Paul Stamets[i] may be the most famous mycologist in the world. He also might not be all he’s cracked up to be. Say his name around people interested in fungi, and some will call him their hero. Others will call him a snake-oil salesman and worse.
Many people have become familiar with Stamets through his TED Talks and his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. He was also featured in the documentary, “Fantastic Fungi.” He even has a Star Trek: Discovery character named after him. He’s the author of six books, including:
- Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
- Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms
- Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World
He has received some impressive awards, including:
- Invention Ambassador (2014-2015) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- The National Mycologist Award (2014) from the North American Mycological Association (NAMA)
- The Gordon & Tina Wasson Award (2015) from the Mycological Society of America (MSA)
He has even discovered and named multiple psilocybin mushroom species.
But…
We don’t recommend Paul Stamets Mushroom Supplements. This is who we currently think has the best Mushroom Supplements on the Market.
The Problem with Paul Stamets
Paul Stamets bills himself as a scientist and a medical researcher, as well as a lecturer, author, and entrepreneur[ii]. He is particularly interested in medicinal mushrooms, and claims to have discovered a way to cure certain cancers using mushrooms (in combination with more traditional therapies). The problem is that he doesn’t share the details of his medical studies so that other researchers can check his work. He seldom publishes in reputable, peer-reviewed journals. In other words, he doesn’t act like a scientist.
He acts like someone who spends much of his time and energy building a reputation as an expert and very little time actually being an expert.
Much of Stamets’ business involves selling his own brand of mushroom-growing kits and of mushroom-based medicinal supplements (called Host Defense), backed, of course, by his reputation as the world’s most-famous mycologist. However, his grow kits have a reputation for not growing. His supplements are made from mycelium, not from fruiting bodies—mycelium is substantially cheaper to produce, but it’s the fruiting bodies, the actual mushrooms, that contain the substances thought to be medicinal. He claims that mycelium has its own medicinal value, and for some species there is evidence that he is right (for others, there is evidence he is very wrong)–but the problem with mycelium is it’s almost impossible to separate it from the substrate it grew on, with the result that mycelium-based extracts, including those sold by Stamets, contain a very high percentage of medically useless starch. So, his stuff is low-quality.
Paul Stamets may well be just as brilliant as he says he is. His books are well-regarded, he really has earned his awards, his discovery of new species is quite real, and his outreach has gotten a lot of people interested in mushrooms who might otherwise not have realized how fascinating and how useful these organisms are. The point of this article is not to personally attack the man, and it’s certainly not to imply that his work has no value.
Rather, the point is that he should not be trusted uncritically by people new to the world of mushrooms. His name on a product should not be taken as evidence all by itself that the product is any good. He is a salesman more than he is a scholar or a healer, and it’s a bad idea to ever trust a salesman’s word about his own product. You need a second opinion from someone who doesn’t have a vested interest in your belief.
We don’t recommend Paul Stamets Mushroom Supplements. This is who we currently think has the best Mushroom Supplements on the Market.
Avoiding Snake Oil
The term “snake-oil salesman” refers back to a time before medicine was regulated, when charlatans could easily make a living from the desperate and uninformed by selling “medications” that supposedly cured just about everything and actually cured nothing at all. Some were literally labeled as oil made from snakes, which supposedly had curative powers. Often, they were mostly alcohol. Some were actually toxic.
It may be a stretch to lump Stamets in with them. We don’t know that he is really a charlatan, and it would be unfair to assume. But he does operate in an unregulated industry, that of medicinal supplements (not medicine), meaning that the conditions that allowed the original snake-oil sellers to make it big are available to him. He has the option to be a charlatan if he wants to be, as does anyone selling similar products. It’s up to the consumer to sort out the good from the bad.
So how can a consumer know if a mushroom supplement is worth buying? There are four things to look for—save yourself some time and look for these in order, since if the answer to the first question is no, you don’t need to go any farther. If the answer to the second one is no, you can stop there. And so on.
Is There Solid Evidence that the Mushroom Is Medicinal?
Many mushrooms reputed to be medicinal might not be—there just hasn’t been enough research for us to know.
Supplements, by definition, have not been through the extensive testing required of approved medications. There are various reasons people choose to use them anyway, but there is a risk. The key is to minimize the risk by choosing supplements backed by at least some evidence. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to be sure how solid the research is. It’s not unusual for writers to describe this or that mushroom as “scientifically proven” to treat such and such, when the research really consists of a single preliminary study involving mice.
The mushroom might still work, but we just don’t know.
The trick is to go right to the source and look up the actual scientific studies online—the abstracts (brief summaries) are usually available for free. Just do an internet search on the species’ scientific name and the word “medicinal,” and look for the abstracts of reputable journals. At the very least, there should be clinical studies with human patients.
Some readers may object that mushrooms that have been used in folk medicine for thousands of years don’t have to be tested. But aside from the fact that ancient wisdom can sometimes be wrong, traditional treatments belong to their own healing philosophies that also include things like lifestyle guidelines and spiritual practices. Removed from that context and taken as a pill, the mushroom might not work in the traditional way and therefor does need to be tested for effectiveness and safety.
We don’t recommend Paul Stamets Mushroom Supplements. This is who we currently think has the best Mushroom Supplements on the Market.
Does the Product Contain the Right Species?
Mushroom products don’t always contain the same species named on the label. The manufacturer might have made a mistake in identification, processing errors could have led to contamination, or the manufacturer could be treating several species as interchangeable that really aren’t—a particular problem with the Ganodermas, only one of which is the genuine reishi mushroom (the others could be biochemically similar, but they have not been tested, either by scientists or by traditional practitioners).
The trick here is to research the manufacturer. A reputable company will sell what it says it is selling. A lesser company might not.
Is the Product a Hot-Water Extract of the Fruiting Body?
There are multiple ways to make extracts of plants, all of them effective. There is only one effective way to make an extract of a fungus. That’s because fungal cell walls are made of chitin, a substance that can’t be dissolved except by hot water (the extract may be sold as a powder, but it’s not powdered mushroom but rather a kind of dehydrated tea). Alcohol extracts or glycerin extracts of mushrooms are useless (alcohol can sometimes be used after hot water, but not instead of). Nevertheless, some companies sell alcohol extracts of mushrooms, often dressed up in fancy language to make it sound like a quality product.
In a similar way, some companies sell mycelium extracts, or mixed extracts of both mycelium and fruiting body, under the rubric of a “full-spectrum” extract. With only a few exceptions, such extracts are useless, but they cost much less to make and so turn a nice profit.
Look for a hot-water extract of the fruiting body and nothing else.
Does the Product Contain an Appropriate Concentration of the “Active Ingredients” From the Mushroom?
Most medicinal mushrooms are effective, if they are effective, because they contain substances called beta-d-glucans (this common element is why most medicinal mushrooms are being explored to treat the same group of health concerns). A few have other “active ingredients,” instead of or in addition to beta-d-glucans. A reputable company will be able to say how much of these substances are in their products. Companies that won’t provide such information are either too sloppy to do their own quality testing or actively trying to hide something. It’s worth noting that a favorite trick of the disreputable is to be accurate but vague, boasting, for example, of their high polysaccharide content. Beta glucans are polysaccharides, but not all polysaccharides are beta glucans, and many have no medicinal benefit at all.
The Bottom Line
If you’ve gotten all excited about mushrooms because you’ve seen Paul Stamets talk, that’s great. Mushrooms are as cool as he says they are. But recognize that he is a salesman. Double-check his claims through mycologists who are not salespeople, or through reputable health-care practitioners with clinical experience with mushroom-based therapies. And do not buy supplements solely because of the human being whose name is associated with the brand; buy them—with the advice of a qualified expert—because of the hot-water fruiting-body extracts inside!
Greetings Austin,
Nice website and good information. I thought you might like a little about Chaga that comes from back in the day when my father was a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry and in the early days of pharmacognacy (1970’s-1980’s) . He had some exchanges with Alexandr Sholzhenitzin about the use of Chaga and the Russian use is to take a mix of about 2/3 orange heartwood of chaga and one third black outer wood and make a sun-tea or just allow it to extract slowly in warm water – they were quite adamant that it was the mix of polypeptides and polysaccharides that was effective and that you must not denature the protein content with overheating.
Otherwise I have been using mushrooms for all manner of things throughout my own,( now fairly lengthy) adult life and interested from the standpoint of a Czech background in keeping that knowledge alive and a part of my own daily practices. In my case that includes using mushrooms in most every season and that (in Michigan) includes a fairly lengthy winter. You don’t find that much more than Tricholomas in the real cold season, so we eat a lot those, but they will be found even under snow if you pay attention (especially Myomyces). Among the amusing things regarding them is that I have encountered Cambodians harvesting them like combines and trashing the woods in the process . They have a market for them and dig them up whole. I wish they were more conscientious in the manner of harvesting but they tell me they grow in the highest mountains of Indochina and are highly valued as medicinal – these would be the greenish/yellow flavovirens and grey ones as well that grow in sandy soils with reindeer moss. The Cambodians do not seem to much differentiate between the several Tricholomas we find in late fall here in Jackpine flats and take them all with abandon. Curious that. It has been some years since I encountered the Cambodians, but I recall them claiming cancer curative properties, though I have grown a little unsure of what they told me then as with their English usage and the reliability of the quality of our communications.
Chaga — (Inonotus obliques)
Some of the most intensely fragrant and musk-like smells of the northern woods come from decomposing birch trees. The various fungal growths on birches have their traditional uses and include the warty looking growth (Inonotus obliques), generally referred to by its Russian name of Chaga. That one is widely used all across the northern Eurasian landmass to treat stomach cancer. Alexander Solzhenitsyn successfully used Chaga to cure himself of stomach cancer while imprisoned in the gulag (Their forced labor was largely logging the mature birch forests nearby and so chaga, if little else, was in plentiful supply.
My father, when he was employed as a cancer researcher, assayed this fungus for anti-tumor effects and did indeed detect promising activity. But this took place against the backdrop of elections. A new administration was voted into office in Washington and government contracts are the plums with which co-operation is rewarded. In this case, the contract was not renewed. It went to other (presumably more tractable) institutions with better insider tracks leading to how money gets allocated.
The Chaga study was dropped, but preliminary data indicated far more promising results for ulcers than with cancer — and why not? What village herbalist could be expected to differentiate between an open, bleeding ulcer or a cancer, either of which kills their patient with nearly identical symptoms? Anishnaabe healers of the upper Great Lakes use this fungus to treat hemorrhoids — problems arising just a little downstream on the same river of foodstuffs. I find chaga fascinating both visually and as a living entity with its own beauty, which is at least partly a function of its power to heal one body and decompose another — two sides of one coin.
Ladislav Hanka
Incredible story. Thanks for sharing!
I really struggle to trust anyone associated with Rogan
Sadly he has gone off the rails.
Just because Rogan is a critical thinker and not buying into the mainstream thought process?
I would say he’s gone to far the other way to not trust anybody.