A Day Trader’s Take on Lion’s Mane Mushroom

14 Jun A Day Trader’s Take on Lion’s Mane Mushroom

#fin­twit #Day­Trad­er #trad­inglife #Mar­ket­Pro­file #Order­flow #Nootrop­ics #Lion­s­Man­e­Mush­room

This is a Blog Post cat­e­go­ry I have been want­i­ng to do for a lit­tle while. I will be post­ing book sum­maries (most­ly trad­ing relat­ed), but also thoughts on any­thing that could be of val­ue to a Day Trad­er. The rea­son for me want­i­ng to do this is to ‘show more of my work’ (Austin Kleon, author of Show your Work) as well as doc­u­ment and learn more effi­cient­ly from all that I read and have learned. For exam­ple I have been exper­i­ment­ing with Nootrop­ics for quite some time now. Then I took a break from it. But recent­ly I start­ed dab­bling again. 

Warn­ing: I tend to write long essays so get your read­ing glass­es (if you need them) and a big cup of cof­fee to pre­vend you from falling asleep! 🙂

Which brings me to my first blog post on A Day Trader’s Take on Lion’s Mane Mush­room. Just keep in mind that these are my per­son­al expe­ri­ences that I will be shar­ing here. Your mileage may vary (a lot). At the foun­da­tion of any­thing new that you might be try­ing you need to go through a process of tri­al and error. What works for me, might not for you. This is not a rec­om­men­da­tion of any kind. You are to do your own research and tri­al and error. With that out of the way… 

I got onto Lion’s Mane Mush­room from my men­tor Dee. She explained the per­son­al ben­e­fits it has on her mem­o­ry and I decid­ed to give it a try as well. 

What is Lion’s Mane Mushroom?

Now, I’m not going to go super in-depth to explain what it is. There are way more supe­ri­or posts on this already. In a nut­shell, Lion’s Mane Mush­room is an edi­ble mush­room. No, not those mag­ic mush­rooms you might be think­ing of. Lion’s Mane Mush­room is a type of med­i­c­i­nal mush­room long used in tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese med­i­cine. Cur­rent­ly it’s wide­ly avail­able in sup­ple­ment form. These sup­ple­ments come in dif­fer­ent forms so you should find out which one you pre­fer. This post is more about my per­son­al expe­ri­ence with them.

For your ref­er­ence I am using the Lion’s Mane Mush­room 500mg sup­ple­ment from Swan­son Health Prod­ucts. They are capsules. 

Doing some research on Lion’s Mane I found out the fol­low­ing claimed ben­e­fits:

• Alzheimer’s Dis­ease
• Anx­i­ety
• Depres­sion
• High Cho­les­terol
• Inflam­ma­tion
• Parkinson’s dis­ease
• Ulcers
• Man­age dia­betes symptoms
• Reduce heart dis­ease risk
• Boost immune system
• Pos­si­ble bet­ter sleep regulation
• Improve mem­o­ry

Now, whether or not Lion’s Mane Mush­room actu­al­ly ben­e­fits these is far beyond the scope of this blog post. For me, the rea­sons for tak­ing it were pri­mar­i­ly for anx­i­ety and depres­sion. As well as to bet­ter reg­u­late my sleep and improve my mem­o­ry when I’m at it.

Most of my adult life I have in one form or anoth­er strug­gled with anx­i­ety, depres­sion cou­pled with over­all bad sleep­ing rou­tines. So much so that I start­ed tak­ing sup­ple­ments and med­ica­tion to help with them. When I start­ed tak­ing Lion’s Mane Mush­room I was in the habit of tak­ing 0.125mg of Xanax to fall asleep almost on a dai­ly basis. Which I had been doing for almost 6 months. I see many peo­ple take quite high­er dosages (2–4mg a day) and thought that my rel­a­tive­ly low dosage would not have much effect on me. 

I was wrong. Besides that it helped me to fall asleep it also made me less anx­ious the next day. Which obvi­ous­ly was a wel­come effect for me. But also added to my depen­dance on them. How­ev­er, when I start­ed tak­ing Lion’s Mane Mush­room, about 3–4 days in, I noticed that I did not feel the need to take Xanax. I was falling asleep quite eas­i­ly and every­thing seemed to be going well. Then, about 5–6 days of not using Xanax I start­ed feel­ing with­drawals. Luck­i­ly those sub­sided rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly with­in a few days but it made me reaf­firm not to take these meds light­ly. I already did not take it light­ly but like I men­tioned. Tak­ing such a low dose I thought it was some­what okay. 

Dosage

When I start­ed Lion’s Mane Mush­room I start­ed off with 1 (500mg) cap­sule in the morn­ing. I had read it was good to take while drink­ing your morn­ing cup of cof­fee. So that’s what I did. After a week or so I decid­ed to dou­ble my dai­ly intake and espe­cial­ly just before bed. I had read that this could ben­e­fit my sleep even more as well as induce more lucid dreams. Many user expe­ri­ences boast­ed about this and I thought I’d give it a try. Although I did have more lucid dreams I did not feel rest­ed the next day. I tried it for about a week before giv­ing up on tak­ing it before bed­time. It sim­ply did not have the desired effect for me. 

Then, I decid­ed to have anoth­er cap­sule in the after­noon. My rea­son­ing was to have a larg­er gap between tak­ing it and my bed­time. I felt that this was bet­ter although a few days in I start­ed feel­ing lethar­gic dur­ing the Lon­don trad­ing ses­sion. As if I had just eat­ing a big bowl of pas­ta and the slump start­ed kick­ing in. The Lon­don ses­sion is what I trade. Liv­ing in Asia, the Lon­don ses­sion opens at 3 or 4pm depend­ing on Day­light Time Sav­ings. Feel­ing like this was a big no no. Sim­i­lar to when I tried tak­ing 2 cap­sules in the morn­ing. So I went back to only tak­ing one cap­sule a day.

I start­ed open­ing the cap­sules and pour­ing it into my cof­fee and drank it like that. Now, I have no real data / or per­son­al expe­ri­ence  that this is any bet­ter than just swal­low­ing the cap­sule. I had read that a lot of peo­ple were doing it like this so I decid­ed to do it as well. It does not change the fla­vor of the cof­fee much. Per­haps a lit­tle ‘earthy’ taste is added. 

A side­note I was also dab­bling with Alpha GPC (I might write anoth­er post on that as well at some point) in this peri­od and the lethar­gy could’ve been par­tial­ly caused by that. So I do want to give two cap­sules a day anoth­er go at some point but I feel it’s doing its work for now so no rush. 

Personal Subjectively Perceived Benefits

Now most of those ben­e­fits that I list­ed ear­li­er I have no way of know­ing if it helps in any mean­ing­ful way. What I did notice I will elab­o­rate on here. 

Bet­ter sleep­ing routine

From the first few days I felt less anx­ious. And as I men­tioned before, I was able to fall asleep at night with­out much issue. So that’s good. A good night’s sleep is everyone’s best friend. But for us day traders it’s arguably even more impor­tant. When I explain what I think a day trad­er needs to be able to do I com­pare it to being a pro ath­lete. I know that might sound weird to some but bear with me on this. A pro ath­lete is not stay­ing up late the night before a big game or tour­na­ment. They need good sleep so that they can func­tion at the high­est pos­si­ble lev­el. It is sim­i­lar for us day traders where we need to func­tion on a high cog­ni­tive lev­el. One could argue high cog­ni­tive func­tion is a part of ath­leti­cism as well but that’s a sep­a­rate top­ic. We might not be need­ing to sprint a 100-yard dash but our brains need all the sup­port it can get. Sleep­ing well con­sis­tent­ly is a huge fac­tor in that. Bet­ter cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty. Bet­ter con­trol of emo­tions ie. you’re more like­ly to have a short­er fuse if you are tired. Etc. You get it. 

For me, I even have a hard rule, of not being allowed to trade if I have 2 con­sec­u­tive days of not sleep­ing enough. I know from per­son­al expe­ri­ence that I am more like­ly to make mis­takes. So then why trade? It is more like­ly to neg­a­tive­ly affect your bot­tom line. 

Per­ceived Anx­ious­ness / ADD / ADHD

As it hap­pened I was talk­ing to a friend and he made me real­ize a cer­tain pos­si­bil­i­ty. Now, I still need to fur­ther ‘research’ this for myself but I think it makes sense at first glance. I have been con­sid­ered a per­son with ADD/ADHD for all my life even by pro­fes­sion­als. I have always whole­heart­ed­ly dis­agreed with this assumption/observation. I find it has a neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion but the way I per­ceive it this has nev­er hin­dered me. Quite the oppo­site. It has helped me a lot. Espe­cial­ly in day trad­ing as we need to process lots of infor­ma­tion in a glance. Where am I going with this? My abil­i­ty to per­ceive more infor­ma­tion is com­mon­ly seen as lack­ing some fil­tra­tion sys­tem for all the infor­ma­tion our brains take in and then dis­re­gards as not use­ful. Often times I can draw rela­tion­ships between seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed top­ics and pour them into one. I believe the lack of under­stand­ing or fol­low­ing along this thread is what makes some peo­ple lead to believe as me hav­ing ADD. Prob­a­bly also the rea­son why my posts are often long-winded 🙂

I’ll give you an exam­ple. I went into the office of a psy­chol­o­gist and noticed all the dec­o­ra­tions such as pic­tures, plants, and a clock she had in her book­case. I com­ment­ed about them not think­ing any­thing of it. Her first real ques­tion to me was: do you have ADD? Feel­ing kind of put off by this I told her ‘my moth­er has psy­chol­o­gy degrees as well. If I had ADD I’m sure my moth­er would’ve told me. So no I don’t have ADD/ADHD’. She con­tin­ued to explain that “nor­mal” peo­ple do not notice their sur­round­ings in that detail as peo­ple with ADD do. To which I react­ed: ‘I walked into your office that I’ve nev­er been to, how am I not to notice these things?’. She went on fur­ther elab­o­rat­ing how ‘nor­mal­ly’ peo­ple fil­ter out most seem­ing­ly unim­por­tant details and offered to have me test­ed. Which I respect­ful­ly declined. Per­haps I shouldn’t have had. My think­ing then, and kin­da still is, is that I am mere­ly able to process (if you will) more infor­ma­tion and it hasn’t hin­dered me in any mean­ing­ful way. Actu­al­ly, quite the oppo­site. I feel it has ben­e­fit­ed me great­ly. One of which is in Day Trading. 

OODA Loops

As Day Traders there is a lot of infor­ma­tion com­ing at you. You need to take it in. Grasp what pos­si­ble nar­ra­tive could be unfold­ing (remem­ber, there are no guar­an­tees in trad­ing). Then you need to stalk a pos­si­ble hypoth­e­sis set­ting up. Then decide what price action you would pre­fer to see (giv­ing your­self a mar­gin of error and not being too anal about details). Then exe­cute on said oppor­tu­ni­ty. Con­se­quent­ly mon­i­tor order flow through price action and mar­ket pro­file in my case, to Observe, Ori­ent, Decide and Act based on what­ev­er the mar­ket is unfold­ing into. The so-called OODA loops. 

So how does this relate to Lion’s Mane Mush­room I hear you scream­ing?! One of the things that I noticed was a “lack” of obser­va­tion when rid­ing my motor­cy­cle. Anoth­er warn­ing here: dec­la­ra­tion of bad behav­ior com­ing up!

I’m a bit of an idiot and gen­er­al­ly like to ride faster, let’s say. When I ride I have to take in all the infor­ma­tion of traf­fic but also poten­tial law enforcers that might want to give me a tick­et for speed­ing 🙂 (see where the per­ceived ADD is actu­al­ly help­ing here:)) Now, I under­stand that I should not be speed­ing but it is a good exam­ple of the point that I am try­ing to get across. After hav­ing start­ed tak­ing Lion’s Mane I noticed that more often than not I am less ‘sharp’ on these obser­va­tion­al skills. 

Often I plan ahead my route. I know which traf­fic lights to hit and where to ‘take a detour’ as traf­fic lights here all have timers on them. So I know if a light has a cer­tain amount of time left it is bet­ter to go a dif­fer­ent route so I’m able to hit the next green light etc. I don’t like to stand still sweat­ing, espe­cial­ly wear­ing a suit and hel­met in a trop­i­cal cli­mate. So I take turns and fol­low dif­fer­ent roads where I can keep going and thus my routes are rarely direct. Which I don’t mind as I love riding. 

My friend point­ed out that per­haps the less­ened obser­va­tion­al skill might actu­al­ly be the thing that is cre­at­ing a less­ened feel­ing of anx­i­ety. If I am think­ing less than less thoughts could be both­er­ing me. Which made sense to me. I’ll have to keep track of this. 

Per­haps I do have ADD 🙂 If there is a pro­fes­sion­al in my audi­ence I will allow you to diag­nose me (free of charge of course). For all the rest, it’s fine if you just call me weird. Which I’m pret­ty sure I am but then again no nor­mal per­son would ever think of becom­ing a Day Trad­er (or actu­al­ly pull through on it). Also, who the fuck wants to be normal. 

Mem­o­ry benefits

To be hon­est I don’t see much improve­ment in this depart­ment (yet). Per­haps that will improve more over time. I kin­da feel as if my mem­o­ry has improved slight­ly but that could just be a place­bo effect. I will keep track of this and update and edit this post as I go along. Like adding to my dosage etc. 

EDIT: I am start­ing to think that I do sense a slight­ly bet­ter mem­o­ry. I can recall from short term mem­o­ry a bit bet­ter. Which is def­i­nite­ly an area I need improv­ing in. I am still tak­ing only one cap­sule in the morn­ing with my coffee. 

EDIT 2022/07/22: I have start­ed tak­ing pour­ing two cap­sules into my morn­ing cof­fee and this has been going well. I kind of sensed that I was not feel­ing the same as I did when I first start­ed Lion’s Mane. After start­ing to take 2 cap­sules I got that feel­ing back. Which could indi­cate that I am build­ing a tol­er­ance to it. Will keep tabs on how this devel­ops in the future.

Conclusions

I like the ben­e­fits of Lion’s Mane Mush­room just for the mere fact that I feel less anx­ious. I feel my (ADD) obser­va­tion­al skills are still there but I can turn them on instead of being at a default ON set­ting. For what­ev­er rea­son. I seem to be sleep­ing bet­ter. I have a bet­ter rou­tine because of it. I also cou­ple this with read­ing before bed but I feel now I have the calm­ness to actu­al­ly get in bed with a book. When peo­ple do/say things that might ‘nor­mal­ly’ annoy me some­what I feel I have more of a lit­tle buffer in between the obser­va­tion and react­ing to it. Which allows me to calm down if need­ed and have a split-sec­ond to reassess. Which obvi­ous­ly helps in trad­ing as well where price might pop and you might feel the need to react. Stand back. Reassess through going through the OODA loops and act accordingly. 

If you have made it all the way through till the end I real­ly applaud you. My posts are usu­al­ly very long-wind­ed and def­i­nite­ly not an easy read. So to applaud your ded­i­ca­tion to my efforts and for just being extreme­ly awe­some to spend your valu­able time with me I give you a nice pink Lam­bo!! Well, a pic­ture of one. Come on!

If you have any com­ments or just want to say hi feel free to leave a com­ment or just get in touch with me. 

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