild edibles and trying out mushrooms? I mean, does that just happen?

I'm kind of fortunate, like, you know, learning from my parents and, you know, I've. In my own ecosystem, where I grew up, I really hadn't had that problem at all. And there's been some that have, like a little bit of a mold. I've had a little headache or something like that. More bought from the store, actually, the forage. Myself, I've never been poisoned. And obviously when I go to new areas, like today I'm going to beat basin in California foraging, and then tomorrow to Sonoma. And that's a little bit like California is not my expertise. So I'll be extra careful on picking up mushrooms. But when we talk about these inedible mushrooms, the tree mushrooms, for example, in Finland, there's no toxic tree mushrooms, but there are a lot of toxic ground mushrooms. Just to oversimplify things. But I've been lucky enough. No poisonous action so far.

So is there a difference? When I go to the grocery store, I can find button mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms and portobello mushrooms that I can use in recipes. What's the difference between those mushrooms and the kind of things that you use as medicinal mushrooms? Aside from the fact that the medicinal mushrooms have much cooler names like cordyceps and Reishi?

Yeah, yeah, they're really samurai names. So first and foremost, the first thing that people not always realize, and I didn't realize this even growing up, is like, mushrooms are our own kingdom. They're not a subgroup of plants. Now sometimes we think they're a subgroup of plants, but just like animals and plants and bacteria, fungi, our whole kingdom so just like there is really cute animals like, you know, puppies, you know, bunnies. There's also really cool animals for us human beings. So, you know, basically could kill us. So there's a big difference between mushrooms and from a roughly about 1.5 million mushrooms around the world. You know, now we know that there's a little bit over 300 mushrooms that have these health benefits for medicinal purposes. And actually about half of the top best selling drugs in the world are derived from fungi. People know penicillin. But if you've ever been on an antibiotic, it's very likely that you've been on mushrooms or on shrooms.

So are they pharmaceutical companies growing mushrooms in laboratory conditions or are they also out like you are foraging in the hills of California with a burlap sack? How's that work?

Yes, the pharmaceutical companies have to necessarily grow them in laboratory environment, but process them in laboratory environments. And then there's big differences on what kind of pharmaceutical is it. But it's very controlled and they don't use the whole food form. So if a mushroom would have, let's say, take the case example of chaga, there might be hundreds of active ingredients in the chaga plus it's one of the highest sources of multiple different minerals and trait minerals. So but they would only take this one compound, betulin or petulinic acid out of it. And the reason being is that they want a patent for it, obviously to protect themselves and their innovation, which you cannot get for Whole foods or Cordyceps. One franchise of Cordyceps is used for the only official cure for Ms. Disease. It's this drug called Delenia by Novartis.

But doesn't that make the, when you isolate the compound from the mushroom, couldn't that theoretically make it more powerful and efficacious? I mean, yeah, it allows them to patent it too. But doesn't it make it more effective?

Absolutely. So you can also take this into any supplement, basically. So what, once you standardize extract or you make it, you, you isolate a compound, it's definitely stronger. But at the same time if, if you isolate it enough become side effects. So the risk and reward ratio, and even though it's not a linear line, it still exists. So a lot of these drugs would have very, very strong side effects to them. So, you know, that's the game you play. I'm a believer that as long as you can, you would use whole food form.

Well, what would be like for example, can you give me an example of a patented pharmaceutical compound based on a Mushroom and then how you could achieve the same effect by using a whole.

Food, you know, legally I'm not going to tell you that those claims personally but you know, if you want fungi based drugs, penicillin is the household name. There are four over billion dollars selling pharmaceutical fungi right now in the world. Immunosuppressions, things like. And a lot of them are related to actually the immune system and related to that. So a lot of the research on mushrooms is based on the immunofunctional. So it's their kind of immunomodulatory. So they either suppress the immune system. If you have autoimmune disease disorders, we talked about Gilenia made out of a part in one Cordyceps species. And so that's kind of calm in the immune system. But it can also work like an immunostimulant. So if you have a flu or cough, it can kind of activate your immune system immune response. So very particularly there's these type of sugars, polysaccharides. So then after type of sugars that will like raise your blood pressure. Actually it's the opposite. But they kind of feed your immune system. So your internal cops, natural killer cells and things like that, they're going to feed them so they will be active but not overly stimulated. So that's kind of what they do.

Okay, gotcha. And you can achieve the same effect with just like a whole food mushroom extract. Yeah.

I mean again I'm not going to, I'm not going to make health claims in the U.S. yeah, I know. But also we have international like you can look into the research and just if nothing else, they've been used for several thousands of years. So at one point those indigenous cultures would have probably said that I don't think this is working. So that's kind of my true thing. But they are the most researched whole foods probably in the world. So if you look at the amount of research on Reishi and chaga and especially these polysaccharides, it is overwhelming in the whole food space.

Yeah, it is. One of my friends actually gave me a book. It's not in my office, it's over my bookshelf in the, in the rec room. But it's a, it's a big book and it's just basically all of the different research and referenced scientific studies that have been done on the use of mushrooms for like these immunomodulatory effects that you're talking about. And also for, you know, again, I know you can't make health Claims. But I can say stuff. You know, the research that has been done on things like cancer, for example, it's through the roof. It's pretty amazing as far as, like, suppression of tumor cell growth and some really interesting stuff with these mushrooms. So I certainly see where you're coming from. Now, I want to ask you about the different kinds of mushrooms that you work with, because you said there are millions and then there's like 300 that actually have some kind of a beneficial effect on the human body. What are the type of mushrooms that you're using at Four Sigma? Like, what are kind of like your flagship shrooms?

Yeah. Just before we dive into that, I just want to again emphasize the fact that there's also a lot of bad mushrooms. And I think there's a lot of microphobia around people, especially because of bad mushrooms like Candida and in a way, cancer. Mycophobia, Phobia. Yeah. I mean, people are scared of things that we've consumed for a long time that are very natural, like bacteria. I think a lot of people are spooked out about bacteria, even though it's vital to our health, same way as a lot of people are scared of mushrooms, because molds and other things that are bad for our body. And this is mostly because we humans are super close to the mushroom. So depending on the mushroom, we're like 30 to 50% same DNA as mushrooms. So if you look at the mushroom next time when you're in a forest, think that that mushroom actually breeds oxygen, so it's actually breathing oxygen and expelling CO2, just like we humans, whereas plants are the opposite. So these guys are very close to us. So if they get attacked by fungal diseases, so mushrooms get attacked by other mushrooms as well. So we're very prone to those same illnesses. But at the same time, there's these. The best of the best have survived for a long time and build mechanisms to protect themselves. And because we're so close to them, we can utilize the mechanisms they've done for themselves, for our own health. And in that case, a lot of them are growing in trees. The one you mentioned before, shiitake is edible mushroom that also has these medicinal properties. But even then, you would probably want to cook it, either fry it on a band with like butter or whatnot, or make a soup out of it. A lot of these have been consumed in peas and soups in the history. So a lot of them do grow on trees. And I think that's one way how we can utilize the health beneficial compounds from the Tree same way as we eat plants because we cannot eat soil. It's like a medium for us to get the minerals from the soil through the plant. And the kind of way of us getting some of the properties. Just like we use SAP, you know, birch SAP or maple SAP, we can use the mushrooms to get energy, you know, the health benefit compounds from the trees. But the top, if you want to look at it, is often Reishi, which is the queen of mushrooms. It's like you said, very fancy names. For example, a Japanese name. And then there's Chaga, the king. King of mushrooms. These are probably the two most researched ones. Chaga then is the Russian name. And the most sold mushroom supplement in the US I think is cordyceps, which is very popular among athletes. It became kind of booming in the running and triathlon space. So.

Yeah, yeah, you hear about cordyceps a lot. I want to, I want to actually ask you about cordyceps in a second because I hear that comes out like the ass of a larvae or something like that. But before I do, you also mentioned Reishi and you mentioned Chaga. As far as Reishi and Chaga are concerned, like what would be the biggest benefits in your opinion to consuming something like that? Like is it more of a smart drug? Is it more of like a pre workout? Is it something for sleep? Like how would you use Reishi and how would you use Chaga? What would you say are the biggest benefits?

They're kind of like the Ninja Turtles. All of those four guys are turtles and they're ninjas. And in this case the ninja and the turtle means that they're good for your immune system. And in that way they're supporting you from getting sick, but also preventing other immunological issues. And people don't realize what immunological issues are the basis for a lot of things. And they're related to for example, allergic reactions and other things. That's what they all do. But they all have a special weapon. And in the case of Reishi, I would say that the biggest what I've seen over the years is for a modern person is stress reduction. It is an adaptogen, but especially works this endocrine system. And I've seen over and over, like people who are really stressed out or busy at work or maybe over trained, just, you know, take Reishi and calm down. It's just not in a sedative way. If somebody use things like valeriana or kava, it's not going to prevent you from driving a car and knock you out. But it's just going to calm you down. Yogis used to say that it opens up your crown chakra, which is, you know, a little hippie aversion of saying that just brings you to the moment. The Chaga on the other hand is very high in antioxidants, very high in certain trace minerals that are otherwise very difficult to get. So the anti inflammatory properties are pretty interesting in my books because of the antioxidants as well. You know, it is probably, if you're about to get sick, it's probably your best weapon and it is very safe. Like all these are foods, they're not supplements per se, so they're very tonic so you're safe to use them. Just rotating different kind of mushrooms incorporating to your diet doesn't matter if you're paleo, vegan, whenever, just incorporating some mushrooms to your diet will probably reap a lot of benefits. But reishi for anti stress and chaga for anti inflammatory purposes.

Now if I'm going to take reishi because I want like a calming effect on the mind or I want anti stress, is there going to be a difference between taking, taking something like that on an empty stomach or should it be taken with food?

Well, this is the thing is about in general like the supplement and food industry, certain things are not always supported by evidence and certain things are used for marketing purposes. And you often read labels and they say take it on an empty stomach. And I've just noticed the fact that like then almost anything is more powerful when you take it on an empty stomach. So for example, I noticed that if something doesn't work in my body, not.

Like fish oil or vitamin D, you know, not like fat soluble vitamins for example.

Yeah, that's. Those are exceptions. Those are by the way also one of the things that we've studied the most. But I think if you look at the labels of a lot of you go to GNC or vitamin shop or whatnot, almost every product says you have to take it on an empty stomach or early in the morning because that's when you reap most efficacies. But it doesn't mean that's the only time when you should use it. So a lot of health products you can use in the evening as well. That's just when body, at least my body is the most sensitive in the morning and then after a meal or afternoon I can take more without noticing it. So in the morning you are definitely more sensitive.

Well, I can tell you when I've, when I've been using this because you Sent me some chaga tea and I tried that. And I also tried this reishi. I've tried both. And the cordyceps, actually you sent me that too. I've tried all of those in the mid afternoon. In the mid afternoon on an empty stomach. And I've also tried them after breakfast, like after I have my what I call my big ass morning smoothie. And I've noticed that I feel them within like 10 minutes when I take them in the afternoon on an empty stomach. I barely feel anything when I've been taking them with a stomach full of smoothie. So to me I feel better taking this stuff on an empty stomach.

Yeah, I mean then definitely digestively, it's kind of first thing in is the first thing that gets often digested. So for example, the old trick is if you're in a drinking contest, you eat a lot of bananas on the go and then you can drink as much and you're not going to absorb the alcohol because the bananas are there until they get digested and then something's going to hit yourself in the head with the hammers.

Can you say that again? You use bananas for a drinking contest?

Yeah, that's the old trick is like if you're in a drinking contest, you can build yourself like a one hour window by eating a lot of bananas in the beginning and you build a kind of a layer and then all the alcohol will be sitting on your stomach because a lot of the actual absorption will come into like the colon. And that's why like things like probiotics are important and whatnot. So if you take your smoothie in the morning, that's going to first build kind of a layer of something that the stomach will first digest and then you know what you take. The last is probably the thing that gets absorbed the last. So if you take it on an empty stomach, that's the only thing you kind of. So for example, if you have stomach problems, you often usually go on a mono meal. You just have one food because it's just the easiest way of body to digest it. If you're really like. If you have stomach issues, that's usually easier than putting like 50 different ingredients in a smoothie and then jocking that down because your body might get a little confused at that point. So taking them on an empty stomach is the most powerful way. Just like with any supplement. That doesn't mean you have to take them on an empty stomach. They will get absorbed. And how we build the recipes is we add synergistic things like rosehip which has a vitamin C in it. And vitamin C will enhance their absorption of these active ingredients, especially these polysaccharides, like crazy amounts, like 69 times. So we've already built it kind of a synergistic recipe, so you're already getting that bang for your buck. But at the same time, at the same time, obviously, if you combine it with other things, you might get more or less synergistic benefits out of it.

Okay, gotcha. So we've gotwe've got reishi, and that's for the calming and the stress, and then chaga, which is good for the immune system. Now, how about cordyceps? First of all, before we talk about what cordyceps is good for, is it true that it comes out the butt of an insect or something like that?

Yes and no. So the thing is, it's like, think of like a species of cat animals. There's a lot of the home pussycat and then you have the lion. So the same way, there's a lot of different kinds of cordyceps. Now what people often know is like the BBC documentary where you see how it comes from the ants. Ants are now actually even the most common pieces where it likes to grow, there's like moths and other things. But when you buy these, almost none of them would be these wild, wild cordyceps, because they're, it's not sustainable for getting them because there's a very lack of them and they would also cost a lot. So my good friend, they grow in like Bhutan and Tibet, and my friend had known about the Bhutan agricultural minister even through his personal contacts. The wholesale price would be something like $40,000 per pound for the wild variety. So almost all the cordyceps you ever bought and probably will ever buy is what you call CS4 Cordyceps. This is like, if it's high quality, at least it's the CS4 version, which is basically a very similar. It has the similar strains as the wild one, but it's done in a tank where you put the cordyceps in a tank and you feed it a lot of protein and you put them fighting against each other and then they will become strong and will have that power and health benefits to it. So if you ever buy cordyceps, it will not come out of the butt of an ant or a moth. But in theory there is varieties that do grow on animals, but they will not affect human beings. And those varieties that come from those animals, probably you will never see because there's multiple different kinds of cordyceps. Not just one.

Got it. Now, when it comes to the way that these mushrooms are grown, I'm relatively familiar with the supplement industry and that there's a lot of compounds out there that either don't have in them what they say they have in them, or have lower amounts of the acid active ingredients or are they're basically tainted. Right. With things that shouldn't be in there. When it comes to mushrooms and screening programs for the active compounds in mushrooms or whether or not mushrooms actually have in them what they say they have in them, how do you ensure that the stuff that you've got in these powdered packets is actually pure or does actually have in it what it's supposed to have in it? What should you be looking for when it comes to mushroom extracts?

Well, I think it's the same what you use for mushrooms as a screening method that you do for any supplement or health food. You look at the efficacy, you look at the purity, and then you look at the actual kind of formulation. Slight amount of fillers that will be added during the process of putting them into capsules or packets. So I'll start with efficacy. So more mushrooms. There's hundreds of things that affect your body, but most commonly they're measured against two types of health benefits. Polysaccharides, which we briefly mentioned, especially these like beta D glucans and things like that. Those are for the immune system. And, you know, for example, for every batch we do, we measure how much polysaccharides we have. Then there's the other one, though. These like sterols and these triterpenes, which are more for the hormonal balance. So overly simplified. They are the parts that make it more adaptogenic. Those get measured as well. So that's kind of the efficacy part for mushrooms. The bigger part is that is it grown on a lab now, cordyceps is the exception, but most other products, they would be like. We would always get them from nature. Either grow them on tree stumps or logs or just force them from living trees. But a lot of products on the market are grown on laboratories, which is way cheaper. But the amount of active ingredients, the one that I mentioned before, is like three to five times less because they're grown on brown rice rather than nature. So, for example, chaga, which grows like 10, 20 years in the harsh climates of Siberia, obviously have built more resistance to it than something that grows in a laboratory for a few months in a medium that is not naturally grown. So getting them from what you call fruiting bodies, which is from Kind of the nature actual living part, which the indigenous cultures also use, versus getting them from mycelium, which is kind of a newer thing. Always offer products that have the fruiting body if possible.

Okay.

So that's the efficacy then the purity.

So just to back up a second, the actual mushroom themselves, you would want to make sure that that's grown on what you called a, what'd you say? A mycelium.

So you want to make sure that the product is fruiting body, if possible. If you want a strong efficacy product. Mycelium products are, you know, they can be good for you, but they have less of these active ingredients, they're less bitter. So that if you want to use the kind of the original natural version, you would use the fruiting body.

Okay, the fruiting body. Okay, gotcha.

The fruiting body is like eating the apple from the apple tree and eating the mycelium is like trying to eat the tree itself. You know, it's, it's, it's less good for you.

And for, for a lot of this mass produced stuff, the actual mycelium is grown on some kind of like. Did you say like a grain or a rice?

Yeah, exactly. So you can even see sometimes it's grown on this, you know, either a husk or brown rice. And then the in croissant product is only 50 to 30% mushroom and 50 to 70% it's actually like the brown rice. So it's, it has a lot of filler from get go, you know. So that's already like, that's a huge quality decrease there, like half. And already even if you would only get the mycelium, it would have less of these polysaccharides and triterpenes diversions, getting it from nature.

So you've got fewer bioactive compounds. And you also have a mushroom that was basically grown on grain instead of in its natural environment.

Correct. Which is often a treaty. So that's the efficacy part. The other one is purity. I think famous for a lot of supplements, other products. You want to make sure it doesn't have irradiation, it doesn't have pesticides, it doesn't have, I guess like what Dave Asprey has brought to the consciousness is the mold. So the bad kind of mushrooms. So for example, we test our mushrooms to make sure that they don't have these mycotoxins. So we test our mushrooms so that they don't have mushrooms in them, you know.

You test your mushrooms for mushrooms?

Yeah. And actually the funny part is that people who have candida Reishi is really good against Candida, so they're actually antifungal, so.

Interesting, huh? That's kind of, kind of ironic that you can take a mushroom to control the growth of a fungi.

Well, that's. That's nature making jokes, I think, you know, but so that's. And then heavy metals, I mean, that's a huge thing as well is, you know, obviously depends what kind of supplement it is. But nature has minerals and heavy metals and you just want to make sure that, you know, I guess the big topic lately has been like certain protein products and things like that where heavy metals have been too high. And we've known from eating fish and other things before, like there's certain thresholds you don't want to cross. And so I think testing against those is pretty important. And then finally understanding the process a bit. A lot of supplements would have fillers, certain capsules. In order then to capsule machine to fill those pills, it has to add things like magnesium stearate and other binders and fillers so the machine would run smoothly or just purely what we've seen lately in the press with the gnc, Walgreens and those cases in New York, they just add fillers so they could get the cost down.

Yeah, that's what I've heard that a lot of mushroom extracts are mostly like starch or dextrose and not actually like, what'd you call them? The beta glucans.

Yeah, exactly. And that's really a funny thing as well is if you take these adaptogens or herbs and you take them in powdered material, but they've been extracted. Extraction means that they've been like boiled or put in an alcohol for a while. But then from that liquid extract, you make it into a powdered extract. Requires that you blow it through this like high pressure valve. It's like you spray it in a very high pressure in high temperature to make this powder. But if certain ingredients, certain green leaves and other things require a binder, that often is a maltodextrin and not always the highest quality maltodextrin, and then ends up that you're actually buying like a tulsi extract where 30% is the tulsi and 70% is the maltodextrin, which is like not always the best quality sugar available. So that happens as well during that kind of process. And as a consumer, it's a bummer because unless you dedicate your life to herbals and botanicals and health and wellness. How do you know this? Right. Yeah, it's it's definitely a challenge in this industry, like transparency and, and getting this information and finding the product that is pure and you works for your body.

Yeah. So that was a complete segue as we were talking about cordyceps. But what is it that cordyceps actually does? Because you see both cordyceps and I guess it's cordyceps and reishi as the primary ingredients in a lot of these compounds that are sold to athletes and specifically like endurance athletes or people competing at altitude, is that their primary benefit is VO2 max or lung function or why is it that someone would take cordyceps or Cordyceps Reishi blend?

Yeah, I mean, overly simplify these Reishi is a downer and cordyceps is an upper. Not saying that cordyceps is not a stimulant, but still like that's how you use them. Cordyceps before a workout, in the evening or after a workout, calm down the body that received the stress. So that's overly simplified. But cordyceps is, you know, it's used a long time for like lungs, people have asthma or lower back problems in the oriental world and sexual desire. But once we've kind of just researched this in the Western world, we've seen kind of two major things that are quite special. And you mentioned the other one. The other one is, you know, the VO2 max and maximum oxygen intake on untrained individuals. We've seen like 9 to 15% increase in VO2 max, which is huge. Basically you don't need caffeine or sugar to be energized. If you can increase your oxygen intake, you're just going to be more energized.

What percentage did you say for VO2 max?

9 to 15% increase on untrained individuals.

Was that a study that you guys did?

No, no, no. I mean, and a lot of the studies are out. I actually in the endurance world, it kind of came out, I think it was Stuttgart93 when the ladies, the Chinese ladies won the 10k run. The first time they run below 30 minutes and people were like, oh, that's doping for sure. And then they kind of tested them and nothing came out. And the trainer just contributed their success on cordyceps. Obviously we will never know if it was doping or cordyceps or why, but that was kind of when it came out later. There's been a lot of studies. We've had a lot of athletes use them. For example, one of our team members and partners is Olympic level cross country skier. So he also tested it on for his own body. And it's interesting, but obviously it differs on per person. And how high is your VO2 max already? Because if you're already plowing, like 65.

Yeah. 9 to 15% would be huge for a trained athlete.

Yeah, I mean for him as a cross country skier, if he can bump it up one or two milliliters, that's already huge, you know, because he's already pushing the limit as a pro athlete. Obviously for a normal untrained individual, you can reap benefits, you know, a little more.

How about at altitude?

Oh yeah.

Is there a difference? Well, I guess you hear like about like a lot of Sherpas, for example, using mushroom extracts to help them when they're guiding people up Mount Everest. Like that's the fabled story. Is there any studies that have looked at difference in altitude performance when on versus not on something like cordyceps?

I haven't seen it, but it's really funny. I love to read about herbs and whole foods and what kind of the myth and the lore and the old studies around them because it gives a little bit of an indication how you could potentially use them for your own body. And the story on cordyceps is that they originally they found that cordyceps is a good mushroom by looking at these yaks. A high in altitude grazing. And they were grazing and they were kind of sluggish. But when they ate the cordyceps high in the mountains, they would get all crazy and have this energy. And that's why how the Sherpas learn how that they should incorporate the cordyceps into their diet when they're high in altitude. So that's the kind of, I guess where that comes from. If somebody knows a research on it, please let me know. But I haven't seen a western credible research on altitude. But I've heard a lot of athletes use it when they go high up. But I haven't seen any like systematic studies myself.

Gotcha. All right. So in addition to Reishi Chaga Cordyceps, a couple of others that I've seen in some of your products in particular. One is Lion's Mane and it's a pretty cool name. My kids love the name by the way. They saw me drinking the Lion's Mane tea and they wanted some. And I don't even know if I haven't given it to them because I actually want to ask you about its safety for children. But first, what is Lion's Mane like, how would you use that?

Yeah, Lion's Mane is again growing on trees you can find it in like Maine, Vermont. It has a lot of different names. It could be called like bearded tooth mushroom or whatever, monkey head mushroom. But it's basically one of the. It has one rare skill that the others don't have. Actually almost no food has it, the certain nervous system and memory support that it has. So it's obviously used for people who have like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's type of things, but also for an athlete. It's actually interesting that recovering from like muscular stress or lactate acid is pretty fast. You can do it in one, two days. But once you hit nervous system related damage or you overtrain or you do too many sprints and you get. It could last for months when you're just feeling lethargic. So I actually heard this from, from Dave Asprey, that when, when you work out a lot, it's sometimes good to use lion's mane for the nervous system support. But.

Yeah, but he doesn't work out a lot. He works out like five minutes a week.

Exactly, exactly. But so I think a lot of brain workers use it. It's like a safe nootropic. So it's a safe, smart drug, if you may. There's really cool like 16 week possible double blinded studies on how it increases your memory on like a memory game. And it's very interesting for the brain.

So you could basically use lion's mane similarly to like a nootropic or a smart drug.

Exactly. So it's a safe version. Again, as a whole food, it's not as strong as if you take one of those synthetic ones, but it's definitely something I've as well noticed of like calm, sustained mental focus and clarity. I would use it more for brain function. And if you're truly doing a lot of sprints and other things, it doesn't probably hurt to use that to support your nervous system as well.

Is that stuff safe for kids? Like any of these mushrooms that we're.

Talking about, their food, they're not actually even a supplement. They're generally regarded as safe. So I would say especially things like lion's mane, shiitake reishi are very safe with kids. Obviously kids are smaller human beings, so dosages might be smaller. You know, the same way as you want to be mindful of how much they eat anything, you want to be mindful of this and you maybe use them in, rotate them a bit more so, you know, have different kinds of. I don't like to use the word superfood per se, but these superfoods Be it goji berries or schisandra or whatever, just, you know, have them take smaller dosages and rotate them a bit more. But yes, kids could definitely use mushrooms as well.

What's the difference? Because there's, there's two other mushrooms that you have. So we talked about cordyceps and chaga and rish lion's mane. What's the difference between shiitake and maitake for mushrooms?

They all are ninjas and turtles, which is my way of saying they're all immune system. What's interesting about shiitake and maitake is maitake is used for a lot of people with diabetics and this is a hard word, but it's an alpha glucose, it is inhibitor. So basically helps to balance your blood sugar. So if you're eating a lot because of training or xyz, your blood sugar might go up and down. And keeping it balanced has a lot of health benefits to it.

Have you ever tested that? Have you ever done a postprandial blood glucose to see if it actually keeps your blood glucose low?

I actually haven't. I've heard people do it, but I haven't personally done it. All I've seen is the kind of the research on it. But that would be very interesting to do it on myself as well.

Yeah, I've done that before with, I've done that with bitter melon extract and I've noticed my postprandial go down by 15 to 20 points when I take bitter melon extract like a half hour before a carbohydrate containing meal. So I know some of this stuff can work. I'd be interested. It's shiitake that we're talking about right now.

Right now, this is maitake.

Maitake. Okay. So maitake would be for balancing blood sugar.

Yeah. And shiitake is very interesting as far as like liver detox. We, by the way, combine the shiitake with schisandra berries and, and dandelion. But kind of like one and two phases of liver detox. So liver being kind of mirror to your skin health and kind of natural beauty. So you know, having, cleansing the liver is good for your skin health and natural beauty as well. So more of I would say. Well, yeah, I mean, liver has multiple functions. Burning fat is one, but also like cleansing your body from toxins. And if you have a cleaner liver, you're probably going to have cleaner skin as well. So besides milk thistle, you should look into things like schisandra and dandelion and shiitake as well. But it is I would say as a more of a detox mushroom. It's also yummy in soups. And maitake is ridiculously tasty if you fry it in a pan with butter ghee or something like that.

Yeah, I've never cooked with maitake before. I've cooked with shiitake and I put that in mushrooms and it's. It's pretty dang tasty stuff.

Yeah.

Now this stuff that we're talking about with you, it's not the actual mushrooms, like it's powdered. That actually gives me a little bit of pause because usually if I see something powdered, in most cases it's been like been heated or it's been heat dried or it's been basically had the crap blasted out of it to actually get it into this dense, powdery form from its whole food form. And what I'm curious about is when you're. You were telling me that before we recorded that, like you're going out to the park in California and you're going to be looking for mushrooms. And when you get a mushroom and you turn it into a powdered extract like this, how are you actually doing that? Like, how's it going from a mushroom to getting into this packet?

That's a very good question. So I'm a believer in whole foods, which I've already told like 15 times on this call. So whole foods means that they're minimally processed. Obviously, whatever you eat, you need some kind of processing, be it an animal product, bone broth, whatever. Chopping a tomato requires some processing to it. So in this case mushrooms, especially these polypore. So these kind of tree mushrooms, they have this layer which is basically extremely hard substance.

I think ketene, like T I T I n. Yes. Okay.

And it's also in like, I think shrimp or crab fish in the shell. It's like the hard substance, and our body cannot penetrate that. So it's eating chaga or reishi. It's raw. It's totally not bioavailable. So if there is one non raw food that raw food people and raw food experts always eat, it's these mushrooms. Okay. So they don't eat the mushrooms raw because they have no bioavailability. So raw mushrooms, unless they're like edible mushrooms like portobello and whatnot, these have no really nutritional value. So these medicinal mushrooms require breaking this chitin layer out. And you can break it in two ways. And both of them have their pros and cons. One is boiling it in hot water. This is what most indigenous cultures would do, and there's a lot of old writings about this. But you would take the mushroom from the forest, you take the fruiting body, you put it in a pot and you would boil it and you would have this black dark tea that looks a little bit like coffee and you would drink it. And that boiling will extract into the water from the actual mushroom the health beneficial polysaccharides mostly. So most of the immune system support comes from boiling in hot water and then you could put it in alcohol. So tincture, I'm sure everybody's seen like whole foods or whatnot. These little tincture bottles, they're good. Also breaking down this chitin layer and extracting more of these fat soluble compounds like the triterpenes that I mentioned before. And those are also good. Now what we do is we do a dual extraction. So we do both and we combine it and the end result doesn't have any alcohol, it gets evaporated. But it's good to understand that in this case the mushrooms would not be bioavailable without doing something to them. And obviously anybody can go and chaga themselves and try to eat it and see how it feels. But it's like tree, it's like hard matter.

You see that a lot in nature. And I've had people on the podcast before talking about Paleo, for example, and how the problem is not eating wheat or consuming dairy. It's consuming for example, dairy that hasn't been fermented or wheat that hasn't been soaked and sprouted or fermented or dried. And so you look at a lot of these things that, that appear to have bioactive compounds. Like you talked about how mushrooms have these beta glucans and some of these other components that can potentially be anti carcinogenic or help out with immune system. But what you're saying is that when they're protected with this Titan compound, that they're actually kind of similar to how wheat can be indigestible. Either indigestible or unabsorbable.

Absolutely. So whole foods doesn't mean no processing whole foods means that you process the minimal amount to get the bioavailability. And I think we can learn a lot from the kind of in this case the Paleo community looking how indigenous cultures would use particularly be grains or mushrooms and learn about that. And obviously the modern science supports that use case. So yeah, you would look mushroom extracts versus raw mushroom powder. Unless you're eating nutritional mushrooms, portobello and other things, then you're eating more for the protein or the carbohydrates. Whereas a lot of these mushrooms you would eat for more again like medicinal, health supporting benefits outside of macronutrients.

Yeah. I want to ask you a question more of kind of like a flavor and a product question, because like I've already mentioned a few times, I've tried a lot of your guys stuff that you've just basically sent to me to try. And one of them was my absolute favorite. And it was chocolate. I'm a sucker for just about anything that's chocolatey. And this was like a chocolate shot that had herbs and mushrooms added to it. I think it's called. Is it Zoco or Coco?

Yeah.

How's it pronounced? Okay. So what did you put in this stuff?

Like I said, like you actually said in the beginning, our point is to democratize or popularize or normalize the consumption of mushrooms for modern people. So one of the challenges is they're hard to use. So you would actually have to boil them for like 12 to 24 hours and put it in this alcohol for six weeks and whatnot. So we pre done that for people. The other problem with it is what you just raised now, which is flavor. Once you use the real fruiting body from a wild crafted or log grown product, it's extremely bitter. And we as kind of modern citizens have taught ourselves not to enjoy bitter flavors that much. Like we've kind of removed a lot of bitter things from our diet and replaced it with like sugary stuff. Right. But the two bitters that people still love is coffee and hot chocolate. So while we originally started making these products for more of a hardcore consumer, someone who's like a total like health food fanatic. But then we realized that it's actually, if you want to help people get, you know, excited about this, we need to work on the flavor. And here we have combined the product you mentioned, Choco, we combine it with hot chocolate. So we basically made an upgraded Swiss myth, if you may, where you just add hot water and you have an on the go hot chocolate where we've hidden these mushrooms. And because the cacao is a stronger bitter flavor, it tastes like a hot chocolate, but you're still going to get the benefits of the mushrooms. And now the product you just got on the mail, the mushroom coffee, is another way, another bitter thing that our society likes. And actually mushrooms like chaga has been used as coffee substitutes during like second world war when there was lack of access to coffee beans. So they have synergistic benefits with cacao and coffee, like lowering acidity of the coffee or supporting adrenals. But also this is a great way of hiding them for people who are not yet used to drinking things like chocolate. How would you describe the flavors of the chaga, cordyceps and Reishi that you tried separately versus the hot chocolate?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's bitter, but you're not. That's one of the first things I look for right when I'm looking at a compound is how much cane sugar has been added to it to make it taste good. You guys don't. It doesn't seem like you're using a lot of sugar like this coffee is just coffee. It's arabica coffee, chaga and cordyceps. There's only three ingredients.

Yeah, it doesn't have any sweetener in it. Obviously, if you want to add some people. Drew.

Dr. Well, I have to admit I actually added chocolate stevia.

Yeah. So I mean, that's fine. The mushroom drinks that are straight up suga bitter, we've added a couple of the products. Stevia. Some don't have it. Some do have it. And then on the chocolate shots we've added 2 grams of coconut palm sugar. So that would be like, I think like a quarter of an apple worth of low GI sweetener because the cacao and coconut wise work so well. But we've tried to find products for, you know, any diet, any flavor preference for people. And obviously you can add it to your smoothie or your cooking. So if you want to flavor it separately. But we try to avoid sweeteners in this case because sugars, like you said, mushrooms have been used against things like cancer and other things like that. And they feed on sugar. So us adding sugar to a lot of these products would be kind of counter proactive to the functional purposes that we're trying to reach by using them.

Plus, I wouldn't even have you on the show if you're adding a bunch of sugar to stuff. Like I said, that's one of the first things I look for. I've been taking a lot of notes as we're talking. If you're listening in, you can go to bed. BenGreenfieldFitness.com mushrooms and if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mushrooms there's a few things. First of all, there's all the show notes and all the links and everything that I've been keeping as I've been talking with Taro. But then the other thing is that Four Sigma is giving anybody who listens in 15% off any of this stuff. So if you want to try the zoco chocolate cordyceps chaga stuff, or you want to try this mushroom coffee, or you want to try like maitake and do the blood sugar experiment or cordyceps lion's mane, rishi, chaga, it's all there. And they're just like these tea packets. And actually taro, do you have to mix them with hot water or do they still work? If you just like a few times I've put them in cold water with ice. Are they not efficient? Efficacious if you do that?

No, the same health benefits would apply. And they're bi available. The thing is, just like any powder in cold water requires shaking. So either you shaker bottle or a blender or something like that.

I've just been like, stirring it up like crazy with a spoon. And I just like stuff cold sometimes, like especially in the, you know, in the afternoon or after a workout. I don't really like to drink hot stuff, so. So you can mix it up hot or cold. All right, well, cool. So BenGreenfieldFitness.com mushrooms is where you can check this stuff out. You can get a big fat 15% discount on the, on the stuff from Four Sigma Foods. It's definitely got my stamp of approval. I've been digging it, I've been using it. I actually was drinking right before this. Instead of my usual morning dark black cup of aeropressed coffee, I drank this powdered blend of arabica and chaga mushroom and cordyceps. And I have not experienced any explosive diarrhea during today's podcast episode. So that's always a sign of improvement. So that's a perfect note to end on, huh? Taro, thanks for, thanks for coming on and sharing this stuff with us, man. This is really cool.

My pleasure. And hopefully people will get excited and give mushrooms a chance as well.

Yeah, give those mushrooms a chance. All right, well, this is. This is Ben Greenfield and taro from Four Sigma Foods signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com mushrooms have a healthy week.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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