Compounds of Interest: an Exploration of the Medicinal Benefits of Mushrooms with Eric Puro

Boomer Anderson 0:06
Welcome to decoding superhuman. This show is a deep dive into obsessions with health performance, and how to elevate the human experience. I explore the latest tools, science and technology with experts in various fields of human optimization. This is your host, Boomer Anderson. Enjoy the journey.

Alright, so before we get into today’s episode, I want to give a shout out to yet another listener leaving a five star review on iTunes. Shmake Shmitxhell cell and I should really pick names that are easier to pronounce, but I apologize if I got that one wrong. left a review saying I love the guests Boomer brings in to give a truly holistic lens to being a high performer. The grounded science and techniques are mine. Expanding and practical, recommended to anyone or high achiever looking to uplevel their performance. Shmake, thank you so much for leaving the review. And if I butchered your name and pronunciation please correct me. Let’s get on with today’s show. Today’s guest is Eric Puro. And I tried my best to give that a Finnish accent but may have failed. Eric is the co founder and CEO of Kaapa health in Kaapa biotech, which is a company that uses medicinal mushrooms in ways that I find truly admirable. Today we get into the benefits of medicinal mushrooms on the immune system, energy as well as focus we talked about anything from Chaga to Reishi. To mushrooms that I didn’t really know how their immune system benefit like should shitaki all of the show notes for this one and Eric sites a lot in terms of compounds of interest can be found at decodingsuperhuman.com/Kaapa that’s K A A P A. And given what’s going on in the world right now, some of those immune system mushrooms may be of interest to you. So head on over to Kaapa health that’s kaapahealth.com and use the code BIOHACKS because Eric is hooking all of our listeners up with a 15% discount on their tinctures which I’ve been writing really since I met Eric at the biohacking Congress and I feel freakin fantastic. Let’s move on to the show.

Eric, welcome to the show, my friend.

Eric Puro 2:52
Yes, thank you. Really nice to be here. Thanks for hosting. We’re going to

Boomer Anderson 2:57
go into a lot and you and I had the pleasure of meeting At least officially, we probably have met before at biohacking Congress in London and we had a fantastic conversation about so many things. Not just related to mushrooms, but just life in general. And I’m glad we’re able to continue it here today with the recording button. recording button press. So hopefully we sound hopefully I sound at least intelligent and we’ll get started. Let’s get started, Charlie. Yeah, great. So Eric, your surname is finish, but you’re not from Finland originally. In fact, you told me that you had this permaculture farm in Kentucky and like how does one go from Kentucky to Finland? Cuz people in Kentucky? You know, my parents wants a UK not traditionally thought of as going to Finland as their next step.

Eric Puro 3:54
Yes, it’s a good question. Yeah, my last name is Puro. And that is my My grandfather’s father came from Finland to the US early 1900s. And brought with him our family name, which actually was a Puronen and poodle and maybe it was too weird to the chopped it off and made it Puro, which funny enough Puro is actually a very common finish last name means little river. But, uh, yeah, I guess my connection to Finland growing up was very limited. My father always made a sounder kind of in the basement. And I didn’t know that it was weird to have naked sound out with your family on Sundays.

Boomer Anderson 4:34
Yeah, that’s, that’s not your typical church experience that I had. Last right.

Eric Puro 4:39
No, so that was a bit like, okay, no one else does that. Then, you know, my brother and I we decided this is maybe too weird for us. And then it became a thing. Okay, well, now it’s healthy. So I can do it after football practice or something. Yeah, but, but the connection to Finland never was really there. It was kind of, Oh, yeah, that’s where some family went to. It’s where my blood is from, and I just went on with my life. life and in my, my life is not a clear trajectory from anywhere to anywhere. But john myself kind of living after I did, let’s say corporate consulting for a while in Chicago. I needed to understand how the world worked more. I felt really, somehow just like, someone was holding my hand for so long of my life. And I wanted to understand how things actually worked and went out and wanted to do good. What kind of problems can I solve? How can I use my brain for a better purpose and making lots and lots of money. And that journey just stayed on for about 10 years. I was doing everything from squatting in London, boycotting runways of new airports. Helping stop old growth forests from being cut down to, you know, proactively then building really ecological houses. I did that for a long time. I started a nonprofit international nonprofit called the push which helps people find places to do nothing. Building you know, kind of went between maybe negative reactionary environmental activism to maybe more positive side of things and and kind of what I landed on was really enjoying connection finding connection in my life connection with myself people nature my own body just like really finding more more connection and that led me to natural building it led me to permaculture led me to finding ways that I could as a design in my life interact more with the natural ecosystem hunting became foraging became looking for mushrooms became wanting to tan hides with the brain of the animal fire by friction, walking without shoes, I mean, just really deep into that that space and kind of emerging out of that when I had a daughter going okay, how can I How can I make some business out of this and how can I really do something really positive my life and permaculture turned into biotech biotech turned into the company that I have now. And I think then my, my journey was really in in Kentucky was, what 62 acres of land which is like 30 some Hector’s three waterfalls, spring fed. You know, we’re bathing in spring water. I mean, just beautiful log house we were building sounds like

Boomer Anderson 7:19
a dream right now.

Eric Puro 7:21
Yeah, it was it was incredible. Just Well, really nice foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. really supportive community around us with people who are doing permaculture and organic farming and everyone really pushing each other to do new things. And yeah, it was great. And then none kind of, you know, deciding to make a really big change in my life and my daughter came what is being a father, what is my responsibility now to her? Can I be living this lifestyle anymore? How does this work and you know, those thoughts and those decisions led myself to go on a family vacation to Finland where, you know, my my late wife, she was finished so we came here to see her parents and stuff. Are our new daughter and I take my shoes off just one day walking through the forest and it’s mossy blueberry. Andrea nucleo right outside of Helsinki. And there’s a national park there called nucleo. And it’s the understory in Finland is basically blueberry bushes, wild blueberry bushes. And then moss and i mean it’s it’s a really like you think there’s nymphs and you know, little elves and stuff running around everywhere. And I take my shoes off and I was walking through this ecosystem of lakes around me and Moss hanging from the trees. Read the air is like really crisp, really clean. And I said, you know, my God, this is my home. You know, in Kentucky I was one day I almost stepped on three poisonous snakes. doesn’t make me feel good to raise a daughter there. I mean, I just don’t understand that kind of jungle ecosystem. It just didn’t ever felt right. I never felt my place was there. I was trying to connect forcing myself got here and it was like, oh, okay, that’s Finland. Now I get it. This is really, you know, and then of course now I’ve been here Three years and just everything that I learned about the health food scene here the there’s a lot of really supportive people and the really strong social system people here through the government genuinely care about the health well being livelihood of each other it’s just I feel a lot of honor you know, and for the first time of my life I feel like really happy to pay taxes which is such a good feeling to have like just and so not very

Boomer Anderson 9:29
American at all. Yeah it’s fascinating All right, the company cap of biotech right and so you know, Kappa health. You are one part of this equation, if you will, originally you were telling me the story. How did it all kind of converge and come together into the little call it an organism, the organism that lives right now?

Eric Puro 9:54
Yes, I’m one very small part actually. What what there is Well there wasn’t it there still isn’t. Helsinki is a group. There’s many of these around the world. They’re called Miko hack labs. It’s a space where people are interested in fun guy trying to solve all the world’s problems connected to companies connected to universities just in their own garages. It’s a totally social equalizing space. And you can go there and just connect to other people working with fungi. And there’s like, you know, people giving workshops on the medicinal compounds, how to extract them. There’s workshops on how to grow glow in the dark mushrooms, how to dye fabric with mushrooms, how to build furniture, make packaging with mushrooms, how to filter water, I mean, everything you can think of, this is the place where people are really experimenting with that space. And I got involved because i was growing, you know, in my summer house, maybe 1000 meters of mushroom logs outdoors and just trying to get it to work in Finland. Trying to get that done hasn’t been done here. And, you know, I met guys who just knew way more than I do about fun guy proper my colleges with proper education years and years 810 years of experience in this space. Um, you know, and I just started looking like my god if we could all you know, the leader inside of me, what if we all just work together? You know? Yeah, could you do something really incredible and so I just went around and and and we had some really nice long discussions with now a good friend of mine Laureen been Logan levenstein who’s actually our head mycologist and head of production. And we had a lot of discussions little here and there what we’re doing, get to know each other. And he said, he called me up one day and said, Eric, let’s let’s inoculate like 40,000 mushroom logs and make a proper medicinal mushroom company one that’s designed to be a medicinal mushroom company from its conception, not one that was doing something else and then moved into the medicinal mushroom space. And I said, I said yeah, man 40,000 mushroom logs. That’s a lot of work. I don’t think you understand it. But you know, let’s let’s do that. And then we started picking up more people who else do we need to make this work well We need someone who knows the forest industry so we can start growing lots of Chaga and sales and we found a really good friend of mine, Henry Loki who joined on as our forest services director. And then last kind of piece of the equation was on consumer sales, how do we make make a brand? How do we make products and we took on our current product development expert kind of marketing director, also musalla had a company already selling Chaga. And, you know, we divvied up the company ownership and we just said, hey, let’s let’s just like, let’s just be really equal here, and let’s just move forward and, and now we’ve just been like running really fast. It’s, it’s been almost two years old as a company. And I’m sitting in our new facility, we just bought 1300 square meter production space, and we’re renovating it’s like a, you know, 600 650,000 year old project. And the market is really demanding a lot of a lot of medicinal mushrooms from us. Let’s put it that way. And we’re gonna get some Purdue

Boomer Anderson 13:00
we’re gonna go into that idea medicinal mushrooms in a second. But just so I understand and kind of there are a lot of business people that listen to this podcast, you have the consumer facing arm is the consumer facing arm relatively new in comparison to some of the other stuff you guys have been doing.

Eric Puro 13:17
So what our company is sort of divided is we have Kaapa biotech, which is our parent company. Kaapa biotech is interfacing with researchers. It’s crawling papers that are being published about fungi. It’s looking for opportunities that we can commercialize a biotech solution to some industry problems. So we work a lot with the forest industry because we’re in Finland, it’s kind of the easiest place for us to get started. And then we are working on a little bit in the energy space, a little bit in Pest Control space, this kind of thing. And then we have our it’s called Kappa forest now and Kappa forest is right now where we are working to help The regeneration of finished forest. So how can we actually be getting moving filin forestry away from cleaner cutting more destructive practices toward, you know, continuous continuous cover forestry where we’re providing proper financial returns, and ecologically managing that forest really well. So we have a big forest owner growing network, where they’re growing us 6070 80,000 kilos of dried Chaga mushroom. And this is a very innovative thing that our company has done. So this was kind of one of the first things we started working on was using technology that we’ve worked with the National Research Institute of Finland to develop, which is these little dowels of inoculated Chaga we’re putting into live birch trees. So we’re actually we’re cultivating Chaga we’re able to define the strain that’s being used. And then we’re also able to really control what the harvest and production and sustainability and the regeneration around that whole picture And unlike cultivating Chaga, where you grow indoors, maybe on petri dishes or something, this is not what we do. Okay, so that’s a big involvement in the forest sector. And then we have our then our consumer division that’s relatively new Kappa health, where we’re selling a product line of our own products. And then we have Nordic mushrooms where we are working with other brands to be an ingredient supplier.

Boomer Anderson 15:25
So let’s go down the medicinal mushroom route because there are a few people that are listening to this podcast and I have covered in recent episodes, or had discussions around psychedelics and I just wanted to differentiate terms before we go down this path. medicinal mushrooms, do you mind defining that for us versus what? No, something like? A Paul Stamets would talk about when it comes to things like psilocybin and other areas.

Eric Puro 15:55
Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, I would, I would, I would, I would qualify it. psychedelic mushrooms is medicinal. Well, okay, fine, but I would put everything in that, you know, oyster mushrooms, maybe not so medicinal. I mean, in a way everything we eat is medicinal.

Boomer Anderson 16:11
Yeah, I guess I guess that is true.

Eric Puro 16:14
So it’s really difficult. I mean, even eating like bread at some level is medicinal. I mean it’s, you know and so when I think about medicinal mushrooms when I’m thinking about is there is an active scientific base of researchers that are developing a studies on what our company calls compounds of interest. Yeah, from those naturally naturally occurring in those mushrooms. That’s what we call medicinal mushrooms. Also functional mushrooms. We refer to it a lot in our consumer division, but that’s kind of the space so you know, quarter soaps Lion’s Mane Chaga she Turkey Turkey tail, my attackee Reishi and that was really the ones that we work with.

Boomer Anderson 16:54
What we call medicinal and these medicinal or functional mushrooms. I become fascinated by reading Because here’s kind of looking for alternatives, right? But also, I know for some reason, I just gravitate towards an evolutionary lens. And there’s more of a chance that I’ve encountered this in, you know, or this body has encountered this in past lives through a fun guy rather than necessarily through a capsule. And so looking at some of these medicinal mushrooms in their benefit, you know, let’s just call a spade a spade here right now, because you and I are both sitting in countries that are kind of there in Europe. And there’s a lot going on right now with regards to this kovat 19. And, you know, guys, we’re not diagnosing or treating disease here, but what we want to do is just open a discussion around how some of these medicinal mushrooms can help with the immune system because it’s that immune system discussion right now, and you walk into a pharmacy and sold out of vitamin C. What kind of stuff Can we expect to learn or what what medicinal mushrooms should we be looking at here?

Eric Puro 18:05
Yeah, very good question. It’s maybe the most best question we’re getting asked right now.

Boomer Anderson 18:11
Yeah, I’m sure you got a lot of inbound FAQ right now in your website. Yeah.

Eric Puro 18:16
I mean, I’m not sure what, when, when this will be published. But right now we’re, it’s like middle March, early March. I may have to fast

Boomer Anderson 18:24
track it based on your answer.

Eric Puro 18:26
But I think it’s, it’s right now we’ve got a lot of a lot of people concerned about about this, this, this virus, and it’s kind of like a pneumonia actually imitating but it’s a virus. So a lot of medicine is that we have like, well, funnily enough, it’s also fungal but it’s a stuffs of bacteria. It’s like a, you know, this is not working anymore. Yeah. So we have to think in a more holistic way. Like vitamin C does. How do we help strengthen our immune system And that’s and that’s the question. So, you know, we don’t have to get hysteric about it. You don’t have to freak out. We don’t have to have emotional reactions. But I’d say very calm collected response to this would say, hey, how much vitamin C do I have in the closet? And and I would like people to think well, if another thing to think about too is what kind of medicinal mushrooms do you have in your closet? Because what we’re looking at is Yeah, basically natural sources where we can be helping strengthen our immune system. And I think you know, even just like vitamin C, our human species have been using medicinal mushrooms for thousands and thousands if not millions of years. And I mean even mammals that are not humans are known to do that. So I think what we have in a way co evolved with fungi and more than plants we are more closely related to fungi than we are plants. So we have a more similar immune system actually to mushrooms and we do two plants. And in mushrooms Actually, we have a such a very similar immune system. So The only difference was when we kind of split off these evolutionary paths. Mushrooms developed a bit more of a chemical based immune system. And humans developed a bit more of cellular structure based immune system. It’s very hard for viruses and bacteria to get into ourselves to take over our mitochondria. Whereas in mushrooms a lot of chemical help about the very interesting thing is that are the chemicals that mushrooms make, we have receptors for that we can actually use those chemicals. So in a way we can think about mushrooms as tiny little pharmaceutical factories that are helping to augment or support, what kind of compounds we need or what what immune system deficiencies we might have. And if we go even deeper to biohacking space, where I know both of us kind of come from, we’re able to understand we understand our biology, we understand, you know, like killer cell reaction, right? Like natural killer cells, I mean, we can be using beta glucans or Oregon firing, we can be using these kind of compounds to stimulate those effects earlier or later or quicker. So in a way we, if we understand our cellular biology we can understand, and we understand the compounds from medicinal mushrooms, we can really think about how which ones we should be taking.

Boomer Anderson 21:17
So eventually, that’s a

Eric Puro 21:18
long answer, but I could also get into specifics about

Boomer Anderson 21:20
it. It is a long answer, but I am going to take you down the specific route because we’re talking you just mentioned beta glucans, and a few other things, and why don’t we go down specifics of these medicinal mushrooms and the properties? One of the other things that you also said and this may become a multi folded question, I’m trying not to make it one. But he said we have receptors and so let’s start with the receptors first, because receptors systems is something that I’m fascinated by the listenership is fascinated by in terms of the receptors for these mushrooms is this very similar to like we have an entire endocannabinoids Right, which we didn’t really know about until recently. Is it a similar structure to that or these?

Eric Puro 22:07
Yeah, actually one of the most interesting things and I don’t want to go into too many details about this right now, but we’re starting a, what we call knowledge base on endocannabinoid system and medicinal mushroom compounds. And yeah, one of the most interesting things is actually how we can be increasing the bioavailability, or our reception of these what we call compounds of interest from from mushrooms, obviously, we’re missing a mushroom company. And what we’re finding is more and more we’re seeing, well, I mean, we’re starting a knowledge base, we’re gathering scientific papers showing a lot of medicinal compounds are activated on the endocannabinoid system. So this is actually a really interesting, really interesting time that I think we will start to see a lot more development in the medicinal mushroom industry on that kind of line of train of thought as CDB is becoming more

Boomer Anderson 22:56
thinking. It’s like you’re at the early stages of the CBD movement right?

Eric Puro 23:00
Yeah, yeah. And it’s, it’s in a way, I think that these these two industries will become very, very connected very intimately.

Boomer Anderson 23:10
So now taking that and going down the route of beta glucans, and everything that you just mentioned in terms of benefiting our immune system. Can we talk about some of these specific medicinal mushrooms? Like, obviously this isn’t doesn’t sound like it’s a portabella discussion or an oyster discussion. As you mentioned earlier, we’re going down a very specific type of mushroom. Can we talk about just a few of those?

Eric Puro 23:32
Yeah. So I guess that what I mean, the most general like, how to say this, I think a lot of a lot of mushrooms that we grow or we work with they’re, they’re really helping the immune system, right. And then some of those mushrooms are doing really strange and weird things also, like quarter steps, or also in a way maybe Chaga or Lion’s Mane But I would say mainly when you, you know, and those are the more popular things that we’re kind of just now learning about maybe trendy but but mushrooms in general have been mainly focused on just Immune Support immune system support. And they’re kind of doing that in a big way with Beta Glucan. content. Yeah. And, and basically, beta glucans are in pretty much every but every mushroom, but my Taki might have the most of them. But you’ll see so that’s why we’re seeing a lot of increased sales in my talk to you right now at our company. But there’s also she Taki will have them too. I mean, pretty much almost almost every mushroom. And what beta glucans are doing are, they’re a simple kind of polysaccharide like glucose or kind of a sugar. They’re bypassing our normal gut system. So they’re kind of like, in a way kind of more of a insoluble fiber and they’re getting into our bodies. And what they are doing is they’re kind of their immune system. modulating, immune stimulating, and they’re essentially affecting our natural killer cells. So our natural killer cells have this amazing ability to do usually, let’s say our cells get a virus gets into our body. And that goes in, swims around and gets into one of ourselves can take maybe, oh, three days for natural killer cells to kind of average about three days for natural killer cells to kind of get activated, and then they can really start to go after and even kill those cells that have been contaminated in the way. What the other method is, is that those cells will sort of self reflect and Mark themselves that they have been that they’re not normal. And then there’s another mechanism our body can flesh that out, and that might be a week, you know. So that’s why there’s kind of this, this incubation period we talked about and then you start to see symptoms and then your body starts to kick in, you get a fever response, you get coughing, you get whatever it might be, to kind of help your body. What we can do is Be proactive. If we’re taking something like high enough beta glucans, with our medicinal mushrooms, we can be activating our killer cell response right away. Very cool, you know, and also with McAfee, so we can also be kind of stimulating our white blood cells to also go out there and really start to work. So it’s kind of stimulate our immune system, you know, when it doesn’t actually would be stimulated itself. So if we know we’re putting ourselves in a potential danger zone or exposing ourselves unnecessarily to these kind of virus risks, we know we can kind of biohack that we really boosting our beta glucan intake and and forcing our immune system to be really on high alert,

Boomer Anderson 26:42
if that makes sense. Makes perfect sense. And so it’s my Taki is sort of is that the cream of the crop when it comes to production of beta glucans? Or is it also like, should you be doing a variety with Chautauqua and I know you mentioned turkey tail earlier, which I all conveniently have sitting Here. What? What? Is there a recommended way path that people should go down or as variety the best choice here?

Eric Puro 27:11
I think I would be taking.

I mean, it’s, there’s a fine space that I can do about recommending, and we don’t have to

Boomer Anderson 27:18
go vertical. We don’t have to recommend a protocol, let’s just say like, how would she talky act differently than, let’s say my talk to you? Alright guys, so I’m an early riser. And sometimes the benefits of being an early riser are Yes, you get more done. You have a lot more free time in your morning where people don’t necessarily bother you because they think you’re sleeping. But also you wake up before the sunrise is a period of time that for me is very peaceful. But when you want to get work done, but you don’t necessarily want to turn on all the lights and disturb your natural circadian rhythms, what do you do well One of the things that I have running almost consistently in the morning is my sauna space photon light. And that light is something that I meditate in front of. I used to heal myself faster post workouts, and I just sometimes just throw it in from my face because it feels freakin good. And so the guys over at sauna space are just truly awesome. We’ve had Brian Richards on the show before you can see that episode at decoding superhuman calm slash sauna space. But if you head on over the show notes for this one, we have a link to sauna spaces website which you can go on and purchase the photon or any other one of their devices with the code superhuman and get yourself a nice little discount. So head on over to sauna space comm use the code superhuman or just grab the link in the show notes. Let’s go back to the episode.

Eric Puro 28:54
So shiitake. Yeah, that’s a good that’s a good question. So shiitake actually has also has beta glucans but It also has a really one of the most I mean, for instance, right now at our company, we just gave everybody, two bottles of sheet hockey. Yeah. So go home, be taking stock every day. And the reason we did that was because of a very what we call compound of interest. That’s very interesting to us. That’s in sheet hockey, mainly called La Liga thyrion. And if you have show notes and stuff, I can send you more.

Boomer Anderson 29:23
We’re going to plow all of this in the show notes. So please get our studies.

Eric Puro 29:28
Absolutely. So Elora thyrion, it does a lot of interesting stuff. It’s kind of antioxidants. So it’s just generally helping your health, helping protect your DNA and RNA. But one of the most interesting things for me is what it’s, it’s kind of protecting yourselves. So, and this this is only study we have about this is actually in vitro. So I want to be really clear. When we talk about in vitro, what that means is, you know, human cells in a petri dish. And if we don’t have actually studies about this in vivo, which is actually our living bodies, so there’s that little bit of this connection. But you know a lot of in vitro helps us understand how these compounds work before we would move to kind of sorry, in vivo and in vitro would help us before we move to in vivo. And with the alaric athyrium, what we’re seeing is it actually is like, kind of, it’s protecting your cellular layer. So it’s, it’s kind of really like stopping viruses coming into your cell and hijacking your mitochondria. Okay, so, so you can really hope to, it’s like an extra armor.

Boomer Anderson 30:27
It’s like, if we’re gonna go if we’re gonna completely nerdy on this, why don’t we just go there? It’s like having that force field if you’re on the Starship Enterprise or something like that. Right. Okay. Okay, so should Taki has that Turkey tail? I think you do. Yeah. Because turkey tail has the connection there with the gut is fascinating to me. What What can we expect from Turkey tail?

Eric Puro 30:54
Yeah, yeah, Turkey tail, I would say. It’s, it’s interesting. We’re seeing quite a lot. Yeah, uptake of this as well right now people are people are quite flocking to a turkey tail. And I think people just have in their head that Turkey tails really helping with the immune system. Yeah, you know, there’s been a lot of like studies around this a lot of especially with cancer, like basically if you’re if you’re in Japan and you contract breast cancer, they give you turkey tail interesting. It’s the medicine that you’re given. That’s obviously not the case in the US or Europe but in Japan that that’s the medicine you get with with a with a certain Beta Glucan in Turkey tail called p SK. There’s also another one called PSP. That’s also nice that way but but it has a lot of it has beta glucans mainly. So we’re not looking at actual specific, you know, breast cancer or real specific issues that we have. It also just has a lot of beta glucans. Okay, but the mushroom like I said that mushroom that we have no the most we have beta glucans in is my hockey, okay. So

Boomer Anderson 31:58
when we’re looking at Talk he or she should talk he is probably the easiest one for at least me to access it at the grocery store. Let’s talk about the delivery here because what’s are there benefits to me just cooking a bunch of it at home and taking it that way or because you guys have formulated in these little tinctures how does it work in terms of effectiveness? Do you lose effectiveness when you cook it?

Eric Puro 32:24
that’s a that’s a great question. Um, the answer is kind of yes and no. Okay.

Boomer Anderson 32:30
All great questions have a yes or no answer.

Eric Puro 32:34
Yeah, so so basically with with Turkey with any of these mushrooms like she talkie talkie stuff you might find in a grocery store. There’s there’s kind of there’s compounds that are water soluble, which means you eat it and your body can kind of absorb that break those break that down, get access to those compounds. And then there’s compounds that need a solvent that’s much stronger, like alcohol or some ultrasonic extractions. methods. And so that’s kind of where it depends. It depends what what health benefit you’re looking for, and how that compound needs to be extracted. So, for instance, some of the antioxidant compounds can be extracted just with water. Some of them also need a stricter solvent like alcohol. And it just and try terpene compounds almost always need alcohol a little bit, we’ll come out with the water, but it’s very, very small. So it depends. I mean, the we basically do extract every mushroom. Yeah, so we ensure that the full range of compounds are going to be present in a little bottles, you know that the next step could be that we’re, you know, making specific extraction methods for specific use cases, of course, but that gets much harder with health claims and everything else. Yeah.

Boomer Anderson 33:53
And, look, we’re not making health claims here. We’re just sharing benefits of that, that have been seen in literature. All right. Okay, so the immune system modulators or regulators, or whatever you want to call them are fascinating to me. Can we talk a little bit about Chaka? Because, yeah, you the whole idea of 40,000 it was at 40,000 logs of Chaga is how you guys got started or was it 40,000? Just, you know, I guess you can say 40,000 trees full of mushrooms. How did you guys get started again, remember that

Eric Puro 34:30
we had loading called me up and said, let’s do like 40,000 logs of mushrooms and a farm. We ended up not doing 40,000 I think we did 4000

Boomer Anderson 34:40
It’s a lot of work. And how does this all work with every man’s right in Finland? Because they can just invade and take your mushrooms.

Eric Puro 34:46
Really good question. So every man’s rights is a very unique thing to Finland, which is that, you know, private property is a loose space here, what is private and what is public. It’s not so defined. So If I if you live in Finland near my neighbor, I can walk through your forest, I can eat your berries, I could pick your mushroom, whereas in the US we can shoot you because it’s trespassed. Yeah.

Boomer Anderson 35:12
Fair enough.

Eric Puro 35:13
Yeah, but I mean, here it’s much, you know, it’s way more open and there’s no immediate area around your house of your own land. You know, people cannot put tents in, they cannot be in this kind of thing. But, you know, there’s not many people here and it’s a very big country. So a lot of people have, you know, acreage, a couple, Hector’s and forest. I could go to my neighbor’s forest and pitch a tent and, you know, hang out with my kids pick their berries and eat them and stay the night. So with a mushroom farm, or like what we do with Chaga are kind of these forests that we cultivate. Anything that’s cultivated is not cut is not allowed in every man’s right. So even if it’s a natural berries that are cultivated in a farm, that’s not allowed. So our forest owners who, let’s say, kind of join our growing network have that sort A sense of security but how we, how we grow mushrooms. It, it really depends, like Chaga we grow outdoors on living birch trees in forests around Finland. And with all the rest of the mushrooms we have like a actually the European Union’s largest outdoor medicinal mushroom farm. This year we’re going to be adding about 10 to 15,000 more logs even to that. Wow. And we grow there lots and lots of lion’s mane, lots of sheep hockey turkey tail, my attackee we’re trying we had a little success with Reishi we’re trying to get more successful Reishi but we’re growing out of as much as we can outdoors and and this is actually a very different thing that our company is doing than most companies and it’s mainly around like, you know you look at our mushroom logs out there. You know Finland has the cleanest ever recorded air cleanest ever recorded water It’s a very clean environment that’s very conducive for very high quality medicinal mushrooms to grow. Are you working

Boomer Anderson 37:06
for the Immigration Service right now and trying?

Eric Puro 37:11
As I told you to say, that means welcome. But it’s a very it’s a very unique place to grow medicine outdoors. And like it wouldn’t be doing this in London, for instance. Yeah, but are we? Yeah, we’re Amsterdam. Yeah. But we are mushrooms that we’re growing. We have a birch log, and we implant mycelium from certain strains of certain mushrooms. Yeah, but then we sit it literally just in piles out in the spruce forest. You know, we’re not touching that again. So obviously, you know, other fungi has gotten there. You know, a lot of other things that are gonna take over eating that log. That’s, that’s what we want to see. We’re not growing these mushrooms indoors. We have a filtered air. It’s a totally clean environment. Yeah, we’re growing them outdoors in the wild. And you know those those mushrooms are having to develop those immune enhancing compounds at a larger effect because they’re being attacked. They have to survive. So our char goes the same way as you know, all of the all the mushrooms we grow basically except quarter seps we’re growing outdoors and and that’s really helping those mushrooms like make more what we call compounds of interest. Yeah, so when I see three different fungal species on my lions made log, I’m going great,

Boomer Anderson 38:29
you know, perfect. It’s having to fight to be there, you know, beautiful and or compounds of interest using that phrase that you just had the compound of interest within or I guess you can say the property of interest with Chaka is is that just purely an antioxidant play or why should like I take charge every morning now that I have your formulation here, but what exactly is going on with the Chaga

Eric Puro 39:01
I think we could go really deep into lots of compounds of interest that we’re looking at. And, and what’s really I want to just before I answer that question really quickly say there’s, um, there’s a bi annual so every two years there’s the international medicinal mushroom society’s Congress.

Boomer Anderson 39:18
And then another thing to play on the show notes. I love it.

Eric Puro 39:21
Yeah, yeah. So this this is Congress is actually a The only space where all the researchers around the world are presenting papers on medicinal compounds from mushrooms. The only place you can go there as a guest, you know, you can I can go there’s a company, but everyone can visit. It’s gonna be in the EU actually, in 2021. I’m on the executive committee planning that that Congress data on it most likely will be in Serbia is the plan right now. Awesome. And yeah, so that is the place where all this new information comes out. So when I say compounds of interest, part of those are things that are well researched, quite understood. Some of them are, we’re doing that work right now, learning about stuff right now always learning more. But with Chaga specifically compounds of interest that, that we know were that we know are there that we are, you know, taking it for are mainly around the antioxidant space. So when we think about how our cells age, we’re looking at a lot of, you know, there’s, of course, telomeres that dictate how many times our cells can sort of regrow or kind of start again, but also every time they start again, that that sort of, let’s call it like the roadmap of how to build itself again, is dictated by the DNA and if that DNA has been damaged by free radicals, and holes been punched in and everything else well, even though the telomere is still you know, reproducing and everything else it’s not reproducing very well. So you’re getting a degeneration of your skin, your eyes, have your you know, muscles of your liver of your heart, everything else all the time that that Has that regeneration process has to go because free radicals kind of just punching holes and stuff as they’re flying around. So to me a high, high regiment of higher any accidents is really important. Because I want to lift on 150 I want to it’s on 250. But I don’t want to live if I’m just laying around doing nothing. Yeah, I want to like, you know, I still have some hair in my head, you know, I still can play with my kids, my grandkids, whatever it’s gonna be, I want to have a joy of life. So when I think about that, I look at antioxidants as a really important answer for that. So chakra has the highest antioxidants, gram per gram of any any substance in the world, but it’s on a different level. Like if we’re looking like Auric ism is a test done to kind of establish the let’s say antioxidant level of substance in vitro, and that is showing things that we think of as having high anxiety. That’s a Casio berry blueberries 2000 4000 right around here. Chocolate has maybe 200,000 Wow. So it’s just it’s on a totally different plate. So there’s references to Chaga mushroom being called the mushroom of immortality, yeah, culturally. And this is probably the reason why they why they talk about it that way.

Boomer Anderson 42:13
There are two more mushrooms that I want to ask about. But before I go deep into those sustainability of Chaka, or just sustainability, these mushrooms in general, I know your company is very focused on it. But yeah, I think, because these compounds are starting to get some light shed on them. And they’re starting to be a lot more science plant pod into them. Some of the companies are getting quite popular. How do we ensure that we’re not just gonna pillage the earth of these and then go back to trying to create these things in a lab?

Eric Puro 42:45
Yeah, it’s a super good question. And that’s, maybe you asked that about Chaga because that’s like, it’s actually a really big debate in the us right now. Yeah. medicinal mushroom companies in the US are having to lose a lot of debate around this. There’s a lot of Consumers asking that question and then I’m answering it because Chaga is right now. It’s a forage mushroom. That’s how you get it. That’s how we the Jagga, you’re taking from us is also foraged, we don’t our forest growing network is not going to produce for another five, six years, you know. So, right now it’s all for lunch and how that foraging is done. It depends on the laws of individual countries. So a place that’s maybe a bit more relaxed, like Russia, that’s the largest supplier of Chaga, we might be creating a lot of damage to that ecosystem, most likely about how the track is being done. countries where or you know, Canada, it’s also very difficult to get really in the back country there. So and labor is very expensive, unlike Russia, so it’s not happening so much in Canada. us almost all the any any sort of commercial foraging saga has gone. Yeah, it’s gone. totally gone. Yeah. That was in the 80s. As a response to that, that’s my company. Like Host Defense or old mushrooms and these kind of aloha medicinals. These bigger older medicinal mushroom companies started growing chocolate indoors. Yeah.

But what’s really important to think about is that Chaga

by definition is a canker. It’s a reaction that the tree is having to the mycelium is obligors and that creates a chakra, and a chakra is actually 90% would matter from the bursary. So it’s this it’s not exactly a mushroom, it’s not exactly a tree. It’s Chaga. Yeah, you can’t grow that in the lab. And the FDA actually has very strict labeling requirements on that that are going to be enforced, I think here very soon. So chocolate is only grown outdoors on a bursary, you cannot grow it inside. And that all the all the studies and everything we have done about it. That’s all from outdoor grown. That’s its proper Jaga. And what we’re doing is we’re trying to solve this, you know, between Central crisis before becomes a potential crisis and start to cultivate it. So that’s why we’re actually going into those forests. We’re inoculating those life birch trees. With Chaga, then we will basically be harvesting that chocolate bringing it back and using that as our supply. And those trees that have been left out without Chaga we can be inoculating them with rare and endangered fungal species. They can be, you know, lay down on the ground of that forest, add that nutrition back to that top soil. So we can actually play a much more non extractive sort of relationship with the forest then cutting everything down and taking it out for making paper or still symbiotic relationship

Boomer Anderson 45:40
rather than one of the parasitical relationship, I guess.

Eric Puro 45:46
Yeah, exactly. I guess parasitic enough.

Boomer Anderson 45:49
So I’ll save the performance mushrooms for a second. Again, we’re looking at selecting these. He mentioned a couple of Companies there but also, like, you go out into Whole Foods, for instance, and a lot of the listenership is where you and I came from in the US. And they’re saying, like, hey, there’s certain mushroom companies that we’re exposed to. And there’s, you know, that seems readily available on my shelves at my local Whole Foods or whatever organic store you go to. How do you evaluate these companies? Because you just hinted at something that I didn’t even know. And unless we know how things like chug are actually grown, or the company comes out and explicitly states certain things. How do you actually start to evaluate where you’re buying or where you’re sourcing your mushroom from?

Eric Puro 46:40
No, yeah, this is maybe the most difficult thing right now. And it’s not part of our culture. I mean, your parents, they taught you how to look at ground beef and know if it’s still good to eat or

Boomer Anderson 46:53
smell if it’s brown here. Yeah.

Eric Puro 46:57
You know, or like, you know, look at a carrot and if it’s Be flimsy. Maybe you know when to eat it or what mold looks like on bread. I mean, like part of our culture helps to prepare us for, you know how to analyze food and make those decisions and kind of what is medicine, what’s not medicine. We don’t have a cultural tradition of taking medicinal mushrooms, most European countries, most Americans, this isn’t part of our heritage. I mean, Chaga, of course, in Finland is quite part of the heritage but no other medicinal mushrooms really. So I think we have to do this is a very important conversation. We’re having to help educate people. And there’s lots of information on the internet. And I think what’s the advice that I would give is that we can’t be so dogmatic about this. It we have to look at every single mushroom, we have to understand then what science studies have been done. We have to look at what how the basically what the raw material that was used for those studies and what the extraction method was done for those studies. And then how we can be knowing if there’s any what compounds will come out from those extraction methods and what we’re trying to achieve ourselves. So and when it’s actually it’s much more difficult. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of potential problems in the industry. 92% of all mushrooms are grown in China right now. Yeah. Which I mean, this is a crazy time to be talking about, you know, even even before that, right? is China. Yeah, but even I mean, it’s it. It’s a place that I don’t think I was getting, you know, let’s say like, really healthy. health food. Yeah. The air quality is not so good. And there’s a lot of a lot of issues that we’re seeing in the organic food space, that there’s pesticides being used and aren’t even, we’re not even knowing we should be testing for it. So so the quality control is quality control is quite bad. Yeah. So I think this is a concern that I would have looking at that. Another concern that I would have is What mushrooms are they using and how are they grown? Is it? Is it the mycelium in liquid culture? Is it pure mycelium? Is it my ciliated grain? Is it fruiting bodies of mushrooms, and that’s kind of more of a technical debate that we have to have. And it’s really important because basically, mycelium is the living body of the organism. It’s like the white little stray any little guys hi phase, that are kind of making the connection. It’s it’s like the living body. It’s like the apple apple tree or something you would say. And the mushroom itself is only the fruiting body and like an apple, so it’s basically it’s coming up for a short period of time. It’s releasing spores or seeds kind of into the atmosphere and it’s replicating its DNA, you know again, and giving new life. And basically, all the studies that we have on medicinal compounds have been done on fruiting body So, for instance, if you your listeners would like to come to the international medicinal mushroom society. we’re presenting papers on on compounds there’s not a single mug that I’ve ever seen there that is using mycelium grain. Some, a couple are looking into what might be the medicinal compounds of mycelium on liquid culture, which is a technique we do here also in our laboratory to grow just pure mycelium in a liquid substance that we can drain it liquid and then just have pure mycelium that we can dry. And that’s mainly being done as a cost savings. Can we count as we as an industry medicinal mushroom industry? Can we be getting the same compounds without having to, you know, grow fruiting bodies, which are much more complicated, much more costly to do? It’s not being done as, Oh my gosh, maybe this is a better product. It’s just can it can we do this cheaper, which is of course as an industry a very good question to ask, you know, can we be providing this medicine to more people can we be getting the price point lower These are all very important questions to ask. But if it’s sacrificing quality then it’s then it’s not. So not a lot of success has come from that to be honest. And then if we go to a place of my ciliated grain, which a lot of major companies in the US are using right now that my city grain it’s essentially Tempe, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, some amount of grain. That’s that’s kind of wet inoculated with some mycelium. mycelium will start to grow on that grain, eat it, and then they just dry that whole block and grind it up and make it into capsules.

Boomer Anderson 51:34
So I’m guessing that the effectiveness of that is one 10th. One 100th of the wild ground stuff.

Eric Puro 51:41
We don’t even know if it is active at all. Okay. I mean, it’s, it’s hard to say if you know if it’s effective at all, and it’s 99 95% grain, you know, so you’re seeing a lot of just starch.

Boomer Anderson 51:55
Yeah. And we have other issues in society of starch. Eric, that was the meat. I’m glad you went through that because I think you just to kind of recap a few points for people. And this is stuff that I think people should need to do with all of their supplements is just ask questions. I mean, Eric, he gave some great points there in terms of key points to ask mushroom companies. And most of these companies have customer service. And candidly, if, and I’m a person who sends a lot of annoying emails and asks a lot of annoying questions, Eric is, you know, but like, I want to understand the quality control. And one of the red flags for me is if I get some customer service person who a doesn’t answer, or B doesn’t really dodges the question doesn’t give me the answer that I want, etc. And that’s just a way for you to understand a little bit more about what’s what’s actually going into your body, right? Yeah.

Eric Puro 52:56
My friend God, no, I just I just think it’s You know, to be honest, we,

it just it really it frustrates me from really core place because I think it’s we’re not growing potatoes. Yeah, you know we’re not we’re not growing calories like we are making high value expensive, medicinal mushroom supplements, right and food supplements that people are taking because they have breast cancer. They they are looking for high amounts of antioxidants they, they they’ve learned about beta glucans they want beta glucans they are I mean, they’re trying to heal some like we have people taking Reishi for eczema issues, skin issues. I mean, there’s so many success stories I’ve had for that, you know, because it’s not a joke. It’s not just potatoes, nothing wrong with potatoes, but we have a moral responsibility in creating really high quality, you know, good medicine now. And so for me, it’s really frustrating to see that that ethical standard in my industry is not, not everyone’s on the same page, you know? Yeah.

Boomer Anderson 53:57
I hear you and I really appreciate you guys. One of the reasons why I wanted you on the show was because of that. But let’s talk about Reishi. Because then the next three, and we may have to do these a little bit faster, depending on timing, but Reishi is something that I’ve enjoyed pretty much every evening as in some of its adaptogen properties. But it also like it just brings me down a level. In fact, when I was doing a TEDx talk, right before going on, or actually like an hour before, it’s like, boom, hit the Reishi tincture that you guys have, and I felt just like, it was just smooth sailing, right, which you think about the pressure of a TED talk? That’s different. What are like maybe I just blew everything you had to say about Reishi. But in terms of Reishi, what why should people be interested?

Eric Puro 54:47
Yeah, I think you should be interested because to me that the biohacking community is one that’s really incredible. I mean, now now getting more into this consumer side, we’re interacting, you know, much deeper with this community and I I love it because I can I can sit here and tell you, whatever I want to tell you, right? And you can believe whatever you want to believe. And to me, the biohacking community is one that, you know, you have the outer ring you’re checking, does this stuff if we’re saying Reishi helps asleep or helps to calm me down? Does it actually do that? Yeah. And and we’re seeing that consistently, you know, we’re having people buying it again and again and again and again and again, because they’re able to actually find and and check those metrics and know that it’s actually helping them relax, helping them get better sleep. And that, to me is incredible. That you know, that’s better than me telling you what it’s going to do. So I think Reishi has so many so many compounds of interest, such as, you know, the incredible things that we’re looking at. But it’s really stuck as a way to calm down. It’s a it’s really helping moderate your stress. You know, relax your neuro system. Like just really, really relax after after Dave word.

Boomer Anderson 56:00
Okay, let’s go on to like the performance kick kick things up a notch compounds, lions made in quarter steps. I’ll let you pick whichever one you want to talk about first. I know we’ve had several conversations about quarter steps a little bit less so on lion’s mane, but floor is yours. Which way do you want to take us?

Eric Puro 56:19
Yeah, we can talk about kritis ups. Yeah,

Boomer Anderson 56:21
let’s go down that route.

Eric Puro 56:23
Okay, well, I don’t know. There’s quarter steps, I guess quarter quarter steps is a really fun thing because

there’s

70 or something different species of quarter steps. The only two that basically you hear people talking about a quarter step sinensis or quarter set miletus. And these were kind of found out sinensis, at least, you know, with hurting animals, you know, eating it and then getting more energy. So, basically herders in the northern step in Tibet, Bhutan, started taking them themselves. Then. And certainly if you use a fax, and it became kind of a mainstream part of Chinese traditional medicine, this quarter step, so it became a place to be used for depression, low energy. You know, athletic performance, but, but mainly a way to make you enjoy life more. So, you know, the winter here in Finland is like, really? Right now, but you can see the sun shining in it’s really nice, but

Boomer Anderson 57:27
it’s gonna go down soon.

Eric Puro 57:28
Yeah, exactly. And then December, maybe you don’t see it at all. Yeah. So, you know, the ecosystem environment here can be quite quite impressive in a way. And it’s really nice to have these kind of allies that can help us just enjoy life a bit more. So of course, EPS is a big one for that. I mean, it kind of it’s like a helicopter, it takes you to the top of the mountain drops you off there and goes, Yeah, that’s how life can be. That joy you’re feeling that’s what you can feel every day all the time. It doesn’t, you know, doesn’t keep you up there but you got to figure out how to kind What changes you need to make in your life to stay that way? Yeah. And what it’s really helping with, like a chemical basis is is a lot of, you know, higher amounts of ATP, more oxygen in your lungs help to healing your lungs it’s kind of creating more yeah more and more ability to perform so that oxygen is also getting to your brain everything else you’re thinking more purely, you’re you’re able to perform, you know better. And it’s used by now we’re selling artists, even the Finnish Olympic team and it’s it’s a really nice thing that people are, you know, athletes are seeing that performance but also people like you and I who have kind of high demand analytical or conceptual thinking careers so it’s a To me it’s it’s not something I take every day. Yeah, something I take when I really need to be performing well, and to me the extra amount of I’m kind of like this really energetic dude. Anyway, yeah. So, if I took it all the time, I think my partner would leave me by my by a lot of my employees would probably be too sick of me, you know, to continue working anymore. I think I, you know, I’m like the steam engine. So I take it really sparingly, just when I really feel it’s a long day to day and I got to get through it.

Boomer Anderson 59:18
Is there a tolerance issue with any of this? Like, whereby you build up tolerance and it no longer works?

Eric Puro 59:24
I’m sure, but we haven’t seen it. You know, I mean, we work with we actually, just to be clear, what we grow is quarter million Tatas. And this is a, we have a strain that we found here in Finland. We also grow strains from all around the world. We grow them indoors, because nobody taught us essentially in the international system evolved to take over the brains of insects. Yeah. And so it’s it’s very, very strange. It’s not like we talked about she talked to you by Taki. These kind of mushrooms, they’re the sap robe. they decompose wood. It’s a very different kind of mushroom and target which is kind of this weird you know wood and mycelium kind of thing. And then you know of course EPS which is like this, you know parasite on insects. Yeah. Well very different kind of mushrooms but gorgeous apps of course are we have to grow it indoors because the market really requires that we have a vegan substrate calm, which we do. So it’s organic certified vegan, and it’s a and then to get the mushroom to fruit we’re actually having to shine lots of different LED lights on it at different times to quite intensive process actually.

Boomer Anderson 1:00:32
Last one I want to close out with is lion’s mane, which is a compound that’s fascinated me for a long time you see it and Stamets stack and all this stuff, which seven sack is something completely different. But let’s talk about lion’s mane and some of these benefits.

Eric Puro 1:00:46
Yeah, yeah, so lion’s mane, it’s funny for the longest time. It’s been considered as mainly a gut health. Actually, a lot of studies a lot of the research around Lion’s Mane was Well, of course, it tastes amazing. You know, it’s been culinary mushroom for a long time, but it’s really been helping with gut health. So it’s just very recent that we’ve started to understand this kind of nerve growth factors and neurogenesis and how it’s kind of stopping this brain degeneration. And of course, I want to say this is all only with rat trials, right? Yeah. So, again, we can’t we’re not saying this has been shown in humans, but it’s interestingly enough that you know, of course, people starting to use it for that reason, including myself. And I think, what’s what’s incredible is that at age 30, your brain starts to degenerate, you start to lose neurons and start to, you know, kill kind of kill off parts of your brain and, and this mushroom has been shown in rats, at least to not only stop that from happening, but to kind of start brain regeneration. Which, when I start to think about how how our bodies look at when we are Hundred or 150 again, quality of life. I mean, I want to have a properly functioning brain I want to have a properly functioning body. To me this is a I don’t know anything else it’s doing as good of a job with Ngf as sorry nerve growth factors as like lion’s mane. Mm hmm.

Boomer Anderson 1:02:16
So do you take it every day?

Eric Puro 1:02:18
I do just about just about every day. I mean, with every mushroom like I take chocolate every day pretty much lions Lion’s Mane every day pretty much. And depending on then what else is going on some other mushrooms but to me, Lion’s Mane is I take a break from everything that I do, of course, every once in a while, including Chaga

Boomer Anderson 1:02:43
just every It’s so nice to see what happens without it. Eric, you’ve been extremely generous with your time and I’m sure I’m sure when people listen to this, they’re gonna force me to bring you back for round two. Not that I wouldn’t love doing it anyway. But I usually like to round things off with a couple rapid fire questions. Yeah. And the first one is what’s your top trick for enhancing focus?

Eric Puro 1:03:09
Patrick for enhancing focus, okay. Yeah. Um,

Boomer Anderson 1:03:14
you can be by you can be as

Eric Puro 1:03:16
nice as you want. Yeah, this is such a good question. I mean, it depends on how much time I have. If I’m gonna do I need to be really top top focus, like, like, do I have an hour to prepare? Do I have 10 minutes if I have an hour to prepare? I’m gonna jump in a frozen lake. You know, in Finland, we call it avant. Oh, yeah. And, and this ice bathing is really for me just it just centers. My body just brings me right back. Just poof. It’s really incredible. But if I have 10 minutes, what I do is I go to Spotify and I put on the psilocybin trials, the soundtrack from the john hopkins psilocybin trials. And it’s this curated to three our incredible such intentionality put into A lot of orchestral music like classical music. And and that takes me to this kind of ephemeral place where I can do really deep thinking or really get involved when I’m doing such a beautiful answer.

Boomer Anderson 1:04:13
What book has significantly, I guess you can say impacted your life and how you should you show up and perform in Yeah, are shifted your way of thinking. So I don’t know. Yeah,

Eric Puro 1:04:24
I would say

Oh, man, this goes way back to like a high school I would say and it’s funny that the first book Oh, my God, now that now now that I have a minute to think about it’s all so many different titles are coming in, but the first book I thought about was actually

like iron Rand. Really?

Boomer Anderson 1:04:43
Yeah. It’s cuz like I have on all of our books here.

Eric Puro 1:04:48
Yeah. But atlas shrugged. You know, I mean, I think I think I was in a really funny place in high school, trying to find some sense of meaning of the world. You know, what is what how To explain how people work, you know, in a way, and I don’t know if I believe everything that she’s she talks about in these books or I agree. Yeah, there’s,

Boomer Anderson 1:05:07
there’s certain things I completely disagree with, but

Eric Puro 1:05:10
I think it’s okay. It was a really eye opening book for me. Yeah, it’s one of, wow, this is a perspective that I’d never heard before. I have to get you down here

Boomer Anderson 1:05:18
to Amsterdam. I’ve a first edition copy of it, that somehow gave me as a gift and it’s sitting here I need to figure out how to preserve it a little bit better than it currently is being preserved. What excites you most about the health world right now?

Eric Puro 1:05:34
Just where we where we can go. I mean, I meet folks like, you know, my age, your age, who are heading up biotech companies heading up the space I the biohacking summit in Helsinki is absolutely incredible place to be. I mean, everyone I met there was doing the most interesting thing that I’ve heard about until the next person I talked to Yeah, I think that this is a space that There’s a lot of very motivated people to find out answers and apply new technology and new ways of thinking to those things. And it’s not, we don’t have to think about it in this old way anymore. And right now you have a customer base in EU and the US, especially that are willing to pay for food supplements. There’s also a revenue model that really can make companies go deeper and find out new things and it’s a really great time to be alive for the health space. Sure.

Boomer Anderson 1:06:30
Where can people find out more about you what you’re up to and your company?

Eric Puro 1:06:35
Yeah, I’m on Instagram. I’m like everybody now. Eric MTP zero, and Kappa health.com Kappa K PA. So Kappa health.com is our is our consumer division. And then you know, Kappa biotech calm is our biotech side of things. And yeah, just reach out

Boomer Anderson 1:07:00
And if people want to get some of these tinctures that I’ve been talking about you’ve been talking about they go to Kappa health calm Is that right? Correct. Good. I’ll go place an order now before other people decide to listen to this episode and place orders as well. But Eric, thank you so much for this has been incredible. As always, my friend it’s good talking to you. And I really appreciate you taking the time.

Eric Puro 1:07:25
Yeah, thanks

Boomer Anderson 1:07:26
to all the superhumans listening out there have an epic day. Alright, superhumans. Did you enjoy my conversation with Eric? I did head over to Kaapahealth.com and place a little bit of an order after this episode. And you know what, I actually don’t receive any affiliate commission on this. I do believe that they make me stronger, healthier person, and it’s why I wanted him to come on the show. Plus, Eric does a really good job of delving down. Good information, science. tipic faced that is also helping us select your best mushrooms. Again head on over to Eric’s website Kappa health.com and if you want the show notes to this one it’s decodingsuperhuman.com/kaapa superhumans have an epic day, stay healthy and always choose health