Should You Feel It? Demystifying the world of active compounds and mushroom effects

Last month I had the pleasure of joining Jashid for an Instagram live chat on the topic of active compounds in mushrooms, and whether or not we should actually be feeling them. My work as the Founder at The Fungi Consultant has focused a lot on the
education side of things, and I want to make it known that if you’re consuming a high-quality functional mushroom product, then you should actually notice it!

Both myself and Jashid have very strong opinions about this topic, and that’s why we found this conversation so interesting, as it provided a chance to demystify active compounds and mushroom effects. It seems to be that a lot of the narrative that I hear surrounding functional mushrooms is that “you might not feel it straight away and the effects will build up over time” and there is certainly a lot of truth in that in taking mushroom supplements for long periods of time. In traditional Chinese medicine, for example, they say take them every day for the rest of your life. But I think that this idea that we won’t really notice anything until after we’ve taken it for a long time isn’t necessarily true.

There are lots of variables involved and we might have been told that you need to give it a three to four weeks, or maybe six weeks for me to start feeling anything. So you might be taking a bunch of powders and pills and tinctures, just really wondering, spending lots of money, wondering if it’s actually doing anything? This is a very critical question to address because there are a lot of products which are not up to the mark, and because of those products, people try it and they say that mushrooms don’t work or they don’t do anything, and it’s not the mushrooms. People might not realise that they’ve essentially purchased a bad product!

What are the most noticeable mushrooms?

There’s lots of mushrooms which are medicinal and therapeutic and functional is quite a broad term, but for me quite simply they’re things which help the systems in our body function better, and there’s different systems which different mushrooms can provide benefit for. It seems like the top three most popular functional mushrooms are cordyceps, lions mane, and reishi – for me personally they’re the ones which help the systems function best that I can be almost immediately aware of, such as those impacting my sleep, stress, and focus.

Those will seem to be quite immediate, noticeable day-to-day things, so I pay a lot of attention to the fungi which can help manage these core aspects of my wellbeing. I tend to just use those also because those three as well do a lot for your immune system, so then if I’m targeting sleep focus, energy it’s almost like those three systems coming together are providing benefit for the whole system.

When speaking to Jashid about the the marketing side of things when Nuvedo launched some products, it seemed that sleep, stress, and focus were the three problems that most of the people wanted help with or wanted some assistance with, starting with stress relief – “I think this is right after COVID, you know, so everybody was super stressed. So the first benefit that people wanted was something that can help them reduce stress and go to sleep better. And the second thing that they wanted was something that improved their focus because with so much of Instagram dooming being sucked into screens all the time. I think people were finding it really difficult to tune into their work or the stuff that they were doing because there’s too much stimulation. And the third thing is actual energy, actual physical energy to sort of go through the day.”

I think similarly to a lot of people, I started with lion’s mane to help manage brain fog (which is a symptom of fibromyalgia) and I really noticed the attention that I had, particularly in social situations. I was able to be more involved in conversations even if I was feeling a bit fatigued. I just felt a little bit sharper and I’ve generally felt that with lions mane, but now I’ve predominantly shifted towards cordyceps to manage long term fatigue, and I was really astonished at the effects it had on improving my energy.

I was also fascinated by the benefits that it has to potentially manage things like cancer, diabetes, obesity, and chronic fatigue – a lot of the major issues people are facing today. For me, cordyceps was ticking all of these boxes, particularly as someone who has struggled a lot with weight, fatigue, and inflammation over many years. So I just found this mushroom to be kind of magical, like a silver bullet! It’s quite surprising how much cordyceps has been really helping me with my energy levels, and it means I’m able to do more during the day, which then means I’m able to exercise more and do the good things, which just create that lasting benefit and longevity. Then actually, because I’ve been able to expend energy during the day, I’m more relaxed in the evening.

There is certainly a stimulating effect and I think the only reference people have to stimulation is caffeine. But what I found with caffeine was something which did feel very mental, very much like a drug. Whereas what I find with the cordyceps is that I feel like something happening where you are able to tap into these extra reserves where you are not being depleted as much and you are actually giving more fuel to something like a battery. You are actually able to generate reserves that you might not have had, but I don’t find there’s a wave of stimulation and a crash (like I might do with caffeine) as it all just feels natural. Where I struggle with fatigue, it feels like cordyceps is a missing piece of the puzzle – maybe there’s something happening with my mitochondrial function where I’m not actually able to generate enough energy that I need.

When I’ve taken this mushroom, which is powering those cells, I’m able to get more oxygen around the body and utilise it better, so then it all feels very real. There’s certainly growing evidence to show that mushroom extracts do have immediate effects, but we might need to pay more attention to people’s experiences. With cordyceps you can feel your lungs expand, and somebody who has allergies, asthma, or bronchitis for example, you can literally feel your lungs clearing up.

According to Jashid, this is the case with a liquid extract, as you’re able to feel it much faster. An interesting study looking at reishi and sleep where mice were given reishi extract to measure the quality of their sleep showed that a single dose of reishi right before sleeping improved the quality of sleep.

This showed a difference in sleep quality from the first dose, so there might be enough evidence to show that there are acute effects and there are long-term effects. But now the next question is why don’t we feel the benefits? I’m sure many people have experiences where they’ve had supplements or functional beverages where you’ve had the product and you actually didn’t feel anything.

So why do we feel certain things and why do we not? It comes down to the quality of the product and understanding what the bioactive compounds are and what the effect these compounds are going to have. But when you’re not allowed to recommend your products for any specific medical purposes, this might create a double-edged sword. You can’t say this product will help you with sleep, but you can say “recommended for evening use” Which is different to saying “this product will help you sleep” – and then what I’ve seen are reishi products which are hot water extracted, and then it’s meant for evening time. But if you have alcohol soluble compounds in there, such as the triterpenoids which have immediate therapeutic effect.

But if your product doesn’t have any of those alcohol soluble compounds in, then you can still market it for evening time because that’s what reishi is known for. But actually it might not have any of that desired effect.

How important is the quality of the mushrooms?

A lot comes down to how these mushrooms are being extracted, but also we don’t necessarily know how much of these active compounds are actually in the mushrooms. How well are these mushrooms grown? And how much of those compounds are you getting in the end product?

When I asked Jashid about this, he mentioned that “If they’re not being tested, then we don’t really know. But ideally, you would hope that they have these bioactive compounds. That elicits some kind of effect. You know, the polysaccharides are doing stuff to your immune system, but that’s not having a conscious noticeable effect compared to something like cordycepin from cordyceps or the triterpenoids from reishi, right?”

These polysaccharides shouldn’t be forgotten about, as there’s some mushrooms like Turkey tail and Chaga that have the combination of glucans and other compounds in there that seem to be really powerful for treating all different types of diseases. But when this gets spoken about across the board, it muddies the water a little bit. Take the main one, for example, which is Lion’s mane – now it’s a really good thing if you have a product which has been tested for beta glucans that have some benefit for your immune system and your gut, but again, we come back to this not being able to recommend a certain product to treat something. So even though everyone knows that Lion’s mane is meant for your brain, the suppliers can’t actually say this, so then they can get away with producing a Lion’s mane product that has just been hot water extracted and just has beta glucans and doesn’t have any of the terpenoids, like the erinacines and hericenones, which are helping with this nerve growth factor, which is providing that cognitive benefit.

So if you don’t actually have these other compounds in there, then not necessarily taking a product, which isn’t gonna have any benefit, but it’s not going to have the benefit related to the thing that it’s being marketed for. A high percentage of the beta glucans doesn’t mean that the product is, again, more potent because each mushroom has a different set of bioactive compounds and each of those compounds is basically what is giving you those unique effects. A better indication of quality is a mushroom which has a higher bioactive compounds which are specific to that mushroom, which is cordycepin and adenosine in cordyceps, terpenes like erinacines and hericenones in lion’s mane, and the triterpenoids like ganoderic acids in reishi.

The future

As we move forward, brands have to move in the direction of testing for specific bioactives, but as Jashid mentioned, being a small brand working out of India makes things ridiculously expensive because many of these standards are not available. Test kits often have to be imported, and it’s not very practical for a brand to do such tests at the moment without passing on that cost to a consumer. Being in a market that’s just evolving, where people don’t even know the difference between a mushroom powder and an extract means that things will come over time. Standardising and testing extracts for specific bioactives is certainly important, but right now it might be hard for a customer to sort of see the value in that unless you’re highly aware or educated about the brand or the mushrooms themselves.

This probably happens with a lot of health food supplements, and I think it’s probably across the board with a lot of these adaptogens and nootropics. If you dig deep down into the ones that are really popular at the moment, you probably find a lot of these discrepancies. I think functional mushrooms have gained a lot of popularity because of what’s been happening with mushrooms in general in the psychedelic space, the therapeutic space that certainly helps boost the profile of mushrooms. We’re starting to see more interest in the therapeutic compounds of all different types of mushrooms. They’re exciting, they’re different and they have a wide range of benefits, maybe overwhelmingly so compared to these other supplements.

So the hype has definitely gained a lot of momentum and maybe it’s a case of just letting that hype do it thing, play out, and, and when things settle a bit, then there’s the opportunity to engage more in the education side of things.