We caught up with Marko and Daniela to discuss Entrepreneurship and Mushrooms
Nice to meet you both! Can you tell our readers a little more about your business?
Antioxi is a marketplace that brings the most well documented and researched adaptogenic mushrooms and superfoods to people.
Our core values are to ensure our products have sufficient scientific evidence to back their claims, have been farmed in a sustainable manner and have been lab-tested to provide both assurance and transparency behind our processes.
It may be better to start from the top, could you tell us a bit about your background and how you both started Antioxi?
Our passion for entrepreneurship has been seeded from our distaste for the transparency within the food and health market. Not understanding the hieroglyphics written on food labels, the daily change of health trends and the transparency behind the quality of food items.
It turns out that in this world we thought to be ruled by lines of black and white, it is actually overshadowed in a system reading a 50 shades of grey novel. Point is, there is a lot of room to confuse us, customers, in thinking that what we are buying is “good” for us.
And BAAM! Antioxi was born.
After years of researching the scientific principles underpinning our understanding of health, it became vividly clear to us that there are some powerful foods found around the world that should form a part of our daily lives. Adaptogenic mushrooms being one of them.
So all that was left is to ensure that our products matched our core values:
Quality – ensuring the products meet the desired specifications of those used in clinical trials
Sustainable – ensuring our methods of manufacture are scalable and being sustainable
Transparent – by educating and providing evidence (lab tests) of our products and processes
For those just getting into Fungi, where would be a good place to learn about them?
The best introduction I can find to date is the new Netflix documentary “fantastic fungi”. It provides such a great overview of this wonderfully overlooked species inhabiting our earth.
From there the sky’s the limit to be honest, one can keep things high level and understand which mushrooms provide which benefit or you can go as deep as actually reading the clinical trials, which will make the hairs on your arm stand up!
Funny story, every copywriter or content creator we have worked with, after doing their research into mushrooms for our business, have turned into customers. Honestly, the clinical research speaks for itself…
What’s your perception of the Fungi market at the moment, do you think awareness is growing?
Oh heck yeah. From celebs, podcasts (Joe Rogan), Netflix people are starting to see the light. Daniela says I am a tad dramatic as I write this, but I do have a knack for the theatrical.
That being said, if we set the main media aside for a second, the real shift in awareness has been anecdotally by people who take these mushrooms. When you have a friend or loved one who has been struggling with an illness for some time and they start to see health improvements, well one can’t help but take notice…
We actually watched “Fantastic Fungi” on Netflix and follow Paul Stamets’teachings, what was your thoughts on that movie, did it represent the Fungi movement well?
Oh yeah, Paul is an OG (Original Gangster) of mycology. Well sort of an OG, the real OG’s existed almost 2000 years ago as seen in their documentation of plants and mushrooms and their perceived cures for various illnesses.
Either way, the clear message that we hope people take away is a logical one, much of our atmosphere is actually made up of fungal spores and you have been interacting with these spores since the day you’ve been born. In fact, the Gutenberg institute determined that with each breath you take, you inhale between 1-10 of these aforementioned spores. Crazy thought actually…
Therefore, through the various years of research, it has become clear that our body is hardwired to respond to the compounds present in the various mushrooms. Each response being different:
Turkey tail – Beta D Glucan compounds -> C-type lectin receptors -> improves the immune system
Lions Mane–> Hericenones and Erinacines -> nerve growth factor -> improves memory loss/Alzheimer’s
Hope that makes sense?
What are the benefits of taking mushrooms and how often should one take them?
This is a bit of a tricky one to answer, as each mushroom is so unique in the benefits it offers.
You’re looking at benefits ranging from immune health balance to balancing energy levels, assisting with anxiety, focus, concentration… the list goes on 🙂
Just like a multivitamin, mushrooms should be taken daily to really consistently benefit from them.
What’s different about your Fungi vs others on the market?
The difference lies within our blend of transparency, customer service and quality.
When you buy one of our products you can rely on the fact that you are buying quality that is in line with the clinical research that has been done on that product.
You also have the evidence at your fingertips in terms of lab reports available to you and if you need any help deciding we have our very own customer happiness department dedicated to ensuring you get exactly what you need.
Don’t believe us? Ask the customer for whom we Ubered a product to the airport for so that she could get it in time for her flight to Ecuador to give it to her ill father.
We genuinely care and are interested in helping our customers.
Can you tell us a bit about how some mushrooms differ from others?
Yes, this is a great question as it is 2 fold:
The production/manufacturing process
Mushroom quality differs based on the farming methods (organic, wild-grown, rice grown), use of the fruiting body or mycelium (this is the part of the mushroom), the extraction method (water vs ethanol vs dual extraction)
These are just a few of many but we have highlighted them as these are the fundamentals we want our customers to consider when making an educated choice.
The actual mushroom itself
Each mushroom has different compounds that provide different health benefits. Lion’s mane for example is famous for its components Hericenones and Erinacines (the components that promote its cognitive health abilities). Reishi’s true magic lies in the triterpenoids, Turkey tail PSK and PSP (both of which have been extensively studied in clinical trials for cancer) etc…
Don’t you just love how beautifully complicated mushrooms are?
What is the difference between taking a complex 8 mushroom vs say individuals mushrooms as powders?
The question follows the same premise as standing in a pharmacy looking at a multivitamin vs iron tablets. Are you looking for great coverage or are you looking to treat an iron deficiency?
The answer is both, get both 😉
Lastly, is it pronounced “Fun-J-eye” or “Fun-Guy”?
There is no hard rule for this one.
In fact, we both pronounce it differently – Daniela likes to call them fung-i, whereas I believe the correct term is “mushies.”
You can find out more information about Antioxi and buy all of their products directly from their website by clicking here
Follow Antioxi on Instagram here : https://www.instagram.com/antioxi.uk/
