In this episode, we discuss topics including the history of mushrooms, what they are, why they are beneficial to the planet and humans, types of medicinal mushrooms and their amazing properties, why cultivation methods matter, and much more!
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In this week's episode...
Empowering you Organically – Season 1 – Episode 6
Title: Boosting Your Immune System using Mushrooms
Guest: Dr. Daniel (“Doc”) Nuzum
What are mushrooms?
- It is a fungus
- Not a plant
- Not an animal
- Grow like a plant
- Grow immunity like an animal by adapting to seasonal changes
Why are mushrooms important to the planet?
- They provide the mycobiome for the Earth
- The Earth’s topsoil is a mixture or microbiome (made from bacteria) and mycobiome (made from fungus)
- Mycobiome is like a spider web intertwining among the microbiome
- The mycobiome acts as a detox mechanism within the microbiome
- Example: Your neighbor sprays pesticides or herbicides on the ground. This begins to kill the microbiome and the mycobiome will dissipate the glyphosate over a 4 city block. Nature’s solution to pollution is dilution and the mycobiome is part of that process.
Why are mushrooms important to humans?
- Humans also have a mycobiome in their microbiome.
- Medicinal mushrooms feed the microbiome and mycobiome within the gut
- Fungi are fundamental to the human microbiome
- has been shown, in total, to modify fundamental human physiology, including energy acquisition, vitamin-cofactor availability, xenobiotic metabolism, immune development and function, and even neurological development and behavior
- Support a strong immune system by giving us theirs
- Translated from their immune system to ours via polysaccharides. These short chain sugars carry the immunologic information that the mushrooms have. It’s like a copy of their history and what they’ve had to deal with in their growth cycle. That particular information gets translated to our immune system when we consume these polysaccharides.
Types of Medicinal Mushrooms
- Reishi
- Excellent in assisting your body’s ability to detoxify
- Chaga
- Makes you more resilient by supporting the immune system and is a powerful adaptogen
- Shitake
- Supports gut health and feeds microbiome as a prebiotic
- Lion’s Mane
- Helps the gut’s capacity to produce serotonin and dopamine
- Cordyceps
- Powerful adaptogen that enhances your mitochondria
Mushrooms and Your Immune System
- They help increase your capacity to adapt. You can not become chronically ill if your body has a healthy capacity to adapt.
- Supports a stronger detoxification response in your body
- Mushrooms are 82%-87% genetically identical to humans!
- Help with genetic repair and doing that genetic repair can undo some of the epigenetic damage that is happening to our system
- Medicinal mushrooms are revered as the Fountain of Youth in the Orient and Amazon
Cultivation Methods Matter
- Efficacy is affected by cultivation – can be enhanced or degraded
- Typically grown off of millet or white rice – not as much added benefit
- Organixx mushrooms are nutritionally fortified
- grown on red quinoa, black cumin seeds, pomegranate juice, blueberries to enhance the benefits
Fun Facts!
- The Earth’s microbiome acts as an information relaying network throughout the microbiome of the planet. All over the world you’ll find mushrooms. Different types of mushrooms are growing all over the world. There’s a mushroom growing in Oregon here in the U.S. that is at least nine acres wide.
- The Emperor of China would purchase Chaga from the Czar of Russia.
- Cordyceps only grows for two weeks every year in Tibet traditionally. The Emperor of China was the only one that got the crop of Cordyceps every year. It went to him and his family because it would keep them young for the longest period of time
Deeper Dive Resources
Dr. (“Doc”) Nuzum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qK9ujZRZfA
Paul Stamets: Entrepreneurial mycologist believes that mushrooms can save our lives, restore our ecosystems and transform other worlds.
https://www.ted.com/speakers/paul_stamets
Mushroom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom
Human Mycobiome:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4448585/
Adaptogens:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3991026/
Mitochondria:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion
Medicinal Mushrooms:
Jonathan: Welcome everyone. Jonathan Hunsaker, founder of Organixx. I’m joined by our CEO, TeriAnn Trevenen.
TeriAnn: Hi, everyone.
Jonathan: And Dr. Dan Nuzum.
Dr. Nuzum: Hey there folks.
Jonathan: Listen, we’re just putting together this whole podcast. This is our first season, Episode 6. We’ve been talking about a lot of stuff this season about how to get healthy, how to live a better healthier longer life.
And today, we’re talking about mushrooms. Mushrooms are extremely important some of the information that doc sharing with me over time and even today. He’s just fascinating when it comes to mushrooms. Yeah. So, doc, why don’t you start us off and tell us what are mushrooms?
Dr. Nuzum: Mushrooms, what are mushrooms?
Jonathan: What are mushrooms?
Dr. Nuzum: They are fungi. Mushrooms are fungus. Fungus is actually has its own category and in biology it’s not a plant. It’s also not an animal. It’s a little different. What makes them interesting is they grow like a plant but they actually develop immunity very much like an animal. And again, they’re not a plant and they’re not an animal either. They’re something different. So, that’s what mushrooms are if that makes sense. So, there’s something little—they’re not a plant. They’re not an animal but they have traits of both but they are neither, if that makes sense.
Jonathan: Absolutely.
TeriAnn: A mix.
Jonathan: So, talk about why mushrooms are important.
Dr. Nuzum: Here’s an interesting thing. Let’s talk about the planet real quick, okay? All across the planet the Earth has its own microbiome. Soil has a microbiome. That’s basically what topsoil is, it is a microbiome. It’s a mixture of bacteria basically that has bio activated nutrients or rock and that’s what we have as minerals in our topsoil and it’s the microbes that make up a vast majority of what we call topsoil, right?
Well, that’s the Earth’s microbiome. Well, within that microbiome there’s also a mycobiome which is something different. Remember this is a fungus, a fungal form mycobiome is what it’s called. It’s M-Y-C-O, okay? So, it’s not the micro-biome which is made out of bacteria. This is the myco-biome. It’s made out of—by a fungus.
And this is all the entire planet is in enveloped in this. Anywhere that there’s land has to some extent both of these things. We either have microbiome. There’s both. They happen at the same time simultaneously. The microbiome in the mycobiome, they’re part of the wrap. Wraps are the top soil, the dry ground of our planet, right?
TeriAnn: So, there’s a microbiome and then mycobiome.
Dr. Nuzum: Yes.
TeriAnn: Just like that on the top of—
Dr. Nuzum: You can have microbiome, mycobiome, microbiome. It’s kind of the basic make up.
TeriAnn: Interesting.
Dr. Nuzum: Okay. So, mycobiome is more like a spider web or web in between the microbiome if that makes sense.
TeriAnn: Yeah, it makes sense.
TeriAnn: It’s kind of interesting things. So, what the microbiome does is it acts as an information relaying network throughout the microbiome of the planet. This is all over and you go around the world you’ll find mushrooms, different types of mushrooms are growing all over the world. There’s a mushroom growing in Oregon here in the U.S. that is at least nine acres wide.
Jonathan: Wow!
TeriAnn: Wow.
Dr. Nuzum: It’s a nine square acre mushrooms, one continuous mushroom—
Jonathan: Just one organism.
Dr. Nuzum: One organism.
Jonathan: Wow!
TeriAnn: Wow.
Dr. Nuzum: With different shoots coming up out of the ground, massive and it’s not the only place. Those places like that throughout the Amazon—
TeriAnn: The monster mushroom.
Dr. Nuzum: Exactly.
TeriAnn: Wow!
Dr. Nuzum: There’s nine square miles of this—
Jonathan: Acres.
Dr. Nuzum: Or acres, I mean acres. Nine square acres of this mushroom, right? That’s not isolated. It’s not the only place. This happens all around the world. This is right here far from us. It’s right here in the West. That mushroom relays information all across that entire network just like the microbiome does all throughout the soil on dry ground.
Now, what’s interesting is that mycobiome will also act like a detox mechanism within the microbiome. So, when they spray pesticides or herbicides on the ground you know in that that goes into the soil starts to kill the microbiome in the soil, okay? In order to try to save the microbiome, the microbiome will dissipate those toxic chemicals.
I give you an example. If your neighbor, if you’re in a neighborhood and your neighbor goes out and sprays glyphosate on the dandelions in his front yard, all right? The mycobiome, this is not the microbiome, the microbiome in the neighborhood will dissipate that glyphosate over a four city block area.
TeriAnn: Wow!
Jonathan: Wow!
Dr. Nuzum: It’s amazing what this stuff does.
TeriAnn: How long does that take? And so, it fast that it spreads out like that?
Dr. Nuzum: It’s very fast. It’s usually within a day or so. So, it’s unbelievable how fast this stuff works and how—but think about that. So, when pollution can’t be neutralized if the solution to pollution is dilution. And so, in the microbiome since it can’t neutralize that particular toxin right away, it just dilutes it by spreading it out over a bigger area. Okay, and that’s one yard. Think of that. So, four city blocks is how far that will dissipate out.
So, that’s what mushrooms do on the planet, in our ecosystem, right? What’s interesting is we have something similar within our microbiome. We also have a mycobiome within our microbiome, okay? So, through our digestive tract we also have something similar.
One of the things that medicinal mushrooms do is they feed that micro and mycobiome within our gut which is why you’ll hear me talk about medicinal mushrooms all the time because they’re such a powerful super food and they start their process within our gut before—your microbiome touches your food before your gut does.
So, it actually does the final fermentation process of extracting all the nutrients from the food you’re eating, right? And within that microbiome you have your microbiome assisting in that whole process and it does something very similar to your body that the microbiome does in soil. So, it helps with detoxifying you of anything that’s coming into your system before it actually gets into your system. It’s really super important in medicinal mushrooms fortifying all of that.
Jonathan: It’s absolutely fascinating. So, what are some of the better mushrooms to take?
Dr. Nuzum: Just as categories Reishi mushroom, fantastic, amazing mushroom. And what’s interesting about Reishi is Reishi is very-very good for ramping up your body’s ability to detoxify. So, it’s not something that’s going to create a detox effect. It’s not like it’s going to go in and just start pulling stuff out of your system. It’s not going to go in just clean house.
What it will do is it fortifies your body’s capacity to detoxify itself. So, it ramps up your kidneys capacity to detoxify, ramps up your livers capacity to detoxify. And if they don’t have to detoxify anything they don’t have to but their capacity is greater. So, it supports our body’s own detox system.
Jonathan: Well, I mean it’s interesting that you talk about that because detox is another buzzword and people talk about it and there are different ways to detox. I mean yes, you can take stuff that flushes your system out and it can be hard on your system especially if you’re not a healthy person to begin with but something like the Reishi mushroom that just helps your body naturally detox isn’t going to hurt you regardless of your health state so to speak.
Dr. Nuzum: Exactly.
Jonathan: Because it’s just making your body healthier to do what it’s designed to do anyway. It’s just weaker because maybe you haven’t fed it well or there’s other things that have made your body less effective at detoxing.
Dr. Nuzum: Right, exactly. Which is these things that when you’re from a clinical standpoint, that’s why these things are so wonderful.
Jonathan: Right. Earlier today, I mean you’re dumping out powdered mushrooms into your morning drink before we start doing the podcast and all of that. So, this is not practicing what you preach. I mean you—
Dr. Nuzum: Oh, no, no.
Jonathan: You were taking packets of it.
Dr. Nuzum: Right.
Jonathan: All right. So, we have Reishi. What are some other ones?
Dr. Nuzum: Chaga. Chaga is another one of my favorites. Chaga is amazing. Here’s what’s really interesting. Remember we’re talking about what mushrooms grow on. We talked a little bit about that earlier in some of our podcasts. Chaga typically will grow on birch trees but the Chaga mushroom—when you think of mushrooms what kind of consistency do you think of? Kind of a spongy—
Jonathan: Yeah, spongy, half—
TeriAnn: Yup, spongy. Yeah.
Dr. Nuzum: Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.
Jonathan: Half rubbery, almost, about a little rubber maybe.
Dr. Nuzum: Yeah. Right. Okay. So, that’s most mushrooms, right? Chaga is harder than the birch trees it grows on. They literally have to use chain saws to cut it off of the birch trees. It’s amazing and it’s harder to cut the Chaga, this mushroom than the tree.
Jonathan: Than the tree. Yeah.
Dr. Nuzum: It’s amazing. So, one of the—this is consistent all across the globe in traditional herbal medical systems, herbal medicine and indigenous medicine and things like that. One of the real consistent concepts within indigenous medicine all across the globe is that you take on the properties of the herbs that you consume, okay? So, whatever properties they have, whatever type of resistance they have to the weather or whatnot. You take on those properties when you consume these herbs, right? Well, Chaga is like known for making you tougher and more durable.
TeriAnn: Interesting.
Dr. Nuzum: Because of it’s such a hardy mushroom—think about it. They have to use chainsaws to cut this mushroom off of the trees it grows on.
TeriAnn: Yup.
Jonathan: When you say it makes you tougher, I mean are we talking—
Dr. Nuzum: More resilient.
Jonathan: Your immune system essentially, right? When you talk—
Dr. Nuzum: Exactly.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Dr. Nuzum: Yeah. Not like—
TeriAnn: Your skin tightens and you get tough—
Dr. Nuzum: Yeah, right. Not that—
TeriAnn: Yeah.
Dr. Nuzum: Not quite like that—yeah.
TeriAnn: Internally your body takes—
Dr. Nuzum: You become like that—
TeriAnn: Yeah.
Dr. Nuzum: So, your immunity increases your capacity to deal with things increases and so, it just makes you stronger. That’s the concept with that particular mushroom.
TeriAnn: Let’s talk about that for a second because you’re talking about mushrooms and mushrooms that you like but you were talking earlier to Jonathan and I about the mushrooms being 82% genetically identical to people. So, talk about that for a second because I think that’s fascinating and I love that you brought that up. I had no idea. So, talk about that a little bit and how they work together, people and mushrooms.
Dr. Nuzum: Yeah. It’s amazing. Here are some interesting facts about mushrooms is remember I said earlier they’re not plant but they’re also not animal, okay? They grow like a plant like they have—even some of them look like plants. You know what I mean? They develop immunity the way an animal does.
Plants have an interesting process plants typically will have four different immune modules that they’ll go through, one for each season. Mushrooms don’t have that which is different.
So, if you have a tree in your backyard, it is designed to have a summer immune system, a fall immune system, a winter immune system and a spring immune system. So, its immune system changes with the seasons. Mushrooms don’t have that. They have to adapt to the seasons just like an animal. As they adapt to seasons, they create an immunity. So, they grow immunity real similar to the way humans and animals grow immunity, so, real interesting.
Now, across the board your medicinal mushrooms are usually between 82 and 87% identical on a genetic level to human that—their genome versus a human genome they’re 82 to 87% identical which is amazing. So, the significance of that—
Jonathan: No wonder you think that you take on the property of that mushroom, right?
Dr. Nuzum: Right.
TeriAnn: Yeah. That’s exactly what it made me think of when you mentioned that.
Jonathan: So, you think it makes you tougher and that’s interesting.
TeriAnn: Yeah.
Dr. Nuzum: Sure. It does—fortifies you all the way to the genetic level if that makes sense.
TeriAnn: Yeah, and that’s what brought that up in my mind. So, how does that connect it to humans, right?
Dr. Nuzum: Right.
TeriAnn: In talking about the Chaga mushroom making you more durable internally with your immune system, how mushrooms adapt everything but it seems that it helps humans to adapt to changes in different things as well based off of the properties of that mushroom.
Dr. Nuzum: Absolutely, that’s exactly the case. And so, the mushrooms take—it’s kind of like they give you their immunity. The way that’s translated from their immune system to our immune system is through the polysaccharides and the secondary sugars is what they’re called—that’s what we call them in a lab. So, you get these polysaccharides.
A saccharide is a sugar. Polysaccharide is a sugar that—if you think of like table sugar, table sugar would be like a chain with two links, okay? A polysaccharide would be a chain with like 30 or 40 links. A complex carbohydrate would be like a 100 to 200 links where a dietary fiber would be like 1,000 links. All of them are sugars but they’re not the same in case that’s not table sugars. It’s not what I’m talking about. So, polysaccharide a lot of times is referred to as a secondary sugar or some sugar, that kind of thing.
So, what’s interesting is those molecules, these short chain sugars carry the immunologic information that the mushrooms have. So, it’s like a copy of their history and what they’ve had to deal with in their growth cycle. That particular information gets translated to our immune system when we consume these polysaccharides.
Jonathan: Wow.
Dr. Nuzum: So, it’s like I equated to your immune system going to the library. You’re taking these new books and learning all these new fighting techniques. It’s kind of like they get a library karate manuals or something.
Jonathan: Like Neo in the matrix, right? He gets this—
Dr. Nuzum: Exactly.
Jonathan: Download directly to his brain.
Dr. Nuzum: Exactly.
TeriAnn: You had to go to colleges.
Dr. Nuzum: Here we go. Oh, yeah.
Jonathan: All right. So, Reishi, Chaga, let’s talk some more mushrooms and just some of their benefits.
Dr. Nuzum: Shiitake, Shiitake mushrooms. Shiitake is excellent gut healer and so as Lion’s Mane. Those two, I like those two in particular for gut health.
Jonathan: I’ve heard about Lion’s Mane helping as well for sleeping and improving sleep.
Dr. Nuzum: What’s interesting is it actually helps increase the guts capacity to produce serotonin and dopamine and so, as the person serotonin comes up they just feel calmer and they can go to sleep easier in. So, Shiitake and Lion’s Mane, those would be—the way I think of these things I look at those as being microbiome food.
You want to support your microbiome. Yes, you need probiotics. You need those types of things but you need these mushrooms to feed almost as a prebiotic if that makes sense. You want to have those things in your system to support a healthy microbiome. And I use that as part of it you know especially after detoxing someone because that’s a perfect time to access the person’s microbiome because we cleaned it out, kind of swept out all the all the junk and all the bad guys from the microbiome. So, it’s a perfect time to fortify it, start rebuilding it. So, after detoxing people I really focus a lot on those mushrooms with probiotics as a way to rebuild their microbiome.
TeriAnn: Interesting.
Dr. Nuzum: Another one. Chaga and Cordyceps are my personal favorites. Chaga is just one of those—it’s a powerful adaptogen. And when I say adaptogen, adaptogens basically—to give you concept of what an adaptogen is an adaptogen enhances your capacity to adapt, okay? And that is to whatever, emotional stress, physical stress, spiritual stress, whatever type of stress you’re dealing with. The adaptogen increases your physical capacity to deal with stress to handle it or to adapt to it.
Okay. So, if that happens to be exercise, it helps you adapt to that exercise. So, if you can adapt to exercise quicker, that means when you go to the gym and you start exercising and say, “I like to lift weight.” So, I go in and I lift weights. If I’m taking Chaga and Cordyceps both of these are such powerful adaptogens that help me recover from those workouts. So, when I come back around I can do better next time. My body adapts to that stress of the exercise. Next time I come back in I can do a little better, maybe a little better instead of having “Bad Days” at the gym. I don’t typically have bad days at the gym.
TeriAnn: Interesting. So, you’re saying that the Chaga has those adaptogens that help your body to adapt to different situations and different environments.
Dr. Nuzum: Right. Whereas Cordyceps, Cordyceps does also but Cordyceps enhances your mitochondria is capacity to use oxygen, so, it helps your mitochondria breathe better. Let me equate this and give you an example. Let’s say you had a wood stove. If you keep putting logs in the wood stove and never clean it out eventually the ash will snuff out the fire, right?
Jonathan: Right.
Dr. Nuzum: You just get to a point that it can’t. So, Cordyceps helps remove the ash and helps the fire breathe better, if that makes sense.
TeriAnn: Yeah.
Dr. Nuzum: Okay. So, the mitochondria are the power generators for your cells and so, the better they breathe the more energy they produce. So, if your tissue has—your heart has more energy, it pumps more efficiently and it can pump stronger and it can adapt, it can fluctuate. Because we’re sitting at a table right now, our hearts don’t have to pump a whole lot but if we ran out the door or ran down to this—or out the front yard to the street, right? Our hearts would have to change. They’d have to adapt to that activity and start pumping harder, right? Well, that transition, that’s the type of thing that Cordyceps helps with.
TeriAnn: Yeah. It sounds to me like a lot of these things you’re talking about with the mushrooms and something we already know is it really benefits your body supports your immune system because all of these things impact your immune and impact your overall health. So, talk a little bit more about mushrooms and your immune system and your immune system support.
Dr. Nuzum: Right.
TeriAnn: What does that look like?
Dr. Nuzum: That adaptation process—here’s the thing. Some I teach students that are learning all this and teach my patients, you can’t become chronically ill if your body has a healthy capacity to adapt. It’s not possible. If your body can adapt well it’ll overcome an illness. If the capacity for your body to adapt is broken down then it’s not hard to be overcome by an illness and for the illness to become chronic. That’s part of the process of—it’s all the different factors that feed into a chronic illness that caused a collapse in the body’s ability to adapt.
And when the body can’t adapt, it starts to accommodate which is the adapt which is the opposite of adapting. When you adapt you adapt to something and you overcome it. When your body can’t adapt it starts to accommodate. So, think about this. If it can’t adapt to the toxins in the environment what’s it going to do to those toxins?
Jonathan: Accommodate.
TeriAnn: Accommodate them, all right? If it can’t adapt to some relational stress, what’s it going to do is going to accommodate that. You’re going to start carrying it, and the weight of these multiple stresses eventually causes the system to break down. We call that chronic disease. It doesn’t matter what the disease is. That’s a process that’s involved.
Jonathan: Well, we’ve talked in other videos. I don’t know if we touched on the podcast or not but just about your body’s inflammatory response to stress, right? Because that’s your immune system, right? And its response is to inflame and it doesn’t know where to go so it goes throughout your whole body.
Dr. Nuzum: Right.
Jonathan: Right?
Dr. Nuzum: Yeah.
Jonathan: Now, we’re talking about chronically being inflamed now and then you’re more susceptible to the toxins. You’re more susceptible to all kinds of stuff and it’s just that. It’s at constant downward spiral and it’s interesting as you talk about it because I’m constantly just thinking about all the other videos we’ve done and all the other things we’ve talked about and how it’s all a whole matrix of things that come together, right? It’s not you just need to do this one thing it’s not just this thing or that there when you’re feeling this way go take that pill or anything like that. It all plays in together to keep you healthy, right?
Dr. Nuzum: Right. Exactly.
Jonathan: And it’s not a reactive state that you want to be in.
Dr. Nuzum: Right.
Jonathan: Well, sometimes you need to react a lot of times it’s about building up everything so you can handle all of these things.
Dr. Nuzum: Exactly. It’s increasing your capacity. That’s what—
TeriAnn: It’s interesting with the mushrooms because I think back to the process you talked about in detoxifying people and then getting their microbiome to a place where it’s clean again and then you go in with the mushrooms and now that we know more about mushrooms and as you’ve talked about this more how they adapt, once your body’s clean, anything else that comes in its adapting—
Dr. Nuzum: Adapting to that. Right.
TeriAnn: It just quickly changing to make sure that your body does what it needs to keep itself which is amazing when you think about it in that form of that process what mushrooms can do for you.
Dr. Nuzum: Right. I’m probably the opposite end of the one pill one ill doctor.
Jonathan: Sure.
Dr. Nuzum: Because that that doesn’t work long-term because you’ll never end up with one pill. You’re going to end up with a lot of pills.
Jonathan: You got to take some pills for the side effects from the first pill and make some more pills for the side effects with those pills, right.
Dr. Nuzum: Right. And just one pill for one ill, that pill isn’t going to stop that ill for very long. So, you’re going to have to take two pills for one ill than three pills for one ill then you’re going to have to take ones for the side effects and like you said. That’s how that works. So, I’m way of the opposite end of that. It’s not about taking a pill. It’s about increasing your capacity to deal with things. That’s how you get well. That’s how you stay healthy.
So, part of that—yes, we have to detoxify because if we’re carrying—I live up in the mountains in Idaho in—one of the things—we hike. We love to hike. We go out and hike and so, if we went on a hike and we go up to a table. We have some sandwiches and water bottles and then we have 20-pound bricks on the table, right? You guys, each grab a water bottle and a sandwich. I go over and grab a 20-pound brick and put that in my backpack. Who’s going to make it the farthest on that hike?
Jonathan: Right.
Dr. Nuzum: Not the guy with the 20-pound brick in his backpack.
Jonathan: Sure.
Dr. Nuzum: So, detoxification okay takes that 20-pound brick out of your backpack, right? But then you need to fill it with something that’s going to sustain you.
Jonathan: Or it’s just going to fill backup with toxins. Yeah.
Dr. Nuzum: Exactly. You just made and empty hole.
Jonathan: Right. And that’s a conversation that we went back a few episodes talking about the dam, right? That’s why you need all the different nutrients because that’s the dam and when you’re missing some of them there’s the holes and then the toxins go into the holes. I mean it’s all full circle.
TeriAnn: So, I don’t want to go too far into this one point but at one time you mentioned and just one minute on this, you talked about mushrooms at the epigenetic level.
Dr. Nuzum: Right, sure.
TeriAnn: Can you start at that for one to two minutes and what that looks like?
Dr. Nuzum: It was back to where you know, mushrooms being so identical to us on a genome level. So, genetically, they’re 82% to 87% identical to the human. Their genome is a real close to our genome more than any plant. There’s no plants on the planet that come even close to how similar on a genetic level we are to mushrooms. So, consuming them consistently goes back in their genetics fortifies hours. So, it helps with genetic repair and doing that genetic repair can undo some of the epigenetic damage that is happening to our system.
TeriAnn: That’s interesting. How does that play into—if you’re talking about repair, right? Not only fortifying, it can adapt what’s going on in the body but if you’re talking about repairing, how does that relate to anti-aging?
Dr. Nuzum: That’s slowing down the freight train if not turning it into rever— putting it in reverse.
TeriAnn: All through mushrooms.
Dr. Nuzum: All through mushrooms. And it is working with mushrooms. It’s cultivating. When you’re getting medicinal mushrooms, they’re not all cultivated equally. So, the efficacy of the mushrooms—the mushrooms all have the same qualities but how you cultivate them, you can enhance those qualities or you cannot enhance them.
Typically, most labs that grow medicinal mushrooms that are used for nutritional supplements grow them off of millet or even more often than that, grow them off of white rice. They grow fine, and they come out. They have their qualities in everything but you can do better than that
I guess what I’m getting at. So, the mushrooms I work with are grown off of things like black cumin seeds or red quinoa. And in the process of their growth cycle, we’re also feeding them like blueberry juice in pomegranate juice and things like that.
It will—take like Lion’s Mane. Lion’s Mane grows out this—like a Lion’s Mane, okay? This beautiful white stringy-strandy mushroom that’s real similar to a Lion’s Mane, right? Through our process, it can come out, purple, red. Because of all the phytonutrients, all those plant chemicals, healthy specific compounds from the things we’re feeding them, they’re extracting that in incorporating it into their system, so, what we’re using our fortified, nutritionally fortified mushrooms. So, we’re not just fortifying with some synthetic vitamins or minerals. These things are actually fortified because they’ve grown off of organic whole foods.
TeriAnn: It’s cool. It’s almost like they’re vibrant to say like, “Look at all these nutrients that we absorbed.” And I love that.
Dr. Nuzum: Exactly. Yeah.
TeriAnn: That’s a really cool way to look at that we’ll see it come out in that way.
Jonathan: We know how nutritious white rice is, right?
Dr. Nuzum: Yeah, exactly.
Jonathan: So, if you’re growing your mushrooms in white rice and then what kind of value—it’s interesting in the episode that we did about turmeric where you talk about mushrooms. They are what they eat the same as we are, right? We talked about how feeding mushrooms turmeric and the properties that it took on and all of that.
Very-very interesting. Well, listen. This has been an awesome episode. Is there anything more TeriAnn that you want to ask doc about mushrooms?
TeriAnn: No. I just want to finish out really quickly the conversation on anti-aging and so, when we’re talking about mushrooms and we’re talking about how they can benefit our immune system. They adapt to whatever comes our way but then talking about reversing or stopping that aging because it’s at that epigenetic cell level that we’re changing even below the cell level that we’re changing and reworking our body for the better. Just talk a little bit more about that just to close things out today.
Dr. Nuzum: When we go over to Japan and Okinawa and so on and so forth over there, the folks in Okinawa live a lot longer than one of those special zones where people tend to live a lot longer. What’s interesting is they grow old but they don’t grow older. They age. They get older but they’re still hundred years old doing the same stuff they were doing when they’re 30 or 40 or so on and so forth and have been working the same job for the last 80 years.
Jonathan: Right.
Dr. Nuzum: And haven’t stop—
Jonathan: I think Western influence is starting to affect that a little bit now but for the longest time, that’s absolutely the truth.
Dr. Nuzum: Right, and all throughout the Orient and even into the Amazon. Here’s what’s really interesting in the Amazon. Medicinal mushrooms were revered as the Fountain of Youth or the—they were the immortality and I’m not talking the funny mushrooms. I’m talking medicinal mushrooms like what we’re talking about here. These types of things were considered the herbs of immortality or the things that would make you forever young or young for your whole life. That’s actually one of the names of Reishi mushroom in Chinese, The Herb of Immortality.
What’s real interest—let’s go back to China real quick. In China, like read Reishi and Cordyceps, and the Emperor of China also would purchase Chaga from the Czar of Russia. These were things that they were exclusive for traditionally. Cordyceps only grows for two weeks every year in Tibet traditionally. Your traditional Cordyceps, and it grows—
It’s very prolific but when China was an emperor, they had a kingdom, the kingdom of China, the Emperor was the only one that got the crop of Cordyceps every year. It went to him and his family because it would keep them young for the longest period of time in being the—he was there, immortal. They wanted him immortal for as long as possible.
But the stuff went on for thousands of years. This isn’t recent. This is a long couple millennia that this has been going on in. So, if it didn’t work, they wouldn’t have kept doing it.
Jonathan: For sure.
Dr. Nuzum: You know what I mean? If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t have kept on keeping on.
TeriAnn: Yeah, and I mean I think mushrooms are just as important today to people I think and it’s another thing that people are starting to talk more about as we’re talking about this movement of supplements coming back in to play and so, this has been fascinating. I think mushrooms are like a superpower food. They’re not just super food, super powers. And when you talk about them that’s all I can think about, is how powerful they are. So, it’s definitely been interesting, an interesting conversation today.
Jonathan: Yeah. We’re talking about medicinal. I mean and we’re even finding out that even the psychedelic mushrooms and their effects on PTSD and other things like that to rewire the brain mushrooms are phenomenal.
So, with that, let’s wrap up today. Thank You TeriAnn. Thanks doc for joining me on this episode. Listen, if you guys are interested at home, go to Organixx.com. We have tons of articles, tons of videos teaching more about mushrooms, teaching more about Folate and Humic acid and talking about all kinds of other stuff to really educate yourself on getting healthy.
Organixx also has it’ very own mushroom blend called 7m+. No psychedelic mushrooms in that blend but only medicinal that are phenomenal. It’s actually our second best seller of all time on our line and the feedback is just phenomenal.
So, if you’re looking for an easy way to get your daily dose of all of your mushrooms, go check out our 7M+ at Organixx.com. Thanks Terry, and thanks Doc, and we’ll see you guys next season.
Dr. Nuzum: Thank you.
TeriAnn: Thanks everyone.

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