July 2, 2025 • 55 mins
Tom Baxter is the founder of Bristol Fungarium, the UK’s first organic-certified medicinal mushroom farm. A former organic vegetable grower and forest school leader, Tom has spent years foraging in the wild across the Pyrenees, Siberia, and the forests of Somerset. Today, he leads a pioneering operation that not only cultivates native strains of mushrooms but also funds neuroscience research and runs the only dedicated analytical lab for medicinal fungi in the UK.
In this episode, Tom joins Robin Harford for a rich and far-reaching conversation about the power, mystery, and challenges of working with medicinal mushrooms. They explore the rise of lion’s mane, the pitfalls of the supplement industry, why most mushroom powders are misleading, and what makes a mushroom extract genuinely effective. It’s a frank and passionate look into one of nature’s oldest and most complex kingdoms.
🎧 Listeners get 15% off at https://bristolfungarium.com/ — use the code WILDPOWER at checkout.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
And welcome to another episode of the Eat Weeds
podcast. I'm Robin Harford andfor about a couple of years I've
always wanted to interview aparticular gentleman who set up
bristolfungarium.com. His name'sTom Baxter and last year at the
Power Plants Festival I had thegreat pleasure of meeting him
(00:21):
and he's a bit of a character soit's really nice to have him on
the show. Tom welcome. Thankyou, Robin.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'll attempt to keep the character in check. So
Speaker 1 (00:35):
today we're going to talk medicinal mushrooms because
that's what your speciality is.And I'm always curious about
people's journey. To keep itshort, what was I know your
backstory with organic farming,vegetables, etc, but
specifically in this context ofmushrooms, what was the turning
point? What made you go, I wantto do that?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I think I'd spent quite a few years foraging for
mushrooms. I've been fortunateenough to look for mushrooms in
the Siberian Steppes too andthen I spent quite few years
living in the sort of foothillsof the Pyrenees and used to
frequently tell my assortedchildren that the conditions
were perfect for mushrooms andwe were just going to go and
(01:18):
spend five hours up the mountainlooking And 95% of the time we
found nothing, and by the endtheir excitement was just tinged
with complete anticipation ofdisappointment because every
time we'd go we'd never findanything. They'd then tell me
that before we even left.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
This time and I think
Speaker 2 (01:38):
that is the is the foragers' conundrum isn't it?
You can never lose faith but yetexperience tells you that you
should perhaps qualify yourparticipation a little more.
Fundamentally for me whathappened was that I was at that
stage an organic veg farmer andneeding revenue in winter where
(01:59):
no photosynthesis takes placeand I had been like foraging
mushrooms and selling them tovarious customers or in these
shops in around Bristol. And Ithen spent the last bit of money
I had on a couple of shippingcontainers and started growing
oyster mushrooms on straw andthen hired a man far more
(02:20):
competent than me called Henrywho was able to clone local
mushroom strains, oystermushroom strains, and so then we
started looking at what wasavailable around us that we
could then clone and grow. Ithink fundamentally for me, at
one point, I had a couple offorest schools.
I grew up on the edge ofLongweed Forest. I spent a lot
(02:41):
of time in the woods as a child,and I've always wanted somehow
to come up with a way of beingable in my head to spend more
time in the forest and yet earnmoney. And this was ironically
enough, I've managed it,although I don't spend a huge
amount time in the forestanymore. But we do look to the
woods around us for the majorityof the genetics of the mushrooms
(03:06):
that we grow. So in a way, Ihave fulfilled my desire to use
the forest as a basis for myexistence.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
You took me around the sheds just now, and you're
coming from very much ascientific background or base
not I don't know aboutbackground, but basis. Think
Trying to get strengths ofcertain compounds up.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah. We're quite fortunate now in that six years
in, we're now the only companyin The UK that funds pure
research, so our PhD at theneuroscience department in
Bristol. Wow. We also haverecently hired Pai Anne, who's
my Persian teddy bear, but he isa late 50s analytical chemist
with thirty years experience.He's been at Glaxo and Pfizer.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
His whole life has been counting compounds to put
on labels, and so we now haveagain, we're the only people, I
think no. There's one company inSpain, actually. Apart from the
single company in Spain, we'rethe only company in Europe that
has a dedicated analyticalchemistry laboratory, which is
actually done in Peyton, yourwhole neck of the woods. Yeah.
(04:19):
Yeah.
And so we are able now to takemushrooms from the forest around
us here in Somerset and quantifythe compounds that we know are
relevant from a human healthperspective, and we can do that
very quickly. So within a monthof finding something, we can
count the compounds that we'reinterested in.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And then from that, if you find something that's
appealing Yep. Say stands outfrom the crowd Yep. Will you
then that's what you will thenbring back here and
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah. And grow. Yeah. Yeah. And so interesting, for
example, with our lion's mane,is actually how we actually
landed up where we are now onthis farm.
So about eight years ago, afriend of ours spotted a lion's
mane 30 foot up a beech tree,and we went to look at it, and
it was a lion's mane. I think wewere the first people to find a
lion's mane at that point in theSouthwest for eight years
(05:12):
because they are they were thelast few years has been a bit of
an explosion in people seeinglion's mane. I think post COVID
where a lot of people spent alot more time outside, they
started to become a lot moreengaged and obviously with the
sort of increase in interest infungi and mushrooms and
mycology, A lot more people arecognizant of what they're
(05:32):
looking at or interested in whatthey're looking at. And, Baylor,
when we've when this one wasidentified eight years ago,
there hadn't been one for a verylong period of time in the
Southwest, and they cut the treedown, the beech tree that it was
growing on, and we managed tocollect a lot of smashed lion's
man off the floor and cloned it.But I also rang up.
I got the number for the manthat owned the land and then was
(05:55):
like, had a pop at him about thefact he shouldn't have cut that
tree down. And then I asked himif he had any land for sale. He
said, I don't sell land. Andthen you can't make any money
off land. What do want the landfor?
And I was like, I need to builda barn. Said, oh, millions of
barns. And so he took me around,and he's got a couple of
thousand acres just around here.So just around Baragurney, and
(06:16):
they're in half the village. Andthere was we found a barn and
which he's rebuilt for us.
And then he said, don't yousuppose you'd be interested in
the the farmhouse? No one's beenliving it for two years.
Commercially, we can't rent itout. It's absolutely fucked. But
if you'd be interested So, yes,so now we live in the farmhouse,
which is less screwed than itwas when we turned it.
When we turned up, had to goaround with expanding foam
(06:37):
everywhere just to keep the windout and the rain. So, yes,
ironically enough, that lion'svein that we found 800 meters
from from where we're based nowis the reason we're here. And
that lion's vein, when we had ittested, had sort of 20% higher
levels of two types ofcompounds, hericinones and beta
glucans, than the fivecommercial strains, and I think
(07:00):
it's indicative, and we knowthis anyway intuitively, that
something that has taken, inthis case, certainly probably
centuries it's been here, maybeconsiderably longer, that it is
adapted to this environment.Sure. And so the fact that we're
growing that mushroom at scalenow and it's of all the
(07:22):
mushrooms, we sell far morelion's man than anything else
and it had higher levels of thetwo compounds we're interested
in.
It speaks of there being, as weknow, the plant kingdom, the
fungi king was probably similar,some adaptive reality to the
environment. And I think one ofthe reasons we grow so many
(07:42):
mushrooms that are localized tohere is, one, this was an
ancient estate, and so there arestill some ancient woodlands.
And two, the fact that they'vebeen growing here for such a
pronounced period of time meansthat they are accustomed to the
climate. And for whateverreason, that means that they are
(08:03):
more adapted to the conditions,and that seems to be represented
in the chemical profile. So whenwe test them, they have higher
levels of some of the compoundsthat we're interested in as
opposed to these other strainsthat we've tested that are
brought in
Speaker 1 (08:20):
China or
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah. Or or Europe quite often. And but, yeah,
there's definitely a lot fromAsia as well. But it's yeah. So
not all the time is that thecase, but certainly more often
than not, that is the case.
So, yeah, it's largely thanks toa lion's vein. I'm able to be
sat here in this barn with younow.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Thank you, lion's mane.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah. Thank you, lion's mane. A dominant master
is the fungi.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah. So what's what for people who are completely
new to all this, they may haveheard of medicinal mushrooms.
They may have heard that lion'smane they can buy lion's mane
coffee from all these I'mthinking more of the American
brands. What is it aboutmedicinal mushrooms that the
regular folk on the street needto pay attention to and the
(09:06):
sense of why they're importantfor their potential well-being?
If they're important for theirwell-being, is it which are we
talking purely neurologicalhere?
You mentioned the neuroscienceinstitute or department. Is that
where medicinal mushrooms havetheir excellence
Speaker 2 (09:22):
or is it? Okay, yeah, no, it's not that simple.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
I wish life was, but
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So now what is interesting with fungi in
particular, if we look at thedifferent sort of kingdoms, is
from an evolutionaryperspective, they were the first
kingdom of life on Earth, andthey were around for about,
we're confident, 1,500,000,000years ago. Although in August,
there was a dig done in SouthAfrica, and there are these
remarkably these forms that lookalmost identical to what we now
(09:53):
recognise as mycelium, and sopotentially it might be back to
2,400,000,000 years. Butinitially, obviously, were water
based. The Earth's been aroundfor 3.5. If it does push it back
to 2.4, we really are at thedawn of time.
The Earth would have been a veryradioactive place at that point.
And what is actually what isinteresting at Chernobyl, there
(10:13):
are actually three differentstrains of fungi growing on the
inside of the dome, the concretedome, which
Speaker 1 (10:19):
are using radiation as their energy source. So
Chernobyl, for those who arevery young, was the nuclear
power plant that went hot,basically, in Russia.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yep. Yep. There's a wonderful book called Chernobyl,
which is strongly recommendanyone reading it. It just how
the incompetence of humans Sure.Could really create catastrophic
Yeah.
And it really was theincompetence of humans. It was
not like a system designfailure. It was just one level
(10:51):
of it. And also yeah. Anyway, wewe go into the Chernobyl
disaster.
Read the book. Fascinating. So,yeah, fungi have had a
inordinate length of time todevelop compounds. Are
fundamentally biochemicalfactories. The majority of a
mushroom is not actually thefruiting body of the mushroom
(11:12):
that we see, that's just thereproductive orgasm, a bit like
an apple on a tree.
So the tree is made up of theroots, mycorrhizal fungi, and
the trunk and the branches, andthe apple is just the fruit, the
reproductive organ, and that'sfundamentally what we see in
terms of the mushroom. But themycelium, which is like the tree
(11:32):
and the roots combined, is onecell wall thick, so anything can
pass into the body of the fungi.And from about, let's say, one
point five billion years to sortof nine hundred million years,
all that existed on Earth wasfungi, bacteria, viruses and
other fungi, and all of thesecould pass into the body of the
mushrooms, and so the mushroomshad to launch a biochemical
(11:54):
reaction against these viruses,bacteria, fungi. And that is the
reason why fungi as opposed toplants have so many more
compounds. So each of the fungiwe grow probably has between two
fifty and maybe over 300compounds of interest.
(12:15):
Even plants that are viewed assort of powerhouses like
curcumin or turmeric, we'relooking at around 200, and the
compounds are actually much,much more simple in terms of
molecular structure. The reasonwhy that's relevant for us as
humans is that a lot of thecompounds that these mushrooms
have created in reaction toother viruses or bacteria
(12:37):
getting into the into their bodyis that they are very similar
from a molecular structureperspective to compounds that
our body already makes. So acouple of an easy example to
look at is in ration,gallauderic acids are very
similar to pretty much allhormonal steroids that the body
(12:59):
makes and also cholesterol. Sothey all have they're
triterpenes that have 30 carbonatoms, and the only sort of
difference is off the
Speaker 1 (13:08):
So explain the triterpene for people.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So the triterpene is the type of compound which is,
from a molecular structureperspective, has 30 carbon
atoms, and off carbon atomnumber three, it either spikes
into a hydroxyl or carbonyl, anddepending on whether or not it's
testosterone, oestrogen,cholesterol, they all have this
(13:31):
same shape, and so the receptorsin the human body recognise that
shape. So when you have thesecompounds called gallidaric
acids in Reishi that are thesame shape, they attach on to
the same hormone receptors inthe body because the body
recognises them. And so thereare quite a few examples of this
in with compounds that mushroomsmake. So for example, all
(13:55):
mushrooms make type ofpolysaccharide called a beta
glucan, and that is a thirteensixteen molecular structures of
the third and sixth carbon atomthat spikes. That is recognised
by human immune receptor cells,so there are nine different
pharmaceutical adjuncttreatments for cancer.
There are isolates of fungalbeta glucans, and again, that's
(14:16):
because of the shape of thesebeta glucans. And there are lots
of lots of examples of compoundsfrom mushrooms being used in in
the sort of pharmaceuticalspace, and so the science is not
new. We know that the body canmake use of these compounds, and
the reason why there are so manymore of these compounds in fungi
that the body recognizes asopposed to in plants is one
(14:39):
because of where the animalkingdom comes after the fungal
kingdom. And so a lot of thestructures were in essence
developed by fungi and thenadopted later from the
evolutionary perspective byanimals. Whereas with plants,
they don't sit above the animalkingdom.
(15:00):
They sit to the side. And sothat's fundamentally the reason
why mushrooms are so relevantfrom a human health perspective
and also from from a folkloricangels or medicine perspective.
I remember reading Culpepper andtalking about the plague and
London tonic number two. Theycalled it a think they called it
(15:22):
a conch fungus and also whateverthat. But, anyway, 30% of London
tonic number two was made fromsome sort of conch fungus, which
we think potentially may havebeen a garacon.
But, anyway, certainly, theknowledge of fungi being
relevant from a healthperspective goes back a long
(15:43):
time, both in Europe andobviously in Asia. In Europe,
there's been, probably becauseof the birth of Christianity, a
bit of a stop in the sort ofriver of knowledge. There was a
big gap where fungi didn't seemto be used particularly much. We
certainly know, obviously, inthe fifteenth, sixteenth century
it was, but there is the Druidsobviously use them. We know
(16:03):
about some of the through someof the writing.
I think it was one of the Romanhistorians talking, obviously,
about the druids and how the thethe arrows wouldn't hit them,
and they took varioushallucinogenic mushrooms
beforehand. And I think that wasprobably we were fundamentally
forest runners to a degree backthen, and so the knowledge of
(16:25):
the forest would have been veryprevalent. And I think probably
post, we lost a lot of ourforests, especially when we're
cutting them down full of allthe wooden boats, the Armada,
that sort of stuff. Yeah. But Ithink the lack of ancient forest
in The UK is probably that goeshand in hand with the lack of
sort of decrease in knowledge ofwhat was available from a
(16:49):
medicine perspective.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah. I know when I was wandering Southeast Asia and
Laos and Burma and places likeor Myanmar as it's known now,
that when I would be in go tovillages or gather there'll be a
gathering of a market really onthe edge of the forest. There
were always the healers, forwant of a better word, on the
ground, and half of themedicines were larger roots and
(17:14):
twigs and leaves and things, buthalf of it was were just massive
mushrooms.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So they're part of it. But then I think their
tradition was influenced byChinese medicine.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah. And I think there's a huge also in fungi
love, humility, tropical jungle.There's a lot of fungi.
Interestingly, we were fortunateenough to be invited over to
Barbados in November to do thefirst fungal survey of Barbados
since, I think, it was over1940, really. And what was
(17:46):
amazing being over there wasthat because fungi predate
Pangaea, and so there were therewas one landmass fundamentally
about 350,000,000 years ago.
Fungi have already been aroundby at least a billion years by
this stage. So when Pangaeastarted to break away to form
(18:08):
the sort of continents and thelandmasses that we know now,
fungi had been colonized, thatland mass, and so there's
enormous similarities betweenfungus all over the world. They
look different, but they're allfrom the same family that's it's
quite interesting. Everyonethinks that you'd find
extraordinarily different fungiin Barbados. Mean, you do find
(18:29):
morphologically fungi that lookdifferent, but they're all still
identifiable when so we have wefound some ones that people
probably recognize are thesesort of pink flamingo
chanterelles growing off coraland a very small amount of soil,
but obviously it formed somesort of mycorrhizal relationship
(18:50):
with some of the some of thetrees there.
But again, actually, Barbados,like The UK to a certain degree,
Barbados even worse have beencompletely clear felled. So
although we're in this junglewith huge trees above us,
actually going back a hundredand forty, hundred and fifty
years, literally the entireisland have been clear felled.
(19:10):
Wow. So a lot of the there's noreal ancient forest there
anymore. And because uniquely inthe Caribbean Islands, it's
actually a coral Island.
And so even when you're, like,at the highest points, you dig
down two or three inches,there's little coral underneath
your fingertips. And so, yeah, Ithink, you know, the history of
(19:30):
the world is one of evolution orcreation and destruction. And
what's quite interesting is ifyou look through the fungal
records at we're living throughone of the great extinction
events currently, but if youlook at the extinction event,
for example, between the Permianand the Triassic, immediately, a
couple two or three millionyears after that, there is huge
(19:53):
spore loads in the fungal in theRoss fossil record. There was an
explosion of fungi with adominant life force again or,
like, a dominant kingdom of lifeon Earth. And so I think fungi
are nature's great recyclers,and another example is the only
reason we have the fossil fuelsthat we have now, those were the
trees and plants that were notinfested with fungi and
(20:15):
recycled.
If you wanna sleep easily atnight, there will always be
fungi. I remember reading aboutsome Japanese ice cores that
have been drilled in Antarctica.It went back to twenty million
years ago, and they found somefungal spores, they fruited,
basically. Wow. What's alsointeresting is that they can
deal with the spores can dealwith the radiation in space and
so there is I'll probably getthis wrong, but there's a theory
(20:39):
called I think it's called transspasmodia, which is this idea
that because fungal spores candeal with the radiation in
space, it's plausible thatfungal spores came here on a
meteorite Yeah.
And gave birth to life on Earth.I think a huge number of
evolutionary biologists believeit, but it is definitely
(21:01):
plausible.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
I mean, it's quite interesting one that because I
was while you were talking, Iwas just thinking, oh, would
would because people are outthere trying to find life in
other planets. Would one of thekey indicators of life other
than water be fungi?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I don't think anyone's looking for it because
they're looking for theBacteria. Yeah. They're looking
for the sort of fundamentalbuilding rocks to a hydrogen
car. But And also how you wouldyeah. I'm not sure how you would
get a bit of equipment over onMars that could do well, I'm
sure you probably could thatcould do microscopic.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm absolutelyprobably could. If you could
find fungi, then you have foundcomplicated life on Earth.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Life anywhere.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
What is really interesting actually is recently
some some I think there wereDanish ecologists put on weather
balloons up into thestratosphere. It was quite
simple tech used for mycology,and they had these matchsticks
or a sort of spinning thing thatthey put Vaseline on, and they
chucked them up under weatherballoons, like, high up in the
stratosphere. And so the sporeswould stick on the the Vaseline
(22:06):
and then blew the balloon up andit falls back down. And there
are so many mushroom spores thathigh up and so loads of them
were like potential. A lot offungi can be potentially
invasive to either crops orhumours or whatever it may be
and so this idea that fungi arealready travelling all across
(22:29):
the world.
I know, like, it's quite oftensaid, if you had a column, a
foot wide column above your headgoing to the stratosphere,
there's around about6,000,000,000 fungal spores
above your head. You'rebreathing in fungal spores every
breath you take. They are wecan't see them, but they are, I
wouldn't say, the mostimportant, but certainly the
(22:49):
oldest aspect to intelligentlife on Earth.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
So how much of the human body is fungi?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Everyone wants to bring it back to the individual.
Are, In your sort of gut biota,there will be millions of
different types of fungi kickingoff down there. Yeah. Certainly
in terms of not millions,there'll be tens of thousands.
We think that at the momentwe've identified about 150,000
types of fungi, and currentestimates are that there's
(23:21):
between two to 3,000,000.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Our level of fungi and the role they play is
infinitesimally small. Sure.Obviously, there have been some
beautiful books written,obviously you've read Life of
Trees where they do theradioisotopes down and then get
transferred.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
And there's that Australian filmmaker with his
wife that do that beautiful filmon fungi, world of fungi,
something
Speaker 2 (23:46):
like that. I don't Extraordinary photography. Oh,
it's a macro photography. Yeah.So we're yeah.
That's amazing. I've met therewas one on on Netflix done by a
guy called Louis Schwartzbergercalled Fantastic Fungi. Oh yes.
It had Paul Stammocks in it.Yeah.
And Louis does a lot of thatmacro photography. Actually
Louis hopefully is gonna startfunding Richard who does a lot
(24:09):
of our macro photography here todo some yeah, so we're lucky
again that we've got friends whodo a lot of that sort of stuff
Yeah. Because of Bristol havingthe natural a lot of the natural
history stuff going on. Richardhas made some beautiful videos
of our fungi growing. And, yeah,hopefully, we'll be able to do
more of that because they areunbelievably beautiful Totally.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Things. Yeah. They're an expression that I think
captivates once someone seesthem. They're caught, aren't
they? Yeah.
By the just by their by the notonly the beauty, but the
curiosity. There's a it's anunknown. They're a mystery still
so that it kind of peaks And
Speaker 2 (24:50):
they are alien.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That. And they are alien.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
They are alien. They fundamentally are. Mushrooms are
interesting. They're made ofchitin, which is the same stuff
as, like, crustacean shells orexcess cousins of insects, and
that's one of the reasons it'svery difficult for the human
body to break down unless youhave a high level of the enzyme
chitinase in your belly. Just byeating mushrooms, most of them
most of the sort of compoundsyou're likely to just shit out.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
This is something that I'd like to move into. So
let's talk now about there'sloads of mushrooms we could talk
about, but I think the two thatstand initially for me are
lion's mane, cordyceps, and thenSerbang B. Reishi. Let's start
with lion's mane. Like I say, itseems really popular to people
(25:33):
who don't know anything aboutthis world.
Why lion's mane? Why wouldsomeone want to take a tincture
of lion's mane? Oh, okay. Andlet's do you go one step. Two
two questions in one.
Why tinctures when yours aretriple extracted versus dried
powder?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yeah. Okay. If we start with Lion's Man, I think,
personally, I believe Lion's Manhas almost got its own PR
department behind it because Ithink the reason for that is in
our society where our society isat the moment, in the sort of
acute individualisation that'staken place, this sort of, yeah,
(26:15):
this sort of atomisation asHallbeck would call it, the
atomisation of the individual.We all think the problem's in
our head, and if we could justsort our head out, everything
would be fine. And so I thinkthis mushroom is very much
indicative of the sort ofgeneral perversion of the
(26:35):
individual as god, which isalmost what's happened.
And so the individual with thesort of breakdown in the
community and familial sort ofstructures, of the mind quite
often gets, as Jung would,separated from the the archetype
and the ego and the archetype.And so I think fundamentally
lion's mane is a mushroom formodernity
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Because it tells you, or at least this is what people
want you to believe, that youcan sort your focus, clarity and
mind out, and everyone believesthat's the recipe to a healthy
existence and a virtuous lifenow. If they could just have
Speaker 3 (27:13):
a clearer mind, everything would be fine.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Is that almost out of the productivity community?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. A 100%. Yeah.
Yeah. That's exactly what it is.Fire hacking. Hacking. But also
the desire to be perpetuallyproductive.
Yeah. And love working.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
So am a man.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
I love gardening. I like being busy, so I don't
think there's anythinginherently wrong with being busy
and doing things that, you know,you enjoy. But just being I
think there is it's gone a bitextreme in certain sort of
corporate environments. Sointeresting. This was the reason
why we funded the PhD initially.
So the the I think the title ofthe broad sort of three year
(27:51):
engagement is exploring theneuroregenerative and
neuroprotective compounds,medicinal mushrooms, with
obviously lion's mane beingprobably the reason why the Tim,
the professor of neuroscience,was keen on getting me to pay
him to hire someone. Lion'smane, there are a couple of
things that are genuinelyinteresting with lion's mane. So
(28:11):
lion's mane in traditional usageand there is some evidence of it
being used to aid in meditationin the sort of fifteenth
century, but more often than notin terms of a TCM perspective.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
And that's traditional Chinese medicine?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah. It was given for upper digestive tract
issues, so like acid reflux. Andand what is interesting,
actually lesser reliance onbased on the research that we've
done, but there is obviously anacknowledgement now of the key
role between the sort of gut andthe brain. And so there has
actually been a compoundisolated from lion's bone, which
(28:48):
is now used as an adjuncttreatment for oesophageal
cancer. And interestingly,oesophageal cancer is often
caused by acid in the stomachbreaking down the lining of the
bottom of the esophagus.
So that was a big part of Lion'sWay in terms of its actual
traditional usage. Now whatwe're exploring as part of this
(29:09):
PhD is what compounds, if any.Firstly, we're exploring what
does our tincture do, whateffect does it have from on the
specific neuronal cell lines andcertain stem cell lines as well
from a neurodegenerativeperspective. And so we're one of
the things we're doing is we'retreating this neuronal cell line
(29:31):
with trans fatty acids torestrict the growth of them, and
then we're putting a wash of ourlots of different ones of our
tinctures, but a wash of ourtinctures to see if that does
encourage new growth. And it itdoes interestingly on a couple
of them, but not as much as oneof the other ones that no one
actually takes for neuronalgrowth, which is quite
interesting.
And so there are certaincompounds that have a very low
(29:54):
molecular weight callederinacines and herosimones and
heronacines that are tinycompounds that seem to be able
to cross the blood brain barrierand potentially create the
precursor to an enzyme, which isthe first step in a two step
process of developing somethingcalled NGF nerve growth factor.
(30:15):
So it's a lot more complicatedthan and in the research we've
been doing, the one thing that Ithat lion's mane does seem to
have a meaningful quantity of isa compound called ergothionein.
Ergothionein used to be isbrutally important for bodily
(30:37):
function. We have ergothioneinreceptors in every organ of our
body. Before we eat, they getfired up in anticipation of
ergothionein being delivered andbeing able to be shifted through
the body.
Unfortunately, we used to get itmainly through the soil.
Unfortunately, due to how wefarm, the quantity of ergophyll
(31:00):
in in the soil in much the sameway as invertebrate numbers,
worm numbers Yeah. Has literallycollapsed. Wow. And so it's
another reason to probably, ifyou can afford it, either buy
local or buy organic becausethere is more ergophylline in
the side of organic, and noone's really testing for it.
(31:22):
But but anyway, so we're notreally getting it in our diet.
You can get some from chickenliver, a small amount. There's a
tiny amount in red beans aswell, but the only other source
is mushrooms. They have aroundabout a thousand percent more
ergothione
Speaker 1 (31:38):
in there. And this is all the kind of edible strains
Speaker 2 (31:40):
All mushrooms. Mushrooms to a certain degree.
Some of them have more, and soergothione, interesting, the
ones that have the most are thepleuritis, the oyster family.
Also, my taqui has a higheramount, but also lion's mane has
about three quarters of what theClaritus family have. And so I
think possibly the reasons we'reseeing the outcomes for people
(32:02):
or the if it's not just theplacebo, if people because we
sell a lot of lion's mane.
If you add up all the othermushrooms, they equate to about
the same amount as we sell alion's vein. And so the effects
people are reporting to us, ifit's not the placebo, and I
think it's probably not theseinfantism, these small compounds
(32:26):
over very low molecular weight,if I was to guess, I think it's
probably ergothialine, andespecially we know in all
degenerative diseases and withage as well, ergothionein
plummets in the body anyway.People have not been getting
anything like the same level ofergothionein they've been
accustomed to for millennia. Andso if I was to guess, and every
(32:51):
time I write a guess, I'm wrong.Yeah.
So bear in mind I'm wrong. Yeah.But I would say ergothione in
lion's vein is probably one ofthe reasons why people are
reporting the changes that theyare. What I will say What
Speaker 1 (33:04):
are those reports? What are the changes?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
The people find that they are able to concentrate
more Okay. Focus, have lessissues from a sort of memory
perspective. So the one elementthat I haven't discussed with
lion lion's mane, this is one ofthe reasons why people make the
jump into it being potentiallybeneficial from a neuron
(33:29):
perspective and a couple of thestudies that have been done. So
lion's mane definitely, from alot of studies that have been
done, seems to help speed up thereparation of the myelin sheath.
So the myelin sheath is the theoutside of all your nerves made
up of this myelin sheath.
And so there's lots of studieslooking at the effect that
(33:51):
lion's marine has on how quicklythe myelin sheath repairs
itself. I think I'm comfortablesaying it does appear to repair
the myelin sheath quicker thanfor people who aren't.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
And the myelin sheath does what?
Speaker 2 (34:04):
It protects all your nerves throughout your body.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
So it's not just brain?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
No. It's not brain at all. No. But but so I'm
comfortable with that. We've hadlots of people who've had
injuries, sports people forexample, who have seen
remarkable improvements in arelatively short span of And the
the interesting thing is withnerve issues, you tend to find
that the nerves improve over thefirst eighteen months.
(34:30):
And then if you haven't seen anyimprovement, you won't see much
improvement beyond eighteenmonths. And so for a few of the
people that have taken ourlion's vein products that have
had what they thought deadnerves or these people that have
had this issue for years andthen suddenly they take the
lion's vein, their nerves andtheir triceps start working. And
(34:52):
so I'm comfortable possiblybelieving that it might be the
lion's vein that's doing that.They certainly the individuals
concerned certainly believe itis. But the other element with
lion's vein that's outside ofthe sort of myelin sheath
perspective is that and thisisn't talked about very much, is
that there's definitely apercentage of people that have a
(35:15):
bad reaction to it, like agenuinely bad reaction.
And so I'd say probably of saythere's around twenty thousand
people that have taken ourlines, Wayne. I would say four
people have had a bad reaction.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Means that their heart rate rockets
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And then plummets. Oh, wow. And it's over a sort of
twenty four hour period. And forsome people, they can feel very
anxious. And and this isn't justour product.
I've heard this from so manypeople. Sure. Actually, I was
speaking to a woman at thisconference we were at in London
at the weekend. She was a longdistance swimmer. She swims 35
kilometers in the ocean for fun.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah. Exactly. Takes all sorts. Yeah. That is a
marathon swimming.
So, yeah, that's like the theswimming the channel and
swimming back just for fun.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
But she told me that she'd had this reaction with
Lions' Man, and I was like, itwon't take you out of Lions'
Man, take you to someone else's.And I was like, that is
definitely the Lions' Man. We'vehad two or three people
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Say exactly the same. Actually one guy had, you know,
had all this sort of whatever itis, like, tracking stuff for his
heart rate and his sleep, it washe sent it over. My god. Wow.
Yeah.
10 high. And so I think as Tim,the neuroscientist, the
professor of neuroscience, wouldsay, it's positive in a sense,
Tom, because it's provingbiological activity. This is one
(36:40):
of the this is one of the thesort of things that makes us
more comfortable in terms ofbelieving that the mushrooms are
having biological effects onpeople because, for example,
with Reishi, which intraditional Chinese medicine is
given for high blood pressure,it opens up the capillary. So it
(37:02):
actually acts in the same way asa couple of blood pressure meds
anyway. It opens up thecapillaries, allows the body to
hold more oxygen, which in turnslows the heart rate down.
But when people are on, forexample, antiplatelet medication
where they're dropping thequantity of large oxygen
carrying hemoglobin cells, theystart feeling awful because
(37:22):
there simply isn't enoughoxygen. And so again, that's
indicative that something isactually going on. But
ironically enough, where becauseof the fact that fungi or
mushrooms are not viewed ashaving any medicinal value,
you're not able to put on anywarnings because they have no
value with this, so how can theyhave any?
Speaker 1 (37:44):
And that's EU or is that UK?
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Everything's fundamentally EU. Okay. So,
yeah, I think with Lion's Vein,we're hoping to understand more.
So through Payam, we've justordered around another 12
different standards fordifferent compounds.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Payam is?
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Is our Turkish, not Turkish, God forbid. Okay.
Persian. Persian.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah. The bear.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Teddy. Yeah. Beautiful man. Very cuddly. And,
yeah, so hopefully in aboutthree or four weeks, we should
start getting data sets backfrom another 10 different
compounds in our lion's way, andI'm feeling about three or four
months, you'll be able to seeexactly how many compounds are
in each one of our products.
(38:26):
To touch on the tincture side asopposed to powders, in an ideal
world, either would be grape.Okay. Interestingly, in order to
make a powder, you first have todo an extraction, so you first
have to make a tincture anyway.The reality is, the vast
majority of products availableglobally emanate from Asia,
(38:51):
India, mainly China, the vastmajority of China or Vietnam,
and latterly India to a certaindegree, which has been
interesting because obviously inthe Ayurveda, mushrooms are not
good. So it's quite interestingYeah.
That that there has been thissort of explosion in mushroom
growing in India, whereas indirect contradiction to their
sort of cultural Sure. Mental.But it's nice to see that even
(39:14):
ancient traditions can take onor can adapt, whereas certain
religions were slightly moretolerant to to the march of
march of knowledge. But yeah. Soin terms of tinctures versus
powders, fundamentally, one ofit one one element of it is that
you can obviously shift a lotmore product if it's not held in
(39:38):
water and alcohol and so from anefficiency perspective.
So in order to make extractpowder, what you do is you
extract into liquid, be it wateror ethanol like we do. I mean,
we use ultrasolics as well tobasically, they send sound waves
into the kiting cell walls,fracture them, and allow a lot
(39:58):
more compounds to be pulled outinto solution. But the process
for making an extract powder isextract into your liquid, be it
ethanol or water, then you putit through a spray drying tower
between either two seventy or370 degrees Celsius. That blasts
all evaporates off all the theliquid. And then you have a
(40:19):
carrier, a sort of powder that'scirculating in that tower, and
well over 95% of the time, thatwill be multidextrin because you
don't have to put on youringredients list maltodextrin
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
And it's water soluble. Wow. So you can claim
pure, a 100%
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Bloody mushroom
Speaker 2 (40:38):
extract powder, but it's the vast majority of it's
maltodextrin. It's why quiteoften when you taste Yeah. These
mushroom powders, they'reslightly sweet.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Sweet. Sure.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
So it's a multidaction. Actually,
multidaction can have a bit ofan issue for people with
people's guts. And so numberone, you can create a product
that is much more shippable.Sure. Two, theoretically, you
can create a stronger product aswell.
Unfortunately, the reality isthere's a great opportunity for
(41:11):
creating a large volume ofproduct at a very low price with
not a lot in it. Yeah. And,also, it's water soluble, you
can make it and put it intodrinks. You can
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah. So my friend who goes under eBay and buys
organic
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be mainly multidosteron.
Yeah.
Yep. Which is a shame.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
It is a shame.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
It's also the one nice thing with
Speaker 1 (41:33):
That people are now being made aware Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Through this. Yeah. But don't get me wrong. There
are some really good productsthat I actually have had.
There's some really good ones,and some of the ones we've
tested have been amazing.
Unfortunately, some of the oneswe've tested have literally
nothing in them. Yeah. But alsothe same with tinctures, but
it's the one thing withtinctures is it's a lot easier.
You can trust your senses. Yeah.
If they look clear and pale andthey taste of very little,
(42:01):
that's because there's nothingin them. If they look thick and
dirty and taste of mushroomsYeah. You can be confident that
there's something in them. Andso it's much it's much easier.
It is easy with tinctures.
You can it's very easy tocompare our product to another
company's product. Just look atit Yeah. Taste it, smell it, and
that's there's no hiding withtinctures, although lots of
(42:22):
brands do try and hide behindall sorts of other things. And,
yeah, we have obviously theother thing that's great having
our ability to have the researchon one side and the testing on
the other side now is that wecan obviously test lots of other
companies' products Sure. Whichis always what's the best way to
describe it?
(42:43):
Always, for us at least, alwaysencouraging Yeah. But also
slightly depressing Sure.Because we are limited by the
amount of mushrooms we grow tothe amount of product we can
sell, but obviously no one ischecking anything. So I could
write as a lot of companies doanything on the packaging, and I
(43:05):
could just make a much weakerproduct. Wow.
And I could suddenly have abusiness that is worth or
potentially could sell a lotmore. I have a lot more product
off the same amount ofmushrooms, which lots of
companies do. Yeah. Lots andlots. The smaller, yeah, the
smaller guy is probably less.
One of the main interestingly,with the research we've done,
one of the main differencesbetween our extraction process
(43:29):
and other companies' extractionprocess is actually the amount
of solvent we extract into.Although I didn't actually take
you into the well, I'll take youin before you leave, but the
tincture kitchen. So we'llextract one kilo of dried
mushroom into in the twoprocesses we do on the water
side, about 45 liters on theslow cook with the high high
(43:51):
hydrasonic and then 20 liters onthe high pressure ones. We'll
have about 65 liters of water,and then we'll evaporate that
down under vacuum to about 3.4liters. So there's a lot of
energy Sure.
And a lot of time. And the therelevance for that is that water
only has a carrying capacity, asolubility level, so you need to
(44:14):
use a lot of it's like making astock, basically, but you need
to keep it under 70 degrees toin order to not denature a lot
of the compound. And so,unfortunately, this is a lot of
companies obviously just don'tdo that. They extract into the
same amount of solvent they wantat the end of trees. You just
don't have enough in there orthey boil stuff when they need
(44:34):
to evaporate it down, which justsmashes loads of the compounds.
I think fundamentally, if you'relooking to buy a decent product,
Amazon is probably not yourfriend. Sure. Probably not.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
The word organic is questionable.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Organic nowadays. What I find so frustrating with
it is people no one gets pulledup on anything anymore. Yeah.
The amount yeah. There's acompany that I think is a we all
take it as a bit of acompliment.
Basically, they call themselvesa farm. That's another UK
company. They don't farmanything. They're based in a
flat in Derbyshire. And yet tolook at everyone that buys those
(45:10):
stuff, thinks they've got afarm.
They've they put this extractratio on the on the surface
appears to be stronger thanours. What they're doing is
buying a maltodextrin and justputting it in water and putting
some ethanol in there.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
That's all they're doing. And, obviously, theirs is
cheaper, and it looks like a farmore just utter twaddle. But 30%
of the
Speaker 2 (45:26):
people that take that pollock will probably experience
a positive Proceed. Yeah.Exactly. Right. Yeah.
And so even even though there'sliterally nothing in it. And
then there's other companies weknow, like, European companies
that look, the companies that weused to venerate and try and
mimic. Oh my god, they're doingsuch a good job. It's so pure,
so clean. But then when you testthem solo, like solo, and then
(45:49):
you think if I had if I wascomfortable putting a product
out there, which was that weak,suddenly overnight I could shift
five times more product.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah. You're not the only one in our community of
plant and fungi people that hassaid this. There's other very
science focused friends andcolleagues who have done their
own tests on other people'sstuff and
Speaker 2 (46:15):
it's It's depressing It
Speaker 1 (46:16):
is really depressing because it is that predatory,
predating on the naivety of theconsumer because everyone's
hearing about medicinalmushrooms and obviously it's a
jungle and in jungle there arepredators.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
They're very clever, some of these ones, though,
because what they do is theyextol the virtues of the
transparent supply chain andgive you, like, these data sets,
and it's just bollocks. BecauseI mean, a part of it is because
there aren't enough companiesactually saying what's in their
product from a compoundperspective Yeah. Because there
(46:57):
aren't any labs that you can goto. There's a lab that do a lot
of testing for various things inin The UK called Eurofins, and
lots of people get heavy metalstested by them, and they don't
actually do microbiology,Popular is the big sort of brand
for certificate of analysis fora lot of supplement type things.
Yeah.
And so when we went to them afew years ago asking if they
(47:20):
could test for some of thesefungal compounds, they were
quoting us 6,000 to £8,000 justto set up the methodology before
they could do the tests, And sothere are and there aren't
really any labs apart from r onethat are doing this in The UK
because it is expensive to setup methodologies. If you've got
if you wanna test for, say, 40different compounds, and that's
how they give you a good dealand just charge you £5,000,
(47:43):
That's £5,000 times 40. That'swhatever that is 200,000. Yeah.
So it's a lot of money Yeah.
To get, like, a decent libraryof things set up. So we're very
fortunate to have Payam, who'sworking unbelievably hard for
next to no money and is verystressed. But, hopefully, we've
introduced two other companiesin The UK to him. So, actually,
(48:06):
I'm going down with MartinPowell. Martin Powell is
initially, I think, in traininga microbiologist, but he is a
traditional Chinese herbalistfundamentally.
He went to I think he went touniversity in China. He speaks
Mandarin fluently. Yeah. Heactually brought over a couple
of people to the farm a coupleof weeks ago. He's written the
books on medicinal mushrooms andthe compounds.
(48:29):
He's like the sort ofgrandfather of Yeah. Medicinal
mushrooms in The UK, and he'sjust an entirely decent human
being. If the world is made upof people like Martin, we would
be we would be all the richerfor it. So Martin has been doing
what we do for decades. Yeah.
A bit like sort of MatthewRooney was the man doing what we
(48:49):
were doing before we eventhought about doing it. Yeah.
You know, Martin has yeah.Martin's level of knowledge, and
he goes to China every year. Heknows everyone out there.
He knows everyone, you know, inThe US who's set up martial
related businesses over the lastthirty years. He's an absolute
an absolute he's a diamondgeezer, basically. Anyway, so
we're going down together to seeto I'm gonna introduce him to
(49:13):
Pyam, and he's gonna start usingPyam to test his product over
here. And I think that's thething. There will be other
companies now that it'savailable that are gonna be
actually give a shit aboutwhat's in their products, but
there's gonna be a lot that donot want to know.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
So I think it'll probably be easier for me
putting about twelve months timebecause the companies that
people are gonna startaccounting compounds and putting
them on there, it won't be verymany. Yeah. I think the other
issue is you'll have withcertain ones of the most of it,
almost everyone's importing fromChina, and some of the issues
you have with the Chinese and Iused to live in China. I've got
nothing against Chinese. I'vehad brilliant times living
(49:50):
there, but they they can beslightly unscrupulous when it
comes to opportunities to makemoney in the same way that
there's a lot of Europeancountry companies in my space
that are quite unscrupulous whenit comes to selling a product
that doesn't have a lot in it inorder to make money.
And what sometimes happens isthey'll do analysis on a batch,
and then everything they sellfor the next twelve months,
(50:11):
that'll be the bit of paper thatgoes with it, but it's got no
relationship to what they'reactually selling you. And so
there was an interesting studydone in 2017 where in The US,
they bought, I think it was 23Reishi products, both Amazon
and, like, whole food shops. Andof the 23 they tested, so they
(50:33):
did like a DNA profile. Only 17of them didn't have any Reishi
in them whatsoever. And sothat's probably around who knows
what it's like now.
Some of the big brands in The UKdon't do any testing, and so
these are brands that you cansee in anywhere, boots. These
guys are literally just usingthe certificate of analysis, and
(50:53):
that certificate of analysis,all it says is heavy metals.
Yeah. And actually what really,what you really need to test for
on product coming out of Chinais pesticides and no one's
testing for that. Yeah.
So it's, we're in this sort ofslightly odd situation. And when
you're doing an extraction andthen concentrating stuff down so
much, the last thing you wannabe doing is using a product that
(51:16):
has Sure. Potentially like theanyway, so we have tested a few
Chinese mushrooms for compounds,in particular, reishi's. What is
interesting is when you starttesting stuff, the picture does
not become clearer.
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
And the trouble with science is you can't argue with
it. Sure. Yeah. And I thinkthat's the same bit indicative
(51:53):
exactly of what's going on withthe sort of bigger picture with
climate, the financial systems.If you look at a systemic
perspective, there are so manyknowns that are not acknowledged
Yeah.
And behaviors that should followfor that acknowledgment. And so
on a smaller scale, can see itin the space that I'm in from a
(52:14):
supplement perspective where,you know, I think that's when
you're in a society which is notacknowledging these preeminent,
these like
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Scientific reality.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Yeah. But these like actual fundamental threats to
our very existence. You know,I'm always reminded that it took
the first city on Earth that hadsupply chains sufficient enough
to support a million people asrope, And then it was fifteen
hundred years later, the nextcity on Earth had enough of a
(52:51):
stable empire and supply chainsto be able to do that, and that
was London. And the idea that weare going to be able to continue
to supply the amount of citiesthat are now well in excess of a
million people given what'shappening climactically. And the
trouble is what happensclimactically, also massively
(53:13):
influences politics.
Yeah. And the reason we'reseeing this sort of rise in
tribalism across the board andprobably this return to
hereditary religions is becausewhen people are fearful, they
return they return to whatever'sfamiliar. Sure. And, you know,
what from a fungi perspective,they're sitting pretty. I know.
(53:34):
Even the last few extensionevents, it was boom time
Speaker 1 (53:36):
for them afterwards.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
There's lots of recycling that Leeds doing.
Guess all the fungi's was rightthere. In fun. It's happening
again, guys. I think we couldhave free reign.
Give it a century or two. Thinkit's gonna
Speaker 2 (53:48):
be bone house again. Yeah. So all is not lost if
you're a fungi.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
And we will be recycled. Yeah. Returned to
time. Totally. Tom, it's beenfascinating.
I haven't even asked, I camewith a load of questions which
is Rift, which is actually howthe podcast is meant to be. Like
you say, it's such anextraordinary world. We're
barely really it seems, gettinga handle on it. We have some
(54:15):
kind of handle. Yeah, a littlebit.
A lot of unknowns.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Yeah, a lot of unknowns. I think humans benefit
from having a closerrelationship with fungi.
Fundamentally, thing I alwayssay is just eat more mushrooms.
Yeah. There's so much evidence.
There have been two long termstudies, one done in Latvia and
one done in Japan, andfundamentally the groups
actually in Japan it was allmen, about 30,000 men that they
(54:40):
followed over nearly fortyyears, And the incidence of
colon cancer, prostate cancer,and pancreatic cancer was all
about over thirty percent lowerin the groups of men that ate
mushrooms five times a week.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Unless even button mushrooms and things like that.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
Any mushrooms. Yeah. Any mushrooms. Just there are
there are just eat moremushrooms. Fundamentally, if
you're interested in your healthand you're interested in what
benefit mushrooms can bring, ifyou can eat mushrooms three or
four times a week regularly thatis going to have almost the best
outcome you can imagine from anydietary change.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
Thank you again and people can find you at?
Speaker 2 (55:22):
Bristolfungarium.com or on Instagram
bristolfungarium.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
Thank you.
And welcome to another episode of the Eat Weeds
podcast. I'm Robin Harford andfor about a couple of years I've
always wanted to interview aparticular gentleman who set up
bristolfungarium.com. His name'sTom Baxter and last year at the
Power Plants Festival I had thegreat pleasure of meeting him
(00:21):
and he's a bit of a character soit's really nice to have him on
the show. Tom welcome. Thankyou, Robin.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'll attempt to keep the character in check. So
Speaker 1 (00:35):
today we're going to talk medicinal mushrooms because
that's what your speciality is.And I'm always curious about
people's journey. To keep itshort, what was I know your
backstory with organic farming,vegetables, etc, but
specifically in this context ofmushrooms, what was the turning
point? What made you go, I wantto do that?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I think I'd spent quite a few years foraging for
mushrooms. I've been fortunateenough to look for mushrooms in
the Siberian Steppes too andthen I spent quite few years
living in the sort of foothillsof the Pyrenees and used to
frequently tell my assortedchildren that the conditions
were perfect for mushrooms andwe were just going to go and
(01:18):
spend five hours up the mountainlooking And 95% of the time we
found nothing, and by the endtheir excitement was just tinged
with complete anticipation ofdisappointment because every
time we'd go we'd never findanything. They'd then tell me
that before we even left.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
This time and I think
Speaker 2 (01:38):
that is the is the foragers' conundrum isn't it?
You can never lose faith but yetexperience tells you that you
should perhaps qualify yourparticipation a little more.
Fundamentally for me whathappened was that I was at that
stage an organic veg farmer andneeding revenue in winter where
(01:59):
no photosynthesis takes placeand I had been like foraging
mushrooms and selling them tovarious customers or in these
shops in around Bristol. And Ithen spent the last bit of money
I had on a couple of shippingcontainers and started growing
oyster mushrooms on straw andthen hired a man far more
(02:20):
competent than me called Henrywho was able to clone local
mushroom strains, oystermushroom strains, and so then we
started looking at what wasavailable around us that we
could then clone and grow. Ithink fundamentally for me, at
one point, I had a couple offorest schools.
I grew up on the edge ofLongweed Forest. I spent a lot
(02:41):
of time in the woods as a child,and I've always wanted somehow
to come up with a way of beingable in my head to spend more
time in the forest and yet earnmoney. And this was ironically
enough, I've managed it,although I don't spend a huge
amount time in the forestanymore. But we do look to the
woods around us for the majorityof the genetics of the mushrooms
(03:06):
that we grow. So in a way, Ihave fulfilled my desire to use
the forest as a basis for myexistence.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
You took me around the sheds just now, and you're
coming from very much ascientific background or base
not I don't know aboutbackground, but basis. Think
Trying to get strengths ofcertain compounds up.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah. We're quite fortunate now in that six years
in, we're now the only companyin The UK that funds pure
research, so our PhD at theneuroscience department in
Bristol. Wow. We also haverecently hired Pai Anne, who's
my Persian teddy bear, but he isa late 50s analytical chemist
with thirty years experience.He's been at Glaxo and Pfizer.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
His whole life has been counting compounds to put
on labels, and so we now haveagain, we're the only people, I
think no. There's one company inSpain, actually. Apart from the
single company in Spain, we'rethe only company in Europe that
has a dedicated analyticalchemistry laboratory, which is
actually done in Peyton, yourwhole neck of the woods. Yeah.
(04:19):
Yeah.
And so we are able now to takemushrooms from the forest around
us here in Somerset and quantifythe compounds that we know are
relevant from a human healthperspective, and we can do that
very quickly. So within a monthof finding something, we can
count the compounds that we'reinterested in.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And then from that, if you find something that's
appealing Yep. Say stands outfrom the crowd Yep. Will you
then that's what you will thenbring back here and
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah. And grow. Yeah. Yeah. And so interesting, for
example, with our lion's mane,is actually how we actually
landed up where we are now onthis farm.
So about eight years ago, afriend of ours spotted a lion's
mane 30 foot up a beech tree,and we went to look at it, and
it was a lion's mane. I think wewere the first people to find a
lion's mane at that point in theSouthwest for eight years
(05:12):
because they are they were thelast few years has been a bit of
an explosion in people seeinglion's mane. I think post COVID
where a lot of people spent alot more time outside, they
started to become a lot moreengaged and obviously with the
sort of increase in interest infungi and mushrooms and
mycology, A lot more people arecognizant of what they're
(05:32):
looking at or interested in whatthey're looking at. And, Baylor,
when we've when this one wasidentified eight years ago,
there hadn't been one for a verylong period of time in the
Southwest, and they cut the treedown, the beech tree that it was
growing on, and we managed tocollect a lot of smashed lion's
man off the floor and cloned it.But I also rang up.
I got the number for the manthat owned the land and then was
(05:55):
like, had a pop at him about thefact he shouldn't have cut that
tree down. And then I asked himif he had any land for sale. He
said, I don't sell land. Andthen you can't make any money
off land. What do want the landfor?
And I was like, I need to builda barn. Said, oh, millions of
barns. And so he took me around,and he's got a couple of
thousand acres just around here.So just around Baragurney, and
(06:16):
they're in half the village. Andthere was we found a barn and
which he's rebuilt for us.
And then he said, don't yousuppose you'd be interested in
the the farmhouse? No one's beenliving it for two years.
Commercially, we can't rent itout. It's absolutely fucked. But
if you'd be interested So, yes,so now we live in the farmhouse,
which is less screwed than itwas when we turned it.
When we turned up, had to goaround with expanding foam
(06:37):
everywhere just to keep the windout and the rain. So, yes,
ironically enough, that lion'svein that we found 800 meters
from from where we're based nowis the reason we're here. And
that lion's vein, when we had ittested, had sort of 20% higher
levels of two types ofcompounds, hericinones and beta
glucans, than the fivecommercial strains, and I think
(07:00):
it's indicative, and we knowthis anyway intuitively, that
something that has taken, inthis case, certainly probably
centuries it's been here, maybeconsiderably longer, that it is
adapted to this environment.Sure. And so the fact that we're
growing that mushroom at scalenow and it's of all the
(07:22):
mushrooms, we sell far morelion's man than anything else
and it had higher levels of thetwo compounds we're interested
in.
It speaks of there being, as weknow, the plant kingdom, the
fungi king was probably similar,some adaptive reality to the
environment. And I think one ofthe reasons we grow so many
(07:42):
mushrooms that are localized tohere is, one, this was an
ancient estate, and so there arestill some ancient woodlands.
And two, the fact that they'vebeen growing here for such a
pronounced period of time meansthat they are accustomed to the
climate. And for whateverreason, that means that they are
(08:03):
more adapted to the conditions,and that seems to be represented
in the chemical profile. So whenwe test them, they have higher
levels of some of the compoundsthat we're interested in as
opposed to these other strainsthat we've tested that are
brought in
Speaker 1 (08:20):
China or
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah. Or or Europe quite often. And but, yeah,
there's definitely a lot fromAsia as well. But it's yeah. So
not all the time is that thecase, but certainly more often
than not, that is the case.
So, yeah, it's largely thanks toa lion's vein. I'm able to be
sat here in this barn with younow.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Thank you, lion's mane.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah. Thank you, lion's mane. A dominant master
is the fungi.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah. So what's what for people who are completely
new to all this, they may haveheard of medicinal mushrooms.
They may have heard that lion'smane they can buy lion's mane
coffee from all these I'mthinking more of the American
brands. What is it aboutmedicinal mushrooms that the
regular folk on the street needto pay attention to and the
(09:06):
sense of why they're importantfor their potential well-being?
If they're important for theirwell-being, is it which are we
talking purely neurologicalhere?
You mentioned the neuroscienceinstitute or department. Is that
where medicinal mushrooms havetheir excellence
Speaker 2 (09:22):
or is it? Okay, yeah, no, it's not that simple.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
I wish life was, but
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So now what is interesting with fungi in
particular, if we look at thedifferent sort of kingdoms, is
from an evolutionaryperspective, they were the first
kingdom of life on Earth, andthey were around for about,
we're confident, 1,500,000,000years ago. Although in August,
there was a dig done in SouthAfrica, and there are these
remarkably these forms that lookalmost identical to what we now
(09:53):
recognise as mycelium, and sopotentially it might be back to
2,400,000,000 years. Butinitially, obviously, were water
based. The Earth's been aroundfor 3.5. If it does push it back
to 2.4, we really are at thedawn of time.
The Earth would have been a veryradioactive place at that point.
And what is actually what isinteresting at Chernobyl, there
(10:13):
are actually three differentstrains of fungi growing on the
inside of the dome, the concretedome, which
Speaker 1 (10:19):
are using radiation as their energy source. So
Chernobyl, for those who arevery young, was the nuclear
power plant that went hot,basically, in Russia.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yep. Yep. There's a wonderful book called Chernobyl,
which is strongly recommendanyone reading it. It just how
the incompetence of humans Sure.Could really create catastrophic
Yeah.
And it really was theincompetence of humans. It was
not like a system designfailure. It was just one level
(10:51):
of it. And also yeah. Anyway, wewe go into the Chernobyl
disaster.
Read the book. Fascinating. So,yeah, fungi have had a
inordinate length of time todevelop compounds. Are
fundamentally biochemicalfactories. The majority of a
mushroom is not actually thefruiting body of the mushroom
(11:12):
that we see, that's just thereproductive orgasm, a bit like
an apple on a tree.
So the tree is made up of theroots, mycorrhizal fungi, and
the trunk and the branches, andthe apple is just the fruit, the
reproductive organ, and that'sfundamentally what we see in
terms of the mushroom. But themycelium, which is like the tree
(11:32):
and the roots combined, is onecell wall thick, so anything can
pass into the body of the fungi.And from about, let's say, one
point five billion years to sortof nine hundred million years,
all that existed on Earth wasfungi, bacteria, viruses and
other fungi, and all of thesecould pass into the body of the
mushrooms, and so the mushroomshad to launch a biochemical
(11:54):
reaction against these viruses,bacteria, fungi. And that is the
reason why fungi as opposed toplants have so many more
compounds. So each of the fungiwe grow probably has between two
fifty and maybe over 300compounds of interest.
(12:15):
Even plants that are viewed assort of powerhouses like
curcumin or turmeric, we'relooking at around 200, and the
compounds are actually much,much more simple in terms of
molecular structure. The reasonwhy that's relevant for us as
humans is that a lot of thecompounds that these mushrooms
have created in reaction toother viruses or bacteria
(12:37):
getting into the into their bodyis that they are very similar
from a molecular structureperspective to compounds that
our body already makes. So acouple of an easy example to
look at is in ration,gallauderic acids are very
similar to pretty much allhormonal steroids that the body
(12:59):
makes and also cholesterol. Sothey all have they're
triterpenes that have 30 carbonatoms, and the only sort of
difference is off the
Speaker 1 (13:08):
So explain the triterpene for people.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So the triterpene is the type of compound which is,
from a molecular structureperspective, has 30 carbon
atoms, and off carbon atomnumber three, it either spikes
into a hydroxyl or carbonyl, anddepending on whether or not it's
testosterone, oestrogen,cholesterol, they all have this
(13:31):
same shape, and so the receptorsin the human body recognise that
shape. So when you have thesecompounds called gallidaric
acids in Reishi that are thesame shape, they attach on to
the same hormone receptors inthe body because the body
recognises them. And so thereare quite a few examples of this
in with compounds that mushroomsmake. So for example, all
(13:55):
mushrooms make type ofpolysaccharide called a beta
glucan, and that is a thirteensixteen molecular structures of
the third and sixth carbon atomthat spikes. That is recognised
by human immune receptor cells,so there are nine different
pharmaceutical adjuncttreatments for cancer.
There are isolates of fungalbeta glucans, and again, that's
(14:16):
because of the shape of thesebeta glucans. And there are lots
of lots of examples of compoundsfrom mushrooms being used in in
the sort of pharmaceuticalspace, and so the science is not
new. We know that the body canmake use of these compounds, and
the reason why there are so manymore of these compounds in fungi
that the body recognizes asopposed to in plants is one
(14:39):
because of where the animalkingdom comes after the fungal
kingdom. And so a lot of thestructures were in essence
developed by fungi and thenadopted later from the
evolutionary perspective byanimals. Whereas with plants,
they don't sit above the animalkingdom.
(15:00):
They sit to the side. And sothat's fundamentally the reason
why mushrooms are so relevantfrom a human health perspective
and also from from a folkloricangels or medicine perspective.
I remember reading Culpepper andtalking about the plague and
London tonic number two. Theycalled it a think they called it
(15:22):
a conch fungus and also whateverthat. But, anyway, 30% of London
tonic number two was made fromsome sort of conch fungus, which
we think potentially may havebeen a garacon.
But, anyway, certainly, theknowledge of fungi being
relevant from a healthperspective goes back a long
(15:43):
time, both in Europe andobviously in Asia. In Europe,
there's been, probably becauseof the birth of Christianity, a
bit of a stop in the sort ofriver of knowledge. There was a
big gap where fungi didn't seemto be used particularly much. We
certainly know, obviously, inthe fifteenth, sixteenth century
it was, but there is the Druidsobviously use them. We know
(16:03):
about some of the through someof the writing.
I think it was one of the Romanhistorians talking, obviously,
about the druids and how the thethe arrows wouldn't hit them,
and they took varioushallucinogenic mushrooms
beforehand. And I think that wasprobably we were fundamentally
forest runners to a degree backthen, and so the knowledge of
(16:25):
the forest would have been veryprevalent. And I think probably
post, we lost a lot of ourforests, especially when we're
cutting them down full of allthe wooden boats, the Armada,
that sort of stuff. Yeah. But Ithink the lack of ancient forest
in The UK is probably that goeshand in hand with the lack of
sort of decrease in knowledge ofwhat was available from a
(16:49):
medicine perspective.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah. I know when I was wandering Southeast Asia and
Laos and Burma and places likeor Myanmar as it's known now,
that when I would be in go tovillages or gather there'll be a
gathering of a market really onthe edge of the forest. There
were always the healers, forwant of a better word, on the
ground, and half of themedicines were larger roots and
(17:14):
twigs and leaves and things, buthalf of it was were just massive
mushrooms.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So they're part of it. But then I think their
tradition was influenced byChinese medicine.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah. And I think there's a huge also in fungi
love, humility, tropical jungle.There's a lot of fungi.
Interestingly, we were fortunateenough to be invited over to
Barbados in November to do thefirst fungal survey of Barbados
since, I think, it was over1940, really. And what was
(17:46):
amazing being over there wasthat because fungi predate
Pangaea, and so there were therewas one landmass fundamentally
about 350,000,000 years ago.
Fungi have already been aroundby at least a billion years by
this stage. So when Pangaeastarted to break away to form
(18:08):
the sort of continents and thelandmasses that we know now,
fungi had been colonized, thatland mass, and so there's
enormous similarities betweenfungus all over the world. They
look different, but they're allfrom the same family that's it's
quite interesting. Everyonethinks that you'd find
extraordinarily different fungiin Barbados. Mean, you do find
(18:29):
morphologically fungi that lookdifferent, but they're all still
identifiable when so we have wefound some ones that people
probably recognize are thesesort of pink flamingo
chanterelles growing off coraland a very small amount of soil,
but obviously it formed somesort of mycorrhizal relationship
(18:50):
with some of the some of thetrees there.
But again, actually, Barbados,like The UK to a certain degree,
Barbados even worse have beencompletely clear felled. So
although we're in this junglewith huge trees above us,
actually going back a hundredand forty, hundred and fifty
years, literally the entireisland have been clear felled.
(19:10):
Wow. So a lot of the there's noreal ancient forest there
anymore. And because uniquely inthe Caribbean Islands, it's
actually a coral Island.
And so even when you're, like,at the highest points, you dig
down two or three inches,there's little coral underneath
your fingertips. And so, yeah, Ithink, you know, the history of
(19:30):
the world is one of evolution orcreation and destruction. And
what's quite interesting is ifyou look through the fungal
records at we're living throughone of the great extinction
events currently, but if youlook at the extinction event,
for example, between the Permianand the Triassic, immediately, a
couple two or three millionyears after that, there is huge
(19:53):
spore loads in the fungal in theRoss fossil record. There was an
explosion of fungi with adominant life force again or,
like, a dominant kingdom of lifeon Earth. And so I think fungi
are nature's great recyclers,and another example is the only
reason we have the fossil fuelsthat we have now, those were the
trees and plants that were notinfested with fungi and
(20:15):
recycled.
If you wanna sleep easily atnight, there will always be
fungi. I remember reading aboutsome Japanese ice cores that
have been drilled in Antarctica.It went back to twenty million
years ago, and they found somefungal spores, they fruited,
basically. Wow. What's alsointeresting is that they can
deal with the spores can dealwith the radiation in space and
so there is I'll probably getthis wrong, but there's a theory
(20:39):
called I think it's called transspasmodia, which is this idea
that because fungal spores candeal with the radiation in
space, it's plausible thatfungal spores came here on a
meteorite Yeah.
And gave birth to life on Earth.I think a huge number of
evolutionary biologists believeit, but it is definitely
(21:01):
plausible.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
I mean, it's quite interesting one that because I
was while you were talking, Iwas just thinking, oh, would
would because people are outthere trying to find life in
other planets. Would one of thekey indicators of life other
than water be fungi?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I don't think anyone's looking for it because
they're looking for theBacteria. Yeah. They're looking
for the sort of fundamentalbuilding rocks to a hydrogen
car. But And also how you wouldyeah. I'm not sure how you would
get a bit of equipment over onMars that could do well, I'm
sure you probably could thatcould do microscopic.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm absolutelyprobably could. If you could
find fungi, then you have foundcomplicated life on Earth.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Life anywhere.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
What is really interesting actually is recently
some some I think there wereDanish ecologists put on weather
balloons up into thestratosphere. It was quite
simple tech used for mycology,and they had these matchsticks
or a sort of spinning thing thatthey put Vaseline on, and they
chucked them up under weatherballoons, like, high up in the
stratosphere. And so the sporeswould stick on the the Vaseline
(22:06):
and then blew the balloon up andit falls back down. And there
are so many mushroom spores thathigh up and so loads of them
were like potential. A lot offungi can be potentially
invasive to either crops orhumours or whatever it may be
and so this idea that fungi arealready travelling all across
(22:29):
the world.
I know, like, it's quite oftensaid, if you had a column, a
foot wide column above your headgoing to the stratosphere,
there's around about6,000,000,000 fungal spores
above your head. You'rebreathing in fungal spores every
breath you take. They are wecan't see them, but they are, I
wouldn't say, the mostimportant, but certainly the
(22:49):
oldest aspect to intelligentlife on Earth.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
So how much of the human body is fungi?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Everyone wants to bring it back to the individual.
Are, In your sort of gut biota,there will be millions of
different types of fungi kickingoff down there. Yeah. Certainly
in terms of not millions,there'll be tens of thousands.
We think that at the momentwe've identified about 150,000
types of fungi, and currentestimates are that there's
(23:21):
between two to 3,000,000.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Our level of fungi and the role they play is
infinitesimally small. Sure.Obviously, there have been some
beautiful books written,obviously you've read Life of
Trees where they do theradioisotopes down and then get
transferred.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
And there's that Australian filmmaker with his
wife that do that beautiful filmon fungi, world of fungi,
something
Speaker 2 (23:46):
like that. I don't Extraordinary photography. Oh,
it's a macro photography. Yeah.So we're yeah.
That's amazing. I've met therewas one on on Netflix done by a
guy called Louis Schwartzbergercalled Fantastic Fungi. Oh yes.
It had Paul Stammocks in it.Yeah.
And Louis does a lot of thatmacro photography. Actually
Louis hopefully is gonna startfunding Richard who does a lot
(24:09):
of our macro photography here todo some yeah, so we're lucky
again that we've got friends whodo a lot of that sort of stuff
Yeah. Because of Bristol havingthe natural a lot of the natural
history stuff going on. Richardhas made some beautiful videos
of our fungi growing. And, yeah,hopefully, we'll be able to do
more of that because they areunbelievably beautiful Totally.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Things. Yeah. They're an expression that I think
captivates once someone seesthem. They're caught, aren't
they? Yeah.
By the just by their by the notonly the beauty, but the
curiosity. There's a it's anunknown. They're a mystery still
so that it kind of peaks And
Speaker 2 (24:50):
they are alien.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That. And they are alien.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
They are alien. They fundamentally are. Mushrooms are
interesting. They're made ofchitin, which is the same stuff
as, like, crustacean shells orexcess cousins of insects, and
that's one of the reasons it'svery difficult for the human
body to break down unless youhave a high level of the enzyme
chitinase in your belly. Just byeating mushrooms, most of them
most of the sort of compoundsyou're likely to just shit out.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
This is something that I'd like to move into. So
let's talk now about there'sloads of mushrooms we could talk
about, but I think the two thatstand initially for me are
lion's mane, cordyceps, and thenSerbang B. Reishi. Let's start
with lion's mane. Like I say, itseems really popular to people
(25:33):
who don't know anything aboutthis world.
Why lion's mane? Why wouldsomeone want to take a tincture
of lion's mane? Oh, okay. Andlet's do you go one step. Two
two questions in one.
Why tinctures when yours aretriple extracted versus dried
powder?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yeah. Okay. If we start with Lion's Man, I think,
personally, I believe Lion's Manhas almost got its own PR
department behind it because Ithink the reason for that is in
our society where our society isat the moment, in the sort of
acute individualisation that'staken place, this sort of, yeah,
(26:15):
this sort of atomisation asHallbeck would call it, the
atomisation of the individual.We all think the problem's in
our head, and if we could justsort our head out, everything
would be fine. And so I thinkthis mushroom is very much
indicative of the sort ofgeneral perversion of the
(26:35):
individual as god, which isalmost what's happened.
And so the individual with thesort of breakdown in the
community and familial sort ofstructures, of the mind quite
often gets, as Jung would,separated from the the archetype
and the ego and the archetype.And so I think fundamentally
lion's mane is a mushroom formodernity
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Because it tells you, or at least this is what people
want you to believe, that youcan sort your focus, clarity and
mind out, and everyone believesthat's the recipe to a healthy
existence and a virtuous lifenow. If they could just have
Speaker 3 (27:13):
a clearer mind, everything would be fine.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Is that almost out of the productivity community?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. A 100%. Yeah.
Yeah. That's exactly what it is.Fire hacking. Hacking. But also
the desire to be perpetuallyproductive.
Yeah. And love working.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
So am a man.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
I love gardening. I like being busy, so I don't
think there's anythinginherently wrong with being busy
and doing things that, you know,you enjoy. But just being I
think there is it's gone a bitextreme in certain sort of
corporate environments. Sointeresting. This was the reason
why we funded the PhD initially.
So the the I think the title ofthe broad sort of three year
(27:51):
engagement is exploring theneuroregenerative and
neuroprotective compounds,medicinal mushrooms, with
obviously lion's mane beingprobably the reason why the Tim,
the professor of neuroscience,was keen on getting me to pay
him to hire someone. Lion'smane, there are a couple of
things that are genuinelyinteresting with lion's mane. So
(28:11):
lion's mane in traditional usageand there is some evidence of it
being used to aid in meditationin the sort of fifteenth
century, but more often than notin terms of a TCM perspective.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
And that's traditional Chinese medicine?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah. It was given for upper digestive tract
issues, so like acid reflux. Andand what is interesting,
actually lesser reliance onbased on the research that we've
done, but there is obviously anacknowledgement now of the key
role between the sort of gut andthe brain. And so there has
actually been a compoundisolated from lion's bone, which
(28:48):
is now used as an adjuncttreatment for oesophageal
cancer. And interestingly,oesophageal cancer is often
caused by acid in the stomachbreaking down the lining of the
bottom of the esophagus.
So that was a big part of Lion'sWay in terms of its actual
traditional usage. Now whatwe're exploring as part of this
(29:09):
PhD is what compounds, if any.Firstly, we're exploring what
does our tincture do, whateffect does it have from on the
specific neuronal cell lines andcertain stem cell lines as well
from a neurodegenerativeperspective. And so we're one of
the things we're doing is we'retreating this neuronal cell line
(29:31):
with trans fatty acids torestrict the growth of them, and
then we're putting a wash of ourlots of different ones of our
tinctures, but a wash of ourtinctures to see if that does
encourage new growth. And it itdoes interestingly on a couple
of them, but not as much as oneof the other ones that no one
actually takes for neuronalgrowth, which is quite
interesting.
And so there are certaincompounds that have a very low
(29:54):
molecular weight callederinacines and herosimones and
heronacines that are tinycompounds that seem to be able
to cross the blood brain barrierand potentially create the
precursor to an enzyme, which isthe first step in a two step
process of developing somethingcalled NGF nerve growth factor.
(30:15):
So it's a lot more complicatedthan and in the research we've
been doing, the one thing that Ithat lion's mane does seem to
have a meaningful quantity of isa compound called ergothionein.
Ergothionein used to be isbrutally important for bodily
(30:37):
function. We have ergothioneinreceptors in every organ of our
body. Before we eat, they getfired up in anticipation of
ergothionein being delivered andbeing able to be shifted through
the body.
Unfortunately, we used to get itmainly through the soil.
Unfortunately, due to how wefarm, the quantity of ergophyll
(31:00):
in in the soil in much the sameway as invertebrate numbers,
worm numbers Yeah. Has literallycollapsed. Wow. And so it's
another reason to probably, ifyou can afford it, either buy
local or buy organic becausethere is more ergophylline in
the side of organic, and noone's really testing for it.
(31:22):
But but anyway, so we're notreally getting it in our diet.
You can get some from chickenliver, a small amount. There's a
tiny amount in red beans aswell, but the only other source
is mushrooms. They have aroundabout a thousand percent more
ergothione
Speaker 1 (31:38):
in there. And this is all the kind of edible strains
Speaker 2 (31:40):
All mushrooms. Mushrooms to a certain degree.
Some of them have more, and soergothione, interesting, the
ones that have the most are thepleuritis, the oyster family.
Also, my taqui has a higheramount, but also lion's mane has
about three quarters of what theClaritus family have. And so I
think possibly the reasons we'reseeing the outcomes for people
(32:02):
or the if it's not just theplacebo, if people because we
sell a lot of lion's mane.
If you add up all the othermushrooms, they equate to about
the same amount as we sell alion's vein. And so the effects
people are reporting to us, ifit's not the placebo, and I
think it's probably not theseinfantism, these small compounds
(32:26):
over very low molecular weight,if I was to guess, I think it's
probably ergothialine, andespecially we know in all
degenerative diseases and withage as well, ergothionein
plummets in the body anyway.People have not been getting
anything like the same level ofergothionein they've been
accustomed to for millennia. Andso if I was to guess, and every
(32:51):
time I write a guess, I'm wrong.Yeah.
So bear in mind I'm wrong. Yeah.But I would say ergothione in
lion's vein is probably one ofthe reasons why people are
reporting the changes that theyare. What I will say What
Speaker 1 (33:04):
are those reports? What are the changes?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
The people find that they are able to concentrate
more Okay. Focus, have lessissues from a sort of memory
perspective. So the one elementthat I haven't discussed with
lion lion's mane, this is one ofthe reasons why people make the
jump into it being potentiallybeneficial from a neuron
(33:29):
perspective and a couple of thestudies that have been done. So
lion's mane definitely, from alot of studies that have been
done, seems to help speed up thereparation of the myelin sheath.
So the myelin sheath is the theoutside of all your nerves made
up of this myelin sheath.
And so there's lots of studieslooking at the effect that
(33:51):
lion's marine has on how quicklythe myelin sheath repairs
itself. I think I'm comfortablesaying it does appear to repair
the myelin sheath quicker thanfor people who aren't.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
And the myelin sheath does what?
Speaker 2 (34:04):
It protects all your nerves throughout your body.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
So it's not just brain?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
No. It's not brain at all. No. But but so I'm
comfortable with that. We've hadlots of people who've had
injuries, sports people forexample, who have seen
remarkable improvements in arelatively short span of And the
the interesting thing is withnerve issues, you tend to find
that the nerves improve over thefirst eighteen months.
(34:30):
And then if you haven't seen anyimprovement, you won't see much
improvement beyond eighteenmonths. And so for a few of the
people that have taken ourlion's vein products that have
had what they thought deadnerves or these people that have
had this issue for years andthen suddenly they take the
lion's vein, their nerves andtheir triceps start working. And
(34:52):
so I'm comfortable possiblybelieving that it might be the
lion's vein that's doing that.They certainly the individuals
concerned certainly believe itis. But the other element with
lion's vein that's outside ofthe sort of myelin sheath
perspective is that and thisisn't talked about very much, is
that there's definitely apercentage of people that have a
(35:15):
bad reaction to it, like agenuinely bad reaction.
And so I'd say probably of saythere's around twenty thousand
people that have taken ourlines, Wayne. I would say four
people have had a bad reaction.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Means that their heart rate rockets
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And then plummets. Oh, wow. And it's over a sort of
twenty four hour period. And forsome people, they can feel very
anxious. And and this isn't justour product.
I've heard this from so manypeople. Sure. Actually, I was
speaking to a woman at thisconference we were at in London
at the weekend. She was a longdistance swimmer. She swims 35
kilometers in the ocean for fun.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah. Exactly. Takes all sorts. Yeah. That is a
marathon swimming.
So, yeah, that's like the theswimming the channel and
swimming back just for fun.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
But she told me that she'd had this reaction with
Lions' Man, and I was like, itwon't take you out of Lions'
Man, take you to someone else's.And I was like, that is
definitely the Lions' Man. We'vehad two or three people
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Say exactly the same. Actually one guy had, you know,
had all this sort of whatever itis, like, tracking stuff for his
heart rate and his sleep, it washe sent it over. My god. Wow.
Yeah.
10 high. And so I think as Tim,the neuroscientist, the
professor of neuroscience, wouldsay, it's positive in a sense,
Tom, because it's provingbiological activity. This is one
(36:40):
of the this is one of the thesort of things that makes us
more comfortable in terms ofbelieving that the mushrooms are
having biological effects onpeople because, for example,
with Reishi, which intraditional Chinese medicine is
given for high blood pressure,it opens up the capillary. So it
(37:02):
actually acts in the same way asa couple of blood pressure meds
anyway. It opens up thecapillaries, allows the body to
hold more oxygen, which in turnslows the heart rate down.
But when people are on, forexample, antiplatelet medication
where they're dropping thequantity of large oxygen
carrying hemoglobin cells, theystart feeling awful because
(37:22):
there simply isn't enoughoxygen. And so again, that's
indicative that something isactually going on. But
ironically enough, where becauseof the fact that fungi or
mushrooms are not viewed ashaving any medicinal value,
you're not able to put on anywarnings because they have no
value with this, so how can theyhave any?
Speaker 1 (37:44):
And that's EU or is that UK?
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Everything's fundamentally EU. Okay. So,
yeah, I think with Lion's Vein,we're hoping to understand more.
So through Payam, we've justordered around another 12
different standards fordifferent compounds.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Payam is?
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Is our Turkish, not Turkish, God forbid. Okay.
Persian. Persian.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah. The bear.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Teddy. Yeah. Beautiful man. Very cuddly. And,
yeah, so hopefully in aboutthree or four weeks, we should
start getting data sets backfrom another 10 different
compounds in our lion's way, andI'm feeling about three or four
months, you'll be able to seeexactly how many compounds are
in each one of our products.
(38:26):
To touch on the tincture side asopposed to powders, in an ideal
world, either would be grape.Okay. Interestingly, in order to
make a powder, you first have todo an extraction, so you first
have to make a tincture anyway.The reality is, the vast
majority of products availableglobally emanate from Asia,
(38:51):
India, mainly China, the vastmajority of China or Vietnam,
and latterly India to a certaindegree, which has been
interesting because obviously inthe Ayurveda, mushrooms are not
good. So it's quite interestingYeah.
That that there has been thissort of explosion in mushroom
growing in India, whereas indirect contradiction to their
sort of cultural Sure. Mental.But it's nice to see that even
(39:14):
ancient traditions can take onor can adapt, whereas certain
religions were slightly moretolerant to to the march of
march of knowledge. But yeah. Soin terms of tinctures versus
powders, fundamentally, one ofit one one element of it is that
you can obviously shift a lotmore product if it's not held in
(39:38):
water and alcohol and so from anefficiency perspective.
So in order to make extractpowder, what you do is you
extract into liquid, be it wateror ethanol like we do. I mean,
we use ultrasolics as well tobasically, they send sound waves
into the kiting cell walls,fracture them, and allow a lot
(39:58):
more compounds to be pulled outinto solution. But the process
for making an extract powder isextract into your liquid, be it
ethanol or water, then you putit through a spray drying tower
between either two seventy or370 degrees Celsius. That blasts
all evaporates off all the theliquid. And then you have a
(40:19):
carrier, a sort of powder that'scirculating in that tower, and
well over 95% of the time, thatwill be multidextrin because you
don't have to put on youringredients list maltodextrin
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
And it's water soluble. Wow. So you can claim
pure, a 100%
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Bloody mushroom
Speaker 2 (40:38):
extract powder, but it's the vast majority of it's
maltodextrin. It's why quiteoften when you taste Yeah. These
mushroom powders, they'reslightly sweet.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Sweet. Sure.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
So it's a multidaction. Actually,
multidaction can have a bit ofan issue for people with
people's guts. And so numberone, you can create a product
that is much more shippable.Sure. Two, theoretically, you
can create a stronger product aswell.
Unfortunately, the reality isthere's a great opportunity for
(41:11):
creating a large volume ofproduct at a very low price with
not a lot in it. Yeah. And,also, it's water soluble, you
can make it and put it intodrinks. You can
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah. So my friend who goes under eBay and buys
organic
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be mainly multidosteron.
Yeah.
Yep. Which is a shame.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
It is a shame.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
It's also the one nice thing with
Speaker 1 (41:33):
That people are now being made aware Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Through this. Yeah. But don't get me wrong. There
are some really good productsthat I actually have had.
There's some really good ones,and some of the ones we've
tested have been amazing.
Unfortunately, some of the oneswe've tested have literally
nothing in them. Yeah. But alsothe same with tinctures, but
it's the one thing withtinctures is it's a lot easier.
You can trust your senses. Yeah.
If they look clear and pale andthey taste of very little,
(42:01):
that's because there's nothingin them. If they look thick and
dirty and taste of mushroomsYeah. You can be confident that
there's something in them. Andso it's much it's much easier.
It is easy with tinctures.
You can it's very easy tocompare our product to another
company's product. Just look atit Yeah. Taste it, smell it, and
that's there's no hiding withtinctures, although lots of
(42:22):
brands do try and hide behindall sorts of other things. And,
yeah, we have obviously theother thing that's great having
our ability to have the researchon one side and the testing on
the other side now is that wecan obviously test lots of other
companies' products Sure. Whichis always what's the best way to
describe it?
(42:43):
Always, for us at least, alwaysencouraging Yeah. But also
slightly depressing Sure.Because we are limited by the
amount of mushrooms we grow tothe amount of product we can
sell, but obviously no one ischecking anything. So I could
write as a lot of companies doanything on the packaging, and I
(43:05):
could just make a much weakerproduct. Wow.
And I could suddenly have abusiness that is worth or
potentially could sell a lotmore. I have a lot more product
off the same amount ofmushrooms, which lots of
companies do. Yeah. Lots andlots. The smaller, yeah, the
smaller guy is probably less.
One of the main interestingly,with the research we've done,
one of the main differencesbetween our extraction process
(43:29):
and other companies' extractionprocess is actually the amount
of solvent we extract into.Although I didn't actually take
you into the well, I'll take youin before you leave, but the
tincture kitchen. So we'llextract one kilo of dried
mushroom into in the twoprocesses we do on the water
side, about 45 liters on theslow cook with the high high
(43:51):
hydrasonic and then 20 liters onthe high pressure ones. We'll
have about 65 liters of water,and then we'll evaporate that
down under vacuum to about 3.4liters. So there's a lot of
energy Sure.
And a lot of time. And the therelevance for that is that water
only has a carrying capacity, asolubility level, so you need to
(44:14):
use a lot of it's like making astock, basically, but you need
to keep it under 70 degrees toin order to not denature a lot
of the compound. And so,unfortunately, this is a lot of
companies obviously just don'tdo that. They extract into the
same amount of solvent they wantat the end of trees. You just
don't have enough in there orthey boil stuff when they need
(44:34):
to evaporate it down, which justsmashes loads of the compounds.
I think fundamentally, if you'relooking to buy a decent product,
Amazon is probably not yourfriend. Sure. Probably not.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
The word organic is questionable.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Organic nowadays. What I find so frustrating with
it is people no one gets pulledup on anything anymore. Yeah.
The amount yeah. There's acompany that I think is a we all
take it as a bit of acompliment.
Basically, they call themselvesa farm. That's another UK
company. They don't farmanything. They're based in a
flat in Derbyshire. And yet tolook at everyone that buys those
(45:10):
stuff, thinks they've got afarm.
They've they put this extractratio on the on the surface
appears to be stronger thanours. What they're doing is
buying a maltodextrin and justputting it in water and putting
some ethanol in there.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
That's all they're doing. And, obviously, theirs is
cheaper, and it looks like a farmore just utter twaddle. But 30%
of the
Speaker 2 (45:26):
people that take that pollock will probably experience
a positive Proceed. Yeah.Exactly. Right. Yeah.
And so even even though there'sliterally nothing in it. And
then there's other companies weknow, like, European companies
that look, the companies that weused to venerate and try and
mimic. Oh my god, they're doingsuch a good job. It's so pure,
so clean. But then when you testthem solo, like solo, and then
(45:49):
you think if I had if I wascomfortable putting a product
out there, which was that weak,suddenly overnight I could shift
five times more product.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah. You're not the only one in our community of
plant and fungi people that hassaid this. There's other very
science focused friends andcolleagues who have done their
own tests on other people'sstuff and
Speaker 2 (46:15):
it's It's depressing It
Speaker 1 (46:16):
is really depressing because it is that predatory,
predating on the naivety of theconsumer because everyone's
hearing about medicinalmushrooms and obviously it's a
jungle and in jungle there arepredators.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
They're very clever, some of these ones, though,
because what they do is theyextol the virtues of the
transparent supply chain andgive you, like, these data sets,
and it's just bollocks. BecauseI mean, a part of it is because
there aren't enough companiesactually saying what's in their
product from a compoundperspective Yeah. Because there
(46:57):
aren't any labs that you can goto. There's a lab that do a lot
of testing for various things inin The UK called Eurofins, and
lots of people get heavy metalstested by them, and they don't
actually do microbiology,Popular is the big sort of brand
for certificate of analysis fora lot of supplement type things.
Yeah.
And so when we went to them afew years ago asking if they
(47:20):
could test for some of thesefungal compounds, they were
quoting us 6,000 to £8,000 justto set up the methodology before
they could do the tests, And sothere are and there aren't
really any labs apart from r onethat are doing this in The UK
because it is expensive to setup methodologies. If you've got
if you wanna test for, say, 40different compounds, and that's
how they give you a good dealand just charge you £5,000,
(47:43):
That's £5,000 times 40. That'swhatever that is 200,000. Yeah.
So it's a lot of money Yeah.
To get, like, a decent libraryof things set up. So we're very
fortunate to have Payam, who'sworking unbelievably hard for
next to no money and is verystressed. But, hopefully, we've
introduced two other companiesin The UK to him. So, actually,
(48:06):
I'm going down with MartinPowell. Martin Powell is
initially, I think, in traininga microbiologist, but he is a
traditional Chinese herbalistfundamentally.
He went to I think he went touniversity in China. He speaks
Mandarin fluently. Yeah. Heactually brought over a couple
of people to the farm a coupleof weeks ago. He's written the
books on medicinal mushrooms andthe compounds.
(48:29):
He's like the sort ofgrandfather of Yeah. Medicinal
mushrooms in The UK, and he'sjust an entirely decent human
being. If the world is made upof people like Martin, we would
be we would be all the richerfor it. So Martin has been doing
what we do for decades. Yeah.
A bit like sort of MatthewRooney was the man doing what we
(48:49):
were doing before we eventhought about doing it. Yeah.
You know, Martin has yeah.Martin's level of knowledge, and
he goes to China every year. Heknows everyone out there.
He knows everyone, you know, inThe US who's set up martial
related businesses over the lastthirty years. He's an absolute
an absolute he's a diamondgeezer, basically. Anyway, so
we're going down together to seeto I'm gonna introduce him to
(49:13):
Pyam, and he's gonna start usingPyam to test his product over
here. And I think that's thething. There will be other
companies now that it'savailable that are gonna be
actually give a shit aboutwhat's in their products, but
there's gonna be a lot that donot want to know.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
So I think it'll probably be easier for me
putting about twelve months timebecause the companies that
people are gonna startaccounting compounds and putting
them on there, it won't be verymany. Yeah. I think the other
issue is you'll have withcertain ones of the most of it,
almost everyone's importing fromChina, and some of the issues
you have with the Chinese and Iused to live in China. I've got
nothing against Chinese. I'vehad brilliant times living
(49:50):
there, but they they can beslightly unscrupulous when it
comes to opportunities to makemoney in the same way that
there's a lot of Europeancountry companies in my space
that are quite unscrupulous whenit comes to selling a product
that doesn't have a lot in it inorder to make money.
And what sometimes happens isthey'll do analysis on a batch,
and then everything they sellfor the next twelve months,
(50:11):
that'll be the bit of paper thatgoes with it, but it's got no
relationship to what they'reactually selling you. And so
there was an interesting studydone in 2017 where in The US,
they bought, I think it was 23Reishi products, both Amazon
and, like, whole food shops. Andof the 23 they tested, so they
(50:33):
did like a DNA profile. Only 17of them didn't have any Reishi
in them whatsoever. And sothat's probably around who knows
what it's like now.
Some of the big brands in The UKdon't do any testing, and so
these are brands that you cansee in anywhere, boots. These
guys are literally just usingthe certificate of analysis, and
(50:53):
that certificate of analysis,all it says is heavy metals.
Yeah. And actually what really,what you really need to test for
on product coming out of Chinais pesticides and no one's
testing for that. Yeah.
So it's, we're in this sort ofslightly odd situation. And when
you're doing an extraction andthen concentrating stuff down so
much, the last thing you wannabe doing is using a product that
(51:16):
has Sure. Potentially like theanyway, so we have tested a few
Chinese mushrooms for compounds,in particular, reishi's. What is
interesting is when you starttesting stuff, the picture does
not become clearer.
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
And the trouble with science is you can't argue with
it. Sure. Yeah. And I thinkthat's the same bit indicative
(51:53):
exactly of what's going on withthe sort of bigger picture with
climate, the financial systems.If you look at a systemic
perspective, there are so manyknowns that are not acknowledged
Yeah.
And behaviors that should followfor that acknowledgment. And so
on a smaller scale, can see itin the space that I'm in from a
(52:14):
supplement perspective where,you know, I think that's when
you're in a society which is notacknowledging these preeminent,
these like
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Scientific reality.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Yeah. But these like actual fundamental threats to
our very existence. You know,I'm always reminded that it took
the first city on Earth that hadsupply chains sufficient enough
to support a million people asrope, And then it was fifteen
hundred years later, the nextcity on Earth had enough of a
(52:51):
stable empire and supply chainsto be able to do that, and that
was London. And the idea that weare going to be able to continue
to supply the amount of citiesthat are now well in excess of a
million people given what'shappening climactically. And the
trouble is what happensclimactically, also massively
(53:13):
influences politics.
Yeah. And the reason we'reseeing this sort of rise in
tribalism across the board andprobably this return to
hereditary religions is becausewhen people are fearful, they
return they return to whatever'sfamiliar. Sure. And, you know,
what from a fungi perspective,they're sitting pretty. I know.
(53:34):
Even the last few extensionevents, it was boom time
Speaker 1 (53:36):
for them afterwards.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
There's lots of recycling that Leeds doing.
Guess all the fungi's was rightthere. In fun. It's happening
again, guys. I think we couldhave free reign.
Give it a century or two. Thinkit's gonna
Speaker 2 (53:48):
be bone house again. Yeah. So all is not lost if
you're a fungi.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
And we will be recycled. Yeah. Returned to
time. Totally. Tom, it's beenfascinating.
I haven't even asked, I camewith a load of questions which
is Rift, which is actually howthe podcast is meant to be. Like
you say, it's such anextraordinary world. We're
barely really it seems, gettinga handle on it. We have some
(54:15):
kind of handle. Yeah, a littlebit.
A lot of unknowns.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Yeah, a lot of unknowns. I think humans benefit
from having a closerrelationship with fungi.
Fundamentally, thing I alwayssay is just eat more mushrooms.
Yeah. There's so much evidence.
There have been two long termstudies, one done in Latvia and
one done in Japan, andfundamentally the groups
actually in Japan it was allmen, about 30,000 men that they
(54:40):
followed over nearly fortyyears, And the incidence of
colon cancer, prostate cancer,and pancreatic cancer was all
about over thirty percent lowerin the groups of men that ate
mushrooms five times a week.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Unless even button mushrooms and things like that.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
Any mushrooms. Yeah. Any mushrooms. Just there are
there are just eat moremushrooms. Fundamentally, if
you're interested in your healthand you're interested in what
benefit mushrooms can bring, ifyou can eat mushrooms three or
four times a week regularly thatis going to have almost the best
outcome you can imagine from anydietary change.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
Thank you again and people can find you at?
Speaker 2 (55:22):
Bristolfungarium.com or on Instagram
bristolfungarium.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
Thank you.
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