Music. Hi, this is Teemu Arina from Biohacker's Podcast. Today I'm talking to Maximilian Endter and he's from Germany. He's an avid biohacker who turned into a mushroom enthusiast, those functional mushroom types. And we both share the fascination for the mushroom kingdom. And he has some pretty unique angles at which he looks at these functional mushrooms. Also, I think he's the only dude who I've met recently who likes to use glycerin extracts of mushrooms.
I personally stumbled upon using vegetable glycerin as an extraction method probably a decade ago when I was making my own extracts. So a lot of people use alcohol and water extracts. The issue with alcohol is obviously if you don't want to use any alcohol and vegetable glycerin is probably one of the most effective means to do that. It's a sugar alcohol.
It's also kind of a natural sweetener in that sense. And I've used it to extract a bunch of different things, not just mushrooms, but also adaptogens. But anyway, this guy is bright. I'm very happy to talk to him. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here and I've looked forward to it for a long time.
Awesome why don't you share the story of how you got into mushrooms in the first place, that's a little bit of a story my co-founder and and i we know each other since few times then our ways left each other and we met again after our university time and then was the decision what are we doing with our life and we didn't know yet but what we knew was we should We should do something together, but we didn't know what.
So we started our first little adventure, founded our first very little company, and we helped other people in marketing and stuff like this, but it was not the thing we really wanted. What was happening right then was we had our studies, we had hobbies, jobs, and many, many different things, and our to-do lists get longer, longer, longer.
Productivity gets lower lower lower so what we became was biohackers we tried to optimize our biology body health spirit everything we tried also everything since this day it is seven eight years ago we start biohacking with the breath all the nutrition stuff meditation and supplements also and the funny moment we came across the mushroom was a very random one we listened to the podcast from tim ferrist big biohacker back then I think 2016 and he told the story that he took cordyceps mushroom
we never heard of it before as he said he was lit like a christmas tree which we found really confusing and funny also because we thought about he's lit like a Christmas trees is legal, where does it come from and what does it do? And what we saw back then it was. 7 000 studies I think now we have 50 000 studies for many many different functional mushrooms to 600 medicinal things you can do with them which is pretty awesome. And then we thought why there is not a product we would.
Like to use because there were many many capsules from china where you don't know really what is in there how is the quality and stuff like this then there were some not so good tasting stuff on the market and we thought maybe that there should be a brand that encapsulates magic the mushrooms have not magic mushrooms functional mushrooms in like a very very good way and what we came across was that mushrooms were used on the planets like forever and only in europe it's kind of like people forget
about it but in china they use it since 5 000 years south america also like millennia and they talk about their mushrooms like they are the small saints so they think they are holy and we when we talk about mushrooms some people say mushroom doesn't taste that good or they are toxic or yeah they don't think good about them and we want to bring back that positive picture of mushrooms that's why we call our company smains it stands for small saints and
that's the story how we came across them and since seven years there we are very hooked into the kingdom yeah absolutely the aztecs knew what they were talking about of course the small saints some are connecting that to some researchers to the psychedelic type of mushrooms people very often mistake to functional mushrooms and maybe expect similar functionalities but what is the big difference here with functional or medicinal These are mushrooms.
And these psychedelic ones, it's not just the compounds and effects, but also the way it grows. Most of these functional mushrooms, they grow on trees instead of on the ground, and they are so-called polypore mushrooms. The exception is... The cordyceps that you mentioned, I mean, there is many exceptions, of course, but from the most popular ones, that this one is a parasite to insects. And this grows in Tibetan plateau.
And it's an interesting mushroom because it infects the nervous system of ants and starts to control them like zombies, moving them to the highest point where they will get paralyzed, fertilized, rooted, and then there is a mushroom popping out from the forehead of the ant where it drops its pollen and spores. Then what can easily happen is just one infected ant can destroy a whole ant colony. I've also read that yaks do eat them in mating season.
Why didn't you expand a little bit on this cordyceps? What kind of mushroom is that and why does it have an effect on humans?
Why are we not that far from yaks eating yeah that's a really cool story the legend says that people saw this mushroom because the yaks kicked down in the ground and kind of got wild in the mating season and it's funny because it's also enhancing testosterone sexual hormones and is like aphrodisiacum it's the same effect on humans so to speak and this is the mushroom that got us hooked into the whole kingdom because as biohackers we want to have more energy more
resilience more power and so on and studies show it is doing exactly this you see that the atp production in the cells is higher which is our true source of energy in the body you also see that people have more oxygen in the blood there's a parameter called bo2 max you can measure it and like four weeks to eight weeks, when you take the mushroom, you see people have more oxygen in the blood. In sports, they can have more endurance. Also, they have more strength.
And for sports people, so to say, it's a really interesting mushroom because it's like doping, so to speak. And it's not on the doping list anywhere but for horses. So in horse races, it is forbidden. For humans, it's possible to take it. and some sportsmen use it. So 1993, I think, the team of Chinese women in sprinting, they had many records, world records, and they win.
The championship and they asked the trainer the coach how did you do this because sometimes they think they do doping so he said they used cordyceps so it got really big into the whole fitness industry the mushroom and it's pretty known and really crazy mushroom so what you've spoken about in the second part of your question is i think the most fascinating fact about mushrooms. Why does a mushroom work in the human body or in animal bodies, so to speak?
Because that's exactly the question I had the whole time when I started digging into the mushrooms and they work against blood pressure, they work against whatever problems there are on the planet. How is it possible? And there's this really, really cool theory that the first kingdom on the planet was the mushroom kingdom. So mushrooms were here before everything else. And they made small compounds out of the big organic compounds so that other species can evolve.
We share, like many other species on the planet, DNA with mushrooms. And we share pretty much DNA with them. We are like more mushrooms than animals, if you compare it. And that's why mushrooms work in a very other way than plant compounds or anything else comparable. We are mushrooms. If we take it like this, and that's why we get some, I also say it's like a software upgrade for our immune system. If it's too overactive, for example, the mushroom can show, hey, this is our blueprint.
Go back to homeostasis. And there's a very, very big intelligence in the mushrooms we can use because we share DNA. And that's why they have superpowers we can use. Yeah, it's interesting that we are genetically very close and there's some key pathways that many of these functional mushrooms do affect. So while it breaks down a functional mushroom and its compounds, you have polysaccharides where the key one is beta-glucans that has immune system modulating effects, especially in the gut.
It increases the production of macrophages, so the cell eaters, and also natural killer cells that activates the immune system in that way. It also has three terpenoids, for example, in Reishi that are anti-inflammatory and anti-viral and anti-cancer properties. And then you have secondary metabolites where you have a bunch of terpenoids and steroids and alkaloids that have all kinds of effects from antioxidants to anti-inflammation.
One of the key pathways is NFKB. is critical in regulating immune system response. And many of these mushroom compounds do inhibit NF-kappa and reduce inflammation that way. And one interesting thing that I find is that it also affects proteins like cytochrome C in mitochondria. So there's this mitochondria-mediated induction of apoptosis in cancer cells, which is interesting. It's kind of like, if you look at it, it's actually a hormetic stressor.
So it's irritating to the system, like the compounds, to a level where it makes your body just function better in a sense. There is other pathways as well that these mushrooms modulate, MAPK, for example, or JAK stat pathway. Those are also immune system related and cell growth related pathways. If you look at, for example, cordyceps has cordycepin, and that inhibits the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-6 and TNF-alpha.
And one of the kind of key pathways that operates here is NFKB. So it's a really central effect here, so to say. And I mean, cordycepin is interesting because it's quite similar to adenosine. Another compound that a lot of people consume is caffeine that blocks adenosine receptors. Cordycepin can do the same, and the result is increased alertness. But what cordycepin also does, there seems to be improved blood. There's cardiovascular effects, so it improves oxygen intake.
And one interesting thing about cardiovascular health, specifically on cortisol is that it reduces platelet aggregation, so blood cells don't clump together when you use it, so it prevents formation of blood clots and in that way, it also improves blood flow and it also has effects on blood cholesterol levels. These are very interesting compounds and there's different compounds in different mushrooms. Now, one mushroom that you have on your product line is Agaricus blazei.
Most people know Cordyceps, Reishi, Shiitake, Chaga, all of these. Why do you have Agaricus blazei and why is that such a cool mushroom? Yeah, that's a very special one. You said not that much known because it's basically from South America and all the healing tradition is more in China and Asian countries. But what's very special with this mushroom is it has the most potent effect on the immune system. It's the extract.
It's also with chaga. We developed this with Dr. Simone Koch, and she is an expert for Hashimoto's disease. And this mushroom has some very interesting studies concerning autoimmune disease, Hashimoto's, and also thyroid stuff. So that's the main point we are using it in our immune product because it's one of the most potent immune balancing and stimulating mushrooms.
And you need that kind of firepower, so to speak, in the immune system for these heavy things like autoimmune disease, also cancer. Cancer, it is used in South America in the therapeutics while people get chemotherapy. Because it's great for the immune system, that it brings the immune system back because most people die of the side effects of the chemotherapy because the immune system is killed. And this mushroom is so potent for the immune system, it brings it back.
So they have much, much less side effects there because they use this mushroom and we use this immune power for regulating immune system, them also for allergies, very good and for stuff like this, but it's your favorite mushroom because of another thing it does, right? Yeah. One thing that I noticed about it is it's very potent blood sugar regulator. I have a friend who has diabetes and she told.
Out of all the mushrooms that she has used, Agaricus blazei basically completely baselines her blood sugar levels. And that's a really interesting effect. There are some natural compounds there that do influence insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism. And yeah, it's not very well known, but most of the effects that are studied on functional mushrooms are in there. It does have beta-glucans, for example. That's a type of soluble fiber, which also reduces LDL cholesterol.
So if I was having an unhealthy lifestyle or I would have, let's say, a very high saturated fat diet, oxalate mushrooms are great because of the way it also affects cholesterol. To me, what is interesting about it is also some of the antioxidants in these mushrooms that help deal with oxidative stress. And my knowledge also contains some selenium that people are deficient of. So that's a cool thing, which also has a role in the immune system as well as a mineral.
But there is also hepatoprotective effects on many of these functional mushrooms. This is not on the market, at least easily available, but I think it's called the red-belted conch mushroom. That one is very potent on dealing with liver-related issues. I could imagine you could take these with or after alcohol and might have hepatoprotective effects. I know that's one of those things. For example, reishi potentially does. It's kind of anti-hangover because of the liver functionality.
But the Alkidecus plaza is great for that blood sugar regulation thing. And it's South American, but you have actually a European version of that, right? We cultivate all our mushrooms in Europe. So we also use different species of this mushroom, for example, from Reishi, there are, I don't know, 50, 100 specific ones in German, it's the Glänzender Lackporling, very interesting names in German language for these mushrooms, or in China, there's lingzhi.
In Japan, it's reishi and so on. And we can use all of them combined and cultivate them in a very, very potent way, which is very important, organic. So mushrooms catch everything, which is heavy metals or whatever is there and try to decompose them. So it's very, very important where the mushrooms are coming from.
As we started with our mushroom love back in the day we saw that many stuff is coming out of china and you have some problematic compounds in there we don't want yeah talking about reishi or lingzhi that's one of the most studied mushroom also one of the most appreciated mushrooms actually in the chinese medicine system not everything coming from chinese medicine is solid but many are and And Reishi is definitely one of those.
One of its key mechanisms is actually the inhibition of nuclear factor kappa or NFKB pathway. Reishi has triterpenoids and polysaccharides and other compounds that inhibit that pathway. And it also affects the cytochrome P450 enzymes. That's the liver, especially when it comes to drug metabolism and synthesis of cholesterol, steroids and other lipids. Cytochrome B450 is key and it supports those enzymes, but there is no cross
interaction with pharmaceuticals. That's why it also makes it very safe to use, I would say. That's one of those things that you can also. Support sleep in the evening. Cordyceps is more a morning thing that you mentioned earlier with alertness. I also see Chaga is kind of an endurance thing. If you want to, because of its high antioxidant capacity, if you do something which is potentially causing oxidative damage, Chaga is awesome.
And Reishi is great for recovery and that kind of overnight immune system support.
Port it's a really cool mushroom and there is different forms and types of mushrooms also when it comes to reishi when you go to china or thailand even wherever in asia you find a lot of different varieties of lingzhi and I found ganoderma lucidum it's the latin name from all different place of the world all the way from finland to recently in an island in thailand which I'm very proud of, that I like running into this mushroom. It's quite rare, actually, outside of cultivation.
And what is striking about it is it's like really bright color, red, especially on the peripheries. And these mushrooms have slightly different compounds that are aggregated into different parts of the mushroom. And most of the health benefits are actually kind of almost skin layer of that mushroom. When the mushroom grows inside a tree, It forms these kind of like thicker mycelium and then it sprouts out from the mushroom to produce that so-called fruiting body.
And the stuff that grows normally inside trees, like the way it's cultivated, is to produce that. There is actually more surface area to extract the health benefits of it when you have more surface area compared to a fruiting body. So actually in a cultivating situation you can produce more of the active compound than in wild nature, but at the same time wild nature provides the stimulus for the mushrooms to produce those compounds that we seek.
There's different techniques to kind of of stress the mushroom, so it produces more of it. And my understanding of cordyceps cultivation is that they actually make the mushroom kind of fight each other a little bit, so it produces more cordyceps. So you can kind of see these compounds as part of the mushroom's own immune system that separates it from the outside world, which is a chemical-based immune system.
And the more it is under stress from the environment, the more of these compounds will be produced for its own protective reasons. And then in the human body, lo and behold, we have the pathways where it can work with school. Out of all these mushrooms, which one is your favorite? In terms of more functional mushrooms, what do you like yourself? The most favorite mushroom for me is lion's mane. It's also a very crazy looking mushroom. It looks like a lion's mane.
It has some white lines lying down. And it's also called pom-pom. it looks like it's a really cool looking mushroom you can google it and this mushroom is very special because it has two big areas of superpowers and the first superpower I like the most is it has compounds that regenerates brain cells and nerve cells so it's hiring a nerve growth factor and bdnf it's like rebuilding structures in the brain that got damaged it's neuroprotective and does studies.
Which is very funny and they they measured the iq of people beforehand and after the intake of lion's mane and the people got more intelligent which is cool I think and it's a brain power mushroom and that's the one area and the second area which is very much connected with this is our gut this mushroom has some really cool immune system benefits and the most important one from this mushroom is it is repairing the gut lining it has also hundreds
thousands of years in traditional chinese medicine they use it for every kind of skin or barrier in the body there are mucous membranes in the body every mucous membrane not only in the gut also in the stomach so if people have problems with stomach up from the down to after every mucous membrane is kind of repaired and made more wet by this mushroom which is crucial for the functioning of mucous membranes and that makes it very powerful I myself had some
issues with leaky gut and I tried like the beginning of biohacking very many different things and this mushroom and other mushrooms were a catalyst for getting these kind of problems away from me so I like it very much you mentioned it It affects the brain. So I'll add a little bit of scientific details. The grain-derived neurotrophic factor is one of those growth factors that influence the survival and differentiation of neuronal cells.
And it's vital for long-term memory and thinking processes. And lion's mane enhances the expression of BDNF and thereby supporting neuroplasticity and cognitive functions in learning and memory. And what is interesting about it is you don't really have an immediate effect from it. It's more like an effect that builds up. When you keep on using lion's mane, it rejuvenates your brain in a sense.
If you have brain damage, you have stress, lack of sleep, whatever, it can stimulate that brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And other effects that I find interesting about it, you mentioned the gut effect. Of course, there is beta-glucans, and we think of something like inflammatory or irritable bowel syndrome, IBS. It exhibits these kind of anti-inflammatory properties, which influence the production of inflammatory cytokines in the gut.
Technically speaking, it reduces inflammation, and in that way, you can manage the symptoms and help the body to heal itself. And one interesting possible effect is here that it might also promote the production of tight muscles. Junction proteins in the gut that fixes the leaky gut effect. You kind of reduce the intestinal permeability by using this mushroom. In a way, Lion's Mane can protect the stomach lining from damage and help the body to support healing.
But of course, it will be more effective if you combine that with some other compounds, for example, L-glutamine. You mentioned Tim Ferriss earlier.
I think one of the first things that I learned from him that really worked for me was to take 5 to 10 grams of L-glutamine after, let's say, you know, you eat something bad or you get food poisoning or whatever, you had to use antibiotics or something and you feel horrible, that can really speed up in the empty stomach the healing of the gut lining, which is interesting, and these mushrooms can definitely help in that process.
But yeah, I think like this, these mushrooms are great for anyone who does cognitive sedentary work. Why? Cognitive because these mushrooms have these kind of reindeer neurotrophic factors. There is these antioxidants, there is anti-inflammatory compounds, and then there is all those things that modulate blood sugar and lipid metabolism, so cholesterol values. If you sit a lot throughout the day, this is one of the best things to add to
your daily beverage, like a cup of coffee or something. and I have used over 10 years now. Functional mushrooms on a daily basis without a break. And I do attribute a lot of changes in my health in the last 10 years compared to 10 years earlier to using these mushrooms regularly. Like better functioning gut, then also better biomarkers like lipid metabolism. And then the third thing is, which I think is also key, is less seasonal flus and sickness.
Or if there is something, thing, it will pass very quickly. So you are kind of more prepared for those moments when your biological organism gets challenged from the outside. That's also my favorite mushroom, but I've noticed that there might be effects from lion's mane to libido. And there's anecdotal reports on the internet. I haven't looked into the studies, but there's a lot of people who do complain that they feel less drive if they use Lion's Mane on a regular basis.
I need to look into it, but I think it's solid that with a lot of these things, there might be effects that we haven't studied or understood yet. And cycling them in and out is key. That's why I also don't use the same mushroom every single day. I'm kind of like cycling them in and out. It works really well for me. There's days when I'm not having cordyceps at all. There's days when I'm not having Reishi at all, but it's different times of
the week when I do different things. And that seems to work for me pretty well. Do you have any other kind of advice or experience that you want to share? About these wonderful creatures of nature? Yes, there are many the superpowers of mushrooms. You mentioned before you have a friend that has some problems like diabetes and things like this. We had the agaricus, which is a very good one.
And there are some mostly unknown functional mushrooms, but they have very, very cool powers considering diabetes and also the blood sugar.
And the first one, and it's my favorite study of mushrooms is about maitake and maitake is the hero of our metabolism it can it has really an impact on our sugar metabolism so it showed in studies that it can also invert the insulin resistances in the body and optimize sugar intake and that comes in very handy that's why we have it in the balance products where we say it's more like inner balance for you against stress combined with reishi and also the hormonal balance because reishi has
also the hormonal balancing effects and we combine it with maitake because there's a really really cool study about the reproduction function of women and they had pcos so they have problems with their uterus and so what they used maitake extract against a drug which is called clomiphene what this drug does it also can bring the women back to have children again but with really really bad side effects like losing your ability to see or as getting blind and very harsh side
effects and they but they can get women back to fertility to like 97 percent the maitake extract has done the same thing without any side effect in a very low dose so So 250mg extract for a study is not enough. And the maitake can do it like 76% of the time. And they found out that it is because of the reversing of the insulin resistancy in the uterus. Also, when the women don't have any diabetes or stuff like this, they can have an insulin resistancy because of the PCOS.
The mushroom is reversing it, then energy flows and they become fertile again, which is awesome. Awesome really really cool and I think it's much more cool because you have the comparison with like a very very harsh drug so that's interesting for people who want to optimize their blood sugar stuff and so on and there's also a mushroom people don't know it's called coprinus.
Paleotropicus in german it's shop tintling and it is a very crazy looking mushroom it does not grow on trees so it's on the ground and it has a very arrow formed head so to speak and then it is this head is turning up and it looks like it's blue that's why it's called tintling and these mushrooms have not only some effect on the blood sugar levels and sugar metabolism but also some very very good effect on our organ that is producing insulin also it's on
the the pancreas it's a very special mushroom not many people know it but it has very very good effect on the pancreas and that's on insulin production and on the whole sugar game and it's pretty unknown interesting i can share a couple of lesser known effects on mushrooms as well that a lot of people know it actually protects the skin against uv rays and other forms of oxidative stress and the reason might be because it influences super oxidized dismutase
enzyme activity so SOD that is crucial for breaking down potentially harmful oxygen molecules now there's another mushroom that works on skin health that is not very well known it's called the birch polypore the Latin name is Viptoporus petulinus. This one has all kinds of different effects that could help skin health. For example, the typical ones that all these mushrooms have is anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antioxidant capacity.
But there's some wound healing benefits from this birch polypore. And the effect is that this mushroom promotes the activity of fibroblasts. Those are the cells that are crucial in wound healing and formation of new blood vessels. And if you want to repair your skin damage, all of that, like that mushroom, I find it's very interesting. Now there is also Paul Stamets, one of his favorite mushrooms. I think two favorite ones that he speaks a lot about is Turkey Tail as one of his top mushrooms.
And it's very rich in PSK, which is polysaccharide K and also polysaccharopeptides, PSP. And it stimulates the immune system activity. It's a really good immune system modulator. And another one, which he used to treat his mother's cancer effectively, I think intravenously, was Agaricon, which is Omitopsis officinalis. And Agaricon has a lot of antiviral properties, has been studied against different viral infections, including influenza, smallpox, and so on.
The exact effects are not very well known but something is happening there with viral replication where this mushroom inhibits that effect unfortunately a lot of these mushrooms which have all these cool effects don't necessarily have that commercial use in European Union before the year 97 unfortunately some of these are not available on the European market turkey tail is definitely one of those mushrooms that actually have to extract it.
Grows in almost every ecosystem. It's quite easy to find, but that is an example of a mushroom, that although it grows everywhere here, you can't really sell it in European market. But yeah, oyster mushrooms, those you can eat, those are available everywhere, has commercial use and very few people know that that's one of the top potent functional medicinal mushrooms available in a typical supermarket.
And oyster mushrooms are great for immune system support as well and in the end a lot of people do use functional mushrooms without knowing it by just eating those things or and so on but adding more of the superheroes of nature into your diet can definitely help prevent issues or help speed up healing and provide that well-rounded support for your immune system the way your body is dealing with stress and all the way from the gut, to uterus, to brain. Like these have many, many different
effects. And kind of circle back into the best ways to use these. So a lot of people on the market, they use extracts that are double or triple extracted with alcohol water, maybe some more advanced processing techniques, powder to mix in their drinks. They might use straight powder, which I don't recommend because it doesn't really have most of the compounds in bioavailable form and are not standardized.
Standardized then there's alcohol extracts but of course those are challenging in countries where you can drive in traffic with any amount of alcohol in your blood you may want to avoid alcohol extracts in that case and that's where the glycerin extracts are cool and it also adds kind of the sweetness to it it's one of my favorite herbs to add into my coffee is why don't you talk a little bit about the vegetable glycerin extracts and why did you choose to go with that one.
It's exactly the thought process we had. We started with our powders, which were more like a lifestyle product. Many people drink mushroom coffee or mushroom cacao, and we made some functional mushroom powders with adaptogens and so on. And we always thought about what is the most potent way to consume mushrooms to have more of the benefits. And of course, we came across the liquid extraction.
Back then we thought there's only the alcohol extracts. And when we tasted them, we said, okay, that's not for us. I can't really taste this. It pretty much tastes like an alcoholic beverage where you have fried mushrooms in, so you have to like it. So for us, for our brand, it's always very necessary that there's a good taste, like a good ritual you have with the product in the morning and so on. And alcohol is not the best to consume in the morning, for example.
For us liquid extraction was then something we didn't look into and then we came across the glycerin extracts and when we first tasted them I said how is this possible it tastes like honey and then we looked into the compounds that are in there it's crazy so the liquid extracts we have so potent one tablespoon of it you can compare with 36 normal mushroom powder capsules which is pretty much compounds in there you can't get more mushroom compound in a
bottle like this and it's because we do triple extraction so we first do that what every extract friend is doing it's the hot water extraction it's the cheaper extraction method and you mostly only get the polysaccharides out of there so all we talked about the immune system and stuff like that beta-glucane all these stuff you get out with hot water extraction and the fun stuff of the mushrooms we talked about bdlf in in lion's mane or all the 200 there are more than I think 300 tryptophanes in
reishi all these are only extractable with alcohol and we do an alcohol extraction to get all these frayed compounds out then we have to get rid of the alcohol again and And then we do a third step and that is the cold water extraction so that you get also the compounds out of there that are heat sensitive.
And then we have the glycerin and glycerin is a very special compound that can hold these big amounts of compounds, which are water soluble and fat soluble, which are extracted with the alcohol.
And then you have a very very potent extract of the mushroom which holds basically anything that is in nature in the mushroom but potentiated big time and the very cool thing is the taste you mentioned it it's you can get a sweetness into your drinks and the power of the mushroom and it's without sugar the taste comes from the glycerin itself and if we use it in organic form out of sunflower seeds and it's yeah it was a very cool moment when we taste the first time the glycerin extract
and it's a very very a hard process to do but then you have a very potent extract in the end you have a bunch of different mushroom extracts and you actually combine them and you don't just use mushrooms you also have some adaptogens in there I need to just share a little bit about the thought process why you combine certain mushrooms and to then add up the chance. We thought about the usage of mushrooms. We want to bring it into everyday life.
So it should not be something you have to have a really, really long thought process. Which mushroom do I take? When and why? So we made this four categories. We call it four pillars for maximum performance. And the first one we started with was focus. That's what biohackers are striving for, energy and focus. In the morning, we want to get things done or we want to have a deeper meditation, more clarity and stuff like this. We combined the most potent mushrooms for this endeavor.
It's cordyceps for energy, lion's mane for cocoa. And we put them into this high-dose extract you can use everywhere or into our powdered product. That's the mushroom cacao. In the mushroom cacao, you not only have cordyceps, but other adaptogens as well. And there are very cool effects. We studied back in our biohacking starting days. And there is citicoline. And that's a source for our neurotransmitters. But we use these neurotransmitters to think, use our brain.
And when we use them, we felt with cordyceps together, the cordyceps also enhancing blood flow to the brain, oxygen to the brain, and you have some cognitive effects. But combined with the citricoline, we have pretty cool effects, which is long lasting. You can think faster, so to speak, and it felt more light in the brain. Many people are deficient in this compound because it's normally in eggs or animal products, and many people don't eat animal products anymore.
And we use this because we really like the effect of it. Then there's Ginkgo biloba. And Ginkgo is known for the cognitive enhancement, the memory enhancement. It also enhances the blood flow to the brain. And it also has effect on the breakdown of the neurotransmitters. It inhibits it so you can reuse the neurotransmitters in the brain for longer time. And they really have a really cool symbiotic effect with the mushrooms.
We have also vitamin B5, which is known to enhance cognition and a pretty good taste with organic, very high quality cocoa. And together, it's also like cocoa is also a little bit enhancing serotonin and gives a good vibe, so to speak, in the morning, which is another vibe than most of caffeine beverages, which is more stress to the body. We want to create this feeling of this light creativity you have to achieve your dreams. That was the focus of this product.
Wonderful. And if people want to know more about your products, where can they find more information? You can find the information on our website. It's smainz.de. And if you are English speaking, which I think when you hear this one, You can scroll down and you can have the English version of the website. If you have any questions, you can write us an email. We are happy to help you in English language. And you also find us on Instagram.
smaints_mushrooms. We have cool content there about mushrooms. Wonderful. So S-M-A-I-N-T-S. Smaints.de. And you can scroll down and get the English version. And this is a cool company because products are sourced in Europe, they're manufactured in Europe, and German company, high quality, high standards, and also you do have the laboratory certificates for everything you do. It's awesome. I can recommend everyone to take a look at,
these products. I have a lot of different companies and mushroom products that I use, and this is definitely one of those, especially the glycerin extracts that I love. Makes it super easy to use with morning beverages like coffee or cacao even. So check it out. Yeah, you guys are also going to be in Helsinki, so we have the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki in July. That's our 10th anniversary. Last year you were in Amsterdam. It was a big success for you guys.
You launched some products and there's some new products you can launch in Helsinki as well. If people are interested in witnessing these products themselves first hand on all these other cool brands that are coming to Biohacker Summit go to biohackersummit.com and you can find more information. It's going to be 2nd and 3rd of July. It's like the Burning Man of all the biohacking events. It's not really a conference, it's a festival. It's really cool. Looking forward to meeting you there, man.
Yeah, I'm really looking forward. It's awesome events. In Amsterdam. We are on many events in Germany, some in England and so on, but this is very, very special and we are very happy to be there again. Thank you, Maximilian Endter.
That was a good primer to functional mushrooms and their benefits and a couple of rare ones for people to look into, maybe forage themselves, maybe try out that glycerin extract on their own little little experiments and with that I wish you all a very very healthy functional week. Music.