Functional Mushrooms: Are They the Remedy You've Been Looking For? - Episode 104

We’re back talking about the magic of mushrooms. This time though, we’re not talking about mushrooms as psychedelics or going on a journey with mushrooms, we’re talking about the healing powers of mushrooms with Ken and Roger of Fruiting Bodies.

They know first-hand the functional use of mushrooms as remedies because mushrooms have literally saved their own lives. We can’t wait for you to hear their stories – and the impact that mushrooms have in their lives and the lives of so many that they’ve helped. They’ve taken their passion and created Fruiting Bodies – where they’ve crafted their own remedies with fresh, organic mushrooms that produce real, measurable benefits.

As they say, fungi and humans have been friends for centuries. As we evolved, our bodies have come to respond to certain fungi in miraculous ways.

They can’t wait to tell you all of the ways that functional mushrooms can change your life – and about the products that they have created with the utmost care and precision that is now being used by people all over the world, including doctors and patient care.

MORE FROM FRUITING BODIES

• Find out more about functional mushrooms + products by Fruiting Bodies at fruitingbodies.co.
• Follow them on Instagram @fruitingbodies.co
• Go behind-the-scenes on Instagram @fruitingbodeslab

Visit seekingcentercommunity.com for more with Robyn + Karen and many of the guides on Seeking Center: The Podcast. You'll get access to live weekly sessions, intuitive guidance, daily inspiration, and a space to share your journey with like-minded people who just get it.

You can also follow Seeking Center on Instagram @theseekingcenter.

Transcript

Robyn: I'm Robyn Miller Brecker and I'm Karen Loenser. Welcome to Seeking Center, the podcast. Join us each week as we have the conversations and we, through the spiritual and holistic clutter for you, we'll boil it down to what you need to know now, we're all about total wellness, which to us needs building a healthy life.

Karen: On a physical, mental, and spiritual level, we'll talk to the trailblazers who'll introduce you to the practices, products, and experiences that may be just what you need to hear about to transform your life. If you're listening to this, it's no accident. Think of this as your seeking center and your place to seek your center.

Robyn: And for the best wellness and spiritual practitioners, experts, products, experiences, and inspo, visit theseekingcenter. com. We're back talking about the magic of mushrooms on Seeking Center. This time though, we're not talking about mushrooms as psychedelics or going on a journey with mushrooms. We're talking about the healing powers of mushrooms with Ken and Roger of [00:01:00] Fruiting Bodies. They know firsthand the functional use of mushrooms as remedies because mushrooms have literally saved their own lives.

We can't wait for you to hear their stories and the impact that mushrooms have in their lives and the lives of so many that they've helped. They've taken their passion and created fruiting bodies where they've crafted their own remedies with fresh organic mushrooms that produce real measurable benefits.

 As they say Fungi and humans have been friends for centuries.

Robyn: bodies have come to respond to certain fungi in miraculous ways. They can't wait to tell you all of the ways that functional mushrooms can change your life and about the products that they've created with the utmost care and precision that is now being used by people all over the world, including doctors and patient care.

Let's get going. There is so much to discuss. Hi, Ken and 

Roger: Roger. Hey guys. Thanks for having us on today. 

Karen: Oh, we're so excited to have you here. Like Robyn said, there's so many questions 

Robyn: already. yes, and we [00:02:00] are so excited for everyone to not only hear everything you have to say, but to feel your energy because I know when we talked last time I left and for days was buzzing just from talking to you both because there's so much passion and that comes through in everything that you have to say as well as your actual products because Karen and I have both been experiencing your products as well and as we said it's like the energy that comes from you that is within the products and you can feel them in our own bodies.

So 

 We're going to dig into your personal journeys, which are unbelievably inspiring, but can you first tell our listeners what we mean by functional 

ken: mushrooms? Roger, why don't you take that? 

Roger: Yeah. When we talk about mycology and mushrooms in 

general I feel like most people hear mushrooms and they scope right to psychedelics.

 That's really been the key word for the last couple of years in media. But what we're talking about is functional mushrooms. So functional mushrooms is, somewhat [00:03:00] interchangeable with maybe like medicinal mushrooms. So we're talking, cordyceps, reishi, lion's mane chaga, turkey tail.

These other mushrooms that have effects that might work physically, but also on, maybe your emotional state not psychoactive or psychedelic, but for instance, maybe lowering blood pressure or starting to rebuild neurons in the brain. So some pretty impressive stuff. 

Functional mushrooms tend to get overlooked quite honestly a lot and the research behind it, which I'm sure we'll dive into has been lacking for a while as much as it's been, really helping to push functional mushrooms forward in the field. Yeah. 

Robyn: Thank you because you're so right.

I feel like most people do. They just go straight to the psychedelics. which are also wonderful, right? That use is wonderful. We're talking about a different use. I just wanted to make sure everybody listening right off the bat understood what we're talking about today. 

Let me just add, 

Karen: Each 1 of these remedies that you have a different.

A very different purpose, 

and I want to just underscore to like when you hear about mushrooms, you're going to something that's really nutritional [00:04:00] and helpful for your body. 

Roger: Exactly. I think I speak for both of us, these functional mushrooms for myself.

They really changed my life. And I got into herbalism when I was in college and that was, A real game changer, having been on a plethora of pharmaceuticals for a while, but it wasn't until I was introduced to functional mushrooms that really set precedence in my life and just the thing that's really beautiful, just to underscore mushrooms and functional mushrooms is that they're immunomodulators.

So most herbs, again, have very specific pathways to affecting your physical health. What's nice about mushrooms is not only do they have that and they work on individual instances for different problems, but they also have this baseline of being an amino modulator. There's a lot of overlap between the different functional mushrooms.

Just bringing your body into homeostasis and just not getting sick in the first place. That's really where mushrooms shine is, affecting your immune system so that you're just pretty much overall healthy. And that's been some of the best response that we've heard from people. 

And the fact that [00:05:00] it works on your immune system, especially having gone through with this giant grand world scale of dealing with COVID. These mushrooms have really been extremely helpful for people. 

ken: I want to say like thinking about food is medicine and fungi is obviously different than the plant family or the animal, family.

So how they digest and eat. And get their nutrients and the things then that they offer us that we don't get from necessarily from plants or animal food or meat, that type of medicine is unique to the fungi kingdom, or queendom and , for our bodies, it offers us other things that other 

cultures have been using and knowing centuries, and it's just coming more recently into the United States, into Western medicine, understanding this. Chinese, Ayurvedic, a lot of the different medicines and cultures know and have used this and we were just catching up, We could go on about the difference [00:06:00] between mushrooms and how mushrooms are related to us and, the common DNA and then the different, even beta glucans that are specific to mushrooms that you won't get from any other source.

And there's a lot of ways we could go into this, but it is from a standpoint of medicine, of healing, of how it can help our bodies, our minds. And we know everything that's connected. it's huge. Yeah, and just speaking 

Robyn: of that, I don't think that most people understand the complexity and the system that lives within our Earth.

 I know we've all seen Some documentaries you guys have dug deep in research, which we're going to talk about today too. But most people really have no idea. No, you think of 

Karen: it as something on the salad bar, right? Like it's true. 

Like all of the things that you just said, Ken, I had no idea that there was so much nutrition properties in the mushroom itself. So let's dig into some more of that. Cause I would love to [00:07:00] hear about like the common DNA. What does that mean? We have common DNA with mushrooms.

Roger: Yeah, Roger, do you want to share a little bit? Yeah, so I, yeah, I'll definitely share. So for instance, we're more closely related to the kingdom class fungi than what they are other animals. So we share a extremely large percentage of DNA with fungi. quite honestly, there's all these theories about how they arrived here on Earth in the first place, whether you're looking at, Some of the evolution theories or some of the other theories like there's theories that exist that the spore is the reproductive little particles basically that are from these mushrooms that they can survive the vacuum of space and super cold temperatures and that they came here on asteroids.

So there's a lot of different, theories revolving around that, but. Quite honestly we probably wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for fungi. Most people hear fungi, they hear, psychedelics or functionals, but you're forgetting about yeasts and other fungi that exist all in our body.

You have your gut flora and, we don't operate optimally unless we have healthy gut flora. Living within our bodies in the first [00:08:00] place and the forest couldn't exist if we didn't have fungi, these mycorrhizal fungi that live deep underground and were attached to the roots of trees.

And, we can get into the different types of fungi. So the fungi that we cultivate. A lot of them are basidiomyces. So these mushrooms that are like your usual stem and cap type of mushroom. But for instance, one of the mushrooms that we had cultivated for years was called cordyceps militaris and cordyceps mushrooms have just an amazing history, but cordyceps are a specific type of another classification of.

Fungi where their intimate pathogenic so what that means is they grow on specific species of insects. So these mushrooms will, basically colonize and grow inside of the bodies of these specific insects, so there is over 800 different species of these cordyceps and they're nicknamed the zombie fungus, but they basically will take over the neurological center of some of these.

Insects and they'll climb above, like up a tree or something, and they'll position themselves above a colony, say of ants or something, so that when [00:09:00] the mushroom will unfortunately, it's an aggressive way that it does it, but the mushroom will then grow out of its head or its back or something, and as it spores, it drops these spores back down onto the rest of the colony, and they'll start to ingest them, and, we grow cordyceps militaris on grain, on rice, And it's something that hadn't been done for, it's relatively new within the last 10, arguably 15 years that we've been growing these mushrooms but there's just, so many different types of mushrooms in that sense.

And I'm back to the mycorrhizae. These mycorrhizal organisms are species of fungi that you cannot cultivate, so you have to know somebody that has foraging experience that will go out into the woods, collect these mushrooms for you, and they're usually pretty highly valued and expensive because of the fact that you can't cultivate them, and what I mean by mycorrhizal is the spores will attach to the tip the outside of a root, basically, of a tree or a grass of some sort or another plant, and they need To live in a symbiotic relationship with those trees and they exchange sugars for different compounds that exist inside of the [00:10:00] mushroom and they're exactly essentially will hold more nutrients or hold more water for the trees or the plants.

 And like I was saying, our forests wouldn't exist unless we had these mycorrhizal species holding everything together. So the world that we know, the beautiful nature and you go out on all these fantastic walks and forage and we wouldn't have any of that if it wasn't for fungi in the first place.

We owe a lot more to Fungi than I think anybody wants to admit or is even quite honestly aware of and I think , this is what it really keeps me excited. We're learning all new cultivation techniques , we're running different analytical testing to figure out the different compounds that exist within these different mushrooms.

 There's a lot of overlap, but every single individual mushroom species. In my opinion, they all have a very unique quality to them as well. And Ken and I, we're just scratching the surface of this. Everyone else that's in this mycology field right now, we're really just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to figuring this kind of stuff out.

Through the rest of my lifetime and in the people that are going to be born 50, 60 years after me, we're still going to be figuring out so much. And I feel like every day [00:11:00] we find a new mushroom species that gets documented. it's never ending. The field of mycology it's ever expanding.

ken: And I just want to add so that's what got me into mushrooms, like in my healing journey. And then being in soil science and learning about, how, the importance of the mycelium and the mushrooms and 

and then realizing there wouldn't be life on this planet as we know it without mushrooms. 

And just thinking about wow, like when I was growing up, we had, chemistry, biology, physics, we didn't have mycology. 

So why have we ignored this such important area? And like Roger said there's so many things we could talk about. Like the single largest living organism in the world is a mushroom, that's the honey mushroom and North Eastern Oregon, I believe it's I don't know exact square foot, like 2, 900 acres of one single mat living organism. 

So like all these things, I lived all these years and I didn't know anything about [00:12:00] mushrooms. And, that's mind boggling. This is everything to be able to share and bring this information and what's possible through mushrooms so that we can be healthier in every single way, mind, body, spirit, soul, environmentally, socially, so for me, it's extremely exciting. 

And every day is fascinating. And you go to these events and these conferences and you meet all these people doing all these. cool things with mushrooms from biodegradable building materials and all these other things to replace styrofoam and other things that are been in our landfills.

Ecovative, yeah that Dell computer and Ikea, yeah, is using now for packaging as opposed to styrofoam, these mycelium molds. And the different uses that mushrooms are now, from mushroom leather to mushroom furniture.

So all these biodegradable where we're not, having to deforest and kill our environment and put stuff in landfill, but actually look [00:13:00] at how mushrooms can be used. All this outside of functional there's so much to get into that.

I just get so excited and geek out on everything mushrooms. I'm telling 

Robyn: you that you're blowing people's minds right now, because I will say that a large percentage of people listening right now have not thought about mushrooms in this way. And you're changing their perspectives at this very moment.

And we're going to come back to some of this, but I would love to talk about both of your healing journeys. With using functional mushrooms, because I think that is another level of inspiration for people to hear right now. So I don't know who wants to go first, but Roger or Ken both of your journeys are just 

ken: remarkable.

Roger. 

Roger: Yeah, I'll go first. I'm sure we can piggyback on one another. We could talk forever on just the uses of mushrooms, but that's really what was so inspiring to me is, we're living in a time where.

 This will go into kind of my history too. I went to college for sustainable agriculture and food production and living within this agricultural field. There's a lot of [00:14:00] unfortunate inconsistencies that exist in agriculture, whether it's large scale animal agriculture, or even just commercial agriculture today, whether they're using.

Nasty chemicals, inorganic solvents that exist, that stay in the earth they're reproductive. one of my great uncles passed away from from cancers basically, because, they used to, with their hands, they were mixing up pesticides, 60 years ago.

'cause they didn't know any different, they had no idea of the health parameters around this kind of stuff. And the beauty of mushrooms is that they provide a lot of solutions to problems that we're facing here, not just in America, but on earth in general. So you can grow mushrooms on agricultural by products, which is fantastic.

So a lot of the waste that the agricultural community is creating, you can take that, pasteurize it or sterilize it and grow more mushrooms on it. And some of these mushrooms have such a strong quality where they actually are digesting. With their enzymes, these harmful products through a process that in mycology we call micro remediation.

So they're able to remediate and fix and [00:15:00] clean up, whether it's, oil spills and contaminated water or ground soil and make it healthy. And some of them are actually producing it in a way where you can consume these mushroom. down the road and they're safe. , one instance where it's not, is like mushrooms are really good at soaking up radiation as well.

And this is, when we get into our products and why we're doing what we're doing, we'll explain, the efficacy behind that, why it's really important to source from, quality places that are using good organic inputs and not just necessarily agricultural waste all the time, because mushrooms are like, Ken always says they're sponges and they soak up.

Everything in their environment. They're really good at that. But on the other hand, not only are we using it to clean up agricultural products or water, but you could use them for building supplies, medicine, some of the stuff that we're making textile, name it. There's pretty much a use for mushrooms and they're finding, new uses every single day.

And one of the craziest things I'll. Pitch this before I tell a little bit about my story, we went through COVID and it was a really hard time for this planet and . I would say that time was probably the first time in most people's life [00:16:00] where they heard about PCR or polymerase chain reaction, which was like the PCR test to see if you actually had COVID.

And basically, Yeah. What they're doing is they, you went for like your nasal swab your throat swab to culture to see if you were positive for COVID. And they would put that in a little tube with some liquid and they would run it in a machine the process is called PCR, but the machine itself is called a thermocycler.

And without this thermocycler, We wouldn't be nearly where we are in the medical field or the pharmaceutical field, or science would never advanced if this guy, Casey had never invented the PCR and came up with this method and what's really interesting is Albert Hoffman basically stumbled upon LSD and it was because of LSD that this guy, Casey, he figured out how to make this PCR, that figured out this process.

to basically stop DNA from replicating. And the most interesting thing about that is that the compound that they'd used is called amatoxin. And it comes from the destroying angel, the white Amanita mushroom. So you have a fungi which [00:17:00] created LSD responsible for Introducing this guy to making the PCR and then they took another mushroom and they put that compound into the PCR, which stopped the DNA from replicating so that they could actually test for all of these things that single handedly advanced our genetic and DNA work here in the world.

it probably propelled us, exponentially in terms of science and in revelations here in the United States and all across the world. So we owe so much to fungi that people are just. Quite frankly, just so blindly, walking past. And I encourage people, I probably would have fell into mycology had I learned about it earlier in my life.

I think it's just been one of the most fascinating things. Cause it seems like it's connected to everything life. When , when I really think about it. 

ken: Everything is connected and mushrooms and fungi have a part of pretty much everything we, Have advanced our lives and it goes unnoticed. Nobody talked about 

Robyn: completely. It does not come up in any conversation. Like when you're talking about the PCR test, which, as you said, almost everybody listening right now has heard [00:18:00] of and used and yet who knew that there's several mushrooms involved there.

 . And love that. We're talking about it. And the more we're talking about it and others are talking about it and this whole field now that exists, the validation is there now, and now it's going to grow exponentially. I would imagine just like mushrooms.

So I really had no 

Karen: idea that there was this entire unexplored world that, like you were saying before, Roger, that there's so much that we don't know, because to your point, you would think that everything has been mapped out already and learned, or at least through ancient traditions, that maybe all of this information and knowledge would be there for, but it feels like it is a virtually unexplored, 

Robyn: Area.

Yeah. 

Karen: So can you talk about that aha moment for you in your life 

what was it about it? The mushroom and studying mushrooms that really drew you made you want to dedicate your life to doing more and exploring more about them. 

Roger: Oh, segue from what I was just [00:19:00] talking about with PCR is that this information isn't new. And I think that was really what interested me the most when I first got into mushrooms.

 For instance, mushroom that really changed my life single handedly when we talk about functionals is the reishi mushroom. It's this big, beautiful usually red kind of orangish mushroom, the varnish conch the Ganoderma lucidum is the real red reishi. And in traditional Chinese medicine, it's been documented over 4, 000 years ago as the mushroom of immortality.

And when I had first heard that I was just like, holy shit, like the mushroom of immortality, that's crazy. And that would really sparked my interest in reading about these mushrooms and the fact that it was documented with human use thousands of years ago, and we're talking 4, 000 years of human use.

 So when I was a child, I was a patient of children's hospital here in Massachusetts for years. And I dealt with all sorts of digestive issues, and for, a lack of better reasoning my parents were doing the best they could, and at the time if you have a sick kid, you're like, [00:20:00] of course, you're gonna try to get them the best care that you can, and I was admitted to Children's Hospital and we went to visits maybe once or twice a week, like pretty frequently.

I was put on pharmaceutical drugs for all sorts of different things. And that was really, the Western response to being sick is getting put on a lot of these pharmaceuticals and we didn't know any better.

And basically I was I ended up getting mono one of the worst cases that they had seen here arguably in North America, I had mono for 14 months, I had missed 180 days of school my junior and senior year pretty thin to begin with, and I lost 40 pounds, I was basically dying, I was very sick it was pretty horrible, and thinking back I can't imagine if I had a child and like what my parents saw and watched me going through when I was just laying in bed, basically crippled from pain, was missing out on, all sorts of things that a high schooler should be doing and basically homeschooling.

Thankfully, I went to a really good private school and I was in high school and they were able to work with me through this. But my junior senior year before I got mono. I was playing [00:21:00] lacrosse and I had three major concussions within a three month period and basically had to get put on Adderall sorts of like concerta and different medications to help him with focusing.

So I was on all the stuff for my digestion I was dealing with the concussions, and I was wearing sunglasses indoors. And my last concussion, I went to the hospital here at UMass and they wanted to x ray the back of my skull. Cause I thought I got hit in lacrosse. I basically flipped over. I blacked out.

I could hear everyone around me, but I was just laying there basically unconscious and it was probably one of the scariest experiences in my life and it took me like a couple minutes for me to come back to where I could see again.

so I went to the hospital they went to do an x ray, and they were checking to see if I had, some internal bleeding or bruising at the base of my skull. And this just happened to be very synchronistic, but I was complaining of joint pain, and they were like that's odd, so they did a mono spot test, and it came back that I had mono, and then I went down this rabbit hole of having mono, being sick for another, almost half a year.

And in that, I finished my last high school [00:22:00] exam three days before I went to college. Thankfully, the college I was going to was very willing to work with me. Got to school, was at college for about almost two months and I was just too sick.

I still was just not healthy. I probably shouldn't have went. And I just wanted to fight through it so bad, and I ended up coming back home on another year of medical leave. And it was at that time that I fell in love with Reishi. I went and just basically bought all the books that I could.

 Ken and I talk about this all the time. between the two of us, we probably own every book there is on fungi and alternative healing. We have a very similar path in that regard. I started reading about Reishi and people were using it for, a plethora of different things that I was experiencing and, I didn't come from a very stable financial background and I didn't have, just money to throw around on supplements a large majority of the people that I was following or reading about just had access to all this stuff.

So I tried Reishi for a while and I was probably taking it for two months and I started to notice all my symptoms were basically going away and I didn't really have any other [00:23:00] explanation for it. And then I realistically, into my third or fourth month of taking Reishi, I couldn't afford the supplements that I was taking.

I basically came off all of my medications cold turkey in those first three or four months. 

And it in that time where I couldn't afford Reishi. I went through about two months. All my symptoms came back. I did whatever I could. I scrapped up enough money and I started taking Reishi again. When I was in college, I was basically making all of my own herbal tinctures and mushroom tinctures, sharing them with my friends, with myself.

 It was a real shortcut for me being able to afford these medicines. And after I started taking Reishi again, my symptoms went away and I've pretty much lived on it since then. I can tell you stories about these individual mushrooms and how they've changed my life. For instance I was on all sorts of ADHD medication at the same time that I was sick.

And at the same time, I had mono, so it was really, for lack of better words, I was going through just this pharmaceutical shitstorm of different compounds being thrown into my body, and I was trying to navigate life, I was miserably depressed, I got to college, and they put me on low dose SSRIs.

[00:24:00] And then , I wasn't, sad anymore, but I didn't really have any other emotions. And one day I was like, what's the alternative? I've already been through the absolute worst and felt my absolute worst.

If I just stop all these cold turkey, the worst thing that's gonna happen is I didn't have a dependency on any kind of opiates or any of these other medications that are like, extremely strong. I was like, it's safe now if I can come off of what I'm coming off of. I started taking alternative medicines, got into herbs and Reishi and that literally changed my life.

cordyceps, like I was saying before, cordyceps have allowed me to come off of all ADHD medication. I would say without a doubt I'm living proof that these compounds have the ability to change people's lives. I've come off of everything. I haven't touched a pharmaceutical drug since I was 18.

I just turned 30 in January. It's been just an amazing journey and I feel better than I've ever felt in my life. And I really owe it functional medicine and functional mushrooms. 

Robyn: I've heard your story before and hearing it again, it just, it stays with me.

And I think about that, and I think about [00:25:00] people in my family, myself, others that I know, who will want to give this a try because they are so dependent on other medications that aren't necessarily working. we know that there's a place in our society, right?

For certain pharmaceuticals, but when they're not even working, 

Karen: My son is clinically ADHD and he was very sick as a kid. Went through a lot of pharmaceutical care throughout his life and just made sort of an affirmation that he didn't want to do that anymore.

So when it came to that medication, he refused to take it. And I was telling him about the lion's mane, 

Roger: so , the thing with ADHD is unfortunately We're navigating as a business, we're navigating a gray zone, if you will we have to be really careful about how we talk about products and can't make X, Y, and Z claims because of the FDA.

 But the stories and the response that we've had to these specific products, like for instance, ADHD whether you have this hyperactivity or not. Cordyceps is an amazing baseline. I know more [00:26:00] people, and I have friends that own other mushroom companies that would stand on top of the mountain and preach this, that cordyceps have single handedly changed their life, 

 it's extremely powerful, but again, back to this hyperactivity, some people respond really well to including Reishi, and some people respond extremely well to using the Lion's Mane. Lion's Mane is just, in my opinion, and I know Ken is just probably itching to add to this, but we would recommend fucking Lion's Mane to everybody.

Absolutely everybody. You look up the case studies and what they're using Lion's Mane for it's silly that people aren't taking it. And I think a lot of it boils down to, Whether, you're financially able afford these medicines. And that was one of the real missions that I wanted to set out when we started our business.

And Ken and I have had a lot of conversation around that is making these products extremely potent. Because in my opinion, these, a lot of the research that's out there is just very underdosed. So not only making it as potent, but making this affordable because I come from a place where I wasn't able to afford this medicine for a while and it single handedly changed my life.

So [00:27:00] once I broke through that other side and experienced reishi and started diving into these other mushrooms and set me on this path of wanting to provide this for other people because there was an extreme need for it.

 That Couldn't go under the radar any longer. I feel this is my biggest mission is not only creating community, but we want to educate people around these things.

And, again, we have to be careful because of the FDA. But think, eventually we will be working alongside, FDA type standards and regulations. And that's one of the things in the mushroom community. There's no regulations and standards when it comes to mushrooms.

unless it's like USDA organic, that's pretty much it. There's just no standards in the products themselves. So I really wanted to come out of the gates with, the best product we could, and that's why I've poured my heart and soul 

ken: into this. Yeah, and there's so much confusion around the supplement industry because it isn't regulated.

So what do you take? And is this a good one? There's so many on the market and really the education part of it is huge for us 

And like Roger said, we could go on and on about the, these different products.

 [00:28:00] We both agree, like Lions, Maine, you can go on PubMed and a lot of these others and just put in Lions, Maine, and you'll see some of the research I would say that every.

At starting at a minimum of the age of 30 should be taking lion's mane every single day for prevention of things that happen as we naturally in our bodies age. So it allows the regeneration and some of these other things that we don't get from other. Foods or medicine and it's without the side effects of some of the other things and we don't have to wait till we're losing our memory 

and I think that's, some of the things that we've. talk about is like a lot of, it feels like a lot of the Western medicine has been about dealing with the symptom, but what if we think about where these come from and then starting to change things so we can prevent these before we get sick and help us to age in a really healthy way so that we don't need these things later on.

. And instead let's increase our health [00:29:00] span by prevention. And that's what a lot of these will do too, is help prevent things. Keep our immune system like Roger was talking about immune modulators and adaptogens and, combining with different things to help us to regulate our bodies so that we have this homeostasis, have this balance so that we don't end up getting sick and we don't need these other things.

. We want to hear 

Robyn: about your story. Ken, tell us what led you on this mushroom journey. 

ken: It started, when my life fell apart I grew up in this. White upper middle class neighborhood And, I believe that if I, went to college and got a good job, made money, got married, like we had, all this stuff that was, what was going to make me happy in, this definition of success and really not, I will say I'm a recovering addict right now with over 25 years of sobriety from the drugs of choice that I had and had not dealt with trauma or things that I had [00:30:00] experienced growing up.

And I just thought if I made enough money had all these other things that the world said I'll be fine and it caught up with me and I wasn't the person that I knew I was born to be I was this Loving, sensitive kid that just wanted to help everyone and cared about everyone and, boys don't cry and, you're supposed to be tough and all these things and shutting down my feelings.

And then when stuff was going on, not talking about it and not even having the words or any of that. So 25 years ago and it led me to really look at everything. And like, how did I get here? What are the structures in society, why are other, because I looked around me and saw I'm not alone, obviously in the addiction world I started through 12 steps and AA and like just seeing all the other beautiful people that were suffering , and struggling and like why are you Children, why are we not [00:31:00] getting what we need and so it led me to look at everything holistically and realize that everything is connected.

The food we eat, our environment. The people like all of this and not dealing with, there's generational trauma, so I started reading everything and spiritually like things course in miracles and looking at fear versus love.

And like how I was raised in this society where I'm supposed to be worried and afraid of everything and scarcity mode and lack and I was like, wait, this is all wrong. And that led me looking at capitalism and profit, everything about profit driven, not people driven.

And what if we were people driven? What if we put people ahead of profits? What if we put love, connection, environment? Animals, plants, everything ahead of profit, how would this world look? And so I started exploring these different paradigms and, got into anthropology and sociology and all these [00:32:00] different things and trying to look at what other, Cultures do too, because I was raised and spent most of my time right here, in America, one way of thinking and seeing.

And so I learned about shamanism and then medicine work and all these other different things. And through my healing, it led me to study nutrition too, and how can we live In a way that is going to be good for our bodies, good for our relationships and good for our environment and that led me to wanting eventually to grow my own food and medicine and help other people to understand and it brought me to soil science, which brought me to mushrooms and I explored Ayurvedic medicine, like Chinese medicine, all these different ways of being in what, and I used to take Adderall all the time. 

And then I realized, so I stopped all of that. And when I stopped taking all of these things like Roger said I hadn't had. Antibiotics since the 90s when this, when I went on this journey, I stopped everything all over the counter [00:33:00] medication, all pharmaceutical. And as a recovering addict, they got me originally on stuff like Wellbutrin and other antidepressants.

And I realized that there were more natural holistic ways to, heal my trauma start exploring love and , Getting back to connection and awe and wonder this childlike thing that I lost this creativity this way that I always wanted to fit in because I was afraid as a kid to stand out right and like to be different.

but we're all different, and we're all weird or unique or whatever words you want to use, and I shoved all the shame and guilt that I had to be a certain way Letting go of all that and all of a sudden realizing my cells were healing.

I didn't need any of this stuff. the only time I've been on an antibiotic since the 90s now, since this healing journey, I had this tick. And, they talk about Lyme disease Lyme disease is a real thing. I went back and said, okay, fine. I'll take an antibiotic. . And , getting back to mushrooms and what Roger was [00:34:00] talking about with it being a a bio accumulator and a sponge and it takes up everything in its environment.

That's the same with everything like energy, like who's growing my food. and mushrooms are a great example so learning from mushrooms and thinking about that, how I am like a mushroom. So the energy and the things around me affect me. And so the food that's grown who's growing it, what's their heart, , why are they doing it?

Are they doing it strictly for profit? Or do they really love these plants? And, starting my own mushroom company and growing the mushrooms and having this relationship, every mushroom was like family to me. And, I tell the story of being in a grow room, the environment, cause no matter how well you set a grow room the outdoor environment will still affect.

Your inside grow room. And so I remember it was very dry And the weather wasn't really conducive outside. So the mushrooms weren't growing much. And I had chefs that [00:35:00] were relying on getting these mushrooms. So I went in the grow room and I really wish I had video or pictures because it's hard for people to believe, but these were my babies, 

these are my friends and they know we have a relationship and so I'm in the grow room and I say, look, we have a lot of chefs relying on you and they were just pinning.

So if you understand it should have taken days before they were ready to be harvested And I said, I really need you to grow fast because we only have one day and I know the environment hasn't been good, but if you could please, and I had this conversation and we're like talking to them and sharing and literally the next day when I came into the grow room, they had grown so much.

It was impossible. That doesn't happen. That's not your natural growth cycle. and that sounds crazy. That sounds really crazy.

Roger: Not to us. Not to us. 

ken: It's real. And everything is relational and everything is energy and everything is connection, was about the love of these mushrooms 

so that's this whole [00:36:00] evolution for me and wanting to bring this to the world and make a difference because I couldn't change the things, that I had done or, the way I lived my but what I could do is use my life.

And all my experience and everything I've been through the pain, the hurt, the heartache, the loss, all those things to make a difference in this world for future generations. and that's really been my life now for 25 years. And that's what led me.

Meeting Roger. Yeah, tell us. How did 

Robyn: you meet? 

ken: So part of my journey was working with some pretty amazing mushroom people. I had shut down Chicago mushroom company. I'd started this other company where we were going to grow, basically we were going to grow mushrooms, but we were going to be a mushroom company and educate, and I wanted to get into functional mushrooms. And 

I listen to everything and read everything on mushrooms. And there was this, . It was Michael Preneur Dennis Walker. Shout out to him. Thank you. He's awesome. great mushroom podcast. And the person who was interviewed was was Roger and [00:37:00] at the time he had Mushroom Magic and he was talking and I listened to him and you can hear Justin talking to him today.

 he's so real. He's authentic. He cares more about people and doing things in a way he doesn't take any shortcuts. He wants to create the best medicine based on all the science, but he's also an alchemist and his energy and everything he talked about cordyceps, he talked about concentrates, talked about his equipment, and how he was doing it.

and I could tell. Roger is not just a genius when it comes to the way he does things and wanting to really have the best healing medicine because of his own life, for other people to have this, but He's also an incredible human being, and that's the only thing that tops his genius in the lab is his heart and soul and mind he cares so much about people and life and wanting the world to be a better place for future generations.

[00:38:00] so immediately I reached out to Roger and we didn't connect at that time, but the person I was working with we were trying to find somebody to do functional mushrooms together with us a white label. And there were only two people on that list and Roger was on the top of the list and they reached out, connected with Roger and then Roger and I started meeting and talking.

And from the beginning. I was like Roger I know we talked about doing white label, but we should do this together. I want to work with you. I want to do this with you, I believe Roger Holden here is good for the world. I know the medicine that we're doing and we can get into why it's different I can look people in the eyes today when people ask and I can say I know this is good for you.

 it's third party tested. And that the potency is there. And it's got some of the highest potencies that have been tested in the United States. And doesn't have any of the bad things in it. It's been tested for toxins and [00:39:00] for all these other things.

And that his energy Is just joy. It's a dream come true for me to get to work with him. 

And realizing that we're connected, way bigger than anything like all these imaginary separations and differences. No, we are all connected and that's what we're creating and it's bigger than just the mushrooms. It's really taking this health and wellness. Into into the spiritual, the social, the psychological, the community, the environmental, every part of it.

And living a life that we can be free to be who we are, live our biggest and best lives together in a way that is good for everyone and everything. But that's how I met Roger and , if Roger gets into sharing the science behind what he's doing in the lab. Yeah, we would love, yes. I think that's really valuable. Yes, we'd love it. 

Karen: Robyn and I were both gifted by you with this beautiful box, as I mentioned before, and each one of these bottles, first of [00:40:00] all, are beautiful, but they each have, an individual.

Individual intention behind them. 

Could you talk about that? And just the differences between each one of these? 

Roger: Definitely. If you go on our website fruitingbodies. co, you can maybe follow along or look at what we're exactly explaining, but basically, all of the different individual mushrooms that we're extracting, we then combine them into our tincture that we call synergy. So synergy is basically like our mushroom multivitamin, if you will. And, it's equal parts of each mushroom. So you're getting the benefits basically each of these mushrooms and the mushrooms that we fell on these five mushrooms, for instance, I think the synergy as well has shiitake and maitake, so we have lion's mane, cordyceps, reishi, turkey tail, chaga, as our individual mushrooms, and then in our synergy, we also include shiitake and maitake, and Ken was explaining I had my own business before this, Mushroomagic, and I'll just say it really has been a dream come true.

I basically hit a wall in terms of what I [00:41:00] was able to do by myself and for a lack of better words, the stars aligned, Ken reached out and When we first talked we had basically that, for that first seven hour conversation, it was surreal. when you meet somebody else that you are just on the same wavelength or whatever you want to call it.

And I had no doubt in my mind that we were supposed to be working together. . I knew that this was meant to be, so we started Fruiting Bodies together and it's just been It's been amazing ever since I Ken is probably the most art warming and authentic human being that I have crossed paths with in my life.

And that says a lot. He really does his work. He's been through a lot. He has seen the value in human life and the potential in others and is living in his authentic self. And to be working alongside him and, aside from his business experience, which is, surreal in and of itself as well.

 It's just been an amazing journey together. The mushrooms that we landed on these seven because [00:42:00] they're the seven most studied mushrooms currently, and I'm sure that a lot of analytical data will come out regarding other species of mushrooms over the years.

So as new science comes out, and as new studies are coming out, we're really going to do our best to stay up to date. 

But these mushrooms, like we were saying before, there's a lot of overlap. And. Ken touched on this a little bit earlier, but I would highly advise everybody, go on PubMed, go on google. scholar do your own research. These mushrooms, if you're curious about anything, you can just type in, for instance, like reishi and blood sugar reishi and cholesterol and you can just look at all of them.

There's hundreds of scientific peer reviewed papers on these mushrooms, and this isn't anything new, and a lot of this data started, I would say, in the 80s. We have maybe 50 years, like I was talking about the time spin, and 50 years is nothing. What we're going to learn in the next 50 years, is going to exponentially enhance this entire field.

 But these seven mushrooms that we're currently working with have some the most studied peer [00:43:00] reviewed scientific research. My favorite mushroom now, and I owe this whole journey to Reishi, but my favorite mushroom would have to be cordyceps.

 I was a personal trainer for years. here in Massachusetts and working in this kind of supplementation field and nutrition and being interested in a lot of the work on supplements that are out there. There's a lot of them out there that, again, it's not very regulated. The FDA Will one bad instance of a high schooler's heart, going into like overdrive and then having a bad reaction and they'll ban a substance whether it's like an over the counter steroid or some kind of stimulant, that's really all the FDA is worried about.

They're worried about people dying, essentially, and which makes a whole lot of sense. There's a lot of supplements in the workout world that. for a lack of better words, they're pretty dangerous my opinion. And there's, high schoolers and teenagers that are just taking like scoops of all of this pre workout , these are meant for people that have hit their kind of peak and hit their nutritional peak and they're benching or squatting their [00:44:00] max weight.

 And they're trying to increase their strength. They're not meant for, younger kids that are just getting into working out and that's how it's been used. But in my training and my experience, I fell in love with cordyceps. Cordyceps are a stimulant in and of their self, but at the same time, they're now being used in these scientific papers for sleep studies as well.

Cordyceps have a wide range of uses, and what's beautiful about cordyceps, and Ken was talking about how these mushrooms have specific compounds that are specific to the mushroom kingdom itself. It's ironic when we were talking about pharmaceuticals, it's like extremely ironic how the pharmaceutical industry is so worried about alternative healing, if you'd even call it that, or we call it preventative medicine.

But they got all of their research from the natural kingdom. Like pharmaceuticals didn't just appear out of nowhere. They looked at, willow bark or other nuts and things and roots that produce these compounds. So Western pharmacy is in pharmaceutical world is rooted in natural and [00:45:00] alternative medicine.

So they come from the same place. So these mushrooms , back to your question, they have very specific compounds to them.

 Cordyceps has a compound in it called Cordycepin. And cordycepin, it works essentially on this the same kind of pathway where your mitochondria are producing ATP, like the powerhouse of the cell. So your body mistakes this compound this cordycepin, and a handful of other things.

analogues like adenosine, which most people familiar with. And there's, I believe, eight or 12 compounds that exist inside cordyceps itself, other than cordycepin, but cordycepin is really the star and your body mistakes it essentially for like cellular ATP cellular energy. So you get this real influx of energy where there's no crash, there's no jitters.

Like people talk about coffee alternatives, cordyceps is the star when it comes to caffeine alternatives. It is a game changer 

most herbs, most mushrooms, you need to take them for a couple months to really start. Getting the effects or other adaptogens. It takes a [00:46:00] while for them to start working and for you to notice it or other traditional Chinese like tonics, for instance. And a lot of these mushrooms do produce, I think, in my opinion, more of an immediate effect when they're at a higher dose.

And a lot of these studies are just horribly underdosed, and this has been my understanding and my learning through my healing journey and why we started to develop these concentrate products like our chocolate bars. back to the cordyceps. Cordyceps are very unique in the sense that you can take a gram or two of dried cordyceps fruiting bodies, and it produces quite an immediate effect. It's about 15 minutes, 20 minutes after drinking this, you'll notice that your airways and your breathing is just expanded super, super wide. And it's unavoidable. You can't ignore the effects of cordyceps.

It's very gentle at the same time as it's stimulating. And for anyone that works out, anyone that has any kind of respiratory condition, whether you're on steroidal inhalers or COPD, asthma it just opens your airways. And again, traditional Chinese medicine has [00:47:00] known this for years. It's also a kidney tonic, so people dealing with any kind of like blood.

problems or a kidney transgression cordyceps are fantastic for that as well. For me, it was one of the most amazing experiences that I felt from functional medicine, whether it's herbs or mushrooms and that immediate breathing that you feel you'll get through a two hour workout and you'll be ready to work out again there's no fatigue.

So cordyceps have become staple in the workout world and will, in my opinion, over the course of the next 5 10 years as people learn about it, because There's really no interactions per se with a lot of other medications, and that's what's really beautiful about mushrooms, unless you're on blood thinners.

Blood thinners are really the only kind of baseline, even just in herbalism in general. Blood thinners are really something that you want to be careful of, and not necessarily that you're gonna die or bleed out or anything like that, but they can cause interactions. That can affect the efficiency the blood thinners but these mushrooms just have just immense [00:48:00] power. And lion's mane to piggyback on this, the next mushroom and I would argue it's probably the most known mushroom right now on, social media and talked about on podcasts. And it should be realistically, everyone should be using it and with lions made it literally rebuilds the myelin sheath around each neuron that is responsible for them reconnecting in the brain.

So people that have any kind of neuro regenerative or neuroinflammatory problems, you're talking, Alzheimer's, dementia autism, these lion's, main mushrooms. produce pronounced effects in the healing with people that are experiencing these conditions. And a lot of those conditions stem from inflammatory problems.

And then also that comes comes from your diet. So when you change your diet and you're not having all these reactions to inflammatory conditions then you start to introduce lion's, main We've heard instances of people using some of our products with nonverbal autistic children. And within a week of taking the product they're talking again.

 We have a gentleman that we're selling products to at a store in Illinois . And he proceeded to tell me the story about a gentleman [00:49:00] who his father had dementia , or Alzheimer's and he couldn't remember anything.

Essentially. And he started taking the lions main and within two weeks, he was having full blown conversations with his son again and his son was the one that was buying the lion's mane for him.

 When it comes down to any kind of neuro inflammatory problem lion's mane is fantastic. And the way I always lead into conversation with Lion's Mane is the biggest thing that I've noticed and that people around me have noticed is that your words are more fluid. So even just like conversation like this, you're not skipping over your words.

You're not having problems with recalling what you're trying to think of, but also vocabulary recall. Reishi cordyceps and lion's mane are pretty much the three mushrooms that I take without failure just because of how effective they've been in my life.

And I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Ken. 

ken: I could add a lot. We've had story after story. And i'm excited for you to hear more about turkey tail and chaga. A quick 

Karen: question in terms of do you take this every day? Is it an everyday thing that needs to accumulate over time?

Or if [00:50:00] I'm running into a meeting and I'm stressed out or I'm looking to focus, Is that something that I would just add to some water and down it real 

Roger: quick? So my recommendation would be Yes to both. And the reason that our product really shines is the equipment behind me. Some of the equipment that's in front of me that you can't see.

So we create a dual extract. So we use water and one 90 proof. Ethanol it comes from cane sugar. So everything's organic as well. When a going into these with inputs and what's really special about this. And the reason that we don't use 200 proof, which is. Pretty much standard in a lot of the cannabis community.

 A lot of other herbalists will use 200 proof because they believe it's pulling the most compounds out, but you can't make 200 proof ethanol without including benzene. And if you know anything about benzene, benzene causes cancer, and it's just not a good compound to have in the first place and I just don't feel comfortable using something that's, contains benzene and there's other solvents that people are using for extraction, but we've found that even with our testing as [00:51:00] well that water and 1 90 proof ethanol has been the best for pulling out these compounds and mushrooms have water soluble compounds and then they have alcohol soluble compounds.

So you need to really do a dual extraction. 100 years ago when they didn't have access to alcohol and know this, they were just making water extracts or water concoctions over, X amount of hours, three or six hours on the stove, and those were good, but they were only getting certain compounds out of these mushrooms and some of these mushrooms, where their medicinal values shine is in the alcohol, and some of them, it really is prominent in the water.

So doing a dual extract, you're getting everything else that you really want. But I also use ultrasonic technology to increase the bioavailability of these products. So that's really what makes our products different than what's on the market. We're also using 100 percent fruiting bodies currently, and we don't use any mycelium.

, so a fruiting body is like the stem and the cap of a mushroom. It's basically the fruiting body is the reproductive organ of the organism itself.

[00:52:00] So I was talking about the mycelium that lives underground in the forest, holding everything together when the mycelium has enough water and it's pulled in enough nutrients. under perfect conditions, it will then what we call fruit. So it grows from underground or off of the tree. It will grow that stem with the cap or like a large conch like Reishi is.

 And then what happens is that fruiting body, when it reaches maturity will then produce spores so that the spores are basically like the seeds. And they don't have a necessarily a sex or gender they're like opposite attracts. They have basically a plus or a minus. Once those spores find each other.

They form this string of mycelium called a hyphal strand. And when more of these spores in an area produce these hyphal strands, these little strings connect to each other and form these knots and as more knots form, that forms the mycelial body. So once the mycelium is reached, it's the size that it needs to in an environment because there's enough water, enough food, and then produces fruiting bodies, but these fruiting bodies have been shown to contain [00:53:00] more bioavailable compounds in them than the mycelium themselves.

ken: Yeah, I'll just chime in if I could here now. The other thing in our education, what I loved when I learned about how Roger was doing it is first of all, and this was key when Roger and I met, was to talk about third party testing. you're getting any supplements, I don't care what it is, If it doesn't show on their website, complete transparency, third party testing and , make sure that it's.

Actually, if it's a lab tested that it is third party like independent and nothing to do with your own lab. And second of all, what's the date? Because if it's a two year old test, they probably had multiple runs of their product since then. So you may be getting a very outdated , one that showed up really good, but you're not getting any real data on what you're actually taking.

. 

ken: So when we compare products. You have to know number one, how it's being extracted and what [00:54:00] exactly is in it. And then what are the third party tests showing and all of these things matter to know what you're actually putting in your body and whether it's going to actually make a difference, a medicinal difference in what you're taking. 

Let's talk about Chaga and Turkey tail, 

Roger: Yeah So Chaga is really special. Chaga has got some of the highest levels, if not the highest of any oxidents on the planet. It's also very unique. It contains melanin. So there's some people out there that have been taking higher doses of Chaga and coming forward and talking about how they don't have the same UV exposure not getting a sunburn, which is really fascinating.

But Chaga and Turkey Tail have this overlap where they're extremely good for your gut health. They help with inflammation. Another. Mushroom that helps with inflammation is lion's mane. And one of the things I didn't touch upon with lion's mane, and they're doing this studies clinically, is they're looking at anxiety and depression.

A lot of these mushrooms have this overlapping quality of, again, not only that homeostasis and [00:55:00] bringing you up to where you're not getting sick in the first place but somehow All of these are affecting your mental health, which is really important in the sense that, you're not getting sick in the first place, or your brain's getting the oxygen that it needs, say, with cordyceps, or the myelin sheath, and the myelin is being repaired by the lion's mane when you have optimal, cognition and neural health, you're not having the same interactions from your External stimuli from the world around you, which is really special with mushrooms.

 Turkey tail, for instance, and it's another one where people are using for a neuro regenerative. So not only gut health, but the same with lines m they're using it for cases with M. S. They've actually even looked at it for some instances of epilepsy, which is really intriguing. where turkey tail shines is it's antiviral qualities.

It's just amazing at combating anything that's realistically a virus. So when COVID hit, there was this protocol called the Buhner protocol, and they were using cordyceps simultaneously with turkey tail, producing these effects where I even have personal [00:56:00] stories as well as.

 Some other customers when I was running my other business, as well as family and friends that have come forward and they're like, I've kicked the flu or I've kicked these other, common colds, viruses that I picked up maybe at the gym or for my kids at daycare. And I'm sick for a day and that's it.

So high dose turkey tail is profound for people that are getting sick. A lot of these old studies were using mycelium or fermented mycelium. So now that we're using fruiting bodies that have more of these compounds, of course, the effects are going to be greater anywhere from 55 to 50 times greater.

And on that same note, When you have a really concentrated product so like back to what you were asking before, but with our chocolates our chocolate is made with the concentrate and our concentrated forms of our products are really special. So when you take a concentrated form of cordyceps, you really notice the breathing and the focus.

It is, unavoidable. You can't really look past it. All of a sudden, you're just like, wow, I can breathe. I've never been able to breathe like this before. I can't think of a [00:57:00] single person that we've given cordyceps to that wasn't blown away by efficacy behind cordyceps.

And on that same note these higher doses of Reishi and Lion's Mane are profound. When I take high doses of lion's mane, I noticed that I get really intrigued in what I'm reading as if I was taking like my old ADHD medication. And that was the only positive thing that I ever remember. Coming from being on Adderall is, I can remember sitting in some of my high school classes learning about, physiology and anatomy or something, and just being so engaged with what I was reading.

And when I started taking the higher doses of Lion's Mane, I was like, holy shit, this is the same feeling that I had when I was taking Adderall, where I'm super focused on what I'm doing, but now if someone comes and talks to me, I can have a full blown conversation with them at a better cognitive level.

level than when I was taking Adderall and I don't lose my appetite. That's the most important thing to me is being able to stay, cognitively healthy, but also being able to eat. The concentrates [00:58:00] are more. Of a, in my opinion, like a quick fix. If you're looking for that energy or that attention, or you need to realistically calm yourself down.

I'm usually high functioning anxiety and I can hop on a call like this in a podcast after taking Reishi and have conversations like we've known each other forever and I'm just, I've become so much more comfortable. Having conversations, social gatherings, whenever we do events and parties, I never thought I'd be in front of a room talking to 50, 60 strangers explaining what we're doing without sitting there and literally shaking and being like violently uncomfortable.

And now it feels like second nature and I'm sure some of it comes from experience and doing it but not that fast. But the effects that I felt from taking that high dose reishi, like a really calming effect that I, for the first time was like, wow, this, I thought I felt the calm effect from reishi. But when I took , that higher dose, I was like, this is fantastic.

It wasn't cognitively impairing. It wasn't like I just, smoked a bunch of cannabis and was stoned and I couldn't get off the couch. It wasn't inebriating. I [00:59:00] guess I would say, and I think that's what's beautiful about these mushrooms. Like cordyceps is very stimulating without being like over the top, too strong reshi is very relaxing without being sedating.

 And lion's mane is beautiful in every aspect. I find that lion's mane is A double edged sword in the sense that it produces , these qualities that are relaxing at the same time that you get focused . You can look up on Google Scholar any of these mushrooms with anti cancer, anti tumor.

There's so many studies out there with it. We always encourage people just do your own research take. 10 minutes, you will be blown away by looking on Google Scholar and just typing in a singular mushroom with a symptom. 

Robyn: And I have one question, about the reishi, I just want to make sure I clarify that of the major uses is for ADHD or anti 

Roger: anxiety. Yeah, I would say Reishi is, overall, it is very calming. So if you have that overactivity, the hyperactivity from ADHD, like that, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, instead of just ADD Reishi is gonna work really well,

it's lowering [01:00:00] cholesterol, it's lowering blood sugar it's doing some pretty fascinating things in the body. And when you start to realize, like what Ken was talking about before, how everything is connected, when you start bringing your body to homeostasis, so lowering your blood sugar, lowering your cholesterol even just limiting the exposure that you have to environmental stressors, But also taking mushrooms that help with these things.

And when I was talking earlier in the podcast, I had mentioned traditional Chinese medicine and tonics. Unfortunately, so many people hear the word tonics and they're like I need to take it for, three months to really get the benefits of it.

These concentrated forms, try it for yourself and tell me you don't feel something. It's pretty profound. they're potent and they're safe, which is really nice. 

ken: And that's what I wanted to say about our chocolate bars.

Each piece. Has five times the dose of a regular so you'd have to do five full dropper fulls of a tincture or a capsule from where , you would just from one square of our chocolate it's organic. people [01:01:00] who normally don't like dark chocolate, love our we use coconut palm sugar, which is low glycemic. so it's delicious. It's good for you. And it's very potent and you only need one or two pieces to get a very strong dose. .

Robyn: And another question. I know you talked about synergy, which is your tincture that does combine all the different mushrooms if people are starting out, would you suggest, and I know you have a lot of this on your website, which everybody needs to go check out, which is fruitingbodies.

co. and you're very specific in how you talk and you give so much of the information we've talked about and more on the website. But if someone were starting out, would you say that they should start out trying each one and then go for the synergy, or could they start with the synergy?

Roger: My recommendation. So the thing that's nice about Synergy is there's a lot of overlap. What I would recommend is for someone if you were to take Synergy would be if you find yourself getting sick a lot throughout the year. Your immune system's just not that strong

the synergy is a [01:02:00] fantastic entry point into functional mushrooms, but I would personally recommend if you can afford it, I would go with a singular bottle of reishi lion's m and cordyceps. And if not all three of those, we do, we sell it in a bundle on the website for a discount. I would recommend reading on those three and maybe making.

A decision and just getting one of those to try seeing how that really feels. They're my three favorites. They're the ones I take every single day. If I feel like I'm getting sick. Turkey tail is my savior. I take turkey tail immediately when I feel like I start getting sick.

So I keep turkey tail, it's, it lives in the medicine cabinet. If anyone in my house starts getting sick we start taking turkey tail three times a day until we're not sick. It really is a beautiful, just, combatant to getting sick. But, I would say look into Reishi, Lion's Man, and Cordyceps and take those three.

 If you're just to pick one, and I was to had to pick one tincture for it, I would say start taking Lion's Man. Lion's [01:03:00] Mane, feel like most people notice the effects from Lion's Mane, no matter what, because there really isn't anything out there like it. 

If you experience any kind of brain fog, groggy in the morning, they're using it for anxiety and depression. It's a feel good. It's slightly euphoric without, Producing any kind of any inebriating whatsoever, more people have noticed their memory just increased by taking the lion's mane.

And I think that's one of the things that's most recognizable for people in their everyday life and all of 

ken: them are immune modulators. So they all will help strength in your immune system. So you can't go wrong with that. And I'll just say I take all five. I appreciate it. focus on the three that Roger mentioned, but I do like to add some chaga and turkey tail.

And a lot of people that I know are doing all five because they want the overlap benefits of all of them. And then they take the chocolate for specific things. And so like everybody who i've talked to I tell them people can tell you a protocol but your best [01:04:00] Doctor is yourself. Listen to your body and try different things. They're not going to hurt you. You're not going to OD on these things. Just listen to your body. And try it and see what feels good and right to you. You're not going to go wrong. You're not going to hurt yourself and you're going to find the right combination in the right ways. .

And that's really think all of us really connecting more to our bodies and listening and getting to know that inner healer. You have everything you need inside of you. And so when you listen to that, And work with these things, you're going to know.

And so you can't go wrong with any of them, but I would say you will benefit if you can do it from taking them all and playing with it yourself at different times of day. Every body is different and no two people are going to take something and experience the exact same thing. 

Robyn: Totally. and one more question about the taking of them when you talk about the different ones and let's say it's all of them or you [01:05:00] get three of them.

If you want to try them. Would you say you can take them all in the morning and you would use the same amount of drops. In however you're taking it, whether you're putting it on water or you're putting it with tea or whatever 

Roger: it is, generally, on our bottles. We recommend four milliliters as a dose.

So it's realistically,, I would say, two to four droppers and to start out with the tinctures I would tell someone to take it morning and night. If it's cordyceps is really the only exception where I would say morning and maybe midday. See how your body is affected by cordyceps before you're taking higher doses of it at night, because some people it does produce quite the stimulant effect.

Other people it's helping them with breathing at night, so they're able to sleep through the night better they're using in sleep studies, but cordyceps is really the only one where it's can be stimulating. So I would say on a baseline, morning and night is really good. But like Ken was saying, it really boils down [01:06:00] to you dialing it in yourself, and seeing how your body responds, but a general rule of thumb.

Other than cordyceps, morning and night two to four droppers and seeing how you feel. 

Robyn: I think that's really helpful because I think a lot of people are going to be inspired to go to co, check things out, purchase, and then want to hear how you're using them, how many people you talk to are using them, so that they can start out in the best way possible.

Roger: have any questions, reach out. Feel free to send us a message on Instagram. Send us an email if you have any questions. We're here to really help. Personalized to needs. If you're unsure, just ask.

ken: Yeah. And , I wanted to say that to all your listeners, please if you have a question, ask us, it's not just about buying our products. Like literally, if you have a question, because we're trying to raise the bar, we want all we totally transparent and open because the goal is that all the companies are going to create the best medicine 

so if you have a question Hey, I've been using this We want you to [01:07:00] know, have the information and to know what to look for so that you're actually not wasting your money and you're not putting anything in your body that's going to be harmful we'll help anyone. Like this is our passion and that's why we do it. And so please reach out. 

Robyn: I feel like everybody today who has listened has learned so much. I've learned so much today. I know Karen learned so much today and I know there's so much more to learn, I have to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

For all that you've guided and shared with us today and for all that you are doing every single day because you are saving lives, you are transforming lives, you're making the world a better place. I know that the mushrooms brought us together so I know that they are connectors for everything and really connected us today.

And I am so grateful. I know your products are good because I myself are taking them. So [01:08:00] we wouldn't have you on if we didn't believe that's who we are too. So the authenticity that goes into everything you're doing is felt and you're Helping to transform this world.

So thank you. From the bottom of our hearts, and I know I mentioned you can go to fruiting bodies.co. You can also go to fruiting bodies.co on Instagram. And , I know you have another account too, 

Roger: Yeah, you're welcome. So behind the scenes is fruiting body's lab on Instagram, LAB.

Awesome. Thank 

ken: you. And Robyn, I wanna you. For what you're doing. I've listened to so many of your podcasts and all the amazing people that you've had on and the difference that's making. And your the voice that your podcast gives is so valuable want more people to get to listen because I know the difference it's making.

How you're opening people's hearts and minds to think about things differently so that it can benefit their lives, their family, their community. So thank you for what you're doing. Like I had to be on your podcast. That means [01:09:00] Roger and I were talking about this earlier, like how excited we do get people wanting us to be on podcasts, but like yours is really special and for us and what we're about.

And the way we see the world, what you are doing and creating the community and the healing that you're bringing, the light that you're opening up to for people. Like thank you. Oh my God, that makes me want to cry. So thank you. And thank you for seeing me and seeing Karen and seeing what we are doing in this world, because it's our passion. We share that passion for wanting to help others and transform the world as best we can. So thank you for seeing that because I certainly see that in you both. And I really look forward to growing and evolving with you guys and seeing what we can all do together in the future.

So thank you so much. Thank 

Roger: you. Thank you for having us.