Dhru Purohit Show - The Top Adaptogens for Better Focus, Memory, and Mood with Tero Isokauppila

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Cozy Earth. Are you suffering from chronic fatigue, anxiety, or digestive or autoimmune issues? Or are you seeking a simple way to level up your health with a food that is easy to integrate into your everyday routine? Look no further than to adaptogens: nutrient-dense superfoods that have been clinically proven to help support your body's immunity and gut health, boost brain activity and focus, aid with stress and mood, and so much more!  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru talks to Tero Isokauppila about the power of adaptogens and how to start integrating them into your routine for better health.  Tero Isokauppila is an expert in all things related to nutrition, health, and wellness and is the founder of Four Sigmatic—a functional foods company. He is the author of two bestselling books: Healing Mushrooms, an educational cookbook, and Santa Sold Shrooms, a children's book for adults about the magical origins of Santa Claus, as well as his newly released book, Healing Adaptogens: The Definitive Guide to Using Super Herbs and Mushrooms for Your Body’s Restoration, Defense, and Performance. In this episode, we dive into:    -The top three adaptogens for brain health and focus (1:44) -The history of adaptogens and how they have been used throughout traditional cultures (7:30) -How to incorporate adaptogens into your daily routine (11:03) -Functional mushrooms vs adaptogens (15:18) -How adaptogens work in the body (16:18) -The benefits of tulsi and ashwagandha (20:15) -How reishi and ashwagandha improve sleep quality (27:28) -Adaptogens and caffeine intake (38:24)  -Psychedelics and microdosing (53:20) -Pregnancy and adaptogens (1:13:55) For more on Tero Isokauppila, follow him on Instagram @iamtero, Facebook @foursigmatic, Twitter @foursigmatic, YouTube @foursigmatic, and through his website, us.foursigmatic.com. Get his book, Healing Adaptogens, here.  This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Cozy Earth. ​​InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. Cozy Earth are the most comfortable, temperature-regulating, and nontoxic sheets on the market. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DHRU. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every adaptogen has like three to five super skills versus a normal supplement or an herb. It's just used for one thing and one thing only. Welcome to the Drew Prod podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is my friend, Tero Isocopola. And we're talking all about the top adaptogenic herbs and mushrooms and even beans, yes, beans for better brain health. improved mood, and even increased performance. Now, a quick note about my friend Terro.

He's the founder of Four-Sigmatic, a functional foods company, and he's the author of the newly released book Healing Adaptogens, the definitive guide to using super herbs and mushrooms for your body's restoration, defense, and performance. Terro was chosen twice as one of the world's top 50 food activists by the Academy of Culinary Nutrition and has appeared in Time magazine, Forbes, BuzzFeed, Vogue, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, and even Bon Appetit. If you're curious about the topic of adaptogenic herbs and mushrooms and the power of them

and how to start integrating them into your routine today for better health, this conversation is absolutely for you. Stay tuned. Tara, welcome back on the podcast. A pleasure to have you here. We're talking all about adaptogens today, mushrooms. and more than mushrooms, too, the full spectrum of adaptogens. I want to start off with some value for our audience,

and I want to dive deep in the topic of brain health and focus. Just give us a couple adaptogens right off the top. Before we explain what they are, exactly how to use them, et cetera, et cetera, what are a few adaptogens right off the top that can support people's goals in improving their brain health and focus? Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. But if I would give you maybe three to start out with, Lions main, Kotukola, and Mukuna would be three that I would probably put on your stack.

Okay, amazing. Let's just break those down a little bit high level. So let's start up with Lions Main. That's probably the one that people are most familiar with, right? People know it's a mushroom. Give us a little bit of the lowdown on it. Lions main is, yeah, it's a mushroom grows on trees, including in the U.S. For brain health specifically, what makes it very unique is it has an ability to penetrate your blood brain barrier,

which very few natural or isolated substances can do, which means you can deliver nutrients straight to the brain. And the blood brain barrier otherwise prevents it, which makes brain issues often. They start decades before you have any symptoms because of that reason. So it's the ability to go there, and particularly there's a compound in it that helps protect and repair nerve growth factors.

So that's interesting. There's a study, a human study, which is not super, super, super, common with natural substances, but there's a human study with elderly people with mild cognitive impairment, and they took on Lions Main 250 milligrams dose, and they took it for 16 weeks. And during that time, every week their memory results got better. So the memory improved. And when they stopped taking it or they received a placebo, at that point, results went down. So it's, I think, pretty solid evidence also on ability to improve memory.

And in the study, how are people taking it? Was it given to them in pill form? Were they taking some sort of tincture? Yeah, pill form orally extracted lions, mine. All right. So what was the next one that you mentioned? Oh, it was Kotukola, which is one of these Indian sacred herbs, Rosayanas, they're called. And it is a very, very fascinating herb.

It's a leaf. Some people call these doctrines of sands of seeds. signature where food will resemble something. It kind of does resemble a brain. But there's multiple compounds around it that impact mood and brain power. And there's actually even a 2019 study on telomerase, which is more on the longevity side than brain power per se. But it's very fascinating that one of the main theories around longevity is this telemarase and how it shortens and that every time kind of your cells reproduce. And there's a couple adaptogens as stragglers and gotocola that's been studies around it.

But there's a over a ninefold increase in telomerase protection versus not doing anything. So there's also like long term brain health benefits in codicola. And so actually we'll take a pause here before we get back to the third one. So the first one you mentioned was a mushroom. The second one you said was an herb. But they both fall in this category of adaptogens. I think a lot of people on our audience have heard. the term, but let's break down the definition. Adaptogens are any substances, so it can be

plants, fungi, but that help you adapt to stress. And the difference between that or some superfood word is that it's evidence-based. It's actually a scientific word. It's been around for seven years as a term. The ingredients itself have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years in different parts of the world. But it's a scientific term. It means that the substance must be safe on a daily basis. So it cannot have a toxic load. It restores balance. So it doesn't, it's not a stimulant or sedative. It doesn't upregulate or downregulate, but restores. And then it's non-specific. So it impacts the body on multiple systems. But it could be a mushroom or a plant and it could be a leaf, a bean, a rude. It could be different parts of plant. Plants.

And historically, you know, I know you like to kind of dig into history. You wrote a book about Christmas and sort of origins around that and everything like that and connected to mushrooms, which we'll talk about a little bit later on. But historically, how, what's the sort of history around adaptogens, you know, and how they've been used throughout traditional cultures? Yeah. Adaptogens, there's about a little over 20 of them today. There could be more later, but it requires because it is evidence-based that there. is a solid pool of research to prove their health benefits through modern experiments. And all of them are kind of the top one, two, three herbs or fungi in their own area.

So basically like every corner of the earth, you pick up the what's the sacred thing that was elevated generation after generation after generation to be a sacred food or an herb or medicine. And yeah, there have been. used depending on each one of them for a really long time and they've their time worn and then now over the last seven years science has proven them and the story how the science part came is also fascinating it comes from the former Soviet Union the Soviet Union like many other military powers had realized that giving stimulants to soldiers be it caffeine nicotine or amphetamine

is has downsides. People get addicted and they have a letdown the next day and they don't perform as well unless you up the dose, right? And so they found this doctor, Dr. Lazerov and asked him to find what could we give to soldiers that you wouldn't have a let down next day that would improve their physical performance, stamina, memory, yada, yada, yada. So he collected a huge pool of researchers and with the Soviet Union kind of like rocky four, even Draco style. They went on and found like what can we find and they found these bunch of these ancient natural substances. And that's where it started and now around the world, there's studies around these adaptogens. Do you know what kind of adaptogens they ended up giving to the soldiers? Yeah. Some of the very first ones were

ulithero, ginseng, shisandra, a lot of things that improve physical performance. So stamina and endurance around blood circulation, particularly was an interest of theirs, is like how do we increase cardiovascular system, basically. Endurance, energy, et cetera. Yeah, that was the initial interest for them. Wow, fascinating. So when you think about how one, you know, like, give us the context, you know, if somebody's eating a healthy diet, right, they have their workout routine.

They might have some supplements that they've been given by their doctor, etc. How do you see adaptogens in sort of the whole wheelhouse in the circle? that we have of our health. Like, how do you contextually talk about them to people and how do you want people to think about it on this podcast? Yeah, that's a great question. Like, are they things that you take? Like, you know, we have something that we'll talk about on immunity.

So is this something that you take when you have a problem? Are they for daily use? Like, how do you think about adaptogens? Well, that's a great question because there's a lot you can take. There's, they're not a pill for an ill. So they're definitely building restorative, balancing. things but there's so much we could take there's so many supplements there's so many foods there's so many things to take so it can be overwhelming what is for a lot of people it is and i feel like if

you open social media you'll see a miracle cure for everything and like hey you don't have to work out or do this just take this herb and testosterone goes up or something right that so i could see why people get confused and um what i would say what makes adaptogens great um um is the fact that they are the creme de la creme. They're time-worn and they're used for a long, long time, and they've been elevated in ancient systems, but they're also proven by modern science, which is not that common with natural substances, believe it or not.

And so they are the best of the best. The other part is, how would you use them? I would, with anything, including any food item, grocery item, I would look at like what are routines that you can sustain. There are some of them that give immediate results and we can talk about it, but many of them require consistent use and a lot of modern research requires at least four week, often much more, 60 day, three-month, six-month studies. So their use usually require consistent use.

So if you can make it fun and easy for your daily routine because there are foods, then you're more likely to stay with them. So if you're not consuming them in a capsule format, then putting them in anything like a protein bar or coffee or whatever that is convenient for you will make it easier you to reap for the benefits. So do you remember what the third one was that you mentioned? Yeah, Mukuna.

Yeah. Let's talk about that. What is that and what's its benefits for brain and focus? Yeah. Mukuna Perurians is the velvet bean. Some people call it. It is a bean. It's in the same family as,

other beans and peas, which is actually pretty funny that a lot of these adaptogens not are only the most elevated foods of each region of the world. They're also the highest elevated in large groups of herbal or fungal families. So like this is a huge family of nutrient dense foods. And the Mukuna just happens to be the best of the beans. So yeah, it's a velvet bean. what is it interesting for people with focus and brain power is that it is the highest source of precursor to dopamine, L-dopa. And that's amazing. And we can talk about why that is important. But also because it's natural, it performs much better than isolated forms of L-dopa. And that increases mood and concentration. So it's used a long time for brain power. There's also a second

secondary benefit is a lot of things that improve cognitive function, either improve sports performance or they improve, prove, like, mood. And mood then usually leads to, like, sexual health. So there's, for example, Mukuna's also used for, like, people with erectile dysfunction and whatnot. So there's often these secondary benefits or thirdary benefits once you reap the, you go for the brain and then you also get, you know, libido. So this is a dumb question, but are all functional mushrooms, not all functional mushrooms are adaptogenic? Is that correct?

Yes. Or they all are? They all are not. Okay, great. So somebody could be taking functional mushrooms. Like what's an example of one? That's great. And it might have its beneficial properties, but it's not an adaptogen.

Anoki. Anoki. Yeah, which is a great functional mushroom. He has immune supporting benefits. but to qualify as a true adaptogens, you need to do a little more. So one way to think about it is, like, every adaptogen has like three to five super skills versus a normal supplement or an herb that you would get from an herbalist in common. It's just used for one thing and one thing only.

You take dandelion, you take dandelion for liver. And that's like you do it for liver. But then adaptogen can do two, three things. and they're more systematic instead of like isolated. Yeah. And so anything more that you can tell us about how adaptogens work in the body because the ability that they can either go, they can go like left, right or center based on what your body needs.

So what does that interplay look like? Do you know anything more about that, or the interplay between these adaptogens and what our body's needs are? Yeah, a lot. For to write my latest book on adaptogens, I went through over 1,000 research papers, and you get to the nitty-degree date because those papers are very much about how they're measured and different parts of the body and what are the metrics. But what you're saying is where often people lose. Either they lose trust in adaptogens or they get confused. It's because you can go left, right, and center, and that's very confusing.

But I'll try to explain it through a couple body systems. So our bodies have 11 main systems. So you have cardiovascular system. We have reproductive system, skeletal system, immune system, digestive system. So these systems are like they're like complex computers that have a clear task, but they operate in a complex way. So I'll take a couple examples on those systems and how. adaptogens play to it. One is the immune system. So fundamentally most things you take either boost or downregulate one of these 11 systems. So in the case of immunity, they either upregulate

immunity, which is stimulation of, so there are things called immunostimulants. And then there is downregulation, immunosuppressants. So if you have, you're sick, you have a little flu, influenza, you probably want a little boosting of the immunity. And then if you're chronically autoimmune, you probably want some suppressions of immunity. And what the adaptogens do is they modulate the immunity, which means they can still activate natural killer cells activity, for example. And they can improve cytokines, but in a way that doesn't overly stimulate the system.

So if you have, you know, you have already an hyperactive immune response, because of whatever autoimmune, that natural killer cell activity or the macrophogic activity doesn't go over and confuse because they have basically intellect. And in the case of autoimmune, it's because your own immune system is kind of confused. It doesn't know which intruders are the bad guys and which one are the good guys. So sometimes they attack the good guys because they're kind of confused. But these ones, for example, some of these adaptogens have these immodomodulating beta clugens. And they come and the beta clugans say is like, hey, if you're lazy, you've got to get to work. But if you're working too much, they're going to say, it's like, hey, you shouldn't work

that much. So that's the wisdom that they have. So that's one example is, for example, the immune system. The other one is the cardiovascular system. So basically like blood circulate, oxygen intake. There's multiple of these that have shown both in in vivo and in vitro studies on how basically blood circulation improves, oxygen intake improves. Corticeps might be one of these adaptogens, as an example. There are studies to show that increases VO2 max, so maximum oxygen intake, and therefore, by having more oxygen, you can then achieve many different health benefits. So having more oxygen in your body doesn't prevent you from sleeping better. But if you want to have more oxygen before a workout, it truly helps. So that's indifference

versus taking caffeine that is a central nervous system stimulant. So the effect is very different. Both cases you have energy, but the other one you could do at night. So while we're covering this whole topic, because there's a lot to cover, I'm going to zoom in and zoom out on some of the practical things that are like the nuggets that people can walk away from. So I want to touch on. my homeland of India. Wasn't born there, but that's my ancestry and everything where my family originally comes from. And there's two adaptogens that we grew up taking, you know, in different places.

I didn't really know much about them, but my parents would give them to me at different times. And you have them here as being listed for stress and mood. That's Ashwaganda and Tulsi. Let's talk a little about them. Let's start off with Tulsi. And why is it one of the adaptogens that you've highlighted here for stress and mood? Yeah, Tulsi, also known as Holy Basil, is one of the safest herbs you can take that is still super effective. You might have seen Tulsi tea at some natural product store for years, but it is quite, quite well studied.

There is, herbalists would use it for wounds and stuff like that, but what I find it interesting is mostly from mood and people who have anxiety or depression. There's, for example, a study with GAD, which is kind of one of these common forms of kind of depression and anxiety in life. And after taking Tulsi, their mental health got improved. So there is some of these leaves that are very antibacterial. They'll have a lot of impact on our gut. So a lot of mood and brain impacting health benefits actually are. are generated in the GI track or where a lot of neurotransmitters are created.

So there's usually products that are super gut friendly tend to be usually also very mood or neurotransmitter friendly. So Tulsi would be one of those things where it helps with the GI track. Therefore, it's also used for anxiety and stress. And it is used for, I believe, about 4,000 years in India. And out of all the things in Ayurveda, which is the oldest, medicine practice today, it's constantly elevated as the number one or number two sacred herb, which I think to me tells something with, you know, billion people using things.

And generation after generation, it's highlighted as like the number one or number two thing to take. Yeah, as India gets more modernized, I don't know how many people are using it still today outside of like the traditional circles, but they definitely could use some a little bit. Is there any more knowledge that you have on Tulsi, Holy Basil, about how it would operate in an adaptogenic form when it comes to somebody's sort of mood and stress like if you're overly excited will it bring you down and if you're sort of not you're you're sort of suppressed or depressed a little bit it's kind of bringing you up well um i know some of it but maybe the disclaimer is is that a lot of these neurotransmitters and brain is the frontier where currently

the science is and even just in the last 20 years that i've studied adaptogen so much more information has come. And I assume that will continue. And I think the nervous system and the brain are the frontier. We know a lot about our organs. We know a lot about muscles. We know a lot about blood circulation, for example. We don't know as much about the brain yet,

even though there's leaps and bounds are taken there. But to answer that question, we know some. So basically these neurotransmitters, particularly serotonin, dopamine, some nor prefreferrinin that gets created. Their input, their amounts increase when taking these adaptogens. And there is quite a few hundred studies now at different adaptogens and their impact on achieving it. So it's not like a massive pool.

There's another Indian food turmeric that has over 4,000 studies just on turmeric. but like still 100 studies roughly all things that improve neurotransmitter production. So if you suddenly increase serotonin production naturally, you will be happier. So fundamentally, you will be happier. But then beyond that, it is a little bit of a black box. And I'm sure more and more info will come. But we beat psychedelics or non-psychedelics, we really don't fully know, exactly everything that goes in the brain. Yeah, we're going to talk about psychedelics as well.

What about Ashwaganda? Yeah, it's a fascinating one. One of my favorite facts about it is that lately I check Google trends, you can see what people search. And Ashwakanda searches have surpassed green juice in search volume. And it's not an easy word to spell. So if you ever see Ashwakonda, and I think that it's a true testament that it works, because it's one of, if you don't, if you've heard these weird names, Mukuna, Kodokola, this and that here, and you're like, where should I start? Ashrakanda might be just, might be one of the things, if you're in doubt, where to start. It's one of the most studied, most versatile and best things to take. It's mostly used in the root form and you take an extract of it. And it's used for stress mostly to reduce stress.

But there's also a couple specific Ashwakanda extracts that are clinically studied for brain power, that KSM 66 and censoril. And there's solid, like legit clinical studies to show that it also increases brain power. But mostly what it's used traditionally and what I would recommend it is kind of for stress and kind of evening calming effects. You see it in a lot of like formulas or or sort of, you know, kind of combination of ingredients. And it's one of the flagship ingredients that is in a lot of calming formulas that often like functional medicine doctors recommend to be. Yeah. And I'm not the best person to explain it.

But these depression and stress study surveys questionnaires are pretty well established because they've been used in with psychologists for a long time. So there's surveys that you use and attract huge pools of people and people how they feel. And Ashwakanda studies around like taking it and how improves all those stress markers, like amount of cortisol in your blood plasma decreases and things like that that are, there's no like one marker of stress, you know. There's like a pool of markers, but they're pretty well documented in general just because it's been a topic and interest for a long time.

We don't know how the brain works, but we can observe the effects of stress and we have. And so Ashwakonda has pretty solid, cold standard, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind studies on improving pretty much all the stress markers. If somebody was looking to dip their toes in the water of adaptogenic, you know, herbs, beans, mushrooms, whatever it might be, and would there be one that you know, would there be one that you? would elevate. It might have been one that we've covered. It could be one that we didn't cover. Is there one of the recommendations of items that are there that is like a no-brainer in terms of where to get started? Or do people really need to kind of get an understanding of the lay of the land and then sort of, you know, feel where to. No, you absolutely don't need because they're all safe. You, well, in general, in be it herbalism or fitness, like you don't need to learn the move number,

the 162nd best move at the gym. Like you don't need to learn. You don't even need to learn the 15th best move at the gym. If you learn squat and deadlift and press, you're probably, like, that will get you pretty far. Yeah. Add a pull-up, push-up. So what would that number one be?

So I would, for most people, there is individual aspects. For most people, the Archimedes lever to health and to brain power. Like how to literally, literally increase your IQ is sleep. So most people out of all the adaptogens who take things that lower stress and improve sleep quality, even if you sleep the same seven, eight hours, your deep sleep increases. And those two would be Rishi and Ashwokanda as like, if in doubt, those would probably be the most commonly prescribed by me to people. because just if you can make slight improvements in like the cortisol levels in your blood plasma and therefore you get an extra 30 minutes of deep sleep. The benefits of that are probably greater

than having a little bit more oxygen and doing a couple extra set at the gym, although there are people who want to do the couple extra sed at the gym. But I think sleep is the archimedes lever of of health. So let's talk about those two. So how would somebody use them in your sort of experience of working in this space for a while, having a company in this space for Sigmatic for how many years now? 10. 10 years. And being like super into it even well before that and well read on the topic. How would somebody begin to start to use these for sleep? And does it help you with what aspects of sleep does it help with and which aspects of sleep does it not help with? And then how long do you have to be on it before you really give it a world to see, like, is this working for you?

Great. So I'll give you bad news first, and then I'll give tons of good news. The bad news is a lot of these products are exploited by marketing. And, you know, that's what we humans do. We spoil a lot of things. And there are all these products that you can buy online or in stores that will promise you the world. There will be like, hey, take this a little bit of this and you will have 70. Superfoods and adaptogens. First of all, there isn't 70 adaptogens. Secondly, if that small

scoop will not have an effective dose, you need to get enough of whatever it is in the product. Second bad news is they do taste pretty bad. These, particularly these two, some of these adaptogens taste great. Rishi and Ashriganda. Yeah. And if you've never tried either, you could think of like turmeric you might have tried or pure cacao that are also more. commonly known adaptogens. Like if you eat actual cacao bean, it's quite bitter. If you eat, chew on a turmeric or get turmeric powder by itself, not that great. If you mix it into a curry or you make a hot chocolate, quite delicious, right? So similarly with Ashwakanda and Rishi, they're very

bitter, not that tasty. So you could take in a capsule. With Aschwakanda, some of the best studies show kind of like 300 milligrams of Ashwakanda. extract over a 60-day period. That's kind of the low-end. Ideally, you would do that twice a day. And then with Rishi, it's around similar 250 milligrams to 500 milligrams per day on a consistent basis. And what are the markers that usually you get improvements, particularly with deep sleep? There's other things that can help with REM sleep. And I would say how quickly you fall asleep is another area will you probably notice quite quickly results because I mentioned one of those markers. There's multiple, but the cortisol amount in your blood is some things where these will probably

be helpful with. In those cases with these two items that you mentioned, the Rishi and Ashwaganda, you know, magnesium is another big thing that people take for sleep. Would you do on a personal level, just asking what you do, do you ever stack any of these things together? 100%. So in herbalism or in ancient traditions, there really isn't a habit of doing one thing. It's just a weird thing that we've adopted over the last few decades. Like you don't just take, you really shouldn't just take coffee. You shouldn't just take cacao. You will mix it with something. So cacao you would mix with vanilla and cayenne and whatever. And you would make a Mexican hot chocolate. So similarly here, you would absolutely stack. them. The rule I've learned from top herb list and what I apply to also supplements is I take a main thing and then a supporting thing that do the same thing. So it could be like Rishi and magnesium.

And then I usually take things that have increased absorption or the delivery could be vitamin C. But I do like things like L-thanine, L-triptophan, lemon balm, magnesium, Rishi-Ashwakand. are things that I do enjoy. I don't recommend cannabinoids to everyone. I think they can actually hurt your sleep more than people realize, even though you think you fall asleep easier. And Kava, Valeriana would be also things I would be somewhat cautious with on the sleep side.

But camomel, lemon balm, lavender, magnesium, L-thane, L-tryptophan, Rishi Ashwakanda, are things that you could stack. And you could take three of them, max maybe five of them, and then make it taste delicious. So you actually want to do it every night instead of hating it at the end of the day. You just had your second kid. Congratulations. Thank you. What was your, you know, talk about sleep for a second.

You know, how is that looking for you right now? And are there things that you're using to support you in the process? Yeah. I'm going to give us something I don't think I've said in any podcast. I love it and exclusive. Yeah. But I think the best thing you can do for sleep is actually. belief around sleep. So I've gone the deep end so many times with different sleep hacks and I'll tell

you some of my favorites. But I think what the most game changing thing for sleep is actually revisiting your beliefs about sleep. And that will be super relieving. I'll give two examples. Some people cannot fall asleep and take a nap. Like they struggle napping. I'm a big napper. And they are like, I can't nap. I can't fall asleep. But if you change your belief and you're like, hey, if I close my eyes for 20 minutes in a dark room, quiet, lay down, I will get. Without the phone. Without the phone. You're not staring at anything.

You're just laying there, maybe listening to something calming that maybe your belief is like, that's not helpful. But if you change the belief that, hey, I'm going to get 90% of the benefits out of that. Same with like how quickly you fall asleep or when do you have to go to bed. I see a lot of particularly type A, entrepreneurs, busy people, career, and they're like, I have to be at bed at this hour, have to wake up. And then they get more stress if they wake up an hour earlier or later. And I think visiting some of those beliefs and seeing which of them are serving you and

which of them are not serving you is really important. And I had to serve in the Finnish Air Force and you quickly learn that how long you can stay awake is quite remarkable. There's a price to pay, but like we can do a lot more than you think. And I see so many people stressing about sleep and that's actually hurting them more than helping them. So I, to me, that would be where I would start before going into the hacks. Yeah. It's interesting about the napping because I've definitely had, you know, past partners, girlfriends, all this stuff, including my wife, who's like, I'm not a good napper.

And I see that the thing that kind of gets in the way of the napping is this feeling that I should be doing something. else. I should be productive right now or this isn't the best use of my time or I can't let myself relax. But if you truly do create that environment, that dark environment, you know, if I also find like a little eye pillow or something, a little bit of pressure on the eye. And then it's just like, it's the toughest thing because for the first 10 minutes, you're, you're bored, you're not productive. You think about a thousand things that you want to write down. Like for people who are not good nappers, they want to go write this down because they forget, I have to take care of this. I have to get that up to care.

So it's like my wife would often go to her phone and be like, I just need to text myself these things. So I remember. But that in itself would stimulate you and then it makes it harder to go, you know, take a nap. But if you truly commit, even if you don't nap, like even if you don't fall asleep.

And I found, you know, we wrote this whole protocol. I'll link to it in the show notes. And when Andrew Heuberman was on this podcast, he was talking about how he enjoys yoga nidra as well. Like you listen to like a yoga. Nogadneedra track. There's one that's free on YouTube that a lot of people really like. We'll put

them in the show notes. Even if you don't end up falling asleep, just sitting there and giving your body a break and your mind a break, there's some deep relaxation that ends up coming with that process. You do that enough. Eventually you're going to get to a place where you're going to be able to fall asleep. Completely agree. And there's a lot that is there around breath. and through that also how, you know, like laying down how plot circulation changes. There's a lot of evolutionary things that we've learned over hundreds of thousands of years, 200,000 as homo sapiens and then prehumans that we've learned that we can benefit. But I see a lot of people not sleeping well or not benefiting from sleep because of these limiting

beliefs that are not serving them. So if they're not serving you and they're not helping you and they're not even necessarily scientifically solid, then why listen to them? So you can't talk about sleep without also talking a little bit about coffee. And you mentioned about coffee earlier. What are some of the ways that you see people sort of engaging and dabbling with caffeine, you know, coffee being, let's say maybe one of the most prominent? And then are there any ways that adaptogenic herbs or mushrooms or anything else in that world? can support some of the ways that we pulse in or pulse out with caffeine. For sure. Actually, almost everything you've been told that is not good for you,

sugar, coffee, chocolate, alcohol can all be made as a vessel, as a deliver vehicle to other good stuff if you're just careful about the mound, the quality, the timing, and the combinations. So specifically on coffee, it is actually one of the most, if not the most proven and effective neutropic. So this is one of these smart drugs, things that you take that makes you like the guy in the movie limitless. And there is meta studies. And obviously by its success, we know that increases energy, productivity.

And there's actually a lot of long term brain health benefits around coffee as well, like most other these black foods like black olives and cacao. But there are a couple negatives, major negatives. First of all, it is a central nervous system stimulant. So it does stimulate you. And it happens to have this half-life depending on what enzymes you have. It gets really technical and kind of your heritage. But let's say every four to six hours is, with some even eight,

you half the amount of caffeine that will still be in your blood. So probably during the day, depending when you had your last cup of coffee, you can half it twice. So you'll have a quarter of what you drank during bedtime. It really depends when you drink. But one of the best ways to do is how can you have your coffee routine and get the enjoyment out of the coffee while having less caffeine? That's why I think actually tea is more suitable for a lot of people. there's other health benefits of tea, but I think the real main, main benefit of tea is actually the fact that you're going to have roughly half of the caffeine that you would have from coffee. So that way I would recommend is using these adaptogens like chaga that is used as a coffee substitute for a long time and do half and half.

And you're not going to notice really any change in flavor. You're going to still have the normal cup of coffee. You're going to have some caffeine. But at the end of the day, you're going to have a. much, much less of the caffeine in your body when you go to bed. So that would be one. The other thing is a lot of people get digestive issues that then can lead to jitters during coffee because the pH is very high and there's a lot of issues and adaptogen can combat that as well. So then if you're really smart, you take the caffeine and you combine it with some of these other things that don't taste

because they're bitter and use the coffee to height the bitter stuff that you don't like and at the same time, get brain power and energy with less caffeine. So you'll make a recipe or blend that will have other brain energy supporting adaptogens while having less caffeine. So the stimulative effects will not tax you as much at the end of the day. So when you're talking about tea, or you're talking about like straight up black tea, green tea, just all kinds of teas? They're all the same plant. So any tea you buy, it's chameleus senenses. It's just slightly how it's process is mostly the difference. And there is slight variations in caffeine amounts. And there's other beneficial compounds. If you take a fermented puir versus, you know, a fresh matcha, there's

other things that you get in macha, Elfayonine, ECGC that are these catechins that help with cardiovascular health, shallow energy. But generally, they're all the same plant. And do you ever go on like a coffee. Well, do you have coffee? Do you drink coffee? Yeah, I cycle coffee in and out. Yeah, so that was going to, what I was going to ask you, when do you know that it's time to cycle out of coffee?

That's always a tough thing, right? I'm sure, especially in the category of like having kids and stuff. So what's your sort of cue? I'll chat about my cue, but what's your cue and then how long do you cycle off coffee? And then when you start again, what do you notice about, you know, your enjoyment or the caffeine that you need? So let's walk us through that. My internal marker is one cup of coffee is fine.

Two, sometimes. Three, never. So my internal cue is when the second coffee doesn't do it for me, it's time. Because then I've built tolerance for it. So that's if the first cup of coffee kind of works, doesn't work. I'm kind of like make a mental note. But if the second coffee does not help me, it's definitely time. The other part is more like systematic.

So just before our second child was born, I went no caffeine because I knew, based on the first child, that the first few months are pretty brutal. And I'm in it now. So I'm like without any guilt, I'm caffeinating. But I know that it's like soon around the corner, I'll pay the price. And I use tea and decalf Swiss water, processed decath coffee as a waiter. to on ramp and off ramp. So I usually going from no caffeine, I on ramp slowly to high caffeine. And then I off ramp slowly to no caffeine instead of going cold turkey.

That works for me. But I don't know what's your normal. Yeah. Generally for me, it's, you know, I don't have kids yet, but they're definitely on the docket for the future. So I'm sure I'll follow something similar. But right now for me, it's a general thing of like, I know that if I've been on coffee for about like three months without taking any kind of breaks. Like it's time for me to take a break, even if that break is like a two week break. And usually what I'll do is I will, I'm, I didn't really

drink coffee until maybe the last like 10 years of my life. I never really kind of had in college and stuff like that. It just wasn't something that I kind of got into. So what I'll do is as I gear up for taking a break off of coffee because I do notice that I need a little bit more. to get that effect. I will switch to, I'll take one cup of coffee and I'll switch it with just Yerba-Mate. And then, so maybe I'll have like my cup of coffee and then the other cup that I would have

of coffee or half cup, I'll switch up with Yerba-Mate. And then I'll do that over a course of a few days. I've written it out. It's a little protocol, I'll put in the show notes. It's called my, you know, why you need a coffee break, you know, and how to do it. And then sometimes I'll even throw in a little bit of like B-12 if I need that little extra sort of energy bump.

I probably should be incorporating some adaptogens that sounds like a good idea too. And then I'll wean down until I'm like on a half a cup of Yurba Mante and then I'll go off of kind of caffeine. Then I'll do that for about two weeks. And I always notice the first couple days are tough. But then by like the third, fourth day for me personally and everybody's different, I know there's people that literally, if they don't have coffee, they get like headaches.

And that's probably a sign that there's some deeper issue out and you should probably work with somebody to get to the root of it, you know, if that's going on for you. But then by like the fourth day, you'll feel just. just like, great. I notice my sleep is better. I notice that I'm waking up just like generally I'm having more energy without even needing kind of coffee that's there. And naturally, you go through that period of time.

You kind of miss it a little bit, typically about two to three weeks for me. And then I start back up on it. But that's kind of my process. And I always appreciate the fact that even though it's tough, I'm glad that I did it for a little bit of time. For sure. I think you're raising three valuable points. One is about finding whatever you're comfortable with and not having guilt.

about any of these substances. So what is your cadence that you're comfortable with? And that sounds like yours. Secondly is this dosing and dosing matters so much. And sounds like you're kind of reducing the dose as well like I do. And then you don't fully again, cold turkey. And then stack the odds in your favor. Maybe it's a B12 vitamin shot.

Maybe it's some other vitamin drips. Or what are other things, cold plunge, you know, things that you can do as, like to give you a little pepping the step in those first three to five days because those are the hardest obviously. So yeah, that's a great idea. Go for walks, organize something fun that gives you joy and energy and then you forget about the coffee.

And I think the other thing about the coffee, and I'd love to hear your take on this as an entrepreneur, I think if you're an entrepreneur, if you're anybody that's really using your creative brain, which can be anybody. It's not just entrepreneurs. It could be any kind of task. You could be an entrepreneur. You could be a stay-at-home dad or mom. who's really trying to like think through some sort of thing that really requires your brain's attention

when you have those two cups of coffee and those are not doing enough for you forget the fact that it affects focus it also affects significantly your sleep and other things like that with all that free-floating caffeine in your body by the time you go to bed but it's that much harder to maintain your attention on whatever it is that you love and care about and want to focus on so that's another reason to take a break from it is because is your full attention in a non-jittery focused way being able to be applied towards whatever it is you want to do? Yeah. And I think that's back to the beliefs around sleep. I see a lot of smart, successful people hurt themselves by being creating these routines, morning routine, evening routine, and then being religious about it. And what actually

means is that if you don't get your, you know, morning coffee just perfect, then what happens is you feel bummed out that it's not a good day. And it could be any, like, if I don't work out every day for 60 minutes, then I'll be bummed out or something. Like, that means then you are kind of a slave to that routine instead of having true range. Like, if, like, if your metabolic health crashes because you have a tiramisu. There's probably some, like you said, bigger underlying issues there if you can't have a tiramisu and suddenly your insulin is all messed up for weeks or something like that. So like having that range is also good. So switching things up, even good things is valuable because you build this like adaptation as well. Yeah, you actually

wrote about that in the book a little bit. I forgot the term that you used, but I think is it xenohormesis? Yeah. Talk about that in the context of what you just shared. Yeah. So that's particularly around plants, but you could take the exact same concept from mushrooms. But fundamentally, these plants, a lot of the best foods we can take, including these adaptogens, are living in extreme conditions or they have their stressors on their own, whatever that may be. So living in the tundra and it's cold and difficult conditions. and they build they face stress themselves so they create compounds.

Rodeola that is you know big thing in Finland it's what Vikings took before going to battle and it's also amazing for brain and productivity was has this compound rosen because it's in the cold all the time so it builds itself this compound to protect itself from stress and zemal hormases means basically is like the plants create these hormetic stressors to themselves that protect them from stress, but when we ingested, we reap the benefits of those stressors. Could maybe an example of that might be spices like cayenne or peppers that that burn your mouth is in a way a protective mechanism that the plant created to protect itself from bugs eating

it and becoming super, super spicy keeps it safe. And then we ingested, we have this little bit of like a stressor. in our body and your mouth burns. But then that excretes huge amounts of feel good hormones. So there was a phase in most of my 20s. I didn't drink any alcohol, but I love to go out and meet friends and be social. And one of the things I would take is high doses of really spicy peppers, cayenne mostly. Is that it in your pocket or what?

Yeah, I would have a tincture dropper and I would put it in water and the alcohol would evaporate. And then I would drink this like horrible thing and he would burn my mouth and I would be just absolutely horrible for like one to two minutes and then the minute three and four are a little better and the sweat comes off. And then I'm like in this bliss for like hours without any hangover very naturally. So xenohormases is plants creating compounds to protect themselves from stress and when we ingest it, we get those hormetic stressors into our body. And if you're not familiar with the hormetic stressor, it's almost like a little boot camp, like a cold plunge or sauna where you get

incredibly hot or incredibly cold for a minute. And then by that, your body, it triggers in the body elicits a response that makes the body stronger, kind of almost like going to the gym. So yeah. I love it, dude. I have this like mental image of you walking to the club with your friends. They're all like pre-gaming and the bouncer is like patting you down he's like, what do all these chili pepper? Yeah. What all these peppers in your pocket, you know?

Yeah. Dude, I'm feeling bliss, man. I'm like, I'm like on cloud nine. Yeah, I did that and then cacao beans I would have. Yeah, I used to. Raw food days. I was like so into the whole raw food scene and everything. As a lot of people in our space, you know, are like Dave Asprey's been on this podcast

talking about how he was a raw foodist one time. And I remember like, I didn't drink anyway, like not out of any sort of thing other than just like I never kind of got into it. And then when I got into whole like raw food thing and I was like, but I still wanted to like party with my friends, I would literally try to sneak in like these young coconuts into like nightclubs that have kind of like already popped and had a metal straw in. And one time it's like bouncer is like patting me up. He's like, dude, what the hell is that? You look like super sketchy bringing in whatever the heck this thing is. Those are the good old days, man.

Those are good old days. Totally. Yeah. You got to, hey, man, I was feeling good. So, you know, whatever you can. I want to take a little bit of a right turn here. And I want to talk about psychedelics a little bit. You know, you mentioned something before and you were talking about the fact that

some of these adaptogenic spectrum of items can have on things like anxiety. And I just want to share a little personal antidote and just hear a little bit of your experiences for our audiences. I think you said you're an advisor to synthesis, which is one of the groups that are there it's based in Europe that does you know psychedelic and psilocybin retreats and and so I'd love to get your perspective because you know you've been in this space for a while but I recently had my wife start on a microdosing protocol I was doing it and I've taken psilocybin and mushrooms before in different sorts of experiences but I had never done like a targeted like you know regimented sort of microdosing protocol so I

I had my experience and my wife was like, you know what, I really want to try it. Like I'm not sure. And I was like, just try it. You know, so I had her chat with this individual that helped us get it set up. And she tried it. And her first day was, day one was this Sunday. Now Sunday, my wife is a new entrepreneur. She's new to that sort of world.

And she's in this sort of high growth period of her business. And for a lot of entrepreneurs on Sundays, there's kind of like the, I mean, even not entrepreneurs, just general people. There's kind of like those hebie-jeebies that people feel. You're like, oh, it's Sunday and you're like Monday is like it's almost like back to school, right? You have all this stuff to do. And I noticed for my wife, for her in particular, she tries to stack a lot of things that she wants to do on Sunday. And I have definitely been there before in my early entrepreneur career.

And you have so much stuff that no matter how much you get done, even if you get a little bit done, you're still not satisfied because you put too much on your plate. So that morning I woke up into it. I said, babe, you know, I think let's try you on, let's have this be your day one. So she took it and the stack that she was taking, it was like 100 milligrams of, you know, of mushrooms like the psilocybin. And then it was like turkey tail, Rishi, Chaga and I think the lion's mane was like the kind of the combination. So she took that and niacin, like a non-flushing niacin. So she took that and we were kind of like driving to go get coffee. We had a little bit of coffee, came back.

And once we were settled in and we were just doing a little bit of work at our place and planning for the day. She came to my room and was like, I just feel like really like it's almost like I have 10% less thoughts. And I just feel very grounded right now. And I was like, that's amazing. She's like, do you think this is placebo? I was like, you tell me it could be placebo. It could be not. But that's the, you know, that's the goal of just going down this experience and sort of seeing what you experienced. Don't let me tell you, but let's see what you see. And for the rest of the day, she would send me text because she had to take her grandmother to the hospital for like a routine appointment. And she checked in with me later on the day and she was like,

I feel like that normal level of like low level anxiety that I have on a Sunday is just not there. And I'm sharing this experience because one, I just, you know, felt like talking about it. I want to get your thoughts on it. But I've had a lot of friends that have had similar experiences that have gone through, you know, a microdosing protocol. And I think that, you know,

I'm excited for the day. day and time that in a way that is safer for the regular public to do that people could see if they have a similar experience. So have you done microdosing before? How has that been for you and any other sort of experiences with psychedelics you want to share? Yeah. I've definitely microdosed multiple substances. And I will take a step back maybe is like psychedelics tend to polarize people.

And I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. But there are people who are like all about psychedelics and they will like tell that psychedelics are perfect for everybody in every way and there's no bad trip and go ahead and take it. And there's people who are like, oh, it's a drug. And I've always tried to stay kind of more Switzerland. And what I would say is psychedelics are big part of our culture. They've been used around the world and they're a big part of religions and stuff. Especially the culture that you come from. Yeah, and a lot of it's hidden and it's coming.

A lot of us try to be like put it, sweeping under the rug. And there has been incredible studies on them for decades. There was a war on drugs that kind of put it on pause and on the last 20 years that research is coming back. And the research I've seen published and stuff that is not yet published is consistently incredible, consistently incredible. And it's like two-thirds of people get positive effects on things like, you know, alcoholism and depression and they, you know, even like postpartum depression is now a thing that they're looking into like mothers who gave birth and they're depressed. So it is incredible. And you probably don't want to do it with just about anyone and you kind of want to.

do your diligence because they're very powerful substances. Anecdotly, I like to give anybody who has been off-piss snowboarding or surfing is like when you go surf, you paddle out, sometimes there's a wave, sometimes there isn't a wave, sometimes you catch the wave, sometimes you miss it. But when you go on a heli skiing or heli snowboarding and you get dropped into the top of the mountain and you're guaranteed to have an experience, less so on microdosing. specifically on microdosing, I actually don't recommend it with psilocybin, at least consistently. It can work on other substances, Iboga, LSD are things that are maybe more microdosing friendly.

But why psilocybin works, it triggers a certain serotonin receptor, and we actually built tolerance for it, which is great, because there's no LD-5, there's no lethal dose on psilocybin. You can't overdose on it and you can get addicted to it because you built this tolerance. But to get, so the first day, amazing, and then slowly you build tolerance. And if the dosing stays the same, unless you space it out enough, you're probably not going to get the benefit. So I'm actually, I mostly think you should take macrodoses of psychedelics less often, maybe sometimes once in your life and reap the benefits. But I think a lot of people love microdosing because it's like a little bit of a crutch and it definitely can work in the beginning.

But if you're not careful, you build tolerance to it. And so that would be my thing is if that makes you feel safe and it's a starting point, amazing, all for it. But I would recommend that the real benefits of this based on the research we have is all around this. it's called psychedelics assisted psychotherapy. It's not psychotherapy at all. It's really just observed. Like there's a professional in the room making sure you're okay, but it's not like therapy. And you take high doses with blindfolds and sometimes with music.

And that's, I think, what is now shown to work. But the first time for sure and probably a few more times it works. And there's other substances you don't build tolerance for that are more maybe suitable for microdosing. So in the case of the assisted one, have you had that experience? Yes. Can you share it all about how it was for you? Yeah.

And there's a few protocols. A lot of them are around some of the original LSD studies. Imperial College has done some interesting ones. That's what synthesis works with. They're one of the first. John Hopkins, Roland Griffin is one of the first ones. And the protocol tends to be similar with MDMA, LSD, psilocybin. It tends to be in a room, in a hospital, which is not that exciting.

And just to mention, when you're talking about synthesis, this is a retreat center that is legal, like, guided experiences. Correct. And they're based out of where? Oregon and Netherlands. And they started in the Netherlands. They were the first kind of legal psilocybin retreat center. They do, they try to marry the shamanistic, indigenous kind of historical use with, so they use the protocol that a lot of these universities and hospitals have been doing in their research, but they do small groups. And there's a lot of talk therapy, breathwork. So it's usually like three days for one session. There's like pre kind of day and then the day and then the post. Or if there's two sessions, it's like five days, one off, a couple, one on, couple off.

And you do in a circle. So there's a little bit of group support, but it is still like your very... And did you do it there? Is that where you went? Yeah, I've done that. And then I'm an investor in another one called Heading Health, which is insurance supported,

actual MDs. You only get the psychedelics assisted psychotherapy. If you are, you know, like you have depression. And then there's like, that's more of like a kid. I mean deprived. There's like few methods they can do. Whatever is illegal. And then those people going there can actually get if they're diagnosed by an actual doctor to be depressed or whatever.

And they can actually get insurance to pay for there because it's pretty expensive. And are they operating here in the U.S. right now? Yeah. Yeah. They're I think Dallas headquartered. But they have few locations. And they also do telehealth for just general wellness. But just on ketamine, right?

They're not doing like psilocy. It's not yet. So Oregon would be the first state that where this is coming live in 2023. There's a couple municipalities, Santa Cruz, Oakland, Denver that have decriminalized it, which doesn't mean it's like legal, but the local police officers will not arrest you. But then there's still federally DEA who could go after if you're breaking their rules. So it's still, it's not the dark age of psychedelics, but we're still like, like internet in 1996.

Yeah. So like there's players and there's probably going to be a dot-com bubble in three to five years or whatever. As there is with everything, right? Yeah, and that's totally fine. And I think if you're familiar with the history of psychedelics, if you are and there's Michael Pollan has the documentary on Netflix. Right.

I think that's a great starting point. Hamilton's Pharmacopia is maybe like a little more advanced version of that. I think you can get it on Amazon. It's a TV show. And then, but the psychedelics went with the kind of this 30 year black age, kind of like dark age when it was totally banned everywhere. And I don't think that will happen again. I think so much convincing evidence on some of the worst things that we're facing for mental health,

it's proven to be so effective. And I think it's here to stay, but we'll probably do some failures along the way and it's going to be a bumpy ride. Everybody's a shaman now, I feel like. And that's alarming to me. But most of them are very safe. Therefore, I feel like permanent damage from most people will be minimal. But there are people who are prone to sort of mental health issues that could really fall off a cliff.

Yeah, for sure. And I hope in that place, we also get the context for how that's already happening for things that already have that momentum. Like we don't give enough scrutiny to alcohol. We don't give enough scrutiny, especially more recently, to cannabis. You know, there's a guy. He's, unfortunately, he's like super controversial because he had some very hardcore takes about COVID and everything else. But he wrote a really great book, Alex Berenson, on parents tell your kids the truth about weed. and I came across that book a few years ago because of a friend of mine actually, you know,

somebody that even worked with for a little while was really like had almost like a what it felt like like a weed-induced schizophrenic episode. And I started digging into it and there's all this literature, especially out of Europe in places like Denmark where they're looking at especially young men between the ages of like, you know, like when the brain is still developing. at like 12 to like 35 who seem to be that already have a predisposition towards schizophrenia where high concentrations of THC, especially in the form that's being sold today, where you have products that are on the market that are like 10 to 100 times more THC than what was available

like 10 years ago. For sure. Is like putting them over the edge and you're having all these stories of people. We have multiple people when I was sharing this story. I had a bunch of friends reach out and say, I had this too. I had a brother who committed suicide because he went schizophrenic and this happened to that. So I hope the same scrutiny that ends up being brought to psychedelics and mushrooms and everything there gets brought to other things that we've so wholly embraced in our society now because

I think that your statement that you made is 100% true and probably could be applied to a lot of things that are going on right now. 100% agree. So it's actually funny that probably the worst mind-altering substances are the ones that have been first made legal. So like alcohol is probably the dumbest molecule you could have. And we obviously been enjoying the benefits of that. Tobacco is actually also can be very psychedelic.

And there's hoppe and snuffing it and other things you can do. And that's also like can be ceremonial and sacred, but can obviously be abused. And then it's weed. And I would say probably one of the hardest psychedelics or one of the things that you can do the most damage is weed. And now ketamine, next health uses, heading health uses the FDA-approved version. There's a spurt in because you have to be FDA-approved to get the insurance. But I think ketamine is going to be next opiate addiction, kind of like serious, seriously addictive stuff.

So it's funny that the stuff that are not necessarily the best get approved first. So I definitely share your concern there and weed. Even like recreational use, even if it's safe, the impact on REM sleep. And I mentioned that weed might not be the greatest thing for sleep, even though it makes you maybe drowsy and fall asleep faster. But what you're really, the quality of sleep is not there. So I share your concern and I hope eventually I think this is all just be legal and you should figure out yourself. That would be my take, but I know there's, that would be a rocky ride if we went there. Like, every substance is legal and nothing is illegal.

But that might not happen anytime soon. So, yeah, psilocybin is LSD are dramatically safer. And now I guess MDMA is the next. And actually, there's some concerns about MDMA as well for recovering after taking high doses of MDMA for. Yeah, it's a learning journey for sure. All right. Let's turn back to the topic of adaptogens. What else do you want to say on the subject here?

Like, what do you want to, like, in putting this book together, was there anything, even as much as you know about the space that just really kind of like, you're like, man, this just really, if people knew this, this is like profound information. You know, it can even be something that we covered before that you want to double down on, but just in putting it together, like even people who are experts in the space. and you obviously are having been in the space for a while, sometimes you're so close to something that you're familiar with it. But when you take a step back and you're writing a book

and you have to get the references and the studies and all of the stuff there, you're like, holy shit, this is kind of like a big deal? So is there anything like that with adaptogens or anything that you want to give more attention to? Yeah, there's one geeky and one practical. The geeky part from me was around antioxidants.

I feel like you go to whatever not nice grocery store and everything says it has antioxidants that I've kind of like in my head, I kind of like discounted it. They're not that helpful because you see it everywhere. It's just overused as a word, right? But then when you start to look into the studies, particularly on for around gut health, immunity, brain power, the neurotransmitters and like how like certain flavonoids coat the digestive system and how that impacts is pretty powerful.

And so I would say gut health slash antioxidants would be a thing that people sleep on. I think you often see them for skin. You see them for kind of general wellness. Like if you get sick, take a lot of antioxidants, like take vitamin C, you know, type of thing. But they're actually how they impact our bodies way more complex and way more powerful than we. Obviously, antioxidant is an umbrella statement and there's a lot of subgroups. But things like eating berries, like not forget about adaptogens, but like getting those colors, getting those color pigments. Like the full spectrum of polyphenols.

For sure. And how they impact our body is pretty mind blowing. And now as the last 10, 20 years, a lot of more gut research is coming. And we're figuring out the gut brain connection that I know you're obviously big on. And the impact of the vagus nerve. and then how does it how do these neurotransmitters that particularly ones that impact our mood and happiness how they're impacted our thing is pretty fascinating Finland being I think four years in a row the happiest place in the earth which is funny to us but we eat a lot of wild berries so maybe that there's something there the other practical thing which has come more and more clear is how confusing health is and going through these thousand research papers and it's like even as a

someone who studied nutrition and chemistry and spend 20 years on this. It's just really freaking confusing. And like nobody can figure all of this out. So for me, it's like made me think a lot about like how do you make it attainable, either by making it super fun, like that coconut was probably fun for you, right, to take it in the club. So aside the health benefits of the coconut, you were smiling, maybe you felt mischie. You had your thing. Maybe someone was like, what's that?

And you're like, well, it's a coconut. And it became a, you were smiling. And there's like these like, it's playful. So therefore you get all these other benefits, right? So or you can like with adaptogens, what's great about them is because of the safety and how they work, you don't have to overthink it. You just take them. Like choose one or two and start taking them because they're not stimulative.

They're not sedative. They're safe, so you don't have to overthink it. Just start doing it and then wait 30 to 60 days and you'll probably be blown by what you feel. I think that's one key thing. You know, people rushing the sort of performance on adaptogens, but they may take a little bit longer, but then when they work, they're sort of like they're in it, you know? Yeah, and that's usually true for a lot of supplements and a lot of things is you trade off speed. with safety.

And I think that's true for a lot of other things in life as well. But like if you take certain isolated chemicals and compounds, they work really quickly, but there's a side effect versus if you take in their whole form, it takes a while longer to get the benefits. There's like a cumulative buildup process, but you don't get those side effects. On the adaptogen side, pregnant women? Yep.

Ask your doctor, that whole disclaimer. Yeah, I probably should give that, but I can speak for our experience. My wife with two pregnancies have been taking regularly. Some of them are quite energizing, you know, ginseng corticeps in a way, not stimulative, but they give a lot of energy. And I think part of what I've observed from her and other friends is part of pregnancy is also slowing down literally and like slowing down your life and preparing. pairing mentally and physically.

And so I think generally like the Reishis and the Ashwakan does and the Lions mains are maybe more appropriate than high dose of something that you take for physical performance and workouts. But yeah, generally they are safe and obviously dosage matters. And if you've never taken them, I don't know if when you get pregnant is the time to start experimenting. And that's true for a lot of food. So besides some essential vitamins, the folates of the world that you need more during pregnancy

and maybe some healthy fatty acids, like, I wouldn't like, that wouldn't be the time when you'd start taking it. But if you've consistently used the Reishis, the Xanthras, the turmeric, the cacao's, and you're used to it, then I'd say go for it. you've been in this game with the company for 10 years you mentioned just a little plug for four Csumatic what is it that you guys do and how are you trying to bring these adaptogenic products to to folks like what aspects have you created formulas for and is there anything that you know you haven't but you have other recommendations of where people should go to find it yeah actually I've had a recent epiphany when we turn 10 years I also haven't I think shared that with anywhere else but

You know, 10 years ago, I was, you know, I was, I'd done formulation. I'd worked with professional athletes and nutrition. I've done sourcing of mushrooms and adaptogens, and I had deep passion, but I had no clue of the business part. I was not even living in the U.S. Then I come here. I'm an immigrant. I don't know anyone.

I gladly met you early on and some of our mutual friends. And I had no clue. And the whole time in the first literally probably eight years of the business, I thought, I thought I was building a mushroom adaptogen company. And I was obsessed with the ingredients, the sourcing, the quality, the formulation. And what I did not see is the forest from the trees. And I did not see is now we've served over 100 million servings of these products. We make coffee, protein mostly, but other these mushroom adaptogen products that work and

taste good. And I did not see the effect it had on people. lives. I got letters. I saw Instagram post and it was like, all of this changed my life. And it really hit me in the last, especially during COVID, that what we created was a essentially like a mental wellness and mental performance company. And some of our products help with gut health and they help with like the protein. But really what people were seeking was some sort of mental balance or performance from the products that we make. And it's been a big epiphany focusing on. the consumer and the benefits they get.

Because at the end of the day, most of our consumers, no matter how awesome they are, they don't care about the mushroom. They don't care about the adaptogen. Right. It's not about the mushrooms. It's about the end result. Exactly. Exactly.

And that sounds very simple and someone smarter would have figured it out after a month. But for me, it took a good eight years. And so that's been a big focus. It's just kind of, it doesn't really change the products or what we do. but it's just like that two degree difference on how to look at things and how, especially with innovation, moving forward on how can we serve our community best by knowing that what they, after all these surveys, what we've done over the years, we've come to realize it's about the benefit itself. I love it, dude. And the book is out now. People can pick it up. Yeah. So anything else you want to

mention about, you know, you have a co-writer on it. What are you hoping that people pick up the book and they read it like, What are they going to get from this? Yeah. It's out wherever books are sold online. Do you read it end to end? Or is it one of those books you kind of like flip through and you kind of pick and choose a little bit? More the latter. I wrote this book to be the seminal piece, hopefully, around adaptogens for many more decades.

So I think hopefully it sells as much in 20 years from now that it sells in this first year. A lot of books sell some on the first few weeks and then not so much. So I hope that to be the book, the guide book. practical but thorough guidebook for many decades and adaptogens. It's like there's 21 of them there and each, so each one of them will cost you a dollar, so to say. But the first part of half of the book is around philosophy or how to think about them and body and systems and how they work and how compounds work to really aim.

And I think that will serve a lot of people in anything around health. So I think people will come for those 21 and they will pay a dollar each to get these benefits on their life. But I think once they read it, they will figure out that gives them a different lens and perspective on modern medicine and ancient traditions and how to marry those and how to look at those, whatever it is. It's like you have a knee injury or, you know, whatever, you have a headache and it will give you hopefully, people a different perspective on how to look at a headache going forward well i love it man it's super thorough and so i feel like the next step is so is really easy especially with your book agent being at uta it's like how do we turn this into a little documentary right yeah i guess so you're the expert so awesome terro this has been great thank you so much the link to the book and the company four

Sigmatic is in the show notes. Healing adaptions, the definitive guide to using super herbs and mushrooms for your body's restoration, defense, and performance. Pick up a copy, audience. And thank you for coming back on the podcast. It was a pleasure to chat with you about all the things. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me on again.