Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 87: Birch Bark Magic - Traditional Mi'kmaq Medicine Meets Modern Chemistry
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.
The humble goldfish, everyone's favorite aquatic pet. It's small, easy to care for.
Speaker 2:What's there not to love? Even the cat may be mesmerized by the color and movements of your aquarium friends. Goldfish are great at home, but don't let them loose.
Speaker 1:Releasing goldfish or other domestic aquatic pets or plants into natural environments is harmful to both your pet and the planet.
Speaker 2:Goldfish disrupt ecosystems by out-competing native species for food and resources. In degraded habitats they contribute to algae blooms. They kill aquatic wildlife and pass viruses and diseases contracted in aquariums to wild fish.
Speaker 1:They could even live up to 40 years and grow as big as a football. Anglers, this is where you come in. If you find a goldfish at your local fishing spot, report it to the Invading Species Hotline or go online to eddmapscom.
Speaker 2:Remember to never dump your live bait into the water and risk spreading other aquatic invaders.
Speaker 3:Keep our lakes free from invaders and don't let them loose. As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe.
Speaker 3:After nearly a decade of harvest use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means, testimonials and research. My skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode, and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. Okay, as always, we want to thank 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, as usual, if anybody has any suggestions for shows or questions they want to answer, just email us and we'd be more than happy to see what we can do to get those on for you Now today we have a special guest, dr Matthias Bierenstiel, who's from the East Coast in Ontario.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the podcast, matthias.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you very much, Jerry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time to be on the podcast. Tell us about whereabouts you're located so our international listeners can kind of get a sense of where you're calling from.
Speaker 4:Well, we're calling out of beautiful Sydney, Nova Scotia. It's a sunny day today, so we're here in Cape Breton Island and that's where we are calling in today from.
Speaker 3:Very good and tell us about yourself. You know a bit about your background and what you're doing and where you're at.
Speaker 4:Okay, great. Well, here I'm at Cape Breton University 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 of Munich, but then I came to Canada, studied at the University of Guelph in Ontario I think under your time when you were minister and then I went to the University of Alberta for a postdoc and then moved with my family to Sydney and ever since, here I'm doing chemistry research and teaching students. Oh, very good.
Speaker 3:So tell us about your position at the university. What is it that you actually do now? I know you've got a class for students to get to, or is it that time of the year now where we're talking about exams and things like that? Oh, exactly.
Speaker 4:So exam is coming up in two weeks, so the final lectures and so on, so they're all there. So I'm teaching this term introduction to inorganic chemistry. However, with kind of what I'm doing, I'm a full professor. I've been teaching chemistry, all different types of chemistry organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry those are kind of my specialties and I've been doing like research with here at the university. Cbu is a primarily undergraduate institution, so we have lots of undergraduate students and we invite them to do our research, and I have lots of projects with students over the years, working with local businesses, with other researchers, and what we're going to be talking about is a major project that has started in 2013, which is Musqueamie birch bark extract. That is really, really useful and it's based on traditional Mi'kmaq knowledge.
Speaker 3:Okay, very good. So some time ago, when you received the grant to begin the research, is that how you got involved with this study of the Mi'kmaq?
Speaker 4:Okay, well, that was a little bit after. Obviously, we have to get the idea first, but that was one of the things. So it was serendipity, or actually, in this case, yeah, it is obviously serendipity. However, being at a small institution, you're, you know, connected with lots of other faculty from different disciplines, with lots of other faculty from different disciplines, and so I met a faculty member from Mi'kmaq Studies, duma Yang. He's a knowledge holder, he's a lawyer, he's a social activist and he's a university professor, and at that time he was teaching Mi'kmaq Studies, and he asked me to come along if I want to learn a little bit more Mi'kmaq cultures, and he took the students to a trip to pick sweetgrass. This was in the summer, so I came out because I wanted to learn.
Speaker 4:I never really did anything like that before. It was really exciting. And on that trip he actually then says, well, and next week we're talking about birchbark extract, birchbark oil. And I said, like, how do you do that? And he says, well, we have a campfire and we'll get some extract out of this campfire. It's a very traditional Mi'kmaq medicine. And I said, well, that's chemistry. If you transform a bark and you get some sort of oily extract out of this, this is a chemical transformation and that was how it started. So that's how we kind of connected together. He talked to me a little bit more about the process and then I kind of did my chemistry and science aspect to kind of work with him. And this is then when we had the idea we got some. We then applied for funding and ever since we got some funding about this and got people involved and health researchers and whatnot, and so this brings everything together. It's a really great project.
Speaker 3:Very good. So I'm going to ask a question a little bit outside the norm, and it's because I sit on the board of the local college and actually I have a board meeting tonight where we're talking about revenue generation as part of it. So when you worked with the project that you're working on now, was there a financial benefit to the university as well? Are they receiving some of the generation?
Speaker 4:No, no, this is an independent company, so the union contracts. 100% of the intellectual property rights that a faculty member generates are with the faculty 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're receiving, so there's the benefit there. So there's this mutual benefit. We have reached out with the university and they're on board. But when we started it, actually we never really had any entrepreneurial business start At first. We just wanted to find things out Right, and only throughout the years how this project developed was like wow, there is something here that we have a small company and this is an independent company that was founded.
Speaker 3:Right, right, so the university gets involved, and is that where the grant came from, or where did the grant come from?
Speaker 4: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 CIHR Canadian Institutes of Health Research and because we wanted to find out what is more with this extract and what we can do, and this was in collaboration. So I'm a co-PI, co-principal investigator. My other partner is Duma Yang and 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 the traditional knowledge of the Mi'kmaq people how can we preserve this, how can we honor it? We called it awakening of the knowledge and I was looking kind of from the science perspective, the different eye, and really saying like, what tools can we have in order to understand this extract? Can we make it better? What are its properties? And kind of really from a scientific perspective investigate and this kind of working together. That was very, very beneficial and we found out a lot of stuff which is really great.
Speaker 3:Right, right. So now, matthias, have you had the chance to look at and I think it's on I'm not sure which platform, it might be Netflix. It's called Happy People A Year in the Taiega.
Speaker 4:No, I haven't really had a diagram to do that, but what I found with with birch so I know you are interested in jaga with you know kind of birch, uh fungus out there this one here is is not related to our project, right? Um, uh, birches, well, there are what 57 different birch species around the globe in moderate climate and uh. So there's a lot of information out of Europe, scandinavia, finland as well. You know Germany, but they are using different birch species Pandula. We are using here Papyrifera, and that's how we kind of get the knowledge there Now that would be.
Speaker 3:What paper birch?
Speaker 4:Yes, okay, that's this one there. What was interesting, actually thinking about how old this is can you remember when they found that glacier Eismann, that Ötzi, in the Alps 1981? Oh yeah, pretty much. They actually found some residue in his pouch that was kind of from birch tar and so they thought maybe it's something from glue. But what we could think about is that this could actually be also medicinal properties back 5,000 years ago, which is amazing.
Speaker 3: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 saw indicated that he was potentially using it for what they may believe was Lyme disease. That long ago from some of the research I saw. So it's interesting how, but I didn't know about the birch, the oil or the tar, whichever we're calling it. But happy people, a year in the Tiaga which came out in 2010 under, I think it was, section about part two, summer, at about 25, 40 of the 25 minutes and 40 seconds into it, they actually do exactly what you're talking about. So they take birch bark and then they take a metal container and they shave the bark and then they build like a kind of like. They have shavings, so they're rather large about the size of a coffee cup sort of birch bark that they put in there and then they have it sits on top of like. It would be like a large sieve which for with large holes in it, and then they put a metal cover over top of it and in that one, what they do is they build a fire around it, cover over top of it, and in that one. What they do is they build a fire around it and then they bring it out and they have a bowl that it collects in the bottom of it and after a period of time they use the extracted material. But they were using it as guess what.
Speaker 3:Here's another thing for your project that you could add it to For insect repellent. Yeah, it was huge for insect repellent. Yeah, it was huge for insect repellent, and they covered all the kids and the dogs with this birch tar, they called it, and it worked phenomenally well for insect repellent. And that's one of the ways that I started to find and found your information in regards to what you're doing, because I wanted to find out more information about that. So I found it very interesting that 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 then build a fire around it and extracts the tar from it that they were using as an insect repellent. You're using it for far more materials, such as to deal with things like eczema, psoriasis and other topical applications in regards to skin issues.
Speaker 4:Correct yeah, well, this is kind of the first start. So this is. You know, there's lots of research to be done, so this is what we're focused on, right, so you're right. So, um, this is similar. So when, when Duma Yang, he rescued this knowledge here from the Mi'kmaq people, and in the 1990s he was talking to elders about stories to rescue them and kind of keep them, and this was in the Mi'kmaq language, and two elders told a story about a Mi'kmaq woman in the 1920s. She had a newborn baby and she developed some sort of rash on her chest and couldn't nurse the baby, and that was really bad. And so the midwife, she made this concoction, masquiomine masqui meaning birch bark and omi meaning kind of gathering oil and then it says, applied it to the chest and then mother and baby survived. Uh, so clearly there was a clearing up of this condition. And, uh, and so he puzzled together the pieces of how they actually made it, and so, like you said, you know kind of similar. They used a can, uh, holes in the bottom in the the ground, put a hole in the ground with a underneath the receptacle can, and then had a campfire around. And these are the traditions that he then said, because only only two elders knew of this story. One has since passed away, so this knowledge would have almost been lost. And that's when he was at the university teaching to the, to his students, to keep that knowledge alive, this oral tradition, and what we have now found, as me as a chemist and an expert, with that, I couldn't have a fire in my lab, that's not allowed. So I said, can we mimic this? And so we built kind of this kind of electric contraption in order to kind of mimic that. And our first extracts actually didn't work. They looked okay but they weren't really, you know, in this case antimicrobial. And so that's when we cut back to kind of thinking about this, and when we talked we said, yeah, we have to have this hole in the ground and there's kind of a thermal protection of this oil when it's gathered in the fire. It's called a paralytic process and and so you can actually say from the words of the elders, mother nature is actually protecting the extract, and so that's actually a critical development to do that. And so we've done this now. And so we we made a little machine to kind of make this and in order to study and can reproduce it. And now we actually much better yield and much better stuff. So we just published a paper about this that the compounds in this extract are antibacterial and there are many more. So we know that there are more than 200 compounds in there. This is why we see this vast vastness and that's how we all kind of started.
Speaker 4:And I was just, you know, doing the academic stuff, and while Duma was showing it to community this is traditional way you do it they come back and says I used it on my skin or my daughter's skin, and she had eczema, she couldn't even go to school and now she could come back. 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 Dumas they're like, hey, I want more. And he then says well, I showed it to you. And this is where then the commercialization idea came, because, similar to, you can make bread at home in your kitchen, but it's so much more convenient to go to a grocery store and buy it. And that was right at the beginning of COVID. And so we actually have our five-year anniversary of our company yeah, in two days actually. So it's our fifth anniversary and we started out.
Speaker 4:I started out in my kitchen and in 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 as MiGMA, essex Watch. He talked to the community and says can we do this? Would someone else do that? They didn't want to run by themselves. They said, yes, you can do it. And so they basically gave us their blessing. Someone else do that? They? They weren't they. They didn't want to run by themselves.
Speaker 4:It says, yes, you can do it. And uh, so they basically gave us 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. Uh, it's indigenous, co-founded, we're still in contact with the community and we are a small company and kind of kind of going about with that, and then and then now the whole thing then started. So it's independent. So this is now independent of of the research. It's an independent uh company. Masque omen um. It's online, we can see it. Masque omencom uh, where we sell in, uh in canada, we can sell into the us as well as well, and yeah, it's really great.
Speaker 3:So now you actually did a there was a television program that you did in regards to this. Maybe you can kind of enlighten us as to some of the work. People can see this and how can they see this program that talks about it.
Speaker 4:Oh, it's excellent, Like people are really excited about what we're doing and because it's all natural, it's traditional knowledge, it's combining it, fusing it with, like, modern science, it's sustainable, now also made in Canada. I mean, it's all made here, I can't go there and so yeah. So we were approached last year by a CBC producer and said would we be interested in joining them? And I said absolutely so. This was last year and it just came out a couple of weeks ago on CBC Land and Sea. It's called Mi'kmaq Medicines. It's just a 20-minute show but it's really exciting and it actually shows the story from the elders with their medicine walks. Tuma is interviewed with regards to how birch is so important for the Mi'kmaq community and I'll show a little bit on what we're doing with regards to the lab and the production of our creams.
Speaker 3:Right, so you mentioned, matisse, that you had a published paper. Where is it published? Is it on Science Director bob med, or where? Yeah, and what's it called?
Speaker 4:so we have, we have, we have a few uh. We have one with the canadian journal of chemistry, um, and then we have uh, one is through wounds, canada uh and um, so they're kind of getting out through through that. It always takes time to get the publications and manuscript writing but we're very proud of that. So one of our earlier ones that was now before COVID, was in Green Teacher to actually see and kind of get that knowledge out and that actually was part again, this was outreach and this is part of being an academic and this is part of, you know, being an academic. We did a lot of non-traditional, not only peer-reviewed publication, but we taught with local teachers and Nova Scotia teachers and their professional development and we're actually now recognized. And there's a little paragraph about Duma and me, about this Masqueoman project in the grade seven French science textbook Very good, very good, yeah, similar for myself.
Speaker 3:Last September I was asked by a teacher out in Millbrook to come and do some of the nature walks with their class, and then she contacted me and said that CBC was in touch with them through the National and so we did a walk through the woods and I did a lot of explaining about the various plants and the utilization for a lot of different materials or ailments and things along those lines. And so the person filming it, he says so, what do we call you? And I said well, jerry. And they said well, yeah, but what's your title? I said Jerry, and they said no, no, but what should we call you? And I said well, jerry.
Speaker 3:And the teacher jumps up and says no, no, no, he's the keeper of ancient knowledge. And I just started to laugh and laugh and I said, look, I may know some things, but there's a lot of other individuals who have far more knowledge than I do. You know, my family background has a Métis status and so we do have some followings in a lot of different circles. But I found it very interesting. But that was on the national and people can see that on the national. Now, what I was trying to get to was it's on. Actually land and sea is where your program is, or the program is that deals with the product we're talking about.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, it's, and I think this is why Canada is wonderful. You know, I immigrated I'm originally from Germany to Canada. You know, about 25 years ago. She counted the other day that I'm longer in Canada than I was in Germany and it's great to be here, like it's all about. You know, working together, uh, we're working with the local indigenous community. We're trying to honor their, uh, their knowledge and really, uh, represent that In fact now with 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 the recent past with you know, with Canada and First Nations, which was horrible, and so we're trying to undo some of those things because it's benefits for everyone.
Speaker 4:It's, you know, having new medicines or not, new, old medicines old medicines really kind of created from that, particularly with skin. And this is me being a chemist and now I'm more involved in this. According to the Canadian Dermatology Association, 25%, so one in four people have a chronic skin condition and people are suffering. And when we see, we get feedback from clients and customers who actually say I have the skin condition for 20 years, nothing really helped. I used your cream and within a week it was gone. This is like very powerful and so, uh, we need to kind of that keeps us going, because it really kind of we're changing their lives and so right now we're we're selling our products, um, under a cosmetic license. So this is kind of how we can get out. But for the research and this is now the academic research is we really want to go into the natural health product field and really kind of clinical trials and find out more details that is required for these advanced medicine steps?
Speaker 3:So are you working to get an NPN number? Is that what I'm hearing here?
Speaker 4: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 so we're kind of step by step by step with that. So, absolutely so, we're, we're working towards that. It's going through the regulatory work and uh, uh, you know there's, you know people complain about that. There's a lot of red tape and there is. However, you know, obviously just needs to be safe, it needs to be working, and so we need to kind of show and document all this, and so it's very exciting from a chemist's perspective. It's a lengthy process, though.
Speaker 3:So, matthias, is there a specific time of year that the birch bark is harvested that'll produce better materials than other times? For example, birch bark or birch trees have their sap runs as well. And for chaga, the Inotanus obliquus that I deal with a lot of, we predominantly harvest most of the time when there's no sap in the tree. Is your harvest time? Does it matter? Are you finding, have you checked into things like that?
Speaker 4:Well, when we look from the chemistry perspective, we don't really see much difference there. But what we're kind of doing is usually springtime. I usually go out with my kids and we are living in the woods here, which is really really great as well as a friend has like big, big uh plot, and so we're really collecting the uh, the bark off the tree in the springtime and then drying that and kind of using that. And because we developed a machine, uh, to make this extract much, much more efficiently, we don't really need that much bark, and so it's really very sustainable and very natural to actually make this extract.
Speaker 3:So how deep do you take the bark when you're taking bark off the birch tree, and are the trees surviving afterwards?
Speaker 4:Oh, absolutely we're not harming the tree, so we're just taking the outer layers and then obviously we have to process them and wash them, that they're all clean, in order to kind of you know, kind of go with that. But that's really our process, so we're really in harmony with nature only take what we need and not kind of go in you know kind of let's, you know, destroy everything. No, we're really kind of in harmony with that, and that's really kind of the focus that we want to highlight.
Speaker 3:So have you looked at other strains of birch trees a yellow birch or any of the other ones that are out there for looking at the material when you're developing this, or is it just the paper birch that you're dealing with?
Speaker 4: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 get their 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 completely different. So the one that we have is like kind of this uh, thick whiskers, almost black extract, very oily. You know that's what we get. And when we go with the yellow birch it's almost like honey color, it's much more runny, it's much more fragrant.
Speaker 4:And this is where I had to learn actually botany a little bit. I got a crash course with a fellow biology biology professor here at cbu in botany. Because when you have, when you talk about the species and if the species are different so you mentioned, you know, natural health product npn number it's actually dependent on the species. So birch is uh, is an overarching, um, like grouping, and then you have a particular species and so in our case the species is Papyrifera, the white paper birch, and so another species is the yellow birch, and you would think it's the same as a birch. No, it's not. This extract actually is quite different, and so this is now really kind of, while we're right now focusing on papyrifera here that is grown here in the eastern part of Canada well, central eastern part of Canada we want to kind of explore what about the different birches all around the world? Because by definition it's a different species, so their products might be different and have different properties, and so we want to see what is overlapping and what is new.
Speaker 1:The humble goldfish, everyone's favorite aquatic pet. It's small, easy to care for.
Speaker 2:What's there not to love. Even the cat may be mesmerized by the color and movements of your aquarium friends. Goldfish are great at home, but don't let them loose.
Speaker 1:Releasing goldfish or other domestic aquatic pets or plants into natural environments is harmful to both your pet and the planet.
Speaker 2:Goldfish disrupt ecosystems by out-competing native species for food and resources. In degraded habitats they contribute to algae blooms. They kill aquatic wildlife and pass viruses and diseases contracted in aquariums to wild fish.
Speaker 1:They could even live up to 40 years and grow as big as a football. Anglers, this is where you come in. If you find a goldfish at your local fishing spot, report it to the invading species hotline or go online to eddmapscom.
Speaker 2:Remember to never dump your live bait into the water and risk spreading other aquatic invaders. Keep our lakes free from invaders and don't let them loose.
Speaker 3:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, we've got Rob from Hamilton here, who's had some success with the Chaga cream.
Speaker 5:Rob, can you tell us about it? Yeah, I've used it on blemishes, cuts, just basically all around healing Anything kind of blemish. It speeds it up really quick, great Speeds the healing process up the healing process really well. It leaves no marks and doesn't stain or smells okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, thanks, rob, appreciate that. You're welcome. We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. Products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode. So are you finding chemicals like triterpenes, betulin and betulinic acid inside your material, or have you noticed anything like that, or do you even look for those kind of materials?
Speaker 4:Well, we have that. We actually have to just finish. We had one of my first graduate student, Vlada. She's Ukrainian and she I have a collaboration with the university of like Memorial University, and so she just did her master's thesis seminar last week. She did a great job.
Speaker 4:And we actually her job was to analyze this with chemical analysis, and so what we find? There are only traces of these bitulin and bitulinic acid. Those are the triterpenes that are natural products it's actually one of the oldest ones that is known bitulin. Well, bitulin's name comes from bitula, which is the Latin word for birch, and they have a lot of medicinal properties and so we see some traces of this. But we see other compounds and this is what we know now with our research, the conditions, the fire, so to speak. If you're like too hot it's not so good and if you're too cold it's not really good. So there's kind of this Goldilocks principle here that there's the right temperature and so that really affects the composition of these compounds. So we have chemical compounds present. We identified so far 76, but we know there are more than 200 in there, probably closer to 300. And so we're really kind of trying to figure out how that works. So it's quite exciting and what I learned from this particular this was really eye-opening to me. When people talk, you know, but oh, make my knowledge or indigenous knowledge and different sciences and knowledge, and I thought like, yeah, you know, kind of, we'll look at this, find one of two main compounds, extract it and then you know, do your normal thing, right. But in this case I think that is not working. First we can't really find a major compound. All of them are kind of, you know, if you have a lot of compounds about half a percent, some a little bit more, some a little bit less but it's that symphony together and this is, I think, how the extract works. Because how can it work on like eczema, psoriasis, sunburn, mosquito bite and you know and the stuff? So our new hypothesis is that some of these compounds are antibacterial, which we have proven. Some of these compounds are anti-pain, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-itch. We know that we have now an N equals three.
Speaker 4:So customers got back and said they used to cream on poison ivy. So they got poison ivy on their hand, they used to cream and it stopped. It was totally fine. So there must be some itching. We don't know how it works, but you know, very limited. So we want to learn more about this.
Speaker 4:But coming back to kind of this philosophy, so the western philosophy is more like one single compound does something, and here the, the migma people have like kind of everything kind of works together. So there's kind of this you know kind of symphony, this multitude of of compounds, and I think that might be a case to solve skin conditions, because while you have one underlying cause and that could be also autoimmune, you know kind of triggered, you know, you itch. When you itch, you scratch. When you scratch, you break the skin and now you have secondary infections and then obviously it's inflamed so you need to have anti-inflammatory. There's some oxidation going on, so you should have antioxidants and so that kind of has kind of this effect.
Speaker 4:And I think this would be something what modern medicine and modern health research needs to look at, rather than the standard, you know, the one aspirin, the one anti-cancer drug to look at multiple compounds and not just like two or three but many more. And I think this is something really exciting. What the Mi'kmaq people have and cultures around the world really say maybe it's that you know well, if you think about it, you drink a cup of coffee or a cup of tea in the morning, you could just pop a caffeine pill and douse it with water. But there are some other compounds in the coffee, in the tea, that are really, you know, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory and that are beneficial. And I think this is the same that we see with musculi. To see this in this regard with skin conditions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I find it very interesting in a couple of areas One that we have a cream as well that we use with the chaga that has similar results with eczema and psoriasis and all the inflictions that you're mentioning. But here's something to try that it was just by chance that somebody had mentioned. What about shingles? With the outbreak of shingles, there has been a number of individuals that have come and have said that the cream that we have was substantially assisting with the pain associated with the rash coming out of shingles, and it might be another area that you can look into that may have some significant benefits to as well.
Speaker 4:I will look into that. I don't know particularly this particular case. We're really kind of very early in this research. Even though we're doing it now, for what? 12 years? 2013? It started. It's amazing, so I can see a possibility for that. It's amazing, so I can see a possibility for that. I have to be cautious about this. This is Research Ethic Board approval. You get a heart attack because we have not proven it. You know, kind of these are all hypotheses there, so we have to be careful about this. But I think there can be certainly compounds in there. Because there are so many compounds in there, this is really important and that was part of why the research took quite a long time. One of the first research that we needed to do was making sure that the extract is not harmful, that there are not any harmful chemicals in there and at the concentration levels that we're using, we can be very confident in our analysis and say it's not harmful.
Speaker 3:Very good. Yeah, I know, when I mentioned the happy people, what they were doing was mixing the oil with fish oil as an application, as an insect repellent for their dogs and the kids and everything. And, mind you, they do emphasize that everybody smells like birch tar, which is a very. They don't say it's pleasant or unpleasant, but they do say it's a strong smell to it, but the benefit was overwhelming and to me, it was well worth seeing, and that's the first place in 2010 that I saw birch bark oil being extracted and found it very interesting. Now, matthias, is there other kind of trees that can produce similar materials? I know because, for example, chaga not only grows on birch trees, but it also grows on the ironwood hop hornbeam, and I'm wondering if you've looked at other trees or not. Is it just primarily focused on birch?
Speaker 4:Well, back to your other stuff with the fish oil there. Well, first with the trees. So right now we're focused on the birch. That's enough for me as a chemist to kind of do with that I need to clone myself there.
Speaker 4:But I know from Duma being you know kind of ethno botanist, he has collected hundreds of stories. He's wrote 300 stories about trees and shrubs and plants. There are more and this is in the CBC documentary that Land and Sea. We have people who do medicine walks and they can tell more about their plants and what it's used for. This is kind of for whatever stomach aches, or this one is here for a headache or here to calm someone down. So there's lots of different properties there. So I cannot really comment on other entities. My work right now is focusing on birch and muscovite, on that. But with the other stuff when you have it I mean this is how you apply. When you take the extract it's highly fragrant and it's kind of a campfire smell there and you kind of dilute that into some sort of a fat-based cream. We are using natural products as a cream in order to do that. I know the Mi'kmaq people use bear, bear grease and apparently bear grease by itself has medicinal properties. Obviously no bear has been harmed in this research and we're not using any bear grease.
Speaker 4:And I can remember actually Duma telling a story that the original cream that he wanted to make he wanted to use then duck fat. And so he then told his mother and his mother says well, you have to hunt a duck. He said I'm not hunting, I'm not hunting. So he took the second best option. So he says, as a good person, I went to the grocery store and bought a frozen duck. We had a feast and then I used the fat then to make his homemade concoction. This was back in the 1990s but I thought that was kind of very funny. That way. It's like, yeah, the not good hunter Duma just goes to the grocery store and buys frozen duck. Yeah, but that's really good.
Speaker 4:What we actually did just about this duck story there as part of the research one was the indigenous knowledge and honoring the traditions. He actually had a Mi'kmaq chef brought in and they actually had some ducks. People in the actually had some ducks. People in the community were hunting ducks in the season and then he actually came and showed how to pluck the duck and actually make a Mi'kmaq dish with that to the community member. And that was kind of bringing back that knowledge and this was really important, you know, kind of gathering that knowledge, that because who goes out and kind of hunts ducks and you know, plucks them and then makes a feast, and so he kind of showed that as part of that tradition there. So, yeah, there's lots of information out there. We are rich here in Canada with information and I you know this is part of mine.
Speaker 4:I'm happy that you know you contacted me with your podcast because I think something there is a little bit of a prejudice with, in this case in chemistry, research. You know we think, oh, the new cancer drug. You have to go to the Amazon Forest or the South Pacific Sea corals, and there are some compounds in there which are really good. I don't want to denigrate that, but don't overlook about the shrubs behind your shed, in your garden in Ontario or here in Cape Breton, and knowing and speaking to the people who are living here, for you know long period of time, you know 40,000 years, there's a lot of knowledge and that knowledge, because it's oral tradition, has been, you know, seriously, you know, destroyed and damaged by the past. It's like let's work together Right and really find that, because it doesn't matter whether you have a skin condition and what the color of the skin is. If we can help each other out, that's just for the benefit of everyone.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, Matthias, is it just from living trees that you collect your bark from?
Speaker 4:You can. Well, it's bark, so you can get them from farm. We're going with living trees right now.
Speaker 3:Living trees and do you know if it matters? And the reason I'm asking this is because when I first saw this, I was up a place near Wawa or Shaplow in Ontario, yeah, and I came across there had been a birch cut by a lumbering company but for some reason they had scaled a lot of the birch bark and there was probably truckloads. You could probably pick up a five-ton truckload of birch bark in the bush where they were using it and I wondered if that could be utilized for that thing that I saw in that TV program.
Speaker 4:From a chemistry perspective, yes, you can. Oh, really, Obviously we have to be careful because sometimes if it's rotten you don't want to use that. You know kind of, how decomposed is it? But if it has been harvested before, then that's from a chemistry perspective. The bark is bark there. You know kind of these are the main components.
Speaker 4:So there is that Obviously you have 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 that this is all cleaned and this is part of our process then for the company then as well, to ensure well quality insurance, that one batch is the same as the next one, and we get all that. So that's what I can say. With that, and from a sustainable aspect as well, obviously you don't want to take everything. It's kind of clear-cutting because obviously you need the partially decomposing trees and branches and whatnot, so that new forest can grow up and go on. So you, you, you, you just take a little bit, Um, the uh, the Mi'kmaq have uh, uh, I don't know I'm mispronouncing that, but that's a concept of you only take what you need and make sure that everyone else has it. And that's again with nature, and so this is kind of part of this concept that we're going in as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there's a lot of things that you mentioned. You know you talk about washing it off because of bugs and things like that, but if you, if you recall a movie called Medicine man where Sean Connery started.
Speaker 4:I'm mentioning that actually to my students. Yes, oh, really 1991 with Sean Connery. Nobody really knows it, but it's actually a really good one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is, because it's the unknown things that actually were the benefits that we don't really know about, and which was saving a lot of interesting. So yeah, so that was a good show and which was saving a lot of interesting. So yeah, so that was a good show, and there's quite a few of them out there that you know. There's Susan I'm not sure if you're sure out of the University of British Columbia that talks about the arbuscular relationships with trees, where they talk to each other or communicate to each other. I don't know if you've seen that one or not.
Speaker 4:No, I have not. I have not seen that. But coming back to that medicine man, like I mean this is for your listeners, I know it's, it's now 19 whatever. Early 1990s, 1991, 1992, with sean connery. It's a little bit cheesy movie but the, the, the content is actually really good. So this researcher went to the amazon forest well, there's the amazon again, but the amazon forest and found, found some sort of drug that could cure cancer in these hamsters or mice that he had there. Yeah, the problem was he couldn't replicate that anymore.
Speaker 3: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 was the bugs that were that, that were the medicine came from there.
Speaker 4:So he treated the plant extract and it was contaminated by whatever these ants that were in the sugar by chance, and so he thought it's the plant that saved them. But it was the ants. And then there was like whatever bulldozers and you know kind of clear cutting and basically the story is like if you destroy the rainforest, you may be destroying you know future medicines and that saves people from cancer. But this is actually true here. I think, in analogy, you know kind of that we need to kind of listen to people and kind of these knowledges and then using modern tools, to kind of fine-tune this. And this is where you know my research here is limited. Right now we cannot really say this molecule is responsible for this and this goes into this enzyme pocket and kind of receptor. We don't really know that. But we do know that when people use this extract it really is good for their skin and there are some benefits from that.
Speaker 3:I recall when I was Minister of Natural Resources, there was a company I believe it was out of Texas, that wanted the rights, the sole rights, to all the chemical compounds found in the materials in Ontario and wanted me to sign off and sell it to them. And I absolutely refused because that would be, first of all, the potentials, as we're just talking about, for so many healing things that are out there that we haven't even looked at yet, that are slowly coming about, and a lot of the ancient knowledge is very significant in passing these on and helping, helping today's society. But I know that at that time I I refused and I said this would be the worst thing going, so I wouldn't allow it to happen thank you for not doing that.
Speaker 4:That's good. No, because because this is we.
Speaker 4:We don't even know what we don't know, you know kind of this is that and, and you know, corporation explore, exploiting uh, it's, it's, that's, that's something. Now, that's speaking me as a founder of a small company. We're just a small company. We're just a few people working here. We're punching above our weight here, but ultimately we're still very, very small. But it has to be in benefit. We don't have a monopoly. Someone else wants to make the extract in their backyard. Go for it. You know, kind of this is knowledge that we should share, and if they find something better that helps for them or kind of tweak the process or add some other stuff. I think that's all what humans are about to learn and to help each other.
Speaker 3:So some of the things that I looked at. Matthias and I was last week just explaining things exactly like this that in Ontario we used to have birch mills that would harvest birch logs and the bark was a wasted residual that they tried to get rid of and they actually had to pay to have it taken to dumps and things like that. Why not look at utilizing those materials in other forms whether we're just talking about things like this and I'm not sure if you've ever if you have companies that predominantly deal in in birch fiber, that would have residuals, leftover materials from birch bark from birch trees that you might be able to utilize en masse and it just adds more use to the fiber that's being taken in the forests.
Speaker 4: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 the birch to get to the, the softwood, in order to make you know kind of well, structure, material and whatnot, which is fine, you know we still need those, but they were really trampling on the stuff and and and. So when the eldest then says, well, they cherish the birch tree as really um, uh, knowledge and you know, kind of part of the culture and stuff that is kind 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 really cherish that. And I think this is exactly what you're conveying to. You know, kind of, oh, this is, this is the garbage.
Speaker 3:You know, I tell my students all the time, if I'm rich and would be there, I would start buying all garbage dumps in Canada, because the garbage dumps of today are the resources of the future would be a great location to do materials extraction for the metals that are in them now, because we used to throw all those metals in the dump once upon a time and dumps are filled with old metals that could be used, probably and extracted a lot cheaper than the mining process that we're doing for extraction of other things now, and it's just something. But the more I looked into that there was not a lot of records for old dumps in the fifties and sixties in municipalities, so it's hard to find those kinds of details. But it's just another potential for somebody looking as an entrepreneurial aspect of some things that could be done.
Speaker 4:Oh, and it helps. You know, back in the day it was more scattered. You know, kind of all this. That's one stuff with metals I mean. This comes back to my chemistry background. You know, a metal is a metal.
Speaker 4:You know, once you have whatever a palladium or gold or whatnot it stays that way and, like you said, that's one reason why we want to, why we are recycling electronics, because the gold content in an old, you know, computer is, I think you know don't quote me on that but I think like two or three orders of magnitude, like a hundred or a thousand times higher than the gold in like the earth, the gold in like the earth.
Speaker 4:So it's like saying, like this is 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 kind of brings everyone and it's actually good for the environment, so you don't have to go to pristine land and really preserve that. But really kind of take what you need. You know, kind of follow these traditions, take what you need, not kind of today's profit, and like whatever you know um, the world can burn afterwards, but really kind of saying like I, you know I have no kids, you know I want their kids to have prosperous country and land to live on and I think we can be very proud of what we're doing here in Canada.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and it's the things that you're doing this and working with the indigenous, the aboriginal individuals that will benefit future generations as well, to see the value in a lot of other things. And I recall I mentioned a number of times that so long as the forest continues to have value, it'll continue to be a forest and once it loses its value, people will find other purposes for that, whether some try to cut it down to graze cattle in, as I stopped in Ontario once upon a time and we need to make sure that those opportunities for future generations continue. But, matias, I know that you've got to get to class very shortly. I think I'm not sure about the time change. How can people find out more details about you and your research, or where can they get in touch and find out about your product, or is there special events on or something you want to share with our audience?
Speaker 4: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're this is it tells us our the backstory, the products that we're selling. We have creams and soaps. Some are really very nicely smelling, so it's really really great there and in fact, I was told from my COO there that we are actually having a little sale on right now until April 10, 2025. So there's 20% off of 50-gram creams and you just put the code word in canopy. So thank you so much for you, jerry, to be on this one here. But, yeah, please check us out online Masqueoman, or just my last name, beer and Steel, matthias Beer and Steel and you will find us. Or check out the CBC Land and Sea documentary Mi'kmaq Medicines that just came out. You can find them on YouTube as well as on CBC website and learn more about us. It's great that people need to know not only about us, but really about all that information that we have and that we have wonderful here within Canada, of all the people who are living here.
Speaker 3:And just so people know, for the people that listen around the world, this is a product you can ship around the world as well.
Speaker 4:Right now we're limited to North America, but because of, unfortunately, the ongoing thing with the neighbor south, we're actually now working on getting licenses to sell all around the world much more faster than we intended to, so they should just send us an email, contact us and then we'll work things out.
Speaker 3:Well, matthias, I very much appreciate you taking the time to be on our podcast today, and this is just something a little bit different than learning some of the benefits and the things that are happening, that has been around for generations, that are now being relearned and passed on to future generations out there under the canopy. Thanks, matthias, thank you.
Speaker 6:How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, Steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, Diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, Learn and have plenty of laughs along the way.
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Speaker 1:Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show, but now we're hosting a podcast.
Speaker 2:That's right. Every Thursday, ange and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio Now what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
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Speaker 1:Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside.
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