Bee pollen digestion and should I pre-soak my pollen?

I'm very interested in adding bee pollen to my diet, but i have read that most humans need to soak bee pollen for 10-12 hours to increase assimilation from 7-12% to +-90% after soaking the pollen(to crack the shell), according to the research of a certain Dr. Cherbuliez.

I was wondering if you had any data/experience involving this?

Pierre Dekkers

Angela's Response:

Hi Pierre,
Great question. This is a pretty common topic I get asked about. Dr. Cherbuliez is the Vice President of the American Apitherapy Society and his view about soaking bee pollen for optimum digestion is widely published throughout the internet. Dr. Cherbuliez is actually a psychiatrist who became interested in bee keeping and apitherapy and some sites claim that he has done research on bee pollen absorbtion. I have yet to be able to find or read the actual research and have no idea how or when he was able to measure the absorbtion rates of bee pollen. Because of this and a complete lack of other research supporting Dr. Cherbuliez's claims, I am not totally convinced that soaking pollen for 12 hours is necessary for everyone. I do find that it helps those who have impaired digestion of some kind (those who suffer from Irritable Bowel, Crohns, Colitis, Gas & Bloating etc). It certainly won't hurt the bee pollen or you. On the other hand, it is well known that pre-soaking certain nuts and seeds helps those who have a hard time digesting them. So even though pollen is not a nut, it is food for thought. I personally believe that if you chew your raw pollen, the human digestive tract is quite capable of breaking down the outer shell of the pollen granule and releasing the valuable nutrients into your G.I. tract.