Mike: Many of you reading
this may have heard about some of the benefits of plants from
the ocean and, in particular, brown seaweed.
You may have seen
some of the recent news stories about the specific constituents
of brown seaweed helping get rid of excess body fat, or you may
have read about them helping to eliminate radiation poisoning
from the body, or perhaps even about some of the anti-cancer
effects of various seaweeds.
Many of you are probably also
familiar with the greatly enhanced longevity of the Japanese
people, who probably eat more seaweed than any other culture in
the world.
Today we’re going to be talking about one specific type of
seaweed, brown seaweed, and the extract form available in a
product called Modifilan, and we’re going to be talking to Sergei Zimin, owner of Pacific Standard Distributors Inc., which
currently produces and sells
Modifilan.
So thanks for joining me
today, Sergei.
Sergei: Thank you for making this happen.
Mike: How long has your company been producing this product, and
where does your brown seaweed actually come from? Is it ocean
grown or farm grown?
Sergei: The raw material we make our extract from comes from
Russian waters; it’s actually a far eastern part of Russia, off
the Asiatic part of the Siberian continent, near the Kuril
Islands between Japan and Kamchatka.
People may also know these
islands by their controversial political geography, which makes
Japan claim this territory as their own northern territories
while Russia - which actually took those islands after the Second
World War - claims them as well.
Our
kombu - the common name of this variety of brown seaweed
- is
not farmed, and it’s not the type of sea plant that is planted
or gathered. It’s in the middle of the ocean, about 600 miles
away from the closest commercial port.
The island around which
we get this particular raw material is called
Urup.
Mike: How do you harvest this? Is this off of a boat, or do you
have divers?
Sergei: A boat is involved, but it’s a little tugboat from which
we gather bunches of leaves hand-cut by divers and tow them to
shore. The kombu leaves are huge. It’s the largest possible type
of Laminaria found in a natural habitat.
In order to make our product extract, you have to have a very
large, elephant-type of leaf so you have lots of the gooey
inside parts to squeeze out. It’s like aloe vera. When you cut
it in half, you can even see some of the polysaccharide - that
gooey substance inside the leaf.
So the divers cut them in shallow waters, probably not more than
15 meters deep - which is what, like 45 feet deep - usually no
deeper. They put several leaves in a bunch, tie them with a
rope, and the little boat brings them onshore. We gather raw
material for our product twice a year.
The good thing about collecting this way - when we do it by
hand - is that when you cut it with a knife, you come to the same
spot next year and the plant will have mushroomed. You’ll see
four leaves growing from exactly the spot where you got only one
before. But if you do it by dragging - like they do it in the
northeast states, Ireland or Japan - you have to look for these
plants somewhere else. It’s not going to be sitting in the same
spot. It’s not going to be in the same bay.
So in our case, when we harvested our first batch back in 1997,
we didn’t have enough funds, force, and money to hire any
dragger or troller to get it.
So we had to use divers. It turned
out to be the best investment in our business, because later, we
were told that the way we do it helps our business actually stay
in business. We’re not afraid of losing the raw material because
the more product we cut, the more raw material we can expect to
see next year if we come to the same spot.
But this particular kelp,
Laminaria, is something only we can
harvest in this particular quarter. And the way we do it is very
sensible in all aspects, including the business aspect where
simply, the more product you harvest, the more raw material you
can expect to see next season.
It comes from territories close
to the islands, but it’s quite remote from the continent.
Mike: Sounds like a very ecologically sustainable system of
harvesting.
Sergei: Yes, it’s a clean place. That is actually one of the
questions retail customers ask when they find out about our
product: “How far is the source of your seaweed from Chernobyl?”
Because it’s one of the very few places that people generally
know about in the ex-Soviet Union, you know?
But it’s on the
totally opposite side of the planet - a good ten thousand miles
away from that place, and it’s 600 miles - at least - away from the
first public sewer system.
Mike: Yeah - Chernobyl is in Western Russia.
Sergei: That’s exactly the point. Chernobyl is in the Ukraine,
which is in the western part; it’s actually in Europe. So we are
talking about islands that are in the far eastern part of
Russia. You can’t get any further. It’s still called Siberia,
but Russians call it the “Far East.”
This is where I’m from. I
was born and brought up on Sakhalin Island, which is the
regional capital. My partner and I are both from this region.
That’s how business started: I have known of this product for
about 20 years.
Mike: So after you harvest these leaves, you squeeze them to get
the juice, dehydrate the juice, and that’s the extract?
Sergei: It’s a little bit more complicated than that. We don’t
just squeeze it, but it’s not a chemical process. After we pull
them to shore, we have to instantly dry them so they don’t rot,
so we put them on a wooden fence to dry out - it’s a very fast
process, especially if you do it in the sun and the wind, which
is a constant factor on those shores. And then we put the dried
seaweed in little rolls and transport them to the mainland,
where the initial processing takes place.
We put a very small amount of water in to bring them back to
life, which is a very fast process. They absorb an enormous
amount of water, but at the same time, we have to use just
enough to make the leaves juicy again. So we skin them, and the
outer part of the Laminaria leaves goes into something that
looks like a big meat grinder.
We don’t throw away the skin part of kombu leaves, we grind it
into something that looks like a paste. What is left behind of
those leaves after we skin them is very thin, but you can touch
it. It’s a small layer, a very thin layer of gel, the inside
part of the kombu leaves. We don’t put that layer through the
grinder; we cut it into chunks.
That paste we get after we put
the outer parts through the grinder; the paste gets mixed with
those chunks of the inner part of the kombu leaves, and it’s
squeezed through cheesecloth-like.
We throw away what stays in the net, because this is actually
the harsh part of the seaweed that humans cannot digest. The
only creatures that actually can eat seaweed and fully digest
it, process it, and turn it into something are the sea urchins
and abalone. These are the only creatures that can munch on
seaweed and work it through completely, fiber-wise.
Anyway, that
disposal part goes away, and the batch of gooey substance that
was squeezed from the cloth goes into a cold vacuum blower - it’s
actually called a drying chamber - where it’s a low temperature,
and we can turn this big chunk of glue into something that
dehydrates and starts to look like a big boulder. It’s like a
big rock.
So we have to physically crack it into smaller chips
and put it in a big, commercial coffee grinder. This is the
final step. We turn these chunks of rock into a powder, and this
is what Modifilan is.
Basically, we can’t say that this is a juice of seaweed, because
first of all it’s dried; it’s in a powder form. By its nature,
we can call it an extract, but at the same time it’s more
mechanical extraction, a coldwater-processing product made by
natural means. We don’t break anything; we don’t take anything
out or add anything in terms of mineral content or composition.
We simply make seaweed mineral qualities available.
Mike: What about the heat? Is there ever any heat processing?
Sergei: No. There is no boiling or heating. It’s a little bit
above room temperature when the leaves gets squeezed, just
because of the mechanics of the process, but the drying process
is in a true cold-dehydration chamber.
Mike: So this probably explains, why your product has such a
potent taste and smell. I have some of your product, and I’ve
been using it for a while.
Sergei: It makes a big difference, yes? We do not kill enzymes.
Mike: That was one of my questions.
Sergei: We do not kill the living part, which is actually
responsible for mineral transfer right after you put it in your
mouth. Sometimes you definitely taste the difference, and
natural eaters will love the flavor and smell of Modifilan
powder. But for some people how it tastes comes as a surprise.
If you open up the capsules and put them under your tongue, they
bite you!
That action actually shows that it’s a very alive food. Another
thing is if you mix it with water, and just put it at room
temperature for a day or so, it will get rotten very fast. It
eats itself up like crazy. The so-called quantum properties of
our product - which is the speed of polysaccharides, you know - is
very high.
There are dead foods. There are live foods, and then there are
super-live foods. And I truly suspect that we belong to the
third category. If you put a good, fresh cut of meat out and see
what happens to it the next day, it’s the same thing with
Modifilan. You can actually turn this into paste.
If you mix it with water and keep it in the refrigerator, it’s
fine. But if you leave it at room temperature or at a warm
temperature, it really gets rotten very fast, which, again,
proves that it’s a very alive substance.
Mike: And for those consumers, too - especially in America
- who may
not be consumers of a lot of seafood or sea vegetables, they may
find the taste a little surprising at first, as I did. But
intellectually I know that that’s what I want, because it tells
me the potency of this is very real, and that it doesn’t have a
lot of filler just to make it taste better. Besides, it’s not
like you’re chewing on it, you’re just swallowing some capsules.
Sergei: Yes, you’re right, there is no filler. We are a small
company, administration-wise, and our product has been made for
10 years now. We don’t use any fillers, no rice powder.
Many
manufacturers of food supplements do it by default, because they
don’t want to clean their machinery often, and they want their
powders to go into capsules easily. With our product, you really
have to stand next to the encapsulator and do a cleanup
regularly. We don’t use any fillers or preservatives. All you
see in the capsule is just the extract itself, straight.
And again, the powder itself has a very interesting and unique
taste. For a natural eater, it’s very pleasant. Before I started
to make this product, the way I used it was a tablespoon of
powder mixed into a glass of lemon-honey water. Just squeeze
half of a lemon in a glass of water, put a teaspoon of honey in
there, and put a tablespoon of Modifilan, and you shake it
together because that’s the best way to mix powder in, and you
drink it.
Very few people can do that because of its very strong taste, so
the capsules are the best way to get it, especially for somebody
who is looking to get extra benefit from our product and needing
to take more of it. Eating six or eight capsules a day is very
healthy - it equals a good level tablespoon of powder.
The vast
majority of people will have a very difficult time consuming
that much powder daily, so capsules are a good way to get it.
Mike: Yes, absolutely. How many pounds of brown seaweed does it
take to make one pound of your product?
Sergei: It depends on the size. The larger the size of the kombu,
the less per kilo. But for about 40 pounds of raw seaweed, only
one pound of our powder comes out. So it’s a 40 to 1 extraction
ratio. With U-FN it’s about a 150 to 1, because we have to use a
lot of seaweed to come up with a single kilo of U-FN. It’s an
expensive product, too.
Mike: Do you sell these products in powder form or only
capsules?
Sergei: Only capsules. The powder form is available to those who
buy it as ingredients for their products, because most of our
business is in manufacturing the substance itself. Most of our
product is sold in private label situations where people call it
different names and sell it in different situations, marketing
through different channels.
So they just sell it as-is, or
sometimes they mix it with good ingredients like probiotics or
good enzymes. But yes, the product is available in powder, but
it’s not offered for retail.
Our distributors, the ones who sell Modifilan in retail, they don’t have powder.
Uses for brown seaweed extract
Mike: Now let’s talk about some of the uses of your product
- I’ve
researched from many reliable sources that the levels of iodine
needed in the human body are much higher than what Western
medicine currently recommends.
Sergei: Ten times higher.
Mike: In fact, iodine is used in breast tissue; it’s used in
prostate gland tissue. I think this is important to note that
the rates of breast cancer in Japan, for example, are
significantly lower than they are in the United States. This is
mostly thought to be due to the consumption of two things:
seaweed and green tea.
Sergei: Yes, iodine and antioxidants. The first thing that
happens to a woman when she develops an iodine deficiency is a
problem with her reproductive organs: breast deformation,
calcification.
The tissue that is supposed to be penetrated by
iodine turns into a calcified, sandy looking thing. This is what
shows up on the mammogram, and that’s the whole story.
So again,
iodine deficiency is not about lack of iodine in the thyroid
only, but it’s about the results of that.
Mike: Absolutely. I think that’s very important to note, because
people will tend to think that iodine is only for the thyroid,
but it’s actually useful.
The next thing that I wanted to
mention is that most people - not only in Western society but also
around the world - live in a state of chronic mineral deficiency.
This is not only the macro-minerals like selenium, which is
related to neurological function; zinc, which is related to
immune function and healing; and calcium, which controls heart
function, neurological function and brain chemistry; but also
the trace minerals.
Brown seaweed has all of the 72 different trace minerals
typically lacking in the bodies of Western consumers. I cannot
overemphasize the importance of getting trace minerals into your
body, and this looks like a great way to do it.
It’s certainly
not the only way, but this is an excellent way.
Sergei: It’s an interesting thing that in our product - although
it’s made of seaweed, which sometimes just resembles a shade of
minerals - you can find some of those trace minerals that you find
in seaweed under the detection limit. In our product, you can
actually detect those.
Speaking of selenium, manganese, and the vitamin B group, in
Modifilan they are presented over the detection limit. Yes, you
call them trace minerals, but in Modifilan they test in higher
volume. They are still all together.
They come to you not in a
multivitamin pill, where you put different crystallized minerals
and vitamins in one batch, but in a natural shape and form in
higher volume than in regular seaweed.
Mike: Yes, that’s a great point. This is really a whole plant
solution. These are not isolated components that are being
combined in an artificial way. This is right out of the ocean.
It’s also important to note that our blood mimics the mineral
composition of ocean water.
Sergei: Yes, actually our lymph does. Human lymph and ocean
water have the same chemical mineral composition.
Not many
people know that, actually. The juice of seaweed and human lymph
are the same - if you cut your finger, and the blood dries out,
there is a little yellowish crystal left behind: a scab. If you
cut seaweed, it will yield exactly the same substance on the top
when it dries on the leaf.
In Japan, wounded soldiers were given juice of seaweed when they
didn’t have enough blood just to keep them alive for several
hours before blood would arrive. Before they were fermenting
seaweed there, they put it in clay or stone jars with ocean salt
to break down the fibers, then they ate it. Or they just chewed
on that and spit it out or sucked on the seaweed leaf.
In Korea,
they’re doing a better job still because they put seaweed in
kimchi, where by means of fermentation they kill that fiber that
we remove. But for everybody else, seaweed became a commodity,
and it started to sell on the market a good fifty years ago.
Everybody makes sure that they eat the whole thing when they buy
it.
Mike: That seems like a really good way to release the
nutrients, through fermentation.
Sergei: Yeah, and it becomes more active, but at the same time
it becomes soft, like gum, so you can work through that broken
cellulose. The fermented foods are great, and if somebody has
the luxury of having time and the place to ferment their foods,
the Kombu seaweed is one of the best substances you can ferment
and eat.
Eating Modifilan is probably the same as chewing on seaweed and
spitting out the fibers. It doesn’t look very good, but it’s how
people in, say, the Mediterranean were eating grapes up until
recently. They just chewed on the grape. They suck on the juice
and then spit the thing out. In Morocco, where they have oranges
growing in the streets, they just bite the fruit, chew it, and
spit it out.
The whole thing about eating fruits, vegetables and
especially roots, which are full of indigestible fibers, in the
cultures of people who grow them or were exposed to them by
natural default is they didn’t necessarily eat the whole thing.
They just chewed on those things.
The same thing is true in
Japan: they fermented it or they sucked on it.
Mike: Yeah. Well, that makes sense. All they really need are the
nutrients, not all the cellulose.
Can you talk about the reasons people buy your product? What are
they saying is their reason? Because your product has so many
different uses.
Sergei: Let’s talk about results which is what they get out of
this product. Reasons are a different thing. It’s all different
what they see in it, but people usually get the same thing out
of it. You get more energy in your day, regularity in your
bathroom trips, and improvement in your skin, hair and nail
conditions.
These are the basic, little things that people see
when they use this product for at least three to five weeks. If
somebody is interested in having results beyond these obvious,
simple things, if somebody is looking for our product with
certain ideas in mind, usually it applies to their understanding
of mineral potency. In our product at the best possible level
and availability are mineral forms of seaweed.
It’s thyroid
support, endocrine system rehabilitation, and everything that
applies to that. There are numerous health conditions
that - simply based on endocrine inefficiency and thyroid
inactivity - inhibit regular body functions.
So to answer your question directly, people who look for this
product, people who want to buy this product with certain health
issues in mind, are the ones who know about mineral iodine as
the only food for thyroid, everything else comes secondary. When
you make your thyroid wake up again and regulate all the little
glands around your body, including the pancreas, gall bladder,
kidneys, adrenals, even the liver, everything will come to you
naturally if you simply feed your thyroid with this.
By its nature, the thyroid is fed by iodine. And we’re talking
about iodine in ionic form, not liquid from a brown bottle. One
that comes out of the soil with your water or in the plants you
eat in your diet; in the sea water - which we can’t gulp much of
anyway - and in the seafood, in fish, and in shellfish.
But the
largest, molecule-wise, ionic form of iodine you can find is in
seaweed. Again, to eat seaweed itself is not the way to get the
iodine delivered; you can’t get that much seaweed into your
system because it’s full of cellulose.
So, the main result people are looking for is relief from
thyroid-related issues, and also the detox quality of alginates,
which people have known of for a long time.
Origins of Modifilan
Sergei: Modifilan was created in the late ‘60s in the Soviet
Union at a time when alginates were already researched and
studied. Sodium alginates - chemical extracts from seaweed - were
widely known and used for detox purposes, but it was all IV
application, where the sodium alginates were mixed with this
liquid and put directly into the vein.
It was very complicated,
there were side effects, it had to be done in a true hospital
setting, and it was expensive.
The whole idea with Modifilan was to deliver all the mineral
qualities - including alginates, which was the mineral they were
after - in a concentrated juice of seaweed. They simply made
alginates available by eliminating an obstacle in the body - the
cellulose. So that was actually the whole idea of Modifilan. It
was made in the Soviet Union for many years, but in very small
quantities.
It was not very well known or available to most of
the public - mostly just people involved in situations where they
had a certain degree of environmental exposure to toxicity,
ionic radiation, and contamination.
After
Chernobyl in 1986, it was first made in a larger quantity.
About three tons of Modifilan was produced, all at once, after
Chernobyl blew up.
That was the first time - and the last time,
actually - that Modifilan was produced in the Soviet Union in that
quantity. Then the Soviet Union went apart, and even Chernobyl
became a good case study for Modifilan in terms of its
applications beyond alginates only.
Unfortunately, the Soviet
Union disbanded, and all of this information became unwanted and
too complicated, and the product was too expensive to make at
the very beginning in Russia.
Mike: As I understand, there were some very positive results in
helping people eliminate radiation, and even the chemical
detoxification of this plant is documented in other contexts as
well.
Sergei: Actually, more than 2,000 people were taking Modifilan
on a daily basis for about two months under the supervision of
doctors. These were the guys who were re-excavating the whole
area around Chernobyl and changing the sewage system out. Two
thousand people in a very geographically enclosed situation were
eating about two tablespoons per day, so it was actually a good
case study for the product.
There was something in this product that medical doctors didn’t
know about, because again, the only use that Modifilan was known
for was the detox qualities of alginates.
But the people who
started to take this product in a very unhealthy situation
developed an interesting reaction to this product’s use, even
when they had pre-existing health conditions. Most of those
people working around the Chernobyl area were reserve-drafted
people, ex-military men age 25 to 45.
Most of those
guys - especially if you’re talking about those older than 40 - had
quite a few unhealthy things in their lives.
Using Modifilan by
default on that many people at the same time, people who were
sleeping together, eating the same food and all, that was a good
thing for the research.
Mike: One of the things that really attracted me to this product
is the fact that so many Westerners have literally hundreds of
toxic synthetic chemicals in their bodies.
You can not live in
society today - at least not in the United States - without being
exposed to all of these different chemicals that become embedded
in your heart, your kidneys, liver, brain and many other organs.
One of the things that was really exciting to me about your
product was that I’ve read a lot of very reliable research
talking about the ability of sea vegetables to not only protect
us from these toxic chemicals, but in some sense to help us
detoxify those chemicals as well.
Can you speak to that in any
way?
Sergei: Yes, I can. Many of our professional customers are
licensed medical professionals, true MDs or NMDs, who use this
product for detoxification qualities.
Being an absolutely
natural product, Modifilan is a very good alternative to
biochemical chelation protocols. Sometimes you have to spend a
lot of money to be very strict about your diet and supplement
yourself with many minerals, because
to chelate using chemically
formulated protocols means you deplete your own mineral
spectrum.
Speaking of the side effects of biochemical chelation protocols,
Modifilan is a winner when detoxing, because the detox or
healing crisis effect is very mild. So yes, if you use our
product in a situation where one is contaminated, like off-chart
PPM levels of mercury, lead, uranium or strontium - especially
those metals that do not belong to the nutritional table of
metals - using this product for about three to four months, in a
quantity of six capsules a day for an average-size body, will
make people clean.
A good proof of this would be to do the same thing for three or
four months after you start using our product.
Usually it takes
about six to eight bottles of product used over a period of
three to four months to start to see a difference. A hair or
urine test will give a great truth in terms of numbers, but the
main difference people will see is in how they feel.
When they
start to take this product, in about three to five weeks - which
seems to be an average introduction period for people with
health conditions, especially if there is toxicity involved - they
will go through a detox stage that never lasts longer than a
week, and it’s very mild. It doesn’t happen to everybody, every
time that they take this product, but people will be aware of
some of that effect.
If it’s heavy metal contamination, you can
count on this product to do a very good job with a very modest
level of detox symptoms.
The anti-cancer connection
Mike: Is there anything you can talk about, or are there any
supporting studies about this seaweed stopping tumor growth, or
anything you can share?
Sergei: There are many studies on mineral qualities of seaweed
as the source of anticancerous agents, especially an element
called
fucoidan.
Since our product offers everything seaweed has in the most
potent and bioavailable digestible form, whatever your readers
can find on the quite extensive range of health benefits of
seaweed, will be in Modifilan. I cannot go into the subject
deeper than that, but I can say one thing: Whatever you see or
read about brown seaweed, expect our product to deliver this at
the best level in terms of its potency, volume, and
bioavailablity.
If you’re talking about fucoidan itself, it’s evaporated
oligomineral that has been very well known for a long time. It’s
been researched, studied, and described widely, and there are
even some fucoidan products available now in food supplement
form. Mostly these are multi-level marketing efforts.
In our product, we have this element - this mineral - by default and
by natural occurrence; it’s not an extract that we have to put
in. It’s in absolute, synergetic, natural combination with other
elements like iodine, protein, selenium, manganese, magnesium,
and all the things that make a food a food. It’s very modest in
terms of its volume if you do a simple chemical test for how
much of that is in Modifilan, but the way it comes in Modifilan
is absolutely natural.
So yes, our product can be successfully used to prevent,
control, and fight problems involving health conditions.
We are
definitely not turning this product into a medicine. Many of our
clients are licensed medical professionals who find this product
useful in their practice as a tool, or they send their patients
to buy this product in certain situations. That makes us very
firm believers in what we do and make here.
Modifilan is our basic product, but we also make a product
called U-FN. It’s another product made from exactly the same
type of extraction process as Modifilan, with some additional
potassium and calcium to stabilize and enhance one particular
mineral element in the kombu - it’s the fucoidan in a bioavailable
form, a type you can eat which still delivers.
If we go back to
your question about the possible
help people with cancer can get
from our product, they may expect Modifilan to help them in this
situation, but it is not a product that simply delivers more of
fucoidan mineral qualities.
With everything else, Modifilan is a better product. For detox,
for thyroid support in terms of mineral iodine content,
Modifilan is a better product to use, but U-FN is a product that
needs to be looked at by those who are looking for fucoidan.
Mike: Fucoidan is not technically a mineral - isn’t it man-made?
Sergei: No. It’s actually a created substance, yes.
Mike: We would call it a phytonutrient.
Sergei: Evaporated oligomineral is what they actually call it.
If you do a detection of fucoidan in our product, there is some
in it.
Burning body fat with fucoxanthin
Mike: People are excited about the research showing that brown
seaweed contains a certain nutrient named fucoxanthin which
burns fat. Now, you talk about something that’s interesting to
Western consumers, burning fat is a big concern.
Sergei: That’s the big hype in your world.
Mike: Yes, there’s a lot of interest in it. I’ve covered a lot
of dietary products, and the impression that most people get is
not true - that they can just continue eating all their unhealthy
foods, following an unhealthy lifestyle, and thinking that one
certain supplement is going to magically make them look thin or
athletic. That’s simply not the case.
Sergei: Especially if they will talk about a particular pigment
found in brown seaweed, which I think soon they’re going to sell
in an extracted form.
It looks like this particular
pigment - which was mentioned in these studies - is going to be sold
in Costco in a bottle, an inexpensive one, and it will say,
“This burns fat. Read the papers.”
My take is that I think they approached it from the wrong angle.
I think that brown seaweed’s effectiveness in a weight loss
situation is all about making your metabolic speed higher
through feeding your thyroid with mineral iodine, which the
endocrine system benefits from. You will seem to process
calories faster and take up energy in a better, faster, more
beneficial, and natural way.
I’m in total disagreement with the piece that appeared in Time
magazine about it. Everybody called here after that went out. I
love it, but at the same time I feel shame because soon people
will go overboard with this.
It will take maybe a few weeks,
maybe a few months, but then the magic thing, fucoxanthin, maybe
mixed with some drinks, mixed with some vitamins or foods will
start appearing in the food supplements section.
But it has
nothing to do with the true benefit of seaweed which I think is
making the endocrine system perform better, and as a result,
increasing metabolic speed.
Mike: Well, I agree completely, Sergei, and I think that for
anyone to talk about losing weight while they are simultaneously
suffering from malnutrition and mineral deficiencies is
ridiculous. What people need to do first to lose weight is start
nourishing their bodies, not with more calories, but with more
real food and high-density food like the whole plant with all of
the nutrients in synergy.
There is certainly a danger that what may happen with this news
is exactly what happened with the
hoodia gordonii - it’s being
hyped up as a major weight loss aid, but 80 percent of the raw
material now being purchased by supplement manufacturers is
actually counterfeit.
The problem is there’s so much demand for
it.
Sergei: The first time I heard the word hoodia, you know what
happened? It’s probably going to be a new thing for you, because
you don’t know Russian, right?
Mike: Ah, no.
Sergei: “Hoodoi” means thin in Russian. The first time I heard
the product called “hoodia,” it made a certain click in my head.
“Hoodoi” means thin; “hoodet,” the verb itself, means to lose
weight.
So when I heard the word and I started to sense all this
very strong marketing effort behind it, it was double trouble in
my head - the name itself, and the way they sold it.
Mike: Well, but you know, if this information does catch hold,
you could find yourself swept up in a whirlwind, actually,
whether you want to be or not, where brown seaweed is actually
being discredited because people will try some other counterfeit
version of it.
Sergei: No, they simply will just buy brown seaweed, and they’ll
go to the Whole Foods - which I love; it’s where I buy my
food - they will find out that brown seaweed is a kelp and that
kelp is a kombu. They’ll go to the whole foods and buy kombu in
a powder, a very thin, very fine looking powder that looks okay
to our eye.
But ask our colon how it looks and feels to this part of the
body. It’s like a piece of shrapnel going down, scratching
everything off on its way.
So people will simply buy Kombu,
they’ll start to eat more of that compared to what they did
before if they ate any, and they will develop diarrhea. They
will develop constipation. They will have an excessive amount of
iodine in their gut, because the sludge in the lower part of the
GI tract will never get processed properly because it’s
non-soluble fiber.
Expect this to be one of the major problems for those who jump
on the idea of eating kombu in larger quantities. China put it
in print today. Time magazine had it delivered into the
mailboxes of millions of people around the world. I see people
this weekend reading this material on the Internet or in
newspapers or in magazines, then they’ll go to Whole Foods
stores and ask if they have brown seaweed.
They’ll say, “Yes, of
course. There it is.”
A few bucks a kilo or whatever, and
they’ll start to eat it by the teaspoon or tablespoon, God
forbid, and you see what will happen one week after that - a very,
very serious problem.
Mike: Just to clarify, too, the difference between that raw
product and your product is that the non-extracted product has
all of that undigestible cellulose, correct?
Sergei: Yes. Our product is a fully soluble substance. It’s a
soluble fiber. It does not produce any sludge; you can’t find
any sand in there when you mix it with water.
Brown seaweed for muscle building
Mike: Okay. I’ve got one more question for you. This one
concerns the people who are involved in strength training or
body building. Myostatins are substances that inhibit the signal
that turns off muscle growth.
So the theory is - and this is all
just theory at this point, I don’t know that there’s any
research on it - if you take myostatins and you’re working out,
then you will grow muscles larger than normal because the
signals are being controlled by the myostatins.
There are, in fact, some nutritional supplements in the body
building community that are focused on these myostatins to
control or regulate muscle growth. It’s my understanding that
the polysaccharides in brown seaweed also contain some amount of
this.
Are you familiar with that or is that something you’ve
looked at?
Sergei: No, but I sometimes say Modifilan is good for natural
doping, because, again, it’s a means of feeding your thyroid and
controlling your adrenals. You simply have more energy, you are
truly awake, and you have more power. It’s as simple as that.
If somebody exercises regularly and they take our product, they
sit-up, push-up, pull-up more than if they’re not eating this
product. But to answer your question, no. I didn’t know about
anything of that particular nature in our product.
So I can’t
say that we had any detection of this in Modifilan, in our
works, or in the sales efforts of those who offer this product
to the bodybuilding community. I suspect that using our product
will be a helpful thing to do, because those who find the muscle
growth in active exercise balance will just be stronger. They
will pump more iron.
It’s simple. You will run longer distances, and you will catch
your breath faster, but only ones who truly exercise regularly
can see this. A healthy eater, when they start to eat our
product, they won’t see any of that detox effect - it’s only
energy, regularity, things like that.
Sometimes it’s just a few
days after you start Modifilan that you start to feel that.
Mike: Well, to summarize some of the benefits we’re talking
about: endocrine function, immune function, the adrenals and
thyroid, also part of the endocrine system. Any other benefits?
Sergei: The simple things are hair, nails, skin, energy
throughout the day, gastrointestinal problems of a lighter type.
When people have acid reflux, eating our product helps a lot
with digestion patterns. It regulates appetite, too. People who
eat our product, eat less. Eating our product makes you feel
that particular limit.
Let’s say you’re eating your breakfast,
you feel that line where you’re satisfied with your food, when
you feel full, faster and more clearly when you take Modifilan.
It’s an interesting effect.
Mike: Yeah, I completely second that. I think that part of that
may be the reduction of cravings, also, through the
mineralization.
Sergei: Probably so, but I was told some weird things like
hormonal happiness, hormonal being full, which adults lack. With
a kid, when the little guy doesn’t want to eat any more
porridge, he’ll twist his head and spit it out where we adults
will usually eat whatever is left on our plate.
The same thing applies with the lion. It catches the cow,
munches it, and eats like crazy, then at one point, boom: He
just flips on his side. Then, if another cow comes over and
licks his nose, he will not even pay attention. It’s the same
thing with hormonal happiness. So doctors know that there is a
strong connection between how people feel themselves mentally
and endocrines.
That is why sometimes taking our product brings, what people
call, a sensation of wellness. It’s one of the things that we
can proudly announce. I know that it will fall into the category
of medical claims but knowing this product myself very well and
having it given away for a long time until we made it our
business, makes me very proud of saying it beyond the reason of
now it’s being sold because we make it.
We are a very small company - two men, two products - but we’ve been
doing this for ten years. We are not new. You said it right, in
certain alternative circles we’re known very well. Many natural
doctors know our product, and most of this is sold under the
traditional, regional trade name.
Dieticians, holistic
chiropractors, kinesiologists, and all these kinds of “weird”
doctors sell it.
We passed a clinical study for type 2 diabetes with one of our
private label customers. It’s a medical clinic in Seattle that
sells under a different name, but for type 2 hemoglobin HbA1c,
hemoglobin serum test, 100 percent success.
It lowers serum, and
it makes people with type 2 diabetes go off their medication in
about three to five weeks. Type 1 will take less insulin; let’s
say one shot instead of three shots of insulin daily when they
take Modifilan.
People who eat this product for about three to
five weeks and have been on centroid or hormones for 20 years,
they can get off those too.
Mike: I never would have thought of using this product for
diabetes. That’s really interesting to know, and perhaps we can
explore that further in another interview. Thanks for joining us
today, Sergei.
Sergei: It’s been a pleasure.
