Que pasa, mufasa, what's up everybody?Happy Friday.Welcome to the Micropreneur Podcast.I'm your host, Dennis Walker.Today we've got lead herbalist at Real Mushrooms, Lee Carroll, back on the podcast for the second time.
Lee just completed a speaking tour in the United States informing folks about the science and benefit of mushrooms.Real mushrooms!None of that filler stuff.
Lee is extremely well positioned to discuss the physiological benefits of mushroom consumption and how consuming real mushroom extracts can help to alleviate inflammation and reduce cellular stress.
We're going to get into the science today, we're going to keep it fun at the same time, and this episode naturally is brought to you by Real Mushrooms, long-time supporters of the Mycopreneur podcast and pioneers in the functional mushroom industry, no less.
And you can check out more information about them at realmushrooms.com, use code LEE, L-E-E, for a significant discount on your purchase from Real Mushrooms.
And there's also a whole educational section on the website where you can really punch into the science of functional mushrooms.
So without further ado, thanks for being here, happy Friday, hope you're having a lovely day wherever you are, and let's get this show on the road.Okay, Pasa Mufasa, what's up everybody?We've got Lee Carroll, lead herbalist at Real Mushrooms.
He's out in Australia today joining us for the second time.Just completed a recent tour of the United States where he was lecturing on all kinds of different health benefits of mushrooms at different trade shows and universities, et cetera.
How are you today, Lee?Good to see you again.
I'm great.Thanks, Dennis.It's good to be back again.You're always a fun interview.
Oh, it's my pleasure to host you again because I really like your style.As everybody listening knows, I'm a big fan of real mushrooms and the whole team.And let's start off talking about your recent tour of the U.S.
You were at a number of different health events and trade shows, and those are great places to learn, to educate, to cross-pollinate.So tell us a little bit about your recent experience touring around the U.S.talking about real mushrooms.I'd love to.
I had the pleasure of living in the US for seven years between 2001 and 2008.And since then, I've been a regular traveler.And the US is kind of like my second home.
And particularly, I lived in Wisconsin, but California, I've got a kind of special relationship with.So my trip started off with a seminar in Berkeley.And for me, that just is like my home away from home.
Over the years, I've developed quite a loyal following of healthcare professionals in that Bay area.
And I had about 32 or three people for a whole day talking about ergothionine and the need for mushrooms in a regular diet to maintain health and longevity.
And I got the chance to drop some new information that we can talk about later in terms of how ergothionine works Every new paper, there's some discovery that makes it just much more of a compelling argument.
And the only place we get ergothionein in meaningful quantities is mushrooms, and particularly eating the mushroom as part of the diet.From there, I've got the chance to visit Namex, which is the parent company of real mushrooms.So I got to see
the operation up close and meet the key people.I spent some time with Sky Chilton, who's the CEO of Namex and Real Mushrooms, and nothing beats an in-person meeting.
You can have all of the Zoom calls you like, but until you kind of shake someone's hand and put your arm around their shoulder, you don't really get to know them that well.
So we had the chance to forage, and we picked a whole bunch of lobster mushrooms,
Sky's very skilled at identifying and picking out chanterelles in his local area, so we ended up with a big bag of chanterelles that we cooked up and had a big mushroom feast that night.
Namex is a fantastic company and Real Mushrooms is imbued with that quality kind of attribute.
And throughout my long career, I've only associated myself with companies that are really focused on doing things right, you know, honoring the traditions, advancing the traditions.
using science to validate what we know and using science to extend and enhance the knowledge base so that the tradition that we come from can grow and prosper and stay relevant and current to the modern setting.
their dedication to quality in the laboratory there is second to none.It was just a real joy and a pleasure to see the humility and the dedication and the brilliance of the science up close.So for me, that was a real highlight.
And it's always fun to go to Canada and get out into the woods.And then from there, I went back to the US And I've had some problems in immigration in the past.I ended up in the bowels of Charles Bradley back in 2013.There's a jail down there at LAX.
I ended up in there for a day because I had a technical violation of my visa, which was not really a problem.But I ended up in jail with, you know, like hardened drug dealers and people that were doing all sorts of terrible stuff.
So every time I go in and out of customs, I break out into a cold sweat.And those that are on the ball are like, why are you concerned?I'm like, well, man, let me tell you about my history.
Going in and out through the board is always a bit stressful.So I came back and I got the chance to speak at a veterinary conference called the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association.
And I've been at a whole lot of human conferences before, but not many veterinary ones.And I got to speak for half a day on a bunch of different mushroom topics.I talked about tremella, which is new to the veterinary community.
I got to talk about ergothionine, which is new to the community and then I had a rave about quality and why everybody needs mushrooms.And that was a fantastic experience.The holistic veterinarians are a wonderful group of people.
They're very receptive and they're clearly all very well trained and really appreciate the science and the value that new knowledge brings to their practice of animal medicine. And so that was a wonderful experience.
And, you know, meeting all of the vendors, I got to meet all these really cool people that are like in this shared space where we're all, you know, kind of collaborating, trying to do, you know, the right thing by the animals.
And then I ended up at a thing called FeedReal.The FeedReal Institute is an organization in San Diego, and they're dedicated to teaching people, pet owners, you know, how to feed their animals appropriately according to an evolutionary diet.
where raw, complex diets are the best way to go.So I didn't get to speak there, but I got to hang out with some internationally famous people.Karen Becker has got two million followers on Facebook, and Rodney Habib, and the Raw Pet Medics from UK.
So I had a real blast.It was a great way to finish off the trip.And then what it's like traveling, because I'm exhausted just watching your travels around the globe.
I got home and then I'm kind of cactus is maybe an Australian term where I'm just dead for about three or four days while my body's just recovering from the jet lag and all of the expenditure of energy.I'm naturally a bit more introverted.
The cost for a trip to me is a little bit more than someone like you who's naturally extroverted.
You know, I'm also cactus, as you say right now.I'm en route back home after almost three months of nonstop travel.
And I was just sharing with my friend I'm staying with here in Mexico City that I don't think I've been in a bed for three nights consecutively.I think that's the max for the last three months.
In some ways, it's extremely exciting, and I love it, and you get to see so many things.But I'm at that point where I'm just pining for heading home and being incapacitated for a few days.
And there are a lot of cool people out there, a lot of cool opportunities.And I tend to say yes when those opportunities knock. So most recently, I was just at the Oklahoma Mushroom Festival last week, and it was extraordinary.
Like, Oklahoma is one of those states that almost everybody coming from out of state, all of the mushroom people there outside of Oklahoma said, it's a flyover state.
I've driven through, but we had a fantastic time, Lee, because mushroom people are cool people.As you know, most of us are cool people.We want to connect.We want to learn.
We're all looking for solutions, growing our own food, growing our own medicine.But one thing I noticed in the heartland, not just Oklahoma, but also Illinois, Michigan, I was in Indiana for a spell, there's a lot of really rich, fatty foods.
And I've heard it referred to as the acronym MAD, Modern American Diet, right?MAD doesn't always accommodate for healthy foods.It doesn't always prioritize foods that are good for your body, right?
You see a lot of processed foods, a lot of fried foods, a lot of very rich foods, whilst those can be very delicious.And I did admittedly eat a chili Frito pie while I was in Oklahoma.I had to.
You see that they correlate with all kinds of health conditions, right?And there's an issue with people with adult onset diabetes, type two diabetes.There's issues with obesity, with just kind of like, you know, a general,
lethargy and chronic health conditions that are behavior related, right?So it led me to start thinking about the inflammation, right?That's underpinning a lot of chronic illnesses.
People eating these really rich processed diets, more affordable, more convenient in many cases, unfortunately.
And I realized that mushrooms and having supplements of mushrooms, eating mushrooms, having ergothionine, which we can talk about, that's actually a key antidote, I believe, to inflammation.
And I know this is one of your areas of specialty as an herbalist, so can you tell us a little bit about some of the ways that having mushrooms in your diet and having a good mushroom supplement routine might be able to counteract or at least help mitigate some of these symptoms and underlying causes of this modern American diet?
Sure, it's a long answer so I'll just give you like little bits because you know there's textbooks written on that topic and there's like thousands of scientific papers.
So at the heart of it, inflammation is cellular stress which becomes uncontrollable.So in a healthy state,
all of the cells of our body can work together so that they can maintain their function without stress developing to the point where the cells can no longer cope with it.And then when cells can no longer cope with their stress,
they need to engage inflammatory mediators, which can control that stress.If you can't control inflammation, then it goes to the next stage, which can cause aberration in the cellular development.You can end up with cancers and that sort of thing.
So inflammation's a natural process in the body that just is designed to keep us healthy.And the modern world is a, disconnects us from what we need and how we need to live our lifestyle to allow our body to stay in that healthy zone.
Mushrooms play a really important role at multiple levels in this whole thing. What you just described was the dietary aspect.
And, you know, clearly, you know, if you're eating a lot of those man-made foods, you know, you're missing out on lots of nutrients.So there's a nutrient debt that you develop.
But one of the biggest things that you lack in that type of diet is complex fibers.So the bacteria in the gut need to be seen as another organ in our body. And the modern diet feeds them, you know, those nutrients that you just described.
So, you know, high fat, high sugar.So whatever we're feeding our gut, the bacteria in our gut start to eat that food.And then the population of those bacteria alters and changes in relation to what we're eating.
So when we eat that modern process, fast food, mad diet, you know, as you described it, it significantly alters the bowel flora.And then that creates changes in the inflammatory state in the body because all of a sudden,
you've got a population of bacteria in your gut that are no longer designed to be at such high levels.And little bits and pieces of their cell walls break off and they get in through the gut.
They can cause too much stress, which becomes inflammation.And then the you know, those inflammatory kind of molecules start to circulate in the body and then you start to get this global, you know, kind of change that takes place.
So if you combine that with the lack of all of the nutrients that we need, so, you know, we need omega-3 fatty acids, you know, we need all of our vitamins and minerals, you know, in inappropriate levels.
In the modern world, where we've got that disconnection, and we're living sedentary lifestyles, and we're not exercising enough, and the stress of those two things which are separate, you know, kind of inputs, you know, help to, you know,
elevate the levels of inflammation.People don't sleep well.People deliberately starve themselves of sleep, you know, so they can get more work done.
And then there's not the same restoration capacity that the body has because we're not getting enough sleep to do that.
So you've got this kind of snowballing effect, which creates this inflammatory environment, which is kind of the mother of all diseases.And in a large part, it begins in the gastrointestinal tract,
So in terms of my view of how mushrooms help to correct this, when you eat a mushroom and real mushrooms, many of the products are one-to-one extracts.So the whole mushroom is boiled up in water and then it's dehydrated.
And then the whole mushroom is then put into the packet.So there's nothing left out.It's been boiled up to release all the good stuff. So you've got the equivalent of eating a mushroom.So you've got all of the soluble and insoluble fibers.
So when you consume a mushroom, those soluble and insoluble fibers start the process of reorganizing the bowel flora.So we can head back towards a more healthy level of diversity. and a healthy balance in terms of the different bacteria.
And then that begins the process of starting to wind back the production of those inflammatory mediators, which takes the pressure off the whole body.
Some of those beta-glucans and polysaccharides get into the bloodstream and they interact with our immune system and tissues that have got the capacity to recognize those types of molecules.
and it has a calming influence on the immune system so that the drive towards inflammation can be kind of dampened down.
It's like, would be like, you know, putting a bit of water or spraying a gentle mist, you know, like over a fire, it just can take kind of some of the heat out of it.And then every mushroom's got a little bit of ergothionine in it.
At the very heart of inflammation, we've got uncontrolled cellular stress and ergothionine plays a really important role in preventing cells from becoming inflammatory.So it helps cells deal with their local stress and without it becoming a problem.
And if there is an inflammatory state and there is challenges in tissues, then additional ergothionine can support the body's process of going back to a more normal state.So we can talk a bit more about ergothionine later.
And then each individual mushroom has got its own unique set of chemistry that can have impacts on various levels of stress and inflammation.So reishi is a good example, and good reishi should taste bitter.
and the myceliated grain type products, which pass themselves off as mushrooms.This is a really good example of sticking with the tradition.Mycelium doesn't make clinically meaningful levels of these bitter molecules.
So mycelium on grain doesn't have any of these molecules.So it doesn't reflect any of the traditional knowledge that comes through that aspect of the mushrooms chemistry.So when you get a,
a reishi mushroom, you're getting very high levels of triterpenes, which are a broad array of different types of molecules.Ganoderic acid A is the main one, but it's got a lot of friends and there might be 20 or 30 friends at that kind of party
where they're delivering their chemical benefits, and those molecules interact with a whole set of receptors in the body that help to control stress and cell health in very unique and particular ways.
So the bitterness of reishi interacts with bitter receptors, and bitter receptors only exist on the tongue in many people's minds, The science tells us that bitter receptors are everywhere in the body.
And for example, they're very highly expressed in the heart.And Reishi's got this tradition around being a cardiovascular herb.And a lot of the inflammatory insults that we experience cause damage in arteries.So we end up with atherosclerosis.
There's insults to the heart where we can end up with cardiac problems.And the bitter receptors, that are affected by Reishi have never been looked at by any scientists.So it's a rich vein of kind of research for someone to do some work.
But based on the structure of those molecules, the Reishi interacts with potentially three of those beta receptors, humans have 25 of them.And of those 25, nine of them are expressed in the heart and the vascular system.
So, when we consume the beta molecules of Reishi, there's...
Currently, it's my hypothesis that these bitter molecules are interacting with bitter receptors to control the stress levels in the heart and the vascular system to prevent the development of those conditions.
So, when we've got someone with this inflammatory diet that you've been talking about, you know, for many of us, the solution is,
to have anti-inflammatory effects from the medicines we take and then change our lifestyle to allow us to come back into a kind of state of balance and health.
So mushrooms, if they're consumed on a regular basis throughout your life, your chance of developing those conditions is significantly reduced.And if you're trying to have a corrective action,
then, you know, mushrooms like golden oyster that are high in ergothionine.
And then Reishi, for example, you know, from that kind of bitterness angle, the polysaccharides in Reishi kind of have similar effects in tissues, but via different mechanisms.You can support a patient, you know, back to health and then
As a herbalist, I use a whole range of different herbal preparations for different types of inflammatory states.So highly bioavailable curcumin is really good for generalized inflammation.
Boswellia is really good for inflammation in the gut and inflammation in the joints, for example.And then there's nuanced anti-inflammatory herbs, which deal with all of the different conditions that are going on.
But I'm at the point now in my career where Mushrooms are the missing link in a modern diet.And it's not possible for everybody to consume mushrooms as a food.You know, if you're stuck in the Oklahoma hotel and you're looking for fresh fruit,
and you can't find that, there's no chance you're ever gonna find a fresh mushroom, because that's even further down the list.So we need to be consuming mushrooms as dietary supplements on a daily basis to help mitigate against these things.
And Real Mushrooms is at the forefront of delivering quality mushroom products that honor the tradition and honor the modern science. Five defenders would be a good place to start for people.
I carried real mushroom supplements around the world with me and they were very helpful in combating jet lag and fatigue and all kinds of different things as a generality, as a generalization between these places I talked about in Illinois and Indiana and then even over in California, right?
the maybe family, community, et cetera, I grew up in.You go to a nice dinner with people.And again, it wasn't like we were having always farm fresh food.It was like, we're having deep dish pizza tonight, which deep dish pizza is great as a treat.
But after just spending three months in Europe, after spending a lot of time living in Mexico, surrounded by farmers, going to farmers markets, et cetera, I really noticed the impact on my body, right?
Being like, all right, sure, we're going to have the fried chicken today with everyone else.And, ooh, wait, we're going to have jalapeno burgers for dinner after we had the fried chicken for lunch?But it's the modern American diet, you know?
And I'm not suggesting, of course, that you eat those things and then just take mushroom supplements on the side and they counteract each other.Of course, you've got to find some kind of balance and have some healthy, fresh foods.
It is a thing I've noticed a lot in the communities that I grew up in and the families.And, you know, I've had the discussion with my wife while we were traveling about like quite a few people we know are on different pharmaceuticals.
You know, they're on different drugs that are given to them to counteract these different adult onset or behavioral related conditions.Right.And Oh, there's the church bells going off right there.Nice.Must be a 4 20 PM right now.Yeah.
So there's a lot we could talk about there.And I did want to mention that I would oftentimes when we were traveling, if I felt tired, if I, you know, felt I needed to, get a little pep in my step.
I would take some Lion's Mane, some Five Defenders, some Rishi, et cetera, and it works.It works for me.So the proof's in the pudding.You yourself look great, by the way.I know this is a podcast.
We'll definitely release some video, but the proof's in the pudding right there.Again, so I feel like whatever you're doing, it's working.So that's great.You're sharp, you're cogent, and that's all the proof that I need right now.
So let's punch in more on Ergo Thione, because it's one of those, buzzwords.I've heard you talk about it.
We've discussed it on the podcast before, but if you were to go take a query of people in the area, I don't think too many of them would be able to tell you what ergothionine is.
So maybe you could do that for us and tell us a little bit about what ergothionine is and why is ergothionine important to add to a diet and to have a regular intake of?
Right up my alley, that question.And It's a little bit technical and scientific, but many scientific things have become commonplace like in our modern world.So the issue with ergothionine is that it's just not popular.
So people haven't heard the message.And ergothionine is as important as vitamin C, and everybody knows that you need a bit of vitamin C every day to be healthy.So ergo is in that same kind of category.
At the cellular level of our body, we are evolutionarily designed to need this stuff.It doesn't meet the definition of a vitamin because if you miss out on it, it's not lethal.The damage that low levels of ergothionine cause
develop over the course of your life.So you don't live as long and you get more age-related disease.
So if we tweak the definition of a vitamin to say that, you know, it was lethal over a long period of time rather than a short period of time, then it would actually meet that definition.So humans have got trans-border proteins.So these are like
molecular doorways that allow nutrients into our body.So us and all of our animal friends and pets have all got these transporters in our small intestine and our large intestine.So we bring it in avidly.So none of this stuff gets wasted.
Whatever you put in your mouth gets sucked into your bloodstream. And then all of the cells in our body have got these same doorways that bring it in.But once it's brought in, those doorways don't let you out.
So ergothionine stays kind of stuck in our cells.And there isn't a water-soluble vitamin that has that kind of attribute.So from an evolutionary point of view, it's really very important.And our body wouldn't do that if it wasn't like necessary.
And the reason I think that it avidly hangs onto it is because in a,
In an evolutionarily kind of old environment, so our early Homo sapien ancestors, our Neanderthal cousins, you know, all of the hominids in our long lineage that go over millions of years,
I believe that they all avidly ate mushrooms when they were available.And as a, as a mycophile yourself, you know, that mushrooms just aren't on demand.You know, you, you can't just walk out and pick them at, at will.
You've got to be, you've got to know where to look and it's a seasonal thing.
So I think that from an evolutionary point of view, when a food stuff is scarce and it's got a valuable nutrient in it, humans would have consumed and our early hominids would have consumed large quantities of mushrooms
sporadically or stochastically throughout the year.And the body was designed to hang on to this stuff.So we have to think about it as a vitamin.And it comes mostly from mushrooms.Plants get some because it's in soil fungi and the plants take it up.
But there's a 10 to 20 times less order of magnitude in a plant. the modern world it's very hard to eat enough plants to get your daily requirement of ergothionine so it needs to come from mushrooms.
And then what it does in the body and all of the discussion is around its antioxidant activities but the recent research tells us that it's got non-antioxidant activities which are as equally as important.So
Just to touch briefly on the antioxidant stuff, because it can get a bit kind of heady.And if you're not up for the discussion, you can get a bit lost.But a cell, just imagine a balloon filled with water.
the membrane of the balloon is the cell membrane and the water is inside the cell.And in there, you've got your nucleus and you've got your ribosomes and all of the stuff that makes us work.
So if you multiplied that balloon by all of its different shapes, you'd get like a whole body.So we could zoom in and just reduce us to the one cell.
So inside that cell, that cell's producing energy and it's being asked to do things and have demands placed on it. And the energy comes from mitochondria.
So, as the mitochondria produce energy, they produce waste, just like the exhaust of an old school, you know, gas-driven engine.And that exhaust promotes the development of cellular defenses that keep that cell healthy.
So while that cell's operating, there's this kind of harmonious perpetual motion thing that goes on that keeps it healthy.
So when a cell gets stressed, you could think about it as the water in that balloon changing to becoming more acidic, so more like vinegar.
So the more acidic the aqueous environment becomes, the more bogged down the cell gets because proteins can't function properly in an acidic environment.
If you crack an egg into some water with vinegar in it, you can make the clear of the egg go white because it changes the conformational shapes of all of the proteins.
and what makes our cells work are all of these tiny proteinaceous molecular motors that all work together in this like crazily complex biological machine.
If you've ever seen the animations of an ATPase enzyme making ATP, it's just like the most mesmerizing kind of thing you can ever see.So I'm getting to the point where
Ergothionine plays a role in cellular stress by when the cell becomes more acidic it gets turned on and it defends the cell against that acidity and then when the cell comes back to normal the ergothionine retreats back to its non-active form and it sits in the background and it works in concert with glutathione.
So glutathione levels go up and down based on the cellular need And then when glutathione is a bit depleted, it gets regenerated back to its active form.So if you've got a bunch of stress happening at that cellular level, glutathione can be low.
And then if Ergotheionine, when glutathione is low, the pH changes and that's where ergotheionine gets switched on and it protects the cell.
So when ergotheionine, sorry, when glutathione comes back to its protective levels, ergotheionine is not needed anymore, the pH changes back to normal and then it sits in the background.So you've got this kind of biochemical tag team match going on
where glutathione and ergothione support each other to keep the cell permanently protected against the stress.And many, many people are deficient in ergothione and the average American diet is deficient by about three or four milligrams a day.
So every one, every, potentially every, adult American is not managing that stress properly at that low, at that kind of cellular level.
And then when we don't manage stress properly, it becomes inflammation and then it becomes disease and then we become unhealthy.
And then the diseases associated with low ergothionein, cardiovascular diseases, all of the neurodegenerative diseases, frailty and aging, poor health outcomes in pregnancy with women, macular degeneration, some gastrointestinal diseases.
So the picture is emerging that this stuff is just really crucial and vital for human health.
Thank you for that, for punching in.I know we have a lot of science nerds who listen to the podcast.Shout out to all the science nerds out there. Is ergothionine a compound that is more prevalent in one particular type of mushroom?
Or is it something that can be selected for and optimized?Because I know it's a product that you've introduced and Real Mushrooms has ergothionine available.
But like, for example, does shiitake have a different level of ergothionine than a lion's mane or another mushroom?Or can you speak at all about that?
Yeah, definitely.The ergo is present in all mushrooms. So, it doesn't matter which mushroom, you're going to get some.But there are hierarchies.
And that evolutionary kind of concept that I just introduced, our early ancestors in Europe ate vast quantities of boletes. of all different types.And the porcinis, like the signature mushroom of Europe particularly, but maybe Italy in particular.
And that has really, really high levels.And I think that it's one of the reasons why, you know, people from that area, you know, developed the way that they did because their early ancestors had access to these very, very high levels of ergothionine.
But in terms of regular mushroom consumption, the shiitake, lion's mane, and oyster all contain around one milligram of ergo per dry mushroom weight.So those ones are really good to choose if you're actually eating a mushroom.
And then the portobello, the crimini, the white button mushroom, they're around 0.4 to 0.5 of a milligram per dry weight.So they're about half as good.
But there's a variety of oyster mushroom, or a species rather, and then a variety of that species, Plerotus citrinopolitis, I think that's how to say it, is the golden or the yellow oyster.
And it's a veritable ergothionine factory, and it can make up to 10 milligrams per gram of dry weight. And that's the one that real mushrooms and Namex have chosen to be incorporated into the Ergo Plus product.
So when you consume that mushroom, you're getting very high levels of Ergo plus all of the other stuff that the mushroom delivers.And oyster mushrooms are profoundly immunological.They've got chemistry in them that's not fully elucidated.So my,
Being a traditionalist, my preference is to have as much ergothionine as possible coming from the mushroom rather than the pure sources that are available where it gets made by E. coli or yeast in particular.
So every capsule of ergo gold has got 10 milligrams of ergothionine in it.And there's a little bit of pure and there's a lot of it from the golden oyster.And all you need is one of those capsules a day.
And as an adult from the age of about 30, because it takes, 20 or 30 years for these diseases of aging to kick in.So you can't wait until you've got the cardiovascular diagnosis or you're 65 and you're like, geez, my memory's really bad.
What the hell's going on?You've got to act on it much earlier.So in your early 30s and maybe 40s at the latest, you've got to be taking this stuff so that these diseases don't develop because they've got a really long arc of development.You can't
You can procrastinate on some things and you can pass the test, but you can't procrastinate on your health.So one capsule every day, or even Monday to Friday, take the weekend off, is my prescription for healthy life, long-term life, healthy span.
Awesome.Well, thank you for that.And I see that you've got a number of different extracts behind you.
It looks like you've got the cordyceps, of course, chaga, turkey tail, probably reishi next to that, but would love it if you could tell us a little bit about your daily mushroom intake, Lee.
What are the different mushroom supplements that you take in a day and what times of day do you take them?
Okay, that's a good place to go.Well, let's start off by saying I'm 65.
I was 65 in July of this year, and I've got some environmental damage to my thyroid, so I need to take T3, which is one of the thyroid hormones, but I don't take any other pharmaceuticals. I'm pretty healthy.
I exercise maybe six or seven hours a week.I think that's really important to your health span and your lifespan.I do practice what I preach.For my age, I think I'm in the top echelons of healthy people.
So I've been doing this a long time, and I started introducing mushrooms in 2020.So it's been about four years now, and there has been an absolute revolution in my health over that period of time.I don't get sick nearly as often.
My frequency of winter infections has been cut in half.The severity is much reduced. My hair, curiously, it doesn't look like it in the camera here, but I've got a lot of new black hair growth in my head.
The whole front of my head used to be pure white.There's about 15, 20% black hairs now, so there's something really curious going on with mushrooms.
I don't particularly care about the color of my hair, but what's happening to my pancreas or the linings of my blood vessels or my kidney or my lungs?
When you do mushrooms over a long period of time, you get these rejuvenating effects, which kind of tap into some of the traditions.So in terms of what I take every day, with mushrooms, the more you take, the better off you are in most cases.
So I do five defenders every day.I do lion's mane every day.I do cordyceps every day.And I do ergothionein every day. And I've got a little bit of tinnitus going on, which is quite common in older people.
And something happens in the audio processing center.And when the hair cells in the ear die off because of loud noise or poor vascular function.The audio processing center can't kind of suppress the noise.
Like your ears ring after a rock concert the next day and then it stops ringing because your brain works out to stop that buzzing noise from the dead hair cells.So I'm experimenting with high doses of ergothioneine.I'm doing
20 to 40 milligrams of ergothionine a day.I'm going to do that for another year to see if that has any benefit.Where I think, you know, for people in my age bracket, 20 milligrams a day is probably a kind of relevant dose.
Younger people, 10 milligrams a day.And then in terms of quantity, I do quite a lot.I also add tremella in.I forgot to do that one.So I don't take them as capsules.I take them as powders and I like to drink them as a beverage.
Although I do the ergothionein as a capsule.So I'm having a three half teaspoons of five Defenders a day, which is kind of like the maximum end of the spectrum.
I'm doing multiple doses of Lion's Mane because I like the taste and multiple doses of Tremella because I like the taste.And I'll have them in hot water.I like peppermint tea, for example, and Lion's Mane,
and tremella go really well in peppermint tea with a little bit of grated fresh ginger.That's a really lovely drink.And I eat mushrooms as much as I can, but even an avid mycophile, it's pretty hard to eat mushrooms at every meal.
So I'm eating, you know, like a big bowl of mushrooms, you know, maybe a couple of times a week, you know, without trying to forcing myself, you know, to do that.
I think, you know, for the average person, you know, that one to two capsules of ergo a day, two to three or maybe four capsules of the five defenders, you know, would be, two is the long-term maintenance dose, you know, like if you've got some health issues, you know, three or four or five or six even.
And then Lion's Mane, to get access to the clinical trial data, you need, in my world, you probably need about three grams a day.
And with Tremella, you need about the same to get the low end of the kind of medical benefits, which is around three grams a day.
Awesome.You know, I take them on an as-needed basis.I feel like I could probably regimentize them a little more.
I know there are some people who take, you know, these mushrooms in the morning, these mushrooms in the afternoon, these mushrooms in the evening.And there are different approaches, right?And different people do it.And I find it,
just to incorporate more mushrooms into your diet and whatever way you can do it.
And the powders and the tinctures, you know, there are different philosophies and schools of thought, but I have a ton of different mushroom products and many real mushrooms extracts.I like making smoothies.I like sometimes, you know, you just
pop them into water if that's what you have you're traveling or whatever and you're like I'm gonna I like tremella that's for me one that's kind of what I call a sleeper banger like you hear a lot about lion's mane or reishi cordyceps these are vital mushrooms but tremella great skin health properties and you know being over in Korea two years ago I bought skin cream for my face that has tremella and it's very moisturizing and
I love studying different cultures and the way they use mushrooms.So yeah, for me, it's just about having a lot of them on you.And it's always been useful for me.I feel a clear difference if I'm loading up on mushrooms and going about my day.
Again, that pep in the step is what I'm going for.People say, You look a little bit ebullient.You look like you have a certain brightness to you.I'm like, it's the mushrooms.I promise.Try it.Try it for yourself.See how you feel.
So Lee, I really enjoy talking to you.
And I want to leave you the last few minutes of our interview here to talk about some of the exciting projects you have on the horizon, some of the different things that real mushrooms are looking forward to and involved in, and what's going on for the next couple of months or next six months to a year for you.
Thanks Dennis.I'm working on this project to enhance the knowledge and understanding around how ergothionine works.So there was a recent paper published that showed that ergothionine gets upregulated in muscle cells when you exercise it.
This is in mice and I think it'll translate into humans.And when ergothionine goes into a mitochondria, It doesn't have an antioxidant role.It has a cell regulating role.
And there's an enzyme that no one's heard about in a mitochondria, which is a very important player in looking after the stress levels in mitochondria and improving mitochondrial respiration.
And respiration is the production of ATP, so production of energy.So this enzyme uses a sulfur source, in a healthy person.Cysteine, which is an amino acid, is the primary sulfur source, but mushrooms have got sulfur sources as well.
So shiitake's got very unique sulfur molecules, reishi's got unique sulfur molecules.So this project that I'm working on brings in a lot of different, you know, kind of threads.And
When ergo interacts with this enzyme, it makes the enzyme work faster and it produces hydrogen sulfide and it produces pyruvate.
And the hydrogen sulfide is too complex to talk about like as a conclusion to the talk, but it promotes antioxidant activity within the mitochondria.So it protects it against the increased respiration being created by the pyruvate.
is kind of like an energy molecule that ends up getting used in the mitochondria.
So when we think about mitochondria, they're at the heart of all of those inflammatory diseases that we talked about and all of the other challenges that we've talked about during the interview.
So dysfunctional mitochondria are a really important kind of fundamental level of managing human health. So ergo has potentially got this whole new avenue of discovery in terms of the way that it interacts with that particular enzyme.
And I went into one of the databases that allows you to interrogate how
molecules interact with human proteins and the shape of ergothionine is potentially able to interact with a whole host of other proteins, not just that one enzyme in the mitochondria.
And there's a very significant overlap between those proteins and the diseases that you get when you have low ergothionine.So I'm working on developing a bigger kind of
dissertation on ergothionine that makes it more important than just being a cellular antioxidant.So for me, that's a big thing.I'm also working on a big piece on quality for real mushrooms.
There's lots of misinformation and there's a lot of guerrilla tactics being used, you know, by marketeers and companies that are trying to cash in on the bandwagon, but without honoring the tradition.
So I'm a long way down the track of producing like maybe an hour and 15 hour and 20 minute long presentation on
the unbiased view of quality and how a layperson and also a practitioner can interpret the misinformation that they're getting from the market.So some cool stuff I'm working on.
I'd say so.And I'd be remiss if we didn't save the best for last and talk a little bit about the fruiting body versus mycelium on grain products.Now, I was just out at the International Medicinal Mushroom Conference in Bari, Italy.
And there were a number of representatives from companies that are producing mycelium on-grain products.
There was just a lot of conversation about, actually, because of this technology and proprietary technique we've developed, the mycelium on-grain actually has these higher levels of compounds.
And you're talking about the marketeering and the different spin that people can put on things.
Well, leaning into tradition, I'm not aware of any culture throughout history that ever used any kind of mycelium on grain product, unless you're talking about tempeh, right?Or like a food product that's maybe a little bit different of a category.
But nevertheless, this is one of the key bifurcations, misunderstandings, and flat out disagreements in the functional mushroom industry. It comes down to fruiting body versus mycelium on grain.
And then you have the separate and distinct subcategory of pure mycelium, which people are doing with bioreactors.
Well, when we talk about labeling, which is something that Real Mushrooms has campaigned for more accurate labeling, which I think is a good idea across the board. It just creates this huge confusion that downstream reaches the consumer, right?
Where, what is in this product?And we see this across the board in mushroom products.So I'd love it if you could close the loop a little bit and tell us about some of your research into this fruiting body versus mycelium on grain.
Well, you set the stage for me to kind of just stitch it all together.We use mushrooms because there's a human tradition around that.
from an archeological point of view, humans have been consuming the fruiting bodies of fungi for at least 50 or 60,000 years that we've got like hard evidence when you scrape the teeth of archeological specimens.
So the medicinal systems that we rely on to drive our current use of these things have all focused on the mushroom.And the mushroom has got chemistry which interacts with our body, which brings about the health benefits.
So if we want to get really scientific and very accurate, it's the chemistry in the product that drives the health benefit.
So along comes mycelium on grain, and they claim that it's, initially it was claimed that it was a mushroom, you know, just to try and trick people into thinking, you know, that they were buying a mushroom.
Mycelium on grain is very cheap to make, it's pennies compared to you know, tens of dollars, you know, to make a kilo of each one.So companies that sell these things are making kind of huge profits as a result of it.
And the marketing around mycelium on grain obfuscates the argument so that it's no longer about the chemistry.
But if you would just sweep away all of the kind of hype and spin that gets created, and you just get left with the chemistry, what's in mycelium on grain that could possibly be having a health benefit?
And mycelium on grain has incredibly low levels of beta-glucans, which are clinically not relevant. basically no ergothionine, so you don't get any of those benefits.
If you're looking at reishi, reishi needs wood as a raw material to provide the lignin to make the triterpenes.So my mycelium on grain reishi has no triterpenes.
So if you could point to the chemistry and say this is what's driving the health benefits of these products, then I would be able to get on board with it. I think that maybe there is some benefit in a fermented grain.
Fermented is not technically the correct word, but like a myceliated grain where the grain's been digested and transformed.
And it's likely the transformation of the native chemistry of the grain, and oats is much more chemically complex than brown rice.It's likely the creation of novel molecules from that digestion process. that might drive some of the therapy.
But I haven't seen any compelling data to show that any of that chemistry is at a level where it could actually benefit the human body.
There might be interactions going on with the gastrointestinal tract, so that those fermented grains might be feeding the bowel flora as a prebiotic, which are producing some of the changes.
There are some clinical trials which can demonstrate some changes in oxidative stress levels in the human body.
But if we're wanting to honour the tradition and if we're wanting to be scientific about it, you can't go past the fact that it's the chemistry which delivers the benefits.
And there isn't any chemical elements in mycelium on grain that you can point to to say that They're the same as in the mushroom, or they're novel and new.That's like the missing thing.
And when you ask companies and company representatives that pointy question, they can't answer it.
They say, oh yeah, we've detected these things, but they never give you the levels and they won't ever say that they're at a level that would be therapeutic. That's my kind of rave on that topic.Yeah, it's scandalous.
And maybe if we could eat a hamburger patty sized piece of myceliated grain, you know, that might be good for our bowel flora.But, you know, taking a, you know, a gram or two a day is very likely.
to have no benefit and famous people promote these things.And so the placebo benefits that are being delivered are kind of world's best practice, like in terms of that domain.
It is scandalous as you've alluded to, and it's a fascinating topic that I hope to continue speaking about.
And I'd love to hear the perspective of some of the producers, you know, I've not been able to corral one of them to come and speak at length about it.But as you say,
It is a very inflammatory topic to bring it back to our inflammation that we're discussing.
And I'd love to keep this as an ongoing dialogue, because I'm just as interested in getting to the bottom of all this as hopefully everyone else is, because I want to benefit from mushrooms.
And you've got producers out here saying that they've found some new proprietary novel technique and it has these benefits to it.And then
You know, that doesn't square with tradition, A, and it doesn't square with my experience, B, but I'm a journalistically inquiry-minded individual.So I want to hear more, and I hope that we can keep this conversation going.
But for today, thank you very much, Lee Carroll, for joining us. Big fan of your work.Big fan of real mushrooms.You're welcome back anytime.
Thanks, Dennis.It's been lovely talking to you.And my last comment is if people use my name, L double E, and E is a very hard letter to say for an Australian. So the fifth letter of the alphabet.
So if you use my name, you'll get a 20% discount if you place an order with real mushrooms.So start your journey and live a healthy and a long life by consuming mushrooms every day.
Thanks everyone for listening and hanging out with us.Don't be a stranger.Hit us with some feedback, get in touch with Lee.All of his contact information will be attached to the episode notes.
And I hope you have a wonderful morning since you're in Australia and looking forward to seeing you hopefully somewhere on the trade show and university circuit so we can enjoy meeting in person and continuing this conversation.So thanks again, Lee.
Yeah, I would love that, Dennis.
Thanks very much.Cheers.And that is a wrap.Thank you for sticking around to the bitter end.It's very sweet of you to commit so thoroughly.Don't be a stranger.
Let me know what you thought of this episode and please consider checking out the substantial backlog while you're at it.
You can reach out to me via email, micropreneur at gmail.com, or hit me on any of the numerous social platforms that I'm currently active on.At Micropreneur Podcast is the handle on Instagram and Twitter.Thank you all very much for sticking around.
Have a wonderful day.I'll see you back here next week on the Micropreneur Podcast.
