Why You Should Be Taking Mushrooms with Jerry Angelini of Host Defense
We’re talking about mushrooms this week . No, not those kind of mushrooms and not portobellos either. Medicinal mushrooms are some of the most fascinating and powerful healers we know and yet they’re still some of the most misunderstood products in our arena. Beyond their nutritional and medicinal properties, mushrooms are also being researched for their use in protecting the environment; including their use to clean up oil spills and mitigate plastic waste.
Meet Jerry:
This week our guest is a true expert and honestly just a cool guy to talk with. Jerry Angelini is an integrative practitioner with training and experience in psychiatric and chronic illness rehabilitation, and is the Host Defense Education Director. He’s worked hard to inform people all around the world including medical professionals, retail staff and consumers about the healing properties mushrooms provide. We sat down with Jerry to talk about how and why we should incorporate mushrooms into our own routines, how they work, and some of Ed’s favorite products.
Some Topics We Discussed:
What are medicinal mushrooms? (5:10)
What are the two parts of a mushroom that provide the benefits? (8:40)
What makes Host Defense products unique? (11:32)
What are the most popular mushrooms? (20:27)
Key Takeaways From This Episode:
Mushrooms help balance and modulate the immune system. (7:09)
Certain mushroom formulations are designed for daily use while others pack more of a punch. (12:28)
You can do targeted dosing based on the health issues you’re dealing with to kick your immune system into fight mode. Don’t be afraid to take more than the bottle says. (14:42)
Products + Resources:
Get Social With Jerry:
Website: hostdefense.com
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:43 What's going on everyone? Welcome back to The Holistic Navigator Podcast where we talk about all things holistic health, and believe in the body's ability to heal itself if it's given the proper nutrients and care. Thank you so much for choosing to listen in today. My name is Brian Strickland. I'm the producer of the show. And we've got an episode today all about mushrooms. We're speaking with Jerry Angelini, an integrative practitioner and Education Director for Host Defense Mushrooms. He's a wealth of information, he has an awesome beard, and is one of our favorite people to talk with. So sit back, relax and enjoy this conversation with Jerry Angelini. I'm gonna pass it off to the host of our show now. Here's Ed Jones.
Ed Jones 01:28 Thank you, Brian. And I am stoked today to be talking one of my favorite subjects of my 41 year career has really been something revolving around mushrooms. And I'm not talking about portabello or magic mushrooms. I'm talking about the medicinal ones that continue to be researched for such value not only in our human system, but perhaps even to save the world from pollution and so many of the issues that we have at hand and today one of my most favorite and I've interviewed you once before, Jerry, on the radio show that I have. But Jerry Angelini welcome to The Holistic Navigator.
Jerry Angelini 02:12 Thanks for having me on Ed. It's great to be here.
Ed Jones 02:16 Well, you know, we scour the world for people who truly know their "s-h-i-t" and you are one of those men and you have a vast background of knowledge you have a tremendous amount of, you know, information, education, you focus and maybe maybe tell people maybe a 60 seconds of where you come from and where you are.
Jerry Angelini 02:42 I have a undergraduate and graduate degree from Boston University in Rehabilitation Medicine. I've studied traditional Chinese medicine, been an herbalist for over 30 years, I started training with Rosemary Gladstar back when I was I think I was like 19 years old started really young. And I have a I've been working with Host Defense Mushrooms for eight years now. And but prior to that I've been an integrative healthcare practitioner for 30 years. So it's been a lot of fun we never a dull moment, that's for sure.
Ed Jones 03:24 I'm sure that is the truth. And with our evolving, broken healthcare system, there's more and more need for gladiators like yourself, and hopefully myself and even my daughter, who has taken up the challenge of which is a miss challenge of trying to educate the public on so many safe options to maintain health and many times to regain health without toxic medicines. And you know, I've done then I'd have to ask Brian is something like 50 of The Holistic Navigators and each one of these is like a chapter in my encyclopedia. So I've chosen many topics. Well, this one's going to be on why should we even think about mushrooms? How do we access them? What do we need to know? And about dosing? And you know, before I actually did this came down this morning, I've typed into PubMed just the word mushroom and cancer and there was 1,764 studies on that alone.
Jerry Angelini 04:31 Oh, yeah. Right.
Ed Jones 04:32 So all you know, so all these people who are like, you know, pooh poohing all mushrooms, you know, here's another wacko talking about herbal medicine. No, you don't, you know, in 20 years ago, we didn't have all this background backup information. We got it now, don't we, Jerry?
Jerry Angelini 04:47 It's really impressive the research that's been ongoing in all the on all the natural substances that have been used in traditional ethnobotanical and ethnomusicological practices so, and the research is only growing. It's really quite impressive.
Ed Jones 05:06 And I know that, you know, I had read somewhere. And I certainly believe this that some of the most powerful medicines on this planet focus around mushrooms. And so maybe give people a primer on this mushroom thing, because again, we're not talking about the one you find at the salad bar. We're talking the, you know, the odd ones like Reishi and Shiitake, and it goes all the way down the list. And I am a huge believer and also use like Cordyseps. Before my workout, I did Lion's Mane before I go on almost all of my podcasts. I do a liquid Lion's Mane. So get people who know nothing about this the primer.
Jerry Angelini 05:46 Great. So mushrooms support the immune system. First off, there are a set of compounds in mushrooms that are both water soluble and alcohol soluble, that interact with the immune system that resides in our intestinal tract. And at this point, most people know that about 60 to 70% of your immune cells inhabit these specialized areas in the intestinal tract. And when we eat prepared mushrooms, they interact with that immune system, and they engage it and in many cases they will either make it function more strongly, or they'll do something that's called modulate that immune response, which is like turning on certain switches and making sure other switches do not get turned on. So it's kind of like making sure it's balanced. And this is particularly important in our world where we have this kind of dysregulated immune response that we start to see in people, right. They get sick really often, but then they have allergic reactions, or they have autoimmune responses. And this is basically an upside down immune response. And many of the mushrooms that we use it Host Defense, and some of the research that we've been doing on our mushrooms at Host Defense show that they modulate, and they help balance the immune response. And this is brilliant, right? It's a product that you can take, you don't have to prepare the mushrooms, you don't even have to like how they taste because if you take the mushroom in a capsule, you're not going to taste it and it's still going to balance your immune response.
Ed Jones 07:39 I love that. And you know, some people don't understand the word modulate, and I counsel people like you have for many of your chunk of your life. And you know, there is an epidemic of autoimmune. And what is autoimmune? Of course, it's where our own friendly immune system somehow gets confused and starts attacking our own cells. I mean, everything from lupus to rheumatoid to blank, blank, blank. And most things that stimulate the immune system, I got to educate people and said, you don't want to do that blindly, because we already have a confused immune system. So let's not just confuse and stimulate something that's confused. But modulate means that if you have something that's acting too excessive, it's going to bring it back to balance, you have something that's acting inferior is going to bring it back up to balance. So many people, you know, are a little bit concerned. I don't want to take an immune stimulant like mushrooms, but you're saying that it's actually going to retrain the immune system to come back into a healthy state. Correct?
Jerry Angelini 08:40 Exactly. And this is actually we just had a research article accepted for publication in the BMC Journal for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Really excited about it, actually, and it proved that Host Defense mushrooms there and it's made up of two parts. It's the root structure of the mushroom called the mycelium and we grow our mushrooms on organic brown rice and the mushroom mycelium ferments the rice, and both the mycelium and the fermented rice are immunologically active. And what it does is this combined product of the mushroom mycelium and the fermented rice engages the key immune cells that help you fight off pathogens and help you fight off cell mutations as well as engaging the checks and balances in your immune system so it doesn't overreact. And this is brilliant because it makes it safe for everyday use. It strongly gets that immune system engaged, and it makes sure that immune system stays within normal limits. So it's a brilliant, brilliant piece of research that finds is going to be published.
Ed Jones 10:02 That's lovely. And I, you know, I so give so much credit to Paul Stamets, to you, to the company itself because, you know, it takes a real heart to journey through this, this difficulty of spinning the money, doing the research, going against the trend of people who don't think you are, you know, intelligent, I guess, or whatever. And, you know, conventional medicine can be pretty cruel with their opinions and what's going on. I will say real quickly, I have to put this plug in the past four or five of my podcasts, because on June 9, Google changed analytics. I now use bing.com to search anything in the natural field, because this morning, I went in there and typed in medicinal mushrooms health benefit on Google, then I went into bing different, different. They really are. So quit using Google to search natural remedies, natural information. It is not going to work very well. It's still there, but it's on page seven instead of page one and two.
Jerry Angelini 11:01 Oh, okay. I'll check that out, too.
Ed Jones 11:05 No, it's ridiculous. And June 9 is when it happened on June 8, we could have put that word in, and everything would have popped up but no longer because now Google has said they are going to review everything about health, nutrition, and herbs and vitamins in front of a board. And if that board doesn't think it's Harvard level, it's going to be discounted way down the list. So it is pretty pathetic. Let's get back to the mushroom conversation before Ed Jones gets off on a rabbit trail. Now I take something called My Community by Host Defense and it's rare. And Brian will say this, that I rarely mentioned brands of anything on The Holistic Navigator. But in the field of mushrooms, I cannot not mention this company. And the reason is because they're not just a mile ahead, they're 100 miles ahead of most every company. And because the devils in the details, if it's grown incorrectly, if there's anything along the line that has not produced the quality of mushroom that Host Defense produces, the results will be limited. So I cannot recommend any brand but that and so tell us about. So I'm saying Host Defense, that's the best The Big Daddy Host Defense, but I'm looking at my product, I take My Community, it's got about how many mushrooms 14-15?
Jerry Angelini 12:26 Yeah, so we've got three products that say immune support on them. One is My Community. And that's the big guns. This is the one that I usually save for when I've tried my echinacea, my elderberry and my olive leaf and my oregano oil, and I'm still feeling really nasty. And I'll just take like, three to four grams a day. So I'll take like two capsules every couple hours. And that's how I use my community. It's amazing, it strongly gets that immune system in the fight. We've got Stamets 7, and that's daily immune support. It's seven mushrooms equal parts. This is the mushroom product, if you want to help your whole body and keep your immune system nice and strong. We've got some preliminary data that it engages natural killer cells and macrophages about 33% stronger than a single mushroom species at the same amount. So it's synergistic.
Ed Jones 13:29 Well, mostly I must ask you the so you're recommending for a person like myself who I'm very fortunate because I think genetics plus all the good health habits I have rarely rarely do I come upon a cold or anything like that. But I still take most of the time I take the comprehensive but you're thinking maybe just for maintenance Stamets 7 might be a better choice?
Jerry Angelini 13:52 That's how I like to do it. But that's because I always like to have something waiting in the wings in case
Ed Jones 13:57 Yes.
Jerry Angelini 13:58 You know, I'm one of those that I always keep My Community for what I really need to kick my you know, kick the butt of whatever is getting in me. And that's Stamets 7, it's got Lion's Mane in it and it's got cordyseps and Reishi and mytaki and chaga and those will like literally hit every system of your body. So like I can take like a gram or two of that a day. And it just it does my body really really well. And so the My Community I like to save for for those special times when I really need to get my immune system in the fight.
Ed Jones 14:42 Well, let me ask you this because I do still speak to a lot of people every day. I work six days a week. And here's one question and I'm not going to say the whole word but when someone comes in who is you know, dealing or getting chemotherapy, which obviously we will know why that is. And their white blood count is too low. The number one thing always I recommend is the comprehensive at about eight cap, I mean My Community at eight capsules per day, and I can tell you from experience, almost every single person comes back and says my doctor was amazed how fast my white blood count came back up. And many of these people stay on it through the whole course. So even from not getting healthier, it helps you from because if white blood counts are low, they have to stop chemo. Also, if white blood counts are low, you're going to get sick, because that's your a defense, correct?
Jerry Angelini 15:37 Yeah, that's so true. And you're right on target there Ed with the amount. Like we really look at, like when you're in the fight, go up to four grams a day, which is eight capsules, and just, you know, you can stay on that for as long as you need to, to keep that immune system strong. And with the cytotoxic chemotherapy. So there's two kinds of basically two kinds of chemo therapies to looking at right, the cytotoxic, which have a lot of those nasty side effects, too. We find that the research shows that mushrooms, in a preliminary perspective really support the efficacy of those. Now, if you're taking the immunological ones, the ones that unlock your immune system, we don't have any research on the impact of mushrooms with those. So we're a little bit hesitant. We want you to be really careful, because we don't want like you to, you know, kind of have an adverse event. So if you're gonna be on those immunological ones, proceed carefully if you're gonna think about using mushrooms. But with a cytotoxic, many people report that the mushrooms give them a little extra energy, it helps them with some of the nausea and the appetite loss. And it actually rebounds their white blood cell count too. So we really like it. Well, we're liking some of the responses people are having with the My Community, and the cytotoxic chemotherapies.
Ed Jones 17:10 And I have rarely mentioned this on my podcast, but I probably say it at least once a day, when I'm speaking to people is keep in mind that the directions on a bottle of most natural remedies, whether they be herbal or nutritional, is for maintenance. They're not giving you the therapeutic dose in most cases. So don't be afraid of going up. If you're knowledgeable enough, you have trusted people in your world that can help perhaps educate you more. We're not talking about a Xanax where you're supposed to take one but you're gonna take four. We all know logically what a disaster that would be. But there again, that's why we're choosing that's why my whole life is devoted to focusing on more natural remedies, because the side effects are so much less. And I know that, you know, there's times when I will mention to people, hey, if you really want to know the power of a medicinal mushroom I want you to, and I will use to say Google now I'm gonna say bing.com and type in the world type in the words Paul Stamets, mother's cancer, YouTube. I want you to listen to that I said, is four minutes or five minutes long. And I mean, it's pretty damn outstanding how all she took was turkey tail, wasn't it? I think
Jerry Angelini 18:25 Well, so for like the first month she took turkey tail. And then Paul switched her over to My Community. Ah, I know. Right. And it's it's kind of one of the things that it's difficult to really talk about that when you're doing a TED conference. But yeah, the turkey tail is amazing too. We do have some really beautiful human clinical trial research on the Host Defense turkey tail. So whether you want to do turkey tail or My Community either is going to be really helpful. I like my community because 17 mushrooms has synergy. And it's going to give you a lot a lot of immune support. So I figure under this circumstance, you know, these mushrooms are functional foods. Like you're saying they're not like an isolated compound like Xanax, or even a chemotherapeutic agent. This is food that helps our body function better. So really, they're safe. They're really super safe.
Ed Jones 19:30 I love that. You know, food is medicine and we're at the pinnacle with Host Defense of concentrating something that the Earth has given us in this magic pharmacy that is so side effect free. And you know, we need a toolkit. I talk about this often if you're going to age well and not go through the door of pharmaceutical intervention you need to have with you in your head some knowledge and also at home perhaps have a toolkit. And one of my toolkits is always to have some mushrooms of some sort in capsules or liquid. I will have to say I do the lion's mane in liquid because I like the quick effects. And again, Lion's Mane for the mental sharpness, anytime I give a lecture or a speech, I'm going to do lion's mane. So maybe go through maybe the bullet points of the top six or seven mushrooms.
20:27 Lion's Mane is actually number one. It is great for nerve support, memory, concentration, mental focus, and you know, you can do between one and three grams of Lion's Mane a day. If you're going to do the liquid you can take between two dropper fulls all the way up to six dropper fulls a day. We're just completing some research on our Lion's Mane that shows that it does, in fact, support nerve tissue outgrowth. And this is brilliant. So it actually increases our nerves capacity to regenerate themselves.
Ed Jones 21:07 Now, would that be helpful for neuropathy?
Jerry Angelini 21:11 So that's the direction that you would look for it in you know, we haven't done any human clinical trials on our Lion's Mane because we're just at the beginning part of that. But that's the direction like not just you know, like peripheral neurological support, but also central nervous system in your brain too. So it's, it's looking very positive at this point in time. Yeah.
Ed Jones 21:35 And what's the next mushroom?
Jerry Angelini 21:37 I would say turkey tail for, for altogether all out, immune support and liver support too. That's right up there. In our top five. You've got Reishi, which is the great support for cardiovascular health. It can help with, you know, balancing out those cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL and HDL. But it can also help a little bit with blood pressure and stabilizing blood pressure. So like, a couple of grams of that a day can be really helpful for people. It's also great for adrenal support. So people that like that have like a fight or flight reaction. You know, they get super, I don't want to say anxious, but maybe their minds just never stop. And they don't ever kind of relax and breathe. Reishi is perfect for that. It can help us experience a little bit more zen yet, give us some day long energy. And then we've got cordyseps, which you're familiar with, it's great for athletes. It's great for people that just want to increase their general energy, but also cordyseps is great for supporting lung health. So for people that react to external and environmental triggers, and their breathing becomes challenged, cortisol, especially that liquid can kick in within a couple of seconds, maybe a couple of minutes, it's a really rapid response for them.
Ed Jones 23:21 I love and I want to butt in here, the cordyseps to me, you know, I only use it on days where maybe I feel heaviness in my chest just from the pollen or whatever's going on. Or I want to really excel in the gym. Or the I did go out to Colorado two years ago and also four and I hiked to have the fourteeners Mount Yale and Mount Quandary. And I in my friend who went with me, we super relied on cordyceps because of the lack of oxygen at that, at that altitude. And my friend who's actually sadly has passed away since then. He had been battling cancer for a decade or more and did really well. But, you know, Father Time has its ways. But he said he did not think he could have made it to the pinnacle of Mount Yale without cordyceps. And he was like me, he was taking therapeutic doses. We were doing like two or three cordyseps every hour as we climb the mountain.
Jerry Angelini 24:23 Yeah. And when you're up at that altitude and you're and you have to acclimate, you can do quite a bit a cordyceps to support your body's adjustment to that, especially if you're hiking and you're not just sitting around right. So if you're out there at altitude attempting to do some kind of physical exertion, that's that cordyceps is super strong at supporting that process.
Ed Jones 24:49 Is there any other ones you want to hit the highlight of?
Jerry Angelini 24:52 We've got a mica botanicals formula. Two of them one's called Brain and it does exactly what it says it supports your brain. It's Got mushrooms and herbs in there. Bacopa, Gotu Kola gingko. And then we've got a powder called Brain and Body powder. And it's 50%, lion's mane, 20%, Reishi, 20%, turmeric, 5%, ginger and 5% cinnamon. And this is a really delicious, kind of like golden milk powder that's going to support your digestive tract, help support blood glucose and insulin sensitivity, it is going to support nerve and brain functioning, joint mobility and all around, support and balance the immune system in your body. So that is a great formula. Super tasty for like yogurt or smoothies or even a little bit of unsweetened almond or coconut milk.
Ed Jones 25:51 I love that I have not tried that one yet. My take home from speaking to you on a personal level is I'm going to switch from My Community to the Stamets 7. I'm going to continue to use of course, cordyceps as needed. Now I did counsel a person last week, and she's a sweetest lady been coming to me for 30 years. And she's quite a bit older than I am. And she's having difficulty breathing. And I was like, and she's not going to do steroids, she's not going to do the other drugs that have issues with them. So I said, you know, let's try two to four cordyceps about every five to six hours. And of course, legally, I had to say check with your doctor, I'm not prescribing, I'm not treating any medical condition on this show or any place in my life. And she came back and said it was wondrous how much better she could breathe. Now is that fixing some underlying issue? No it's not really fixing. But you know what, at 80 years old, sometimes you're just not a fix. Sometimes it's a management situation, and we want to manage with less toxic drugs. Because actually, as the New England Journal of Medicine is quoted, the third leading cause of death in this country is pharmaceutical drugs that are properly prescribed and properly taken. So if it's the third leading cause and cancer and heart disease are number one and two, we can do something about that third leading cause. And you know, I did read a little thing about the mushrooms and I loved it. It's called them that they had cellular intelligence. And I know you would not disagree with the fact that mushrooms seem to be really, really smart about this world, aren't they?
Jerry Angelini 27:30 They sure are. They not only help our ecosystems externally in the larger world, they help our internal ecosystems function better too.
Ed Jones 27:40 Yes. And you know, we, one of our main sponsors is nutritionw.com, which has an online shopping portal now. And if you go in there, and you just type in Host Defense or mushrooms, you will see all of the products that we're speaking about. Well, gosh, Jerry, this has been so informative, not only I know, to the listeners, but it also has been for me, because, you know, as much I need to be reminded of these things, because actually, the the conversation of mushrooms, there's not many people around like you. I mean, you know that, you know, you talk about even many aspects of nutritional therapy. You know, you can find a lot of people. I got about two on my hand that I can speak to on this level of these mushrooms. And I just thank you so so much for taking your time and joining us. And I hope to I know one of my cohorts saw you again at the recent show in Baltimore. But one day, you've got to come down and we're gonna, you know, put off a really big thing for you to do more lectures and more information. You know, John Muir, who I just love some of his quotes, he has a thing on Pinterest that I'm looking at right now. And it's actually a tree with about and you would know that mushrooms I don't from the visual but like 100 mushrooms growing on the side of this tree. And here's his his quote, "In wilderness lies the hope of the world." And with that, I'm going to end The Holistic Navigator. thank everyone for spending their time with me. I do not take that lightly. Thank you, Jerry, have a wonderful day.
Jerry Angelini 29:17 Thank you Have a great day.
Brian Strickland 29:21 Thanks for listening to The Holistic Navigator Podcast. For more information, previous episodes and other resources, visit theholisticnavigator.com. The information on this podcast and the topics discussed have not been evaluated by the FDA or anyone of the medical profession and is not aimed to replace any advice you may receive from your medical practitioner. The Holistic Navigator assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. The holistic navigator is not a doctor nor does he claim to be please consult your physician before beginning any health regimen.
“Mushrooms support the immune system first off. There are a set of compounds in mushrooms that are both water soluble and alcohol soluble that interact with the immune system that resides in our intestinal tract… In many cases they will make it function more strongly or do something called modulate that immune response.”
-JERRY ANGELINI, EDUCATION DIRECTOR HOST DEFENSE