Plants of the Gods: S7E5. Use of Mushrooms and Cannabis in Veterinary Medicine with Dr. Rob Silver

Well, in a podcast entitled Plants of the Gods, we spend a lot of time talking about fungi and with very good reason.

We had both Paul Stamets and Christopher Hobbs on the pod.

I encourage everyone who's interested in more information to go back and listen to those episodes if you haven't already.

And even if you have, they're so rich in content, it's worth a second listen.

But I want to talk to Dr.

Rob today, Dr.

Rob Silver, about how mushrooms influence cognition, mood, and memory, both in humans and in pets.

Well, and yes.

So one thing that we've been finding, and everyone's talking about lion's mane, which currently is probably the most popular mushroom in North America, is that lion's mane contains these terpenes, both in the mushroom fruiting body, but also in the mycelium, which stimulate the brain to produce nerve growth factor.

And that seems to have an influence on memory and cognition.

And there are some studies showing that lion's mane actually can help to stabilize early symptoms of Alzheimer's in humans.

But dogs have an Alzheimer's-type condition just like humans.

We call it sundowners or canine cognitive disorder where they also get confused.

They have trouble maybe finding the dog door or even their food bowl.

And we have found anecdotally we don't have an objective study yet.

You know, the animals are kind of an underserved population when it comes to studies with many of these alternative therapies.

And so we don't have direct studies in dogs, but we've got enough studies that are supportive of it and plenty of anecdotal research.

reports from pet parents that the use of lion's mane really has helped their dogs act younger and be better able to remember where the dog door is and where their food bowl is as well.

And what's interesting is that there is an antioxidant that has gotten everyone's attention.

It's a lot like glutathione and It's found in mushrooms, and it's called ergothionine.

And ergothionine has been, and we short, we call it ergo, which has been shown to also cross the blood-brain barrier, just like these terpenes that we find in lion's mane.

And lion's mane contains a decent amount of ergo, and it also has been shown to improve cognitive function.

Now, I know you've discussed this on your shows in the past about Terence McKenna's theory called the stoned ape theory in which he believes that human consciousness got a boost when primates and early hominids would harvest psychedelic mushrooms like Amanita or psilocybin and that it actually improved.

increased their intelligence, so to speak.

But a colleague of mine, a friend, his name's Lee Carroll, and he's a medical herbalist from Australia.