Ep 440: 3 Key Health Benefits of Taking Mushrooms Daily – With Robert Johnson

Brain fog, feeling inflamed and getting sick often?  Different mushrooms have research supporting their benefits for concentration, focus, lowering inflammation and improving resilience to infections.  It’s important to understand that not all mushrooms supplements are created equal and not all of them come with a psychedelic experience. Robert Johnson is the founder and CEO of Custom Capsule Consultants and Mycroboost, a premium mushroom product company. Robert is a sought-after consultant, conference speaker, and op-ed contributor as well as a regular contributor to Rolling Stone Magazine and other publications. In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast Dr. Jannine Krause interviews Robert (Bob) Johnson on the health benefits of mushrooms and his company’s technology to optimize delivery results. 

Resources From The Show:

• Mycroboost’s Website
• For 15% off enter: HEALTHFIX
• For Mycroboost coffee recipes & more check out Instagram: @Mycroboost

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

1:44 – Do mushrooms have to be psychedelic?

3:24 – What brought Bob to the mushroom industry?

8:09 – Process of making a clean product with minimal ingredients

13:38 – How they got powder to suspend in gel caps

14:27 – Benefits of Lion’s Mane and Cordyceps

17.09 – Feedback received on products

17:42 – Mushroom coffee

19:45 – How Bob switched from coffee to mushroom coffee

22:57 – Talking about the immunity blend

24:44 – A bit about Chaga

25:40 – Product sourcing

26:12 – Difference in production between a commercial mushroom and a small business mushroom / myceliated oats versus fruiting bodies

31:53 – What to check your mushroom product label for

34:35 – Natural flavors? WONF Natural flavors

37:40 – Bob’s daily regimen with his mushrooms

41:44 Where to find Mycroboost

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JANNINE: [Intro] Welcome to the Health Fix Podcast where health junkies get their weekly

fix of tips, tools, and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds, and fit

physics or life. Hey health junkies! On this episode of the Health Fix Podcast, I’m

interviewing Robert Johnson. He’s the founder and CEO of a premium mushroom

product company known as MicroBoost. He’s also the founder and CEO of a

supplement manufacturer known as Custom Capsule Consultants. He’s a cannabis

and hemp industry veteran. He’s a health product expert, psychedelic advocate, and seasoned

on entrepreneur with a 20 year track record of launching successful startup businesses

in new and emerging markets. Now he and I are going to be talking about mushrooms today,

but we’re not talking about psychedelics. We’re talking about mushrooms that are functional.

So what does that mean? One’s that can help with your cognitive health, reducing inflammation,

building resilience to infections. This is a big deal. A lot of people are promoting

mushrooms but we need to be thinking about quality, we need to be thinking about efficacy,

we need to be making sure that what you’re spending money on is actually giving you what

you paid for. And so Robert and I are going to talk all about that today and give you a

really good breakdown of how his company is making sure that you are getting what you’re

paying for in every single dose. So let’s introduce you to Robert, otherwise known as Bob Johnson.

Hey, health junkies. I have Bob Johnson on today and we’re going to be talking about mushrooms today

and medicinal mushrooms. And whenever I tell people I want to talk about medicinal mushrooms,

everybody seems to do this light. Oh no. Oh no. She’s going to talk about psychic dots and

like, guys, there’s so much more to mushrooms. I don’t know how we don’t know this, but while

here we are. So Bob, welcome to the HealthFix podcast. 

BOB: Oh, thanks a lot, Jannine. Really excited to

to talk to you.

Oh, I get that all the time too.

We go to conferences.

We have our Lions, Maine, gummies, and little samplers

for people to try and people will come up

and they’re like, oh, what’s in that?

And it’s just like, well, it’s some functional mushrooms.

They’re good for your health.

They’re like, well, I better not.

I got to drive.

I’m just like, oh, no, they’re not psychedelic at all.

They’re just like a health supplement.

And people kind of look a second time.

and then they’re like, Ah, still, I better not.

You know?

(laughs)

So, yeah, it’s definitely a conversation I have

on a daily basis.

JANNINE: Well, and it’s something that it makes me laugh,

and let’s be honest, like, you know, people have now seen

that the cannabis edibles and they look like the gummies,

you know, and so a lot of people see gummies now,

and if we attach it to mushroom, it instantly comes,

you know, into that thing, or like, Ooh, I don’t know.

So, you know, today we’re definitely wanna talk about

how we can dispel some of the myths

in particular.

And of course with your company micro boost,

I love the plan where it’s there with it,

because I mean, that is the thing

where I am kind of headed towards

with a lot of my patients is using line’s main

for focus, using the brain side of things,

and really helping folks understand

what power mushrooms have for the brain.

So obviously you came to on a company that has mushrooms.

So my first question is, what brought you to mushrooms?

What was your first experiment or any of it?

in that case, I’d love to hear what brought you to them.

BOB: Yeah, well, I was in the cannabis industry for a decade here in Los Angeles.

And in 2018, as cannabis was legalizing, we sold our company and CTO of the company.

I decided to start a CBD hemp supplement manufacturing company.

And we had a lot of specialty and a lot of experience

in making soft gel capsules and gummies

and products for cannabis for so long.

And then when hemp became federally legal,

we’re like, oh, this is going to be an opportunity

where we can make this for our brands

and for a bunch of other brands.

But when you buy a soft gel and a gummy machine,

you’re not just limited to hemp, right?

So we started working with all sorts

different supplement companies and we’re custom manufacturing products for people.

And so I got a lot of calls about different trendy ingredients.

You know, and I started to see a pattern people calling they’re asking about ashwaganda

or elderberry or lion’s mane was one that just kept coming up over and over.

And I’d heard about lion’s mane, but it wasn’t until, you know, I was hired to start

formulating products for people that I really started to understand, you know, what it can do for you.

And, you know, specifically my role was understanding how much Lion’s mane was going to be a meaningful amount to put into a product.

As I’m designing a product for a brand, I want to make it.

So, you know, if their customers try it, they’re going to have a noticeable effect and, you know, want to come back.

And so one thing I kept coming up against is that Lion’s mane or any mushroom, like depending on who you ask, a therapeutic amount, is anywhere between like 800 milligrams and 3000 milligrams, which making a really small soft gel pill.

That’s a lot of ingredients to put into a single serving.

And I found that a lot of these supplement companies,

they weren’t so interested as much as making

the best possible product as just like putting these trendy

ingredients on the labels that they can have some sort

of label claim and get their customer to buy it.

But essentially, then as I was understanding it,

but they’re selling is like a placebo at best.

And so I wanted to get into mushrooms,

but with these little form factors,

I was just kind of limited, right?

I didn’t want to make a product,

we have to take 17 pills to get a therapeutic dose.

So I really started looking for companies

that were making like concentrations of these things, right?

This is how we did product manufacturing

and cannabis for years.

You don’t put a big bag of grass into a little gummy.

You make an extraction, a concentration

of the active ingredient in cannabis’s case, THC.

But in lion’s mane and different mushroom cases,

I’m understanding what are the active in these things.

How can we isolate them or concentrate them

and put them into a really powerful little product?

And so we wanted to do mushrooms for years,

but it wasn’t until I found this company

that was making these organic,

fruiting body extracts that it really became viable for us

because I wasn’t interested.

I don’t even really understand the business model

of sort of tricking your customer into buying something

that you’re just hoping they’re gonna convince themselves

that it’s doing something for them.

The cost, the time of acquiring a new customer,

the idea is you want to give them an awesome product that you know not only

that they’re going to buy again but hopefully you know tell their friends about.

JANNINE: Absolutely absolutely. It’s interesting you mentioned that because I noticed

that on your website you were talking about being skeptical of supplements and

things of that nature and and yeah you know when there’s such a broad amount

that’s effective based on research you’re like you know even as a doc you go

all right I don’t know you know how much how much is someone going to get an

and of course we want something to be potent.

Now I noticed that your soft gels

with the lion’s main in particular

have quite, I mean, very minimal ingredients.

So you’ve found a way to be able to make gel caps

with clean ingredients for that matter too.

Tell us a little bit about that

in terms of trying to figure out, you know,

the schema things for creating those gel caps.

And you know, now that we know that you’re getting

the stuff in there, how do you make it gel cap like that?

– Yeah, so we had a lot of experience with gelatin soft gels

in cannabis business and we were using THC oil

and making really meter dosages back early on

when edibles were a real issue, right?

Like you’d talked about right at the beginning.

Some people have a fear of a THC gummy

because of probably some bad experience.

And when I first started in the business in 2008,

that was exactly how products were sold.

You go in and it’s just like,

Well, how strong is this brownie?

Let me check the packaging.

Oh, it’s 10 skull and crossbows.

You have no idea what that means.

And so my whole career has been about

legitimizing plant-based medicine

by making it repeatable, measurable, consistent.

So when people find an amount that works for them,

they don’t have to guess.

And sometimes it’s helpful.

And sometimes they’re high on the couch for three days.

You didn’t have to.

That was not what we wanted.

But I’m always just trying to look into the future

and make a better product.

So when we started custom capital consultants,

which is our supplement manufacturing company,

We really wanted to master vegan soft gels.

And there’s a reason why 99.9% of soft gels

on the market are gelatin,

is they’re much easier to make,

you have mass produced them,

and vegan soft gels are really finicky.

You have to have the temperature,

the humidity, just right.

They’re made with tapioca starch,

rather than gelatin.

And anyways, if you’re making a health product,

I’ve never had somebody, even if they’re a meat eater,

a request, I need some animal bones

in my mushroom supplements.

So the vegan soft gels was the first thing

that we had to figure out and really master.

And that was not easy.

But then once we did that, yeah, we were working with a PhD

pharmacologist from USC and she was an expert in product formulation and then

also worked for a cannabis company for years as their chief scientific officer

and it was a gummy company. So it was this perfect confluence of background.

You know she knows medicine and measurements and research and development for

designing products and then she also knew like how to make it into a delicious

raspberry gummy. And so once we understood and then found this company with the concentration,

also some things that people don’t normally do is put powder-izing ingredients into soft gels.

But in my experience, the difference between a soft gel and a two-piece capsule that you

has a bunch of powder in it really depends on the product. I wouldn’t say one is better than the

other, but in my experience I found that soft gels have a much higher perceived value,

you know, because you can’t make soft gels in your garage, right? You can pack a capsule with powder

by hand and you know there’s some sort of questionable ingredients in there maybe, and it just,

you know, looks like a big horse pill. And so we just wanted to make something that was sexy,

that was easy to swallow, that was good for you,

and was going to be really beneficial.

And one of the just like kind of bonuses of the tapioca

starch was the shell just naturally has a higher pH

than gelatin.

And a lot of gelatin soft gel companies will do or

will add what is called an enteric coating on the gel shell to

raise the pH.

And the reason that they do that is so it doesn’t break

down in your stomach and your stomach acid, destroy a lot of whatever active ingredients

are in there, rather it’ll break down in the intestine and just lead to more absorption

of the product that’s actually in there.

Or bioavailability is another vocab word that they use for that.

And so that was a cool, just extra benefit.

help conscious people are looking for increasingly more and more vegetarian products.

And then too, just that it actually works better than a gelatin soft gel was a nice added

bonus.

JANNINE: Well, that makes sense.

That makes sense.

It’s really cool because I think a lot of people don’t, I mean, yes, I could see the perceived

value with the gel caps.

I know some people tolerate them, some people don’t, but maybe part of that non-tolerance

is that pH and and something of that nature could be irritating. I’ve just found that over

the years I’ve also found people, you know, telling me, hey, Doc, I’m pooping the capsules

on them. That’s not good. That’s not good. Something’s up with your gut, but you know, it’s

it’s delivery, right? It’s delivery. And so really interesting that you’re using powder

within a gel cap, that’s not something I’m familiar with. Usually it’s a liquid extract

within the gel cap.

BOB: Yeah, so there is a way to homogenize and suspend powderized ingredients up to a degree

into an oil-based soft gel because that’s the difference between a soft gel and a capsule.

It’s all oil-filled.

But yeah, we found a way with Carolinas helped this PhD-Wiz Kid and been making products

ever since.

– We’ve definitely tried a lot of products that didn’t work,

and you don’t have to go back to the drawing board,

but in this case, yeah, we have three different formulas

or just combining different mushrooms

based on their benefits for targeted effects.

So we have a brain formula.

It’s my personal favorite.

It’s just a combo of lion’s mane and cordyceps.

And so lion’s mane is like a cognitive enhancer.

also prevents against cognitive issues like Alzheimer’s dementia. It does a couple of things

that psychedelics are also being credited for in more and more research, which is neurogenesis,

which is the formation of new brain cells and neuroplasticity, which is connecting different

brain cells that aren’t normally connecting in extreme cases with psychedelics. That could

lead to synesthesia, where you’re tasting color or seeing music, having your senses

crosses, cross in ways that they don’t normally do. But in Lion’s Mane’s case, it’s just making

you more focused, more alert, able to recall words better, just having better memory. And

And then cordyceps is a great combination for this, you know, go getter product in my

opinion because it’s great for energy.

It’s great for the respiratory system.

So a lot of athletes use it as a pre-workout.

In fact, one of my favorite little factoids about cordyceps was there was a Chinese track

Olympic team in the 90s, a women’s track team in the 90s that broke so many records

and won so many medals that they were drug tested,

and they passed all the drug tests,

and their coach credited cordycep’s mushrooms

for their, you know, extraordinary performance.

JANNINE: Wow, that’s cool, that’s cool.

I mean, yeah, the cordycep’s, I highly use with my athletes.

And definitely anybody who’s looking for like an energy boost

kind of situation as well,

and, you know, considering with all the critters

that run around these days in terms of bugs

that we’re getting exposed to,

I also think that cordycep’s has a nice little factor

with the respiratory system too.

So yeah, I’ve been seeing kind of the same thing.

That’s, I mean, the brain formulas in particular,

back up on that because I feel like a lot of folks

at this day and age are like talking about having ADD

or not being able to focus.

And obviously part of it had the pathology

and part could be life, right?

We’re just too distracted.

So at LoveFree to speak about a little bit

in terms of using the lions mane if you have

and cordycep’s combination for in the moment focus

to get yourself honed in on something,

get a project done, things of that nature.

Are you seeing folks talking about using your product

for that too, not in addition to just the daily use?

BOB: Yeah, I mean, everything is, you know,

part of my skepticism of supplements is people making claims

like everything is just a magical pill,

that’s like a cure all.

But a combination of awareness of your habits

and desire to change and improve,

I think is definitely essential.

But in my experience, I take the brain soft gels every day

and then we have a mushroom coffee

that’s a combination of all five of the mushrooms

that we use in our products.

And I’m a big coffee drinker, I’m an entrepreneur

So I’m just always need fuel, need a good attitude,

need a good mood.

And so I switched to the mushroom coffee about 18 months ago

when we started experimenting with it.

And I found that my attention and just,

I think I like the way that you said it,

living in the moment, I think, is vital for me

to concentrate on the task at hand,

focus on what I’m doing and not be bouncing

between multiple computer screens

or multiple distractions at the same time.

But I found that my sales were really increasing.

The more I was drinking this mushroom coffee,

I think the combination of being in a good mood,

having good energy, not crashing in the afternoon,

was really doing great for me.

And so when I found something that was gonna be,

not only good for health, but good for my business

and all of our employees, then I was hooked.

And that got me just always just learning more.

And whenever I’m just kind of a obsessive guy like that,

whenever I find something that I find interesting,

and then I find personally that it’s working in ways

that I’m doing the research on

than I just can’t get enough.

And so I write about mushrooms.

I talk about mushrooms at conferences.

And I’d seek out people that have been doing this

for a lot longer than I have and just try and absorb

all their wisdom wherever I can.

JANNINE: It’s huge.

It’s huge.

You know, one of the things I think a lot of people

would want to know about, because I’ve never

been a coffee drinker.

So drinking the mushroom coffee is easy for me.

But a lot of people when switching,

I’d love to hear people’s protocols.

What’d you do to switch?

Did you kind of titrate off or did you go cold turkey

on the coffee or what did you do to switch into your coffee?

BOB: Oh, for a while, I was definitely just adding

a cup of mushroom coffee to my 24 ounces of starbucks

or whatever I was drinking.

But eventually, I started cutting back.

I noticed that my gut was feeling a lot better

in the mornings too, as I was cutting back on the coffee.

And I think part of what made it easier for me to switch

and for a lot of the people that have tried

micro boost is the taste.

Whenever we’re developing a product, I’ll go and look online

and find the 10 most popular products in that category

that I can find by them all, try them all,

really evaluate them.

And one common thing between most of them is they don’t taste very good.

JANNINE: Yeah.

BOB: And maybe coffee is an acquired taste too, but when that’s like the most addictive, heavily

used drug on the planet, making people switch to a mushroom thing that tastes like dirt,

it’s going to be a tough sell.

So I wanted to make something that had more mushrooms per serving than any product we

never made before and more than any mushroom coffee on the market and I wanted it to taste delicious

and so one way that we did that was adding a lot of cacao. So it’s got a little bit of some

organic coffee in it, only like 55 milligrams worth of caffeine which is like a cup of Earl

gray tea or a third of a cup of coffee, but the the cacao just makes it taste like a delicious hot

chocolate. And I’ve started doctrine mind, you know, just the way I like it. I put a little bit of

cinnamon, a little bit of cardamom. Sometimes I even put it into like a peanut butter banana smoothie.

So I’ve found lots of different ways. And on our on our social media now like once a week we’re

We’re sharing a new recipe and you know just always trying to find more ways to enjoy it.

JANNINE: Oh, that’s incredibly helpful because you’re right.

A lot of them taste like dirt and that is the number one complaint I get from a lot of my patients.

So like I’m trying to get off a coffee but these mushroom coffees, oh they’re so gross.

So, cacoa, I mean most people are not going to complain about a chocolatey flavor like a mocha,

probably kind of flavor. And it sounds like you’re going towards like a Latin flair with it a little bit

or maybe even a, I don’t know, Middle Eastern fly with the cardimom. It’s kind of fun there.

I like it. I like it. So let’s talk about immune system a little bit and in the immunity

one that you have because so many people turn to me and say, Look Doc, my immune system’s trashed

from all the things that have happened in the last couple years. I really need something that’s

going to be sustainable. That’s going to help me that I could take every single day. So give us

What was the scoop on your immunity bun there?

BOB: Yeah, I think the main three things that mushrooms help

in categorically wise are the cognitive functions

of stuff like lion’s mane and brain enhancement.

And then as far as immunity is concerned,

anti-inflammation, inflammation.

Flemation is inflammation is one of the leading causes

of many illnesses in the body.

And so almost every one of the mushrooms

that we’re working with is very anti-inflammatory.

So that’s a great start right there.

And then the other thing is the gut microbiome.

Besides what’s going on in your head,

I think what’s going on in your gut

is really controlling our mood and our health

just like on a macro level,

more so than any other parts of our body.

So those are the two areas that I feel like mushrooms are helping us the most and is contributing

to all sorts of other things because of overall health.

JANNINE: Yeah, they do tend, like you’re right, the brain inflammation and the immune system tends

to be like kind of the three main areas.

And definitely I kind of feel like a lot of us our immune system gets trashed as our

inflammation goes up.

And so if we’re working on that balance, it definitely is a nice, nice blend there.

So I guess my next question would be, okay, so you’ve got Chaga, you’ve got Raci and you’ve

got Turkey tail.

We know, you know, a lot of people have been talking about the Raci and Turkey tail for

being immune.

Chaga is kind of one that gets thrown out as like energy booster.

This one, it kind of has like multiple, multiple hats.

It wears there.

And like you said, these mushrooms do multiple things.

What was the synergistic effect you were thinking about with the Chaga and with the Raci

and Turkey tell?

Did you guys think that about that?

BOB: Yeah, it’s the antioxidant qualities in that.

Okay.

You know, and so that’s the other thing that mushrooms do in nature is transform, right?

And so getting rid of the toxins in your body is also part of having a clean immune system.

JANNINE: Makes sense.

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All right, let’s get back to the podcast.

JANNINE: So, of course, people are going to ask me because my podcast is much about kind of getting

to the insights out of businesses, things of that nature, sourcing.

Who’s growing these things?

You know, where, what are you looking for in your sources?

What are you looking for in terms of with the gummies and flavoring?

I know you had mentioned you’ve got your, your whiz kit there who’s helping you with

the flavoring.

A lot of folks want to know natural versus artificial flavors.

What kind of things are you using?

Give us a scoop, give us kind of your background there.

BOB: Great, so yeah, let me start.

I did an article for Rolling Stone recently about exactly what’s going on in the functional

A.K.A.

Adaptogenic A.K.A., you know, medicinal mushroom world.

And so we talked about these mushroom coffees tasting like dirt.

I’ll tell you why most of them do.

So when you grow mushrooms commercially, it’s grown on like a starchy substrate, you know,

oats or corn, and that substrate is inoculated with the spores or the liquid culture of the

mushroom.

Then the mycelium or the roots of the mushroom fill out and grow throughout the substrate.

And then it’s the fruiting body or the stem and the cap or in lion’s mane’s case, this

cheerleaders bomb bomb looking at fungus.

grow out. And so I’m again shocked kind of to see to discover what most mushroom companies

are doing. They’ll actually harvest that fruiting body, that pom-pom lion’s main mushroom,

use that cell in a farmer’s market or sell it to another higher end product, or even they’ll

just buy the substrate, the myceliated oats essentially from these commercial mushroom

farms.

It’s a lot cheaper to just buy these oats.

And so there is some beneficial properties in mycelium, no doubt about that, but they’re

in a very small amount.

And then when you talk about the filler that is in that substrate.

So most of these companies that are making dirt tasting mushrooms are just pulverizing

that entire myceliated oat block.

And that is what they’re calling mushrooms.

And right now there is a company called NAMX that makes fruiting body extracts and has

a brand of their own.

And there’s a handful of brands that are all petitioning the FDA to make it so companies

that are using myceliated oats can’t call them mushrooms because it’s kind of like calling

the roots of an apple tree, an apple.

The fruit of the mushroom is the stem in the cap or the fruiting body.

And that’s what contains the majority of the beneficial properties in it.

And I thought when we were first starting out and understanding this, I was like, what

could it be maybe five to one, untend to one, the fruiting body has the polysaccharides

and all the great properties of the mushroom in it. But the more I was researching on this

for the article, I found that it could be as much as 500 to one. So there’s companies

that sell the big jars of 120 two piece capsules, you could take that entire container of myceliated

oat mushroom mass or mushroom root mass, and that would be taking less mushrooms than a single

one of our soft gel capsules. So one of the hardest things about being, or I guess the most time

consuming things about working in these kind of emerging industries is education. And I was in

the CBD business for years still make a lot of hemp and CBD products. And that was the fastest

boom to bust industry I’ve ever seen. And because everybody got on this bandwagon, tons of

entrepreneurs jumped into get rich quick with CBD.

And I think a lot of shoddy products were put out

on the market consequently.

There’s a ton of media hype around it

that was piggybacking on cannabis’s legalization

throughout the country.

And I think people try a product.

One, there’s a bunch of crazy claims, CBD companies saying

you’re gonna throw down your crutches

and start doing back flips across your living room.

And then you take it and don’t really notice much.

Don’t have those extreme expectations met.

And I think people like dismiss it

when it has like in addition to mushrooms,

it’s great health beneficial properties,

specifically with anti-inflammation.

But yeah, so that’s the main difference is

the myceliated oats versus fruiting bodies

versus what we’re using, which is fruiting body

like extracts or concentrates.

So the strongest amount that you can put

into a small little dosage.

JANNINE: This is very enlightening because one of the things

that I hear from a lot of people,

and being a naturopath, I see folks that just,

you know, don’t do well usually with things

and have a lot of allergies, things of that nature.

And I’ve seen quite a few interesting reactions

to mushroom coffee.

And now it’s all starting to make sense

in terms of what might of went down.

So very interesting.

And of course, this is why I want folks

to tell me about their manufacturing processes,

why use what you do because it’s so important.

Now let’s switch gears for a second.

Oh, unless you got…

BOB: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s the truth in labeling.

So just like, if you wanna buy micro boost, I would love that.

But if you’re at the store and evaluating

which mushroom product you should buy,

you can check the label and what this petition to the FDA

is suggesting is that people would need to label

whether it is mycelium or myceliated oats

that is used in the product.

There are some companies that, in the fine print

the back of their bag will say myceliated oats but that’s a great thing to look for if you’re

going to evaluate any type of mushroom product. And if you ask a company and they’re kind of

dodgy about it, that’s probably what they’re using. And most companies that are using

brooding bodies are shouting it from the rooftops.

JANNINE: Yes, yes. I’ve seen, I’ve definitely seen that, which is now, is to me,

makes sense, I didn’t know about the pulverizing of the mycelia. That’s me. It’s gross actually.

It’s kind of gross.

BOB: Yeah, I mean, making supplements for other people, I really found that maybe I have kind

of a backwards, not as business, shrewd as these folks. But they always start like, how

How can we make a product for a penny or less and then convince people that it’s worth

$5.

Whereas we’re always trying to think, what is something that would be really good for

me, that would be proud to share with my mom, with my family, with my friends, and something

that would really help people.

And then we’ll kind of work backward from there.

It’s like, well, we do have to make money at it if we’re going to help the most people.

and just try and figure it out.

But one of the most challenging parts is explaining

like our 30 soft gel capsules is better

than 30 bottles of your 120 myceliated oats pills.

JANNINE: Yeah, well at the end of the day you get what you pay for.

There’s always that, there’s always that.

But for me, being a doc that recommends supplements

on a regular basis, it’s one of those things

where I don’t want to waste anybody’s money,

but I also want people to get the most bang for their buck.

So quality, but also processing is incredibly important to me

because if I can understand how something’s made

and know that it’s gonna have the highest amount

of what I’m trying to get, you know,

the patient to get in their body, then it’s a win-win.

It just makes sense.

So with the gummies, this has been a long-term debate

in my office about natural colors,

natural flavors, things of that nature.

Obviously, using natural flavors of like ground up cherries or something, for example, for a flavor,

is not going to give you the same thought you think of when you think of cherry flavor.

So I would love to hear what you guys are up to in terms of creating the natural flavors in a way

that is not as chemically laden as folks would assume based on just the term natural flavors.

Give us a scoop.

BOB: Okay, well there are natural flavors and there are what are called WONF natural flavors.

And WONF W-O-N-F stands for with other natural flavors in quotation marks. And you know, just the way

that the US food labeling and manufacturing has been lobbied is basically people can call

natural flavor that is completely unnatural. So if you look for anything that says with other natural

flavors or WONF flavors, those are some other additives to them. So like you suggest

getting specific flavors like a cherry without other natural flavors is impossible to find.

that are there, unless you’re grinding the cherries, making your own flavors yourself,

your own concentrates, extracts, that’s not something that you’re going to be able to get in a gummy.

But citrus flavors, for example, are available without other natural flavors. So we use those,

whenever possible and in our five different gummy flavors,

three out of the five have without other natural flavors.

And then two of them do still have

with other natural flavors, but as healthy

as we could find without putting red dye, number 40,

and some of these band that we now know

are objectively bad ingredients.

JANNINE: Good deal, good deal. Thanks for explaining that. I think a lot of people do still want to know what we’re looking at in that department and a lot of adults let’s be real. We’re all kids trapped in an adult body. We want the gummies. We want the easy to take things and it’s more appealing sometimes in certain cases.

I think you know, you kind of have it perfect on your website where you’ve got the gummies

on one side and the coffee on the other.

It appeals to all of the, I guess, the easy senses for the adults.

So that being said, I would love to hear what’s your daily regimen.

You said you do the coffee.

What are you doing with the capsules?

Do you have like a, what’s your like star way to take them?

Like what do you feel like in terms of overall health optimization?

What do you want to?

BOB: You know, I had a stomach issue the past weeks.

I’ve been adding the wellness soft gels to my regimen,

but typically I’m taking two of our brain soft gels

in the morning that contains 1,500 milligrams of lion’s mane

and 1,500 milligrams of cordyceps.

And I’m usually taking at least two cups

of micro boost coffee.

Each one of those has 3,000 milligrams of mushrooms

divided over lion’s main quarter-steps,

Chaga, Rishi, and Turkey tail.

So 600 milligrams of each of those.

I don’t think there’s too much mushrooms

that you can take in a given day,

but so that is 9,000 milligrams

of functional mushrooms on a daily basis.

And yeah, that has me going until lunch, at least.

sometimes I’ll have another coffee in the afternoon,

but oftentimes we’re also developing new products as well.

So we’re working on a new gummy flavor.

Right now we’re working on a matcha drink.

So in addition to my daily regimen often,

at least a couple of times we try something new.

And usually when you’re trying to get a flavor or product

just right, you make like 20 before you find something that sticks.

So yeah, I think that I might be taking more functional mushrooms than anybody in like

a 50 mile radius at least.

JANNINE: Well, it’s a good point that you bring up.

You know, really I haven’t seen there be, you know, I’m sure there’s a higher end depending

on every individual person, but I haven’t seen there be a level where it gets to be too

much.

I’ve seen it’s just two, but like two intense of focus on certain folks with some of the

lion’s mane, but other than that, I haven’t seen it be in an overkill.

In fact, I feel like it probably could all use a little bit more in our world.

The matcha is fascinating though.

Give us more scoop there.

BOB: Oh, yeah.

I mean, we just want to want to have, you know, just even more coffee alternatives and right

right now too, yeah, we’re trying to get the flavor, the color, the dissolvability, all

that, and also keep it at a price point that is going to be affordable to people. I wanted

to put the cinnamon and cardamom personally into the coffee mix. One, our team convinced

me not everybody likes the same spices that you do, but also it’s going to add over $1

bag which is big money in supplement business when you have a product in that $25 to $35 range.

JANNINE: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I’ve seen bad upwards of 70 for a month. You know,

it’s a lot of people that’s a big like, Oh, I don’t know. You could probably do the math though

with Starbucks versus the mushroom coffee. You guys are going to come out ahead with the mushroom

coffee just saying but– 

BOB: oh yeah yeah I was spent in $150 a month on Starbucks easy. 

JANNINE: Oh you’re

probably not alone though I mean coming from the Pacific Northwest and the Tacoma / Seattle area.

There’s a lot of folks in that department so at this point you know I think folks got a really

great idea of what Mycroboost is all about we know now where you guys are heading the future some

some new flavors, things of that nature. I think, you know, at this point, I think if folks,

let’s tell folks a little bit more about how they can find you, the website, and then you mentioned

social media and all the recipes for the mushroom coffees. Because I think that is gold because

people are always looking for new ideas. So give us a scoop of what you’re sharing on social media,

how they can find you, website, all the deals. 

BOB: Yeah, great. Well, it is micro boost with a Y,

just like mycology is spelled with a Y and we’re at micro boost on Instagram. I’m on LinkedIn,

but every week we’re posting new recipes. We’re also posting information from Rolling Stone

articles I publish about once a month an article about mushrooms and Rolling Stone. And most recently

I did like a two-part series that was 10 vocabulary words to understand mushrooms.

I’m talking about myceliated oats and polysaccharides and even the plan effect, which is based on a book,

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Polani wrote this.

A really seminal book about psychedelics and baby boomers taking psychedelics in his case.

he came at it as a skeptic, but this plan effect is just something that I’ve been talking about too,

that is used to describe people’s over-hyped expectations for psychedelics being a magic bullet.

Not that he necessarily should be responsible for that, but just kind of they put a name to it,

because his book is probably the one number one cited as far as a piece of media that is really

influence the culture the past six years. So if you go on our Instagram you can find all my

Rolling Stone articles. Also if you just search in Robert Johnson Rolling Stone mushrooms or

psychedelics that’s a good place. I’m speaking at South by Southwest in Austin on March 8th with

a group of some really fascinating smart people from the mushroom industry.

One guy’s name is Reggie Harris. He started a Hyphae Labs and that’s a testing lab for testing

the amount of active in mushrooms and then Mary Carreon. She’s a journalist who writes about

all things mushrooms and cannabis, super talented activist and both Reggie and Mary have a

podcast themselves called high-fail leaks. It’s just talking about the mushroom industry and then

I think the funniest guy in mushrooms is Dennis Walker at Micropreneur official.

He has a podcast called the Micropreneur podcast and he does like a daily video

satirizing the psychedelic industry and mostly like the dude bros that are with the billion

dollar hedge funds trying to come in and capitalize on this sacred, Indigenous medicine.

and it really is kind of rife for comedy.

So the four of us are gonna be speaking on a panel

called Notes from the Mushroom Underground

at South by Southwest

and a few more speaking engagements coming up.

And then at this fall,

I’m gonna be publishing a book on mushrooms too.

So excited for that and happy to share

with your readers when that’s available.

JANNINE: Yeah, I would love to talk,

I mean, I’d love to see that, I’d love to promote it.

Maybe we’ll get you back on and talk about that too,

because I think one of the other big things,

just like you said about the psychadelics

and the perceived effect.

Let’s put it that way,

because I get it all the time from a lot of folks,

and guys, I wanna make sure you guys understand

that microbeau is not psychedelic mushrooms.

I just wanna make that clear.

We’re gonna, we’re switching the conversation for a second here,

you know, as we round out things

and maybe a little preview to our next conversation.

But the concept of micro dosing,

a lot of people will confuse mushrooms

that are medicinal for wellness, for immune for that

with micro dosing.

And then they’ll have a micro dosage

that they got from somebody down the street

and they’ll do it from off,

and they’ll be like nothing happened.

And then they’ll go for like a hero’s journey

and they do that and they’re like,

yeah, it wasn’t really that great.

And then they’ll tell me like,

I don’t want to use mushrooms

so they don’t think it’s that,

I don’t think it’s that effective for me.

So it sounds like there are a lot of things

to be thinking about in the industry

when you’re looking for doing medicinal mushrooms correctly.

Let’s say taking them correctly, maybe that’s something.

BOB: Absolutely.

And I think that they’re both sort of propping each other up.

Psychedux are getting a ton of media attention right now.

And I think that’s good for people just educating themselves.

There is kind of a mycophobia, you know,

a fear of mushrooms that is pervasive in this country

and I’d love to help you a part of change in that.

JANNINE: Absolutely, well we will make sure we get into that.

Thanks again so much for coming on Rob I appreciate it

and we’ll make sure guys we get all of the links

to all of the different things that he mentioned

on our podcast notes at doctorjkrausend.com.

Thanks again, great podcast.

BOB: Thank you.

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JANNINE: [Outro] (upbeat music) Hey fellow health junkies,

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