My Search For Lion's Mane

Mushrooms are amazing! They are fantastically complex creatures. Not plants something else, the closest thing I can think of to aliens. I think that human evolution has been influenced by mushrooms and play a role in our health. 

Anything worth having is worth searching for. Lions mane has powerful brain benefits and it is one of the few things I want to take the rest of my life so it's worth doing some homework on it. 

But now I'm searching for Lion's Mane. This is no easy task. You see the supplement industry is tricky, it is unregulated. Some capsules have the mycelium, simply explained thats the root part of the mushroom. You see if mushrooms are grown on a medium like rice after they are grown it is tough to say where the mushroom starts and the medium ends so you can powder the entire thing. My question with this is if I were to go looking for mushrooms in nature, which I've never done  but I imagine that I wouldn't take the mycelium to eat. I would take what's called the fruiting body. This is the part of the mushroom that you would typically think of, the part that grows. 
So mycelium products may be mostly rice or what ever medium, good for business bad for me. 

Then there are extracts- some claim this form is superior. Also not what I would do in nature but who knows.

Then there is single, double and however many times fermented mushrooms. Is fermentation good? Sometimes but not always sometimes it enhances a substance other times it allows manufacturer to put a buzz word on the label that increases sales. I don't know for sure but in the case of mushrooms I don't think I'm concerned with fermentation.

Then there are raw mushrooms as far as I know raw was a buzz word a few years back that has lost some of it's power but still has some pull. I have heard a mushroom expert say always cook mushrooms. This makes sense so that rules out the raw stuff.

Organic Lions mane, I think organic is good but also know it's tough to produce things like mushrooms in fashion to get an organic certification. Wild harvested mushrooms would be good if they were legit. 

USA or Foreign? Some companies push american mushrooms as much better quality as some cheap imports are just that, cheap and not clean. However, Mushrooms have been much more popular and established in Asia for a very long time so there may be some prime product that is seasoned being imported, I think this depends. 

Buying dried mushrooms on line, this could be a good option to get them like a food but of course who know what kind of quality they are. 

Growing my own- this is something I plan on doing. I want to have a reliable supplement pill powder or tincture but I plan on growing my own from a grow kit. I'll order this now and who knows in a few weeks I may be able do a fun post of me eating my lions mane.

Heres a breakdown on where I'm at so far.

This is what I've been taking. It has a mycelium and fruit blend but of coarse who knows if the cheep stuff is the base and the good stuff is sprinkled on top. 
It says fermented on the front then has a ton of proprietary blend stuff in with it. If you've paid attention to this site you know that I think proprietary blends are the biggest scam in the supplement industry so that's that. The added blends say fermented and the mushroom part does not so once agin who knows. 

I'm excited to try some other options

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Paul Stamets is amazing and if you haven't listed to any of his talks you should. His power is mycelium and not fermented so I thought I would try the extract. This is organic and USA produced. 

This is a fruiting body product so I'm most excited about taking this as it's the mushroom itself. Asian company but marketing as having real history and knowing how to do it right so we'll see. Started this today. 

We'll see how my quest goes. I'm going to try some other options too. I really believe that if I can get my hands on some quality lions mane it will be very worth it from a brain perspective. I work in the industry and I'm having a hard time sorting it all out and figuring out what's real and what is hype so i can only imagine what other go through. It's confusing on purpose. the industry is unregulated so most people just read the front of the bottle. Other reject all supplements. I'm trying to find the balance but it's no easy task. 

​Stay healthy my friends