The Mushroom Revolution: How Mushnoom is Redefining Health Episode

Mushrooms may be the most underestimated force in healthcare. In this episode, Keith D. Terry explores how Mushnoom’s founders, Dr. Siva Gandhu and Dr. Renaldo Jarrell, are leading a mushroom revolution that could transform medicine, wellness, and the future of preventative health.

What if mushrooms could do more than sit on your plate? What if they could fight disease, sharpen your mind, and even change the future of healthcare?

In this episode of The NEXT BIG THING, Keith D. Terry sits down with Dr. Siva Gandu and Dr. Renaldo Jarrell, the physicians behind Mushnoom, a company on a mission to transform mushrooms from ancient folklore into modern, science-backed medicine.

Together, we explore:

• Why is preventative health often overlooked in traditional medicine?
• The compounds inside mushrooms (beta-glucans, triterpenes, ergothioneine, cordycepin) could support immunity, energy, and chronic disease management.
• The challenge of consumer education in a marketplace full of mushroom “hype.”
• Supply chain and sourcing challenges that impact product quality.
• Mushnoom’s bold vision for the future of integrative medicine and community impact.

This isn’t just about supplements. It’s about innovation, entrepreneurship, and the possibility that mushrooms could reshape the future of healthcare.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Why Mushrooms
• 2:59 Meet The Doctors & Origins
• 9:49 Personal Motivations & Early Skepticism
• 17:15 Ownership In Health: Patient Stories
• 24:40 What Makes Mushrooms Medicinal
• 31:20 Bioactives, Extraction, And Evidence
• 40:00 Prevention vs Cure: Practical Use
• 46:30 Regulatory Lines & Claims
• 53:30 Market Noise, Trust, And Standards
• 1:00:20 Who Uses Mushrooms And Why
• 1:07:00 Penetration, Formats, And Future Liquids
• 1:14:10 Integrative Oncology & Real-World Studies
• 1:22:00 Supply Chain Truths: Grow, Source, Test
• 1:30:10 US Sourcing, Certifications, And Gaps
• 1:37:10 End-To-End Manufacturing & cGMP

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Welcome to the podcast, The Next Big Thing. I'm your host, Keith D. Terry, a consultant, a coach, and a serial entrepreneur. The mission here is to teach, inspire, and to motivate. Today's conversation is something familiar yet revolutionary. We're talking about mushrooms. You heard that correctly. We're talking about mushrooms. For centuries, we've been, you've heard that food, it's a food of folklore. But what if they can also be used for medicine? Not in a mystical sense, but in a clinical sense, a science-driven way that could change health care as we know it. My guest today are two physicians who are stepping beyond traditional medicine and exploring this frontier. First up, we have Dr. Seva Gandu, who is the founder and CEO of a company called Mush Nums. Now, they're going to correct me if I've said that incorrectly. Don't confuse it with Mushroom. It's called Mush Noom. With training, he has both training in both Eastern and Western medicine, and he is committed to bringing science and holistic health to us. Alongside him, literally, is Dr. Ronaldo Jurell, Mushrooms co-founder and managing director, a physician of more than three decades with experience in hospital medicine and leadership on the Chicago South Side. Together, they're leading a company called Mushrooms, and I'm going to spell it for you, M-U-S-H-N-O-O-M, a company with a bold mission to transform to transform mushrooms from a superfood into potentially medicines that can reshape healthcare and your health. Now, I've given my listeners the headlines, but I'd like for both of you doctors to uh to take out of your own words, if you could tell us briefly who you are, what you do, and what what and why you chose to dedicate your work to Mush Noom, the company. Either one can start. Dr. Gandu?

SPEAKER_00: 2:01

First of all, thank you so much, Keith, for having us on your podcast, the next big thing. We've been looking forward to this ever since we've gotten the first call from you. You know, my my introduction, I'm quite a simple guy, you know, uh a physician. That's my background. It's a physician by day, work on mushnoon by night, you know. So the entrepreneur in me was something that was always brewing, you know, from a really young age. And I don't look at it as entrepreneurship, I look at it as impactful entrepreneurship. I've always wanted to do something that I could impact the communities, make a larger impact as a whole. So that's kind of how we got into the supplement industry. Um it's a little more complex than that, but it is.

SPEAKER_02: 2:49

Okay. Okay. Dr. Jarrell? Same questions for you. What tell us who you are and what you do and what m why'd you dedicate your work to Mush Noom?

SPEAKER_01: 2:59

Sure. And again, I want to also thank you, Keith, for having us on. We've been looking forward to this uh way for you and I to kind of reconnect since we've known each other for a while but haven't been in contact recently. So appreciate that as well. Uh I'm Dr. Ronaldo Jurell, uh born and raised on the south side of Chicago, and uh started this journey uh 30-something years ago uh in private practice uh in a little town called Joliet, Illinois, and was there for about 13 years. Then subsequently moved down to North Carolina and started working as a hospitalist. And what I've noticed over the last 30 years of practicing is that we've always had this gap between what I feel is great things that were coming out of Eastern medicine that were tried and true, and Western medicine. We've seen a lot of supplements come and go over a long period of time, and some with testing, some without testing. So when I connected with uh Dr. Gandhu here, we both worked together at night in the hospital. What actually happened was we began talking to each other, just both about business and about life and some other things. And uh at the time, uh we have a company that was selling fresh mushrooms, and uh the original plan was to take that company and specifically have that company, you know, widen that company or grow that company. And then we started thinking about the extracts and the benefit of the extracts being that people could take them on a daily basis. So make a long story short, uh there was a meeting of the minds. For me personally, my family is a family of entrepreneurs, right? No one in my family really has ever worked for anyone, right? And so grew up with that in the household. My father was in real estate, and even when I went into private practice, he says, you know, son, you have to think of this practice as your business. Always kind of had that focus, and so this is kind of an extension of that for me.

SPEAKER_02: 4:44

Okay, well, we'll get into it. Well, you know, I want to thank you both. That really helps set the stage. Now let's dive into what I consider an incredible journey. I want to go from the personal side of this, and then now we're gonna meander from personal side to science to the marketplace and the future of mushrooms. So let's start with the with the human side. You know, we we've heard, you've hinted at what will pulled you in, but I'd love to go a little deeper. Was the primary reason you guys started this? Was it the science? Was it something in your background, or was it a personal experience that made you believe that mushrooms could be transformative?

SPEAKER_00: 5:23

Yeah, I would say it's a combination of all three things. Personally, I had explored mushroom supplements since about the year 2018. I was taking mushroom supplements for the reason that I wanted to not be as reliant on caffeine. I wanted to have more clarity, I wanted to have more focus. So I was taking lines made. And I had definitely noticed, you know, a benefit by taking the supplement. But then there was also a period of time where I realized, well, why doesn't each supplement brand, you know, feel the same? And then, and so that was a question that kind of lingered for a really long time, but I never really, you know, did something about it, like in terms of wanting to start a business, you know, based on that.

SPEAKER_02: 6:04

But by taking it, it started to make you feel better.

SPEAKER_00: 6:06

100%. Um The reason we looked at mushrooms as a whole, another reason that we looked at mushrooms, and you know, for me personally, um, was um we as physicians, we're prescribing medications. We're constantly Dr. Drell and I, we practice inpatient medicine, so we're seeing the sickest of the sick. And so we're still we're we're seeing the limitations that traditional, conventional, modern day medicine has, right? And the limitation here is that there's not enough of a focus on preventative health whatsoever. You know, so we can get you feeling better, but from a standpoint of are you feeling better from within, you know, in terms of you know how you go about your lifestyle every day? That that's that's something that medications can't do on their own.

SPEAKER_02: 7:01

Dr. Durrell, uh, I want you to get in on that. Was it the science, tradition, or personal story, but a little bit of a twist. Was there a turning point that you knew it could be a a food, a superfood, more for medicine?

SPEAKER_01: 7:17

Yeah, I think uh what happened was, you know, I was kind of on the ground level of this, Keith. And so um, as I said, we had a company that was selling fresh mushrooms, lion's mane and oyster mushrooms. So my customers were coming back to me saying, you know, quite honestly, Doc, hey, I feel great, you know, when I'm eating these mushrooms.

SPEAKER_02: 7:36

Can I interrupt for a second? Yes. So you guys were selling lion's mane and oysters as just a a food supplement or for medical reasons?

SPEAKER_01: 7:45

No, we were selling them because we found out that, and this is honest to goodness truth, we found out how popular the lion's mane and oyster mushrooms were. So we have a company that was selling this, and I had exposed Dr. Gandu to it, not knowing that he was already purchasing in another area lion's mane and oyster mushrooms. So it's kind of just a crazy. So my customers were consistently coming because we could only sell them every other week. So my customers, customers were consistently coming to me saying, Hey, Doc, you know, I feel great when I'm eating these mushrooms, but that week that you're not here to sell these things, I feel lousy. So, you know, the wheels started spinning in my head, and I said, Well, you know, let's look into these extracts. Then what happened was the more and more that we looked at the extracts, what happened was we started finding studies that supported the use of the extracts that we hadn't known about. And there were peer-reviewed studies from National Institute of Health, from Public Med. Said, boy, there are legitimate studies out here that support the use of these extracts.

SPEAKER_02: 8:48

So let's let's stay on that human side for just a little bit longer. You know, did you guys face I mean, because we got we have a we're gonna get we really get deep into the science and we're gonna get into the marketplace. As you know, here you got your buddy, you find out you both are, you know, you have one person selling lion's man and oysters just because they're good food and they taste great, right? And they make you all this information. Did you face skepticism from peers or people when you when you decided that you were going to start Mush Noom, the company?

SPEAKER_00: 9:22

You know, I would say skepticism is something that doesn't escape us, right? Especially being a physician-owned supplement brand. So I think I think to some degree, physician-owned supplement company is almost oxymoronic. Physicians aren't supposed to believe in supplements, right? Because at least on the on the medicine side, right? Right, right. So but the trend in healthcare is is there is a shift and it's happening, and we're seeing it. There's there's more physicians that are looking into integrative medicine, lifestyle medicine. They're understanding that, hey, supplements and nutraceuticals are potentially a game changer. You know, they can give a patient that boost to their quality of life. They can potentially help with preventative care. I mean, that that's that's the way I see the culture kind of emotional.

SPEAKER_01: 10:12

Yeah, I I think there's there's two things, right? And so, you know, I've been prescribing medicines for 30 years. And so here's the deal, right? I've never put anybody on a medication and they've been happy about it, right? They've never come back in my office and you know, when I was in private practice and said, Man, thank you, Doc, for putting me on that lasana pro for my blood pressure, right? So what has happened here is that when we first started this journey, we didn't know how much people were going to take ownership of their own medical issues and ship of feeling better. That's been the greatest thing for me with this, right? I can walk through that hospital, I can go to certain places in the town that I work, and people are coming up to me, hey doc, man, my cholesterol is great, you know, and and I've just started working out and I've just started eating better because man, you gave me that boost, you know, with this, you know, with this cordyceps or whatever. And so that's what we wanted to see in medicine, right? But you don't get that when you write a prescription for somebody and give it to them, right? Because they're not really having a part in making that decision, right? It's the doctor told me I have to do this, right? And how many times did people leave my office and go home and tell their loved ones, Dr. Jurell told me I gotta take that lasso? So it's a different focus, and that's something that I was surprised about that we've been seeing.

SPEAKER_02: 11:30

Well, let me follow up with this, uh, because we're almost done with this, the human side of this. What do your families think about you guys pursuing this versus the all-out traditional approach of medicine?

SPEAKER_01: 11:41

Uh for me, it's real simple, right? My family's on product. Everybody in my family I can't get them enough product, to be honest with you. A sister who has high blood pressure, we've put her on some of the supplements. We've gotten her off of one of the major medicines that she was on for her blood pressure, and she's living her best life. You know, so all my family members, again, you got to remember, I come from a family of entrepreneurs. So, you know, some of them are sitting back going, it's about time you did something else besides practicing medicine, man. Well, is that it? Okay. Dr. Gandhi, you?

SPEAKER_00: 12:13

What about you? Yeah. So my my wife is a physician as well, and she practices pediatric hematology oncology. So far, far more complex than what Dr. Drell and I do. But, you know, she's also taken mushroom supplements. The only reason she's not on any supplements right now is because we're having the babies, you know, as soon as as soon as we're past this period, she's going to be on the supplements back on them. For her to see kind of the growth that we've had and, you know, how Dr. Drell and I have kind of worked on this project, it's been a passion project. I mean, she's very supportive. You know, she understands that this takes up a significant amount of my time. Uh, you know, but I but I um I haven't had any pushback, you know, it's only been support all the way. So it's easy to do.

SPEAKER_02: 12:58

Well, I have one final human side stor question, and that is if if mushrooms fail tomorrow, what would you hope people remembered about what you guys are trying to do?

SPEAKER_01: 13:09

I think for me, you know, Steve and I have this kind of saying that that he basically came up with. It's it's bridging or bringing Eastern medicine to a Western lifestyle. And so, you know, we believe in that. And so what I would like for people to get out of this, even if this completely fails, is look for those alternatives, right? Look for the other things. Focus in on, because we just don't talk about when we go out and talk to people publicly, we don't talk just about mushnoom. We talk about weight loss, we talk about exercise, we talk about meditation being able to lower your blood pressure. We talk about yoga, we talk about all of those things. We talk about stress, um, you know, we talk about all of those things. And we we have studies that we share with people about you know what chronic stress does, you know, to you and things like that. So it's not just about mushrooms for us, it's the total picture in terms of people living a healthier lifestyle, number one, but also being able to improve their quality of life. That's the at the end of the day, I'm I'm much older than Dr. Gandhu, right, than Siva. So for me, it's about waking up in the morning and feeling good and having that quality of life that that I want. I want other people to be able to have that as well.

SPEAKER_02: 14:25

And Dr. Gandu, any you want to jump in on that question about what you hope people take away and remember if it fails?

SPEAKER_00: 14:32

No, I think, you know, Dr. Gerrell said it best and to supplement that, you know, one of the key fundamental pillars of this company was as a supplement company, we're gonna be deeply rooted with educating the community all together. And and then and community education for us, as he said, is you know, providing not only the resource, but the giving giving people the opportunity to understand that how much of their health care is actually dependent on their choices and their lifestyle, you know, and and how much of their own quality of life is actually dependent on, you know, things like what's in your pantry, right? I I like to say, you know, your pantry should be your pharmacy. Right? So so that's you know. I I I definitely think that's how we've moved through this. We're we're in our initial stages, but you know, we've fundamentally done those things right. We're continuing to do those things, and we want to be able to make a larger uh or have a larger outreach with some of this educational material.

SPEAKER_02: 15:40

So so now let's get into the science. For my listeners who don't have medical backgrounds, what exactly makes mushrooms more than a food?

SPEAKER_00: 15:49

So if you were to look at, you know, most people look at mushrooms as a culinary, you know, it's it's it's a food source. People look at it as a delicacy depending on the type of mushroom that you're dealing with. We have understood actually for many, many decades now that mushrooms do more than just provide us a good source of vitamin D and provide us with, you know, good nutrients and macronutrients, right? If you actually kind of look back into it, and Dr. Drell was the one that actually mentioned this to me early on. There was a medication back in the day called Lovastatin, which is one of the first medications that pharmaceutical companies came out with to reduce your cholesterol levels. And now we're in kind of the further generations and we have a torvostatin and resuvastatin, et cetera. But lovastatin was essentially one of the first drugs. And if you look at the origin of where that drug comes from, it actually comes from the oyster mushroom. So it's not like the pharmaceutical companies and NIH and scientists around the world have been oblivious to the fact that mushrooms have a medicinal value. It's just a matter of awareness and kind of getting people to understand how these compounds work. The cool part about mushrooms is every single species somehow has different compounds and different bioactives that work in the body at a cellular level in different physiological mechanisms.

SPEAKER_02: 17:18

Which gets me to my next question. And that is can you break down the key components? Now, you know, I've done my homework and I may botch uh saying these, but you know, as I'm seeing it, you have beta glucans, dry terpenes, ergothionine, and and cordycepins. So and I know I'm probably saying them incorrectly.

SPEAKER_03: 17:43

That's actually pretty good. Yeah, you did a great job.

SPEAKER_02: 17:47

So if you if you were to break them down and tell me why each of those matter, um or do they?

SPEAKER_00: 17:54

Yeah, no, they they really do matter. That's that's what makes an extract an extract. Right? So if you were to eat if you were to eat a mushroom, if you were to just take it from, you know, pick it up, wash it, and eat it, you wouldn't get the bioactive compounds in a readily absorbable format. In fact, you wouldn't absorb any of the bioactive compounds.

unknown: 18:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:18

Yeah. So mushrooms have a really, really tight and rigid cell wall, and it's made out of something called chitin. So to break the bonds of chitin and free and liberate the bioactive molecules, you have to take it through an extraction process.

SPEAKER_02: 18:38

So cooking it doesn't break it down.

SPEAKER_00: 18:41

Cooking it could break it down to some degree because you're applying heat. Wow. But it's not, it's not enough to break down the bioactives. You'll get your macronutrients, you'll get your vitamin D, you'll get your carbohydrates, your healthy carbs, but you're not gonna you're not gonna absorb the bioactives per se.

SPEAKER_02: 19:01

You guys really got me interested here now because I thought I thought that you could get these components by a cooking process. You're telling me I can't. I love that. Why is is one better than the other? Is a beta glucan better than a cordycepin? Let's break it down biologically.

SPEAKER_01: 19:20

Aaron Powell I think I think the way that we would look at it, because what happens is that when you start looking at the science of, and this is something that I've seen, you know, for so long, you know, and being in the office talking to patients, you know, the science is important for us, but there's an easier approach that we take when we talk to customers or whatever. We break it down based on the individual extracts that we're looking at. So we would look at cordyceps, cordyceps, we'd look at lion's mane, we'd look at rishi, we'd look at those three separately because they each do different things. There's some overlap with them, but when you start looking at, for instance, cordyceps and you're talking about cordyceps. When you're talking about beta-glucans and you're looking at things like rishi, it could be that the triterpenes are more important for certain things. It could be that the polysaccharides, for instance, there's something that's called PSK, which is in basically all of them, right? So for certain things, it may be the PSK that we've studied or that's been studied that does, you know, this. So we like to keep it as simple as possible. And when I'm out there talking to people, we can explain to them, yes, you know, there's the beta glucans, all of this, and the percentages and all of that stuff. That is key for us as a company because we want to be that first company that is telling you we have this percentage of cordycepin in our cordyceps extract. Ours, we think, is better than, you know, the other companies or whatever. So we want to take it to that level where there is standardization with those very same things that you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02: 20:52

Is there a component or a compound that's more important or more exciting for you guys one over the other?

SPEAKER_00: 20:59

So the way I would the way I would phrase this is each of the compounds of the mushroom. So if you were to look at cordyceps, you got cordycepin, polysaccharides, and you have another compound called adenosine that's found in abundance. In lion's mane, you have two big compounds, her hercinones and uranicines, which fall under the category of basically your terpenoids, but that's how they're broken up. You call it and call them the H compounds and the E compounds. And then you also have polysaccharides and beta-glucans in the lion's mane. And in the Rishi, you have what they call ganoderic acid, which is the terpene, and you have beta glucans. So beta-glucans are essentially in all three varieties, but the concentration of beta-glucans are gonna be highest in your rate red rishi. Your concentration of polysaccharides are typically gonna be higher in your cordyceps and in your lion's mane. But you're still gonna have a small polysaccharide content in your rishi. Now, when science looked at these compounds, there were some scientists around the world that went and studied what they call the entire extract. So they take the cordyceps mushroom, for example, and some of them just did a what do they call a water-soluble extract. So then they put this cordyceps mushroom in um high temperature water for a period of time, and then they get the extract. And then they studied what they call the full spectrum extract. So that full spectrum extract now has cordycepin, some content of adenosine, it's got polysaccharides, it's got beta glucans, all in that little water mixture. Then you had other scientists that took that same extract and then they broke it down. They said, well, what did the cordycepin specifically do? And then what did the adenosine specifically do? And what did the polysaccharides specifically do? So now each of them have their own benefits in the body. So if you were to ask me about a specific compound that interests us, I would definitely say in cordyceps it is that cordycepin molecule. In lion's mane, it is that iranosine molecule. And in red rishi, it is that ganoderic acid molecule. But I think we're too early in science to also understand how would that cordycepin behave in your body if it didn't have the polysaccharide accompanying it?

SPEAKER_02: 23:35

Is it fair to look at where you are now with your knowledge base saying that one of the components is more important for the immune system versus the inflammatory response versus cancer versus cognitive health? Do you guys have that level of evidence?

SPEAKER_01: 23:51

Yes. Yes. I go back to my original statement, uh, Keith, because here's I'm a simple guy, right? And so what I mean by that is that the the goal of this is to get this out into the community and to get it out into people, right? And so what I try to do when I talk to people about this is make it as simple as possible, right? Gotcha. So, you know, an individual who I recommend for them to take cordyceps, right? I'm looking at cordyceps in its totality, right? I'm not as concerned if it's the cordycepin, if it's the PSK that's doing this specifically. That's more of a research-oriented model, so to speak, right? What my customer is caring about is, Doc, why are you suggesting that I take this cordyceps?

SPEAKER_03: 24:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 24:40

And, you know, maybe they do have some concern about how it works. I can explain to them how it works, right? But I think what Siva is saying is that we do have evidence that says Cordyceppin does this, Cordycepin does this. However, what we don't have total evidence of is does it 100% do this without the PSK, right? In terms of that extract. That is, I think, what he was alluding to, kind of the the next frontier with this. That's one of the things that we want to do. So if you were to ask me right now, do I believe that an extract that has a large amount or the highest percentage of cordycepin in it, a cordyceps extract, if that's going to help your blood pressure, I would say yes. Is it going to help it more than another extract that has less or a lot or a smaller percentage of cordycepin? I would say yes, right? Based on our studies, based on what we know. But we're not there yet where we can standardize it. That's one of the things that we want to do. That's the next frontier that we're headed for.

SPEAKER_02: 25:42

Yeah, I think you guys are on to something, Dr. When you were talking about the pharmaceutical companies who I used to work for. You gave a great analogy of how a blood pressure medication was a precursor for was a precursor for a pretty popular cholesterol.

SPEAKER_01: 25:59

The cholesterol. Now moisture mushrooms are low.

SPEAKER_02: 26:01

Yes. Going forward, do you see pharmaceuticals being complementary or competitors to what you guys might be bringing to the marketplace?

SPEAKER_00: 26:10

Yeah, that's a good question. I would say I think it's if if we take the steps that we are planning on taking with this company, I think it becomes a complementary approach. Now, where and and competition is, I guess, always kind of, you know, there's other companies that could potentially be wanting to do what we're doing, right? And they're completely allowed to sure.

SPEAKER_02: 26:33

And I'm sure they this might generate some.

SPEAKER_00: 26:37

Right. So, you know, at the end of the day, for us, I think it's more I think it's more fruitful to approach this in the sense that with with the amount of science, the research, and the evidence that we're kind of putting into this process, if we are able to encourage other people to take these same steps and create products with the same level of integrity, then sure. That means that there's only better supplements out there for more people to take.

SPEAKER_02: 27:07

I think you guys are onto something pretty, pretty, pretty massive.

SPEAKER_01: 27:09

Keith, just to touch on one of the things that you were kind of mentioning, if we look at our studies, and this is what Siva was talking about, if we're looking at PSK, let's take that as an example, right? We have a lot of studies that show when we're talking about using these extracts as adjuvants, right, along with conventional medical therapy for the treatment of cancer. Right. The the greatest amount of data that we have is with PSK, right? So obviously, if you're looking at one of the extracts, you'd want to you'd want to look at the extracts that have the largest amount of PSK. If you're going to utilize the extracts as an adjuvant, you know, for conventional medical therapy when you're talking about treating cancer. So we have numerous studies that show if we're using, for instance, rishi would be an example of one, that if we're using that along with conventional medical therapy as an adjuvant, that we'll see a number of really great and positive results with both gastric, with gastric, prostate, ovarian, breast, and colorectal cancer. And so the what we've seen with the studies is that individuals who have taken this supplement along with conventional medical therapy, they've seen not only an increase in survival, they've seen an improvement in their quality of life, and they've also tolerated treatment better. Okay. And so if I break that down on a scientific level like you were talking about, you'd say, well, why? We'd say it's probably the PSK in there.

SPEAKER_02: 28:35

That's what the studies show. Aaron Powell What's the biggest scientific misconception about mushrooms that people may have about mushrooms?

SPEAKER_01: 28:43

What would you say to that? Aaron Powell Well, I think that on a basic level, the one thing that it was kind of funny, I I read this probably about maybe three weeks ago, two or three weeks ago. We were brought up to think that we were probably more like plants as humans, and we're actually more like mushrooms, right? Because we can share up to 50% of the same DNA that mushrooms have, right? So looking at that and starting from that and kind of extrapolating back if you if you will, then I'm not really surprised that these mushrooms can do all of the things that we've been seeing them do, right? That's a big thing. Help to lower our blood pressure, you know, help to lower our cholesterol, you know, those kinds of things. You know, help to lower our blood sugar, boost that ATP production, you know, those types of things.

unknown: 29:28

Dr.

SPEAKER_02: 29:29

Gandu, I want to I want to bring you in on this, but I want to rely on your lived experience. You have both training on the Eastern side and the western side. Same question to you. What's the biggest misconception that exists on the Western side and the eastern side as it relates to mushrooms?

SPEAKER_00: 29:46

Well, you know, the the way I would look at it on the western side, there's there's always been so much kind of what we call pushback, and and people don't want to accept supplements as a whole as a category. People that do hear Mushrooms in terms of supplements. Today I get a lot of people talking about psilocybin. Bring up I bring up mushrooms and they're like, You have shrooms. It's like I have I have functional shrooms, not dysfunctional shrooms. You know, there's a big clear demarcation. I know there's a lot of research that's going around behind psilocybin as a whole, and you know, I think it will definitely help us in terms of depression and treatment-resistant depression and schizophrenia, psychosis, and that's a whole different conversation. But the mushrooms that, you know, we work with lion's mane, rishi, cordyceps, um, we'll start working with turkey tail, these mushrooms as a whole, um they they're starting to be accepted, especially by the integrative oncologists and integrative medicine folks. For for a large reason that, one, we know that they're safe. They've been used for centuries, and we have documentation over the that period of time as to the benefits and you know the side effects and who it's worked for. And then over the last few decades, we actually have a lot of scientific data that's been posted on PubMed and NIH. And so the safety profile is quite adequate, right? And so from we always get a question, hey, I'm on, I'm on these meds, you know, can I take mushrooms? You know, the standard here that I tell people is look, if you're if you have an autoimmune disease, I would definitely check with your doctor. Because we don't understand autoimmunity as a whole, as physicians in the medical world. We're starting to understand more and more of it. And even the treatments geared behind it are something that everybody's invested in right now, biologics, right? So when you look at autoimmune disease as a whole, your body's immunity is naturally occurring, but naturally affecting you. So in that process, mushrooms can sometimes worsen how the body attacks itself because mushrooms can down or upregulate and downregulate your immunity based on what you need, right, in a normal person. So if you're in a high stress scenario, the mushrooms will upregulate your immunity to help you combat the high stress scenario. If you're in a low stress scenario, your mushrooms will actually help you, you know, kind of downregulate and you know, uh and kind of smooth things out per se.

SPEAKER_02: 32:20

But only if you're taking it in the the way that you guys are extracting it. You just can't go out and buy it. Okay. Because, you know, I for me as a lay person, the biggest misconception that I walked into is that, you know, ah, mushrooms are just some plant you put on for taste. You know, a lot of people now understand that it has anoxidation properties for you, right? I didn't know antioxidants. Yeah, and I I I equate them before this conversation with blackberries and blueberries, because blackberries are good in antioxidants, then and so now that I'm hearing what you guys say, um, you know, I I would bet that there are a ton of misconceptions about mushrooms, and there's so many different types of mushrooms, and we'll get into that when we get to the supply side conversation. And so let me just ask this final scientific question before we go on is do mushrooms have, are there any limitations that you see kind of?

SPEAKER_00: 33:19

I mean, from a limitation perspective, I would say this isn't this isn't a cure, right, that we're talking about for your chronic medical disease, right? This is something that can potentially prevent the onset of chronic medical disease by giving you some benefit to your lifestyle so that you're able to be more active. You have less artropathy or joint pain, you have less fatigue, you know, your gut feels better, your digestion is occurring better, you're not constipated, you're not having significant issues with, you know, bowel. And, you know, that's then causing you to eat bad and you know, not have timely eating habits. It'll allow you to sleep better. And you we all know the importance of sleep. So I think when you look at the category that you know the mushrooms have their benefit in, you know, you have to take it for that. We are not here at this point today to say, well, you have really bad hypertension. Well, we're gonna cure your blood pressure issues with cordyceps.

SPEAKER_02: 34:28

So here I was thinking you guys had a curative.

SPEAKER_01: 34:30

No, I I think to to kind of to kind of piggyback on what Steve is saying, uh, Keith, the way I would look at it is this, right? So as physicians, we're treating our patient, right? And so we're also looking at our patient's family history. Yeah. Right? So let's take the scenario that I have a 20-year-old male who comes into my office and or when I was in private practice and I tell and he talks to me and he says, I have a family history of diabetes, I have a history, family history of high blood pressure, I also have a family history of stroke, right? And heart disease. And I examine him, look at his blood pressure. Let's say his blood pressure is borderline. And then I can sit down and have a conversation with him. In years past, I would have said, okay, let's put you on some lasanopril, let's get you exercising, let's get your weight down. Now I can go and sit down with him and say, you know what? I have this mushroom extract. It's called cordyceps. Let's see if we can get you on that. It's gonna boost your energy, right? It can potentially lower your cholesterol, and maybe we can prevent you from ever having to go on medication for your blood pressure. Because once I put you on that medication, guess what else I have to do? I have to watch your kidney function. Oh, and by the way, guess what? This cordyceps can help preserve your kidney function over a long period of time, right? Now, I've done that, and here's what happened. Remember, I talked about ownership. So now I have that individual who now walks out of my office, he feels really good. He goes home, he talks to his wife, and he says, Boy, honey, you know what? I really like that guy, Dr. Jarrell. He's kind of smart, right? He gave me this knack called cordyceps, right? And man, it's gonna do all these great things for me. So then I see him back a month later in the office, and his blood pressure is good, he's working out, he's feeling really good. Boom, his quality of life has improved, right? So that's how I see this, but we got to get there, right? Which means we need the we need the data and we need to get enough of those people who, like Siva said, already have high blood pressure so we can convince the community that this stuff really works.

SPEAKER_02: 36:31

I'm gonna pontificate for a second. I think you guys are onto something. I I think the data will come. I think you're gonna find out some surprises. And Dr. Gandu, you might you might end up curing some stuff, and it's not so much, you know, I I I I I I think that's even if we don't have the cure right away, prevention is the cure.

SPEAKER_00: 36:48

Prevention is the key.

SPEAKER_02: 36:50

And you know, and so I I think that so now we're gonna go into the marketplace kind of uh question section here. And so, you know, when you you know the mushroom market has exploded, right? There are a lot of people using it. You got powders, coffees, gummies. How do you carve out credibility in a noisy field like this? Now we're getting into the blocking and tackling in the marketplace.

SPEAKER_01: 37:13

Yeah, I think I think what happened was when one of the things that was very important for Siva and myself as physicians, right? You know, my family members, my friends, they contact me. Hey, you know, I'm dealing with this, you know, what do you think about it? And the general public just looks at physicians in a very general way, right? I get people call me about orthopedic problems, they call me about, you know, cancer or whatever, and sometimes they call me about their kids, you know, and sometimes I I don't do this stuff, right? But they trust us, right? And they want to trust their physicians. So, you know, we take that very seriously. And so when we started this, we said, first of all, we have to have the best product that we could possibly have out there, right? Because that's what the public expects us to have, right? So how do we do that? Well, we get our studies done, right? We do our review of the studies and we've done it, you know, just extensive review of the studies. The second thing is that we take our product through the best extraction process that we possibly can. And then remember I talked about standardization. We want to be the individuals that when you look at our packaging, you know exactly what's in there, right? You know exactly how it's been tested, and yes, you talk about competition, we're ready for the competition because we're gonna put everybody, as the kids say, on blast with this, right? Why don't you why don't you have your information right on the packaging so people can read about it, right? Why don't you tell the general public how much cordycepin is in your cordyceps, right? How much beta glucans is in there, right? Why don't you have that? Because it's not available. And so one of the one of the downsides that we've seen, and not to go off on anybody that that's that's producing product, but what we've seen is we've seen where you can go into a store and you can purchase nine different extracts and you take them and study them. And if they're all supposed to be lion's mane, some of those extracts don't have lion's mane in them. I believe that.

SPEAKER_02: 39:14

It's like vitamins, right? You know, it's yes.

SPEAKER_01: 39:17

So one of the, you know, I'm different than Siva in that I've never taken an extract before in my life, right? And or supplement. And the reason that I didn't do it was because honestly, I didn't trust them. There was no data. I didn't know what I was going to be taking. So I'm on lion's mane and cordyceps, and my family cannot believe I'm taking the two because they're like, boy, you must really believe in this stuff because you wouldn't take anything before.

SPEAKER_02: 39:41

That's a that's a good that's a hell of an endorsement, which then gets me down to to the customers. Your current customer base. Because you guys are on a on a having worked in the pharmaceutical industry, you know, you got to be careful with promoting certain claims before you start getting the you know the regulators after you. But your current customers, are they buying it for wellness or are they buying it for medical applications everywhere? And I and that's a setup question because I'm sure they're buying it after you recommend it, Dr. Jarrell. But your initial customers, and I'm sure you have some that buy without even speaking to either one of you, do you think they're buying it for wellness or for a medical application?

SPEAKER_01: 40:26

Well, here's the way that I've always approached everyone, right? So if you were to ask me, Keith, you know, about the supplements, about our extracts, right? My question to you would be tell me one or one to three things that you would want to accomplish by taking a supplement in general. Is that a medical issue like high blood pressure, diabetes that you'd want some support or help with, right? Not a cure, as Steva said, but to some help and support with. Or is it, you know, I'm feeling fatigued all the time, lethargic, boy, I've got, you know, back pain and these kinds of things, you know? And so that's how I approach it, right? Because I want to know, you know, what is our customer looking for? Gives me a lot of insight into that, right? And I, you know, he can I can share that with him and we can, you know, know how to position ourselves, so to speak. But I think people are taking the supplements for various reasons, right? So it's not always, you know, what I think, or it's not always a medical issue. It could be, boy, doc, I'm not sleeping at night, right? I'm under a lot of stress because my job is driving me crazy, or something just happened to one of my family members. Real life stuff, right? And so the beauty of these mushrooms that we found out is that it can encompass all of those things, right? So in the last year, we've learned so many different ways that the mushrooms can be utilized believable. And the reason I've learned that is because my customers come to me and they say, Do you have something for this? And I go, sometimes I go, I don't know. Let me go check the literature.

SPEAKER_00: 42:00

Okay. And then a lot of the times we we also have customers that would have started taking, you know, line's mane for, you know, a cognitive, you know, improvement or you know, for focus and clarity. And they come back to us and they say, you know, I used to have really bad joint pains. And, you know, my mobility is better, and my, you know, my joints don't feel as inflamed. And then you start seeing that you know, there is some literature that supports the fact that, you know, for example, line's main polysaccharides and line's mane can actually help with that inflammation.

SPEAKER_02: 42:35

You know, I I No, go ahead. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00: 42:40

So I I think I think you know, it's it's it's interesting for us to see most people approach this from a wellness standpoint when they're younger. And we have a category of individuals that we, you know, sell to. They're they're older individuals, and they approach it from a different standpoint, right? They're yes, they're looking at it from the I already have the disease. Now what else can I do? Because my doctor's got me on all these meds. What else can I do? Right. So you have that subset, and then you also have the young 30-year-olds and 25-year-olds that don't have any medical issues, but they're just focused on really prevention.

SPEAKER_01: 43:19

Yeah. Or they're focused on performing better at their job, right? Like more clarity, more focus on their job, things like that.

SPEAKER_02: 43:26

Now, this is an interesting question. You're two medically trained doctors. Are you upset if the wellness side of this business takes off and the so-called scientific studies that you guys are talking about lags behind?

SPEAKER_00: 43:39

No. I I would say, I I would say because one compliments the other. Right. Yeah, here's what happens, right?

SPEAKER_01: 43:46

So um, and I'll I'll give you a prime example, right? A young lady um came to me and she said, you know, and and everybody calls me doc. So when I say doc, that's what everybody calls me, right? So she says, Doc, you know, do you have anything to help me with menopause? Right. And so I usually try to ask people, do you have any other medical problems? So I asked her, Do you have any other medical problems? Are you taking medication for anything? And she kind of smiled at me and said, No. I said, Well, let's try you on Lion's mane, right? So I saw her back two weeks later. She says, Doc, this is great stuff. My hot flashes are better, you know, my irritability is, you know, down to basically zero. You know, my husband loves living with me now, right? And uh, so I said, fantastic. She says, I need some more of that lion's mane. It's good stuff, right? So two weeks later, he and I, or about maybe a month later, he and I are at the farmer's market in Nash County, and uh, this young lady is there. So she walks up to both of us and she says, Doc, by the way, does this stuff lower your your blood sugar? And I went, Oh my gosh, you got diabetes, don't you? And she says, Oh yeah, I'm on such and such and such and such. I said, Well, what happened? She said, Well, my blood pressure went down to 50 after I started taking this. And I said, Oh boy. So that's a prime example of I think what Steve's talking about, right? People may start it for one reason, but they may see another benefit. Now, what that actually taught us was that we got to be a lot more careful. We talk to people and do more, you know, more uh ask them more questions about, you know, what they're taking, you know, and whatnot. But but that's an example of how, you know, we can combat two different problems, right? So her quality of life was improved with this, right? Her relationship with her husband was improved, right? Her sleep, you know, the all the things that you can see with menopause, right? And oh, by the way, happened to help her blood sugar. As a follow-up to that, she was able to get off of her metformin. She's still on a uh uh, I think OZIP or something like that. No, she's on Zetbound, but she was able to get off of her of her metformin utilizing the lion's main.

SPEAKER_02: 45:54

So what's the most difficult part in the marketplace now when we start thinking about growth? You have you guys have uh intimate knowledge, but would you say that you've penetrated the U.S. market and I'm only you know keeping it to the US market, then we can go global if we want to. Would you say the use of mushrooms is at 10%, 20%, 30%? Um and to grow that, what do you think it requires? So, first question, what do you think the penetration level is today versus what's required to grow it?

SPEAKER_00: 46:28

I would say honestly, looking at some of our marketing data, I would say the penetration lies somewhere between five to ten percent. That's it. Wow. Yeah, in terms of in terms of the people that are actually your dot bottom of the funnel consumers. I think from a top of the funnel perspective, I think the penetration's probably closer to twenty percent. This is it, I think it's definitely growing. And you know, when you look at all the market analysis and the market data, there's a significant growth um with the mushroom industry over the next two decades. The United States being the mecca of consumer product goods and consumer behavior.

SPEAKER_03: 47:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 47:13

Whatever, if if mushrooms do well here, they will do well globally.

SPEAKER_03: 47:18

Oh.

SPEAKER_00: 47:19

And so, and it's a very interesting phenomena because India, so I I trained, I went to medical school in India. And so, you know, um, Ayurveda and holistic health is something that's been deeply rooted in our culture for centuries, right? And it's so funny that you actually see the Indian government putting more money into the Ayurvedic systems now after the West has started to adapt to integrative practices in Ayurveda and holistic health. You know, it's just it's it's just the way the world works, right? And so our goal is definitely to take to be a global brand, to have supplements that we're catering to different populations around the world. We started with the United States primarily because this is a really good marketplace for us to test. And is and and the beauty about America is it's so multicultural.

SPEAKER_02: 48:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 48:16

You know, and so you're actually. You know, so we can actually see what the benefits are kind of across the board. You know, how does it affect Caucasians? How does it affect African Americans? How does this actually affect Hispanic populations, et cetera? And and you you have you have the sample size right here in front of you, right? So for us even to do research from a clinical perspective in the long run, this is the best place to do it.

SPEAKER_02: 48:42

And may I ask the product that you guys are selling, is it in pill form? Is it something you sprinkle over your cereal, put in your coffee? How what what's the intake process?

SPEAKER_00: 48:52

Yeah, we have capsules at this time. We also have powder in sachets. The sachets are dosed per day, so it basically just slides out. I wish I brought some here so I could show you. And it's like a little packet of like Splenda, right? You just open it up and put it in your food, your smoothie, your drink, your coffee, whatever it may be. The capsules, you know, it's it's very on the go. The containers are very small. You get about 50 capsules per unit. And we will very soon be having liquid, and the liquid will be even more portable and you know, travel friendly. Two, our liquid is gonna be very, very superior. We're gonna have a nano emulsified liquid. So we will have our bioactives in a nanomolecule. So that means they're very readily absorbable, and essentially you can have a lesser dose and feel the same effect.

SPEAKER_02: 49:42

Well, let me ask you this. Seth, thank you for that. And I and I hope my listeners are listening to that. Do you think that the market is oversaturated? I mean, I said that markets have exploded, but when I listen to your penetration numbers, we're not even close to that. But do you think there are certain overhyped brands that will dilute trust?

SPEAKER_01: 50:05

Yeah, I do. And this is kind of what I was alluding to before. So when we decided to do this, right, there was a certain way that we wanted to do it. And it was a scientific way. It was a way that we felt physicians should do this, right? And so again, having that best product out there, right, means that you have to kind of go out on a limb to kind of change the norm, so to speak, right? And you know, you can uplift the rest of the individuals out there if they want to kind of come along with you. And so, you know, it was very disheartening for me to see when we started looking at our testing versus, you know, other brands that were out there. And then when we first started this to see, you know, products that didn't even have, for instance, lines made in it. So we knew that people were buying these products, reportedly getting, you know, benefits from them. And some of the products that we knew that were out there on the market, we looked at them and said, boy, they're they're not very good. So the other part, I think, to this that we also have to understand is that it's not just us doing this in the medical community. If you look at integrative oncology and you go across the country and you look at great places like Sloan Kettering, you look at great places like MD Anderson, they all have integrative oncology departments, right? And they're looking at these things, you know, completely on a day-to-day-to-day basis. So things that happen, and I'm a little bit older than Siva, so I've seen a lot of changes in the medical community. And generally they come from within, but they start very small and they kind of build, right? So these integrative oncologists are pushing everybody else that's out there, right, to say, hey, you need to start looking at these mushrooms, you need to start looking at other herbs and natural products, right? Because we're doing all we can with chemotherapy, you know, to fight colorectal cancer and things like that. So I think it's there's a movement that's kind of starting within the medical community, being spurred by the integrative oncologists that we can tap into as well.

SPEAKER_00: 52:09

And you know, to kind of add to what you had asked in terms of other companies that could potentially be killing the reputation of these mushrooms altogether, right? And you know, one one thing that our our company, JG and Biotech, our motto is setting a standard, right? Setting the new standard, right? And and so what that actually, you know, from a superficial level, that that refers to the fact that we care about standardization.

unknown: 52:34

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00: 52:35

From a much more deeper level, what that refers to is pushing the agenda to get other companies to actually do the same thing that we do, right? And try to get try let's let's as a whole, let's as as a whole come to a point where we're you know delivering the top-notch products. Now, the the companies that are already out there that might be making millions and millions of dollars because they're in large retail stores and et cetera, you know, there's always you're a businessman and you you understand you know the whole concept of you know the early adopters. Yes. And then you have the chasm. Mm-hmm. And what and the chasm, the chasm can be deadly. And then and then you wanna you want to catch the wave. So we we truly, we truly feel like we're we're coming into this business, coming in with the focus and the fundamentals where we're going to be able to catch that wave. I do feel like the companies that have been out there in the market, they did catch on to the early adapters. And the early adapters in this segment seem to have a lot of say, and I feel like social media and you know media outlets as a whole have helped kind of penetrate and get that penetration going and awareness going in terms of what mushrooms can do for you. But if you still go, you know, to rural America where you know a vast majority of our population lives, it's it's you know, one in ten people that might actually know what these compounds and these you know mushrooms are about, right? Altogether, the different species of mushrooms, they're not even asking me about psilocybin. They're just like, well, I thought mushrooms were just those little things you get at the grocery store, right? So, you know. So that's that's why I say I it might sound like an underapproximation in terms of, you know, those percentages, but that's why I truly feel like it it's we're still early, but we're we're doing everything to catch that wave.

SPEAKER_01: 54:28

Well, you know, I think you got but what but just one yeah, just one thing. The other problem that I see is just what we were talking about earlier, right? The companies that are out there now are focusing on one or two things, right? And they're only looking at what I think is about maybe one percent of the capabilities of these products. So there's nobody talking about how this can be used to support high blood pressure. There's nobody talking about how this can be used to support individuals that are undergoing treatment for cancer. There's nobody talking about how this can be used to support our diabetics out here, our people with heart disease and high cholesterol, right? This is the majority of our population in this country, right? So, you know, as a physician, you know, my focus is going to be different.

SPEAKER_00: 55:12

Yeah. And and when we would honestly be doing people an injustice if we didn't talk about the support that this has for chronic medical disease. And support is a key word, right? Because we're not saying we have an anti-hypertensive, right. Or we're not saying that we have, right?

SPEAKER_02: 55:29

And so so you know, I hear what you're saying, but coming from this industry, is it that the limitation in in nomenclature is that they don't have the studies to support it? Because you guys can't go out and say anything.

SPEAKER_00: 55:42

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 55:43

Right. Well, and and as two physicians, yeah, you guys are medically trained to answer, medi you're looking at peer-reviewed articles, all those kind of things. And so how do you balance the need for data and the open market that exists for a wellness company?

SPEAKER_01: 56:00

Yeah, I think for me, um, again, it's it's all about approach, right? And so when I talk to people, I will tell them very plainly, look, I've been doing this a long time. So when I start you on Lasanopril, I don't know what the response of your blood pressure is going to be. Right. So if you are, if you have borderline hypertension, right, then yes, we may be able to try you on cordyceps or, you know, whatever. But if your blood pressure is extremely high, if it's 180 over 110, you need medication, right? And so, you know, so I think it has to do with how, with the approach. So our approach has always been, I never tell anybody, but I I didn't tell anybody when I was prescribing medicines or when I'm prescribing medicines, this is going to take care of your blood pressure. I tell them it's going to help and it's going to help support you, right? Now, here's the beauty that I talked about before. We talked about that ownership, but also I can tell them if you take this cordyceps, maybe we can lower your blood pressure, right? You might already be on amlodipine or another drug, and maybe we can work towards trying to reduce that drug, right? Or potentially even getting you off of the drug, right? That's the conversation that I have with people, right? But I'm able to do that on an organic level because I am a physician, right? Right. So I think that's the benefit that we have when we look at how we are kind of positioning our company out here. Again, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night from an ethical standpoint if that I've got a hundred people taking cordyceps and I've lowered all of their blood pressures, right? Then if you came to me and you said, Hey, Ren, you know, I I need something for my blood pressure, I'm gonna say, no, don't take the cordyceps. I'm gonna say, hey, let's try this cordyceps. It's an ethical issue for us. And about the there's a lot of data that's out there, right? There's more data than we even knew. And it's the same type of data that you used to look at when the companies that you worked for and that you were doing on the pharmaceutical side, the beginning of it, right? The in vitro studies, you know, the in vivo studies, you know, there may be small human studies.

SPEAKER_02: 58:10

I I I I guess I'll say you guys have a really great problem. Yes. And the businessman in me, you know, if there are no regulations, I want to sell the hell out of this. Dr. Gandu, get it up to millions of dollars as quickly as I possibly can. There are people taking it for a whole host of reasons. As long as I don't get myself in legal trouble, I've built a wellness company that can do good. However, on the medical side of things, I bet you got how you know, I bet you guys battle because you need you need studies to support what you're saying. Tell me if I'm incorrect in that, but from a company standpoint, but from a company standpoint, let me just get this out. From a company standpoint, you really don't have restrictions at this moment for the things that you can talk about, do you?

SPEAKER_00: 59:00

Right. So we one restrictions are there with nomenclature. If I'm talking, if Dr. Jarrell and I are sitting on the Key Terry podcast, the next big thing, and we say that cordycepin can support blood pressure, we are not gonna get dinged by the regulators because we're talking about why we think that it can support blood pressure. But if I were to just take anti-hypertensive and put that on my packaging, right, without any of this, you know, background knowledge, right, that I'm providing, then yes, the regulators should by all means have, should by all means, you know, have the opportunity to come and ding us for it. And the reason I say that is because one, if we are going to be saying it, because we know that our product has more quartipin, a lot more quartipin, and a lot more polysaccharides than our competitors do. So if If we start putting claims that you know don't have scientific randomized control double binded randomized control trials to back this, right, and we start saying antihypertensive on our cordycep supplement, then every other company technically can do the same thing too. And guess they're stuck, you know, they're they don't have enough cordycepin in it. They don't have enough polysaccharides in it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:23

Well here's the here's the other thing, Keith, and and and I'm gonna get us in trouble for this, but I'm gonna go ahead and say it, right? There's a company, and you've probably seen the advertisements that is saying that they have nature's Adderall. So this is an example of what Siva was talking about. Now, here's the thing. Earlier I said, you know, we can use Rishi as an adjuvant to conventional medical therapy, right? I said that, right? Why can I freely say that? Because I have studies that show that, right? So when we are talking to people and we are telling them things, I am telling them things based on two things. One, anecdotal evidence that we have, and I will be very honest with them about look, I only have anecdotal evidence that this stuff works in this way. Scientific evidence that this is how, for instance, cordyceps may lower your blood pressure by working or functioning just like an ACE inhibitor does. I have I have scientific evidence of that, but I don't have human studies that I can say, you know, we've given this to 10,000 people and it's lowered their blood pressure. So what I do is I explain to people how it potentially works and I talk to them about the anecdotal evidence that I have. Now, when I was talking about Rishi, that's different. I will tell people we have studies that show this. So when I have those studies, I specifically pinpoint what the studies are, right? But here's the problem we have to know those studies. Right. So we we do extensive work on researching what those studies are. We've we're finding studies every week, every day.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:58

Rishi's study that he's mentioning is 1,300 patients. 1,300 people. Right. You mentioned as a company, you know, how do we plan on kind of capturing more of this data too? And that that that's that's something that we're equally passionate about. And, you know, we're we we're a physician-founded company. We're bringing more physicians on board. One, two, that we're hoping will help us set up our own. We have we have a bare bones team right now for internal clinical research. So basically what we what we invested in is finding researchers that do want to actually look more into these compounds, whether they're nephrologists, whether they're oncologists, you know, um, take take our extract because we're gonna give you all the COAs, the certificates of analysis and the safety sheets and everything that you need to prove to you that, hey, you know, you can give this, you know, to a subset of patients and you know, take this through a study. And as soon as we find, you know, a researcher that's interested, we will apply for the grant and make this study happen, but we will be hands-off in terms of we'll give you the powder or the liquid, whichever form you want it to study in, right? And you conduct the study, we don't want any biases coming out of this either, right? Because that's also important. So this is our plan. We have different categories that we're looking at. You know, we're looking at diabetes and diabetic kidney disease and hypertension. We're also looking at gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, and seeing how we can potentially use Rishi as an adjuvant to conventional chemo and radio. So, you know, there is a study right now in Mayo that they're doing with uh turkey tail and triple negative breast cancer for turkey tail.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:43

Interesting. Really interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:45

And so we're and you know, you know how that study, how that study got started, Keith? What what actually happened was there's generally a time frame between when a female is diagnosed with breast cancer and she sees her surgeon, right? And so in Eastern medicine, if you're diagnosed with breast cancer, then you either get a prescription for turkey tail or you get a prescription for Rishi or both. So what males started looking at was during that time frame when those women went back to see their surgeon and the surgeon did follow-up mammograms or films, whatever, they found that the women who were on these uh mushroom extracts, their tumors were shrinking in the interim.

unknown: 1:04:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:26

So now they are believing that either that the turkey tail should potentially be part of that protocol for the treatment for women with these this particular type of breast cancer.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:36

All exciting stuff. I mean, this is why I say you guys have a really great problem to have. And we're gonna we're gonna delve into the next segment, which is the supply chain challenges. But before we do that, if you had to compare Mush Noom to another health care comp to another health company outside of mushrooms, what who would that company be? That helps me to understand your mindset.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:00

I would at this point, I would actually say in our supplement space, um, I would actually compare us to AG1. Um and the reason I say that is because they have they have a good founding background. They were, you know, they have um spokespeople like uh Dr. Andrew Huberman, um, you know, people that you know code. That's a nice comparable document background. Right. And they their products are very high quality. You know, they they made sure they've gotten the certifications that they need, you know, to actually you know manufacture, get their product NSF certified, things like that. They've done independent studies, you know, midterm to long-term kind of studies to see different cohorts and compare how people actually felt on their supplement versus people who weren't on it. Um, you know, it's more it's not as a specific, like category specific supplement, right? It's more of like a daily wellness product. It's it's like a um you take this, you're gonna get prebiotics, you're gonna get probiotics, you're gonna get vitamins, you're gonna get f you know, the micronutrients, you know, so it's kind of it's kind of this 360, you know, once a day, you know, this should help you with kind of everything. Right. But that's something where we defer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:26

I love the the insight and the comparable. You just gave a great example. So now as we go into the supply chain, you know, mushrooms are living organisms. What's the hardest part of sourcing and scaling them for consistency?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:39

Yeah. So, you know, the back to kind of what we talked about in terms of standardization, right? This whole process of how you get a really good product, it starts with your raw material. And it starts with where you source your raw material. So nine out of ten mushroom companies or extract companies, they get away with basically sourcing this raw material from quite uncredible, you know, what I would say, you know, just poor sources. A lot of it is coming from China, where, you know, there aren't the necessary certifications in place. Two, if it's not coming from China, it's it's companies that are getting this raw material just based on price. You know, so when we looked at all of our vendors, we actually ended up our our vendor actually is probably the most expensive vendor, right? Okay. And and so, and and I they they can I stop you for a second, Doc?

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:34

And and let's stay there for a second. You talked about, because I was gonna ask about raw material and you brought up sourcing, and I'm just gonna play, push back a little bit and play devil's advocate. Does it, since it's a living organism, does it matter? Tell me why there is a gap in the quality of the sourcing. If the mushroom is grown in the ground, it's grown in the ground. You say it's a difference in quality, tell me why how are you looking at it? Why should I care what you're looking at?

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:08

One, because they're not grown in the ground. They're grown indoors, vertical farming. Okay. Right? And so what goes into that substrate? So essentially you think of a, you know, they're grown in like bags or even, you know, mason jars, etc., depending on the species. And you have what they call the substrate, and the substrate is basically colonized by the mushroom's roots or its neural networks, which is the mycelia. Then after the mycelia have colonized the substrate, then they grow into the part that is visible to the naked eye, and that is the fruiting body. Got it. So depending on your quality of the substrate, your mycelia and your fruiting body are going to have drastically different qualities. And so that that is a key differentiator. There's so many companies out there that'll say, well, we use a fruiting body only extract, and you know, we don't use mycelium. All that all that only works for people that don't know enough about mushroom. Yeah, which is a lot of people. Right. And so so fruiting body and mycelium, this is an entire myth that's out there. You know, like if you go back and look at, you know, the literature, your mycelia actually have a lot of the bioactive components as well. So why are you leaving that out? One, you're leaving it out probably because you've grown your mycelia on substrates that are not consumable to human to humans. Like so instead of growing it on you know, rice or oats or things that you know we can eat, they grow it on, you know, sawdust. You know, it's cheaper, right? Because sawdust is much easier to procure. Yeah. I see your point now. Then they say, well, we only give you the fruiting body. Well, yeah, I don't want your mycelium. No, I I'm not trying to.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:00

So you guys have a sourcing. Do you guys have a sourcing problem? And because, you know, let's take your where I what did I write this down? Let's take your 10% that you mentioned is the penetration level. And let's, you know, take that up to 50% next year. Is it can you guys source? I mean, is there a sourcing issue? Maybe that's uh another business opportunity for you, but at that point, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:23

I said the latter, so you've already kind of nailed it, right? We know where the limitations with sourcing lie. We know that we have possibly the best source that we can we can have at this point, and they can supply us, you know, up to about, you know, five to six tons a year, right? Is that a lot? I for us, looking at our projections, we would say that that's not a lot. Right? Um looking at the market projections, we would say no. But the that's one of the things that we've invested a significant amount of time into, and we are we are going to be cultivating very soon, and we're going to become our own source, and we will be and we will also be the source for many other companies out there.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:10

Excellent. I love that. From a geographical standpoint, and I'm so glad you educated me on this, that mushrooms aren't grown in the ground. Is North America better for this than some other country?

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:24

How do you look at the cultivation of your So the Chinese have historically cultivated these mushrooms longer than everyone has. Which is why they can get away with so many things that they can't today's market, because there are so many cultivators out there in China. In in the United States, where cultivation of these mushrooms has really started to, you know, take a rise over the last, I would say, ten to fifteen years, there is fewer sources of um mushroom growers here that are growing at a very, very good quality that can be used for extraction. In terms of a culinary purpose, there are a bunch of people that are growing. You know, the quality of the mushroom from a culinary purpose isn't going to change significantly because you're not going to be eating the mycelium, you're eating the fruiting body, right? And the fruiting body itself, if whether it was grown on sawdust or whether it was grown on rice, it's still going to have the macronutrients that it needs to have. From a bioactive percentage, it's not. That's where the difference is. So when you're looking at mushrooms for nutraceuticals and mushrooms for supplements or mushrooms to put into functional beverages, etc., you really want to get a source that one, we wanted to get a source from the United States because consumers like that better. It comes with trust.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:50

I see that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:51

And a lower tariff, too. And a lower tariff. Yes. Nowadays for sure. And and two, you know, the certifications. So like we our mushrooms are USD organic. Our mushrooms have come from a facility that has uh BRCS certifications. You know, they are their kosher, they're vegan, etc. All those certifications, so they matter to people. And, you know, when we looked, we I've spoken to companies from Canada, the United States, China, Bangladesh, India, parts of Europe. You know, we found our our sourcing partner from California. You know, the one thing that I realized, and this is why we're so keen about cultivating, is there is such a huge gap. That is there. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Even even amongst your quote unquote premium suppliers, there is a huge gap. And and once we're once we have our mushrooms out, we'll have another podcast, and then we'll talk about the gaps that we closed there.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:55

Walk me through the various steps. We're talking about supply chain. The way I think about it, all the big companies I've worked at, Abbott being one, they sourced their material. They had to go in the lab, they had to make it. So you're you're what just walk me through kind of uh the steps on your supply chain.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:14

Yeah, so sourcing of raw material happens here in the United States. The mushrooms get sent over to our contract manufacturer over in India. The contract manufacturer in India is then procures the solvents. The solvent procurement is, again, a very rigid process. We only use pharmaceutical grade solvents. So whether it's the alcohol that's being used or whether it's the RO water that goes into place for the extraction process, all of that basically has to come from a pharmaceutical source. We undergo the manufacturing process in that one facility. The manufacturing process is our own proprietary extraction. The IV is owned by JG and Biotech. It was developed by us by using the facility's resources. So we didn't want to, you know, make a huge capital investment and go out and you know buy an entire factory. We were, okay, we know what we need in terms of equipment and we know what we're gonna do in terms of process. So we package, bottle, label, everything there. That's a CGMP facility. So certified good manufacturing practices, and we have entire batch records, you know, everything to basically show us our compliance to CGMP norms, and then the product gets sent back to the United States for fulfillment.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:33

Wow. Thank you for that. And uh I would assume I won't have you talk about your the your logistical bottlenecks, but I I like that. So before we leave this section, one final question. What lessons have you learned about scaling um and you know, trying to scale a natural product like this in a, should I call it a pharmaceutical market?

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:56

Yeah, I think just to touch on what Siva was saying is that um we need to have more control, right? From the and so from a cultivation standpoint, that's an absolute must for us, right? And so if we really want to achieve our goal, which is standardization and we want to make sure that we have the best product that's available, then we need control from top to bottom. I think that's you know my take-home message from this in terms of what I've learned going through this process, right? So we have to start from the cultivation point and just move forward. Because there are things that, you know, quite honestly, Keith, that we want to do within you know this market that other people aren't doing. Like our product has no alcohol in it. So something as simple as taking the alcohol out, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:40

Yeah, like distilling it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:42

Distilling it, right. That's that's costly for us. But it's something that we want to do because that opens it up, that opens our product up to be utilized by children, right? And also to be utilized by, you know, adults who may have, you know, former addiction issues or recovery. People of the Islamic faith. Right. People of Islamic faith, exactly. So, you know, so those are things that are really important to us. And so for me, you know, if I'm looking at this from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I want as much control as I can possibly get.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:10

Yeah. And and you know, be working in a pharmaceutical industry, you know that to take a drug from ideation to formulation, right? The big word that you hear is validity, validity, validity. And so to get to a point of where we're validating an active pharmaceutical ingredient, if we have not controlled the process end-to-end in terms of I know that exact, I can trace that mushroom back to where it was grown and then take it to a point where I know how much bioactive I want in this, and now I'm gonna get into that field of what we call active pharmaceutical ingredients and API. That's the long-term vision here, right? And that's what will transform us from a nutraceutical company to a pharmaceutical company.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:55

One of the big questions that I get asked all the time is, you know, how much of this should I take? Right? Should I take a gram? Should I take two grams? Should I take three? Should I take four? Should I take five? You know, how many of you have to do that? And the answer is? Well, the answer is we start at one or two, right, and we move up because I can't tell my my customers exactly that data, because I don't have the data, right? No one, and this is what we're talking about when we talk about standardization. So if you come to me and you say, Boy, I want to take cordyceps because I'm fatigued or I want to boost in energy, then I want to be able to tell you that a gram is where we need to start, or two grams is where we need to start. And this is, you know, under this, under these circumstances, this is the standardization that we've done, just like when I was talking about lasanopril. Well, why is it that we start at five milligrams or two point five? Depends on what we're trying to accomplish, right? So if I'm using lasanopril for heart failure, I might start at 2.5. If I'm using it for blood pressure, depending upon where somebody's blood pressure is running, I might start at even 10 milligrams, right? But that's because of the standardization that's been done, right, where we know what the dosing should be. No one's ever done this in this industry at all.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:06

Yeah, when you look at all the studies, it's one one study was done with a water soluble extract, right? And the other study was done with a methanol-based extract, and then a third study was done with just the dried, you know, mushroom powder and not extracted. So there's so many inconsistencies, but the one thing that you see in uniformity is the benefit, so which means that your body readily accepts these compounds. So now for us, what we're doing is, and you know, we we're super passionate about this and we have the resources to do it, is the analytical chemistry behind it, and we're gonna make sure we're having consistency across all our you know, our future batches. Once we've established that degree of consistency, then we know, well, we're gonna start looking at this from a dose-dependent standpoint. You know, let's start at the NVivo level.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:58

Yeah. So we're gonna move on to the to the final segment and talk about the company. And so I'm gonna have fun with this because I get to peer inside of your brains and we get to look into the future. So when we talk about mush noom, am I saying that correctly? Yes. Mush noom. And for my listening public, we're not I didn't you didn't hear me miss misspeak. The name of their company is called Mush Noom. What is Mush Noom's core why? That's my question. My first question.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:32

Yeah, I think um, you know, we've touched on a number of those things, right? And so to me, being on kind of the back end of of practicing medicine and whatnot, um, you know, I I kind of look forward and I say, I want to leave this place with having impacted the community. Right. Okay. Um, you know, I'm able to do that to some degree as a hospitalist. I was probably able to do it a little bit more when I was in private practice. But um, you know, some of the things that we're talking about, I I likely won't be here to see them, you know, occur. But I want to Not as you get bigger.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:07

Not as you get bigger with all the money coming in and the different Yeah, I mean we'll see.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:12

We'll see, right? You know, we'll see. But but I think for me it is it is more of a holistic approach, right? Because we're still talking about the things that I've been telling people to do for 30 years, right? And it it's all encompassing for me. So I would like for people to look at mushnoon as a more of a wellness company who just happens to be in the mushroom extract space, right? I would like for them to be able to go to, you know, our websites, our you know, Instagram pages, Facebook, whatever, and not just get information about the mushroom extracts, but also get information, like I said, about, you know, meditation, those kinds of things, right? Why I need to exercise. Well, you know, you need to exercise to decrease your risk of getting dementia, you know, those simple things like that. Steve and I, we talk about all the time when these new studies come out, we share those studies with each other, right? And it may not have anything to do with mushroom or mushroom extracts, you know, directly. So I think for me, that's where I want our company to be. But aside from that, I want us to be the top, the number one company in the world that actually produces mushroom extract. And I want our quality to be undoubtedly better than anybody else's. Dr.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:23

Gandu, do you share the same vision or do you have a slightly different one?

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:27

Share the share the share the same vision, but you know, I want to emphasize a few points. One, we're never too old or too late to think about legacy, and you're never too young to think about legacy. The entire, my entire mission in life has always been to, you know, to impact the community, have something what I call impactful entrepreneurship, right? And be able to, you know, affect the masses per se. I knew that I can make a difference with my job, but I knew that when the time came, is that am I going to be satisfied? Probably not, right? And so JGN Biotech was founded on that promise of, you know, we're going to continue to build a legacy not only for this company, but for this community that we serve, right? So, and it doesn't end with JGN Biotech. You know, the money comes in, the revenue comes in here. Well, we're going to put it back into another project that can benefit the community.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23:26

So as you grow, I'm not sure if this is being funded from your own pockets. Do you have series A, Series B? Because it gets me to my next question. And that is as you build this company in your your JG biotech company. The reason I'm asking, are you building it towards a consumer wellness company, a biotech company, or something in between? You hinted at it, but as it grows with more complexity, more money, a board, you know, don't know. I mean, there are a lot of complexities here other than you two brilliant physicians, because when when it grows, I'm asking, you know, what are you guys building the company towards? Your own personal beliefs versus some of the marketplace realities that exist.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:16

Yeah, but I think that I think here's what the way that I look at it, right? And so I look at it much in the same way that my father looked at it, right? And so you and I, Keith, we come from a generation that, you know, our parents were involved in the civil rights movement as an And so what did we see happen within our community? Businessmen contributed to that movement, would not have succeeded without it, right? So that was a way that our community was affected tremendously, right? So whatever it is that we accomplished through JGN biotech is just one aspect of it for me, right? We can partner with people, you know, go in this direction, this direction, and set up, you know, charities, things like that through that entity, right? Which is what we saw in our community that people did, right? And so to me, it's all encompassing. And I look at it and I say, the better that we do with JGN Biotech, the more opportunities and options we have to give back, right? And to affect our community, right? That's just one aspect of it for me, right? There's always things that I'm thinking about doing and and things that I'm thinking about getting involved in, right? Because what I've found is that uh my place in the community as an African American physician has been great for me the last 30 years, right? People come to me and they ask me about all different kinds of things. They've instilled trust in me. So I take that very seriously. But I've also been approached by tons of people who want me to help in certain ways. And so I've been able to do that on a small level. I would love to be able to do that on a much larger level, right? So I'm always looking for opportunities for us to get involved in different things. And so when Steve and I first start sat down and talked about this, his idea was to have wellness communities or wellness centers, right, in India, and then also, you know, throughout the United States. We're working with some individuals now that we believe we can make some of those things happen. Now, obviously, in those wellness centers would be Mushnu, of course, would be one of the things that we would make available for people. But just something like that, you know, where people could go to and they could see a physician, and this physician has a background in integrative medicine, you know, and is talking about all of these other things that we're talking about. Because what we're seeing with the studies that are coming out is how important this stuff is, right? I don't know if you know there was just a study that was released looking at Mediterranean diet and preventing diabetes, right? So these are things, these are things that we haven't seen during my time of practicing medicine. So to Siva's point, this is a great time to capitalize on those kinds of things across the board.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:03

I hear you, but I'm I'm asking a slightly different perspective.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:08

We're talking about the growth. Can I kind of try to answer it? Okay, all right. In terms of in terms of from I think, and Dr. Jarrell, I think, talked about what JG and Biotech as a whole encompasses and what our mission is with growing this company in terms of the long long term, right? From and I think your question was more geared towards from a wellness company, where do you evolve with JG and Biotech? Yes. We would stick to the supplement business, but stick to the supplement business in a way that we're providing standardization across the board, and we would keep this company focused on nutraceuticals, herbominerals, and essentially the supplement industry. As we gain the science and as we gain the literature and the data that is going to be crucial in the product development for us, we will definitely look into the pharmaceutical side. Now, I do not know if we would do that under JG and Biotech or if it was gonna break if it'll run under the same holding company, right? But you know, it it it also depends on who who the players are that are gonna be involved at that point because no business, you know, can happen with just, you know, the two of us, right? And and there is a team behind us, right? That you guys and and there's key components of that team that make mush noom possible. There's gonna be more key components in that team that are going to actually help us launch another flagship brand or another, I wouldn't call it flagship brand, but another brand off of JGN Biotech, which also deals with supplements, right? I think that's that's the way we look at JGN Biotech is we approach it from uh a quality perspective, keep it in the supplement space, try to bring pharmaceutical practices, your standards that are applicable in the pharmaceutical industry to the supplement industry, so that essentially now people have great quality supplements that they work with. Now, to kind of supplement that, okay. What do we do? You know, and Dr. Jarrell kind of talked about it, right? Like the charities and the community service and a CSR and all of that is gonna be super, super important. And he touched upon the fact that you know, we wanted to look into wellness centers, right? Wellness centers are one part of it. We're also working on software, right? Wow. We have we have a software company that we have opened. It's called Rejuvenate LLC. And so we're gonna be excited to bring out a new product, you know, hopefully early next year. And this is the whole concept here is to build an ecosystem, right? Because yes, we can be the greatest supplement company out there, but how do we the whole Goal of this was we build brand trust and you're gonna associate JGN with trust and you're gonna associate JGN with hey, if they if they give me another product, whether it's an application or they tell me to go to one of their wellness clinics, I'm gonna I'm gonna trust that and I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna use it. That's I love what I'm hearing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:23

The most successful companies didn't start well, let me say it. This is this was what I'm saying. Most uh companies, when they get big, didn't start that way. They adapt it, they move, they shift it. And you know, I just think what you guys have is phenomenal. What you've uh achieved is phenomenal. And so if Mushnoom uh succeeds, you know, how is healthcare gonna look in the next 10 to 20 years from your perspective?

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:52

I think for me, some of the things that we've already talked about, right? I think if we are successful, then the majority of phys physicians across this country that do what we do, which is primary care, when your kids, you know, my kids, your grandkids, my grandkids walk into a doctor's office, they'll have options, right? And so it won't be so much, I just I'm gonna write a prescription for you, right? It could be, hey, going over to, you know, this place and pick up this cordyceps or pick up Rishi or Lion's mane or whatever. And I think the benefit of that is that it fosters a lot more conversation and interaction between the physician and the patient, right? Because you have to talk to them about this stuff. Right. It's not, oh, well, you know, I got this Lasana Peril that, you know, everybody knows about that I'm gonna put, you know, put you on for your blood pressure. And so the biggest complaint that I got that we saw in private practice was patients complaining about their doctors not spending enough time with them and not explaining things to them. That's the biggest, and it's still the biggest complaint that we get in the hospital, right? So to me, this is how I think we could affect and we could change that. The second part of this would be what Steve has already talked about in terms of prevention, right? I'd like to see those numbers go down, the incidence of diabetes, the incidence of high blood pressure, the incidence of heart disease in all of our communities, right? Because we're utilizing these specific supplements as adjuvants, right? Not necessarily to replace, but I'm hopeful enough, right? I'm optimistic enough that in a in a percentage of that patient population or percentage of the community, that we can get to these individuals soon enough, right? And we can prevent some of these problems, right? We can take these prediabetic patients out of that that realm and get them into a realm where their A1Cs are low enough early on so they don't have to worry about developing diabetes at age 40.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:52

I think to add on to one thing that Dr. Durell also said is I would like to see more accessibility. I think that's a good idea. Yeah, of mushroom supplements or you know, of mush nooms products altogether, you know. Um and as a matter of fact, all the products that JGN Biotech manufactures, right? And so if we're looking at supplements as a holistic approach for preventative health and giving people years to their or or quality years to their life, you know, the communities that actually really suffer from this are minority communities, especially in America, and and they don't have the access, one, two, it's a monetary and and it's an economical issue, right? If you're already not going to be able to afford your medications that you know you're getting through Medicare Medicaid for a couple dollars, there's really no way that you know you expect that person to be able to afford a supplement that they now have to pay about thirty dollars a month for. So, you know, I I think I think that is that would be I think the pinnacle, right? I I yeah it once we saw that and and we're gonna do what we what it takes to provide that access to these communities. But as Dr. Jarrell said, you know, you have to be able to see this more available and the way you bring this down in terms of the pricing, and Keith, you know this, it's a volumes game. Right. If we have the data over the next five to ten years to show that in these populations, this might actually be a safer alternative and people seem to tolerate these supplements better. Well, can we maybe cover them through, you know, not only your HSA and FSA, where, you know, that's an employer-based benefit, but could we look at some coverage through a government scheme and you know, maybe we subsidize it to the government altogether? Right? So, you know, that that's that would be the goal with this.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:52

And and I think, Keith, I'll give you a quick example of what I'm talking about. So nowadays, if your A1C is six or greater, you're gonna be probably put on metformin, right? Yes And you know, you probably know as I do, metformin can cause a lot of GI side effects. So if five or ten years from now you can sit there with your patient and say, wait a minute, I have an alternative to metformin because your A1C is running about 6.1 and we can put you on cordyceps or cordyceps along with lion's mane. Now I don't have to put them on protonics, right, when they have the GI upset, right? So in the long run, I'm probably saving money, right? Now the folks that make protonics aren't gonna be happy with us, right? They're gonna they're gonna be very upset with us about that. But from a from a cost effectiveness standpoint, right, then you start looking at, you know, if if uh what to what Siva was saying, if you can get your numbers up, if you get the volume up, then that's gonna lower your price right across the board, right? Then you start having situations where your Walmarts of the world come in and they say, Oh, well, we want your product because it's good product, and now we can provide that to our patients, to your patients for six dollars a month, right? And now I don't have to worry because I don't have to worry about paying for that protonics, right, that they would need potentially with metformin.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:12

Well, you know, I I I have a prediction, having been in this game for a minute, you guys have a really good problem to have. If you're if you're right and you can substantiate the value of of a disease with this product or any of the products that you guys come up with that's outside the realm, or let's say it another way, that comes from a nutraceutical company and you've and your value proposition is so high, I don't necessarily see the price going necessarily down. I know I I think as from a business standpoint that you've solved something that the price will the price will be the price. And I'll give you an analogy. I've worked for a number of companies, one in cystic fibrosis, and it had such a great value proposition in keeping and extending the lives of of of some of its patients by 10 years. When that product came to market, it was not an inexpensive product. And and some can look and say, boy, but it was justified. It was covered by insurance. It was, you know, we're talking$13,000. And so I guess, I guess when I look at this, I think, and I'll say this, you guys have a really good problem to have because I can't help to think as a businessman, you know, you want to bring value to the marketplace. And you want to be and you and I just think that you guys have a really wonderful problem, and that kind of takes me us to the end. And I ask every guest this one last question, and we'll start with you, Dr. Gandu. What is the one piece of advice or insight you want my listeners to carry away from today's conversation?

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:48

Be curious. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. For every ten success, you're gonna have ten failures. And coming from a physician background, I don't I don't have a degree in anything business related. The one thing that I've realized is foster relationships and approach everything with an open mind. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, be honest, have integrity, and be the sponge and just just learn from people around you. Practical learning carries you so much, so much further. So as a young entrepreneur and as a physician, I think those are the things that I would like to, you know, have your viewers hear, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02: 1:38:27

Okay, Dr. Jarrell, you have the last word here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:31

Yeah, I think for me, again, coming from a family of entrepreneurs, watching my mom and my dad, you know, run a business for, you know, 30 plus years, I would agree with Siva. It is about relationships, right? And I think a lot of times people have a great idea or what we think is a great idea, but they're they're not willing to put the work in behind it. They're not willing to do the research along with it, they're not willing to really sit down and tap into the resources that are around them in terms of developing a really strong business plan. And I think the other thing is that, as he said, don't be afraid to fail, right? Because you learn more from failure than you do from success, right? And don't be afraid to pivot, right? So as I said, when we started, when I started this thing, and when we started this thing, it was all about fresh mushrooms, right? And so when we started looking at the extracts, I said, boy, we're gonna put the fresh mushrooms on hold for a while here, right? So I also wasn't old enough to watch my parents pivot, but my father kind of fell into real estate. That wasn't the first thing that he did. And so as I got older, I found out, you know, he was unsuccessful in a couple of businesses before he got to the real estate industry. So, you know, be determined, you know, utilize those relationships. Always talk to people, always talk to your customers, always talk to your family, your friends, because you never know when they're gonna meet somebody or you're gonna meet somebody that's going to be able to help you in a way that you never thought they would. Just our meeting, the two of us meeting was probably by accident. It was he was Siva was supposed to be doing a GI fellowship. And had he done the GI fellowship, we would have never met.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:15

Right. So sometimes those coincidences are huge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:20

How do people find your product? Where should they go? Give them the give them the the contact information quickly, please.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:26

Yeah, our website is www.mushnum.com. They can reach us there. And we have uh oh, you know, if they have questions or whatever, they can send us you know questions there. We have studies on the website as well. Um and our Instagram page is at try mushnoom.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:43

So that they can there's any questions, they can always reach us at care at JGN Biotech. That email will go straight to Dr. Jarell and I. And, you know, if there's any questions about the supplements or about anything that we've talked about today, um, you know, please be willing to reach out. And it's NUM with a N, New Meaning Togetherness.

SPEAKER_02: 1:41:03

So S means so M-U-S-H-N-O-O-M. And I'll put it in the in the caption when I post this on the various channels. Well, that's it for today's episode of the next big thing. A huge thank you to Dr. Steve Agandu and Dr. Ronaldo Jarrell for joining me and sharing Mushnoom's journey. I thought this was a delightful conversation from the science of healing to the business realities of bringing innovation to the marketplace. Thanks for listening to the next big thing. I'm your host, Keith D. Terry. If you've enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support this podcast, please share it with others. Post about it on social media or leave a rating and a review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on my YouTube channel at Keith D.Terry. If you want to recommend a guest, please email me at infoterry performance group.com. This has been produced by your host and Jade Productions.