Episode 69
Mushrooms of the Vikings with Silver Laus
In this episode of the Biohacker's Podcast, Teemu Arina is joined by Silver Laus to discuss the history of Estonia's resilient people and how the country's beautiful and potent nature helped them along the way.
Silver Laus is one of the leading voices in the functional mushroom space, combining deep knowledge of ancient fungal wisdom with the latest scientific advancements to help people live stronger, healthier, and more vibrant lives.
Estonia's unique position at the crossroads of northern Europe shaped its character through centuries of struggle. According to Laus, this small Baltic nation's history is deeply intertwined with Viking culture, an aspect many outsiders overlook.
This resilience manifested in the nation's relationship with nature. While Christianity swept through Europe, condemning practices like sauna use, Estonians maintained their traditional knowledge and connection to the forest.
As the CEO of Shroomwell, one of the world’s premier mycotechnology companies, Silver Laus has been instrumental in pioneering potent extraction methods, creating high-performance mushroom supplements, and shaping a global wellness brand rooted in wholesome principles.
Shroomwell's approach to mushroom cultivation blends ancient wisdom with cutting-edge techniques. Rather than harvesting exclusively from wild sources, the company has developed sustainable farming methods that mimic natural stressors while increasing yield.
Learn more about Silver and Shroomwell at https://shroomwell.com!
This conversation was recorded in April 2025.
Check https://hololifesummit.com for upcoming events & tickets!
Devices, supplements, guides, books & quality online courses for supporting your health & performance: https://hololifecenter.com
Key moments and takeaways:
00:00 Introduction by Teemu Arina
01:15 Who is Silver Laus from Shroomwell?
02:30 The significance of functional mushrooms in health
04:10 Personal experience with chaga and other mushrooms
05:45 Understanding product quality and sourcing concerns
08:30 Silver's background in Estonia and its Viking heritage
10:00 Resilience of Estonians throughout history
12:30 The cultural significance of sauna and its connection to health
15:50 How Estonia defended its heritage against invasions
18:20 The medicinal properties of chaga mushrooms
20:45 Overview of the various forms of functional mushrooms
23:15 Benefits of functional mushrooms in modern health
25:00 Importance of outdoor-grown versus indoor-grown mushrooms
28:40 The unique cultivation practices for chaga mushrooms
30:50 Insights into the extraction methods for bioavailability
34:10 The interplay of environmental stressors and mushroom potency
37:40 Introducing Shroomwell’s innovative product range
40:20 The challenges within the energy drink market and the shift towards wellness
45:30 Come to the HOLOLIFE Summit in Estonia, visit Shroomwell, try their products
47:50 More amazing facts about Estonia, fermented products and mushrooms
51:30 Shroomwell has an Open Door Policy
Transcript
Music.
Speaker:Welcome to the Biohacker's Podcast. My name is Teemu Arina. Today's topic is functional mushrooms,
Speaker:the most resilient nation and resilience and what you can learn from nature
Speaker:and how to implement that in
Speaker:your life practically and extremely directly with the power of mushrooms.
Speaker:My guest today is Silver Laus from Shroomwell. I love the name of the company.
Speaker:Shrooms make you well. It's just a fact
Speaker:i've been using functional mushrooms most of
Speaker:my adult life over 10
Speaker:years now every single day i'm having chaga mushrooms
Speaker:in my morning coffee i usually make with
Speaker:chaga tea instead of water and i often put some nice tinctures in there like
Speaker:cordyceps or lion's mane and sometimes i just put like a powder mix of them
Speaker:like i've used mushrooms in all different forms and i'm a big snob when it comes
Speaker:to the quality of these products i think everyone should be.
Speaker:Really conscious and aware of the quality of
Speaker:the products that they're consuming not just because they're afraid that
Speaker:there might be heavy metals or something like this in it but
Speaker:also you want to have active ingredients there are
Speaker:so many companies in europe and u.s
Speaker:who get their product from china or wherever
Speaker:and who knows where the stuff comes from
Speaker:some of it is lab tested some of it is not some of
Speaker:it is made from the mycelium some of it made made from
Speaker:the fooding bodies some of it is like just
Speaker:standardizing for beta-glucan some of them are actually looking for other things
Speaker:some of it is not very well extracted some of it is extremely well extracted
Speaker:so it is a huge spectrum of variables you need to be aware of and you want to
Speaker:be conscious about the products you choose the only products that i choose are
Speaker:the ones that actually do work.
Speaker:But yeah we're gonna geek into it so welcome to
Speaker:the show silver happy to be here yeah i
Speaker:was in estonian television recently and i joked that when they asked why am
Speaker:i here i said i'm here because of vikings and they were like what and it turns
Speaker:out that estonia is actually the place where the viking era started and it also
Speaker:ended like 50 years before everywhere else and 50 years after,
Speaker:so many people think of Estonia as the ex-Soviet
Speaker:country but Estonia is
Speaker:not an ex-Soviet country Estonia is
Speaker:a sovereign nation that was taken by force and
Speaker:they got their independence in the
Speaker:90s and yeah they've been growing faster
Speaker:than anything else so I want to be in places which are growing fast
Speaker:and which are also inhabiting some of the most resilient people on this planet
Speaker:because I'm a pie hacker and Estonia has Seem Land who is very well known a
Speaker:longevity expert written many books like the longevity leap.
Speaker:And it's the home of one of the largest jaga farms in the whole world.
Speaker:Well, and also it has some of the most resilient people and we're going to dive into it.
Speaker:So did you, Silver, know about your Viking past?
Speaker:Oh, I think most of the Estonians in some level know that. Do they acknowledge that or not?
Speaker:It's something that's been part of our culture and the roots,
Speaker:they go back to Sarema, which is one of the biggest islands that we have.
Speaker:So a lot of history has been found there that basically dates back to the beginning
Speaker:of the Viking era over there.
Speaker:And it's very hard to believe because if you're a small nation like Estonia
Speaker:and you've been always conquered by somebody, it's eventually stopped believing.
Speaker:But now we know that the Vikings started from Estonia. And unfortunately,
Speaker:the Vikings also died in Estonia.
Speaker:So basically we're looking at an island that is in
Speaker:the baltic sea and in those
Speaker:times if you wanted to travel you didn't have airplanes or
Speaker:trains yeah you actually like the most ideal
Speaker:way was to use like some kind of boat
Speaker:and if you wanted to go east you
Speaker:want to go to asia all the way to china or you
Speaker:want to go south you want to go to turkey you
Speaker:want to go to egypt you want to
Speaker:go to the trade routes this was the ideal
Speaker:place to come to and Saarenmaa was right there
Speaker:and it was able to protect itself from many
Speaker:attempts of other nations trying to concur that because
Speaker:it was an important trading post so Estonia was
Speaker:doing a lot of trade and a lot of this recent history and
Speaker:understanding of Viking era actually comes from not
Speaker:from written accounts because a lot of the information is
Speaker:destroyed but from basically like
Speaker:finding graves and finding objects and skeletons and so on and there's a lot
Speaker:of coins that have been found in Estonia and Estonia was very wealthy during
Speaker:that time for several reasons one of them was that as an important trade route they were of course,
Speaker:engaging in a lot of trade also with Gotland with the other Vikings and so on there has been.
Speaker:Findings of coins all the way to Egypt to Turkey all kinds of objects from those
Speaker:regions which shows and is evidence that there was a lot of trade happening
Speaker:there and from there and through there and the other thing is that,
Speaker:estonia was a manufacturer of iron in the iron age so in those times people
Speaker:understood iron so swords and like shields and whatnot and one place to get
Speaker:iron was estonia because iron,
Speaker:i mean you can mine it but you can also find it from swamps so it's very iron
Speaker:rich so you can enrich that you can melt that and you have a weapon from a swamp
Speaker:and the thing was that everyone also wanted the iron that was in Estonia.
Speaker:So those are kind of the geopolitical reasons why Estonia was such an important place.
Speaker:And it was invaded by many, many different nations.
Speaker:So for example, the now Russians, Novgorodians, tried to come over here, take over.
Speaker:The Danish, the Norwegian, the Swedish tried many, many times with boats, come over here.
Speaker:The Livonians, which is Latvians now during that
Speaker:time it was Christianity trying to spread around
Speaker:Europe and all the way
Speaker:to the Pope of Rome tried to
Speaker:come over here so there was the Christianity that tried
Speaker:to spread there was all these like how could I call them maybe like berserkers
Speaker:and like just small gangs trying to take over the trade routes and vikings of
Speaker:course in the end Estonia defended itself longer than any other nation in Europe.
Speaker:So that's why Christianity landed in Estonia later than anywhere else.
Speaker:And also it was able to keep its heritage.
Speaker:So one thing that very few people know about sauna culture, now sauna is a big biohack,
Speaker:is that sauna survived because it didn't spread to Finland, for example,
Speaker:or Estonia, probably not to Finland because of Estonians actually.
Speaker:The Christianity.
Speaker:Saw and religion saw sweating
Speaker:as filthy and pagan and something
Speaker:that humans should not do and during enlightenment if you look in france netherlands
Speaker:they didn't like go to shower for two three weeks they thought it's unhealthy
Speaker:to take a shower did you know that silver Somewhat, yes.
Speaker:So the early Christianity era was weird.
Speaker:There were a lot of things that were going on that sound or look very peculiar
Speaker:for us at this time and age.
Speaker:So something that you touched there as well is that it arrived here very late
Speaker:because this small, resilient country was able to defend every nation,
Speaker:every gang, every tribe that tried to come in.
Speaker:If we look at the recent history, although we were under Swedes or we were under
Speaker:Russians or any other nation, we still had this kind of a pact among us where
Speaker:we're like, okay, we're still resilient.
Speaker:We don't bend the knee. Although the fact might be different,
Speaker:we're not bending the knee. So we always were fighting back,
Speaker:although the flag was different, to the point where, let's go back to the 90s,
Speaker:when we actually became free, the freedom that we have today.
Speaker:It was a hectic era. I'm born in 83, so I remember the early 90s.
Speaker:And it was a very hectic era where the mafia tried to conquer Estonia, basically.
Speaker:And something very weird happened. Estonian mafia...
Speaker:Which is bad by as it is organization became defender of Estonia and then Estonia
Speaker:in a way were like pushed back Russians,
Speaker:Russian mafia, Azerbaijan mafia, like there were like five, six different mafias
Speaker:that were trying to take over Estonia and they became kind of like unofficial.
Speaker:Defenders of Estonia because this
Speaker:is something that's written in our DNA is like nobody walks
Speaker:in here and just takes things over yeah now estonia
Speaker:is one of the safest countries i've lived in
Speaker:estonia for a while and i've never felt safer
Speaker:anywhere like i've never witnessed any crime i can leave my door open it's completely
Speaker:transformed and one thing you did you actually kicked out all of those gangs
Speaker:so for example in finland we still have some motorbike gangs and stuff like
Speaker:this, but not in Estonia.
Speaker:Interestingly about this resilience part was also that women were also pretty tough.
Speaker:I mean, Estonian women are super tough, but during the Viking era,
Speaker:women did carry weapons.
Speaker:They had a lot of metal on their clothing and body, and they were pretty tough.
Speaker:And maybe they were actually fueled by mushrooms,
Speaker:some functional mushrooms or chaga mushrooms, often is associated to Russia
Speaker:and Siberia as kind of the tea that was being consumed during wartime when coffee was not available.
Speaker:But this is basically an age-old thing. So I would say that.
Speaker:Cultural consumption, regular consumption of botanical extracts,
Speaker:mushrooms, all of this, it's in the DNA of Estonians as well.
Speaker:So I've seen that they're very nature-connected people.
Speaker:In the pharmacies, for example, you also have herbal products,
Speaker:which I find interesting.
Speaker:Of course, things are changing, like in most of Europe, but it's the thing that
Speaker:the nature connection has always been there.
Speaker:And it has one of the cleanest natures also like
Speaker:in terms of air quality if you look at the air quality index globally like
Speaker:you want to be here not in bangladesh or or
Speaker:delhi basically you want to be in estonia you don't want to be in finland and
Speaker:if we kind of like look at like some of the achievements during the viking era
Speaker:very few people know but the king of sweden died in saarenmaa The bishop of
Speaker:Sweden died in Saarenmaa.
Speaker:One of the greatest Viking leaders of that time died in Saarenmaa.
Speaker:One of the queen of Norway and the son of the queen were captured by Estonians.
Speaker:Later, the son was bought back by a Norwegian merchant as a slave, obviously.
Speaker:So that time was pretty bloody
Speaker:for many reasons but it's mainly for defense purposes i
Speaker:heard from the local vikings that during
Speaker:that time the estonians were called the others the
Speaker:other vikings so you had like swedish norwegian
Speaker:vikings and then you had the other vikings who are killing everyone and
Speaker:this was this was estonians so that's
Speaker:a little backdrop into how resilient nation
Speaker:it is and it defended itself as the
Speaker:last place in europe later it was
Speaker:like taken over by christianity and then run over by different countries germany
Speaker:swedish russian like you were just occupied here and there but you're pretty
Speaker:tough like even during the viking era there was a point where you only had like
Speaker:a hundred thousand inhabitants left like Estonia could have been wiped out completely,
Speaker:but now you are like 1.55 million or something like this, if I remember correctly.
Speaker:1.3 million strong. 1.3 million. So you grew back, you survived the Soviet times, and you are still here.
Speaker:So we want to learn from resilient nations, and this is where we are now.
Speaker:So let's talk about some mushrooms and resilience, because...
Speaker:Functional mushrooms they can support your immunity but they can also support your,
Speaker:resilience jaga mushrooms increase your
Speaker:stamina if you take that before you go for a run or something like
Speaker:this it will be very beneficial it's a
Speaker:very strong antioxidant so can you give us like a little overview on some of
Speaker:these mushrooms let's start from jaga because that is native to estonia so so
Speaker:i think this the backstory of this resilience led estonians to the place where
Speaker:we became very dependent of land and forest.
Speaker:So one thing that we had to defend very heavily was our food supply.
Speaker:And this is something that's still engraved into Estonians. A lot,
Speaker:like you said, it's changing. So we're becoming the Westerners.
Speaker:We think that the food comes from store, but still I think we're better off
Speaker:than most of the countries. We still grow our own food.
Speaker:We still go into the forest and harvest certain
Speaker:things like berries and mushrooms and stuff like that and
Speaker:it's a normal thing in estonia we have a law it's
Speaker:called every man's right so if you go into the forest and it
Speaker:doesn't matter if it's a private owned forest or it's a state owned
Speaker:forest you can pick berries and mushrooms for
Speaker:your own use because it's historically so we
Speaker:can't deny that so that resilience is
Speaker:still built on or built into that
Speaker:and i think it's a very very important part that i truly hope
Speaker:this is something that's not gonna die or like we're not going to lose that
Speaker:yeah this is definitely a huge difference to us
Speaker:for example where they definitely don't have every man's right
Speaker:if there is a public land somewhere there's going
Speaker:to be warning signs and gates and like whatever walls
Speaker:to keep people out from the dangerous
Speaker:nature so in estonia that's not
Speaker:the case you can go to the forest you can pick up whatever you like
Speaker:mushrooms berries you can't like cut
Speaker:down a tree but yeah you can have like the
Speaker:gifts of nature and many estonians i met they know about herbs they use thin
Speaker:nettles and they use dandelions and for them it's just normal part of life their
Speaker:grandmas were doing it and they are doing it it's not some like distant past
Speaker:actually it's still like going on so that's what i also do when i go for a walk.
Speaker:In Tallinn, which is the capital city.
Speaker:I pick up some herbs and I make a salad for myself.
Speaker:I can't wait a few months from now.
Speaker:One month, actually, it's going to be the best season already to pick up some
Speaker:herbs. But let's go back to the topic and chaga mushrooms.
Speaker:That's a pretty resilient mushroom, isn't it?
Speaker:Well, it's called King of the Mushrooms for a reason.
Speaker:And this is not called King of the Mushrooms by Estonians or it doesn't come from this region.
Speaker:It actually, if you look at any of the ancient nations that have been using
Speaker:mushrooms, such as China, this is where they call it King of the Mushrooms because
Speaker:it has the most bioactive components of any mushroom or any plant.
Speaker:Estonians have been using chaga. Pretty much every person, at least the older
Speaker:generation, knows chaga. And they're like, yeah, I know. We used to make tea.
Speaker:We used to harvest chaga from forests. Like every year we made tea.
Speaker:This is something when you become sick, this is something that you go for.
Speaker:That's the first thing that you do.
Speaker:Again, something that has been dying in the last 30, 40 years,
Speaker:but it's coming back. We can see that.
Speaker:The reason is very simple because it's an extremely powerful agent.
Speaker:It's an immunomodulator, which means that it deregulates your immune system.
Speaker:Up or down based on your body's need.
Speaker:So these days, the main problem is not that your immune system is weak.
Speaker:Which also happens a lot.
Speaker:But the bigger problem even these days is that your immune system is on overdrive
Speaker:because we have so many stimulants, we have so many things going on in our life
Speaker:that our immune system is constantly on overdrive and causing other problems and diseases to happen.
Speaker:So your body basically starts to attack itself, right?
Speaker:So chaga does really wonders there.
Speaker:And if we're looking into the studies as well this
Speaker:is something that where we deep dive in like we're trying to be on
Speaker:top of that game it's like every new study that comes out we're gonna
Speaker:we're gonna look into the study and we're trying to understand what they're looking
Speaker:for because it's something that's very time consuming and expensive
Speaker:to do yourself and like we're doing that ourselves as well but there are plenty
Speaker:of companies and people out there who do the studies and they all basically
Speaker:point in the same direction it's like it's a strong immunomodulator so basically
Speaker:any disease that is immune-related.
Speaker:Chaga basically comes in wears a cape and starts to do things that are basically unheard,
Speaker:right the the interesting thing about the antioxidant
Speaker:content is that the orac value is like 10 times
Speaker:larger than for coffee or chocolate so like chocolate is superfood coffee is
Speaker:superfood for many not caffeine but coffee and like all these dark pigments
Speaker:are strong in antioxidant content but chaga is like 10x that's why i use this
Speaker:chaga tea when i make my coffee it's also,
Speaker:i would say like the bitterness of that with
Speaker:the bitterness of coffee it's just like makes the taste more
Speaker:richer every cup of coffee tastes better with chaga
Speaker:that's my opinion if you're already on
Speaker:that topic the antioxidant count double extracted or
Speaker:then ultrasonic extracted which is the new technology that we
Speaker:use chaga has the highest antioxidant
Speaker:account of any substances so nothing
Speaker:even comes close to it so we talk about
Speaker:the the ultrasonic ultrasound technology to extract so if you try to extract
Speaker:the active compounds from chaga yourself by boiling it like hours on for tea
Speaker:and then maybe doing an alcohol extract my understanding is that you can get maybe 60 percent,
Speaker:bioavailability of the compounds but with this technology what are we talking about.
Speaker:So we're talking about depending on a mushroom but we're
Speaker:talking about 90 to 95 percent of bioavailability that
Speaker:you actually get from that so and the other
Speaker:big thing is that so why i said if you're lucky
Speaker:if you do the the kind of the older version of
Speaker:double extraction is that there is a very important part which
Speaker:is time so double extraction is
Speaker:not only like i'm boiling in a water and then i'm doing the
Speaker:alcohol and then i'm putting it together it's how long do
Speaker:you boil how long to keep it in alcohol so
Speaker:and in the world where like time is everything and
Speaker:for businesses time is everything like the the companies are
Speaker:not doing it for very long so which means that if they
Speaker:would do it for weeks or months yes you get that 60
Speaker:but most likely they do it in like i
Speaker:don't know 24 hours which means that this is actually you
Speaker:get maybe 20 25 out of it right and
Speaker:many american companies they use mycelium because
Speaker:it's easier and what you're paying for is basically sawdust extract so it's
Speaker:because you can't separate mycelium from the sawdust easily where it grows so
Speaker:the extraction is done with the sawdust so yeah you're getting something like
Speaker:that And that's why they also standardize many of these things for beta-glucans.
Speaker:It's an active ingredient there. It's easy to measure.
Speaker:But when you are talking about something like lion's mane.
Speaker:Or cordyceps like cordyceps has
Speaker:the active ingredient is cordycepin so that's
Speaker:the active stuff you want out you want to have the maximum technology
Speaker:to get the most out of it and beta
Speaker:glucans is much more easily measured and also
Speaker:dissolves into this extraction easily
Speaker:so it's easier to standardize for so yeah
Speaker:like you guys are using proper technology
Speaker:to get the most out of your mushrooms let's talk about
Speaker:the other aspects of the quality and
Speaker:that comes in terms of increasing the
Speaker:active compounds and yield already on the growing
Speaker:phase because if you think of mushrooms
Speaker:where do these compounds come from they need
Speaker:to protect themselves in the
Speaker:environment they are in and they do that
Speaker:through chemistry so they synthesize molecules
Speaker:to protect themselves and that's what these compounds are
Speaker:that we want to use for our
Speaker:resilience these are the so-called medicinal or functional compounds now if
Speaker:the mushroom is grown like a tomato in the Netherlands in a greenhouse it's
Speaker:a completely different story than if it actually needs to fight for its life
Speaker:in real nature so can you talk about that a little bit because you do functional
Speaker:and sustainable farming.
Speaker:Right. So on that topic, the best example, in my opinion, how things that are
Speaker:coming from nature are way more powerful than the ones that were growing indoors,
Speaker:although it sounds like a concept for some that there's difference. Let's take chaga.
Speaker:So chaga lives in the nature. It requires a live host tree.
Speaker:So it's almost impossible to copy that indoor environment.
Speaker:Like i know chinese are doing it they're doing it in a reactor and they're selling
Speaker:it as a chaga but it's nothing close to chaga i wouldn't buy that i wouldn't
Speaker:poke that with a long stick.
Speaker:They grow on a tree and to harvest the chaga so
Speaker:what we are doing harvesting a chaga from the forest
Speaker:like we're not picking a chaga that's younger than 10 15
Speaker:years old so it takes let's say
Speaker:15 years to for a chaga to
Speaker:grow and then somebody goes and harvests it if we're
Speaker:talking of like naturally growing chaga in the nature for 15
Speaker:years he has to endure everything that's going on the sun
Speaker:the cold the wind the uv light
Speaker:everything and this is where those
Speaker:natural compounds are coming from because it has to
Speaker:fight it has to be that resilient being on that tree and then survive and then
Speaker:when you finally pick it and that's why it's called the king of the mushroom
Speaker:because no other mushroom grows that long this kind of environment so that's
Speaker:why when you pick it and so far we know there is over 400 bioactive components
Speaker:so that one makes it resilient that
Speaker:one makes it strong so we're trying to copy that
Speaker:kind of idea as much as possible in Estonia and in Estonian nature because you
Speaker:already mentioned that Estonia is extremely clean environment and you want mushrooms
Speaker:from the cleanest possible environment which Estonia Finland and this region
Speaker:is so there are mushrooms that are going to.
Speaker:Indoors that we're growing indoors as well such as lion's mane which
Speaker:is very hard to grow outdoors because it's very picky
Speaker:it has a very short cycle where
Speaker:you have to basically harvest it and so
Speaker:on so it's not sustainable in that sense but
Speaker:some other mushrooms such as let's say reishi or even turkey
Speaker:tail which is you know forbidden in europe and we
Speaker:can deep dive into that later but those are mushrooms that don't
Speaker:have a short harvest period but in
Speaker:estonia we have a lot of forest and we have a lot of clear cut
Speaker:forest and we're looking around and we're like okay so the
Speaker:forest industry does its job cutting down the trees and then
Speaker:walks away and then for the next 60 years there is
Speaker:no revenue from that forest but we
Speaker:were looking at it was like okay there are a lot of tree stumps there is a lot
Speaker:of food over there and there is a beautiful nature here that does its job how
Speaker:we can put those two things together so we started to inoculate we're still
Speaker:in a test phase But we started to inoculate those tree stems with specific mushrooms
Speaker:and growing them outdoors.
Speaker:Because now once we succeed, and we have already first results coming in,
Speaker:and once we succeed and we're going to measure the mushrooms that are going
Speaker:indoors in a kind of a perfect environment.
Speaker:And then the mushrooms that are going outdoors, that take, I don't know,
Speaker:indoors eight weeks, outdoors two years, then the bioactive component count is night and day.
Speaker:So if we're transferring over to the indoor environment, then we're trying to
Speaker:give as many stressors as possible.
Speaker:Because otherwise, the mushrooms become lazy. Human beings become lazy if they're
Speaker:in a perfect environment. If we have all the food and all the Netflix and the
Speaker:home and everything and we don't need to work, we become lazy.
Speaker:We become overweight. We become sick.
Speaker:Same with any mushroom or any other plant. So we need to give the stressors.
Speaker:We need to keep them on their toes because this is how they develop those useful
Speaker:components that we can exploit in a good way later.
Speaker:Yeah what is interesting about what
Speaker:you're explaining here is that in
Speaker:the nordic northern region the nature is pretty tough we have clear seasons
Speaker:summer winter spring autumn and the winter is long and these trees these mushrooms
Speaker:they need to endure all of that so for good reason many things like.
Speaker:Bilberries which is like the wild blueberry
Speaker:is so much more in antioxidant
Speaker:content so much more nutrition in those
Speaker:plants compared to stuff that you might
Speaker:have somewhere growing in a nice bush in the
Speaker:Netherlands again in a greenhouse more taste more
Speaker:bitterness more nutrients more antioxidants more
Speaker:polyphenols more plant-based compounds and same
Speaker:with these mushrooms now you are simulating like
Speaker:a rough environment you actually don't really need to simulate that
Speaker:much because the nature is already rough what else are
Speaker:you doing to make it even more rough is there anything
Speaker:you want to share yeah we have a lot of tests
Speaker:some weirder than others going on
Speaker:i can't disclose everything but i can give you some glimpse and
Speaker:some ideas so let's differentiate indoor and
Speaker:outdoor farming here right so outdoor nature
Speaker:does a lot and as you mentioned as well the nordics have
Speaker:four seasons very clear distinguished seasons the
Speaker:temperature difference can vary 60 70
Speaker:degrees between those seasons
Speaker:right the summer and winter so it's a very rough environment to endure but we're
Speaker:looking from angle being like okay so what else can we do can we do something
Speaker:else to give another shock something else that makes it even more powerful One thing that we noticed.
Speaker:So going back to this Estonia being a Brazilian country where everybody tried to conquer us.
Speaker:So we realized that during the Second World War, we had a lot of battles happening
Speaker:in Estonia because first it was Germans, then it was Russians,
Speaker:then Germans, then Russians again, and so on and so forth.
Speaker:So they dropped a lot of bombs. They did a lot of things that created shocks
Speaker:that disrupted the nature.
Speaker:And the areas where there were battles, you find more chaga.
Speaker:Why is that? So we know that chaga grows on the trees where there is a damage.
Speaker:So this is where it basically starts to operate because it's a pathogen. It lands there.
Speaker:But that fact alone doesn't explain why you have more chaga there because it
Speaker:needs more than just kind of a wound on the tree.
Speaker:And our thesis was that the battle areas had a lot of bombs dropping,
Speaker:a lot of vibration, a lot of light, a lot of electromagnetic fields, shocks.
Speaker:And stuff like that so what we are doing we have 700 hectares
Speaker:of chaga plantations that we started in estonia so
Speaker:it has grown to 700 hectares we see
Speaker:the growth there but some of the trees are rejecting chaga or at least kind
Speaker:of closing the wounds so it doesn't let the chaga to grow out it grows inside
Speaker:of a tree but it doesn't let to grow out because a tree has the immune system
Speaker:so we're trying different things like giving them shock electric shock.
Speaker:Wow shock that's like
Speaker:a concentration camp for functional mushrooms if
Speaker:they survive that it's probably going to be something you want to be taking
Speaker:sounds incredible but it's not something that's dangerous
Speaker:for the ecosystem it's very
Speaker:well very well designed test where it's
Speaker:like only affecting the tree tree trunk itself
Speaker:and hoping to get results through that right
Speaker:so you're just using like the past as
Speaker:a template to understand what might be the
Speaker:ideal growing environment for chaga and you
Speaker:try to simulate it in a safe way sounds fantastic so
Speaker:you are already increasing the yield the quality
Speaker:the concentration of active compounds already growing phase
Speaker:you are also making sure that it's
Speaker:sustainable so in 15 years you said
Speaker:you cut a tree it produced nothing now
Speaker:you're producing black gold which is chaga and many other
Speaker:beneficial things mushrooms can turn living
Speaker:matter into all kinds of different uses you have like different growing mediums
Speaker:you're figuring out what to do with those growing mediums so that it's more
Speaker:sustainable not throwing them out and giving bring another patch in so nowadays
Speaker:when people do care about the environment more and more.
Speaker:It's important that you vote with your wallet on products that actually are
Speaker:made in a sustainable way.
Speaker:And there's nothing better than a good mushroom that actually is contributing to the environment.
Speaker:So I remember seeing these logs in some forests and often the people who maintain
Speaker:the forest, they leave them around.
Speaker:They leave the mushrooms growing there and breaking
Speaker:down the matter because it's important for insects for
Speaker:example it's important then for birds it's
Speaker:important for the living ecosystem that the mushrooms are
Speaker:there they get there they have a healthy environment to grow so
Speaker:if you have a forest full of chaga growing it's actually
Speaker:helping the forest to transform into a
Speaker:living ecosystem for other organisms oh absolutely
Speaker:correct so like we have to look at it in
Speaker:the realm of like hundreds of thousands of years something
Speaker:that's being in the forest all the time this is not something
Speaker:new that we created every mushroom plays a
Speaker:very important role in the ecosystem being at the
Speaker:pathogen which sounds harsh but it
Speaker:has to be there because it also picks out the trees that are weaker and does
Speaker:its own work or being it a decomposer when the tree falls down and then breaking
Speaker:it down to the smallest particle so everything new can grow again right we do
Speaker:get the pushback when we started the project the growing chaga and the forest,
Speaker:we obviously did get the pushback from the forest industry being, oh,
Speaker:you're like destroying the forest because you're putting pathogens in a forest and so on.
Speaker:But that was our job to educate the forest industry and saying that, listen, this is not.
Speaker:How it looks or it sounds because this has been
Speaker:in the forest for thousands and thousands of years before the
Speaker:forest even existed and it actually
Speaker:enriches the ecosystem so capturing more
Speaker:co2 even or like you said insect which is biodiversity
Speaker:or so on so forth so we see as well
Speaker:we have observed that the forest where
Speaker:you find more chaga have way more biodiversity right that's that's like another
Speaker:thing that probably people didn't know and why in terms of like different things
Speaker:that are in your diet, these kind of mushrooms should be there.
Speaker:So when you get an harvest, I did visit your factory and it's fantastic by the way.
Speaker:I learned some interesting things about the indoor farming. So you mentioned
Speaker:lion's mane and lion's mane is a very, very sensitive mushroom.
Speaker:And mushrooms are intelligent they're communicating to each
Speaker:other so you told me that
Speaker:if you cut a lion's mane you have to be very
Speaker:careful with them that you don't damage them because they will tell other lion's
Speaker:manes that hey there's this dude who wants to eat us and like then something
Speaker:weird happens what's going on there yeah you just poked a knife to my heart
Speaker:because that was a very tough era where we tried to figure out what's going
Speaker:on we know one thing is that the nature is interconnected.
Speaker:We know that. And we know that the mushrooms are playing an important part of that.
Speaker:So if you're looking at the ecosystem as a whole, like the forest,
Speaker:if you cut down the tree, you go to the forest to pick your Christmas tree and
Speaker:you start to cut it down, it gives a distress signal.
Speaker:And that distress signal is transferred through the roots and the mycelium of
Speaker:a mushroom to other trees.
Speaker:We knew that in advance, but we kind of ignored that fact.
Speaker:So when we started our indoor farm and we were starting
Speaker:to scale up like doing it in a small scale everything seems easy
Speaker:it's one of the coolest business on paper where you're
Speaker:like okay this is licensed to print money and then when you start to do
Speaker:it it's like one of the toughest business because everything starts to happen
Speaker:that you have no explanation of and when the things were scaling up and we started
Speaker:to harvest all the mushrooms that were in one greenhouse so we have multiple
Speaker:greenhouses that are fully automated
Speaker:when we're harvesting those the other greenhouse next to it the lion's,
Speaker:lion's main fruiting pot started to look awful and started to die.
Speaker:And we couldn't explain it we couldn't understand why and
Speaker:that repeated the process repeated itself it's top of the
Speaker:art like it's technology we use the latest technology to
Speaker:do all of that and still things like this happen one
Speaker:thing we realized is that as soon as you touch the fruiting
Speaker:body of last minute you start to cut it it sends out this dressing
Speaker:which is basically a chemical that's flying
Speaker:in here letting everybody else to know that there is somebody
Speaker:here who tries to destroy us so therefore destroy
Speaker:your fruiting body because it's the question of existence
Speaker:so by the time when we harvest the first greenhouse and we got our lion's mane
Speaker:and we're super happy and going to the next one they were all damaged like we
Speaker:can use them and we couldn't explain it in any way so eventually what we realized
Speaker:is that we need to cut off the air supply.
Speaker:Although they're not connected to one another, the greenhouses,
Speaker:the distress signal still found its way there.
Speaker:So when we're harvesting, we're cutting the air supply in that greenhouse so
Speaker:the distress signal doesn't fly out.
Speaker:And that shows that mushrooms have that intelligence.
Speaker:We can't still explain it because there is no central piece art brain,
Speaker:but every piece of mycelium.
Speaker:Can think it has the direction it has the understanding of temperature it has
Speaker:understanding of time even so they're super smart and i truly believe that they're
Speaker:still smarter than we are we like to think that we're smart but i am feeling
Speaker:that they're smarter than we are,
Speaker:yeah it's incredible what a
Speaker:neural network that can communicate and even through
Speaker:the walls basically like in this case making the human monkey scratch their
Speaker:head and ask themselves like what's going on here so anyway you get this optimized
Speaker:output based on years and years of experience working with them optimizing them
Speaker:figuring out how to get the best stuff out.
Speaker:Now what i really like about your products
Speaker:is that many companies out there
Speaker:just make let's say a capsule product or they make a
Speaker:tincture but you also have other forms in
Speaker:which these mushrooms can be consumed and what
Speaker:i like about that is different methods in terms
Speaker:of absorption instead of the use instead
Speaker:in in terms of the lifestyle or the
Speaker:functionality like i don't want to take more capsules myself like
Speaker:i'm taking already enough capsules so i'm
Speaker:not in the target audience for that when it comes to mushrooms i like
Speaker:the taste of mushrooms i like to cook with them sometimes I
Speaker:don't like to use a tincture because yeah
Speaker:it's just like I have a lot of tinctures already and
Speaker:alcohol extract is not necessarily always the thing I want to
Speaker:take so you have sprays and you also have soft drinks and I think those are
Speaker:great ways to get more mushrooms into your system in a new form that yeah maybe
Speaker:most people have already too many supplements in their morning.
Speaker:Right. So there are two components here that is in play.
Speaker:One is we're constantly seeking the ways to apply mushrooms.
Speaker:Because like you said yourself, like you're taking enough capsules.
Speaker:You want to have something that is maybe easier to use to put into your coffee.
Speaker:It's more bioavailable through that because every form has different bioavailability.
Speaker:Then there are people who are like constantly on the run and they need something
Speaker:that they can put into their pocket, their purse and like spray form or whatever it is.
Speaker:One thing is to be closer to the consumer and reaching the gap of them letting
Speaker:them to know because mushrooms still have this weird aura where it's like, mushrooms?
Speaker:Like, does it taste weird?
Speaker:Do I see visions after that? It's still there, right? So we have to breach the
Speaker:cap. And that's why, for example, we came out with Lion's Mane Soft Drink.
Speaker:So now people who have no idea about the mushroom supplements.
Speaker:Can at least try this and they're like extremely
Speaker:surprised being like oh there's no mushroom taste and it actually tastes good
Speaker:and i can actually feel the effect of
Speaker:lion's mane because it gives me like better focus or
Speaker:sharper brain or whatever it is what they feel and then
Speaker:there is another component of that is that we're committed of
Speaker:making good products there are
Speaker:plenty of average products out there and as you mentioned as well
Speaker:in the intro most of companies don't even know where their supply is
Speaker:coming from or they don't care where the supply is coming from
Speaker:or they're just putting together some random product because the trend is there
Speaker:and you throw it on the market and slap it on people and they're like hey here
Speaker:we go so we're committed to something that's called humanity plus which means
Speaker:that we want to give more back than we're actually taking from the nature which
Speaker:means that the product has to be clean it has to be sustainable and.
Speaker:And no bullshit. Because, like I said, there are plenty of companies with bullshit out there.
Speaker:They don't need us. The world doesn't need another bullshitter.
Speaker:That's why we got the ultrasonic extraction method in. That's why we're looking
Speaker:into the cleanest ingredients when we're putting into the product.
Speaker:Finding the best form that goes with your lifestyle.
Speaker:And then offering you the best quality product. So we can say that, listen, we did our best.
Speaker:I can sleep deep during the night. and that's
Speaker:what i need as running this company and being responsible
Speaker:for those products that's it that's that's
Speaker:exactly true we don't need more bullshit in our lives and we definitely
Speaker:don't want to buy bullshit products so don't buy
Speaker:just marketing out there nice nice nice influencer
Speaker:videos but like actually do do the
Speaker:research on the origins of your product you mentioned
Speaker:the new ways of using these
Speaker:mushrooms the energy drink market is huge
Speaker:i mean red bull and all of that but i see the shift coming
Speaker:like we're gonna see the next decade is the decade of
Speaker:wellness and people will abandon what was
Speaker:cool in the previous generation like music television made red
Speaker:bull big right now there is new influencers
Speaker:who don't want to promote alcohol tobacco and bullshit
Speaker:energy drinks they want to they want to bring other things on the
Speaker:on the plate we see that shift already david
Speaker:beckham you know promoting supplements and like
Speaker:all of this like a daily morning drink as an
Speaker:example so we have a huge potential new
Speaker:industry coming that is kind of clean fuel.
Speaker:Clean energy that you can get clean focus
Speaker:clean stamina whatever you do sports esports
Speaker:computer work just like
Speaker:hanging out out there like you want to maybe you're
Speaker:traveling and you want to consume something
Speaker:you're a little bit thirsty and you want to go somewhere
Speaker:and not get sick so that's where
Speaker:these kind of products come into play i would love to see your products in every
Speaker:freaking small takeaway supermarket out there so if there's anyone listening
Speaker:who is distributing these products contact these guys they have some really
Speaker:amazing soft drinks that are just waiting to get to the market.
Speaker:And the thing is that also those products don't have bullshit ingredients.
Speaker:So it's only good stuff from Estonian nature.
Speaker:And yeah, that's what I would love to consume. Even if you have your burger
Speaker:and fries, it's better to have a soft drink that is actually healthy for you.
Speaker:And it's actually going to be tastier than whatever you're buying.
Speaker:So that's what I love about it.
Speaker:I would love to see young kids who are streamers doing their streams online
Speaker:on Twitch or YouTubers promoting products like this.
Speaker:I think this is cool. And this is something that the young generation should
Speaker:get their hands on instead of whatever their parents were consuming.
Speaker:So if you're a streamer, if you're an influencer, think about promoting products
Speaker:like this instead of whatever bullshit is out there.
Speaker:Right so yeah that
Speaker:was a very good shout out and i thank you for that and
Speaker:let's real quick talk about that so obviously
Speaker:the there's a massive gap in between so there
Speaker:are people who don't care don't
Speaker:want and they keep on doing things in the old
Speaker:way and then there's people who are like well i need
Speaker:to be better and i think that area
Speaker:of like me being better and finding more
Speaker:energy and being healthier is growing rapidly so people
Speaker:are shifting over from one side to another because you
Speaker:know all what has happened to covid and everything else where
Speaker:like people realize they have to take care of their own health and
Speaker:well-being and talking about the energy
Speaker:drink market so you're from finland it
Speaker:doesn't come surprise to you that like fins are
Speaker:crazy about their energy things like that market is
Speaker:huge and massive 5.5 million
Speaker:people and i think they sold like close to 500 million energy
Speaker:drinks last year every stimulant like we are the
Speaker:biggest coffee consumers and biggest freaking market for
Speaker:energy drinks in finland i'm not in the target audience
Speaker:but yeah which is insane right but
Speaker:what i see as well is that the mentality starts to
Speaker:shift so people still need that energy because you
Speaker:know it's a high-paced lifestyle like we have to work
Speaker:like two jobs just to make them get the
Speaker:end meet but now it's the question of like how.
Speaker:I'm gonna do that in a healthy way or healthier.
Speaker:Way so and that gives us an
Speaker:opportunity being at the soft drink or being at the
Speaker:lion's main tincture or even the capsule where people are like okay i'm
Speaker:gonna go towards that because you know i don't feel.
Speaker:Like crap two hours later or i'm
Speaker:gonna gain another five years because of that which is like a
Speaker:crazy thought it's it is shifting and i think the timing is right and i think
Speaker:guys like you and the events that you are doing with the hololife summit that
Speaker:is growing crazy as well is definitely helping to make that shift so i'm extremely
Speaker:grateful for that yeah i think that's all we need to wake up for is that there are.
Speaker:Ways how you can run your biological operating
Speaker:system and nature is one
Speaker:of the most intelligent designer chemist ally
Speaker:you can have if you are tired of all the synthetic stuff
Speaker:that is in every food product nowadays it's basically franken
Speaker:food it's food that is not even food so going
Speaker:back to our roots and discovering what is real food and
Speaker:turning those into trendy things i think that's
Speaker:what the world needs more and mushrooms are
Speaker:definitely trendy but they can be even trendier if
Speaker:put in the right kind of way and right kind of packaging so if
Speaker:people want to try this room well soft drinks
Speaker:sprays whatever even see
Speaker:the farm come to estonia hololife summit
Speaker:takes place on 14 and 15 of june and it's
Speaker:the best time of the year to come to this region it's the
Speaker:best summer in the world i don't want
Speaker:to be anywhere else in the world at that time there's also
Speaker:the midsummer festival is right after so maybe you
Speaker:can stay a little bit longer maybe you even pay a little visit to shroomwell
Speaker:factory see yourself like it's actually open doors like you get a lot of travelers
Speaker:like who can come over and check it out so it's you you don't need to like necessarily
Speaker:book anything like just check it on the map but of course talk to the man silver
Speaker:allows himself in the event,
Speaker:listen to his talk try the products if you are planning to manufacture products bring to the market.
Speaker:Don't look even close to the Chinese.
Speaker:Suppliers or whatever you find from eBay.
Speaker:Or Amazon get from the real guys the good stuff.
Speaker:And that's where you want to start from. If you're a consumer,
Speaker:be conscious about the source of your products.
Speaker:Anything from the Nordic region, from Europe, basically. Why do you want to
Speaker:buy your stuff from Europe? It's because we have this thing called regulations.
Speaker:Like we have regulation. We have regulated everything to the extreme,
Speaker:but for your health benefit in many cases.
Speaker:And although turkey tail is not allowed, although it grows freaking everywhere,
Speaker:it's not dangerous, but it's basically like European regulators.
Speaker:Kind of like turkey tail is
Speaker:amazing by the way i do make my own extracts out
Speaker:of it it's amazing and you guys are also
Speaker:producing some for outside of european market right
Speaker:yes we're actually growing turkey tail on our outdoor plots where like the tree
Speaker:stems are and we do produce it to the countries that are where that where it's
Speaker:allowed to sell the turkey tail products there are actually a couple of countries
Speaker:in europe as well where the turkey tail is allowed now which which is Holland,
Speaker:Czech Republic, Slovakia, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker:And the last that I heard was that even Germany is planning to allow turkey
Speaker:tail product, which is a big shift.
Speaker:And I really hope that the countries like Estonia and Finland,
Speaker:who usually are back of the line making those kind of decisions,
Speaker:will somehow wake up as well and
Speaker:understand that this is amazing substance and there is no harm in that.
Speaker:Exactly. It's a natural resource that even grows in your backyard and you could
Speaker:turn that into massive profits. So with that, Estonia, the most resilient country.
Speaker:Country the most resilient mushrooms all interconnected
Speaker:ecosystem and cleanest nature
Speaker:cleanest products you want to definitely learn more
Speaker:about that i'm gonna have my mushrooms i'm
Speaker:also gonna have my fermented cabbage like
Speaker:that's one thing that i've learned in estonia is that you
Speaker:have amazing local producers for different kind of fermented
Speaker:things and like different forms of
Speaker:fermented cabbage kimchi whatever like with all
Speaker:kinds of added herbs and ingredients i've been
Speaker:buying those from like this grandma's and
Speaker:like local farmer markets and it's just
Speaker:amazing it's not just you know
Speaker:something that they consumed in siberia it's
Speaker:it's like when when you had no other things
Speaker:to eat but this this is the stuff of the vikings
Speaker:this is the stuff that like it's a
Speaker:health food that people promote everywhere in the world
Speaker:like have your fermented cabbage and all of
Speaker:that so have your fermented cabbage in the morning with your
Speaker:mushroom coffee and you get to go man so
Speaker:that's what drives estonians that's what
Speaker:drives me and yeah actually the estonian
Speaker:television visited me this other
Speaker:day and i made that drink and i
Speaker:actually used bare bone broth not not bone
Speaker:broth not reindeer bone broth which i usually
Speaker:use but bare bone broth because i'm.
Speaker:In the country of the most resilient freaking viking spirits.
Speaker:Ever and if you've been watching movies and you're completely misguided and
Speaker:you don't understand anything what's going on in the world because you consume
Speaker:media and you're hypnotized to to not not see the truth come come see yourself
Speaker:like there's a lot of things to learn in europe of how things actually were in history.
Speaker:Oh, absolutely. That was well said. And one thing I just wanted to add,
Speaker:we've been talking about the resilience, we've been talking about the mushrooms,
Speaker:and we're talking about fermenting food, which was part of the preservation,
Speaker:but then they realized that it's also very healthy.
Speaker:So why Estonians have been consuming mushrooms overall for a very long time?
Speaker:Because they realized that it does miracles.
Speaker:They realized that every mushroom actually like
Speaker:we're talking about the functional mushroom as like something very unique as
Speaker:like a very small group of mushrooms like every mushroom is
Speaker:a functional mushroom so estonians have been using mushrooms
Speaker:for very long because they realized that it's not
Speaker:only tasty but it's a health food and it
Speaker:has sticked so today yes
Speaker:we're like focusing on this like top five or top
Speaker:seven that are like making waves in the
Speaker:world but overall we have a saying and
Speaker:like i'm going to show it's actually written about that there's a
Speaker:mushroom or a problem so whatever problem you're facing is being like an energy
Speaker:or is in the immune system or even the sleep or or whatever it is i guarantee
Speaker:you there is a mushroom you don't have to look for from par There is a mushroom
Speaker:to fix that because we're 60% mushrooms.
Speaker:Our DNA is 60% similar to mushrooms.
Speaker:That's why we can absorb those nutrients and those bioactive components very easily and very well.
Speaker:So if people want to get their mushrooms, check out shroomwell.com.
Speaker:Where you can learn more about wellness farming innovation and
Speaker:these great products or you can also go to hololifecenter.com
Speaker:we are also carrying these mushrooms now from
Speaker:shroomwell as well and come to hololife summit.
Speaker:In estonia and if you want to visit our farming production
Speaker:hit me up i'll definitely make your tour we are
Speaker:like we're one of the few companies in well who are keeping the open door
Speaker:policies we're extremely proud what we're doing
Speaker:that's why yeah it's such a rare unique experience
Speaker:a little bit outside of Tallinn little countryside
Speaker:trip and you will experience something extremely
Speaker:exotic and interesting if you have ever
Speaker:wondered how these mushrooms grow that you're consuming
Speaker:every day if you want to learn more about the ecosystems this
Speaker:is the place to go go to Shroomwell's factory and
Speaker:they're going to give you a little tour and it's definitely going
Speaker:to be a fantastic experience on its own like
Speaker:the estonian countryside one of the most beautiful countrysides ever
Speaker:you don't need to go like 10 15 minutes you're in the middle of nowhere
Speaker:the small towns the lakes the
Speaker:forests like there's all kinds of weird stuff on
Speaker:the way even a shiva temple in the middle of the forest some
Speaker:viking villages castles watch
Speaker:towers you can probably find some viking burials somewhere
Speaker:and make the next discovery of why actually the norwegian and swedish were actually
Speaker:not the real vikings thank you so much silver for this interview looking forward
Speaker:to seeing your talk where you dive deeper on this at the hololife summit as well
Speaker:thank you Teemu, i'm super excited for 14th and 15th of june thank you.
Speaker:Music.
