Healing with Fungi: The Science Behind Mushroom Supplements | SMFG Podcast

In this episode we host Dave Claassen and Paul Grzybowski, founders of Encapsulate USA, to explore the fascinating world of mushrooms. They discuss the health benefits of functional mushrooms, the challenges of bringing medicinal mushroom products to market, holistic & natural health alternatives, and the upcoming Atlanta Mushroom Festival. 

Our conversation also dives into the concept of microdosing and its potential effects on mental health, as well as the cultural perceptions surrounding mushrooms. The episode emphasizes the importance of community engagement and education in promoting the benefits of mushrooms and holistic health.

This episode is proudly sponsored by Band Groupeez, a live music service connecting music lovers with independent musicians and local venues.

Access your local music scene now at https://bandgroupeez.com\

About Encapsulate USA:

Encapsulate USA was born out of a genuine friendship and a mission for better wellness. In 2014, founders Dave Claassen and Paul Grzybowski began sharing information about functional mushrooms as a complementary approach to traditional treatments. When a close friend was diagnosed with stage-4 breast cancer, they created a product designed to the highest standards: Paul formulated the blend (drawing on his chemistry background) and Dave sourced premium ingredients. This led to the development of their flagship 6-mushroom blend, fine-tuned for effectiveness and taste.

Today, Encapsulate USA offers a curated line of mushroom-based supplements committed to quality, transparency, and real results. With an emphasis on full-spectrum extracts rather than basic powders, the brand focuses on supporting immunity, energy, focus, and overall wellness. Based in Atlanta (USA), their story bridges personal care, scientific rigor, and community support—making them a trusted name for anyone seeking a more natural path to health.

Encapsulate USA’s Website: https://encapsulateusa.com/
Encapsulate USA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/encapsulateusa/
Atlanta Mushroom Festival: https://atlantamushroomfestival.com

*Information about functional mushrooms is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

#fungi #mushrooms #functionalmushrooms #lionsmane #reishi #cordyceps #supplements #biohack

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Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00)
Let's f***ing roll.

Welcome back with McBastard Studio. I'm Brad Banyas. You're listening to the SaltyMF Goat today. Today we're gonna talk everything mushrooms with Dave Claassen and Paul Grzybowski. And these guys own a company called Encapsulate USA and we are gonna learn some great stuff. But I wanna say the most unique thing. So David played at University of Georgia. He was from Australia. He came over, he's a punter.

and Paul went to Georgia Tech. So there's a divine intervention happening here where we get a tech guy who, who, who basically is a chemist and a mycologist and a good old Georgia punter from Australia. Guys, welcome to the show, bro.

Speaker 1 (00:40)
Thanks so much

for having us. This is awesome man. Great studio.

Speaker 2 (00:44)
Yeah, well, I know we connected ⁓ and you guys, they also run the Atlanta mushroom festival and that's how we got kind of together and that's coming up November 27th. 22nd, my bad.

Speaker 1 (00:57)
Saturday, November

26th.

Speaker 3 (00:58)
Saturday, November

22nd.

Speaker 2 (01:00)
1122.

But I wanted these guys to just come in and tell us their story. And I know you guys have had good results with what you're doing with your supplements. So hey, welcome to the McBastard studio. Let's go.

Speaker 1 (01:13)
This is

great. I met Paul when I was in music for probably about 13 years at broadcast music BMI. Yeah. Worked with songwriters and publishers and labels. And one day I went out to lunch with Paul's girlfriend at the time. And she said, you should go meet my boyfriend after lunch. Cause you guys would get along. Well, we did. And here we are sitting on your podcast. We've been a business for four years. We started for breast cancer.

close friend of mine from the film and entertainment world in Florida called and said, hey, I got this email you guys been firing out about mushrooms that Paul had put together for me, but I can't find these products in the store. ⁓ You've got two weeks because Lynn starts cancer therapy in two weeks. And she's gonna do chemo and radiation and I just, don't wanna lose my wife. So I said, okay, called Paul, one call, that's all.

Speaker 2 (02:00)
out.

Speaker 1 (02:09)
And then we sourced the product with his direction in three days. We shipped it off to Florida. 58 days later, we got a phone call from Craig saying Lynn was in remission.

Speaker 2 (02:21)
my God, it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (02:22)
Every time I tell that story, I get goosebumps, but that's why we're a business. And I looked at Paul that day and I said, hey, Lindsey remission, but she doesn't want to do the powder that we've been doing. Gives her diarrhea, it doesn't taste good. It's hard to consume. You're vigorously stirring. It's worse than mud water. He goes, don't worry, we're going to extracts. And that's how we built this company.

Four years ago, we partnered with the largest extracts manufacturer here in North America, and we are sourcing all of their extracts free of heavy metals, free of microbials. Paul is our genius. He put together the blend and all of our individual offerings. We've got about 14 SKUs. We're currently just in capsules, but we're also an extract that's added to beer, chocolate, kombucha, all here in the state of Georgia.

And we're looking to grow the business next year. ⁓ We're gonna go into gummies. We're gonna do some clinical trials. And we're gonna also do ⁓ hopefully USP certification, which would mean that athletes from UGA, all the NCAA and Olympic sports could take this product knowing that it's safe to consume. Paul and I are in the Kennesaw State.

⁓ Georgia economic developed small business incubator program. Hatchbridge about to wrap up and one of the greatest things that they've taught us I was gonna let Paul kind of go through this is how to identify the pains and the problems of our clients.

Speaker 3 (03:43)
Yeah, HatchBridge.

Yeah, I mean, that's huge part of the problem solving of business. Like the whole point of a business is to be solving a problem for a consumer, for a target audience, a target market. And, you know, either you are alleviating some sort of pain point that they have, you're doing something better than somebody else is doing it, and you're able to provide it at a better cost.

or you're just flat out able to provide a service that no one's ever really provided before. And so where we kind of sit is we are not reinventing the wheel here. People have been growing mushrooms in Asia for over like 2000 years. Shiitake's were the first mushrooms that people cultivated. They realized if I take a log that is not colonized and I stick it next to a log that is colonized, that next season that log is going to end up growing mushrooms. Right? So, know, China produces 90 % of the world's

and where we currently sit Americans are, you know, some of the most under educated people about the fungi kingdom. And that's kind of the whole reason why the festival and why the nonprofit that we just got.

Official status for the Global Mushroom Initiative, is ⁓ kind of runs the festival. The festival is a product of the nonprofit and it's kind of our how we reach into the community and help educate people and teach people more just about the fungi kingdom. in all, if you ask someone about mushrooms.

You know, like name some mushrooms that you know. The only thing that most people are gonna say is button mushrooms and psychedelics. And, you know, that's kind of silly because if you ask someone, name how many plants you can think of.

They'd be like carrots and apples and peaches and pineapples, like a grass and an oak tree and a pine tree. you know what I mean? Like they'd be there's so and there's just that there's that much diversity everywhere with mushrooms. There's an estimated scientists estimate that there's roughly three million species of mushrooms on Earth. I'd say 99 percent of them we have not identified.

And what's really cool is I was just talking to a guy at CIRMAX, which is the Southeastern American Chemical Association's conference, and he's doing studies on fungi in the ocean.

And he there's there's a whole thing of biodiversity of fungi in the ocean that most people people think about mushrooms on land. There's like even more that's unexplored at all the different depths of the ocean. The fungi. And he was saying that he had they had sent a rover down almost a mile beneath the surface and had pulled up a piece of sponge that they were able to extract a cordyceps out of. Like this cordyceps was living in this sponge.

a mile beneath the ocean. And cordyceps are typically entomopathogenic fungi, which means they eat bugs. So how this bug-eating mushroom landed up in the ocean in a sponge and is living out its life cycle there is wild to think about. And then on top of that, he was actually able to fruit this mushroom and produce little itty bitty fruiting bodies.

⁓ up here on the surface, which is kind of wild in this particular mushroom produces an array of mycotoxins, the things that are toxic to other fungi, right? Particularly towards Candida aureus, which is like becoming a huge problem worldwide, which is a type of yeast that is infecting people and causing deaths worldwide. you know, there's a lot of the solutions that humans have to our problems already exist.

And it's just a matter of us just finding them and discovering them. ⁓

Speaker 2 (07:42)
Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it was I was telling you before so I think there's some, you know, probably misnomers just about mushrooms and like so I was a kid, my dad was from the Kentucky mountains and then they were from the Carpathian mountains. So they're passed down. They would, you know, go mushroom hunting. Oh, yeah. You know, in the mountains to find him and we like growing up, they'd saute the mushrooms with onions in it. And I remember him like trying to point out to me, I'm colorblind. Like, yeah, it was certain things.

Speaker 3 (08:12)
That must be hard.

Speaker 2 (08:13)
He was

like, you know, you can't eat this one, you know, don't and I'll be like, well, they look like, you know, similar than he was like, here's the deal. We're not letting you pick the mushrooms. Like so, but as a kid, I always like we always ate natural shrimps, right? You know, we would go and it was like a fun thing to do when we were little. And then I saw you think of that side of it. And then I think it's also because you hear about

Maybe people are just have been told, you know, there's so many poisonous mushrooms, right? There's so many there's so many edible and like you don't maybe like they're just Fearful that shit. Yeah, what if I eat a poisonous mushroom, right? Yeah, and then in college, you know, we we got the mushrooms that were under the cow shed. Yeah, and then I'd water Yeah, and that was interesting

Speaker 3 (08:59)
Yeah,

it is a good time. And speaking of the Carpathian Mountain Range, I do import truffles from Romania. so the Carpathian Mountain Range is where a lot of truffles, porcinis, chanterelles, morels, like a lot of really good choice edibles come from that region of the world. So yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:14)
It's a homeland for my dad's family. Carpathian

Reasons. God bless the Carpathian Reasons. People about a home.

Speaker 3 (09:22)
Yeah, that's awesome, man. Yeah, it's a beautiful it's a beautiful mountain range and one day I can't wait to go and explore and hopefully get to pick some.

Speaker 2 (09:27)
If you go out,

I might want to go out. My oldest son's been there. I've never been there, but I'd like to.

Speaker 3 (09:33)
It's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (09:34)
Ben,

I need to go.

Speaker 2 (09:36)
Yeah. So so tell me just like why someone's gonna take encapsulate right? it's everyday person. Yeah, you know, I'm an everyday person. I'm just looking for like what what are the kind of benefits for me just to say I'm I don't take many supplements. But like what what's this gonna do? What's it gonna make me feel like? What what are some of the benefits I could you know, expect from it? Just just curious like

Speaker 3 (10:01)
I'll

let Dave speak on this, we made this product for a very specific person to try and help them ⁓ through their cancer journey because there's a ton of science, not here in the United States, but in Asia that shows that taking functional mushrooms, shiitake, lion's mane, rishi, cordyceps, turkey tail, and these types of mushrooms in conjunction with chemotherapy and with radiation and even with fasting protocols can dramatically

improve your chance of survival by 50 % or more. Wow. And so that was where this whole thing kind of started from was taking a lot of that foundational knowledge. mean, Paul Stamets did a whole tech talk on turkey tail with his with his mom who had stage four breast cancer and he was giving her seven grams of turkey tail a day and she ended up going into remission. So I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of knowledge that already exists. ⁓ And you know, we had built and designed this product for that specific purpose.

But then we started taking it ourselves and immediately started noticing these huge changes. And I'll let Dave talk more about that.

Speaker 1 (11:06)
We started noticing immediate energy. So when you take this product about 60 % of men and women feel a serotonin reuptake. So that's, that's the thinning out of your blood but giving you energy and oxygen and minerals all into your bloodstream immediately. So you feel incredible. You want to go walk the dog or a lot of people say it's my get up and go capsules. And what's going on? Like I just said, just thinning out the blood.

naturally providing energy, you're also releasing the inflammation in your gut to your brain. So that highway is a clean highway. So you have sustained levels of energy throughout the day, and you sleep better. Your inflammation goes way down. So if you're trying to heal from say cancer, this is an agent that is going to speed up your immune system's ability to heal itself. So when you take this as a daily supplement, anything else that you take in conjunction,

This is a metabolic catalyst for so it's going to speed up and make more bioavailable vitamin B vitamin D ⁓ Niacin magnesium B12 you can go on and on vitamin C So if you have that already existing in your liver and kidneys, which we do but our bloods too thick to move it this alleviates the pressure of the blood and over time you feel better

daily and when you look at your blood and your results for your cholesterol, you see regular levels of blood pressure and cholesterol. And that's, those are two measurements that everybody, know. So yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:39)
That's all.

anybody can track.

So how hard was it for you to get the product to market like to get this?

Speaker 3 (12:50)
It's

a supplement.

Yeah, the FDA doesn't really regulate something. And that's why we do third party testing on our product to ensure that it's safe to consume our all of our products are grass certified by the ⁓ FDA. So they're generally recognized as safe. That's what grass stands for. It means that enough people have taken it and people don't get sick from taking this thing. And so they can say that it's okay for you to take it with a relative amount of safety, right, right, as opposed to a brand new supplement that no one's ever taken. No one's ever seen.

something out of the Amazon or something. You know what mean? It's like, how much do you take? Is it even safe to take? Like, who should be taking it? So there's already a lot of foundation for this style of product to exist in America. And it was very shortly after we started our business that a lot of bigger companies ended up, you know, kind of getting ahead and being able to cast a really large net and to just kind of get people into.

taking a mushroom supplement like Paul Stamets has a product. There's real mushrooms, there's own mushrooms. But a lot of those products are made from myceliated grain. And so people are like, what does that even mean? And so when you grow mushrooms, mushrooms don't necessarily have seeds, right? They produce spores. Spores is how they reproduce sexually. And those are the city of my seeds for ascomycetes, which ascomycetes reproduce asexually. Then even some the city of my seeds like agaricus can also reproduce kind of

asexually and do some weird things. But for the most part, that's how most mushrooms kind of do their thing, at least the ones that you see. ⁓ And from there, yeah, it's... ⁓ When you grow the mycelia, after you germinate the spores, you grow them on grain. And so that's kind of the normal process. And the grain is usually a starting point, but for a lot of these companies, that's the end that they're done.

Right, you know, and so when you grow it on the grain, like you can still see the individual kernels of the grain. It's it's it doesn't get completely digested. There's enough science that shows that you're not breaking down 100 % of the chitin or the cellulose and the lignin and hemicellulose. You're not getting rid of all the proteins and carbohydrates like you're still getting mostly just grain. If you want a pure myceliated product, then you need to do what they're doing in Asia, which is they're growing.

you know, all of these cultures and liquid fermenters, right? Because in a liquid substrate, you can literally filter out the solids, the solid is just going to be your mycelium. And so that's how you get a pure myceliated product. Otherwise, with a lot of these fermented grain products, while they do work, that's where we started, we started with a fermented grain product. And what they were doing is they were growing all of these mushrooms on rice, they were then trying to fruit them. So they were forming either full fully formed fruiting bodies or they were

forming Primordia, which is like little baby fruiting bodies before they reach full maturity. And then at that point, they were drying it and pulverizing it into a powder. And then we were kind of like blending it and mixing it. And while that works, like we gave that in an offering of 10 grams in a scoop, like we gave a scoop for the same price that someone like Paul Stamets is offering a one gram serving in two capsules. And it's and it's not that that style of product doesn't work. It's just you need a

of it in order to get enough of the mycobiomass in order for it to do something. Otherwise, you could just go to your cabinet and take a scoop of rice and blend it in a blender and just like add it to a drink and drink it and get pretty much about the same benefits.

Speaker 1 (16:27)
Really

what we spend a lot of time doing, Brad, is educating Americans on milligrams and grams. That's what we do. So when I say to somebody, well, they'll tell me, they'll say, so is this like rice coffee? I'll say not at all. Yeah. Why? I go, well, rice coffee is made from mycelium. Does it sometimes give you an upset stomach? Well, sometimes every now and then.

I can't tell if it's from the mushrooms though. And I'm like, okay, that's because it's coming from the base of the mushroom. Right. And we already know when we had thousands of people taking this product, one in three was complaining about upset tummy.

Speaker 3 (17:11)
Which it's because of the chitin. So the chitin is what makes up the cell wall structure of the mushrooms and it's the same ⁓ biomaterial that makes up the exoskeletons of bugs, land bugs and sea bugs like shrimp, lobster, pretty much every bug on the surface of Earth is their exoskeleton is made out of chitin. And so that because of that, know, some people who've had more exposure to that

are less sensitive to it. People who've eaten mushrooms their whole lives or their families, you know, came from a region of the world where they were been eating mushrooms for thousands of years over and over again. It's not a problem. But for people who've who's generating, you know, generationally have not been exposed much to mushrooms and haven't consumed it. It's kind of a brand new product and your body needs to figure out what the heck to do with

Speaker 2 (17:59)
Worst case is you're getting kind of upset in your stomach.

Speaker 1 (18:03)
So we

really give the most potent offering when you look at this bottle ⁓ it says 8,000 milligrams so we do sell it in 1,000 milligram offerings a cheaper offering but the stacking going on here with the six mushrooms 2,000 milligrams of lion's mane 2,000 milligrams of shiitake and then a thousand of chaga reishi turkey tail these quarter steps these mushrooms all help your body do an amazing job of functioning at a high level so whether you have

short term memory or long term memory, taking this thing can increase your chances of remembering your wife's friend's name.

Speaker 3 (18:44)
I

do that on purpose.

Speaker 2 (18:46)
I do that on purpose sometimes.

Speaker 1 (18:48)
Yeah, and then during, you know, pandemic, we started doing panic steps. So a lot of people didn't get the shot and they would double down. They take four of these a day because they were so afraid of getting sick. And it really does keep you alert and also just happy, happy person. You'll notice when you stop taking this product that you need to get back on it because you're driving.

Speaker 2 (19:11)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:11)
Yeah, I'd

say most people can usually feel something within like 20 to 30 minutes because it's an extract So like what is an extract so you take the mushroom fruiting bodies you grind it into a powder you then and for For this product we do will extract it with water and ethanol because not everything is soluble in water Yeah, the beta-glucans the immune stimulants are soluble in water, but all of the other active ingredients are not soluble in water They're only soluble in like ethanol and so you take all of those liquid fractions and then you evaporate

all the liquid out of it. And what you're left with is an ultra fine powder that is a that is a concentrate of that mushroom. It doesn't have the chitin, it doesn't have the protein, the starches, the carbohydrates, doesn't have any of the nutritional

benefits of eating the mushroom, it just has all of the medicinal benefits of eating that mushroom. And so when people are like, is this like rice? It's like, no, because this is we're not trying to make your coffee taste bad. We're actually trying to give you a medicinal dose of mushrooms. So it's like, hey, guys, I'll you right now. Drinking mushroom coffee, it tastes like crap. You're ruining your coffee. Like take a mushroom supplement.

Speaker 2 (20:11)
much.

Speaker 1 (20:19)
getting less than 1000 milligrams. So what's that doing? Yeah, what do we talk

Speaker 3 (20:23)
Yeah,

and for most of these, most of these companies are only giving 1000 to 2000 milligrams, if you're lucky, they're using ground up mushrooms, because that's a little bit more concentrated than just like a mycelia product that actually has no fruiting bodies in it. It's just mycelia and grain. So I mean, you go and grind up some rice and throw it in your coffee and drink that too.

Speaker 1 (20:45)
Vigorously stirred.

You know what? We started.

to transaction to transition into this next portion, we started the Atlanta mushroom festival, because one in three is mycophobic. So fearful of mushrooms. So we're up against 30 % of America, let alone the southeast. Thank God we live in Atlanta, a diverse haven. And we can operate and educate. We used to be quarterly now we're semi annual. So the next festival is coming up November 22. We're expecting five to 10,000 people.

We're sponsored by Georgia Grown and Lee and White, Wild Heaven, ASW Distillery, and Monday Night Garage. And everybody is doing mushroom-themed cocktails, beers, food. We have a food contest, and this year we've added a whole costume contest. It's really designed for people to bring their friends, their parents, their grandparents.

Speaker 2 (21:44)
her

Speaker 3 (21:44)
their kids, their friends.

Speaker 2 (21:45)
dog. mean, it'll be like, in like, obviously in the beverage side, right? Mix in the better me whatever alcohol beer, whatever, maybe, whatever energy drink, whatever me. Is there a lot of that kind of currently going on or

Speaker 3 (22:00)
Yeah, there's like Odyssey energy drink, is a mushroom forward energy drink.

Speaker 1 (22:06)
They are using extracts.

Speaker 3 (22:08)
Very

large, they use like a gram or two grams of extract of Lion's Mane extract and Rishi extract in their products. So that's, you know, that's that is I would say like a good quality starting point. Is it something that is becoming radically popular? It's not quite there yet. Like, once again, most people you ask them how many mushrooms can you name and they can they can get out to you. They're doing pretty good. Why do people have none?

Speaker 2 (22:32)
That's all that's that's like what I just now I'm not that I was paying attention, you know to that to the deep of it, but I mean the reality I'm gonna be like a mushroom gooner now, but the reality the reality of it is like that one that like that's stuck in my head when you start saying

Speaker 3 (22:48)
And it

works. ⁓

Speaker 1 (22:50)
Find that at our

festival. We will have a large number of mushroom growers all from the southeast, mostly Georgia, but other parts of the states around us and they will be selling lion's mane. And one of the greatest things you can do when you buy a pound of lion's mane is you cut it up into little slices like a steak, grab some butter, grab your spices, put some onions on, saute it.

And it turns into, well, I use my spices because, you know, I'm a slap your mama Tony Tatera's. It turns the crab for me.

Speaker 2 (23:21)
Yeah, But yeah,

no, I'm excited. mean, get out. mean, so ⁓ that where is that going to specifically be so that we can tell everybody?

Speaker 1 (23:33)
10 White Street Southwest Atlanta, Georgia 30310 it's Leon White. ⁓ Just type in Wild Heaven or ASW exchange whiskey exchange or Monday night.

Speaker 2 (23:45)
it out there. But

I'm just curious like for people listening because we're get this out before. Yeah, the festival.

Speaker 1 (23:52)
the West End

and it's the best end.

Speaker 3 (23:54)
It's

West End is the best and easy to get to get to from my 20 you can get to it from 285. You're not dealing with Atlanta BS traffic like there's tons of parking. The community is rich. It is diverse. The area is chill there is the belt line right there.

Speaker 1 (24:13)
It's about 10 bucks all day.

Speaker 2 (24:15)
Yeah, my daughter lives right there, like off Crog Street.

Speaker 1 (24:19)
line over a full

forward. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great location. You've got a food court now and everybody's participating. So you'll have mushroom burgers. I mean, I'm not kidding when I say mushroom cocktails. Ryan at golf and social they do. Yeah. El Tesoro does mushroom tacos. I mean, it's a whole thing.

Speaker 3 (24:30)
Sandwiches. Without the sorrow.

Speaker 2 (24:40)
I think it's I mean, I think it's cool. mean, when we went like you said, yeah, the land of mushrooms. I was like, what we've got.

Speaker 1 (24:46)
Yeah, got

it. and stop this weekend. And then in two weeks we got Atlanta.

Speaker 2 (24:49)
of

us. I mean, you were talking shit. didn't know that. But it's like 10,000 people. There's been a lot of people. It's not like, yeah, yeah, a of people come

Speaker 3 (24:57)
I think last event we were probably somewhere around two to four, but you we're shooting for the stars here. And the thing is, is when we first started, we so we started this business in Capsule. And then, you know, we we decided the you know, we started it in in like twenty twenty one kind of around like June or so. And then we we kind of pulled the business together, got an LLC, did all the stuff that took about six months. And then it was that

following year in 2022, we like, okay, like, where are going to sell this product? Georgia Mushroom Festival was happening in March. And we decided, shoot, we'll go to Georgia Mushroom Festival. So we went there and did really well. And it kind of dawned on us. so this is if you have a product and you find the people who want to buy the product and you're selling it in front of them, the chances of you making money can be pretty high. And so we kind of figured like, okay, like we have a mushroom product.

We found the mushroom people. But how do we do this more than just once a year? ⁓ And that's where we kind of came up with the idea of like, let's run. Maybe we could do the Atlanta Mushroom Festival. Something else we also realized is like 80 % of the people that were there were all from Atlanta. So it's like, why are we traveling once a year to go to Cave Spring, Georgia, to go to a mushroom festival when 80 % of the people that are coming to this are literally from our backyard. We should be doing this here in Atlanta. And so the first event we did was

three months later, you know, ⁓ it was like we went in March and it was like, it's like in June, we decided, okay, we're doing it, you know. ⁓

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:40)
We got a dog.

Speaker 3 (26:41)
Yeah, let's do

it, man. We're about it. But it was... And so the idea for the festival was originally like, okay, like we want to help grow the mushroom space and create economic development for this space. And that's how it originally kind of came about. It's like, okay, how can we capitalize on this interest to make money and help other people make money? ⁓ Because it's kind of a tough space to break into. ⁓ And after our first event, know, Dave and I looked at each other and very quickly realized that...

that it's so much more than just ⁓ creating income. There's an entire community that is desperately needing a place, a hub, just to be and exist and to meet each other and to find friends and to learn more. ⁓ And that just, what didn't really exist.

And so we were doing this event quarterly. So every three months we were turning around and churning out another festival. And we were doing that at least for the first few years, because if you only have a once a year festival, it doesn't give people very, very low visibility.

Speaker 2 (27:42)
there's no way

really for them to go to to learn right it makes it

Speaker 3 (27:46)
And

so for every single time we threw the event in the beginning, we were getting a new audience every festival. Every festival we were pulling in 700 to 1,000 people that had never seen this event before. You know, maybe had a 10 to 15 % repeat market. And then it wasn't until year three where we were, instead of doing it four times a year, we did it three times a year over at Park Tavern, that was last year.

Speaker 1 (28:09)
change

locations to try and get a different demo.

Speaker 3 (28:12)
It was a different

vibe, different thing. We ended up moving back to the West End just because it was more conducive to what we were trying to do with the community and the community there was way more open to it. But even still, was last year that we realized that we were burning out a lot of our customer base because we had finally gotten to the point where it wasn't 15%, it was like 30 to 40 % all repeat.

And so, and they were like, well, we'll skip this one and go to the next one. It's only three months from now. And that's not the vibe you want people to be engaged and to want to show up. And Dave and I honestly were getting burnt out from like we would have a month off and then immediately have to go back into planning another event.

It was a lot. And we do not make any money. I just want like everybody out there to know like we are not run by BlackRock. We're not run by some like secret government operation like Paul and Dave are not some corporate billionaires like we make zero dollars doing this event. We have never made a single dime. The only thing I've taken from this event is a t-shirt. Or not even I don't even have like one of every t-shirt. I literally have just

Speaker 1 (29:18)
for.

Speaker 2 (29:23)
One. Yeah. You know, it's crazy because, know, we got into this salties live music while I was talking to you guys for that's where, you know, child jet black jet black roses was on and we started kind of sponsoring musicians. And then, you know, people were like telling us to put on events and like we tried an event and it was like, it just like bombed it. Right. It rained. There's friggin nobody there. And I was just like, man, this is like, this is tough. Tough. We were lucky.

Speaker 1 (29:46)
Because we had pandemic. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:48)
Well, we were lucky because Dave's friend was Eric Johnson of Wild Heaven and that's where we got our start and they were extremely generous. Shout out to Wild Heaven, y'all rock.

Speaker 1 (29:58)
During

pandemic, no one wanted to get together. We stopped being in the habit of meeting and that was not good. So this created a really cool opportunity for people to bring their kids. I brought a monkey, you know.

Speaker 3 (30:14)
I mean,

Speaker 1 (30:15)
Show up. It's a whole thing.

know Atlanta, we influence everything. We're as weird as Austin. Except we have more diversity. And I think that's what makes this festival unique.

Speaker 3 (30:26)
Yeah,

and speaking about that, you know, when you think about a mushroom festival and you go and just like Google the mushroom festivals that are here in America, most of them, let's be honest, it's a bunch of old white people. That's that's really what it is. It's like old white people by all I mean, like 45 to like 65. Like that's really the target demographic. And yeah, there's like a smattering of your 30 somethings in there. But outside of that, and you'll see like the occasional like token BPAC somebody hanging around.

⁓ But it's not like that because we're not because, you know, white people are pushing people out of these communities. It's just because like a lot of those other communities don't haven't been invited in have or have like.

people pulling them in. And so that's what I think is so unique about what we're doing in here in Atlanta is we literally have the most diverse Mushroom Festival in the world. That's great. You can go anywhere in the world and you will not find the diversity of patrons and vendors that we have here in Atlanta. mean, Telluride Mushroom Festival has been around for over 40 years. You can go ahead and Google pictures of their festival. It's a bunch of white people.

Very wealthy white people. But, you know, what we're doing is something different. And the reason why we, you know, we have structured this event in this very specific way to promote and to get everybody into mushrooms. Mushrooms is not ⁓ a ⁓ black, white, it's not racial, it's not ethnic, it's a human experience. Every human on earth

has can should have access to this knowledge and the right to be a part of these communities and feel comfortable being

Speaker 2 (32:11)
Well,

even the medicinal part we talked about I like to go back to that, you know, I mean, you know, my wife got into the holistic medicine stuff years ago, right? And I mean, we it's like taboo here because the you know, the big pharmaceutical companies, you know, whatever, ⁓ you know, it's just not taught, you know, just like you're talking about in the Orient and Asia and you know, the the medicinal benefits of it. And I think I think a lot of that is suppressed, right? It's suppressed, you know, you try to go out and, you know, and sell, you know, some kind of THC supplement.

I'm not a big THC guy or whatever, but the point of that there is some benefits to to that as well and like, you know, I think it gets you know, D are you guys kind of monitored as much ⁓ as some of these other, you know what I would say, ⁓ you know, the whole CBD world and the Delta nine number you like, can you advertise freely? No problem. Because there's nothing with that is there because I know you can't

Speaker 1 (33:03)
Lou

on six. He says this segment brought to you by encapsulate USA.

Speaker 2 (33:08)
Mushrooms.

Speaker 3 (33:10)
We're on Amazon. We're Amazon,

Speaker 2 (33:11)
Good job. Yeah, we know Bach. know Bach.

Speaker 1 (33:12)
We know, but...

Speaker 3 (33:16)
on Instagram, we got websites. It's all legal stuff.

Speaker 1 (33:18)
Don't get blocked to be. Facebook pushes

our information. We get kudos all the time saying your your content is a plus.

Speaker 2 (33:27)
Awesome. Yeah, because we are brands called salty MF. It doesn't mean making friends, even though we do make friends. And I mean, so we there are certain things we do that like don't get through where the message behind this is, hey, we're about into individuality, entrepreneurs, musicians, right? It's not a sign as hardcore like is everybody thinks it or it appears to be. And I'm just always curious because like, you know, certain areas, you know, you do get your message gets blocked. Yeah, even though it's a thing.

Speaker 1 (33:56)
Right now, mushrooms are a hot topic. It's predicted to be a trillion dollar business. When we show you what we've learned over the last four years running a festival and running a supplement, we've seen incremental gains on both sides.

Speaker 2 (34:01)
That's right.

Yeah,

well, I'm gonna I'm gonna use this. can wait encapsulate USA and I'll tell you I'm gonna I'm gonna run it. Yeah, as long as it's out. I'll tell do it. Tell everybody. I mean, if it's looking I mean, you guys

Speaker 1 (34:17)
Firstly in the morning.

Speaker 3 (34:22)
It

doesn't make you better looking, but at makes you feel better. At least if you feel better in your body, that's gotta mean something.

Speaker 1 (34:29)
But here's what you get.

Speaker 2 (34:36)
Yeah

Speaker 1 (34:36)
Here's what you can expect at the festival. We're going to have music from 1 to 12, 1 to 7 p.m. And then we will have speakers from 1230 to 7 p.m. So speakers, presenters, we'll have a chef talking about how to cook oyster mushrooms. We'll have guys that are growing mushrooms, especially at Kennesaw State with their technology that they've created. We'll have guys talking about psilocybin, medicinal mushrooms, foraging.

I mean, the list goes on. You can come and spend a whole day with us for free Atlanta. People are coming from outside of this state to come to this.

Speaker 2 (35:08)
Awesome.

I I heard I talked to I mean, they're they're expect from what I hear you guys are expecting me to double what you did last year. Yeah, which is you know, reality of it is it's it's, you know, just like we got hooked on this whole live music stuff, right? Is get back into the community, get back into go hear these people go see these people experience it right? mean, and that's the way you guys are doing is awesome. It's bringing people together. It's getting people you know, it's educating them. They're having fun. They're listening to music. They're eating. They're eating, know, whatever.

Speaker 1 (35:29)
Right.

Speaker 3 (35:46)
cocktail

having a beer. ⁓

Speaker 1 (35:49)
Like you're

saying everybody's getting involved is having fun. Yeah. And that's when you look at this event, you're like, wait, everybody that played music that spoke, that presented, they all said how much fun they had.

Speaker 2 (36:02)
Yeah,

that's awesome, dude. I love what you guys are doing. And mean, when David, you know, David said that we meet out our Chad David, sorry. ⁓ When he when he reached out and absolutely, man, you know, I'd love to have you guys on and it's cool what you're doing. And I'm a big I'm a big believer in other kind of traditional things that have been, you know, buried for whatever reason, or the knowledge hasn't been transferred, or just the our dietary palette, which is shitty here in state. Let's be honest, right? I mean, I think it's all Yeah,

Speaker 3 (36:31)
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (36:32)
you

Speaker 1 (36:32)
Having a supplement

and a festival and a community of people to help you in your journey, which is your wellness journey, your life journey, that's what it's all about. And I think since pandemic, we've learned how to encourage people to come together around health and wellness.

Speaker 2 (36:49)
Yeah, it's health and wellness.

It's great. And I know you're a big health advocate, just period. All the thing you do. I see you kind of in your your ⁓ whatever you call it your what's the air thing you're breathing. Yeah, hyperbaric. was trying to hyperbaric. Yeah, cryogenic.

Speaker 1 (37:00)
the hype and back.

That

would make you claustrophobic.

Speaker 2 (37:08)
Yeah, that's awesome. But I love watching your videos and stuff and how you deal with your health and you know what, why did you go down? Like, why was this? I'm just curious because you were in music. Yeah, you're an athlete. Like, I just want to like, what, why did you

Speaker 1 (37:18)
Okay.

you. Yeah,

mean, good reason I got pulled into this 6018 years ago, I lost my dad to prostate cancer. You're not supposed to die of that. Yeah. Paul didn't get to meet my dad, but he was quite an amazing man. And he was a minister. was a teacher. He's also a coach, a coach rugby at UGA. Great player in his day. But one of the things he did was he brought people together. And I took that

bringing people together around music and film and entertainment and live events. And I decided that in a pandemic situation, we need to help people heal together. So, you know, I sell a mushroom supplement, I do my job of staying healthy and sharing that with people. But now it's my job to be a little more vocal about it and show people what real health looks like and how to live it. And I think that's just, you know, when you're doing something new that works.

Speaker 2 (37:59)
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (38:18)
takes a little bit of repetition. at some point we will change culture. And when we change culture, it'll be a beautiful thing when people look at us and say, thanks for doing what you did because it's changed my life, it saved my dad's life, and my sister's doing great too.

Speaker 2 (38:34)
That's awesome. That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (38:36)
Well, that and Dave had a bunch

of TV eyes from playing sports. And so that's another huge part to the health pushes. I know you've had to overcome a lot, man.

Speaker 1 (38:47)
Yeah,

I've had to overcome a lot from car accidents over 20 car accidents. That's how I got into hyperbaric was healing through, you know, the compressed oxygen therapy. And then once I got through that, I got into juicing, I didn't want to die from eating all these, you know, crazy foods that we've got pesticides and GMOs sprayed on. So I learned how to clean my food and my produce. And then from there, the rest is just following suit on how to be a healthy individual and how to influence others. I ran a health night for like,

18 years with a chiropractor from Life University. And every Sunday people would come, give Bob 20, and he would work out their myofascia. He would release it. And you know, he moved Paul's stomach at one point. Paul grew another inch and a half. It was like...

Speaker 2 (39:30)
needed.

Speaker 3 (39:34)
grown an

inch and a half, but he did move my stomach and it did help me breathe better. And that was weird. That was a weird cool thing.

Speaker 1 (39:38)
Yeah.

Holistic, know, healing is what really changed my life. It wasn't a pill. And in this case, this actually is a pill. We never thought we could put something like this together. And when we go into gummies and all the other things, it's going to be a whole series of supplements that help people heal on their regular.

Speaker 2 (40:05)
Yeah, it's it's great. So we we we got involved with a guy. ⁓ He has kind of a cosmetic ⁓ brand ⁓ called Ferris skin. And he uses ⁓ lard basically. Yeah. And you know, he was going in and I don't I don't know all the you know, chemistry size or whatever. But I guess pigs are from as far as our skin. It's one of the closest things. And and his products are really like really good. It's just like people like sometimes can't get over that. it's large, you know, it's large based.

Yeah. But reality of it, what he was, he was a pig farmer and ⁓ Charles good man may feel good guy, honest guy, smart guy. ⁓ He, he, he got sunburned really bad, you know, and he had a jar of lard sitting on his counter and he was like, dude, I was so sunburned. Like I didn't know what to do. I started to sort of lathered my whole damn body in the shit, you know, like, cause he wasn't thinking about that. He goes, know, the next day, my sunburn was gone. It was whatever.

kind of he evolved into exactly he kind of he wasn't a skincare guy, but he kind of evolved into it. know, and it's just it's really cool to see people how they come about that we had we had a ⁓ Baja salt company on and they ⁓ they were pulling salt from you know, some they had some place near the ocean that they pulled from. And this guy started just to fertilize the grass right to get the minerals back in the soil and he started doing that and then the farmer said, you know, hey, my cattle are

Speaker 1 (41:11)
We have.

Speaker 2 (41:35)
seem to be more healthy, whatever, can I put this in their water? Can you make me a salt lick? Right? He's like, yeah, you know, he did that. And then they saw the reproductive go up in all the animals, right? They were healthier and whatever. And then he kind of, he wasn't, you know, any, any kind of chemistry and he's like, oh, you know, shit, there's something to this. And then they start getting into the minerals. And now they evolved in where you can put that saline in your water. And it's, and I use it. It's amazing. don't, you

you don't get dehydrated. It's got all the minerals that you weren't. And it's just cool, like how you guys evolved into this. And I wanted to ask Paul, like, did you think you'd be doing like, did you? Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:17)
I

kind of have like a 10-year plan and having a supplement company was on that list. Yeah, that's it happened a lot sooner than I thought it would ⁓ This is something I've been I'm like all mushrooms all the time. So between Another reason Dave got in the mushrooms because I looked at him was like hey Dave this time you can start doing this mushroom thing with me and

Speaker 2 (42:24)
But.

Speaker 1 (42:30)
Kids.

I was a little dabbler. would not really go into that world. I was like everybody that's listening right now. I was like, okay, I don't know if that's for me. I grew up with mushrooms.

Speaker 3 (42:53)
And I mean, I my first experience with psychedelics in college and up to that point, mushrooms were something that I had no interest in. I'd never tried it, never didn't really eat them, had no real any connection to them. It was it was just not a conversation. So it'd be like mushrooms. I'd be one of those people. It's like, I've heard of psychedelics and I've had button mushrooms before. I was one of those people, you know, and now I've come to a point where I'm kind of like an expert in this in in this field of study, you because I have

background in chemistry. So I'm doing a lot of research into the chemistry, fungal chemistry, which is incredibly fascinating. And there's so many things that it can do. But the long, the long and short of it is, is that, you know, while I don't necessarily think that the information is being suppressed, I think that people are just there, there is some fear mongering that's going on in our medical system of like, you have to only trust the doctor and the doctor is only allowed to give recommendations that the FDA have approved.

So the doctor, even if they're like, ⁓ you you should try taking some turmeric and some piperine for your inflammation, or maybe try Lion's Mane, you know, to help clear up some of the brain fog you have, or by the way, like maybe taking some rishi and shiitake might help lower your cholesterol. They can't recommend that because the FDA only gives...

you know, a doctor can only give a recommendation based on what the FDA has approved. And the FDA does not regulate supplements and a food product is technically a supplement. And so that's where a lot of my focus for, you know, a very long time ever since I was in college and I started really studying this is that food is medicine and that it's the medicine that you take daily.

often multiple times a day, right? You're feeding yourself morning, afternoon and evening, right? And so, each time you eat, you have an opportunity to put medicine into your body that is either creating wellness or is making you sick. And so, outside of that, that's what supplements are for. They're there to supplement, literally, what you're not getting in your diet. So, if you're not eating 20 or...

10 bananas a day to get the total amount of potassium that people recommend, then you can take a potassium supplement to help supplement what you may not be getting from your diet. That's kind of the whole philosophy is that if you are treating food like medicine, and what you're not getting out of your food, you're taking as a supplement, then you're doing preventative care. So, by doing that preventative care,

You shouldn't need to have to go to a doctor. The doctor's there for your checkups and your blood work to make sure that like, you know, you're on track and that there's nothing outrageously wrong. But the pharmaceutical industry, right? Remember, I have a background in chemistry. Absolutely. I've been to Puerto Rico. I've seen Pfizer, Merck, Elie, Lilly, Medtronics factories. I've been in multi-billion dollar facilities and seen how they run. And while it's absolutely amazing that we as humans have been able to build these monolithic machines that are able to churn out

you know, thousands of kilos of OxyContin and Percocet and amphetamines at any given point in time, you can just flip a switch, put in the reagents and out pops like, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these drugs. I mean, these types of things are buttons. Chemistry is about buttons. And, you know, if you if you have an infection,

⁓ you don't want to go and be like, herbal tonic can I take? You after it's like, you you have your thumb about to fall off, right? It's like, okay, let me go to the doctor and get a freaking antibiotic, solve this problem. But if you but if you're taking care of yourself, when you initially get the cut, you can go and...

puts a salve or something on it to reduce the chances of it getting infected before you go to the point where it's like, okay, this infection is out of control and I have to see a doctor. You could be eating foods that are helping reduce and lower your cholesterol before you get to the point where your doctor's like, hey, you're pre-diabetic, your heart's about to explode from your blood pressure and you're about to go and clog your heart because your cholesterol is through the fricking roof.

Right? And so that's where if you're treating food as medicine and what you're not getting out of your food, you're supplementing with supplements in your diet and you're taking them daily, ⁓ then you're able to go and create a ⁓ sense of wellness that's actually ⁓ sustainable. You know, you're not you're not just waiting until you're sick and then going to the doctor and the doctor treating your symptoms and sending you home and then you feel a little bit better and then you end up getting sick again because they didn't solve the root problem. Right? Like you're actually creating a conscious

Speaker 2 (47:28)
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (47:31)
network within your brain, your body that that brain to body connection where you're like, okay, I have a craving for apples, probably because I might need some malic acid, you know,

Speaker 2 (47:41)
Yeah. It's

It's good. So I mean, even what you say is just good advice. I mean, it's, ⁓ you know, people, you know, I want someone specifically that I know that's been on the trying to get healthier and whatever. Just like, look, you got it. You got to, you got to all diet and exercise. You know, just, just try that, you know, just, just stick with it a couple more. They're like, Holy shit. I wish I would have done this 10 years ago. It's just a discipline to do it or pay attention to what you're doing in your body.

Speaker 3 (48:00)
That's 90 % of it.

And exercise, you only got to do like an hour a day. You can literally just take a 15-minute walk and watch. If you do a 15-minute walk every single day, can guarantee you'll lose probably 10 or 15 pounds just by doing that.

Speaker 2 (48:22)
Can you

guys tell me about, ⁓ like, I know we've had some people on the show, not in the same industry, but they were they were talking about micro dosing and around mushrooms. I mean, you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I, I hear that a lot, like

really swearing by it. were saying like, you know, so I'm just kind of interested in that, like, you know, give me kind of your thoughts on microdice.

Speaker 1 (48:50)
I started

microdosing, I didn't really want to. I was so afraid. I did not want to lose control or just be out of my mind. And everybody thinks, oh, take this, going to turn you into something crazy.

Speaker 3 (49:09)
Mungering is a real thing in our country. It's how we yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:12)
looks at me and goes, look, Dave, Johns Hopkins describes a trip at 2000 milligrams. So with those guidelines, if you just want a microdose and just be focused and use this as ADHD replacement or therapy for you to kind of heal through some of the stuff that's traumatic to you, which is 20 concussions, you know, a lot of trauma there. So daily, I had him put together a pill for me.

of 125 milligrams and I just took it for like 30 days. I painted my house, I redecorated the place. Each day by day, I got better. I spoke to myself in different accents because I can imitate anything. I've grown up in multiple countries. And I had like these little conversations myself trying to figure out what the problems were. I did this little mantra that Deepak Chopra gave me which was really cool. It was...

Ask yourself the questions. The power of intention is real. What do you want? Ask yourself over and over. What do I want? So I do this mantra while I'm doing things, tangible, know, hand-eye coordination stuff. And in about 30, 40 days, I looked at Paul, I was like, I think I'm a different person. He's like, oh, you are. You're way more empathetic. You're way more in touch with me and everybody else. This is what you do.

Speaker 2 (50:36)
Indeed.

Speaker 3 (50:37)
started with lucky

dips. He would just take the dust from the bag. He would take the mushrooms, it was just like the dust sitting at the bottom of the bag and he would just like pour it into like a little container and was like lick his finger. And that's kind of like where the dosing, like figuring out what a micro dose even was. Because if you you listen to someone like Paul Stamets and him talk about micro dosing, he's like a micro dose is a half a gram. And it's like that's to me not a micro dose, like to me. And this is where

I think you bring up a really valid point of like, is a microdose, right? Because, okay, so from my scientific perspective, a microdose, I define as the lowest dose where you can achieve effects that are noticeable, but those effects do not hinder your ability to function in any way or form or fashion. So it is the lowest dose you can take.

where you notice maybe you have a little bit more empathy or you have a little bit more energy or maybe you're a little bit more creative, but you can still drive your car, talk to your mom, go to work, you know? You're not gonna go to work on a half a gram of mushrooms. You're gonna be ⁓ like...

Speaker 1 (51:49)
No

way and people that do like

Speaker 3 (51:55)
Yeah, pretty much in 500 milligrams, I mean, a half a gram is is I would consider that a low dose. Yeah, right. So you have a micro dose, you have low dose, and then you have like a flood dose. And then you have like, her dose, I would say two grams is like a flood dose because under at a flood dose, you are

Speaker 2 (52:09)
Rowick.

Speaker 3 (52:15)
fully under the influence, are incapable of operating heavy equipment. You might not even be very verbal. I tend to go kind of non-verbal at that point. And then obviously at heroic doses, it's like pretty much anything about... Turn the lights off. You're already... You're probably like a wounded animal laying on the floor, just like, what's going on? Did I make this decision for a good reason? But yeah, that's what's great about microdosing is because if you do microdosing right, you should not...

It should not inhibit anything about your life. You should be able to do all the things you want to do, but you'll notice that it's just a little bit different. ⁓

Speaker 2 (52:56)
just makes

good descriptions.

Speaker 1 (52:57)
me more

focused because I'm taking the stacking agent. So people say what's stacking? I just put out a video on it. When you take a functional mushroom supplement like this 8000 milligrams, it's loaded with what Paul said polysaccharides and beta glucans. minerals help aid other minerals. So like I said, vitamin C, vitamin B, but also psilocybin. So this is a stacking component to your micro dose. You take this in the morning, you have

Breakfast later, you have 200 calories, pull out your food, eat some, then you have a little microdose. Whatever it is that you wanna be intentional about is what you're gonna do. So for people that say, got a long Zoom call, I need to get on a microdose this week, I need to do that because it's like a three hour call.

I'm driving from Florida to Tennessee. Okay. Take two one every three. Focus. What is your intention? My intention is to get work done.

Speaker 2 (53:54)
I was curious

Yeah, we were, cause we were in Colorado a couple of years ago and you know, where the guy was with, had these, he's like, Oh, you ever, want, you ever had a micro dose from mushroom? Is it like a little, like, I don't know, man. The only mushrooms I ate came from under, know, old Bessie out there and sage for a Georgia. So I, and that didn't turn out too well. So, uh, I don't think I want to do it. You know, it's that fear. You don't know.

Speaker 1 (54:24)
think what Paul said, anything under 500 milligrams, preferably 300 is a.

Speaker 3 (54:30)
I mean, I would

say the average microdose is 125 to 250. So you're talking a quarter of a gram or an eighth of a gram. I would say that is a microdose. Now there are there are people who have mutations in their 5-HTAT receptors, which is the active site for where psilocybin and psilocin. Well, psilocin is going because psilocybin is the pro drug. It's not actually active. It dephosphorylates in your stomach. And there's other enzymes that help with that dephosphorylation process. I can get really deep in the woods. But yeah.

It's all good, we're not pying up for that yet. ⁓

Speaker 2 (55:05)
Bring out the two grams out right now. That's all.

Speaker 3 (55:10)
Yeah, but the, the, so the, whole, the whole, the whole thing though is that, you know, I'd say one out of 10 people are ultra sensitive where 125 milligrams may be probably too much, you know, but I, but that's kind of rare. And I'd say eight out of 10 people are normal where 125 to 250 milligrams, a quarter of a gram to an eighth of a gram is more than enough. And then you have, you know, this one out of 10 people that have these natural tolerances. And I think that those natural tolerances stem from.

these mutations in those receptors that are blocking the activity of the active ingredient. And so you just have to end up taking a lot more. So for people who have those intolerances, a half a gram is a microdose. Because for them to feel anything, two grams would not be a flood dose. They would have to take four plus grams to have a flood dose. You're on SSRI. That's it. The lame thing. have something that...

Speaker 2 (56:06)
Absolutely. Yeah, we, the nine dot guys in, had the five milligram and then 10 milligram and I won't call someone out here, but he goes, I'm going to drink a 10 milligram. And the guy goes, no, don't do that. And he goes, oh, smoke weed all the time, whatever. He's like, I'm dead.

Speaker 3 (56:24)
No, actually it's because the way that you digest it, it, core, when you, when you combine THC, ⁓ and you, and you eat it, activated THC, it like coordinates with your fat molecules in your body and it breaks down different and just, it's, it's completely different mechanism of action than when you smoke it. So when you smoke it, you're bypassing first pass. First pass is when it gets into your stomach, it gets absorbing to your intestinal lining and then goes to your liver.

And then your liver crunches and eats a whole bunch of it. Right. And then it circulates into your bloodstream. So that's like the whole first pass process. So when you smoke something, you're bypassing digestion and you're going straight to the bloodstream. ⁓ And so because of that, it's much more predictable. when you eat something, ⁓ your liver is going to go and do chemistry. And what happens with that chemistry isn't always predictable. And when it comes to edibles, people have

Speaker 2 (57:10)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:22)
very wide ranges of tolerance and intolerance. So my wife can eat a thousand milligrams of pure THC and just be like, having a great time. And if I eat more than 20 milligrams, I am that wounded animal along the fly. I you, I told you 16 years, being nauseous and puking. I saw the devil.

Speaker 2 (57:38)
and

like you know good night

Speaker 1 (57:42)
But I leave that for good.

Speaker 3 (57:45)
Yeah, there's,

it's, but with edibles, edibles, it's because of the mechanism of delivery, there's a very wide range of like how it affects people. But with mushrooms, it's the active side is the same place. It's your brain. And granted like psilocybin being a 5-HTAT receptor, agonist and being 5-HTAT receptors are all over your, from your gut to your brain to your heart, your kidneys and your liver, right? There's 5-HTAT receptors all over the place. And so while they're...

There is activation at all of those sites, which can lead to the side effects for some people like, I've got indigestion or I've got a stomach or all of these other things. But the most part, everybody's brain is about the same size. weighs, everyone's brain weighs about the same amount. And that's why that when you take mushrooms, it has this very specific effect and people have been consuming mushrooms. So first pass is how it gets activated. so there's some consistency with how you take it.

why it works, how it works and where it goes. Cause I've seen people, seen, I've met women who were like a hundred pounds soaking wet, you know, maybe like 90 pounds and they could eat seven grams of mushrooms. And you're like, how the heck can she do that? You have this guy who's 300 pounds can barely eat. Right. And because the active site isn't the body, it's the brain, you know, so there's genobloid systems everywhere. The active sites, the whole body, with mushrooms, it's really just your brain. That's what's going.

Speaker 2 (59:00)
⁓ yeah.

All right guys, well, you've heard it. We've been educated on mushrooms and Encapsulate USA. Get out there and try that supplement. And then also you're going to want to definitely hit the Atlanta Mushroom Festival on November 22nd. So David, Paul, we've just enjoyed having you guys. You guys are awesome. I love the entrepreneurial side of it. And it called the Kennesaw State too for them having that. mean, Kennesaw State was, truthfully, what I realized too, a lot of really...

Great, great. Entrepreneurs, business side. ⁓ They're amazing.

Speaker 1 (59:45)
pushing

founders to stash man our cities. So if you've got a business, get out there doing course like we did. It's so healthy. They're banking on one company out of all these participants hiring 20 employees.

Speaker 3 (59:52)
It's free, all you need is to show up.

Speaker 2 (1:00:01)
Well, kudos to Canterbury Falls State too. So I had a couple of kids go there. a great, great school, great education. And, you know, I did, we didn't talk about it, but kudos to them and you know, kudos to you guys. We'll have you guys back on, but anything you guys want to say in closing to the Salty Nation out there?

Speaker 1 (1:00:17)
Oh, we're so excited to get to know you guys. Come to the festival, say hello. Hello. Let us know that you heard about us on the show, but thanks for having us. We support everything that you're doing because it's pretty much what we're.

Speaker 2 (1:00:29)
Absolutely, thank you so if we're all in this together as my dad you say we're all in this shit together fellas So phone fungi kingdom right here on the salty meth go pad Go podcast and live from the bastard studio check out encapsulate USA