Passionate about health and wellbeing, but dissatisfied with the taste and accessibility of functional mushroom powders, Lucid founder Csilla Gindorf is on a mission to make her delicious and affordable adaptogen bars available to all.
Everyone has a different approach to managing their own wellbeing, and Csilla wants to ensure that those interested in pursuing natural supplements have the information and the tools to find out what works for them.
Csilla’s Wellbeing Journey
Having struggled personally with anxiety, brain fog, and lack of energy, Csilla set out to find a natural holistic remedy that could combat those symptoms; after diving into research she discovered functional mushroom powders.
“I started to feel better after about three weeks: my energy levels were much higher and my brain fog lifted and I could concentrate on my work and things were getting a lot better.”
This solution worked for Csilla, and it was through her work in the fashion industry that she began to see how valuable it could be for other people going through the same thing. A notoriously high pressure industry, Csilla found the demands of her job to be incredibly damaging to her physical and mental health.
“It was the first time that I really understood the impact of stress on my body.
“I started realising, other people around me also had this stress and it was impacting them in a way where they didn’t really know how to manage it and they didn’t know tools and they didn’t know what supplements they could add to help with that stress.”
Developing the Product
Functional mushroom powders have a whole host of benefits for our health and their use as a supplement in traditional medicine goes back centuries. The one downside, however, is the taste.
“I was mixing them into my coffees and into my teas and things, but they’re quite bitter and quite earthy. So it wasn’t really that nice and I didn’t really want to make my morning coffee ritual something that I didn’t enjoy.”
Csilla discovered that a lot of people she spoke to had the same reservations. In addition to this, buying all of the powders can be quite an investment, with the expense making them fairly inaccessible as a supplement.
With taste and cost clear barriers, Csilla knew that a delicious and affordable alternative was a gap in the market that she could fill.
“I went on to try and create something that was accessible that was easy to incorporate into your daily lifestyle, something that was indulgent and delicious and that could really provide you with those mushrooms in a tasty, indulgent way but still healthy and convenient.”
The Lucid Range
Lucid currently has two different ranges: Re-Vitalise Me, which is infused with lion’s mane and maca that’s available in peanut butter and jelly, and cookie dough; and then De-Stress Me, which is infused with reishi and ashwagandha, available in chocolate hazelnut and banana bread.
“A big part of inspiration was bringing those nostalgic flavours into something that I could happily eat every day without feeling bad for indulging in something sweet or a sweet treat.”
Csilla is passionate about the power of mushrooms to improve health and wellbeing, so as well as selling the adaptogen bars she promotes informational resources via her website to help people understand what goes into her products, and the world of functional mushrooms.
Great at giving you mental focus. It helps with building brain cells. It’s really, really great at nourishing your brain.
An adaptogen used in the ancient Inca times as an energy supplement as well.
Helps to calm down the nervous system and it helps your adrenals manage cortisol and reduce your stress levels
An adaptogen, it helps to manage your cortisol levels which reduces the stress and makes you feel a bit calmer.
Really good for energy production and it helps your body utilise oxygen for energy production.
High in antioxidants so it’s great for your immune system and creating that protective shield from the inside out.
The Hatch Launchpad Programme
Csilla had the idea for a winning business, but wasn’t sure where to take it from there. She joined a Hatch Launchpad programme to get some expert support on taking the idea through development stage all the way to launch.
“I really liked that for me, as a founder in the development stage, I wasn’t intimidated by having to do a course where there’s people that have already built their businesses.
“Going onto the Launchpad course, it really explained that, you know, you take your idea and go through the whole process of learning how to validate that idea, how to build your financials, how to figure out whether your product does have a product market fit, and then leading on to actually doing all this pitch practice and getting to a point where you could actually launch a product.
“Throughout the programme they really helped us to build on our ideas and to build our confidence and honestly, it was just so helpful in creating that ability in me to be able to explain my ideas and explain my business without being nervous or stressed.”
Csilla’s Top Tips for Managing Stress
Mindfulness: there’s no one way to practise mindfulness. You can either do meditation in the morning, you can practise yoga. You can go for a walk, you can spend time in nature, do breathwork. It really helps with grounding yourself and just checking in with yourself to make sure that you’re calmer that day and asking yourself what do I need today to keep stress at bay.
Exercise: it helps with creating endorphins in the body and it helps to lower cortisol, the stress hormone. And it really just helps with the mental benefits that you get from exercise.
Adaptogens: this is what goes into Lucid bars, they’re really great at helping the body adapt to stress. Over time they actually help your body to cope with stress and it helps your body to lower cortisol levels.
The Mental Health Foundation revealed that 74% of people in the UK in the past year felt like they weren’t able to cope with the stress that they were experiencing, and that figure goes up to 83% for 18 to 24 year olds.
Csilla hopes that through easier access to the benefits of functional mushrooms, more people will be empowered to better manage their stress and their own wellbeing.
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