Podcasts about mason oh

In today's podcast Mason chats to Jeff Chilton. Jeff has been working in the medicinal mushroom industry since 1973 and is an absolute specialist in his field. Jeff is the founder of Nammex, the leading supplier of organic mushroom extracts in the world today. With over 40 years of mushroom growing experience, Jeff was one of the first people to bring mushroom extracts to the North American market. All you medicinal mushroom nerds out there make sure you catch this episode, Jeff is a deep reservoir of knowledge and insight!   The gents wax lyrical over: The ins and outs of mushroom harvesting. The difference between products made from mushroom mycelium as opposed to their fruiting body.  Cordyceps Cs-4. The inferior nature of grain grown medicinal mushroom products. The nature of the medicinal mushroom industry at large, and what to look out for in regards to quality and authenticity. Following your passion in business. Retaining your integrity in the mushroom industry. Polysaccharides and betaglucans. China as a superior source Who is Jeff Chilton ?   Resources  Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify and Soundcloud!   Check Out The Transcript Here: Time to talk tonic herbalism people. Maybe some medicinal mushrooms and philosophy for longevity, so pour yourself a tonic and get ready to get super human, baby. Let's start the show!   Mason: Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Got one that, I've been really looking forward to doing this interview. Jeff Chilton, I'll go into a little breakdown now, rather than just jumping ahead to why I'm really into his work. He's been in the mushroom industry since 1973. When it comes to mushroom cultivation, back then, he was really pioneering. Especially, a lot of the mushrooms that we have available today via cultivation in the west.   Mason: He had a lot to do with the developing the manufacturing of those. Then in 1989, switched over to the manufacturing of medicinal mushroom extract, so he's OG in this medicinal mushroom world. There was no real trending back then. And I, like him, we met two years ago at a herbal symposium in Oregon. That's when I really ... super aware of him and just how he was just via just his own integrity and just educating the market.   Mason: He became this internal watchdog of the industry. Just in the sense of just calling out real bad practices that are going on in the medicinal mushroom industry, and still today, and educating people, so you can spot a product on the market which is telling fibs, and really doesn't have the good stuff that we have all come to know and love about medicinal mushrooms.   Mason: So NAMMEX is his company, also Real Mushrooms, and I love the fact that we can sit down as colleagues, offering medicinal mushrooms, having more at it from the Taoist perspective and Jeff just rocking gin that specialization of mushrooms and especially being such an originator of the entire industry. I really love to be able to sit down, talk with him and ask him about the history, especially he's really been shining in educating people about the difference between growing medicinal mushrooms on wood and on mycelium. And we dive into nuances of that.   Mason: Basically we talk about the industry and we talk about setting up relationships in China and just how amazing it is to be able to source really incredible, the most high quality mushrooms that you're gonna be able to get in the world outside of a wild cultivated situation. Where we are talking about medicinal qualities. Getting those from China and being able to educate people about the beauty of getting them from China. We talk a little bit about that.   Mason: Also what it's taken for us to develop the relationships with growers and farmers and so I think you'll find it really interesting hearing me from 2011, Jeff from 1989 really navigating the difference in our stories. As well we go into organic because Jeff has pioneered in getting the first certified organic mushroom supplement in the US which is really amazing. We go a little bit into that, I share my two cents on where I see organic is at. More so the reason why I like Jeff is because he's not like most companies that just think the be all and end all is paying for this little sticker, jumping through a couple of hurdles and getting the sticker on your product.   Mason: But what we call going beyond organic. And Jeff does that with the organic certification and I share my two cents on where I'm at with that whole thing. But mostly just how much I love that he's non-stop out there educating people. Not just trying to flog a product, not just trying to grow this crazy big business. But I think that's kind of inevitably happening, it's just a nice slow growth of a business. Because it has a lot of trust and it has a lot of consistency in its messaging. And we talk a lot about that and have a lot of laughs and get a couple of stories about the history of the mushroom kingdom and those mushroom people back in the day. We talk about mushroom conferences and a bunch of other things. I think you'll really enjoy it, I hope as much as I did, here's Jeff Chilton from NAMMAX.   Mason: Jeff, thanks for joining me, man.   Jeff: Hey Mason, thanks a lot for having me.   Mason: Absolute pleasure, so remind me where are you again in the world?   Jeff: I am in British Columbia, Canada. I like on Vancouver Island out on the West Coast. You and I are actually connected by the Pacific Ocean.   Mason: Vancouver Island especially, for some reason that just keeps on calling in. I keep on having friends, awesome friends and now you. You're waiting there. And I'm like "What is the pull?"   Jeff: Yeah. You have gotta come. Definitely come in our summer time because otherwise you'll just be hit by all of those things you don't like, which is rain and all the rest.   Mason: Well, it brings mushrooms, yeah?   Jeff: It's true.   Mason: When is it really on for you there? What months is it on for mushroom harvesting?   Jeff: Mushroom season is really going strong in October. First couple weeks in November still happening but then things cool off too much then it slows down and there's nothing happening. We get rains in August, which really primes things then in the last couple weeks in September we could see things starting to pop up.   Mason: All right, I love it. October, that sounds good to me. Let's dive in a little bit because we met maybe we were chatting it must've been two years ago.   Jeff: At the American Herbalist Guild Conference in Oregon, which was just awesome.   Mason: That was amazing, I mean, we were in Silverton? Is that right?   Jeff: Silverton, exactly, yeah, that's where we were.   Mason: But apparently not the witch one. No, I think that's on the other side. Tony was looking at Silverton but that's where all the witches were.   Jeff: Oh, ah   Mason: That's a different Silverton. I can't remember the name of the hotel but their grounds rolling in and the ginkgo trees, big ginkgo trees as well lining it. And then all the herbalists who came and did their herb walks were just frothing at how much they were able to go and show everyone how to forage, how to identify. Because the array of herbs there was incredible. That place is designed.   Jeff: It was absolutely designed. It was a huge property and they put in all sorts of different plants, herbs and different kinds of trees. It was a beautiful venue there are a great place to have that. Even on the Saturday night when they had a band playing and everybody was dancing. I had a great time.   Mason: That's so good, yeah. I imagine that place gets a lot of herbal symposiums going through it. And man, the best thing, the fig tree was kicking. Did you get up there and face on the fig then, during that symposium? That was the best part of it. Right next to the pine.   Jeff: Oh my goodness, no. I hardly had a chance to get outside which is back to my place where I was staying on the grounds and then down to the venue. But I was locked into my booth most of the time and talking to people. And then in the evenings it was nice. It was a fun thing. And I know you said you had a chance to get to hear Christopher Hobbs while you were there. That had to have been really great because I always enjoy seeing Chris. I know he was really busy in fact, funny thing was Chris told me, he said "God, I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with you. I ran into an old girlfriend."   Mason: Oh, right, I'm happy for him.   Jeff: Me too.   Mason: You're like, 100%, I can't contend with that. So '86 Hobbs wrote the book. Were you aware when his book 'Medicinal Mushrooms' came out, because when was NAMMAX first created?   Jeff: I started the business in 1989. I'm trying to remember whether I knew Chris at that point in time or not, but he was part of the whole herbal industry, so to speak, and Herbalist Guild and all of that back then. I wasn't nearly as much in touch with herbalists until I started my company. Before that it was just pretty much just mushroom people and all the people that were in the mushroom world over here. There are a lot of them. Mushrooms really happening. Long before the herbal industry figured it out and got wind of it.Chris was one of the first because he was an herbalist but also was interested in fungi. So that was really cool.   Mason: Yeah, I think he studied and formally became a mycologist as well.   Jeff: Well, no, he was a botanist, definitely a trained botanist and a history orf botany in his family. Herbalists and things like that. And now he went on and he got a PhD in molecular genetics.   Mason: Okay, he's going down that route. I like that book because he was really able to balance the mystical aspects of the mushroom herbal kingdom especially and then dive deep down into the science. It's something that only him and Steven Hardliner. Steven is the master at going down deep, molecular how a particular compound is interacting with a particular viral passade. And then blowing into full throttle Earth poetry in the next paragraph. It's a real gift. Going back to the 80s, you were running with the mushroom clique in America. Yeah, tell us the story.   Jeff: The thing was in the 70s... Well, first of all in the late 60s magic mushrooms were really great interest. That was one of the things that I was really studying at university. I had this interested in mushrooms in the 60s and I reading all about a man named Gordon Wasson. Are you familiar with Gordon Wasson?   Mason: Just the name and loosely, but not really.   Jeff: Yeah, so Gord Wasson was a New York banker with a Russian wife. He learned about mushrooms being used deep in the mountains of Mexico by Curanderez and went down there in the 50s and spent the next five summers down there. He classified a whole bunch of different psilocybes during that period because he took a French mycologist with him. And so, five summers. But he basically opened up this whole world of Look! Still today after thousands of years there are people in the world that are still using these psychoactive mushrooms in their healing practices. Man, that was a mindblower.   Jeff: So I was reading Watson and other people that were involved in that and they had published these books that were incredible books. I mean Watson went on to publish a book called 'Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality.' He published that in 1968.   Jeff: Then somebody came along a man named John Allegro came and published a book called 'Sacred Mushroom and the Cross,' which talked about mushrooms in early Christianity. So, Mason, listen, think about it for a second. In 1968 two books are published. One says that a mushroom is at the root of Christianity. The other one says a mushroom is at the root of the Hindu religion.   Jeff: And then all of a sudden from there it just... You get going forward and you find that mushrooms, you see symbols of them and you start to hear stories about them used through all sorts of different groups throughout history. Pre-history actually, because as that came out people started looking and discovering this. That was really part of my study in university because I was studying anthropology. And mycology on the side.   Jeff: Going into the 70s in Olympia, Washington where I lived and worked on this big mushroom farm there was a whole core of people that were interested in mushrooms. It was an amazing group of people. Paul Stamos is one of those people. Ultimately he and I wrote the book called 'The Mushroom Cultivator' in 1983. We even had a group. We had four people, Paul and I and two other people, where we had four different mushroom conferences. These conferences were so ... You would have enjoyed it so much. We had people there that were speaking about how to identify mushrooms. I was speaking on cultivation of mushrooms, speaking on the anthropological aspect of mushrooms. We had great people there speaking. There was Andre Wyle was at our conferences. And it was just a great time had by everybody, right? You can imagine. All these mushroom people coming together. 200 people coming together for a weekend. Amazing.   Mason: So good. I mean, it's different, you got this original crew, there's always something special when you've got the original crew.   Jeff: Yeah.   Mason: There's a medicinal mushroom symposium every year that moves around the world. It was in Colombia a couple of years ago and then in Italy. Do you know that one?   Jeff: You're actually talking about the International Medicinal Mushroom --   Mason: Conference?   Jeff: Society IMMS and you know what? And that was more of a scientific group that was formed much later. I know the principles of the group. It started somewhere around 1999. They're having a conference in China on the 18th of September this year. You should come. I'm gonna be over there at this conference. I know lots of other people are gonna be there as well. It's gonna be an interesting time. I'm gonna be giving a paper there, which will be fun. There will be lots of other people too. I don't know what time of year you go to China.   Mason: Yeah, I go in September. I think this year we've got our staff retreat in September. I'm gonna check the dates, but otherwise I've been wanting to get along anyway. I've been trying to revolve it around going to Wudang mountain and doing some Taoist training as well. This is where I've been tossing up this year, what time to get over there. But that sounds a bit serendipitous.   Jeff: Yeah, well, the conference is I believe the 18th to the 22nd of September. That's normally kind of early for us. We like to go over more in November. We go every year. November's really harvest time for a lot of mushrooms like Shiitake, Maitaki, Wood ear. A little bit later is Hericium, Lion's mane. In September it's the Reishi harvest.   Mason: Yeah, Reishi harvest is normally for us in September. Where's your Lion's mane growing? Which region?   Jeff: It's growing in Fujian province.   Mason: Okay. Ours is a little bit earlier, in September as well. In Heilongjiang. In the northeast.   Jeff: Okay, yeah, because in Fujian province it is late, late November when it's quite cold. It's back to the mountains, quite cold. Maybe up in Heilongjiang it's colder in there right?   Mason: It's chilly.   Jeff: (laughs)   Mason: That's spoken like a true Australian.   Jeff: Let's fly in and start up north there and step off. I just can't wait to get to Yunan province.   Mason: (laughs)   Jeff: I can't wait to get down into that tropical vibe. Although, nothing beats that crisp air.   Jeff: Well that's good. I'm at that point where -- I don't know when your periods of this business growth have been -- but I've been real head down, bum up in the business. Not really been in that space of upgrading my information. Of course, I'm always reading and everything, doing all these things. I feel like that's like, you're at a point in your business where you are traveling around and you're educated. You're back at that point where you're free to go and educate and then go and educate yourself non-stop, constantly, which is really nice. I'm nearly back there.   Jeff: Yeah, you know what it's like. We are so swamped right now. We've got so much demand for the product right now. We're growing and over the past two years we've hired four people, two people for lab and another person for regulatory and, can you imagine, we've got one person that's strictly regulatory affairs and deals with all the paperwork that we have to deal with. The paperwork is really monumental. We get forms from companies that are 220 questions!   Mason: Companies that you're doing business with and they wanna know, looking at purity or is it you getting stocked with them that they want all those questions answered?   Jeff: No, they qualify their suppliers. And so this is all about GMPs for the most part and how your product is manufactured. They want to know that everything is according to the GMP, quality, and the standard operating procedures and all the rest.   Mason: I think that's where Real Mushrooms. Was it your son that created Real Mushrooms?   Jeff: Real Mushrooms, yeah. Sky created Real Mushrooms in 2015 as part of NAMMAX so it's just one division of the company. He runs Real Mushrooms as well as other things because he's in training to allow me to go fishing and he can stay and do all the work.   Mason: Great. NAMMAX is providing more providing bulk for people that are putting it into products and stuff?   Jeff: We're a business to business. We sell the raw materials and then Real Mushrooms is retail products and mostly sold online. Maybe getting it into the stores at some point, but right now an online business. But we're business to business where we sell to companies that then put the raw materials out under their own brand.   Mason: Does NAMMAX do... I'm increasingly aware because I think NAMMAX... we get a lot of people asking at SuperFeast but we don't really specialize in that B2B space. But one thing I want to talk a little bit about later is a lot of people who, like NAMMAX has bridged it and made it really accessible. Especially with you and the middlemen not having to deal straight with trying to... I'm still appreciating, it took me quite a few years but you'd know the in's and out's beyond what it's like developing relationships, critiquing, getting the authenticity on the testing. Also developing a relationship based on integrity and qualifying on that level takes so long. I feel like NAMMAX has really made it possible.   Mason: I know a lot of people in Australia who are like "Ah, great, I can just go and NAMMAX can just do it all for me." Which is really great, because there's a lot of people. I like it because there's a lot of people jumping onto the bandwagon, and Australia has got this nice buffer. We don't have too much shit here, which is really good. And that's something that's nice for me to be able to say about my competitors as well. Australian community doesn't need to be as wary, I think, as the U.S. world because the U.S. is a bit...I didn't realize it's a shit fight. I know talking to you a lot back in the day, I don't think I presented that I was from SuperFeast. We were just talking about mushrooms and I was just learning a bunch off you and learning about your history.   Mason: As a company when I started out it was an absolute no-brainer that we weren't gonna use fillers, that I wasn't going to be using mycelium product myself. We'll talk about that, it has its place. Of course, growing on good-quality wood. In Australia we're just small companies. I started in Mum's spare room getting products for me and Mum. Then talking to you I was like... and then reading your blogs and really falling off the back of it just like that. Wow, because you actually really inspired me after that talk going, "Well of course, I do talk about the fact that we don't use fillers and we don't grow on grains." And all these kinds of things, but it was getting to that point I didn't realize people really needed to know the in's and out's of your product and be able to ...   Mason: After seeing what happened in America with how much trickery there is and the percentages of polysaccharides there is, lets' go into it a little bit now. You've been watching it and been the internal watchdog of the industry, which I really like. When did that first start cropping up? When did people start jumping on the mushroom bandwagon and fibbing about the levels of polysaccharides and active ingredients?   Jeff: The interesting thing was that having been in the supplement industry since 1989, the key thing for me was that I was a mushroom grower by trade. So i spent ten years as a commercial mushroom grower on a very big, big farm. Not a hobbyist growing in my basement or a closet or something like this. A commercial mushroom grower, large farm. Millions of pounds of mushrooms every year. So I knew how it all worked, I knew the economics of it all. I realized back in the late 90s, for example. Or even the early 90s that you couldn't actually produce mushrooms in North America and turn them into a supplement, because it's a dry powder it's not a fresh product. Once you dry that thing out it's 90% water you gonna get ten times as much money for that pound of mushrooms. It doesn't work in the supplement world.   Jeff: That's where going to China and I went to farms, I went to factories, I went to research institutes, I went to conferences. The 90s was just amazing to see what was going on. I went north to south, east to west. Yunan province all the way up to Jilin province. It was all over China seeing this industry and seeing the research. One of the things, you talked a bit earlier about quality how do you know. Here I am visiting these companies going to all of these conferences. I'm having people coming up to me all the time saying, "Will you buy my product? Here it is." And they just show me a brown powder and I'm just like, it's a brown powder, I don't know what it is! How can I really know what that is. And then getting to know companies and people that were genuine and you could go to their factories and see what they were doing. Especially if they were only producing mushroom products and then building the relationships to that.   Jeff: Then I turned around and back in the United States here are these companies that come along and they start to produce mycelium on sterile grain. The worst part about it is they sell it as a mushroom.   Mason: Some people might not know what, so, we're talking about the fact, which you alluded to, which I completely agree with, that the only way to make a viable super high-quality product that's a powder is doing it in China. Based on the fact that, say you have 10 or 20 kilos worth of raw product that's gonna then give you a kilo of the powdered product in the end, it's not viable in the U.S. so to make it viable in the U.S., the way it generally works is that it's grown on a grain substrate, like rice, brown rice, oats, this kind of thing.   Jeff: Yeah, and the thing is, what people need to understand is that a mushroom is just one part of this fungal organism. So the other parts would be a spore, the spore germinates in to a fine filament, those filaments come together, they create mycelium, which is the actual body of the fungus. Which normally if you're out there hunting mushrooms you never see that because it's in the ground or it's in the wood. So most people are unaware of that. But that mycelial network amasses nutrients. When the conditions are right it produces the mushroom. That's what we see because up it comes and it's like "Wow, look at that thing there!" And then that matures, it produces spores, and then we have a complete life cycle.   Jeff: The interesting part, Mason, is that growing mycelium, which is the vegetative part of this organism, on sterile grain as a mushroom grower, what that is and what that was developed as mushroom spawn. Which is like the seed that is used to grow mushrooms. Because mushrooms don't have seeds they have spores. You don't plant spores when you grow mushrooms, you plant live mycelium. The mushroom growing world, what they developed is "Okay, we'll take that live mycelium and we'll put it onto some kind of a carrier. Then that carrier we can spread into our compost or whatever it was that they're growing their mushrooms in. If you take a gallon of grain, you've got maybe thousands of grains in there you coat that with mycelium, and then you take those thousands of grains and you can mix them into a big pile of straw or compost or something. Each one of those mycelium grows off of and it grows into this thing. So that myceliated grain actually was developed in the 1930s as mushroom spawn or essentially seed to grow mushroom.   Jeff: It's an easy process, it's done in a lab and people in the United States, we can't grow mushrooms. Why don't we just take that process, we'll grow out the mycelium. Mycelium in and of itself it's got beneficial properties because it is a fungal hyphae that has beta glucans in its cell walls. If you grow it in a certain way like in liquid or something it can produce certain medicinal compounds. But when you grow it on grain and then you don't separate it out from the grain at the end of the process you end up with mostly grain powder. That's what companies started to do. They started to grow the mycelium on grain. At the end of the process they would dry it -- just like you're drying a mushroom, but -- they'd dry it, they would grind it to a powder. No mushroom there at all. No mushroom, it's just myceliated grain, and it's mostly the grain powder. Finally, the worst part about it is then they call it mushroom when they sell it.   Mason: I definitely know I've been surprised, because my first trip to the States I went and bought all the different brands. I was floored by some of the grainy non-mushroom powder that I was buying. That was like white powder, it's in your face.   Jeff: Yeah, white powder and you taste it and you're like, "How's it supposed to taste like mushroom? It tastes kind of like flour."   Mason: Yeah, it's like flour, sawdust. So are there companies doing a mycelial growth that are more on the ethical spectrum, that they're not doing a full grain wash and that they're growing on a particular grain that they're able to separate out a lot of the mycelium? I know that a lot of the mycelium is embodied grain. That's just a reality that you're not gonna be able to get rid of. But I'm trying to play that... is that possible in your experience?   Jeff: In China they grow mycelium in large tanks of liquid.   Mason: Like Cs-4 Cordycep, yeah.   Jeff: Yeah, Cs-4 Cordyceps. They've been doing that for 50 years. But the thing is that it takes a lot of money to put in a big facility that can grow and these tanks are huge and you have to have a steam generator. It's a big investment but to actually grow out the mycelium on sterilized grain does not take a lot of money, it doesn't take a lot of expertise. It's a very simple process. Anybody can do it. In my book that I published in 1983, it tells you how to manufacture mycelium on grain at home in your kitchen. It's not difficult so it's very easy and ultimately, the stuff is so cheap to produce. And these people are selling it as mushroom and making a fortune doing it. It's really immoral in my opinion, and unethical. And especially if you're calling it mushroom.   Mason: I think because we sometimes maybe look at the market and what we subconsciously are looking for when we want a mushroom and most of the studies have been on if you're like... Most of the time we're looking for a fruiting body. That's the mushroom. It's the unspoken that we know that we're talking about is the fruiting body there? And I guess there are some companies that have been quite averse or trying to sign typically validate the mycelium. When I was first kicking around all this there were people going "Look, just have it all. Have the fruiting body, have the mycelium, have all these..." and I very quickly, before I had a company was like "Mmm, no." I'm not in this to justify a particular aspect of the market or go for ease. I'm in it personally, and especially in the beginning, being a dreadful romantic, trying to connect to a herbal system, particularly Taoist tonic herbalism for me.   Jeff: Exactly. The people who grow those products and they say "Oh, we want to have all parts of this. We want to have the spore, we want to have the mushroom, we want to have the mycelium." It's like they say "It's full spectrum." Well, the problem is that they leave out the fact that (A) there is no mushroom in it, and (B) the grain! How can it be a full spectrum product if they've got all of this grain in the product? That's what they don't like to talk about. They don't like to talk about the fact that it's mostly grain and all of this other stuff about "Oh, you know, the fruit body's in there and the spore's in there." Absolutely not. It's really a lot of smoke and mirrors.   Jeff: That's what's so hard to take is that when there are people out there actually espousing that and claiming that they've got a full spectrum product when in fact it doesn't take much in the way of analysis to prove what they do and they don't have. We've run analysis and what's really interesting is if you analyze it, for example, with a proximate analysis, which is proteins, carbohydrates, fats, ash, minerals. Those products line up perfectly with the grain they're grown on.   Mason: Are there exceptions to that?   Jeff: No. All of these products and there, it's the myceliated grain products. If it's grown on brown rice it lines up with brown rice. If it's grown on oats it lines up with oats. Literally the two lines run together. The way I like to think about it too is I talk to people and I tell them what they're growing is tempeh. And they say what tempeh is, it is cooked soybeans with fungal mycelium grown on it. If you look at that tempeh and it's all white that's the mycelium but if you look at tempeh and you cut it open you can see it's mostly the soybeans. And if you were to dry it out, look, Mason, mycelium is 90% water. Just like a mushroom. The soybeans are 50% water. When you dry that tempeh out the mycelium just goes "Fffft!" Just tell me, where's the mycelium? And you've got all of these dried soybeans and you're like, well, it's mostly dried soybeans, that product.   Mason: I'm sure you get it a lot as well. Yours, there's obviously a few brands in the U.S. becoming more aware of the others. I didn't go looking for them but as you move into a market. SuperFeast, I spoke to you about it the other day. We've got so many people ... like [inaudible 00:29:50] story. I've realized in business a lot of the time it's like, same with you, I like the people. I like the unique stories. People are like "Bring SuperFeast over, there's no one doing that like what you're doing over there!" I like, yeah.   Jeff: (laughs)   Mason: And it's the same. When you're upfront about the nuances although there's a lot of companies doing medicinal mushrooms like yourself and Taoist herbs like us, medicinal mushrooms. There's nuances there and the sourcing and there's nuances in the story. What I like is, which is going to get to the polysaccharide claim, and the full spectrum claim for the people growing the mycelium. Because people are in an egoic, competitive make money mentality a lot of the time. They think they have to be everything to everyone. Versus just being very upfront. I'm always quite upfront, I don't really look at that. I don't try and standardize color or anything in any way. I don't try and standardize the constituents. I don't even sell on the percentages of constituents. I don't focus on it. I'll move more in that direction because more and more people want to be satiated. I can say yes, we test for percentages of the active ingredients to ensure that they're in alignment with the Chinese cornucopia and ensure that they're actually active. And all that kind of stuff.   Mason: But going over into the States now and hearing about all these other brands and I'm with you whenever it's growing on grain I can't get behind it. Not to be disrespectful, and I'm always trying to be really amicable in my talks. There's a place for it, but less and less can I find that place.   Jeff: And I understand what you're saying too because if a person is genuine. For example the herbalists, who are at an American Herbal AHG conference. These are people that want to provide good products, they want to provide a body of knowledge to help people. That's who you wanna be, that's who I wanna be. I'm not in this to make a lot of money. I'm not in this to build some big company and go Oh, gee, isn't this great? Because I'm selling $20 million a year of this or that. That does not excite me at all. That has no meaning for me. What has meaning for me is that I'm producing a quality product that I've been working on for years and I can tell you the product is what I say it is and I want it to help you. I want you to be able to take this product and feel confidence that you're getting what the Chinese have used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. That's what I want.   Jeff: I don't want to sell you something that is not what it really is and is a placebo and expect you to buy the product from me and I walk away going "I'm managing this great at my company. I'm making so much money and it's wonderful." No, I'm sorry, that's not me. I'm not interested. Those people turn me off. It's like the difference between being in a group of people that really understand mushrooms or herbs and being in a group of people that are just talking business and numbers and all that kind of stuff. And I don't give a shit about that.   Mason: Yeah. I think it's interesting. Watching your business I can see in the beginning it probably would've started out that everyone knew Jeff and knew your level of integrity and how you just wanted a good product. In that little circle it was like 'Great, we'll just go and get Jeff's product.' Then as you grow I think what you've done really well ... just to put it as an example of why I'm bringing this up, we're getting to this point where we're growing as a company where it's beyond Mason at the markets and everyone knows that Mason has the badass tonic herbs. Or people are coming along to the talks and all the health clique. We've started emerging.   Mason: I think you would've gone through this years ago when you emerged beyond the health clique. And it's very dramatically people aren't associating directly with you or the founder, it's the company. They don't even know or care who the founder is and therefore you need to have these things in place. We're getting to the point where everyone who's a SuperFeast customer is just like, "Yeah, we don't even care about organic, we know what you guys are doing," and we're going on that old philosophy and we're documenting that and there's all those other checks in place like independent testing for pesticides and metals and all that in place and available.   Mason: But it's getting to that point now where the people on the very outside... I still don't know if we're really gonna shift because I still personally don't care and I don't change my company for perception's sake. But you can see Wow, that organic would be really, really useful for those people on the outside. Or the testing to know what percentage of what's going on inside and being able to present that. I think we'll move in that direction. I think you've done that really well and really maintained the trust in the brand of course, and in yourself. But maintaining you there as the one that's rolling this along and not then just relying, you know, the organic certification or the percentages.   Mason: I think that's what I find really commendable, because most people then they rest on their laurels. Once they change over into, not standardizing but testing for minimum constituents like beta-glucans or organic. they then rest on that. Whereas that means nothing to me at all. Being able to talk to you I'm like, Yeah, because organic, I don't know what your take on that. I know there's some terrible organic products out there. Just the fact that we know we can go organic there's five different companies we can go to, so you just go and find the company that suits you. We can go with the company that's the hardest to jump through.   Mason: I won't go into the details of what's going on, why we're probably not going to go in that direction. For us there's so many little micro-farms that we're being nimble with whom we're working with. When we're beyond mushrooms we've got a lot of other herbs going on. We need to cut that farm out if they need to move on and do something else and we'll go and we've got that team to go around and constantly go and find these people. So every time we want to nimbly adapt and go down a different direction when someone's doing a little more traditionally than the other person, all right, get the organic certify up. Or lie, which is what I think a lot of people are doing. They get the organic certification, then when they change up those little farmers, because we're dealing with independent farmers as well, not a company that can provide the organic certification. I don't know why I went on that rant. So that's why we're not going on down that route.   Mason: It's something I see. I know there's a bunch of companies who are coming to NAMMAX, which I think is just been so good for the Australian industry. For people to know that they're very quickly going to be introducing a really good quality. You can tick off the organic but I hate it when it's just organic that they are going for and not just an incredible product with a story behind it as well. So I really commend you for offering that out.   Jeff: I've always really believed in chemical-free food. Organic is more than just chemical-free it's how it's grown. When you're growing out of soil it's building the soil and not just depleting it. For me organics is a holistic way of looking at things. I've always considered that to be very important and I support that type of agriculture no matter what it is. A lot of these companies that are producing myceliated grain, they're organically certified!   Jeff: It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a great product. These companies have what I call all sorts of merit badges. 'We're big and we're organic, we're kosher, we're this, we're that,' which ultimately means nothing at all. There's a lot more to it than just that. The one thing I really like about what you're doing too is that you're introducing the philosophy of it and that's something that you really believe in. That to me is important and that's what people look at. They look at who's behind the company and what that person has to say, is that person ethical, righteous, person or not. You're not up there as a smooth talking business salesman or anything like that, right?   Mason: You should see me try and sell something I don't like. I'm a bumbling mess. I think I told you that back in the markets people used to say god-made...you could sell ice to the Eskimos. But I'm terrible if I'm not talking about herbs or philosophy behind it.   Jeff: That's because you're doing something you believe in. That's where everybody should be. Not everybody has that opportunity, but if you can have that opportunity. I was lucky enough that I followed my passion and I didn't do that because I wanted to be rich. I did it because I loved it. I always say to people, if you really like to do something, whatever it is, just do it. Follow your passion. Maybe you're going to be poor for a long time. Make something that you feel good about.   Mason: Honestly, and I really mean it not just because you're on the podcast talking it up or trying to flatter you. But when I met you, you had a happy disposition to be in business that long. In the beginning I was trying to escape the business side of things. Quite scared about having a business and not coming out the other end alive. You have a sunny disposition and you still have control of your company and the standards and you're still educating about the same thing that you're educating, of course it's evolved, but you were educating about beforehand. And there's something that I've learned a bit about in that. There's something humbling and nice about not being in that pursuit for aggressive growth while still growing at a nice, sustainable rate. But staying true to what you were doing in the first place. I educate about basics of herbalism and medicinal mushrooms in the beginning and then I'll move on and doing other things. The more I go along the more I want to settle back into doing what I did all along.   Mason: I've got a weird thing about going back to the organic, I'll almost shy away from something if it's organic because I see it as a marketing ploy a lot of the time. And I think it is a lot of the time. With little things. When growing Lion's mane there's a lot of people who will use organic fungicide because they don't pick when they're watering out to the Lion's mane. I like to use this example because we don't have a plastic covering, it's just a straw and a hut to keep it nice and dark and it gets watered. That's the only part that gets watered. And one of the things I talked about in the beginning with Lion's mane, I just heard about it through the grapevine, that fungicide is needed if you're watering straw a lot of the time in order to, all right, we know why fungus grows. But found someone who wasn't doing that and found people who were doing organic Lion's mane who were using organic fungicide on the huts. Little things like that they get me so dejected about the marketing ploy behind it. But I think you're the one organic product that I would be over the moon to use.   Mason: And the other example is Ron Teeguarden. I think we talked about him. He was such a rogue in the industry herbally. You were telling me about the acupuncture when he was offering acupuncture because he's a barefoot herbalist and all the acupuncture's guilds are like "Screw you, you need to be regulated." And he's like "Hey."   Jeff: I know, it might've been somebody when you were in LA but it wasn't me. I don't know Ron that well. He's been around a long time. He's done his own thing, he's not out at the shows or anything like that. He's very well-known and in a sense he's been the herbalist to the stars. He's in Los Angeles, right? A lot of people in Los Angeles that are into herbal medicine and living properly in term of what they eat and things like that. They would go to Ron and Ron has one of the very first herb bars where you can walk in and have this type of a drink or that type of a drink. He was really in it very early and doing stuff that nobody else was. He was an outlier in that sense. I don't think he really needed to go into the industry proper. He's done a little more now that before. He didn't have to.   Mason: He, on the level of sourcing philosophy. I bumped into him years ago. I was at that place where I was starting to grow, people are asking why I'm getting my herbs from China and people asking me if I'm organic and all these kinds of things. I want to keep on doubling down on my philosophy, what I'm doing here. One thing that I drew from yourself as well and then be proactive and educating the market. Not in pushing your own product, just generally being happy about the market being educated as well. And Ron was like...In fact I talked with him for about five minutes. More or less he was like "Listen, if you have that spark," I remember, "do not deviate from that sourcing philosophy." And it really stuck with me and from that day I did. I doubled down and I was not going to try and... I'm going to continue to not worry about what's going on and just do me. It's a lot of fun. I was at Dragon Herbs Tonic Bar about three weeks ago. I frequent the Hollywood one when I'm in L.A.   Mason: Before we go too far off the mycelium grown, one of the things you've really educated, not only the market, but businesses in the market around medicinal mushrooms in the market, is how to identify a true polysaccharide read on medicinal mushrooms. Rather than people including 60% polysaccharides or even 30%, yet when you go down into the class of beta-glucan it's actually been tested you've been hoodwinked and they've gone dry from age or whatever. Can you talk a little bit about that?   Jeff: This is something in the herbal industry too that you learn right away, and I learned it back in the 90s, was that so many herbal extracts, when you make the extract they oftentimes need some kind of a stabilizer. Otherwise they can get gummy, they can jut come together if it's a powder. Putting a carrier with a lot of extracts was pretty common. What happened was sometimes companies would cheat a little bit. The next thing you know instead of 10% carrier it was 50% carrier or 80% carrier. And they're not revealing that to anybody. You think you're getting an herbal extract, not just mushroom extract, an herbal extract and it ends up being mostly maltodextrin or dextrose or something like that, and they're not telling you, then it is really deceptive. So there's a lot of companies that were doing that in the industry.   Jeff: As I went along, the whole time that I'm working with people in China I'm like, "Look, I want extracts where we aren't using any carriers. It has to be made in a certain way," because I'm looking for the pure essence. In traditional Chinese medicine they take the herbs and they throw it in a pot and they boil it up and pour it out and "Here, drink this!" There's no carriers in there.   Mason: That's right, not sliding agents.   Jeff: That's right. If you have to put something in a capsule you've got 150 milligrams of different types of fillers and binders and flow agents. Putting it into a pouch is so nice because then you don't have to put those things in with it. It's just the pure herb. Early on in the 90s everybody's testing for polysaccharides and nobody's testing for beta-glucans. And beta-glucan is a polysaccharide. Unfortunately all these carriers are polysaccharides too. A lot of people can hide that from you that you've got carriers on their product. No, no, we don't use carriers, it's 100% mushrooms, stuff like that. That's where with any kind of supplier you have to build up a level of trust. Like I say, they show you a brown powder and say. "Here's our product, it's shiitake mushroom extract. Isn't it great?" You can test it.   Jeff: This is the thing, Mason, it's not like you can take a mushroom product other than a reishi extract, consume it, and then a few hours later or a day later go, "Wow, yeah! Did I ever get a kick out of that!" No, it doesn't work that way. You can organoleptically, I can taste the shiitake extract and I can tell you yeah, that's definitely essence of shiitake. Or with reishi it's so bitter I can taste all those bitter notes in that reishi extract, that is an awesome extract.   Jeff: I used to give a reishi extract to a friend of mine who was a deep herbalist making his own liquid extracts and a big business ultimately. He'd taste some of my extracts in the beginning and he'd go, "Not bad, but it tastes a little bit burnt." And I'm like, "Oh shit." When it was dried it was maybe in the oven a little longer, and he could pick up on it. I thought that tastes pretty good. That was in the early days when I didn't know any better. I thought it's great and high triterpenes and all this. He'd go "Yeah, it tastes a little bit burnt." Those kind of things teach you a little bit about, okay, how's it made. Let me tell you, in the 90s the facilities that were making herbal extracts were nasty. They were old facilities   Mason: Not too much GMP regulation back in those days.   Jeff: It wasn't like stainless steel everywhere, no. Everywhere was dark from all the herbs they'd been cooking for who knows how many years. Now all that's been torn down and you see nothing but brand new factories in China. Everything is stainless steel and it's beautiful and there's none of that anymore. But back then, actually, it wasn't until we got the megazyme test and I started using that. And that was in 2012 or 2013. Up until that point I thought, well, the polysaccharide number was high, that's great. Then we starting testing the products and that's where we really pulled back the curtain. My main supplier, awesome! The test results we got from that. Beta-glucan and alpha-glucan and the alpha-glucan, that was where any of the carriers were revealed.   Jeff: And then another company that was supplying me with some products, only a few, not many, fortunately. And was swearing up and down they never used any carrier. Jesus, their alpha-glucan level was way up there. I was shocked and really upset because I thought their product was good because occasionally I'd test it for polysaccharides it was 50-60% and I was thinking, great product. I could taste it, it tasted okay. Nothing but mushrooms they were producing. But here they were. They were putting them on a carrier and telling me they weren't. That's the kind of thing that you face when you're over there.   Jeff: How do you qualify these products? You can go to the factory. They can show you around, you can look at all the mushrooms in their warehouse, you can look at them cooking these things up, the final products. They don't show you the bags and bags of maltodextrin that are hidden back in the warehouse somewhere that they're using as a carrier for the liquid extract. That literally pulled back the curtain and I went and confronted that with them. They claim no. Finally they actually admitted it and I'm like, okay, see you later. I'm not buying another product from you because you lied to me. Fortunately it was a secondary supplier. They weren't my main supplier at all, but I needed a secondary supplier. I visited them and it was all mushrooms that they were doing and they were in the heart of mushroom country and it was nothing but mushroom. Yet they had all these carriers in there. I was really upset not only with them but with myself because I got taken in by it too. And that's what you have to do.   Jeff: Look, Mason, have you ever been at Ali Baba and looked at all the mushroom products being sold?   Mason: It's always funny, and as you know, everyone's jumping onto the bandwagon right now. You can see people trawling through Ali Baba going "Oh, just tell me which one is awesome." I haven't been in there in a long time. I got curious, to be honest. I think we were in the office having afternoon drinks and seeing what was on Ali Baba. It is insane.   Jeff: It's totally insane. So many companies selling mushroom extracts. Sometimes they're selling at prices where you're like, "No, wait a minute, you can't sell me that extract for $20 for a 10:1 extract. That's impossible. You load it up with starch, that's quite possible, right? That's where analysis, for me, has been very helpful. Especially the beta-glucan analysis because that gives me that alpha-glucan which is the whole carrier. That's what unmasked all of those myceliated grain products. There's definitely a place for analysis. There's also a place for getting to know the grower. I don't believe in organic pesticides. I don't give a shit. Don't use whatever it is, you have to grow this. I know it's more difficult but you have to grow this without sprays and all that.   Jeff: The thing about China is that when you're traveling through China and I've been back in the mountains in all these different places and you go back and you look down and this little valley and here's this beautiful rice fields down there and you're going "Oh, isn't it great, back here. Everything's idyllic." And then you see somebody walking through the rice field and they've got a backpack sprayer. And they're going along spraying chemicals on this rice crop. I'm like, "Ugh, shit. Really? Do you have to do that?" And I think to myself, even the smallest growers out there are using some chemicals. That's where I'm like... And I want to be sure. And that's where we test and test to make sure that everything is staying on track because these things can slip in. Somebody can cheat. You have to ride herd on the whole thing. Otherwise it can slip right through your fingers.   Jeff: That's been good for me in the sense of having an organic product that has meant that we put these constraints on the people that we work with. We say look if your product shows one of these things in there I'm sorry we're not selling it. If you and if you shipped it over to us and we find it in there after you've done the testing that's all good and we find it in there it goes the landfill I'm sorry, we can't sell it. That has been a really good quality, that's how we keep that quality up. In that sense I kind of believe in it all and think it's important. It helps us keep the product a little bit more real.   Mason: As you say said there's all these things that can go by... even though it is organic, you can get organic pesticides and all this kind of stuff. I have taken your product and of course I really love it. You know that you're going to go that extra mile with it. It's a trip around it, there's a stigma around China is isn't that whole thing polluted?   Jeff: Well, that's the other side of it right now, Mason. People are so afraid of anything coming out of China that this gives them a little bit more confidence in it. They can say what they want about organic and all but we've got pesticide tests that can demonstrate what it is and of course the always have to do heavy metals and micros and all of that.   Mason: Alpha-toxins   Jeff: For us, especially as a raw material supplier to companies large and small we have to be able to give them confidence because you know they're selling a Chinese product that they buy from us and lot of people are just like you know when it comes to China it's like no no no no it's like not going to do it so I have to talk to a lot of people. And I say, well, hey look. There's products in the United States that are absolutely full of chemicals. So it doesn't matter where it's grown. It matters where it's grown but it's not this country or that country. You can grow good, clean products anywhere in the world if you're doing it properly.   Mason: It's so good. Of course people are realizing that the ultimate Chinese herbs and medicinal mushrooms are going to be coming out of China. I really like how it's still dominating and making it really easy for people to get One thing that's organic and Two very quickly have all those things to provide so enough people are going to be able to go, Oh, okay, so it's from China and we can trust it. That's something that makes it really easy, because people are going to jump on the mushroom bandwagon. We found it as well, a similar thing. People want to come, they're like okay, tell us about Chins. Okay, tested three times for pesticides before it comes to market, each batch. Plus here in Australia the TGA facility and heavy metals and alpha-toxins and microbes. At some point people go "Hmm, shit, okay." And testing of the water. And when we can going and doing radiation testing in the areas. And then going live and seeing pictures of you at your reishi farm is magic.   Mason: When I was going live around China going, you know we're still going up while we're outside the mountains going to the fields where the eucommia bark trees were grown or up in Yunnan. Just drove five hours in the middle of nowhere to get to the poria farm, where there's wild pine and people are going "Holy shit! Look at that land! The land of the dragon. It's calling me. It's real." All of a sudden popping that thing that first of all, yes, you just need to be vigilant, that's absolutely number one. I've only changed suppliers once. In the beginning I found someone I had really enjoyed their product. And then what I've decided was one of my areas in going forth is I need someone that could absolutely school me. If I'm requesting things and they weren't able to "bang" school me on that immediately, then I'm not going to be able to do business.   Mason: And it got to this point where I was confirming no municipal water. Only springs, only well water. Only creek water in the area. Nothing from the tap every touching the crops. At one point "Okay, sometimes that's a bit hard." I was like "All right, I'm gonna change now." That's when I started going down that route and ended up... developing relationships, developing a friendship first, understanding the intent behind the philosophy behind the business, understanding who owns the business that you're going to be dealing with and what their motives are and what their history is. These are the things where people don't realize what goes into it. People go "Can you tell me your supplier?" And you're like   Jeff: (laughs)   Mason: At this point it's not about me being scared about you having access to that supplier but so much has gone into this relationship. It's not just about finding someone and sourcing off them. Although, it's nice and easy to do that. If I was beginning right now I'd love to be buying just from suppliers on NAMMAX because it's cool. All the certificates, all the independents, and then all the years of vetting and tweaking that leads to this point where trust is inevitable and you become even more switched on to what to look for if anything ever comes up. If anything slips or changes you know the questions to ask and where the slip in quality could possibly be. And large ways you know how to put things in place that would stop that from ever happening to begin with. It's an interesting industry.   Jeff: We go there every year and we'll do an audit. We'll visit farms, the factory we'll be sure we confer with our partners to make sure everything is good. This year we're at the point where we're hiring someone to be on the ground in China that will do a lot of checking and stuff for us on a regular basis. More regular than us going over there once a year. It's gotten to a point where we really need that coverage of somebody right there that we can say "Can you go out to this farm or this factory?" Also, communications because sometimes communications... although some of our partners speak English but some of them not so well and then they have to use a go-between and that's not always the best. So we're gonna have somebody now that's right there in China and can do that for us. Can you imagine going to China and traveling around without having somebody with you to help you through the liaise and talk?   Mason: I have the best intentions of getting my Mandarin up to scratch and as soon as I'm out of it, it all slips out of my head. I haven't fully entered into that poetic language realm. The language is sticking. Can you speak Chinese?   Jeff: No, I speak Spanish, but Sky's learning Chinese. He has three classes a week, an hour each class with a Chinese speaker he does it over Zoom or something like that. He's very diligent about it. We get over there. He's speaking with them in Chinese and they love it. He's learning more, but unless you actually go and live somewhere for a while it's always tough. I've been thinking about it. You go over and spend two weeks, three weeks, whatever, then you leave. That's nothing in terms of really getting in and learning a language. That's swimming on the surface.   Mason: I gotta get onto it because I'm gonna do some Taoist training there.   Jeff: Yeah, that'd be really cool. You're young enough that you still can do that. I'm way beyond doing anything like that.   Mason: Come on, they'd love you up in the temple.   Jeff: Not only that, where I love to be is in Patagonia   Mason: Dude, that's the other place my heart lies, down in Patagonia. I want to become an old Argentinian man. I want to become a cowboy.   Jeff: Exactly, I know where we can get some horses, Mason, so let me know.   Mason: All right, that's it. That's on. China this year, maybe Patagonia next year.   Jeff: Yeah, two years ago Andrea and I went out and spent the day with, we had a gaucho that took us out. We went all over this one area. It was a hot day too. We were on horseback the whole time, cruising through, very slow. Slow living at its best, right?   Mason: Yeah, that's it. Drinking, eating a lot of meat, drinking a lot of yerba mate.   Jeff: Yeah, when you're on a horse you're not going to go very fast. You're going to cruise along. It's life in the slow lane.   Mason: I love it. So before we finish up is there anything that is coming up now that's exciting you about educating people about this market and about this industry with medicinal mushrooms?   Jeff: People really still need a lot of education with mushroom. Part of what I do too which I really like is I talk about the nutritional value of mushrooms. My thing too is eat mushrooms. I think mushrooms may be the missing link in terms of food. A lot of people are like, fungus, never eat it, right? And I'm like, "Dude, you've gotta get on and eat mushrooms, it's a fabulous food. They've got great benefits, you get medicinal benefits as well as nutritional benefits." That's the key for me, I'm pushing that really hard when I talk to people, saying "No, it's a fabulous food." And in China they have this whole thing of food is medicine.   Jeff: That's in Ancient Greece too. Food as your medicine. Everything that you take into your body should be something that is beneficial. And medicine as a very loose way in terms of it's feeding you and keeping you healthy. And that's what we should all be thinking about. What we consume is keeping us healthy and we should look at our food as that. That's providing me with all of these benefits. I say if you want a supplement, you feel you need more, that's great. You can supplement. But definitely use mushrooms for food. That's a big category for me.   Jeff: As a mushroom grower, can you imagine? I'm working on an agaricus farm. For ten years every day I'm going in I'm going through the rooms and each room ultimately is producing 20,000 pounds of mushrooms. There's mushrooms everywhere around me growing and I'm stoked. I love this. I've got mushrooms that I'm eating all the time. I've even got small beds of mushrooms that I bring stuff home and I'm growing them in my house because it's so interesting to me. The farm I was on it wasn't just an agaricus, we had a scientist that was growing shiitake and maikitake and oyster mushrooms. Back in the 70s when those weren't even on the markets anywhere. And I had access to these mushrooms. Besides the wild mushrooms that we were navigating. I'm like, make them part of your diet because it's a wonderful food.   Jeff: That's my message to people is this is a forgotten food, bring it home.   Mason: I love it so much. Thanks for reaching out, I really appreciate you reaching out and having you on here. It's not only do I admire you as a person, admire what you've done and your business. I spoke to you a little bit about it. I like talking to the other people who are perceived competitors. There's so much room in this market and everyone's doing their own thing and has their own story. This whole red ocean we have to fight over a scrap of people who are going to be buying mushrooms and not focusing on educating together is absolutely ridiculous. It's always awesome to meet people who trail-blazed that attitude in the industry. Calling out people that are bullshitting and then coming together and educating together and getting the world healthy together in our little way. There's something really nice about that that makes it possible to be in business for so much time, for so long, see so much shit yet still have such a positive attitude about it.   Jeff: That's absolutely right. I really love what you're doing too and I love the whole Taoist part of what you're taking to people and bringing to people. That philosophy is really awesome. That's what brings something really unique. When I hear you talking about mushrooms up around, what's the lake up there in the mountains?   Mason: Mumbai   Jeff: Yeah, that was so cool and you're hanging out there, talking about the mushrooms really excited about it all. That is really special. I love your energy, Mason, I'm really happy that we've been able to get together and have these meet-ups, speak and let's carry it on, let's keep doing it and stay in touch for sure.   Mason: Absolutely. We'll get some videos in another podcast together, 100%. I'll go check out these dates, see if I can swing a   Jeff: I'll send you the info on it so that you can check it out. If you can come you'll have a ball because there's gonna be lots of mushroom peop

In today's podcast the boys come together to discuss candida overgrowth, its frequency within the population, the varied symptomatology associated with this common yeast-like infection and the strategies you can use to bring the body back into balance. Mason, Dan and Sage draw on their superior knowledge of this condition from personal experience, sharing their wisdom from a traditional Taoist tonic herbal perspective and a functional naturopathic approach.   The gents discuss: The fact that Candida albicans is a naturally occurring organism within the body and only becomes problematic when imbalance occurs how chronic use of antibiotics can contribute to the condition how diet and lifestyle practices can help to bring things back into harmony the common symptoms that candida overgrowth is present, e.g. chronic fatigue, brain fog, digestive disturbances, weakened immunity, oral thrush, fungal infections within the the skin and nails etc the particular clinical tests you can use to investigate and diagnose candida within your body how you can use your symptoms and health history to identify whether candida is a problem for you foods that aggravate the immune system and exacerbate candida overgrowth the importance of food combining in regards to candida candida from a naturopathic perspective and the clinical markers used to identify the condition the importance of normalising the body's circadian rhythms and adrenal response is in regards to healing candida from a Taoist perspective and what's happening within the organ systems, particularly the spleen how candida leads to jing depletion and exhaustion within the system as a whole the correlation between candida and leaky gut the Jing herbs you can use to rebuild your foundational energy stores, these include he shou wu, cordyceps, rehmannia, morinda etc the importance of lifestyle factors such as sleep, rest, breathing practices, nature time and reduced caffeine and sugar intake to bring combat candida overgrowth the lifestyle tweaks you can use to bring the body back into its parasympathetic mode so you can heal. Reishi and Ashwagandha are game changers here how cutting carbs and sugar can help manage candida symptoms using fats (ketones) as fuel how herbs such as pau d'arco, chaga and reishi can assist healing the benefits of probiotics and fermented foods such as sauerkraut and coconut kefir  the Body Ecology Diet the importance of sunshine and vitamin D, sweat and movement the herbs and nutraceuticals you can use to break up stubborn biofilms the importance of supporting the liver with herbs such as schizandra, burdock and dandelion root and st mary's thistle  the importance of full body detoxification in healing from candida overgrowth the three phases of liver detoxification and the nutrients your body needs to successfully complete them the immune boosting powers of medicinal mushrooms when healing from candida, particularly chaga, reishi, turkey tail, maitake, Mason's Mushrooms the difference between ground dwelling mushrooms and those that grow on trees e.g medicinal mushrooms  bringing awareness around the glycemic load of gluten free products when working to heal candida overgrowth the tests you can use to distinguish candida from other bacterial loads within the body, particularly the OAT (organic acids test)   Who is Dan Sipple? Dan is a also known as The Functional Naturopath who uses cutting-edge evidence-based medicine. Experienced in modalities such as herbal nutritional medicine, with a strong focus on environmental health and longevity, Dan has a wealth of knowledge in root-dysfunction health.   Who is Sage Dammers? Fuelled by a passionate desire to help people live the ultimate life and create a better world, Sage studied raw and superfood nutrition and traditional herbal systems, especially Taoist tonic herbalism. He has worked with and trained under the world’s leading master herbalists and nutrition and longevity experts in Costa Rica, Australia, Bali, China, and America. Sage has developed products internationally and given lectures on peak performance nutrition in Australia, Bali, America, and France. His years of experience in this unique arena have allowed him to cultivate an unparalleled combination of cutting edge nutritional and culinary expertise. Sage has started tonic elixir bars in 5 star luxury hotels in Paris and Sydney serving longevity elixirs disguised as gourmet treats, introducing the novel concept of healthy indulgences to the market of world travelers.     Resources Clearlight Saunas The Wim Hoff Method Body Ecology Mason in China at the Poria Farm Benny Ferguson Movement MonkDan InstagramDan Email Addictive Wellness  addictivewellness Instagram Addictive Wellness Choccies on Amazon   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify and Soundcloud!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: Hey, everybody! Welcome to the SuperFeast podcast. It's Mason here, and I've got an epic conversation coming for you today with some of my favorite men in the health space. I've got two names and faces you're going to recognize. We've got Sage Dammers from, you're joining us from over in LA, Addictive Wellness. Incredible tonic herb-infused, sugar-free chocolates as well as smoothie elixir packs, and all infused with all these beautiful tonic herbs and mushies we're going to be going into and as well as tonic herbs on their own. Mason: And Sage is one of my absolute favorite voices coming out of that like, gnarly melting pot of LA with this absolutely next-level in health and this integration of health systems from all around the world, and Sage has been in it for so many years and you've heard him talk on it before, and you've heard his wealth of knowledge. It's always surprising to find out what he's going to be able to come up with. And today, talking about candida, is going to be no different. Mason: And I've also got Dan Sipple, friend, functional naturopath down the south coast of Sydney. Dan is absolutely my favorite go-to naturopath, we've been friends for a long time. He is now officially my mother's naturopath and mine and Tahnee's naturopath, and so that's a beautiful little evolution that's going about. Mason: Boys today we're going on a deep dive, three way conversation around the yeast-like infection candida albicans. Welcome guys. Dan: Hey, hey. Sage: Thank you for having us, Mason. It's a pleasure to be here. Mason: Yeah it's going to be so good, so fun. Alright, you know I don't know how many other people are going to be having the best time absolute ever having a conversation around a gnarly infection that's become ... I guess it's not as trendy, I'd say? As it used to be? But it's definitely still a hot topic, especially a hot topic in the west. Mason: Candida albicans, yeast-like fungus within the body that, as I mentioned, now it's absolutely a normal part. These candida cells are a normal part of our body, of our flora, exists within our mucus membranes, our skin, mouths, genitalia, vagina, intestines and other organs. We're going to be talking about this phenomena today where we see some kind of environmental, or maybe lifestyle, or maybe it's been a modern medicine antibiotic that's then led to an upset within our microbiome and basically in many other areas, including immune deficiencies. That's led to this fungus, yeast within the body then overgrowing and getting what many people have experienced, which is fungal overgrowth. Mason: First of all I just want to go to Sage. Just going to go to you and say hey and give people a bit of an insight with your history of candida. Sage: Yeah, absolutely thank you Mason. For me personally, I dealt with candida first hand. When I was growing up I was a vegetarian but not a healthy by any means. I was just on carb overload throughout my whole Childhood of like rice and pasta and pizza and any carb I could get my hands on. Was very fortunate not to be eating fast food, but still was not the most ultimate diet ever. Sage: So when I came into my teen years, about 15 and a half, I started developing chronic acne, probably more to do with my diet than anything else. Diet and combination of hormones and things like that. I didn't know what to do with it at the time, you know? I tried lost of topical things and things of that nature but nothing was really making an impact in helping me, and that's such a stressful thing as a kid to be going through. And I resorted to taking antibiotics, because it was the only thing that was going really do me any good at the time in terms of the superficial results that I was looking for. I didn't understand the whole repercussions and the future downsides of it, I just knew, this is going to help me in the short-term not to be so self-conscious. And I had no other solutions. I didn't know of all these other things I know about now. I wish I would've. Sage: So I was on twice-daily antibiotics from age 16 until 19 and a half. Mason: Gnarly. Sage: So these years of antibiotics, as you can imagine, wreaked havoc on my microbiome, and left me ripe for candida to come in and take over. So it was a thing where in the beginning I enjoyed fruit so much, and even as I was getting healthy and getting onto much more of a natural diet I still really enjoyed fruit. So I didn't want to give that up, and that was the one thing holding me back from really making progress against candida, where I couldn't make the jump to go fully into what was necessary to push back on the candida. Sage: And eventually it got to the point where I got real mentally strong about it and got strict and went through the Body Ecology Diet, Stage One, where it's really strong. Cutting out carbs, cutting out sugars, bringing in probiotics and fermented foods and some of the most powerful antifungal and immune-enhancing herbs, and over the course of a couple years that really got me through it and got me to a much better stage of health. Life has been much better ever since. Mason: Yeah, I mean to the extent that where I think that history of yours has played such a huge part in your life that it's absolutely entwined in your philosophy, the ways that you make your chocolates and your elixir blends, right? Sage: That's why I have sugar-free chocolate, is because I [inaudible 00:05:25] but still have a sweet treat, while I was in the candida recovery stages, and it didn't really exist. It wasn't out there. All, you know there's all these chocolates made with agave and coconut palm sugar and all that, and regardless of where somebody may stand on those things, they are still gonna be feeding bacteria, fungus, yeast and molds in the body, and it's not going to be your friend most times and especially not on recovery from candida where you need to not be feeding these guys. So I made it out of necessity, and it's turned into a beautiful life of being a chocolate maker. Mason: Yeah, I love it. The fruit of the healing journey and I still attest that it's the only sugar-free chocolate that I can really thoroughly enjoy. Sage: Thank you. Mason: Dan you've had quite a history with candida, now you've really had this firsthand clinical experience for a number of years now. I'm interested to hear what your path with candida has been. Dan: Yeah sure, and not too dissimilar to Sage. IT very much came as a result of antibiotic exposure, and so I've talked a couple of times on previous podcasts. In my earlier years, 17, 18, 19 I had issues with viral load and autoimmunity, which kind of set the scene for other opportunistic organisms to take over, and it was a course of about five or six years where I was kind of floating in that space where my immune system was compromised to the point to where I would actually need antibiotics by the time these bacterial infections would take over. It was like a vicious cycle that got set up, and I see that often in clinical practice too, where once that cycle starts it's very hard to get off that train. Particularly if you are being dictated to by the western medical model, which at the time I was heavily under the influence by. Mason: [inaudible 00:07:19]. Dan: Yeah, absolutely that's right. So lots and lots of antibiotics, I'd get better. I'd push my body a bit, the infections would return to the point where there was clear and overt infection. Not knowing anything about herbal protocols or functional medicine or naturopathy or anything of that kind of world at this stage, but it was very much a long road to try to undo that vicious cycle and get out of that loop? And incorporating things like Sage is talking about with diet and lifestyle and cutting the alcohol and the sugars out, you know. Optimizing vitamin D status and restoring the microbiome. So it was definitely one of those things that didn't go away overnight, and I think that's really important to drill into the listeners as well is that once you get traction with something like candida you really need to set up a lifestyle that facilitates long-term resistance against that so that these opportunistic organisms can't take back over. Mason: Candida's such an interesting one. The level of symptoms that arise from a chronic infection are so vast, and it's one of those ones where if you read the list you go, my gosh; I don't know if that list is very useful because there's so many other infections or deficiencies that can give rise to it. But then there are, of course, some specifics. And so looking at the list, you've got chronic fatigue, brain fog, digestive issues. Then when you start getting down a little bit more the reoccurring yeast infections, oral thrush. Even going into sinus infection, you can start seeing candida is being implicated when there's food allergies, when there's intolerance. Of course, dead giveaway is fungal infections on the skin, within the nails especially within the feet, and then a weak immune system. Quite often is it a chicken or an egg, you know? You can see that when there is weak immunity, especially when you see medications in particular like antibiotics and chemotherapy, and then hormone disrupters like hormone replacement therapy ... what is it? Corticosteroids, then? Am I saying that right? Dan: That's right, yeah. Immunosuppressants, corticosteroid-based medications because they're basically squashing the immune response, which, although ameliorate symptoms, allows these guys to take an even stronger hold. Mason: Mm. Oh and then you even see joint pain and definitely the alteration of moods coming about from candida. And so we go, okay. Unless you've got some of the telltales, like reoccurring thrush, fungal thrush in the mouth and fungal infection coming up on the skin, how do you clinically hone in on a diagnosis that in fact we do have candida cells proliferating in excess in the body? Dan: Is that question directed at me, Mason? Just to clarify? Mason: It is, and I will just make ... And I don't think you have clinic, Sage. I don't know maybe you didn't know that Dan. Sage: No, no clinic for me. So if I hear the clinically word in there just [inaudible 00:10:22]. Dan: Yeah, so to answer that question. That's a really good question, Mase, to really sort of hit on the head in the forefront. I think with an issue like candida it's very, very rare that I see that alone. What I usually find is that that's there in concert with just a good old dysbiosis where you'll see bacterial pathogens that are overgrown, you may or may not see parasites as well. So I don't think I've ever seen just one clean cut, pure case of candida without all that going on with some sort of viral load or bacterial imbalance. And so what we find is, is that the best kind of treatment is not just to isolate the yeast in this case and attack the yeast. It's to nurture that whole ecosystem, to treat it like an ecosystem where you're setting up a new environment basically, to where it's not conducive for it to thrive, which as we say does incorporate diet, lifestyle, herbs and the whole concert and symphony of things. Dan: But in terms of testing, you can do blood testing for antibodies to see if the immune system has actually seen the candida albicans and made antibodies against it from the base cells? The only downside to a test like that is that you don't whether the immune system has made those antibodies 10 years ago or if it's happening right now and that's where the symptoms really need to guide you. If there's overt signs of candida as is like on the tongue, the toenail, the respiratory issues and what not, then you've got more of a case for that so that's where usually doing the stool test and looking at candida markers in combination with that blood is a really good way to back that up. Because if you're seeing it on both, if you're seeing it in the stool, antibodies, then you've got quite a good case for it being currently present. And in that case, you know, obviously, you want to make the protocol more specific to yeast in that case. Mason: Sage, how do you go about this? Because I completely ... I like the fact that I've got access to Dan's knowledge and can get a little bit more specific, and I know you recommend this a lot, in getting some testing, getting some panels done so you're not just, like, shooting in the dark. But how do you, dare I say kind of like, I know I can definitely say that I come from a more folky perspective when it comes to gentle diagnosis? But from your perspective how do you go about that in really identifying that candida is in fact present? Sage: Yeah, I don't know exactly what your health care system is like in Australia, but I know here in the US it's expensive to do lots of testing. Very often things will not be covered by insurance so you'll have to pay them out of pocket, so I always find it's really nice to be able to at least somewhat get a little bit of progress in terms of a self-diagnosis before you go investing in testing so at least you know what tests to go do, so you don't have to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Because it can get real expensive. Sage: So with candida, as you mentioned, you're looking at a lot of symptoms in terms of recurring infections, oral thrush, fungal issues. And then it's a combination of looking at your symptoms and then looking at your history in terms of antibiotic use. If you've had extended use of antibiotics, especially if it's for two weeks or more in the past, your odds are going to be pretty high that at some point candida has taken a good foothold in your system and started to really proliferate beyond the natural levels that you'd find. Candida at small levels is actually a good part of a healthy microbiome, good for nutrient absorption and beneficial in that way. But when things are thrown out of balance you're going to get in a lot of trouble. Sage: So there's many really good questionnaires up there online that people can do just to get an initial idea, just to get a rough feel? Then from there you can progress to testing, which I think is incredibly important. If you can afford it, whether it's this kind of testing or whether you're looking at your thyroid or hormones, rather than just experimenting without data indefinitely and maybe five years from now you finally figure out what's really going on. Save yourself a ton of time and a lot of trouble and probably save yourself money in the long run in terms of being able to spend money on the right supplements and herbs to help you out, and foods, rather than dealing with misdiagnoses for an extended period of time. Mason: Well let's say just getting to the food here. Often we know, that yeah we've had a look at kind of the pharmaceutical angle, the antibiotics especially. Especially going in and nailing the microbiome and causing our ability to actually create the environment where we can naturally regulate healthy levels of this, this and candida cells being within the body. Let's have a look at the food that you see as being an accumulative force or an aggravator, that leave our organ function, immune function, the microbiome function to getting to the point that candida can actually take hold. What are the, what are these nasty ones or excessive ones that get nasty when they're excessive? Sage: Yeah I think it is many things that happen in conjunction. Probably, if you had never taken antibiotics, and you've got a really strong immune system, you could deal with having some of the wrong foods coming into the body, right? Even if you never did antibiotics, but you're having tons of sugar, but your immune system's really strong ancestrally? Maybe you're okay and maybe you can pull it off. Or if you're having lots of sugar and in combination you're having, say, ground mushrooms, like culinary mushrooms that haven't been properly cleaned and tend to be very contaminated and nasty. And these are different from tree mushrooms, I want to be real clear about the distinction- Mason: I'm going to leave a lot of time for us to get into that distinction, thanks for bringing that up so when we- Sage: Yeah yeah. So we'll come back to that a little bit later. Patience everybody, we'll get there. Mason: Patience, you mushroom fiends! Sage: Depending on the individual, right? Because everybody's got a bit of a different setup in terms of the microbiome and adjusted powers, but for a lot of people I think also: poor food combining. Especially having lots of, like, leafy greens? That take time to digest and they're very fibrous? And combining that with really sugary starchy fruit. I've found that for a lot of people the fruit wants to burn up fast and move through, and it's like rocket fuel. But then you have, you know. It's like a Ferrari on a freeway, wants to go, doesn't like being driven slowly. And then you have these green leafy vegetables that take time to digest, they're very nutritious, they're like a big rig carrying lots of, you know, nutrition on them and fiber and what not. And they slow down the traffic, and the Ferrari is getting into road rage. It's like it develops into a situation where it's a ripe breeding ground for proliferation as things start to ferment in there. Sage: So that could also be a situation that, while it may not specifically cause, it wouldn't be a root source of candida? It would not be supportive or helpful if it was something that you were dealing with. Mason: Mm. Love it. Hey Dan what about you, in terms of dietary lifestyle factors that are really going to come in and, you know, if ... I like what you said there, Sage. There's going to be different constitutions at work here. You're going to have an ancestral ... It might be the difference being breastfed or not being breastfed, in terms of whether your immune system is strong or just ancestrally whether you've got that strong gene expression within the immune system, and then acknowledging that. Because long-term, I think you've definitely seen it over in LA, I definitely have here in the health, same way. You almost get to a paranoia of candida becoming crippling to your lifestyle. Is that something you see happening a lot? Sage? Sage: A little bit. It's not people, the awareness of it in the community is not as strong, I would say, as it was in like, 2011, 2012? There was- Mason: Glory days. Sage: ... back then? You know, these trends and focuses always kind of come and go. I don't know, it's weird because it's still as much an issue as ever, but people kind of feel the need to talk about something new, so they can sell new books and post new videos. So. As we move more further beyond some of the basics than we really need to, the solution was often right at hand. Mason: Yeah, very funny. And I agree. I think candida is having a PR nightmare right now. I think- Sage: [SIBO 00:18:45] has stolen all the attention from it. Mason: Yeah. And so Dan what's your take on this? Dietarily, lifestyle-wise, what are the conditions that you see as precursor to, especially if someone has the constitution that is ripe for the picking for candida being an issue. What do you see those being? Dan: I completely agree with Sage, and I think I'd add on to that what I find really prevalent is when people's circadian rhythms are out? When they're using, you know, dietary sources to jack up their adrenal response. So caffeine, you know, refined sugar obviously. Nailing the circadian rhythms and leaving space between meals sounds really, really simple, but it is quite pivotal when you're dealing with any sort of dysbiotic environment when it comes to the gut, or the respiratory system, or any immune suppression. Getting the circadian rhythms locked in and normalizing the nervous system, and the adrenal response is huge. Dan: Because if you think about it, if you've got fire going on in that digestive system or anywhere in the body that's of a yeast or a general viral origin or whatever, your adrenals are seeing that and are constantly trying to put out those flames with a fire extinguisher, hence the adrenal fatigue phenomena. So normalizing those rhythms and supporting the adrenals can't be understated. Mason: Yeah, I would definitely attest to that. I mean, we've spoken about ... I think I've spoken to both of you previously on the podcast talking about digestion in case people aren't realizing digestion has a huge part to play with candida albicans. Especially from a [Daoist 00:20:29] perspective when you start seeing weak spleen Chi. Mason: That can really be the feeding ground from a triple burner perspective. That middle burner really emerging with whether it's just dampness or weakness within the spleen and therefore that whole spleen and digestive network through the stomach, then allowing strong digestive function, strong governance of your bacterial levels. What we see there is that can be the catalyst to then going down into the lower burner where we see damp heat emerge, and we start seeing yeast infections within, basically throughout the entire sexual organ system. And then also moving from that middle burner to the upper burner, where we see heat and fire through the lungs with all those allergies and all those respiratory issues and through the heart as well. Mason: So basically I'm going to pause it there because I think if I open up that can of worms and make a distinct ... in these treatment protocols it's going to take us in a completely other direction. Mason: But there's a few things then that you were touChing on that I want to leapfrog off, and that was definitely the Jing and exhaustion aspect here. You talked about the fact that, I like seeing the Jing as the pilot light for digestion. If you are exhausted, if you're adrenally exhausted, if you're leaking that essence, if you're relying on coffee, if you're mentally stressed and you're in emotional patterns that continue to make you, you know. Those things that make you emotionally excessive. You're going to see that you don't have the foundations and roots within your body, within the core energy centers of the kidneys to really stabilize you. And to that, you're going to see a thorough endocrine disruption go on at that stage, because you are overly adrenalized. And you can't produce natural cortisol, you can't get down to, like you have to rely on these cortisone creams and all that kind of stuff. But then at the same time you're not going to be able to lead to that real healthy sex organ function. Mason: And so, basically, that core is ... You see that consistently, I do as well, Sage, where that exhaustive, gene-depleting lifestyle doesn't allow for the pilot light to go on so that the spleen can actually turn on that fire and appropriately- Dan: It can probably become, I think it can really become a vicious cycle, because with the candida, it's creating higher levels of permeability of digestive lining. So you're getting, essentially leaky gut, and this is releasing bits of food and digestive materials into the bloodstream, which is causing inflammation and autoimmunity. But it's also releasing the toxins, which are being produced by the candida. Its own, basically the candida poo being released throughout your body. Dan: So now you've got systemic inflammation firing away, and that is going to be a major leak of Jing. So that in itself is depleting the adrenals, and it's a vicious cycle because okay now your adrenals are depleted, now you can't fuel your immune system because you're experiencing exhaustion, and the candida can even grow further. And it's really unfortunate. But at the same time if you can get in there with a little bit of action and start making some moves on it, you can slow down that cycle and start to spin it back. Mason: Well let's start here, in terms of looking at treatment. Once we've identified that perhaps we have an environment, and as Dan was saying: you're not going to be able to just isolate candida. There's most likely going to be a number of coinfections, and you're definitely going to see, I'm sure you're going to see a bunch of worms of various types being present at that time because we're going to see a repressed immune function. But starting off the bat, quite often we're looking at removing the excessive candida from the body, cleaning up the diet, and I guess loosely saying this is going to be a cleansing or cleaning aspect of the protocol. Mason: Now at this point, I'd like to get both your two cents. We'll start with Sage. Do you like to bring in, of course lifestyle factors, and I think it's obvious that are going to reduce stress, but do you like to bring in herbs or other practices to, for lack of a better word, tone our ability to store and restore Jing? Sage: Yeah, of course. So naturally, you and I and I bet Dan is into these as well, you want to look at your top Jing-building herbs. Things like He Shou Wu, Cordyceps, [inaudible 00:24:58], Rehmannia, Morinda. And so I think building that base of core vitality is an essential component of any healing program, basically. Because without that your body just does not have the energy and the safety. When you're in such a Jing-vulnerable state? And you're prepared to run out of fuel and die at just about any moment? Your body is afraid and not going to divert resources to dealing with your fungal issues because it's just concerned with not, like, crashing and burning and that being the end of the show. Sage: So absolutely, building the Jing is essential, so you can build ... you're kind of simultaneously wanting to build the Jing, and address the candida itself to stop the Jing leak, and then you can start improving at like, twice as fast. Mason: And Dan, what's your take on that? Dan: Yeah. 100%. Nervous system and adrenal support is absolutely necessity initially before you, I think before you even go in thinking about using the big guns to break up the biofilms and reduce the candida load with strong antimicrobials, which are all part of the protocol. But it really depends on the person in front of you to. So for example, if I've got someone who's burning the candle at both ends, doing the 75-hour work week, and only wants to take antimicrobials it's like, ha ha. No, no, no, no, no. We have to nail the lifestyle first. That is absolutely essential. And so sleep, blue lights, EMFs, all of that stuff comes into it. Diet, you have to have the foundations ready and ripe for the body to go, aha! Now I can enter healing mode, now I can switch over to parasympathetic. Because the foundations are there. Dan: What I often do in those cases, too, with someone who is really on this end of the spectrum and is part of that go-go-go lifestyle? Is just little simple tweaks, like green tea. So instead of coffee? It's green tea. It's anti-strep, it's anti-candida, it boosts [inaudible 00:26:58] bacteria, it's antioxidant, it's lymphatic. So little tweaks like that. You know, removing the sugars. You sort of stage it out. Dan: Then you might bring in a probiotic, and you'll use a strain which has been shown to reduce fungal load and boost natural killer cells and various components of the immune system. And you step it up. And you step it up. And you step it up. And you carefully watch for reactions, because that's another part of it with any sort of protocol where you are reducing microbial load, because you are obviously going to run into potential detoxification issues if that person's ability to clear out these metabolites can't keep up with the front end. So that's something that you really have to be careful navigating. Dan: And like Sage said earlier, this can take a long time, people. This can take, if it's been a long time it can be up to one or two years. And then once you're there to have to maintain where you've got to, and in my case I got there a long time and ended up, a little while later, in a moldy apartment over on the northern beaches and it all went out the window. Those things come up, so you have to be really on to the environmental side of it too. Mason: Okay, and let's just, before we move on, I want to touch on the nervous system and supporting the nervous system to getting into that parasympathetic state so we can actually get to resting, digesting, and healing. Some of your favorite methods, distinctions whether they use technologies or whether they be something simple that we can access through nature. Dan: Yeah, nice one. So I'm sure we've touched on it before Mason, but just barefoot earthing. Getting back into nature, a very simple thing to do. Slowing the breathing down, doing diaphragmatic breathing, not breathing shallowly from the chest. And doing that as often as possible, making that really, really priority. I often team that up with the blue light blockers, which you can get now. Get people to slap those on at like 7 PM at night every night leading up to bed. SwitChing off wifi at night, that's really good for the nervous system. Dan: So all these little tweaks to get you over from fight-or-flight over to the parasympathetic side of the nervous system. You can also pair that up with a few gentle botanicals like chamomile, passionflower, and Reishi mushroom for example. That trio works fantastic. Mason: Yeah, like a beautiful moon milk at night, maybe with a bit of a ... well I like doing a chamomile, lavender infusion within the milk there, been doing that for retreaters recently and getting those Reishis in there. Beautiful nightcap. Mason: Sage, I know there's like a crazy crossover of what you do and love and recommend there, with the breath and the barefoot and getting the blue light out. Sage, one thing I'm going to have to do and put in the notes here is get the instructions on how people can completely get the blue light off their phone. Everyone's like, oh night mode. It's like, no, no, no; I'm like, Sage has got this beautiful hack for getting all the blue light out. Sage: Deep in the settings you can modify it so it glows all red at night, and you can still fully text and stuff. It gets weird if you're trying to, like, check out Chicks on Instagram? Because they don't look good. Mason: And that's you, man. I imagine it gets weird for you all night. AnnaBlanca's like, "What you doing?" Mason: "No I'm just doing some, looking at like, photography development, old school style, so weird." Sage: But other than that, it's great to be able to flip on all red at night, and it's just, everything in your phone, the only colors are red and black, for everything. And there's a shortcut you can set up where all you have to do, and I'm not sure exactly how this goes on with iPhone X and past that where there's no home button anymore. But with the older ones you just tap the home button three times for the shortcut, and it'll put it right into the red. So it's easy to turn on and off, so it's great. And then even for some random reason you need to check the time in the middle of the night, it's all red, so. It's ideal not to use it at all, but if you have to look then at least you're not messing up your melatonin levels and shocking your system in the middle of the night. Sage: And other things that I like for getting into that parasympathetic state is, Reishi mushroom has been mentioned. Ashwagandha is another one of my absolute favorites because it works on so many aspects of health that people are struggling with these days. Mason: It goes right in that moon milk as well, the Ashwagandha and Reishi with that infusion. Oh man, it's so good. Sage: And then also, infrared saunas are great to put you back in that parasympathetic- Mason: Oh yeah. Sage: ... state because you're being surrounded by the infrared, which is that heat signature that we as humans give off. That's why you look through night vision infrared goggles, and you see people. So if you think back, and this is a theory my dad first shared with me, and this is not scientifically based, really; it's just a theory, and you see if it resonates with you. But if you look back at when the last time was that you were fully surrounded with infrared heat in somewhat of a dark and fully safe place was in your mother's womb. Mason: Oh, true. Sage: And so it is getting you back to that place of being fully provided for, fully safe, everything take care of and everything's okay, all you need to do is Chill out. Mason: And you know what I'd probably put there, like, putting those ocean sounds on. Like over when Tahnee was pregnant we were listening to the placenta, and it had this woosh, woosh. So getting those sounds in there at the same time, those ocean sounds while you're meditating in that infrared sauna. And we should put some links, just here on this call we've got some incredible resources for people to go and get a clear light sauna. I mean, your folks offer them over there in the States, and we're both friends with Sebastian here who owns the New Zealand, Australian, and European and UK branch, so basically no matter where you are in the world we're going to be able to basically get you hooked up in- Sage: We've got the connections [inaudible 00:32:52]. Mason: Yeah, we've got the connections. We'll put some links in though depending on which continent you're on and give you some ... you know. Just give them the old, Sage and Mason ... and Dan. Well let's throw Dan in there as well. Sage, Mason and Dan sent me. So get you hooked up because I agree that is one of the absolute, ultimate technologies, having an infrared sauna in my house for getting the nervous system toned up. And we could just do a podcast on that, I'm sure. Mason: Now let's start- Sage: Real quick, if you don't mind, just to finish on the nervous system. I'm a huge fan of the Wim Hof method for this. Breathing and the super oxygenation? For strengthening the nervous system and gently building up to cold exposure. People get intimidated because they see people do it on Instagram in the beginning, but it's just like lifting weights. You train your nervous system, you don't jump in and do something super challenging, you know? Go to try to bench press 200 kilos on your first time going to the gym. Sage: You do the 30 seconds of cold water at the end of a hot shower or after taking a sauna, when it's not going to be that crazy. And from there you gently build up. Eventually you're doing 10 minutes of a cold shower, or you're doing a five or ten minute ice bath and it's not that big of a deal anymore because you built up to it at a sustainable level. Of course if you hit it too hard in the beginning, that's why people catch a cold. Their nervous system's weak and it can't handle being out in the cold if they hit it all at once, and it overwhelms them. It's like if you try to do too much at the gym, you're going to injure yourself, it happens. So I think that is one of the most incredible tools that I've experienced, and now that I've been doing it for, almost four years. And it's been, yeah. So powerful for me. Mason: Yeah and I think that's a good distinction there because when you look at the branding and what works is seeing Wim walk up and down in his shorts, and it's covered in snow. And basically it's very important for us to remember that these aren't systems of fanaticism. These are systems of appropriateness for you to build that core function. So I definitely throw my support behind that. Wim's a great guy and also for those of you that are maybe wanting to go even deeper through a process with your breath, if that might seem a little bit unobtainable? I'll also put a link, um, Benny Fergusson, my friend, the Movement Monk, has a really amazing, gentle breathwork practice that is very intricate and very much takes into account these, the mental and physical unification that's going to have to go throughout that process. Mason: So you've got lots of resources there, everyone, for getting that nervous system toned. Then we start moving into how are we going to get ... We've got the baseline. We've got building back our Jing, getting our nervous system toned, and I think we've kind of talked about it's the bread and butter. And maybe bread isn't the best example here because it's got the yeast raising factors, that are actually going to be implicated when it comes to candida. Sage: Non-starchy, gluten-free bread and butter. Mason: Mm, mm. Grass-fed butter. Sage: There you go. Mason: Basically now I want to get into where we're getting into the clearing now. Getting into the clearing, starting to bring some herbals, start bringing in some compounds that are going to start building back our microbiome, start countering this intense leaky gut that we can start seeing and that permeability that we've already touched on. Sage, you're starting out. What are your pillars for starting to clear the body and get it back on track in those initial stages, which may be for three months or a year. Sage: Yeah, yeah. It is a bit of a journey, and that was the most intimidating thing to me in the beginning that actually stopped me from starting for a couple of years, after I kind of knew I was going to have to do this. But I was super intimidated by the fact that I was really going to have to be serious about cutting down on carbs and sugar for anywhere from six months to two years, and I wanted to figure out any other way. But in the end it came back to this: you've got to deal with these basic things. Sage: So you really want to minimize carbs, cut out all forms of sugar, because all of this is beating the candida. Eventually, one day, you will be able to bring it back in moderate amounts, as you've rebuilt your whole gut microbiome. But for now, you really want to cut it down. And you're going to see tremendous ancillary benefits from this, aside from just the candida? You're going to be able to start burning ketones as a fuel source and start burning fat, so you're probably going to experience some great weight loss, some people are probably going to enjoy that. And when you're burning these ketones for fuel and burning fat as fuel, healthy fats, you're able to produce far more ATP, which is your pure cellular energy, than when you're burning glucose as fuel. So you're going to have a lot better energy, once you transition. Sage: It can be a little challenging as your body first is transitioning to burning fat as fuel. But once you get there it's pretty amazing. And you'll learn to get creative with stevia and things like this that can still give you the pleasure of sweetness in your life, you don't have to say goodbye to that. There's many ways, we put tons of recipes on this stuff on our YouTube channel. And so that's the first step, is cutting out all these things that are feeding the candida. Sage: And then, what are you going to go after it with? One of the best that I found was Pau D'arco tea. It's one of the most powerful, natural, antifungal herbs coming out of the Amazon. You can make a really nice tea with that, it goes great as the base of any hot elixir, or you could just be sipping it on its own, all the time. And then two of the other very powerful herbs for me, the tonics that we all know and love are Reishi mushroom and Chaga. Sage: Chaga for me was especially impactful. I was doing some nice tinctures and capsules but where I really started experiencing the benefits of it was when I would get the raw chunks of Chaga mushroom and cook them for three hours into a real strong water extraction, freeze it overnight so that the water gets inside the cell walls, these cell's walls that are super hard that you can't digest? Actually busts them open as it freezes, then boil it again the next day and make it super strong, and I was getting into drinking it regularly. That was a huge assist in my journey against candida. Mason: So ... Yeah, go for it. Sage: Oh I'm just getting on a roll. Mason: So, well actually before. I want to keep you going, but I just want to comment on two things there and Dan, get your two cents in. Mason: That's a really appropriate use of the ketogenic diet. I really like ketogenesis as a distinction in what's ... in a way to possibly get us losing weight that's excessive and actually shouldn't be there? And also getting our mitochondria rocking to the extent that we can, for a time, get off sugars and get into this state where our metabolism can get a bit of a reset and it's a little bit of a breath of fresh air for our immune system for a time as well. Rather than just, go after it, get shredded, nonstop, don't ever not be keto. Mason: I don't know what your sense of that is, but we've discussed it a couple of times on the podcast and it's come up with one of Tahnee's conversations with a practitioner in terms of like, for women. An appropriate time to use ketogenesis and when it's not actually that useful? And we've spoken about it, Dan, in terms of what that excessive fat can do to go and contribute it over too much of a long period to gut permeability thanks to the off-gassing that that excessive fat gives through the bacteria. Mason: But I just wanted to really like ... I like that distinction that you just made there, Sage, I think that's for most people as casting a wide net. That seems like a sensible time to be using ketogenesis. Sage: Yeah. I think, you know there are anti-aging benefits of it in terms of minimizing glycation and things of that nature. And I think it's a transition diet, something you do for a time period to really change your inner terrain and external appearance and everything. And then probably long-term more of a cyclical ketogenic diet is probably the more beneficial thing, where you go in for a bit and out for a bit. And it's more of a natural flow. Mason: And of course, Pau D'arco. I think we're three massive Pau D'arco fans, coming from the lapacho tree in the Amazon. Heavily a part of my healing protocol. I hit it for probably a couple of years I had it constant rotation in strong amounts before it was time for me to then cycle off. Sage: You get to where you don't even want to think about it anymore. Just, you hit a point where, okay. I've had enough, I'm good. Mason: Yeah, I've had it absolutely enough. And that is, I think that's a really appropriate way to let your body govern, you know? Because of course, with any herb, especially a herb that has strong antifungal, antimicrobial actions, you're going to want to cycle off that at some point. Because your body's going to want to have the breathing room to go and do its thing and regulate. Mason: I just wanted to throw my support behind those. Pau D'arco had such an incredible, such an incredible impact on me moving ... I don't think I even mentioned the fact that I did, that was my catalyst, was candida, in getting into this. I was having fungal eruptions on my skin and a suppressed immune system. I've told the story I think on the podcast a couple of times, but it was definitely for me likewise, that combination of Chaga mushroom and Reishi mushroom, but then I'd use a base of Pau D'arco tea, and that's a very simple herbal approach. Mason: Then I had He Shou Wu coming in and nourishing my kidneys in the beginning, and that was the beginnings for me. Getting off the, of course I got off gluten, I got off the grains. I got off the conventional western diet, which is very suppressive to the spleen Chi and it definitely was to mine, and it was really suppressing my digestive capacity. And I was able to bounce back pretty quick, especially with those three primary herbs, the two mushies, and the Pau D'arco bark, and then the He Shou Wu coming in and supporting. Mason: And after I want to hear all your awesome rambling Sage, but I want to let everyone know that after this we're going to dive into the mushies. Sage: Yeah, so those are my first two pillars really, is starve the candida and get in the beneficial herbs that are going to help clean things up in there. And then you've cleared it out, and what are you going to put in there? You're not just going to leave a blank slate and let the candida come back in all over again like you did with antibiotics. You messed up once, don't do it again. So now, we want to introduce really great bacteria into the gut. So it's good to be taking some probiotics. Sage: I'm really a fan of taking spore based probiotics, or ones that are shown to have efficacy in actually making it through and setting up shop in the gut, rather than being killed off somewhere higher up? Maybe in the stomach by digestive acids and things like that? SO rather than just looking at the number of colony forming units, which is what's advertised, you actually have to do a little deeper digging to see if the company's actually had testing done, to show the level of survivability, which makes a huge, huge difference. You can have a trillion-strain probiotic formula that all gets killed off in the gut. You don't get anything from it, or you can have a 30 billion and all 30 billion survive and make it through and set up shop and are doing all sorts of work for you. So it really makes a big difference, whether it's surviving or not. Sage: And then getting on fermented foods, was a big part for me. Tons of sauerkraut, fermented vegetables ... Drinking coconut water kefir was really supportive for me, and yeah. That's the fermented side of things, and those for me were the three main pillars. Sage: You know a few other herbs that were beneficial were, like occasionally using a aged kyolic garlic extract was also supportive for me. One time early on I heard someone say, oh yeah you should juice a whole head of raw garlic. Candida will freak out about that. Holy crap, I had the worst burn, I pretty much gave myself an ulcer in the stomach from that. So don't juice a whole head of raw garlic and try drinking that. It's not a good idea. Learn from my mistake. Mason: Yeah, you lose your friends, you lose your intestinal lining. Sage: It was painful, man. Mason: That's so good. But hey, I think it's awesome that everyone can learn from our fanatical mistakes. Because I've definitely gone down that road. Mason: Yeah, I love it. I love that it's simple, I love that it's methodical, I think that it's really ... Over the years I've seen that same combination coming up again an again and again when you go through all the complexity and all the confusion in terms of what you should and shouldn't be eating and drinking, basically these are the core pillars in terms of what's going to get you from A to B in terms of healing as soon as possible. You mentioned Body Ecology, I think that's really ... I think you kind of consider that the Bible of the anti-candida diet, is that right? Sage: Yeah. It's a great place for anyone who's thinking they might be dealing with a candida issue to start out and get a good set of basic information and approaches and what foods can be beneficial and what not. Because they'll get a taste of things, and a feel of things I think from listening to us today and get some really good ideas. But it's good to have a kind of a manual, that you can really pore through and refer to and can address it from all sides. SO I highly recommend it to anyone that things they may be dealing with candida. Read the Body Ecology Diet book. Mason: Love it bro. Mason: Dan, what's your take? When you're entering into this what foods are you bringing in, what foods are you eliminating, are there any distinctions in terms of any particular constitutional elements that you like to take into account? Dan: Yeah, definitely and I'm one of those practitioners where, I probably do the least amount of dietary manipulation compared to a lot of practitioners. What I typically do is, apart from the obvious things, things such as alcohol, excessive caffeine use, refined sugars. Usually if we can take dairy and gluten-containing grains out of the diet and lower the amount of starches? I generally don't do too much above and beyond that in the initial stages. A, because of the amount that it puts onto the patient who is already compromised to some degree under this burden of stress, and so we just want to take out those really common sort of insults to allow the inflammation to kind of just settle down in the gut. Dan: But I think probably what we perhaps should've mentioned a little bit earlier is just movement and sweating, and we talked about sauna of course. But sunlight and movement are massive for candida. When I treat people that have chronic yeast issues, they're different people when you consider how they're presentation looks in winter compared to summer. And that I attribute largely to the upgrade they get from their immune system when their vitamin D level are optimized? Because we know that with optimized vitamin D levels we're producing higher amounts of our body's own antimicrobial substances like [inaudible 00:47:54]. Which has been shown to be stronger than many, many, many botanicals when tested in terms of destructing biofilms and getting viral load and bacterial load down and so forth. Dan: Movement's huge. You know lymphatic detoxification, that's massive as well. To ensure the person is moving and sweating and getting adequate sunlight. Dry skin brushing, that's effective as well. But at particular sort of point in treatment I like to then depending on the person's constitution introduce some gentle biofilm destructors as well. It's one thing to bring in antifungal herbs, but if the immune system can't see them, the shell of these critters isn't cracked up to allow their contents to be exposed to these botanicals or our immune system, then we're kind of not getting as much bang for our buck. So compounds like N-Acetyl Cysteine, absolutely brilliant for breaking up biofilm, really good for supporting the liver as well and glutathione production, which is our body's master antioxidant and you want prime levels of that anytime you're doing any sort of changes to the gut ecosystem or detoxification. The good old, Pau D'arco and cat's claw tea combo I found to be personally really successful and I think that's probably one of the first things you and I ever jammed about back at the markets years ago. Mason: Yeah man. For sure, and I think I can attest to Sage's love for cat's claw, una de gato, as well. Everyone's like, oh my gosh you guys are eating cat's claws? It's just a bark, everybody. I've got to just mention that. Sage: [inaudible 00:49:31]. Mason: I get that every now and then. Mason: Yeah sorry Dan, I had to get that little joke in there. Dan: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. So, yeah. In addition to that, pomegranate I have found to be just absolutely magnificent when it comes to any pathogenic overgrowth. I can't speak highly enough about that particular herb. I haven't found any other botanicals that simultaneously lower things like bacteria and candida, whilst up-regulating good bacteria at the same time. So pomegranate tincture is definitely going into the protocol for anyone who has any sot of fungal overgrowth. Dan: Apart from that, once you're doing the biofilm work, the person's moving and sweating, the vitamin D is optimized, and the dietary foundations are on point, you do have to think about the liver and all the metabolites that you're breaking down. Because the liver ultimately has the job of buffering and keeping the oil clean. And again, that feeds back into using things like N-Acetyl Cysteine, Alpha-Lipoic Acid, good old and St. Mary's Thistle, burdock, dandelion root just as teas can be really pivotal as well. Dan: Just, garbage in, garbage out. Just get people thinking about the more you're killing off, and the debris you're producing that has to be exiting the system because you can get that enterohepatic recirculation, and you don't want that, because the bugs will just set up shop in a different area of the body. Mason: So can I, I'm just going to before we move on. I just really want to bring a summary to this aspect of treatment, where we've identified that perhaps we do have an overgrowth of candida. We get into the tweakings of the diet, whether we do it gently, and I would agree that it's a psychological conversation of whether someone's going to go down the hardcore, phase 2 Body Ecology when it's like no sugars whatsoever. Maybe some green apple, I think at this stage- Sage: It's Phase One, Full Intensity. And then Phase Two is, like, gentler as you've gotten better. Yeah. Phase One is the Full Intensity. Mason: And also just making distinct what Dan was saying there, what are the core things that I'd be introducing if they're in a state where it's just not possible for them to make those changes? And that would be, again, whether it's going to work or not, these are ... this is what everyone's going to have to have that real dance within themselves, I think that's safe to say, and what's possible for you. And then you're going to have to manage your expectations with that. And as you said, Dan, I don't know, what were you saying dietarily with your core? Refined grains, excessive sugars, definitely getting off processed sugars, I think that's ... if you're on processed sugars you're going to basically be shooting yourself in the candida foot every single time you try to jump at him. Mason: So we've got that aspect, you know? Possibly looking at ketogenesis for a particular time, and so basically we've got that dietary component. Within talking, within a herbal sense and a treatment sense of getting our nervous system really toned and getting us in a calm place where our body can actually heal, getting our foundations of our Jing through Jing herbs. Like you mentioned, He Shou Wu, Rehmannia, Cordyceps, Eucommia Bark, and I think you mentioned Cistanche as well, Sage, and also you're going to get a good crossover there. And you don't have to have all of these, you know. You pick your herb, and Ashwagandha is also a beautiful one that's going to have those jewel effects on the nervous system and on the kidneys. Mason: Then we've gone to talk about, right. What herbs are we starting to include and what supplements are we starting to include to actually start clearing these out. Medicinal mushrooms we're going to go into next, but that's a huge aspect of building up basically the Jing of the immune system, which is always implicated. I can definitely always ... Definitely always, that's never the case. But I can generally say that you're going to see an immune suppression when it comes to candida. I think that's a fair thing to say, would you guys agree? Sage: Absolutely. Because you're very vulnerable to other things happening and taking place. Mason: Absolutely. So then we see both your suggestions in terms of what we're going to be getting coming in. We're going to get the herbs like Pau D'arco, the Chagas, the Reishis, Maitakes, and turkey tails are always going to be wonderful bringing those in to fortify the immune system. And you've talked about N-Acetyl Cysteine and started talking about this other aspect of this phase, which Sage, I know you're all over. And now that we're here Dan I really appreciate you bringing up the biofilms, the ability for us to actually break down. I don't know where you're atin terms of just describing what these biofilms actually are. I know there's a bit of calcification involved in them and I know the immune system especially has a hard time identifying that there is something there behind this little encasing, or this little barnacle, in which the infection lies beneath. It's one of ... Its survival, opportunistic mechanisms to not become identified by the immune system. Mason: And at that time so I just want to talk just a little bit more on that stage within this protocol, of actually knocking out these biofilms so our immune system can start getting this candida infection under control. So I just want to reiterate: your favorites for breaking down these biofilms, and then I just want to have another quick little conversation around opening up detox channels, supporting liver, and also my favorite, including binders, like clays within the diet to help moving these things out. And then also inclusive in this conversation is going to be, the saunas. We don't have to go too much further into it, but if you've got that going on, you're going to be definitely opening up that channel of detoxification through the skin. Mason: So in terms of knocking out these biofilms, your faves Dan? Dan: Pomegranate first and foremost. N-Acetyl Cysteine which we mentioned, and another one from the silkworm, Serrapeptase, I'm sure you guys are quite familiar with as well. Sage: Yep, absolutely. Mason: Another big favorite. Dan: Yeah. The only caution with Serrapeptase is long-term, it can ... Let me rewind a little bit. Good bacteria as well do form biofilm, and so there's a concern that long term use of agents like Serrapeptase and N-Acetyl Cysteine can also crack up good biofilms, which you don't want. Mason: Mm. And that's like, it's natural with anything that's a treatment protocol or enzymes therapy, with the Serrapeptase, you want to make sure that you're cycling it and respecting the treatment period, and you're not going in an “altering” the system of the body too long-term. Would you like the use of MSM in there? Have you ever found that useful? Dan: Yeah I do, I do like MSM and that's a big one I'll use in conjunction with this protocol particularly if people have joint-related issues. Which as Sage said, we often see that with candida, these fungal metabolites get passed around and float around through the body. It can cause quite painful and swollen joints and brain fog. That's another thing, with brain fog the components that get broken up with candida compounds actually form acid aldehyde, and that's why you get people who say, I feel like I'm drunk; I'll go to work and I just feel like I'm wasted and I can't think properly; my short-term memory's gone. And that's because of this acid aldehyde that the candida produced. Dan: SO yeah, sorry. Kind of went off on a little tangent there, but- Mason: No it's really funny when you see those news articles of people who they found had so much fermentation going on in the gut they were tested to be drunk and they hadn't had any alcohol at all. So bizarre, but it's true life. Dan: Next thing we know there'll be pulled over and getting breath tested and being fined as having [crosstalk 00:57:19]. Mason: Soon enough. You want to get tested for candida? Get pulled over and the cops [inaudible 00:57:23]. Dan: Yeah, imagine that. Imagine we get to the point that we're really concerned about the immunological health of our population. Random candida testing everybody. Pull over, like, parasite testing, you know? We've just got your back, everyone. Mason: Concerns your driving safety. Sorry Dan. Dan: Do not operate maChinery while candida is present. Mason: Yeah. Dan: But yeah, so to summarize. N-Acetyl Cysteine, Serrapeptase, the pomegranate. Good old green tea. Sounds very boring and we're used to hearing that but that is so, so good for candida in particular. We can talk about things like lauric acid and caprylic acid, they're often good additions to do particularly in those stubborn cases. Dan: The other one I didn't mention is berberine. Berberine is really efficient at cracking up biofilms and getting on top of ... And this is what I love about herbal medicine. It's like we're isolating candida but we know we're going to have a good effect on viruses and bacteria at the same time. So if someone does come in and they've got known candida issues, but they also have [inaudible 00:58:32], we know that using agents like berberine and pomegranate we're hitting both on the same head, if that makes sense. Mason: Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative). Mason: Absolutely. I mean, yeah, it gets a little bit different when you're using herbals rather than isolates. Beautiful list there, Dan. I really like the Serrapeptase- MSM combination for breaking down those biofilms and definitely going to have to get a little bit more into pomegranate, definitely through my support behind the berberine. Mason: Sage, in term