Wellness Unfiltered | Episode 10 | ~60 mins
This week, the cabin gets a very special guest. Mason Taylor, founder of SuperFeast, Daoist philosophy devotee, and quite possibly the most passionate man alive on the subject of medicinal mushrooms.
Mason takes us through the ancient Chinese three-treasure system of Jing, Chi and Shen, and why your goal should never be immortality, but rather arriving at elderhood with your full self intact. He breaks down the difference between a genuinely therapeutic mushroom product and a glorified chocolate powder, explains why Tremella made Irene's skin look extraordinary, and reveals the underground Australian fungi nobody's talking about yet.
Justin wants to know if 2008 pickled onion brine counts as a sports supplement. Irene has a rant-slash-rave about France's forever chemicals ban and why the brands who quietly reformulated are not getting the standing ovation they were hoping for.
🌿 Daoist Philosophy & Longevity
The Dao (Taoism): An ancient philosophy for moving through life more synergistically with people and the world. Mason describes it as "real deep personal development, frameworks so life happens a little more smoothly."
Longevity ≠ Immortality: The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to arrive at elderhood with enough vitality that you've done your work, tackled new projects, contributed to community, and refined yourself — without projecting unprocessed baggage onto everyone around you.
✨ The Three Treasures: Jing, Chi & Shen
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Three Treasures form the foundation of health, vitality and spiritual cultivation. You are always either cultivating them or leaking them — and every practice, herb, and lifestyle choice sits in one of those two camps.
First Treasure
Jing
Your superannuation of vitality. Bones, sex drive, the ability to age without degenerating early. Think of it as the ship. If you're burning the candle at both ends, you're leaking Jing. Stored in the kidneys; both inherited and replenished through herbs, rest and lifestyle.
Second Treasure
Chi (Qi)
The crew that runs the ship. Your capacity to integrate life, mobilise yourself, animate the machine of your body. Influenced by diet, breathwork, movement, emotional state and doing work that generates charge.
Third Treasure
Shen
The cargo. The culmination of your personality, your mind, the refined diamond of who you are. Resides in the Heart; governs mental clarity, emotional wellbeing and presence. The goal: protect it through the journey so your wisdom is fully intact in old age.
The core Daoist health question: Are you cultivating or leaking your treasures right now? Any herb, practice or choice can be measured against this single lens.
🍄 The Superior Herbs: A 2,000-Year-Old Framework
The Shen Nong Ben Xiao Jing (~200 CE): The Divine Farmer's Materia Medica, one of the founding texts of Chinese medicine. It identified a handful of superior herbs — Reishi, Ginseng, Rehmannia, Goji, Schizandra, Eucommia Bark, Astragalus — and specified not just which herbs, but exactly which microclimate conditions were required for them to carry their therapeutic treasure.
These aren't symptom-treatment herbs. They're taken over a long period to protect the body's treasure and prevent degeneration. The earlier you start, the more constitutional shifting you do.
Why adaptogens work: These herbs intelligently restore regulation in the body. Think of them as "little friends" that come in and help the body find its own balance, rather than forcing a pharmacological outcome.
🍄 The Key Mushrooms, Explained
Lion's Mane — The Neuroscience Catches Up
The Research
Lion's Mane contains hericenones (fruiting body) and erinacines (mycelium) — compounds shown in research to stimulate the production of Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) and Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). These proteins support the survival, growth and maintenance of neurons. Human trials have shown improvements in mild cognitive impairment. Research is ongoing.
Mason's mother's stroke recovery: Mason used Lion's Mane during his mother's stroke recovery at a time when it was considered extremely fringe. She has since made what some doctors call a miraculous, and Mason calls a practical, recovery. The science has now caught up with what Daoist herbalists knew centuries ago.
The 2-Minute Noodle Problem: Mason's term for venture-capitalist brands that spot a market gap and add a token amount of Lion's Mane extract to a gummy or chocolate. Particularly painful when people with serious diagnoses reach for the quick, cheap version because they don't have time to research.
Tremella — The Snow Mushroom
Polysaccharide hydration: Tremella contains glucuronoxylomannans — polysaccharides that function similarly to hyaluronic acid in their ability to attract and hold water. Some research suggests Tremella's smaller particle size allows deeper tissue penetration than hyaluronic acid alone.
The lung-skin axis: In TCM, the Lung organ system governs the skin. Tremella nourishes the Lung as a yin tonic, and the skin radiance is the downstream outcome.
Irene's personal experience: Nine years ago, after having Mason on her first ever podcast, Irene started taking Tremella and Jing. The difference in how she felt and looked was, in her words, "unexplainable." Not placebo. It shone from the inside out. She is now deeply, publicly committed to starting again — by the tablespoon.
Schizandra Berry — The Five Flavour Fruit
Five tastes, five organs: Schizandra uniquely affects all five major organ systems (liver, kidneys, heart, lung, spleen) through its five flavours — sour, sweet, bitter, salty and pungent. A powerful systemic tonic and one of the most famous Taoist beauty herbs in existence.
Liver support: Among the best-evidenced adaptogens for hepatoprotective activity, with research into lignans (schisandrin B in particular) showing measurable liver-protective effects.
Reishi — The Mushroom of Immortality
Immune modulation: Contains beta-glucans, triterpenes (ganoderic acids) and polysaccharides extensively researched for effects on NK cells, T-cells and macrophages. The most studied immunomodulatory mushroom in the world.
Exohormesis: Growing Reishi in stressful, wild-simulating conditions causes it to produce more complex secondary metabolites as a survival response — mirroring the hormesis principle seen in exercise, cold exposure and fasting. A mild stressor that produces a stronger adaptive response.
✅ How to Know You're Getting the Real Thing
- Fruiting body, not mycelium on grain. The fruiting body is where the therapeutic compounds live. Check the label.
- Extracted, not just ground. Many beneficial compounds (beta-glucans, triterpenes) require hot water or dual extraction to become bioavailable. "Herb equivalency" on a label may just mean whole ground product.
- Wood-grown substrate. Mushrooms should be grown on wood, not grain. Grain-substrate mycelium has been shown to contain high levels of starch filler.
- Third-party testing. SuperFeast tests for far more pesticides and heavy metals than required by US or Australian organic certifications.
- TGA Listed. SuperFeast is now TGA-listed as a registered medicine in Australia — an almost impossibly expensive process for a small company, but one that gives independent credibility to the therapeutic claims.
- Supply chain transparency. SuperFeast sources from small, obscure farms in remote mountain regions. Mason visits them. Wild harvesting is used where responsible; they move to wild-simulating cultivation five years before unsustainable levels become a problem.
🧠 Psychedelics vs Functional Mushrooms
The line is clear now. Functional tonic mushrooms are non-psychedelic, legal, accessible and taken for long-term vitality. Psychedelic mushrooms are a separate category.
Where they overlap: Mason sponsors MIND Medicine Australia, which runs psychedelic-assisted therapy training. SuperFeast supplies Lion's Mane, Cordyceps, Chaga and Reishi to graduates specifically for integration, to help the body and nervous system process and recover from deep psychedelic or shamanic work.
Jing for the deep dive: If you don't have the foundational Jing reserves to undergo deep spiritual or psychedelic work, Mason recommends building them first — so you can do the work without depleting yourself.
🔬 Underground & Emerging Mushrooms of 2026
Tiger Milk Mushroom
Not widely known outside Singapore, where most research has been conducted. Offers an interesting new pathway to immunity. Worth watching closely.
Cordyceps Gunnii
A native Australian cordyceps found in Tasmania and Victoria. Grows on the snow moth caterpillar. Being wild-harvested by small Australian mycologists and appearing at specialist markets.
Ganoderma Applanatum
The "Artist's Conch." Gaining serious attention in oncology research. Endemic in both Australia and China. Mason expects it to become a significant area of therapeutic focus.
On Australian adaptogens: While Australian indigenous medicine was not documented and systematised in the same way as Chinese medicine, the knowledge exists and deserves respect and support. Mason is enthusiastic about the growing attention to native varieties.
🌸 Mason's Personalised Recommendations
- For everyone starting out: Begin with Jing to see whether you have a gap and leakage in that kidney-water foundational system. Take it for 2 to 3 months, especially going into winter.
- For women (daily baseline): I AM Gaia — SuperFeast's women's regulatory blend. Blood-building, blood-invigorating, uterine toning and relevant across the whole female lifecycle from teen to post-menopause.
- For everyone (daily): Mason's Mushrooms — eight mushrooms in one formula. Add to coffee, chai, smoothies or soups. Heat-stable. Take consistently for 2 to 3 months going into winter and watch what happens to immunity.
- Tremella as the "dessert" mushroom: Yin-nourishing, lung and stomach tonic. Acts like hyaluronic acid, carries 500 times its molecular weight in hydration and delivers it through the lung to the skin. Radiance from the inside out. A teaspoon straight from the jar is a perfectly valid method.
- Schizandra Berry: The five-flavour fruit. A yin tonic, liver herb and beauty elixir in one. Takes all the organs and brings them into harmony. Even more famous as a beauty herb than Tremella. Better taken in drinks than food.
- Silica + Tremella combo: Mason and Lee both flag the synergy between silica and Tremella for skin beautification from the inside — noted especially for those who have just launched a silica product.
The key mindset shift: Stop thinking of these as supplements. Think of them as a herbal practice. Once they're integrated into your daily rhythm — in your coffee, in your chai — they become invisible and consistent. Consistency is everything.
🥒 Pickle Juice: The Sports Science
Justin has been watching footy and noticing that athletes keep chugging pickle juice. So Lee and Irene investigated. Here's what the science actually says.
The Study (Miller et al., 2010)
Athletes given 1ml per kilogram of body weight of pickle juice mid-cramp stopped cramping approximately 37% faster than water alone, and 45% faster than no treatment. The cramping relief occurred too quickly to be explained by electrolyte absorption — electrolytes take longer. What's happening instead: the acetic acid (vinegar) activates transient receptor potential (TRP) channels in the throat and stomach, triggering an inhibitory nerve reflex that tells the misfiring alpha motor neurons to calm down. It's a nerve reset, not just a salt top-up.
Electrolytes are still present: Pickle juice contains sodium (~500mg per 100ml), potassium and some magnesium. For heavy sweating during intense physical exertion, it does replenish what's lost. The key phrase being: during physical exertion.
Night cramps: The same neurological mechanism likely explains why pickle juice helps nocturnal leg cramps — that 2am cramp that makes you leap out of bed feeling tasered. Worth trialling if this is a regular issue.
Justin's situation: As a sedentary sports viewer rather than sports doer, his electrolyte situation during the match is probably fine. A glass of water and some nuts will see him through. The 2008 jar of pickled onions in his fridge has been retired.
✨ Forever Chemicals, France & the Quiet Reformulation
Irene's rant. Well-earned.
The rave: France banned PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, think Teflon-like compounds) in cosmetics and beauty care products. This ban came into effect in January 2026, making France one of the first nations to impose such a restriction.
What are PFAS? A class of over 10,000 synthetic chemicals with extremely strong carbon-fluorine bonds, making them resistant to heat, water, oil and microbial degradation. They do not break down in the environment or in the body. They are found in almost all tested human blood samples globally. Associated with hormone and immune disruption, increased risk of certain cancers (particularly kidney and testicular), thyroid disruption and reproductive effects.
The quiet reformulation: Estée Lauder Double Wear — one of the world's most beloved long-wear foundations — has been reformulated. TikTok and Instagram are flooded with side-by-side comparisons, noting changes in finish and feel. Almost nobody is asking why. The answer is the French ban. Clinique and other brands with waterproof formulas have also quietly reformulated; waterproof products were among the highest-PFAS categories in beauty.
The rant: These brands had these chemicals in their products for years. In some cases, decades. They did not remove them out of passion for their customers' health. They removed them because they were legally required to. That distinction matters, even if the outcome — cleaner products — is a positive one.
The silver lining: Because major cosmetics brands manufacture globally and cannot easily maintain different formulations for different markets, the French regulation has effectively driven reformulation worldwide — including for Australian consumers, who have no equivalent domestic PFAS cosmetics ban. The French have effectively improved beauty products for all of us.
Still worth scrutinising: Even reformulated products are not "clean beauty." Silicones and other synthetic ingredients remain. The removal of PFAS is a meaningful step — it is just not a complete one.
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