Hi, and welcome to another episode of the improving Berry podcast where I interview experts in health and wellness.
And this week, I talk again with Eric Puro from Kappa mushrooms and Kappa Biotech.
We talk about a lot of things, including
the quality and issues around quality with mushroom products,
how to spot quality mushroom products,
We speak about some of the specific mushrooms,
including turkey tail and cordyceps,
and we also talk a little bit about psilocybin
mushrooms.
For the full transcript, go to www.improvingberry.com.
As always, enjoy this episode.
Let's get started.
So,
thank you for doing part 2.
Part 1 was very well received by,
my audio sort of people listening and viewing
because it turns out people love functional mushrooms.
And, you know, it's like a hidden gem that adds so much value
with so little downside, you know, almost no no side effects, but just these magical things that you can take in
and do all sorts of stuff. And and as we discussed last time, there's lots of science behind this, why these things,
work with, beta glucans and, they up regulate or,
immuno regulate the immune system and do magical things. We'll get into some of the specific mushrooms today as well.
But let's start with,
one thing that you posted on LinkedIn,
and that's about,
quality issues when it comes to functional mushrooms.
And you,
commented there on an article on a website that's titled Mushroom Supplements
Market Analysis called for
calls for more rigorous quality control.
Can you tell us what's going on here?
Yeah. Well, great to be here and it's nice to get a little bit deeper. I think we could probably do part 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Yeah.
But, yeah, I think that,
what
I mean, it's it's nice to hear that your your audience is interesting in this kind of topics and,
obviously functional mushrooms are are 2nd fastest growing trend. In in the food supplement space, nutraceutical
space.
People are getting real results and telling their friends, and it's getting bigger. And I think that,
you know, as as a industry grows this fast.
I mean, we're talking when we started the company 6, 7 years ago,
we were placing a very risky bet that this is all gonna work out and that people are gonna be interested in in mushrooms We had no idea. There was a handful of companies in the US market mainly working with these.
You know, it wasn't a huge industry.
We just said, hey. This is we see a lot of promise here, and let's let's get going.
And, obviously, it took us many years to start to learn how to grow the mushrooms and then extract them and everything.
But I think that it's, you know, now it's growing so fast that
you're seeing,
regulators
a bit not sure what their job is here or what their role is. I mean, for the 1st 4 or 5 years of our company,
the,
the Finnish,
regulating authority
went to go analyze how we grow the mushrooms, right, and all that they could use for the organic standards was plants. And it's like, well, they're so different. They're so they're so massively different.
I mean, the difference between mycelium and a seed from a plant is is crazy different. So we've had to have these conversations and improve the the educate the the regulators, which is a very strange place to be in as a company. That's that's the worst. We wanna be just told what what is we wanna have them more know more than we do, not the other way around. And I think that this I think you're referencing a paper called something around, like, the Pandora's boxes open,
you know, Yeah. Yeah. I think if you if I if I know what you're talking about on LinkedIn, but it's a it's a quality,
analysis,
done by a colleague of mine on the international medicinal mushroom society.
Doctor Giuseppe out of Italy,
and his his team, of course, is not just one guy. But, yeah, they took, you know, 19
different products that were top sellers in the Italian market on Amazon,
all from Chinese origin,
and they looked at you know, a whole range of different categories, heavy metal values,
the DNA of what's inside,
the efficacy,
And I think that it's really you know, they called it open let's open Pandora's box for a reason because they kind of probably
the us in the industry know the quality issues for sure with with Chinese origin material and how sketchy that is. And not to say that all material that comes from China is bad. For sure, no. You know,
And there there are brands that I know personally who have visited China who go there in audit about every 3 to 6 months. Do quality testing themselves, DNA analysis, everything else, when the products are landed here in Europe,
or the US, and they have a great reputation, and they do great stuff. I mean, there's but it's a bit like a lottery, you know, like, you might get the right Nike's. You might get some off brand thing that might not work. And if you don't have a really strong you know, regulatory authority, or as a company, a massive amount of competence in the quality side, this is gonna be difficult. So what you see is a is, you know, as a we also do ingredients supplying as a company. And so we supply a lot of ingredients to brands across Europe. And, you know, they contact us, and most I would say 80% of those are startup companies within the 1st year of operation they've got some funding, and they're not quality experts,
They're not they're not you know, we send them all the quality data. We send them all the lab tests and stuff, but it's a bit hard for them to get through that information. They're not,
you know, a giant Gaia herbs type company or, you know, something like this. It's been in the market for 35 years. So as a startup company, trying to navigate you know, what's good? What's bad? How do I test it? What do I even what do I not know that I don't know? This is a really difficult
difficult thing to do when you just wanna do marketing and branding. You just wanna get a product out there. You wanna educate people about the benefit of mushrooms and and that kind of thing.
So this study was very interesting because
the results were kind of, well, pretty eye opening for many people. And you know, this was the number one thing I posted on LinkedIn. And and I do a lot of content. I have quite a lot of followers on LinkedIn. This was the number one most commented, most shared,
most liked. It was the most engaging thing that we've ever done as a a myself.
And the reason is is that, you know, out of 19 products,
only 5 of those were the right species that they said it was.
You know, the the packaging said this was Shitaki and actually turned out to be Shitaki through DNA analysis.
The other fourteen
were totally incorrect species. Most some of those were not even fungi that couldn't even a couple couldn't establish what DNA it actually was,
Some of those were a a mixture of yeast, so not even basically fruiting body mushrooms.
And a lot of most of majority of them were some you know, cheaper to produce, species.
Because at the end of the day, you know, it's it's a brown powder that smells kind of like umami
mushrooms. Yeah.
You know? And I think some of the most crazy stuff I've seen is is this study, you know, and I think it's called let's open Pandora's box because we can't close that box now. Now it's so many people are going, woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Let's slow down here. What and and it's unbelievable. I was in,
London this week this past weekend for a big expo called NOPEX, and it's like the largest natural and organic product expo that they haven't in the UK market.
And I was on a panel discussion to talk about, you know, I thought, what are the benefits of mushrooms? We go through all the species. We talk about the, you know, Rishi for sleep, and this is the mechanism of actions. This is how it consists of dosing levels. But to be honest, all the all the people's quest I mean, these are educated buyers. You know, educated people in the market, formulating people, ingredient salespeople.
But, you know, most of their questions was around quality. How do we how do we not have this as a problem for our brand? How do we have an existential,
you know, how do we get over this?
Yeah. Oh, okay. That's very interesting. So that that's London. Let's call that Europe as well. Yeah. You know, on the continent of Europe.
So there's lots of quality issues and you say
so let let's get a a a clearer
picture of the landscape.
So you guys, you create stuff, and you also sell your own stuff. Right? But there are lots of suppliers
that don't do that and just buy your stuff and just rebrand it into whatever brand they have and sell it. Is that correct? Yeah. That's correct. Yeah. I mean, as a as a company, we do probably more ingredient sales than our own branded product sales precisely because I think many customers wanna have the mushrooms in a form really easy to take. Like, mushroom coffee, mushroom beer.
You know, we also sell to the pet food industry. We sell to the cosmetic industry.
So for us,
you know, most of what we work with are brands that are quite established, you know, or startup companies with really interesting, unique delivery methodology or something. So So we sell freeze dried powder and then also liquids.
But, you know, it's us
or China.
You know, there's a couple companies in India. But it there there's really nobody else doing what we do and definitely not on the scale that we operate at. So I think it's it's
you know, we're put in this kind of position that,
every basically, every every mushroom company probably in mainland Europe, minus a couple,
you know, are are buying the material from China or us, basically.
Yeah. So, you know, from the tide of, you know, actual mushroom competence, like, I have a big factory.
You know, we're growing cordyceps,
Raysy, Chaga,
and then doing all the extraction and everything. So from a from a sense of mushroom competence, that's where I see the problems. I I I I can look at a product do the testing, and I can go, woah. Woah. This is something. It tastes sweet. Why does it taste sweet? It should taste bitter. You know, why is it tasting sweet? So I think we just, you know, we've seen a lot over the 7 years, let's say. Right? And so in in the EU,
you know, companies can buy this stuff from, from China as well, the ingredients
to put in their own thing because the regulators sit that are just not up to speed. Right? Oh, well, I'd say that What is good or not? Is it There's definitely good material coming in from China.
You know, there's legitimate. I visited I've been in China many times. I visited those companies.
And some of them are, you know, have campuses the size of Google. I mean, they have hotels. They have conference centers. They have huge factories.
I mean, some of them are really, really doing great work, you know, and,
you know, have a great research and development team like we do at Capa doing their own studies like we do as well. You know, doing great stuff, being able to prove efficacy,
but it's a lottery. And and if you don't if you can't commit the the years, to really go cert through the weeds of what are the good companies and what are the bad companies,
as a as a customer or as a brand, I think it's very difficult to do that. And I think that this this study shows that exact, the problem of that, you know, if night 14 out of the 19 products aren't even the right species not even to get into the heavy metal issues where most of these products are legal actually to sell in the EU with heavy metal regulations. So you're actually getting too much arsenic, too much lead, cadmium,
these kind of heavy metals. So, you know, what they are being sold in the EU? Yeah. They are. I mean, and that's that's the problem is that, you know, stuff can in in if stuff are being sold in lower volumes, they can kind of go under the radar. Like, our our company is being audited every 6 months, so we have a know, health regulator come here and look at what are called our COAs or certificate of analysis, where we test every batch, we send it to get heavy metal testing, CFU testing, then we do medicinal compound testing as well with some laboratories.
So that way, you know, we're able to show them, hey, for 4 years, we've never had an issue with heavy sales. They trust us. We we move forward, but,
that that doesn't exactly happen a lot of times with, at, you know, end consumer brands.
Right. And,
so situation in Europe is bad. What's the situation in the US as far as you know, and? Yeah. Well, I mean,
So I'd say it's a bit worse. Yeah. I'd say it's a bit worse, to be honest, unfortunately.
I mean, here in Europe, we have, European food safety authority. It's an organization which many people call
or European food safety authority.
And it sits there. And it's sort of like, it's the regulatory body for all European countries. So you know, Barry, you wanna make, you know, improving Barry, mushroom mix. Right? You're like, I'm gonna this is my thing. I'm gonna go to market.
You would announce this in the market probably in, like, Netherlands. Right? Uh-uh. And then you go through the Netherlands authorities. They would approve it. They would look at the labeling. Right? They make that it has the manufacturer on it, that it has the health information
that it would you know, if it says organic, that it would have the organic number, like, there's just that regulatory detail, But then they would also look to the EFSa,
regulation on what is, approved food and unapproved food, or what is a not approved novel food or unapproved novel food And it's basically just a way to say that when the European Union joined together, they kinda said everything the countries are have approved to this date is okay. So that they they set that date kind of May of 1997.
So any food that was being consumed in the European Union prior to that date, just safe effective. No problem. People can continue to use it. They're not gonna try to regulate that. Anything that's brought after that fact is a novel food. And a novel food needs to then have safety and toxicity trials to get it to be approved. So for instance, my, you know, mycelium on grain,
or or mycelium,
in major ways, is one of these kind of unapproved novel foods in the European Union. So that's pretty well regulated here. You don't see a lot of mycelium products, which don't have any real medicinal compounds in them, on the market, but in the e in the US, this is, of course,
to has been sold for 30 years, some of this stuff. And the number one selling product in Whole Foods And Amazon is a a product, probably in in all the I don't know, all of us, but it's a product made by Paul Stammitz. He's quite famous mycologist,
and it's his brand, host defense.
And this is actually my city, Mongrain.
So we we effectively call this product cornflakes,
because it's basically cornflakes. I mean, it's it's it's mycelium grown on, some grain could be oats could be rye, could be weed, could be corn, whatever.
And it's the end product is basically that where it the my studio will colonize that food source and kind of eat it. The whole brick will turn kind of white.
And then it before the fruity bodies would come out or anything would happen,
that that product is dried,
ground, and powdered, and and put into capsules. And that's the final product.
So, you know, it's even if the mycelian had some additional value,
it's actually about 95 to 99%
grain.
And and it's like Tempe, which is a food product. You know, it's a fermented grain product. There's nothing wrong with Tempe. I think it's great. I I eat it sometimes.
But, you know, it's not a food supplement. You know, if you wanted to know, if you wanted to get real medicinal value there, you'd have to eat a lot. You know, so for instance, our products take you know, 10, sometimes 20 kilos of of mushrooms, and we condense and concentrate that down to the final product.
It's just like you wouldn't go out and eat a few mushrooms and think that that's gonna give you a medicinal dose.
Same with this. You you know, So I think that that's where the US really has a lot more problems than your current estimate is, at least, on that side. But at least the my C1 Grain products are grown in the US. So in terms of heavy metal and toxicity issues,
at least that's probably not gonna be a really problem. But, you know, from a efficacy standpoint and kind of a ethical standpoint,
I'm not in the business of selling used cars.
Right? I mean, I'm not I'm not selling even t shirts. I'm not I I I'm selling products that our customers and people around the globe are using to improve their health. You know? And it's like, we have we have one life. That's probably it. You know, we have we have this crazy journey, this weird thing that we're doing,
and, it, you know, that's a big responsibility
from a company. To be providing products to help people have a life improvement. If that's sleep, if that's, you know, dealing with chemotherapy,
if that's, you know, brain cognition issues, if that's being sick, constantly sick all the time, or autoimmune issues, whatever that might be, If mush mushrooms can provide solutions for that and have. So being able to stand behind the product makes something that's that's effective and and ethical
and is actually working,
you know, it's a no brainer. That's if we weren't doing that, I I don't know what I could do with my life. Like, it it would be really tough to wake up and and get to work every day. So I think that it's we have a big responsibility in this industry at any health, any health food practitioner, any any health food manufacturer.
To do it really in highest ethical standards that we possibly have with with those values.
So, you know, my biggest concern is that
you know, this big it's called the shroom boom right now. Right? I mean, everything is about functional mushrooms. And my biggest concern is that people try some kind of you know, product like on the Italian Amazon that's not, you know, even mushrooms, it's a Easter. It's not even what they and they don't have an effect. And they go, ah, doesn't work for me. They tell their friends, doesn't work for me. And that person is kind of maybe they won't try again. They they gave it one shot to do anything, and they don't try it again. So that's where I think it's just really important that we have those conversations, and and we get a little bit deeper,
about what is the quality, what are what are affect, you know, what are affecting,
products and what are the what are the extraction technologies and how does this all work?
So as a as a consumer, you know, I walk into my local health food store, and there's lots of, jars with, I don't know, lion's main powder, things like that.
What should I look for?
How do I know that that's the real deal? That that's not just,
fungus, some
Yeah.
Yeah. It's a good question. And it's a it's a tough one right now. I would say, well, I mean, this this paper really opened up some holes in deregulation issues, you know, with these products coming in from China. Mhmm. So I would say that it's, you know, as a as consumer, probably, Barry, you're not gonna go do DNA testing at all. Everything that you get, that's a power to happen. No. It's not gonna happen.
But what I would say is that some easy ways to tell if it's you know, like, you know, what I would if it was me and I wasn't able to do DNA testing,
what you could do is you could buy some lion's mane know, you could eat the culinary mushroom, you can find it probably in the supermarket.
Just bake that in your oven at 40 degrees Celsius, 50 degrees Celsius for 8 hours.
Make yourself just, you know, it'll it'll crumble in your hand and just taste it. That's lion's mane. And and there's no questioning that. You saw it. It looks like lion's mane. You dried it, you tasted it. I can tell you right now, it's quite bitter.
It's also quite,
really mushroom taste. It's a really strong, a strong mushroom.
And, you know, if if what you're buying is not tasting similar to that, there's something wrong because it should be it should be more intense of that. That would be, I think, the easiest way, you know, somebody wants to do that. But, of course, the better,
or the the better way is find a brand new trust. Right? Just find really try to understand what that transparency of that brand is and and where they're getting their material from. And you can ask those questions.
You know, every month,
10, 20 people are asking us, like, hey. What is the where do you buy your mushrooms? How do you do it? We we have a kind of automated response from our, marketing team that we send that just goes, this is how we grow it. This is how it goes. Here's how the photos are. Come visit the factory if you want.
And I think that that that helps us, at least bring a lot more trust with people. And I and if the brand is not willing to answer those questions, I'd be a bit scared about that.
But you can also always ask about give a give me some heavy metal testing. Give me some CSU level testing or colony forming unit bacteria level testing. Give me that stuff.
And brands should have that, basically, in in,
in a folder somewhere, and they should be able to send that right away. So I think that it's just about customers being a bit more
conscious about the situation.
You know?
But in general, I think once you establish that the food is actual that it's safe, doesn't have too high levels of heavy metals or CFUs, and it is actually the species that you're looking for,
the the other thing to look for is that it's actually mushrooms.
And, you know, mushrooms is a a definition of the fruiting body of the fungi. And that's That's sort of like a biological definition. So to pretty buddy,
so as the mushroom is as the fungi is growing, it's in a myciliated state. So it's kind of these long wisps of white hair, almost. And it's traveling through the soil or some piece of wood,
And it's sort of making territorial boundaries on its food source. So just, you know, when at first, a couple spores might hit a fallen tree,
it just goes crazy. It just starts to expand as fast as humanly possible
and set up these boundaries so the incoming other fungal species or yeast or bacteria or even nematodes really can't break in there. And it goes, okay. That's my food source. And then it lives for as long as it can. Year, 2 years, 4 years, 10 years, you know, just eating that that that that wood source.
And right at the end of its life, usually, right at the end of its life, it goes, okay. Well, no more food. There's nothing left here. I need to
propagate my jeans
and and go somewhere else. I don't know if it's casually thinking that, but, you know, then it creates what's called a mushroom.
And the mushroom is is there to mainly do one thing, which is to spread the spores, you know, or the seeds, kind of, of the of the of the fungi. So the mushroom will pop up and, we'll sporulate, you know, depending the species couple weeks, couple days, couple months,
and
This, this act is actually incredibly energy intensive for the fungi. It doesn't wanna do that. Right? I mean, you know, it might be,
you know,
500 grams of of mycelium, you know, could be producing
kilos of of of mushrooms. You know, it can be it can be an incredible energy intensive thing. So and that's gonna take down it's gonna take a lot of its food source to do this thing. You know? So he'd rather live probably 2 more years than produce the mushroom if it doesn't have to. So it's very good at calculating, you know, the limits of its food source how much it has left, how long that's gonna have, and then calculating kinda what it needs to make the the the the fruiting body to release the spores.
So I think You know, the mushroom itself is what is kind of above ground. It's a bit more open to, you know, things flying in the in the air.
And it has a lot, basically, all the medicinal compounds that we're looking for in in a final product. So, you know, you wanna make sure you're actually having mushrooms in it. And this is pretty good because in the EU,
there's actually very good regulation around, you know, making sure that if it's called mushrooms and it's mushrooms on the label, that it's actually mushrooms,
And in the US, there's a labeling requirements.
So, you know, if you if you if it says mushrooms, it actually has to contain mushrooms according to the FDA.
And if you look at the back on the ingredients, the ingredients should be one thing. It should be, you know, mushrooms, basically.
And if it has anything else like, you know, rice filler or something like that, then you're an indication that there's something else being kind of mixed in there, and that's that's a no go for me. I would or take those products.
But the second thing you have to think about is, you know, so now you have now you're going, okay, the it's heavy metal safe, CFU safe. It's the right DNA and it's a mushroom product. There's still one more step, and that's that basically it's extracted properly.
So
when we think about
You know, I I was, like I just said, in London, for the weekend, you know, I love a full English English breakfast. Like, I I'm an intermittent faster. Using that eating breakfast, but when I travel, I don't wanna have any extra stress. So I'm eating basically breakfast and all three meals a day. And so I'm eating a bass of full English and having a great time, you know, the beans and everything. But they always come with mushrooms.
And, I mean, I'm a I'm a super big mushroom guy, And I still really watch how much mushrooms I eat, you know, from a culinary standpoint because, you know, they actually do create indigestion.
Like, our our Our gut system has been perfected for eating plants.
We can open up that cellulose wall,
in plants really easily. We can digest it, we can process that. No problem. But with fungi, they have these kiteen cell walls. And these are very strong, and our gut does not do a good job at opening those up. We know it's about 5% they can open up. So what that means is that you're just getting some indigestion,
and it's really hard on your on your gut. It's good to take enzymes if you're gonna eat if you're gonna eat some mushrooms.
But that's why people think they're allergic. Also, it's actually just gut. It's normal gut indigestion.
And and bloating due to eating mushrooms.
So when you make a medicinal product, obviously,
you need to open up all those cell walls because that's where the compounds are inside. And so that's a process that's done through us through a process called extraction. And companies have different ways to do that.
The Chinese are using ethanol and alcohol, this is called a dual extract, or some companies called a triple extract when it's cold water, hot water, and ethanol, but it's mainly just two solvents, water, and ethanol.
And the ethanol is a chemical solvent. It's dissolving those those kiteen cell walls.
And this is a process that we know that takes around 3 months. And needs to be agitated about three times a day. So, you know, sometimes that's being done in the full extent, sometimes it's being done only in a few hours, but it really takes a long time. To do that effectively. And the best that you're gonna get with that kind of, extraction technology is about 50% bioavailability.
Right? So we've done We've done some testing. We have a a large EU grant with a with a organization in Portugal called CMO,
and it's a laboratory that we do bioavailability testing with mainly an We learn about better how to do better extraction all the time. And so we've tested, you know, dual extraction, a water extract only, and then what we use, which is ultrasonication,
And ultrasonication
is basically sending really high energy,
like, sound waves effectively
at the material, And where those sound waves cross,
the energy's so high enough that it's a a micro implosion. So
super, super intense. And that implosion just rips those cell walls apart. So we could get, you know, the process time down with under a day. We can do an extraction batch.
This gets our this keeps our cost, you know, reasonable,
and also can provide bio availability up to, like, 92%.
So it's a much more effective technology for extraction as well. So, basically, if you if you take some chaga and you make a tea out of it, you're 5% bioavailability.
Still healthy. Probably better in coffee, for sure.
But it's not the full thing. If you're doing ultrasonic assisted extraction or ultrasonic,
you're at, like, 92% viability.
So you wanna make sure that it's, you know, it's safe. Doesn't have heavy metals, CFUs, that it's the right DNA.
And then it's actually,
a mushroom, and then that it needs to be properly extracted.
So I don't know. I hope all your listeners wrote down that big to do list checklist process, but But I'd say that it's,
it's it's a really nice thing. And I think when you get when you finally get a really effective mushroom product,
you know, you can see you know, sleep sleep improving, you can see, like, you don't get sick that often anymore.
You can see proper, you know, up regulation or or down regulation of your immune system depending on what what you need. You get that homeostasis.
And to be honest, you know, when you find that right, if it's a mix of herbs,
vitamins, it's not just fungi. Right? I mean, it's a huge probably some counseling of what we all need a little bit of too. You know, when you find that mix right,
you can have a life that's really
nice. You know, that that's a bit a bit more enjoyable, Evan. So that's that's the hope. That's cool. Definitely.
Yeah. And and we'll get into the specifics and some benefits of specific mushrooms as well.
So,
alright. So so that was a good summary of what the general public can look for when they are buying mushroom products. Right? And, obviously, that all comes down to then using those tools to find reputable
creators and sellers like yourself,
would you be comfortable
with
sharing
like, some of your clients as well that you,
sell ingredients to. So, obviously, it's you that people can buy excellent products from.
What kind of other companies are out there,
the bigger ones that that people can buy from? Yeah. Good question. So,
I think
let's see. Here in Europe, a couple so I'm actually not responsible for the sales of our of our ingredients.
But some of my favorite companies that we work with, for instance, is a is a, quite nice finished company here,
called Nokos Kombucha.
And they're one of the Kombucha brands that's, like, unpasterized
all wild.
And I I love their ethos because they're actually going out and foraging
almost all the herbs and everything that they put into it. I mean, they have a backpack. They go out and company trips. Oh, wow. And I think that that's fantastic. And they're so,
you know, they're they're very product product orientated or product focused company, which also we are too, obviously. So we have a lot of, you know, we resonate a lot there. But they make all their own kombucha themselves, and they do it, and they use our mushrooms when they when they need the mushrooms.
And there's something that's special that can happen when you when you find a way to take these kind of mushrooms, let's say, in,
you know, other other forms than just liquid or just powder, you can integrate it into your daily. So you wanna grab a drink.
Maybe you go for the Coca Cola. No. No. No. I wanna have a maybe a kombucha's better. Oh, maybe a raw kombucha is actually much better. Oh, maybe a raw kombucha with functional mushrooms and,
you know,
metal. You know, then boom, you know, and I think it backs those little steps that we need to make, you know. But there's also if you're if you're listening from Spain,
probably one of our favorite brands that we work with is a company called CN Portia Naturale,
and, this is a great nutraceutical brand.
So we we produce all the the mushroom products for those guys. And I go and, you know, lecture to they're selling in pharmacies to doctors.
So for me, that's a really special place to be involved in. I love going and lecturing to doctors because I don't have to hold back in any way. I can share new studies. I can talk about methods of action. We can talk really about dosing.
And, you know, I'm not a practitioner myself, so I'm not a pharmacist myself either. So I'm always having these questions, you know, like, like, Chaga, you know, is thinning your blood, which is great for most of us. That's a great tonic for most of us. But if you're taking blood thinning medication, okay, that can be an issue. So I get to hear from doctors who are treating patients with, you know, needing needing some had heart attacks, whatnot. They need some blood thinning,
with our chaga. And I'm able to get the those feedback in a clinical setting
and how that's working in their in their practice. And so for me, that's such a special
I love going. You know, once every couple months, probably, I'm in Madrid or Barcelona, lecturing to doctors and trying to give them new new tools to help treat their patients.
Yeah. Okay. So those are 22 great brands, and that's such a great thing. Is is that a
a very integrated thing in Spain that, that physicians use functional mushrooms? Yeah. Actually. I mean, I was, you know, they invited me to come down. It's very to me, it was very surprising. So then in Finland, we don't do this at all. I mean,
in US, not not so much either. I mean, When I I was invited to go down there, I said,
I happily come in lecture to some doctors. I thought it I thought it'd be maybe fifty people would show up. You know, we have a really intimate circle, and they'd all be natural paths or,
someone in the natural medicine side, you know,
doing acupuncture or something, some alternative medicine practitioners that have maybe a fringe to your nursing. Yeah. Fringe people, the nursing degree, or or a PhD that they kind of, like, you know, turned to a bio hacking or something.
And I this was not the case at all. I mean, these were just normal, absolutely normal doctors in the in the Spanish health care system you know, surgeons, people oncologists treating with cancer. I mean, really. People had, you know, 11 one doctor who lectured after me has been using our lion's mane in clinical settings in the bass country. What is that? Northeast, east,
Spain.
Because they have, like, some alcohol alcohol issues there,
where people have degraded their mental capacities so much, that they're needing to live at home with family or or hospital settings, and they've been using Alliance Maine in in connection with QECG machines where they can test and see blood flow. And they can see improvement already within 1 month.
So it's like,
you know,
you know, so much of me is is kind of laughing at this industry because, you know, we go on Instagram. We go, hey. You need to focus in the afternoon and get your work done, take some lions, mate. You know, and then here here's this totally other other alternative where people are actually really, really suffering can't even live on their own, and we're seeing some amazingly promising results. And you know, this doctor to me, you know, said something so bold and so,
just really it really resonated with me so much that, you know, we have this
We we normalize this brain loss. We normalize this memory loss. We normalize that so much. We wear my keys at. I've got 3 kids. You've got a couple. What names are they? You know, we get it wrong a lot. I mean, this is we just normalize that. We laugh about it. We just say, this is something we accept. It's part of growing old. It's you know, our hair falls out. I'm losing a little bit there. You know, it turns great.
And, we also just kinda our brains start to suck a bit more every every year. And I think that this is something that we normalize, and this doctor stood up and said, actually, this is something we don't have to normalize.
We need to stop normalizing
We need to start using more new tropics and and and things that help improve our brain cognition. Our memory, you know, lion's mane is one of those that just has a lot of promising results. So
Yeah. Wow. That's that's so good to hear and especially that the medical community there is picking up on this as well,
which I think is very rare
So, you know, all the more reason to move to Spain if you're in some cold European country like ours.
Yeah. You've been there for a while, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. It was lovely.
Yeah.
So okay.
So that that's quality,
stuff.
Let's now talk about some specific mushrooms. Now some of these you guys sell and some of these, you you don't. Maybe you can talk about that as well.
You just also mentioned Paul
Stemitz, I think that that's his last name, right, or state statements, Stemitz,
standards. Yeah. Standets. Yeah. So he,
was on Joe Rogan, for instance, talking about Turkey Tail, which is a mushroom,
and he did a TED Talk as well,
also about that, turkey tail where he,
claims that that helped his mother to survive cancer, right, and now to thrive,
or at least, to back then to thrive.
Which is, you know, very positive thing. So perhaps you could talk about, turkey tail, what that is,
does that actually help against cancer?
On its own or with something else. And maybe we can also talk a bit about what this, Paul, statement sky
does and and, you know, what the controversy
around him is. Oh,
yeah. So turkey tail is,
we grow it, actually outdoors,
we have outdoor farm here in Finland.
I'm, like, looking at the window because it's not that far away.
And
You know, we we have about 3 harvests in the summer because the the season's so short here in Finland. It just it's freezing all the time.
But it's it's an amazing, it's a native species to Finland.
It's also pretty much everywhere in Europe, tremendous diversity color. It's incredibly aggressive mushroom.
It's also used in a lot of bio remediation projects because it's so aggressive.
It can it can learn to eat plastics,
oil,
I it's just it's a really interesting species of fungi from a from a biological standpoint.
And it looks beautiful. It's called turkey tail because If you just quickly Google the the tale of a turkey, it's this beautiful velvet,
multicolor kind of experience,
and the mushroom itself is very velvety feeling.
So what it's a polypore, which means many pore. So if you turn the mushroom over
and the spores are coming out all these tiny little holes on the bottom,
as opposed to a gilled mushroom, such as,
Shiitake, where or or Chantrel, or many many mushrooms that we forage for,
It's a it's so it's rough. It's it's not good for eating. It's quite bitter,
but the medicinal compounds are really, really high.
So
This mushroom,
has a a lot of what are called beta glucans, and beta glucans are are kind of part of the cellular structure of fungi. So there's they're quite in abundance, you know, 20, 30, 40%,
50% we've seen.
They're they're a lot in fungi. So
turkey tail specifically has some more interesting beta glucan, and the most famous one is called PSK,
And PSK is just a a subset of of, of beta glucan.
But for instance, if you're in Japan
and you get breast cancer,
you'll go buy, like, our product at it's not our product, but a product like ours is similar manufacturing, everything,
in the pharmacy,
doctors will prescribe it to you, and you'll take that for your breast cancer.
So I think, you know, it it's been used in it's not just Paul's damage to his wife. I mean, this is something with, you know, hundreds of years of clinical data,
you know, basically hospital settings in Japan where they've been doing this. And I've been in Japan many times, And I've met with these researchers
who are who are looking at this and working with, turkey tail for for for cancer there. And it's, I mean, it's It's nothing that people are still learning about. It's like you you go through the medical training and, yeah, turkey tail is what you use to to work on with breast cancer and cancer in general. You know, in Japan.
So, I mean, it's it's a very helpful mushroom.
But, you know, we have to remember that, you know, beta glucans in general are across all species.
Right? So Shitaki,
lion's man, chaga. I mean, everything kinda has beta hook hands. So any any types of long term inflammation,
right, which is effectively what cancer is. Right? Like, Barry, you and I right now, every listener listening has cancer growing in our bodies. Right?
So that's something that when I learned that, I was like, what?
And no idea. It blew my mind.
And, you know, cancer is just there.
It tells Get out of control. You know? One of the, the reason that we peel after a sunburn
is it's actually our cells doing at the apoptosis or or killing the or self destructing, basically.
To to potentially
not give cancer to the rest of our our bodies.
So they actually die, and that's what we have. We have this skin loss. We have this peeling
that's our self committing suicide, apoptosis, effectively,
to not infect the rest of our bodies with cancer, potentially, from the UV damage of the sun. So we're all all of us are having cancer all the time in our immune system through the process of apoptosis,
which is like
basically signaling our immune system telling us, hey.
Go kill yourself now. You're getting out of hand.
You know, that the process. And and and if that's working effectively, like it is probably for you and me right now, most of our listeners,
you know, then
All good. Right? But, you know, if that becomes a if there's something that's not right, you've got a little bit too much stress.
Your diet's not great. You're not really moving your body very much.
You know, one of the things that happens that that, you know, makes our immune system not as functioning,
this process can get out of control. And there's no check to to to the immune system doesn't go in and say, hey. Optosis. Go commit suicide. You go commit all day long. That's what they're doing. So mushrooms and beta glucans in general, if that's from turkey tail, if that's from shataki lines, whatever, you know, contain huge amounts of beta glucans. And beta food cans we know are, you know, actually entering into our bodies through our large intestine,
and they're effectively,
you know, immunomodulators.
So they're they're up regulating or down regulating our immune system, depending on what it is. And the most interesting thing that I've seen when I was in Japan was a a clinical,
that they did with, Chaga specifically,
and they were looking at, you know, how it affects apoptosis.
In a regular cell or a cancer cell. And that was the most interesting that that that, you know, in a regular cell, cancer is not just sorry. Chuck is not just saying OPposis machine. It's not just going kill everything. It's not always
up regulating the immune system. In a normally functioning cell,
it actually supports,
you know, antioxidants
to to not kill the cell.
But with a with a cancer cell, it'll actually then kill it. So somehow these beta glucans are affecting the immune system in a way that it's creating homeostasis
or bringing it up
to a functioning level or bringing it down to a functioning level. So in that sense,
you know, don't wait till your mom has breast cancer. To give her any mushrooms. I don't know why Paul waited so long. I mean, you know, don't wait till you're in a in a doctor to to take, you know, you got Cancer to start taking mushrooms, take them today, take it as a preventative.
And that's, to me, what all this biohacking movement is about, what all this consciousness is about is that We've outsourced a lot of our health to the to health care system, right, for for a long time. And many people are listening right now going Hey. I maybe that wasn't a great idea. I need to actually now take more responsibility from my own health. I wanna learn from Barry and from his guess, you know, what what it, you know, what I could do better, and one of those things is is massively
preventative
health care, drink enough water, get enough sleep, exercise a little bit, at least, you know.
And I think that those are the things that are really important. And taking mushrooms on a daily basis or weekly basis or or having that something, some some functional mushroom
product in your in your life, I think, is a really important thing. And just, you know, that's why the trend is happening. I think it just gets bigger.
Yeah. Definitely. The the awareness is, is growing as well, and, people starting to take more charge of their own health, which is very good. I think that's also because of the the pandemic
people seeing, you know, maybe if I were more healthy, then this wouldn't have impacted me that much.
And maybe maybe that's also a movement.
Yeah, I think we realized we had immune systems.
You know?
He should be like, oh, oh, god. Okay. Covance here. Woah. What is you know, what's Yeah. And that's for a lot of people that they don't work that well as as they should. Right? Yeah. So we should work on that. Like, I don't know, maybe get more vitamin d and work with Definitely. With functional mushrooms as well. And we spoke about this in the part 1 as well about these beta glucans and how they are in all of the
mushrooms. Right? So not only in Turkey or in Alliance, Maine. But then there are different types of these beta glucans, like you just alluded to as well. With turkey tail.
And so, yes, they are definitely preventative as well, and they are always,
immuno regulating the immune system so up or down so that you get that homeostasis
that can work and and have those natural killer cells touch the bad cells and say, hey. Go kill yourself and clean up, what what's needed.
But turkey teal, for instance,
also,
upregulates,
these natural killer cells that are very good against cancer. Right? So
We don't really want to that to happen all the time. Right? So so should we be taking turkey till
every day of our life? So that is that a good idea?
Yeah. I think
turkey tail is one that I definitely don't take every day.
Almost ever do I take turkey tail, actually? I I I think that it's it's somehow too strong.
You know, for me, at least.
I think, you know, I'm I'm taking a host of different,
functional mushrooms for their kind of secondary benefits that they have. And then I'm, of course, getting all the beta glucans from that as well.
I think that's fine. I mean, I don't have cancer. You know, I'd at least I don't think I do right now. I don't have it in a in a amounts that matters in a way.
But, I mean, if I did, I would take Turkish 2 on a second. Yeah. And,
unfortunately, turkey tail is a unapproved novel food in Europe just because no one's done the safety and tax toxicology
issues, so Epson is not allowing it for sale. So you could probably still find it, but those brands are very small because they haven't been regulated.
So I would be very cautious to buy it, in Europe. But, I mean, for instance, our company, we give out quite a lot of it. I mean, people pay bills and his emails and they go, hey. I just need a bottle. We go, hey. No problem. And we ship it. So we can we can, as a company, we can, we can send it for free. I can't charge you for it. I can't announce it to the market, but that's okay. I mean, at the end of the day, our our our company's job is is to get medicinal mushrooms into the hands of, of people that need it. For whatever they're going through. And if that's if that's not gonna be a, let's say, cash, a cash payment, for instance, for that,
we make enough money from the other mushrooms, and it's okay. You know, the best is that we get people to help. So any listeners listening out, just send me a DM on Instagram, or you place an order, put some notes there, it happens all the time. We're happy to send out turkey deal because people people are going through a lot, you know, and There's, one of my friends just twenty kilometers away. His wife is going through
breast cancer. Right? And, you know, we're sending lots of turkey to his way.
And I think that that's that's like,
something that that yeah. We that's our responsibility of the company. So
Yeah. I think that's awesome that you guys do that.
Are there other mushrooms that you don't sell or give away?
Cortesepps is the other one.
Yeah. So Corteseventhalis
also is an unapproved novel food, and, this is a
I mean, both these mushrooms, just to be clear, are totally safe in my opinion. I mean, they're sold in the US market, UK market, Japan, China everywhere for a long time. It's just not approved yet. Yeah. We've done what are called self affirmed grass studies or 80 page dossiers on safety and toxicology.
Totally say there's no problem.
But but they just haven't been done in Europe.
And these court assembly taught us, of course, is very important for,
energy. And and it It produces actually cellular ATP or cellular energy. It's what our our bodies will will take all the fat, all the sugar, everything, and turn it into ATP for ourselves. So from a from a standpoint of,
clean clean energy to keep your keep your day going, Cortesep's newly taught us is a incredibly important fun guy. The other thing that we know about it too is that it's actually crossing the blood brain barrier, a compound called cordycepin.
And everything that's very it's always really interesting to find things that cross the blood brain barrier.
And, of course, a handful of, researchers have done, you know, what does it do after when it's up there messing around with stuff?
And we found we're still investigating to be honest right now. But one of the biggest things that we found is that it's actually suppressing melatonin production.
So, you know, if you're wanting to do with some jet lag problems or if you're wanting you know, if you really wanted to kinda biohacker biology a little bit, if you wanna if you normally go in a bed at 10, but Okay. Tonight's gonna be a party man. I wanna be up till 2. Cordyceps can help a lot for instance that way.
But it also just it's a mood improvement. It's it's increasing VO2 max, it's giving more energy. And if and if you're depressed and you can't see the sunlight and it's hard to kinda get out of bed and you don't wanna go to work and all that kind of stuff, You know, having something to kinda just give you a little bit of motivation to get you going through the motions again,
can be quite helpful. So, you know, we have a lot of customers that are using our cordyceps just to
just to have a better day. You know? And and I think that just being being part of the day and and being open a bit more to to what might come your way can can be sometimes a solution as well to get over really what's causing the problem too.
Yeah. Definitely.
I love cordy steps myself as well. It gives a lot more energy, and it makes your body, more efficient in utilizing,
oxygen as well. So it kinda increases your VO 2 max. Yep. You know,
You just get that for free by taking that. But like you said, you need to be careful with that as in, take it,
early in the day as it inhibits
melatonin production.
So when you take it later in the day, it can mess up your sleep and your melatonin production, which not only influences your sleep, but melatonin is also a very potent antioxidant and anti anti cancer,
compounds, which, you know, helps them to do that a part a partosis,
during the night when you sleep, to clear up all the the cancerous cells. So so be careful with that. But, you know, if you take it early enough for the day, you should be fine. Right? Yeah.
Yeah. We recommend, like, don't take it 6 hours before you go to bed. You wanna go home. Yeah.
Hey. If you wanna go all night, you can just, keep taking it.
So that's that's turkey tail and that's, cordyceps as well.
Now I've heard people talk about,
cancer treatments
with turkey tail,
in conjunction with portobello
mushrooms as well as an additional
Can you talk about what those are and what those do?
Well, Portobello mushroom is effectively
I think they're called.
Like, the button mushroom, the very small one. So Portobello is just that grown a bit bigger.
So the the industry found out that, you know, you could harvest these mushrooms really early,
and and it's much cheaper.
And that's button mushrooms, or you can let them, you know, go a bit later. Of course, it's gonna be more expensive from a production standpoint. And then they actually kind of, like, fan out, and those are called portobellas.
So it's same species. It's just a different way of growing them.
And, I mean, these mushrooms, of course, have have beta bootcans as well. Right? I mean, everything does. And I think that they are, you know, if you're eating enough of them,
I don't know how much that would be, 500 grams, you know, 400 grams a day, probably you're gonna get a medicinal dose as well.
So I think it's a it's a pretty
yeah. I think it's a great it's a great mushroom. It tastes great too.
And in in the mushroom industry, we kind of refer to them as, like, the iceberg lettuce of fungi because of the most boring and, like, least interesting. They're just really cheap to grow. I think it's something like €3 a kilo, you know, you can you can grow these mushrooms at. So, you know, they have these hugely automated systems in Netherlands where they're just, you know, farming them with robots, and it's just super, super developed. But they're also because they're decomposers, they're able to kind of renew some of the waste from the agricultural industry in that lens as well and produce something good for humans to eat at the end of it. So they play a very good role and they're they're wonderful. I mean, but if I was really trying to treat myself with, with cancer, I wouldn't be looking button mushrooms for that. I'd be looking at something more serious like turkey tail, you know, my taki, lion's mane, Shitaki, something like that. A bit more. Race sheet.
But I mean, what I I think what I was I was talking a little bit before about this this work that I've kind of done in in Spain. And to me, the the fantastic thing there is that, you know, these are oncologists who are treating, you know, in the public health care system, people with cancer. And, you know, they're going through chemotherapy.
So these are patients that are, you know, they're having kind of a normal, let's say, medical treatment for for their cancer.
And what they found with mushrooms is there's over 10,000
you know, clinicals
done with fungi supporting
a traditional oncology approach toward cancer or, like, or chemotherapy.
And so these the Spanish authorities kinda looked at that data realized this was a totally safe and effective way to do it, and they've been using our products for for some time there.
And basically just, you know, as an adjunct
kind of, treatment. So they're getting chemotherapy, but they're also taking functional mushrooms on the side. And the functional mushrooms are supporting the immune system through that chemotherapy process,
and survivability rates are going up because the people are just how they're how they at least how they're writing it is that the survivability rate is going up because they're getting more chemotherapy
treatments.
They're able to stay alive longer
and and just get more chemo and the chemo is what's killing the cancer. I think it's probably something like that, but I think the mushrooms are also helping to support the immune system to kinda clean out the cancer naturally. I think it's I think it's a a dual effect. And I would
you know,
if I had cancer, I probably would be exploring also chemotherapy as well, just to be honest, you know, but I would also be looking to functional mushrooms. I think any anything that we can do to give ourselves a fighting chance. So
Yeah. Definitely. And these are very, potent
animal plant like creatures or whatever.
So Whatever. Yeah. Okay.
So,
Let let's talk about,
another,
specific one, which is a weird one, and I'm sure you you probably don't make it or sell it.
Mcsilocybin.
Also, a mushroom does very different things than lion's mane.
What's your take on that? Have you ever taken it?
Yeah. I've taken Psilocybin.
I'd say about every it's probably the last time was maybe 2 years ago.
For me, it's something that that's you know, good to kinda just take every 3 years ish is when I kinda had the feeling.
I don't microdose personally, even though many people do, I don't have any I get kind of headaches and it doesn't doesn't feel good to me whatsoever.
But that's also probably because I'm a CEO, I'm just trying to get a bunch of work done. You know, I got my head down, and I'm just trying to read and do emails and get get, you know, documents signed and whatnot.
But I think that from a creative standpoint,
I do know people in my company, and I know people, obviously, in my community who who micro does all the time, very, very, very small levels of psilocybin
and are feeling more creative, are feeling bit bit, you know, help with some mental health problems. I mean, so I have a lot of anecdotes there. And, unfortunately, that's really all that we have right now with microdosing of the episodes. So if you if you do a deep dive,
or I was into Hebrew Midlabs, quite a lot, So Hebrewman Labs is,
fantastic biohacking podcast
by Andrew Huberman.
He's a neuroscientist,
and he has he had a guest on couple months of 6 6 or 12 months ago,
who was really discussing a lot about, you know, microdosing
psychedelics. He was he was on the podcast to talk about macro dosing. The John Hopkins trials and what they're doing in macro dosing side. But he he he got into microdosing because it's such a trend right now. And every venture capital firm that I've talked to in the past 2 years wants us to just microdose everybody and do all microdosing
things. It's a huge bubble of investment, and that's why you're seeing a lot of it. But the science isn't there. You know, they they talked at length about it that they're looking for for studies showing that microdosing is actually, you know, improving synapses in our brain or or helping with, mental health issues or something, and you just can't really find it. Not not to discount anecdotal evidence, not to discount any listeners here either who are taking silocybin having a wonderful experience on a microdosing there.
But, obviously, it's it's just not we don't know the method of action, and we don't see the outcome.
The biggest clinical study ever completed
was,
the the outcome was that
maybe it helps a little bit, but most likely it's actually kind of reducing brain functionality,
a microdose trial.
Paul Stammitz famously has done a a
study where he just basically asked people to come and fill a form in about their experience with with microdosing psilocybin.
And, of course, it's a self selected study. People are going there and saying it's great. It's the best thing for me to. So, you know, I wouldn't trust results like that so much. I mean, the placebo effect is massive.
Huge. And if you're listening to everyone telling you that that, you know, microdosing is the best thing in the world and venture capital firms have huge amount of money behind this this campaign,
I think you probably could start to feel those effects. But from a from an another standpoint, macro dosing as opposed to micro dosing where it's, you know, couple milligrams or something per day, macro dosing is taking a few grams.
It could be 10, 15, even,
in in in kind of a ceremonial setting or or, you know, a longer experience
where you start to feel the psychedelic effects, whereas microdosing, you don't get visuals or any you know, feel pretty normal.
From a macro dosing standpoint, you're gonna start to feel your body a little bit more. You're gonna or sensations, you're gonna start to see some,
elephants, whatever whatever it might be. You're gonna see some loose you're gonna hallucinate a little bit. But, you know, for me, the benefit really is
around what's called our default mode network.
And the default mode network effectively is this is this area in our brain
that, you know, we've put huge amount of people into these,
n n n r I machines.
Where you kinda slide in there and then, you know, researcher will tell you, hey. Think of your earliest memory ever. Yeah. And you're thinking about that time, you know, dad pushed you on your on the first bike and and you fell over. Whatever. You know, you have some early memory, and that's what that's what they realized. All the blood will go there. They go, okay. That's the area of the brain where long term memory stored,
and or, you know, they recently just I saw on the airplane actually driving coming back from London that they put
two people actually having sex in one of these machines, and they found out a lot where,
you know, the area of your brain to switch with this kind of sexual pleasure and and and this connection with your partner is coming from. And that's how they do it. And then they do it reputably enough with enough people to find out, you know, this is the memory area. This is prefrontal cortex. This is what I'm about, and they sort of started to understand the brain a bit better. So they've done this too with people, and they've said, you know, don't meditate. Don't think about anything necessarily just be. Just don't don't try not to think. Don't try to think. Just, like, hang out.
And what they found is that those when they do that to people, there's a, you know, across all cultures across all areas in the country.
In the world, they're finding people having this these certain areas will all light up, and that's called our default mode network. And if you could think about it a little bit in the sense that
you know, I start all my emails with howdy.
You know, that's just my thing. I just write I like howdy. Okay. Weird. Okay. I see people. I say howdy. If I'm in Finland, I say That's how I that's there's a many ways to say hi. I can say Moi. I can say, hey. Yeah.
But we all have an identity.
We all have these automatic reactions to the world. You know, we all see something, and I like that. I don't like that. I like you're not making a value decision every single time. You've developed an identity. You've developed a set of values. You developed a taste, taste buds for certain food, waste it. You'd like these kind of people. You don't like these kind of people. You developed a sense of identity, and that's your default mode network working. It makes your life easier because you don't have to decide things all the time. You don't have to recreate your identity every moment. You know, you see that tree in its pink. I don't like pink. You do you really? I don't know. You know? You just made that decision,
many years ago, and now you're just in that default mode network. You're not open to those things. So in a way,
You know, the one one thing that they've asked people who've taken macro dosing, what is the effect to 10 in your life? Is that they feel more open?
That's an important concept to understand. And that this is the negative action. So when you take a macro dose, effectively,
it shuts down your default mode network. That's all it's doing neurologically.
So if you put if you take someone, you know, macro dose, you put them in an MNRI machine,
that default bone network is gonna be inactive.
So for the first time, you're able to be
without having your identity in between you and the world.
You know, it's a very weird thing to think about. So I can the analogy that I can give to this is, like, you know, you've been outside of Netherlands. Right? I've been outside the US. I'm living outside the US. You know, those when you go travel, we have this moment when you're in Spain, and you're going, that the grocery stores here are a little bit different. I just love that there's, like, lemon trees growing on the road or You can start to compare,
right, the the life that you've had in Netherlands with the life that you're living in Spain, or you go to China, somewhere so different. You go, woah. This is crazy. This is so different. And you have a, what's called reflection,
and you're able to reflect on your own cultural values, your own place that you co grew up in because of of, you're outside of it. Right? Without getting outside of it, you can't almost reflect on it's very, very, very difficult. People can. It's really hard. So, you know, what psychedelics do effectively in a macro dose setting is allow you to reflect on your own identity in a in a really clear way. You start to go, oh.
Why? Who am I? Am I got a smoked cigarettes? Am I an alcoholic? What are the stories I tell myself? You know, is it that I'm worthy of love?
Is it that I'm a a a confident constructive person? Do you think people like me
I follow through with my word. Whatever that identity might be, if it's positive, great. You could check-in and go, hey. Everything's still working fine. But if it's negative, if it's causing depression, if it's causing alcoholism, if it's causing a victim mentality, if it's causing bad relationship after bad relationship, after bad relationship, That might not be from your own follow-up. Could be from some trauma. Childhood could be from something that your culture helped you grow up with. And taking psychedelics is the way to go. Step the step back.
Who what are these stories that I'm telling myself? What is my identity like? And if you do it in the right setting with the right people,
you know, especially with a practitioner there is really helpful.
You know, you can have some pretty phenomenal results. And then through, some sessions of counseling,
You know, you can kinda get over some of this stuff. You can rewrite
your identity, which is really powerful tool. You could go, hey. I was like this for the 1st 30 years. Not gonna be that for the next 30. Yeah. I'm not gonna be a victim anymore. I'm not gonna be depressed every day. I'm not gonna be not worthy of someone's love. Not gonna be in these dysfunctional relationships. I'm gonna be a contributing member to my society. Whatever those goals you have, it's very difficult to get those sometimes, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. I that's very powerful,
thing to be able to be plucked out of your own little bubble so that you can reflect on your own life and your own experience
there,
which doesn't happen in normal life. Like, we're sitting right here. You're just in it. And so it's very difficult to get out of there. And so you you just, describe all of the
physiological things and neurological things that happen
with,
with psilocybin mushrooms.
Did you also have, like, a spiritual
experience
when taking them.
Yeah. Well
yeah. I mean, I had,
It depends. I think every every experience I've had is a little bit different. You know, if I if I look back to when I first took them, you know, I was maybe
2023,
maybe.
And I was at a festival, a Bluegrass Festival in Oregon in the countryside. Yeah.
You know, and I and I, you know, all we had some chocolates in front of us, and we were all in the tent, maybe four friends of mine were like, do we do it? Oh, we're all scared. One person just put it in their mouth, and it's like, well, that's it. I guess we're all gonna just do this. And then it was just excitement, you know, and you have your tummy kinda gets a bit upset. It doesn't like it. And then you get over everything, and then you start to just feel great. And if you just let go and allow it to happen, you can have a wonderful time. And I remember seeing, you know, dancing there and the lights were really great, and the elephants coming out of my arms was super cool. And, you know, just was this phenomenal experience.
And then I remember sitting, I was actually smoking tobacco at the time. And I remember actually sitting down with my friend that I always would smoke tobacco with. And we were he was rolling a cigarette, and I was kinda thinking, like, Oh, god. Thank you.
I do. I'm a smoker. I'm pretty sure. Thank you for helping ground me. You know? Oh, yeah. That's and I was trying to roll a cigarette. I barely could do it. You know, because you're so out of your identity that that it's very difficult to, like, do those things. And that was a very transformative experience for me to think, oh,
do I don't I can choose to be a smoker.
You know, I it's not it's just part of my this this weird identity thing that I've decided. I could also not do this if I want to. I I decided to continue to do it, but, you know, it was just amazing, like, a moment to just realize that Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I forgot that I'm a smoker. Yeah. And how many smokers forget that they're smokers? It's oh, it's been 2 hours of Dove. That's Let's get out there and have a cigarette. So I think that that was a phenomenal experience, and then it's went everything from that to, you know, more recent when I've taken it I had a, a pretty big traumatic event happened in my life about, like, 5, 6 years ago.
When I moved to Finland, my my finished wife she she died within the 1st 8 months of moving here.
And it wasn't like, you know, we knew about it. It was cancer that she had for a long time.
Basically, it was just,
We were sitting at at at the dinner table, having a meal, and she made this wonderful soup. And our two year old daughter was there with us, and
And she just fell over in her soup and,
just had a, I think, a heart attack. We don't know exactly what happened, but You know, I took her and started giving her CPR, and my two year old daughter was there at the time just, you know, kissing her kissing her on the face. It was really a powerful emotional
experience.
When the medics came, basically, they just pronounced her dead, but there was nothing that anyone could do
and, you know,
we we moved in with her her parents,
because I needed some help raising my daughter. I
I didn't I didn't know exactly what I was doing.
So thankfully her parents really were so we kind of grieved together, you know, and we had about 6 months, 9 months together,
all four of us, her parents and and myself and our, their granddaughter, my daughter,
to kind of all just be be together in that space. And it was a very difficult thing. You know, the the stages of grief is really intense
and doesn't make a lot of sense, and it's different for everybody.
And it was really hard really hard for me.
But I worked through it, and I knew that I needed to kinda continue my life and focus on things that were positive.
Because this made no sense to me how this could happen. Right? It was very difficult to to kind of comprehend that.
And I just realized, okay. Well, the the mushrooms in the company, that's very positive. Very positive thing in my life, and then also my two year old daughter, very positive. You know, just wanted to be there for her, just give her everything that she wanted, and help her get over this trauma of not having a mother for the rest of her life.
And
I
I, you know, went through maybe 6 months, maybe 9 months of really intense,
getting over that trauma, then I decided to move out. I said I just need to kind of
I can't be in this environment anymore,
where it's so focused on this death. I need to just kinda continue my life. And I I moved out, and about 3 months later, I felt you know, pretty good to check-in with my cell.
And, to me, what that means is take some site to Dallas, basically.
Check-in with myself and go, you know, is this trauma healed? What am I still doing? What is I was scared for the first time to take them. I didn't know if I really wanted to see you know, what what what I did to my brain in that moment.
And I wanted to do this in a clinical setting, not at the festival. Right? Not I wanna do a very very clinical. So I was searching for someone who could do that for me here in Finland, but because it's illegal, it was very difficult to find. There's a handful of people that I knew through my professional network, but were booked for months years.
So as in lieu of being able to take psychedelics,
I started researching other out other kind of alternative ideas. And one of those that I found was actually,
it's called holotropic breathing.
And this is a technique that's if you know the Wimhoff method, it's very similar to Wimhoff. It's but you do the Wimhoff breathing for, like, 2 hours.
Really intense.
And you're essentially through hyperventilating
your body, you can suppress the default mode network in exactly the same way psychedelics,
that what all the effect is maybe half an hour, maybe hour max. It's not as intense.
But you don't take any substances. You take nothing foreign. You just through your own breath, and I felt this is really interesting, actually. I'm gonna I'm gonna try that. And I there's a retreat, a great, a great group of people doing that here in in Finland, booked a weekend.
Went there and,
you know, there's a lot of people there. Some people just trying this out. Some people had trauma. Some people were not even able to talk to people.
And it was just a group of very interesting folks trying this out, about 25 of us.
Because it's kind of dangerous, I would do wanna say that, you know, it's very intense on your body to breathe, that that much so intense,
that there's a lot of medicinal medical practitioners there. There's about, like, ten people for twenty people just walking around, making sure everybody's safe.
And when I had my experience, I was just, you know, breathing as hard
taking as much in and as much out and just really hyperventilating,
you know, arm, your fingers will will crunch up your, you know, everything. And and I felt I was laying on my back and I felt at some point, I can't get enough air and I had to sit up and I had to get more air and I just I I just gave into the experience fully.
And at some point, I don't know. I've reached some point in, you know, these lights started coming. I started hallucinate, and I just kind of, like, stop breathing.
And I just quit breathing. I think it was, like, 3 or 4 or 5 minutes. It was a long time.
And during that time, I was it was safe that it was people monitoring me. It was all okay, but I I was having I was hallucinating massively that, you know, I was floating over the the whole universe, there were stars, and everything around me. And And that's a very common experience that you feel at one with everybody, because you lose that identity. You know, you lose that walls that we put up between each other and and nature and ecosystem So I'm floating across the universe, and I'm all these stars, and I see this purple light come in front of me. And, my my wife always wore purple, like she's super into purple.
I said, this is some this is Satu. She's here. She's here guiding me somehow. And let's be open to what she wants to show me. And, you know, From that trauma response,
I forgot all memories with her.
My brain suppressed them. So not only did I lose her physically, but I lost her also,
in my memory, you know, to protect my psyche or something. My brain just shut down. I could I could remember times with her, but I she wouldn't be in that memory. It would be everybody else who is there.
It was very strange, and it was really horrible to go through that. But during this experience, for the first time, there was this purple light in front of me. I actually have goosebumps right now, just thinking about it is so powerful. And she's showing me these transcendental moments of our relationship, like, You know, we gave birth to our, she gave birth to our child at home to I was her doula. We did it together, and I held her through that whole process. And
you know, these very transmittal special times in our relationship,
and for the first time those memories flooded back, and I felt somehow everything opened up again. I could I could remember everything that I did with her. And instead of,
my first thought of her was always this, traumatic experts
faced down on the table, going to the floor, doing the CPR, and her dying in front of me, and just that, again, and again, and again, and again,
For the first time, I I started to remember these beautiful moments of our relationship
where, you know,
and I just felt this overwhelming, thank
thankfulness and just appreciation
that that we had the time together that we did,
and just feeling blessed for
just the time that I had with her. And it was a total change of how I think about her.
And one that went from a very negative thing to a very positive thing, and it allowed me to really process that accept it and be okay with it. She died, in a deep way,
be really actually okay with not blaming the universe, not trying to find something something went wrong or something did something wrong, but just be absolutely fine with it. And,
and I felt at the end of that experience that, you know, there was a next day where we do integration, we talk about what we did and went through and we draw some pictures And I felt just like, get me out of here. I'm done. You know, I dropped the mic. I got what I needed, and I don't need to be here anymore. And I felt just for the first time, like, the world got sharper again, I got my energy back. I found my motivation. I got excited about life again. You know, I was really happy to go home and hug my daughter, you know, and it just
You know, obviously psychedelics would have would have done pretty much the same thing in that moment, but I think this, you know, being able to check-in with yourself on a on a some regular basis and just make sure things are okay.
I think is a really important part of of of life. And if you look at almost all indigenous cultures that we've studied.
Every single indigenous culture has a form of psychedelics that they use on an annual or or or biannual basis. The sami people here in Finland, Amari to Muscardia,
you know, people in South Africa, Ayahuasca. I mean, just everybody has something that they've used to just, as a community check-in and go, hey. Is, you know, everything okay?
And and now that, of course, with John Hopkins trials, we're learning that, you know, people are accepting death
for the first time. They're scared of dying. They have cancer. There's nothing anyone could do for them anymore. And they're able to accept that death and help their family transition in a peaceful way. And, I mean, just, you know, there's just countless, countless benefits that you're looking at things now. So from a from a standpoint of how, you know, our health care system treats us and how we wanna we wanna have a a nice, experience on this planet, I think psychedelics is gonna be
just a growing, interesting,
piece
in that conversation for decades to come.
Absolutely. I definitely hope so as the war on drugs is winding down and, you know, becoming more nuanced
and these trials are happening as well. Thank you very much for sharing that story.
And I'm so sorry that that happened to you. That is horrible.
And I'm very happy that psychedelics
helps you there,
to step out of that and and and heal
you know, as as far as you can with with something like that.
Does
that event also drive your passion now
to help people,
enable them to become healthy. Is is that your driver?
Yeah. I mean, I think I think that
When you when you look at this, you know, you're when you're when you're born, you know, you're you go to school,
and you're taught about the circle of life. And from a very early age,
you you start to accept the death that's gonna happen one day. Maybe you're taught that there's a heaven after or something else, right, but But from a biological standpoint, you're taught at the circle of life, and you have a you grow up and, you know, you grow up, you become, you know, you do your twenties, you you get on on your own, you have kids, you become a grandparent, and you die. And that's just not always the case. And with my wife, she was never able to really, you know, be there for all these amazing moments of our child growing up, and she won't be a grand grandparent. You know, she won't have that. So I think it's like
it's that's real. That's actual reality. There isn't some just universal story about how this life goes. It's I'm lucky to be alive today. I'm lucky if I make it to tomorrow, I'm lucky to be there tomorrow. And our it always becomes sharper when you're when you're more closely
you know, involved in an event like this, where it doesn't go the way that it should. You know, Grandpa dies at a nice old age. It's hard that he's accepted it. The whole family has accepted it. You know, it's it's it's more or less okay.
But, not to say that's okay. There's obviously still trauma, and there's still but when it happens, when it shouldn't kind of happen, it's it's very, very difficult.
But it makes you really appreciate life. And it makes you appreciate the 6 like I said at the start of the podcast, I think, you know, we have one life. And that's really important that everyone really understands that that today is a a a beautiful thing, and we should do really beautiful things today. And we should be doing what we wanna be doing.
And I think the products that we make and and the way that we look in the world,
and what gets us out of bed here at Tampa is, of course, just helping to improve that for that if you can have a bit better,
maybe you maybe hit your landlord still yelling at you or your ex ex husband's still kinda like not so nice.
You know, but but maybe you're not getting sick as much. Right? You're getting a bit better sleep. Maybe you're able to think through things better. Maybe you'll make better decisions with Rit Bracey or something. So You know, that's that's a bit like that's that's what we can do. We all have our little small small place that we can play.
And I and I do hope that
You know, the regulation around psychedelics gets really sorted, like, just gets figured out because people people need it.
Yeah. And, you know, as with everything,
government related, it'll probably take a while. Yeah.
But, you know, people know where to find stuff like that. Yeah. So if you have the opportunity to, do something like that, go for it. It's
and do it in the right set and setting with, professionals.
Yeah. There's safe if you do it in the right. There's great organizations in the Netherlands. Where it is legal. Yeah. And I think that there's even a Finnish language organization, a friend of mine set up there. So even if you're if you're only speaking Finnish where Only speaking Spanish, there's usually language specific centers, in the Netherlands that are helping to treat people. And I think
You know, that's a phenomenal option for people. You know, when you feel that things are life is just too much and you can't you don't know how to go to the next step.
I highly highly recommend just to just to just to pop in and check out what what what is your default mode network telling you you should do? What is your identity? Just check-in with yourself a little bit.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
And so, you know, we come to what you guys do, what you do for the world.
With, with these things, right, with this type of stuff, for instance.
I
I take it as well. Like, for instance, lion's mane, I take because, really, I don't wanna get Alzheimer's when I'm older. Yeah. And I feel that,
longer term when I take it, it helps me,
to be more sharp as well.
So let's let's end on on this.
I saw that you guys are also doing a bit of a rebrand with a couple mushrooms there.
Or that's coming up. Right?
What what's next for you and for for Kapan?
Well,
I guess many many things.
To be honest, right now, what what our our company has got some phenomenal response
And, you know, we're growing quite quickly.
So so we're able to bring bring on some capital that we need to kind of increase our operations. So We're probably gonna be 10x in production within about 13, 14 months from now. And, this will be a really, really nice option for for for a lot more brands to get involved with our products and a lot more, people to to to get some really high quality mushroom supplements
out there,
I'm really happy to some of our investors to to stand up and do that.
So, yeah, we're we're excited. I mean, it's just now we've figured out kind of what works. We just need to do more of it. And I think there's some exciting species also being talked about right now. You know, like, Amanita Muscariam is a is a psychedelic mushroom, but doesn't use psilocybin.
Compound. So there's some regulatory
interesting things there.
You know, there's a lot of just, like, it's a growing space, and there's a lot of interesting you know, innovations that we can do from regulatory standpoint or or production standpoint. So
so, yeah, I think I'm gonna have a full definitely a full 12 months at least,
Yeah.
Okay. Excellent. Yeah. Thank you very much. I would encourage everybody to, to follow you guys
see what's going on and to just get these,
delicious tinctures. They're extremely high quality, and they will definitely help you as well. I will link to all of that in the show notes and all of that we've, spoken about today as well so that you can find it easily.
Again, thank you very much for your time and expertise as always.
Yeah. Thanks, Barry. It's been good to be here.
Thank you for spending time with me to learn about health and wellness.
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