446: Mushroom Coffee: Hype or Health Revolution? The Truth About Medicinal Mushrooms with Wade Lightheart

So what, what's the feeling? I would say a calm, clear, resourceful state that is almost subtly euphoric. Because you know how those days when you're in flow and you're just kind of hitting it and you're just kind of rolling. Yeah, that's the state when you have an optimized neurochemistry. So there is a biological component to it.

Welcome to Midlife Conversations. I'm your host, Natalie Jill, and I'm passionate about having amazing conversations that matter to us midlife women. On this podcast podcast, I do what I do best, taking complicated health topics and breaking them down simply so that we can optimize aging together. I share actionable steps to help you thrive in what I believe are our best years to come. Join me as I interview the most inspiring people living their best midlife years and dive into essential topics like hormone changes, health optimization, weight management, blood sugar, emotional well being, relationships, beauty, and so much more. Mushrooms in your coffee. I mean, I know you've seen the post, you've heard the buzz, but maybe you're still wondering, what exactly is mushroom coffee and why in the world would anyone drink it? Is it just another wellness fad or is there actually something to it? While it might sound strange, like a strange combination, the trend of blending medicinal mushrooms and no, not the kind on your pizza and not the kind that create psychedelic things that we hear about. But adding them into beverages has exploded for good reasons, promising everything from boosting your energy, clearing the brain fog, and so much more. But mushrooms and coffee? Is that the best way to get medicinal mushrooms or is there a better way? If you've tasted mushroom coffees, you might already be saying, no thank you, but hear me out. I found something that is better tasting and that even non coffee drinkers like myself, because I'm not a coffee drinker, can benefit from. Today, Wade from Bio Optimizers breaks down what we need to know about the mushroom coffee hype. Why it's not what you're probably picturing, why the this matters, especially for us women in midlife, and how this mushroom breakthrough offers something different, specifically addressing women in midlife. Thank you so much, Wade for being here today with me.

Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

So I went to you about this topic because anyone listening knows I absolutely love your product line. I talk about your enzymes consistently.

I love.

So if you have not gotten on mass times yet, y', all, you're missing out here. I eat. I take their mass enzymes with every meal I have. It helps us break down protein and get more. And I also, Wade always gives me a new tip every time, and I end up adding new of it, new products to my daily stuff. Last time I interviewed you, Wade, you turned me on to Microbiome Breakthrough. You promised me it tasted like vanilla frosting. I laughed at you. And now I crave it, like, first thing every morning. It's like the first thing I scoop into my mouth is that I just eat it, like. Like frosting. It's good. You're right.

So.

But I wanted to come to you because every time I reorder product from you guys, you send Mushroom Breakthrough. And every time I get it, I hand it to my husband. I'm like, I don't understand. What is this? And I thought, okay, enough people have asked me about mushrooms and what they're for, so I thought, let's all learn together. Even though I have started using it, I don't fully understand it yet. So I. I'm learning just like my listeners are. So thanks for jumping on and let's. Let's talk about this.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much. So if you go into what mushrooms is, which is the family of mycelium, which is about 14,000 different species, and what we call a mushroom is actually the fruit produced by mycelium. Mycelium is the largest organisms on the planet. In fact, they create a neural network that literally connects the entire Earth together. And so whole forests and fields and everything have different types of these mycelium. And then occasionally you'll see these, you know, mushrooms pop up. You'll also see them growing on trees, and you'll see them in different elements. Now, there's a fellow by the name of Paul Stamets that probably brought it more to the American mindset. And of course, his famous thing is he took some magic mushrooms and a. In a thunderstorm and had a transformative psychological experience and lost his. His stuttering, which was a big thing. And he founded a mushroom company. But mushrooms have had a cultural and health element permeating through virtually every culture of the world throughout history. And we might understand why mushrooms are unique, say, to other superfoods or other plants or vegetables or anything that you can consume. And it turns out if you go back in time, about 300 million years ago, I think it is something along those lines. We actually are part of the same ancestral development in that a mushroom digests everything on its outside surface where we went into creating a digestive system internally. The neural networks that are laid down in our body are very similar to the neural Networks that are put together through the mycelium under the surface of the earth. That connects everything. So. So some of the elements of Avatar actually have some legit, legitimate biological connection to the real world. And that's fascinating that there's this interconnected web of mycelium. So why that's important in humans is because some of these characteristics that we still, you know, inherited through the genetic elements, it means that mushrooms work symbiotically with many of the functions inside of the body, particularly in cognitive function in immuno response. Because, for example, the way that you manufacture your immune system in a mushroom is similar to how we do it in our body. We just do it internally, the mushroom does it externally. You can train mushrooms that just handle just about anything. They've done experiments where they can take mushrooms that'll take nuclear waste and create it inert. It can eat up all kinds of stuff. So they're fascinating species.

This is going to be weird question maybe, but this is where my head's going. Is this why it grows on the outside of. Of like, cow poop and stuff? Okay, correct. It's decomposing it. Is that what that's.

That's what it's doing. That's what it's doing. And you can teach mushrooms to decompose just about anything. And now, in order to live, there's both a process of creation and a process of decay. What's interesting about the mushroom elements and the cognitive elements is there's an element that we require for a process called neurogenesis. Neurogenesis is essentially the development of new neurons inside of the brain, which was thought to be static for many, many years in psychology research. And turns out that's not true. Turns out that your body can build new neurons and new neurosynaptic connects, as that's the connection between axion and dendrites in the brain. Okay, what's that mean, Wade? Well, it means the development of all of your cognitive processes, whether that is skill development, learning how to throw a baseball, whether that is thinking through a challenge or a process, recollection, memory, all of that is connected how well you're acting dendrites. And as we age, we see a decline in bdnf. So BDNF is really high, for example, in babies, because they're laying down all these neural networks and they grow and develop and have a high capability to learn. As we get older, oftentimes due to diet, aging, degeneration, toxicity, et cetera, we lower our bdnf. And so the typical Methodology that people do in order to kind of get them wake up and go is they'll use something like coffee to give them a spike in adrenaline and cortisol. And that creates an acceleration of synaptic firing, which means that you're essentially putting a turbocharger on your four horse, four cylinder engine. And that engine will get the power, but it'll burn out faster. And so you need increasing amounts of coffee. And then you have the negative side effects that persist over time for that. Now, I'm not against coffee, I like coffee and all that sort of stuff. But you want to offset some of the stimulatory elements of that with other elements. It turns out mushrooms are really good for that. But mushrooms on their own can be an actual replacement. So instead of running a, a four cylinder, you can have an eight cylinder instead, which gives you a lot more power, smooth flow, and probably longer durability in your engine, which is your brain, which is how we determine her life.

And it's not doing it as. Because it's a stimulant. It's not like that. Stimulant. Okay.

Correct. You're just beefing up your absolute horsepower in the brain by flooding the system with things like bdnf. So, for example, let's take a look at memory. Memory is probably the thing that we notice the most as we age, starting to decline. And a lot of that has to do with. You have these axiom dendrite connections, just like the mycelium and the planet. And when you have a strong memory connection and emotional signing is something that anchors the connectivity. That's why Tony Robbins takes people through these high and low elements to recreate emotional states and to override suboptimal ones and to instill new ones, because it's the fastest way to create new neural patterns. But as we age, these connections get looser and looser and. Or it's like maybe you had a high level of skill in a sport or something like that.

Yep.

And then you stop using it. And then all of a sudden you come back to it. You know, you have those original neural pathways, but they're sticky, they're not that good. You have to repract that element for a period of time before you can get back to your level to reactivate that neural pathway. That becomes more and more difficult as we age.

One avenue is to do the stimulatory effect, which is burning the candle at both ends. The other as is, why don't I just flood my system with the right elements that would Improve this element called bdnf, which improves neuronal development and neuroplasticity and neural connectivity, which the end result is improved cognitive function. Hormones play a big element inside of this. So as a woman's hormones tend to become a little bit more dysregulated as they enter into the middle age, that hormonal impact reduces the production of BDNF significantly. And that's where. Where did I put my keys? Oh, my God, I forgot to do that thing. I went to the store. I'm standing there blanking out in my mind. I don't know why, I must be tired, I must be these things. And so we look in the wrong areas as opposed to finding supportive elements. So mushrooms have been used historically for thousands of years and in extensive.

Medical literature. Ayurvedic, Chinese medicine, also in the Middle east also, it's a very strong culture. In the European cultures, particularly in the Scandinavian countries, they've been used excessively. Most people, I think, for a long time had a negative connotation of, what would I say, mushrooms that had some sort of cognitive state because everyone associated. So, oh, it's magic, psychedelics, you're going to get psychedelics and stuff, all this stuff. But there's a whole range of elements that mushrooms can provide. So when we started looking at, and I'll tell you a personal story, Matt and I, my business partner, as we edited into our 40s, started to notice some cognitive decline, particularly around memory. And it was really challenging for me because I have an extraordinary memory and I've had that I think I've inherited. My grandfather had the same thing, my father had the same thing. So I. There's a. There's a genetic element to it. But I started to lose this skill that I had relied on for so long. And so conveniently, I was like, what's going on here? So I realized, oh, I'm actually using too many stimulants to keep my to. To meet my commitments to my business and my family.

A lot of us do. It's a very common thing. Yep, sure.

And I'm not creating the supportive elements for my brain. So we hooked ourselves up to EEGs. We did neurofeedback training, we did psychological assessments. And I got into a conversation.

With a fellow by the name of Jeff Chilton. He's been a mushroom farmer for over 50 years. And he had suggested. I had read in the literature and had experimented with mushrooms, but didn't get that much results. And I was like, ah, you know, I don't know if it's working or not. I try things like some things tights are. I felt a little something, but nothing consistent that was, you know, definitive in improving my cognitive function. And I randomly ended up in a conversation with Jeff. And Jeff, who's been in the industry for 50 years, is, well, the reason you're not getting the benefits from the mushrooms that you think is because most of the American companies that are producing mushrooms are actually giving you more cellulose than they are mushrooms. So you'll see the mushroom sample, and they grow a lot of these mediums on cellulose, which is like what you'd see on a tree. Like, it provides a lot of cellulose that it could. That it can digest and absorb, which.

Is basically like wood fiber. Right? Is that correct?

Okay, correct. Now, the challenge was, is that most of the companies were including the wood fiber with the mushroom. So you thinking you're getting 500 milligrams or a gram of this or a gram and a half, you're getting a fraction of that. And nobody is discerning to the public about that. And I was like, oh, wow.

Cellulose is kind of marketed as. It's like a filler. Right. And it's. It's supposed to help keep things separated. And it's also. Is not the reason for it why a lot of things have that.

Yeah, it's a plant fiber. And the one positive element of cellulose is that it can be a supportive element for a lot of bacteria cultures in your microbiome. The downside is a lot of people have challenges digesting cellulose. And, for example, if you're one of those people that genetically has a suboptimal microbiome, you've done a lot of antibiotics or you have trouble digesting plants, for example, chances are you have a suboptimal microbiome and genetic history that allows you to break that cellulose down. We address that with our enzymes and all that sort of. But moving beyond that, let's get back to the mushroom conversation. So, talking to Jeff, I said, well, can you get me some of this pure stuff? Right? Like, what does that thing? So, and I said, we've got this cognitive decline method we've seen in the literature. I need to take about 3 grams a day to get a benefit. I've tried these other supplements. I've taken the three grams a day. I didn't really notice a difference. He says, okay, here, try this. And he gave me. And he actually showed me the demonstration of how the Cellulose and all this stuff. So I said, great. So I got this from Je. It was great. Within a week, my memory just sharpened up dramatically, and then really the exact same experience. Then when we went to. We took it to the test, and.

You were just doing this, like, once a day, Just having, like, the three.

Yeah, I took three grams a day.

Okay.

And then we went to neurofeedback training. And if you do neurofeedback training the way we do, we. We do a compressed week of. Of a week where we're doing, you know, six to eight hours of training a day.

Okay.

It's really taxing on the body, and eventually your brain kind of crashes. And so we started using mushrooms in order to support that, and we were able to double the amount of training time that we were able to do. So before, we were only doing three hours. We were doing six, seven, eight hours when we were supported by the mushrooms because we were producing all this bdnf. So Matt and I said, well, man, there's a lot of people that could benefit from this type of elements. The problem was that when you went out there and started looking at some of the big mushroom blends, you know, whether it was chaga and lion's mane or et cetera, that you couldn't take enough of it to get the effective dose. So when you're looking at the literature, the research papers, the historical elements, whatever it happens, they were taking, literally pounds of mushrooms to produce these results. You gotta eat a lot of these mushrooms to get that result a lot. And so what happened is the industry took the research, created these suboptimal products knowingly or unknowingly, because most people just didn't even aware of the sourcing ingredients, produced the product. Maybe it tasted good. Maybe people liked the flavor. It became kind of popular, and people thought, well, I think it's good for me, and I feel a little bit or something, and it's great. I mix this stuff in my coffee, and it's great. But we knew from an efficiency standpoint, when we broke down all the mushroom blends that were out there, like, there's not enough in here to give you the kick.

So, like, some people, it was probably a placebo thing. Like, they hear it, and now they're like, I'm gonna take this. It's the trendy thing, and. And they're mixing with coffee, so they're getting a little bit of that outside stimulant. So they're. They're believing that that's changing things for Them, Yes.

And simultaneously I went in with getting I from a place in Canada called New Brunswick. And turns out that in New Brunswick you have high amounts of some of the best chaga in the world. It grows on the birch trees. Russia and eastern Canada are great places for it. And so, well, my aunt was knocking this stuff off the trees and drinking this tea and had all these men. So I said, well, let's do that. And when I drank the chaga tea, that was from the real mushrooms. It's kind of like a charcoal type substance. I was like, wow, I feel amazing. I feel energized. I've been like, you know, this is really something. My parents noticed it. I was like, okay, so I know mushrooms work okay, but how do I get this into a simple, usable element that can help a person take a ritual to, you know, to go through a week or two weeks of doing this so that they can get the performative benefit that's definite in their own world.

And then one, one clarifying question here real quick before you share that. When you said like 3 grams to really get an effect, would that, like, if you're looking at these different kinds, like lion's mane, cordyceps chaga, like, was that three grams of each one separately or could it be that was at.

The lion's manes in particular. The other ones needed different elements.

Okay, got it.

I was like, well, if I'm going to take all these different mushrooms. And we'd identified those four as some of the best ones. We're like, well, how much of this would I need? And it turned out I was going to need about 50 capsules. And I was like, wow. Well, I'm not capsule averse, like, I'll go do it. But I'm like, no one's going to. That's a lot like. He's like, yeah.

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So we went back to the best mushroom experts in the world, Jeff being one of them, and said, hey, look, how do we. How do we get this into a serving size with the potency that we want? So there's the sourcing. But he says, well, well, there's a way that you can extract the most potent elements out of the mushroom that make the effect okay. And so you can get these 100 to 1 and 50 to 1 extracts. And if you go to that, basically you're able to get the equivalent. We combine those four main mushrooms in a specific order to get a therapeutic dose of each one of them. For example, Lion's Mane. One drink of Mushroom Breakthrough contains about 1.2 pounds of mushrooms from an extract point of view. So now you drink it, and all of a sudden it's like, bang. Wow. I feel different in my brain. What's going on here with just a serving? And it's like, oh, okay, so now we had something. We worked with a.

Classically trained chef, because if mushrooms are an acquired taste.

They'Re a taste that's not really common within the western palate. It's more of an eastern palate. It's a little bit pungent. And so we realized, oh, that's not gonna work. So we worked with this chef, say, hey, how do we make this takes? And what's interesting, if you combine mushrooms with really good, like, cacao, and then you sweeten it with like a protein sweetener. And you can not get the calories, but you get this like cocoa type flavor.

Right.

And mushrooms work really well with chocolate. It's interesting. I remember but going back to the in Vancouver, there was this famous beach called Wreck Beach. It was a naked beach. And there was people co selling chocolate mushrooms. So people can.

That's also what they do with psychedelics.

Oh yeah, yeah, I know. I know that connection because I remember I tried some of those mushrooms. They tasted good. And if you take the mushroom itself, it tastes like garbage.

Yeah, but they do that with psychedelic mushrooms too, right? That's like a common thing. Yeah.

So I said, okay, let's do that. Let's do the chocolate mushrooms that aren't psychedelics that have the, you know, the health boosting benefits that we could do. And it turns out we were able to come up with what we called mushroom breakthrough. And mushroom breakthrough combines the four most potent mushrooms which can really have a positive impact.

And that's lion's mane, quadriceps, chaga and what was the fourth?

Yes. So let me go through these. We got lion's mane, right?

Okay.

To me, that's the grand master of them all. And that works particularly in the hippocampus, which is your memory, the BDNF center. Okay. And then you know that we got a 50 time concentration on that. Then we go into reishi. So now reishi, known in Chinese medicine is called the king of mushrooms. I'm preference to lion's mane. But I think a lot of women would really probably say, no, no, no.

I'll take my reishi. Because one of the elements that's really palava beneficial of, of reishi is it helps during emotional problems and as well as stressful problems like when a person's going through their cycle. Right. And it's really good on the immune system fatigue and helps you feel kind of happier. So it has a mood regulatory aspect because of where it stimulates the brain. Then there's cordyceps. Cordyceps is. I think that was the one you didn't mention. Cordyceps is for energy levels and libido. The reason why that helps, it's really key in oxygen utilization, especially during exercise. It also has a memory enhancing effect. Actually all of these seem to improve memory from different mechanisms and also is used for the reduction of stress. Chaga, I talked about that, which is my aunt who has been a big advocate of that for years. Knocks it off the birch trees. I used to drink that. I really like the affiliate it's an immune system element. It's been used, particularly in the northern climates, drank during the winter because you could easily access these things in those places when you know the snow's on there and you kind of reach up and knock these chaga things and you boil it down, it has all these nutrients and vitamins. It's great for antibacterial and antiviral properties. Also a stimulatory aspect on memory loss. Right. This is really good. So keep in mind this is also part of the rapid learning elements that you would be looking for to get the kind of benefits that we're talking from. So these are the kind of elements that we've stuffed into mushroom breakthrough in order to combine them into a unique formula where people can feel the effect in their very first. A melon. So what, what's the feeling? I would say a calm, clear, resourceful state that is almost subtly euphoric. Because you know how those days when you're in flow and you're just kind of hitting it and you're just kind of rolling. Yeah, that's the state when you have an optimized neurochemistry. So there is a biological component to it. As your hormones decline, it's harder and harder to get to that state. So, you know, you get that feeling. I just don't feel like myself. Things aren't really flowing. I'm not getting into that state. Well, what you're really describing on an emotional or experiencing level is a diminishment of the neurochemicals and these elements that mushrooms can support. And so by doing that, a lot of people will first start mixing it in their coffees because they're probably taking coffee, they didn't get enough sleep. They're running the roads and trying to get everything done. So I say add it to your coffee, see what happens. What does? Apple coupes. It makes like a really nice chocolatey drink. Doesn't have the calories or anything else. Adds some really nice, rich, creamy notes to it. That tastes great. So it masks any of the nasty flavors that mushrooms might entail. And it's actually. Well, it's like, wow, my coffee's better. A lot of people, after a month or two on it, drop the coffee altogether.

Yeah, because it sounds like the coffee, the caffeine, and the coffee is just like the. The front loaded piece. Right. Like, because that's got the caffeine, it's got that initial thing. But what you're saying is you're doing this. It's more like a therapeutic effect. So it's going to compound over time, I'd imagine the more you do it and you're actually getting to the root of things. So you don't need the caffeine. This is going to do that instead because you're actually fixing the problem versus just doing an outside stimulant. Am I saying that right?

100% accurate. We also threw in a little bit of collagen because that has some benefits. Also in order to support cognitive function and brain function, there's a transfer in excellence. You can also also add extra. If you're taking collagen right now, it'll work harmoniously. You might get a better result if your collagen doesn't. I know a lot of ladies like to take. To take collagen, but we threw a little bit of that in there as well because it's a supportive element to the whole mushroom blend. And again, with these 150 to 1 extracts, you know, you take these two little scoops and. And put it in your coffee or put it in your drink or you can mix. I like it with a protein shake. I think it stacks up actually really well with protein drink. Simple. Because the protein can provide the amino acids that will also accelerate the neurotransmitter production. So there's a big movement right now, particularly in the women's movement of wake up in the morning, get your protein in, get your protein. You get that 100 grams as fast as you possibly can in the day. It has a satiety effect. Why does it have a satiety effect? It has a satiety effect because it makes the neurotransmitters that regulate your appetite, which makes you hungry or not hungry.

Makes sense. Makes total sense. Okay, so I have some questions here. So I've got some mushroom questions, but I'm going to come back to that in a second. Specifically with Mushroom Breakthrough. You said you can add it to coffee. You said you can also just mix it with water. You can add it to protein shake. Can you. Is there other ways? Like, could you just. Is there any way that would hurt it? Like for instance, like when people used to drink whey protein, you know, you couldn't heat it up because it would denature it. Like, is there anything that would hurt? Like, could you bake with this? Could you add, like, what. What's the limit on here?

Yeah, you know, these are extremely resistant to heat temperatures. So you could boil it and you could boil water. Like, and sometimes like, for example, in the case of chaga, to get the extract, the process, the boiling process is an element that extracts the particular antioxidants and nutrients out of the chaga itself. So it's, it's much more heat resistant than say other supplements that you can, that you can, might take. I have a whole thing that I did when I was getting ready for the Mr. Olympia in my 50s. I would mix, I would make my, I made a protein pudding and I put protein breakthrough and I put the microbiome breakthrough and then I put the mushroom breakthrough all in a mixture together with what?

Just water or anything else?

Just a little tiny bit of water.

Okay.

Not very much. And people go, why'd you do that? Because I didn't want it to turn into a liquid. I would turn it into a pudding.

And it did. It tastes like a pudding. I trust you.

Oh my God, it is. Absolutely. It's killer. And I was like, I'm eating chocolate twice a day and getting ripped to shreds. People are like, how's that possible? And so I showed people how I was doing that. And it's amazing. You can also stack it with oatmeal. And here's things with kids. Okay, okay. So kids particularly, I have a couple of godsons and that. And I can't wait. My son just turned four and a half months. So a few more, few more, few more weeks, we're going to be able to start putting them on this, this mix, which is when you provide them the protein and the mushroom breakthrough in a pudding.

Yep.

Like my, my godson, he mixes it all up. He demands to his mother every morning that he has his protein pudding. And she noticed that his ability to self regulate his emotions and his ability to learn, his ability to stay focused on his schoolwork was much better when he had the mushrooms inside his breakfast thing. And it's fun, it's chocolatey, doesn't have any of the negative calories. She mixes a little bit of yogurt in it. Sometimes you can add in other elements because that chocolatey flavor will round out some of the things that a child is averse to. So. And you can make it fun and the kids are doing it and everything. And that provides them a level of BDNF that really out competes their peers and that allows them to accelerate, build confidence to have the available neurochemical resources so they feel good. So whether you're a kid or whether you know you're a middle aged lady, it doesn't matter. You still need those neurochemical resources and that gives you the confidence to tackle the Tough challenges of a changing world.

Well, and I'm also, I'm just thinking of so many different uses that I wasn't aware of for this, but like just ADHD as an alternative to meds for that. That could be, that would make sense too because everything you hit, the focus, the energy, all of that could be. I wonder if that's like a, if that's been tested at all on that, if anyone with that has tried.

Well, it's very interesting because I've dealt with it with a number of my friends and everything else. And so first off, I want to be clear, I'm not a psychotherapist or anyone not recommending anything. But here's what I do know. I do know that it is possible to get off chronic pharmaceutical drugs using.

A high quality, well orchestrated nutritional supplement program by weaning off these pharmaceuticals and supporting it. And one of the key elements to supporting it is mushrooms, B12, things like that. In fact, I had a friend of mine recently who's in her 50s who was on SSRIs for literally since she was a teenager. And over the course of, I believe it was just over six months, I had a naturopathic doctor friend of mine put that in and she was using a combination of mushrooms. She was doing a gut stack because your gut and your brain are connected. So she fixed her gut, she provided the elements her body wasn't able to methylate or provide properly. She used mushrooms to support the transfer from going off the pharmaceuticals and easing the side effects of coming off and coming back on. And now she's been off for the last 18 months and have never felt better in her entire life. So a lot of these cognitive problems actually stem from chronic nutritional deficiencies. And I'll cite the research from a fellow by the name of Dr. Linus Pauling. People might know him, he was a two time Nobel Prize winner that wrote a book which I read, which was pretty heavy duty stuff which was.

The foundation of treating illnesses. It was called orthomolecular psychiatry. And these were psychiatrists that turned the entire psychiatric world upside down in the 70s because they said we could treat a lot of these dysfunctional conditions, hyperactivity, adhd, depression stuff, by hyper dosing vitamins and minerals. And by doing that, whether that was a detoxification element, like high dosage of vitamin C or providing a whole range of B vitamins to improve the methylation process to make the neurotransmitters. And this was a tipping point for me because I know so many people that suffered from all these conditions and then they had all the side effects from the pharmaceuticals. And their life was really, really challenging. And I have a lot of empathy. And you see the rise of these mental health issues correlate to the lack of nutrition. And so by reversing that trend and focusing on this element, they were able to make resounding transformational changes. These are, you know, these are scientific heavyweights. And a lot of that information was buried for, for decades and then was revived again. And there's this whole movement in orthomolecular nutrition is that, well, maybe some of these conditions are because of chronic deficiency. And now cognitive health, particularly for women as they get older, they seem to be far more susceptible to the degenerative conditions of cognitive health as you age. And usually the beginning signs really hit home at the element when they're going through, you know, perimenopause, menopause, all that, all that area. Because all of a sudden you have these wild fluctuations on your hormones. Hormone levels are like, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, that massive dip in estrogen is going to create that right away.

Correct. And hormones, you have to realize, are like, that's like the gas pedal in your life. You can take exogenous hormones and you'll get a boost because you're putting the gas on, but you're going to drain the tank of nutrients much faster. Just like if you've got a sports car, it drives. Yeah, it burns gas a lot faster than your daily driver. That's a little four cylinder that you kind of hum along. And. And so one of the elements, in order to support yourself is to realize, if I fill up my tank with the nutrients, then I don't have to turn on the turbos in order to get my life in order. And this is where elements like mushrooms, getting a genetic test going through that, recognizing having a proper dietary analysis in correlation with your ND so you can look at, oh, these are the tendencies where I might have a little bit more challenging to produce. So that's where I need to focus my supplementation on in particular. So I believe that we are now in the age of targeted nutritional supplementation for the individual, where they're at hormonally, where they're at biochemically, and where they are biologically or genetically and as well as the microbiome. And if you address those issues, it's great. Now with the mushrooms, it's really great because you can just bypass a lot of the mechanisms because these elements are common to virtually everybody at some level as you age A climb. Very few people accuse a 90 year old of having sharper memory than a 25 year old. Right, Right. So we all kind of know that. Yeah. You know, you know, grandma's starting to lose it. You know, those kind of conversations. Right. Is this kind of an expected element that we kind of think that's not going to happen to us till it starts to happen to us? And you're like, oh, no, am I going down that road? So I say, stop the truck right now. Start putting some mushrooms into your brain and reverse that trend. And you can retain, I believe, near perfect cognitive function for however long you're here on the earth if you're. If you were supporting yourself with the proper mushrooms.

Okay, I've got a few clarifying questions here. So if so. Okay, so just like if somebody's taking a 5 HTP supplement or something and they're not supposed to take that, it says don't do that with. If you're already on an SSRI or something. Is there any issue with adding in mushrooms or adding this in if you are on a prescription? I know you said it could be under medical supervision, you could come off, but could you do them together? Is that a problem?

First off, I'm not a doctor, so I can't make that analysis, but I. You want to always check with your physician. However, I've literally got hundreds and hundreds of people who were on some of them very heavy pharmaceutical medications for cognitive health or memory or emotional regulation. They started taking the mushroom breakthrough and they all with it.

With it, taking it same time. So. Okay.

And they all noticed significant improvements. And oftentimes the improvements were so significant, they said they started researching to get a good naturopathic doctor to get them off, because for the first time, it may be decades, they thought they had. I've got hope that I can fix my brain.

Wow.

Yeah. And my wife, she's taken her PhD in psychology. And so we have a lot of conversations about this, you know, with the people that she's working with and the research that she's getting. And, you know, there's a big thing with Dr. Van der Kolk talking about comparative analysis between cognitive behavioral therapy, pharmaceuticals, traditional plant and mushroom elements to support cognitive health, as well as neurofeedback. And it turns out that neurofeedback and supportive nutrition is probably the best combination in order to make your brain work the way you'd like it to work.

Is there any contraindications? Is there anybody that should not play with mushrooms or should not add these In. I know it's a food, so. But it's medicinal in a lot of ways. So it. So is there. Is there anyone that like, does not do well with this or is this a pretty. Pretty. It's like having a food. Most people are fine with it.

Yeah. Well, one of the things that we identified in the ultimate nutrition Bible, which is kind of behind me there you can see on the wall, is you have to recognize that when you look at any research, and I took this way back at university, about the effective dose and the lethal dose within element is a determination of how safe a pharmaceutical is or an element. There's no amount of mushrooms that you would take that you would do damage to yourself. And the reason is now that's. With the exception of the psychoactive ones, some people who are susceptible with neurochemistry could have a cognitive break with medicinal mushrooms. Like you would get the only. So let me back up. You'll see a bell curve of response within the population, and they average that bell curve for the effective dose versus the lethal dose. And that determines the safety of an element. That curve is significantly. It's almost impossible to overdose on any type of food. There are some people that may have, for whatever reason, an adverse sensitivity to taking a mushroom. Usually that's related to their digestive system. They may have a recessive genetic characteristic. So you're maybe 1% or maybe even less than that would have that. And that's where someone who's versed in your genetics would be able to quickly determine that for you. For the most part, if I was to take a thousand people and give them all Mushroom Breakthrough, for example, you probably have one person that has a negative effect. You probably have maybe 50 to 100 would say, I don't know, I didn't really feel that much. 80% would say, oh, wow, I felt something on a various range. And then 10% was, you know, it just fixed everything that I had in my life, it would happen to be the right element. And so what I suggest to people by getting a Gen X expert to look at your stuff is to say, look, now you can give yourself the most likelihood of what supplements would be beneficial. And I think that fixing your guts, number one, addressing your vitamin minerals, essential fatty acid, nutrient deficiencies, protein deficiencies, whatever that is, that would be number two. And then number three would be moving into something like Mushroom Breakthrough or various other supplements that would, you know, give you the boost that you're looking for. But you always want to start with the foundational principles first makes Sense.

Wait, this might be a really dumb question. I don't know. I just want to ask. I'm so curious. Like, so I kind of put mushrooms into like three camps. And maybe I'm over generalizing here, but there's like, the food where there's shiitake or portobello or whatever, and then there's these, like, the psychedelic ones, right? That the extreme. Then there's all these, like, medicine medicinal ones that you're talking about. Like, how did.

This is gonna.

I don't even know if I'm asking the question right, but how did. How does one figure out, like, how did they figure out which one was what? And like, for the food ones are there when you just have like regular food, mushrooms. Are you getting some of these benefits? And when you're doing like. And like, on the other side, when you do some of these medicinal ones that aren't the psychedelics, if you had too much, could you get a psychedelic effect? I don't even know if you know what I'm asking, but is there an overlay? Is or does that. Do they ever combine or crossover?

It's a great. It's a great way to simplify and bucket them into a classification. Most of the research was passed down historically for thousands of years in, you know, like Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. And the psychoactive ones fall particularly into a category of like MAO inhibitors and things like that. Again, you have to take a dosage in a specific and a freshness and a density that's going to qualify that when you're dealing with a nutritional supplement that you can get over the counter. You're not allowed to sell psychoactive medicines in most places.

You're not gonna have a problem.

Like, you're not gonna have. No, no. I mean, I don't know what would happen if you just drank protein. Breakthrough. All day long until you, like, vomited. That'd be an interesting experiment. Maybe I could try that, see if I get a psychedelic out. You do feel. You do feel.

There is, I will say there is a definite cognitive feel. And it's that calm, clear, well resourced. Everything's kind of good. Feeling that persists and people will feel it initially, but as it builds, there's a buildup effect. If you take it over a week or so and you really start to notice, and that's just building up your neurochemical reserve.

Well, I'm wondering if you look at like marijuana, for example, like, there's you can cbd, which doesn't make you high, right? But it's still the same plant where cb, where THC from that was. So it's like the same thing, but it's different levels. So that's, I guess that's where my head was going to.

Yeah, well, that's a great example. So one of the reasons why there's so much research going into the cannabinoid plants in particular is because all of your cells have receptor sites for cannabinoids and essentially that becomes a delivery agent, the potency of a cannabinoid. So anybody under the cannabis family still serves as a delivery agent for whatever the potent molecule in. So there's these sub, you know, there's, you know, Delta Nut, Delta 8 and there's CBD and CBN and CBG. They're starting to classify the variants of these. And same thing with nicotine. I think you have seven or nine different receptors on nicotine. Now nicotine was used for healing practices throughout all of the world. And then in 1955 they decided they spray all these chemicals on nicotine and that's what's caused all the cancer rates. Dr. Koch couldn't find a cancer rate same thing as cannabis was banned because of the concentrations of thc. Yet hemp was used regularly, in fact was the biggest textile industry in the United States back in the 1800s. Like your ropes, your sails, your clothing, all of this stuff was made from hemp. So the designations of same thing as mushrooms, people put cannabis in the same category as they put mushrooms in the category of psychedelics. Because it's the lack of understanding and influence and the nuances, right? They put nicotine as a toxin where you could, you know, one of my friends, Paul Check, and he taught me how to use nicotine as a driver for essential oils and how to use herbs with it, use it in a vaporizer.

But people right away smoke cigarettes and say no, bingo.

Which was the chemical elements to it. So a little bit of discernment and then you have to really walk yourself back from the fear porn on social media. In order to get traction in today's social media world, people need an emotional response to a non emotional element. So you make a exclamatory headline that says mushrooms are going to kill you or Raver overdosed on a set of mushrooms and they're toxic. And then some expert weighs in on the dangers of mushrooms or the dangers of cannabis or the dangers of nicotine and they're right on a generalized aspect. But when you start diving into the variations, you can find elements that will allow that. So cannabis is a particularly good delivery agent.

Okay.

You know, so why did the MRNA vaccine come out? Because they're trying to deliver the elements that they wanted to produce inside the cell. Cannabis, I would argue, is probably a better delivery agent in their various elements that are now THC done in high dosages does have a suboptimal performance of aspects. I use CBD every day as an adjunct to the programs I use. And I notice that I get a better result from the elements I do because I'm delivering those key elements into the cell using cannabinoid receptors.

Wow. Okay. That's wild.

Yeah.

Wow. Okay. So when that, when you look at the food mushroom, like just the food, not the. Any shiitake mushrooms or portobello, this is a huge stretch. But do you, where do you. Do you think the health benefits from that are like totally unrelated, just like you would say from a vegetable or, or do you think there's any. Anything in those that are also providing some type of medicinal effect the way that some of these, like lion's mane and chaga and all that are doing?

Yeah, I think if taken in, in an appropriate dosage, again, volume is going to be the preparation, the potency of that mushroom. And so if you go to the Chinese market, and I used to go down to the Chinese market in Vancouver, Canada, where I used to live, you would see a very well versed culture in determining what mushrooms were formative for their elements. And they had whole ratio, they had like quality that was determined. And I didn't understand a lot of it, but I remember going, this here's the same mushrooms. This one's, you know, 50 bucks a pound, this one's 10 bucks a pound, this one's $5 a pound. Based on, I think ginseng is another one, is a great thing. So you have all these elements that have grades of potency effectiveness by the people who are around them a lot and get more refined in the nuances of that particular product. So when it comes to mushrooms, there's wide families and keep in mind that the masters of any craft, they get really deep into that craft. So if you go to Japan, which I think has probably figured out food better than any culture on the planet, serving size, presentation, quality, all of it, they're really, they're really, really good. They would take some of the mushrooms and that's a serving, you know, these specific mushrooms and the senses are fine. And they also have a relatively clean diet. So the properties of that mushroom. So if you go to a master herbalist or a Chinese medicine, they would work with a particular plant for a period of time. Same thing in South America. If you go to the Shipibo people, they would take you. If you're going on a shamanic mission, they would take you out in the forest and they would experiment and determine which plants were the plants right for you, which became your master plant. You're the informer for you. And that would vary from person to person. So there's long historical elements to the nuances in depth. Much of that has been washed out of the world today.

Yeah.

And we use these, you know, hyperbolic statements that gets people attention and scares people away so that they, you know, go to their physician and get whatever pharmaceutical prescription that is to offset the symptoms of whatever they're feeling with whatever side effects that can get you on another drug later down the road.

You know, it's. I love talking to you, Wade, because I'm such an. I'm such a curious person. I was telling my husband the other day, I said, my favorite thing to do is my podcast is because I. As a kid, I'm that ADHD kid that a teacher would teach something. And I had 5 million questions, and I never felt like I would get my questions answered because I would be afraid to raise my hand because everybody else is. They already caught on earlier. But I love to, like, go deep and understand. So I love interviewing you because you always give me those light bulb moments, like, you let me go deeper. And I've never understood the mushroom thing until today. Like, I. I hear. I see all the ads. I hear people talking about it. I've never gotten it. I never quite understood. And in fact, I had tried random supplements with. I didn't get it. I was like, I don't understand. But now that I understand from you, I'm. I'm clear. It's like these four. It has to be the right dose. It has to not have the cellulose. It has to be. There's a lot of steps that people are overlooking, and you have to. I see why combining it with coffee is probably not the best indicator. Is this working or not? Because if you're doing that, like, you're. You've got this face, this fake feedback initially, right? Like, you got this initial feedback, and then I'm also hearing correctly. It's kind of like any of your supplements. Like, it's an overtime thing. So it's not about just doing it one time and going, oh, that was amazing. It's about that buildup and your body using it and doing it. Over time. So I'm convinced, completely convinced now I need to get some and do more like this needs to be an everyday thing. I mean I really. And I'm going to report back on what this does with my focus and my energy. So I'm. This is, this is cool. So thank you for breaking it down so simply you all. I love bio optimizers. I mean there's, there's a number of their products that I use and I, and I now I'm realizing I got to learn a lot more about all the products because I've always pretty much stuck to your gut stuff like I love your HCL and your enzyme and your microbiome breakthrough. But if you want to specifically get the mushroom one you all, if you go to midlifeconversations.com mushroom so midlifeconversations.Com mushroom and if there's a place to say I sent you, it's from you can just say Natalie Jill and I believe there's a built in discount there. But we will make sure to link all of this up. Thank you so much for as always for fully explaining and for your knowledge and for what you keep to keep innovating within the company.

Well, thanks so much. And I would also share to your listeners is one of the priorities that we have at Bioptimizers is I build the customer service team. You talk to real people that can answer your questions in real time. So we're really responsive and so you're not talking.

Not a bot or an AI thing, all that stuff?

No, no. With people. And I've actually answered all of the questions inside that repertoire. I think we're up over 8,000 questions. Amazing. And anything that gets in that they don't know, it gets forwarded to me and then I go and research and answer it if I possibly can or direct them to the person that can. The other element that we do, we have a 365 day money back guarantee.

So yeah, you do and they honor that. You're amazing with that.

Any product that you try from Buy Optimizers, try it for a couple of weeks, reap the benefits. If you don't feel anything for whatever reason it doesn't work for you, call us up, email us, text us, chat with us, whatever you want to do, we just refund your money. The reason we do that as I'm very clear that when people spend their hard earned money that there's nothing more expensive than a product that doesn't work, whether it's for me, somebody else, anyone else And I said, look, I know that there's a small percentage that won't get the benefit and I know that there's a large benefit that will. So to offset the financial risk that a person gets, I'm going to put 100% money back guarantee. So then they try it. They don't have any risk. They, they put it out and we will direct them to a product that might be better for them from maybe what they're looking for. If they talk to one of our staff, the other one, you don't have the risk. But guess what? Turns out I know almost everybody in the industry. We have the lowest refund rates in the entire industry and one of the highest subscription rates of anyone in the industry. And the reason is we make products that are well researched, that have the potency, that work, that feel good, taste good, work good, and something that you'll want to add to your life for a long, long time because you'll see the benefits. And that's the end of the day. The end of the day you take something because there's an ambition, there's a challenge that you're looking to face. We're trying to bridge the gap with products that we feel that we can be best in category in the industry and that's our promise from bio optimizers.

And I love watching you grow. I mean I, I smile when I, I see your stuff in Sprouts. I see like, it's, like it's, it's cool. So y', all, you can go through my link and get the discount, but you can also go to Sprouts and find it there. There's I, I love watching you, you all grow. Thank you so much. Wade. Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Thanks for joining this conversation on Midlife Conversations today. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with friends on social media and be sure to tag me and our guest so that we can find your share. I'm Natalie Jill Fit on social media platforms. The biggest thank you that you can give me is leaving a review and a nice one. I hope by that this is how others find these episodes. If you do leave me a review, Message us@supportataliejillfitness.com with a screenshot of your review and we'd love to send you a free digital download of our DSR journal as a thank you. And let me be crystal clear. I have a podcast, not a prescription pad. I'm just a curious person with a microphone phone exploring midlife topics alongside you. Any advice I give should be filed under things Natalie thought sounded good rather than medical gospel. I'm not your doctor, therapist or biological mother, though I do care about you enough to remind you that this show is for entertainment, curiosity and educational purposes only. If you're making health decisions based solely on the podcast, we need to have a different conversation. Partnerships on this podcast are done by partners partnerships by Category 3 Media Group. To advertise in this podcast, contact Sales admin@category3CA Information provided in this podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek advice of your physician or other healthcare professionals before starting something new or making changes to your current regimen. Information provided and the use of any products or services related does not create a client patient relationship between you and the host and or anyone I've interviewed or featured on this show. Statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Some episodes may be sponsored by products and services discussed. The host may receive compensation for advertisements or if you purchase products throughout the affiliate links. Opinions expressed about products or services are not those of Host and our guests. Sponsorship does not imply endorsement of any product or service by healthcare professionals featured on this podcast.