The Magical World of Mushrooms - a supplement for every pet

With a whole range of supplements on the market claiming to both help optimize your pet’s everyday health as well as treat all manner of different diseases, it can be impossible to know where to start.

Unfortunately many (or even most) fail to live up to their marketing hype.

Today though, we’re diving into the world of mushrooms and exploring how they could play a crucial role in keeping your dog and cat as healthy as possible.
Topics covered include:

• What are mushrooms and how are they different from other herbs and supplements?
• Can mushrooms be used to maintain optimal health or treat certain diseases (or both)?
• What is the evidence to support their use?
• What are the main active ingredients of medicinal mushrooms?
• Are there any side effects to be aware of or any individuals where mushrooms would not be appropriate?
• What makes a high quality mushroom product?
• How to integrate mushrooms into your pet’s wellness care

Head to the show notes to find out more about mushroom supplements and their health benefits for pets

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Transcript

Dr. Alex Avery:
Dr. Rob and Joni, welcome along to the podcast. I'm really excited for our conversation today, all about the world of mushrooms because it's something that I'm aware of in the background and on the fringes, but not something I've had a huge experience with. So, I know I'm going to learn a lot. But I'd love to, before we dive into the nitty gritty, find out what brought you into the world of mushrooms and how you started using them, and seeing the benefits that you have. Maybe Joni, if we start with you?
Joni Kamlet:
Yeah, sure and thank you for having us on here. It's really good to be on the show with you. Yeah, so my background, I'm a registered veterinary technician and a certified canine rehabilitation practitioner. I got out of hands-on vet medicine and was working in the supplement industry, teaching veterinarians about nutrition and herbs, and wholefood supplements. Then I started working for a supplement company. I got involved in formulating and we were using mushrooms and it was actually not a veterinary company, but I've always admired Dr. Silver. And when I heard that he was working formulating this veterinary line for this mushroom company, I couldn't wait to get on board. So, that's how I found my way into mushrooms, just reading about them and really ... and then I'd already been working with vets, and so I started giving them the mushrooms and asking them for feedback on what they were seeing in pets. And based on that feedback, it confirmed to me that this was an area that we really need to do more with animals. So, that's my way in, Dr. Silver had his own.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Fantastic, yeah. Super interesting. Dr. Rob, what brought you into this field?
Dr. Rob Silver:
So, when I graduated vet school, which is a long time ago, I'm an old-timer, I graduated in 1982 from Colorado State University, I thought I had all the tools I would need to address the terrible diseases that I was going to encounter in day-to-day practice. And for a while that worked out but after a few years, I started seeing patients I just could not touch, that the tools I was given in vet school didn't work for. Chronic disease, diabetes, autoimmune disease, cancer, some very tough stuff, Cushing's disease even, not a lot of good stuff for that. So I started looking at nutritional, at diets as ways of perhaps modifying the health of the animal. I looked at herbs, I looked at dietary supplements, things like fish oil and whatnot, antioxidants and looked at cannabis and CBD, and in the process developed an expertise in that and it was the natural progression to look at mushrooms because mushrooms are very much like CBD in that each individual mushroom or each individual cannabis plant, it's like a poly pharmacy.
Dr. Rob Silver:
It has so much stuff in it. So many good, beneficial bioactive molecules, it's not just a one trick pony. And so for me, who's a bit of a nerd, a bit of a pharmacology nerd, I like to know how all these ingredients that are in the plants and in the mushrooms work in the body, what brain receptors do they signal, all that complicated stuff. I like to figure that part out. Mushrooms were every bit as exciting and interesting and fascinating as the treasure trove of pharmacologic ingredients. So, that's my story.
Dr. Rob Silver:
And clinically, I found mushrooms to be incredibly beneficial, but they're a different kind of a category of substance. They're not something like you might take, let's say ... what am I going to say? Something like, let's say licorice route, let's say, to reduce inflammation. It does that relatively quickly.
Dr. Rob Silver:
Mushrooms really are more of a lifestyle supplement. They can work okay in the short term, but they are at their highest performance when they're taken on a regular basis, daily, over a long period of time. They are called biological response modifiers. And what this means is they're not really like pharmaceuticals. They don't really stimulate a pharmaceutical reaction. They cause the body itself to change, or to improve in its healing process, or to up-shore the immune system that might be flagging, so that it can better address whatever those challenges are. So, that's what got me into mushrooms because they're an amazing way of addressing problems that we may not be able to address that well with conventional therapies.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Yeah, fantastic. I guess that daily use is ... we see that in the mushroom coffees and all those different products for people as well, they're designed to be a regular addition to a lifestyle, rather than always just targeting a treatment. So, I guess I'd like to dive in, why mushrooms are different to herbs, so we've got that polypharmacy, but I guess that goes back to their biology and their category of ... as we classify different organisms and that kind of thing. Is there specifics in there that are just not found in other plants, that are the really useful ones?
Dr. Rob Silver:
Can I speak to this a little bit, Joni?
Dr. Alex Avery:
Yeah, no, please take it. Dr. Silver. Absolutely.
Dr. Rob Silver:
Well, there are three kingdoms for living things on this planet. We have our animal kingdom and we have our plant kingdom, but we have the fungal kingdom, which is separate and different from the other two. It's thought that, millennia, millennia millions of years ago, that when we are more at the single cell level of development as animals, plants, or fungi, that animals and fungi actually spun off from the same organism. So, they share a lot of DNA in common, which is one reason why they seem to really have a strong impact on animals, humans, pets, livestock, all of those above. So, it's that fungal kingdom that is so dominant and we're learning more and more.
Dr. Rob Silver:
I mean, even today I read something about how important this fungal kingdom is to the health of our planet, because of its ability to recycle and renew all of these dead and dying animal and plant materials that are on our planet and how it works. And then the part of the lifestyle cycle of the fungi includes this mycelial stage. And we're learning more that this mycelial stage winds up creating this huge, acres, hundreds of acres, if not square miles or hectares of mycelial growth that underlies forests and the soil. And there's like a communication system that allows the sharing of nutrients and important information. Now, how they inform each other. I think you need to have plant intelligence or fungal intelligence to understand, but the mycelium is almost like a worldwide net. So, the more we're learning about , we are learning more and more, it's not just bread mold, or something that spoiled the meat in the fridge. They are something that is integral every day to the health of our planet, to our own health, the health of our growing things. So yeah, that's a long-winded answer for a good question, you know?
Dr. Alex Avery:
No, I mean, yeah, it's fascinating because I think it's easy to think of ... We put all of our herbs and other things in the same bucket, but they're very different and they have their different uses and different actions. I think it's important to understand that if we really want to really be recognizing all of the different aspects and changes that we can be making. So, with regards Joni, our use to maintain daily health, we've also got our other category of treating disease is it mainly ... and we've spoken about that before, but is it really just this optimizing the daily health as a daily supplement or a weekly supplement, or what does that look like to the general pets out there?
Joni Kamlet:
Yeah. Well, and I just want to go back, I just want to piggyback on what Dr. Rob's just said. That's one of the things that got me so excited when I first learned about mushrooms, the idea that we share more of our DNA ... that mushrooms share more of their DNA with us than they do with plants. I mean, they really ... just personally from taking mushrooms, I can feel a difference in my resiliency. They support the tone, vigor and function of the body and that's what they're going to do when we give them to our pets. So, it's great to take mushrooms daily, and in addition, there are certain mushrooms that focus on specific organ targets. For instance, Cordyceps mushroom has an affinity for the lungs and the kidneys. A lot of people have heard about turkey tail mushroom, which is probably the most popular mushroom in veterinary medicine and its uses for supporting animals with cancer. There's mushrooms that support cardiac health, liver liver health, et cetera, and taking them daily, I just notice, and I just ... the feedback we're getting, with pets that are on them, they have more of an ability to withstand the daily stresses of life.
Joni Kamlet:
But in addition, if they are dealing with some sort of illness, chronic illness, mushrooms can be added to the protocol to give a whole lot of support and Dr. Silver can share more. There are not a lot of clinical studies, unfortunately with animals. There's more and more human studies every day, in vitro, in vivo studies. But a lot of the information that we're learning about mushrooms with animals is anecdotal, but there's a lot of it. And yeah, I really firmly believe that everybody should be on ... every being, humans and animals, can benefit from being on some sort of mushroom daily.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Sure, fantastic. So, I guess that touches then on the evidence to support their use, because I guess we find a lot of the time with these new and emerging fields that it's not a whole lot but we can borrow from the human side as well. I mean, that's showing that there is biological activity and it's helping, and we're not all that different. So, we've got that anecdote and we've got that history of use through yourselves and other people, but where do we sit with this? Is this something that is being actively looked at? Is it the fact that we are relying on just a couple of studies and people aren't really that interested in the scientific community? What's the picture like there?
Dr. Rob Silver:
There's actually a huge body of objective evidence about mushrooms that's been developing for many, many years. Much, much longer than we have for cannabis, because there hasn't been the regulatory issues with THC. Now, so there's a huge amount of research and there are good clinical trials. A lot of it comes out Asia and comes out of Eastern Europe, which are cultures that have always loved mushrooms. Some of the Western cultures, the English culture, and some American cultures, I think are a bit what they call mycophobic, a bit afraid of mushrooms, because of the poisoning aspect of some mushrooms. Although only a few mushrooms are poisonous, but they sure get your attention when they affect your dog, or your friend, or yourself.
Dr. Rob Silver:
So, a lot of the evidence, they're doing studies that aren't lifestyle studies, they're directing them to some clinical entity, be it allergic asthma, be it cancer, be it a number of different things, a wide variety of applications that have been scientifically proven in laboratory animals and in some human clinical trials as well. We just don't have them in our veterinary species because there's been no economic stimulus. It costs money to do studies, there's been no economic stimulus until recently. Real Mushrooms as a company has been around for seven years, which is a long time in the mushroom space and we're talking about what kinds of studies we can generate with dogs and cats and horses, that would be valuable to both the pet consumer, but also to veterinarians.
Dr. Rob Silver:
And so, one of my big roles, is to package all of this into good educational material that veterinarians can wrap their minds around and understand that mushrooms are more than just something that their patient picks up in the backyard, because that is a danger, is the backyard mushroom.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Yeah and I guess that's what people ... like you say people worry. Well, we hear mushrooms and we hear how you've got to be so careful. And if you don't know what you're doing, you should not go and just pick a mushroom and eat it.
Joni Kamlet:
Absolutely, yeah.
Dr. Alex Avery:
I mean, what kind of, I guess, problems can we get into? Are there certain individuals where it's not appropriate to be using mushrooms, or are there certain types that a little bit more care needs to be given, albeit that they're still in the supplement market, if you like.
Dr. Rob Silver:
In humans, we have reports of some minor small percentage of people having some allergies to some mushrooms. Oftentimes they're the actual raw versions of the mushrooms versus the cooked versions. But many of the mushrooms that we find have clinical value, have medicinal value, are oyster mushroom, or little button mushrooms, portobello mushrooms, or cremini mushrooms. These all have good research that supports that the ingredients they contain actually can create beneficial clinical change. So, then there's a few mushrooms, which are not all that edible, cause they're kind of woody, these mushrooms that grow on trees, look like shells, they are very woody just like the tree itself. And they use materials, oftentimes molecules that are found in the tree, they transform them and concentrate them and we get to use some of the benefit of the tree as well in that regard, so they're not as edible.
Dr. Rob Silver:
And then we have the psychedelic mushrooms, of which there's really only one species, which is the psilocybin species. And we're not talking about that, although there is a lot of interest in it and Cassara Andre, who you interviewed a while ago, she's showed a big interest in trying to bring psilocybin mushrooms into dogs that may have a lot of behavior issues, PTSD, things like that. I know there's a study that's being worked on in Canada, on dogs that are in warfare and that get PTSD and looking to see if psilocybin mushroom might help them with that, but we're not going there. And then there's the toxic mushrooms, which a are small percentage, but gets everybody's attention.
Dr. Rob Silver:
So, we're not dealing with toxic mushrooms. We're not dealing with the psychedelic mushroom. We're dealing with the edible mushrooms and the nonedible mushrooms that have good ... that work as functional foods, that have good functions clinically. So, for instance, I had shiitake mushroom last for dinner. Now, fresh mushrooms are like 90% water. So, if you dry it down, you get a more concentrated amount of the good medicinal properties of the mushroom, but mushrooms are very fibrous. If you've ever eaten a mushroom they're tasty, but a little bit of chew factor there. So, a lot of the bioactive ingredients in the mushrooms that work clinically, that give benefits, are trapped inside that fiber. And so the way you release them from the fiber is to boil them in water, or you don't really boil, you bring them all almost up the boiling, like 190 degrees Fahrenheit, which would be like maybe 90 degrees centigrade. And then we do that for a couple of hours, which releases the goodies from the fiber.
Dr. Rob Silver:
So, for instance, putting mushrooms into soup is a great way to eat them and also to release all their good properties. So, I think I'm answering your question. It was a wide-ranging question there and maybe Joni wants to pipe in here too.
Joni Kamlet:
I just want to add a little bit, the general rule of thumb is if a mushroom is safe for a human, it's going to be safe for an animal. So, in answer to your original question, we would never recommend eating forged mushrooms, unless you're a mushroom expert, don't go out into the woods and pick mushrooms and give them to your pet. Definitely not. If you want to cook with mushrooms, for the most part, if you go to the farmer's market, or to the grocery store, all of those mushrooms are going to be safe for pets. The medicinal mushrooms that come in supplement form that humans take, are going to be safe for pets.
Joni Kamlet:
And like Dr. Rob said, anything can cause anything. I mean, there are certainly going to be animals or people that have allergies, just like they can have sensitivities to anything. But for the most part, what I love about mushrooms is they're functional foods basically. And so, it's very hard, what we're learning is that you can give ... and for the most part, you can give mushrooms in very large doses. And in fact, therapeutically that's often recommended, under the guidance of a veterinarian. And the clinical study, Dr. Rob, I don't know if you want to dive into that hemangiosarcoma study, what they found was the higher doses were giving the better outcomes with dogs. Wasn't a great study, but it's one of the few that we have.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Yeah, sure. So hemangiosarcoma being a bleeding, a bleeding tumor that's often of the spleen. So, there's specific information about specific mushrooms used to treat that is there?
Dr. Rob Silver:
There's two published studies doc, that were funded by a Chinese company that has patented a practice to extract one particular individual molecule from the growing mycelium of the turkey tail mushroom in a special liquid broth. But it's actually, they've used this extract, it's patented, they've used it in a human patient, human cancer patients in China, and currently with chemotherapy. So, the company wanted to spend some money and see if they could get some starting with animal studies here in the US, moving eventually to FDA approval.
Dr. Rob Silver:
So, the first study they did surprised everybody, it was a peer dosing study. We had small study groups of like five dogs each, but the highest dosing tier as Joni is suggesting, actually caused these dogs have survival times greater than historical survivor times for dogs who were splenectomized, had their spleen removed, but also received chemotherapy, which these days is the gold standard for treating hemangiosarcoma. So, it surprised everybody.
Dr. Rob Silver:
Well, they then did a follow-up study with study group of 25 dogs each. And they did one group that had just the mushroom extract alone. These are dogs all were clinically ... had the hemangiosarcoma, had their spleens removed. And then they had another cohort that had the chemotherapy with the mushroom. And then they had a third cohort with the chemotherapy, with a placebo mushroom. And what they found was in this larger study, that there wasn't as much of a benefit for this single molecular extract at the dosage that they used in the entire body of patients. But they did find a small benefit for the male dogs versus the female dogs in the study, there's actually a sex associated outcome with ... and I think they find that with chemo as well, but much less so than they were able to find with this.
Dr. Rob Silver:
So, we don't understand what those mechanisms are yet. That study was just published last month. We're still looking at it and going over it, discussing it. But my thinking is that because ... See, the turkey tail mushroom historically has had great success in treating human patients with cancer and the number of anecdotal testimonials that we get as a company from cancer survivors who are using our turkey tail, or from vets, or from pet owners that are using turkey tail for their cancer, it's hard to ignore. Although we know there with anecdotal studies, although there's evidence it's not unbiased, there's always that placebo effect or in pet owners, that wishful thinking that the animal's getting better. We've seen that many times.
Dr. Rob Silver:
But my thinking is that it's a higher dosage of the whole turkey tail mushroom that doesn't have a single isolated ingredient, but has the full panorama of the 10, the 20, the 30 different active molecules that are similar, but different that work together synergistically. So, that's where I want to go with my clinical trials, is I want to start with turkey tail and make sure it's safe at about a 10 times normal dose. And then I've got a couple of integrative oncologists to put together a multi-center study that's going to be similar to what these published studies are in dogs with hemangiosarcoma to see if we can make an impact. Now, it might be that hemangiosarcoma as a disease, is just such an awful, terrible, aggressive disease, there just is nothing that we have in our technology or in our natural pharmacy today that really can make as much of a difference, it's really more up to the individual animal's immune system to really ... because that's what we do see some animals that do well on hemangiosarcoma for several years, which we don't understand.
Dr. Rob Silver:
Sometimes we give them mushrooms, we think the mushrooms did it. Sometimes we don't give them anything and they still do well. So, we need more studies about this. I'm hopeful that we can find some benefit to the higher doses of the whole turkey tail mushroom for cancer because let's face it, I'm sure you're aware of this as well, we've got a cancer epidemic in our pets going on and we've got to do something about it, you know?
Dr. Alex Avery:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's fascinating. I guess, what your explanation of that study springs to my mind is that we always want to dial it down to this one thing that is the-
Dr. Rob Silver:
I know, yeah.
Dr. Alex Avery:
... beneficial thing, but sometimes it's not just the one thing, it's all these lots of little things. I mean, I say that with regards to even the treatment of our common diseases, arthritis, we don't want just the one painkiller. We have our whole lifestyle changes, and our diets, and our weight loss, and our supplements. And it's the same maybe with this as well, dialing it down to that one pharmaceutical.
Dr. Rob Silver:
Yeah, it is for everything. Yeah, multimodal. I like that word, multimodal.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Yeah, yeah it's a fantastic-
Dr. Rob Silver:
Or integrative. Integrative because integrative takes ... we take the best, evidence-based conventional therapies and we blend them with the best, evidence-based alternative therapies to improve the outcome of our patient.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Yeah, absolutely and it's making ... I mean, you touched there on the limitations of different types of evidence and that's absolutely true. I mean, I think if we're waiting ... at the same time and I'm a big believer in following the evidence, upfront, but at the same time we need to not discount everything just because there isn't that placebo, double blinded, gold standard, because we'll be waiting for an awful long time with an awful lot of things, if we're waiting for that before we start. Just trying it and integrating it, like you say, with everything else.
Joni Kamlet:
Yeah and the study came out, this original hemangiosarcoma study came out with the turkey tail in 2012 and it set off the original interest in mushrooms for animals. There are a number of veterinary oncologists that it's part of their protocol, and the turkey tail can be used in conjunction with chemotherapy. It is frustrating because holistic medicine doesn't have the funds that these big pharmaceutical companies have. And so, when I first started working for Real Mushrooms, Dr. Rob used to ask me ... I'd say, "Well, I heard this or I heard that." He's like, "Well, where's the evidence Joni?" So yes, it's very, very important. And at the same time, we have a app called Slack and every time somebody leaves a review on our website, it pings my cell phone.
Joni Kamlet:
And since January, when I started with Real Mushrooms, it's pinging all day long. There's reviews coming in and many of them are animal reviews and person after person saying that there's some benefit that they see their dog receiving, whether it's a tumor shrinking, or longer survival times, or better quality of life, et cetera. Again, it's frustrating because that evidence, it can't come soon enough. And at the same time, it's hard to discount when so many people are seeing a benefit. And that's what keeps me excited about continuing to do this work.
Dr. Alex Avery:
I guess I'm diving then into the product and that side of things. I mean, you'll be aware Joni from your first life, if you like, of working with different supplements in a supplement company, that quality can vary hugely between manufacturers, between different products. I'd love to talk about, what the the differences can be between sources and how people can be certain that their supplement that they're providing is a good quality one containing what it says it does.
Dr. Rob Silver:
Well, I joined this company last year and I joined them specifically because of their quality control. I'm also a formulator of products and have been for 25 years, particularly specifically for veterinary use, although now I'm formulating for pet use as well. And Real Mushrooms has a parent company that cultivates these mushrooms under organic standard, and it cultivates them, then it extracts them, it drives them and extracts them according to the highest standards. Third party analyzes every batch to make sure it doesn't contain heavy metals, doesn't contain pollutants, that is in fact a very clean material. Real Mushrooms is the retail wing of this manufacturing company that Canadian ... Well, Real Mushrooms, and the other company called Nammex, they're both Canadian companies.
Dr. Rob Silver:
So, they take these dried, organically grown mushrooms and they hot water extract, and they do various levels of concentration depending on what end product they need to put them in. And so, their testing is done all throughout the process. And so it's a very clean product, each bottle that's labeled by given mushroom species, let's say go back to turkey tail, we've got that species. It's standardized, so from bottle to bottle, from batch to batch, from capsule to capsule, you get the exact same percentage of active ingredients in it. They standardize it to a type of ingredient that's common to all mushrooms called beta glucans. And beta glucans are these molecules, they're actually part of the fibrous wall of the mushroom, but they signal our immune system because the worst infections ever are fungal infections, they're the hardest to treat. I think in part because we share DNA with them, they know how to get into us. So, fungal pathogens are the most difficult. So, all living beings' immune systems evolve to be able to very robustly detect the presence of fungus, mushrooms are fungus as well.
Dr. Rob Silver:
What that does is it detects that there's a mushroom, there the mushroom's not pathogenic, but it activates the immune system because that's this ancient mechanism that we have to protect us against fungal infections. So, it activates the immune system. All mushrooms have these beta glucans in them. So, by standardizing them to the beta glucans, we get a sense as far as how much of that mushroom do we need to use to give a certain amount of beta glucans to produce a certain result? We have established dosages for beta glucans in all animals, humans as well, that allows us to then be able to give some kind of an objective basis for dosing or administering these mushroom compounds.
Dr. Rob Silver:
Now, mushrooms are different from each other. They all have the same beta glucans, although the beta glucans they have are also different from mushroom to mushroom, but they have other molecules. And these other molecules are what makes each mushroom have its individual effect. For instance, there's one mushroom called lion's mane. Lion's mane has good beta glucans. It's got like 25% beta glucans, but it's got these other molecules in them called terpenes. Terpenes are the things that make vegetables smell, like you squeeze a lemon and you can smell that, that's limonene, which is a very simple terpene. Mushrooms have much more complicated terpenes, which may add a little bit of bitter taste to them, but which activate many pathways in our body to reduce inflammation, or reduce the growth of cancers, or improve mentation, or stimulate growth factors, nerve growth factors, that allow us to repair following trauma. Lion's mane has those kinds of terpenes in them, which stimulate brain repair, and also have a calming effect, a settling effect, and can also reduce anxiety and improve cognition.
Dr. Rob Silver:
It's called a nootropic, N-O-O-T-R-O-P-I-C, compound which means that it helps to increase your mind intelligence, or your mind's capacity. So, that's the story behind why I think this company is so good because it creates products that are very similar to the other products that we use to treat our patients and it makes it simple to do it though.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Absolutely. Fantastic. So, I guess it's as much of an education of the pet parent out there as it is the vet at this stage as well.
Joni Kamlet:
Yes, yes.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Joni, for those people who are listening to this and thinking, "Well, it sounds like mushrooms are, are going to be a real benefit for me and for my furry family." How can people go about starting introducing this? We touched at the beginning and there with Dr. Rob, just about how beneficial it can be across the body as a whole, not just for treating disease, how can people go about introducing this to their pet's lifestyle and wellness plan?
Joni Kamlet:
Yeah. I mean, certainly you can cook mushrooms and add them to your pet's diet if you're home feeding, but it's very hard to do that consistently. You're not going to do it every day. So, I think supplementation is great and of course in the US, and we're actually also on iHerb, if it's a pet that is generally healthy and you just want to proactively add mushrooms to increase that resiliency and the vigor of the body, I would recommend a combination of mushrooms. Mushrooms seem to work best in synergy. So, we have a product called Five Defenders, which is a combination of turkey tail, reishi, chaga, maitake and shiitake. All of these mushrooms are immuno-modulating, they're all anti-inflammatory. The Five Defenders would be a whole body support, to go back to what Dr. Silver was talking about earlier, the lion's mane, that was actually the mushroom that got me excited initially.
Joni Kamlet:
That's the mushroom that I sent out to my vets initially, because I had read some literature about the ability of lion's mane to support the regeneration of the myelin sheath, and having worked in rehabilitation with dogs with degenerative myelopathy, where the myelin sheath starts to disintegrate, and it's a very, very tragic illness, disease with no ... there's no cure for it. I actually sent the lion's mane out to these veterinarians that did rehab and said, "Hey, try this. This is a really cool mushroom, and there's these clinical studies on the myelin sheath." And what they ended up saying is, "for the DM, it works kind of ... " Just like with DM dogs, they can be good one day and bad other, but for cognition, they were noticing these older dogs with DM were having very specific changes in their cognitive function. Dogs with dementia, suddenly finding the dog door where they couldn't before, making direct eye contact with owners, very specific things like that.
Joni Kamlet:
So, for pet parents that are listening, if you have an older dog with cognition issues, lion's mane would be a great one. Lion's mane traditionally was used also for the gut to support irritable bowel disease and ulcers. So, it has that double use. The Five Defender's great proactively. Dr. Rob, do you want to add some other ones here? You know, the-
Dr. Rob Silver:
I think that using a combination , the shotgun approach is generally well accepted, and so for those that are looking for wellness, certainly that's a good approach. At the same time, talking about these testimonials that we get, we're getting quite a few testimonials about using that shotgun being very effective for treating conditions like cancer and so on. So, I think what's cool is that it just seems like they're so robust, that almost any mushroom you choose can have a benefit, but we're trying to educate and label the products in such a way as to make it easy because it is complicated. It can be confusing and we want to make it simple because that will encourage pet parents to use it more, which then reaches my goal and Joni's goal, which is to raise up the level of health of all of our critters out there.
Dr. Rob Silver:
So yeah, I'm a bit more ... because I do this all the time. I like to use individual mushrooms for specific purposes and oftentimes I'll put two individual mushrooms together. For instance, I created a formula for this soft chew product, which uses the lion's mane along with another mushroom called reishi, organoderma. Reishi Also has calming properties. Zen masters will take it as a meditation aid, for instance. So, it's not like it's sedative, it's not going to knock them out, but I put some theanine and tryptophan in this to help with the whole calming process as well. So here, you could think about using it for relaxing or settling, not really sedating.
Dr. Rob Silver:
We found a lot of help for this during one of our holidays where they use fireworks and you know how frightened dogs are fireworks. Thunderstorms in the summer. We also have a soft chew which contains ... like Five Defenders that Joni was referring to, which has the five in it, all of which have very potent immune enhancing properties. And there's several herbs in here like ashwaganda and astragalus root, which are both adaptogens, but also work synergistically with the mushrooms to improve immune system response. So, we've got a lot of tools. We're just at the beginning of my work.
Dr. Rob Silver:
One of the products I have in mind is something that pet parents can use every day to sprinkle on the food that gives a little bit of everything, not just the mushrooms, but some antioxidants, some probiotics, some digestion boosters, the whole thing, so people can feel ... because life's so busy these times, who has time to listen to podcasts, well obviously someone's listening to this. So, to make it easy to put something in every morning or every evening when you're just giving them their bowl, even if you're just feeding old kibble, it's going to help improve their plane of nutrition and improve their response to challenges.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Yeah, no, I love that because yeah, I guess it goes back to what we were talking about. The multimodal is actually, it's good to have-
Joni Kamlet:
Great.
Dr. Alex Avery:
... a little bit of everything and you're going to get probably the biggest benefit. But if it gets to a stage where you're adding five, or six, or seven different products, then it all becomes too much. You throw your hands up in the air and you go, "It's too hard for me. I don't have time for this." So, this has been a fantastic conversation. I've loved hearing just the developments and the exciting field. And like you said, we're just at the very beginning. For those people who want to dive more into the work that you're are both doing and the company that you're working for and the products that are available, where can people head to to learn more about all of that good stuff?
Joni Kamlet:
Well, our website is realmushrooms.com, R-E-A-L mushrooms.com. So, in the US, you can order the products through real mushrooms. We're also available on Amazon. And if you're out of the US, I know that our products are now available on iHerb. So, that would be a good place to look for them. And if you go to our website, there's a little pet section, you can order the ... The Real Mushrooms for pets are going to be there. And we also have on the website, a link that says, "Learn," which there's all kinds of ... Dr. Silver's written blogs, I've written blogs. There's a lot of information, if you want to ... I mean, everybody, it's not just for the pets. I mean, I encourage everybody to look into taking mushrooms and there's a lot of information on there on the different mushrooms and what to look for in a quality mushroom, cetera.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Fantastic.
Dr. Rob Silver:
Once a month, we have a live streamed pet Q and A where I have no idea what they're going to ask me. It's a lot of fun. But it's live, and so people can really get on board. And if they have a burning question, they need the answer for, they can certainly submit them there. Those could be found also through our website, can't they Joni?
Joni Kamlet:
Yeah. Now, our next one is August 25th, Thursday, 4:00 PM Pacific Time. Oh no. 7:00 PM Pacific Time, 4:00 PM ... No, 4:00 PM Pacific. I just moved. Forgive me, I just moved to Virginia from California. So, I'm still getting my time zones sorted out, but yeah, 4:00 PM Pacific.
Dr. Alex Avery:
[inaudible 00:41:21].
Dr. Rob Silver:
It's usually five o'clock Mountain Time for me.
Dr. Alex Avery:
No, cool.
Dr. Rob Silver:
It's been great being here, doc. Really appreciate the opportunity to help educate pet parents about ways they can help keep their pets healthier and not have to go into the vets unless it's annual prevention.
Dr. Alex Avery:
Yeah, absolutely.
Joni Kamlet:
Absolutely.
Dr. Alex Avery:
No, it's been a fun ... Well, it's been a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise, Dr. Rob and Joni and yeah, I will leave all of those links in the show notes, and in the blog post, and all of that good stuff, so people can find out more and dive deeper into the world of mushrooms and watch this space, I guess I would say as well, because we're at the tip of the iceberg and there's a whole lot more to come.