Medicinal Mushrooms: Hania Opienski | CNM Specialist Podcast - Full Episode

so you know one of the wonderful things about mushrooms is that unless you're allergic to mushrooms they're pretty much something that is safe for everyone they can be used by children they can be used by animals and the fact that they have a lot of compounds that are only available in mushrooms the more that they're being studied the more that people are seeing that actually they do numerous things the main thing that any mushroom that you eat whether it's a culinary mushroom or a medicinal Mushroom on some level it's going to be helping to modulate the immune system and that means that it's helping to either raise immune immunity when needed and also lower immunity when needed if you had to pick one mushroom that supports the gut what would your go-to be oh Lion's main would be the main one that we would we would think of it's amazing what it can do and it's one level is the fact that it really helps with rebalancing the gut microbiota but another aspect of it is that it actually stimulates something called nerve growth factor which then encourages the growth of nerve cells there was even a you know a period in the 80s in Japan where they were using a particular mushroom as primary chemotherapy because one of the certain active compounds was actually having you know an anti-tumor effect [Music] hello and welcome to the CNM specialist podcast with me Bobby Qureshi cnm's Director of Education today I'm delighted to welcome Tanya opianski Hanya is a naturopathic nutritionist traditional Chinese medicine acupuncturist and Energy Medicine specialist she applies a holistic approach to health using a Synergy of natural Eastern Western and Energy Medicine to facilitate the highest expression of well-being and balance for her clients she is the education lead and a medicinal mushroom specialist consultant the heifa statera UK and Ireland in today's podcast we'll be looking at the most therapeutic mushrooms available to us how we can use them and their benefits in areas such as the immune system for gut health and also for cancer thank you so much for joining us today Hanya welcome great to be here so I'm really interested to hear where did your interest in natural medicine begin and also of course where did your interest in mushrooms come from okay well my interest in natural medicine came from my parents so when I was a baby I when I was sick I was given some antibiotics and I got more sick from that and so my parents decided they wanted to explore alternative medicine and so I grew up using Homeopathy and then being introduced to other forms of natural medicine so it was always something that was quite normal and accessible for me and then after a bit of a health crash in my 20s I decided to retrain and acupuncture was one of the things that had been really helpful in my recovery and and so I decided to study acupuncture initially and then once I'd been working with that for a while and finding that the nutritional advice that I was giving my clients from a Chinese medicine perspective was really helpful and I thought well actually I'd like to understand nutrition more and then when I was looking into courses I found that actually naturopathy which combined herbal medicine and and nutrition was something that I you know sounded really interesting and I decided to study in Australia so I went and did naturopathy there and then in my course as part of herbal medicine you know we touched on mushrooms a little bit but we were kind of looking at them from a western perspective and in herbal tinctures and use in combination with Western herbs so I just kind of had a bit of an introduction there but didn't really you know mycotherapy which is the use of mushrooms as their own therapy you know just you know without herbs or nutrition or in parallel with herbs and nutrition it wasn't something that I was aware of um at that point when I moved back to the UK I started working looking for a supplement company and I was in you know as a rep working in Whole Foods and Planet Organic and it was a way for me to learn the whole scene in the UK because I had you know studied in Australia and then worked in the Maldives in Thailand so I didn't really know the UK supplement Natural Health Market and all the products and while I was doing that I started learning about the different brands and I started getting more interested in medicinal mushrooms and I you know was looking at everything that was available and who was a research-based companies and that's when I first learned about he FES and they found that they would do you know they were doing primary research and was a supplement company based on Research rather than just on products and so when the opportunity came up to work with them I jumped at the chance and I've been continuing to learn more about mushrooms as I worked for them for the last five six years that's amazing and I think it's good to highlight that this is an area that we're really learning more about all the time you know this is evolving very quickly you mentioned the term their mycotherapy so just explain that to our listeners because of course as practitioners we call this microtherapy but if you could just elaborate that would be great so so Micah therapy is the term micro meaning mushroom therapy therapy so it's the use of mushrooms um as a medicinal or health-giving substances and particularly applied to human health excellent well well explained in terms of mushrooms I think a lot of people listening will probably probably be thinking well are the mushrooms in my cupboard medicinal mushrooms so could you just explain what we mean by medicinal mushrooms and what the different sort of types of mushrooms are basically yeah so there is actually a crossover between culinary and medicinal mushrooms and there's certainly some what we would class medicinal mushrooms that people probably are familiar with so something like shiitake as we get more you know more used to Asian food it's something that probably most people will have heard of or even eaten and that's something that's also been used traditionally medicinally for thousands of years as well and so that would be one that crosses over and actually the common you know everyday button mushroom it's part of the the agaricus family and one of the main mushrooms that he first works with agaricus blasey Morel is a particular it's like a cousin of the one that you know the white mushrooms or brown mushrooms that people would eat every day that just has higher levels of certain active compounds which therefore we consider it medicinal but even eating everyday mushrooms you're actually getting lower doses of a lot of the therapeutic compounds and and that would go for actually all pretty much all of the culinary mushrooms have some of these key compounds that are are really useful just if we're using them medicinally we'd probably use them in higher quantities than people would be eating on a daily basis and I guess some of the medicinal mushrooms that we talk about just have certain compounds that are more kind of the potent therapeutic compounds just in higher dosages is that is that what kind of makes them medicinal yeah and it's also like some of the medicinal mushrooms are ones that you know would have been traditional used in herbal medicine and aren't culinary so something like reishi it actually has is very hard so it has a lot of this insoluble fiber so actually if you ever see a real reishi mushroom you know it's like if you knock on it'll sound you know like the wooden table wow you couldn't actually eat it so the only way it could be consumed is if you ground it up boiled it as a tea so there's a number of medicinal mushrooms that are only able to be used if you're preparing them whereas you know the culinary mushrooms we can still prepare them into a you know powder and extract but you could you know eat a shiitake mushroom you could eat lion's mane but something like reishi it's only usable in a medicinal form right and you've mentioned a couple of locations predominantly Asia here and most medicinal mushrooms on my rights they found in Asia or do we find much for example where we are here in Europe so it's it's a mixture I mean I think Asian medicine has a longer tradition of using mushrooms uh medicinally or more kind of overtly but there is evidence things like um chaga lion's mane the oyster mushrooms maitaki all of these are actually you know indigenous to Europe as well and some of them are things that you know you could find if you you know got into a foraging group and definitely in North America a lot of the the mushrooms are available and even now people are growing reishi you know in the UK it is possible um but I think in terms of herbal medicine in the UK and Europe I think in Siberian medicine and a couple of the sort of older medicines they did use some mushrooms but it wasn't so emphasized whereas in Chinese medicine mushrooms are in like the earliest ever you know medicinal test texts from hundreds of or even thousands of years ago they actually include mushrooms from that date so there's a I guess a more trackable history of that makes complete sense so we we've got lots to talk about and I'm really interested to talk about what the key mushrooms are your favorite mushrooms the most therapeutic ones and basically what they do for us and of course how we can use them but I think a good place to start just to really start from the the sort of the bottom and work our way up it's just to explain really what a mushroom is so if you could start from there that would be amazing yeah so mushrooms actually have their own kingdom so we have the the animal kingdom the plant kingdom there's also the fungal Kingdom so mushroom uh actually you know if you're being technical that actually just applies to what we call the fruiting body of a fungus which is the bit that we think of as a mushroom but actually the whole you know plant um the fungal equivalent is actually a fungi and in the same Kingdom we also have yeast and micro fungi so the kind that we would use therapeutically and and in a culinary way we call macro fungi which just means the big ones and then there are micro fungi which are things like um well even at the the other end of the scale things like mycotoxins which are completely different so when we're talking about mushrooms you know ideally you would be actually be using the fruiting body but what would be the equivalent to a plant of roots which is called the mycelium there's also some therapeutic compounds in here and the spores which are the equivalent of the seeds and so if people are actually looking at mushroom products you'll find that some of them will say they're full spectrum biomass some will say fruiting bodies some will say mycelium some will say Spore and these are basically just referring to different parts of the mushroom that are being used and is there a particular part that's most therapeutic or does it not really work like that well in a way it's like you know if you think of a plant um you know in some cases you know we would use the bark of a tree in some cases we would use the leaves or the roots but you know the the fruit would be the thing that is actually kind of carrying the most nutrients the most life is the thing that's designed to be consumed to actually then propagate the species so ideally you would use a fruiting body product and that's the thing that it takes the longest to grow it's going to have the highest concentration of active compounds and so that would be ideal but in in some cases and some mushrooms we would use the mycelium because there are some mushrooms that actually like cordyceps that I think we'll talk about is actually what they call an entomopathogenic mushroom and what that means is that in order for the fruiting body to sprout it actually eats into an insect and so it needs that host in order to actually create a fruiting body so most mushroom companies unless they're wild crafting quadriceps they want to make vegan products they don't want to be sacrificing thousands of insects so all pretty much all cordyceps products you'll see on the market will just be the mycelium because though that you can propagate without having to you know kill insects they are quite quirky looking mushrooms aren't they I must say yeah anyone listening just have a little Google Search right now of cordyceps I remember when we were doing some some of our lecture material on mushrooms and I'm sourcing some images and I was sort of like is this it really I think actually that they are generally beautiful things maybe not so much quality steps but otherwise you know lion's mane reishi they are absolutely stunning mushrooms and I think people are always Blown Away by how beautiful they are um so it's really nice that they're starting to get some attention here I feel because it's very much deserved and I guess really we need to talk about why they're getting the attention because from our perspective as practitioners we use them because of their amazing therapeutic benefits so what makes you know how do they exert such great benefits and what are the benefits we get from them yeah so so you know one of the wonderful things about mushrooms is that unlike a lot of herbal medicines which you know maybe you can just use for a short amount of time or they might have interactions with medications or they might have you know active compounds that are useful in the short term but if you take them for too long then they can have a negative effect on the body mushrooms unless you're allergic to mushrooms so if you can't eat food mushrooms you can't have medicinal mushrooms but other than that they're pretty much something that is safe for everyone they can be used by children they can be used by animals and they're you know we could call them a functional food although they're also used as a um as a a herbal medicine so they kind of cover those two you know areas so a nutritionist can comfortably use them but also a herbal medicine practitioner or a naturopath can use them and then of course in the traditional Asian herbal medicine Traditions they are they are used so safety is a is an amazing thing the fact that they can be used long term and the fact that they have a lot of compounds that are only available in mushrooms and they the more that they're being studied the more that people are seeing that actually they do numerous things and the main thing that any mushroom that you eat whether it's a culinary mushroom or a medicinal Mushroom on some level it's going to be helping to modulate the immune system and that means that it's helping to either raise immune immunity when needed and also lower immunity when needed and that's really important because I think historically people thought mushrooms were just immune stimulants and that then limits because say if someone has an autoimmune condition you don't want to stimulate the immune system so there's a lot of really useful immune herbs that you just can't use in someone with an autoimmune condition whereas because mushrooms have this modulating effect you know you can help someone who's you know recovering from a virus or is kind of chronically getting coughs and colds and has to take you know Medical education because they have an autoimmune condition which is suppressing their immunity you could then give this person a mushroom and know that it's going to be supporting them with their sort of coughs and colds without actually counteracting their medicine that is you know helping keep their autoimmune condition in check I think that's a really good explanation and highlighting that they are immune modulating so you know we always think with the immune system don't we that if it's under active it's a problem because you can get sick if it's overactive it's a problem because we end up with autoimmunity and allergies so it is about getting that that balance and we want to make sure we're optimally functioning here so I guess what the mushrooms do is they kind of bring us back to that level of balance and that's nice you've also highlighted a great point there which is of course about safety because of course this is something we always should be very much aware of um I know I believe and correct me if I'm wrong but heaths have actually conducted some research to look at safety in terms of the interactions and medications and they basically found that the main route that drugs are detoxified by mushrooms don't interact with so they they're not broken down they're not going to influence that same pathway so is that is that sort of explaining why we know with medications they're generally regarded as safe yeah I mean I think you know you have to be careful when you're choosing a mushroom product because there can actually be other ingredients in a mushroom product or something in the production that may mean that that specific product is going to have an interaction so you always want to check if you are um you know using a mushroom product that that company is saying this is safe to be used alongside your medication and so you know he first wanted to like one of the key areas of research and product development and and creation is in integrative oncology and so of course if someone's going through primary you know Cancer Care and they're taking you know chemotherapy immunotherapy you want to make sure that anything that you're recommending is going to be safe and not interacting um so he first did a trial on their concentrated extracts or actually a third-party organization the Medina Foundation they did a trial using heathus extracts and they found exactly as you said that this liver detoxification pathway that the mushrooms weren't interrupting that which means that they're not going to interrupt the metabolism of drugs that use that pathway and that was geared towards looking at these you know heavy duty drugs but also applies to you know all the other drugs so you know we use that that also use that pathway so he first products you know have that that research and that safety but I would say that doesn't necessarily apply to all mushroom products so if you you know you'd want to check in with a company before just thinking oh yeah mushrooms are safe I can use them and I think actually a really interesting thing I don't know if this is now the case but I've read a research paper from about three years ago and it they basically looked at a group of supplements that were claimed to Medicinal mushrooms and quite alarmingly and 75 of the products there was actually no medicinal Mushroom in there none I think they were looking at reishi but even that alone you know obviously this is now a big industry tree it is important to make sure that you're getting good quality products that actually have in there what they're claiming to have in there so I guess you know being cautious um that we're looking for quality and making sure as you said that there's no extra ingredients in that could be a problem for the individual um and that it's a well-respected company I guess is key you've also mentioned um you mentioned integrative oncology so could you just explain I know he fast you sort of specialize in this you're doing a lot of research in this area but just sort of explain for our listeners what you mean by that yeah I'd love to but is it okay if I just go back to your previous comment because um what you said there about that research paper is actually really important when people are choosing a supplement because um it's I don't think it's the case in Europe but in the states um there is a you know a kind of like legal loophole with mushrooms that allowed you know that that to be the case where basically as soon as you put like a lot of mushrooms like mushrooms traditionally would grow the medicinal ones mainly grow on wood and so what that means is that you know it's easy to harvest the fruiting body but the mycelium the roots are going to be sort of embedded into to wood chips and so you wouldn't use that but of course it's uh mushrooms like most things feed on carbohydrates so growing a mushroom on a grain means it's going to grow much faster and you'll see you're going to get a faster yield and because grain is something that can be consumed it means you can use the mycelium the roots with some of the Grain in there and so it means that then you actually bulk out your product you know it's faster and cheaper and in the states there's basically a ruling that as soon as you put mushroom spores into grain it's then legally classed as a hundred percent mushroom and that's why you know this was a published in nature which is you know one of the most important journals and basically what they're finding is because of this um you know this legal loophole companies were you know sort of putting spores into their grain medium and then creating products from that whether the spores actually developed into mushrooms or mycelium or not and so really when you're choosing a mushroom product you really want to look at if it says something like biomass you know full spectrum biomass if it's a grain grown product then it means you don't actually know what proportion of that product is actually mushroom What proportion is mycelium What proportion is grain and as this study showed actually 75 percent of those mushrooms on the market were actually pretty much just grain and no mushroom and so it's really important that people know what to look for because if you're you know uneducated to this it can say 100 reishi and legally it is but actually in the ingredients if it's been ratio grown on grain then it could actually be just a tiny fraction of ratio or none at all so that's that's really important it's a really great point it's almost like with the supplement industry generally you know you might have a very cheap vitamin C that's full of excipients and basically rubbish that's got maybe 10 milligrams of vitamin C and there she's going to do absolutely nothing for you so it is important that we look for quality and I guess ultimately this is why certain supplements will be more expensive and products be more expensive just go back to the integrative oncology yeah so um yeah so integrative oncology is a really interesting field so um you know as we've sort of mentioned about mushrooms being used in Asian medicines for a long time and so they actually are probably further ahead than in the West in terms of looking at mushrooms for oncology um and um yeah but there was even a you know a period in the 80s in Japan where they were using a particular mushroom as primary chemotherapy because one of the certain active compounds was actually having you know an anti-tumor effect now mushrooms are something that tend to be used integratively rather than as a as a standalone and that would be you know what he first is promoting as well and that's because even though there is some evidence that mushrooms can actually be have an anti-cancer effect interrupt you know that whole process of the cell cell change and you know tumor development but actually one of the key things that mushrooms do is this protecting the immune system and so what they're doing is like buy while someone is having this you know very um challenging treatment it can actually be supporting the individual in maintaining a certain level of quality of life in maintaining a certain level of of weight of energy of you know managing nausea of managing immunity so they're not necessarily catching you know other things while their immunity is weak from the treatment they can also help with things like reducing the loss of taste or reducing the loss of hair and in some cases you know because of this improved quality of life it means that people can finish a course like one of the the things that you know I don't know whether it's so kind of commonly known but with because in um chemotherapy can be such a you know a debilitating treatment often people can't complete full courses because of the side effects because they're finding it so challenging whereas using a mushroom product alongside because it's improving the quality of life it means that it can support someone in actually you know finishing a whole course of treatment and getting the full benefit of their primary treatment whilst actually being more comfortable having a better quality of life and then supporting with maintaining remission it's amazing that these compounds can do that these mushrooms can do that and so basically what we're saying is that they can improve efficacy so they're helping with efficacy of treatment based on research but also that they're reducing side effects which of course is a huge problem when it comes to Conventional cancer treatments and of course if we just think in simple terms what chemotherapy is doing it's basically targeting any cell in your body that's quickly dividing that of course includes cancer cells but it also includes a lot of healthy cells your you know cells in your bone marrow like your red blood cells like your white blood cell so your immune system you know cells involved in the hair hence people losing hair cells in the gut tense gut problems so this is amazing that we've got something here that we can use to to make that more targeted and reduced side effects you also mentioned there with um Japan is that turkey tail yeah that's right that was Turkey Town also called coriolis coriolis right and it's named turkey Tech we can talk a bit more about this too it's called turkey tail isn't it because of the the sort of the lineage that you get the appearance of the mushroom it looks literally as such it actually grows like a fan and then it has like different colors going out so it actually looks like a fanned turkey tail so that's the the common name and it's quite bright colors so yeah it's another beautiful one to add to the list yeah so um so in terms of um cancer progression what we know is that um there is some evidence to say that it can assist in terms of um the sort of the cell cycle that we associate with cancer what do we know about this at the moment is it so there is some evidence to say that it can actually stop tumor progression yeah I mean you know there is you know small trials uh you know sort of cell studies some animal studies some small human studies um and there's actually you know numerous actually pretty much every step along the the the you know the pathway from that you know stopping the the cellular change to stopping uh angio or reducing angiogenesis which is the production of um uh blood vessels so that the tumor can actually feed itself and keep growing uh reducing tumor size uh what else there's some evidence also of um there's a process that's called you know programmed cell death which is the when the body actually kills off cells that are damaged like in cancer that's you know one of the mechanisms that stops working so these damaged cells can keep growing there's also evidence that mushrooms can actually switch that back on so they can you know amazingly tell the body this is an unhealthy cell kill it off this is a healthy cell let's make it healthier so like all of these different stages there's small evidence that mushrooms actually support each of these steps and it's you know some mushrooms will have an effect on all of these things but a lot of mushrooms there'll be certain mushrooms that do this or certain mushrooms that do this better in certain tissues of the body and so ideally in a integrative oncology product you want to you know one that's a synergistic combination a blend of different mushrooms and then you're gonna and ideally one that's actually targeted towards the specific type of cancer that you have because there are certain mushrooms that are kind of supportive across the board and then there are certain mushrooms that have what we call a tropism which means like a an attraction to a specific system or organ in the body and so then using those specific mushrooms is going to give you an enhanced benefit than just using those ones that have a general benefit so just on this whilst we're on topic what would your kind of go-to mushrooms be when you're supporting somebody that's got a diagnosis of cancer yeah so I mean these days I would use the the heat first combinations because they've created Five Blends which are targeted to the main types of cancer um and so the kind of the key mushrooms that are in all of those Blends are something called Sun mushroom or agaricus blasey Morel uh reishi that we've mentioned a couple of times which is a specific strain is Ganoderma lucidum and the other is maitaki which is grifola fondosa so these are the kind of three mushrooms that are you know key in the blend and then depending on which condition there are two or three other mushrooms added and uh yeah this sort of evidence coming back either from people that I've supported or people that you know practitioners who uh you know ask for advice from heifers and work with heathus mushrooms is using those tailored Blends is actually you know really making a difference in supporting people and so yeah and and the other key thing that's really important is mushrooms are what we call dose dependent and what that means is the worse the condition or the bigger the person the higher the dose of mushrooms needed to have a therapeutic effect so when we're working with oncology then you really need really high doses and again like you know from kind of Asian research people were mostly just using mushroom powders or some cases extracts and they were finding that people were having to take kind of 15 30 you know extract capsules a day or like you know 50 100 whole mushroom powder capsules and of course if you've got nausea if you're taking other medications you know that becomes really hard for people to do and so he first decided that they wanted to make a liquid supplement so that that's going to increase ease of use and it's going to increase you know how regularly people are actually taking it because again that regularity of use makes a difference you want those mushrooms in your system so that you actually get a steady state you know of those active compounds so you're taking it once or twice a day throughout a course of treatment and then you're going to get the best benefits and so now you know a liquid vial from one of the oncology lines is like the equivalent of 200 or so capsules of just a mushroom powder or like 20 or 30 of a concentrated extract so again you're really needing these high doses but of course you want it in a form that's going to be actually feasible to take and not as expensive as buying hundreds of you know powder capsules makes perfect sense makes perfect sense you've actually really highlighted a good point which is about dosage because of course as with anything it is about dosage as well as quality and you need to make sure you're getting the right dosage to have a therapeutic effect and this is where sometimes people will come in to see us as practitioners saying well I did try you know this vitamin or this nutrient and and it didn't really work but sometimes it's simply a case of just an inadequate dosage so it's good that you're highlighting that for this sort of um this sort of effect that you're trying to achieve you need to be working in very high dosages I also read some studies uh I think it was one particular paper this was referring to that spoke about how some mushrooms in particular have quite a strong Prebiotic effect in the gut which basically means that it feeds the gut bacteria for those listening and that that mechanism is also good for some types of cancers like bowel cancer for example is that is that something that that you know much about yeah so as you say you say merging area of research and uh you know the one of the key active ingredients in mushrooms is better glucans and these are a type of polysaccharide which is like a long chain sugar um and you know they do have this immune modulating effect and a number of other effects but they also have you know a Prebiotic effect and actually there's a couple of research trials that heathus is doing at the moment one in in colon cancer one in breast cancer and they're both actually and particularly the breast cancer trial actually looking at the impact of mushrooms on the microbiome because now it's being recognized that actually you know dysbiosis or this kind of lack of balance or ill health in the gut bacteria actually being a risk factor or a precursor to cancer development and so they're looking at you know how these mushroom prebiotics you know how that is actually part of the mechanism of how they're helpful in actually bringing the gut back into balance as part of the the healing process and not just looking at the immune modulating effect and how the immune system can be self-regulating or kind of working at fighting against the cancer so it's this kind of dual approach so yeah definitely a really interesting area stuff and I think the great thing is we're actually starting to make that connection now between the gut microbiome and cancer development obviously it's very early days we don't know much about this yet so we certainly cannot make any claims but you know I think it's been hypothesized for many years now that there must be some connection and we're we're starting to get evidence to suggest so so this sort of evidence is really interesting because it does make sense from a sort of mechanistic perspective when you think about what the gut microbiome is doing and how that could potentially feed into the development of cancerous cells Etc so really interesting and of course if we just think from a general gut perspective if we're dealing with somebody that's got dysbiosis without any other sort of ongoing illness that shows that mushrooms could could have a good benefit there in terms of supporting the health of a good microbiome hmm yeah definitely and one of the nice things that I found is that um I don't know whether you found this as well but there are certain prebiotics that can actually create a lot of bloating or discomfort while the body is kind of getting used to that change in bacteria whereas you know I don't think we've ever had feedback at heifus and I certainly haven't from anyone I've worked with of mushrooms even at you know High powder doses or high concentrated extract doses ever really getting any of that discomfort so they're a really kind of easy Prebiotic that they they have the effect like so you know again he first has done some case studies and looked at you know the people's microbiome and the kind of the balance of bacteria pre-use at three months at six months at nine months um and the change in you know the gut microbiome and the balancing of you know getting rid of the bad ones increasing the good ones and also some that like acomencia species which is I think now people are actually starting to make supplements but yeah for a long time it was something that couldn't be done because it's so you know unstable people that actually you know just taking a Prebiotic you know can help the body to create its own and so it's yeah it's amazing let's talk about the acamancia because it's a good connection um akamancy for those of listening we we regard it as kind of a keystone bacteria in our gut microbiome it's one of those bacterial species that if we ever do a stool test we're always looking to see is it there is it present in excess it's all about balance in excess it could be a problem but most people don't have it and the main place we get it from is breast milk um interestingly probably a bit too much detail but I did a store just a couple of years ago and um uh yeah probably 18 months ago now and on my status there was no acomancia which um is kind of fit in with the symptoms I was getting and uh at the time my my wife was pregnant and she always made the joke she's like I'm gonna get you drinking my breast milk that would give you acromancia and since then luckily I didn't need to go down that route as much as I appreciated the offer since then we've learned that we can feed any acamancia that is there even if it's in tiny amounts with the prebiotics and get them growing and the reason this is such a key bacteria is because it keeps the mucus lining in your gut nice and healthy so if there isn't enough there's a chance that we can sort of have a very thin layer of mucus and we get a little bit too much crosstalk between the contents of the gut and the immune system we can start having lots of inflammation which obviously isn't a good thing so that's really interesting and what I really like what you highlighted there was how this is a Prebiotic that doesn't typically bloat you because um you are right this is one of the biggest issues we face as practitioners when if somebody's got an overgrowth of certain bacteria one of the ways that we can approach this is to try and feed the healthy bacteria but the issue is that a lot of prebiotics feed both so the the bad ones there will try and steal it all so you just blow because you get lots of gas so it's really powerful actually that these are substances that we can use that are very kind of friendly in cases of dysbiosis so that's really interesting you highlighted that yeah and and I mean I would say like growth you'll probably be better off using a mushroom extract than a mushroom powder because there is the possibility that that increased level of Prebiotic fiber in a whole powder might initially as you said feed the good and the bad but we found that the concentrated extracts where you know you haven't got so much of the kind of bulking fiber that would be in a mushroom and you just have these kind of therapeutically active um you know fibers like the better glucans and maybe some Alpha glucans but that actually that can as you said just be feeding the good ones and not kind of propagating those things that we don't want so that it can be something that gets someone back to a level of you know getting out of dysbiosis and into balance and then it might be that you want to use a whole mushroom powder because they're not getting any fiber in their diet and they need that extra but yeah as you said it can be used much more comfortably without sort of adding into the imbalance amazing and now I'm going to ask you this question I feel like I know what the answer will be I hope it is this answer but I want to talk more about this mushroom soon but if you had to pick one mushroom that supports the gut what would your go-to be yeah well I think you've already yeah so lion's mane would be the main one that we would we would think of and there is quite a lot of uh research on lots of different aspects of this but yeah it's definitely you know it's amazing what it can do and it's one level is the fact that it really helps with rebalancing the gut microbiota but another aspect of it is that it actually stimulates um something called nerve growth factor which then encourages the growth of nerve cells so you know you talked about you know when the gut gets irritated the lining is thin um you know and then that can then cause some you know sort of I think he said crosstalk between what's inside and what's outside so we could call that some leaky gut and one of the great things with lion's mane is that it doesn't just balance that the gut bacteria which helps with healing the gut lining but also it actually helps heal the whole enteric nervous system the nervous system in the gut as well as peripheral and central nervous system so it's actually supporting this whole gut brain axis and helping to heal the lining of the gut much more efficiently than just a probiotic a Prebiotic that might be helping with the the imbalance it's also encouraging you know healthy tissue growth and particularly this nervous tissue in the gut as well thank you for explaining really well explained it's an amazing connection and you know like you've said we can use it to support the gut barrier so if there's permeability problems which is you know very common we can use it to support cases of dysbiosis extremely common and you mentioned that gut brain connection I mean this again is a really hot topic we know so much now about how all you know in imbalance in the gut can have an imbalance in the brain basically to put it simply if we have put it in simple terms leaky gut or dysbiosis in the gut we're more likely to have problems associated with the brain that could be various different things but it's amazing we've got a mushroom here that covers both areas I mean Lion's main for me total geek around lion's mane I love this mushroom my students I think wind me up because I'm always like oh my lion's mane could probably work for that it's just a it's a great mushroom and um again another one to Google image I think isn't it I mean the appearance tell the listeners about the appearance of this amazing mushroom yeah so it's it's not kind of you know if you if you think of a mushroom this is not at all the image that you would get and so it's basically like another one of the names that I think with the English common name is bearded tooth mushroom and that kind of gives you an idea it's like it basically has all of these tiny little filaments so the fruiting body instead of being like a solid smooth Mass it has all of these tiny little hairs that actually look like a lion's mane and it tends to grow sort of on the side or underneath things so you get these amazing kind of waterfalls and it's kind of it's sort of very white sometimes slightly yellow but it's really you know really beautiful and pristine and yeah very attractive mushroom and it is edible isn't it yeah no luckily I've actually managed to get it at my local farmers market in the last couple of years so it's it's delicious it's I if you ever get a chance to try lion's mane I really recommend it it's very it's almost like kind of vegan Lobster right um it's very sweet and subtle and quite soft textured so yeah really really good amazing amazing I've used lion's mane actually I like to use lion's mane for General nerve related problems so for example if I've got somebody that has had a nerve injury or you know patients that have had a stroke for example or you know one of my patients recently has motor neurone disease you know these are it's really interesting because there is a lot of research talking about the specific compounds in lion's mane that promote nerve growth factor so we actually know quite a lot about it and it can help if I'm not mistaken even with the myelination which is the coating around our nerves that kind of helps our nerves to transmit of course you know we lose myelin we lose that Coating in conditions like multiple sclerosis so although you know as far as I'm aware there's not you know big kind of research pointing out that yes we can use it for this treatment but certainly from a physiological perspective there is a potential there that with some more studies would be really interesting to delve into yeah I totally agree exactly I mean mean there's definitely evidence that you know the active compounds the Harissa nodes and arenaisines these are kind of key active compounds in Lions main that they will have this remyelination um effect that they will stimulate nerve growth factor that they will stimulate other um you know chemicals in the brain that are to do with mood management as well as nervous system healing so it kind of works you know lion's mane is is for neurological you know healing reducing degeneration maintenance but also for mood management um but um yeah as you say not very much research or human Studies have been done yet but there's really good potential there because the mechanisms we know that this happens and that there is some studies like you mentioned talking about nerve injuries there's animal studies of you know using lion's mane and helping with you know regenerating peripheral nerves and you know like hind leg injury and you know there's there's definitely evidence that shows this is a really interesting area of research amazing really amazing and I think this is where at the moment we're in that we're at that point with this sort of mushroom where we're sort of going well we know the potential mechanisms we know the the actions yes we don't have extremely strong evidence for this yet if we look at you know kind of scientific research but there is suggestions there and obviously us as clinicians we're using them and we're seeing how it works based on that mechanism and we're obviously not promising the world to our patients we're just saying let's see how it goes and we're keeping it very simple but uh you know we're seeing the benefits aren't we in clinic um I you know I've seen I remember having one patient actually where it really stands out from me who um it was quite an unfortunate one really it was actually a post um vaccine injury and this this guy was in his mid 50s had had um his first covered vaccine and literally within almost hours he was starting to decline and then the next day he he developed um severe tingling and numbness and he basically started to develop gradual paralysis there was a there was a query he went to the hospital they didn't know what it was they sort of thought is it you know they acknowledged that this is what it is it's an injury post-vaccination um but they didn't know whether it was a condition called Gill and Barry syndrome which for those listening is sort of where your immune system attacks the nervous system basically but they they said look we don't know what it is it's sort of calmed down a bit came in to see me and it really was just in a bad way had you know power loss in his muscles tingling um really not in a good place and the first substance I thought of was well let's let's try Lions mate again didn't promise him anything at all the response he had was unbelievable I mean within two months he was virtually symptom-free um and it was amazing obviously there were different things we were using but that was a key part of my protocol on the basis of some of what we know and who knows we don't know for sure there's no certainty here of course whether it was that or other things it could have he might have just resolved otherwise but it you know I think from what I saw that might have been why so it's interesting and I know a lot of practitioners that use lion's mane and other mushrooms and get similar effects maybe where the research isn't is but it just shows so much promise for potential for the future for how we might use these hmm no I totally agree and yeah I was thinking about one of the the cases that kind of stood out for me was also with with lion's mane and a patient who had Crohn's and um you know which is a disease of the inflammatory bowel disease where um like you know the lining of the gut kind of gets eaten away and um you know and she had had kind of scans and had you know quite a lot of lesions you know in her gut and the doctors were really pushing for her to have Western treatment and you know we helped her I helped her change her diet and she was taking a range of supplements and it was kind of managing her symptoms and reducing it um and then you know I decided Well she needed to give up smoking which she did and we introduced lion's mane and then I think it was I think it was even just three months later when she had her next scan you know basically they said you're in complete remission um and so you know I'm sure this like stopping smoking was a major part of it but you know we started the lion's mane powder and then a concentrated extract and you know and she was taking that and you know her gut completely healed so I think that combination of taking out a trigger Factor putting something in that helped the body to heal faster and you know and she's managed to sort of maintain uh you know that remission since then with kind of looking after her stress not going back to smoking but yeah it's made a massive difference that's amazing thank you so much for sharing uh it's a very powerful mushroom and I think you know if we haven't sold lion's mane by now Hanya I don't know what else we could do we should probably talk about another mushroom um let's think of other areas because we've spoken about the immune system we've spoken about its role potential oil in cancer we've spoken about the gut brain axis of gut brain connection um what other things do we use medicinal mushrooms for well I mean in a way you can kind of use them for for most things um so you know they are there as well as being you know immune modulating there are a number of mushrooms like we talked a bit about lion's mane but those that manage uh the central nervous system so something like reishi it is one of the most immunomodulating mushrooms but it's also known as a nervous system balancer so it's something that you know has been used in traditional medicine for Sleep stress um you know anxiety depression pain you know for Millennia and now there is research you know in each of these areas and it's one that is kind of known for calming the nervous system and for helping to sort of uh slow down or reduce the stress response so that's one that uh you know is a really useful one and the other kind of key thing like you know if you look at any of the traditional mentions of reishi it's considered the mushroom of Eternal Youth and that's because one of the key things that it does is it's an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant I think actually it's possibly one of the most potent antioxidants out there and so of course what that is doing is you know oxidation and inflammation are two of the things that cause cellular aging so you know taking ratio preventatively is going to be one of those things that is reducing inflammation and oxidation in the body so from a you know a longevity point of view It's a Wonderful mushroom but then if you have any conditions where oxidation or inflammation are an issue which is pretty much all Western diseases or living in a city and being stressed and breathing polluted air it's also going to be having a counter balancing effect there wow I mean the mushroom of Eternal youth again you've sold that one so it's sort of a healthy aging mushroom you can think of it that way and um yeah fantastic what you just described there so this is good for for nervous system conditions I recently used this actually on a patient of mine that's got really severe anxiety um and because it's also if I'm not mistaken reishi is an adaptogen exactly do you want to explain what an adaptogen is yeah so so basically an adaptogen is something that helps the body adapt to stress uh and uh there are a number of herbal adaptogens but reishi is probably the best known of the mushroom adaptogens although actually all mushrooms have a degree of an adaptogenic function and that again like this immunomodulating effect it means that you know it's not just going to have a calming effect it's going to have this adaptive effect so it's not like you know taking a sedative but it's like if someone is anxious or they're over stimulated and they take reishi it's going to help their nervous system adapt and calm down but if someone is depressed and they're you know they're they're you know their stress responses like you know inactive and they're in freeze then again reishi can actually you know modulate up and have that adaptogenic effect and give them a bit more energy and a bit more kind of Vitality wow fantastic thank you for explaining and on this topic of reishi whilst we're here um another area that reishi sometimes used for I believe is for prostate health would you mind just explaining why the prostate kind of how that all works so I think the main you know uh effect or benefit for reishi is that anti-inflammatory effect because of course you know whether and actually ratio can be used either in benign prostatic hyperplasia or in for prostate cancer it is one of the key mushrooms in uh you know the the heifers um you know mites called micro men you know the oncology product you know it is one of the most potent mushrooms and it is like it's having a massive anti-inflammatory effect and also you know cellular oxidation you know this this effect of slowing the degeneration of cells and promoting them you know maintaining their health and their patency is something that reishi does really well so it's going to do that you know for the prostate and you mentioned benign prostatic hyperplasia just for our listeners basically an enlarged prostate that's not cancerous um it makes complete sense I don't know if this is uh exactly right but I I think I read that reishi um reduces the production of the more potent form of Androgen or male sex hormone is that is that right that's also right yes yeah absolutely right so we talk about um the androgens basically the male sex hormones the one everyone knows is of course uh testosterone but um testosterone is converted to a very potent form and basically when it comes to prostate enlargement this is the one you don't want too much of and what race is very good at and thank you for clarifying is that it it reduces the conversion of testosterone to what we call DHT which is the very potent one so it makes sense even more mechanistically in terms of how that's working but um that's a great one I think what hopefully is coming across here is how in a case you're obviously looking at lots of factors in that individual's presentation you're looking at their overall health what their main concerns are the main systems of the body that are under stress and then you kind of will start to see in your mind sort of like oh this sounds like a ratio this sounds like you know perhaps I don't know shiitake would be better right so you're almost there's different things you're always ticking boxes is that is that almost what happens in your mind when you're trying to pick these yeah definitely and and the other thing that's important to remember is that mushrooms work really well in Synergy and you know in traditional medicine they would normally have been used either with other herbs or with other mushrooms and so often it is that there's a specific mushroom that is going to be the most appropriate for a case but as you said you know people are you know they may have many different things going on at once and you're working with an individual and so often you know it's preferable to actually combine a couple of mushrooms so you're actually getting you know a broader effect and are going to work in in harmony with each other so what other applications are there of medicinal mushrooms that we haven't yet mentioned oh there's a whole host of things so um mushrooms as long as you know a child has had them as culinary mushrooms and you know that there's no allergy there's something that actually also a good safe option for kids and so you know we talked about gut health but you know sort of allergies and food intolerances are quite common in kids and that could be a really useful you know safe easy um you know something to add in to a kids diet to help with healing that and because as we've talked about the the Prebiotic effect and balancing the gut microbiota it also means that they can be helped helpful with normal um you know brain development and sometimes you know behavioral issues or concentration memory you know issues can actually be to do with dysbiosis or a lack of certain good bacteria and that's affecting mood or concentration or brain health and you know there's certainly evidence that mushrooms can actually be helping by you know resetting the microbiota are going to actually support better mood management and all of that in kids so that's a really interesting really interesting yeah and are there any particular strains of mushrooms that you might use more for kind of childhood or it could again be any it could be any you know sort of symptom dependent but again like often rati and lions mean are two really good ones because you know we talked about it in terms of the you know balancing the androgens and the prostate hormones but actually that's one of the other things that reishi does is it is a hormone balancer and so that can be balancing stress hormones it can be balancing uh you know female menstrual hormones so you know it is one of those ones that's really a really good modulator on a lot of different levels and so again sort of you know Women's Health and you know hormone modulation uh is an area that you know just another thing that mushrooms can do well so sort of fertility as well can it support with yeah exactly and I mean um you know for fertility there's probably a couple of other mushrooms that we'd bring in as well so ratio is a really useful hormone modulator and that's both for stress hormones and a reproductive hormones and so you know if someone is having issues and there's a lot of stress involved as well or there's a regular periods then you know reishi would be a good one or particularly if there's like pain and inflammation you know really she's going to be working in a number of different areas but if say someone has something like Pecos or they have blood sugar issues or weight issues then something like maitake is really good at helping the body to regulate blood sugar and also regulating fat metabolism although shiitake does that better but you know maitake is kind of it's one of the main mushrooms we think about for metabolism so if that's an issue that is affecting fertility then certainly Mitaki is something that you would use for a period of time to help that person kind of get back into balance maybe alongside you know with reishi and then the other one would be cordyceps and this is one that is really useful for both men and women for for fertility so it's known as the you know the mushroom of Vitality or the mushroom of virility and um uh originally it was uh I think it was the you know the Tibetan herders they found that when their Yaks uh were feeding in certain Fields they started getting all kind of frisky and they were like well what is it in the grass that's you know getting them so frisky and they started looking around and you know like I said the um uh the the cordyceps mushroom they have this one phase which is just that the mycelium phase and then once they then spring comes they feed on an insect and then they actually shoot up and they're like these little uh you know these kind of long fingers that then were in the grass and so the Yaks were eating um you know the these cordyceps and once they realized what it was they started collecting it and of course using it for themselves and so in traditional medicine it's been known for virility and fertility and now unfortunately there isn't much research on this but you know the little bit that's there demons streets that actually it can have an effect on um you know basically you know the cellular energy it increases cellular energy and also it can increase cellular oxidation oxygenation so of course you know if you have either sperm cells or eggs that are just you know not so healthy if you can actually oxygenate them and increase the energy then it means that it's actually going to promote healthier cells throughout the body but also particularly in the reproductive organs so for fertility normally what you'd want to do is give you know for a woman at least three menstrual cycles so a minimum of three months of treatment ideally with cordyceps and if needed Mitaki and or reishi to kind of help get the body to a good level and then you can start actually looking at trying to conceive and same thing you know with men there's some small evidence of improving um sperm they call it morphology and motility so that's the the shape of the sperm which needs to be a certain way so that they can swim well and then their capacity to swim well and they're actually using using cordyceps can actually improve that so it's going to affect both male and female fertility wow and so does it also have an effect on libido does it increase libido yeah yeah exactly so you know it is considered a you know a natural uh yes alternative for improving libido and again the nice thing is it's one that is for men and women and not just something that is you know working with for men it's really interesting what you're saying actually about cordyceps and I've got some patients in mind now already where I'm thinking yeah I hadn't really thought about you know supporting some of those functions so that's um really interesting thank you for sharing that are there any other um sort of key actions of cordyceps that we haven't mentioned yeah so cordyceps is a really interesting one so as well as having that oxygenating and energizing effect um it's also a really potent antiviral so it's something that is useful to consider either you know therapeutically of someone you know has a virus and you're wanting to support recovery and also you know preventatively and it also has an affinity so a tropism for certain organs in the body and that would be the adrenals the kidneys and the lungs and so it does also help with the Regeneration of lung tissue the oxygenation but also because it's working with the adrenals and the kidneys it can be and that's you know in terms of Chinese medicine we'd look at that adrenal kidney energy as being related to the reproductive energy and so in Chinese medicine you know it's considered you know kidney tonic and a cheetonic so something that is going to build that virility infertility but also then thinking more physiologically it means it's going to be supportive for fatigue league and particularly things like chronic fatigue post-viral fatigue where there's a real you know a real need for for a boost cordyceps is something that I would consider in those cases like you know worst end of the spectrum but then at the other end of the spectrum if you're a healthy person and you're taking something that's going to increase your cellular energy increase your oxygenation it's something that's great for people who are wanting to improve athletic performance and that can either be you know on the track or in the bedroom um you know quarter steps yeah but it's yeah so it's one that actually you know if you're healthy and you're wanting to actually just improve your performance or recovery it's a really great one to consider amazing I've I actually saw it may have actually been from heat faster that I saw the study um but I saw some research on cordyceps in rheumatoid arthritis because I think it was sort of explained that from the research they'd found which may have been extracts I believe from cordyceps that it reduced the enzyme production in joints within in people that have rheumatoid arthritis and the enzymes basically degrade the joint and cause a lot of inflammation so it just goes to show you know you've spoken a lot about a diverse array of functions and obviously we're learning all the time what it can do so it is very much a watch this space as well this isn't it when we're looking at medicinal mushrooms yes exactly yeah I mean he first did collaborate uh on on a study with a Spanish organization which was looking at you know at arthritis of the knee and yes so it was cordyceps and ratio together and indeed the quadriceps working on those enzymes and the race you're working on the inflammation and Pain Management so yeah really then they're really good Synergy those too amazing what about turkey tail because we've mentioned turkey tail already um very much in the context of of cancer we you would explain that in Japan in the 80s I believe they had basically taken I think it was two extracts um psk psk and PSP PSP that's yeah and uh these these were basically patented as far as I'm aware so that they could then and use them as a drug pharmaceutical drug basically um is that the main action the main sort of use for turkey tail in terms of cancer support or are there any others that you might use turkey tail for yeah so the particularly psk but you know coriolis PSP is this antiviral effect and so again you know looking at sort of risk factors for um cancer often if there's actually now they're sort of seeing okay there's actually viral um you know evidence of you know virus in the in the the medical history and so they think that might be part again of you know the the effectiveness of uh turkey tail because it actually reduces viral load and so that's something that's really important to consider now when you know we're kind of worrying about viruses um but it's also something uh for things like you know for women for things like HPV um so there is you know potential there that you know this is viral load that kind of builds up over time and so there is some evidence there about you know using coriolis to help clear that and kind of you know using it preventatively or therapeutically and again you want to make sure that those active compounds are present to get that antiviral effect but really you know we think of you know coriolis either being antiviral or sort of you know oncology care those would be the main main areas I think that um mushrooms generally if I'm not mistaken as well have generally got an antiviral effect I think even The Culinary mushrooms they increase what we call interferons which basically stop cells from kind of helping viruses to replicate um is that correct just to make sure I'm not mistaken that yeah I mean there's there's different mechanisms that kind of come but certainly that you know sometimes they can interrupt viral replication sometimes yeah they're increasing you know the the immune system sometimes they're increasing um you know the they can actually kill the virus and you know deactivate them so there's yeah there's various different mechanisms but yes as you said they do you can increase interferon and that's true that you know to a degree again you know part of the immunomodulating effect is having slightly antiviral and also antibacterial and even you know anti-fungal anti-parasitic so it's this kind of like whole broad spectrum effect and then certain mushrooms are going to have you know certain compounds that do that more so shiitake we think of as being more anti-fungal whereas uh coriolis and quadriceps we think of as being more antiviral reishi is kind of this sort of like it does a bit of everything so you could use it in any of these and then another one Sun mushroom so that's um really useful for um a little bit for viruses but more for depressed immune system so those people who kind of chronically like any time anyone in the office gets a cold you know they're going to be the one that gets in they just have like chronic infections that go on and on or those kids that are always a bit Grizzly you know it's like you know Sun mushroom is one of those ones it has one of the highest levels of naturally occurring beta glucans those you know key active polysaccharides so it's really just a great one to boost the immune system I want to just draw upon a point there you mentioned about beta glucans now in the supplement industry beta glucans are now being used more and more in terms of an A supplement where they have been isolated and they're being used on their own what are your thoughts on using beta glucans in isolation oh well it's you know it's one of those those difficult things because there is certainly you know evidence that beta glucans are an active compound and they have a therapeutic effect um but there's certainly I mean I think one of the areas that you know he first really looks at in terms of research is whenever they work with mushrooms they want to look at the synergistic effect and in the same way that you know it took us a long time to realize that actually if you have bioflavonoids with your vitamin C it makes the vitamin C work better or if you have you know you want you don't just want calcium you want you know vitamin d and vitamin K you know it's like and I think with mushrooms there's a lot of uh you know interest and so research is done on like you know this one compound that we think does everything but you know actually you know there's a Synergy that happens and so it might be that yes this is going to have an effect but actually in Synergy with these other things that maybe haven't got so much research they can actually be doing really important roles and so by taking all of those things out you're only getting this like you know one or two or three benefits as opposed to maybe 20 benefits so I would say ideally you know you want to choose whole mushroom products you want to choose mushroom products where the other active compounds are also being standardized and it's not just that you know people are just guaranteeing you know one compound or an isolate because you know again we don't really want to turn mushrooms into you know Pharmaceuticals or isolates you know they are a natural medicine and there is this harmony you know within the mushroom itself and a lot of other compounds the terpenes or polyphenols that you know there's a whole the sterols there's lots of other ones that you know they we know that they do therapeutic things and that they are supporting you know perhaps you know better glue can certainly are the star but there's actually a lot of evidence that you know the terpenes particularly the triterpenes like it's one of the most important you know group of compounds in reishi and so if you're just having a better glucan product you're losing all of those other benefits so it's really interesting actually talking about this because of course I always think in nature things are given to us in the form that they're generally intended to be used in or at least they are in in synergism with their different compounds generally for a reason and it's often when we take one substance that we also end up with potential problems of course if we think of the pharmaceutical industry you know they might take salicylic acid from you know a plant let's just say from a herb and that in isolation could lead to digestive problems like stomach ulcers if we actually go back to you know Willow bar for example where we get this from they're actually compounds in the plant which protect the stomach from salicylic acid so it's always interesting when we go back to the original form it's generally there for a reason and I imagine this a bit like a football team if you've got a football team you want a team of in you know English football what 11 players you don't just want a striker a striker is not going to get you the desired effects because you want the synergies in between all the different parts that work together and as you've explained we have you know try terpenes in there very powerful compounds we have these beta glucans we have vitamin D you know you've got all these amazing things and ideally we want them to work together so I think what you said there makes absolute sense I completely agree with you um just thinking practically for people listening who want to let's just say they want to support their immune system um what would you recommend for them I mean what was the sort of thing that you would say as a take-home message for them to to be using these mushrooms so mushrooms um I mean you know as we've said a lot of culinary mushrooms actually have some active compounds so I'd say you know as a basic eat mushrooms you know and if you have a farmer's market or you have access to a place where they're going to have interesting varieties like a lot of you know I didn't really talk about you know other varieties but actually things like oyster mushroom is another one that people may be familiar with as a culinary mushroom and that comes in you know pink gray white there's a whole range and they all have slightly different active compounds you can get lion's mane you can get shiitake you can get agaricus family so eat mushrooms that you know that's the simplest thing that you can do you know to have them in your diet but you know if people are actually thinking well no I want something that's you know sort of standardized or you know it's going to get me a regular amount of certain active compounds then I'd say if you are generally healthy and you just want something that's going to be supportive and preventative then I'd say go for a blend because then you know the mushroom within themselves like you mentioned have this wonderful synergy but when working together often you know the parts are greater than the whole so actually having a blend if you're not trying to Target any specific thing it's actually going to give you broader benefits than perhaps you're thinking of and if you're not so familiar with mushrooms you might not know which one to choose whereas if you go for a blend that is like an immunity blend a digestive blend you know a metabolism regulating blend then it's like someone else has done the work for you and chosen the mushrooms that are going to address that need and I'd say that's something that's really useful to do and if you're generally healthy you can just go for a whole powder a product you know a non-extract and that is then giving you more prebiotics and some of the active compounds but I would say look for a product that actually guarantees that you're getting some active compounds if you see something that just says X percent polysaccharides so the polysaccharides you know we've mentioned better glucans but actually mushrooms have a lot of other you know polished acrides in their cell walls and they're like the equivalent of you know cellulase that you get in plants so it gives the mushroom structure it's going to have a Prebiotic effect but it's kind of inert in terms of therapeutic effect so if a product just says polysaccharides you don't know whether you're getting you know 30 letter glucan or you're getting one percent better glucan and 29 you know bulking fiber that is just like the cell wall of the mushroom so you want to choose a product that actually says X beta glucans X triterpenes you know whatever else is in there and if you actually are someone that you know maybe has a compromised immunity or has food allergies or has metabolic issues you know then maybe go for a concentrated extract and a blend that is going to be targeted towards that you know that condition or stronger immune support and you know mushrooms are safe to take long term so you can be taking one or two capsules um a day indefinitely and then if you have a particular a condition then you can go okay now I'm going to take a higher dose or specific mushrooms for that particular complaint or you know go and see a practitioner and they can guide you you know about which to take and or for how long but they're really safe you know and you can use them for your kids as well get a kids formula you know you want one that's going to be dose appropriate you know because kids are littler so a liquid formula or a powder that you can kind of dose to their body weight and that's a great you know preventative and supporting healthy gut balance healthy development that's great great advice and I I like the idea of using powders we used um reishi powder we sort of fluctuate between ratio and lion's mane of course and it's just easy I mean we make like a a raw cacao hot chocolate it's literally just some cacao and some you know plant-based milk and um put some powder in and it's it's you know you don't really taste much I mean you can taste a little bit with the lion's mane actually but I quite like the flavor that comes through um but obviously you can add it to hot food you can add it in to your smoothie there's lots of different ways that you could use powder I guess um so yeah lots of different ways we can use it now just thinking a little bit more outside the box what if somebody wanted to go doing some some foraging for mushrooms is this something that you would recommend I would say if you're going to your garage you really want to you know do your research and either find a foraging group or an expert or you know read some books and have a proper guide because you know there are actually a lot of poisonous mushrooms and some of them can look like the Edibles so you really want to know what you're doing so that's a kind of basic thing and then the other thing would be you want to look at where you're foraging and how clean the environment is because mushrooms are amazing they're actually they're kind of like sponges not just in their texture but also the fact that they will suck up not just nutrients from their environment but if there are any heavy metals any runoff any pesticides any you know anything like that in the wood or in the soil depending on what kind of type of mushroom they will suck that up so they can actually be really useful for cleaning soil or you know getting rid of toxic waste mushrooms are sometimes used even for clearing up nuclear waste but it what it means is if you you know you're collecting mushrooms in the wild you want to make sure that where you're doing that from is not a place where there's going to be runoff from some farms and you're getting these lovely fresh mushrooms but they're actually full of toxins so I would say you know with some research and guidance foraging can be a wonderful thing to do but if you're thinking about it from a health perspective yeah you just really need to know what your consuming is such a crucial part of our ecosystem aren't they when you think about it and literally you wherever you are you're literally millimeters away from fungus right you they're all around us um listen this has been such an interesting conversation um I really do love medicinal mushrooms I love using them with myself my patients um and to talk about it you know for me has been great fun I hope for our listeners it's been very interesting um I just thought a great way to finish the podcast would just be to hear from another little story of yours a real standout from your experience working with with medicinal mushrooms in a great case just sort of showcasing how powerful these are yeah um so one case and I mean and this wasn't you know kind of like a big thing but I thought it was really it was a really kind of important thing so I had a client who was uh you know sort of post-menopausal and she you know was kind of at that stage where her blood sugar was getting a bit High her cholesterol was getting a bit high and her doctor was kind of pushing for her to to start taking medication and she's someone who has always you know been chosen natural medicine and wanted to kind of do things herself and so she got her doctor to say look let her have three months and see if she could bring any of her numbers down and then you know have the discussion again about you know going on statins Etc and so I gave her um a medicinal mushroom blend designed for metabolism so shiitake maitaki reishi um and she did that three months of you know taking this regularly and when she went back and had her Bloods again um you know I think that was pretty much the only thing she changed because she was already taking a number of um supplements and her diet was quite good although you know a few things that were probably raising the the blood sugar um and yeah and you know she wasn't fully back into you know for her cholesterol it wasn't fully back in the the normal range but it had gone down like two or three points just in that period of time and her blood sugar had started going down as well and it was enough that you know her doctor said okay well we'll talk about it next time and so that was just really lovely to be able to support her in you know her desire about how she looked after herself and she wasn't because we had already looked at sort of diet and supplements she wasn't really having to make lots of extra changes it was just adding this in and it really you know made a profound difference over just a few months wow and you can see I guess when that's pretty much the only thing you've added in you can see the changes they're very powerful things thank you for your lovely story and thank you so much for your time Hanya you're very welcome it's been a pleasure foreign [Music]

Channel: College of Naturopathic Medicine

Views: 167,775

Keywords: medicinal mushrooms, mushrooms, reishi, benefits of medicinal mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms benefits, edible and medicinal mushrooms, reishi mushroom, chaga, mushroom, lions mane, cordyceps, adaptogens, medicinal mushrooms cancer, fungi, turkey tail mushroom, shiitake, medicinal mushroom, mycology, immune system, lions mane mushroom, mushrooms for sleep, wild foraging, herbal medicine, mycelium, fungus, cnm, cnm college, cnm podcast, podcast, health, natural health, medicine, naturopathy

Id: jhK4psXuSRM

Length: 74min 37sec (4477 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 02 2023