Medicinal Mushrooms

This week we’re talking all about mushrooms - not cremini, not shiitake, not psychedelics but medicinal mushrooms. You may have seen mushrooms reishi, lion's mane or cordyceps added into coffee, hot chocolate or in the supplement aisle. Are these mushrooms really as powerful for the immune system, brain health and longevity as they say? Or is this just another scheme?

Listen to the girls as they dive into the research behind the roots of this latest trend in the wellness industry.

Link to the mentioned real mushrooms guide: https://www.realmushrooms.com/7-medicinal-mushroom-benefits-for-health/

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Transcript

Emily: 0:00

Welcome to wellness. Miss the podcast where we take a hard look at the nutrition and wellness industry through a no bullshit lens. My name is, and I'm an anti-intuitive eating ed diet and yoga.

Vanessa: 0:13

And my name's Vanessa. I am also a registered dietician and I specialize in hormone. Emily. And I met back in college when we were studying to be dieticians and we basically never left each other's side. Since the moment we met and post grad, we haven't really left each other's side either we live across the country from each other, but that hasn't stopped us from being business partners and talking almost every minute of every day.

Emily: 0:40

Let's get into this week's episode. Welcome to this week's episode of There's so, what's so much noise in the background on yours? I can hear you like scratching, kinda What's going

Vanessa: 1:04

Craig is retailing the bathroom. I apologize listeners like sound quality on this one from my end, my, and now my dog's shaking.

Emily: 1:14

Oh my god.

Vanessa: 1:14

Some quality on this one just might not be like the best, but we're gonna work through it and I think it's gonna be okay. And just like, enjoy the sounds of my daily living. Maybe it'll kind of be like a smr a little bit

Emily: 1:29

It

Vanessa: 1:30

like I feel like the child scraping could be a little bit of asmr. Maybe if I just like whisper over it.

Emily: 1:39

You, your mic is honestly perfect for that. Like, we should start, we should make you do like an ASMR meditation or something for the podcast.

Vanessa: 1:45

I'll just whisper

Emily: 1:47

Oh my God, it sounds so good. It's giving me, it's giving me the feelings, like I want you to keep doing that. But we do have things to talk.

Vanessa: 1:57

you know, the sensation when like, sometimes you like whisper. Okay. People are gonna like, think I'm full blown crazy now. But you know, like sometimes when you whisper and it kinda like, it like tickles your.

Emily: 2:08

Yeah. Like your tailbone.

Vanessa: 2:10

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I feel when I'm doing that.

Emily: 2:14

Yeah. That's how I feel when you're doing it.

Vanessa: 2:16

oh yeah, but I feel like it when I'm doing it too.

Emily: 2:20

It's like some next level advanced

Vanessa: 2:23

Or like in the matrix here. but anyway, let's get into medicinal mushrooms.

Emily: 2:30

I'm really excited to talk about this because I've actually had a few clients recently ask me about this and wonder what my opinion is, and I was really happy to have an excuse to do this research.

Vanessa: 2:41

There's so many cool things we're gonna talk about with medicinal mushrooms, and they are really trendy right now. I feel like they have been for probably like the last like five-ish years, they've been really trendy and like doing mushroom coffees and things like that. And just to be clear here, we're talking about medicinal mushrooms. We're not talking about like the hallucinogen. Mushrooms like that are taking you on a trip. Separate episodes

Emily: 3:10

yeah, which I, I still wanna do that. We have to Angela back to talk about that from the somatic therapy episode. I would love to have a psychedelic episode,

Vanessa: 3:18

we're talking about mushrooms with healing properties. Not that the other ones don't have healing properties, but like just purely gentle. Very few side effects aren't going to make you hallucinate.

Emily: 3:30

A hundred percent. You do not have to fear these mushrooms. They're basically like a supplement. Like that's a lot of, that's kind of like how you could think of it if you're gonna take it in a therapeutic type of,

Vanessa: 3:42

Like I said, super trendy right now, but they've been around for a very long time. So, our ancestors used mushrooms as medicines for thousands of years, so, I think the history has it dating back to 450 before common era four 50 before common era. Wow. That's kinda hard to say for me for some reason. But a really long time ago, thousands and thousands of years. They use mushrooms for anti-inflammatories to cauterized wounds. And we're still kind of using them in that way today a little bit to, not really to cauterize womb or wounds, but as an anti-inflammatory. And some of the benefits we've seen from medicinal mushrooms are Anti-inflammatory antimicrobial. They've been shown, or some of them, there's a bunch of'em. We'll talk about the different types. But they've been shown to reduce triglycerides, be blood sugar balancing, anti-aging liver protection, hormone balancing, and libido enhancing.

Emily: 4:51

Yeah. I feel like I saw a lot of those similar things. A lot of like viral protection and also a big use in oncology, the treatment of cancer. And it's actually over 30 years, it's been approved in Japan and China as an adjunct to standard cancer treatments. and they have done all of that research.

Vanessa: 5:12

this is the first time that Emily and I actually have some of the same research.

Emily: 5:17

Oh my

Vanessa: 5:18

So I actually have that written down too. Being that it's a complimentary care to cancer treatments. And this has really good research behind it and pretty much all of them, we'll go over the different types in a minute. It's not, you know, that's not being done that I know of in the us. But there's well documented benefits, and again, I wanna stress that they are using it as complimentary care to other, like standardized cancer treatments. So they're not just having people take mushrooms, like to cure their cancer. They're doing, you know, chemo and or radiation. And then they're also doing mushrooms on top.

Emily: 5:59

Yeah. Important distinction for sure.

Vanessa: 6:02

Yes. And that's something too that, you know, with things like this in medicine, it can always, you know, sometimes we're in the US a little bit. More hesitant to try complimentary therapy. But as I was looking at a lot of this research, I was like, why don't we try that? Like, you know, it's like medicinal mushrooms have very little side effects. They seem pretty safe. They've been around for a long time. It's well documented that we've used them and it's also well documented. they're helpful. So it's kind of confusing that we don't adapt things like that.

Emily: 6:40

Yeah, and they're immune modulators so they can adjust how they're affecting the body based on how your body needs in that moment. So I think that's a pretty like cool piece of it too. And like we said, they've done the research in other countries to know that it's safe to be able to use alongside other treatments. So yeah, it's, it's definitely interesting. I think there's like a lot of confusion and honestly it's funny, like the four Sigmatic coffee brand, Vanessa, do.

Vanessa: 7:07

Hmm.

Emily: 7:08

I've never had any of their coffees before.

Vanessa: 7:12

I have.

Emily: 7:13

Okay. So I don't really know the taste and honestly I don't trust you if you say you liked it anyways, because it's probably a bitter, disgusting piece of dirt if you did. But anyways it's like, aside from that, I don't see it like constantly in the wellness universe. I feel like that four Sigmatic coffee brand really kind of like helps skyrocket mushrooms in to be part of the wellness lexicon. But other than that, we don't hear like a constant use case for them. So it's, it's interesting.

Vanessa: 7:43

Yeah, I feel like something that's gotten kind of hot recently too is like rashy hot cocoa.

Emily: 7:51

Oh yeah, totally. I had that last weekend. That's like kind of embarrassing.

Vanessa: 7:56

I have some in my cupboard and I'm probably gonna drink some tonight,

Emily: 8:00

Oh wow.

Vanessa: 8:01

And, you know, I, I'm, I'm very happy about it. But really quick, I just wanted to point out a study. And Emily, you probably came across this too, but this one, there was a bunch of studies when I was looking at the mushrooms related to oncology. And one of them was it was a review, so it was reviewing several studies and there was 8,009 patients. So that's a pretty big review. And this was patients who had surgery to remove gastric cancers. And after surgery, patients in the trials were given chemotherapy with or without psk. So PSK is what's in Turkey tail, which is a medicinal mushroom. And the results suggested that receiving chemotherapy and PSK helped patients live longer After.

Emily: 8:53

Awesome.

Vanessa: 8:54

I mean, and that's pretty like, I mean that's a lot of people, so that's pretty compelling. I always try to look cause and there are quite a few studies a lot of them are, you know, it's in like the hundreds or they're smaller scale. Again, with supplements, a lot of times we don't get like the big money studies behind them because there's. As much money to be made. So they kind of get lost in the shuffle a bit.

Emily: 9:22

Yeah, I think that's a good thing for people to just know in general too, that ultimately, like there's a lot of studies on things that have a big money source behind them, and it's not like some weird conspiracy. It's just like how capitalism is and how it affect. Our healthcare system and research. And so even though like, you know, yes, research is really important and we're always gonna be advocating for that, it's something that you, you have to think about, right? Like the cattle council, or whatever the hell it's called, what is it called? Justice, like something like that. It's like the dairy council and then something, I don't know, whatever.

Vanessa: 9:57

I thought it was like, there's beef too. There's a

Emily: 10:00

Yeah. Yeah. It's like beef paid for by the cattle people. I don't know, but it's like, yeah, no kidding. Like they're gonna wanna do that. Like, they want you to see these studies and they want to provide them, same as how like brands of probiotic products want to fund other studies because it's only gonna mean potentially positive things for them. So it's just something to keep in mind when you, you look at research like this for.

Vanessa: 10:25

Yeah. And it, there's a common theme. I'm sure most of you probably, well, maybe if you're dieticians or if you're in the health field, maybe you are scouring over you know, articles. Yeah. and if you are spending a lot of time on PubMed and you're trying to look for things like supplements or let's say you're, you know, looking at medicinal mushrooms specifically, you will find a lot of studies that say something about like, structure of this was, okay, we need more research. Like, it's always like the, we need more research on this, and I appreciate that and I think we do, but it never really happens, and in my opinion, I look at these and say there's enough research to say that they're safe and generally effective. So I don't know what's making us so damn cautious about it.

Emily: 11:21

Totally. I think a lot of, a lot of things too that are important to look at, and this is goes for a lot of the medicinal mushroom studies that we have here are that third gun in vitro, which is like in a Petri dish or a test tube, and so sometimes that translates into what happens in the body and sometimes it doesn't. Just like when we're doing studies on rats, like we can't like, Full proclamations just based on that. It's just like what we have as the best thing. And if we get a good result, then we do further research. But yeah, it's, it's confusing because why not just kind of try it and see, especially if it's something that's accessible to you and you have funds to throw around at your health, like why not? I think it's like with every single type of thing we talk about, like these are all extras and fun additives that you could do. Or if you had like a specific, you. Issue that was happening to you. Like, you know, for example, Cortis mushroom that one can be used for antioxidant effect, anti-malarial. That was like really interesting, like malaria. But that's like in mice, right? So it's a possible molecule that could be explored to be anti-malarial, but you know, it requires more research. There's also been a lot of research about cordycepin, which is the bioactive in the cordyceps mushroom and anti arthritis effects or anti osteoporosis. You know, again, a lot of these studies were done in test tubes or in mice. But it's sort of like if you're struggling with those issues, it might be worth exploring why.

Vanessa: 12:55

So Emily and I had a big conversation about this before we started recording, so it is pronounced Cordyceps. But I just can't unlearn. The way I wanna say it at this time, so I'm going to continue to mispronounce it. Do with that information what you may. So cor CETs as Emily said, so they have, you know, research behind them for some of that stuff. A lot of times you'll see that a cor CETs advertised as promoting stamina enhancing libido, energy. I was actually looking at some research today for cor ceps being taken to increase endurance and athletes, especially those that were training at Altitude. And there's some really good research on it. They even had, they had Sherpa's taking it. So it, it was, it's really, really cool. So what they think is happen happening is it's enhancing physical performance by helping the body increase its production of atp. So. Therefore delivering more energy to your cells so you're able to go a little bit longer. At the same time, cortis and these other medicinal mushrooms have an impact on our immune system. So they can be like adaptogens as well. So they help bring us back into that parasympathetic nervous system, so our rest and digest out of like a fight or flight. And that's very good for making sure we're not like overstressing ourselves with maybe high intensity workouts.

Emily: 14:31

And I think it's important to kind of look at, if you're thinking, huh, maybe I should try these, or I could use some of these benefits. It's important to know like which mushroom has, which effect. There's a really good website that I found. It's called real mushrooms.com, and they provided kind of all like the research links and everything behind their information as well. Again, some of these studies were really. But what they do talk about on this link, which I'll put in the show notes of our episode, basically talks about like what supplements you can use, what reasons you would use each mushroom. It's a pretty nice resource, so I'll link that for sure in our show notes. But it's important again, that like you don't just like go on, you know, for sigmatic.com and buy like a million mushroom coffees and take them at will. It's like, okay, if you're really trying to get a result from it, It's probably best if you try for something specific that could be potentially even measurable. Like if you have arthritis and you're taking this, it's like, okay, let's look at your symptoms when you start taking it and after you've been taking it for a little while to see if it's working for you. You know, some people just wanna like throw money and be like, okay, cool. This is like a healthy coffee. Like regular coffee, has lots of antioxidants in it too, and is really healthy and oh my God, I think we need a whole episode about coffee now that I'm saying this. Cause we haven't done.

Vanessa: 15:50

Yeah, I, I was actually thinking about that today too, because I was in the office and someone had like mentioned something about like, oh, I was gonna, you know, Drink some coffee this morning, but I thought, oh, I should have some tea instead. That'd be healthier. And you know, I didn't say anything because I, Emily knows this. I hate like getting into these conversations sometimes cuz it can be a whole rabbit hole and you can be there for longer than you anticipated. But I was like, why do people think that? Like why do people think that that's the healthier option? It's really interesting. So we will need to do an episode on that. But let's get back to the medicinal mushrooms. Was there anything else you wanted to say about Corti ups

Emily: 16:36

No, I think that's all, that's really it that I found. But I'm, I'm curious because I'm, I'm looking at, there's a lot of products with it and it's making me think about that coffee brand, and I'm wondering like, which one you've tried and did you like it?

Vanessa: 16:50

for for Sigmatic?

Emily: 16:52

Mm-hmm.

Vanessa: 16:53

So I have tried more of their products that have ratio. So r is a medicinal mushroom that's also an adaption that is known to be more calming. And if any of you know me personally I typically don't need any more. So calming is usually the way I go with things, although I am kind of interested now incepts in just like endurance and things like that. Especially cause I like running and working on things like that.

Emily: 17:23

I think it's interesting too, like if you're sitting there at home thinking this as well, it's like, okay, like what do you normally do before your run? Like is it pre-workout instead? Like is there maybe like a crash that's involved in that much caffeine? Like maybe you could try this instead. Like you might be kind of a good candidate. Like that's kind of how you'd like critically think through that one.

Vanessa: 17:44

Yes. And something to add to with this is that if some, with something like Cortis, so if you're thinking of supplementing with that do not expect like immediate results. Like you are going to take it and do your workout in like all of a sudden you're gonna have the greatest workout of your life. It is something that, like many other supplements, you need to take it for a couple of weeks and then after that you might start seeing some results. But it can take some time. It's not necessarily going to be automatic. And here's a good example. So I actually just sent my brother a cortis. Supplement and here's why. He is a runner. He runs a lot. He works out a lot. His immune system sometimes suffers because of that. Cause I think he pushes himself a little bit too hard. He also lives in Colorado and is at a high altitude. So I was like, this seems like the perfect situation. He was looking for some more supplements to increase his endurance in stamina and help with overall performance. And we had looked at, he was interested in creatine as well, which we could also do a whole episode on that. He might do that in. And Cortis as well. Creatine is a pretty, you know, generally safe supplement also and very, very well studied. There's some money behind Creatine

Emily: 19:09

That's

Vanessa: 19:10

that one has like the most studies of any supplement, but that is a situation where like, yes, that like he was a good candidate for that medicinal mushroom. If you're someone who like doesn't really work out and is just like looking randomly at mushrooms, I mean maybe Cortis isn't necessarily the one for you. Or maybe like Emily, I think you said there was some studies for it being beneful beneficial for like osteoporosis, right?

Emily: 19:45

Yeah, totally. I, I think it's like all looking at like what your needs are and what your biggest concerns are. Like when I said the ratio like that can help with sleep and more so relaxation. So if you're in like a heightened space where you're like, oh my God, like I am, like thoughts are, I'm going a million miles. I'm like, busy. I have stuff to do. Like I have all that. Like you might, you're in order for you to find balance, you might find a mushroom like rachi.

Vanessa: 20:09

Another one is Lions Main. So Lions Main promotes mental clarity, and I'll never forget this. So like we think of it a lot with like brain fog and things like that, but there, I used to listen to a podcast that they had four Sigmatic as a. Sponsor and when she she'd like bring up like the different products that the she had and there's like rhymes for each of them and I can't remember all of them, but like kind of a rhyme to like remember what they did and she always said Lions mane helps your brain.

Emily: 20:42

Oh, interesting. I

Vanessa: 20:43

So good way to remember that. And I did see with that, that a very small trial with elderly patients. Taking lines main did show improvement in depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline. Again, small study, but still pretty, pretty cool result.

Emily: 21:02

Yeah, I think it's really interesting and I love to see kind of like when the Western world like does their take on it. Just because it's something that, especially in traditional Chinese medicine, they've been using Lions Main for a very long time, as Necess said at the beginning of this episode. And they're gonna have like a really different spin on it. Like they're using that mushroom. Bleeding. It's associated with digestion, energy and water regulation. And they use this mushroom as a tonic for stress related disorders and for lack of energy as well. And some of this information comes from like monks using this as tea to increase their ability to concentrate during meditation. There's just so many different. areas that use these things. And so it's interesting to like see all of the body of research and tradition and kind of make your conclusions from there.

Vanessa: 21:54

Yeah, absolutely. And you can see areas where those crossover too. Like if you, a lot of times when people are really stressed, they're experiencing like brain fog. So there's definitely like crossover in different areas. But another one I was looking at was Chaga. So promoted as being an anti-inflammatory and as being anti-aging. But I was, as I was saying it's always interesting to me when things are promoted as anti-aging cuz like it's confusing as to what that really means. I mean like antioxidants I guess are anti-aging. in a way.

Emily: 22:31

Yeah, I'm thinking like I wanna see some actual like telomere on dna. Like lengthening, like that's what I'm assuming that you mean, but like I know that's probably not what anything is meaning. And for those of you who might be like, what the fuck does that mean? Telomeres are sections of DNA at the end of your chromosomes and they shorten as you age. So to me, unless we're talking about telomeres, I don't really wanna hear anything about anti-aging or it's my aesthetician. She can tell me about that, but I believe everything she says, but,

Vanessa: 23:02

well, speaking of your aesthetician chaga also has high amounts of melanin, so they think it might be beneficial for skin also.

Emily: 23:10

oh, cool.

Vanessa: 23:12

Yeah. So I'm kind of like, I'm expecting to start seeing Chaga in more skin products. Like maybe that's gonna be the next, like, next big thing. Maybe we should jump on that market honestly.

Emily: 23:26

Yeah, seriously.

Vanessa: 23:27

And then there's also so I know in the beginning we really kind of started talking about like Turkey tail. And that was, you know, when we were looking at oncology, oncology research and anti-inflammatory. And like shataki and Miki at mushrooms are also anti-inflammatory thought to strengthen the immune system. And I think that is about all. There's a few more medicinal mushrooms, but that's kind of all of the ones that I was looking into. But it's, it's a really, really cool space. I think just like Emily said, there's like new research and then there's things like from. The past and then there's like the, you know, things that monks are experiencing. It's cool. I think it's really cool.

Emily: 24:16

Yeah. It's a really fascinating thing and I think it's like one of the only times that we could say, do your own research about something, because it's like you really could like look up the different kinds and. See what they're kind of meant for. And I really just encourage you to run your own little science experiment if you do it and have regular consumption and of these mushrooms and let us know how it goes for you. I'm like really thinking about trying it. Now after our talk, I'm kind of inter intrigued.

Vanessa: 24:50

I, I mean, personally, I'm gonna be having some hot cocoa tonight with Nira in it. I do want to say also, so not that I think people probably wouldn't do this, but I just wanna put it out there, so don't be like going and just eating mushrooms from the woods. like Willy Nelly or anything like,

Emily: 25:15

I'm so paranoid about that, right? Like I live in the Pacific. No. And I was literally going to, this was like during Covid, it was like an outdoor like barbecue thing and people went foraging for mushrooms and they like were cooking them for us and giving us to them to, or giving like these mushrooms to us. And I was like terrified the whole time. I was like looking around watching everyone. I'm like, So these are good. Like this is chill. We're not gonna die tonight. Like there's just, it's, it's a scary world out there and I know, like, I honestly sound ignorant, but like it's just, yeah, you definitely wanna make sure that you're getting them from a trusted source and don't trust yourself out there in the wilderness. That's

Vanessa: 25:55

Unless you actually know, like if you are, you know, someone that you actually know, you forged before you understand, you know what's safe and what's not. Get after it. And if you're someone who wants to know, go with someone who knows first.

Emily: 26:12

That's like, seems to be the only way you can do it. Like that's how anyone that I know that's done it, they're like, I just won with this guy. Like, he took me out there in the woods and then we just foraged together. Like it was raining. It kind of sucked. It's like not that fun, but like, we got

Vanessa: 26:27

Yeah.

Emily: 26:28

It's

Vanessa: 26:28

then, With some mushrooms, like the people who are foraging for them are kind of like secretive about it. Like they don't really wanna give you their mushroom spot, so they're not always willing to show you. But either way, I mean, therapeutically we kind of wanna be like taking them in like a bigger dose anyway, so like a supplement is gonna be a little bit better for like feeling some of those effects. Not that it's not great to just eat mushrooms too, cause it absolutely.

Emily: 26:58

Yeah, I think it's important to note that like if you're looking for a therapeutic effect, you have to have them in sort of an additive or concentrated form, like in a product. And if you're looking at a product that says it has mushrooms in it, make sure it talks about the dose. Like it has 500 milligrams or something like that. Cuz a lot of the times it can just be like a fun buzzword for them to put in there and it has like, you know, two tiny little milligrams of mushrooms in there.

Vanessa: 27:24

Right. And it's like just like filler stuff. Yeah.

Emily: 27:27

Exactly. Yeah.

Vanessa: 27:29

Well, I'm feeling extremely proud of us because we're giving our stamp of approval on medicinal mushrooms. And I think last week we like gave our stamp of approval on a bunch of stuff as well. And these last couple episodes have just been really positive and I love that for us

Emily: 27:46

Here we go. Yeah, Vanessa. Vanessa hates when we're shit talking. We just do medical media. So we've definitely done our fair share of shit talking, but. It's, it's nice to be

Vanessa: 27:56

did like medical medium. We did oh God, what was the fiber one?

Emily: 28:01

F factor, the carnivore diet.

Vanessa: 28:04

Yeah. I mean, you guys, like, it was a lot of, like, I wanted to say some good things about it. Even like in the F factor episode, I try to say good things and like I, I, you know, I slip in a couple things, but it's just tough. It's tough.

Emily: 28:20

Yeah, it totally is. So it's fun to be able to give our approval on something, and if you try mushrooms, we're curious to hear how it goes for you.

Vanessa: 28:32

And we'll be back next week with, we're not sure yet, but something else Fun, maybe something about coffee.

Emily: 28:39

something good. We're always thinking.

Vanessa: 28:42

Bye.