104: Mushroom Power: Growing a Potent Fungi Product Through Sustainability – with Julian Mitchell

Our host Wade Lightheart was excited to talk about mushrooms with Julian Mitchell because Wade has always been fascinated by mushrooms. Fungi has been used by many cultures in various ways throughout history. Wade points out that the human body is “the closest thing to mushrooms that we can get. This is why antifungals can be so damaging to people’s health.” In this episode, Julian shares how his mushroom harvesting business began in a container of used coffee grounds and has “mushroomed” (pun intended) into a thriving business. 

Julian Mitchell is an Australian native who has always been passionate about nature, human performance and sustainability. He is currently completing his Physiotherapy degree and previously worked as a physiotherapist in the English Premier League before his entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, leading to his co-founding Life Cykel, a business focused on creating new mushroom products and technologies to biohack our daily performance.  

In this podcast, we cover: 

• How the principle of sustainability led Julian to the idea of growing mushrooms from used coffee grounds
• Why Wade uses Life Cykel tincture products while traveling
• Why pro athletes like UFC fighters are using mushrooms
• What “superpowers” each individual fungus holds–Lion’s Mane, Chaga, Turkey Tail, Reishi, Shiitake
• Can you take too much or use mushrooms too frequently? Julian talks about dosages
• The special ingredients that make these mushroom products taste pleasant – even delicious

“Mushrooms are a key that unlocks many different doors.”  — Julian Mitchell

Which doors do you need to unlock using mushrooms? 

According to Julian, you can rotate multiple mushrooms throughout the day to address different needs. The first step is getting to know each mushroom and how that particular type of mushroom can benefit you. 

The lion’s mane mushroom is the one that Life Cykel customers tend to get the quickest results from. Within a day or two, customers talk about a noticeable improvement in cognitive function. They notice improvements in focus and memory recall, along with an increase in REM sleep. People using lion’s mane report having more vivid dreams that are easier to recall. 

According to scientific studies, lion’s mane also promotes nerve growth, which has been found to help professional athletes, like UFC fighters, who suffer from head trauma injuries. 

Cordyceps in another extraordinary fungi used by Life Cykel. Cordyceps are known to enhance energy levels. When someone has adrenal fatigue and needs to quit caffeine, cordyceps is a great tool to help you wean off of coffee. 

Julian shares more amazing information about lion’s mane, cordyceps, and other types of mushrooms with “superpowers.” 

What is something surprising about mushrooms that most people don’t know?

This is one of the questions Julian was asked in this episode. His answer was simple: mushrooms grow surprisingly fast. 

 As someone who harvests mushrooms, Julian says the speed at which fungi grows is an attractive quality for anyone interested in growing their own. Depending on the type of mushroom, each can grow fully in 12 to 15 days, reaching a point where the mushroom has a medicinal source and extracts as well as being “ready to eat.” The shiitake does take about 38 days to grow, however, most only a couple of weeks. Regardless of how fast they grow, the grow time is advantageous for farmers, and the sustainability potential is amazing. Julian calls mushrooms “intelligent life forms” that learn to grow and eat waste quickly. 

Mushrooms are also extremely adaptive. Julian credits this adaptability to fungi’s “collaborative” nature. How this collaborative process takes place begins in the roots of mushrooms, called mycelium. Technically mushrooms do not have roots like trees do, but mycelium is a rootlike structure at the base of mushrooms that helps the toadstool grow vertically and horizontally. Mushrooms work collaboratively with the forest floor, the rocks and living trees, to break down logs after a tree has fallen down. 

We highly encourage you to check out the entire podcast. Picking the brain of a mushroom expert is not something you get to do often. Julian’s insights will open your eyes to the hidden powers of fungi. You will hear about additional mushroom products, what they are and how they help people look and feel better. There is one type of mushroom that helps your fingernails grow really strong and healthy looking! 

Episode Resources:
www.us.lifecykel.com – use BIOPTIMIZERS10 to get 10% off! 
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Read the Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening. It's Wade Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast. And today from the land down under, we have none other than Julian Mitchell joining us. He is the co-founder of "Lifecykel" in 2015, after discovering how to grow gourmet mushrooms from, look at this, waste coffee grounds. We've more about that in a minute. Leaving their health profession jobs in the WA mines. I don't know what are the WA mines. We'll find about that a sec. They set out on a mission to inspire new attitudes toward food production, waste products, and mushrooms. So of course, Julian grew up in Australia and he's very passionate about nature, human performance, sustainability leading to completing his physiotherapy degree. And prior to founding this, Julian worked as a physiotherapist in the English Premier League before his entrepreneurial drive and belief in building a sustainable future, led him to work in mushroom biotechnologies. He now specializes in creating new mushroom products and technologies to biohack our daily performance. Simply, mushroom technology will play a key role in our evolution as both individuals and species. I've been traveling here during the holidays, and I've been taking a bunch of these life cycle mushrooms and which is interesting. They're got in tincture that they're doing and we'll talk about it. So Julian, welcome to the show.
 

 Julian Mitchell: Excited to have chat mushrooms. Thanks for having me on.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, so, okay. You know, I'm always fascinated with mushrooms have been used throughout history and a variety of different cultures in a big. It's pretty, they're pretty fascinating organisms. Human bodies are actually the closest thing to mushrooms as we can get. That's why antifungals can be so damaging to people's health. How did you end up in the whole mushroom conversation and how did you grow mushrooms at a waste coffee? That's pretty interesting.
 

 Julian Mitchell: Yeah, it wasn't a natural trajectory sort of, as you mentioned, I was, my background was physio and elite sport and human performance is very interested in that medical side. And then I guess from there it was looking at what was going to unfold into the future. And this was five years ago, you know, the CBD movement was just sort of kicking off then and beyond meat and impossible foods and all these companies, I guess we're going down the path of, you know, biotechnology, the future of food, the future of how do we medicate ourselves. And, and how do we do that? And I guess we were doing a lot of research at that time and seeing what else was going to had opportunity had scale and had a real impact and looking at the literature, as you just mentioned, and the historical events of mushrooms. It was really like an uncharted content. It'd been dabbled in, in bits and bobs. But it hadn't had its time in the sandwiches having right now, which it will continue to have. It's sort of a fad that will come and go. Mushrooms and mushroom biotechnology, Um is an enormous wave. And so it was really understanding that that wave hadn't gone gone yet. And that it ticked a lot of boxes from us from a personal philosophy point of view, from sustainability to ethos, to gand, to you know, GMO, to you know, pesticides, to very low water use in terms of the, the growing aspects of it. And then the application aspect of it was infinite from, you know medicines to,uthe mushroom leather to, you know, breaking down biodiesels and hydrocarbon contaminants to breaking down plastic, to,uyou know, being a replacement for antibiotics in particular populations,uto really specializing in, you know, I guess addressing other issues,uamongst disease population. So it was just that such a broad spectrum. It was uncharted. And I was like, let's go that way. And we started growing mushrooms and that was our foundation was growing mushrooms. And so that's where we looked at, how do we grow mushrooms? What can we grow mushrooms off? And in the,uthe town and city that I was in, very, very big coffee culture, like most of the world, a very big coffee culture. And so this is an agricultural waste,uthat goes to landfill. And so it's something that can be used. And so at the start, we were really growing these mushrooms. From coffee waste that we would collect from cafes and restaurants. Then we would return these gourmet mushrooms, wastish stalkies lion's manes to these restaurants to put on their menu. So it was a closed loop system,ua circular economy. And that's something that's sustainable going forward as to how do we think about the whole supply chain, where things come from and where they go after. And so that was sort of where we started.
 

 Wade Lightheart: And just a quick question on that. Because mushrooms are such a fascinating, what does sustainability mean to you? Because I, I see that word kind of bandied around a lot in the world, but oftentimes I don't know if it's clearly defined. So I'd like to hear what your version of sustainability and then particularly to mushrooms.
 

 Julian Mitchell: I think at the core of it, it's like, Can we do this into the future for an infinite amount of time ? Because we're maintaining our homeostatic balance. Just so like within our body, you know, maintaining our own health therefore a sustainable point of view is maintaining homeostasis and our body naturally does that. So how do we do that with our environment? So we're not this, this parasite to this planet and we're just taking and sucking and taking and sucking to the point where that we've depleted. How we also regenerating our environment and replenishing our environment, then that environment can feed us. And so that means really balancing our resources and being real about what we're doing and where are products and things are going at the end of the day also. So it's a new conversation, but it's something that I guess, as you mentioning, like it's becoming a bit greenwashed in many ways and it can, and it's about taking real action, doing real things. And so from our point of view, you know, we have full transparency of our supply chain because we're vertically integrated. We grew our mushrooms ourselves if I was in Australia. And in the US we have a farm in Wisconsin. And then so, you know, it's understanding that whole process. And then even within, you know, mushroom industry replacing plastic bag use in the growing operations, minimizing water use, staying away from pesticides. So sustainability is resource-based. And there's also, I think just about returning to working in combination in team with nature, as much as possible, especially in biotechnology, you can get away from that. You can get excited by technology and this will do that. And we can, you know, we can pull exchange from here and that's great, but it's, you know, it's doing a disservice to what nature has evolved from for hundreds and thousands of years. So it's about working in harmony with that. Ufrom the way we grow our mushrooms to the way we sort of, I guess, close the loop and mushrooms specifically, you know, are the grand recyclers of nature. You know, that when a tree falls in the sort of forest floor, you're going to find that that Clayton cannot be broken down, which is a compound within the tree. And so fungi helped break that down, returning it to soil, returned those nutrients to the ground to another trees and other life forms can come up. And so it's that lots of that mushrooms are very much involved in that death piece and that regrowth piece. And so taking that, I guess on board with how we run our business in terms of having a closed loop, as much as possible with what we do,
 

 Wade Lightheart: Beautifully and distinct description of what that is. So one of the things that struck me and was that you guys are able to provide mushroom, I guess, concentrations in tinctures that you can carry and spray and are very convenient. You know, I've had a lot of different mushroom advocates and I'm a big believer in the use of mushrooms, but I have yet to see anybody. And by the way you have beautiful, attractive packaging, very convenient. How did you get into using tinctures as a way to distribute the benefits of the mushrooms that you grow and serve the world with?
 

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, I guess it was a matter of just, I'm looking at so many aspects of, you know, the consumer experience, but also from a science point of view, which we're deeply embedded in. We've now got 12 in the team from nanotechnologists, the biotech engineers to food scientists to microbiologists to mycologists. So we're constantly evolving and we're evolving the extraction processes. But we've just found from a bioavailability point of view when we're mixing it with the kakadu plum, which is a native Australian Bush food into a liquid form. It was just more bioavailable. It was more convenient to consumers. It tasted better but we will have also a gel capsule come up in 2021, which will be, which will be great. And it was just also a production, a scale point of view. So it was tying all of those things together without technology. And I guess, where are we going to be heading in the future, which is down the path and then a lot design, more extractions and really doing stuff on that, on that sort of so even nanotech level. So the liquid extracts have been very popular in that sense, and we do sell powder forms of our products, but yeah, out of the last six months, we've had about four and a half thousand reviews. And out of those, you know, we get very little for the powdered product, if any. So we just, I guess, went naturally with the, with the market that in the mushroom form, the liquid extract seems to be very popular and the results are very much noticed within the first couple of days. And so we just went down that path and listening to the consumer, I guess, as well.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. One of the things I struck me as I was flying here, as I just took out, you know, flying I'm in quarantine right now in Canada, I came across the border from the United States and had to go through all that rigor, Moreau and everything. And I have to, I have to say it was really nice. I had my, you know, my Turkey tail and gorgeous ups and reishi and lion's mane and I'm on the plane and I'm just spraying this stuff into my throat and everything. I'm like, Oh, this is great, yeah. And so I really appreciate the convenience that you have for the product. What are the particular mushrooms for who they are for and which ones do you suggest, do you suggest using them all at the same time or one's an individual size, or where do you think that mushrooms are best applied for people's health and for people's performance?
 

 Julian Mitchell: Um I think that the beautiful thing about mushrooms is, this is a key to unlock many different doors. And so it's a matter of what doors you want to unlock, but from my own point of view, um, sort of rotating throughout the day, different mushrooms and I'm existing on mushrooms in symbiotic relationship with them. But yeah, if you're an entry level person who has never really got into them, it's really about understanding one may benefit you the most. Lion's mane is probably by far our best performer in the sense that people will notice that pretty instantaneously within a day or two from a cognitive point of view. And so that's always pretty popular for memory recall for focus, for clarity, for increase in REM sleep. And you notice that in dreaming. And so you get very vivid dreams, very high definition dreams that you're able to recall. And for some,you know people, some athletes at number of surface and UFC fighters, any sport where there's some, I guess, micro concussions or head trauma, any aspect, they seem to really benefit from that one in the evening for sleep. And they finally get a really good sleep because there is that Margaret trauma attached to those sports. So there's that neuroinflammation. And so we know, we know growth factor that is promoted by lion's mane. It really helps with that helps consolidate and return that memory and that sharpness and that clarity, we had one athlete on right, who had a near death experience in a pipeline injury where, you know, any death experience with it, even though it was sort of diagnosed by the amount of DMT you have in your blood at that point in time, when you go to the hospital and he made his way back and, you know, sort of surfing it back to a sort of a seven out of 10 in terms of performance, but then really you know, tried the lions manes used it and felt that it worked wonders for him. So it's, we get a lot of those anecdotal stories and we need to tie them up into some, something more formal, but,uthat's sort of the lion's mane is that head trauma that focus that cognitive flow,uin symbiosis with other, you know, other tactics and techniques, and then the cordyceps for vitality energy, stamina. It's great to come off of coffee with as well, you know, in terms of if we're getting drained from those adrenals and we're getting that fatigue,uthat's an amazing, wonderful for that does have antiviral properties also. So it has have the ability to, I guess, interrupt the RNA and DNA replication of viruses. And so it's been shown in research. And so that's a great one for actually,maintaining immunity, which all of them can do. They're all at the core of it. These medicinal mushrooms are immune powerhouses. And then beyond that, like that these are the superpowers, if you like, so the lion's manes for the brain, the cordyceps for energy um, stamina, it will be the vitality. You've got the reishi , which is very much, almost like a natural sedatives. It's very calming. It's very Zen. It's very, like you've just got out of the yoga flow very much the feminine energy and the, the women really resonate with that really well. And anyone who is sort of overthinking according to their mileage, so he can do, you know,.I'm sure anyone in business and anyone with a busy life, which is everyone can benefit from the reishi , especially before bids. The lion's mane and reishi pairing in the evening works really well together. Umnd then you have the Turkey tail, which we found for, for some digestion and some mood and some anxiety works really well. I mean, there's been some great research out there for turkey tail in conjunction with chemotherapy. So, but in, at its core, it's really, you know, hnother promoter and a good one for gut health. And then you have Shataki for, for hair, skin, and nails, and you really notice your nails get pretty, pretty strong and grow pretty fast, a bit like Wolverine. And then you get, you know, any man have to shave your beard a bit more often. Umnd so that's also got Lentil as well, which is great for preventing, hnti-aging in the form of formal aging in the form of breakdown of elastin. So we speak a lot about collagen and collagen and collagen, but the other key component of healthy skin is elastin. And so Lentil then helps prevent the elastase, which is stimulated by UV and so, yu know, wich breaks down the elasticity of your skin. So that's the Shataki mushroom.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Beautiful. And now you've got to move into the, the sprays and stuff. And I think I, I love the convenience because you know, I've, I've that the capsules and I've that powders and I've that teas and I've done all sorts of things. And I use mushrooms on a daily basis. Two questions that come up, I guess, is what is specific dosage and can you take too much or the frequency that you can use? Can you take them all at the same time? Is that beneficial? Or how do you go about the day of using the "Lifecykel" products? Because I'm, I'm fascinated by like, I, I just get them and I want to like spray them all, you know, and it's like, this is awesome. You know? So like it's, it's good. I like the, I like that the tactile component of just spraying my mushrooms. It's a nice change from, you know, doing, you know, the powders and pills and things like that. So can you tell me a little bit about. [Crosstalk].
 

 Julian Mitchell: And how did you find the the taste of the lemon myrtle? What did you think of that?
 

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, It's it's , I think it's just great. I mean, most mushrooms have, for lack of a better ferment , kind of a fermented mushroom flavor, but these are just lovely.
 

 Julian Mitchell: Yeah. Yeah. So the lemon myrtle, which is, I'll just touch on that for a second, because it's quite a foreign ingredient comes from Australia from an indigenous bush food here. The lemon Myrtle is known to be more lemon. And lemon is sort of what they say, because even the leaves, when you wipe them into a tea, it's a very, very strong lemon tea, but it has great antiviral antibacterial properties. And it helps probably, it helps make it a bit more addictive or palatable because a lot of tinctures in their nature a very, you know, not, not nice on the palate, to be honest.
 

 Wade Lightheart: No, not at all.
 

 Julian Mitchell: And actually it probably stopped the adoption of them, to be honest. They are very powerful and then great and a very potent in tincture form as well. But the taste you know, leaves a lot to be designed. So it's hard to consume. So taste is obviously important. So with that, with my daily regimen and what,you know, I've found works and what works for a lot of people is really the cordyceps, lion's mane in the morning, um the Turkey tail as well. And then throughout the day, you can have you know, a little bit more of that, especially early afternoon, if you, if you're trying to wean off coffee or you're feeling, you know, that you're dipping somewhat, you just have some, some more lion's mane, cordyceps, like half a serving one meal one to two meals. I mean, it really varies. I mean, when I was on the podcast with Dave Asprey from Bulletproof, just before that, Dave was at 12 dropper fulls of cordyceps and on the podcast, he was ready to run a marathon. You know, he was, he was, he was really ready to go. And he's like, this is probably my able limit. This is probably my limit of what to consume. But when you're an athlete, you know. I guess what I learned from different athletes and things is that obviously you need to tell it to yourself when you need to tune into your intuition. And the servings that we have are a great guide, but if you're looking to go higher and farther and further and find peak performance, then you really need to tune into your body and find what that amount and what that serving what that dose is for you, but a standard dose of two meal per day. And most importantly, also the consistency of regularity, you know, day after day, you get that cumulative build-up and that cumulative flow that you find. And what we also find a lot of is when people say, Oh, I went on a holiday or whenever say as I did this and I forgot my mushrooms and I really felt it. I really noticed that, that's when they weren't on them. So it's funny like that. But yeah, with the sprays, they're also great to have on the run. And so it's sort of a constant microdosing throughout the day where you're just spraying small amounts. You know, you're getting that sublingual hit. You're getting that straight to the brain, especially with the lion's mane, that brain cognition aspect of it. And the ratio, if you're just feeling overwhelmed, especially if you're traveling as well, or you traveling on plane, you know, you've got people around you, maybe some people coughing you're on a long flight, the air stale in those things. It's you know, it's a, it's an amazing vessel for carrying pathogens and who knows what's going on in there. And so just keeping the sprays close by on a hand, like in your tool belt keeps you in a survival vitamin. We've had a lot of surfers and other athletes also talk about just throughout the season, not so much this season, because most seasons of sports are being canceled. But last season, the season before I noticed that I didn't get on well at seek business when you go into plan to plan and from meeting to meeting and from sporting event to sporting event, you know, you get run down. So that's also the key to performance is consistency of, of health and well being and not getting core, what happens. It started raining. He has, I'm not sure that's impacting the sound at all. If you can hear me fine.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, I can hear, I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure if it was the rain or the waves crashing, but that's all good. So based on what you've said, there's, you know, you can kind of just kind of go with these ad nauseum and with no need, you don't need to go off them. You don't need anything, you can just keep taking them. And it seems that there's a prolonged, like build up positive benefits. The more you take it, the more they work. And that's, what's really interesting about mushrooms as opposed to drugs. What are some of the challenges that you had and, or had to overcome or specific things without giving proprietary information about growing mushrooms? I think it's a growing mushrooms as if it's, it's, it's such a trip compared to maybe other types of things that you might grow. What are some of the things that you've learned or were unexpected about the growing process?
 

 Julian Mitchell: Yeah, it's I mean, I'm surprised I do have all my hair from those early days of, of growing mushrooms and a kind of grow a business at the same time. It's like a, you know, how things to be doing, but the mushroom aspect of it is it's not like putting a seed in the ground and leaving in water and sunlight. Of course, as you may know, sort of very much a laboratory environment, especially in its early days where you're working on a Petri dishes, you're working with, you know, very clean air that's purified in the room. The lighting needs to be very precise and obviously the person that's working needs to be sterilized and have everything very stairwell, the equipment that you're using, because what you're doing at the early point of view is you're trying to culture mushrooms and you're giving the mushrooms the best chance to grow. And it's these bacterias and these other pathogens that are beyond the, you know, the ability for the human eye to see that are also growing at that same time and competing for that nutrient source. And so you got to give those mushrooms the first, I guess, advantage in every aspect that you can. And every 1% chance helps that mushroom grow and become strong in that genetic expression become healthy and strong to then, you know, down the track, grow amazing you know, mushrooms. And so early days, there were a lot of contamination. Like I remember celebrating when we very grabbed very, very first mushroom because we sort of went into the business gam. Yeah, we're going to have a mushroom business. We're going to grow mushrooms, never having grown a mushroom, never having been to a mushroom farm. It was just that it made sense to do that. I'm more passionate. And so, you know, I've got images of doing it in my kitchen and different things like that and growing them in a seller room and just, you know, exhaust after exhaust after exhaust or just not working. So the contamination is a huge thing for mushrooms, and we've been able to over a period of five years and bringing on expertise and through learning and having a great network of other mushroom growers combine our knowledge and that collective learnings to be able to really grow amazing mushrooms. And that's been a huge, huge win. And then the next part of it, of course, with business and agriculture, its timing and then also scaling. And so it's easy making similar to the hemp space where it's easy to grow, maybe a hundred plants in a hemp farm or CBD scale. That's a thousand scale and ten thousand to a hundred thousand. What happens is the difficulties and the problems grow exponentially as well.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Correct.
 

 Julian Mitchell: And so that's also the aspect of how do we scale this effectively with contamination, with it being at the end of the day agriculture. And so working, going back to that very first question was around, or second question on sustainability is how do you, you know, keep it as natural as possible. And so what we found is having, you know, several farms is useful as well, instead of just one big gigantic monolithic farm. It also helps keep the quality as well. And so I think that's the part of the future as well as decentralization of agriculture and small plots of agriculture is important for quality, for taste, for flavor, for localization, especially when it comes to fresh food, but for us. That's why we grow in the US as well, because we wanted to have something local there and work with those local conditions and local ingredients. And and not just be shipping from here necessarily. So that's something that we were able to do and very excited to be set up in the US.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Really commendable and you know, it comes to mind and when producing I know, I know how difficult it is and to create a breakthrough product and have a beautiful labeling procedure. What are some other things that you didn't anticipate maybe on this journey, either benefits from growing or challenges with your business? What are some other things that people might not be aware of about mushrooms?
 

 Julian Mitchell: Yeah. I think that one of the first things is just how could we like grow actually, which is a very attractive thing, you know. From an agricultural point of view, how quickly they grow. So to get a harvest and then get a fruit depending , you know, depending on the mushroom, anywhere from 12 days. I mean, you're growing it up to about 38 days, but you've got wasters and other mushrooms that are 12 days, 15 days to get something. That is both of , a medicinal source in an extract, but also a food source that can replace, you know, you, you made some things from a sustainability point of view is, is amazing. So the speed in which they grow the efficiency in which they grow, meaning that they're very intelligent life form that learn to grow and eat different forms of waste very quickly. So they are extremely adaptive. And I guess these philosophies, even without even knowing it's sort of embodied ourselves into the company culture of being extremely collaborative in our major with other businesses and other, other groups and organizations that are all aligned on that health mission, because mushrooms are very collaborative. That's what they do in nature. And there live, there ive mycelium, which is the roots of the mushrooms. It lives underground. It's connecting all life form in forest. And if you go to a healthy forest, which you will do in Canada. I'm sure a plethora of mushrooms and a plethora of mycelium, which is that what cow web looking that you find on the underside of 400 logs, even if you lift up rocks, some big rocks in,uin the forest, you'll find mycelium on the amber surface. And that mycelium is breaking down the nutrients and attain the nutrients and the minerals from those rocks exchanging them with the trees. So passing them onto the trees because the roots cannot absorb the rocks and the minerals. And in exchange, the trees are giving starches and sugars to the mycelium. So it's a collaborative network. It's one of the first business transactions that ever took place. It's one of the joint ventures that took place. And so mushrooms, I guess, are collaborative. And I think if we can bring that nature and philosophy and understanding to above ground to humanity, then we'll go a lot further. And that is a part of that evolution is to be more collaborative in nature. And I'm sure, hapitalism and in different forms of division, hind of divide us at times. But, mt's about evolving that, that philosophy and mushrooms can definitely teach us that and they can teach us that. So that's one of the things that, monstantly, you know, brings us back to why we do what we do.
 

 Wade Lightheart: So what's what's up and coming for your company "lifecykel". And where are you going? And what's the, what's the plans moving forward with your, with your company, maybe development of products, new mushroom, whatever what's what's happening.
 

 Julian Mitchell: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just finished, uh, one of that newest products, which is a certified organic turkey tail, ginger lemon grass sparkling drink.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Oh, that's cool.
 

 Julian Mitchell: So it's a very, so we can see it too clearly, but um
 

 Wade Lightheart: That's great.
 

 Julian Mitchell: It's just a tasty drink. And so putting those things into the R&D, but at the core of it, our focus is producing the highest quality mushroom liquid extract on the globe as best we can. And that's just because it's our ambission. I guess, you know, seeing that CBD wave and another waves that come and I mean, you, and obviously ask you the same question in terms of being able to maintain, stay in the market and maintain a high quality product with high integrity, builds brand and you know, be sort of commodify, which is not wanting to see mushrooms being commodified to the point where we' will say, Oh yeah, I tried them. I didn't really get too much from them. They are very powerful. They're very potent. If it's a quality product, then you will notice it. And it will be a part of your, you know, your toolkit for health in it. And an evolutionary tool, which we think mushrooms are an evolutionary tool just like CBD in its own way. And so I guess, doubling down on the sides um. Moving more into, so "lifecykel" is one of the companies that we have. As we have a couple of other companies specifically for R & D and for one company, for example, we work in animal agriculture. And so we have near four farms in Australia, some poultry, chicken, egg laying farms, some agriculture farms that are now all antiboitics free. And it been antiboitics for over two years now. So that's a very important part of, I guess, using mushrooms and preparatory formulas to help. I guess, remove the need for pesticides and need for antibiotics from our food systems, because they are, you know, an old way of doing things. And so from our next steps, it's scaling. Really that process and what we've learned there into North America, its scaling our mushroom extracts into North America, which in Australia, we've been here for five years now. And it's you know, become sort of a, somewhat a household name and and very, going very well here. So it's about just bringing that quality and maintaining that integrity and bringing that Australian flavor with the Kakadu plum and the lemon myrtle and these bush foots that have, you know. Australia is a very tough environment, its very harsh. It's either very aware at times, but it's mostly very hot and very dry. And so when you get plants, flowering, and bush foods growing in those soils that are very dry and hard and ironed hot. You know, it's, it condenses the nutrients and the power within those fruits. And so that's why you get things like the Kakadu plum, which has the highest vitamin C of any fruit in the world, which grows in animal land out near all the rue and up in the Northern parts of Australia. So it's really about spending more time in North America, which unfortunately can't do at this moment because of the climate. Uand it's about bringing these products into different forms like the oral sprays. And then also be bringing out a whole range of other products,usuch as the ready to go to drinks. And just helping people to access mushrooms in a wider way, in an easier way, and really feel those benefits.
 

 Wade Lightheart: I absolutely love it. I love your brand. I think it's a, it's a, it's a breakthrough concept and idea. And product is, speaks for itself. Quality is awesome. I love the flavor of it. Can you tell us where people can reach you and find out more about "Lifecykel", maybe get access to your products? I would highly recommend people giving them it. I check out, I think just, just these tinctures alone blew my mind like I got your delivery of them that came up. It was a beautiful box very attractive. And then I'm using, and I'm like, wow, I really like these. I've, I've, I've feel the potency of them. So I would like to encourage our listeners to go away. If you, if you've tried mushrooms or you like mushrooms, or maybe you haven't give these things a shot, where can they reach you?
 

 Julian Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely. So going back to one of the challenges of the business early, it was the learning that so the company is "lifecykel". You can find us at lifecykel.com. But we spell cycle , C Y K E L. Uh, which is inspired by Scandinavia. And we just thought the things that they doing over Northern Europe, quite inspiring from an environmental sustainability, health point of view. And so we get that. A lots of we spelling it wrong. A lot of the time I'm pronouncing it wrong. But life, L I F E C Y K E L.com or on Instagram or on Facebook, definitely hit us up with a DM or a messages. That's more convenient. To any of your listeners and yeah, be sure to try the products out and any feedback. We're always looking to improve. But I am in love hearing to the stories and, and their benefits. Do you have a favorite particularly there, out of the range?
 

 Wade Lightheart: I want to say that I'm really into. Well, there's two different levels. First off, I like the lion's mane, because I do feel that boost. And then of course you know, I I've, I can sometimes drink too much caffeine and I really like the turkey tail around that to keep those adrenals have. So those are, those are probably my go-tools, although I have been, I've been kind of going a little crazy on them on this trip, what flying through the airport, I was just pulling out bottles. This is just spread like crazy. And then it was awesome. Because I, I fast it during the 26 hours or 27 hours, it took me to get here. Because I had to go through all the airports and all these kind of waitings and I just fast it and I just used the "lifecykel" mushrooms. So it was really great. Now I have used all of those, you know, throughout the entire trip and,uhad no issues, no frustation , never ever got sick or anything else. So it felt really great. And I'm very appreciative of that. So yeah, but I would say, turkey tail and lion's mane, I feel really, really quick. The other ones I think are building up over time. And this lemon Myrtle thing really struck me because I never had that before. And most mushrooms, if you take something that, you know, it's, in the powder form, you know, and I'm not kind of guy that just eats stuff in a spoon and you know, spit it out.
 

 Julian Mitchell: Yeah, Yeah. It's good for me, good for me. I'll put it now.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it all. I'll do all of it. But what I love is for people who struggle with this, you really kind of crack the code on something here. And there's a lot of servings in one of these little tinctures. Look at this one, it's, it's turkey tails like 125 servings in this little bottle, how efficient is that? I mean, I want to have to take like kilos of, of, of mushrooms to get what I had just in my little carry on bag. And so that was really grateful and I think that's a real breakthrough technology of convenience. And so thank you for that.
 

 Julian Mitchell: Awesome, awesome thing. Whoever trying the products out and and reaching out to us.
 

 Wade Lightheart: There, we have in focus, its Julian Mitchell, the founder, co-founder of Lifecykel. He's made an extraordinary tincture blend of various variety of mushrooms of the highest quality. If you're into sustainable agriculture and the use of mushrooms for health and vitality, definitely give these things a shot. They're simple, they're easy. They're convenient. I love them. I think you will too. That's another episode of the awesome health podcast. I'm Wade Lightheart, want to thank you for joining us and we'll see you again really soon. More importantly, take care of, be healthy and lots of love.