#284 Reishi, Lions Mane, Cordyceps, Maitake and more with Tom Baxter, Farmer and Mushroom Expert

Dr Rupy: Should we all be consuming mushrooms daily?

Tom Baxter: Yes.

Dr Rupy: Are mushrooms plants?

Tom Baxter: No.

Dr Rupy: Can mushrooms be used as medicines?

Tom Baxter: Indeed.

Dr Rupy: Can mushrooms boost our brain health?

Tom Baxter: Possibly.

Dr Rupy: And what is your top pick for a single mushroom to add to a healthy diet?

Tom Baxter: There's 2,000 edible mushrooms. I mean any. Any is better than none. But one that's available in the UK, probably Shiitake.

Dr Rupy: Okay, Shiitake. Okay, that's that's music to my ears because that's actually my favourite from not only a flavour point of view, but a texture and I love it.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, they're brilliant. There's quite a few reasons from a medicinal perspective that you should be.

Dr Rupy: Well why don't we start off there actually, from the medicinal perspective. And the way I sort of categorise it in my mind is that we've got the medicinal mushrooms and we have culinary mushrooms. I'm sure there's a bit of crossover there, as we'll get into, but why don't we start with, why are mushrooms medicinal? Why do they have these medicinal qualities?

Tom Baxter: So, I think if we bring it right back to sort of the foundation of life on Earth, 1.4 billion years ago, fungi was the first kingdom of life on Earth. So nothing would exist if it weren't for fungi. So there were no plants, there were no animals. The plant kingdom didn't exist, the animal kingdom didn't exist. It was only the fungi kingdom. And so fungi are fundamentally biochemical machines. They are taking one compound and through initially enzymatic activity, breaking it down into its constituent compounds that then create the sort of basis for other kingdoms to be able to exist on Earth. So the reason why fungi have these medicinal compounds that are relevant to human health is because they've had 1.4, 1.3 billion years of biochemical experiments. The mycelium of fungi is one cell wall thick. So if we go back to

Dr Rupy: What's a mycelium?

Tom Baxter: The mycelium is like the sort of, what we consider mushrooms is just the fruiting body, so the reproductive part of the organism. The majority of the mushroom is the mycelium, the vast majority. You only see the fruiting bodies, the mushrooms that we eat, when they're looking to reproduce. And so the mycelium is one cell wall thick, so anything can cross over into the body of the mycelium. And so if you go back to when there was only the kingdom of fungi around, there was also bacteria, there were also viruses. And so these were all passing into the body of the mycelium of the fungi. They were having to develop biochemical responses to either outcompete with those viruses, those bacteria, in order to, you know, survive and prosper. And so they have been conducting huge amounts of chemical tests for a very long period of time against other fungi, bacteria, viruses. And because of where the animal kingdom sits, it sits beneath the fungi kingdom, so a lot of those compounds that the mushrooms have created for their own benefit are, the molecular shape of those compounds is recognised by receptor cells within the human body, just because of an evolutionary reality of where we sit as animals underneath fungi. And so that's the sort of, well, short, long-form answer as to why mushrooms have this, have these compounds that are potentially relevant to us as animals.

Dr Rupy: A bit of a silly question then. If the parts of the mushrooms that we typically consume are the fruiting bodies, are we in some way missing out on some of the benefits if we don't also consume the mycelia?

Tom Baxter: So they are similar, the compounds within mycelium and within the fruiting bodies, within the mushrooms. They differ largely in terms of the quantities. We are interested from a human health perspective in a lot of the secondary metabolites that the mushrooms create, and those are far more present in the fruiting body. However, there are certain compounds that are in certain species that are, that exist only in the mycelium. If I wanted to have a far more simple and profitable business, I would grow mycelium because it grows much faster, it's much easier to do, and I would grow mycelium on oats, like some quite famous American companies do. Unfortunately, whilst there are certain compounds in the mycelium that are in higher quantities, and only really in one or two mushrooms, there are hundreds of compounds that are in much higher quantities in the fruiting body than in the mycelium. So you could make the argument that for certain products, probably a combination of pure mycelium combined with fruiting body would be the optimum product. But in the vast majority of cases, the superior product will be from the fruiting body. What is interesting is a lot of the, a lot of the sort of pharmaceutical products, especially the adjunct treatments for cancer that are isolates of compounds from the mushrooms that we grow, and for example, in Japan, PSK, which is an isolate of a type of polysaccharide, a beta-glucan from Turkey Tail mushroom, I think last year they spent, the health service in Japan spent something like 9 billion on PSK as an adjunct treatment for cancer. So that's been around since the 80s. And how they, how they scale the production of PSK is by growing a strain of Turkey Tail mycelium in large bioreactors, and they pretreat it with a certain enzyme, and I think they cook it at 39 degrees at a specific pH, and the mycelium expresses a huge amount of this particular beta-glucan called PSK. And so that's how they have managed to scale the production of that particular beta-glucan. There are around about 60 different beta-glucans in Turkey Tail mushroom, and what's interesting is that although they scale the production of that one, all of the, it's not because that was the most efficacious, it's that that was the one that they could come up with a process to scale. The other ones were, and some of them were actually probably more efficacious, but they couldn't commercially produce them basically. And so, you know, there's always a trade-off when you're trying to, you know, put something into commercial production, especially from a pharmaceutical perspective.

Dr Rupy: I just want to go over that for a second actually, because there's a few words there that I'm sure might have gone over the listener's and the watcher's head. So, you mentioned it being an adjunct. So this is something that we use as an add-on essentially to therapy, in this case, I'm assuming it's cancer therapy.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, so chemo or radiotherapy.

Dr Rupy: And you mentioned beta-glucan, which is a type of carbohydrate.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, it's a type of polysaccharide, so it's made up of glucans. So what's interesting with fungi beta-glucans, their molecular structure is 1-3, 1-6, so they spike off the third and the sixth carbon atom. They differ to, for example, beta-glucans that exist in wheat and stuff, which are, I think those are 1-3, 1-4, 1-2, 1-4. But what's very different is the, so with oat, for example, beta-glucans, these polysaccharides and oats, is that they have a single helix. With mushroom beta-glucans, they have a triple helix structure, and that's recognised by certain receptor cells in the human body. And the other issue with mushrooms is they're made of something called chitin, or chitin, which is the same compound that makes crustacean shells and exoskeletons of insects and certain bacteria, I think make it as well. But that also has a sort of triple helix shape to the actual molecular structure of the walls, and it is a nightmare to extract from. So even when we've done our, you know, triple extraction process, there is still probably three-quarters of the compounds left in the mushrooms, and there's nothing you can really do to get them out. I was speaking to the Vice Chancellor at Exeter Uni who spent 40 years extracting from chitin, and, you know, without using like hexane or very harsh solvents, which you then need to, you know, there comes a limit to what is like practical and also from a human consumption perspective, what you're looking to actually use as your solvents. So, so yeah, the fungi beta-glucans are, if you look at the nine different adjunct treatments for cancer that are isolates of compounds from the mushrooms we grow, eight of them are beta-glucans.

Dr Rupy: Gosh. So I mean, this is fascinating for me. So there's pharmaceutical companies in other countries like Japan who isolate specific polysaccharides from mushrooms to use as additive therapies to for cancer. And the reason why they're only using this particular one is because it's easiest to grow using the bioreactor, not because it's potentially the most efficacious.

Tom Baxter: No, but I mean it is, it is very efficacious. I mean, I think this is the point, they're all efficacious to a degree, but the reality of commercialising a particular compound means that the compound that you can commercialise most effectively is likely to be the one if they all have a similar, you know, effect on whatever it is you're looking to address.

Dr Rupy: If I'm got my farmer hat on, you know, this is just an incredible world of potential new drug discovery that we haven't even scratched the surface of. I mean, you said right at the start of this podcast, there's 2,000 edible mushrooms. I could only name maybe 10 at a push, you know. So I mean, this is, this is phenomenal.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, I mean, it's why there's a lot of money going into it. So ironically enough, we've had two heavily funded biotech companies come to us and offer to basically give us a broad spectrum, like using mass gas mass spec stuff to create like a big landscape picture of what's in our mushrooms free of charge to us. And when I suggest that maybe I'll own the IP on that, they then become quite aggressive. And it is quite amusing because I think they assume that they're talking to a, you know, an ignorant farmer. And there's a lot of money going into this. So bioprospecting is fundamentally what people are doing. And I know of a couple of, well, one company in the US who six or seven years ago, there were three PhD guys just working on basically fractioning out compounds and looking for new compounds in mushrooms. And they got bought out for not a lot of money, about two and a half million. And then four years later, so two years ago, they got sold for 90 million. And they're all that they're getting bought for is that library of compounds that they have IP on. And so, um, yeah, I mean, I'll probably go into it, but we are doing very similar stuff now. And but unfortunately not with a view to putting IP on it, but with a view to creating a more knowledgeable approach to our business.

Dr Rupy: So we meandered down this path by me asking you about what makes mushrooms medicinal. So this is what certainly it seems like the polysaccharides and these particular elements, you know, the triple helix, the chitin is it's one of the reasons. Would you say that's the one of the main reasons or there are other

Tom Baxter: I mean, that is the reason they've developed these compounds. So the compounds that, you know, if we were to look at broadly the compounds within mushrooms that are relevant, beta-glucan is one of the sets of compounds, but you'd also be looking at things like triterpenes, you'd be looking at ergothioneine, you'd be looking at vitamin D, you'd be looking at the ganoderic acids, which are actually, you know, within specifically with reishi, but they are triterpenes. So yeah, there's a whole range, the ergosterols, statins, you know, there's there's a whole range of different groups of compounds that are relatively unique to fungi that are of relevance from a human health perspective.

Dr Rupy: And I'm assuming depending on which mushroom you're looking at, you're getting different amounts of these triterpenes and ergothioneine and all that kind of stuff.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, and different and actual different compounds within and different structures and different, yeah, fundamentally different molecular structures.

Dr Rupy: And there it seems like there are some novel phytochemical plant chemicals that you only find in mushrooms. Am I correct in saying that?

Tom Baxter: Yeah, so for example, that we've talked about the the fungal beta-glucans, that shape is unique to fungi. And a lot of these compounds are the molecular structure of them is unique to either that particular mushroom or to that that clade of mushrooms, so that sort of group of mushrooms. So, the most studied of all the mushrooms is reishi or Ganoderma lucidum. But again, there's as soon as we start looking at the taxonomy of mushrooms, we are going down a whole new rabbit hole, especially with the recent advances in DNA. So it's like we are fungi is sort of, it's interesting, it's one of those, it's probably the last remaining sort of area within science where amateurs can still make some level of, firstly, new discoveries of just species, but also from a sort of scientific perspective with, you know, I mean, it involves doing some level of DNA profiling, but there's a there's a whole, it's sort of that last frontier where the barriers to entry are relatively low. And so it is quite exciting. You can do breeding work like we do.

Dr Rupy: It's a really good point. I've never really thought about it in that respect because I guess, you know, previously stargazing, you know, if you had a decent telescope, you could contribute to science by discovering new stars in our planetary system. But now, you know, you have like super expensive telescopes and everything. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Whereas, whereas, you know, foraging, if you really get into it, there is the potential to find something genuinely.

Tom Baxter: 100% and especially with mushrooms. So I think the estimates keep going up, but I think probably wrong, but roughly 1.5 million species of fungi, and I think we've identified maybe 150,000. So there's like far more that we haven't recognised or counted or named than there are that we have. And so, you know, this is a huge potential area. And, you know, fungi are similar to a degree the world over, just because of the fact that they sort of predate the land masses sort of separating. So there is quite a lot of similarities globally. But there are differences and there are, you know, especially in, you know, the jungles, there's a huge variety of fungi growing. And we actually recently were lucky enough to get invited over to Barbados and took part with a couple of guys, Max from all things fungi, who is an unbelievable macro photographer. And it's hilarious when you go foraging with Max, you literally move at one metre every hour. Because all he's doing is looking at things that are microscopic. And they're everywhere. I mean, it really does make you realise that, you know, there are fungi everywhere. You've just got to have a very good eyesight or a macro lens. And so that was exciting being able to, I don't think there'd been a fungi survey done in Barbados since 1940. And it was quite interesting seeing how many of the similar types of mushrooms, you know, we found cordyceps over there, various different ganodermas. I found like an endemic magic mushroom in, you know, around with the cows. So it's kind of, yeah, it was great. I mean, it was hot. Rainy season in Barbados, like 38 degrees, and, you know, I remember the first day we met up with this, this sort of local medicine man who designed all the botanic gardens and all the things, a Rasta man called Ras Isles, and he, you know, so we went off into the jungle with him, with him and his machetes, and we had Aubrey, my youngest son on my back, who was like seven months old, and it was just so hot and so humid, and Ras was just scything through the jungle. After just under two hours, I have never been so happy to see a path. I was walking up and down this path. I was like, I can stand up straight. This is absolutely wonderful. It's flat. So, so yeah, I think this is, this is one of the things that's with a natural curiosity, like there is a lot of unknown in the fungi world. And with our ability to marry it up with modern sort of analytical work from a scientific perspective, it's just quite an interesting thing to be involved with.

Dr Rupy: You mentioned mushrooms predate us and obviously pre the separation of landmass. And that kind of gets me thinking, within every culture, is there documented use of mushrooms either in a sort of medicinal sense, a psychedelic sense, or at least, you know, a culinary sense?

Tom Baxter: Yeah, 100%. I mean, unfortunately, in the UK, the people that would have held the knowledge of, you know, mushroom use was the druids. And post, you know, there's a couple of references, I think, in, you know, in some of the Roman historians, like Herodotus and stuff. But I think that that knowledge was sort of lost with the advent of Christianity. But if you look at other cultures, certainly in, I think the Northern Cree people in Canada, they would use what's called, well, it's a similar one to hoof fungus. And they would grind it up, they'd actually cook it in, you know, well, nowadays we cook them in a can just to like make charcoal out of them. And they'd use that for so many different ailments. Obviously, the Sami people, the reindeer herders, they use chaga. That's their sort of daily tea. Solzhenitsyn, obviously, mentions chaga in his book, which one was it, Cancer Ward.

Dr Rupy: Who was that?

Tom Baxter: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, one of the very famous, great Russian authors. He wrote a book called Cancer Ward. He also wrote like famous ones like, I don't know, Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. He's amazing, amazing writer. And he actually wrote a whole thing about chaga, a whole essay about chaga, but it features in Cancer Ward because it's what some of the cancer patients escape from the ward and go into Siberia to try and find to try and help their cancer stuff. Then obviously, you know, the first, I think the first mentions of science are in, well, the first mention of mushrooms, certainly there are some Babylonian texts that go, so that's sort of cuneiform, and I think that's sort of goes back to about 1400 BC. There's lots of mentions from like 600 AD in China in particular. The thing is with a lot of the, a lot of the populations who, you know, are close to the Earth, they don't necessarily, they didn't necessarily develop a sort of written tabernacle type way of transferring, so it was all verbal, oral histories. And so yeah, you can look sort of throughout Europe, North America, certainly you've got the Mezotecs in, I mean, that's whenever people mention, you know, we should take more magic mushrooms. I mean, there is, there was a culture that, you know, magic mushrooms were an integral part of their, their society and they were taken regularly. And unfortunately, it did result in a large amount of regular sacrifice of babies. So not necessarily what you'd hope for.

Dr Rupy: No one talks about that.

Tom Baxter: No, I know, well, it doesn't follow the modern narrative. I mean, I think the reality with psychedelics is certainly for people with chronic PTSD, addiction issues, certain trauma and certain, and certainly end of life care, there is absolutely no doubt, statistically speaking, that, you know, nothing competes in terms of outcomes for how people deal with or are able to process their traumatic events they've experienced or the onset of their sort of realisation that death is occurring to them. And so I think, but that's in large doses. There's there's a lot less evidence for the efficacy of microdosing, be that LSD, mushrooms, or anything else. And I think some of the meta-data studies that have looked at sort of pulling all the microdosing studies, it doesn't seem, basically the, what it appears to be is that the people that are microdosing do claim that they're more focused, less stressed, all the things you'd hope for, but the placebo group claim exactly the same. So the belief that you're microdosing is as powerful as microdosing.

Dr Rupy: I think there's a lot to be said for that placebo effect as well, you know, and I think people disregard it when you're, you know, spending a lot of money, doing something illegal, getting microdose, microdosing on mushrooms, you know, there's a, there's a powerful effect that you're not counting for. And if the same thing is happening for the, the group that aren't taking the actual microdose, it stands to reason that's probably what's going on.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, I mean, I remember reading about the placebo effect in the Korean War. And this was the first sort of time that it sort of hit American medicine in a big way, because they ran out of morphine, and so they were just hooking people up to drips. And this, and they were, they were, 30% of the times when they were conducting actual operations to remove limbs, 30% of the time, when people believed they were hooked up to morphine, couldn't feel a thing. Yeah, it just went into, you know, I mean, you know, the placebo is a real, it's a real thing. There's no doubt about it. And, um, obviously from our perspective, doing what we're doing, we need to be confident that what we're doing is above placebo, because, um, and I think especially with the health service and the situation it is where people just can't get appointments, when they do get appointments, they have no time to be heard. And with the sort of more complex pathologies that people are presenting with to doctors now, spanning all sorts of different systems within the body, be it like immune, hepatic, so many different things are going wrong for so many people simultaneously, and it's very difficult for doctors to, you know, be able to offer them a single pill to deal with such a complex issue. And people are, you know, looking for alternatives. And I think, um, that sort of environment that we're in currently, um, and probably will continue to be in for a reasonable length of time, especially with the demographics of our population, um, means that there is going to be an opportunity for people to just claim all sorts of things, and people, you know, people are looking for solutions.

Dr Rupy: Well, this brings me to what I think should be the focus of our conversation actually around like deciding whether mushrooms are for you and where they could potentially help. Um, and you've already listed like a number of different mushrooms that I've definitely seen on the stores and like, if you go on, if you scroll through Tik Tok or Instagram, you're you're bound to get served an ad for for mushrooms, and it's just such a confusing and fast-moving pace. I wonder how best to sort of present the world of mushrooms to our listeners, you know, from Reishi, Turkey Tail, Lion's Mane, Cordyceps, Chaga, like which one, how do you decide whether this is going to be useful for you, first off, and then deciding what product to choose and ensuring you're going to you're getting purity and you're not actually relying on something as strong as the placebo effect.

Tom Baxter: So I think the first thing, unfortunately, is to make sure that you're looking to address the cause, not the symptom. So, um, what we find quite often is that people will come to us saying that, you know, describing a whole lot of issues they're having in their lives, which are actually symptomatic of something else. And, you know, it's simple, but I would say in at least a third of the cases, people are not sleeping well. And when you don't sleep well, everything goes wrong. And so, you know, your concentration, your ability to concentrate, your regulation of your emotions, all these sorts of things then become, you know, they're the symptoms that you're experiencing. And so I think taking a step back and trying to, trying to establish what the cause is and then looking to address that, um, because I think we're very much in our minds nowadays. Um, and a lot of people are, you know, you can see it from the mental health crisis, which is very real for people. You know, I've got five children, and certainly see it with my daughters in particular. And so the temptation is to try and deal with the, the mental side of things, but quite often we're relatively complicated biochemical machines, we're relatively simple animals, but relatively complicated, the processes that are going on. So I think if you can address, look to address the, the root basically, and more often than not, that will be in probably sleep and changing in changes of diet, and fundamentally changing what you're actually doing with your time. I think that will have as much benefit as taking some mushrooms.

Dr Rupy: I really, really appreciate that as a, as a starting off point, because I think a lot of people are chasing a panacea or a cure all because, like you were saying earlier, they can't get in front of their practitioner, they're looking for answers, they're in a dire state, and I think doing the basics first is absolutely the right way to go. A lot of of our listeners will have heard me rabbit on about sleep and diet and improving exercise and all this kind of stuff.

Tom Baxter: I must confess, I've never listened to any of your podcasts, so apologies if I'm

Dr Rupy: Um, let's assume you have somebody, um, who does a good sort of foundational amount of work on themselves. So they eat a diverse diet, they're looking after their microbiome, they're moving every day, they're sleeping as best they can. I'm definitely someone who's trying their best at the moment with a newborn at 13 weeks old. Um, let's assume you're trying to do all the right things. You're already there. But, you know, you might still be suffering with an autoimmune condition, you might have menopausal symptoms, you might have a bit of inflammation, a skin condition. Where do we sort of like start to explore the world of mushrooms that could have those sort of like supplemental benefits to

Tom Baxter: Okay, well if we, I think, um, I think we we can start with skin, for example. I think, um, there are some specific mushrooms for skin, and there are some studies that also back this up. Um, so from our experience with in particular psoriasis, um, we have had a lot of success with shiitake. Um, and it's quite interesting because shiitake is the one of the mushrooms that if for about 5 to 7% of the population, if they eat it raw, they will land up having like a dermatological explosion called shiitake flagrante dermatitis, and you look like you have been mauled by a tiger. It's long red scratch marks across your torso and across your legs, and it's extraordinary to see. I remember when, um, when my partner, uh, came up in this rash, and she was like, I think it's the mushrooms. I was like, don't be so ridiculous. Of course it isn't the bloody mushrooms. And, uh, so a couple of days in, she still had these, you know, unbelievable looking scratch marks all over her. And, uh, I started Googling, as everyone does. And would you believe it? Yes, it's, uh, it's a real thing.

Dr Rupy: Okay, so don't eat shiitake raw.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, I mean, for about one in maybe 12 people, that will happen. And it's quite interesting how this is the mushroom also that seems to have such a positive effect for inflammatory. Yeah, for inflammatory responses on the skin there. So it's, um, it's a very interesting one, shiitake. I think people, because it's sort of a relatively well-known edible mushroom, people don't necessarily, um, like to, you know, everyone likes to put things in boxes, and they don't necessarily view it as having any sort of medicinal value. And yet it's the sort of third earliest cultivated mushroom after like, um, jelly ear, I think was the first one. Um, and it's got a really long use in medicine. It's also potentially good at regulating testosterone. Um, it also there's a compound from shiitake called AHCC.

Dr Rupy: A-H-H-C.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, which has been used for, um, well, in particular for HPV1 and HPV2. So herpes virus one and two. So causes herpes, genital herpes and cold sores.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, exactly. And again, this is another thing that we've found remarkable. Yeah, and I've been a little, you know, a little out of hand at times when I've been speaking to people, you know, certain individuals have been coming up and buying a few bottles of shiitake at the same time. I'm like, oh, you know, it's good for. And then they're like, yes, I do, thank you. And I think it's quite an interesting one because I think the first, um, I think it was the first adjunct treatment for cancer that was an isolate from a polysaccharide was lentinan from shiitake. So I think, I think that was in the 60s maybe.

Dr Rupy: Was that in Japan as well?

Tom Baxter: I think it was in Japan, probably in Japan. It's either Japan or China for most of these. And to a degree actually, um, interestingly, Latvia in the UK, in the EU is, well, I can we can talk about Latvia a bit later, but, um, yeah, so shiitake is really good. And what we've found, um, is that with people with psoriasis, I didn't realise quite often it stays on the scalp. And for a lot of people, they've been able to get rid of it on the scalp, which for the individuals concerned is a big, a big thing because generally, apparently it comes and goes on the skin, but for a certain number of people, it's perpetual on the scalp. And so, yeah, so that's one. And Chaga has been, there's actually been some clinical trials looking at Chaga for certain skin conditions.

Dr Rupy: That's really interesting with regards to psoriasis on the scalp. You know, when I think of psoriasis, I put my GP hat on, and I'm thinking of very strong anti-inflammatory steroid-based creams, shampoos, coal tar, um, you know, with my lifestyle hat on, I'm thinking stress, vitamin D exposure, exercise, gut health. Um, there are some really interesting dietary interventions that we discuss, we've discussed on the podcast, but also on the Doctor's Kitchen app, for example, we have, you know, some clinical studies and sources where we've looked at phytonutrients in specific foods like green vegetables and and how that can potentially have benefits. Never, never come across shiitake. That's phenomenal. I I've definitely got to look into that. And and I can imagine, you know, if shiitake and those polysaccharides are improving your gut health, maybe that's the mechanism by which it's

Tom Baxter: There's some fascinating stuff looking at gut health with, um, actually Turkey Tail.

Dr Rupy: Oh, okay.

Tom Baxter: So, um, it seems to be, uh, that with, there seems to be a prebiotic or whether or not it's a prebiotic, it seems to have the same effect as a prebiotic in terms of, um, the outcomes that people are seeing. I can't remember what proteins it is that they look at in the blood to try and work out what is going on in the gut. There's a couple of markers that people, um, look at when they're trying to establish what is the, oh no, that's what they do. They're looking at the, um, the breakdown of like the happy bacteria and the bad bacteria, and that shifts with, um, it shifts with Turkey Tail, and that is pretty much exactly the same action that occurs when you're taking a couple of different prebiotics.

Dr Rupy: So just for the listener, prebiotics are specialised types of fibres, um, that you find in things like chicory, inulin. These are common prebiotic supplements that you can buy in health food stores and, uh, pharmacies. Um, and what you're saying is Turkey Tail has similar prebiotic-like effects.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, in particular, in particular, um, Turkey Tail. But I think this sort of leads on to one of the sort of, we can, we can spend a lot of time, you know, looking at the different compounds and all this sort of stuff. But actually, one of the fundamental benefits of eating more mushrooms is they have very high levels of fibre. Um, and also they have high levels of chitin because that's what makes them up. And, you know, there've been studies looking at the effect on the microbiome of chitin. Um, and this is like one of the main reasons why eating more mushrooms is going to have a very beneficial effect on your microbiome. And by, as we all know, you know, in terms of, I don't know, your, um, endocrine system, your gut is the most important thing pretty much in terms of certain hormones that it's going to be, uh, creating. Also, like in some of the studies we've been looking at with the PhD we we sponsor, um, the neuroscience department at UE, we're looking at certain, uh, dopamine receptors with reishi, which seem to kick off. Um, which are particularly relevant for Alzheimer's as well. And there's, there's so much value in getting fibrous mushrooms into your belly that irrespective of all the different compounds we can spend time on, you know, if just eating more mushrooms, you know, definitely has a long-term benefit. And the two big studies done, sort of meta-data studies done in Japan where they looked at, um, two studies that both had like 15,000 people in each of them, so it's about 30,000 people. Um, they were looking at, um, mushroom consumption, the differences between people that were eating mushrooms five times a day, or five, sorry, five times a week or twice a week, and the outcomes, um, predominantly from a cancer perspective. Um, and so the incidence of things like prostate cancer in men, colon cancer, they were all lower after, by about 30% in the group that, and this was a long-term study, sort of 30 years they were following these people. Interestingly, they tried to do a similar study in the US, um, which was actually more people, about 45,000, um, and there seemed to be no correlation between mushroom consumption and, um, incidence of cancer.

Dr Rupy: Right. So it really depends on like the population that you're looking at in terms of whether you're going to have this effect.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, it depends on, I mean, fundamentally it depends on the individual, but also it depends on the culture. And if you look at the difference between, um, also the species of mushroom to a degree. Um, I think, I can imagine that would be very different in Japan versus very different. So you're looking in America at button mushrooms fundamentally. Garicus bisporus. Um, and in Japan, you're looking more at things like Enoki, um, Shiitake. Um, yeah, so those are sort of the two and then like what we call beach, beach mushrooms as well.

Dr Rupy: And just for the listener, so Enoki are those like long, stringy, sort of finger-like mushrooms. Is that

Tom Baxter: Yeah, what's what's interesting with, so Enoki are those sort of white mushrooms that you see. Now, Enoki, ironically enough, you'd be able to, if you went out into the woods today in England, you'd be able to find exactly the same mushroom looking completely different.

Dr Rupy: Really?

Tom Baxter: So Enoki is actually exactly the same as what we call velvet shanks over here.

Dr Rupy: Velvet what?

Tom Baxter: Velvet shanks. Velvet shanks are one of the few mushrooms that grows in winter. It can tolerate, um, frost basically. And velvet shanks are probably the most common mushroom at this very moment in time in the woods in the UK. Um, and they've been some really interesting studies looking at velvet shanks for various different things as well. So it is, it is a good medicinal. Um, they look, so Enoki are grown in high CO2 environments in the dark, which makes the stipe, the sort of stem of the mushroom grow so tall. Um, and why they're white. And so, uh, you can grow, you know, you can grow, we've grown Enoki or but UK native, um, velvet shanks in sort of cold fridges and you you can't quite get them white, but you can get them very, very pale yellow. And so, um, yeah, they're really from a forager's perspective, this time of year, those are the ones. Um, and they've got this sort of sort of gelatinous surface to their caps at this time of year, and that's in essence like an antifreeze. So that's why they can pop out. And there are, before you go out and there are a couple of similar looking, so the whole wood tuft family, there's lots of different ones of those.

Dr Rupy: What's it called? Wood tuft?

Tom Baxter: Wood tuft. There's lots of different, like sulfur wood tuft. There's lots of different wood tufts.

Dr Rupy: I've heard of wood ear.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, wood ear, so different. Still on wood. I need a like a diagram. Yeah, yeah. So I think there's, I think at the moment we've identified around about 12,000 sort of fruiting body mushrooms in the UK. So there's there's a few.

Dr Rupy: 12,000.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, and there is one actually that's quite similar, relatively similar, although it wouldn't be growing at this time of year, uh, to, um, to velvet shanks, uh, which is the funeral bell. Um, and so that is a particularly, that's one definitely to try and shy away from consuming. Yeah, the name does tell you. Yeah, it's not, I mean, yeah, it's not. So, but this time of year, there's lots of velvet shanks out, and those are Enoki, and they are very good from a, yeah, all the things that mushrooms are good for. Um, the issue you've got, so I think one of the things is that again, going back to the microbiome, when you're comparing these sort of studies in Japan that seem to illustrate, my God, you'd be a fool not to eat mushrooms regularly, uh, with this big study done in the US where it looks like it makes no difference whatsoever. The mushrooms are made of chitin, and the levels of that enzyme to break down chitin, chitinase in your gut is going to play a massive part in how much medicinal value your gut is going to be able to pull out of those mushrooms. Now, if you're, if you're from Japan, you're likely to have eaten mushrooms for a far longer period of time. You're also, they eat more shellfish as well, which is also has is made of chitin. And so just because it didn't work in the US in that study group, doesn't, you know, you don't need to take from that that, you know, it's all sort of rubbish, you know.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Because there's a lot more nuance than that.

Dr Rupy: So just to do a micro summary before we move on, eating mushrooms is great because of the chitin, because of those benefits to your gut, regardless of the fibre, and the fibre is probably the same central thing. Um, there are some studies that show the associations between a reduction in the incidence of cancer. It's not necessarily the same. It really depends on the individual first and the types of mushrooms probably and what else you're eating with. But that, you know, the it it seems like there's strong enough evidence to suggest that we should be having mushrooms at least in our in our weekly diet.

Tom Baxter: Well, there's a very interesting study done in Europe and a decent sized study as well, which was done, I think between

Dr Rupy: The Latvian one?

Tom Baxter: The Latvian one, and this is, this is a good one. So this one is, um, between, I think it was 1995 and 2012. So a good chunk of time and it it was, uh, it had 35,000 people on one side and just over 40,000 on the other. And they were looking at, um, particularly in, so there's this mushroom that you've probably come across, uh, called the stink horn. Have you come across the stink horn?

Dr Rupy: No.

Tom Baxter: So stink horn's quite an interesting one. So it's called, uh, the Latin name is, uh, Phallus impudicus, um, which means, uh, rod, shameful rod, I think in Latin. And I think it was a French mycologist who coined that. Um, now stink horns are quite extraordinary. You might have seen some of those, um, some of those sort of, uh, stop frame photography of the mushrooms growing and then a beautiful white veil coming out. So that's a type of stink horn. So stink horns are, um, you know, in, I think it was Darwin's daughter used to, was running out and used to like cut them all down because they're so, you know, they're so phallic and then she'd burn them in the fire at home because it was sort of an affront to the idea of Victorian decency. Um, and and they do stink. There is a reason why. So it's interesting, their sort of model of how to, um, reproduce themselves. They grow from this egg, and then within 12 hours, there's this sort of eight to 12 inch mushroom that looks distinctly phallic with like a rotting, rancid, um, sort of gelatinous mucus on the tip. And, uh, and it stinks like rotting meat. And the interesting, there've been some studies done in the UK looking at, um, looking at the correlation between badger sets and stink horns. So what it looks like is happening, well, it doesn't look like, this is what's happening, is the when the, um, when the mushroom comes into all its phallic beauty, the flies descend on it, start like getting covered in this mucus that has all the spores in it, and then they'll go off and find like a rotting badger or some carcass of an animal to lay their eggs. And so there's a very, there's a direct correlation between, um, badger sets and quantities of stink horn. And for whatever reason, there seem to be quite a few that turn up in, there's some amusing anecdotes of ladies going to see their, their husbands in the graveyards and, uh, and, uh, you know, a woman going up and, um, and she goes, whenever I go and see George, I can tell he's happy to see me. And it's just, you know, it is, there's a lot of these things. And so like, but interestingly, in two different regions in Latvia, the stink horn is the most collected mushroom. And so the National Institute for Science in Latvia has been doing huge amounts of research over decades on the stink horn. And it's, you know, in sort of folk remedies, it used to be like mixed up and put into, if you had gout, so they would actually go through, and there's another mushroom called, um, which is very common in the UK called, um, Ganoderma Australe or Ganoderma applanatum, the artist conk. And again, there's an folk remedy for like basically powdering it up, putting it into like a foot bath. And both of these seem, there seems to be like, we know three compounds now that seem to be able to pass through the skin and help. And this has been going, but there's so many instances of these sort of folk remedies. But the, the Latvians have done a huge amount of research. And so what was interesting is they were looking at, um, specific usage of, uh, stink horn, and they have so many different preparations for it over there. And the group that had cancer and were using the stink horn preparation, this is over 30,000 people over a 17-year period. And again, the incidences of, um, well, basically the long-term survival rates of the people that were taking the stink horn as opposed to just the traditional therapy were like 30 odd percent longer they lived. And but on so many different, and it's the one massive, decent data set we've got in Europe looking at, but it's specifically on stink horn.

Dr Rupy: Stink horn, yeah, yeah.

Tom Baxter: But it's interesting because the, the blend of compounds is very similar to in other mushrooms. The way they go around preparing it actually is slightly different. Quite often it's like a ferment or, yeah, I'm not quite sure. You can eat them. They are actually edible at a young, at the egg.

Dr Rupy: It sounds very

Tom Baxter: Well, it's not, when they're, so at the egg, at a young stage, so if you get them as the egg, and you cut them, and they they taste sort of slightly, I mean, there is this sort of, I mean, they're quite, they're sort of green bit in the middle of them. Um, but it does taste like sort of slightly radishy for all things. And it is edible, a little fishy.

Dr Rupy: Right. Yeah, yeah. You know, not not my ideal two flavours.

Tom Baxter: Sure. You know, a genuine sense of umami though, if you're looking for it.

Dr Rupy: I think I'll stick to shiitake.

Tom Baxter: If you come down at the right time of year, I'll force feed you some.

Dr Rupy: So, so there are some, some studies in Europe that demonstrate

Tom Baxter: That's the one, that's the one big one. That's the one big one. And Latvia is very much, um, the one sort of, uh, outlier. Obviously, in a lot of the Nordic countries, there's been, you know, there's a huge and Poland and Eastern Europe, there's a huge sort of, uh, culture of collecting mushrooms. But Latvia is the one country that has spent a huge amount of time, effort, and actual academic resource in understanding what's going on. And they are, you know, the worldwide number one producer of stink horn and stink horn, but I think because of its unfortunate smell, taste, everything else, it's not, it's not necessarily, I don't think it's a big export for them.

Dr Rupy: I can't imagine that doing very well on Tik Tok.

Tom Baxter: A few years ago, I did actually think about, you know, starting to offer like some Latvian, um, some Latvian products. Um, but we've, yeah, too busy doing what we do. So, um,

Dr Rupy: And so, okay, so we we you mentioned like the fibre and everything. That that makes me think, if the majority of the products that I find in supplemental form are in powder or in tinctures, are you getting the full benefit of the mushroom? Is it better to go to the source and try and actually have like a physical lion's mane and, you know, cook it or like, you know, chop it and sort it.

Tom Baxter: Again, I think that, um, there is definite value in doing that. Um, the, the problem is that if you are, if you have the ability and the time to eat whatever, 150 grams of, uh, mushrooms a day, um, then I think that's a really good thing to do, and possibly you don't necessarily need to supplement that much, um, if at all. The, the issue that you've got though is that if you look at reishi, for example, which is the most studied of all the medicinal mushrooms by a country mile. Interestingly, in the folk, well, in the history of the sort of of the mushroom, it was like a female deity in around 600 AD came down, a Chinese deity came down, and in her left hand, she had a reishi mushroom. In her right, she had the cannabis plant, and they were viewed as the two sort of gifts from God. And for about 350 years, it was only the emperor and his family who were allowed to use reishi. Um, so it was very much viewed as the sort of mushroom of immortality. And certainly, I think of all the mushrooms we grow, it's the one that has the the biggest impact on the broadest number of people. I think a lot of people who are taking lion's mane would be far better off taking reishi.

Dr Rupy: Really?

Tom Baxter: Reishi is extraordinary in so many ways. Um,

Dr Rupy: Let's let's double click on reishi actually, because I I do want to go through like lion's mane and stuff because I think people, myself included, will look at some of these mushroom products and it will say, boost your brain or good for fatigue or good for your skin or whatever it might be. And I'm like, okay, well, I need some of that. But there isn't that much education as to whether that's actually truly a good thing to do, obviously beyond all the lifestyle stuff.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, I think it's a difficult one though, because, you know, the problem we've got in the UK from a regulatory perspective is that mushrooms are viewed as having no medicinal value. And so, for example, we were investigated by the MHRA like a year and a half ago, and we had to take off any

Dr Rupy: That's the medical health regulation agency.

Tom Baxter: Medicines, yeah, medicines and health regulation authority. And, um, what's happening at the moment within the sort of regulatory framework, a lot of the resource that's been going after like CBD type products is now looking at the mushroom space. Um, and so we're not allowed to put any scientific evidence on any page where we're talking, where we've got a product to sell. So you cannot mention any of the research we're funding.

Dr Rupy: Really?

Tom Baxter: No, so it's you can't. And so it's quite difficult. That's why you you tend to see a lot of these generic terms which aren't implying anything. And because you're not allowed to substantiate it. And I do understand because a reasonable proportion of the products that are on the marketplace at the moment are unlikely to have a huge amount of beneficial compounds in them. So I do understand that from a regulatory perspective, you do need to stop people from just buying 10 kilos of powder from China, then referencing every possible clinical trial on some product that has absolutely nothing to do with the product they're selling. So I do understand it, but it is also frustrating in a way because if you're trying to educate people, you want to be able to point them in the right direction so that they can go off and do their own research. And so we are in this sort of slightly unfortunate situation where it's hard to do that. And so what you've found is with some of the more, the better funded companies, and quite a lot of these are companies that have pivoted out of the CBD space and are now coming up with brands in the mushroom space, they're putting, for example, I don't know, echinacea or, you know, a tiny amount of a herb in it that helps with, I don't know, whatever it may be, sleep, and then they can claim sleep on the product that they're selling with reishi. So they're looking for herbs so that they can sort of get around that, and then they can make the claims on the herbs that are in the product, irrespective of how much is in there, because you just need an infinitesimal amount. Um, and so the whole, you know, it is difficult to gain clarity on, um, the products, very difficult, and it's difficult for the people making the products to give you that clarity because of the regulatory framework as well. But it's, I do understand from a regulatory perspective why you need to stop people from making all sorts of claims when the majority of people, unfortunately, probably don't actually know what it is that they're selling because there's no requirement.

Dr Rupy: Okay. I I had no idea that the agencies were stopping you putting out claims or scientific studies alongside your product.

Tom Baxter: Yeah. I can understand why from the way you've explained it, because if you are literally just getting some powder that is mainly maltodextrin or whatever, and it's claiming to be chaga or reishi or whatever it might be, um, people are unwillingly buying that and looking for that, that claim. But if you, you know, to take the other side is, if you were able to demonstrate in a transparent way the constituents of your product that have been lab tested to have a specific amount of certain compounds that are of interest and have actually got substantiated claims behind, I don't understand why

Dr Rupy: So what the process is then is then you have to make a application for a marketing right for that particular compound in that particular product. And so it is possible to do that, and you then have to basically create a brand name for that particular product that has that particular compound in it, obviously it can have other compounds in it, but you're marketing it under a particular, and then you get marketing rights that are approved by the MHRA for that. So it's sort of, it's a step towards sort of a more pharmaceutical orientated sort of model. And again, you have to be relatively well funded. I mean, we've, we could do that for a few of our products now. So we could do that, for example, with our oyster product because we know the ergothioneine content. We could do that with our reishi product because we know various different ganoderic acids, about six of them now. Uh, we know our ergosterol, uh, we could do that with our cordyceps because we know the adenosine, we know the cordycepin levels. Um, we could do the, so there are quite a few of those we could do it with. Um, but for the majority of people, I don't know any other company in the UK that's counting any of those compounds. All that they're doing is that they're using, um, they're buying a product and they're with that, you get a COA, a piece of paper which is a COA, a certificate of analysis. And that'll generally say polysaccharide content or beta-glucan content. Some of the better ones will say maybe, um, triterpene content, but that, that'll be it. That'll be as detailed as they go.

Dr Rupy: Right, right. I mean, I've never seen that on any product.

Tom Baxter: Those are the good ones. There might be one or two. There are, there are some, there are some good ones. Yeah, no, of course there are. There are like, there's not, it's not all

Dr Rupy: Can we talk about reishi actually? So what, so you mentioned some of the compounds in reishi that you verify on your own products. What, what is, what are people using reishi for? What should

Tom Baxter: Okay, so reishi, I mean, reishi traditionally in, um, is given for sort of hepatic system. So for regulating your sort of liver in particular. Uh, it's also viewed as a, um, sort of a calming mushroom. And so the reason for that from a physiological perspective is it opens up the capillaries and allows your body to hold more oxygen. And obviously, if your body's holding more oxygen, you don't, your heart doesn't need to beat as fast. The issue, this is where one of the contraindications with reishi comes in for things like anti-platelet medication, like warfarin and things like that, because obviously if you've, if you're going to open up the body to hold more oxygen and you've already dropped the platelet count, then suddenly it's beating much slower, and but unfortunately it's beating a lot less oxygen around the body, and people start, we've had lots of people feel awful because they weren't aware of this. And this is one of the other issues, because the mushrooms have no medicinal value according to the regulator, you can't put contraindications on it because they have no medicinal value. So you can't put, because then you're inferring that there's there's something in it. And because if there's nothing in it,

Dr Rupy: That is wild.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, it's it's absolutely, it's, you know, it's just

Dr Rupy: That is bonkers. So people are actually consuming medicines with potential contraindications, interactions with drugs like warfarin, anti-platelet medications, aspirin, etc.

Tom Baxter: Yeah. You can't put the contraindication on because that means you're inferring that it has some medical efficacy, which is not recognised by the regulator. So you're in this perverse world where

Dr Rupy: This is a public service announcement right here. We should we should really get people to think about if they are going to be taking mushrooms. Yeah, 100%. There is things to consider. What are the key medications from your knowledge that that you should be aware of?

Tom Baxter: So anti-platelet, clotting is a big one. Um, so it's not just actually reishi. So generally in the sort of, um, herbalist world, everyone has always suggested, you know, pre-surgery, you take two or three weeks off reishi before surgery for obvious reasons. Um, also lion's mane to a degree seems to contraindicate. There, if you want to go, I can list some of the things to can be conscious of now. Um, one of the potential issues with chaga is it's got a high ORAC value. So ORAC was sort of came up with by the US, I think, originally to as a sort of, it's been used by companies to try and market things from an antioxidant perspective. And chaga is off the charts when it comes to ORAC value. But so from an oxalate perspective, potentially chaga, I mean, it does have a lot of oxalates. And if you wanted to be really sensible about taking chaga over a long period of time, you'd probably suggest taking it with milk so that the calcium can basically get it out of your system. And so there are, you know, the more you look into it, there are more, you know, it's why we suggest people have a break like between bottles or, you know, because I think

Dr Rupy: So you shouldn't be having like a supplemental form of mushrooms every day.

Tom Baxter: I think, I think, I think you can do it. No, I think you can do it. Like, I don't think there's, with ours, I don't think there's any issue in taking them for a couple of months. But I think it's always a good idea with anything to like have a break off them for a week or two, also be conscious of any changes, because you don't need to take something if you're not conscious of, if you can't notice the difference, there's no point in taking it. And the trouble is if you get into this habitual routine, I know all brands like ours are keen on people just like on the subscription model is key basically to people's business. Um, I should mention the fact that if you do buy a bottle of ours, don't buy it on a monthly subscription because the the bottles last seven weeks. That's one of the distinct flaws in our business model. So, so don't, don't, don't. Um, and yeah, I think, I think giving your body time away from these compounds is really useful.

Dr Rupy: Yeah. You know, I mean, I I in a very sort of glib way, you know, I I take myself off anything caffeinated for a month every year. You know, I love my coffee. I'm a big fan of coffee. I drink decaf for a month and I have other things in my diet that I remove just because I actually want to feel what it's like to be, um, without any caffeine in my system. And then that coffee on that day, it hits different. It is delicious. Yeah. It's great. Okay, so, so the high ORAC score in chaga, the oxalates, you know, if you've got kidney or you're prone to kidney stones, that's definitely something you want to be aware of.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, no, in a real, in a very, very real sense. That's something you've got to be aware of. Um, uh, with, now, it's, so the other thing that's interesting with mushrooms, they seem to have an ability to regulate certain hormones. Um, and so if you're taking, um, you know, medication to suppress estrogen, estrogen in particular for, you know, people that have, um, got estrogen dependent cancers, then you don't want to be taking reishi.

Dr Rupy: Okay.

Tom Baxter: Reishi seems to be able to, it's got a couple of phytoestrogenic compounds in it, and it seems to be able to, it's very positive for like pre-menopause or menopausal women because of that ability to regulate estrogen. But if you're trying to suppress the function, then you don't want to be taking reishi, and especially not over long periods of time.

Dr Rupy: Well, this is really interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, if you do have an estrogen dependent cancer and you've been told mushrooms are good for cancer, and then you go online and your first thing you see is reishi because that's the most well-studied, like you said, it's the commonest one that we find, you could be really erroneously doing yourself a lot of harm.

Tom Baxter: You could be. I was speaking to an oncologist who, um, works at a specialist breast cancer clinic in Kent, and, um, I'd always said to people not to take reishi because of this potential ability to upregulate estrogen. And interestingly, she said she agrees to a degree, but she will also recommend people take a high dose of reishi for a month. The benefits from her perspective outweigh the risk, but not over a longer period of time.

Dr Rupy: Oh, okay.

Tom Baxter: Because there are so many other compounds in or so many other effects of the compounds in reishi that are potentially beneficial from a breast cancer perspective. Um, but yeah, generally speaking, and so for example, with, um, maitake seems to be able to regulate progesterone. And so for progesterone dependent cancers, you need to stay clear of maitake. Um, so yeah, I mean, it's like anything in life, the more you look into it, it's more complicated.

Dr Rupy: It's so complicated. You know, it's easy to conclude, you know what, best to just stay away.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, but it isn't, it isn't, because if you can speak to someone that has some level of knowledge or the trouble is there's a lot of people that think they've got some level of knowledge.

Dr Rupy: This is exactly my point, you know, I mean, the fact that we've got you on the podcast is phenomenal, but I don't think I would be able to call up someone within my network and get advice on which mushrooms would be relevant for me if I had a concurrent medical problem like cancer.

Tom Baxter: I mean, this is why, for example, Turkey Tail is so useful because Turkey Tail doesn't appear, like all the sort of studies they've done looking at, you know, whether or not there's a toxic level for anything, it doesn't appear there's a toxic level at all with, and it doesn't regulate any hormones.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, maybe that's the one.

Tom Baxter: Well, that that was just the study we've done, but lots of other studies have looked at, you know, toxic levels. And there doesn't appear to be one for Turkey Tail. Turkey Tail is very effective at, um, regulating, um, sort of immune function and potentially helping with, um, acting as a prebiotic on the gut. And so certainly for, um, people when they're going through, in particular, you know, chemo and radiotherapy, the upregulation of neutrophil counts, which is one of the main markers.

Dr Rupy: So one of the immune cells that

Tom Baxter: Yeah, but it's one of the main markers oncologists look at to decide whether or not you can actually take the next set of chemo.

Dr Rupy: Round of chemo, yeah, yeah.

Tom Baxter: And so it's interesting because I think some of the value in when you're looking at the outcomes for people, um, with cancer of taking the mushrooms, it's not necessarily that the mushrooms are doing anything to, you know, slow down the rate of growth of the cancer cells, but because they're upregulating the immune system, they're allowing the people to have a far more regimented protocol. So they're getting them more regularly, which means you're not giving as much time for the cancer cells to mutate and allow the ones that are, you know, able to like dodge the chemo to grow. And so I think that ability to just allow the body to take more chemo in a more concentrated period of time is probably one of the main reasons why you're seeing the positive sort of long-term survival rates in year one, year three, year five, just because it's, it's working synergistically in essence with the chemo.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, and I really like that idea actually, because, you know, some of the novel treatments that we've discussed on the podcast, like peptide vaccine technology, which is where you're essentially giving your own immune system a higher education. It's like, you know, going from primary school to like postgraduate level education on what that cancer looks like. So you're utilizing your own immune cells to attack that cancer more aggressively. So with the combination of other products like chemotherapy, etc, um, you're likely to have a better outcome. Um, so I like that idea or that analogy of like Turkey Tail not directly being anti-cancer, but actually something that supercharges your own immune system to be more effective at getting rid of the cancer.

Tom Baxter: I think what it really does is it allows your own immune, your own immune system to recover much more quickly from the cell death that the cancer occurs, that the chemo creates. And so, um, yeah, the ability to, um, basically process through the kidneys and the liver that quantity of dead cells allows the body to recover more quickly and then, um, take another bout of traditional therapy.

Dr Rupy: On the subject of reishi, now looking at the flip side, if it does have this phytoestrogenic effect, in the same way soy isoflavones are potentially beneficial for menopause, pre-menopause, um, certain other products, uh, in that sort of category of of soy, um, is reishi good for menopausal symptoms?

Tom Baxter: 100%. Yeah, 100%. And I think, um, you'll probably be able to tell me more about this, but I think the, um, one of the big things that are reported back to us is that the, um, people's sleep is massively improved. And actually body temperature regulation, because I think there's a direct link. I think one of the biggest causal links is between, um, at least what I've read, is between, uh, estrogen and, uh, insulin. And there's some, I can't remember exactly what the ratio is, but when, um, obviously in menopausal women, the estrogen levels are dropping, and so that ratio between insulin and estrogen just goes completely out of whack. And that's one of the main body temperature regulation mechanisms. And so we have lots and lots and lots and lots of people claiming that one, they're sleeping a lot better. Um, and part of that, I think, is because they're having less variation in body temperature at night. And so, um, yeah, I mean, what's really interesting for us with reishi is, um, we're looking at ganoderic acids in particular. So with the PhD that we have at the neuroscience department at UE in Bristol, um, we're, we're, one of the things we're looking at with reishi is inflammation within the microglia, within the central nervous system. Um, and it appears that the ganoderic acids, their molecular structure is almost identical to cortisol. Um, and it seems that they're attaching onto the same receptors that cortisol would normally attach onto. And the, it's been quite interesting for us because we've been comparing lots of different ganoderma species and looking at the different amounts of different ganoderic acids. And some of the ganoderic acids are very interesting from a certain cancer perspective as well. But I think AD and E are very relevant from a regulation of inflammation within the central nervous system perspective. And, um, this is one of the lines of, uh, research that we're going to be doing over the next 12 months is just trying to establish which one of those ganoderics, if any of them, uh, ganoderic acids seem to downregulate an inflammatory response within similar cells basically to what you find in the microglia.

Dr Rupy: That's super interesting.

Tom Baxter: And also with Alzheimer's, there appears to be some link between, um, this particular, no, sorry, with Parkinson's, a particular, um, serotonin receptor that gets kicked off in the gut with some compound with reishi. And so that's another one that we're looking at. And I think, you know, the, the, if we stay on reishi, the, the ability to create a sort of down regulation of heart rate, of, uh, inflammation within the, within the microglia potentially, but most importantly and most, probably the most noticeable outcome we hear from people is when people have inflammation in the joints, it seems to downregulate cytokine release. And so cytokines, you'll probably know far more about this than I will, but in my layman's terms, they are the sort of signalling enzyme or signalling enzyme of the immune system. And what quite often happens, I think around 60% of visible inflammation in the body is is caused by an overproduction of cytokines. So a lot of people with rheumatoid arthritis, for example, um, tell us, and these are proper Somerset, a lot of them are proper Somerset country boys. Oh, you have some reishi up here, no. And so we've had people, literally had people come up the farm from the village because someone has taken our reishi for their knees or their ankles or their hips. And, you know, have extolled the virtues of them. And mainly because people are taking a lot less painkillers in the morning, and so they're able to take the reishi, and for whatever reason, their knees are working better, they're not having to take painkillers to get down the stairs, you know, and I think there is quite a lot of evidence for this, uh, cytokine regulation. And I think what's, the one, if you take one thing away from the sort of difference between mushrooms and other potential supplements, let's say, it's their regulatory capacity. You know, a lot of people think that you're taking them, you know, as immune boosters. You're not, they're not going to boost your immune system like potentially taking a lot of vitamin C or vitamin D or whatever it may be. They are looking to create sort of homeostasis in the body. So they will looking to downregulate or upregulate. They're regulators as opposed to like just boosters. And so whether that be from an inflammatory response perspective, be it an immune response perspective, um, this is what's different, this capacity to regulate is what's kind of unique to mushrooms. There are certain other compounds that potentially have a regulatory capacity, but

Dr Rupy: I I like that idea actually, because, you know, I think people use supplements in very binary terms, like, like you just said, I I ingest X to boost Y, to boost my immune system, whatever it might be. But you're saying, what you're saying is mushrooms come in, they sort of assess the situation, and they tweak the knobs as to whether you need a little bit more of inflammation or a little bit less or a little bit more estrogen or a little bit less. It seems like they can do a multitude of things, which sounds almost like fanciful, but

Tom Baxter: I think this is where our sort of, uh, this is where we can sort of veer into the space of, um, needing to recognise that mushrooms are not plants. There have been various studies done looking at, for example, types of slime mold. Uh, there seems to be, there is no brain in a mushroom, yet there seems to be an ability to make rational decisions. So, for example, they've put

Dr Rupy: Intelligence.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, there is, yeah, there is, there is some level of intelligence which, uh, exists within fungi at a level, potentially exists within plants as well, but it's it's at a level that we are able to recognise. So, for example, they've done studies in Japan looking at slime molds in the metro system, and the slime mold chooses the most efficient way to get through the metro system more efficiently than how they designed it. They've done really interesting studies, um, using, um, sort of radioactive, uh, markers where they put it down into, you know, you know, they pour some into the ground at a mile away, and that particular compound lands up, you know, a mile and a half further down the train. It's gone through lots of different, you know, mycelial networks attached to different trees. And, you know, there's other ones where they've, so the their ability to transfer compounds to where they need them over a vast range. And also, what's quite interesting, I remember speaking to, because a lot of the research, a lot of the money that's gone into sort of mycology over the last 30 or 40 years is to do with cereals, because that's agriculture is big, big ag basically. These are the, it's the pathogens that are killing cereal crops that are, you know, where the the research money is. And so a lot of the mycologists, you know, who've been working in academia and research have come from this background. And, you know, the few I've met are quite funny, funny sort of dry human beings, but the idea that, uh, I remember speaking to one of them and he was like, you know, the idea that mushrooms are in some way sharing, caring organizations, you know, it's just because we don't hear the screams, we don't see the blood, you know, they are very selfish. They have a preference for their clade, their family. They will choose to allocate resources. So, for example, with mycorrhizal fungi, fungi that form relationships with plants, and the photosynthesis, the plants photosynthesize, they give the, um, they give the the fungi carbon and potentially some glucose, uh, and the fungi give them back nitrogen or whatever it is that they've broken down with their enzymes. Um, but if the, if the fungi are not getting as much, you know, glucose as they want from the plant, they will stop the trade, and they will just transfer that, you know, nitrogen that they're carrying further down until they've found a willing, you know, trade partner who's willing to give them extra more. And so it is like, you know, I think, I think the irony of it is that we are more like fungi than we care to believe, just not in the way that we'd hoped.

Dr Rupy: This is interesting. So, I want to get on to, so so there's probably some people listening to this thinking, okay, um, I do all the best things. I I wouldn't mind a bit of sharpness. I wouldn't mind a bit of improvement in my sleep. How do you determine what is actually going to be a quality product given that you can't make claims on the product? It's completely unregulated if I'm not mistaken. Um, what are the key things that people should be looking at when they choose a mushroom supplement?

Tom Baxter: I mean, this is where it becomes really hard. Um, I mean, the first port of call, I'd probably say organic is probably a good

Dr Rupy: Organic.

Tom Baxter: a good starting point. Um,

Dr Rupy: Do they tend to be adulterated with a lot of environmental pollutants, these

Tom Baxter: I think the problem with mushrooms, one of the problems with mushrooms is that they're very good bio-accumulators. And so

Dr Rupy: Ah, yeah. So just to, uh, clarify for the listener, a bio-accumulator is essentially a concentrator of environmental pollutants.

Tom Baxter: Yeah. Similar to like mollusks and, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's a reason why tuna has so much mercury, it's because it's at the top of the food chain that's eating lots of things further down the food chain that, you know, have little bits of mercury in. The problem with mushrooms is that they are, because of their ability to, um, they exude enzymes into the environment and break things down into constituent parts and then absorb that into themselves. So they're very effective at breaking down metals and taking them up in their complete state. And so, interestingly, one of the projects we're doing at the farm at the moment is looking at using mycelium to take out, um, sort of nitrogen, uh, potassium, and phosphates from, uh, wastewater, uh, with a view to hopefully being able to clean some of the down our way, there's a big issue with chicken farms on, uh, one of the rivers. And so, yeah, that's one of the things we're doing. So they are very good at doing it. Um, but unfortunately, when you're looking at it from a human health perspective, you don't want a mushroom that has been sat for six months, and also because they're around for quite a long time, um, you know, they do have that ability to, um, you know, take up heavy metals. And also, you know, one of the unfortunate realities with, um, so for example, I mentioned cordyceps briefly. So the cordyceps sinensis, which was the wild forage one from Tibet, that always has very high levels of arsenic in it. And it's not that, um, geologically, that part of the world, sort of China, actually geologically has much higher levels of heavy metals. It's not because of pollution. I mean, it's also because of pollution now, but for example, in Tibet, there's not a lot of pollution, especially on these high plateaus, but they have very high levels of arsenic. And that, that was one of the reasons why sort of 25 years ago, they, and also the life cycle of these, um, cordyceps is about three years in the wild. So it takes three years before the mushroom actually comes out of the ground. And even when you're trying to grow them commercially on these, um, moth larvae, it's still like 550 days. So it's very difficult to come up with a commercial product using, um, cordyceps sinensis. And so the one that is now sort of used ubiquitously is the cordyceps militaris. Um, and so that's the one we grow. Cordyceps militaris also grows in the UK. So, you know, this year actually was a bumper year for cordyceps militaris. I don't think anyone's ever seen as many as this year. It's kind of ironic given the fact that this year was, you know, catastrophic for butterflies and moths. And, um, you know, I don't think there's a correlation. I don't think it's the cordyceps. I think it's more everything else we've done. Um,

Dr Rupy: Okay, so organic sounds like something to look for.

Tom Baxter: Organic is probably the best, that's going to, that's going to rule out a lot of the bad stuff. So that's a good starting place. Um, ideally, they they're actually doing some research themselves, the company, and there are a couple that are doing it. I think the, you know, there's a company, there's a couple of companies I'd probably be comfortable suggesting. Um, there's, uh, a company that was sort of founded by a guy called Martin Powell.

Dr Rupy: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Tom Baxter: Who's an absolute joy of a human being. Um, and I'd strongly recommend getting him on.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, if you can make the intro, I'd love that.

Tom Baxter: He knows a thousand times more than me on this stuff. So, um,

Dr Rupy: Well, you know quite a lot, so that's something.

Tom Baxter: When you speak to Martin, so Martin's, yeah, Martin's been a great support to us, and he's a biochemist by training, but he's also a traditional Chinese herbalist. Um, and he, you know, speaks Mandarin, has been going to China for decades, knows absolutely everyone in the mushroom space over the last, all the people that have set up sort of biotech companies, all the big, he knows everyone, um, and is so humble and is so kind and so knowledgeable. Um, some of the best books written on medicinal mushrooms are written by Martin. Um, so his company or the company that he uses is or that he heads up, he's not really with, not really involved in a practical sense anymore, is a company called MycoNutri. And then there's another company, um, in Europe, um, which it's a tricky one, this one, because we've tested their products and for the same compounds that we've tested ours for, and ours have a lot more, like a lot more in. So, this is what's so difficult about it, because on the surface, these guys look completely legitimate. Um, they're a European company, they do a lot of R&D, um, they were set up by scientists, their products are expensive. Um, but now that we've had the results back, until I've got, I do normally suggest them, and they do seem like a decent bunch of people, but I'm just a little bit hesitant now just because

Dr Rupy: Well, we'll stick with MycoNutri for now.

Tom Baxter: MycoNutri. I haven't, I haven't tested Martin's product. Maybe I should test it before I recommend it. From a personal perspective, I would, I would have no issue.

Dr Rupy: Do you think with regards to what you were talking about in terms of the, um, soil levels of arsenic, provenance is also something important as well?

Tom Baxter: 100%. I mean, the issue you've got though is, you know, being boring and talking about like the actual economics of doing this, it's very difficult to do it in Europe, um, because the cost of production in China is so low. You know, they are, you know, the scale they're doing things at is just beyond anything that we can comprehend. Um, and so, you know, it's very difficult to, um, you know, it's why I'm never going to have a huge company because trying to grow huge quantities of mushrooms and extract from them and do everything else, it's just not practical. You know, I can't, we grow about half a ton of, well, we harvest about half a ton a week of mushrooms, about 500 kilos. Um, and that's a lot of work. We mix like three tons of substrate a week. So it's like, it's proper, yeah, it's proper graft. And, um, the idea that we could triple that and not kill ourselves is ridiculous. Um, you know, I do have friends in the UK who've, you know, bigger farms than us that are providing a lot of it for, um, the sort of consumer. So a guy that grows huge amount of lion's mane for Wagamama's. I'm not sure if they're still doing it, but various, um, sort of bigger, uh, organizations, and, you know, we could potentially partner up with him. Um, so there is scalability, but provenance is amazing. And to a degree, you know, um, if you can get some level of visibility on their supply chain, then that's great, because they should be able to tell you where they've actually sourced it from. Like, the problem is, like, everything, not everything, but the vast majority is going to be coming from China, a little bit from Vietnam now, especially cordyceps, a tiny bit from India. Um,

Dr Rupy: If you were a consumer, Yeah. and you were investing in your health, would you buy a Chinese or an Indian made product and consume it every day?

Tom Baxter: It depended if I, so with MycoNutri, the majority of those products will be from China. But Martin has been going to China for 30 years, knows absolutely everyone, does all the testing. And so if I knew that the person I was buying it from was an honest person who knew the market and had been doing everything that he possibly could for decades, then I wouldn't have an issue. You know, it's a question of you've got to be able to trust the person. The problem is there's very few people like Martin.

Dr Rupy: Oh, yeah. I mean, like, I can't think of, most of the brands out there are pretty faceless. And if they do have partners or people associated with them, they're not necessarily biochemists. They're certainly, they're certainly not Mandarin speaking. And, uh, I think a lot of people are buying it on the premise of the potential nootropic effects, you know, brain boosting, cognitive enhancing, um, without really thinking about, you know, provenance and the transparency. And I guess one of the other things that, not to put words in your mouth, but if they are actually independently having their test, their products lab tested for purity or the presence of particular phytonutrients and stuff.

Tom Baxter: So the only, the only thing that you're actually required to test for is, uh, like a microbiological test and a heavy metals test. So those are the only two that you're actually required because it's a food supplement to test for. Now, what is interesting is I've never seen a certificate of analysis from China that doesn't have some level of cadmium, arsenic. I think part of that is, as I mentioned, is geological. It's not necessarily pollution. I mean, it's also because of pollution now, but for example, in Tibet, there's not a lot of pollution, especially on these high plateaus, but they have very high levels of arsenic. And that, that was one of the reasons why, you know, we've never seen any of any arsenic, cadmium, anything in any of our samples. So, you know, it is definitely, um, it's definitely possible to make a mushroom product with zero of any of these heavy metals in. And that would probably tell you as much as anything. I mean, if you can find a product that doesn't have heavy metals in, it's probably not come from China. And the thing is with heavy metals, they do accumulate. That's one of the issues. So although it might be under, like considerably under, if you were to take that product for years, say, then there would be a potential issue. Um, and I think the other thing is, like, realistically, in terms of where we're at as a sort of species and as a society, I think trying to do things locally is how you create a better sort of environment to live in. Um, everything is so sort of homogenized now, everything is so similar, the supply chains for everything are so long, no one really knows where anything comes from. Um, I mean, it's extraordinary just how simple it is to get, for example, organic certification on a product you're buying from China. You just got to get a piece of paper from them, show it to the Soil Association, and they go, yeah, great. And you're thinking, you know, you come in and spend two days in here, go through absolutely everything, and all I need to do is just buy stuff in from China, my life would be so much easier. You know, and it's like, uh, so I think this whole sort of supply chain visibility thing, it's, I'm not, I think just buying local and trying to have relationships with whoever it is or whatever company you're doing, because fundamentally, we are living in a community, we're living with the people around us. And I think if we can do anything consciously to try and support the people around us, then that has as much value as, you know, looking at things purely from a sort of, you know, data perspective. Everything's about data nowadays. And we're the same, we're, we love data, but there does come a point where, um, you have to think a little bit about in terms of the choices you make, we're living in a society at the moment where, you know, people are not feeling very connected. Um, people are feeling quite lonely, a lot of people are living by themselves. Um, you know, if we can start making sort of consumer decisions based on wanting a slightly different world in future, rather than, you know, the cheapest thing from whatever machine or whoever it is that makes things for next to nothing. So I think, you know, if you can support people that are doing stuff locally to you, um, the one thing I will say with tinctures, it's really easy, because you can taste them, you can smell them, and you can look at them. If they look clear, there's nothing in them. If they taste just of alcohol, there's nothing in them. So like, they should taste and look filthy. They should taste horrendous. You know, if, so I think, I think, you know, trust your senses. With tinctures, it's a lot easier. With powders, obviously, it's much harder. And the majority of products are powders. Um, so yeah.

Dr Rupy: I I I completely agree with your sentiments around buying, uh, local and and supporting, um, the, uh, the local economy. I I want to wrap this up because I I reckon, you know, if they're not using, uh, reishi or lion's mane to go to sleep, they can definitely use us chattering on for two hours maybe. Um, let's do a warm, like a a rapid fire round to to finish things off.

Tom Baxter: Wake us up.

Dr Rupy: Wake us up. Yeah, right at the end. So, um, gosh, I had so many more questions, but I I think, um, why don't we start with an easy one? What, um, what mushrooms do you take every day in supplemental form?

Tom Baxter: Uh, so I take maitake, um, and cordyceps will probably be the two, two of the main ones.

Dr Rupy: Um, I'm looking to, uh, improve my energy every day. What mushrooms should I be thinking about?

Tom Baxter: Cordyceps.

Dr Rupy: Cordyceps.

Tom Baxter: And possibly reishi.

Dr Rupy: And possibly reishi.

Tom Baxter: To give you a good night's sleep. That'll give you more energy than anything else.

Dr Rupy: What is the, uh, mushroom that you're most excited about?

Tom Baxter: Oh. It's like choosing one of your kids. Well, it's just, it's just that we're, we're creating hybrids at the moment, so we're doing

Dr Rupy: Oh, we didn't even get to talk about that.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, so there's, and we're also, I think we're the first people to have commercially grown a couple of other strains, um, which have just started coming through. So there's, there's, what's the one I'm most excited about? Um, I mean, I love maitake because it's, maitake is like the, the beautiful woman who is intolerably difficult to deal with, but gives you, I mean, that it is, maitake is an amazing mushroom. It tastes amazing, it looks amazing, it smells amazing. It's so difficult to grow. Um, and yeah, so maitake.

Dr Rupy: Should I be putting mushrooms in my coffee?

Tom Baxter: Yes, if you can't do it a different way. It's fine. It's fine. Some argument over adenosine receptors, but it's fine.

Dr Rupy: Is there any added benefit to adding it to coffee, or is it just to mask the taste?

Tom Baxter: No, it's probably, yeah, no, there's, there's no benefit to adding it to coffee unless you're, um, using, the only benefit you could argue is that if you have fats in your coffee, the lipids in the fats will coat the compounds and get them further into your digestive tract. So that would be the only real benefit. There are possibly some negatives, um, but again, we're talking like single percentage points in efficacy, so it's not massive, but if you wanted the optimum way, and everyone loves optimizing everything nowadays, then

Dr Rupy: These are marginal gains.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, these are very much marginal gains. As long as you've got a decent quality product, that's the key thing.

Dr Rupy: Should I be consuming blended mushrooms? As in multiple blends of like, you know, as many mushrooms in a powder product as possible.

Tom Baxter: I think from a, I think if you're buying just the powder, not like the extracted powder, so the powder to like give your body lots of protein, improve your, your gut, and that, that powder should not be expensive. We're not talking super expensive mushroom powder. This is, this is just sort of like fibrous mushroom powder. Um, so like you should be getting like 150 grams for sort of 20 pounds, really, because it's, it hasn't gone through any extractions, or it might be the leftover of the extractions. Um, then yes, but if you're taking like extract powders, which is a sort of a different product, and this is the other thing, there's so many different products on the market. It's like, you know, what's it, we could go on for hours. So, yeah, but I think fundamentally, eating mushrooms, start with eating mushrooms.

Dr Rupy: Start with eating mushrooms. The the products where, because I see this a lot, and actually my wife had, I think she had quite a bad reaction to taking a blended product. It had like everything we talked about in it. Everything. Chaga, reishi, lion's mane, like the whole long list, all in a, all in a powder with like a bit of chai and, you know, for flavour. And horrible reaction. She had a really terrible reaction.

Tom Baxter: And what, what was the reaction she had? Because that's not

Dr Rupy: Gut.

Tom Baxter: Yeah, that's, that's really common. We hear that with a lot of a lot of people that have taken these, um, products that are sort of marketed as, you know, your sort of mushroom coffee alternative or whatever it may be. And I think that's probably got something to do with the maltodextrin in it, uh, having a really bad reaction. But also some people do actually have bad reactions to mushrooms. And actually of all of them, lion's mane probably has the highest incidence of, so for some people's heart rate rockets, and people can feel very anxious. So, you know, of all of them, ironically enough, lion's mane is probably the one. We've had three people, and that's out of probably around 15,000 that have had like an immediate adverse reaction. And so, you know, there is no doubt that a biological reaction is taking place, albeit in this sense, it's a negative, you know, it's a negative reaction. And I think people do need to be conscious of it, um, because, you know, they're the, they're actual, if you've got a decent quality product, your body should be making use of some of the compounds. And in 99.9% of the time, it should hopefully not be in a negative way. But, you know, still, everything is not gravy.

Dr Rupy: Tom, this has been awesome. You're, you're, you're super knowledgeable. Man, I could have talked to you about so many other mushrooms as well, but we'll, we'll save it for another time.

Tom Baxter: Save it for another time. Get Martin on, and then you can, you can realise how, how ignorant I actually am.

Dr Rupy: I'll get Martin on. Thank you, man. This is brilliant. This is brilliant. Super, super, super interesting.