Greetings, SuperFriends!

Welcome to today’s show, where we’re going to talk about magic mushrooms.

Not those kind of magic mushrooms.

But still, pretty magical.

That’s because today, we’re joined by a 13th generation mushroom farmer turned entrepreneur and biohacker from Finland.

…I couldn’t make this stuff up if I wanted to.

Through his company, Four Sigmatic Foods – Click for a 15% off discount, today’s guest is working hard to bring the ancient wisdom of mushrooms and their nutritional and medicinal benefits back into the modern era. There are a ton of health benefits which we’re going to learn about in the coming hour, but beyond just that, for every product you buy, they donate a portion of medicinal mushrooms to a cancer patient in need. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Since meeting him at Summit at Sea, I’ve been enjoying a ton of Four Sigmatic’s products – click for a 15% off discount!, and I have to say, I think there is really something to what they’re doing, and I’m really enjoying exploring the different types of magical potions they offer.

This episode is brought to you by SuperLearner Academy – home of my exclusive masterclasses. Check out a free trial using the link above today!

In this episode, we discuss:

• Who is Tero Isokauppila, and where the heck did I find him?!
• What is “Four Sigma,” and why did Tero name is company after it?
• Learning about the Fungi kingdom, and debunking some common misconceptions
• What percentage of pharmaceuticals are derived from mushrooms (shocking!)
• What are the different ways that mushrooms can boost our health? (very surprising)
• Which mushrooms have nootropic effects, and how do they work?
• What are adaptogenics and polysaccharides, and how do they improve our health?
• How mushrooms work, grow, and why they're so rugged and durable in nature
• Which mushrooms make you a better athlete, and how? 
• What is the Chaga mushroom and how does it protect our bodies?
• Can you just buy these medicinal mushrooms in the store and eat them?!
• What are Tero Isokauppila's favorite mushroom products, and the ones he uses?
• How can mushrooms stimulate nerve growth factor – and which ones do it?
• How does coffee stack up to other nootropics?
• How Tero Isokauppila spends $30,000-40,000 a year on whole foods(!)
• The sanskrit concept of “neti neti”
• An exclusive 15% off coupon

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Four Sigmatic Foods Websites:           USA   |    International
  (These special links will apply the 15% discount code mentioned in the show. Just in case they don't, you can use the code “superhuman”)
  • Lion's Mane
  • Mushroom coffee
  • Mushroom hot chocolate
  • Chaga elixir
• Mushroom breeds mentioned:
  • Lion's Mane
    
  • Reishi
  • Cordyceps
  • Chaga
  • Maitake
  • Shiitake
  • Oyster
• Hericenones and Erinacines
• Four Sigmatic Foods' Science Page
• This article on mushrooms in the Huffington Post
• Our previous episode with Jesse Lawler
• Paul Stamet's TED Talk on mushrooms
• Books:
  • Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora
• Google “Santa Claus mushrooms” and see the story behind it 😉

Favorite Quotes from Tero Isokauppila:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host. Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: This episode is brought to you by the Become a SuperLearner Masterclass. Now, I've been telling you guys about the Masterclass for a few weeks now. So I'm actually just going to take a step back and let a good friend of mine, tell you guys about his opinion on the Masterclass.

“I am Nelson Dellis, four-time USA, memory champion, and a huge fan of the SuperLearner Masterclass. You know, when I started memory techniques years ago, you know, I wish that I had had all the resources that are available in this course. Jonathan does a great job teaching it. And it's a fantastic course and I highly recommend it. It'll take you just as far as I am without as much time that I had to put in. So enjoy it, get into it and, uh, keep your memory active”.

Jonathan Levi: To learn more, to sign up for a free trial with no credit card required or to redeem an exclusive discount for podcast listeners only please visit jle.vi/learn or visit becomeasuperlearner.com.

Welcome to today’s show, where we’re going to talk about magic mushrooms. Not those kinds of magic mushrooms. But still, pretty magical. That’s because today, we’re joined by a 13th-generation mushroom farmer turned entrepreneur and biohacker from Finland.

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I wanted to. Through his company, Four Sigmatic Foods – Click for a 15% off discount, today’s guest is working hard to bring the ancient wisdom of mushrooms and their nutritional and medicinal benefits back into the modern era. There are a ton of health benefits which we’re going to learn about in the coming hour, but beyond just that, for every product you buy, they donate a portion of medicinal mushrooms to a cancer patient in need. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Since meeting him at Summit at Sea, I’ve been enjoying a ton of Four Sigmatic’s products – click for a 15% off discount!, and I have to say, I think there is really something to what they’re doing, and I’m really enjoying exploring the different types of magical potions they offer.

And I'm really enjoying getting behind them and the vision that they have for making the world a slightly better place. I want to make sure that you guys listen all the way to the end of this episode. And so I am withholding a 15% coupon to any of their amazing products and free shipping over a hundred dollars.

If you listen all the way through to the end. By the way, before we go ahead and transition to the episode, I want to make one very small request from you guys, maybe two requests, and that is let us know what you think.

Send us a tweet on Twitter. Send us a comment on the blog post. Drop us an email. You know, we know thousands of you guys are listening, but it can get a little bit lonely over here behind the microphone.

So please do take a moment to share your feedback with us. And the second request is to try and share that feedback publicly. If you can write us a review on iTunes or on Stitcher or wherever you're listening to this podcast, that definitely helps and will stymie some of the lonely thankless feelings that we are getting over here myself and the editing team. So please do take a moment today to take care of that. And so without any further griping and without any further ado, let me introduce you to, and I'm going to try and pronounce this the best I can. Mr. Tero Isokauppila. 

Tero my friend, how are you? It's been a while since I saw you last time. Have you been? 

Tero Isokauppila: Thanks brother. I've been good. How about yourself? Yeah, really good. 

Jonathan Levi: Really excited for this. You know, since I met you, the first thing I thought was, Oh my God, we gotta get him on the show. So I'm excited that we finally did it.

We followed up despite all the, you know, post-conference stress and we made it happen. 

Tero Isokauppila: Oh, thanks for having me. Yeah. It was a, quite the rush after Summit, but yeah. All good now. Yeah. Awesome. 

Jonathan Levi: So let's give a little bit of background. As I said in the intro, I met you at Summit at Sea. I have to admit, first time I saw you

I go, okay, here's this tall Scandinavian guy about a foot taller than me. I assumed you were an athlete. And then you pop out with, yeah, I'm a 13th generation mushroom farmer. So tell us about that and how you went from that into entrepreneurship. I have to say this is probably one of the most unique bios I've ever heard in my life.

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah, I guess kind of like in your TedTalk, when you were like really excited about learning and kind of hyper that's the entrepreneurship part of you. Right? So you're just excited about a lot of stuff. So I guess that's my path to entrepreneurship as well. It's been a way of creating, I like consuming things and reading and stuff like that, but also like creating so the best way to create.

Um, grew up in Finland and Nokia. A lot of people think that Nokia was actually from Japan or whatnot, but it's a Finnish town that later became a mobile phone brand and then a technology company. So we have a farm there. We don't exactly know actually how long we've had it, but at least were the 13 generations.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. So that's like a couple of hundred years. Your family's been in the farming of mushrooms. 

Tero Isokauppila: We actually forged mushrooms. We farm rye. So it's more of you don't actually, so we can go later into it, but there's a way of collecting mushrooms, but there's also a way of cultivating mushrooms and those are two slightly different things.

And then there's even the cultivation. There's few kinds of cultivation. So actually our farm is known for more like hair loom, cows, and rye. And then the mushroom is something that we get from the forest wild, so interesting. Okay. 

Jonathan Levi: So let's go into that a little bit and I'll give people the background of saying, Four Sigmatic foods, has a lot of power and a lot of meaning, and there's a very significant reason why it's called Four Sigmatic. So tell us a little bit about what the company does and why it's called that and what the mission is that you guys are trying to accomplish before we kind of dive into the mushrooms if you will.

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah. Four Sigmatic is like the geekiest possible way of saying that we only represent like the most researched foods in the world, like about 50 most researched foods. So essentially if you take any sciences, including natural sciences, a large enough sample size. It tends to form a bell curve, a normal distribution, and things away from the means the standard deviations are called Sigma.

So Four Sigmas away from them, all the foods in the world mean that there's only about 50 of them in the world. But it's kind of like IQ or any other metric people are outliers. So I guess in your world, the SuperLearners or the superfoods. So they add super means that they're like exceptional. So in this case, I mean, I don't like the word superfood, but I guess that's the most accurate thing you can say.

So surprisingly, a lot of those 50 most research foods, there's things that they're like ginseng, or, um, lemon actually, you know, ginger, but there's also a lot of these ministerial mushrooms or tree mushrooms that are really good for you. And we just want to focus on those foods. And our first mission is to help popularize the mushroom part of it.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. Okay. So there are only 50 foods that represent, I mean, I know Six Sigma is one in a million. So Four Sigma means that like, it's really, really, it's kind of very isolated. What foods are being researched? I didn't realize that there was so much research going on into these kinds of mushrooms. Most of which I have to say, you know what?

I checked out your products. I've never heard of lion's mane. I've never heard of most of these kinds of mushrooms. 

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah, well, you and many others. I mean, I started my first mushroom venture. It was about 10 years ago, on my own. And still even like, let's say a year ago, and even still today, a lot of people just think of psychedelics or, you know, your common white button mushroom when you talk about mushrooms.

But actually, they are a kingdom. They are a kingdom. Same way as animals are kingdoms, right. Plants are a kingdom. A lot of people still think that mushrooms are some kind of a subgroup of plants, but no, actually they are drastically different, and from a human being's point of view, it's fascinating because they're our worst enemy and our best friend, because we're very close with humans and mushrooms actually belong to the same superkingdom and were genetically very close to them.

So we share almost half the same DNA as mushrooms. So we're very prone to mushroom illnesses. So we sometimes like molds and things like that. Those are also in the fungi kingdom, but we can also use the mushroom medicine, way better than many other medicines. And that's why about 40% of pharmaceuticals are derived from mushrooms.

Jonathan Levi: So, Oh, wow. That's basically the reason why they're so studied is that the pharmaceutical companies fund a lot of that research. I had no idea. I mean, I know, you know, your basic penicillin is a mold. I didn't realize that so many drugs were being derived from fungi. Yep. Incredible. So, yeah. What's the big deal with mushrooms.

I mean, I know there are a lot of people in the audience, probably the majority of the audience who has never heard of these different kinds of, and they're probably asking, you know, isn't the vast majority poisonous or illegal, what's special about mushrooms and why are they so powerful for medications?

Tero Isokauppila: I mean, 40% is a huge number. Yeah. Well, same way as a blue whale is different from a Chihuahua, even though they're both animals and they're both mammals, is it also to understand that there is a huge difference in between mushrooms and some are poisonous, the same way as some plants are poisonous, you know, the same way as some animals are not suitable to be pets, a large part of animals are not just not, you can't domesticate them, or at least we haven't found a way yet and hope we won't.

But essentially, there's also for the good kind of mushrooms. There's two types of mushrooms. One are more for culinary purpose and they have some protein. So that's your normal portabella mushrooms. And then there's these medicinal mushrooms or more of these superfood mushrooms. And they tend to grow on trees. And what they're good for is the most of the research is based around cancer actually, and immunomodulation

so people who might have cancer or are out to immune disorders, a super unsexy topic, unless you're suffering from any auto-immune disorder. People usually don't care about immunomodulation, but it's directly related to our gut, and mushrooms help with our gut biome. And for, I guess, for a lot of your listeners as well, gut is related to our brain function and cognitive function so that makes it more relevant.

On top of it, a lot of the best mushrooms are adaptogenic, so they help with hormonal balance or help lower stress. Maybe improve oxygen intake, and support your adrenal glands. So there's a lot of different functions, but most of the research is based on the immune system and therefore also in the gut biome.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. So tell me a bit about that research. I mean, I want to go into, you know, I've poured through your website. I've really been enjoying the products myself. But I want to go in for our audience, if we could kind of say, well, here's this type of mushroom that you've never heard of. And it's been proven to do X, Y, and Z.

Can you give us a few examples of those may be starting out with the lion's mane, which I've been enjoying so much, and going into different types and what they're known to be effective for.

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah, let's do a couple. I guess lion's mane is one that your audience and listeners will enjoy most is because it's one of the few, I guess, nootropics or smart drugs.

So this is a food, not a supplement. It is actually a food consumable thing that a lot of oriental people, for example, use as a meat substitute. So people want a vegetarian diet one because it tastes very much like meat once you cook it. But it also has these certain kinds of compounds that help repair and protect our nerve growth factors.

And there's a compound that can penetrate, the blood-brain barrier, so essentially help your brain and your nervous system function better or original use in more of a medicinal purpose. Of course for Parkinson's and in Alzheimer's. But lately, it's been used more for it because it's very interesting how it can help with cognitive function also on a daily basis.

So we have a lot of customers who, for example, do memory games, and then they've tried it with and without lion's mane. And obviously, there's more research to be done in that field, but it's definitely someone to be helping with cognitive function. And then another one that I could take is reishi mushroom, which is probably the most studied of the mushrooms.

So Ganoderma lucidum. And that's again, has a lot of different functions. Interestingly, it works as an adaptogenic. So in our liver helps break down stress a little bit, but all of them mushrooms have a, a common compound group called polysaccharides, especially this B to D glucans to get absorbed in our colon.

And they help work out our own protective system, our shield. So our cytokines and they work them into directional way. And these get absorbed in the colon. And therefore now new research shows, for example, there was a research made in San Francisco recently, how reishi can help repair the gut biome part of it.

But for a long time, we've known that those polysaccharides, which are one of the most studied groups in human medicine of all get absorbed in the colon.  

Jonathan Levi: Wow.  And you know, am I correct in assuming, I mean, when you look at a lot of mushrooms, they kind of, they grow in spores. Am I correct in assuming that growing them is really massively scalable and it's also probably super sustainable.

I mean, it's not like traditional crops where you have to invest all this sunlight, all this energy, all this fertilizer till the soil, it kind of seems like these things are very rugged. And I'm looking at photos on Google images right now of these lion's manes that are bigger than I am, you know, are these things durable and pretty sustainable to grow?

Tero Isokauppila: Yes. So few fundamentals in fungi, in general, is that they grow everywhere in the world, including Antarctica. They essentially are extremophiles. So a lot of the best, most studied foods in the world are one of the extremes. It's either foods that grow somewhere where nothing else grows. I guess a good example for you might be like olive. Or when there's a burn olive tree comes out or something like that.

Right. Whereas a lot of these mushrooms are extremophiles or the end of the life cycle when there's a tropic or rainforest, which is so biodiverse that it has the best nutrients to grow the most amazing things. But in general, they are extremophiles. They don't require sunlight and they can survive a couple of times actually mushrooms have essentially mastered the whole planet because at one point there was a meteorite that they essentially made a dust cloud that block the sun and all the plants died. That was pre-humans and all the plants died, but then mushrooms survived. So mushrooms for the first thing to come from the sea to the surface of the land.

And they could survive this because they don't need sunlight. So they are extremely durable and they're extremophiles. As far as growing them, it's fascinating. If you ever walk in a forest or you see a mushroom and you kick it down, you actually don't hurt the mushroom. So collecting the mushroom part that you see, which is called the fruiting body.

So the thing that pops from the ground is actually not hurting the mushroom cause the mushrooms underground wherever you are right now, if you walk anywhere on, under the ground, they will be mushrooms. And these is the roots of the mushroom, which is called mycelium, which is, the one that will survive.

And this fruiting body is like the apple growing from the apple tree. So collecting it or leaving it, there makes no impact. So the actual impact is on the mycelium and the mycelium is good for the planet because it's like a cleaner of the forest and it can clean oils and radiation. But the part that we want to eat is the fruiting body.

So we want to eat the part that is actual visible from the ground, or from the tree. But in the fire of these medicinal mushrooms, the important part is that they're grown on trees now. Lately, there've been a lot of, uh, mushrooms that are grown in laboratories on different like grains, and substrains, which are not that good.

A lot of the benefits of the mushrooms that for example, we use come from the tree. So sometimes it will be almost like an ideal diet for us humans to eat soil and trees, but because they're not bioavailable in our body, we things that grow on the soil and we things that grow on trees. So a lot of the health benefits actually comes from the tree.

So that's part of also how you naturally farm it. 

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. Yeah. I mean, that's a big part of why our crops today are so poor. It's not because the crop itself is poor it's because the soil that has been growing in is just completely depleted. 

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah. That's a big part of it. And a lot of the genesis and the species have been had to be, it's not always even GMO, but you use hybrid versions of different plants that are uh, the less durable, but easier to grow in large scale. So a lot of the hair loom varieties of anything, let's say potato. Which we consider as, Oh, it's just the potato, but actually potato can be extremely nutrient-dense. If you just use varieties that would have more nutrients. But a lot of the more industrial versions of various plants tend to be less nutritious.

Jonathan Levi: Right. So we covered the lion's mane. We covered the reishi. Are there any other mushrooms that you guys are not cultivating but gathering that have significant health benefits that people should know about?

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of them, I think from a simplicity point of view, our education has focused a lot on the, for kind of the most free search and most unique mushrooms.

So we talked about reishi, which is all of them are great for the immune system, but research it can also help with stress and sleep quality and liver, uh, lion's mane was brain nervous system. Then there is a mushroom cordyceps, which in the United States system, most popular one helps with adrenal fatigue, and oxygen intake.

A lot of people will do CrossFit, endurance athletes, triathletes that kind of people use it because you can get more oxygen in your lungs. So according to studies, your amount of oxygen in your lungs gets nine to 15% more. Wow. And obviously, even if you're not an athlete oxygen, it's just a vital part for focus for energy.

So if you're ever tired and you feel like you need a big cup of coffee or whatever, just go outside, take a few big deep breaths, and usually a lot more alert and energized. Wow. But it helps with adrenal fatigue, energy, support performance. And then there's a mushroom called Chaga, which is the highest source of antioxidants.

High as those are. It's because of the antioxidants, besides helping with our immunity, it can help lower inflammation, really good for gut health and then for skin. Cause it's also very high in melanin and all of these compounds help protect our skin from the inside out skin is our biggest organ, but it's usually the last place to get nutrients.

So one of the easiest way to know if somebody is also healthy is looking at their skin quality skin reflects a lot of holistic health aspects, in our bodies. So. 

Jonathan Levi: I love it. And I love by the way on your website, you make it simple because a lot of these things, you know, people are wondering, are they safe?

People are wondering, what do they do? You almost feel like you have to be a botanist, you know, just listening to you, talking about all these different receptors and how things work. You guys make it very simple. You know, here's the ratio. Reduced stress, deeper sleep. Lion's mane, you know, improves cognitive performance, and cordyceps energy.

I love how approachable you guys have made experimentation with these different foods. 

Tero Isokauppila: Thanks. I mean, it's definitely not easy, I guess, related to your own field is it's like a balance, right? It's you want to be on top of the science part. You want to be focused on that. Like what's proven right now, you also want to focus on applied sciences.

So what has worked in practice? People don't have time for that either. So you have to break it down into smaller pieces, even like oversimplify it a bit, so people can kind of get it and then start using. And then the people who are really into it can study, you know, the ins and outs of it. But it's a hard balance.

Like how do you, cause there's, especially with food and supplements, there's so many like snake oil type things that like just promise a lot of stuff and there's like, no research on it. And that was kind of what, why we chose Four Sigma as well is a kind of a quest to focus on the more research foods, but it's hard to make it, not everything in the world is bullet sizeable, but you should try to make it bullet sizable for a lot of people.

So it's a balancing act. Absolutely. 

Jonathan Levi: No, I assume a lot of these mushrooms, I mean, I've never looked, but I've never seen, you know, chaga or cordyceps in the grocery store. Are a lot of these foods available in people's local markets, or is this something that despite the research has just not made it into traditional kind of supply chains. 

Tero Isokauppila: In oriental countries, they're extremely available. In more Western countries it really depends on which of the mushrooms we're talking about. Like I said, a lot of these medicinal mushrooms are actually growing trees. So they're in edible mushrooms. So we have to cook them like you would do bone broth. So they're not bioavailable raw.

You can't eat them raw mushrooms in general. They're not really meant for it. So they're not usually sold in the grocery store with the more edible mushrooms that portabella mushrooms, there's couple of crossover products. So if you go to a grocery store, I would recommend looking into mushrooms like Maitake also known as Hen of the woods or shiitake. 

So maitake and shiitake are mushrooms that you might find in your normal grocery store or oyster mushroom. These three are probably more available mushrooms that would have some of these polysaccharides and would be really good for your health, but also more available in a traditional grocery store.

But in the two days online world, we can buy these. Be able to anyone in the world. 

Jonathan Levi: So exactly. So I do want to get into that because as I said, I, I have really been enjoying, I actually first tried your products out at Summit at Sea. You know, someone kind of, there was this non-alcoholic bar and someone was like, Oh, here's a Chaga mushroom tea, you know, as opposed to having a margarita.

So I've been experimenting and really enjoying the products a lot since then. But I wanted to ask, you know, where would you recommend that someone start if they want to try and test the experience and the benefits of these mushrooms. What's a good entry-level mushroom to try and see how they feel. 

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah. Well, I'll give you two answers. Like obviously here comes the super biased part that it's our company. Like I left the mushroom feel for a while and I came back for it because I saw it that they work and they're so powerful and they're so studied, but the problem with them is the best mushrooms are kind of hard to use because they're inedible. 

So there's a certain amount of processing of hot water extraction, and alcohol extraction required. And they also, once you do the real thing, a lot of the products in the market are actually, like I said, grown on laps and not that high quality, but once you have like real high-quality stuff, they taste pretty bad.

They're very bitter. And a lot of people, especially like reishi mushroom, lot of people don't like it, even though it's a good thing to gradually learn yourself to enjoy better flavors again. So we make mushroom coffee, mushroom hot chocolate because cacao and coffee bean are flavors that people like, and they enjoy it.

They're bitter as well, but they're bitter flavors that people would like. So we try to make it easy. They come in easy-to-use packets. So my first answer is our products. But beyond that, I think looking at your local grocery store, looking for shiitake, maitake, oyster mushroom. Or going foraging. So looking at your area and contacting a group of people who are into mushrooms, there is a mycological association pretty much around the world.

So actually getting mushrooms from the wild is possible almost anywhere in the world. So wow. Contacting somebody in your community, who's really into it. Who can maybe take you the forest and maybe you can find something together or, you know, it doesn't even have to be a forest where you can find them.

Jonathan Levi: So. That's really cool. That's really, really cool. I appreciate the candid answer. Feel free to tell people what product they should try out. I don't recommend every product on the show. And when I do have someone come in and talk about their products, it's a product that I've tried and a product that I stand by.

So where would people start? Personally, I have to say of all of them, I haven't tried every product. I'm really enjoying the lion's mane and I actually kind of you sent me this other product, which I think is no longer on the website now, which is the kind of mind boosting nootropic one, but I didn't realize the lion's mane was.

And then, you know, I kind of just took out the packet and put it in the hot water and drank it and thought that it was kind of one of these relaxing ones. And then I realized I was super, super focused. So that's personally my favorite. Which one? Uh, do you find yourself drinking the most? 

Tero Isokauppila: It's really fascinating.

Like we've now. We selling this at about 27 countries. And we ship online to, I dunno, 40 50 countries. And we get this feedback and it's really funny like there are some bestsellers, but in general, it's, it really varies a lot. And I think it comes to find out the fact that we gravitate towards products that we need or our body craves.

Right. So I just say like, you can go to our website or so free information there about mushrooms in general and superfoods. So just find like things that you kind of like see and catches your eye and go with that first. I think the intuitive part of it is really like self-conscious part of it. It's really important.

I think if you're in doubt, start with reishi mushroom, it's really the most studied and probably the most versatile of them all and work from there. I think for your audience, lion's mane is definitely an interesting one. So read more about that. It's also a very pleasant flavor compared to a lot of the others.

So it's an easy compliance part. If you're not used to taking more bitter products. And it's also fascinating because there's not that many natural foods that actually produce these kinds of nootropic brain boost and cognitive function, boosting benefits. You can find like products that would do the same thing as cordyceps.

So sport performance or sexual energy or adrenal support. There's few of them, you have a pool of, 10 to 15 things you can choose from, but for the brain function, there's really only a couple of things that I've known that would help the nerve growth factor element. So things like certain algae, and chlorella CRO factor might do it. But there's only like two or three things that really work on that and the kind of whole food world.

So I think the lion's mane is definitely very fascinating. I think the coffee part is definitely our bestseller. So a lot of people like coffee, they feel a little guilty about drinking coffee. So our mushroom coffee is definitely our bestseller. 

Jonathan Levi: I love that. I do want to ask actually, you know, now that we came back, circled back nicely to the nootropics, and as you know, I'm a huge fan of nootropics.

We've done a lot of episodes on them and I'm a big, big advocate of them. I don't know if you know it. I mean, I know I'm asking kind of a cognitive neuroscience question, but how exactly is lion's mane influencing the brain? 

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah, so essentially, some of the functions we know, some of the functions we don't know, even in the Latin name of a lion's mane mushroom, it has a lot of different names in different countries, but it's, it's, unimpeachably gonna always pronounce it incorrectly, but these Hericenones. H E R I C E N O N E S. And then these erinacines E R I N A C I N E S. And these are compounds that we so far know that are the active things, but there might be things that we don't yet know. It's still like fairly new thing, but at least these two compounds essentially stimulate the nerve growth factor.

So they're molecules super small and they actually stimulate the nerve growth factor production. And then there is actually there's this blood-brain barrier. There's these compounds, I think they're amyloids or something like that in the brain that these two mentioned compounds help penetrate, essentially improving the flow of information.

The mean the brain and the nervous system. Oh, wow. So we have couple studies. So there is a research paper on our website. We also, we have like the scientific summaries of existing research that is in the world. So you can read about that. There is also a Huffington Post article. There is a couple of research.

There was one Japanese study, I remember. And there was, I think, one Chinese study on cognitive function and you can check it out.

Jonathan Levi:  Awesome. Yeah. We'll  definitely link those in the blog posts.

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah, it's definitely one of the hardest for me is definitely the brain part, even though my first degree was in chemistry and I've tried to research these, but it's really, that part is so complex.

I think like you have to dedicate your whole life just to understand that. And I'm coming from a farmer's background. If people are really into the, a nootropic field, and I used to reading these research papers, I would highly recommend it. But it's definitely related to the nerve co-factor and the stimulation of neurons.

Jonathan Levi: Sure. I'm sorry to blindsight you there with the cognitive science question, because, uh, you know, I think, like you said, there's so much research being done about these substances and even still, I mean, I had a, an interview today where the person said, you know, we don't actually know how it works. We know in double-blind studies that it works.

And he and I both concluded that we actually know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the actual functions of the brain. And so it's one thing to say, okay, you know, caffeine blocks these receptors, and that's really easy to know but to actually know what is promoting neurogenesis, what's actually improving the synaptic connections of the brain.

We haven't even gotten close to understanding how that works.

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah. I remember kind of like, I think 80, I took my mom's class and they said, if you have a glass of beer or a glass of wine and you kill your brain cells, you never get them back. And that's not too long time ago. Like you really seem like the nineties was the decade of brain research.

And it seems like the brain is still compared to a lot of our organs or plus circulation or muscular system. Brain and the nervous system seems to be like the new frontier of research, but definitely looking to our site, uh, foursigmafoods.com/signs, or we'll link up the stuff. Some of the research you can read about what the current study say, how it actually works.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, absolutely. And I think also what can be potentially interesting is, you know, we've done recently an episode on nootropics with Jesse Lauder and just talking about this different idea that, everyone's brain really works differently and that, you know, something that was working really well for him, doesn't work at all for me.

And so this idea of mixing and matching different substances, you know, you guys are mixing the caffeine of coffee with the kind of neurogenetic properties of lion's mane and stuff like that. I think there's just so much fun and equals one kind of safe experimentation that consumers can do and say, Hey, you know, I'm going to pick up a box of these drinks and see how they respond.

And for one person, it might do incredible things. And for another, it might just be a bitter drink that they kind of don't notice the effect of.

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah, it definitely. And by the way, coffee is quite the powerful nootropic as well. Sometimes when I didn't drink coffee at all, and I would have a long drive, like I had to drive a long distance on a car and stay alert.

I would sometimes just buy coffee and put it on the center console and just put the air conditioning inside the car and just smell it. And that would give me an alert feeling. It could be plausible totally, but I felt alert and same with sometimes I smell coffee beans, and that gives me an also sensation of like focus, which also seems odd. But it worked. So I'm not. 

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, exactly. Although I do have to say, you know, I'm on a little bit of a crusade against just regular coffee, because, you know, as a quote-unquote, nootropic, it actually doesn't qualify because it's habit-forming. And because it has side effects, like quote-unquote, the side effects of coffee, make it more dangerous and less qualified than something like, uh, you know, you mentioned ginseng before, so I'm all about this whole lion's mane thing. 

I'm all about your aromatic. I'm all about green tea. Again, for a lot of the same reasons you mentioned the mushrooms. It's like coffee has, uh, some antioxidants, but not nearly as many.

And it's certainly not going to stimulate, you know, these amazing things that a lion's mane apparently does, you know, new formation of synopsis and stuff like that. 

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah, I fully agree. I mean, copies, it's a fun thing every now and then, but it's definitely not a daily thing. 

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. So on that note, which of the products do you consume everyday? 

Tero Isokauppila: I'm a lot of experimental diets. And just today was the last time when our chef gave me a random bag of something new, a new flavor combo. So I'm a lot of trying those, I think in general, I'm pretty energetic and I get a lot of stimulants from the world and the world I live in and I meet a lot of cool people and I get excited.

So if I'm a believer in being and gang as a principal balance, so wherever you are in life, your needs might be different. So you said that what works for me might not work for you, but also understanding that what worked for me when I was 20 might not work for me when I'm 30 or 40. Sure. So right now I'm traveling a lot or really hectic.

So reishi is something that I constantly gravitate towards. Another thing is the Chaga mushroom because of their anti-inflammatory properties. And I'm a lot on the airplane. Which I called the fart tube. So really like a world that I'm right now in might not be the healthiest world too, you know, be in their plane and travel a lot.

But that's where I'm at with my, uh, mission around the mushrooms. So Chaga mushroom helps with inflammation and just, you know, keep me healthy on the cost of being Monday sick. Or if it's a total bummer but it also affects my daily life quite a lot. So I definitely don't want to be sick. So Chaga and reishi, are probably the ones that I'm consuming the most right now.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. And you said there's also digestive benefits around that and improving the gut flora, introducing new flora to the body. 

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah, the Chaga is originally a Russian name. A lot of the original research on Chaga mushroom comes from Russia. It was even, it was all a lot of it's actually accepted in and stood and pharmaceuticals as well there.

But, um, the, a lot of the usage there is for different gut problems and even, uh, got related cancers. So it's definitely gentle for the stomach. Very like, by the way, just by itself, a great coffee substitute, really gentle for the stomach, you know, better pH just a great pit person taste. It was used as a coffee substitute during the second world war when there was a lack of coffee beans.

So there's somewhat of a flavor it's really burned, tastes like campfire. It's like really burned coffee flavor. So not maybe for the coffee connoisseurs out there, but, it's a great substitute really helps to replenish your body. And we combine it with Siberian ginseng, which is a great for adrenals as well.

So we have a Chaga elixir, which is great for people who want to completely cut out on caffeine, but still kind of crave for that bitter or even that habit. A lot of people who drink the coffee, they just want the habit. So it's a great way to, you know, instead of trying to kill the habit, just upgrade it or replace it with something similar, like drinking tea or having chocolate, so, right.

Jonathan Levi: All right. I'm going to have to go to your website and order to that one. Cause I didn't order that one. I only ordered really the ones that, uh, were at Summit at Sea. So all right. I need to get on this. Awesome. I'm just picking through the website. Let me ask you another question, Tero, which is,

I learned a really, really fun fact while I was researching you for this episode, it's a little bit stalkerish, but apparently, you spend over $20,000 a year on whole foods. First of all, wow. But second of all, I know that Finland is very expensive, but I, I'm not sure how you do that. Tell me about that. 

Tero Isokauppila: Uh, it's probably up from that. It's closer to 30, 40, which is a real bummer because I know a lot of entrepreneurs, so I get really, like, I can buy wholesale sometimes give it, get them even for free, but I mean, first and foremost, it's curiosity.

I'm like really like whenever I see something new, I'm excited about it. I'm interested in it. Also for those people who think that's a huge amount of money. I just want to give kind of two thoughts around that. One is how much should we spend on healthcare? How much should we spend on pharmaceuticals at the end in our lifetime, that actually might not be that big of a amount.

And also the other part that I want to people to understand is like a lot of those things don't work. So there are people in the world in every field quote, unquote experts who study or go through a lot of materials in my case, try a lot of stuff for our health or health foods and they're experts because they've gone through a lot of volume, but they get paid because they will tell you everything in a few sentence.

So it's almost like the ancient Greek philosophers, it would tell you how to reach eudaimonia or a good life or a positive world, kind of those life principles in every culture. So the same thing in those, like a lot of the stuff I spend money on, I would not recommend to other people. And the funny part is that when you have a kind of a new thing, a new product, usually the margins are just ridiculous.

So you've ended up paying for hundreds of dollars of something that should only cost 10 $20, but there's not enough demand or because it's so new that they have a huge markup. So I ended up paying way too much for some things, but that's in the pursuit of finding one out of 20 or one out of 30 things that actually

bring me like awesome results. 

Jonathan Levi: Right. And I understand that you know, probably a lot of that for you is a tax deduction because it's research, you know, if you guys are looking really for foods in general, not just mushrooms, it's really competitive research for you guys. I would hope. 

Tero Isokauppila: Yeah, but, uh, there was also a lot of stuff I buy and then I have to donate it to someone because it's just not for me, not for you.

Jonathan Levi: Well, fair enough, Tero, I want to ask if people want to learn more about these magical mushrooms, if you will, and not the kind of magical mushrooms that most of us encounter in university. What's a good book or some good resources or blogs that people could read and check out. 

Tero Isokauppila: Again. It depends on how much time you're willing to donate for this.

I think an easy way to start is to visit our website, download some of these, or just browse through skim through. If you want to give a time to watch one or two TedTalks, there's an interesting guy called Paul Stamets. So if you go and, and there's a talk, I think six ways how mushrooms can save the world that might be worth your time if you're willing to invest about 15 minutes to do it.

We also have author talks, fairly fascinating. He also has a book, um, but it's a very good beginner's book. It's called Mycelium Running. You can get that on Amazon, for example, fairly affordable. Those are great ways to start. If you want to then look into a bigger part of the fungi world, a great book about that is Mushrooms Demystified.

And then what would I be say, like, I think that was the David Aurora, Mushrooms Demystified, and that's a big book. That's a lot to cover. And if you could go even through one 10th of it will be almost a mushroom expert.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome.

Tero Isokauppila: Those are good books. And then I would say that I would study just out of curiosity if you're into the mushroom world, I was studying kind of the history of psilocybin and the psychedelics, even if you're not into it at all, it kind of gives you a better understanding of how the mushrooms work. And I would also if you want to entertain yourself, I would Google Santa Claus and mushrooms and learn more about the history of Santa Claus and how it's related to mushrooms. 

Jonathan Levi: Cool. That's a nice kind of surprise for people to play with at home. Tero, I know you guys were very generous to offer a 15% off discount for anyone who purchases through the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. So we're definitely going to be putting a link to that in the podcast episode. If people want to check it out or if they want to go to jle.vi/mushrooms. And that will take them directly to a page with the appropriate coupon-coded link so they can save 15%. Anything else you'd want them to check out website-wise, get in touch with you, your handle on Twitter, any of that kind of stuff.

Tero Isokauppila: People are smart. They will find me if you need it.

But I just want to say like, understanding of, I think it's a Sanskrit thing. It's from India called neti neti, which means not this, not that kind of what we discussed that what works for me might not work for you. And what worked for you 10 years ago might not work for you right now is understanding the gray area.

And I think mushrooms have suffered a lot from this, black and white thinking it's suffered from this food racism. Same way as for a long time, we were scared of bacteria, even though we are bacteria. Right. So I just wanna ask people to have an open mind, give mushrooms a chance and just like explore them more.

They're a huge kingdom. They're part of everything we do on this planet and just educating yourself a little bit on it. It's good for common sense, but also might give you some aha moments or some other fields that you're interested in. Cause there's a lot of linkages. So hopefully everybody could just like that 15 to 30 minutes at least to give mushrooms a chance and read a little bit more about them. And then maybe that will give some aha moments. 

Jonathan Levi: Beautiful. Mr. Tero, thank you very, very much. It's been such a pleasure reconnecting with you and I'm sure we will stay in touch. Hopefully, I'll see you also next year at Summit at Sea.

Tero Isokauppila: For sure. And hopefully before that somewhere else.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, that'd be great.

Tero Isokauppila: Let's do keep in touch.

Jonathan Levi: Thanks again for joining us today. 

Tero Isokauppila: Thanks a lot. All right my friend take care. 

Jonathan Levi: All right Superfriends, that's it for this week's episode, we hope you really, really enjoyed it and learn a ton of applicable stuff that can help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

If so, please do us a favor and leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or however you found this podcast. In addition to that, we are. Always looking for great guest posts on the blog or awesome guests right here on the podcast. So if you know somebody or you are somebody, or you have thought of somebody who would be a great fit for the show or for our blog, please reach out to us either on Twitter or by email our email is info@becomingasuperhuman.com. Thanks so much. 

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming Superhuman Podcast. For more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.