The Fungal Gospel Of Modern Optimisation

At Biohacker Summit In Helsinki, Maximilian Endter Cast Functional Mushrooms As Nature’s Answer To Exhaustion, Stress, Sleep Loss And The Search For Human Upgrade

In a conference culture built on metrics, molecules and relentless self-improvement, it was perhaps inevitable that mushrooms would eventually take the stage not as culinary garnish, but as instruments of transformation.

At the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki, held on 2 and 3 July 2024, Maximilian Endter, founder of smaints, certified mycotherapist and self-described biohacker, delivered a presentation titled The Unbelievable Powers of Functional Mushrooms. His argument was simple in form and expansive in ambition: modern people, depleted by work, stress and metabolic imbalance, had much to gain from ancient fungal intelligence.

Endter spoke less like a salesman of supplements than an evangelist for a forgotten kingdom. Cordyceps for stamina. Chaga and agaricus for immunity and gut resilience. Reishi and maitake for hormones, metabolism and stress. Lion’s mane for sleep and cognition. In his telling, mushrooms were not marginal wellness accessories. They were adaptive agents, biological allies, natural technologies.

“We ourselves started to biohack because we had very, very high levels of work to do,” Endter told the audience. “We had very high to-do lists, but very low energy.”

That sentence landed because it described not just a personal origin story, but the prevailing condition of the room.

A Language Of Fatigue, Relief And Control

The appeal of functional mushrooms at gatherings like Biohacker Summit was not hard to understand. The industry of optimisation has long promised sharper focus, cleaner energy and deeper recovery. But beneath the polished language of performance lies an older and more familiar vulnerability: people are tired, wired and increasingly unconvinced that conventional routines are enough.

Endter framed mushrooms as a response to precisely that modern contradiction. He recounted how his own search for better energy and resilience began years earlier, after he and his co-founder found themselves overwhelmed by work. Breathwork, supplements, gadgets and protocols were all part of the biohacker toolkit. Mushrooms, he suggested, became the breakthrough.

A podcast anecdote involving Tim Ferriss and cordyceps helped set him on that path. Ferriss, Endter recalled, said the mushroom left him “lit like a Christmas tree”. The line was vivid, slightly absurd and effective. Endter used it as a gateway into a larger claim: that what looked fringe at first glance was supported by millennia of traditional Chinese medicine and a growing body of modern research.

“We Are Mushrooms,” He Said. Not Quite, Came The Reply

Part of Endter’s presentation drew on wonder as much as evidence. He lingered on the strangeness of fungi, their evolutionary mystery, their apparent intelligence, their underground mycelial networks. In one of the talk’s most memorable lines, he declared: “The most amazing fact about mushrooms is that you and me, basically, we are mushrooms.”

He elaborated by pointing to shared biological traits and overlapping DNA, arguing that fungi and humans have more in common than most people realise. “The mushroom, where it grows, it digests so openly, and we have a closed system for digestion,” he said. “It breathes, it makes vitamin D in its skin, so to speak. So we have very much things in common.”

The phrasing was provocative, and later in the question-and-answer session it prompted a public correction from the moderator, who insisted on a more rigorous distinction. Humans, the moderator noted, are not literally mushrooms. Fungi, animals and plants belong to different kingdoms.

Endter conceded the scientific point while holding on to the metaphorical one. The exchange was revealing. It captured a tension that ran through the session and, more broadly, through wellness culture itself: the desire to marry poetic fascination with empirical legitimacy.

The Mushrooms Of Energy And Endurance

Of all the mushrooms discussed, cordyceps received the most forceful treatment as a performance enhancer. Endter presented it as a natural tool for boosting stamina, oxygen uptake, blood flow and libido. In his account, it was a mushroom for people trying to outrun fatigue, whether in athletics, work or everyday life.

He described cordyceps as capable of increasing VO2 max and cellular ATP production, effectively placing it in the category of legal performance optimisation. He also offered a case study from within his own company, describing a colleague who had struggled with lung issues and long Covid before later returning to high-level running.

The claims were ambitious, but they were also carefully pitched to a biohacking audience accustomed to thinking in systems: oxygen, mitochondria, circulation, recovery. Cordyceps was not framed merely as herbal tradition. It was framed as mechanism.

Immunity, Allergies And The Gut As Battleground

If cordyceps belonged to the language of output, chaga and agaricus belonged to the language of repair. Endter cast these mushrooms as immune modulators with particular promise for allergies, autoimmune conditions and gut dysfunction.

His own experience with leaky gut and allergies formed part of the narrative. He described mushrooms rich in beta glucans as helping restore balance to an immune system that had become dysregulated. The governing concept here was homeostasis, a word he returned to repeatedly. Functional mushrooms, he argued, did not simply stimulate the body in one direction. They helped correct imbalance.

That idea helps explain the enduring appeal of adaptogens in wellness culture. People want more than stimulation. They want calibration. They want not just energy, but the right energy. Not just immune activation, but immune intelligence.

“Mushrooms are the kings of the adaptogens,” Endter said, “because this works for many different body systems in both directions.”

Hormones, Stress And The Quiet Collapse Of Balance

The most striking social diagnosis in the talk came when Endter shifted from energy and immunity to endocrine disruption. Here the atmosphere darkened. He spoke of escalating stress, falling testosterone, hormonal disorders, insulin resistance and fertility problems. This was not the language of enhancement but of attrition.

Reishi and maitake, he suggested, offered support in this terrain. Reishi was presented as a stress-balancing mushroom with anti-inflammatory and hormone-regulating properties. Maitake, meanwhile, was linked to sugar metabolism and insulin sensitivity, with Endter citing research involving women with PCOS and infertility.

The force of this section lay not only in the specific mushroom claims, but in the diagnosis underneath them: modern life had become hostile to equilibrium. The body was no longer just under pressure. It was under siege from chronic stress, poor diet and physiological overload.

In that context, mushrooms were offered not as miracle cures, but as forms of assistance in a larger struggle to regain internal order.

Sleep, Dreams And The Promise Of Neural Renewal

If one theme united almost every strand of Endter’s talk, it was recovery. And nowhere was that more evident than in his discussion of lion’s mane and reishi as “night mushrooms”.

He spoke of sleep deprivation as one of the defining health failures of the age. Deep sleep, he argued, remained foundational to immune function, hormone regulation and neurological repair. Without it, every other intervention was compromised.

Lion’s mane was presented as a mushroom with particular significance for the brain, supporting nerve regeneration and cognitive performance. Reishi, by contrast, was positioned as the calmer counterpart, easing stress and helping the body settle into deeper rest.

In a room full of people seeking control over biology, the promise of better sleep may have been the most radical of all. It suggested that improvement might not always come from doing more, but from finally allowing the body to do what it was designed to do.

Wonder, Commerce And The Problem Of Proof

The session was not without friction. In the Q&A, questions turned toward supply chains, extraction methods, contamination concerns and the widespread problem of poor-quality mushroom products, particularly those sourced through opaque global channels. Endter responded by stressing European sourcing, quality control and extraction processes designed to improve bioavailability.

That shift, from mysticism to manufacturing, was important. Functional mushrooms today sit at the crossroads of folklore, pharmacology and branding. Their advocates invoke ancient medicine, cite contemporary studies and package both in a language of premium wellness. The result is a category rich in promise, but vulnerable to hype.

What distinguished this session was that the audience seemed alert to that danger. They wanted enchantment, yes, but they also wanted percentages, sourcing and mechanisms of action. Biohacking culture, for all its susceptibility to trend, still likes to believe it is evidence-led.

The Deeper Appeal Of The Mushroom Age

What Endter offered in Helsinki was more than a catalogue of fungal benefits. He offered a worldview in which nature had already solved many of the problems that modern people were frantically trying to out-innovate. Energy, immunity, hormonal balance, sleep, cognition: all, in his framing, had fungal counterparts waiting to be understood.

“The important things to remember are we are mushrooms,” he said near the end, returning to the line that had defined the talk. “And we can use, like Super Mario, the superpowers of mushrooms for us.”

The metaphor was playful, but the impulse behind it was serious. In an era of burnout and biological self-surveillance, the popularity of functional mushrooms revealed something profound about the contemporary search for health. People were no longer just looking for medicine. They were looking for meaning in physiology, for intelligence in nature, for a way to believe that resilience could still be grown rather than merely purchased.

For one afternoon at Biohacker Summit, among the protocols and products, fungi became the vessel for that hope.

Frequently asked questions

Why are functional mushrooms so popular at biohacking events?

Maximilian Endter, founder of smaints and a certified mycotherapist, framed them as a response to a familiar condition beneath the language of performance: people are tired, wired and increasingly unconvinced that conventional routines are enough.

What did he mean by saying we are mushrooms?

Endter leaned on wonder as much as evidence, lingering on the evolutionary strangeness of fungi and their underground mycelial networks. The most amazing fact about mushrooms, he declared, is that you and me, basically, we are mushrooms, pointing to shared biological traits and overlapping DNA.

Which mushroom did he present for performance?

Cordyceps received the most forceful treatment, presented as a natural tool for boosting stamina, oxygen uptake, blood flow and libido. Endter described it as capable of increasing VO2 max and cellular ATP production.

About the event

This recap is part of the Biohacker Summit 2024 Helsinki series, recorded in Helsinki on 2 and 3 July 2024. Read the summary of the whole event or join the next edition, HOLOLIFE Summit 2026 Amsterdam, on 14 and 15 November 2026.