Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Mushroom Coffee

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Another wellness trend that feels newer than it actually is, people have been looking for a coffee substitute since coffee was discovered (see: episode about coffee). Dr. Sydnee talks about the additional claims made around these fungi, as well as what possible benefits they could have – and possible dangers.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/Immigrant Defenders Law Center: https://www.immdef.org/

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Welcome to Sawbones. Just reach right across me there.

My reach. Sorry. Cheesh. Try that again. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Sawbones. Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy.

Sorry, Justin. I was getting our timer, so we were ready to go. Yes. Yes. And you didn't. Have you started it? Yeah. All right.

It's rolling. It's rolling. It's rolling. It's podcast time. Time to make the donuts. The podcast donuts. The podcast donuts. This podcast is not about donuts.

I wish. Ah, man, we've done a medical donuts. How much of a history is there of medicinal donuts? I mean, I'm going to, I have, okay. Can I, can I say that if I was actually going to do that, that is what I would start off with, like, I'd get into the search engine and be like, medical history of donuts. And I'm, don't give away all your secrets. I'm guessing, well, that's what I do when I think, I don't know if this is anything. I'm guessing that's nothing.

But, you know, that could be wrong. Maybe, you know what? When we're done, I'm going to check. Check. be some medical donuts. I bet there, I bet there, you know what I'm going to get. I'm going to get ads for those little pillows you can sit on when you have hemorrhoids. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Have you been searching for those to give his gifts? No, I'm saying that if I look, if I look at medical donuts because they look like donuts, I bet I'm going to get an ad for those pillows. Yeah. That's what I think I would get. I don't need them because I have the great preparation age on my side. Sure, sure.

What are we going to talk about this? If you're not going to talk about donuts, even though, ha-ha, I tricked you to talk about donuts for like a minute. My dad suggested a topic for this week. Tommy Smurrell, my father. Okay. And then we got an email from Kestrel. Thank you Kestrel as well.

But I had to shout out my dad because he had actually mentioned it even before I got the email. So he sent me a text and he said, hey, Beanie, because that's what he calls me. Sure. Hey, Beanie. Is mushroom coffee really a thing? Thanks. Love, Dad. And that's kind of a large-ranging thesis statement, but the intent is there.

I mean, you know what he means. Is that a thing? Or is it like, those are the two options, I think. You got to watch Sydney's facial expression when someone says they've been diagnosed with something or they've started using something because you'll either get a like, huh, or like a, oh, interesting, huh. You know, it's one of those things where, especially since we've been doing sawbones so long, I have these two people battling in my head, and it's the Sydney that understands social interaction really well and knows that sometimes you don't need to correct people or tell them that something isn't real.

Sometimes you just need to be a pleasant person at a party and say like, oh, that's so interesting and nod your head and smile and then excuse yourself from the conversation when you get a chance. And then there's the other voice in my head that is sawbone Sydney that's going, you have to tell the truth. You have to spread the word. we have to fight pseudoscience. Which Sidney wins. Trick question, I win because there's two Sidney's meow. So, Sid, is mushroom coffee a thing or what? It's a thing in that it exists.

Okay, yes, that's true. Well, I, you know what? Can I just say, you can argue the medicine of this if you want. I am going to get into the semantic trenches if we have to. There is mushroom coffee. Okay, but is there, because I don't know. I've drank coffee a long time. I don't know if I'm going to count this semantically as coffee by the end of the episode.

I will remain to be convinced. I want to walk you through how we got to mushroom coffee. Okay. And I will say just not spoiling, but to clue you in, sometimes these things are unsatisfying. Is mushroom coffee a thing? It's like a lot of the stuff we talk about on this show. Kind of? I don't know.

Maybe. Anyway, how did we get here? Why are we making coffee out of mushrooms? Why are we doing this? Because we ran out of beans. Sort of. We've had, we've done a whole episode on coffee. So I'm not going to get into the history of coffee, real coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee.

Because you can go back and listen. It was actually a live episode that we did in Seattle. Appropriately. Coffee. During that live episode, by the way, I mentioned, because I was going back to see if we've already covered this, I mentioned that I'm drinking tea because I was pregnant at the time. Oh, wow. I was decaffinated tea.

Anyway, so we've had coffee since like a thousand C.E or maybe earlier. We've had coffee for a very long time. And we talk about this in the episode, but to refresh your memory, the legend of where coffee came from, which is probably not true, but this is like the full story of where do we get coffee, is a goat herder noticed. What? That's terrible. What did the goats ever do to him?

Just walking around hurting goats. What a jerk! Go on. What is jerked in? I feel good about this? No, I regretted it instantly. A goat herder in Ethiopia noticed that his goats ate some specific berries and then were dancing. Oh. And he was like, well, I got to try these berries.

They made the goats dance. And this is where coffee came. Yada yada, Starbucks. And then coffee. You can listen to the whole episode. If you want to know the history of real coffee. And people love coffee. And everybody rejoiced because now we have coffee.

Ha-ha-ha-h-Zenga. Initially, they, like, chewed it. They, like, mixed it with fat and made it, like, a chewy thing that you would eat, and then eventually they started boiling it and turning it into a beverage and you got coffee. And then things happen over time. The problem is, once you've had coffee for many of us, like myself, you love it. And if it were to go away, you may be desperate to find a substitute. You remember in the fringe universe, Walternet, and the others in that side of the divide didn't have coffee. I remember at some point the world's coffee supply had run out.

If you remember, that was one of the main differences they established between our dimension and theirs, is that they didn't have coffee over there. I don't remember. Did they have, did they just drink tea or was there another replacement? I don't know, actually. You know, I remember it being a big deal when someone would bring coffee over from the other side because it was like. You know, it's interesting because. French? Yeah, it is.

I love French. I love fringe. But if I don't have coffee, if coffee isn't available and tea is available, that's fine for me as like a coffee substitute. because I can get caffeinated tea. Black tea is, I don't know, it's in the ballpark. You get it. You know. Shug enough of it.

But throughout history, even in times where tea was plentiful and coffee was not, tea was not good enough for many people. They had to find a different substitute that was more like coffee. Almost as far back as we have like commercially produced coffee, we have commercially produced coffee substitutes. If we go back to 1733, we can find oat coffee being mentioned, where you just boil. oats and make some sort of liquid out of it.

The caffeination is not there with oat coffee. No. No, it's not. It's not. Like you could call, like, milk don't make you float, correct? Yes. So if you grind up a bunch of almonds, mix them with water, weight, yada, yada, almond that's fine.

If I drink that, I'm refreshed. It's good on cereal. I don't float. wasn't expecting that, not a milk thing. You can call it milk. Coffee make you dance. So if I drink like grain coffee or any kind of coffee substitute that does not make me dance, then it's not coffee. Do you understand? It has not met the minimum standard. So I think this is what is most interesting as I was reading, because I wanted to, as I was reading about mushroom coffee, I kept finding mentions that we've had mushroom coffee for a long time. Like this is not a new

idea. It feels new. It feels trendy. It's like a wellness thing, but it's old. Feels appeal to ancient wisdom. Yes. And so why were mushrooms used as a replacement? And this led me in this. That's why I'm talking about coffee substitutes first. Yeah. Because it seems to me that for most of history, when we needed a coffee substitute, we weren't necessarily trying to replace the caffeine. We were trying to replace the flavor and essence of coffee. We wouldn't even necessarily understood caffeine yet, right? Well, by this point, we did. Yeah, by this point we did. And so a lot of the time, the reason somebody would reach for a coffee substitute was because either coffee was scarce or it was a luxury, depending on where and

when you lived. Or I wanted to point to, there was one specific point where it was banned by somebody. So in Frederick the Great of Prussia Wanted to get his subjects to consume more chickery or beer because those were both things that were made there and so Sort of a by local Kind of push like drink this instead of this and so he said that he was just going to ban coffee Oh And then that way you can't You can't have coffee so you have to drink locally produced

Chickory or beer and chickory actually like drinks based on chicory have been a very common coffee substitute for a couple hundred years now at least. I mean, and even to this day, we'll get into that. But chicory is still something that people use as a coffee substitute. I have never drank like a chicory beverage, but my understanding is it gives you the, I don't know, everybody talks about coffee is having that roasted flavor, which I feel like is such a vague thing to say, roasted. I mean, yes, I understand they're roasted, but like, what?

I mean, like, I've roast vegetables, and that has a roasted flavor that is quite distinct from coffee. I think when you're talking about roasted flavor, it's like, how close do you get to burnt? And then look over the edge. You're like, I didn't. You know what I mean? I think that's what people want with roasted. Like, no, not burnt. But you got to see burnt from your yard.

Yes. You know what I mean? That's roasted. That's the flavor you want. Because you just want to live on the edge. I think that's what people like. They think, like, this is almost burnt and then I ate it. And I, you know, I guess that makes sense in the, like, like, you know, like, you just that makes sense in the, like, like,

Like, okay, smoking is not good for you. You shouldn't smoke. We should have said that earlier in the show, honestly, in this production. It's best not to smoke. Yes. At a point in my life, I have smoked a cigarette. I was never a smoker, but I have smoked a cigarette. I'm just prefacing with, you shouldn't smoke. But I'm sharing that they're, you know, I'm 42 years old. I've done a lot of things. I smoked a cigarette. And I always thought that cigarettes and coffee sort of tasted similar to me. I think it's like that almost burnt

It's like the burnt It's burning It's like burnt Okay, yeah maybe For me I liken the two Except I like I remember college babe I was liking them too Listen coffee and cigarettes

Yeah Good That's why I thought they went well together Is because they both kind of burnt Hey you want to really twist your noodle We traded that for kids What? Listen the coffee stuck

Cigarettes no He shouldn't smoke Shouldn't smoke, but... Don't smoke. If you're gonna, get it out of the way in college, just treat yourself to a couple of years. Pure satisfaction. Don't. Don't. Don't.

Don't. Don't. Don't. It's addictive. Don't. Don't. Because it'll be hard to overcome it. You know, it's addictive? Overcoming the challenges of addiction. That's addictive. Believing in yourself. I just want to know, Frederick the Great went to the extent of employing 400 wounded soldiers to work as coffee sniffers, whose job was to go around trying to smell coffee

and find, like, illegal coffee bootleggers, like people who would be making coffee. That's a good gig. I love that. Your coffee sniffer. That crack squad out there. Still doing the Lord's work. I mean...

Smelling. Hey, let me smell that cup, George. Yeah, I thought so. Wait, were they smelling... Sorry. Were they smelling people's individual beverages to see if they had coffee? Or were they smelling...

For like production, like a bloodhour like Scooby-Doo, they're trying to sniff it out. Yeah, looking for like a coffee still, except not a still, I guess. But, you know, same idea is like you're looking for the secret speakeasy. You're looking for the secret Starbucks. Yeah. You're looking for the secret coffee shops. You just listen for some Nora Jones music. I, man, I tell you.

And then you're going to find a Starbucks. I get mine at the old village roaster on Fourth Avenue. And when Pete and Vickie had been in there roasting, when Pete's been in there roasting, you can smell a block away. It's not a joke. When he's been in there making this Highlander grog, or his, you know, roastmaster's choice,

you can smell it. It's good. It's good. Now, he doesn't have the ever-present threat of the government crackdown on his coffee production. Maybe he is trying to get it out to the streets. Maybe he could, like, put up some tarp or something to hide the stench. I don't, well, yeah.

I mean, if he had coffee sniffers, Frederick the Great takes over. That's so great. So we really see a lot of, I want to highlight some of the different things because I'm sure there were examples like that all through history of coffee of people kind of, well, this is sort of similar to coffee, so I'll boil it. But it wasn't until we had like mass produced coffee and then it was standardized because if you're going to, if we're going to have people systematically finding a way to replace coffee, they kind of have to need coffee. And so people got hooked on coffee. And then if they couldn't get it because of war or whatever, they found different ways to do it. So in the U.S. Civil War, persimine and watermelon seeds were roasted and boiled and that was coffee.

Sweet potatoes, peanuts was a common thing. In Nebraska, like barley, rye corn, a lot of using what you got, right? Those are common. West Virginia specific, I found this recipe. Okay. Uh, wheat brand, cornmeal, eggs and molasses. Ooh, that's rough. You cook that down and make coffee.

Oh, yeah. That is not coffee. No, that's not coffee. I'm sorry. I'm usually quick to defend West Virginia traditions. That reminds you, like, uh, who, it was on one of those worst cooks in America shows. We watched one time where somebody tried to, uh... Make chocolate.

Make chocolate from cinnamon. Yes. It's like, it's not brown enough. It's still not chocolate. It was like, that's not what chocolate is. What chocolate is. No, they had a whole conversation about, like, chocolate is a thing. It's a thing.

You can't just, like, make something into chocolate by making it for hours. It was like alchemy. They were trying to do alchemy. That's what this is. Like, I've brought coffee. You haven't. You started a bunch of groceries in a cup. There were, in New Mexico, they used different kinds of seeds, jojoba seeds, sunflower, juniper berries.

And really, again, it's the top, the thing that people were trying to mimic. And it's interesting because coffee has caffeine. And if you drink caffeine enough, you will become physically addicted to it, right? And you will experience withdrawal symptoms if you stop drinking caffeine. We know that I am addicted to caffeine. We know this is true. It's interesting that people who were drinking coffee regularly made these things that clearly were not going to have caffeine in them and drank them regularly.

They must have all felt awful and not known why. Hmm. Or knew why, but didn't know what to do about it. Yeah. Justin, one of the most famous coffee substitutes, before we get to mushrooms, that I want to talk about, I feel like our interest converge. Because it was made by C.W. Post. Ah, yeah. Yes.

Serial legend. I want to talk to you about CW. Post, serial legends, coffee substitute. But first we have to go to the billing department. All right. Let's go. Macaw for the mouse. So, Justin, how much do you know about CW Post? The bitter rival of Kellogg, perhaps best known for his raising brand.

He spun off with that, I believe. But, yeah, he was a nutritionist, kind of a devotee before he did his own thing. That's my best recollection of Puck. Yeah, that's a good, so, yes, Post, he had early in his life, he had some challenges with, I mean, at the time, what they were calling a nervous breakdown. Could be anything. Yeah, modern day. Obviously, he was having some mental health challenges.

And a lot of it stemmed from, too, he was having trouble with the various businesses he was involved in. He wasn't getting his projects off the ground. So he wasn't having a lot of success. And then he also had some mental health issues. And eventually he went to Dr. Kellogg's Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. looking for like save me help me actually his wife brought him there was like please fix him yeah there's nothing to do and he was fixed with food of course yes a miracle a lot of a lot of Kellogg's patients were fixed with food it's weird how that yeah if all you have is a hammer yeah well that

and uh restricting masturbation so there's the two the two things you have when all you have is a hammer and restricting masturbation he didn't he didn't uh I don't know if that was part of Post story. I didn't read that specific. I'm sure that fact is out there or not, whether or not that was. But I could see that because he definitely like he started studying like

Sorry, that's a Kellogg thing. Yes. No, I know. But I don't know if Post adopted that. Got into that. I know he got into cereal. Yeah. Right. Like you liked cereal, clearly. And the idea that like all health kind of stems from what you eat and having a clean

GI tract and that kind of thing. So he read some medical books. He decided, of all the things he was doing, one of the worst was coffee. He thought coffee was killing him. And he had once had a coffee substitute. When he was in Texas, he'd had a drink that was made from chicory. As like I said, chickery is a common theme here. And wheat berries.

Okay. So he used bran and molasses instead and made a breakfast drink post them. Postum. Have you heard of Postum? I have heard of Postum. Yeah. Postum is still around to this day. And the idea was this is a coffee alternative that will break your caffeine addiction. It's going to be just like coffee, except it's, which I mean like you could just have decaffeinated coffee.

Sure. Yeah. But it's almost too close. Yeah. But this is something that you can drink and you're going to overcome what he called your yellow streak. Oh. Your cowardly addiction to caffeine. I will never overcome it.

Don't want to. So Postum became a really trendy. And I think it's an interesting touchstone because it was trendy. It was a coffee alternative. And it was being marketed for wellness. Now, I don't know that we were using the word wellness, the way we use the word wellness now, you know. But this was wellness.

It was still pretty loaded, I think. Yeah. Like wellness has always had that, I think, it can carry a lot more linguistic weight because it's a lot more ephemeral, I think. I didn't, I had never heard of postum. I had to look this up to see. And I mean, it's, it's really marketed now with, like, this nostalgia to it.

Like, don't you remember your first postum? The old days of postum. I don't remember postum ever. But anyway, among all of these different alternatives to coffee, it seems natural to me that if we're talking about, like, coffee's burnt flavor, roasty flavor, whatever you want to call it, that mushrooms have,

having an earthy, it's right there. Umami flavor would become part of it. So it turns out that using mushrooms as coffee replacement dates back to Finland during World War II. Wow. Because as I said, wartime was a common time to find these coffee substitutes pop up because you didn't have coffee. You wanted something. You made something.

So in the 1940s, in Finland, there were a lot of things you couldn't get, you know, sugar. was a common shortage, and coffee was among them. And so they started different things, you know, like a lot of different communities were doing, rye being roasted was a common sort of base to them. And they started adding chaga mushrooms to it. Like it has this blackened color on the outside of it. Trying to get a little closer to the original. Yeah, and so it would kind of look like coffee.

You would just steep it overnight, and then you would press it. Yeah, okay. It's a long preparator. Go ahead. Well, I mean, I imagine you make it in big batches and have it ready, right? Yeah, I guess that's true. Like, you have to, there's a big procedure with roasting coffee beans, I guess, too. I shouldn't be put off by the amount of elbow grease I'm putting it up front. Well, I mean, I think you can be put off if you're considering that you're still not going to get caffeine.

Yeah, that's true. Like, I'm not going to go through this process. Yeah. But anyway, so they would, they would soak the mushrooms overnight, press them all out. And then you could add, like, the, like I said, the roasted rye. to it and you would make this beverage that was a coffee substitute. So, again, the idea feels really new and trendy, but this is just one example, that's probably the first known example we have.

Certainly there could have been other cultures using mushrooms. And since then, there have been a lot of different places where some sort of mushroom has been, you know, soaked and pressed and turned into a beverage. And this is a known thing. it's important to note that this specific mushroom that they were using can thin your blood. So please don't try this at home unless you consult with a medical professional, especially if you're on certain medications. This is going to be a theme.

Okay, gotcha. Like everything else in nature, just because it might have some sort of beneficial property, doesn't mean... That it doesn't have... Some sort of negative effect or interaction or contraindication, just like medicine. You know, I mean, if you think that these things are medicine, then treat them like medicine. Not everyone can take all medicine, right? So anyway, that was probably our first, like, this is where mushroom coffee we know begins.

Certainly there could have been other examples. And if you look at, I think that's what's really interesting. So we have all of this throughout history in times of shortage or whatever or for a wellness purpose, like Postum. if you look at the sort of coffee substitute atmosphere today, it's the same stuff. Really? So I was looking up different, they call them beanless coffee brands. Weird. Why specifically do you think it's weird?

Because I think it's weird, but I wonder why you do. Like, I feel like it sounds like a coffee that you get if you fart a lot. Like, finally, there's a coffee that won't make me fart. That's what it sounds like, too. You say beanless, it's like it just makes me feel like I love coffee, but I hate to fart. That's why I don't like it. As usual, my brain doesn't first go to farts. But what was weird to me about discovering that beanless coffee is a concept is that if something is less,

I feel like you're saying there's something negative about the word you put before it or like it's good that this isn't in it. And I don't know why bean, like caffeine-free would be a thing. Yeah. And, like, certainly there are products that are, like, dairy-free because maybe you can't tolerate dairy. And then there's the whole non-GMO, which we have issues with, obviously, that GMO is not inherently evil or dangerous or bad for you. But, like, the implication is this is bad for you, so we took it out. And I don't know who's out there going stop beans. Yeah, I don't, yeah.

Well, no, the FDA is. They're way down there on the new ups. down food, try, food, upside down pyramid, whatever it is.

Anyway, but if you look at these coffee alternatives that are out there today, they're using things like fermented chickpeas,

date seeds, roasted dandelions, rice hulls, and then a lot of them contain mushrooms. I looked up like the first one that I found

this Atomo. It contains, which mushroom do we have? Lions main. So a lot of these are mushroom based coffees, and some of them, their selling point is they don't have caffeine, period.

Okay. That's it. Like, if you read the thing, they're like, look, this is better for you because it doesn't have caffeine. Okay. It's too bad. And I understand if you're trying to avoid caffeine, okay, great. But for a lot of them, they're kind of saying, not only do we not have caffeine,

but we're giving you some sort of health advantage. And I think that's interesting because a lot of the coffee substitutes, other than postage, post them, we're not trying to give you any kind of wellness advantage. They were just trying to give you the feeling of coffee without having coffee. So this isn't just that. It's like you don't want to drink coffee because of the caffeine. Here's something that you can drink. It's this is going to make you better. A lot of them will tell you they're going to give you energy from some other source. That's such a popular thing in the wellness industry, natural energy. And what they mean is no caffeine, except sometimes wellness products do. Absolutely do contain caffeine.

Sometimes there is, which, and you're like, hey, this gives me a little bit of extra energy. You know what kidding? Yeah. Look at the truck. They're like natural energy, and it's like, well, it's caffeine. But they're going to try to tell you that you're going to get energy and focus without the jitters. That's a really common because caffeine gives you jitters. This is going to give you all of the benefits of caffeine without the jitters.

Can we talk about jitters for a second? Yeah, sure. I don't know that I've ever, I don't know what people mean when they say that. Like, I have never experienced whatever that is. I mean, maybe I have experienced it. But I've never, like, maybe it's just because I've been drinking coffee steadily and effectively since I was in college. But, like, what is the jitters? I have experienced the jitters before.

At least what I think that means from a colloquial perspective. At times, especially in residency, I would just be mindlessly drinking coffee. throughout the course of an entire night. So we are talking a lot of coffee consumption, thoughtlessly consuming coffee, tossing it back quickly in between things to go into rooms. And so probably drinking much, much more, definitely drinking much more caffeine than I would on a regular basis.

And not what I would recommend. I would not recommend just thoughtlessly chugging caffeine all day. Certainly, we shouldn't, that's not good for you. And in those moments, what I have experienced, aside from the fact that I definitely got some runs of superventricular tachycardia. My heart rate was way too high. I don't have that anymore. But I also experienced a feeling of, it's almost like when you get the bugs crawling inside your skin.

Have you ever had that sort of? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah, that formication is the name. Forme. I had been very consistent about my coffee intake, though. I guess maybe I'm just not mixing it up enough. But I've had that moment where I feel like inside.

I'm shaking, but I'm not shaking on the outside, but I'm shaking on the inside. And it feels like if I try to pick something up, I'm going to drop it. And I don't know. It's a very uncomfortable. I have experienced that from, but again, that's not just from drinking coffee. It's from drinking way too much caffeine. I think I would have just assumed that was me if I started feeling that way, you know, just the wonders of being made.

I just feel scared inside, kind of shaking inside. Yeah, maybe I just would have mistaken that for regular brain activity. Well, I mean, I think certainly other things can give you jitters. That's true. So here's what... Also, sometimes, though, coffee makes me really sleepy, so I don't know. Oh, man. Doesn't do that.

Okay, the only reason that coffee makes me sleepy is if I still haven't had enough. There's another reason... Whoa. Sheesh. Don't even talk to you until you've had your coffee, right? There's another reason, too, but it's... If your energy is an applied kinesiology, if your energies are flopped, then caffeine makes you sleepy and, like, NyQuil will make you energize, and you have to do some sort of, like, energy

switching to fix that back. That is not real. You pass my test. Okay, thank you. Okay, so mushroom coffee specifically. There are a lot of different brands out there. They use different mushrooms. What are they claiming?

And is there any reason to claim that this is anything other than just a, it's a sort of like coffee. It's got mushrooms in it. And if you like it, you can drink it. Right. Right. Okay. So the most common species of mushrooms, lions Maine, Chaga, which we've already mentioned, Rashi and corticeps.

Corticeps is the one that people freak out about because there's certain kinds of that fungi that can infect bugs and turn them into like zombies. And so there's a lot of like, I think there's a lot of writing out there that sort of connects that to a zombie. Like you could use that in a fictional sense as like a zombie apocalypse kind of thing.

Anyway, so those are the mushrooms that most commonly are in the various wellness coffee brands you can buy. Lions main is, will tell you that it will be good for your brain, make you think clear, make your brain work better, basically. Chaga's supposed to be antioxidant. Rashi is supposed to be good for your immune system. And corticeps is just like, that's that natural energy that they talk about. That'll tell you that you can get natural energy.

Now, have there been studies done on these things? Yes. So let me talk about just briefly, what do we know? Lions main first when we talk about cognitive function, brain function. So a lot of the stuff that they do that they've done is either in like a lab model or an animal model. And as we've talked about many times on the show, just because something works in a mouse doesn't mean it's going to work in a human. So they've done a lot of studies in animals and found some like, I don't know, basically animals have better brain function after being exposed to lions mane. So we've seen that. Like they can do a maze better. there was a study that looked at humans.

There was a Japanese study, and specifically individuals with some sort of cognitive decline or impairment, like dementia. So somebody who we're trying to boost them back to their baseline functioning, not take them from baseline to limitless. Yeah. And it did, it was a very small sample, and it did show maybe some improvement compared to placebo. But it was, again, just the kind of study that you would say, interesting result, not sure if it means anything, we should replicate it in a larger group to see.

But in terms of like, if you don't have any cognitive decline, would this make you smarter than you already are? We don't have any evidence right now to show that, you know, if you start eating lions main, you're going to become limitless. Do you want me to start talking about Chaga? Yeah, talk about Chaga. Again, a lot of these are pre-clinical studies when it comes to Chaga, like reducing inflammation, is it antioxidant? There's so much interest in reducing inflammation. There's so many things that in a lab will show some sort of antioxidant properties. We really don't have a lot of human – there's almost no human data, nothing that is significant enough to mention in terms of that.

So we don't know. And cortisps, again, there have been – there's been some small research. Your name for that. I don't like that choice of word there, corticeps. It sounds like a tool. I don't think that should be what they call that. Well, I'll come up with something better, see if I can get it going. They've mainly looked at it in athletes to look at, like, do you have, do you fatigue slower?

And studies are mixed. They're very small. It's inconclusive. So, like, the point of all this is we don't really know if they do these things yet. there have been some small studies, most of them not in humans, that have suggested possibly. At this point, we can't say conclusively that these mushroom coffees are going to do anything for you other than be an alternative to coffee. Some of them do have caffeine, I should note. So that would be an advantage if you're trying to avoid caffeine, then I guess certainly

and you enjoy the flavor of these coffees, then that would be an advantage. But some of them do have caffeine. So you've got to check. You need to read the packaging. because some of them have the mushroom stuff and they talk about antioxidant and all that other thing, but then also they do have caffeine in them. So that would be a problem. So, I mean, for most people, it's probably fine.

I will say that some people have, well, I mean, obviously you can be allergic to mushrooms. Some people have some stomach discomfort with mushroom preparations. So I wouldn't advise it if it's upsetting your stomach. Although, I mean, coffee makes a lot of people go to the bathroom. That's true. So, you know.

But you might have some discomfort. and then again, some mushrooms will interact with medications you might be taking, specifically if you're on any kind of anticoagulant, a blood thinner, anything that has to do with your immune system, anything that has to do with diabetes management. I would talk to your health care provider before substituting your coffee with mushroom coffee if you're on any of those kinds of medications. There have been rare cases of liver toxicity from the rishi mushrooms. that's probably a quantity issue, I would guess. However, it's just a good reminder that just because something is, quote, unquote, natural comes from the earth, grows. That doesn't mean that it's completely benign and you can just eat or drink as much of it as you want. Just like I drank so much coffee that my insides were vibrating.

You could drink so much mushroom coffee that you give yourself diarrhea or it interferes with your medications or certainly that you harm. one of your internal organs. That's true for most things. Even water. Even water. There is a limit that you can drink too much. So I think if you want to try a mushroom coffee, this is what I told my dad, because my dad really likes mushrooms. This is why he wanted to try mushroom coffee. Not for any of the wellness benefits. He likes mushrooms. He likes coffee. He thought he would like mushroom coffee. So in his sense, it is a thing. It is a thing. What I would tell him is... I doubt you get that great robust mushroom flavor from it though, right? That can't be what they're striving for. I mean, I've never tried it. I don't know. But here's what I would tell you. If you're like my dad and you like mushrooms and you like coffee, certainly you could try it. If you need that caffeine and you don't want to cut caffeine out, I would get one that has caffeine in it. I would drink it in moderation, just like coffee should be drunk. And I would also, again, if you have any other underlying health conditions or if you're on medications, I would consult with your health care provider.

before replacing coffee with it. For most people, it's not a big deal, but also if you're looking to become limitless. This may not be the only way. Is that fair to say? I don't, I would not recommend, I mean, I don't know if it's more expensive. I'm going to guess that it is. Then the limitless pill?

That's tough to say. I would not invest your money in this if you're trying to cure, treat, manage. Sure, treat, diagnose. Or elevate yourself beyond the bound. of human comprehension. Thank you so much for listening to our show. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song, Medicines is the intro and outro of our program.

And thanks to you for listening. That's going to do it for us. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole. Maximum Fun. A Worker-Oned Network of Artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.