Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged  — The Magic of Mushrooms w/ Tero Isokauppila  — 324

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

Tero Isokauppila is a a Finnish nomad turned into a fungi lovin’ foodpreneur. He is the president and founder of Four Sigmatic— A mushroom and superfoods company that creates products to help you live a better and healthier life. Tero’s dream is to bring back the ancient mushroom wisdom to modern lifestyle. In his native Finland, Isokauppila grew up on his family’s centuries-old farm regularly foraging for mushrooms. He holds a degree in both chemistry and plant-based nutrition from Cornell University, and was awarded a Finnish innovation award for discovering that the Japanese matsutake mushroom also grows in Finland. Tero was chosen as one of the world’s Top 50 Food Activists by the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, and has been featured in Vogue, Time, Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. He’s also the author of Healing Mushrooms: A Practical and Culinary Guide to Using Mushrooms for Whole Body Health. In this episode, we dive into the healing powers of medicinal mushrooms, mushrooms role in nature and human evolution, the anatomy of a mushroom, top 10 mushrooms for better health, energy, and performance, and much more. Enjoy! – Doug and Anders   Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_isokauppila ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @thrivemarket - www.thrivemarket.com/shrugged for a free 30 days trial and $60 in free groceries @OMAX - www.tryomax.com/shrugged and receive a free box of Omega 3 Fish Oils @Onnit - www.onnit.com/shrugged for a free 14 pill bottle of the leading nootropic Alpha Brain and 10% savings on all purchases. @Four Sigmatic-  www.foursigmatic.com/shrugged to save 15% on your first purchase ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Shrugged family, we're back! Another killer episode. Hey, today we're hanging out with Taro from Four Sigmatic. And what's super cool about Taro from Four Sigmatic is he is part of one of the coolest, most epic Shrugged weekends that ever happened. Man, last week was so cool in my life. On Wednesday, Viviana and I went and filmed a proof with Ryan Fisher at CrossFit Chalk, talking about high-intensity interval bodybuilding. Super fun. Got our sweat on.

Then Thursday, I went and did a bunch of filming at MovementRx with Dr. Teresa Larson on rehab and tactical wellness for tactical athletes. And then later on Thursday, Doug Larson showed up. We did bro stuff, chilled in my garage, lifted the weights. Then on Friday, Mike Bledsoe came and hung out with us at Stratum CrossFit. Oh, that's not right. Stratum Fitness. Sorry, they rebranded.

We shot an epic two-hour long show. Just me, Mike, and Doug talking about training and what we're doing these days. Then we had an awesome photo shoot with Mr. Colton Duncan, who always gets roasted on this show. But he's our boy. I really like him. And then on Saturday, we woke up super early. We went up to Four Sigmatic in Venice we talked about mushrooms on Venice Beach I know that doesn't seem that strange but super cool

then oh and you should go over to foursigmatic.com backslash shrug because they're partnering up with the show now and you're going to save 15% on your first order and I drink all the mushroom products that they make and they're delicious and the interview that you're about to listen to is really killer and then we went to Air One and we super overpaid for food and it was delicious and it made us feel good about ourselves buying overpriced food and then we went to Ben Bruno's house and he's Justin Timberlake's trainer and if you're a 35 year old male you know that Justin Timberlake is a gangster. But he also trains like Chelsea Handler, Kate Upton, a bunch of NBA players. The dude is a savage when it comes to training, and so is the interview.

And then later in the day, we hung out in the Hollywood Hills with one of the weirdest, coolest humans ever, Ronnie Teasdale slash Ravi Chandler slash Ra of the Earth. He made regionals seven times, and now he's a crazy hippie, and he's awesome, and I really enjoy talking to him. And we went two hours standing on a picnic table, literally on top of the Hollywood Hills, staring down into the valley at all of the people.

Then on Sunday, we got back to, oh, that's not even all that happened on Saturday. Then we went to Art of Breath at CrossFit LA and hung out with Brian McKenzie and Yoga Tune Up, Jill Miller, and then we did the breathing work, and Kenny Kane was there. And then on Sunday, we woke up, and we went to CrossFit Chalk and interviewed Kenny Kane and Andy Galpin. And then the strongest girl in the country, Jessica Lucero. Man, what a savage weekend. I freaking love working here. It's work. It doesn't sound like it because it was the coolest weekend ever but man it's so cool to be able to do this and call all these people friends and

man my circle that i get to hang out with is just so epic these days um one thing we talked a lot about training we have the coolest training programs ever. You need to get in there. Into the Shrug Collective bulk. I really enjoy seeing all the PRs, all the success, meeting everybody in our private Facebook group. 11 programs, 3 long-term programs, 18-plus months. And there's, what, 8 short-term programs that you can combine together. Mob mobility, strongman, squat programs, pull-up programs, you name it. All the programs are in there, nutrition, macro counters, grocery list, meal prep, the whole works. The whole thing is just loaded with crazy good information.

If you have any questions on what you should be doing or how to get into the vault, get over to Anders Varner on Instagram. Send me a DM. A bunch of you guys did it last week and it was awesome. I enjoy talking to you and helping you guys along the way. But we've got a ton of people in there and tons of PRs, tons of progress. I love seeing everybody that we get to talk to on a weekly basis, just watching you guys with lift weights.

So shrugcollective.com backslash vault. And then the title sponsor of this show, Four Sigmatic. They're awesome. I had a blast talking to them. Mushrooms are important. Foursigmatic.com backslash shrug to save 15% on your first order. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner.

Doug Larson's hanging out. Adam Von Rothfelder in the house. We have like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers just collided today. Literally, Doug Larson comes to town. Von Roth showed up. Bledsoe's in the back in the house. We have, like, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers just collided today. Literally, Doug Larson comes to town. Von Ross showed up. Bledsoe's in the back of the car. He just went down to the beach to do weird Mike Bledsoe things. He's, like, breathing, doing something.

Tero from Four Sigmatic. We're in Venice, and we're going to talk about mushrooms with the mushroom guy, the fun guy. Yeah, that's what they call him. That's what you're called. Yeah. It's kind of original, but kind of not. Not really. But also sticks really well. Yeah, that's what they call him. That's what you're called. It's kind of original, but kind of not, but also sticks really well. Yeah.

When people tell that joke, they're like, have you heard? Are you the fun guy? I'm like, no, never heard of him. Yeah, that's weird. No one's ever said that before. No, I didn't have a sixth grade biology teacher. Yeah, totally. I love the breathing, by the way, is the weird blood stuff.

Oh, it's going to get way weirder. We showed up to Von Ross this morning for Breaking Fast with the Von Ross elders. And then Bledsoe had to get a little elevated to make himself normal. Now he's down at the beach. And it's not even 9 o'clock yet. Probably hyperventilating of some sort. I think they're doing Wim Hof. So it's kind of.

Yeah, he's one. With a random group of people he met like five seconds ago. He was like, I'll go to the beach with you guys. See you later. So weed, coffee, and holotrophic breathing. I mean, perfect combination in the morning. It's a Saturday.

Good way to start your 10 a.m. Yeah. We are – I'm stoked to do this because we did a good 8 to 10-minute riff on medicinal mushrooms about three months ago with Dr. Mike Izzertel. And I have never been ripped on the internet so bad about some hippie wacko stuff. And since that day, and since you internet people destroyed us, I have been dying to get somebody that knows what the hell really goes on with mushrooms.

Because my life, I've hated mushrooms since forever. You mean like you just hated them or you hated eating them? Can't stay in the taste. Some of the mushrooms are cool with me. But I've hated the taste. And then as I've started to learn about them and your book, I have learned that maybe they're like the foundation for all of life. And we should probably learn a lot about them and not just what goes on with mushrooms and the medicinal benefits,

but just kind of like in our ecosystem of life. It's pretty important. It's kind of the Internet, the communicator of all of life. Yeah. Before we get to the Internet part and someone else ripping you off, we should probably start with the life. Yeah. Before we get to the internet part and someone else ripping you off, we should probably start with the basics. Yeah. Mushrooms is actually not,

it's just a part of the fungi kingdom. So there's a kingdom called fungi and mushrooms are the fruiting body. So that's the classic like cap and a stem shape and that's called a mushroom. But there's the whole fungi kingdom, like you said, is vital to life. So there is a few different kingdoms.

Generally speaking, we think of six. But in nutrition, we're mostly focused on two. It's plants or animals. Like those are the things that we focus on. But fungi and bacteria are actually as vital to life. And obviously now I'm happy to see so much more of kind of the gut biome and the microbiome thing going on. But fungi is part of that and for life

in general um as we know it fungi are like massively important and the story goes back about 2.4 billion years so if the world is 4.2 billion years old or something like that and we've been here as a homo sapien 100 200 000 years mushrooms or fungi go back 2.4 billion years old or something like that. And we've been here as a homo sapien 100, 200,000 years, mushrooms or fungi go back 2.4 billion years. And they were set to be the first thing to come out of the sea to the dry land. And for over a billion years, they ate rocks to survive. So what's funny about mushrooms, we'll just call them fungi mushrooms for the sake of convenience. What's cool about mushrooms is that they are actually like half the same DNA almost as human beings. And there's a lot of similarity

between animals and fungi, a lot more similarities between animals and fungi than animals and plants. And one of the similarities is that mushrooms need to eat something. They cannot photosynthesize their own energy and nutrition like plants can. So they have to munch on something. They cannot photosynthesize their own energy and nutrition like plants can, so they have to munch on something. But there was nothing on dry land, so they ate rocks. So they're quite survivors, you know? So they would actually decompose the rocks? Yeah, they would like acidic, kind of like start decomposing the rocks to get nutrition for themselves. Mushrooms, by the way, also breathe in oxygen and expel CO2, also similar to animals versus plants. And yeah, and they started creating topsoil. And today, almost all plants require mushrooms, this hyphae

type of a mycelium underground to collect water and nutrients. So you can almost, wherever there's plants, basically almost anywhere in the world, there is going to be mushrooms underground. So that is the internet underground that helps collect nutrients but also um inform the plants let's say a tree about an intruder on the other side of the forest and so there's knowledge there and it's actually being scientifically proven so it's like a thing and then for us humans we are made out of a lot of bacteria, and there's this symbiotic relationship between bacteria and fungi. The most common everyday example is kombucha, which is the scoby that makes kombucha is bacteria and fungi. But also in so many ways, yeast and bacteria and fungi work together.

But when something is a kingdom, not all mushrooms are good for you. Same as not all animals are made to be pets or not all plants are made to be eaten. Some mushrooms can really mess you up. So it doesn't mean that if something is a kingdom that it's automatically good or bad. It has both. So if you say you don't like mushrooms, the flavor means you don't like some mushrooms. But there's 1.5 million mushrooms estimated to be on earth, which means that if that's true, there's six times more mushroom varieties than their plant varieties. So every red onion and zucchini in the grocery

store, there's six different types of mushrooms out there. So when people think of just their butter mushroom, cremini stuff, it's such a small sample size of the total thing. When did this adventure start for you, just foraging on the farm back in Finland? Yeah. That's a lot of Fs. Damn. Say that three times fast. Foraging on the farm in Finland.

When did this start to kind of move into you needed to learn more about this? I've lived a few years in the U.S. and I find like Americans, I don't know is it a new newton thing or something like an apple falls in your head or something everybody wants like that one moment like what was the moment when you knew you wanted to lift weights like there was like one moment at least i don't have one it's the day that hot chick showed up it was like you look strong okay i'll do that yeah totally uh no it's a series of moments as a kid i grew up in finland

at our family farm um i'm a 13th generation managing that farm with my brother and my mom took us when i was like yay high out foraging for like good old culinary mushrooms santrells and stuff and that was like my first interaction with it. And then my great, great, great grandfather started like an environmental school in Finland. You know, we built nests for owls and every summer we had to collect wild things, flowers and edibles and name,

dry them and name their Latin name in elementary school. So I went through that and there was more mushroom knowledge there. And then from there studied chemistry, and it's been it's been an ongoing thing since but uh my first mushroom venture was about 13 years ago randomly discovering um winning this innovation award for discovering this like acclaimed mushroom growing in fin, but it's a whole nother story, but well, we got time. Yeah. So getting to, getting to your, the 13th generation farm, what is, what did you guys farm there? I mean, I know you were mentioning foraging mushrooms was there, but what was it? That's actually funny. It's, it's, it's a, it's, it's a good or alarming story of a state of

agriculture right now. When I was a kid, our farm farm was huge it was like a massive big farm today's world it's a tiny farm so just in my lifetime the farm sizes have exponentially grown like i have to have a massive farm economics of scale to produce food cheaper and cheaper and uh when i was a kid we focused on high quality with it like oats like oatmeal is a big thing with today made matcha lattes for you guys. We used, oat milk is now a thing. It's become a Swedish company. Oatly has come to the U.S. You can go to cafes everywhere and there's like oat milk. But oats are a big thing.

And for us, it was also heirloom cows. So we used very fancy cows. One of my favorites was limousine because it sounded cool. But it's like heirloom cow breeds that produce like really nice meats and that was what we we never had dairy on a dairy farm uh or anything like that so yeah just like good old classic grains that grow in icy finland that can survive that and then heirloom cows and then a lot of forest stuff so for foraging for stuff, but also just timber. It's like wood.

There's a lot of good income in that one. And it's a renewable energy source that keeps on growing when you're taking a shit. Money has been growing on trees. So that kept us alive, I guess. When we start to look at the structure of mushrooms, you're talking about kind of the root system and how that is the communication first time i ever heard that actually i was watching a documentary on some i think it was on like a desert maybe something

and all of a sudden there was a whole bunch of like deer or elk that just like randomly started dying and they realized it was because one tree was talking to another tree and as the deer were eating the berries off of the tree it signaled to the other tree like hey they're coming for you and they started producing an enzyme that just mass-killed this like population of deer and they were like how did that happen you're just inviting the internet to troll you. That's fine. I love it. Well, that was the first time I was like, oh, there's things I don't know about. Like, there's

a communication underneath there. Well, we just, I think, generally speaking, like, if we don't see something, we're, like, we're prone to not believe it. But, obviously, there's a lot of stuff we don't see. Like, when you're on a smartphone, it's coming to hate you. Come on, internet, let's go. of stuff we don't see. Like when you're on a smartphone, it's coming to hate you.

Come on, Internet, let's go. Let's do this. Using words like trees are talking to each other, like using that terminology is what brings on the trolls because people think like, you sound like a crazy person. Trees can't talk the way we talk, but they still can communicate in some fashion. So wait, this is an avatar?

There's not like blue electronic lights traveling back and forth? Well, definitely like different life forms have different forms of intelligence. It doesn't mean that they have our types of intelligence, but they have intelligence. Like they, and there's a million examples of this. Like if you just look at trees, how they start to grow in a certain direction to get sunlight, right? They're just trying to survive, right? In this case, there is this hyphae mycelial network connected to the roots of the trees that help the trees collect water and nutrients, but they also communicate of intruders. So in this case,

that happened. One of my favorite examples comes out of Japan. They had this slime mold, which is basically a form of a mushroom, that they would put in a maze, and this mushroom found its way out from this fucking maze. And they've also done it, I think, both in the UK and in Tokyo. And in Tokyo, they tested and they put, like, the stops. Like, here are the train stops in the UK, and here are the train stops or the subway stops in tokyo and this mushroom built this network that had apparently some mathematician like cal it's like better built than what humans built like it had more mathematical sense to how

it was built how that structure was built by this mushroom versus what we humans thought this is a great way to do this so there's definitely like intelligence it might not be the intelligence that we perceive like normally but it definitely like has ways of surviving just like more sophisticated ways of surviving and living. So a lot of plant compounds, to just say that, is like anything from like the onion is to something like really dark leafy green. He has like a strong flavor. That's the plant's own way of protecting itself from other things.

So a lot of these compounds that we even have, like enjoy nutrient density in foods, are actually the plant's own way to protect itself or attempt to protect itself and the the fungus or the mushroom actually is also like a broker to delivering nutrients to the tree in return for carbohydrate from the tree right yeah it can um it can exchange nutrients so it can definitely like it's not it's it's not wall street but uh it can definitely broker some deals underground literally underground deals going on it's not overflowing in hair gel and shitty suits we're attributing a lot of human qualities to the mushrooms they're

great day traders they always make a profit yeah while you're talking about them i'm almost like imagining some of the things that you hear about even like squid and like how they intelligently find their ways and communicate and find their way through a maze. As you're saying this about a mushroom, I'm like, God, it sounds like how a squid works its way through some of these problem-solvings. Is there any of that conversation that goes on about that? Well, to the earlier point of the internet attacking you, it's definitely – I'm ready for you. Bring it. I'll try to... If there is a conspiracy theory,

let's assume there's 100 conspiracy theories and two of them end up being true. We're fucked. And then we assume that the 98 is also true. Because if two of them are correct, then all of them must be correct. And probably the answer somewhere in between is

some of them might have legit facts, but then some don't. Same with mushrooms. They are incredible, and they can actually heal us humans in many ways, and we can talk about that in a second. But also they can help the environment. Mushrooms can help break down inorganic and organic matter. So organic matter is they break down dead trees, or even if humans at a graveyard they

can help break us down into um back to something more usable but they can also break down inorganic things such as diesel so basically oil spells oyster mushroom can help with that or plastic they a few years ago found a mushroom on the amazon that can just loves to eat plastic so can they just put these mushrooms in giant garbage piles? Yeah, they're working on that right now. And the crazy part is that you could actually eat it afterwards, after it's eaten the plastic. But it breaks down in organic matter,

even like toxic chemical warfare weapons. But even though it has this promise, it doesn't mean that every mushroom theory is correct. So there are all kinds of crazy theories. Oh, yeah, here we go. Top three. Top three. Should I say the next one?

Top three crazy theories. Okay, I'm not saying that this is not possible. Disclaimer. Love it. I'm not saying this is not possible. And secondly, I want to believe it. I'm just not quite sure that if it's true in the sense that it's... Galpin's not here, so it's all good.

Terrence McKenna, who is every psychedelic guy's favorite, one of the theories is that through psychedelic mushrooms as pre-humans, we were able to learn how to speak. So what we know of the brain is that we can only,

currently, we use only part of our brain capacity so as our brain has tripled in size yada yada yada like even before when we were less smart if we could have used more of our brain capacity would have been pretty smart right so makes sense so his theory is that by using psychedelic mushrooms we were able to learn how to speak and stuff i probably think it's probably just had excess nutrition. So we just have more nutrients that we could use. And we were starving before that. And then we found ways to tubers or hunting or whatever to get more calories.

And through that, we had more ability to building blocks. Well, that may be similar to what you're saying earlier about like Americans always want to have like the one moment. Yes. Same thing with how an organism evolves over time. It's not necessarily one thing that was the big change. Many things are happening simultaneously, and the emergent property of many things might have contributed to us having larger brains and being able to communicate better than other animals, etc. So true.

So if you look at evolution, even this short 200,000-ish years, it's like there's so many iterations. So if you look at just our own life that is just a fraction of within that big picture of, like, let's say 100 years, how many times in our lives we've, like, improved. And it keeps on going. It's like a daily grind of going to the gym or studying or whatever you're working on, and you slowly get better and better. So then if you think of generations, like in my case my case i often reflected the previous 12 generations running our farm

we've been through under russian ruling the swedish ruling there's been a civil war all the shit has happened at the farm and the farm is just like just within this few hundred years so many things have happened and when you start looking at like hundreds of millions of years, if not, you know, 2.4 billion years, it's been a lot of adjustments over the course of time. And a lot of like cool the sacks as well. Like certain life forms have come to an end and realized that this is where our road ends.

And then another life form has like, you know, something got to fill the void yeah i'm gonna make a projection real quick and and suggest that a large percentage of our audience wants to start hearing about the health benefits of mushrooms so in your mind like categorically what makes mushrooms different than eating other vegetables as an example like are there special properties to mushrooms that have health benefits that you can't find with just eating meats and vegetables nuts and seeds starches etc yes there is and that's probably because of the dna similarity so mushrooms do have some of those um they're not a vegetable but they do have some essential nutrients um especially i think exciting is vitamin d a

non-animal based source of vitamin d D, high in mushrooms, because mushrooms are the same as animals. They can create vitamin D on their skin. So if you collect a mushroom and you put it gills up kind of upside down from the sun, it can create vitamin D2, and then we can ingest that. That's pretty fascinating. There's B vitamins. There's tons of minerals. But where it really gets exciting on stuff that you said, human performance,

there's compounds in mushrooms that are either in very small amounts elsewhere or not at all elsewhere that we can use. And I think the most fascinating for human performance is this group of polysaccharides. So poly means complex and saccharides, sugars. So obviously, as the keto dudes here, it's like, oh, sugars are bad. But these ones absorb completely differently. And they're mostly studied for three things, partly because there's a lot of funding for these. One is gut health.

Massive studies coming right now on how mushrooms being prebiotics but also helping to improve gut biome. And we mentioned the bacteria and fungi having this special relationship. Second is immuno-modulation, which is in the sports performance world, I think, highly underrated. And the importance of modeling your immune system. Because when you exercise, your immune system drops. You easily get sick. If you get sick, you can't exercise as often. I feel like that's the number one thing that I tend to see. Whenever I look at the benefits of medicinal mushrooms, the immune benefits seem to be one of the more prominent things that, that I read about

that I don't see when I'm reading about other forms of nutrition. Correct. And mushrooms do that to plants as well, not to take a side step back to the big picture, but they help with the immune system of, of the whole ecosystem. So it makes sense that it would help with our immune system as well, protect us from intruders. So mushrooms are studied a lot for cancer, partly because there's a lot of funding. It's the second main cause of death after cardiovascular illnesses. And also for immuno – when we talk about immune system, when our immune system is low, that's when usually cancer happens and you need immunostimulants. And that's when you go to a health food store, a supplement store, and they have like the immune boosters. They all like up, upregulate immune system and kind of it's lazy and kick it

in the ass. But also now more commonly people have autoimmune disorders when they're constantly chronically inflamed and their own immune system is starting to attack their healthy cells. And this is where this concept of immuno-modulation comes when you need to suppress the immune system. So modulators are things that can do both. If your body needs a kick in the ass or it needs to slow down because you're over-exercising. So there's modulation that happens with mushrooms. So definitely mushrooms are probably the most studied and consistent actual food source for the immune system and how that helps with performance is avoiding from getting sick, also possibly lowering inflammation.

And I think that's super underrated. And understanding is if you're causing this stress into your body that you want to recover as fast as possible to redo the stress or a different kind of a stressor, that's something you have to have in order and mushrooms can be really helpful for that how much of that process starts kind of with the soil though you talked about how the it decomposes pretty much everything around and i know that we have a massive problem with just quality the quality of our soil and if it is responsible for decomposing say everything around us,

is that influencing the quality of the soil that we're growing all of our plants in? Well, mushrooms help create topsoil that is needed to grow anything. But actually, the funny part is that almost all of the mushrooms that you want to use for your physical performance grow on trees. They don't grow on the ground. There's almost no mushrooms that grow on the ground that you use for optimal physical performance. And those are the polysaccharides? Not really, but if we look at shiitake, maitake, lion's mane, reishi, chaga, cordyceps is the one exception, but otherwise they all grow on

trees, or should grow on trees. So they collect the life forest, so instead of getting nutrients from the soil, they get it grow on trees. So they collect the life force. So instead of getting nutrients from the soil, they get it from the trees. And trees often also have this, not to go too woo, but they have this different kind of life force. So if you look at bird sap, if you look at pine pollen, which is a source of free testosterone, if somebody there is interested in natural sources of free testosterone, tincturing pine pollen might be a fun experiment. But yeah, it's definitely a lot of the benefits of mushrooms are actually from what it has eaten, be it soil or trees. And the quality of the source material, course matters like with any food what has the cow eaten matters to what quality meat or animal product it is or if you have a soil for lettuce

or tomatoes like how's the soil same with mushrooms so that's no different but often the top mushrooms eat trees i feel like at the grocery store growing up all i ever saw was like cremini maybe shiitake shiitake was like the like the outlier cremini was kind of like at the grocery store growing up, all I ever saw was like cremini, maybe shiitake. Shiitake was like the outlier. Cremini was kind of like the staple, at least where I grew up. But I never feel like I see chaga and lion's mane and reishi and cordyceps sold as something that you should just put in your stir fry, as an example. I see them all the time when they're put into powders and supplements and they're're sold as a health product but i don't feel like i see them just at the grocery store on a daily basis even when i shop at arowana whole foods or wherever it happens to be

is there a reason for that or is that just because they're they're not widely as widely known in in the public eye and so they just wouldn't sell well enough to actually take up shelf space or why do you think that is um there is people know shiitake or oyster better than they know lion's mane but if you go to the northeast you go to Vermont on a farmer's market probably you'll find lion's mane there but the biggest reason is cost. A lot of these mushrooms you find in grocery stores are grown and not on their natural medium but often on grains or some sort of kind of like not laboratory but quite commercial ways. So actually, funny enough, I'm a mushroom fan who almost tries to be a PR agency for the kingdom of fungi,

but I can't recommend you buying mushrooms on a grocery store, generally speaking. You can or you can't? I can't. So just farmer's markets or what do you mean? Farmer's markets are awesome foraging. There are the Erwans and there are exceptions, but generally speaking, I couldn't recommend most mushrooms. The grocery store environment is optimized for vegetables,

not necessarily always for mushrooms. And mushrooms can have also bad mushrooms in them, so mold. Mold is a form of a fungi but it's the bad mushroom so it's kind of this cosmic giggle you know is it mother nature god whatever you want to call it but it's like this laughing where good mushrooms are fighting bad mushrooms and vice versa so um and also butter mushrooms if you have tendencies to like candida and other things like that it might make it worse. So actually like the famous example is Tom Brady doesn't eat mushrooms because they cause inflammation

because the classic grocery store mushrooms can cause inflammation. But if the top mushrooms do the opposite, they're anti-inflammatory. So again, it's like when you look at something as big as a kingdom, you can't say something is good or bad like oh plants are good or bad like or like animals are good or bad it's like it's a pretty common it's a blanket statement that is not quite accurate so same goes with mushrooms did you ever growing up accidentally pick a mushroom that you thought was one species or whatever it's called and it turned out to be something completely different and accidentally ingest something that that was you know harmful in any way uh did not happen to me because my mom was pretty good at it. Also was always taught us to be pretty careful.

But I have played with quite poisonous mushrooms. I think the closest I've been to death is kind of ill-preparing false morels. I knew it was a false morel. So morel is a kind of culinary treat sometimes some of you might have had it and there's a false morel that looks very close to it that is is lethal and you have to prepare it in a certain way you have to cook it in a certain way and then it becomes a delicacy but it's a risky play it's a russian roulette and i prepared it kind of like half-assed it. And I don't know, was it placebo or whatever? I didn't feel great.

I didn't die. That's a good thing. But I knew what it was. It was in adult age. So, yeah, that's it. One of the first times I ever actually heard about mushrooms was in the sense of like a health and fitness paradigm was almost like 12 years ago in Ironman magazine, they were talking about white button mushrooms and having a positive effect against de-aromatization of estrogen.

And, you know, remembering that and then kind of seeing, you know, Four Sigmatic bring mushrooms, in my opinion, to the forefront of the supplement world to be used as a supplement uh we hear you know like chaga reishi all these like cordyceps these main ones that we're hearing as a supplement but like say we're at a grocery store that we know has good mushrooms what would be the superstars that you would find in the conventional market that do have the best health properties out of like a white button a white button a shiitake a portobello or whatever shiitake is is is the second most studied mushroom second most widely cultivated mushroom after the butter mushroom and reishi is probably the most studied but it's it's

a superstar and it tastes great has it's a great source of protein there's minerals in it um b vitamins there's a lot of cool stuff but it also has these immuno modulating benefits also a lot of these top mushrooms are very high in antioxidants so you know you can find glutathione and other things like that in these mushrooms so even like the porcinis of the world rank really high but shiitake is number one i would say the other ones is oyster uh also quite easy to grow. You can grow it in even coffee grounds and stuff like that. And it's delicious, but it also has a lot of health benefits.

And then enoki. Those are probably the top three that you would find somewhat commonly in almost anywhere. You can go to Ralph's or whatever one, where you might find enoki. So I would start with those three. I would, generally speaking, avoid the Portobello Cremini Axis. Which are the more expensive ones. Out of the three that you named, it's one of the more expensive ones. It's not saying that they're not good for some people.

They do have fiber. They do have essential nutrients. But just they're a little bit on the risk. I think you get better bang for your buck if you go to a grocery store and get chi-talky. Blitzo started a fire somewhere. Yeah, it sounds like it. Too much fire breath over there.

Combusted at the beach. Is there any particular way that preparing mushrooms, if you're making a meal, brings out the nutrients more so than any other way? I know sometimes if you're making a meal brings out the nutrients more so than any other way. I know sometimes if you leave something raw versus you cook it under high heat, it changes the nutritional properties.

100%. Don't eat mushrooms raw. I'm pretty much giving a blanket statement that no mushrooms should be eaten raw. All the salad bars right now in the world are like, holy shit. We're trying to kill our patrons. Old country buffet.

Get out of business. If that's even a real mushroom. With certain mushrooms, it can remove toxicity to cook them. But particularly, they have this cell structure in the cell walls called chitin. Chitin is also in the shell of a lobster, for example. Just not something as humans are equipped to digest. So you want to apply mushrooms with heat and lipids. So that's why you put in a soup that has oils and heat, or you saute on a pan with butter. So the way how chefs prepare it is actually also the way to get the

bioavailability out. There's also a way to tincture them using alcohol. You can use mushrooms to make pretty cool, like all kinds of healthier cocktails and stuff but generally speaking heat and fats are what you want to apply and those help to unlock it um so you can look at mushrooms more like bone broth than you would look at them as like a raw veggie that you want to put on your salad with the with the lipids that you're cooking the mushrooms also uh help with uh transporting like the nutrients like you were saying that mushrooms are high in vitamin D, since it's a fat-soluble nutrient. So is that kind of what it is? So, I mean, again, there's many ways to slice and dice this,

but generally speaking, fats help with the absorption of a lot of things, including mushrooms. Vitamin C, that probably nobody in the Western world will ever be deficient on, helps with the absorption of many other nutrients so the same with polysaccharides vitamin c having it in a smoothie or a blend with like some sort of a natural vitamin c probably help with the absorption of them so same goes for mushrooms so you know when you uh wrote your book you laid out 10 very important ones but one of the things that was super cool is the timing throughout the day

and how you can kind of supplement that throughout your day for what you're going for. I know even at Four Sigmatic, you guys have like a morning, a midday, and a nighttime regimen. We're going to take a break, but get over to foursigmatic.com backslash shrugged. Go get some sweet coffee and tea. We're going to load up right now. We'll be back after the break. Drugged fam, hope you guys are enjoying the show. I want to give a special shout-out to our sponsors.

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Back to the show. Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged. We're in the middle of Venice talking mushrooms with Taro for 4sigmatic. And because I'm not that smart, I forgot to give you what the deal is. Go to 4sigmatic.com backslash shrugged. 15% off your first order. Go do that thing because now that we've got Taro on here, you know this mushroom thing's real.

It's not just weird stuff that we like to talk about. Before we left, though, we talked at the beginning a whole lot about the root system and all the woo-woo communication of trees. But the actual flowering piece, I want to get into just a little bit of the anatomy before we get into the specifics of each mushroom and the benefits of the top ten that you've kind of laid out so if there's 1.5 million different types of mushrooms there's many forms they look different but generally speaking mushrooms have roots the same way as plants have roots and those roots are called mycelium and those are underground

generally or inside the tree so that's the rooting rooting system. Then you have the fruit, which is called the fruiting body. That's what you're meant to eat, generally speaking. So let's think of like an apple in an apple tree. So the actual apple that you eat is called this fruiting body. And this fruiting body might have different pieces to it. The classic just has a stem, has a gap, cap, and then it has gills. But there are so many different forms. So not all of them are like that.

And then there's spores that come out of the fruiting body. And those spores are the seeds. And those will fly somewhere and create more hyphae, mycelium, fruiting body, spores. And that's the circle of life. So, yeah, those are – you are meant to eat the fruit, so to say. Is the cap and the stem, is that a different medicinal effect or is that all just eat it all and it's all the same? That all depends on the mushroom.

Generally speaking, the stem has more fiber, a little bit less of the medicinal ingredients, but that's very general comment. So, for for example these chairs are an amanita muscaria it's a red mushroom with white dots that is your mushroom emoji that is part psychedelic part poisonous mushroom um that has a lot of myth and lore around it and they're specifically on the cap just underneath the skin is like where a lot of the psychoactive compounds are so so did super mario know that yes

i mean like that's why it's obviously a red and white and then he grows and yeah and that's why he is running away from runs into monsters all the time because like this one is one of the most the darkest darkest psychedel mushrooms. It's by the way also legal. So you could, I'm not, highly don't recommend going online and buying it, but you could. Silk Road, is that still available? No. Is that still a thing? No, it's actually just straight up legal, but highly recommend if nobody to get into Amanita.

You said it is legal. It is legal, yeah. Oh, okay. I thought you said it was illegal. You said it is legal. It is legal, yeah. Oh, okay. I thought you said it was illegal. No, it is legal. It's part psychedelic, also part poisonous, and it gives you the worst trip. Call Mario and Luigi for your hookup.

Yeah. If you want a trip while being poisoned, that's your mushroom. That is true. If you want to take it to the next level. If you're thinking, don't think about it. Just don't do it. So what's kind of the starter kit?

You mentioned the reishi is kind of the most researched piece of the mushroom kingdom. Fungi kingdom. Reishi or reishi, both are right. Wait, is this a say? His way was right. Mine was wrong. He did that very nicely. I could do either one, really.

But really, it's the other way. But the smart people. It's a Japanese name. They're difficult, you know? It's all Japanese names. Yeah, that one is the most studied. It's more grounding. All of them have these pulse chakras.

They're good for gut health, immune system. So whichever you choose, they're probably going to support your gut health. They're going to provide antioxidants, and they're going to help with the immunomodulation. So all of them are same in that way but they all have like special skills what's specific about reishi is that it has these triterpenes that are really adaptogenic which is like so buzzy these days that's exactly what i was about to ask you about i feel like i feel like that word is really come into about mainstream but it's really like infuse itself into the kind of the forward thinking fitness functional fitness community let's start where where that came from so even though a lot

of these plants and mushrooms that are considered adaptogens and there's not by the way a lot of them like a lot of things that are marketed as an adaptogen is not an adaptogen so um the original really research comes from the soviet union where they they commissioned this Dr. Lazarov look at like what can we give the soldiers that the performance will go up even a little bit but we wouldn't have a let down the next few days and they studied originally five different things like ginseng ulythro rhodiola rhodiola is a route that like vikings took before going to battle and that's the kind of the the origins um mostly from like the 60s and onwards. And it was all meant for physical performance.

So there's a lot to be learned there. They don't offer – none of these adaptogens really offers macro or micronutrients. So you're not going to get a lot of protein, fats, carbs from them. You're not going to get a lot of minerals or vitamins from them. But what you have is these smaller compounds, the rosavans and the ginsenoids that somehow seem to modulate your body. So all adaptogens should be non-stimulative, so they should modulate your body. They should be non-habit-forming, so they shouldn't be toxic or cause an addiction to them. And they should also help regulate balance so sounds like something that is perfect for anybody who

like does sports or active physical or just wants to perform like at work better because it's safe it's non-toxic it performs performance but through balance and um there's a lot to be there and i think that is definitely the next frontier because it's not away from anything. You can eat any diet. You can be low carb. You can do heavy duty style. You can do bodybuilding, whatever. But all of these will still help in your goals. And so it's definitely something people should look into

adding to your own regimen. Is ashwagandha a fungus? No, it is. It's just an adaptogen, but not a fungus. Yes. It's mostly used as the root, but you can also use the leaf. It's often referred to as the Indian ginseng. It's top, probably third most studied adaptogen after ginseng and reishi,

maybe fourth, but definitely on top of the list. Mostly also studied for stress, but can have multiple other benefits. Because these adaptogens are nonspecific. They're harder to measure because normally studies are done with a one marker. So like, hey, how does your cholesterol behave when you take this? Or how does this blood circulation, how is your VO2 max up or down when you take that? But with these adaptogens, at least the basic concept is that they work your body in multiple different ways. But yeah, ashwagandha is mostly for evening, reducing stress,

but also has antioxidant properties, immune-supporting benefits, and stuff like that. By the way, if you're listening to this and you want to see some of the research on all this stuff, we interviewed Kamal from examine.com, which is like a supplement review type site where they just aggregate all the different studies that have been done on all these different types of compounds. So that's where I typically go if I want to see research studies. Rather than just take someone's word for it, I want to see what the actual science says about something.

So for things like ashwagandha and even each of the individual mushrooms, go check out examine.com. It's a really, really good research. It summarizes all the research so you can get it in a very bite-sized way. We don't have to sit there and read through research papers. And I love that they are so,

like they curate it so well. They do. And they make it so easy, but it's still legit. I really love examine.com. If you don't want to go through PubMed yourself and just go through that jungle, which is also fun, but I really like examine.com. you don't want to go through pub med yourself and just go through that jungle which is also fun but i really like examine.com yeah when you were uh recently when you were

talking about um previously you were talking about extraction and you were saying like how they'll make tinctures what do you find um with something like reishi or chaga um i find that you know some people are doing like an alcoholic like an alcohol extraction where some people are doing a water more of a water-based extraction i'm not really sure the the other differences but there'll be like a difference in taste i mean some are like so bitter right but is there a difference in performance or the way that they absorb um or is there a preferred way that you believe they should be isolated yeah there's huge differences so you think of like hey you say it's like oh you should do deadlift but then you go what kind of deadlift how many sets

how you know there's so many varieties so sure we can say that you should do deadlift you should have rishi right but then it comes down to the quality what's your form so what's the sourcing of that rishi how it's extracted would be like what style or how many sets or how many reps you do, right? So these all definitely matter. And I think the point when you start calling things good or bad, just like blanket statements, usually gets you in trouble. Sure, you can say some things tend to be better, but you have to look deeper into it. And mushrooms or herbs are no different. So extraction is a huge factor. And

especially in these compounds that are hard, they're so sturdy. They protect themselves from nature. Chaga lives 20 years in Siberia or Finland in snow, or ginseng lives 6 to 12 years trying to avoid from bugs eating it. Yeah, they are sturdy things. They're usually roots or some kind of like a strong substance, and you have to extract them. And the general rule of thumb is that hot water helps extract the immune-modulating benefits of them. So if you want immune support, hot water. That's the classic way to go.

So you basically make a decoction, which is like tea is an infusion, and it's like a light boil. Decoction is like a long boil. Think of, again, bone broth is a slow cooker is a great example. And then the adaptogenic properties comes with lipids or alcohol. So you could use glycerin or alcohol like a tincture. That's the most common way. And if you do both, it's called a dual extraction.

But now we have to get into like, what are you trying to achieve? But generally speaking, the dual extraction is when you get best of both worlds. Which is what Four Sigmatic products are, correct? Yeah. Dual extraction. And it's more important. I remember you saying that on a hike one time. Yeah. So it's more, it's more important for certain mushrooms than other mushrooms. And same with supplements. Let's take rhodiola, which is not a mushroom. It's another root like ashwagandha, used for a lot of sport performance. There's many kinds of extractions on the market. Supplement companies love to say their extraction is better than other extractions and whatnot.

But definitely the extraction level matters a lot. So, I mean, it's no different from protein, for example, like protein isolates and the sourcing and yada, yada, yada. What is the schedule we talked about as we were kind of going into break here, kind of the, how would you partition the day out, which mushrooms specifically, clearly you don't want to be drinking the four sigmatic coffee at 8 PM before you go to bed, but how, how do you kind of structure a day of the most ideal scenario of which mushrooms, which times? So number one rule is, is if you don't take it, it's not going to help you. So whatever is the way you enjoy taking it, is it with matcha,

is it with coffee, is it with cocoa, is it in a smoothie, is it in a snack? The main point is you're getting it into your system. So even a worse workout is better than no workout often. So just get there and do stuff and then just start optimizing as you go. On the specific mushrooms, where should you start? I really like chaga mushroom, the king of these mushrooms in the morning. It's super high in antioxidants. And that really gives, it's like the force field in a cup.

It protects you from both the pathogens and the oxidization that happens during the day. So I really like that. It's also quite neutral in the way because in the morning you have energy naturally. You're like you should already be go by itself if your body is healthy. So that's the thing. In the afternoon, midday, I recommend cordyceps pre-workout or if you need energy. It's really shown to kind of be a more uplifting mushroom.

There are some interesting studies for endurance purposes, some VO2 max studies. It also has a lot of myth and lore in the endurance world of, like, runners using it for quite the spike. It was discovered because the Sherpas high in the Himalayans were observing yaks, the big bulls native there, eating it. They were tired in the altitude. They were like all pooped out. And then they started grazing on these cordyceps. And suddenly these yak were set to have like crazy endurance and energy.

And then the Sherpas were like, oh, we should probably have them as well. So that one is probably a pre-workout or when you need energy. Lion's Mane is the one that has become super trendy right now in this like emergence of nootropics and smart drugs so it's got a great name yeah it's it's why wouldn't you want lion's mane we we use purely free-range lions i killed them myself. Humane lions. No, we used grass-fed Malaysian children to collect the lions.

Send them out there? Yeah, they're good. They're really quick on their feet. When a lion's coming after you and all you've got is scissors. They give them chocolate before they go. They've got energy. They work all day long.

Yeah. Just FYI, we were kidding about killing lions. Yes. Do not. No. You just cut the hair. You don't kill them. You just chop it off.

Snip the hair. Yeah, snip the hair. That one is more for brain function. So if you want productivity, a lot of nootropics are very synthetic, and they might have quite bad side effects. And I'll just leave it at that. But when you use real foods for cognitive function, synthetic and they might have quite bad side effects and i'll just leave it at that but when you use real foods for cognitive function like good fatty acids like fish oils and stuff

like that i would say but lion's mane in that kind of a building block category and then the rishi is probably post-workout afternoon evening when you kind of want to you know you can combine it with your marijuana or you can just have it with your or just buy it have it in a little cocoa um but yeah it's a it's a great adaptogen ashwagandha would go great with actually reishi so if you want to do an evening hack you can combine your magnesium l-theanine l-tryptophan ashwagandha reishi make a little thing going on and like someone is writing down this list of ingredients to make their own product right now. They pulled over on the side of the road. They're like, Taro told me to make this.

No, but it's like, look, I think the best stuff you should not hide is just to say what's working. The things that it's studied and you've seen good stacks or good blends, nobody should own them. So if somebody there wants to do a magnesium, reishi, ashwagandha, L-theanine, what else should we put? Chamomile, lemon balm. Chlorogenic acid. Some coffee

green coffee bean extract. Get that blood-brain barrier going. At night, 200 milligrams of strong coffee. 200 milligrams of strong coffee. That'll be like $10 a serving. We're making the ultimate supplement. $1,000 cup of coffee.

Some Silicon Valley guy right now is like, this stuff doesn't exist. It's 20 bucks at Air One. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You blend it with the Bulgarian rose water. Yes, yes. And you get that $214 royal jelly from the freezer. Oh, my gosh. And you just put it on. They have like a $100 bottle of water that they no longer carry.

And I was like, I just. They definitely have still the $200 plus oil jelly. God, that's insane. It's the best. Unbelievable. I remember hearing about Cordyceps. So you were saying it was kind of some, you know, urban, you know, some urban legend, maybe a myth behind it. But I've heard a lot of stories about Chinese like the Olympian...

The runners? Yeah, the runners. It was Stuttgart. Himalayan mountain climbs and stuff like that where it's... We'll never know the truth, but how it became famous in the West was the Stuttgart World Championships, I believe in 92. And there was a group

of Chinese female runners that were not as famous in the running circles yet. And they came kind of seemingly from nowhere. And they broke the world record. I believe they were the first woman to break 30 minutes on a 10K, which is pretty impressive. And they were like, oh, doping for sure. Yeah, doping for sure. So they tested them so many times, and they tested out clean. All we can find is cordyceps.

But that's what the coach came. This famous coach, Ma Yunren, just came out and said, like, hey, we trained this much, like this many miles, more than other people, and then we took a lot of cordyceps. Obviously, especially if you've seen Icarus or whatever, you don't know what's happening. There's no EPO used on that Chinese running team at all probably. Yeah, but really high-grade cordyceps. But that being said, I would say probably if they took something besides cordyceps,

I would assume in the early 90s they were not the only ones who took stuff. What's the American 100-meter runner, Florence Griffith Joyner? Oh, yeah. Flo Jo. Flo Jo. Oh, my God. She's natural. Yes.

Juiced. Juiced. Totally natural. How old was she when she died? Like 38, 39? Juiced to the gills. It had to be her asthma. It had to be the asthma that did it.

I just remember as a kid, it was like Marion Jones, who also got caught cheating. Mark Henry. I just remember as a kid, it was like Marion Jones, who also got caught cheating. And she was 20 years later, and she was juiced. And she could get, like, was she like, she ran like 10.68 or something. And the Flojo ran 10.49 and, like, stopped at the end, kind of like started waving her hands. It's like, what happened? That that was easy it was easy yeah i have i have one more question actually getting back to adaptogens just a little bit because this is a this is a personal question a lot of adaptogens work for a very small group of people right but i find that with what i've read mushrooms with their adaptogenic properties work for a larger percentage of people.

Does that have to do, getting back to almost one of the first things that you mentioned, which is our DNA structure, that's why they work that much better. So something like a maca positively works for 40% of people. They're tribulus. So I would say

yes, DNA similarity can cause mushrooms to be the best ever or the worst ever. Worst ever is that sort of mushrooms can really mess you up pretty badly because of their bioavailability, good or bad. But they can also be more generally available for a lot of people. The other reason why I would say mushrooms are good is the polysaccharides are really one of the most, especially bath-D-glucans, if you want to go and study them. They're one of the more kind of study thing compounds for human health in general. You can get them in, for example, the oats,

which we used to farm in small amounts, but very high in mushrooms. So even if you wouldn't have the triterpenes, you wouldn't feel in reishi as much, or the cordycepic acid in cordyceps, you wouldn't feel as much. You would probably still reap the benefits from the polysaccharides.

The other thing I want to say is a lot of stuff that is sold as an adaptogen is not necessarily adaptogen like tribulus maca that you mentioned probably are not quite as proven as ashwagandha holy basil ginseng rhodiola so like not everything's created fully equal and i i i couldn't recommend people taking triplers on the regular. I just feel like a lot of people are, a lot of companies are getting away with biased, you know, biased science to the idea of, like, oh, this is going to do this, this, and this in, like, the smallest group study. And it's, you know, it's good to hear from somebody who has the knowledge. It's the shitty part is that progress doesn't happen if we only look in the rear-view mirror. So if we only look at what's already been studied, it's like

somebody needs to be the pioneer. Somebody needs to be the Bledsoe breathing fire at Venice Beach on a Saturday morning. Sounds like they put it out. Trust me, don't go that far though. Don't go that far. You'll be off the rails in a week and a half. Somebody needs to be that. It's gotta be an extreme.

If there's a pendulum, and we think that the pendulum swings from the other extreme to the other extreme, and we think the extreme optimist and the extreme negative or whatever, and then somebody comes and just throws the pendulum to the other place, the center point changes as well. We need these people

who experiment. Maybe one out of 10 things they do we end up seeing it's like oh that actually is legit the nine other stuff was like but like hey that one thing actually is is a real deal right and you're you're kind of battling with four sigmatic like a ton of people that are very focused on the negative side of this stuff so what is kind of the message and how are you able to get this out to the public of the benefits? Clearly, this show has got to be leading the charge for you.

Clearly. But I mean, Four Sigmatic, you guys have been creating an awesome business, awesome model, super healthy stuff. But when did Four Sigmatic start and what was kind of the process of getting rid of all the maybe negative phobias that go on surrounding mushrooms? Yeah, we started six and a half years ago. We've been in the U.S. a little over three. We did a lot of things wrong and a lot of on the practical side. You're starting strong coffee.

You know, like how difficult it is to make a food product. there's a lot of things that goes behind the scenes that as a consumer you don't always know but the few things we got right was really you know with my background on our team is like geeking out on the ingredients and the formulation side so that was like it's like sometimes marketing is a tax you pay for a bad product i'm not saying that's that that's completely true but definitely there's a factor if you just make a legit thing I couldn't pay myself a salary. We couldn't do any marketing but people tried the product. They loved it They talked about it So the good old classic word of mouth doing like good stuff

The other thing that we did from day day one is just like free education just not just on our products but in general and That really was like we didn't even know about like whatever content marketing or fancy words of podcasts was just coming out. But it's, it's, it's the thing is like, Hey, now today's world, you can share a lot of stuff easier than you used to 10 years ago. Um, and that's the authentic way, like just sharing and educating and it will resonate with some people will not resonate with other people for us. Like we've not come out and said that like originally our packaging had no claims because we came out of Europe You couldn't make any health claims in America. You can make stuff say stuff We still have it instead of saying this will make your penis bigger and it will fill out

Do that one? Yeah, they allow you tax for bigger and busier Like our product says, like, Dick jokes. We're still eight. It's fine. Oh, I'm nine. I'm nine. He's mature. Yeah, I'm mature.

Does somebody say penis? Yeah, I mean, our product says, like, a hug for your brain. Like, we've never come out and said, like, our product will solve all your problems like that's not been part of the messaging is like and i still don't think mushrooms are going to solve all the physical performance things and they're going to be all the things that you're going to need but i'm saying they're underrated like there's a lot of research on them and there's

a lot of promise on them that you can benefit and if you exclude a complete kingdom out of your diet that's probably not smart. So it doesn't mean you have to have Four Sigmatic, doesn't mean you have to have chaga, but if you exclude a complete kingdom from your diet, that's probably not a smart move. How much of the stuff do I need? Like if I am taking Four Sigmatic products,

or like what is the dosage that is kind of like an appropriate daily amount do I need to just be eating mushrooms like grinding and juicing and all of it every single day of my life or is this a minimum effective dose of kind of what you guys are putting into the products or do we need to be supplementing this stuff just all day long yeah I'm probably like one-fifth of whatever of whatever plezo is having that's a big question yeah that's not a podcast we've we've i would say generally speaking our products are dosed that like one is enough to give you a result but you say like we say between one to three and they're already pre-packaged so just like have one to three so morning afternoon evening is totally

fine but you you can only just do morning. And what's important about these polysaccharides is think of them almost like a chlorophyll, is that you want to have a little bit of chlorophyll every day. It's not that you do like a chlorophyll overdose and do a green juice, you know, for three days and nothing but green juice. That's probably not smart,

but you probably want to have dark leafy greens in some form or the other, be it in a smoothie or in a salad or next to your steak or whatever, every day, because that is a building block kind of like for your general healthy body. So think of polisaccharides the same way. You don't have to have Four Sigmatic. You don't have to have chaga. You don't have to have shiitake, but have some sort of a polisaccharide every day at some meal or between meals. It would be ridiculous

if we were in Venice Beach right now at the Sherm Room and we did not talk about psychedelics a little bit, right? I was like, we are in Venice at the Sherm Room. We have to discuss this. And there's a bit of a revolution going on. Michael Pollan just wrote a book.

He's got a big voice. It looks like this conversation is kind of coming to the forefront of just mainstream and understanding some of the benefits and maybe some of the drawbacks i don't know but the conversation has become much more a part of our culture um have you done this benefits how far how far are we going on uh just your your education on that side of it because sure i think one of the things that it's maybe just the phobia of those are bad for you like my parents used to say that anytime we'd be in the park like don't don't eat that you're gonna die um and then the next conversation is you're gonna trip balls if you eat that. So, like, what's – can I drink your tea and have a beautiful afternoon? Yeah, they're non-psychoactive.

Damn. Someday. It's going to be a big day. It's just like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Every, like, 1,000th pack has a special dose of psilocybin in it, but you don't know which one it's going to be until you take it. You won the lottery today. You've got to roll the dice.

You would literally feel like you are at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Holy shit. Holy fuck, it's a Noompa Loompa. He's staring at me. April's Fools, we announced the product. It was an Amanita Elixir, and this tagline was like an EDM festival in your brain. Yeah, it's possible.

Maybe every 10,000. There you000 this it's the same pendulum thing is like it's these extremes and we love to operate in the extreme yes extreme no like people are like hey you everybody should be on psychedelics every day microdose right that's the way to go or like hey all of them are bad and but I can tell that in the last 13 years, there's probably not one mushroom conversation where somebody is like, are these magic mushrooms? If you say magic. Yes. That was last year's conversation. They're all magic, though, right?

Yes, that's what I mean. They're all magical in different ways. But it is really funny to look at people's reaction. It is. It's just it's very binary. People get really excited or kind of really freaked out yeah it's fun to gauge but you're right it's in the last two years massive change has happened like people are so much more open to having the conversation and that's pretty them is the best

thing you can hope for is people to ask different questions probably the same in exercise it's not like instead of knowing what's the best workout system or what was the best way to eat, if people just asking like, hey, how should I work out? How should I eat? And just do their own thing. A few things I want to note, though, on a very on the high level is that humans, for better or for worse, have had a history with psychedelics for a long time, like a long, long time. And different forms of psychedelics and magic mushrooms, psilocybin particularly, like, has a lot of heritage. It doesn't mean that that means it's automatically good. We humans have done a lot of stupid stuff as well in the past,

but there's a long heritage on them. The other thing that it's to note is, like, what's a drug? Like, what is a drug to someone else like for example um byron who makes aspirin used to create heroin and that was given to kids like oh like put them to sleep little babies heroin coke coke coca-cola for a long time a couple popes even promoted cocaine wine so and then you go into the the ambience and and the adderalls of the world that now are legal like how good we those will be in 10 years or whatever but um mushroom salsibum particularly is not legal in the

united states it's not something you know you can buy or it's it's even legal to possess so it's very much considered a bad thing it is not known to create addiction actually built tolerance for it so if you have it today then tomorrow you would have to up the doses massively to get any noticeable results so um it's it's not one of these um drugs quote unquote that creates addiction problems but doesn't mean that it's good and doesn't have other risks in it so um i i think people are starting to more openly have that conversation and not compare all drugs equally because some of them are quite different and how we use them as humans as well is quite different. Do you find that, or in your knowledge, do you feel that some of the mushrooms such as reishi or cordyceps or chaga positively affect the experience of being paired with psilocybin. Yeah, Lion's Mane is quite a classic.

Lion's Mane combined with niacin is probably the most classic psilocybin stack. So I'll just leave it at that. Cool. We'll talk offline. Everybody's brain is just like brain just like I got a guy yeah but mushrooms that is not

15% off yeah that's full price double vitamins we talked about vitamin C enhancing absorption

like there's definitely mushrooms in general the oyster and the shiitakes there's definitely a connection between B vitamins with mushrooms and there's also for niacin particularly but like also other b vitamins

how they could potentially help with brain function anything from helping serotonin production to other things like that so b vitamin is a definitely interesting brain hack in general and also water soluble so there's like limited risks and lion's mane for nerve growth factors and generally brain building new neuropathways maybe i think there needs to be a lot more research but maybe benefits like neuroplasticity and other things like that i i think a lot of the like there's a lot of in vitro stuff still but there's a lot of problems in lion's mane for various cognitive, you know, mild cognitive impairment repair and stuff like that.

What's the word with matcha? Like why is that becoming so popular these days? I don't know. I don't really understand the benefits. I've never researched it, though. I don't know what they are. Yeah. So matcha is tea.

It's not nothing. Tea is one of the most common consumed beverages. All real tea comes from the same plant. So the genus is exactly the same. The differences between the black tea and the green tea is how it's been oxidized or non-oxidized. Matcha particularly is grown in a certain way where it's like limited from sunlight. So it really needs to like become stronger.

So think of wrestlers out of iran or russia you know you put them through a different school and they come a little stronger at the end you know so the same this matcha is like a wrestler from uh or a boxer from cuba or something like they go through a different school and they come out a little stronger at the end and what's the difference between green tea and matcha is that green tea, you steep. It was the infusion we talked about. So you put green tea leaves in hot water and take it out. Matcha, you pulverize super fine. So you actually consume the whole green tea. So it has multiple times more amounts of antioxidants. You consume the fibers as well. It has caffeine, same as all tea. So 40, 45, 50 milligrams depends on the amount of matcha you have.

So let's say a half of the caffeine of a normal cup of coffee. It also has L-theanine, which is an amino acid that is used a lot for cognitive function and calming your body. We talked about it in one of the stacks. So, you know, it might help give you energy but give you brain power and doesn't, like, give you the jitters maybe because of the L-theanine. It calms you down. Strong coffee has L-theanine as well. Yeah. And it's equivalent.

We know that. He tells us every time we're together. But the matcha, since it's so much lower in caffeine as a cup of coffee, it has roughly like 30 to 40 grams of caffeine. It has like 10 to 20 milligrams of L-theanine that are naturally occurring in it, which is a big difference to green tea as well, right? Yes. And much higher in L-theanine than in normal green tea. And I think the fascinating part maybe for your listeners tea called catechins and especially ECGG, which is a compound that has some exciting – sorry, we're in front of people getting in.

You can come. Come on through. Come on through. We're good. You look friendly. Do you want to learn about mushrooms? Want to be on the show? We'll make you famous.

Welcome to Barbell Shrug. Those pants are dope. Anyway, just to finish the thought, Stone Cold Fox. So there's some exciting stuff on these catachins for weight loss. There's no magic pill. There's no

super formula. But green tea in general has a lot of promise. Green tea extract is used in a lot of weight loss stacks and stuff. So matcha could be, you know, an assist in healthy weight loss. It's not going to be a game changer. It's not going to make you skinny overnight, but definitely could help with shredding some pounds together with a healthy diet and exercise.

So matcha could be a great for brain power. It could be great for as a coffee alternative without you get energy without the jitters and could be help with some weight loss. And there's also chlorophyll in it. So you get a little bit of green. Yeah. It tastes pretty strong though.

So just warn if you just have without almond milk or some coconut oil or something else, it's quite earthy. So before we close out the show, are there any types of mushrooms or anything in this world that we haven't touched on yet that we really should include in the show that we don't want to miss? I think maitake is probably the one that, besides the cordyceps and the other ones that we mentioned, maitake is quite commonly known

in North America and sometimes called hen of the woods. Delicious, actually probably my favorite for flavor. But there's also some evidence on balancing your blood sugar and the absorption of carbohydrates. I think the fancy word is alpha-glucosidase inhibitor. But that also might be something if somebody's trying to lose weight very naturally and use these small hacks that will give a little bit of an edge. Maitake might be fascinating.

Is that a beta-glucan in it? There is particularly these 1.3, 1.6 beta-glucans in it. Sometimes their market is diffraction. They're fancy names. Just another way of supplement companies try to sell stuff but yes there's particular types of beta glugans that are found in my talkie that are not might be found in other mushrooms that might help with weight loss blood sugar stuff stuff but again weight loss i'm not trying to say here is that's going to be a magic pill but it might help and it might help balance out blood sugar also between like if you want to carbohydrate take a lot of them and just balance

the blood sugar that might be a one experiment to try yeah and for a lot of the stuff you're gonna have to go to some sort of food market that is not your normal sprouts like you're gonna have to go to some sort of farmer's market don't don't talk bad about sprouts sprout sells for sigmatic oh oh no don't go to sproutsouts. Go to foursigmatic.com backslash shrug. Say 15%. Screw Sprouts. Yes. Okay, fair enough. You can go to Sprouts and buy one packet.

Try it if you like the flavor. Then get the mega bundle online. There you go. That's the way to go. Where can people find you since we already just kicked them to the website? That's the place. I'm quite bad in social media and other forms. So Four Sigmatic everywhere is probably the best way to follow.

I think if you got interested in mushrooms and want to learn more, we have a free mushroom academy online. Oh, that's awesome. So you can learn through videos and three different courses, three different levels, and learn about the benefits of mushrooms for your health and for the environment. So if you are the internet troll that

attacked you, whoever, that those people were. It really was only like two people. We blew that up kind of big. Very sensitive. That's the thing about comments online. A hundred people could be like, you're great. One person could be like, fuck you. And you'd be like,

god damn, everybody hates me. We got blasted on YouTube. Blasted? YouTube does that. Whatever. It's just the people. is going to be like, fuck you, and you'll be like, god damn, everybody hates me. We got blasted on YouTube. A blasted? Yeah. YouTube does that. Whatever. It's just the people. It's just the masses.

I'm not worried about that. YouTube's the worst. And they can see you while they're writing, like, oh, that guy. But you reach 280 million out of the 320, 40 million Americans, right?

So you're pretty big. So you get two haters every now and then. Out of 280 million. I also highly recommend going at... What's the name of the book? I'm in the middle of it. Healing Mushrooms.

Healing Mushrooms. Go get it. It's awesome. You have a kid's book. You have a kid's book coming out. It's a secret, man. You can't... Shit.

Okay, you heard it here first. There will be a children's book. Hey, you should have told me that shit was a secret. He's coming up with a game, too, called Super Mario. He chases mushrooms around. Yeah. Try to avoid monsters. Try and find out which one's real.

Yeah. Anyway, thanks for having me on. It's fantastic. Von Roth, tell us about the strongest coffee that exists. Strong Coffee. Strong Coffee. Check us out at Strong Coffee Company. I don't want to dilute the subject as we were just talking about Four Sigmatic,

but you guys were having a conversation over there about some positive properties and proteins and instant nutritional energy. Doug Larson. It's fucking delicious. It's delicious and it mixes well and it's good for you. Those are your three points. I was about to jump in, but you went with the we don't want to dilute it. I was just going to go.

I'm sorry. But check me out at Von Rothfelder. He always forgets to say that it's delicious. I know. It is delicious. I appreciate it. Doug Larson. You bet.

You can find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I'm not sure exactly when this episode is going to post, but I very well may have my own site up by then, DougLarsonFitness.com. I'm going to start putting a variety of educational courses, which I really enjoy making, on that site. So go ahead and check that out as well. Just set a deadline. It's going to happen for you by then.

I don't know when the show's coming out. Soon. Soon. Next couple weeks. Late. Where can they find you, Anders? At Anders Varner. More importantly, just come hang out on the Strut Collective.

We've got five shows on the radio podcast, five a week. We've got, what, four shows on YouTube coming out. You bet. We've got a trancation coming out. Proof on Mondays. Real Talk blog, Tuesdays. Check out Ryan Fisher's blog. That's a good one. All the things.

We're working hard, bringing you guys awesome content. And get into iTunes, like, subscribe, share, get onto YouTube, write a positive comment. Internet troll him. Don't hurt his hair. You know what? Write a negative comment. I don't care.

We're going to go interview the subject matter and make you feel dumb after you write it. So come write a bad one. At Anders Varner. We'll see you guys next Wednesday. Thanks a lot. Thanks for tuning in today. Want to give a little shout out again to all the sponsors of the show. For all of your strength and conditioning needs,

make sure you're getting over to shrugcollective.com backslash vault. We've got 11 programs in there. Three long-term, 18-plus months. Nine, eight shorter-term programs, three months apiece. Shrugcollective.com backslash vault. Omax. You're going to get a free box of fish oils. Try omax.com backslash shrugged.

Organifi, get over to Organifi.com backslash shrugged. You're going to save 20% with the coupon code shrugged. And also go to Thrive Market. Thrivemarket.com backslash shrug. $60 in free organic groceries, free shipping, and a 30-day free membership. ThriveMarket.com backslash shrugged. And then our title sponsor for this show, Four Sigmatic. Go to FourSigmatic.com backslash shrugged.

And you're going to get 15 off your first order see you guys next week