March 31, 2025 • 61 mins
Dr. Matthias Bierenstiel shares how ancient Mi'kmaq knowledge about birch bark medicine combined with modern chemistry is transforming skin care and challenging Western approaches to medicine.
• Dr. Bierenstiel, a chemistry professor at Cape Breton University, partnered with Mi'kmaq Studies professor Tuma Young to research traditional birch bark extract
• The collaboration uses "two-eyed seeing" methodology, combining indigenous knowledge with scientific analysis
• The knowledge was nearly lost - rescued from just two Mi'kmaq elders who remembered a story about a nursing mother healed in the 1920s
• Chemical analysis reveals over 200 compounds working together as a "symphony" rather than single active ingredients
• The extract shows remarkable effectiveness for skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, and even poison ivy
• Traditional extraction methods involving fire were critical - lab replications initially failed until they mimicked the earth's thermal protection
• Only outer layers of paper birch bark are harvested sustainably without harming trees
• The research led to founding Masqueomi, a small company selling creams and soaps with the community's blessing
• Current products are sold under cosmetic licensing while research continues toward natural health product certification
Visit http://www.maskwiomin.com/ and use code CANOPY for 20% off 50-gram creams until April 10, 2025. Check out the CBC Land and Sea documentary "Mi'kmaq Medicines" to learn more about this project.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
The humble goldfish, everyone's favorite aquatic pet.
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Speaker 2 (00:11):
What's there not to love?
Even the cat may be mesmerizedby the color and movements of
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Goldfish are great at home, butdon't let them loose.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Releasing goldfish or other domestic aquatic pets or
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the planet.
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Goldfish disrupt ecosystems by out-competing
native species for food andresources.
In degraded habitats theycontribute to algae blooms.
They kill aquatic wildlife andpass viruses and diseases
contracted in aquariums to wildfish.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
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If you find a goldfish at yourlocal fishing spot, report it to
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Speaker 2 (00:57):
Remember to never dump your live bait into the
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Speaker 3 (01:16):
Keep our lakes free from invaders and don't let them
loose.
As the world gets louder andlouder, the lessons of our
natural world become harder andharder to hear, but they are
still available to those whoknow where to listen.
I'm Jerry Ouellette and I washonoured to serve as Ontario's
Minister of Natural Resources.
However, my journey into thewoods didn't come from politics.
(01:37):
Rather, it came from my time inthe bush and a mushroom.
In 2015, I was introduced tothe birch-hungry fungus known as
chaga, a tree conch withcenturies of medicinal
applications used by Indigenouspeoples all over the globe.
After nearly a decade of harvestuse, testimonials and research,
(02:01):
my skepticism has faded toobsession and I now spend my
life dedicated to improving thelives of others through natural
means, testimonials and research.
My skepticism has faded toobsession and I now spend my
life dedicated to improving thelives of others through natural
means.
But that's not what the show isabout.
My pursuit of this strangemushroom and my passion for the
outdoors has brought me to theplaces and around the people
that are shaped by our naturalworld.
On Outdoor Journal Radio'sUnder the Canopy podcast, I'm
(02:25):
going to take you along with meto see the places, meet the
people that will help you findyour outdoor passion and help
you live a life close to natureand under the canopy.
So join me today for anothergreat episode, and hopefully we
can inspire a few more people tolive their lives under the
canopy.
(02:45):
Okay, as always, we want tothank our listeners all
throughout Canada, united States, all around through the world
Switzerland, ghana, trinidad,tobago all through the Caribbean
as well.
We really appreciate it and, asusual, if anybody has any
(03:06):
suggestions for shows orquestions they want to answer,
just email us and we'd be morethan happy to see what we can do
to get those on for you Nowtoday we have a special guest,
dr Matthias Bierenstiel, who'sfrom the East Coast in Ontario.
Welcome to the podcast, matthias.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Well, thank you very much, Jerry.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time to be on the
podcast.
Tell us about whereaboutsyou're located so our
international listeners can kindof get a sense of where you're
calling from.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Well, we're calling out of beautiful Sydney, Nova
Scotia.
It's a sunny day today, sowe're here in Cape Breton Island
and that's where we are callingin today from.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Very good and tell us about yourself.
You know a bit about yourbackground and what you're doing
and where you're at.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Okay, great.
Well, here I'm at Cape BretonUniversity in Sydney.
I'm a professor of chemistry,and I'm here for almost 20 years
.
I'm originally from Germany.
I studied at the University ofMunich, but then I came to
Canada, studied at theUniversity of Guelph in Ontario
(04:17):
I think under your time when youwere minister and then I went
to the University of Alberta fora postdoc and then moved with
my family to Sydney and eversince, here I'm doing chemistry
research and teaching students.
Oh, very good.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So tell us about your position at the university.
What is it that you actually donow?
I know you've got a class forstudents to get to, or is it
that time of the year now wherewe're talking about exams and
things like that?
Oh, exactly.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
So exam is coming up in two weeks, so the final
lectures and so on, so they'reall there.
So I'm teaching this termintroduction to inorganic
chemistry.
However, with kind of what I'mdoing, I'm a full professor.
I've been teaching chemistry,all different types of chemistry
organic chemistry, inorganicchemistry those are kind of my
(05:08):
specialties and I've been doinglike research with here at the
university.
Cbu is a primarilyundergraduate institution, so we
have lots of undergraduatestudents and we invite them to
do our research, and I have lotsof projects with students over
the years, working with localbusinesses, with other
(05:31):
researchers, and what we'regoing to be talking about is a
major project that has startedin 2013, which is Musqueamie
birch bark extract.
That is really, really usefuland it's based on traditional
Mi'kmaq knowledge.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Okay, very good.
So some time ago, when youreceived the grant to begin the
research, is that how you gotinvolved with this study of the
Mi'kmaq?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Okay, well, that was a little bit after.
Obviously, we have to get theidea first, but that was one of
the things.
So it was serendipity, oractually, in this case, yeah, it
is obviously serendipity.
However, being at a smallinstitution, you're, you know,
connected with lots of otherfaculty from different
(06:22):
disciplines, with lots of otherfaculty from different
disciplines, and so I met afaculty member from Mi'kmaq
Studies, duma Yang.
He's a knowledge holder, he's alawyer, he's a social activist
and he's a university professor,and at that time he was
teaching Mi'kmaq Studies, and heasked me to come along if I
(06:42):
want to learn a little bit moreMi'kmaq cultures, and he took
the students to a trip to picksweetgrass.
This was in the summer, so Icame out because I wanted to
learn.
I never really did anything likethat before.
It was really exciting.
And on that trip he actuallythen says, well, and next week
we're talking about birchbarkextract, birchbark oil.
And I said, like, how do you dothat?
(07:04):
And he says, well, we have acampfire and we'll get some
extract out of this campfire.
It's a very traditional Mi'kmaqmedicine.
And I said, well, that'schemistry.
If you transform a bark and youget some sort of oily extract
out of this, this is a chemicaltransformation and that was how
it started.
So that's how we kind ofconnected together.
(07:26):
He talked to me a little bitmore about the process and then
I kind of did my chemistry andscience aspect to kind of work
with him.
And this is then when we hadthe idea we got some.
We then applied for funding andever since we got some funding
about this and got peopleinvolved and health researchers
and whatnot, and so this bringseverything together.
(07:48):
It's a really great project.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Very good.
So I'm going to ask a questiona little bit outside the norm,
and it's because I sit on theboard of the local college and
actually I have a board meetingtonight where we're talking
about revenue generation as partof it.
So when you worked with theproject that you're working on
now, was there a financialbenefit to the university as
well?
(08:11):
Are they receiving some of thegeneration?
Speaker 4 (08:14):
No, no, this is an independent company, so the
union contracts.
100% of the intellectualproperty rights that a faculty
member generates are with thefaculty member.
Oh, okay, we reached out.
The university is very helpful.
They're helping with research,they're getting overhead from
the research that we'rereceiving, so there's the
(08:36):
benefit there.
So there's this mutual benefit.
We have reached out with theuniversity and they're on board.
But when we started it,actually we never really had any
entrepreneurial business startAt first.
We just wanted to find thingsout Right, and only throughout
the years how this projectdeveloped was like wow, there is
(08:57):
something here that we have asmall company and this is an
independent company that wasfounded.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Right, right, so the university gets involved, and is
that where the grant came from,or where did the grant come
from?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
So I really have two hats, so one is the academic hat
.
So as a university researcher,we apply for funding, tri-agency
funding.
So in this case it was CIHRCanadian Institutes of Health
Research and because we wantedto find out what is more with
this extract and what we can do,and this was in collaboration.
(09:34):
So I'm a co-PI, co-principalinvestigator.
My other partner is Duma Yangand we work together and what we
actually used was Ibtuaptumuk,which means it's translated as
two-eyed seeing methodology.
So Duma was looking at thetraditional knowledge of the
Mi'kmaq people how can wepreserve this, how can we honor
(09:57):
it?
We called it awakening of theknowledge and I was looking kind
of from the science perspective, the different eye, and really
saying like, what tools can wehave in order to understand this
extract?
Can we make it better?
What are its properties?
And kind of really from ascientific perspective
investigate and this kind ofworking together.
(10:19):
That was very, very beneficialand we found out a lot of stuff
which is really great.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Right, right.
So now, matthias, have you hadthe chance to look at and I
think it's on I'm not sure whichplatform, it might be Netflix.
It's called Happy People A Yearin the Taiega.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
No, I haven't really had a diagram to do that, but
what I found with with birch soI know you are interested in
jaga with you know kind of birch, uh fungus out there this one
here is is not related to ourproject, right?
Um, uh, birches, well, thereare what 57 different birch
species around the globe inmoderate climate and uh.
(11:02):
So there's a lot of informationout of Europe, scandinavia,
finland as well.
You know Germany, but they areusing different birch species
Pandula.
We are using here Papyrifera,and that's how we kind of get
the knowledge there Now thatwould be.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
What paper birch?
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Yes, okay, that's this one there.
What was interesting, actuallythinking about how old this is
can you remember when they foundthat glacier Eismann, that Ötzi
, in the Alps 1981?
Oh yeah, pretty much.
They actually found someresidue in his pouch that was
kind of from birch tar and sothey thought maybe it's
something from glue.
(11:42):
But what we could think aboutis that this could actually be
also medicinal properties back5,000 years ago, which is
amazing.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, and they found birch polypore in his pouch two
pieces of birch polypore as well, which you know my
understanding from what.
Some of the things that I sawindicated that he was
potentially using it for whatthey may believe was Lyme
disease.
That long ago from some of theresearch I saw.
So it's interesting how, but Ididn't know about the birch, the
(12:11):
oil or the tar, whichever we'recalling it.
But happy people, a year in theTiaga which came out in 2010
under, I think it was, sectionabout part two, summer, at about
25, 40 of the 25 minutes and 40seconds into it, they actually
do exactly what you're talkingabout.
So they take birch bark andthen they take a metal container
(12:34):
and they shave the bark andthen they build like a kind of
like.
They have shavings, so they'rerather large about the size of a
coffee cup sort of birch barkthat they put in there and then
they have it sits on top of like.
It would be like a large sievewhich for with large holes in it
(12:58):
, and then they put a metalcover over top of it and in that
one, what they do is they builda fire around it, cover over
top of it, and in that one.
What they do is they build afire around it and then they
bring it out and they have abowl that it collects in the
bottom of it and after a periodof time they use the extracted
material.
But they were using it as guesswhat.
Here's another thing for yourproject that you could add it to
(13:19):
For insect repellent.
Yeah, it was huge for insectrepellent.
Yeah, it was huge for insectrepellent, and they covered all
the kids and the dogs with thisbirch tar, they called it, and
it worked phenomenally well forinsect repellent.
And that's one of the ways thatI started to find and found
your information in regards towhat you're doing, because I
(13:40):
wanted to find out moreinformation about that.
So I found it very interestingthat they were using birch bark
in the fashion they were doing,a very rural extraction method,
which was, as I just mentioned,they kind of put a cap on this
and it was all sealed, and thenbuild a fire around it and
extracts the tar from it thatthey were using as an insect
repellent.
You're using it for far morematerials, such as to deal with
(14:04):
things like eczema, psoriasisand other topical applications
in regards to skin issues.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Correct yeah, well, this is kind of the first start.
So this is.
You know, there's lots ofresearch to be done, so this is
what we're focused on, right, soyou're right.
So, um, this is similar.
So when, when Duma Yang, herescued this knowledge here from
the Mi'kmaq people, and in the1990s he was talking to elders
(14:34):
about stories to rescue them andkind of keep them, and this was
in the Mi'kmaq language, andtwo elders told a story about a
Mi'kmaq woman in the 1920s.
She had a newborn baby and shedeveloped some sort of rash on
her chest and couldn't nurse thebaby, and that was really bad.
(14:54):
And so the midwife, she madethis concoction, masquiomine
masqui meaning birch bark andomi meaning kind of gathering
oil and then it says, applied itto the chest and then mother
and baby survived.
Uh, so clearly there was aclearing up of this condition.
And, uh, and so he puzzledtogether the pieces of how they
(15:15):
actually made it, and so, likeyou said, you know kind of
similar.
They used a can, uh, holes inthe bottom in the the ground,
put a hole in the ground with aunderneath the receptacle can,
and then had a campfire around.
And these are the traditionsthat he then said, because only
only two elders knew of thisstory.
(15:35):
One has since passed away, sothis knowledge would have almost
been lost.
And that's when he was at theuniversity teaching to the, to
his students, to keep thatknowledge alive, this oral
tradition, and what we have nowfound, as me as a chemist and an
expert, with that, I couldn'thave a fire in my lab, that's
not allowed.
So I said, can we mimic this?
(15:58):
And so we built kind of thiskind of electric contraption in
order to kind of mimic that.
And our first extracts actuallydidn't work.
They looked okay but theyweren't really, you know, in
this case antimicrobial.
And so that's when we cut backto kind of thinking about this,
(16:19):
and when we talked we said, yeah, we have to have this hole in
the ground and there's kind of athermal protection of this oil
when it's gathered in the fire.
It's called a paralytic processand and so you can actually say
from the words of the elders,mother nature is actually
protecting the extract, and sothat's actually a critical
(16:40):
development to do that.
And so we've done this now.
And so we we made a littlemachine to kind of make this and
in order to study and canreproduce it.
And now we actually much betteryield and much better stuff.
So we just published a paperabout this that the compounds in
this extract are antibacterialand there are many more.
(17:03):
So we know that there are morethan 200 compounds in there.
This is why we see this vastvastness and that's how we all
kind of started.
And I was just, you know, doingthe academic stuff, and while
Duma was showing it to communitythis is traditional way you do
it they come back and says Iused it on my skin or my
(17:24):
daughter's skin, and she hadeczema, she couldn't even go to
school and now she could comeback.
So that was like really, really, really, really interesting.
We used it on mosquito bites,rashes, you know, kind of all
sorts of things.
When they kind of said to Dumasthey're like, hey, I want more.
And he then says well, I showedit to you.
(17:48):
And this is where then thecommercialization idea came,
because, similar to, you canmake bread at home in your
kitchen, but it's so much moreconvenient to go to a grocery
store and buy it.
And that was right at thebeginning of COVID.
And so we actually have ourfive-year anniversary of our
company yeah, in two daysactually.
(18:11):
So it's our fifth anniversaryand we started out.
I started out in my kitchen andin my garage with Dilma, but
before this was important,before we started this, he went
to the community.
So, as part of the research,this was approved by Research,
essex Board approval, as well asMiGMA, essex Watch.
(18:35):
He talked to the community andsays can we do this?
Would someone else do that?
They didn't want to run bythemselves.
They said, yes, you can do it.
And so they basically gave ustheir blessing.
Someone else do that?
They?
They weren't they.
They didn't want to run bythemselves.
It says, yes, you can do it.
And uh, so they basically gaveus uh, their blessing and they
basically says do the good way,do the right way so that
everyone benefits, right.
So this is how we started.
(18:55):
Uh, it's indigenous, co-founded, we're still in contact with
the community and we are a smallcompany and kind of kind of
going about with that, and thenand then now the whole thing
then started.
So it's independent.
So this is now independent ofof the research.
It's an independent uh company.
Masque omen um.
It's online, we can see it.
(19:15):
Masque omencom uh, where wesell in, uh in canada, we can
sell into the us as well as well, and yeah, it's really great.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
So now you actually did a there was a television
program that you did in regardsto this.
Maybe you can kind of enlightenus as to some of the work.
People can see this and how canthey see this program that
talks about it.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Oh, it's excellent, Like people are really excited
about what we're doing andbecause it's all natural, it's
traditional knowledge, it'scombining it, fusing it with,
like, modern science, it'ssustainable, now also made in
Canada.
I mean, it's all made here, Ican't go there and so yeah.
So we were approached last yearby a CBC producer and said
(19:59):
would we be interested injoining them?
And I said absolutely so.
This was last year and it justcame out a couple of weeks ago
on CBC Land and Sea.
It's called Mi'kmaq Medicines.
It's just a 20-minute show butit's really exciting and it
actually shows the story fromthe elders with their medicine
walks.
Tuma is interviewed withregards to how birch is so
(20:24):
important for the Mi'kmaqcommunity and I'll show a little
bit on what we're doing withregards to the lab and the
production of our creams.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Right, so you mentioned, matisse, that you had
a published paper.
Where is it published?
Is it on Science Director bobmed, or where?
Yeah, and what's it called?
Speaker 4 (20:46):
so we have, we have, we have a few uh.
We have one with the canadianjournal of chemistry, um, and
then we have uh, one is throughwounds, canada uh and um, so
they're kind of getting outthrough through that.
It always takes time to get thepublications and manuscript
writing but we're very proud ofthat.
(21:07):
So one of our earlier ones thatwas now before COVID, was in
Green Teacher to actually seeand kind of get that knowledge
out and that actually was partagain, this was outreach and
this is part of being anacademic and this is part of,
you know, being an academic.
We did a lot of non-traditional, not only peer-reviewed
(21:28):
publication, but we taught withlocal teachers and Nova Scotia
teachers and their professionaldevelopment and we're actually
now recognized.
And there's a little paragraphabout Duma and me, about this
Masqueoman project in the gradeseven French science textbook
(21:48):
Very good, very good, yeah,similar for myself.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Last September I was asked by a teacher out in
Millbrook to come and do some ofthe nature walks with their
class, and then she contacted meand said that CBC was in touch
with them through the Nationaland so we did a walk through the
woods and I did a lot ofexplaining about the various
plants and the utilization for alot of different materials or
(22:15):
ailments and things along thoselines.
And so the person filming it,he says so, what do we call you?
And I said well, jerry.
And they said well, yeah, butwhat's your title?
I said Jerry, and they said no,no, but what should we call you
?
And I said well, jerry.
And the teacher jumps up andsays no, no, no, he's the keeper
of ancient knowledge.
And I just started to laugh andlaugh and I said, look, I may
(22:40):
know some things, but there's alot of other individuals who
have far more knowledge than Ido.
You know, my family backgroundhas a Métis status and so we do
have some followings in a lot ofdifferent circles.
But I found it very interesting.
But that was on the nationaland people can see that on the
national.
Now, what I was trying to getto was it's on.
Actually land and sea is whereyour program is, or the program
(23:03):
is that deals with the productwe're talking about.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Yeah, well, it's, and I think this is why Canada is
wonderful.
You know, I immigrated I'moriginally from Germany to
Canada.
You know, about 25 years ago.
She counted the other day thatI'm longer in Canada than I was
in Germany and it's great to behere, like it's all about.
You know, working together, uh,we're working with the local
(23:28):
indigenous community.
We're trying to honor their, uh, their knowledge and really, uh
, represent that In fact nowwith the company we're, we're
publicizing that and it's it's,it's it's amazing what knowledge
we have and what.
You know, what happened in therecent past with you know, with
Canada and First Nations, whichwas horrible, and so we're
(23:50):
trying to undo some of thosethings because it's benefits for
everyone.
It's, you know, having newmedicines or not, new, old
medicines old medicines reallykind of created from that,
particularly with skin.
And this is me being a chemistand now I'm more involved in
this.
According to the CanadianDermatology Association, 25%, so
(24:16):
one in four people have achronic skin condition and
people are suffering.
And when we see, we getfeedback from clients and
customers who actually say Ihave the skin condition for 20
years, nothing really helped.
I used your cream and within aweek it was gone.
This is like very powerful andso, uh, we need to kind of that
(24:40):
keeps us going, because itreally kind of we're changing
their lives and so right nowwe're we're selling our products
, um, under a cosmetic license.
So this is kind of how we canget out.
But for the research and thisis now the academic research is
we really want to go into thenatural health product field and
(25:00):
really kind of clinical trialsand find out more details that
is required for these advancedmedicine steps?
Speaker 3 (25:09):
So are you working to get an NPN number?
Is that what I'm hearing here?
Speaker 4 (25:12):
That's exactly what we're working for, but it's, oh
boy, it's a lot of work, uh,there's a lot of T's to cross
and, uh, i's to dot, uh, and sowe're kind of step by step by
step with that.
So, absolutely so, we're, we'reworking towards that.
It's going through theregulatory work and uh, uh, you
know there's, you know peoplecomplain about that.
(25:32):
There's a lot of red tape andthere is.
However, you know, obviouslyjust needs to be safe, it needs
to be working, and so we need tokind of show and document all
this, and so it's very excitingfrom a chemist's perspective.
It's a lengthy process, though.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
So, matthias, is there a specific time of year
that the birch bark is harvestedthat'll produce better
materials than other times?
For example, birch bark orbirch trees have their sap runs
as well.
And for chaga, the Inotanusobliquus that I deal with a lot
of, we predominantly harvestmost of the time when there's no
(26:11):
sap in the tree.
Is your harvest time?
Does it matter?
Are you finding, have youchecked into things like that?
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Well, when we look from the chemistry perspective,
we don't really see muchdifference there.
But what we're kind of doing isusually springtime.
I usually go out with my kidsand we are living in the woods
here, which is really reallygreat as well as a friend has
like big, big uh plot, and sowe're really collecting the uh,
(26:39):
the bark off the tree in thespringtime and then drying that
and kind of using that.
And because we developed amachine, uh, to make this
extract much, much moreefficiently, we don't really
need that much bark, and so it'sreally very sustainable and
very natural to actually makethis extract.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
So how deep do you take the bark when you're taking
bark off the birch tree, andare the trees surviving
afterwards?
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Oh, absolutely we're not harming the tree, so we're
just taking the outer layers andthen obviously we have to
process them and wash them, thatthey're all clean, in order to
kind of you know, kind of gowith that.
But that's really our process,so we're really in harmony with
(27:26):
nature only take what we needand not kind of go in you know
kind of let's, you know, destroyeverything.
No, we're really kind of inharmony with that, and that's
(27:46):
really kind of the focus that wewant to highlight.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So have you looked at other strains of birch trees a
yellow birch or any of the otherones that are out there for
looking at the material whenyou're developing this, or is it
just the paper birch thatyou're dealing with?
Speaker 4 (28:04):
So we're right now doing the paper birch as part of
my research.
We have looked at yellow birch.
It's very difficult to gettheir bark off because it's much
harder than the paper.
That's why the paper is paper,uh and uh, the the extract that
we get out is looks completelydifferent.
(28:24):
So the one that we have is likekind of this uh, thick whiskers
, almost black extract, veryoily.
You know that's what we get.
And when we go with the yellowbirch it's almost like honey
color, it's much more runny,it's much more fragrant.
And this is where I had to learnactually botany a little bit.
(28:48):
I got a crash course with afellow biology biology professor
here at cbu in botany.
Because when you have, when youtalk about the species and if
the species are different so youmentioned, you know, natural
health product npn number it'sactually dependent on the
species.
So birch is uh, is anoverarching, um, like grouping,
(29:12):
and then you have a particularspecies and so in our case the
species is Papyrifera, the whitepaper birch, and so another
species is the yellow birch, andyou would think it's the same
as a birch.
No, it's not.
This extract actually is quitedifferent, and so this is now
really kind of, while we'reright now focusing on papyrifera
(29:34):
here that is grown here in theeastern part of Canada well,
central eastern part of Canadawe want to kind of explore what
about the different birches allaround the world?
Because by definition it's adifferent species, so their
products might be different andhave different properties, and
(29:57):
so we want to see what isoverlapping and what is new.
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Speaker 3 (31:24):
And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga
Health and Wellness.
Okay, we've got Rob fromHamilton here, who's had some
success with the Chaga cream.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
Rob, can you tell us about it?
Yeah, I've used it on blemishes, cuts, just basically all
around healing Anything kind ofblemish.
It speeds it up really quick,great Speeds the healing process
up the healing process reallywell.
It leaves no marks and doesn'tstain or smells okay.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Okay, thanks, rob, appreciate that.
You're welcome.
We interrupt this program tobring you a special offer from
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Hey, thanks for listening Backto the episode.
So are you finding chemicalslike triterpenes, betulin and
(33:03):
betulinic acid inside yourmaterial, or have you noticed
anything like that, or do youeven look for those kind of
materials?
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Well, we have that.
We actually have to just finish.
We had one of my first graduatestudent, Vlada.
She's Ukrainian and she I havea collaboration with the
university of like MemorialUniversity, and so she just did
her master's thesis seminar lastweek.
She did a great job.
(33:31):
And we actually her job was toanalyze this with chemical
analysis, and so what we find?
There are only traces of thesebitulin and bitulinic acid.
Those are the triterpenes thatare natural products it's
actually one of the oldest onesthat is known bitulin.
Well, bitulin's name comes frombitula, which is the Latin word
(33:53):
for birch, and they have a lotof medicinal properties and so
we see some traces of this.
But we see other compounds andthis is what we know now with
our research, the conditions,the fire, so to speak.
If you're like too hot it's notso good and if you're too cold
(34:15):
it's not really good.
So there's kind of thisGoldilocks principle here that
there's the right temperatureand so that really affects the
composition of these compounds.
So we have chemical compoundspresent.
We identified so far 76, but weknow there are more than 200 in
(34:37):
there, probably closer to 300.
And so we're really kind oftrying to figure out how that
works.
So it's quite exciting and whatI learned from this particular
this was really eye-opening tome.
When people talk, you know, butoh, make my knowledge or
indigenous knowledge anddifferent sciences and knowledge
(34:57):
, and I thought like, yeah, youknow, kind of, we'll look at
this, find one of two maincompounds, extract it and then
you know, do your normal thing,right.
But in this case I think thatis not working.
First we can't really find amajor compound.
All of them are kind of, youknow, if you have a lot of
compounds about half a percent,some a little bit more, some a
(35:19):
little bit less but it's thatsymphony together and this is, I
think, how the extract works.
Because how can it work on likeeczema, psoriasis, sunburn,
mosquito bite and you know andthe stuff?
So our new hypothesis is thatsome of these compounds are
antibacterial, which we haveproven.
(35:39):
Some of these compounds areanti-pain, anti-inflammatory,
anti-oxidant, anti-itch.
We know that we have now an Nequals three.
So customers got back and saidthey used to cream on poison ivy
.
So they got poison ivy on theirhand, they used to cream and it
(36:00):
stopped.
It was totally fine.
So there must be some itching.
We don't know how it works, butyou know, very limited.
So we want to learn more aboutthis.
But coming back to kind of thisphilosophy, so the western
philosophy is more like onesingle compound does something,
and here the, the migma peoplehave like kind of everything
kind of works together.
So there's kind of this youknow kind of symphony, this
(36:23):
multitude of of compounds, and Ithink that might be a case to
solve skin conditions, becausewhile you have one underlying
cause and that could be alsoautoimmune, you know kind of
triggered, you know, you itch.
When you itch, you scratch.
When you scratch, you break theskin and now you have secondary
(36:43):
infections and then obviouslyit's inflamed so you need to
have anti-inflammatory.
There's some oxidation going on, so you should have
antioxidants and so that kind ofhas kind of this effect.
And I think this would besomething what modern medicine
and modern health research needsto look at, rather than the
(37:05):
standard, you know, the oneaspirin, the one anti-cancer
drug to look at multiplecompounds and not just like two
or three but many more.
And I think this is somethingreally exciting.
What the Mi'kmaq people haveand cultures around the world
really say maybe it's that youknow well, if you think about it
, you drink a cup of coffee or acup of tea in the morning, you
(37:29):
could just pop a caffeine pilland douse it with water.
But there are some othercompounds in the coffee, in the
tea, that are really, you know,antioxidant and
anti-inflammatory and that arebeneficial.
And I think this is the samethat we see with musculi.
To see this in this regard withskin conditions.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah, I find it very interesting in a couple of areas
One that we have a cream aswell that we use with the chaga
that has similar results witheczema and psoriasis and all the
inflictions that you'rementioning.
But here's something to trythat it was just by chance that
somebody had mentioned.
What about shingles?
(38:15):
With the outbreak of shingles,there has been a number of
individuals that have come andhave said that the cream that we
have was substantiallyassisting with the pain
associated with the rash comingout of shingles, and it might be
another area that you can lookinto that may have some
significant benefits to as well.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I will look into that .
I don't know particularly thisparticular case.
We're really kind of very earlyin this research.
Even though we're doing it now,for what?
12 years?
2013?
It started.
It's amazing, so I can see apossibility for that.
It's amazing, so I can see apossibility for that.
(38:55):
I have to be cautious aboutthis.
This is Research Ethic Boardapproval.
You get a heart attack becausewe have not proven it.
You know, kind of these are allhypotheses there, so we have to
be careful about this.
But I think there can becertainly compounds in there.
Because there are so manycompounds in there, this is
(39:19):
really important and that waspart of why the research took
quite a long time.
One of the first research thatwe needed to do was making sure
that the extract is not harmful,that there are not any harmful
chemicals in there and at theconcentration levels that we're
(39:40):
using, we can be very confidentin our analysis and say it's not
harmful.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Very good.
Yeah, I know, when I mentionedthe happy people, what they were
doing was mixing the oil withfish oil as an application, as
an insect repellent for theirdogs and the kids and everything
.
And, mind you, they doemphasize that everybody smells
like birch tar, which is a very.
(40:10):
They don't say it's pleasant orunpleasant, but they do say
it's a strong smell to it, butthe benefit was overwhelming and
to me, it was well worth seeing, and that's the first place in
2010 that I saw birch bark oilbeing extracted and found it
very interesting.
Now, matthias, is there otherkind of trees that can produce
similar materials?
(40:31):
I know because, for example,chaga not only grows on birch
trees, but it also grows on theironwood hop hornbeam, and I'm
wondering if you've looked atother trees or not.
Is it just primarily focused onbirch?
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Well, back to your other stuff with the fish oil
there.
Well, first with the trees.
So right now we're focused onthe birch.
That's enough for me as achemist to kind of do with that
I need to clone myself there.
(41:17):
But I know from Duma being youknow kind of ethno botanist, he
has collected hundreds ofstories.
He's wrote 300 stories abouttrees and shrubs and plants.
There are more and this is inthe CBC documentary that Land
and Sea.
We have people who do medicinewalks and they can tell more
about their plants and what it'sused for.
This is kind of for whateverstomach aches, or this one is
here for a headache or here tocalm someone down.
(41:37):
So there's lots of differentproperties there.
So I cannot really comment onother entities.
My work right now is focusingon birch and muscovite, on that.
But with the other stuff whenyou have it I mean this is how
you apply.
When you take the extract it'shighly fragrant and it's kind of
(42:00):
a campfire smell there and youkind of dilute that into some
sort of a fat-based cream.
We are using natural productsas a cream in order to do that.
I know the Mi'kmaq people usebear, bear grease and apparently
bear grease by itself hasmedicinal properties.
Obviously no bear has beenharmed in this research and
(42:22):
we're not using any bear grease.
And I can remember actually Dumatelling a story that the
original cream that he wanted tomake he wanted to use then duck
fat.
And so he then told his motherand his mother says well, you
(42:44):
have to hunt a duck.
He said I'm not hunting, I'mnot hunting.
So he took the second bestoption.
So he says, as a good person, Iwent to the grocery store and
bought a frozen duck.
We had a feast and then I usedthe fat then to make his
homemade concoction.
(43:04):
This was back in the 1990s butI thought that was kind of very
funny.
That way.
It's like, yeah, the not goodhunter Duma just goes to the
grocery store and buys frozenduck.
Yeah, but that's really good.
What we actually did just aboutthis duck story there as part of
the research one was theindigenous knowledge and
(43:27):
honoring the traditions.
He actually had a Mi'kmaq chefbrought in and they actually had
some ducks.
People in the actually had someducks.
People in the community werehunting ducks in the season and
then he actually came and showedhow to pluck the duck and
actually make a Mi'kmaq dishwith that to the community
(43:49):
member.
And that was kind of bringingback that knowledge and this was
really important, you know,kind of gathering that knowledge
, that because who goes out andkind of hunts ducks and you know
, plucks them and then makes afeast, and so he kind of showed
that as part of that traditionthere.
So, yeah, there's lots ofinformation out there.
(44:12):
We are rich here in Canada withinformation and I you know this
is part of mine.
I'm happy that you know youcontacted me with your podcast
because I think something thereis a little bit of a prejudice
with, in this case in chemistry,research.
(44:32):
You know we think, oh, the newcancer drug.
You have to go to the AmazonForest or the South Pacific Sea
corals, and there are somecompounds in there which are
really good.
I don't want to denigrate that,but don't overlook about the
shrubs behind your shed, in yourgarden in Ontario or here in
(44:53):
Cape Breton, and knowing andspeaking to the people who are
living here, for you know longperiod of time, you know 40,000
years, there's a lot ofknowledge and that knowledge,
because it's oral tradition, hasbeen, you know, seriously, you
know, destroyed and damaged bythe past.
(45:14):
It's like let's work togetherRight and really find that,
because it doesn't matterwhether you have a skin
condition and what the color ofthe skin is.
If we can help each other out,that's just for the benefit of
everyone.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Yeah.
So, Matthias, is it just fromliving trees that you collect
your bark from?
Speaker 4 (45:36):
You can.
Well, it's bark, so you can getthem from farm.
We're going with living treesright now.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Living trees and do you know if it matters?
And the reason I'm asking thisis because when I first saw this
, I was up a place near Wawa orShaplow in Ontario, yeah, and I
came across there had been abirch cut by a lumbering company
but for some reason they hadscaled a lot of the birch bark
and there was probablytruckloads.
(46:01):
You could probably pick up afive-ton truckload of birch bark
in the bush where they wereusing it and I wondered if that
could be utilized for that thingthat I saw in that TV program.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
From a chemistry perspective, yes, you can.
Oh, really, Obviously we haveto be careful because sometimes
if it's rotten you don't want touse that.
You know kind of, howdecomposed is it?
But if it has been harvestedbefore, then that's from a
chemistry perspective.
The bark is bark there.
You know kind of these are themain components.
(46:35):
So there is that Obviously youhave to probably wash it and you
kind of clean it that way,because there's some bugs
running around and stuff.
So we want to make sure thatthis is all cleaned and this is
part of our process then for thecompany then as well, to ensure
well quality insurance, thatone batch is the same as the
(46:55):
next one, and we get all that.
So that's what I can say.
With that, and from asustainable aspect as well,
obviously you don't want to takeeverything.
It's kind of clear-cuttingbecause obviously you need the
partially decomposing trees andbranches and whatnot, so that
(47:18):
new forest can grow up and go on.
So you, you, you, you just takea little bit, Um, the uh, the
Mi'kmaq have uh, uh, I don'tknow I'm mispronouncing that,
but that's a concept of you onlytake what you need and make
sure that everyone else has it.
(47:39):
And that's again with nature,and so this is kind of part of
this concept that we're going inas well.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Yeah, and there's a lot of things that you mentioned
.
You know you talk about washingit off because of bugs and
things like that, but if you, ifyou recall a movie called
Medicine man where Sean Connerystarted.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
I'm mentioning that actually to my students.
Yes, oh, really 1991 with SeanConnery.
Nobody really knows it, butit's actually a really good one.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah, it is, because it's the unknown things that
actually were the benefits thatwe don't really know about, and
which was saving a lot ofinteresting.
So yeah, so that was a goodshow and which was saving a lot
of interesting.
So yeah, so that was a goodshow, and there's quite a few of
them out there that you know.
There's Susan I'm not sure ifyou're sure out of the
University of British Columbiathat talks about the arbuscular
(48:25):
relationships with trees, wherethey talk to each other or
communicate to each other.
I don't know if you've seenthat one or not.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
No, I have not.
I have not seen that.
But coming back to thatmedicine man, like I mean this
is for your listeners, I knowit's, it's now 19 whatever.
Early 1990s, 1991, 1992, withsean connery.
It's a little bit cheesy moviebut the, the, the content is
actually really good.
So this researcher went to theamazon forest well, there's the
(48:51):
amazon again, but the amazonforest and found, found some
sort of drug that could curecancer in these hamsters or mice
that he had there.
Yeah, the problem was hecouldn't replicate that anymore.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Right, but it wasn't until they spoke with the
ancient people that were there,the tribes that were there, that
basically said bugs yes, it wasthe bugs that were that, that
were the medicine came fromthere.
Speaker 4 (49:17):
So he treated the plant extract and it was
contaminated by whatever theseants that were in the sugar by
chance, and so he thought it'sthe plant that saved them.
But it was the ants.
And then there was likewhatever bulldozers and you know
kind of clear cutting andbasically the story is like if
you destroy the rainforest, youmay be destroying you know
(49:41):
future medicines and that savespeople from cancer.
But this is actually true here.
I think, in analogy, you knowkind of that we need to kind of
listen to people and kind ofthese knowledges and then using
modern tools, to kind offine-tune this.
And this is where you know myresearch here is limited.
(50:02):
Right now we cannot really saythis molecule is responsible for
this and this goes into thisenzyme pocket and kind of
receptor.
We don't really know that.
But we do know that when peopleuse this extract it really is
good for their skin and thereare some benefits from that.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
I recall when I was Minister of Natural Resources,
there was a company I believe itwas out of Texas, that wanted
the rights, the sole rights, toall the chemical compounds found
in the materials in Ontario andwanted me to sign off and sell
it to them.
And I absolutely refusedbecause that would be, first of
all, the potentials, as we'rejust talking about, for so many
(50:47):
healing things that are outthere that we haven't even
looked at yet, that are slowlycoming about, and a lot of the
ancient knowledge is verysignificant in passing these on
and helping, helping today'ssociety.
But I know that at that time II refused and I said this would
be the worst thing going, so Iwouldn't allow it to happen
thank you for not doing that.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
That's good.
No, because because this is we.
We don't even know what we don'tknow, you know kind of this is
that and, and you know,corporation explore, exploiting
uh, it's, it's, that's, that'ssomething.
Now, that's speaking me as afounder of a small company.
We're just a small company.
We're just a few people workinghere.
We're punching above our weighthere, but ultimately we're
(51:29):
still very, very small.
But it has to be in benefit.
We don't have a monopoly.
Someone else wants to make theextract in their backyard.
Go for it.
You know, kind of this isknowledge that we should share,
and if they find somethingbetter that helps for them or
(51:50):
kind of tweak the process or addsome other stuff.
I think that's all what humansare about to learn and to help
each other.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
So some of the things that I looked at.
Matthias and I was last weekjust explaining things exactly
like this that in Ontario weused to have birch mills that
would harvest birch logs and thebark was a wasted residual that
they tried to get rid of andthey actually had to pay to have
it taken to dumps and thingslike that.
(52:21):
Why not look at utilizing thosematerials in other forms
whether we're just talking aboutthings like this and I'm not
sure if you've ever if you havecompanies that predominantly
deal in in birch fiber, thatwould have residuals, leftover
materials from birch bark frombirch trees that you might be
able to utilize en masse and itjust adds more use to the fiber
(52:42):
that's being taken in theforests.
Speaker 4 (52:45):
Oh, absolutely, it's valorization, you know, of
material Waste is not a waste,you know, and we just look at
that.
You know, bringing them the,the indigenous knowledge lens,
um, I mean, you might know there, you know there'd be the the
loggers would trample over thebirch to get to the, the
(53:07):
softwood, in order to make youknow kind of well, structure,
material and whatnot, which isfine, you know we still need
those, but they were reallytrampling on the stuff and and
and.
So when the eldest then says,well, they cherish the birch
tree as really um, uh, knowledgeand you know, kind of part of
(53:28):
the culture and stuff that iskind of this coding in the
language, in them, in their uh,culture, in their myths and so
on, that we should not, you know, kind of trample literally
stuff like that, but reallycherish that.
And I think this is exactlywhat you're conveying to.
You know, kind of, oh, this is,this is the garbage.
Speaker 3 (53:51):
You know, I tell my students all the time, if I'm
rich and would be there, I wouldstart buying all garbage dumps
in Canada, because the garbagedumps of today are the resources
of the future would be a greatlocation to do materials
(54:22):
extraction for the metals thatare in them now, because we used
to throw all those metals inthe dump once upon a time and
dumps are filled with old metalsthat could be used, probably
and extracted a lot cheaper thanthe mining process that we're
doing for extraction of otherthings now, and it's just
something.
But the more I looked into thatthere was not a lot of records
for old dumps in the fifties andsixties in municipalities, so
(54:43):
it's hard to find those kinds ofdetails.
But it's just another potentialfor somebody looking as an
entrepreneurial aspect of somethings that could be done.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
Oh, and it helps.
You know, back in the day itwas more scattered.
You know, kind of all this.
That's one stuff with metals Imean.
This comes back to my chemistrybackground.
You know, a metal is a metal.
You know, once you have whatevera palladium or gold or whatnot
(55:12):
it stays that way and, like yousaid, that's one reason why we
want to, why we are recyclingelectronics, because the gold
content in an old, you know,computer is, I think you know
don't quote me on that but Ithink like two or three orders
of magnitude, like a hundred ora thousand times higher than the
gold in like the earth, thegold in like the earth.
(55:39):
So it's like saying, like thisis a super gold mine so it would
be stupid to throw it out.
Yeah, um, and just like, hey,just bring it back in.
Um, we've done it with aluminum, um, sulfur is like one of
those examples and this is kindof brings everyone and it's
actually good for theenvironment, so you don't have
to go to pristine land andreally preserve that.
(56:00):
But really kind of take whatyou need.
You know, kind of follow thesetraditions, take what you need,
not kind of today's profit, andlike whatever you know um, the
world can burn afterwards, butreally kind of saying like I,
you know I have no kids, youknow I want their kids to have
prosperous country and land tolive on and I think we can be
(56:24):
very proud of what we're doinghere in Canada.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Exactly, and it's the things that you're doing this
and working with the indigenous,the aboriginal individuals that
will benefit future generationsas well, to see the value in a
lot of other things.
And I recall I mentioned anumber of times that so long as
the forest continues to havevalue, it'll continue to be a
forest and once it loses itsvalue, people will find other
(56:48):
purposes for that, whether sometry to cut it down to graze
cattle in, as I stopped inOntario once upon a time and we
need to make sure that thoseopportunities for future
generations continue.
But, matias, I know that you'vegot to get to class very
shortly.
I think I'm not sure about thetime change.
How can people find out moredetails about you and your
(57:11):
research, or where can they getin touch and find out about your
product, or is there specialevents on or something you want
to share with our audience?
Speaker 4 (57:19):
Yeah Well, thank you very much, yeah, so I think the
best way is our, our website,masquiomincom,
m-a-s-k-w-i-o-m-i-ncom we'rethis is it tells us our the
backstory, the products thatwe're selling.
We have creams and soaps.
(57:42):
Some are really very nicelysmelling, so it's really really
great there and in fact, I wastold from my COO there that we
are actually having a littlesale on right now until April 10
, 2025.
So there's 20% off of 50-gramcreams and you just put the code
(58:02):
word in canopy.
So thank you so much for you,jerry, to be on this one here.
But, yeah, please check us outonline Masqueoman, or just my
last name, beer and Steel,matthias Beer and Steel and you
will find us.
Or check out the CBC Land andSea documentary Mi'kmaq
Medicines that just came out.
You can find them on YouTube aswell as on CBC website and
(58:28):
learn more about us.
It's great that people need toknow not only about us, but
really about all thatinformation that we have and
that we have wonderful herewithin Canada, of all the people
who are living here.
Speaker 3 (58:41):
And just so people know, for the people that listen
around the world, this is aproduct you can ship around the
world as well.
Speaker 4 (58:47):
Right now we're limited to North America, but
because of, unfortunately, theongoing thing with the neighbor
south, we're actually nowworking on getting licenses to
sell all around the world muchmore faster than we intended to,
so they should just send us anemail, contact us and then we'll
work things out.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
Well, matthias, I very much appreciate you taking
the time to be on our podcasttoday, and this is just
something a little bit differentthan learning some of the
benefits and the things that arehappening, that has been around
for generations, that are nowbeing relearned and passed on to
future generations out thereunder the canopy.
Thanks, matthias, thank you.
Speaker 6 (59:44):
How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to
build one of Canada's mosticonic fishing lodges?
I'm your host, Steve Nitzwicky,and you'll find out about that
and a whole lot more on theOutdoor Journal Radio Network's
newest podcast, Diaries of aLodge Owner.
But this podcast will be morethan that.
Every week on Diaries of aLodge Owner, I'm going to
(01:00:07):
introduce you to a ton of greatpeople, share their stories of
our trials, tribulations andinspirations, Learn and have
plenty of laughs along the way.
Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along
trying to figure out how tocatch a bass and we both decided
one day we were going to be ontelevision doing a fishing show.
Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in
all those bass in the summertime, but that might be for more
fishing than it was punching youso confidently.
Speaker 6 (01:00:37):
you said hey, pat have you ever eaten a drum?
Find Diaries of a Lodge Ownernow on Spotify, apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Hi everybody.
I'm Angelo Viola and I'm PeteBowman.
Now you might know us as thehosts of Canada's Favorite
Fishing Show, but now we'rehosting a podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
That's right.
Every Thursday, ange and I willbe right here in your ears
bringing you a brand new episodeof Outdoor Journal Radio Now
what are we going to talk aboutfor two hours every week?
Well, you know there's going tobe a lot of fishing.
Speaker 6 (01:01:11):
I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and
how to catch them, and they werewere easy to catch.
Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show.
We're going to be talking topeople from all facets of the
outdoors, from athletes All theother guys would go golfing.
Speaker 6 (01:01:25):
Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go
fishing To scientists.
But now that we're reforestingand laying things free, it's the
perfect transmissionenvironment for line fishing To
chefs.
If any game isn't cookedproperly, marinated, you will
taste it.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you
are.
Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions
and tell the stories of allthose who enjoy being outside.
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts.
The humble goldfish, everyone's favorite aquatic pet.
It's small, easy to care for.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
What's there not to love?
Even the cat may be mesmerizedby the color and movements of
your aquarium friends.
Goldfish are great at home, butdon't let them loose.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Releasing goldfish or other domestic aquatic pets or
plants into natural environmentsis harmful to both your pet and
the planet.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Goldfish disrupt ecosystems by out-competing
native species for food andresources.
In degraded habitats theycontribute to algae blooms.
They kill aquatic wildlife andpass viruses and diseases
contracted in aquariums to wildfish.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
They could even live up to 40 years and grow as big
as a football.
Anglers, this is where you comein.
If you find a goldfish at yourlocal fishing spot, report it to
the Invading Species Hotline orgo online to eddmapscom.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Remember to never dump your live bait into the
water and risk spreading otheraquatic invaders.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Keep our lakes free from invaders and don't let them
loose.
As the world gets louder andlouder, the lessons of our
natural world become harder andharder to hear, but they are
still available to those whoknow where to listen.
I'm Jerry Ouellette and I washonoured to serve as Ontario's
Minister of Natural Resources.
However, my journey into thewoods didn't come from politics.
(01:37):
Rather, it came from my time inthe bush and a mushroom.
In 2015, I was introduced tothe birch-hungry fungus known as
chaga, a tree conch withcenturies of medicinal
applications used by Indigenouspeoples all over the globe.
After nearly a decade of harvestuse, testimonials and research,
(02:01):
my skepticism has faded toobsession and I now spend my
life dedicated to improving thelives of others through natural
means, testimonials and research.
My skepticism has faded toobsession and I now spend my
life dedicated to improving thelives of others through natural
means.
But that's not what the show isabout.
My pursuit of this strangemushroom and my passion for the
outdoors has brought me to theplaces and around the people
that are shaped by our naturalworld.
On Outdoor Journal Radio'sUnder the Canopy podcast, I'm
(02:25):
going to take you along with meto see the places, meet the
people that will help you findyour outdoor passion and help
you live a life close to natureand under the canopy.
So join me today for anothergreat episode, and hopefully we
can inspire a few more people tolive their lives under the
canopy.
(02:45):
Okay, as always, we want tothank our listeners all
throughout Canada, united States, all around through the world
Switzerland, ghana, trinidad,tobago all through the Caribbean
as well.
We really appreciate it and, asusual, if anybody has any
(03:06):
suggestions for shows orquestions they want to answer,
just email us and we'd be morethan happy to see what we can do
to get those on for you Nowtoday we have a special guest,
dr Matthias Bierenstiel, who'sfrom the East Coast in Ontario.
Welcome to the podcast, matthias.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Well, thank you very much, Jerry.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time to be on the
podcast.
Tell us about whereaboutsyou're located so our
international listeners can kindof get a sense of where you're
calling from.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Well, we're calling out of beautiful Sydney, Nova
Scotia.
It's a sunny day today, sowe're here in Cape Breton Island
and that's where we are callingin today from.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Very good and tell us about yourself.
You know a bit about yourbackground and what you're doing
and where you're at.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Okay, great.
Well, here I'm at Cape BretonUniversity in Sydney.
I'm a professor of chemistry,and I'm here for almost 20 years
.
I'm originally from Germany.
I studied at the University ofMunich, but then I came to
Canada, studied at theUniversity of Guelph in Ontario
(04:17):
I think under your time when youwere minister and then I went
to the University of Alberta fora postdoc and then moved with
my family to Sydney and eversince, here I'm doing chemistry
research and teaching students.
Oh, very good.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So tell us about your position at the university.
What is it that you actually donow?
I know you've got a class forstudents to get to, or is it
that time of the year now wherewe're talking about exams and
things like that?
Oh, exactly.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
So exam is coming up in two weeks, so the final
lectures and so on, so they'reall there.
So I'm teaching this termintroduction to inorganic
chemistry.
However, with kind of what I'mdoing, I'm a full professor.
I've been teaching chemistry,all different types of chemistry
organic chemistry, inorganicchemistry those are kind of my
(05:08):
specialties and I've been doinglike research with here at the
university.
Cbu is a primarilyundergraduate institution, so we
have lots of undergraduatestudents and we invite them to
do our research, and I have lotsof projects with students over
the years, working with localbusinesses, with other
(05:31):
researchers, and what we'regoing to be talking about is a
major project that has startedin 2013, which is Musqueamie
birch bark extract.
That is really, really usefuland it's based on traditional
Mi'kmaq knowledge.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Okay, very good.
So some time ago, when youreceived the grant to begin the
research, is that how you gotinvolved with this study of the
Mi'kmaq?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Okay, well, that was a little bit after.
Obviously, we have to get theidea first, but that was one of
the things.
So it was serendipity, oractually, in this case, yeah, it
is obviously serendipity.
However, being at a smallinstitution, you're, you know,
connected with lots of otherfaculty from different
(06:22):
disciplines, with lots of otherfaculty from different
disciplines, and so I met afaculty member from Mi'kmaq
Studies, duma Yang.
He's a knowledge holder, he's alawyer, he's a social activist
and he's a university professor,and at that time he was
teaching Mi'kmaq Studies, and heasked me to come along if I
(06:42):
want to learn a little bit moreMi'kmaq cultures, and he took
the students to a trip to picksweetgrass.
This was in the summer, so Icame out because I wanted to
learn.
I never really did anything likethat before.
It was really exciting.
And on that trip he actuallythen says, well, and next week
we're talking about birchbarkextract, birchbark oil.
And I said, like, how do you dothat?
(07:04):
And he says, well, we have acampfire and we'll get some
extract out of this campfire.
It's a very traditional Mi'kmaqmedicine.
And I said, well, that'schemistry.
If you transform a bark and youget some sort of oily extract
out of this, this is a chemicaltransformation and that was how
it started.
So that's how we kind ofconnected together.
(07:26):
He talked to me a little bitmore about the process and then
I kind of did my chemistry andscience aspect to kind of work
with him.
And this is then when we hadthe idea we got some.
We then applied for funding andever since we got some funding
about this and got peopleinvolved and health researchers
and whatnot, and so this bringseverything together.
(07:48):
It's a really great project.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Very good.
So I'm going to ask a questiona little bit outside the norm,
and it's because I sit on theboard of the local college and
actually I have a board meetingtonight where we're talking
about revenue generation as partof it.
So when you worked with theproject that you're working on
now, was there a financialbenefit to the university as
well?
(08:11):
Are they receiving some of thegeneration?
Speaker 4 (08:14):
No, no, this is an independent company, so the
union contracts.
100% of the intellectualproperty rights that a faculty
member generates are with thefaculty member.
Oh, okay, we reached out.
The university is very helpful.
They're helping with research,they're getting overhead from
the research that we'rereceiving, so there's the
(08:36):
benefit there.
So there's this mutual benefit.
We have reached out with theuniversity and they're on board.
But when we started it,actually we never really had any
entrepreneurial business startAt first.
We just wanted to find thingsout Right, and only throughout
the years how this projectdeveloped was like wow, there is
(08:57):
something here that we have asmall company and this is an
independent company that wasfounded.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Right, right, so the university gets involved, and is
that where the grant came from,or where did the grant come
from?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
So I really have two hats, so one is the academic hat
.
So as a university researcher,we apply for funding, tri-agency
funding.
So in this case it was CIHRCanadian Institutes of Health
Research and because we wantedto find out what is more with
this extract and what we can do,and this was in collaboration.
(09:34):
So I'm a co-PI, co-principalinvestigator.
My other partner is Duma Yangand we work together and what we
actually used was Ibtuaptumuk,which means it's translated as
two-eyed seeing methodology.
So Duma was looking at thetraditional knowledge of the
Mi'kmaq people how can wepreserve this, how can we honor
(09:57):
it?
We called it awakening of theknowledge and I was looking kind
of from the science perspective, the different eye, and really
saying like, what tools can wehave in order to understand this
extract?
Can we make it better?
What are its properties?
And kind of really from ascientific perspective
investigate and this kind ofworking together.
(10:19):
That was very, very beneficialand we found out a lot of stuff
which is really great.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Right, right.
So now, matthias, have you hadthe chance to look at and I
think it's on I'm not sure whichplatform, it might be Netflix.
It's called Happy People A Yearin the Taiega.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
No, I haven't really had a diagram to do that, but
what I found with with birch soI know you are interested in
jaga with you know kind of birch, uh fungus out there this one
here is is not related to ourproject, right?
Um, uh, birches, well, thereare what 57 different birch
species around the globe inmoderate climate and uh.
(11:02):
So there's a lot of informationout of Europe, scandinavia,
finland as well.
You know Germany, but they areusing different birch species
Pandula.
We are using here Papyrifera,and that's how we kind of get
the knowledge there Now thatwould be.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
What paper birch?
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Yes, okay, that's this one there.
What was interesting, actuallythinking about how old this is
can you remember when they foundthat glacier Eismann, that Ötzi
, in the Alps 1981?
Oh yeah, pretty much.
They actually found someresidue in his pouch that was
kind of from birch tar and sothey thought maybe it's
something from glue.
(11:42):
But what we could think aboutis that this could actually be
also medicinal properties back5,000 years ago, which is
amazing.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, and they found birch polypore in his pouch two
pieces of birch polypore as well, which you know my
understanding from what.
Some of the things that I sawindicated that he was
potentially using it for whatthey may believe was Lyme
disease.
That long ago from some of theresearch I saw.
So it's interesting how, but Ididn't know about the birch, the
(12:11):
oil or the tar, whichever we'recalling it.
But happy people, a year in theTiaga which came out in 2010
under, I think it was, sectionabout part two, summer, at about
25, 40 of the 25 minutes and 40seconds into it, they actually
do exactly what you're talkingabout.
So they take birch bark andthen they take a metal container
(12:34):
and they shave the bark andthen they build like a kind of
like.
They have shavings, so they'rerather large about the size of a
coffee cup sort of birch barkthat they put in there and then
they have it sits on top of like.
It would be like a large sievewhich for with large holes in it
(12:58):
, and then they put a metalcover over top of it and in that
one, what they do is they builda fire around it, cover over
top of it, and in that one.
What they do is they build afire around it and then they
bring it out and they have abowl that it collects in the
bottom of it and after a periodof time they use the extracted
material.
But they were using it as guesswhat.
Here's another thing for yourproject that you could add it to
(13:19):
For insect repellent.
Yeah, it was huge for insectrepellent.
Yeah, it was huge for insectrepellent, and they covered all
the kids and the dogs with thisbirch tar, they called it, and
it worked phenomenally well forinsect repellent.
And that's one of the ways thatI started to find and found
your information in regards towhat you're doing, because I
(13:40):
wanted to find out moreinformation about that.
So I found it very interestingthat they were using birch bark
in the fashion they were doing,a very rural extraction method,
which was, as I just mentioned,they kind of put a cap on this
and it was all sealed, and thenbuild a fire around it and
extracts the tar from it thatthey were using as an insect
repellent.
You're using it for far morematerials, such as to deal with
(14:04):
things like eczema, psoriasisand other topical applications
in regards to skin issues.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Correct yeah, well, this is kind of the first start.
So this is.
You know, there's lots ofresearch to be done, so this is
what we're focused on, right, soyou're right.
So, um, this is similar.
So when, when Duma Yang, herescued this knowledge here from
the Mi'kmaq people, and in the1990s he was talking to elders
(14:34):
about stories to rescue them andkind of keep them, and this was
in the Mi'kmaq language, andtwo elders told a story about a
Mi'kmaq woman in the 1920s.
She had a newborn baby and shedeveloped some sort of rash on
her chest and couldn't nurse thebaby, and that was really bad.
(14:54):
And so the midwife, she madethis concoction, masquiomine
masqui meaning birch bark andomi meaning kind of gathering
oil and then it says, applied itto the chest and then mother
and baby survived.
Uh, so clearly there was aclearing up of this condition.
And, uh, and so he puzzledtogether the pieces of how they
(15:15):
actually made it, and so, likeyou said, you know kind of
similar.
They used a can, uh, holes inthe bottom in the the ground,
put a hole in the ground with aunderneath the receptacle can,
and then had a campfire around.
And these are the traditionsthat he then said, because only
only two elders knew of thisstory.
(15:35):
One has since passed away, sothis knowledge would have almost
been lost.
And that's when he was at theuniversity teaching to the, to
his students, to keep thatknowledge alive, this oral
tradition, and what we have nowfound, as me as a chemist and an
expert, with that, I couldn'thave a fire in my lab, that's
not allowed.
So I said, can we mimic this?
(15:58):
And so we built kind of thiskind of electric contraption in
order to kind of mimic that.
And our first extracts actuallydidn't work.
They looked okay but theyweren't really, you know, in
this case antimicrobial.
And so that's when we cut backto kind of thinking about this,
(16:19):
and when we talked we said, yeah, we have to have this hole in
the ground and there's kind of athermal protection of this oil
when it's gathered in the fire.
It's called a paralytic processand and so you can actually say
from the words of the elders,mother nature is actually
protecting the extract, and sothat's actually a critical
(16:40):
development to do that.
And so we've done this now.
And so we we made a littlemachine to kind of make this and
in order to study and canreproduce it.
And now we actually much betteryield and much better stuff.
So we just published a paperabout this that the compounds in
this extract are antibacterialand there are many more.
(17:03):
So we know that there are morethan 200 compounds in there.
This is why we see this vastvastness and that's how we all
kind of started.
And I was just, you know, doingthe academic stuff, and while
Duma was showing it to communitythis is traditional way you do
it they come back and says Iused it on my skin or my
(17:24):
daughter's skin, and she hadeczema, she couldn't even go to
school and now she could comeback.
So that was like really, really, really, really interesting.
We used it on mosquito bites,rashes, you know, kind of all
sorts of things.
When they kind of said to Dumasthey're like, hey, I want more.
And he then says well, I showedit to you.
(17:48):
And this is where then thecommercialization idea came,
because, similar to, you canmake bread at home in your
kitchen, but it's so much moreconvenient to go to a grocery
store and buy it.
And that was right at thebeginning of COVID.
And so we actually have ourfive-year anniversary of our
company yeah, in two daysactually.
(18:11):
So it's our fifth anniversaryand we started out.
I started out in my kitchen andin my garage with Dilma, but
before this was important,before we started this, he went
to the community.
So, as part of the research,this was approved by Research,
essex Board approval, as well asMiGMA, essex Watch.
(18:35):
He talked to the community andsays can we do this?
Would someone else do that?
They didn't want to run bythemselves.
They said, yes, you can do it.
And so they basically gave ustheir blessing.
Someone else do that?
They?
They weren't they.
They didn't want to run bythemselves.
It says, yes, you can do it.
And uh, so they basically gaveus uh, their blessing and they
basically says do the good way,do the right way so that
everyone benefits, right.
So this is how we started.
(18:55):
Uh, it's indigenous, co-founded, we're still in contact with
the community and we are a smallcompany and kind of kind of
going about with that, and thenand then now the whole thing
then started.
So it's independent.
So this is now independent ofof the research.
It's an independent uh company.
Masque omen um.
It's online, we can see it.
(19:15):
Masque omencom uh, where wesell in, uh in canada, we can
sell into the us as well as well, and yeah, it's really great.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
So now you actually did a there was a television
program that you did in regardsto this.
Maybe you can kind of enlightenus as to some of the work.
People can see this and how canthey see this program that
talks about it.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Oh, it's excellent, Like people are really excited
about what we're doing andbecause it's all natural, it's
traditional knowledge, it'scombining it, fusing it with,
like, modern science, it'ssustainable, now also made in
Canada.
I mean, it's all made here, Ican't go there and so yeah.
So we were approached last yearby a CBC producer and said
(19:59):
would we be interested injoining them?
And I said absolutely so.
This was last year and it justcame out a couple of weeks ago
on CBC Land and Sea.
It's called Mi'kmaq Medicines.
It's just a 20-minute show butit's really exciting and it
actually shows the story fromthe elders with their medicine
walks.
Tuma is interviewed withregards to how birch is so
(20:24):
important for the Mi'kmaqcommunity and I'll show a little
bit on what we're doing withregards to the lab and the
production of our creams.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Right, so you mentioned, matisse, that you had
a published paper.
Where is it published?
Is it on Science Director bobmed, or where?
Yeah, and what's it called?
Speaker 4 (20:46):
so we have, we have, we have a few uh.
We have one with the canadianjournal of chemistry, um, and
then we have uh, one is throughwounds, canada uh and um, so
they're kind of getting outthrough through that.
It always takes time to get thepublications and manuscript
writing but we're very proud ofthat.
(21:07):
So one of our earlier ones thatwas now before COVID, was in
Green Teacher to actually seeand kind of get that knowledge
out and that actually was partagain, this was outreach and
this is part of being anacademic and this is part of,
you know, being an academic.
We did a lot of non-traditional, not only peer-reviewed
(21:28):
publication, but we taught withlocal teachers and Nova Scotia
teachers and their professionaldevelopment and we're actually
now recognized.
And there's a little paragraphabout Duma and me, about this
Masqueoman project in the gradeseven French science textbook
(21:48):
Very good, very good, yeah,similar for myself.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Last September I was asked by a teacher out in
Millbrook to come and do some ofthe nature walks with their
class, and then she contacted meand said that CBC was in touch
with them through the Nationaland so we did a walk through the
woods and I did a lot ofexplaining about the various
plants and the utilization for alot of different materials or
(22:15):
ailments and things along thoselines.
And so the person filming it,he says so, what do we call you?
And I said well, jerry.
And they said well, yeah, butwhat's your title?
I said Jerry, and they said no,no, but what should we call you
?
And I said well, jerry.
And the teacher jumps up andsays no, no, no, he's the keeper
of ancient knowledge.
And I just started to laugh andlaugh and I said, look, I may
(22:40):
know some things, but there's alot of other individuals who
have far more knowledge than Ido.
You know, my family backgroundhas a Métis status and so we do
have some followings in a lot ofdifferent circles.
But I found it very interesting.
But that was on the nationaland people can see that on the
national.
Now, what I was trying to getto was it's on.
Actually land and sea is whereyour program is, or the program
(23:03):
is that deals with the productwe're talking about.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Yeah, well, it's, and I think this is why Canada is
wonderful.
You know, I immigrated I'moriginally from Germany to
Canada.
You know, about 25 years ago.
She counted the other day thatI'm longer in Canada than I was
in Germany and it's great to behere, like it's all about.
You know, working together, uh,we're working with the local
(23:28):
indigenous community.
We're trying to honor their, uh, their knowledge and really, uh
, represent that In fact nowwith the company we're, we're
publicizing that and it's it's,it's it's amazing what knowledge
we have and what.
You know, what happened in therecent past with you know, with
Canada and First Nations, whichwas horrible, and so we're
(23:50):
trying to undo some of thosethings because it's benefits for
everyone.
It's, you know, having newmedicines or not, new, old
medicines old medicines reallykind of created from that,
particularly with skin.
And this is me being a chemistand now I'm more involved in
this.
According to the CanadianDermatology Association, 25%, so
(24:16):
one in four people have achronic skin condition and
people are suffering.
And when we see, we getfeedback from clients and
customers who actually say Ihave the skin condition for 20
years, nothing really helped.
I used your cream and within aweek it was gone.
This is like very powerful andso, uh, we need to kind of that
(24:40):
keeps us going, because itreally kind of we're changing
their lives and so right nowwe're we're selling our products
, um, under a cosmetic license.
So this is kind of how we canget out.
But for the research and thisis now the academic research is
we really want to go into thenatural health product field and
(25:00):
really kind of clinical trialsand find out more details that
is required for these advancedmedicine steps?
Speaker 3 (25:09):
So are you working to get an NPN number?
Is that what I'm hearing here?
Speaker 4 (25:12):
That's exactly what we're working for, but it's, oh
boy, it's a lot of work, uh,there's a lot of T's to cross
and, uh, i's to dot, uh, and sowe're kind of step by step by
step with that.
So, absolutely so, we're, we'reworking towards that.
It's going through theregulatory work and uh, uh, you
know there's, you know peoplecomplain about that.
(25:32):
There's a lot of red tape andthere is.
However, you know, obviouslyjust needs to be safe, it needs
to be working, and so we need tokind of show and document all
this, and so it's very excitingfrom a chemist's perspective.
It's a lengthy process, though.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
So, matthias, is there a specific time of year
that the birch bark is harvestedthat'll produce better
materials than other times?
For example, birch bark orbirch trees have their sap runs
as well.
And for chaga, the Inotanusobliquus that I deal with a lot
of, we predominantly harvestmost of the time when there's no
(26:11):
sap in the tree.
Is your harvest time?
Does it matter?
Are you finding, have youchecked into things like that?
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Well, when we look from the chemistry perspective,
we don't really see muchdifference there.
But what we're kind of doing isusually springtime.
I usually go out with my kidsand we are living in the woods
here, which is really reallygreat as well as a friend has
like big, big uh plot, and sowe're really collecting the uh,
(26:39):
the bark off the tree in thespringtime and then drying that
and kind of using that.
And because we developed amachine, uh, to make this
extract much, much moreefficiently, we don't really
need that much bark, and so it'sreally very sustainable and
very natural to actually makethis extract.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
So how deep do you take the bark when you're taking
bark off the birch tree, andare the trees surviving
afterwards?
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Oh, absolutely we're not harming the tree, so we're
just taking the outer layers andthen obviously we have to
process them and wash them, thatthey're all clean, in order to
kind of you know, kind of gowith that.
But that's really our process,so we're really in harmony with
(27:26):
nature only take what we needand not kind of go in you know
kind of let's, you know, destroyeverything.
No, we're really kind of inharmony with that, and that's
(27:46):
really kind of the focus that wewant to highlight.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So have you looked at other strains of birch trees a
yellow birch or any of the otherones that are out there for
looking at the material whenyou're developing this, or is it
just the paper birch thatyou're dealing with?
Speaker 4 (28:04):
So we're right now doing the paper birch as part of
my research.
We have looked at yellow birch.
It's very difficult to gettheir bark off because it's much
harder than the paper.
That's why the paper is paper,uh and uh, the the extract that
we get out is looks completelydifferent.
(28:24):
So the one that we have is likekind of this uh, thick whiskers
, almost black extract, veryoily.
You know that's what we get.
And when we go with the yellowbirch it's almost like honey
color, it's much more runny,it's much more fragrant.
And this is where I had to learnactually botany a little bit.
(28:48):
I got a crash course with afellow biology biology professor
here at cbu in botany.
Because when you have, when youtalk about the species and if
the species are different so youmentioned, you know, natural
health product npn number it'sactually dependent on the
species.
So birch is uh, is anoverarching, um, like grouping,
(29:12):
and then you have a particularspecies and so in our case the
species is Papyrifera, the whitepaper birch, and so another
species is the yellow birch, andyou would think it's the same
as a birch.
No, it's not.
This extract actually is quitedifferent, and so this is now
really kind of, while we'reright now focusing on papyrifera
(29:34):
here that is grown here in theeastern part of Canada well,
central eastern part of Canadawe want to kind of explore what
about the different birches allaround the world?
Because by definition it's adifferent species, so their
products might be different andhave different properties, and
(29:57):
so we want to see what isoverlapping and what is new.
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Speaker 5 (31:38):
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Yeah, I've used it on blemishes, cuts, just basically all
around healing Anything kind ofblemish.
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Speaker 3 (31:53):
Okay, thanks, rob, appreciate that.
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Hey, thanks for listening Backto the episode.
So are you finding chemicalslike triterpenes, betulin and
(33:03):
betulinic acid inside yourmaterial, or have you noticed
anything like that, or do youeven look for those kind of
materials?
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Well, we have that.
We actually have to just finish.
We had one of my first graduatestudent, Vlada.
She's Ukrainian and she I havea collaboration with the
university of like MemorialUniversity, and so she just did
her master's thesis seminar lastweek.
She did a great job.
(33:31):
And we actually her job was toanalyze this with chemical
analysis, and so what we find?
There are only traces of thesebitulin and bitulinic acid.
Those are the triterpenes thatare natural products it's
actually one of the oldest onesthat is known bitulin.
Well, bitulin's name comes frombitula, which is the Latin word
(33:53):
for birch, and they have a lotof medicinal properties and so
we see some traces of this.
But we see other compounds andthis is what we know now with
our research, the conditions,the fire, so to speak.
If you're like too hot it's notso good and if you're too cold
(34:15):
it's not really good.
So there's kind of thisGoldilocks principle here that
there's the right temperatureand so that really affects the
composition of these compounds.
So we have chemical compoundspresent.
We identified so far 76, but weknow there are more than 200 in
(34:37):
there, probably closer to 300.
And so we're really kind oftrying to figure out how that
works.
So it's quite exciting and whatI learned from this particular
this was really eye-opening tome.
When people talk, you know, butoh, make my knowledge or
indigenous knowledge anddifferent sciences and knowledge
(34:57):
, and I thought like, yeah, youknow, kind of, we'll look at
this, find one of two maincompounds, extract it and then
you know, do your normal thing,right.
But in this case I think thatis not working.
First we can't really find amajor compound.
All of them are kind of, youknow, if you have a lot of
compounds about half a percent,some a little bit more, some a
(35:19):
little bit less but it's thatsymphony together and this is, I
think, how the extract works.
Because how can it work on likeeczema, psoriasis, sunburn,
mosquito bite and you know andthe stuff?
So our new hypothesis is thatsome of these compounds are
antibacterial, which we haveproven.
(35:39):
Some of these compounds areanti-pain, anti-inflammatory,
anti-oxidant, anti-itch.
We know that we have now an Nequals three.
So customers got back and saidthey used to cream on poison ivy
.
So they got poison ivy on theirhand, they used to cream and it
(36:00):
stopped.
It was totally fine.
So there must be some itching.
We don't know how it works, butyou know, very limited.
So we want to learn more aboutthis.
But coming back to kind of thisphilosophy, so the western
philosophy is more like onesingle compound does something,
and here the, the migma peoplehave like kind of everything
kind of works together.
So there's kind of this youknow kind of symphony, this
(36:23):
multitude of of compounds, and Ithink that might be a case to
solve skin conditions, becausewhile you have one underlying
cause and that could be alsoautoimmune, you know kind of
triggered, you know, you itch.
When you itch, you scratch.
When you scratch, you break theskin and now you have secondary
(36:43):
infections and then obviouslyit's inflamed so you need to
have anti-inflammatory.
There's some oxidation going on, so you should have
antioxidants and so that kind ofhas kind of this effect.
And I think this would besomething what modern medicine
and modern health research needsto look at, rather than the
(37:05):
standard, you know, the oneaspirin, the one anti-cancer
drug to look at multiplecompounds and not just like two
or three but many more.
And I think this is somethingreally exciting.
What the Mi'kmaq people haveand cultures around the world
really say maybe it's that youknow well, if you think about it
, you drink a cup of coffee or acup of tea in the morning, you
(37:29):
could just pop a caffeine pilland douse it with water.
But there are some othercompounds in the coffee, in the
tea, that are really, you know,antioxidant and
anti-inflammatory and that arebeneficial.
And I think this is the samethat we see with musculi.
To see this in this regard withskin conditions.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah, I find it very interesting in a couple of areas
One that we have a cream aswell that we use with the chaga
that has similar results witheczema and psoriasis and all the
inflictions that you'rementioning.
But here's something to trythat it was just by chance that
somebody had mentioned.
What about shingles?
(38:15):
With the outbreak of shingles,there has been a number of
individuals that have come andhave said that the cream that we
have was substantiallyassisting with the pain
associated with the rash comingout of shingles, and it might be
another area that you can lookinto that may have some
significant benefits to as well.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I will look into that .
I don't know particularly thisparticular case.
We're really kind of very earlyin this research.
Even though we're doing it now,for what?
12 years?
2013?
It started.
It's amazing, so I can see apossibility for that.
It's amazing, so I can see apossibility for that.
(38:55):
I have to be cautious aboutthis.
This is Research Ethic Boardapproval.
You get a heart attack becausewe have not proven it.
You know, kind of these are allhypotheses there, so we have to
be careful about this.
But I think there can becertainly compounds in there.
Because there are so manycompounds in there, this is
(39:19):
really important and that waspart of why the research took
quite a long time.
One of the first research thatwe needed to do was making sure
that the extract is not harmful,that there are not any harmful
chemicals in there and at theconcentration levels that we're
(39:40):
using, we can be very confidentin our analysis and say it's not
harmful.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Very good.
Yeah, I know, when I mentionedthe happy people, what they were
doing was mixing the oil withfish oil as an application, as
an insect repellent for theirdogs and the kids and everything
.
And, mind you, they doemphasize that everybody smells
like birch tar, which is a very.
(40:10):
They don't say it's pleasant orunpleasant, but they do say
it's a strong smell to it, butthe benefit was overwhelming and
to me, it was well worth seeing, and that's the first place in
2010 that I saw birch bark oilbeing extracted and found it
very interesting.
Now, matthias, is there otherkind of trees that can produce
similar materials?
(40:31):
I know because, for example,chaga not only grows on birch
trees, but it also grows on theironwood hop hornbeam, and I'm
wondering if you've looked atother trees or not.
Is it just primarily focused onbirch?
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Well, back to your other stuff with the fish oil
there.
Well, first with the trees.
So right now we're focused onthe birch.
That's enough for me as achemist to kind of do with that
I need to clone myself there.
(41:17):
But I know from Duma being youknow kind of ethno botanist, he
has collected hundreds ofstories.
He's wrote 300 stories abouttrees and shrubs and plants.
There are more and this is inthe CBC documentary that Land
and Sea.
We have people who do medicinewalks and they can tell more
about their plants and what it'sused for.
This is kind of for whateverstomach aches, or this one is
here for a headache or here tocalm someone down.
(41:37):
So there's lots of differentproperties there.
So I cannot really comment onother entities.
My work right now is focusingon birch and muscovite, on that.
But with the other stuff whenyou have it I mean this is how
you apply.
When you take the extract it'shighly fragrant and it's kind of
(42:00):
a campfire smell there and youkind of dilute that into some
sort of a fat-based cream.
We are using natural productsas a cream in order to do that.
I know the Mi'kmaq people usebear, bear grease and apparently
bear grease by itself hasmedicinal properties.
Obviously no bear has beenharmed in this research and
(42:22):
we're not using any bear grease.
And I can remember actually Dumatelling a story that the
original cream that he wanted tomake he wanted to use then duck
fat.
And so he then told his motherand his mother says well, you
(42:44):
have to hunt a duck.
He said I'm not hunting, I'mnot hunting.
So he took the second bestoption.
So he says, as a good person, Iwent to the grocery store and
bought a frozen duck.
We had a feast and then I usedthe fat then to make his
homemade concoction.
(43:04):
This was back in the 1990s butI thought that was kind of very
funny.
That way.
It's like, yeah, the not goodhunter Duma just goes to the
grocery store and buys frozenduck.
Yeah, but that's really good.
What we actually did just aboutthis duck story there as part of
the research one was theindigenous knowledge and
(43:27):
honoring the traditions.
He actually had a Mi'kmaq chefbrought in and they actually had
some ducks.
People in the actually had someducks.
People in the community werehunting ducks in the season and
then he actually came and showedhow to pluck the duck and
actually make a Mi'kmaq dishwith that to the community
(43:49):
member.
And that was kind of bringingback that knowledge and this was
really important, you know,kind of gathering that knowledge
, that because who goes out andkind of hunts ducks and you know
, plucks them and then makes afeast, and so he kind of showed
that as part of that traditionthere.
So, yeah, there's lots ofinformation out there.
(44:12):
We are rich here in Canada withinformation and I you know this
is part of mine.
I'm happy that you know youcontacted me with your podcast
because I think something thereis a little bit of a prejudice
with, in this case in chemistry,research.
(44:32):
You know we think, oh, the newcancer drug.
You have to go to the AmazonForest or the South Pacific Sea
corals, and there are somecompounds in there which are
really good.
I don't want to denigrate that,but don't overlook about the
shrubs behind your shed, in yourgarden in Ontario or here in
(44:53):
Cape Breton, and knowing andspeaking to the people who are
living here, for you know longperiod of time, you know 40,000
years, there's a lot ofknowledge and that knowledge,
because it's oral tradition, hasbeen, you know, seriously, you
know, destroyed and damaged bythe past.
(45:14):
It's like let's work togetherRight and really find that,
because it doesn't matterwhether you have a skin
condition and what the color ofthe skin is.
If we can help each other out,that's just for the benefit of
everyone.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Yeah.
So, Matthias, is it just fromliving trees that you collect
your bark from?
Speaker 4 (45:36):
You can.
Well, it's bark, so you can getthem from farm.
We're going with living treesright now.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Living trees and do you know if it matters?
And the reason I'm asking thisis because when I first saw this
, I was up a place near Wawa orShaplow in Ontario, yeah, and I
came across there had been abirch cut by a lumbering company
but for some reason they hadscaled a lot of the birch bark
and there was probablytruckloads.
(46:01):
You could probably pick up afive-ton truckload of birch bark
in the bush where they wereusing it and I wondered if that
could be utilized for that thingthat I saw in that TV program.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
From a chemistry perspective, yes, you can.
Oh, really, Obviously we haveto be careful because sometimes
if it's rotten you don't want touse that.
You know kind of, howdecomposed is it?
But if it has been harvestedbefore, then that's from a
chemistry perspective.
The bark is bark there.
You know kind of these are themain components.
(46:35):
So there is that Obviously youhave to probably wash it and you
kind of clean it that way,because there's some bugs
running around and stuff.
So we want to make sure thatthis is all cleaned and this is
part of our process then for thecompany then as well, to ensure
well quality insurance, thatone batch is the same as the
(46:55):
next one, and we get all that.
So that's what I can say.
With that, and from asustainable aspect as well,
obviously you don't want to takeeverything.
It's kind of clear-cuttingbecause obviously you need the
partially decomposing trees andbranches and whatnot, so that
(47:18):
new forest can grow up and go on.
So you, you, you, you just takea little bit, Um, the uh, the
Mi'kmaq have uh, uh, I don'tknow I'm mispronouncing that,
but that's a concept of you onlytake what you need and make
sure that everyone else has it.
(47:39):
And that's again with nature,and so this is kind of part of
this concept that we're going inas well.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Yeah, and there's a lot of things that you mentioned
.
You know you talk about washingit off because of bugs and
things like that, but if you, ifyou recall a movie called
Medicine man where Sean Connerystarted.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
I'm mentioning that actually to my students.
Yes, oh, really 1991 with SeanConnery.
Nobody really knows it, butit's actually a really good one.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah, it is, because it's the unknown things that
actually were the benefits thatwe don't really know about, and
which was saving a lot ofinteresting.
So yeah, so that was a goodshow and which was saving a lot
of interesting.
So yeah, so that was a goodshow, and there's quite a few of
them out there that you know.
There's Susan I'm not sure ifyou're sure out of the
University of British Columbiathat talks about the arbuscular
(48:25):
relationships with trees, wherethey talk to each other or
communicate to each other.
I don't know if you've seenthat one or not.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
No, I have not.
I have not seen that.
But coming back to thatmedicine man, like I mean this
is for your listeners, I knowit's, it's now 19 whatever.
Early 1990s, 1991, 1992, withsean connery.
It's a little bit cheesy moviebut the, the, the content is
actually really good.
So this researcher went to theamazon forest well, there's the
(48:51):
amazon again, but the amazonforest and found, found some
sort of drug that could curecancer in these hamsters or mice
that he had there.
Yeah, the problem was hecouldn't replicate that anymore.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Right, but it wasn't until they spoke with the
ancient people that were there,the tribes that were there, that
basically said bugs yes, it wasthe bugs that were that, that
were the medicine came fromthere.
Speaker 4 (49:17):
So he treated the plant extract and it was
contaminated by whatever theseants that were in the sugar by
chance, and so he thought it'sthe plant that saved them.
But it was the ants.
And then there was likewhatever bulldozers and you know
kind of clear cutting andbasically the story is like if
you destroy the rainforest, youmay be destroying you know
(49:41):
future medicines and that savespeople from cancer.
But this is actually true here.
I think, in analogy, you knowkind of that we need to kind of
listen to people and kind ofthese knowledges and then using
modern tools, to kind offine-tune this.
And this is where you know myresearch here is limited.
(50:02):
Right now we cannot really saythis molecule is responsible for
this and this goes into thisenzyme pocket and kind of
receptor.
We don't really know that.
But we do know that when peopleuse this extract it really is
good for their skin and thereare some benefits from that.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
I recall when I was Minister of Natural Resources,
there was a company I believe itwas out of Texas, that wanted
the rights, the sole rights, toall the chemical compounds found
in the materials in Ontario andwanted me to sign off and sell
it to them.
And I absolutely refusedbecause that would be, first of
all, the potentials, as we'rejust talking about, for so many
(50:47):
healing things that are outthere that we haven't even
looked at yet, that are slowlycoming about, and a lot of the
ancient knowledge is verysignificant in passing these on
and helping, helping today'ssociety.
But I know that at that time II refused and I said this would
be the worst thing going, so Iwouldn't allow it to happen
thank you for not doing that.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
That's good.
No, because because this is we.
We don't even know what we don'tknow, you know kind of this is
that and, and you know,corporation explore, exploiting
uh, it's, it's, that's, that'ssomething.
Now, that's speaking me as afounder of a small company.
We're just a small company.
We're just a few people workinghere.
We're punching above our weighthere, but ultimately we're
(51:29):
still very, very small.
But it has to be in benefit.
We don't have a monopoly.
Someone else wants to make theextract in their backyard.
Go for it.
You know, kind of this isknowledge that we should share,
and if they find somethingbetter that helps for them or
(51:50):
kind of tweak the process or addsome other stuff.
I think that's all what humansare about to learn and to help
each other.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
So some of the things that I looked at.
Matthias and I was last weekjust explaining things exactly
like this that in Ontario weused to have birch mills that
would harvest birch logs and thebark was a wasted residual that
they tried to get rid of andthey actually had to pay to have
it taken to dumps and thingslike that.
(52:21):
Why not look at utilizing thosematerials in other forms
whether we're just talking aboutthings like this and I'm not
sure if you've ever if you havecompanies that predominantly
deal in in birch fiber, thatwould have residuals, leftover
materials from birch bark frombirch trees that you might be
able to utilize en masse and itjust adds more use to the fiber
(52:42):
that's being taken in theforests.
Speaker 4 (52:45):
Oh, absolutely, it's valorization, you know, of
material Waste is not a waste,you know, and we just look at
that.
You know, bringing them the,the indigenous knowledge lens,
um, I mean, you might know there, you know there'd be the the
loggers would trample over thebirch to get to the, the
(53:07):
softwood, in order to make youknow kind of well, structure,
material and whatnot, which isfine, you know we still need
those, but they were reallytrampling on the stuff and and
and.
So when the eldest then says,well, they cherish the birch
tree as really um, uh, knowledgeand you know, kind of part of
(53:28):
the culture and stuff that iskind of this coding in the
language, in them, in their uh,culture, in their myths and so
on, that we should not, you know, kind of trample literally
stuff like that, but reallycherish that.
And I think this is exactlywhat you're conveying to.
You know, kind of, oh, this is,this is the garbage.
Speaker 3 (53:51):
You know, I tell my students all the time, if I'm
rich and would be there, I wouldstart buying all garbage dumps
in Canada, because the garbagedumps of today are the resources
of the future would be a greatlocation to do materials
(54:22):
extraction for the metals thatare in them now, because we used
to throw all those metals inthe dump once upon a time and
dumps are filled with old metalsthat could be used, probably
and extracted a lot cheaper thanthe mining process that we're
doing for extraction of otherthings now, and it's just
something.
But the more I looked into thatthere was not a lot of records
for old dumps in the fifties andsixties in municipalities, so
(54:43):
it's hard to find those kinds ofdetails.
But it's just another potentialfor somebody looking as an
entrepreneurial aspect of somethings that could be done.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
Oh, and it helps.
You know, back in the day itwas more scattered.
You know, kind of all this.
That's one stuff with metals Imean.
This comes back to my chemistrybackground.
You know, a metal is a metal.
You know, once you have whatevera palladium or gold or whatnot
(55:12):
it stays that way and, like yousaid, that's one reason why we
want to, why we are recyclingelectronics, because the gold
content in an old, you know,computer is, I think you know
don't quote me on that but Ithink like two or three orders
of magnitude, like a hundred ora thousand times higher than the
gold in like the earth, thegold in like the earth.
(55:39):
So it's like saying, like thisis a super gold mine so it would
be stupid to throw it out.
Yeah, um, and just like, hey,just bring it back in.
Um, we've done it with aluminum, um, sulfur is like one of
those examples and this is kindof brings everyone and it's
actually good for theenvironment, so you don't have
to go to pristine land andreally preserve that.
(56:00):
But really kind of take whatyou need.
You know, kind of follow thesetraditions, take what you need,
not kind of today's profit, andlike whatever you know um, the
world can burn afterwards, butreally kind of saying like I,
you know I have no kids, youknow I want their kids to have
prosperous country and land tolive on and I think we can be
(56:24):
very proud of what we're doinghere in Canada.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Exactly, and it's the things that you're doing this
and working with the indigenous,the aboriginal individuals that
will benefit future generationsas well, to see the value in a
lot of other things.
And I recall I mentioned anumber of times that so long as
the forest continues to havevalue, it'll continue to be a
forest and once it loses itsvalue, people will find other
(56:48):
purposes for that, whether sometry to cut it down to graze
cattle in, as I stopped inOntario once upon a time and we
need to make sure that thoseopportunities for future
generations continue.
But, matias, I know that you'vegot to get to class very
shortly.
I think I'm not sure about thetime change.
How can people find out moredetails about you and your
(57:11):
research, or where can they getin touch and find out about your
product, or is there specialevents on or something you want
to share with our audience?
Speaker 4 (57:19):
Yeah Well, thank you very much, yeah, so I think the
best way is our, our website,masquiomincom,
m-a-s-k-w-i-o-m-i-ncom we'rethis is it tells us our the
backstory, the products thatwe're selling.
We have creams and soaps.
(57:42):
Some are really very nicelysmelling, so it's really really
great there and in fact, I wastold from my COO there that we
are actually having a littlesale on right now until April 10
, 2025.
So there's 20% off of 50-gramcreams and you just put the code
(58:02):
word in canopy.
So thank you so much for you,jerry, to be on this one here.
But, yeah, please check us outonline Masqueoman, or just my
last name, beer and Steel,matthias Beer and Steel and you
will find us.
Or check out the CBC Land andSea documentary Mi'kmaq
Medicines that just came out.
You can find them on YouTube aswell as on CBC website and
(58:28):
learn more about us.
It's great that people need toknow not only about us, but
really about all thatinformation that we have and
that we have wonderful herewithin Canada, of all the people
who are living here.
Speaker 3 (58:41):
And just so people know, for the people that listen
around the world, this is aproduct you can ship around the
world as well.
Speaker 4 (58:47):
Right now we're limited to North America, but
because of, unfortunately, theongoing thing with the neighbor
south, we're actually nowworking on getting licenses to
sell all around the world muchmore faster than we intended to,
so they should just send us anemail, contact us and then we'll
work things out.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
Well, matthias, I very much appreciate you taking
the time to be on our podcasttoday, and this is just
something a little bit differentthan learning some of the
benefits and the things that arehappening, that has been around
for generations, that are nowbeing relearned and passed on to
future generations out thereunder the canopy.
Thanks, matthias, thank you.
Speaker 6 (59:44):
How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to
build one of Canada's mosticonic fishing lodges?
I'm your host, Steve Nitzwicky,and you'll find out about that
and a whole lot more on theOutdoor Journal Radio Network's
newest podcast, Diaries of aLodge Owner.
But this podcast will be morethan that.
Every week on Diaries of aLodge Owner, I'm going to
(01:00:07):
introduce you to a ton of greatpeople, share their stories of
our trials, tribulations andinspirations, Learn and have
plenty of laughs along the way.
Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along
trying to figure out how tocatch a bass and we both decided
one day we were going to be ontelevision doing a fishing show.
Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in
all those bass in the summertime, but that might be for more
fishing than it was punching youso confidently.
Speaker 6 (01:00:37):
you said hey, pat have you ever eaten a drum?
Find Diaries of a Lodge Ownernow on Spotify, apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Hi everybody.
I'm Angelo Viola and I'm PeteBowman.
Now you might know us as thehosts of Canada's Favorite
Fishing Show, but now we'rehosting a podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
That's right.
Every Thursday, ange and I willbe right here in your ears
bringing you a brand new episodeof Outdoor Journal Radio Now
what are we going to talk aboutfor two hours every week?
Well, you know there's going tobe a lot of fishing.
Speaker 6 (01:01:11):
I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and
how to catch them, and they werewere easy to catch.
Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show.
We're going to be talking topeople from all facets of the
outdoors, from athletes All theother guys would go golfing.
Speaker 6 (01:01:25):
Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go
fishing To scientists.
But now that we're reforestingand laying things free, it's the
perfect transmissionenvironment for line fishing To
chefs.
If any game isn't cookedproperly, marinated, you will
taste it.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you
are.
Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions
and tell the stories of allthose who enjoy being outside.
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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