C: what we are going to talk about today is your latest book, and it's the Psilocybin Handbook for Women. And I came across that book when I was researching for the specifics of the of how psilocybin works in women, because it is different to how it works in men and that has something to do with the cycle, but also with the distribution of serotonin receptors in the brain, which is specific thing for females. And I studied medicine and I worked in neurology and then did intensive care and all that. So was deep inside neurotransmitter and receptor stuff. And I never heard of that before until I came over your blog article.

J: Oh, thank you.

C: yeah, I thank you. You enlightend me with that. Could you please tell our listeners why there is need for a specific female approach to psilocybin? And what does it mean beyond the scientific stuff, but also when it comes to the readers of the ritus of the passage, the rites of passage, so to say

J: Yeah, absolutely. A great question. So what we're learning is that psilocybin likely affects the female body a little bit differently than it would affect the male body. And that probably has to do with the binding. The serotonin affects the binding receptors or it affects binding at the receptor site is what I'm trying to say. And we have to look a little bit deeper up out in the research. I think that's really important that we continue research on that. So this is just some preliminary information that we have, but it also likely it affects the menstrual cycle, which we can discuss later. I won't get too deep into that right now, but I think it's also important to consider that there are major differences in the lived experiences of men and women. And women are more disproportionally affected by things like PTSD, chronic pain, just depression, anxiety. There are a lot of conditions that just simply disproportionately affect the female body, or they may affect the female body slightly differently. And what I started learning when I started diving into the research was that actually more women are using some psychedelic, just some psychedelics more than men are, which surprised me. But then the more I dug it didn't surprise me. And the reason for that is because I think women are really using psychedelics to self treat and that comes out in surveys and polls and including The 2020 Global Drug Survey shows that women are using psychedelics to self treat instead of using them recreationally, which men tend to do. Not that there's anything wrong with using psilocybin recreationally. We're just noticing that women are turning to these plant medicines to self treat. And the reason that really doesn't surprise me as a woman in the in the it's United States, where health care has a lot of problems, we women were largely excluded from early stage clinical trials until about the 1990s. And so that's had some dramatic ramifications for how we treat conditions in the female body. For one, I can look at this timeline that I always like to share when I'm being interviewed because I think it really illustrates this. So men had a drug for male sexual dysfunction in 1998 and everyone knows what that is. It’s viagra - it’s like this common household name at this point. And at that point in time, we didn't even have an accurate picture of what the clitoris looks like. So it has all this internal structure. And we didn't we didn't learn that until 2015 when a female urologist did some research on this and then fast forward to 2015, that's when women finally got a drug for female sexual dysfunction. And it's a name I don't even have in my head. I always have to look it up again to remember what it is. It's just that well, no, that's a 17 year gap from when when men got a drug for a condition to when women got a drug for a condition.

J: And I think that's a really dramatic spread there. And so I understand why women are turning to psychedelics. But we also, again, have very different lived experiences, and that matters too, in how we approach psychedelics. So the book really tries to look at all that intersection of the female body with the context of psilocybin,

C: awesome. Yeah, that's right about it. And that's all it is about is the first 130 pages. This is really a whole some introduction into what is to be known. And you mentioned a lot of correspondence you had with state of the art researches. There was one page where I read what you did with you talk Dr. Calder from Switzerland, and I thought, Oh, I have to email to her about the helioscope. And then next side there was and that's the hideous corp effect. And it's a really interesting thing. And the book by Hosler, who is a colleague and close co-worker and co-author of Dr. Calder as well, is I think, a standard setting for the German language area for those which which is the grammar and vocabulary of research and also of description of the phenomenology of not only psilocybin but psychedelics in whole. And whenever there will be in translation of the Hasler book, it's called Higher Self, you will love that.

J: I know I will. I appreciate that Helioscope metaphor so much that he created and that's so brilliant.

C: For listeners could you bracket up the metaphor please?

J: Yeah. So, so there is this term in the psychedelic literature called the helioscope effect. And as you mentioned, this is from Dr. Gregor Hasler, and it was shared to me by Dr. Abigail Calder. And so what it is, is that actually a scope is an instrument for looking at the sun, because you're not supposed to look directly at the sun, of course. And so when we are on psychedelics, we have our own sort of Helioscope effect where we are. So when we think of a Helioscope as an instrument for looking at the sun, it protects your eyes and also it gives you almost like a new filter of the sun you're seeing it at a different perspective and in a safe way, right? So when we are on psychedelics, we have a very similar effect happening where we can look at trauma almost viewing it through a Helioscope, if you will. And that gives us this safe distance to view the trauma from it. We can also reprocess it in a different way because not only are reviewing it from a safe distance, we're getting a new filter for it. And so it seems like that is such a great metaphor for explaining this the way that we can process trauma is on a psychedelics. So I love that.

C: So if you would burn your eyes when looking directly into your son, you would burn your soul. If you look into your trauma again and again. But the Helioscope effect of psychedelics prevents this burning and helps to.

J: And it's like almost as if we are stopping the triggering response that we have to thinking about our trauma or looking at our traumas. It reduces those triggers that we tend to have

C: That does not mean that instead of triggers there appear glimmers, but there's still a trigger. But it has not the same impact into what we have.

J: So well-said.

C: I totally love your enthusiastic way to, to look into the not only the subject, but also talking about that that's, you know, all your blog articles, everything I heard from you and other podcasts, there's such a lot of fire inside.

J: Thank you. Yeah, I'm very passionate about women's health especially. But as we dig into all of the research on psychedelics, I even get more excited about that because I do see so much potential for psychedelics to help with women's health, especially since it seems like women's health is often put on the back burner.

C: It is it is also in clinical studies and it is explained with the simple claim because it's too complicated because of the cycles. So they are excluded from clinical trials because it's too complicated. But here you go clinicians try all the medications, try all the protocols were invented on male individuals and male study groups and do your very best, have luck.

J: Absolutely. Yes.

C: So you've benefited your self from psilocybin with women health issues?

J: Yeah. So just to kind of take a step back and explain my history with women's health. So I have a condition called endometriosis and that affects one in ten people assigned female at birth. Occasionally, very rarely. It can affect the male body as well, but by and large it mostly affects the female body and it takes on average about ten years for women to get a diagnosis of this condition, which can be really frustrating. And there's not adequate treatments and there's no cure for it. It's very painful condition. It affects every facet of your life, and it certainly has done that with mine. So it's just it's a very complicated situation. But so recently, about five years ago, I had a hysterectomy and that helped me quite a bit. Although I really want to say that hysterectomy is not a cure for endometriosis, it can potentially help, but it's not a cure. And so that has helped me quite a bit. However, I still do have a lot of pain and it's just not as bad as it used to be before the hysterectomy. So psilocybin has helped me to a certain extent with this condition a little bit. In addition to the endometriosis I also get, which is very related to endometriosis, I get menstrual migraine where around the time of my where I would have a period, I no longer have one because I don't have uterus anymore. But where I would get my period, I get a bad migraine essentially, and it's one that can be really, really debilitating. I will vomit and I need to be in a dark room and lie down and I had a dramatic reduction in menstrual migraine symptoms after doing my psilocybin journey and then going back cycling, back to the endometriosis topic. Another thing that I found through my research, which just fascinated me was that researchers did an experiment with four psilocybin extracts and so they're like mushroom extracts in water. And then they took cells from a lab and put the extracts on the cells and they noticed a reduction in pro-inflammatory cytokines. And I think I forget what it's called, it's called Cox two. I'm forgetting the full name of it, but a reduction in the expression of Cox two, which is just, it's almost like a pain signal that people feel.

C: Cyclooxygenase.

J: there we go. Thank you, Doctor. And so what we learned from this experiment and again, this is just an initial study, but it reduced these pro-inflammatory cytokines and they were the researchers were not digging into whether or not psilocybin could help with endometriosis. However, my brain went light bulb moment here and I was thinking, well, I wonder if it could help with endometriosis in that capacity. And so what we do know about endometrial growths or endometrial lesions is that or endometriosis lesions as I should say, they express pro-inflammatory cytokines and they express that Cox too or they overexpress it. And so that's why we have a lot of inflammation in our bodies and a lot of pain when we have endometriosis. So I do see some potential for psilocybin to help with that. Again, we need actual research on whether this really does help with endometriosis, but I see some promising avenues for researchers to start to study.

C: Yeah. Thank you. One of the last questions I wanted to ask you, if you see anything, any research which is worth doing in the next years. So Endemetrios is, is one of those I'm intrigued

C: by the fact that this migraines did well cease after one time intake, you wrote about your first journey in the book and it was also a very spiritual journey as far as I understood what happened to you and also impacted, well, your self and your relationship and many aspects of your life. That definitely has something to do with the migraine as well. Because not only the cycle and has an influence on migraine activity and and severe illness of migraines, but also so many factors of your everyday life, of your psychosocial net, so to say.

C: And did that last for longer?

J: Yeah. You know, it's actually really fascinating! It is because people keep asking me like how, how often are using psilocybin? And I'm like, Well, not very often. I did a journey. So with the macro dose last August and I haven't done one since, but I have done a little bit of Microdosing. But that journey is was incredibly powerful and profound for me. It did reduce pain and that was lasting for about, I would say, six months or so. I did have a return to some menstrual migraine, but not as intense as before. So it had, you know, lasting benefits from this. Again, I can't attribute it directly to the psilocybin. We don't know for sure if that's the case, but that's what I suspect. And then, in terms of my my wellbeing and my social life and things like that, it has really helped me quite a bit. So I used to have a lot of anxiety about this concept of eventually losing my parents and ever since I did the journey, I now know I have the tools to get through that really difficult time in my life that's coming at some point before it seems like I would never be able to handle that or get through it. And now I know I can. Even though it will be very difficult, I have the tools within my own brain to help me get through that. Plus, I have an incredible support system. And one of the things that I think we learn when we use psilocybin is: we may know that we have a support system, but to really feel it, that was a sensation that I got during my journey. I could feel all these people who love me and I love them back. I could feel their love, you know, I could actually just feel it. And that was really incredible. But circling back to what you asked, you asked if there's something that I'm hoping researchers dig into more as we move forward in the psychedelic research era, I really think that people need to be focusing on the female body, of course, but also very particularly, how does psilocybin affect the menstrual cycle? We have some preliminary research that suggests that it does potentially cause a period to come a little early after use. And I'm getting this from anecdotal reports from people in my Instagram, direct messages and things like that. But also Johns Hopkins University did some research on this. Some case studies of women reported that their cycles came early. Additionally, some women have reported that there's a return to having a period after a time of not having one or amenorrhea, and then also that it has the potential to reregulate a cycle after a period of irregularity. So a lot of conditions cause an irregular menstrual cycle. So there's probably some potential here for psilocybin to help with these conditions. And these might be premenstrual dysphoric disorder, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which I think you're you have done some research on and then also potentially endometriosis. So I do not want to classify endometriosis as a menstrual cycle disorder because it's absolutely an inflammatory condition. And yes, absolutely, it's much more than that. So what we're seeing is that or what researchers are thinking is that so our cycles occur along what's called the hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis, which you

J: just are well versed in. And what I mean by that is there's a feedback loop where when when hormone hormone kicks off, it tells another hormone what to do. And then we also have what's called the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, which is really involved in our stress response. And when we use psilocybin, we're activating our serotonin receptors along that stress response. And these two axes overlap. So it's not a stretch to assume that psilocybin journey activating along that stress response impacts the menstrual cycle potentially in a positive way, or vice versa - where we are and our cycles may impact our journey if we're doing a macro dose and it may matter where we are, our cycles and also for a macro dose and for a micro

C: And that was why I wanted to drop in. Are we talking Microdosing or Microdosing in this case? Where do you see that difference? Also, how to integrate it in your everyday life. You can't be microdosing each weekend.

J: Right? Yeah, if you were microdosing every weekend, you know you would build up a tolerance. And of course who has the time for that you know because you do want to block out quite a good amount of time to do a macrodose. So I would see that people could be macrodosing, you know, once or twice a year or maybe more, maybe a little bit more, but not too frequently. And then with and it may matter where we are in our cycles. I did talk to an indigenous wisdom expert and she shared that it's probably better to do a macro dose near your ovulation time rather than as we get closer to our menstruation. And that is simply because our bodies become a little bit more insulin resistant. In the luteal phase, which is the second half of our cycles. And so it's really hard. So a macrodose can be kind of energy depleting on the body and that can be much more difficult towards your cycle, towards your your bleed. So when you're closer to ovulation, you have more sort of energy availability in your body. So that was one thing to consider. And then in terms of microdosing, or if people don't know a micro dose is almost like a 10th of a gram, you know, around there, there's a range that could be working for a microdose, whereas a macrodose is something more like two three, three and a half of a gram somewhere in there. And so with Microdosing, my Indigenous wisdom expert recommended following whatever protocol you're going to follow. There are several out there like standard stack or the Fadiman protocol, and I do I do write about those in the book, but follow that whatever protocol you're doing, follow it for three months and then and keep track of your symptoms throughout your cycle, especially if you're having some type of symptom. Note if there's a reduction in symptoms, all of that because it takes about three months for that microdosing to really for you to really know how the microdosing is affecting you and affecting your cycle.

C: You talking about this as if it would be legal. And you are from Tennessee and it is decriminalized where you are?

J: Not yet. It's not. No, Tennessee is like you're not allowed anything. So yeah, no, unfortunately.

C: I want also repeat for the German listeners up to now it's criminal in here and we do have an option in Europe that is in the Netherlands. They do not have the above the surface mushrooms in a legal way, but truffles, they differ a little bit in the dosing. So you have to just know your stuff and it's possible to do. But whoever is as optimistic as I am for the near future, there is such a lot of work already. There's a big trial in Germany that is the Episode trial. And you've heard of that. I'm sure it's it's about how to bring psilocybin and psychotherapy together and things that really

C: wonderful, important thing. Also with regards to the two-eyed seeing which will be my next question. And there is some work in solid German universities and it is a matter of time and nothing else until it will be broadly available. And talking about psychedelics and substances and

C: marijuana is an atypical psychedelic that is planned to be legal from January 2024 in Germany.

J: wonderful.

C: Yes, it is. You may have some some little amounts and a little amount is 25 grams.

C: That's the solid work that what was done there and it's pretty awesome for many people and helps them to self treat conditions that are unseen by the medical community. So coming back to seeing and unseen and two-eyed seeing that is integrating Indigenous wisdom and you referenced to your nature medicine woman together with Western medicine protocols. What do you get from that and where does that lead us to

J: Yeah. So the two I think concept for anyone who's not familiar is a concept that was introduced by a Mi'kmaq elder named Albert Marshall, and he was from the Alaska Stoney First Nation, I believe. And so he brought this idea to mainstream Western science, where we need to be bridging Western medicine and all the research that's coming out with with indigenous wisdom. So science is a process, or we all think of science as a process of doing things over and over again to reproduce similar results to confirm those results. But that's exactly what indigenous cultures have been doing for centuries with especially psilocybin, which is considered a sacred substance. And so it's really important that we bridge these two. And I think that's when we get the best results for people. And that's because if you think about the context of there's a term in psychedelic language called set and setting, and so what that means is that as you're going into a journey, you want to be in the right mindset. That’s because your mindset matters going into it, if you're all stressed out or panicked, it could lead to a difficult journey. And then setting is what's around you. So your environment, who's around you, do you feel comfortable in your environment? Are you inside, are you outside? And so a lot of our practices surrounding set and setting really come from indigenous wisdom and or indigenous traditions. And so I think those lend us having to having a really good the potential for having the best experience possible is when we really focus on those Indigenous practices that do help really calm your mind, calm your body and keep you in an environment that's really conducive to having a better journey. So yeah, and it's just important to honour the, the indigenous cultures that really gave us psilocybin in the first place.

C: Talking about a better journey as compared to a bad journey? Or usually refers to that trip. What is it? Bad trip? And you wrote it appears more often in women, as far as I understood. There's a reason for that. But what to do to prevent a bad trip? And what would you recommend doing when it happens despite all measures taken upfront?

J: Yeah, this was really great information from Abigail Calder. She was amazing to talk to, but she, she talked a lot about how we do do need to acknowledge that people do have bad experiences or oftentimes what we're trying to call them instead is challenging experiences. because what we're learning through research is that even when people do have a difficult or challenging experience in psilocybin, it could it could be really profound. So people do report that it's even though they've had a difficult trip, it's in their top ten most profound experiences of their lives. You could just have a challenging part of a trip. Your entire trip could be really challenging. It just really depends. But what that might mean is having some anxiety crop up or seeing things you don't want to see in terms of the visuals or just just feeling kind of out of out of place or disoriented. Those things could lead to a difficult journey. But what's what's sort of protective about that is trying to go into your journey with a mindset of being open to whatever the Mushroom wants to teach you. If you go in with all these intentions, I mean, you can have some intentions, but if you're so focused on them, you could get stuck in sort of this thought cycle that's not very beneficial or conducive to a journey. So going into a journey with just the most open mind possible about letting the trip take you where it's going to take you, that can really help in not having a lot of stress beforehand or deadlines on your plate coming up. Just really blocking out enough time to feel comfortable to go through the whole journey. I think that can also be really protective in terms of getting through a difficult journey. If you're experiencing one, you know, lean in to your tools that you already have within your body to calm yourself, sit with the discomfort, that sort of thing, can really also help. It did help me. I had a difficult spot in one of my journeys, and it was it was it was good to just sit with that discomfort a little bit. Even though we don't like to sit with discomfort, it was really important for me to do that. Besides, I couldn't do anything else. I couldn't unsubscribed from the journey. I couldn't end it. I just had to ride it out and it was okay. It really was profound for me.

C: The well, there is a drug that would end the hallucinogenic effects of psilocybin at once which is risperidone, it’s an antagonist for the serotonin receptor group but it is not recommended to do that. Because if the trip does not feel comfortable, then there is a reason for that. And then you just have to to sit through that. And it depends so much on the setting to, well, how you are guided through this I guess.

J: Right. Absolutely. And, you know, I think it was Dr. Calder who brought up a really important thing, and that is the whoever you're with, if you're with a guide or a psychedelic assisted therapist who's ever with you helping you navigate the journey, they shouldn't necessarily be interfering with your journey. It should be kind of unfolding as it is. But they're there to keep an eye on you, keep you safe, help you if you do come up with a difficult part, but not really interfering with that process and that that because that could that could sort of interrupt the whole thing that you have going on. So that was an important thing that she mentioned.

C: Well, that is a kind of surrender to the wisdom of the mushrooms, so to speak, for both sides, for the one who takes them and the one who guides them. Just accept that you have do you don't have to jump in at every occasion and try to form the route, which won't work anyway.

J: Right. Yes, absolutely.

C: There are if you think microdosing, there are some specific fields that affect women, both men as well. So one might be potential sexual health benefits. But also and I was intrigued to read that when it comes to parenting.

C: Oh, yes.

C: I was surprised to read about this because I grew up in a time where Germany was heavily influenced by the American war on drugs. The German culture is heavily influenced by American culture in many, many ways. So something that happens in the US happens ten years later in Germany. That is hip hop and gravity and grunge and everything like ten years later. And also the war on drugs came ten years after the Vietnam War. So then it reached Germany. And we did have slogans on t shirts as pupils with strong Without drugs, stuff like that. So people are primed. That's taking drugs is inherently dangerous and will risk your life and you will go down the drain to to some very unpleasant state, not only during your journey or trip, as it was called then, but like all your life. That does not happen on psilocybin.

J: No.

C: That is one thing. It is one of the safest substances to consume despite not being very funny each time, but it's one of the safest. But then you come up with parenting. And what is the point with that that it's so counterintuitive to what I just told you about my socialization with substances.

J: Yeah. You know, obviously, the war on drugs in the US and any ramifications that the US spread to the rest of the world with that have created a lot of damage and misinformation and or disinformation about these substances. So, as you mentioned, psilocybin is one of the least toxic substances. If we're talking about drugs, it's on par with marijuana. In terms of its toxicity, very low toxicity. So that's great. And in terms of parenting, what I discovered is that certainly we have to consider whether or not someone who is pregnant might benefit from psilocybin use if they're having a mental health disorder that needs treatment. And so the people, the experts that I talked to said, yeah, we need to take that into consideration. And for example, the indigenous wisdom expert that I worked with, she talked about how when she was pregnant she was grappling with alcoholism and her alcohol use disorder and she said taking Psilocybin while being pregnant helped her to abstain from alcohol. And so there was certainly no harm done to her child. And there's no evidence of harm out there from psilocybin on pregnant people. We're not doing studies on pregnant people, of course, but we need to take that into consideration that the indigenous cultures have done this historically. And then with breastfeeding too, I incorporate a bunch of information in the book on the half life of psilocybin. So if, for example, if you wanted to use psilocybin, while breastfeeding and you were worried about any of that being passed on to your infants, you can manage strategy, create strategies around your usage with especially with microdosing for breastfeeding. So that information is out there. And then in terms of just relationships, the the family environment, I see a lot of potential for psilocybin to help with this sort of family unit. For example. You know, we all I mean, kids play all the time, right? And it's a little bit harder as an adult to let go of all of your to do list and you're stressed and all the tasks that are on your plate and get down on the floor and play with your kid, you know, play Legos or whatever it is. And so psilocybin helps us to get back to this state of childlike wonder and or and so I'm not saying that people need to be tripping while they're caring for their kids. That's not what I recommend. However, if you go and do a journey, there's a little bit of a lasting effect linking you back to that childlike state of wonder and awe. And so I think it helps people feel much more present with their kids being able to play, get down on the floor, enjoy time. It helps reduce some of the stressors of parenting. And then also a consideration is helping to end cycles of trauma. So there are these things called adverse childhood experiences in scientific literature. It's called ACEs for short. And so ACEs are things that happened in childhood that were traumatic. So that could be living through a war or living through a natural disaster, having abuse or neglect in your home, domestic violence in the home, living through systemic racism. All of these things create or are adverse childhood experiences and they actually alter your stress response. And they can alter your DNA that you pass down to your children. And so often we don't have any control over how many adverse childhood experiences we've had. One in six adults has had four or more ACEs and when you've had four or more aces, your child is more than three times more likely to have four or more ACEs themselves. And so we this problem in our society of just passing this trauma down. And so I see potential for psilocybin to help ease some of the stressors and things that we're facing with our own traumas so that we help to end these cycles. Now, we may not be able to do anything about passing down the genetic aspect of it. However, trauma can occur because we're perpetuating the things that we learned from our own childhood. So if we grew up in a very volatile household, we may end up having very volatile households as well. And so that environment can also pass it down. And that's where I see the potential for psilocybin to help and sort of stopping the passing down of the aces. Because one of the things that's really protective for children in terms of preventing them from having aces is having this really healthy family environment. And so if we can do all the things that we can to create that healthy family environment, we're setting the kids up for success later on.

C: This is the most precise and concise definition of passing trauma over generations that I ever heard. I don't know if everybody understood what was said in the last 5 minutes. This is really, really important not only considering behavior and how you treat your kids and how you treat yourself, which is the same essentially. But also you talked about epigenetics. So there is something how the book of your life, the book of your DNA, is read. And the words may be the same from one individual to the other, but how you pronounce them, how often you read them, how much you get stuck with one word, and don't come to the next paragraph. That is epigenetics. And that is something that deeply impacts our life, our behavior really on the surface. And also how well, how diseases will come up in your life and influence your later health. Thank you for the awesome explanation.

J: You’re welcome. And just continuing this talk about ACEs, I think it's really important to know that that changes of your stress response, there is some permanence to that. And so when a child who's had some aces gets into adulthood, they're more they're disproportionately more likely to have things like type two diabetes, obesity, all of these things that are affect our metabolic health. And so your life history really keeps informing the things that you go through down the road in terms of your health. And so one thing that really surprised me when I was doing some of the research was that if you've had four or more ACEs, you're more likely to have worse menopause symptoms. The circles back to the women's health aspect, which is really interesting, that our traumas could affect how we go through our experience in menopause. And so, you know, we also don't want to be passing this trauma down to kids and then affecting their physical health as well in terms of increasing their risk for type two diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol, all of these things. And that could then continue to affect their lives going forward.

C: Yes, that is obesity definitely is an answer to stress. I recently read a chapter, a book chapter on that. And I'll see if I can send it to you. I've got it on paper, but I do my very best. I will mail that to you afterwards because the brain works to stay alive. And in some states and in some constellations, it does not give attention to what happens to the body, but it just gets energy to survive. The egoistic brain theory It is called and it's well, it is selfish, actually, but it's a matter of survival. It has kind of a reason to perform. It's so really interesting that maybe people can. I can understand your enthusiasm about this.

C: You nailed the term entourage effect. That is something that might be until we come back to the women talk, we do hear that is something that might be more important for females than men. And that is interesting because studies often are done with the psilocin or psilocybin in their cleared or synthetic formulation, and that is something completely different. So that would be like eating protein versus eating a steak.

J: Yeah. That's really interesting. And so the entourage effect is, if anyone isn't aware, is when two compounds tend to work well together to produce an effect. So we we often talk about the entourage effect in terms of cannabis. And so we can think of these different compounds like CBD and THC in the cannabis plant working really well together to produce results. Like CBD, maybe can help keep a person calmer on THC because THC can bring up anxiety for some people or paranoia and things like that. But we're talking about with psilocybin, there's potential that the female hormones may have some type of entourage effect. Now, we don't know if estrogen creates a better effect or a negative effect. We're still trying to study that. But there is evidence that there is some type of interaction there. We just don't know all the specifics of that yet.

C: But it is promising, I guess.

J: Yes, I think so. Yeah. I think it could be very promising that and again, this would come back to where we are in our cycles really may matter. We need more research on that and I'm looking forward to people continuing to study that. So we I think these things are yet to be elucidated fully, but I'm excited that people are looking into it.

C: This prompts us to maybe preferring the natural substance and its natural occurrence in a mushroom or a truffle, rather than using a synthetic solution with which will come. There is a lot of psychedelic investment right now and there are many companies and that has an upside which maybe is the more popularity that's more widespread information. But also there is a capitalization of the substance and of the supply chains and all that. So we will see where that leads us. And we might be old school right now with our inner orientation to the grown substance.

J: yeah, you know, I'm still in that concept of, you know, I would prefer the natural substance rather than using some type of synthetic option. I understand why pharmaceutical companies are moving towards that direction of creating synthetic psilocybin. Obviously, they want to capitalize on it, as you mentioned, and I'm a little weirded out by that. I don't like that that capitalization on this sacred substance. I do think we need really regulation out there in terms of I want to know if I'm purchasing mushrooms from some dispensary or something like that. I want to know what it is. This strain, all the compounds that are in it. I want to know that. So that type of regulation, similar to we have a lot of cannabis regulation in the US where I can pull up when I go to a dispensary or if I'm thinking about going to a dispensary to buy cannabis, I can look up the product that I want to buy and look at the certificate of analysis and see how much pesticides are in it, or if they're using chemicals and see the exact amount of THC and CBD and other cannabinoids in the cannabis plants that are used for this product. And so or that are actually in the product specifically. And I think that is really important and it would be helpful with civil and because if you're ordering psilocybin capsules on, you know, on a back channel or something like that in an underground fashion, it's always beneficial to test your substance to make sure there's not something in it that you don't want to ingest. And so I do want the natural part of the natural substance of psilocybin to have greater access for people and for people to feel safe purchasing it. That's important. But I do get weirded out by the synthetic issue or the topic of synthetic psilocybin. I'm wondering, does it really have those same effects? And maybe I'm uneducated about that. I need to learn more.

C: I really have to to repeat myself. This is a very comprehensive and great approach to to the art of mushrooming. Do you plan to translate it into German? Or someone not you obviously

J: Oh yeah. I mean, obviously I couldn't personally do that, but yeah, I don't know what my publisher has planned in terms of translation for other languages. I would love that. I've certainly had a lot of requests. So hint hint publisher, we need translations out there.

C: Yeah, we need to flood him with emails

C: Yeah yeah there were some smart question, but it's lost on the way. Sorry.

J: No, that's okay.

J: Yeah. Thank you very much. I think we covered a lot of different subjects you also covered in here and now we're able to to explain in more depth than it is possible in the written book. Also to do some connections that cannot be written but can really easy be explained Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your mission. I would love to make a photo of you in your little research corner here.

J: Oh, yeah.

C: For people listening, you're definitely should search this photo because there's your book and there is this mushroom on the wall and there are some mushrooms in the glass. So that's a really awesome surrounding. Is this the interview corner or is it your working space?

J: It’s both. I have like a little day bed or sofa here, and I like to sit here and I have this little, like lap desk that I use. And so I just feel really cozy when I'm researching and writing rather than sitting at a desk. I know I'm weird.

C: Yeah, well, I think normal is a really strange concept. I love to have a little insight into your weird corner. Thank you very much.

J: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.