Join us for a workshop on Fungal Pharmacology with Jesse Marksohn from Fungal Forest Farm.
The world of fungal medicine is vast. We will begin with a story of medicine and the life cycle of the fungus it was derived from. We will discuss some more general fungal ecology and relevant evolutionary events and talk about fungal medicines that are currently accepted in the west and their significance. Jesse will explain the ecological reasoning behind why fungi have such profound and broad scale functions in medicine. There is a lot of skepticism in this field but this core understanding us to the question, “if our culture is willing to believe in the legitimacy of our anabiotic‘s and ability to perform organ transplants or treat cholesterol imbalance then why would it be a stretch to believe in the medicine contained in all the fungi all around us?” Knowing the ecological reasoning behind these significant effects allows for a much more intuitive lens of where and why these medicines exists. Many herbal medicines are attributed to the plant they were extracted from, however many of these medicines have been found to be attributed to the endophitic fungi living within the hosts tissure. We will then transition into medicinal mushrooms being used in asias pharmaceutical industry and in TCM. Jesse will talk about species with limited clinical trials where more research is necessary such as lions mane and cognition, then talk about identification and collection of a few notable species in our ecosystems and simple to complex methods of preparation.