Podcast 544: Sea Cucumber Secrets — The Ocean’s Forgotten Superfood

SCOTT: There is a creature that lays in the ocean, in the Atlantic Ocean, and it could be the secret to longevity. You need to hear this right after we get started. Welcome everybody. This is the Life Enthusiast Health Shots podcast, restoring vitality to you and the planet. I'm your co-host Scott Paton. Joining us, health engineer Martin Pytela and a very special guest. And Martin, why don't you introduce Kerry?

MARTIN: Indeed. Please meet Kerry Muise. She comes to us from Beche, a company that is involved in harvesting, processing, and bringing us the most amazing unusual food made out of sea cucumber. Kerry, welcome.

KERRY: Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Scott.

SCOTT: Glad to have you here. So, is this like a real cucumber? We grow cucumbers in the garden, and we make pickles out of it and stuff. 

KERRY: No.

SCOTT: It's not like that at all.

KERRY: Not like that at all. It's actually an animal.

MARTIN: Can you show me a picture of it?

KERRY: Yep. Here's a picture.

SCOTT: Oh. Oh, beautiful.

KERRY: Very colorful picture.

MARTIN: It’s gorgeous.

KERRY: And that lives in very deep water. It can live in any part of the ocean. There's over 1,500 species, sorry, 1,800 species of sea cucumbers around the world.

SCOTT: Had no idea.

KERRY: Here in Nova Scotia, we have a very special one. It grows in, or it lives in, the pristine waters that we have off the coast of Nova Scotia. And we harvest it in very deep, cold waters, and it is actually feeding on phytoplankton. So lots of nutrients going into that.

MARTIN: Yeah, we have a relationship with phytoplankton. We sell to people phytoplankton alone. So this being processed by a creature is probably better. Right?

KERRY: Right.

MARTIN: It's sort of like me eating a cow instead of the grass. Right.

KERRY: Right. Very good analogy. Yeah.

SCOTT: So this is something that you and your company have been doing for a couple months now, and it's all experimental, and nobody knows anything about it.

KERRY: No, actually, the company Ocean Pride is the parent company. Our products are called Beche, but Ocean Pride's been around for over 40 years.

SCOTT: Wow.

KERRY: And our founder has passed on, but his son took over the company, Jules Leblanc, and he's really taken sea cucumber to another level. When we first started harvesting sea cucumber 40 years ago, I wasn't here. They were drying it and shipping it to Asia. So,

SCOTT: the Asians would really love something like this, wouldn't they? I mean, that's right up their alley.

KERRY: Well, if you look at the Asian superfoods, thousands of years ago, they were feeding the emperors superfoods and a very specific diet, and sea cucumber was one of those superfoods, and they fed it to the emperors for longevity and for healthy aging and to keep them alive as long as they could. It's been in the Asian diet forever. They dry it and rehydrate it. When you do that, it's very much like eating whale blubber. Not pleasant. You have to mask it with a lot of other flavors.

SCOTT: Yeah.

KERRY: So, not the best way to consume it. Especially for our diet, we're not used to that rehydration and texture and stuff like that.

SCOTT: And I would say too that we have a very narrow spectrum of things we like to eat. Picky children grow up to be picky adults.

MARTIN: This probably has a pretty strong marine flavor to it.

KERRY: It does. It does, Martin. It's not that pleasant. But when I go to trade shows, it's funny. I go with my partner Julie, and when we're looking around at new products, if something tastes terrible, we're like, it's not going to sell. It's not going to catch on. No matter how good it is for you, people are not going to consume it. So, you have to find another way, right? And we've actually found a way by making it into a capsule. So, very convenient. You take one capsule a day. Little tiny capsule. Doesn't smell bad at all. They have to be refrigerated because it's a live organism. So, after you break the seal, it goes in the refrigerator. One a day.

SCOTT: Wow.

KERRY: No problem at all. Yeah.

MARTIN: Right on. So, talk to me about, talk to me about who is the best candidate for wanting to actually ingest these simple little capsules.

KERRY: Someone who wants more energy. Who has any kind of inflammatory issues, especially high-level athletes who are trying to recover quickly from workouts or races or anything like that.

SCOTT: Oh, interesting.

KERRY: Yeah.

MARTIN: You know what's interesting about that? Anybody who wants to recover, I was just thinking that a woman with fibromyalgia wakes up in about the same shape as a marathon runner after his run.

KERRY: That's true. Yeah. I noticed, so I started taking it 10 years ago, and I've always been a fairly high-energy person and fairly healthy, but my energy level went up. It stayed up. I'm approaching 60 years old, and I have energy,

SCOTT: No way.

MARTIN: Okay. If you didn't pop it, I would have thought 42.

KERRY: Oh, thank you.

SCOTT: Yeah, it would have been a little bit less than that, but not much. Wow. So, you're a product of the product, and the product works.

KERRY: Yep. It works. It really does. My husband takes it as well. He's type II diabetic, and it helped level his blood sugar.

SCOTT: Yeah.

KERRY: Yep. And it's funny because he's not a big taking vitamins kind of guy, but he never misses his daily Beche. He even takes it when he travels. So, it makes a difference in how you feel. It really does. Yep. And then there's another really good benefit that I've experienced, and that's menopause. So I actually didn't experience menopause. 

SCOTT: You're so lucky.

KERRY: I can't say that it was 100% because of this, but I'm on this for 10 years, from 50 to 60, and zero symptoms.

MARTIN: And so you just went from cycling to not cycling, and that's that.

KERRY: Yeah. very normal way. No hot flashes, no mood swings. Well, maybe a couple, but.

SCOTT: I was living at home when my mom went through menopause, and we lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba. So, it was wintertime.

KERRY: Oh.

SCOTT: Minus 40. She would open all the doors and windows, and my dad and I were like, "What are you doing?” “Oh, it's so hot. It's so hot." And then she would shut them all and put on a coat and turn up the furnace. “What are you doing?” “Oh, it's so cold. It's so cold.” And almost every minute it would change like that, right?

KERRY: Menopause is a market, or not a market but a condition, a natural condition that's been largely ignored by the pharmaceutical industry and also by the health industry. But there are some things we're now making this product with red clover and black cohosh added to it because those are both documented to,

MARTIN: I better order some if that's available. Indeed. 

SCOTT: Congratulations, Kerry. You just made another sale.

KERRY: Oh, good. Good. Yeah.

MARTIN: Okay. Well, you just popped the most interesting thing, right? So, as you couple it with the hormonal-correcting herbs, it's amazing. We used to have a product that I cannot get anymore for some reason that was based on clover.

KERRY: Okay.

MARTIN: And people, females mostly, the ones with either endometrial or fibromyalgia or that sort of stuff going on were just singing praises of this. So I have no doubt that this will be well received.

SCOTT: Okay. So we've talked about the women's menopause thing. For men, how should we be taking it as well? What are some of the benefits for us?

KERRY: The anti-inflammatory benefits are really, really significant. And as you know,  aging or inflammation is natural; the older you get.

KERRY: So it really helps with that as well. There's marine collagen in this product, which is a biggie.

MARTIN: Right. Yeah. Let's just gloss over it. Right. So, collagen, for those of you who don't understand, that's why you would want to be eating chicken broth or bone broth in general, and collagen is what gives life to hair, skin, nails, and whatnot. But actually every connective tissue throughout your body. So when you hear collagen, your ears should perk up and say, "Oh yeah, I think I need that."

KERRY: Yeah. But it also has omega-3s. There's really good omega-3s in it.

SCOTT: Oh, good.

KERRY: Antioxidants. We also have, and our specific species of sea cucumber, we have an agent called frondicide A, and there's studies going on now that are trying to prove that frondicide A is a cancer-fighting agent as well. They're not verified yet, but that is suspected and in process. So, this has protein in it. Some good fats, marine species fats you would get from fish, and calcium. It's super healthy. So, we don't heat up the cucumber. I can't tell you the process that we have because it's a proprietary process, but we don't freeze it. We don't dry it. So, all the amino acids and bioavailability it is still here in the product.

MARTIN: So, you don't cook it before we eat it.

KERRY: We do not cook it. No. No. And then it has to go in the fridge after you open it.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MARTIN: I noticed the word peptides on the list of ingredients. Can you highlight some of that?

KERRY: I don't have a list of the peptides. I think it might be on our website.

MARTIN: Okay. No worries.

KERRY: I have noticed at the trade shows that I go to, which are all healthy foods trade shows, peptides are huge. That's what people are looking for.

SCOTT: Yes.

MARTIN: Yes, all of a sudden we have noticed them; we have been using insulin, the most common peptide in medical use for the longest time without thinking much of it or calling it a peptide, but there it is.

KERRY: Yeah.

MARTIN: All right, so proprietary process, so you say that this is so special. I guess it would be, do you have to go around with nets to catch these cucumbers? How do you do that?

KERRY: Yeah, they're caught in deep waters with nets off the back of fishing trawlers.

MARTIN: So is it like by catch for most fishing?

KERRY: We're not bottom trawling because they're not on the bottom. They're in the water column. 

MARTIN: Okay.

KERRY: Yeah. So we're not trawling the bottom of the ocean. And the Nova Scotia government. I'm located in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, the southern tip of Nova Scotia. We're an hour away from Boston by the water.

SCOTT: Oh, wow.

KERRY: Bar Harbor actually is our closest port. So, the Nova Scotia government was trying to promote using other species instead of overfishing certain species, they were promoting companies to investigate other species. So, that's how Ocean Pride got involved with Sea Cucumber, and they have granted us plots of land in the ocean off the coast here that we can fish sustainably. So it's all gridded out, and they might fish one area one year, another area another year so that there's a regeneration. Sea cucumber, that picture I showed you of one sea cucumber, there's parts of the world where that sea cucumber is so valuable it could go for $7,000 for one sea cucumber.

SCOTT: Wow.

KERRY: Overfishing is very prevalent because if you're trying to feed your family and I'm not allowed to catch that, but if I catch that, this is how much money I get. It's overfished. So, we're really careful to be sustainable about it.

MARTIN: So, is this the Chinese aristocracy that would want to buy it for the $7,000?

KERRY: Maybe. I don't know. 

MARTIN: There's all kinds of stuff, right? Like tiger penises and rhino horns and whatever else.

SCOTT: Bear balls.

MARTIN: It’s what?

SCOTT: Bear balls.

MARTIN: Yeah, that too.

SCOTT: So, let's bring up the page on the Life Enthusiast site, and we can talk a little bit about it here. So, here's the product. Supports joint health, repair and recovery, immune system.

MARTIN: Yep. All of that. Well, you can read the details. It's there.

SCOTT: And we have our description, everything that it does, and we get into some details, but not how it's made because that's proprietary and we're not allowed to.

KERRY: Correct.

SCOTT: And the ingredients.

MARTIN: Well, the ingredient is a long list of one.

SCOTT: A long list of one. And instructions, which I think is always important because you take it on an empty stomach. Yes. Prior to the first meal. On an empty stomach.

MARTIN: Yeah.

SCOTT: And sometimes with meals we see lots of different things.

MARTIN: Makes sense to me, Scott, that when you take something that's loaded with protein and all the important nutrients, you would want to take it first thing in the morning because that's when you want most of the aminos to hit your body.

SCOTT: Exactly. And there is a lot of research on it. So this isn't just a guess, right?

MARTIN: Yeah. This is not a flight of fancy.

KERRY: No. And it's been reviewed in our country for safety, quality, and approved health claims. So, we have a natural health number for this, like we're allowed to sell it.

MARTIN: Yeah. Canada's neat this way because they once approved you actually have a stated health claim that you can make about things, right?

KERRY: Correct. Yeah.

MARTIN: So, what's on yours?

KERRY: Basically, what you just read, we can claim all of those things that it helps with. Yeah. Otherwise, we couldn't say all that.

MARTIN: Yeah. Okay. Great.

SCOTT: So, I have a question. I'm not sure how relevant it is, but when you go to a trade show in Europe, are you limited on what you can say this and this in Canada, but you can't say that, and that in Europe- even though you could in Canada, or does that?

KERRY: Correct, it depends on the country. We actually partner with Iceland, and they also have a very sustainable, equally nutritious form of sea cucumber. So we've kind of partnered with a company in Iceland, and mixing our two sea cucumbers together allows us to use their claims as well because we have the same claims, but theirs are

sanctioned in Europe. So.

SCOTT: Oh, very cool.

KERRY: Yeah. Yeah. So, we're good to do business in Europe and Asia, of course. Yeah.

SCOTT: And the United States.

KERRY: Yep. And we also ship the powder. So, it doesn't have to go in a capsule. And that's actually the most common thing we do: we'll ship the powder, and then you can encapsulate it yourself, or you can combine it with other items, as we combine it with red clover and cohosh. So there's lots of uses, and that's probably, when we go to trade shows, we're mostly selling the powder, not necessarily this. We sell a lot of this on our website because it's kind of almost like a buy three, you get one free, and it ships every three months to you. So you have supply.

SCOTT: Oh, very cool. Martin, any last questions before we sign off?

MARTIN: I think we may have covered it. The company’s mature and well regulated and well sustainable. So any one of you who's thinking that we are over fishing the ocean we're not.

KERRY: Mhm.

MARTIN: And what else would I like to say? Oh yeah, the cucumber. Why do we call it cucumber when it's an animal?

KERRY: I have no idea. It must be when they're dried and stretched out. They're about the size of a good cucumber. Maybe that's where it came from. I don't know. But they sure don't taste like a cucumber. But anytime you're around Nova Scotia. We'll give you a tour of how we fish them.

SCOTT: Oh, that would be wonderful.

MARTIN: Do you think that this would appeal to people who like to eat sushi, like a Japanese dinner type of a thing or not really?

KERRY: You mean the actual sea cucumber? In the Asian diet, it's very common that they eat the sea cucumber before it's processed.

SCOTT: Right on.

KERRY: And I have tried it once, but I can't say I liked it. I'd rather do this (capsules) any day.

MARTIN: Okay.

KERRY: And I love sushi, but that's different.

SCOTT: That's different. Yeah.

SCOTT: Awesome. Well, thank you very much, Kerry, for joining us today. We really appreciate having you.

KERRY: You're welcome. Thanks for your interest.

MARTIN: Yeah. Thank you.

MARTIN: This has been Life Enthusiast Health Shots. My name is Martin Pytela. You'll find us at life-enthusiast.com. Thanks for spending your time with us.

SCOTT: Bye-bye, everybody.