the bossbabe podcast - 72. Mushroom Magic: Unlock Your Potential + Amplify Your Performance With Julian Mitchell

Episode Date: January 8, 2020

Here at BossBabe, we love biohacking to help us achieve peak performance in life and business. Joining us today is Julian Mitchell, CEO and Co-Founder of Australian-based company, Life Cykel. They create functional mushroom products that focus on unlocking our human potential. We’re diving deep into the mushroom kingdom and all of its medicinal benefits including anti-aging, enhancing brain function, improving mental health, and so much more. Tune in to learn how mushrooms and other holistic health hacks can amplify your daily performance. If better health is your 2020 resolution, this is the episode for you.  This episode is sponsored by LifeCykel, a biotechnology company with a mission to empower people and the environment to grow healthier with mushrooms. Use promo code "Bossbabe20" to get a special discount of 20% off, only the first 1000 will get the discount. ICON Mastermind Live Event in Atlanta, GA: https://www.theiconmastermind.com/icon-live

By regulating that, by restoring that harmony within the gut, you're actually restoring your mood as well. It was about transparency and about sustainability and being, I guess, not harmful to the planet. If you're cumulatively taking these mushrooms, you're cumulatively upgrading your brain. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, CEO of Boss Babe and your host for this week's episode. So I hope you're all settling back into work life well after the holidays.

We are completely hitting the ground running at Boss Babe and have got so much lined up for January. This weekend we're hosting our mastermind retreat for our high-level clients which is going to be amazing as always. It's going to be three days of deep diving into their businesses. Then we're heading to Palm Springs where we'll be hosting our team and getting really really clear on 2020 strategy. Then at the end of the month I'm co-hosting an event in Atlanta. We've still got tickets there for that by the way so make sure you get them ASAP if you're coming. I'll put the link in the show notes below. So diving straight in, if any of you are interested in learning about health, biohacking or high performance, this episode might end up being one of your favorites. So we talk about some

of my favorite biohacking products as well as how you can get started on your biohacking journey for free every single day with healthy routines and rituals. I'm going to be interviewing Julian Mitchell, co-founder of Lifecycle. Lifecycle make mushroom tinctures to help you be your most high-performing self and in this episode we dive deep into what makes mushrooms so interesting for health. We cover absolutely everything. Prior to co-founding Lifecycle, Julian worked as a self and in this episode we dive deep into what makes mushrooms so interesting for health we cover absolutely everything prior to co-founding life cycle julian worked as a physiotherapist in the english premier league before his entrepreneurial drive and belief in building a sustainable future led him to working on mushroom biotechnologies i know you're gonna love it as always take a

screenshot tag me at i am natalie at bossabe.inc and share it on stories and we'll repost you and then please please please leave us a review and leave your Instagram handle because we'll shout you out on our stories there as well. This episode is brought to you by Lifecycle. Okay so you already know how much I care about my own health and wellness. I'm constantly on the go and I love using biohacking tools and techniques to keep myself balanced and energized. One of the most advanced product packages I have found to date has a range of liquid mushroom extracts that include Cordyceps for energy, Reishi for relaxing, Lion's Mane for brain function and Rem's Sleep which I measure every single night by the way. I'm all about the data so I know what works. Turkey Tail for good health and Holy Shittake to amplify the baby in all of

us. This is the ultimate biohacker set by Lifecycle. It has been a total game changer for me and really helped me feel calm and collected even when under a lot of pressure because we all know what entrepreneurship life is really like behind the scenes. I just put a few drops straight under my tongue or I throw it right into a morning smoothie. It's super easy. All Lifecycle liquid extracts are made in Byron Bay. I actually visited a few years ago and I just thought it was one of the cleanest and most pure places on earth. My sleep feels deeper. I feel so focused and productive. So we got hold of a thousand special packs only for our listeners. So if you go to Lifecycle, that's L-I-F-E-c-y-k-e-l.com and use boss babe 20 to get a special discount of 20% off only the first 1000 will get the discount so if I were you I'd go check it out right now it's amazing

a boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise keep going and fighting on she is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks Natalie, excited to be chatting. So we're going to talk all things mushrooms, but I want to just simplify everything as much as physically possible so that by the end of this episode, everyone knows what kind of mushrooms, for what reason, why they're important. So that's what we're going to get into. But before all of that, what led you to start a mushroom business? Sure. Yeah, I was an unconventional path. Initially, I was a physiotherapy in my previous life and worked in England in the Premier League in elite sport and that was sort of what I thought I wanted to do and that was my passion was sort of that environment but then sort of didn't feel intuitively aligned it's what I wanted to do long term and so I came back to Australia and

just reconfigured and understood that I had a love for entrepreneurship for disrupting in some way and doing something aligned to do with sustainability and health and so looking at that point four and a half years ago when we started it was sort of the CBD rise was just coming into play. The fake meat or the burgers were coming into play from a plant-based point of view. And so understanding that's where the market was moving, that's what people wanted, that's what I wanted. And so mushrooms was like an uncharted continent. And like you said, we need to simplify it today because it's an entire kingdom, just like humans are an entire kingdom. So there's so many elements and so many species there that it really did feel like an uncharted continent of opportunity and excitement. And it aligned from a sustainability point of view

as to how we can help solve some issues. And so where did you first find out about the power of mushrooms? I'm just sort of an avid reader, I guess, an avid learner, and just learning, I guess, what food systems were being used at the moment, what food systems can we use in the future. My background, you know, Bachelor of Science, so understanding how to read research and literature and understanding that within mushrooms,

there was thousands of articles on the research in terms of medicinal use of these mushrooms. And so looking at the landscape, no one was really doing a lot in that space and just sort of figured that merging those things together, what you're passionate about, what you want to get up and do each day, what you want to do in a long period of time, like five, 10 years down the

track, and where I felt and myself and Ryan, the founder, where the market was going. And so those things all came together. And that's why we chose mushrooms. And the way you've done it, that was very different. You can buy mushrooms in a supermarket and you can actually consume them like that, or you can buy them in powdered form. Yours are liquid extracts. What made you decide to do liquid extract mushrooms? It's not something that people have really seen before. No, yeah, it's sort of, I guess, merging again what we're passionate about,

which is transparency and trust. And I think in the food system today, for myself as a customer, it's like, you know, where was that grown? Are there pesticides in it? Are there heavy metals? These are real questions coming into play in today's ages. You know. Where did our food come from and how was it grown? And so from that point of view with mushrooms, we're one of the very few companies in Australia and

in the USA that grow them ourselves. And we go from the whole process of growing from the spore and the seed all the way through to the mushroom, all the way to extracting. And so we've got, I guess, what we'd call a farming side of the business. Then we've got a biotechnology side of the business where we have a a biotechnology side of the business where we have a chief scientist who's a biotechnology engineer, a mycologist and a nanotechnologist and so these guys are names I didn't even know what they did four years ago but I guess that allowed us to have technology and IP and know-how

as to how to best turn these into products that were convenient, tasty and efficacy was high and quality was high and so we just believe that liquid extracts are a great product and efficacy was high and quality was high. And so we just believe that liquid extracts are a great product and very convenient for the modern day person. So why? Why are they so powerful? And kind of mushrooms as a whole, why are they so powerful? Yeah, so mushrooms, I mean, if you just some general statistics, 40% of all pharmaceuticals contain fungi. So if we look at anti-cholesterol lowering medication, if we look at cyclosporine, which is an immunosuppressant, if we look at penicillin, which is an antibiotic, which has saved hundreds

of millions of lives since World War II, these all come from fungi. And so this is a kingdom that has huge power in its immune ability, its ability to, I guess, upgrade the software of your immune system. And so it's great for a traveling hack, if you're doing a lot of flying, if you're doing a lot of business or a lot of work and you're stressed. And in today's society, stress is the forefront for everyone, whether you're a stay-at-home mom, whether you're doing business, whether you're an entrepreneur. Any of these roles, everyone's enduring stress, whatever it may be.

And so they have an amazing immune power. But beyond that, each mushroom also plays out in having other benefits on other applications of sleep, relaxation, activity in terms of energy. So there's so many elements to it, but at the core, they're an immune booster. And at the core, being in a liquid extract makes it more bioavailable. You absorb it quicker and the compounds within it are, I guess, a higher quality. So if I have, say, shiitake in liquid form versus just eating it, am I getting more for how much I'm consuming? Exactly.

It's sort of a 10 to 1 ratio, such a compression ratio where you could never consume as much shiitake practically with the time cooking it, all of those things versus putting it under your tongue or in your coffee or in your tea or in your smoothie. I love it. And I'm so fascinated about mushrooms. I first discovered them through Paul Stamets and just interviews he had and the way he would talk about them and how humans have been using them from the beginning of time and how they've really helped evolve our species, I think is so fascinating. And we can get into that. But that mushroom extracts that you have, can you kind of talk through each one and the benefits that they have and why you would use them?

Sure. It's really a modern day tool that I think, you know, we really want as many people as possible to be consuming them because we believe in the power of mushrooms, just like we believe in the power of CBD. These are modern tools for the modern age and for the modern biohacker and for the modern entrepreneur when they have such a stressful situation and schedule and all of those things.

So running through them from, let's start in the morning. So in the morning, what's the best mushrooms to use? So the cordyceps is an amazing mushroom for increasing ATP, which is adenotriphosphate, which is your energy levels and the energy levels produced from your mitochondria. So very simply, what you feel from that is instead of getting that sort of peak and trough with coffee and that excited buzz, but you're not necessarily alert and focused, it's more a smoother ride over a four to six hour period. And without that adrenal drag as well because we know if we sort of slip over the edge and have a coffee too late for some people

they'll interrupt their sleep and then you've got this cascade of events where you're playing catch up and so we need to play that longer term marathon game where we're just feeling good and great for a long period of time and not coming down with that sickness. So cordyceps is a great energy booster, great pre-workout in terms of exercise but it's also in a way an insurance policy if you have had a bad sleep, doubling down on some cordyceps the next day is great to do great energy booster, great pre-workout in terms of exercise. But it's also in a way an insurance policy. If you have had a bad sleep, doubling down on some cordyceps the next day is great to do because it won't interrupt your sleep and it won't drain your adrenals.

So cordyceps is that morning piece where you can have under your tongue, you know, holding it there for five to 10 seconds or having in a smoothie and a tea and a coffee, whatever it may be. The lion's mane is another amazing mushroom for brain function. This is my favorite one. This is everyone's favorite one. This is sort of the entry level in, you know, if you have never had tried mushrooms before in terms of functional mushrooms, definitely start with lion's mane because it has such noticeable benefits very early on. The other ones have a compounding effect. The

cordyceps you will feel pretty instantaneously and the other ones not as much in terms of how quick they are, you know, you feel it. So so the lion's mane i'm keen to hear your feedback on that one but from what we hear daily is really around focus mental clarity and just ability to concentrate and ability for memory consolidation and so that memory consolidation comes on the back of getting improved REM sleep that deep dreaming state of sleep which is where you're you get neurogenesis and you get a decrease in neuroinflammation. So your brain is just really regenerative state and consolidating that memory, which is amazing. And so that's a very popular mushroom in terms of the young high level

performer and all the ladies in terms of your audience and community in terms of that ability to remember that recall and stay focused and clear. It's an amazing mushroom in terms of an elderly population you know post 50 post 60 as we're getting you know more susceptible to you know ms multiple sclerosis alzheimer's parkinson's mild cognitive impairment just where you're not feeling as sharp as you used to where it's like what was i saying mid-sentence or where did i put my keys those kind of phrases is what we would sort of term mild cognitive impairment. But lion's mane is an amazing mushroom for regenerating those nerve cells and helping smooth that conduction and that memory within your brain. So it's definitely an amazing mushroom and it's getting a lot of great testimonials. What are your thoughts on lion's mane? I love lion's mane.

So everyone listening knows that I'm an absolute psycho about tracking my sleep. I really, really love to do different things like in isolation and see how they impact me. So CBD was amazing for my deep sleep. I guess I started trying CBD about two years ago and it was a real game changer for me. And I tried Lion's Mane liquid extracts first about four months ago. And I actually reached out to you after I tried them so I generally get a good amount of REM sleep like at least an hour one thing I notice it only starts at 6am and then I go in and out of REM and light sleep in the morning and so if I'm starting it at 6 and I wake up at 7.30 the max I was getting is an hour taking lines means actually helped me start my REM sleep cycle at 4am which is a massive

difference it's really funny because my husband used to wake me up at 6am every day and we'd go to sleep at 10pm and he couldn't understand why I wasn't feeling rested until I got an aura ring but now being able to start it at 4am has been amazing because sometimes I have really early flights and if I get up at 6am I've actually had some REM so I really really like it I can publish my results as well I might put a link below where I can publish some of them and just show the difference that it's kind of had for me. And just after that, so I love to have it in the morning. I don't put it in my smoothie. I just have it like straight under my tongue. It just helps me focus. I'm not a big coffee person anymore. I used to be, and then my adrenals burned out and I was trying to balance

my hormones and all the things. And I think coffee's great, but I love it if you don't have to rely on it and so I've been having that and I don't even really need a green tea or anything I've really really found it to be powerful amazing yeah I mean I don't drink coffee now I haven't probably for 12 months and it's one of those ones that gets you excited but it's over the long term it can wear you out and wear you down a little bit and because it does have that addictive nature to it people start to rely on it whereas the cordyceps and lion's mane in the morning is a perfect substitute for swapping out the coffee, even if you're doing it a couple of days a week, just to restore those adrenals,

to restore that immune system because it can take a lot from your coffee. Yeah, and I have been having lion's mane morning and night. It's a lot. Which is actually what we're starting to recommend now in terms of having, because it's dual acting, so just to not confuse people,

if you're having it in the morning, you do get that focus, that mental clarity. If you're having it in the evening and you're winding down and you have good sleep hygiene in terms of dimming the lights you know winding down staying away from your phone you know an hour or two before bed getting into that bed routine having a tea etc then it's intelligent in the sense that it helps you sleep and wind down necessarily wire you up the reishi going into sleep is another amazing mushroom in terms of very similar and very, I guess, compatible with CBD in terms of sleeping in the evening, because it helps wind you down, helps turn down the nervous system, helps upregulate the immune system as well. So it's supporting the immune system while turning down the nervous system.

So helping you ease into that sleep. So just help you relax and really turn off from a stressful day, which we need to be doing. Yeah, I love that so much. And I just want to touch on one thing. So you were saying before, you can really feel it when you take them. And I 100% agree you can. But for anyone listening, that might be scared of mushrooms. You're not going to be getting high. That's not how it feels. I think people used to have that fear on CBD too. But it's the same as if you have a coffee, you feel it and it's a more shaky energy. You don't get that with this, but don't worry about the feeling. You're not going to get high. Exactly.

And it's, I mean, the recommended dose that we have or the recommended amount, one mil is just a nice sort of very subtle, gentle nudge, maybe to the point where you won't feel it at all, but you will feel it compound. We get a lot of people that say, oh, I went away on a holiday and I forgot my mushrooms and I could feel it. You know, I could really feel the difference then. So you get into this natural flow state where you're not really necessarily noticing a difference until you actually come off them and stop taking them so that's a good thing to mention in terms of

that you know fear factor of mushrooms because there is something called mycophobia which is an irrational fear to mushrooms interesting it's a real thing and I think it's because we're not very familiar with mushrooms and you know we've heard the story of the poisonous mushroom the button mushroom that's in the stores, you know, and then the poisonous mushroom. And so, and we don't see mushrooms a lot in nature. They're up for a couple of days and then they're gone. And so there's not that familiarity with them.

But definitely those benefits, you know, people, I guess, are drawn to that. And then they get very sticky in terms of, I mean, Dave Asprey, for example, in terms of dosing, we're having a map when we were on his podcast earlier this year, and he took 12 dropper fulls of cordyceps. He's a big band, but on the podcast, and he was just sort of saying like, I'm feeling like I want to compete. I was feeling very, he was just like breathing like the sort of the Wim Hof breathing and just very much in a flow state of wanting to go run a marathon. He's like, this is probably my limit. And so that was funny. But you know, so there is that sort of amount, I guess, where people need to tailor and be intuitive,

just like where they're eating and their diet. Just feel what works for you and find your own rhythm. So taking cordyceps, you were mentioning it's best in the morning. Can you take it in the afternoon? Will it keep you awake if you do? No, that's the great thing is that it won't in terms of that coffee drag and so, again, sort of if you have that good sleep hygiene and you're winding down,

then the mushrooms don't seem to prolong in their effect. So if it's 4pm or 6pm and you want to do an exercise session, again, just sort of tailor how much you have, maybe you have half a meal rather than a meal. And talk to me about turkey tail too, because everyone listening probably knows I did a pretty big gut cleanse. I was taking turkey tail with it and a ton of other supplements and I track everything. So I was using Viome and I've noticed a really big difference. When I did my was using Viome and I've noticed a really big difference when I did my first ever Viome test it was embarrassing the way it came back I mean the amount of gut inflammation growing up in the UK the kind of diet that I had I'm

not surprised honestly but I have been on a pretty big kick with that so talk a little bit about that yeah it's within our team and our staff and it's probably our second most popular and the reason is it just up regulates that general sense of well-being and what does that mean it means a healthy gut because we know that healthy gut and that brain you know the access there and the connection there in terms of mood in terms of well-being and we understand that anxiety and depressive symptoms and thoughts actually a lot of times start in the gut with poor gut bacteria and so by regulating that by restoring that harmony within the gut you're actually restoring your mood as well and so we get a lot of anecdotal evidence

and conversations around you know decreasing anxiety whether you're performing whether you're talking whether you're going into a business meeting or a conference whatever that brings up anxiety for you it really starts to manage that a lot better which is very exciting and I think there's going to be a lot more work with turkey tail and research in that space as sort of an early sign to just manage those symptoms or manage any of those sort of those thoughts and beyond that we know that the Harvard Medical School did a research on the gut bacteria and showing that two compounds PSK and PSP there within the turkey tail mushroom so each of these mushrooms has particular compounds that play a role and for turkey tail they were amazing at activating good gut bacteria. It's so fascinating how mushrooms can do all of this. And there's so

many different kinds of them. It blows my mind. And we're really... Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's

the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe. Only literally 7% into it. So there's around 3 million species and we've only identified 7% of that. So there's still 93% out there that can help solve problems.

I love it. And all of the ones we're talking about are in the box, which there'll be a link below for. But I also want to talk about comparing mushrooms with something like CBD. What's the difference there? Like CBD can be great for anxiety and sleep. So do you just need one? Do they work together? What's the whole deal there? I'm a big believer in both. I'm a big believer in natural forms of food and treating that dietary intake as part of sort of our biohacking slash preventing aging slash all of those pieces that we're all very interested in. And so CBD, as you've tried yourself, maybe with lion's mane in the evening is an amazing hack. Lion's mane and ration CBD is an amazing hack. Cordyceps and CBD probably work in the opposite direction in terms of cordyceps is turning up the volume. And in some cases, CBD is an amazing hack. Cordyceps and CBD probably work in the opposite direction

in terms of cordyceps is turning up the volume and in some cases CBD is more sort of turning down the volume, winding you down and supporting you to get into that de-stressed state. So definitely there's some synergies there. I mean within the mushrooms that we have there, we have an Australian bush food called Kakadu plum and so this is a wild bush food found in Arnhem Land in northern parts of

Australia and still wild harvested today by indigenous women communities. And so this is an amazing partnership that we have where we're able to access a very rare Australian bush food, which grows in very dry and harsh climate. And so what you find, I guess, from a very basic point of view is that when these foods, such as the chaga mushroom, which we can talk about after growing tough, harsh climates, they have amazing compounds within them and so the kakadu plum has the highest vitamin c of any fruit in the world 100 times an orange 10 times blueberry and so we fuse that with these extracts it really helps in terms of taste which we haven't touched on but from a taste point of view tinctures you know if you try ashwagandha or other herbals they're

actually quite foul tasting and as much as you're a health fanatic he's like i can't do it you know if you try ashwagandha or other herbals they're actually quite foul tasting and as much as you're a health fanatic he's like i can't do it you know you're not interested in doing it and so we've found a way to infuse the kakadu plum and to take out the bitterness of the mushrooms which you can get with a lot of sort of chinese herbal medicine extracts and so makes it easy to consume but that kakadu plum as a synergy just like cbd is a synergy that you know you're putting those together and you're getting a lot of power from that you're amplifying the benefits. And talk a little about chaga which you mentioned. Yeah I just got back actually from areas around Wisconsin and Chicago where we were foraging just a couple of days ago in negative 10 degrees temperatures so it was very hot for an Australian but very cold for an Australian but yeah so chaga is an amazing mushroom that grows off of birch tree

and so birch tree grows in very cold climates up to negative 40 degrees that's what it loves and so this birch tree once it gets to around at least 15 years of age then you can start to see chaga although this chaga grows on a good harvest it's one in every 2,000 trees typically in other parts of the world where it grows in very cold climates like Siberia and Russia and other parts of North America. It grows, you know, one in every 2,000. And so when it harvested some chaga, this mushroom, essentially it's taking a lot of nutrients from the birch tree because birch sap, birch leaf, have amazing medicinal compounds.

And so the chaga mushroom has been shown to be one of the highest antioxidant foods in the world. It's dark brown. It doesn't really look like a mushroom. It looks like this sort of brown sort of overgrowth on the tree, which is very unfamiliar. So if you didn't know what it was, you would walk straight past it. But it literally is gold from the forest. And it's this brown gold color. In terms of its benefits, what you see subjectively is your eyes really start to sort of pop in terms of just becoming very clear. And this is something just like the lion's mane where you notice sleep,

dreaming, better memory, better consolidation very quickly. With the chaga, three days after looking in the mirror, you just like you look at your eyes, you have to sort of take a second look. But in terms of your skin, in terms of helping with elasticity and elastin, in terms of helping just in terms of hair, skin and nails, it's a very powerful mushroom. But it's very hard to wrap chaga up in one sentence because it's known as the king of mushrooms and it plays such a non-specific role on your entire body.

So all of these mushrooms have their own sort of place, but they all are very non-specific as well in terms of just helping upregulate your general wellbeing. So chaga is definitely a must and we don't have it in that set there, but we do have it getting bottled as we speak. We just sort of wanted to wait until we could forage it ourselves because I guess going back to why we started the company, it was about transparency and about sustainability and being, I guess, not harmful to the planet until we understand exactly where our chaga comes from and we forage it ourselves

or we have other guys that forage it because it grows on birch trees and we want to make sure that's not getting over harvested. I love that you're doing it and I think that's so important to be building based on those values. You mentioned the way chaga works. I feel like mushrooms are very intelligent.

Can we talk a little bit about magic mushrooms? So what do you think about psilocybin? Are you a yay or a nay? I am all for evolution and all for humanity. And I think these mushrooms, all these mushrooms will have a role to play in our evolution and psilocybin specifically in terms of what the research is showing right now in terms of PTSD, in terms of depression, in terms of getting over other pieces of trauma, in terms of brain optimization and ego death, which is a big one for everyone and all of us all the time. Our ego is on our shoulder every now and then, just not helping us.

In some cases, it is helping us. So psilocybin mushroom, you're going to see a lot of that coming into play in the next few years. And it's very exciting, and it's going through a lot of research at the moment. And I think a lot of doctors and medical professionals maybe don't have all the tools that they could have and this could be a very valuable tool you know I've had friends with depression and different things and they just go see a psychologist you see a doctor and it seemed

like they just didn't have those tools but the research here shows the same with early stuff on MDMA and other medicines that could potentially play a role in mental health which is a huge issue. Yeah and I think I'm all for tools that actually can go in there and do the work that might take 10 years of therapy without the tool. All of this is just how can you get to the result you're wanting to get to faster and I'm all for that. Do you see a time when they might be legal? It's happening quicker than we imagined, you know, in terms of four years ago, you thought, oh, that would be 10 years away or 15 years away. But it seems that the conversation is really ramping up on the back of the CBD and the cannabis and the THC. It's really laid the foundations

for people just to say, hang on, there's, you know, there's a lot of magic, so to speak, in these mushrooms that we need exploring. And it's coming from John Hopkins, Harvard it's coming from Stan it's coming from all the big guys and all the leading research institutes that are pushing it which is very exciting there's always sort of that corporate and governance that needs to take place but yeah the sooner the better in a way as long as it's done in the appropriate way yeah so one thing I think about something like mushrooms and it's kind of the same with supplements is there are lots of different types and it can be a little bit overwhelming, like when to take them, which ones to take. So if you had to describe your perfect day of when you would take, what does that look like? I want your exact routine.

And I'm living off mushrooms. I've been over here in the US five months this year, ping-ponging on airplanes and road trips. I shouldn't be feeling as good as I am right now. Yeah. When did you get in? I got in a couple of weeks ago, but then I went to Wisconsin recently to do some foraging in those negative 10 degree temperatures. And then that's degrees Celsius. And then, yeah, came back.

So I'm exhausted, but not at the same time. My mind is saying you need to rest, but my body's like, keep going. Yeah, you're good. And I'm not drinking coffee. So that's good. So I'm not getting that adrenal fatigue but in terms of my my daily use and what i've sort of over the last couple of years really refined that works for me is no coffee in the morning i have some cordyceps and lion's mane on an empty stomach just in some water or just straight under my tongue or just in a tea in the morning so that's my sort of morning ritual

as well as turkey tail because you're on an empty stomach as well so it's going to absorb much better so it's all about absorption right it's all about trying to i guess bypass the stomach which is what you're not getting if you're having it in a food or you're not having it in a powder so you're getting that higher uptake of bioavailability so those three in a morning yeah on an empty stomach yeah if you have them in a tea what kind of tea is that just some sort of herbal tea a non-caffeinated herbal tea we have a lemon myrtle is a another indigenous bush fruit in Australia. That's an amazing, powerful lemon taste and flavor with no caffeine in it. So that's any herbal tea is fine or water.

And also if you want to try mixing it with cacao. So this is really great. Again, sort of as Paul talks about and Alan Watts and all of these guys talk about that evolution and that theory of how mushrooms came into play and what happened and the stone ape hypothesis of finding magic mushrooms and this accelerated our brain. What we know about the Mayan community is that they had a lot of cacao ceremonies which were infused with mushrooms.

I didn't know that. Yeah, so a lot of the artwork there, they've just got mushrooms on a lot of their artwork and so these cacao ceremonies were also mushroom ceremonies and when you fuse those two together, you get an amplification as well. And so having that in the morning, having some hot cacao or having 90% dark chocolate or whatever your taste buds can handle, that will also amplify in an amazing way.

So that's sort of the morning hack is that. The shiitake is sort of an anytime mushroom. And this mushroom is, which we haven't just chatted about, but briefly is, it helps prevent, so we've spoken and heard a lot about collagen. And elastin is really the other powerhouse, which I think is going to become more of a conversation in the next few years. So you've got collagen and you've got elastin. And these are the two for hair, skin and nails.

And because, you know, as you're getting older, you lose that elasticity in your skin, whether it's around your neck, whether it's around your hands, wherever it may be. This has a lot to do with UV damage as well as aging. And so the UV damage stimulates what's called elastase. And so this breaks down the elastin. And so in Australia, there's a lot of UV radiation. And so if you're English and you come to Australia, that can be problematic.

But so this elastin essentially can be restored through the amino acids in the shiitake mushroom and same with this i'm not sure if you're taking the shiitake but you'll notice your hair skin and nails and especially your nails will really start to grow really quickly and become really strong so for me it was like you know after a couple of weeks it's like felt like wolverine so um this is an amazing mushroom to have any time of the day it's supportive it's antimicrobial it's antibacterial it's antiviral so it has all those immune benefits as well i've never even thought about this but yes that's been very true for me so a lot of people know my story in that i have polycystic ovaries so a lot of hormone

issues and i used to have gel nails on because my nails would snap like crazy and i decided i wasn't doing that my hair was falling out like crazy so I took my extensions out and I've grown my hair probably like five inches in the past few months. And my nails are so incredibly strong. And I didn't even think about the supplements I was taking. Yeah. It's one of those ones with mushrooms. It's sort of not until we, you know, with our friends or customers ask them, what about your dreaming? Like even yesterday, I was catching up with Christian Gonzalez, Dr. G, who's a natural health doctor. And I said, I asked him about his dreaming. He's like, that's crazy. I was just mentioning to my partner the other day about my dreaming. So there's these sort of other benefits

that people and the research aren't showing. And that's why we are big believers in our liquid extracts, because we do sell some powders and we don't make these powders. 96% of all powders come from China. And these powders, we just don't get any testimonials for. But when it comes to the liquid extracts, which some of the testimonials we get are hilarious and amazing at the same time. I love that. Well, I didn't even think about it. So it's totally just, yeah, made me feel good. Okay. So you have shiitake in the mid morning, did you say? Any time of day for the shiitake. Okay. And then what's next? And then it's in the afternoon. Again, some more lion's mane is an option, depending on your day, depending on how you're feeling. Otherwise,

I'm generally just leaving it until the evening and having some lion's mane and reishi one hour, two hours before bed. And you touched on the story of where mushrooms come from. And that's how I find out about mushrooms and started to really believe in them enough to give them a try. For anyone listening who's never heard any of this before, can you give like a brief history? In terms of the oldest living organism, fossil records show that they're over a billion years old. And really the belief is that they laid down the foundation because they do break down rock. And so, you know, once upon a time, the earth was just one big rock. I guess the apocalyptic asteroids hitting the earth and everything just being killed and wiped

down and just being this center of rock and so mushrooms can break down rock and turn it into soil and so that was how soil was created and then from that soil being created then there was able to be life form in terms of microbes in terms of bacteria in terms of other forms of fungi which then allowed itself to then bring into play the plant kingdom so the belief is that the fungi kingdom was the foundational rock in terms of i guess if we look right now at a forest what you see under the surface under the soil is mycelium which are the roots of mushrooms and this is infused throughout healthy soil without healthy forest and even within farms today we get a lot of comments from farmers saying when i was a young kid i would just go pick mushrooms in the field and now i don't do that anymore so a healthy we get a lot of comments from farmers saying, when I was a young kid, I would just go pick mushrooms in the field and now I don't do that anymore.

So a healthy ecosystem has a lot of mycelium, the roots of mushrooms within the soil. And what they do, this mycelium, they help trees communicate to each other. Think, imagine off of Avatar, you know, in terms of that communication network underground. And in terms of also what they do is one of the original business exchanges was the mycelium would break down the rock, get the minerals from the rock and transport it to the trees or the plants. And in return, the trees and plants would provide starches and sugars for the mycelium. This was actually a business transaction, if you want to call it that, that occurred in nature and that occurs today.

And so even if you look under big rocks in the forest, if you're able to pull them up, even smaller ones, you'll probably see this white sort of fuzzy, very thin layered moss. And this is mycelium. And this is breaking down that rock and then transporting it nutrients to the plants and to the trees. And so that's sort of part of the cycle then allowed forests to flourish. And then from the forests came birds and animal life and et cetera, et cetera. So that was part part of the theory which is very believable and very true and scientific in many ways and then on the other side of things the mushrooms are very involved in the birth of life and then in the death and the regeneration because once you see a tree falling down in nature you see again just like with the rocks you see the mycelium on the

undersurface decomposing those fallen trees returning them them back to soil. So there's sort of that whole life cycle of the mushrooms playing a role. And what about the role that mushrooms could have had in maybe brain development and development of humans? Yeah, so this is sort of the stone-aped hypothesis from Alan Watts and Terence McKenna and these guys talking about essentially the ability for going back to psilocybin mushroom. If we put it under a functional brain mri scan you're seeing you know instead of us right now running off of 10 to 15 percent of brain capacity you're running off of 30 to 50 percent brain capacity and

so what's happening is all the doors from the different parts of the brain are all you know unlocking and talking to each other and everything's firing at the same time so you're getting higher levels of sensation in terms of visibility your vision improves your hearing improve improves and so the idea around well that's very useful if you're hunting if you're looking for food if you're trying to survive in many different forms so we know that it improves hearing it improves vision so you get visual acuity and we know beyond that also your ability to create and problem solve because all of the doors to all the different parts of your brain are unlocked they all talk together so it's almost you know like in a in a business or in a family that communication if that communication is open and it's flowing and it's vibing then you

just achieve more and so that's what happens on an individual level with your brain so there's probably the three biggest factors that we believe contributed to our evolution in terms of being able to hunt better in terms of being able to hunt better, in terms of being able to build tools better, in terms of being able to have a stronger community. And so the idea around art and science and dance and ceremony and ritual all plays into the idea of magic mushrooms, both in the moment, but also the after effects of it. So if you're cumulatively taking these mushrooms, you're cumulatively upgrading your brain. And it's not that that mushroom enforces or helps your brain evolve and you've got more neurons than someone else,

but it opens the door for you then to be in this state of mind where you create, where you see more. And so you get those epigenetic effects, meaning it influences how you behave in your environment. I love that. And mushrooms are just so fascinating. I feel like everyone listening to this is just Googling everything. I actually got introduced to Lifecycle through my co-founder, Danielle, who everyone knows her husband.

She comes and saves me a lot. She's based in the UK. And her husband, Greg, was over and had all of these tinctures. And he normally is the one just making sure Danielle and I are actually looking after ourselves. And I was going to bed and he was like open your mouth try this thing and I'm like okay I just like trust him blindly and I tried Lion's Mane and I woke up the next day and felt really good he's like how did you feel about that yeah I've discovered this new company and that's literally how I found out about in the first place and so when a friend had said they know you I was like that's amazing I love this company so I just love everything you're doing and I'm so glad that you kind of got to explain it to everyone as well because I think it can be overwhelming I want to know outside of mushrooms

you travel a lot you run an amazing company like what do you do to keep your energy levels up especially with all this flying and everything to have any routines rituals secrets yeah it's the key I guess and what I found working uh when i was at home in a stable position sort of finding a routine and then how do i take that away and travel for example this morning i was down at bennett's beach swimming so i know what my morning routine for example is some yoga some meditation some the word earthing or grounding which in terms of just being barefoot just the first thing you do when you get off a plane is you should try and find a park or a beach or somewhere where you can just take first thing you do when you get off a plane is you should try and find a park or a beach

or somewhere where you can just take your shoes off and just, you know, earth or ground. And I know that sounds very spiritual and hippie but there's actual science to it in terms of negative electron charge running through your body and getting out of your body and getting positive electrons into your body. It just decreases inflammation, which inflammation is at the core of stress,

at the core of aging, at the core of everything. On a micro level, inflammation is what's's happening so the goal is always to decrease that and so yeah in terms of hacks a couple of them is of course i mean the mushrooms i mean if i'm traveling like i'm traveling tonight back to australia 13 hour flight what i find is if i have a high dose of reishi and lion's mane and turkey tail then you know i don't have any lag and i sleep pretty well on the plane what's a high? Between two and four mil of each. Okay. Yeah.

So it's something that's my personal. I'm getting all your specifics. What I've found is like if I'm taking two to four mil of reishi, turkey tail shiitake, I'm just not getting sick. If you're feeling something coming down and you take that for a few days, then you just wake up and you're fine. So that's what I've found works really well. And as a sort of a travel hack as well is those mushrooms,

but then again re-emerging into or rewilding into nature with the beach ocean water so love getting to the ocean and re-earthing and then cold showers as well i find definitely help stimulate the immune system and build resilience in your immune system so there and the best thing about all of those things is they're all there's no charge to them you know you can do all of those things and so if i am traveling i'm trying to find a hotel or an Airbnb close to a park, like across from a park or across from a beach. It just has to be because that's where I ground amongst all the meetings and being in conference rooms because you can ping pong between rooms and Ubers

and then actually not have been outside all day and in fake lighting, in fake air condition, and then you're trying to get to sleep. And you've got all this in your mind because you've been at all these meetings and you've got this follow-up and there's all these exciting opportunities. And so you just have to like center and ground. I think that's nature and the mushrooms and being barefoot. I love all of those tips. Do you do a cold shower every day?

I try to. I'd like to say, yeah, I mean, when I was in Wisconsin, the water was already freezing. It was negative 10, so I lost track there. But this morning I was at the beach in Venice and it was pretty cold. Yeah, it's cold. People were looking at me like, what is he doing? But once you get in there, you get used to it.

So you're acclimatized to it. But I definitely noticed the benefits. Yeah, I'm going to take your word for that one. I'm not sure about it. I absolutely love that. And I love that you've shared all the free things too. I'm a big fan of earthing. I think it's super important.

Do you have any like technologies or anything that you love using in terms of biohacking? Yeah, I guess the sauna is, if we would call it a hack, you know, in terms of technology. But really in terms of the other tech pieces, it's probably just like, you know, your aura rings, your sleep monitoring devices. So I try and keep it pretty simple in terms of, I mean, I worked in physiotherapy and elite sport in the Premier League where we had every gadget and there's definitely gadgets that work. I'm probably just lucky that I live in Byron Bay where our company is based and you're immersed in nature. But if you're immersed in a

city, you definitely need those technological hacks because you can't just walk across the road to the beach or you can't just dive into the forest or you're trying to find somewhere where you can take your shoes off. So there's definitely amazing technology. And we've got Dave Asprey, who's came on as an investor because he just loves our extracts. And he spoke about us in Superhuman with the lion's mane. I mean, he's just really leading the space in terms of what we should be using in terms of that technology in terms of meditation and devices for neurofeedback for our brains i think that's a big space and i think you know in terms of just measuring things better in terms of blood testing in terms of all of that in terms of gut health testing and stool

testing and biome and all of those things like they're all amazing technological hacks and I guess going into this now it's early 2020 you want to be getting all of that data then you want to be able to check it and you want to be able to know where you're up to at the start of the year so that's amazing. Yeah I love the fact that we're empowered enough to get our own data these days and we can track and we can see if things are actually working because it's a lot easier to stick to something if you see the data move. Just another question you mentioned meditation. Is there a particular kind of meditation you like to do? What does that look like for you?

Yeah, I'm pretty open to all meditations in terms of not doing anything specific. Joe Dispenza, I'm a big fan of. Yeah, me too. So really dialing into his amazing work because he is, again, mixing spirituality with science. And that's the perfect blend. We can't be to one or the other in terms of i guess i guess if we go orientated we're running a business or we're wanting to achieve something we do need to hang out in both fields and i think what i've seen

in the past in previous lives and in other careers is that people go to one way but if you hang out in the middle and you find that balance you're really able to get the best of both worlds and so i think that's what he's doing with his meditations and with that ability to think it, to feel it, to see it before it actually happens and all of those things. And I think once you get into that positive loop, it just compounds. I so agree. Have you manifested anything crazy? Right now. Yeah, I love it. Right now, four and a half years ago, working as a health consultant and

wanting to have a business in mushroom space and be doing it in the USA. So then tune into gratitude, which is another amazing biohacking tool, which just empowers you just to go, hang on, look how far you've come. Would you take that situation now if I was to say that to you five years ago? Even in that moment when you're like, I need more, we need to go faster, we need to do this, what's happening? Take a minute to breathe and you can change your whole physiology and look at it from a different angle yeah it's so underrated there's so many tools and tech out there but if you're not doing the free things chances are you're not going to use the tech either it's starting with that and start for anyone that's wanting to kind of get into this

it's just starting slow and seeing what really works for you on a day-to-day basis yeah i mean there's so many amazing things out there so it is an endless journey and i think that is part of our evolution compared to looking at previous generations, what they were doing for biohacking. So it's blending ancient biohacking tools with modern technology. I love it. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. This episode's been amazing.

Where can everyone find you and all the links? Yeah, absolutely. Lifecycle.com, L-I-F-E-C-Y-K-E-L. So we made it tricky, but cycle or se Sekel comes from sort of a Scandinavian term and it's just sort of a bit different. But we believed a lot in what Scandinavia was doing in terms of education system, in terms of the environment, in terms of their own entrepreneurship and their own outlook on life.

So that was very inspiring. So that's our sort of.com. Then we have Instagram, of course, and Facebook. So any questions, we love getting questions through DM, Instagram, in terms of how those mushrooms are working for you and etc so we're very open to hearing about that would love to hear from that but the biohacking set has become very popular and it's something we're very excited about and I'm happy to hear that you're enjoying your mushroom experience yeah I really really do I never recommend anything that I don't love and we've got you all a code we're gonna put

the links below but I'm a really big fan of everything you're doing amazing thank you for doing amazing work with an amazing community thank you if you loved this episode please subscribe download a few more and please leave us a review I really want to hear what you enjoyed what your main takeaways were and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. The Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. It covers everything from our favorite rituals, books, and hacks. If you want a copy, just leave us a review, screenshot it, and send to podcast at bossbabe.com we will then email you a copy ASAP and since we love Instagram you can go to the hashtag the bossbabe podcast and find our

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