Holistic Health Insights

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511: Grow A Younger Brain, Phycocyanin & SOD Spirulina Algae Secrets

https://www.learntruehealth.com/grow-a-younger-brain-phycocyanin-sod-spirulina-algae-secrets

In this interview with Catherine Arnston, founder of EnergyBits, the focus is on the transformative health benefits of algae. Catherine discusses the potential of algae in improving brain function, preventing cancer, and enhancing cardiovascular health. Emphasizing the importance of choosing clean sources of algae, she explains why EnergyBits prioritizes product quality. Practical advice is provided on incorporating algae into daily meals, with a particular emphasis on the distinctions between chlorella and spirulina. The conversation also delves into the production process and nutritional profiles of these microalgae, highlighting their rich content of essential nutrients. Catherine expresses her aspiration to pursue further research in algae nutrition, concluding with a discussion on the critical role of algae in gut health and their potential to revolutionize overall well-being.

Highlights: 

• The Benefits of Chlorella and Spirulina 
• Spirulina Benefits for Brain Health 
• The Power of Spirulina's Phycocyanin 
• Investing in Health
• SOD and Algae Supplements Importance
• Algae Benefits for Healthy Lifestyle 

Intro: 

Ashley James (00:00.737)

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 511.

I am so excited for today's guest and I know you will be too when you hear that we have Catharine Arnston back on the show. So excited to have you back. Welcome. 

Catharine Arnston (00:24.804)

I think this is my third, or is this my fourth?

Ashley James (00:27.340)

No, this is more than your third. Let me give you the list. You might be up there for one of my guests that's been the most frequent. Actually, frequent flyer. That's it. We've given you the Learn True Health frequent flyer. You've entered the Frequent Flyer Club.

We had you in Episode 234 talking about algae, just going deep into discussing algae and chlorella and spirulina. Episode 265, we talked about the superfood components of algae. Episode 266 was all about vitamin K2, of course, from algae, which is a great, great source. Episode 357, debunked algae myths.

I really like that one because, everyone's an expert these days and just because they have doctor in front of their name and then they write some article that was just a real misconstrued idea from one study and then all of a sudden everyone's it's bad science and everyone's running around like it's the truth and we have to really keep our heads about us and look a little deeper and so I really liked that episode.

And then you were on Episode 487, mitochondrial self-healing superfoods, which we dove deep into chlorella and spirulina, understanding how they can help us not only detoxify, not only nutrify, but also help the mitochondria be healthier. And of course, when you get into understanding the body's ability to heal itself, you learn that- every disease has one thing in common besides inflammation. Go a bit deeper than that. On a cellular level, every disease becomes a mitochondrial disease. And if your mitochondria isn't working, you're dead. 

Catharine Arnston (02:11.923)

Yes, exactly. And by the way, 90 percent of that inflammation is in the mitochondria. So their mitochondria and inflammation are inseparable. If you understand mitochondria, you will understand how to maintain, protect and regain your health. It's that simple.

Ashley James (02:28.947)

And you love digging into research and then, bringing it back to us and giving it to us in a way that we can, we can take your thousands of hours of diving in through the years. And then you condense it and give us, the bullet points we need to know so that we can walk out into our life with this information to best help ourselves be healthy, as healthy as possible. This is episode 511. Can you believe it? I know, is that cool?

Catharine Arnston (03:03.016)

Oh my god, thank you, I'm so honored.

Ashley James (03:06.222) 

I think I'm handing you your frequent flyer pin right now. And today we're gonna get into something you've been researching for a long time and seeing all the studies. And of course you see the results in those who regularly eat chlorella and spirulina. Now of course in past episodes there's really very few companies where you're gonna get clean, very, very clean chlorella and spirulina from. 

My favorite being your company, energybits.com. Listeners can use coupon code LTH as in Learn True Health when they go to energybits.com and buy Catharine Arnston's amazing chlorella and spirulina. You can chew it, you can just swallow it, or you can take a handful and throw it in your smoothie. There's all kinds of ways you can incorporate it. What I really appreciate about your chlorella and spirulina is you go above and beyond to make sure that they're very, very clean. 

So many companies out there have to have the warning on the back of the label proposition. I always forget the number. Proposition, what? 

Catharine Arnston (04:04.467)

I think it's 65 or 64.

Ashley James (04:05.873) 

Yes, proposition something. California says that this contain something that can cause cancer and all these things. And that's because there's heavy metals in a lot of those other algae companies because of their poor practices and you have outstanding practices. 

So of course that means it does cost more because you go above and beyond in testing and in the farming practice to this crop to make sure that it is pure. So we talked a lot about that in our past episode. So we're not gonna get into that too much in this episode because I really wanna spend a lot of time diving into what you're here to talk about today which is maximizing brain health, preventing cancer, and then of course, by doing those things, you're actually also supporting amazing cardiovascular health. 

But I really wanna make sure listeners know to go to energybits.com, use coupon code LTH to get the listener discount. Thank you for that, by the way. Thank you for giving us the discount. I can't tell you how many times my family has sat around in the evening to watch something on TV. We like learning stuff. Well, my husband does not wanna watch fake TV. He really likes documentaries.

So we've found documentaries as a family we can watch with our eight year old and we'll sit around and we will pass the bag of EnergyBits around and we'll eat it instead of popcorn.

Catharine Arnston (05:25.882)

You're making me so happy.

Ashley James (05:28.418)

It is amazingly delicious. Of course, it is a fantastic to add to your trail mix or make your own trail mix, but I'll sit there and pop them like candy and they have that wonderful crunch and that wonderful saltiness. And it's not overly salty, but it is for me better than popcorn.

Catharine Arnston (05:45.624)

Yeah, and I actually put sea salt on my chlorella and sometimes add pistachio nuts and OMG, it is my favorite food. I have them for lunch, snacks, dinner. When you add the sea salt, it's particularly the chlorella. Although spirulina tastes a little bit better, but definitely the chlorella. It's a game changer and then you're eating it, so you know you're eating food. And when we dig into the subject matter of today, I'll start by just giving a quick thumbnail overview of the different two algae, because they are quite different. They do different things in different parts of your body, and you take them at different times of the day for maximum and optimal benefits. And they work, as you said, to protect your brain health, protect you against cancer, and protect you against heart disease. And those are the three biggies in our world today. And the brain health is more than Alzheimer's. It's anxiety, it's depression, and we'll talk about some of the science that's coming out that reinforces why spirulina in particular is amazing for brain health.

Ashley James (06:54.772)

Love it. Now in becoming a health coach, I took a year long program through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. 

Catharine Arnston (07:04.294)

Me too!

Ashley James (09:05.370)

Oh really? You went to IIN? 

Catharine Arnston (07:07.222)

Yeah, but I went there the last second last year they were live classes. So yeah, I graduated in 2009.

Ashley James (07:13.498)

Oh my gosh. I love that. I, oh, I'm not sure if you had Dr. Daniel Amon as one of the teachers. Did you happen to have him? Okay.

Catharine Arnston (07:23.041)

I don't know if I did or not, but we're hoping I have someone who's setting up a meeting with me because we want to work with him.

Ashley James (07:29.977)

I want you to work with him. So I'll let the listeners know in on it. So I went to IIN when it was not live, it's all prerecorded. And it was kind of like every week, kind of like watching these 45 minute long Ted talks. You know how you watch a Ted talk and you wish it was 45 minutes long, cause it was so good? Well, that's what it was like that every single week. And there was audios and there was written stuff. And it's done in a way that even busy career moms or working women or men, time should not be an issue because you can break it down and do it 20 minutes a day kind of thing. And I absolutely love that it could fit into my busy schedule. And Dr. Daniel Amos, that week we were studying all of his work and I was blown away because he figured out after doing thousands and thousands of brain scans and then using more holistic based medicine, he was able to take people who had Swiss cheese brain, basically the scans would show that there was pockets in the brain looking like Swiss cheese that had diminished blood flow or almost like no blood flow over time, those areas were overly toxic because the blood flow can't come in, it can't cleanse the glymph, can't drain out and people's brains were just becoming Swiss cheese and eventually it was like dementia, right? But he could detect dementia 30 years before it ever took place or more. And what he figured out the number one thing to preventing and reversing. He was able to take people with Swiss cheese brain, put them on an amazing nutrition program and exercise, everything to do with helping cardiovascular health, helping the vasculature, helping blood flow. And he was able to reverse the Swiss cheese brain. So five, 10 years later, they actually anti-aged the brain, right? The brain now is younger, healthier. And that's where you live. Like, this is our house. Our body's our house. So this is where we live. And what I love, the big aha moment, is that everything you do to support your brain also supports your heart and vice versa.

So today, and yeah, exactly, right? We often think of the body as broken into these parts

that aren't affecting each other because that's how allopathic medicine works. You go to the liver specialist, you go to the stomach specialist, you go to the eye specialist, and no one talks to each other. And this is the really annoying part of Western medicine is that we're all broken down into parts when the body really should be treated as a whole. And that's where holistic medicine comes in. So we're looking at the body as a whole, but Dr. Daniel Amon was able to see, Oh wow! In focusing on helping brain health, we actually then corrected a bunch of other stuff too. So that's why I'm very excited for you to dive into brain health today. And I really hope you get to work with Daniel Amon because I'm a big fan of his work and I'm excited to hear about that.

Catharine Arnston (10:37.185)

Yes, yes, me too. Yes, and when he sees what spirulina and chlorella do for the brain, I think he'll flip out because my specialty is this area of algae nutrition and correlating all the nutrients that are uniquely found in algae, not available in any other foods, if it comes from a good source. And you're right, it's not just being the clean source, it's the production process, because, as I get into this in a bit deeper, growing Algae isn't like growing tomatoes or broccoli or carrots, it's more like wine, and when you grow and make wine, it's affected by the angle of the sun, but most particularly by the production process. And so, the thing that distinguishes us from pretty much everybody else is the production process. We do it so carefully that we retain all these nutrients that are other companies are killing because they dry their algae with high heat. But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

So let's talk about that brain. But before we get to that, I'm just going to give you a thumbnail on the two algae in case you haven't heard the other episodes to understand that there are different types of algae and they do different things. So the big broad sweep is that there's something called macroalgae and there is microalgae. We're going to be talking about microalgae today but let me tell you what macroalgae is. It's that big stringy stuff that washes up on shore also known as seaweed because it's found in the sea and it's still good for you because it has lots of fiber and iodine, because the iodine comes from the ocean but there's virtually no nutrition so high fiber high iodine both of which are good for you.

Well, I don't know if you don't have a hypo thyroid condition. Microalgae is the complete opposite. It has either virtually no fiber or no fiber. I'll give you the distinction in a minute, but it has the highest concentration of nutrition in the world. This is because it's called microalgae because it's microscopic in size. You can get a million of these microalgae on the head of a pin.

Now it has so many nutrients so that when you consolidate them into these little tiny tablets it's there's nothing in the world with more nutrition than these tablets. One tablet has the same nutrition as an entire plate of vegetables and microalgae compared to macroalgae is everywhere. Microalgae is in the ocean but it's also in the lakes, the rivers, the streams, your swimming pool, the soil and there's a few strains of macroalgae, the stringy stuff.

But there are tens of thousands of strains of microalgae. And the two that are harvested as food crops. So not from the ocean. Yes, there is microalgae in the ocean, but that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about spirulina and chlorella, which are the two microalgae that are harvested in fresh water. It's called hydroponic. And lots of vegetables are grown this way.

So number one, you need to understand that algae, microalgae, which we're talking about today, is a food crop. It is not a supplement. Supplements are made from extracts and then they're mashed up with heat in factories. We're talking about a dried type of vegetable grown in fresh water, so not from the ocean, so no toxins. And we do not use high heat to dry our algae and we do not add anything to it. So our algae tablets are whole food, they're raw, vegan, unprocessed, highly concentrated with nutrition, but they do completely different things. Spirulina and chlorella are like night and day, or chalk and cheese. Some of you maybe have family members and you're quite different from them. So is algae. The spirulina, which we'll talk about next, is completely different from chlorella. And the things that they do, it does in your body, are also very different.

So spirulina is known as having the highest protein in the world, it's three times the amount of protein, and very high B vitamins. By the way, it has 18 of the 20 aminos, including the nine that your body can't make, so it's a complete protein. And it gives you energy because of the B vitamins converting the protein, the aminos, because they're all individual aminos, into glucose for your body. And it also is a vasodilator, so it opens up your blood vessels and has lots of iron, which carries oxygen to your blood. So that's why we call it our spirulina, Energybits, because it gives you energy in the moment. But as you'll find as we get into the deeper dive on brain health and also the heart health, it has nutrients in it that protect and stimulate your mitochondria. Now your mitochondria are what generate cellular energy, which is called ATP. So you get energy in the moment when you have spirulina which we call Energybits. We also have another brand called BeautyBits. They're exactly the same, just packaged differently. But you also, because of the nutrients, we'll talk about in a minute, get additional long-term cellular energy. Now cellular energy is necessary, it's called ATP, for everything that you do. It's not just energy that you need to run to the grocery store or go do a workout. This is cellular energy that helps you breathe, that helps you think, it moves your lymphatic system, it helps your heart, it's what drives your heart to beat, your cells to replicate, or your autophagy, which is cellular death to occur. It generates everything, all energy for everything that you do. When you have cellular energy, you are alive. When you don't have cellular energy, that's when problems start surfacing.

That's when you get indigestion. That's when you have brain fog. That's when you start not being able to have a strong immune system. That's when you can't fight off cancer cells. I tell people having cellular energy is like money. You know, when you have more money, you can do more things and you have more choices. Cellular energy is exactly same thing. When you have more ATP, you can do more things and you have more choices. So everything that you do now that you know about this is you should be protecting your mitochondria so they can generate more cellular energy because that cellular energy is what helps you sleep, it helps you fight disease, it helps you recover from any kind of illness, it helps every part of your body, every cell in your body and spirulina as you're going to find out has a couple of nutrients that are particularly powerful and critical to generating cellular energy and protecting your mitochondria.

So you get that long-term energy from spirulina that is very unique and these nutrients aren't found anywhere else. Spirulina also satisfies your hunger, and it has zero carbs. We work with ketogenic physicians, fasting physicians, because it does not interfere with your fast, and yet it gives you all the energy, mental and physical, and satisfies your hunger without interfering with your fast, without decreasing your ketones or increasing your glucose. So it's a perfect food for any time of the day You could snap have some for the morning have some in the afternoon In fact, that's generally when we recommend people to have the spirulina in the morning because you're hungry and tired when you get up or in the afternoon when you get a slump or before a workout because that's when you need the nourishment for your brain and for your body.

By the way, spirulina is called a blue-green algae because it has two pigments in it. Chlorella, which we'll talk about in a minute, only has one. Now one pigment that's in spirulina you'll know about. It's chlorophyll and that's what makes plants green. And there is chlorophyll in spirulina. But the other pigment that you've probably never heard of before, it's the blue pigment and it's called Phycocyanin and I'm going to spell it for you because I encourage you to google this particularly because we're going to talk about how Phycocyanin has been proven to kill cancer cells and Phycocyanin does not exist anywhere else in the universe except in spirulina and it can only be in spirulina that has not been dried with high heat which is us or raw spirulina. So let me spell Phycocyanin for you, it's P-H-Y-C-O-C-Y-A-N-I-N. And when we get to our discussion on cancer, you can Google phycocyanin and cancer treatments and you'll see all the articles that have been in the PubMed or the National Institute of Health for a very long time. But of course, who's gonna tell you about these things, right? Well, that's what we're here for, right, Ashley? We're opening the Pandora's box to tell you things that nobody else will. So spirulina, because it has this blue pigment that has unique properties, some of which increase energy, some of which kill cancer cells, but all of which protect your mitochondria, it's pretty powerful. But chlorella is a green algae. It only has one pigment, that's chlorophyll, and indeed it has the highest amount of chlorophyll in the world. It has 25 times more chlorophyll than even liquid chlorophyll. And it also has 500 times more chlorophyll than something like arugula or a thousand times more chlorophyll than Chinese greens. There is nothing in the world with more chlorophyll than chlorella algae, which is why it's called chlorella, because of the chlorophyll. And what's so important about chlorophyll? Well, it heals your cell walls, it builds your blood, it has the same chemical composition in fact as your hemoglobin. So that's very important. It's also very cleansing. Chlorella also does have fiber. Oh, I forgot to mention spirulina has zero fiber. The reason why this is important is because this is one of the reasons why you get energy from it because there is nothing for your body to break down. There's no cellulose wall. And this is why it gets into your bloodstream so quickly and the nutrients can be directed instantly to your mitochondria or wherever they need to go. 

Chlorella has the hardest cell wall in the plant kingdom so it does take about an hour and a half to be fully absorbed but the amazing thing about that hard cell wall is that it attaches to toxins and heavy metals and when we get to brain health we'll talk about this a bit more but it pulls out any kind of heavy metals from all your cells, all your organs.

And for that reason, we generally recommend chlorella before bed or after a workout. Because when you sleep, that's when your body goes through a detox repair cycle. So if you take chlorella before you go to bed, you'll be able to have a more effective detox and remove heavy metals. Although I will put the caveat that you can have either spirulina or chlorella at any time of the day, with each other, separate, with food, without food, with water, it doesn't matter. You can have them as often as you want and as much as you want because again they are food. We generally recommend 10 tablets of each one, spirulina in the morning and 10 chloral at night. But if you have any health condition, you really should be taking 30 of each until you get a clear diagnosis. And I have way more than that and have for the 13 years that I've been using it.

So chlorella is a detoxing algae because of that hard cell wall, a cleansing algae because of the chlorophyll, and also it builds your immune system. Your immune system is primarily in your gut, and the combination of the chlorophyll, the hard cell wall which has fiber which feeds the gut biome and the bacteria down there, and also chlorella has all the nutrients that are necessary for a strong immune system.

So it's very much a wellness algae as opposed to spirulina, which is an energizing and nourishing algae. So we call our chlorella RecoveryBits because it helps you recover your health or recover from your day, recover from toxins. It even pulls out alcohol and lactic acid. So you could take it after drinking any wine or anything or after sports to get rid of lactic acid. So it's very much a cleansing algae as opposed to the nourishing spirulina. And I came up with this kind of fun analogy to help people remember the different types of algae and what they do differently and when to take them. Because I give a lot of lectures at conferences in fancy hotels. And it dawned on me that spirulina, because it's so nourishing to your body and to your brain, is sort of like room service.

It gives you everything you need for the day. And then chlorella, because it's so cleansing and detoxing and gets rid of all the junk in your trunk, it's like housekeeping. Housekeeping comes in and takes all this stuff out that you don't need. So think of spirulina as room service and chlorella as housekeeping. Another simple way to think about it, and we'll get to this in a few minutes, because spirulina is so nourishing to the mitochondria and so healing to the mitochondria and because the highest concentration of mitochondria are found in the cells in your brain you have two million mitochondria per cell in your brain two million think about that the next highest is actually women's eggs after that it's your heart and then your regular cells have maybe anywhere from a hundred to a thousand mitochondria per cell, but the highest concentration of mitochondria are where the greatest energy needs are, and that's your brain. Your brain is a workhorse for energy. So think of spirulina as brain food. You know, it occurred to me, you know, a lot of people eat fatty fish like salmon, and they know it as brain food. Well, part of the benefit of that is because these deep cold water fish have a lot of omega-3 in them. And I tell people, well, where do you think the fish get the omega-3 from? Yes, they get it from algae. So here's spirulina, I forgot to mention, has high essential fatty acids, including omega-3. So think of spirulina as brain food, just like you do with salmon or some of these other cold water fish. 

Ashley James (25:56.604)

Cut out the middleman. The salmon, the salmon's the middleman. Just go eat with the salmon, with this, the fish eat the algae, the salmon eat the algae or the salmon eat other fish. But it all came from the algae to begin with.

Catharine Arnston (26:11.146)

Correct, correct. And then think of chlorella as healing your gut because that's where your immune system is. That's where your microbiome is. And chlorella heals the gut and it's been used for IBS and Crohn's disease for decades because of the chlorophyll, the hard cell wall that attaches the toxins, the fiber that feeds the gut biome. 

So Spirulina is brain food, chlorella is gut food. And let's not forget that there's a highway between the two of them called the vagus nerve that connects the brain to the gut. And this is where the real magic happens because as you mentioned earlier, as you heal your brain you are going to be healing other parts of your body but most particularly your gut. And on the other hand, as you heal your gut, then you are also going to be healing your brain because of the two-way communication that occurs between the two of them. And think about it, if you know, that whole concept of a gut feeling, it's real. Your gut is your second brain. And on the other hand, if you are eating in a rush or standing up and you're not focused on your meal, very often you get indigestion and that's because your brain is so distracted that your body can't focus on digestion and the reality is it's not just eating nutritious food that's going to benefit you it's not just the nutrition it's the absorption. What are you absorbing? And if your gut lining and your gut biome are not functioning or they're overrun by candida and all the bad bacteria, you're not going to be able to absorb the nutrients very well and that will affect not only your gut but also your brain. And that's the other reason why particularly I like both of the algae because they're very bioavailable. The nutrients are all there ready for absorption. So anyways, that's the two differences. Spirulina nourishing and very energizing both in the moment at the mitochondria level and Chlorella is very cleansing and detoxing. it's very much a recovery algae that you would take any time of day, but definitely at night, whereas Spirulina is more of a daytime algae.

Ashley James (28:37.119)

And that was probably the best breakdown I've ever heard you do. You were great the first episode, but it's like, you have now like three PhDs into algae.

Catharine Arnston (28:56.599)

Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, in fact, it's funny that you mentioned that because I realized, oh my God, I mean, 13 years I've been studying algae nutrition and how it interacts with the body for optimal health. And I thought, maybe I should do a PhD. So I've actually found a university, there's a lot of steps to go through, but I'll get credit for some of my previous degrees. I do have a master's and I would have to write a test, but I think I'm going to get a PhD from them. So please, please. I mean, yes, exactly. Yes. That's what I want. Dr. Arnston.

Ashley James (29:26.070)

I am so excited for you. I mean, yes, yes. What, come back on the show and tell us about that. I love it. I want to go back because you, you laid down so much amazing information. There's one thing you said that I think for people who didn't hear the previous episodes would have written it off as you being just over exaggerating how great it is. So these are like little chewable tablets, they're the size of aspirins. And when our son was about three years old, I introduced him to EnergyBits and he would chew them because they temporarily turn your tongue either blue green or green, depending on which one we're eating, chlorella or spirulina. And we would play a game and we called them green crackers because they're crunchy but they look like little pills, right? But they're chewable tablets essentially, and you don't have to chew them if you don't want, you can just swallow them like pills.

Catherine Arnston (30:27.620)

Yeah, and most people do swallow the spirulina because it's very earthy and very chewy. Yeah.

Ashley James (30:32.087)

I love, I love the flavor. So the first time you put it in your mouth, you're like, ooh, because you didn't know what to expect. But then if you keep eating it, your body starts to go, wow, I really like this. And then like five minutes into eating it, you're like, mm, this is actually really good. And you start tasting all these flavors. So my son who didn't like it at first, but then we played a game where we stuck our tongues out at each other and he got excited. It's like, oh, your tongue is green. I want my tongue to be green.

Well, we both called it green crackers and he'd ask for them. And now, like I said, he's eight and we'll sit there watching TV and we'll pass the bag around and we'll be chewing them and sticking our tongues out still. And it's great, it's a lot of fun. But you said that one of these chewable tablets, right? Which is very small, size of an aspirin, is the equivalent of a plate of vegetables. And that's something that we discussed in the last time you came on the show, Episode 487, because this is actually research from NASA. Can you just elaborate a bit because again, that point seems too good to be true.

Catharine Arnston (31:30.702)

I know, I know. And just on that note, when I started this as this company, I wasn't planning on starting a company. I just wanted to help my sister, younger sister, who had breast cancer and her oncologist told her to change her diet to an alkaline diet because it would help with her healing. And I was doing international business, nothing to do with nutrition, but I just jumped in and helped her and found out and led me to algae, which is the most alkaline food in the world. 

And it turns out, it's been endorsed by the United Nations for 49 years as the answer to world hunger because, drum roll, it has the highest protein in the world, has three times the amount of protein at stake, there's tens of thousands of studies that confirm all this. So whatever I'm telling you today, I want everyone to know, everything I say is documented in the National Institute of Health and in medical libraries all around the world, there's almost a hundred thousand of them.

But we also found this great quote from NASA who's been using algae for the astronauts again for almost 50 years. And the quote from NASA, and I can give you the paper with it if you want it, says one gram of algae has the same nutrition as a thousand grams of fruits or vegetables. One to a thousand, that's a big number. So I took that calculation, that's about

30 or 40 grocery carts of vegetables, just to give you a visual. And so I was trying to communicate this to people so they could understand the concentration. And I did the math, and we sell bags of algae tablets, and I did the math based on the weight of our bags, which have a thousand tablets, and found out one bag of our algae tablets has the same nutrition as 551 pounds of vegetables.

That's probably 50 or 60 or maybe 100 grocery carts of vegetables. And our bags are $120 and with your discount, it's about $100, but that's, I would have been $1,600 worth of vegetables. And then I took it a little further that, well, I still need to get it to a level that people could really understand. Cause so it worked out to about three quarters of a pound of vegetables per tablet, which is basically a big plate of vegetables. It's three quarters of red peppers, green peppers, tomatoes, greens. 

Ashley James (33:52.181)

It's about two cups. If you think it's just maybe depending on the vegetable. It's about two cups and that's a larger serving than most people will take a vegetable. So that's a big bowl of vegetables.

Catharine Arnston (34:03.378)

Right. Yes. So the CDC says 97% of Americans do not get their daily requirement of fiber and vegetables. And after I graduated from IIN, I taught plant-based nutrition at corporations and hospitals for free, by the way, trying to get people to eat more vegetables because I had seen all the science about the importance of the alkalinity, the phytonutrients, blah blah. And everyone came up to me and they said, you know, look at my mother's been trying to get me to eat more vegetables, but they're heavy to carry home from the grocery store. They go bad quickly. They take a long time to clean. They take a long time to cook. My husband won't eat them. My kids won't eat them. I throw out half of them. So I thought, okay, I have seen the science, I've read for years the science of the importance of vegetables. If I can't get people to eat vegetables, and what mother doesn't struggle with this, I thought I have to find a way to get the nutrition of vegetables into people in a way that is effortless. And I didn't know what I was going to find, but I just re-examined everything I had found for my sister, and that's what led me truly to algae, because it comes in these little tablets. This is how they use it in Asia. They have been growing it in Asia for 60 years. They take it every day. Some of them it's in powder, but the Japanese don't leave their house without chlorella every day. And by the way, I'd like to point out they have the best longevity, lowest cancer rates, lowest obesity rates, and great skin and hair. And I know it's not all the algae, but it certainly contributes to it. And they know about the science of algae, but the trouble is here in North America, nobody knows about the science of algae. They know it's a superfood. Actually some people don't even know that spirulina is an algae. And they put it in their smoothies because it's supposed to be good for them. But they're not really sure why. So I spent 13 years discovering the why. And whoever's listening, you aren't alone in the fact that you don't know anything of what I'm about to tell you today. But that's because no one's explained it to you until I did and it's not grown here. So you don't ride your bicycle to school and go buy an algae farm but they do in Asia. You don't drive to work and go buy an algae farm but they do in Asia. So it's just never been explained and it's not grown here although I do plan to grow it in Florida.

Ashley James (36:38.864)

I would love that. I can't wait for you to grow it here. You know, the other day I was talking to one of my clients and I was getting her list of supplements and things she was taking and she said, oh, I'm taking chlorella and spirulina, but I'm not buying EnergyBits anymore because they're too expensive. I said, okay, hold on, stop. What are you eating? Which brand? I want you to go get the bag. I need you to look on it, see if that proposition such and such is on that bag because the 99% of all the brands out there that sell chlorella and spirulina, the chlorella has lead in it. And the spirulina is like highly heated. It's like flash heated. So it's dead. You're missing out. I like, let's say someone wanted to save $40. So they bought a $60 bag. And she said, oh, wait, the bag that she bought, cause she was saving, $20, $30. She goes, and it tastes horrible. It tastes and smells fishy. I'm like, well, okay.

Energybits is the only company I have found that is pure, that is highly nutritious because at every step of the way from growing it to processing it to shipping it here, every step of the way there's testing and there's things in place to make sure that it is the optimal quality and it preserves the optimal quality of the nutrition. And you can smell it and taste it because the Energybits does not taste like of rotten fish, and so many other companies do. And then I said, you don't ever, ever wanna eat chlorella from any company unless you confirm, because there's only a handful, and EnergyBits being one of them that does not have lead added to it because of the process of cracking the chlorella. And those are the cheaper brands. So if you find it cheaper, it's because they did, they cut corners, which hurt you, or there's no nutrition in it.

Now, with the supplement industry, and some people think this is a supplement, it's a crop, like you said, with food and supplements, it's buyer beware. And it's not a regulated industry like drugs are a regulated industry. We don't really want supplements to be regulated because then a lot of really good companies would go out of business and Big Pharma would be the ones running the show. We don't want that. But at the same time, it is buyer beware.

And these companies that make it cheaper, it's cheaper for a reason because they can put fillers in, because they can do processes that either harm the algae or harm you. And so really you just wasted, you think you save money by buying a $60 bag instead of a $100 bag, you actually just wasted $60 and you possibly harmed yourself in the process. So it is worth spending and like you said, get the discount, use the coupon code LTH. And that bag will last you for a month and that is giving you one tablet as a whole bowl of vegetables worth of the nutrition. And you can make it last longer than a month, like you said, eat 10 a day. I like 30 a day because I'm more focused on using it to detoxify. But for people who are just wanting to stay on top of nutrition, between five and 10 tablets a day, they could just do that. They could hand their kids. Sometimes I just hand my son three to five of the tablets, here, just chew this or swallow. And I know that he just got bowls and bowls of nutrition like comparative to fruits and vegetables. I'm still gonna feed him fruits and vegetables, but there are days I don't get fruits and vegetables into this kid. I'm just gonna hand him three to five chlorella and spirulina and feel good about it.

Catharine Arnston (40:18.589)

Yeah, right, right, and even for adults who don't have children, when you're traveling, you're stuck in traffic in between meetings, you don't have time to eat, you go to any of those convenience stores, it's just carbs, sugar, and carbs, carbs. And so this way I call spirulina chlorella, your not only your nutritional insurance, but your health insurance. And, and let's just, I just want to circle back to that comment about the young lady who didn't want to who'd stop buying ours because of the higher price. So it's like buying a car. If you don't look under the hood, maybe there's a car that's $1,000 cheaper than the other one. And you think, oh wow, I'm getting such a deal. But if you don't lift the hood, maybe there's no engine in there, right? It's just from the outside, because what do you know? They look the same, but you gotta lift the hood to find out the deeper story.

Same with algae. So here's the lift the hood thing, and we'll get into this hopefully in a few minutes.  I'm gonna do a deep dive on two nutrients that are found in spirulina that are damaged, that are killed by high heat. And all the other algae companies use high heat to dry their algae because they are cheaper and because they're less expensive algae, so they need to sell more to make money. So to get to market quickly, they use high heat.

But they kill these two important nutrients. And what do these two important nutrients do? Well, one of them is superoxidismutase, which protects you from heart disease. And the other one is the pigment that I already mentioned, the blue one called phycocyanin, that kills cancer cells. Cancer and heart disease represent 75% of all deaths. And by the way, these two nutrients also prevent brain disorders, anxiety, Alzheimer's, any kind of dementia.

So, this lady is saving $20 and not getting the benefits of protecting herself from heart disease, cancer or dementia. I would say everyone here, everyone in the world deserves to be protected from heart disease, cancer and dementia. And when you take 10 tablets a day of spirulina, same thing for chlorella, 10 tablets a day, you know what that works out to? A dollar a day. She is depriving herself of protection from cancer, heart disease, and dementia because of a dollar a day. 

Ashley James (42:52.990)

Well, I don't blame her. She didn't know this information and a lot of listeners, but it's like, this is where we have to go, we're investing in our health. Yeah, educate, we're investing in our health and it is worth spending a bit more for the highest quality product on the market. And exactly.

Catharine Arnston (43:10.045)

Yes. But someone has to tell you why you want the higher priced algae. It's just everything we do is just more expensive. I've been on 275 podcasts. I've been on 30 summits. I write all the scientific papers. I do all the research. I do all of the writing. Every single weekend, I'm working on more material to help people understand the science because whether you're buying an expensive handbag or you're buying algae, you want to know what is it that makes it better. And nobody else is telling you. Nobody else is explaining how your body works and why the needs the cellular level are perfectly matched by the nutrients found in raw spirulina or chlorella. Again, it can't be heated or you lose all those benefits. This is the key that unlocks the door to great health. That is, in a nutshell, is what good spirulina and good chlorella, i.e. spirulina chlorella, not heated, not dried with heat. They are the key that unlocks perfect health. That's what I've decided.

But you need to know what, how does that work? Like what exactly is it doing? So I'd like to unpack that for you today.

Ashley James (44:31.733)

Yeah, let's do it. I have had several guests come on and do whole interviews on superoxide dismutase and its benefits and how we need more of it and it is crucial for life and crucial to avoid disease, like an amazing nutrient for the body. And the fact that we get it through eating EnergyBits or go to energybits.com getting your stuff, because we know that your stuff isn't heated. So it's not destroyed because it's raw algae. And then of course the Phycocyanin. 

Catharine Arnston (45:13.384)

P-H-Y-C-O-C-Y-A-N-I-N. So, well, let me talk about both of those because we'll do them separately so we can do this two ways. We'll talk about those two nutrients and I'll address the three major chronic diseases, Alzheimer's, heart disease, and cancer, and address how these two nutrients that aren't found anywhere else in the world can protect you and also get you back to health and they're essential for longevity. And then we'll flip.

Ashley James (45:52.519)

Before you do that, and I want you to do that, can you tell us, like, is this something that's found in trace amounts? Is this something that is in high concentration? When you address the individual ones, can you give us an idea of how much of the superoxide dismutase, for example, is found in your algae?

Catharine Arnston (46:14.723)

It has the highest concentration in the entire universe. I don't have the slide in front of me, but there is a little bit of superoxide dismutase in cabbage or broccoli. I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but if spirulina was 100, cabbage or broccoli would be 0.00000000001 percent. There is nothing, and we do lab tests that give us the concentration of super oxygen dismutase. I know I'm stumbling as well. It's also called SOD. It's a little easier to say that way. So there is nothing in the world with more of it. And chlorella has quite a bit of it as well, but half of what spirulina has. So spirulina is the number one algae for the mitochondria. And chlorella is the number one algae for your immune system. So I can dig into that a little bit deeper. So, well, since we're on superoxide dismutase, or SOD, let's address it first of all. So as I mentioned, it's virtually non-existent from any other food in the world. It's certainly not in any amounts that would have any kind of medicinal benefits. I mean, 0.000001 percent is nothing that's going to move my needle. And even if you did find some supplements with it, they get damaged, it gets damaged in the stomach through the digestion. And here's the other benefit of spirulina. It does not have a cellulose wall. So it gets absorbed almost instantly. So it's 99% bioavailable. So all of the nutrients, including the superoxide dismutase get absorbed and directed to the mitochondria so it can be put to use. If you chew it, as I know Ashley, you do, you get it within seconds because it goes sublingually through the mouth membranes. And if you swallow it, oh, it's maybe 10 or 15 minutes before it's completely absorbed into your cells. So there's nothing that's faster than spirulina for that reason. 

So, what is superoxide dismutase? One other thing I want to tell you about superoxide dismutase, the good news is your body makes it from the moment you are born, but it stops making it after the age of 30. And you're going to find this the same thing happens. After the age of 30, your body stops making melatonin, it stops making glutathione, because up until recently, we died at age 30. We have been on the earth, mankind, for 2 million years.

And up until about 125 years ago, maybe 50 years ago, we died at 30. So biologically and evolutionarily, if that's a word, our bodies think we're dying at 30. So it shuts down some of these protective measures like superoxide dismutase, which, drum roll, you're going to find out right now, is one of the very few antioxidants that can get into the inner membrane of the mitochondria, it's like an NICE unit in there, to stop free radical damage. Now, because when your mitochondria are damaged by these free radicals, they die, they mutate, and that's when your health starts to go astray. This is when chronic disease hits. This is when brain fog hits. This is when everything just slides in a downward spiral. And it's no surprise to me that most of the diagnoses of heart disease, cancer, occur after the age of 40, because that's when your body has pretty much shut down its ability to create superoxide dismutase, which is one of the few antioxidants, like I said, that can get into that inner membrane and stop free radical damage. You can eat a room full of blueberries and not a drop of antioxidants will get into that inner membrane. Your mitochondria are your only cell in your body that have two membranes. All of your other cells have what's called a lipid membrane, which basically is a fancy word for saying fats. And your mitochondria have that one too. But they have a second membrane, and I'll tell you where that second membrane came from later on, that is impenetrable by drugs. Drugs can't get in there. Almost no antioxidants can get in there. But virtually all the nutrients found in algae like superoxide dismutase, and we'll talk about some of the other ones in a minute, like chlorophyll and glutathione can get into that inner membrane. 

So what's so important about that? Well, we talked about earlier about ATP being cellular energy and you need ATP to do anything. Thinking, sleeping, walking, talking, digesting, immune health, absolutely everything. But the downside of production of ATP, the byproduct of ATP, guess what?

It's free radicals. Nobody tells you about that. And the most damaging one is called superoxide. This superoxide is a byproduct. It's a free radical produced, I think it's only in the mitochondria, as a byproduct of this ATP. And I read that superoxide is the most damaging free radical. So I was curious, well, what makes it so damaging?

So I dug around in all the different papers and I found out why. So those of you who aren't familiar with a free radical, it's a molecule that has an unpaired electron. The mother nature likes balance. And so if there's an unpaired electron circulating around the atom, it will go and snatch an electron from the neighboring molecule and so to create harmony. But then that leaves a molecule with one unpaired electron so that it steals one from the next molecule and on and on it goes so it leaves this trail of damaged tissue, damaged cells, wherever it goes. And when you have damaged cells then they don't function properly. So superoxide is so the reason why it's so damaging is it has three unpaired electrons. So it is three times as damaging as any other free radical found. And I believe that it's only generated in the mitochondria. So this thing called superoxide dismutase, the word dismutase means it reduces something. It demutes, it's like a dimmer on a light. So think about it's superoxide dismutase. It dims this superoxide. Basically, what it does is it turns that free radical into harmless water.

Ta-da! Mitochondria is hydrated. It's like having the fireman in there with a fire hose. Just puts out the fire caused by all these free radicals that are a byproduct of ATP. Because the place where the ATP is produced, which is also the place where the free radicals are, are exactly where the mitochondria's DNA are located. They are front row and center.

And if you've ever sat near a bonfire or got too close to a fireplace and sparks would fly and you might get burned, that's what's happening to your mitochondria DNA every single nanosecond. They are exactly where the ATP is produced, which is exactly where the free radicals are produced. And so they are always being burned. That's why you need the superoxide dismutase, which is like having a fireman with a hose to put it out and your body makes it for you but only until the age of 30. Right? And then after the age of 30 it makes less and less so by the time you're 40 you do not have any more firemen in there putting out the fire. And this is why people get chronic disease because their mitochondria are no longer being protected by these free radicals as they were until they were 30 or 40 and there's no food source for it. Nothing. Right? Crazy. So now spirulina comes along, but here's the trick, superoxide dismutase is an enzyme. It's an antioxidant but it's also an enzyme. And if you know anything about nutrition you know that heat kills enzymes. That's why a lot of people eat raw food because they want all the all the enzymes and all the other algae companies use high heat to dry their algae because they're lower priced to get to the market quickly. We don't use high heat. So all of our enzymes, including superoxide dismutase, are alive and well. So they can go in there into your mitochondria and put out that fire caused by the free radicals, which are a byproduct of the ATP. Pretty sweet, right?

Ashley James (55:42.560)

Oh my gosh, totally blows my mind. And I loved how you explained free radicals. I went to a naturopath with my mom when I was a kid and he would write these really cool news articles. And of course there was no email back in the eighties, right? So he would physically print it out and mail it to us, and we would read and it was like almost digesting a bunch of different journals, right? He would take all this information, but from the naturopath standpoint. And you know who it was? My naturopath when I was six years old was Dr. D'Adamo, the man who invented the eat right for your blood type diet. He was amazing. And he totally turned my life around. That's part of my health story that I was sick as a kid. And then when I was six, I went to him and he looked in my eyes, took my blood, looked at my tongue, looked at my ears, you know, did the whole naturopathic rundown. And he told us to stop eating milk, yeast, wheat and sugar. And overnight our kitchen transformed and we ate really clean and we took his supplements and I did not get sick once from the age of six to the age of thirteen when I rebelled and started eating all the junk food because I was a teenager. And I quickly learned that you can turn health on and off and you can turn diseases on and off and here I am.

But what was really interesting is I have a distinct memory and I was probably about seven, maybe eight. I was in my mom's bed and we were reading through the articles that he wrote, the newsletter, and I loved it. When you look at kids, you can tell what they're gonna be interested in their whole life. And I was fascinated by his articles. Can you imagine a seven or eight year old being like, I want to read more about antioxidants, right?

Catharine Arnston (57:37.413)

Wow. Everybody else is reading Nancy Drew or comic books and there you are reading naturopathic newsletters. I love that.

Ashley James (57:42.289)

I know, I know. And I was super fascinated but he described free radicals as a bullet on the microscopic level. A bullet bouncing through your body, piercing different cells and breaking open cells basically, but on an electron level. And it was like bullets ricocheting inside you. And  then he talked about how the foods that we can eat can either reduce that damage or can increase anytime you eat fried food, you are essentially swallowing loaded guns, shooting bullets throughout your body, like breaking apart cell walls because the free radical damage from fried foods, right? Same with overcooked red meat has the same effect. There's a bunch of foods out there that we eat as Americans, as Canadians, right, as many, many countries eat these foods that are so high in what causes free radical damage and then thus causes inflammation, right? So, we've got to stop doing that and then start doing the opposite of that, which is eating foods rich in antioxidants and knowing that specifically the antioxidant that targets the mitochondria… 

Catharine Arnston (59:05.048)

There's very few that can get in there to do that. 

Ashley James (59:06.924)

Yes. And the fact that there's very few companies out there that produce a chlorella, sorry, a spirulina that is not heated.

Catharine Arnston (59:16.742)

Right. So you're shooting blanks if you want to use the bullet analogy again. If you buy algae that is less expensive, I can almost promise you they dried it with high heat which would kill the superoxide dismutase. So it may have been there before they dried it, but it's empty now. And you're shooting blanks. And I love that analogy about the bullet bouncing around and piercing different cells because that is what happens. Another visual that just came to me while you were talking is bumper cars. When I was a kid, we used to go to the circus and there'd be these bumper cars and you just go around and you smack into everybody else and hopefully didn't damage anybody permanently. There were lots of studies done about the fact that antioxidants like vitamin E and vitamin C, they have never had an impact on longevity. And it's because I have realized those are two antioxidants that cannot get into the mitochondria inner membrane. Everything, if you come away from this podcast today, understanding nothing else except the fact that everything that happens to your health is determined by your mitochondria. And the problem is this mitochondria, like I said, they're like the ICE unit. They're in lockdown. Virtually nothing can get in there except a handful of antioxidants. Not even drugs can get in there. So the fact that superoxide dismutase is one of them that can. There's also glutathione, which also algae has the highest concentration of, chlorella, in fact, and chlorophyll. And we could talk about those as well. But, in this case, superoxide dismutase is the number one antioxidant. It's considered even more powerful than glutathione. And there are 25,000 medical studies, proving the benefits of superoxide dismutase to prevent heart disease, Alzheimer's, inflammation, any kind of respiratory illnesses, proven. So, but the problem has been your body stops making it after the age of 30 and there is no other source of it from food. And now you know you can get it from RLG or from frozen spirulina because those are the two that have not been exposed to high heat. So the SOD is active and will protect you for a dollar a day.

Ashley James (01:01:56.925)

Now what about those SOD supplements?

Catharine Arnston (01:01:59.537)

Well, they did some studies and again, they were finding that they were getting damaged during digestion and a very limited amount of those tablets of the SOD was making its way into the mitochondria. Here's the thing, those supplements probably cost 60 or 70 dollars and you probably have to take four or five a day and that's all you're getting. Think of a supplement and I've told this to people before, think of the supplement, it doesn't matter which one it is. It could be fish oil, it could be SOD, as just like a grade three soloist. And when you take algae, you've got the Boston Symphony Orchestra because it has 40 vitamins and minerals, the highest chlorophyll in the world, highest protein in the world, in this case, highest superoxide dismutase in the world. You're cheating yourself when you take these isolated supplements for isolated purposes. 

You mentioned earlier, our medical profession has become so disparate. You've got one person for brain health, one person for liver health. And so you're running around going to all these specialists and nobody talks to one another. Supplements are the same way. They are isolated. They don't talk to one another. They actually don't exist like that in nature. So you pee 90% out of what you're taking. And some people take chlorophyll water, for example. I applaud the use of chlorophyll.

Well, chlorella has 25 times more chlorophyll than liquid chlorophyll, and at the same time, you're also getting 60% protein, 40 vitamins and minerals. Chlorophyll water is just chlorophyll. So you always look for the greatest efficiency, and you usually get that from nature. Mother Nature knows best.

Mother Nature has laid out a bounty of ways for us to look after ourselves and most of them are free: sleep, walking outside, simple pleasures, lik,e community, getting fresh air, any movement, sunlight, you have to pay a little bit for your algae, but it's the most concentrated nutrition in the universe

And it was a gift to us from Mother Nature, the first life on Earth, I might add, four billion years ago. So I always encourage people to slow down and take a look, lift the hood, because when you find the truth, it resonates with you. You were saying earlier your body craves the spirulina and the chlorella. So does mine. I've been taking this stuff for 13 years. Every single time I have my first handful in the morning.

It's like an exhale. It's just like, oh, thank God. Honestly, I don't know, I do eat real food, but I don't know how I would survive without these things. It's so instinctual and my body just absolutely loves it and everyone's will too, because it's so high quality, it's so concentrated. It's Mother Nature's invention, but we do the best at preserving the nutrition that she's provided to us by growing it carefully in triple filtered spring mountain water, not using high heat, and then not including any other crappy stuff like binders or whatever. So it's as pure a food as you're ever going to get. The only other thing I could say that would be better is mother's breast milk, but you can't have that after about the age of two. So spirulina and chlorella are your next best shot. So, but pretty amazing about that superoxide dismutase, right?

Sneaking in the back door of the mitochondria to help it survive. And it's like if you had a friend who was in the hospital and they were feeding them crappy food, which they of course still do at hospitals, and then you have some friend who brings you quietly or in a hidden bag, a bag of salad and maybe some grass-fed beef or something. 

Ashley James (01:06:10.632)

The homemade chicken soup.

Catharine Arnston (01:06:14.774)

So glutathione and superoxide dismutase, they get in there to deliver what your mitochondria aren't getting from anything else. They're like your best friend.

Ashley James (01:06:25.980)

Well, I just love that, that it's putting out the fire and at the same time, transforming it into water. So it's not only stopping the damage to your cells and the DNA in your ear, mitochondria in your cells, and restoring balance, like removing the chaos, but then it hydrates at the same time. It's like here cell have more water and less chaos. That is so, so cool. 

Catharine Arnston (01:06:51.232)

And also, and because water has oxygen in it, and there's a German scientist who won a Nobel Prize back in the 30s, his name is Otto Warburg, and this will be my next segue into cancer. He discovered that cancer can only exist in an acidic environment. And there's a scale of zero to 14 that measures acidity to alkalinity, alkalinity being at the high level. And your cells need to be 7.1, slightly alkaline, your blood needs to be a little more alkaline, but when it's slightly alkaline that's indicative of a lot of oxygen that's in the cell and that the cell is functioning in a healthy way. And algae is the most alkaline food in the world and this particular nutrient as you mentioned superoxide dismutase normally reduces the fire from the free radical production, it encourages the production of water, which brings more oxygen into the cell because that's what oxygen water is made of. Pretty cool.

Ashley James (01:07:54.424)

It is very cool. So in your research, you saw that superoxide dismutase helps the cell become more alkaline, like achieve that alkalinity.

Catharine Arnston (01:08:04.296)

Well, it's actually other nutrients that do that, like the chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is probably the most alkaline lining nutrient, and it's another pigment found in both spirulina and chlorella. Chlorella has a higher amount. But this engagement of the superoxide dismutase by stopping the free radical damage of the superoxide dismutase and turning it into water contributes oxygen to the cell. But you get other contributions from other elements in the algae, whether it's from the magnesium or from the chlorophyll in particular is a very alkalining nutrient.

Ashley James (01:08:45.765)

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding around alkalinity and making sure the body's alkaline because there's certain areas of the body, we want at certain times to be high acid. For example, in the last part of digestion with the stomachs about to empty out Into the small intestines it it'll it brings it back to neutral because the small intestines would not be happy with you know hydrochloric acid but there's certain tissues have a range of like, from here to here is the healthiest range. And we have buffer systems in the body to maintain our acid and alkaline balance. And the thing is, is that the body uses our own mineral stores in our bones. So it'll have us release minerals from our bones to buffer the acid in our tissue. So if you're the kind of person who goes and drinks Coke or Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi or whatever, goes to McDonald's, you know, drinks some wine at night, eats a high acid, like the opposite of an alkaline diet, right? Alkaline diet, think of like the raw vegan frolicking through the fields, just picking wild berries and eating raw food in the sunlight, that's an alkaline diet, juicing, anything with a lot of enzymes, anything from plants. You've got a very alkaline diet. And then lots of meat, dairy, sugar, flour, fried food, and also the beverages, high in sugar and Coca-Cola.

One of my backgrounds is massage therapy. This is in Canada where I worked in hospitals and in sports medicine rehab. This is like over 20 years ago, but it's in Canada. Massage therapy is, we work alongside physical therapists. It's a two year college program, not like a 500 hour program that they do here in the States. So it's much more advanced and we would have oil on our sheets. So you can imagine massage therapists end up getting their sheets, have a lot of oil on them. And you know how we wash our sheets to get the oil stains out. Cause you know, any kind of detergent will not get oil out of massage sheets. And then the sheets start smelling rancid from the oil, from the massage oil. 

Do you know how we do it? We take a two liter bottle of Coke and we take a bucket and we put all our sheets in the bucket and we pour the two liter bottle of Coke and we let it sit overnight. And then we put it in the washing machine the next day, 100% removes oil. And if you have clothing with oil stains, I have a friend, a good friend of mine, her husband works as a mechanic for helicopters and there was a leak, like some crazy fluids from the helicopter, got on him, and it was like jet fuel and all this other fluid. And he came home soaking and smelling like just awful chemicals that you would not want anywhere near you. And the only way she was able to get it out, because she tried detergents and everything and it stunk up the whole house. And then she did what I told her, use a two liter bottle of Coke, soak it overnight and then put it in the wash. And it 100% cleaned all these oils, like petroleum based chemicals. So people are drinking this stuff. This stuff is a degreaser agent. This stuff is like this crazy, but people drink it. And that was my little side note to say, people on a regular basis, the standard American diet, which is copied throughout the world now, is highly acidic and it's unnaturally highly acidic. So the body in order to cope with it, because the body isn't running around if we were too acidic, you would just drop into a coma, right? But the body has to regulate and so it has buffer systems.

If you have to constantly use your buffer systems, you're putting massive stress on the body. So yeah, go drink your two liters of Coke and eat your pizza this weekend, but just know that your body is now leaching minerals from your bones in order to compensate. What is the saying? You rob Peter to pay Paul. Eventually, it's going to catch up to you. So yes, we have buffer systems. And that if you constantly eat an acid-forming diet, you are leaching your body of nutrients in order to keep up with that lifestyle. Whereas if you eat a diet high in enzymes and nutrients and phyto plant chemicals, high in plants, and you look for these like rich in superoxide dismutase, Chlorella spigulina, you are putting out the fire. And now you are helping the body. Now you don't have to rely on the buffer system so heavily to stay in a perfectly balanced state for those cells, those cells being 7.1 perfectly balanced. So there's my little rant about pH, because a lot of people go, what are you talking about?

Catharine Arnston (01:13.41.491)

Well, it's, there's a misunderstanding. There are organs and there are cells. And different organs like your stomach do need to be acidic. But universally, through your entire body, your body is made of cells. I came up with another analogy. Think of your body like a building. You know, when a brand new office tower is built, it's glorious and everything works. When you're a baby and you're born, everything works. 

And then in the building are offices. And so think of those offices, the equivalent would be your organs. They're gathered, they're groups, so they have maybe a city group in one place, maybe TJ Maxx is in another, they've assembled offices to have big corporations. And so in your body, you have groups of clusters of things that are organs that work together to function.

And then in the office, the things that keep, or in the building, the things that keep the office working and the people working are lights. And so in your body, those lights are the equivalent of your cells and your mitochondria. And as the building gets older and if they don't replace the lights, the people start closing their offices and leaving. And eventually the building, it's decrepit, and maybe there aren't any people there anymore.

in your body if you don't keep your cells functioning properly and your mitochondria protected, they're basically your lights. They go out and eventually just like the building that becomes decrepit, you do too. So think of your cells and your mitochondria as the lights that keep the equivalent of your building, your body, working. And part of that is, when you mention about the coke getting rid of all that grease and all the oils from the massage. Well, remember I mentioned at the very beginning that all of your cells have a cell membrane that's made of lipids. That's another word for fats. And so when you're eating these things like coke, just like the coke stripped out the oils in your sheets, it must strip out. Similarly, the oils and the healthy oils in your cell walls.

And when your cell walls are stripped of the healthy fats, they become dry and brittle. We're entering the fall here in New England. Think of a leaf that when it does not have the sunlight and it doesn't have all the nutrients and the chlorophyll, it becomes brittle and dry. That's what's happening to your cells. If you do not have the proper fats and if you eat too much acidic food, it causes your cell walls to become brittle and dysfunctional. And that causes your mitochondria to suffer because they're not getting the nutrients either and all that sort of stuff. So you can see how it's all connected, right?

Ashley James (01:16:45.595)

Absolutely. I love it. Anything we can do to keep us like just optimally healthy. I want to be that 106 year old that's still hiking, it's possible we can do it. I think you will.

Catherine Arnston (01:17:00.519)

I probably will be. But the other thing that you have to remember, because we live in North America, people want things that are effortless and simple. And if you can swallow water, although you and I chew these tablets, you can get the nutrition that you need to prevent these chronic illnesses or restore your health. It's that easy. We're not talking about going out to a cryotherapy center, although you could do that. We're not talking about going out for an IV drip But you could do that too. We're not talking about complicated anything. You're in your home. You just open your bag or your canister or your whatever you put some tablets in your mouth and you swallow them down. Seconds we're talking about seconds. This is like in fact, we're going to an IV drip show in a couple of weeks because People are getting glutathione drips. Well, you know what? Glutathione is an algae. People are getting collagen drips. Guess what? The highest collagen is an algae. They should probably have a superoxidized dismutase, but nonetheless, the highest concentration is an algae. So it gives you everything that you need for nourishment, cellular protection, and it's effortless. You don't have to cook it, clean it, mix it, nothing. Just open your mouth and take it. That's all you have to do. And at a dollar a day, it's the best prevention that you're ever going to get and those of you who currently have a condition, it will help speed your recovery faster than just about anything. But anyway, so that's  superoxidized dismutase, how protective it is of the mitochondria, and as long as you are protecting your mitochondria, everything works better. It just does. And I can walk you through some of the science behind that. 

And for brain health, the highest concentration of mitochondria are in your brain, as I mentioned earlier. And we did our own clinical trial recently. We were working with a nonprofit group called the Gray Team. They're based in Florida. And their entire purpose is to stop the suicide rate of military veterans, which is at a heartbreaking 35 to 50 percent. 35 to 50% of military veterans are committing suicide. Just let that sink in. I mean, that's just tragic, beyond tragic.

Ashley James (01:19:25.248)

That's beyond tragic. That is incomprehensible how time and time again, and I'm not gonna just say this to the United States because I mean, I love living here. I'm from Canada. My home is the States now, but it's not just America, unfortunately, because I have seen Britain, I've seen Canada, I've seen multiple countries, Australia, Asia, I've seen them just throw away their veterans like trash. And that is unacceptable. Like just for example, for this country to throw away their veterans like trash and then take billions of taxpayer dollars and give it to other countries. Now I believe that we should all help each other, right? I believe in aid, I believe we should all help each other. But why aren't we helping our veterans? Why do we just throw them away like trash? That gets me so angry. And it's not, again, not just America, it is other countries too. These people, they've been through enough, you know what I mean? And they just deserve so much better. And suicide is such a big problem, especially since 2020.

Catharine Arnston (01:20:26.914)

Oh, well, and we know it's also on the rise just in the general population and COVID didn't help. I mean, it really pushed it over the edge. So there's a lot of people suffering, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder. And you and I talked before we started recording, there's a great book that came out. I would encourage everybody to read it. You can get it on Amazon. It's called Brain Energy. And it's by Dr. Christopher Palmer, P-A-L-M-E-R.

He is a physician, a psychiatrist, at the Harvard Medical School. So he's got all the great education behind him, and he's also been a psychiatrist for 25 or 30 years. Anyways, his entire book documents how all brain disorders, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, suicidal thoughts, Alzheimer's, any dementia, all of it is because of damaged mitochondria.

Damaged mitochondria are the cause of all brain issues. And what did I just talk about? How superoxide dismutase protects and heals the mitochondria. You can connect the dots and see that spirulina is the highest superoxide dismutase as long as it's not from a heated spirulina source. So all the science points to this. So I thought, you know what? We want to help other organizations.

And we had been meeting with them. So they said, let's do a small clinical trial with our particular spirulina. So we did. And all we'd had a small group of their military veterans who had been discharged for 15 or 20 years because they'd had these mental issues that had never gone away. And all we did was give them a pouch of our spirulina tablets. So 30 tablets a day. They did nothing else. We did a brain scan before the clinical trial. And we also hooked them up

to some devices that measure their sleep and their CRV and stuff, HRV, heart rate monitor. 

Anyways, and then we did a brain scan after 30 days. Only thing we did was give them 30 tablets a day. We asked them not to change anything else, no extra exercise, no change in diet, nothing. And within 30 days, and it probably would have happened within even probably seven, that inflammation we could see from the EEG, the brain showed no activity, it was all inflammation, virtually gone, completely gone. One person had multiple sclerosis, his tremors went away. 30 days, not from a drug, but from food. 

Spirulina are raw tablets, 30 tablets a day. Meanwhile, they're still getting 64% protein, 40 vitamins and minerals, and part of the reason it worked was because of the superoxide dismutase. Also, we're going to talk about in a minute, the phycocyanin that's found in spirulina. It's also loaded with essential fatty acids. Your brain is mostly fat. One of the things I didn't mention is one of the things that superoxide dismutase also does is it protects your telomeres. Your telomeres are these things that protect your DNA. And as your cells replicate, the telomeres shorten until they get so short that the DNA gets exposed. 

And then, when the DNA is exposed, it interacts with toxins and it becomes damaged. And then when it replicates, it damages as damaged DNA. And this leads to other chronic illnesses. But when you take the superoxide dismutase, it protects the telomeres so they aren't shortening. So you start to get more functionality and this also contributed to the brain health. So, and as I said, it probably could have happened within a week or even two weeks but we did do the EEG's at the beginning and at the end and that was pretty powerful when you think of how something as simple as this whole food unheated just spirulina could do so much more than any drugs could. Amazing, right?

Ashley James (01:24:36.525)

I am beyond thrilled. So this 30-day study, did you do any questionnaire just to get an idea of their mood before and after, or did they report anything like that?

Catharine Arnston (01:24:53.797)

I think we have, there's so much data and I haven't looked at everything because I haven't been able to, we're gonna write a paper about it so we could submit it. I have to submit, I've fallen behind on that because there's a professor who also works with NASA, Dr. Dominique D'Agostino, who I'm a good friend with, he was going to help us write the paper and submit it to the PubMed and all that sort of stuff. So I have to get back on that. It's just one more thing I haven't had chance to follow up. 

Ashley James (01:25:22.561)

So it's totally fine. It's totally fine. It hasn't been published yet. These are preliminary findings, but in the preliminary findings, the most exciting thing that you've noticed is that there was definite changes in the brain scans. And what other definite cool things did you notice while just looking preliminarily through the findings?

Catharine Arnston (01:25:39.833)

Yeah, well, there's a marker called HRV, which stands for heart rate variability. And you want a high heart rate variability because it shows that under stress, your body can respond quickly. When you have a low heart rate variability, it cannot. So I just remembered this looking at one data point, this person's heart rate variability, I think went from 40 something to 80 something. It was a 50% increase which is unheard of. People brag about how their heart rate variability increased by 2 or 3%. This was like literally a 50%. They also monitored their sleep. They used something called a wavi, which is sort of like those rings, aura rings. So there's tons of data, but with science and studies, you gotta go comb through the data and you look for trends and then you have to write up the findings. It's just time consuming. And I'm running the company, I'm traveling all over the place and I'm busy with my stuff.

Ashley James (01:26:43.789)

It is totally fine. I'm so happy that you dropped some of this information, but you know what? It's like, don't wait until you're done. If you've got something, share it, right? And then you can come back, and once the paper's been written and all the scientists have poured through the data, and you can come back and share more. There's no harm in that. Heart rate variability is super interesting, and life insurance companies are now playing with the idea of using it in order to determine whether someone should be insured or not, because they have seen that it is possibly a way to determine lifespan. Because low heart rate variability means you're in a state of stress and your body can't bounce into stress and then out of stress mode, that if you have low heart rate variability, you are kind of always in stress mode and it wears on you faster and you die sooner.

Whereas, a high heart rate variability means that when you inhale and when you exhale, your heart rate changes and your heart gets to rest a bit. And so your heartbeats won't be consistent. They'll be higher and then lower and then higher. And that's the variable that's measured between the two. Liistening to my son's heartbeat freaks me out because I'm like, did his heart stop? Because in between, there's such a noticeable difference in his heart rate from his inhales to his exhales. Now he's been seen by doctors. He's been seen by naturopaths. He's totally fine. His heart's healthy. But from the untrained ear, who's used to hearing a consistent heartbeat, when he inhales and when he exhales, his heart rate changes.

And that's heart rate variability. So he has actually very healthy because there is a very clear measurable difference between his inhale and exhale heartbeat. And if you listen to your own heartbeat and you notice there's no difference between your inhales and exhales, then you've got low heart rate variability. And there's some work we gotta do to bring your stress response down. So it's really cool. That's something that largely people have been thinking heart rate variability was more associated with mental, emotional health and getting you out of stress response mentally. Of course, you know, the body can stress the stress, right? So eating McDonald's is as stressful as having an argument with your husband or drinking a glass of wine is a stressor or running up a hill really fast is a stressor. Some stressors are good for you in the long run, right? But it's a stressor nonetheless. And the more cumulative stress we have, wears us down if we don't know how to turn off the stress response, right? So with heart rate variability being so changed by one factor, which is like you said, it takes what 10 seconds – open your bag, throw the chewable tablets in your mouth, either chew them or swallow with water, close the bag, done, go about your day. And for some people, the heart rate variability changed by 50%. That is just my mind is blown. My mind is, I'm so excited for that. And I can't wait for your study to be released.

Catharine Arnston (01:30:02.761)

Well, and to have this book by Dr. Palmer, Brain Energy, the health of the brain is determined by the health of your mitochondria. And we have something that basically blows everything out of the water, all drugs, nothing comes close to the impact that these nutrients, and I'm gonna talk about another one in a minute, in spirulina and also to chlorella for protecting the mitochondria. But if you had to choose one algae, for protecting your mitochondria, it would definitely be spirulina. And if you were looking at building your immune system, it's definitely chlorella. And that's another conversation, the science is there and there's literally no question, but we've changing the perception of health in general and predictability of longevity is like moving the Titanic because we have certain ideas in our head, but the new science keeps coming out. And so, I stay in my lane about algae and I keep connecting the nutrients found in algae with the discoveries found in the longevity research and I'm going, Wow! Superoxide dismutase stops heart disease. Hah! Spirulina, our spirulina has the highest superoxide dismutase. That's amazing! Or as we're going to find out next, research finds that phycocyanin, which is the blue pigment in spirulina, kills cancer cells. And I go, Gosh! That's pretty interesting because our spirulina has the highest phycocyanin in the universe. So the science is there about these nutrients, but the scientists don't know those nutrients exist in algae or at least in our algae. So I'm sitting here, I feel like, the kid with the finger in the dike holding the water, holding a dam from exploding and I'm so eager to get this information to the world because this is why I did this. I mean I just wanted to help my sister heal from cancer and I did, and I thought if I can help one more person I'm going to just keep going and now we're in thousands of people, but it's so important to get this information out because it's scientifically proven and there's no question, but you have to know what to look for. People say, you don't notice a red car until you have one. You're not going to notice the benefits of superoxide dismutase, or next we'll talk about phycocyanin, until now that you've learned about it. Now you are informed. Being educated about these things, because nobody else is telling you, is critical. And so that's my goal, and I love educating people, because, I know Mother Nature has provided for us and we just need to get her bounty out to the world in a way that is understandable. The science is complicated but what it does in your body is so remarkable. So is Mother Nature. I mean she is so smart, the universe, God, whatever you want to call it. We are supposed to be healthy, right? But you have to follow a lifestyle that mimics the one that we were born into. I don't think Coca-Cola and white processed food and sitting all day long was the life that Mother Nature, God, the universe intended us for. We need to move, we need to hug, we need to drink water, we need to sleep, and we need nourishment.

And the best way to get it is from spirulina and chlorella. The best and easiest. Again, it's health insurance, not just nutritional insurance, it's health insurance. So it's pretty powerful. And before I swing over to cancer, I do want to make one more, just do a little mini deep dive into another benefit of the SOD. So as I mentioned, the most mitochondria are in your brain and this almost a similar amount and I have tried for months to find a number for this, but nobody, I can't seem to find a number, but virtually your retina has virtually the same amount of mitochondria as your brain, because your eye is literally another brain because it's taking senses, strings of light and and converting that into an image in the back of your head. If you have eye issues, not just your reading deteriorating, but glaucoma and other serious eye issues, they are almost 100% predictor of heart disease and a heart attack within a year. Crazy, right? And why is that, it's because of the high concentration of mitochondria in your eye. There's 7,000 mitochondria per cell in your heart and there's close to 2 million in your eye. But the eye is more visible, you can tell when you have eye issues whether it's glaucoma. So it breaks my heart because I don't think there's any direct communication between the eye specialists and heart specialists, but I have talked to a lot of heart specialists and they confirm that this situation with the glaucoma is indeed real. And it even hit home with me with a fellow I grew up with all my life. He was like my best friend's brother. We did everything together and about a year ago he was diagnosed with some form of glaucoma, but they didn't know that was a predilection of potential heart issue. And so they didn't really do much about it. He's a big skier. He was out skiing about six months ago, had a heart attack, and died on the spot.

Ashley James (01:36:31.384)

Oh my goodness.

Catharine Arnston (01:36:33.920)

So, anybody who's listening, if you have glaucoma issues going on, get your heart checked because, pardon the pun, but it's more visible. It's damage that's occurring at the mitochondria level. I know I'm going to keep hammering home. All of your health issues are determined by your mitochondria, and some of them are easier to detect, like your eye, than your heart.

Ashley James (01:37:04.776)

I have a little side story to share. I am friends with a man who is on the kind of the same health path we've studied under the same nature paths. Really fascinating guy. I've told this story before on the show so I'll try to keep it brief. I forget the names but it's like Green Beret. He was like one of those, like those Navy Seals. He was like one of those, but I can't remember which one. But it's up there. It's like he used to be one of those. But before he actually was Amish and he left the Amish community. He loves them, but he left the Amish community to become like a Navy SEAL green braid, whatever. And him and I were hanging out and he said, and we study under the same doctor. And he was telling me this story. He goes, okay, so the doctor that we've studied under, I've studied under him for over 12 years. He is amazing naturopathic physician, old school. He's like 83 or something like that.

And he was, I mean, his story is fascinating. I've had him on the show twice, Dr. Joel Wallach. And he says that he's told people for over 20 years to not eat oil or fried food. 100% don't eat oil. He goes, just cook with water. He's not plant-based. He grew up on a farm. He thinks beef's amazing. To each is own. He's doing something right. He's 83, he still works. He works like six days a week and worships the Lord on the seventh day. And he’s a very fascinating man. But he says, never eat fried food. It destroys your health. Don't do it. Don't eat fried food. Don't eat oil. Well, our friend, his name's Marvin, and he decided to eat McDonald's fries every day. And he was doing like a little experiment. He wanted to see if he could notice a difference because he ate clean his whole life, right? He was grew up on this, he grew up on a farm, but he'd never really eaten the standard American diet. And he goes, I've never been sick. My whole life I've never been sick. And he is very passionate about studying health, but he'd never been sick. So he started eating McDonald's and started eating fries, just fries, not anything else, just fries at McDonald's. He drives home and he lives in Utah.

And it's really dark out if you've ever been to Utah, but just outside the city, it's pretty dark at night. And there he is driving home. It's like the moon isn't out and there's no street lights or anything, right? It's been seven days of eating fries every day. Now, it's  not been every meal, but every day he's had large fries. On the seventh day, somewhere around there, he's driving home and he realizes, he has completely lost his ability to read signs. He's lost his night vision.

He should have glasses at this point. Everything's fuzzy. He's driving home and he goes, I can't see. Now he was a green brayer, whatever it was. He had like 40, 20 vision. He had some crazy good eyesight. And all of a sudden, seven days of eating fries every day, his night vision was gone. It was shot. And he said, you know what happened? Obviously he stopped eating fries. He went back to his healthy lifestyle. He goes, it took me a year of taking antioxidant supplements and of course eating really healthy. But it took him a year of taking everything he could he knew to nourish the eyes, except for, chlorella and spirulina. But he took everything that he knew to take for eye health for a whole year. It took him a whole year to reverse the damage that seven days of eating fries and just think about all the people that are running around destroying. And so then we go to Dr. Wallach. Well, why did this happen? And Dr. Wallach pulls up an image of anatomy of the eye, specifically the vasculature. And it is the eye's mostly blood vessels. And these blood vessels, which are very small, just like the kidneys, right? Kidneys are another thing that gets damaged by fried foods. That's another reason. Dr. Wallach's been able to take people on dialysis and get them so healthy, they no longer need dialysis. And one of the things is fried food, get rid of oil, get rid of fried food, and then also get rid of any processed meats like have nitrates or nitrites. And because the vasculature is only wide enough to house single blood cells going through. So the vasculature is thinner than hair and it becomes destroyed and inflamed. And so then everything gets backed up. And what happens is that just eating that seven days where the fries was enough to inflame and damage the vasculature of the eye and the retina and the mitochondria and just everything took it like, I could not believe it took him a year to get his eyesight back. So just really we have to listen to our body and listen to the symptoms of our body and don't just go, oh, it's cause I'm getting older. You know, if you notice you can't see it at night very well, we got to take this seriously. Just like you said, the vasculature of the eye, things to go first, right? Men won't see the doctor till they have a penile dysfunction, till they have erectile dysfunction, right? When they can't get it up, that's when they go to their doctor. Well, they should have gone five years ago when they started developing diabetes, but it wasn't until their penis stopped working. Well, their heart has been affected by their declining health and the way they're eating. So we have to listen to the symptoms of the body.

And that person, the man who temporarily lost his penis' function, that can be reversed if we catch it quick enough. But also if he had listened to his body, he would have noticed years before, starting to get tired, going towards more sugar and more caffeine for energy, because he felt tired in the morning, not being able to stay up as late, just like falling asleep while watching TV, getting acid reflux, little things that normally the average person puts band-aids on. Oh, I'm going to take an antacid. I'm going to take a Tylenol or an Advil. I'm just going to drink some alcohol here and I'm going to self-medicate, right? I'm going to take some coffee here, alcohol here. People self-medicate instead of listen to the symptoms. And if we listen to the whispers, then we can catch something, but we have to know. And so I love that you said, if anything's happening with eyesight, especially like glaucoma, we need to get our heart checked right away. We need to take it seriously. And there's a way to reverse it. And we can do that with food, certain foods we gotta stop putting in our mouth and certain foods we gotta put in our mouth  more. 

Catharine Arnston (01:43:51.713)

Exactly. You've got to give your body what it needs and stop giving it what it doesn't. But you also raise a really very important point, which I want to emphasize. Your body, there's a great expression, an old ancient Asian expression. You never step in the same river twice because a river is flowing. So every second different things are flowing by and your body is the same way.

You have over 30 trillion cells in your body and guess what? 30 trillion cells die every day and 30 trillion new cells are born every day. You change your entire stomach lining, I think it's either 24 hours or 48 hours. Other parts of your body take longer, like your skin if you're young it's a 25 day turnover as you get older it's more like 60 days or 72 days your organs.

But the point is, is that if you have a condition, like this gentleman developed, you know, an eye condition, it's not, it doesn't have to be permanent, but you have to do something about it. And the other thing is that if you slide into this, getting into a condition,, in this case, it was unusual because it did happen so quickly, but usually things like cancer and heart disease. They call it silent inflammation for a reason. You don't even know that it's going on. You may be having damaged mitochondria and cellular acidity for decades before the symptoms even start showing up. And once the symptoms start showing up, then you start noticing, because your body's like finally throwing you a flare. It's like, hey, over here, buddy, like do something. And that gets your attention, but sadly in America, we think, oh, we need to go get a pill. But what you really need to do is evaluate what part of your lifestyle has caused this condition because the drugs only mask the symptoms. They will not correct the condition. And your friend at least was well aware that he had a change in condition, but look, it took him a year to regain back all of that new damage. And so this is why I tell people, even if you are healthy now, start taking spirulina and chlorella on a daily basis because you don't know what else is going on under that hood. There may be conditions that symptoms haven't shown up yet, but if you continue down the path you're on, they will eventually. This is why I again consider these two allergies as your health insurance and for a dollar a day you're worth it. Because lots of these symptoms take a very long time. In his case it was very dramatic.

But the eye, because also it's very porous, and porous things like blood, they change very, very quickly. Organs, which are very dense cells, take a long time to either get damaged and or corrected. So anyways, I just wanna mention that. Whatever condition you have, it does not have to be permanent, but you have to make a change.

And the algae seems to be the most effortless, most powerful instrument that has been proven time and time again to have that benefit. So I definitely want to talk about cancer because we've talked a little bit about the brain health and whether it's Alzheimer's, depression, anxiety, mitochondria health is critical and spirulina is proven to facilitate mitochondria health and of course that affects your brain and it also affects your heart because it also your heart also has such a high concentration of mitochondria and again that superoxide dismutase is stopping the free radical damage because it can get in there in the inner membrane to prevent all that damage. But there's another equally powerful nutrient. I have these usually these great visuals I show people It's sort of like Superman and superwoman So think of superoxide dismutase as Superman and the one I'm going to talk about now I've mentioned a couple times the blue pigment in spirulina called phycocyanin think of it as superwoman and again that spelled P-H-Y-C-O-C-Y-A-N-I-N and I'm sorry for repeating myself, but it's very important to me that you have the ability to go on Google and check some of these things that I'm telling you about and you'll see that I'm telling you the truth. But just like you wouldn't know to look for something, it's like those Rorshach inkblot tests where, there's that one picture where you see an old woman and suddenly you look at it differently and you see a young woman and then you look back and you see the old woman, right?

Now that you know some of these things. You're informed. So you can't unknow something. And so now you're more empowered to look for the things that you are aware of that will help you be healthier. And that's my goal here. So this other thing that I really want you to know about is this blue pigment called phycocyanin. So it's so powerful. I'll send you all the links so that you can put it with your show notes so people can get access to the actual links to the actual National Institute of Health studies where I get all this juicy stuff. So in this one particular study, they took a Petri dish and they put cancer cells in there and they dyed them purple just so you could see them in the Petri dish.

And then they added some phycocyanin, the blue pigment in spirulina, to the petri dish. And there's six images and it takes 24 hours. They space them, four hours apart, I guess. And after 24 hours, not all, but virtually all of the cancer cells are gone. Gone. That's because phycocyanin kills cancer cells.

And I'll tell you how it works in a minute. So I went into the study and I saw how much phycocyanin they used in this particular experiment. And I realized, and I checked our lab tests, one of our L-EnergyBits tablets, one, has 4,000 times more phycocyanin than they used in this particular experiment that basically wiped out all the cancer cells within 24 hours, gone, gone, right? I'd say that was pretty powerful. But just like superoxide dismutase, phycocyanin gets damaged by high heat. So anybody who is using, and it's 99% of the companies who use high heat to dry their algae, so these are lower priced algae companies, you're not getting the benefits of phycocyanin because they've killed it. The only other place that I can confidently direct you is to frozen spirulina because once again it has not been heated so your phycocyanin is alive and well and it will go to work for you. But let me tell you how this works. So I don't know how geeky Ashley's been on the mic. We're going deep, it's worth knowing it because again once you know you can't unknow.

So we know we've talked about this production of ATP in the mitochondria. Well, it's not like going to an ATM machine and you just get ATP. There, it's quite a complicated process. God love Mother Nature, Universe God, whatever you want to call it. It's beautiful how this all works. So the way the ATP is produced is in the mitochondria, in that inner membrane, there are these

four molecules that take the glucose from the food. So you eat food and your stomach digest it into smaller molecules called glucose that make their way into your cells and there's a process that reduces those into electrons. And so it's the passing of these electrons from one of these molecules to the next and there's four of them.

that actually, and then the fifth is where the actual ATP is produced. So think of these molecules like you would someone in a relay race. You've all seen relay races. You have four or five people. One person starts, they have the baton, they run a certain distance. They pass the baton to the next person. That person runs the next distance. And hopefully, the person who's at the last part of that group crosses the finish line and wins. So in your mitochondria, instead of,

runners, you have these four molecules and instead of crossing the finish line, you get ATP produced, which is cellular energy, so what they're passing instead of a baton is an electron and so it goes from one station and then there's a conversion that goes the next station, the next station and then boom ATP. Well it's a little more complicated than just a relay race, because in that process between the four stations, there's two other molecules. They're called transport molecules. They're kind of like having trainer wheels. They help the electron move a little faster from one station to the next. And the analogy that I've come up with is that when you're traveling, a lot of these airports are so big, and so you have to either take a shuttle bus or a shuttle train to get you to your gate. I call them shuttle molecules because they're kind of like a shuttle train. They help you, you may be at the airport but you're not at your gate yet. So you can't actually get to your plane. So there's two of these molecules that are like shuttle molecules. One of them, the first one, which we'll talk about maybe another time, is CoQ10. You've probably heard about the importance of CoQ10. And so it's a shuttle molecule and it is a fat-based molecule. And I'll do a little sidebar just while we're talking about CoQ10. Scientific studies have shown, if you have chlorophyll, and of course Chlorella has chlorophyll, and red light, so it could be red light therapy, it could be sunlight, it actually recycles the CoQ10 molecule so that it can generate ATP for you by recycling that CoQ10 molecule. You don't even have to eat. Pretty cool, right?

But that's the first molecule. That's CoQ10. And that's a fat-based shuttle bus. The other shuttle bus further down between 3 and 4 is called cytochrome c. I know these are, again, scientific terms, but feel free to go Google everything. So this little cytochrome c molecule is a water-based molecule. And guess what? The blue pigment in spirulina is a water-based molecule which I may have mentioned earlier and what it does in healthy cells is it speeds up that cytochrome c. This is one of the reasons why spirulina gives you more energy because it's speeding up the transition of those electrons through this shuttle bus cytochrome c so that you can generate more ATP at the final station. Pretty cool.

But if you have a cancer cell or what's called a zombie cell also known as a senescent cell basically a senescent cell is a cell that is subdivided so many times it's basically dead but it doesn't die it just hangs out and it's inflammatory and so you do things like fasting and cryotherapy to get rid of those senescent cells but back to the story so in a cancer cell or a senescent cell the zombie cells, instead of speeding up that cytochrome c molecule to generate energy, the blue pigment, phycocyanin, detects that it's a cancer cell and it kicks out that cytochrome c molecule completely, and that cytochrome c molecule kills the cancer cells or the senescent cells. Boom. And so just to repeat, in a healthy cell, the blue phycocyanin speeds up the cytochrome c molecule so that the electron transport chain can generate ATP for you faster, which is what you want, but in a cancer cell or a senescent cell which is a zombie cell it kicks out that cytochrome c molecule which then goes and automatically kills the cancer or senescent cells and here's the proof. Well, actually you can just google it and you'll find out about it but when you get chemotherapy, the way they tell whether it's working or not is they measure the amount of cytochrome c in your blood. Because if there's a lot of cytochrome c, that shows that the cancer cells c are dying because that's what cytochrome c does to cancer cells. And that's what they use in a lot of these chemotherapy treatments. I don't know whether it's the phycocyanin, well they do use the phycocyanin, and yes they do, sorry I was drifting there for a minute, and it kills the cancer cells. But who wants to wait to get cancer and who wants chemotherapy? You can kill your cancer cells now just by taking the spirulina tablets daily.

And daily we always have cancer cells, but if you have a strong immune system and strong mitochondria, and who does these days? Like nobody. But if you did, you can start taking the spirulina and it will start killing cancer cells immediately. Unbelievable, right? And none of this is conjecture. This is slam dunk. They are creating the chemotherapy companies in the pharmaceutical industry, they're deep in this rabbit hole of using phycocyanin to kill cancer cells. But who wants to wait to get such a diagnosis of cancer? You can start killing those cancer cells now and trust me, we all have them everywhere at all times.  Cancer is basically cells that have gone rogue. They're acidic, they are not functioning properly, they're not communicating properly, they multiply and they're so damaging and inflammatory. They take over others' neighboring cells so quickly. And by the way, while we're talking on the amazing properties of this blue phycocyanin, there's another amazing property that it does. And again, it's a bit geeky. It's called antiangiogenesis. So what that means is angiogenesis is basically the growth of blood vessels. And you need the growth of blood vessels to feed your brain, to feed your organs, to feed just about everything. But you don't want the growth of blood vessels to tumors. But that's what happens with cancer and tumors. They basically hijack your blood vessels and reroute them to feed them. So they have a blood source so they can grow quickly. And there are certain things that cause what's called anti-angiogenesis, which means it stops the growth of those blood vessels.

The blue pigment in spirulina has been proven to do that. And the process is called anti-angiogenesis. And in fact, there's a really famous nonprofit organization based here in Boston called the Angiogenesis Organization. It was formed by Dr. Li, L-I. And all their research is on things that prevent the growth of these damaging blood vessels to tumors. And I think it was about eight years ago, we got a call from his organization, which is right here where I live in Boston, and he said, we're doing our 20th year celebration conference and we would like you to come and set up a table because did you know that the blue phycocyanin in your spirulina has anti-angiogenesis properties. We didn't even know at the time and then they sent me a bunch of papers and sure enough Bill Gates was there and Bill Clinton was there. I mean very prestigious organization. Dr. Li is very well informed. He's got a great TED talk. He's one of my mini heroes. Anyways so we went and but that's just one more cool thing about blue phycocyanin. A. It kills cancer cells. B. It stops the growth of blood vessels, two tumors, and I might as well throw a third one in there while we're rolling on phycocyanin. As you know with COVID, it has those prongs that stick out from it, those prongs that stick out are how the virus attaches to your cell so that it can invade your cell. Now the cells that it invades are called ACE2 receptor cells. And these types of cells are predominantly found in your nose, your mouth, your throat, your stomach, and your lungs. That's predominantly where these ACE2 receptor cells are. And it's where all viruses enter, but particularly COVID. So blue phycocyanin has been found to sit on top of those ACE2 receptor cells and basically shield them. So the COVID virus can't get in. It's like having a superhero standing in front of your cells. And so if you got exposed to COVID, it would just slip through because it can't get in. It doesn't have the combination lock to get into your cells. And proof of this is that a couple of years ago, when we were height of COVID, the University of Pittsburgh was developing a nose spray made of algae. And I'm pretty sure it was the phycocyanin because, researchers know about this. It just always amazes me how much science is available. 

And this is why I feel I have a role in the world because I go to a lot of these science conferences and I read a lot of scientific papers. But you have to know the jargon. I mean, they speak in jargon. They don't know how to explain simple terms. Like they wouldn't know to talk about a free radical being like a bullet bouncing around or, a fireman or superoxide dismutase being like a fireman who hoped to put out the fire. But I do because I've always been a writer and it seems that I love science. So, the science has been around in many cases 60, 70 years, but it hasn't made its way out to you.

And I read a statistic somewhere years ago that said, like, once there's been a scientific discovery, it takes an average of 18 years before practitioners even know about it because it's still hanging around in the scientific world before the practitioner. And then, it didn't say this, but I think it's true. It's another 18 or 28 years before it moves from the practitioner awareness to consumers. The fact that all this research around spirulina and the superoxide dismutase, and we didn't even get to glutathione or the chlorophyll that's found in chlorella, that's a whole, another two or three hours, but the fact that the science is there's a 100,000 studies, about 60,000 for spirulina and about 40,000 for chlorella, documenting all the different health benefits, whether it's brain health, gut health, detox, skin health, stopping breakouts, wrinkles, the important ones clearly like heart health, mitochondria, a 100,000! I mean, you can't argue with 100,000, but the problem is the knowledge from these papers haven't made their way even to this practitioner community they certainly haven't made their way to the consumer and the other side of the coin is nobody knows the nutrition of algae like I do so even if the practitioners knew about superoxide dismutase and cytochrome c, most of them know about that but they don't know that you can get the highest concentration of these nutrients that protect the mitochondria from algae, 

So there's this huge void that I'm trying to fill to help people understand the science, understand algae, and so that the two worlds can meet because honestly it's from Mother Nature, it's absolutely effortless, it's so proven, but keep in mind not all algae is the same. Algae, like I said at the beginning, is like wine and the way you produce and dry and grow the algae affects the nutrient value by a hundred percent. So you can't just grow a bunch of grapes, stomp on them and then put it through a sieve and think you've got wine. You've got to let it distill. You've got to do a thousand different things before it's ready to be consumed. Same with algae. So there's all these companies. I mean, you can go to Costco, you can go to Target, you can go to just about any place, CVS, and buy spirulina and chlorella. But what you're missing are these critical nutrients, and we've only talked about two, superoxide dismutase and phycocyanin, that aren't in 90% of them, or 95% of them, because they've been killed in the production process. So people are not getting the true prevention benefits or restorative benefits or maintenance benefits. Yes, they give you the nutrition. But man, the clinical benefits far outweigh even the nutritional benefits. Of course, they're very tightly intertwined. So anyways, I just want people to understand, if you can understand your body better, it amazes me, we know how our cell phone works better than we know how our body works. And so if you can just, Body Health 101 is the first lesson is don't eat garbage and understand that the mitochondria are the key determinant for everything. And so whatever you do should be to preserve and protect and nurture, nourish your mitochondria. And when you do that, they will protect and nourish you. You guys are on the same team. I tell people I never eat alone. I always eat with my mitochondria.

Ashley James (02:08:07.140)

That's so good to think about because we tend to eat like we're four years old and we're like a kid in a candy shop. We tend to choose dinner based on what is going to taste good. And if you remember that you're eating with your mitochondria, everything you put in your mouth is going to be feeding your mitochondria. Do you want bullets ricocheting in your cells, creating cancer and creating early death and before you die early, you will have years of suffering and declining health. 

That is guaranteed because you look at the average person and the last few years of life are not pretty for those that eat the standard American diet. It is incredibly unfortunate. Or you imagine you're eating with and for your mitochondria, you're nourishing your mitochondrial cells. Okay, don't eat foods that are super fun, right? Like not everyone needs a kid's meal, right? We can be a responsible adults. And here's the thing chew your food more, get some fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, beans. And for me, it's non-gluten whole grains. I'm super into quinoa, buckwheat and amaranth, taff. The list goes on and on. You can get brown rice. You can get lots of organic non-gluten grains. So no barley, wheat, rye, oats for me. There's many benefits to avoiding those personally. But eating a wide variety of really healthy foods, incorporating algae, incorporating the energybits.com, use coupon code LTH. I want you guys to save money and also get the best one on the market. Incorporating that into your life because you're eating with and for your mitochondria. And then here's the thing, maybe dinner isn't the most delicious thing out there, but it is nourishing your cells, it's still gonna be yummy, it still is, because your body knows it's good for you. And maybe you don't love the taste of your kale salad the first time you eat it. There's ways to make it delicious. I can teach you if you want. Write me an email or find me on Facebook, we have a Learn True Health Facebook group. I'm gonna talk about that in a second actually because if you've listened for over two hours, I think we should do a giveaway for If you're still here, we will we're gonna do a giveaway but think about this, if you don't know how to make really healthy food taste good, please come reach out to me. I created a little membership. I filmed for many, many hours in the kitchen and I made delicious meals that are very healthy and also very easy. And so you go to LearnTrueHealth.com click on Home Kitchen. You could check that out or just message me, join the Learn to Health Facebook group and say, Hey, Ashley, how do I eat really healthy but also delicious? I'll tell you, I'll point you in the direction of some resources so you can find simple, quick, delicious meals. But the thing is, as you eat healthier and cleaner because you're eating with your mitochondria and for your mitochondria, for your cells, as you eat cleaner, your body actually begins to enjoy and crave those foods more. And there's a lot of studies that show that you're not only feeding your cells in the mitochondria, which are this amazing bacteria that live inside your cells, you're also feeding the bacteria that live outside your body in your digestive tract, because we're kind of like a donut. The inside of a donut is not like the little hole, is represents our intestines, and that's considered still outside the body, because it hasn't been absorbed yet. And so there's about six

pounds worth of bacteria. So think about like there's a chihuahua or like a little baby panda that lives inside you that you're feeding. And it actually helps digest our food and it's a pharmacy, it's a complicated pharmacy that creates nutrients for us, digests our food and makes nutrients for us and then we absorb those nutrients. And when you have a really healthy, robust microbiome, which I have lots of interviews about that. Listeners can go to learntruehealth.com, type in microbiome, and use the search there. They can also type in viome, and use the search there, and listen to those episodes. Listen to my episodes with Sarica Cernohous. Those are really good ones to listen to for understanding more about the microbiome of the gut. But fun thing, when we feed it healthy foods, the microbiome excretes chemicals that go into our brain and make us crave those good foods. Likewise, an imbalance of yeast or candida can make chemicals that overtake your brain and force you to crave foods that feed the bad stuff.

So a lot of times we walk around thinking we're actually following our body's cravings, we are slaves to the what's living in our gut. If you have craving for donut and you're driving up to Krispy Kremes, you need to stop and go, wait a second. That's the bad guys in my gut that want me to feed them that I'm going to go eat the kale salad and throw some chlorella.

Catharine Arnston (2:13:40.605)

Chlorella is the answer to feeding your gut and your gut biome. And it's just as effortless as the spirulina. And so the other thing, you're absolutely right, but I just want to reinforce again, because a lot of people, when they first realize that what they're eating isn't healthy and they're facing this huge monumental shift in lifestyle and food choices. So here's what I want to tell you. If you did not change anything added 10 or 20 or 30 spirulina in the morning and 10 or 20 30 chlorella tablets at night as many as you can get into you just add those because that's effortless again put them in your hand swallow them down chew them whatever it takes but then that will automatically start nourishing your mitochondria your cell walls your brain your gut and it will slowly ease you into choosing on your own to make other changes. But the reason I like it so much is because we are told so many things, well stop doing that and stop doing that and stop doing that. This isn't something that you can add to your life that you don't have to if you don't want to if you're not ready yet. You don't have to change anything but just add it and that alone will make a difference because you will start feeling better. You'll be nourished.

I mean, we had this one woman who was 85 years old write us. We have people writing us every single day. And this woman was incontinent. She couldn't sleep. She had no energy. She started taking our spirulina and chlorella. And like within 24 hours, she said her incontinence was gone. She could sleep six or seven hours in a one fell swoop. Her energy was so high that she said, this is what I did today. I went to see my grandson played basketball at school, I went to see my friend at the nursing home, I did a two mile walk, I came home, I cleaned my garage, I painted my kitchen, and at five o'clock I had some dinner. Oh, and she now does CrossFit. This is an 85 year old woman. And so she got a whole new everything, sleeping through the night, not being (inaudible 2:16:00.49). I want to go hang out with her. Like any 85 year old that's doing CrossFit, I want her number. But so this is all she did. This was the same, like when we did that our clinical trial with those veterans, all they did was add spirulina. They did nothing else, changed nothing else. So, so yes, the goal is to have a healthy lifestyle that includes nourishing foods and lots of regular activity, movement of any kind, good sleep. But on the nutrition side, you don't have to throw everything out and start over again. In fact, don't change anything. But definitely add, because honestly, algae has been around for so long, four billion years, I might point out.

The Egyptians used it 2,000 years ago. The Aztecs used it 250 years ago. They've been using it in Asia for over 60 years daily. It's time. It's time for algae to be recognized. There is nothing else in the world with more nutrition, more healing properties, more nutrients that do things that nothing else can do. And so you might as well get on the algae train now so you can learn to determine the difference between a good company with nutritious, safe, clean algae. You can give your pets or your newborns or your grandparents and one that's just not well grown, not well carefully dried, missing lots of the nutrients. You've got to educate yourself so that you can get maximum benefit from your purchase. And I am very proud of what it is that we do and how

how clean, I mean, we sell through doctors offices. We do third-party lab tests. I couldn't live without this stuff. I take it every single day. I couldn't imagine a day without algae.

Ashley James (02:17:56.148)

I introduced this back when we first did our first interview years ago to one of my best friends who to this day orders on a regular basis. And she said without a doubt, she noticed a remarkable improvement in her hair, skin and nails like night and day. And now she's already very healthy. This woman is gorgeous and, and she's listening probably. But she noticed night and day improvement and also, energy, feeling healthier. But she will not be without this stuff because she said absolutely better hair, skin and nails. And of course, when we look better on the outside, it means something good to happen on the inside, right? Because that's how the body works. And I've got my bag right here. I've been you've made me want some. I've got my bag.

Catharine Arnston (02:18:52.460)

Because you're mentioning beauty, so we do have a brand of spirulina called Beauty Bits because I found when I started the company, the women didn't like the packaging of the blue spirulina. And I started the company because of my sister having breast cancer. So women's health has always been important to me. And the spirulina has more collagen than collagen powder.

It protects your elastin and your collagen production and it kills bacteria so that you don't get blemishes. So anyways it's very good for skin and hair and I wanted women to like the packaging. So we do have a second spirulina called Beauty Bits. And just again a little sort of side note so there's lots of very expensive creams that have been using extracts of algae in their formulations for at least 20 or 30 years. One that you might know is called La Mer. A small jar that's about the size of a tin. It costs $450,  but they're only putting extracts in there and it's $450. And it's only getting on your face because that's $450 you certainly wouldn't be bathing in it. But when you take algae as it's called an ingestible so you're swallowing it or chewing it. It's a more than extracts. It's the whole deal and it's going to all of your body not just your skin but also your organs, your brain, your cells, your digestion, it improves digestion improves elimination so it's a it amazes me that algae has kind of been around, but in the behind the scenes. And it's sort of like someone who's always been a supporting actor. And it's time for Algae to step up and be recognized as a, as a leading man or leading woman.

Ashley James (02:20:49.586)

Nice. Well, we could talk for many, many hours. I want to do a giveaway for the listeners who stuck it out for almost two and a half hours. I want to reward them. So so tell us the details of the giveaway. I'm going to do it in my Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group. And you let us know what you're giving away and I'll create the giveaway in the group.

Catharine Arnston (02:21:20.060)

Well, because we've spent a lot of time on spirulina and because we have two brands of spirulina, how about we do a large canister of EnergyBits and a large canister of BeautyBits, because they're both spirulina. And the canister is fantastic because it comes with a large bag of tablets inside. And you open the bag, put it into the canister. By the way, the canister also comes with a really cute travel tin so you can always carry about 60 tablets with you wherever you go. And when the canister is empty, as you only get a canister once, then you refill it by buying a bag. So the canister is great to put on your counter. It reminds you to take your tablets, because they don't need to be refrigerated or anything. And the packaging is really beautiful. So how about we do that?

And again, remember a full bag that's in these large canisters equals the same nutrition as 551 pounds of vegetables. So I live in a one-bedroom condo, and I think 551 pounds of vegetables would take up all the space in my kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, and eke out into the hallway. So it's a very, very concentrated nutrition.

Just again, they're safe for pets, babies, pregnant women, nursing moms, grandparents, children. Give your child one or two tablets per their age. So if they're six, you could give them three or six a day.

Ashley James (02:23:01.616)

But you can give them more. I've like just handed the bag to my son and he eats till he is done. Sometimes he'll just eat six. Sometimes he'll eat 20. We'll munch on it. You can eat more because you can't overdo it because it's like you said, it's a crop. You can't overdo it. But especially if you're budgeting, you can just give five or six to a child.

Catharine Arnston (02:23:25.298)

Yeah, I was at a chiropractic conference about four years ago and this chiropractor, I'm trying to remember his name anyways, he's a heart surgeon, his wife is a chiropractor. Anyways, they brought their little daughter, she was I think maybe 16 months, no taller than maybe two feet max, probably weighed 40 pounds if that, 30 pounds. Anyways, they've been feeding her our algae, spirulina chlorella, since she was born.

This little girl, and I have pictures of her, she's absolutely adorable, maybe I'll remember to send them to you, Ashley. She came over to my table, and she started eating our chlorella. She came back probably five times, whole handfuls, just shoved them down her mouth. She had the green on the sides of her mouth. She was making me so proud. In the space of probably two minutes, she must have consumed at least a hundred tablets. This is a year and a half child that was like maybe a foot and a half. I don't have kids so I can't figure out the weight. But I finally said, I think she's probably had enough. But they were fine with it. And so to your point, you can have as much as you want. It's very, very concentrated nutrition. So we always start people with smaller amounts just because if you have been eating a bad diet, it's a lot of nutrition to hit your body with if you suddenly chow down 50 or 60 tablets. But after a while, you get so used to it that you love the energy. You will notice when you stop eating spirulina. Your energy level will plummet. Your mind just doesn't function.

Ashley James (02:25:02.276)

It's no just to preface this you just go back to the way you were you just don't realize if you eat it and you're feeling great and then you stop eating it it's not that you go worse it's you just you go oh my gosh I can't believe that's how I used to feel. Yeah, it's not like you stop eating it and then there's like negative effects of being off of it. But just like it's amazing how we walk around.

Catharine Arnston (02:25:39.246)

Well, it's like putting gas in your car. When you don't have gas in your car, your car doesn't work. When you put gas back in your car, your car works. So think of spirulina in particular, it’s the equivalent of gas for your car, very high test gas or electricity, electricity even better.

Ashley James (02:25:42.794)

Love it. So you essentially have three products on your site. And we've talked about this in the other episodes. You have chlorella and it's packaged in different packages because sometimes people would like a caniste,r with like a bag or there's a few different colors because you notice that women didn't want a masculine bag. They wanted a feminine bag. And I'm not one of those kind of women. I don't care what color the bag is. I'm it's like the good stuff's inside the bag. I don't care what the bag looks like, but there's some women who just  want it to not look like their husband's chlorella. I don't know. And so their's more elegant, so that you could have this beautiful canister on like a cookie jar, basically on your counter reminding you to take it and that's great. I'm so no frills. I'm like, throw me the bag, I'm gonna shove them in my mouth, just give me the good stuff. But some people like the good look. 

Catharine Arnston (02:26:35.518)

Yeah. And I'm very high frills. 

Ashley James (02:26:38.324)

And that's great. I appreciate women who are. I appreciate that. That's not me, but that's cool. So, I mean, it's so beautiful how there's this gorgeous spectrum of femininity. In our femininity, we can be no frills and we can be all frills and then we get anywhere in between. So, you have three products. You have Chlorella, you have…

Catharine Arnston (02:27:04.316)

Well, we actually have two. Spirulina and Chlorella. Boom.

Ashley James (02:27:06.992)

Right, but the third one is the combination of the two.

Catharine Arnston (02:27:09.068)

Yes, so there's two spirulina, BeautyBits and EnergyBits. They're just packaged differently, but they're both spirulina. Then there's the chlorella, which we call RecoveryBits, because it helps you recover your health, recover your gut, recover from drinking, recover from sports, recover from day. Very healing, very detoxing, really builds your immune system. And we didn't talk much about the immune system, but the mitochondria health and your immune system are the two things that work equally powerfully to keep you healthy. But they do different things. So chlorella is the other part and that's the RecoveryBits. And then we have a fourth brand that's called VitalityBits, which is a blend of the spirulina and chlorella. And we did that because some people just want simplicity. They don't want to have to think about spirulina in the morning and chlorella at night. So, this way they just take both the VitalityBits in the morning and they take it at night. They just one stop shop. And one thing I didn't mention, which I should, is because there's so much nutrition in both of them, especially spirulina, it can replace many other things that you already have, like a multivitamin, fish oil, Coq10, biotin for your hair, vegetables even. So it's not that you're gonna spend more money, you'll actually end up spending less because there's less things to track, fewer expiry dates, by the way, the algae last are expired dates usually three years and it never actually goes bad.

Ashley James (02:28:39.120)

It does not, because I have found partially used bags, like in a gym bag somewhere. And I'm like, oh, that was from five years ago or something like that's from many, many years ago. And then I eat them. I'm like, that doesn't taste sale. This tastes great. So I've had that experience where I'll find like a partially used up bag of EnergyBits to RecoveryBits. And I'm like, well, we're just going to keep eating these ones. And it's great. Yeah. Just keep going.

Catharine Arnston (02:29:06.097)

So it does replace a lot of things so you ultimately will save money. Remember if you took 10 a day, it's only a dollar a day. With cancer rates, heart disease, Alzheimer's escalating, no slowdown in the foreseeable future, you just have to be very proactive and protective of your health. This is hand-to-hand combat.Take control over your life. Don't hand it off to the medical community, which as we talked before, I mean, I don't want to bash the medical community because they're very important in certain situations, accidents, major surgeries, but the prevention side of wellness is not their strength. And so things like sleep and nutrition are. And so algae is the best nutrition you can ever put in your body and by the way the chlorella even helps you sleep. So prevention is where the action is and whatever age you are whether you're 25 or 55 I tell people it's never too late to feel great. 

Ashley James (02:30:16.682)

I love it. Well, and to do a 30 day challenge, get a bag of chlorella, get a bag of spirulina, use coupon code LTH is in Learn to Health at energybits.com. Of course, these links are going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com. And then do a 30 day challenge and check. Tell us about see how you like it.

In our Facebook group, the Learn to Health Facebook group, when this goes live, I'm going to make a post asking, “What is your favorite thing you learned from today's episode?” And then I'm going to pick a winner. Actually, I have my son do it. I'll give it a few weeks to fill in, cause everyone takes their own time to listen to each episode. And then, after a few weeks, I'm going to have my son pick the winner. And of course, regardless of when you're listening to this, cause it could be five years from now that you're listening to this, jump in the Facebook group, read the comments, maybe someone else learned something that you didn't or you can learn from other people's comments. And also jump in the Facebook group and share what your experiences have been with taking the EnergyBits and the RecoveryBits and let us know what health changes you noticed. Like I was really surprised that my friend was like, “My hair, skin and nails are absolutely amazing! And I think there was one point where she stopped eating it and then she noticed her hair eventually just became lifeless again and thinner and not great. And then she started eating again. She's like, “Oh yeah, I remembered, I really like these!” And she's like, “Now I'm never without them because I really notice a difference in hair, skin and nails.” And I'd never noticed that because my thing was detox. I take the chlorella for heavy metal detox and I really notice a difference. Like hugely, huge. I'll feel, I'll be in like a very toxic state and then I'll take them and I'll just feel it sucking it out of me. Like it's a natural key later. I'll just feel it sucking it out of me and I will eat them in conjunction with sauna therapy and I'll also take them when I'm really hungry but I'm also really busy and I don't have time for a meal. I'll just pop some in my mouth. Or like I said before, when we're just sitting around and we feel like we wanna snack and we wanna chew something and it's salty and it's just the best. And I smile ear to ear watching my family eat these instead of junk food. Not that we have junk food in our house, but we could. 

Catharine Arnston (02:32:40.711)

Yes, and we'll get you some more. we probably have to wrap up, but one thing I do want to mention is, and hardly ever anybody talks about it, is constipation. Whether, if you're eating a lot of bread and sugar, you're going to have a slower digestion because the bacteria suck those things up and slow everything down, which causes you to be constipated. If you are on any kind of medications or antibiotics because they wipe out all the healthy bacteria which again allows the bad bacteria to flourish, and the bad bacteria eat all your food and slow down your digestion and also just when you're older and so you're not moving as much in many cases that causes constipation and when you're traveling i mean the list is endless. Chlorella clears that up for you. 

This is another reason why we want you to take the chlorella, which is called RecoveryBits, before bed because it will work through all the stuff, the junk in your trunk, and the chlorophyll and the other nutrients in chlorella will stimulate what's called peristalsis and magnesium also stimulates that, so that's another thing you can do if you are constipated. But there's magnesium in both the algae. But it does help with that.

Like I said, it's something a lot of people don't talk about, but it's more common than you believe. So that's another sort of benefit for Chlorella, because I know we spent most of the time talking about its sister, Spirulina. So they're both amazing. So, anyway.

Ashley James (02:34:21.163)

I love it. I love it. That's so great. I hope I hope everything's okay in Boston. I feel like the entire interview, I've heard nothing but sirens in the background. I just want to like call up Boston, be like, you okay, Boston? 

Catharine Arnston (02:34:32.094)

Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Well, I live right beside Mass General Hospital. So, the ambulances normally close off their sirens by the time they get here. I'm sorry about that. 

Ashley James (02:34:41.166)

Oh my goodness. No, I was just thinking was there some kind of major emergency? Oh my goodness. When I listened to podcasts when I'm driving and if there's like that background sound, like looking everywhere. So I hope the listeners weren't like driving around listening, going, oh, is there a siren nearby? Oh, but no, and it's not your fault. I mean, other than you chose to live near a hospital, but that's what we get, right? For living in the beautiful city of Boston, right? That's what we get. Oh my goodness. It's been wonderful having you on the show again. And I can't wait to have you back.

Please come back when you earn your PhD, after all the sifting through the data of your study, when that's published, I want you back. Anytime you've got major findings, I want you back. Here's your passion and your compassion, right? You have both. You've got compassion in one hand and passion in the other, and you want to bring this information out to the world. It's not just about you selling a product to us. 

Catharine Arnston (02:35:48.915)

No, I've never wanted to be a vendor. I just want to help people, but algae is the best and easiest way to do it and scientifically proven. It slows me, it upsets me a little bit that I can't get this information out faster. So thank you actually for helping me.

Ashley James (02:36:04.857)

So absolutely, and everyone share this information with those you care about. And what I get from Catherine, her and I have known each other for a few years now, which is really cool, because you know what, when I first met you was through Shark Tank. I watched that episode live, and I despise Mark Cuban for his comments that I still remember that episode. Yes, you were there.

Catharine Arnston (02:36:29.081)

Oh my god!

Ashley James (02:36:31.617)

And then it was a few years later that we connected. And so I've gotten to know Catherine over the years. And what I get is that you brought EnergyBits to market because there's a need and there's no ethical company doing it for us. And you're the one going well, because there's so many unethical companies selling it cheaply that are harming people. We're not getting the benefits because of the way they're processing it. And you're standing up going, no, this is such a powerful superfood that has so many healing properties that could really change people's lives but we have to invest in the way to farm it and to process it so that we maintain the quality and we test for purity, so you do all that and it costs a lot of money to test every batch and make sure that everything's clean and everything's well done. So we're passing on our dollars to make sure we get a superior product. And I really appreciate you. And I know 100 years from now, you and I won't be here, but your legacy will live on and that you have been an early adapter to spread this information. And I always describe it as this visual of a little ripple becoming a tidal wave, right? So this little ripple of information needs to go out, but the listeners, the person that's going to make it grow into the tidal wave to become a roar, to help people and spread it. So listeners share this information with those you care about and share it with those you don't care about. You know, Jesus talks about forgiving our enemies. You should be sharing this. Share this with your enemies and then make them wonder if they're your enemies or your friends. They're going to be like, wait a second, she shared it with me. Am I a friend or an enemy? But forgive your enemies. Share this information with them as well. We should all want to get better together. Thank you so much for coming on the show and listeners. Please check out energybits.com, use coupon code LTH and come into the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group and join in the giveaway and in the conversation. Yes! And Catherine, I can't wait to have you back on the show. It's been such a pleasure.

Catharine Arnston (02:38:47.669)

Yes. Thank you Ashley.

We'll get that giveaway going. Yes.

Thank you. Algae is the answer. So just give it a try.

 

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Recommended Book by Catharine Arnston

Vitamin K2 And The Calcium Paradox by Kate Rheaume – Bleue

Recommended Links:

Learn True Health – Episode 357

Learn True Health – Episode 265

Learn True Health – Episode 218

Learn True Health – Episode 227

Downloadable Information About Chlorella And Spirulina:

why is our spirulina and chlorella the safest and best

mothers milk and spirulina-have the same nutritional profile chart and explanation 3 pages

chlorophyll content in sprirulina and chlorella compared to other vegetables- one page (2)

Vitamin K2 is found in RECOVERYbits chlorella, helps prevent heart disease, Alzheimer's, and osteoporosis