Comment · Thu, October 14, 2021 · ND Owner
Why is EVERY lions mane brand Chinese
What they were answering
callitblues · 2 points
Thank you for the comment. I too find it strange that Stamets with all of his knowledge allows himself to sell such products. However, I constantly hear people praising his product -- or more specifically, his LM. People seem to benefit from it. IDK if it's all placebo, but it makes me think sometimes, maybe HE knows something we don't. I can only recall reading that the mycelium is thought to create new substances when enriched with rice. I can't seem to find this information again or anything that actually prove it right. But I do know that we currently can't actually test for the proposed NGF-inducing substances content, and therefore all companies test for beta-glucans as quality measurement.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
The thing is that he has had years... decades even... to provide us with the scientific evidence proving his theories on mycelium on grain. He's got the margins to fund these studies. You know how cheap it is to make mycelium on grain? It's dirt cheap to make. He's literally making 90% profit margins. He's got the funds to prove to everyone his claims. Yet here we are over a decade later and we are STILL waiting for scientific evidence to back his claims up. If he knows something we don't, and he has made this novel new thing that works so well, why doesn't he PROVE IT to us?!? Shove our words down our throats with some data. Force me to admit I am wrong and confirm he is right. I am here ready and willing to do that. I have no problem admitting I am wrong when shown new evidence. In fact, I invite it! I love advancing our knowledge of things! That's the entire reason I am here. I don't give a shit about being right. I care about the truth. I care about using objective scientific evidence to advance our understanding of human cognition. Prove me wrong Paul Stamets! That's all any of us is asking for! Show us some damn evidence for your claims, and I will be the first person to admit you were right. I will fall on my metaphorical Samurai sword and commit seppuku in front of everyone. However, all we get are crickets.
What we do get are ZERO scientific evidence for his claims. We get BS explanations that change when more evidence come out. It's also not like we are just sitting and waiting ourselves, either. I am funding research into this shit. I've spent tons of money researching lion's mane now. I can confidently say that I know more than 99% of the people out there on lion's mane, because I've been working with the top lion's mane researcher in the world for almost 2 years on our own projects. We have tested many Host Defense products in our lab, including their lion's mane. It's mostly starch. The starch profile matches EXACTLY to the starch profile of rice. There are ZERO erinacines in it. None. Zilch. Nada. There are no other actives in it that we can detect from the fruiting bodies. We see tons of starch. That's about it. Maybe there are some super secret polysaccharides in there doing magical effects science has yet to discover. I am prepared for that. However, there is no data pointing that way. All data points to ground up rice. Unless Paul Stamets can release some objective scientific data showing otherwise, Hanlon's Razor dictates we have to assume it's BS. That's the conclusion with the least amount of assumptions.
Again, we are not saying the mycelium of lion's mane is not useful. That's far from what I am saying. We have lion's mane mycelium extracts we have made that have blown me away with their effects. That's what we have been developing the past few years. It's seriously one of the most potent nootropics I have ever tried. However, we don't grow that shit on rice and grind the rice up and call it a mushroom! Fungi don't naturally grow on rice, nor do they make erinacines in normal conditions. It's very specific conditions with very specific wood substrates that lead to the erinacine production. We have proven this all in the lab. We know how these things are made. It's not a mystery, which is why I am so forceful with my criticisms. We have been doing this science for a long time, and we understand lion's mane more than almost anyone out there. It's precisely because we understand lion's mane so well that we know Paul Stamets is BSing everyone. The scientific data we have proves that. If Paul Stamets had conflicting data proving his stance, he would release it.