Supple-mental?

It’s all just harm reduction after a point in one’s life unless you’ve been one of the rare few who has always been mindful of health and mental hygiene. You live a normal life of not paying attention or flatly ignoring the gifts you’re born with. You eat whatever you want; fill you body and brain with whatever garbage passes in front of your mouth (some more toxic than others but this isn’t a confessional). Then you wake up one day and you’re not living in a body that does what you need it to do. Then you put age on top of that and you’ve got decisions to make. It was, in my case, the decision to make changes, some drastic and then some not so much.

In the not so much category, mainly because I drift in and out of mindfulness about what I put in my mouth in the dietary sense, I started taking a grocery list of supplements in addition to largely changing the quantity and quality of the food I eat (to varying degrees and in intervals long and short). The main issue is that at one point I was taking so many that it was impossible to tell which had any benefit and which were just redundant for anyone with a moderately healthy diet. It was a while back that I stopped taking most of them just to see if my body could get by on what came over the transom in my diet. The result was, over the long term, I found that my diet wasn’t enough. Eating healthily is damn near a full-time job and with the rigors of working and commuting etc. I end up sometimes just fueling up on what’s available. It in no way approaches my human garbage can approach of days gone by but there are short spells where I’m just not caring for this vessel the way I should be. It’s back on track for the most part but it was time to add something else to the diet and exercise regimen. 

The first thing I added was a whopping daily dose of probiotics and pre-biotics. There was an immediate improvement in digestion, which led right away to more energy and mental alertness. The latter was exciting enough that it impelled me to greater mindfulness over what I eat (for the most part). We will consider this experiment in bio-hacking a resounding success. There were marked improvements right away. No measurement are necessary when you can feel it.

My most recent addition has been a lion’s main mushroom supplement. I’ve read countless articles on the benefits. There is no shortage of reading material on it. You can buy it in every form imaginable; powder, capsules, energy drinks, tea and even a high octane coffee blend. 

It could be entirely my imagination but there seemed to be an immediate effect. The enhanced alertness and energy was there. An ongoing rash I suffer due to an unspecified auto-immune issue has lessened (but not disappeared). Nagging blue funks have lessened (but not entirely gone away). REM cycle sleep and dreams increased, and there is perhaps even a heightened libido, though that’s probably due to sleeping a bit better. 

I wasn’t ready to call the addition to my dietary routine a success right away. You read about possible effects and then they happen, but how much could just be figments of the imagination? How much was me willing it all to be so? It’s still here though after two months so let’s call this all good and put a check in the positives column. I’m going to continue and possible up the dose or add other mushrooms to the mix. I’m also going to reintroduce large daily doses of Vitamin C and Magnesium to the menu and see where that goes. They are both said to boost the immune system, and the latter is also a digestive aid and I know people who have successfully used Magnesium to lessen the impact of headaches. We shall see.

In the meantime, here’s some light reading on the medical benefits of this hairy mushroom: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/lions-mane-mushroom#section6

Happy hacking.