[00:00:00] Luke: So Catharine, how did you get into the world of algae?

[00:00:04] Catharine: I tell people I didn't pick algae. It picked me. I had a corporate career for 25 years, and then my younger sister in Canada, because I'm Canadian, developed breast cancer. First of all, I want everyone to know she's fines, and she did recover, but this was 15 years ago.

[00:00:23] And as she was preparing for chemotherapy, her oncologist, which is a cancer specialist, told her she needed to change her diet to an alkaline diet because it would be important for her healing. But she didn't tell her what it was or why it was particularly good for her, so my baby sister called me and said, what is this alkaline diet stuff?

[00:00:42] And I had no idea because I'm a business person, but I'm a good researcher, and I love my sister, so I said, I'll find out. And it turned out to be a plant-based diet because of the chlorophyll and the phytonutrients that build your immune system. So I did some research, found out some foods for her to eat, which ones to give up.

[00:00:59] She did go through chemo. She did change her diet. She completely healed, and we celebrate her cancer-free every year. But in the process of helping her, again, this was 13 years ago. I learned about plant-based nutrition, and nobody was talking about plant-based nutrition 13 years ago.

[00:01:16] So I decided it was pretty powerful. Gave up my corporate career, went back to school, studied nutrition, taught plant-based nutrition for a year at corporations and hospitals, trying to get people to eat more vegetables because I knew the science was there to prove how healthy it was, but I learned that it was too much work for most people. They're heavy to carry home from the grocery store. They go bad very quickly. People get indigestion. Kids wouldn't eat them. Husbands wouldn't eat them.

[00:01:43] Luke: I'm one of those husbands.

[00:01:44] Catharine: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was getting all this pushback. People knew what they should do, but there were just too many barriers. So I thought, okay, I need to find something that gives people the nutrition of vegetables without any of the work. I had no idea what it would be, but to start with, I went back to look in a deeper dive with everything I found for my sister.

[00:02:08] It took me months before I circled back to algae, and that's when the miracle happened. Because algae is the most alkaline food in the world. It is the most nutrient-dense food in the world. We have a quote from NASA that says one gram of algae has the same nutrition as a 1,000 grams of vegetables.

[00:02:24] So one to a 1,000. And this is microalgae we're talking about. It's also the most studied food in the world. As you're going to find out, algae is not a supplement. It is a food crop. And about 60,000 studies exist in the PubMeds of the world, and about 40,000 on chlorella confirming all the health benefits we're going to talk about today.

[00:02:47] So it's on solid scientific foundation. The United Nations has endorsed it as the answer to world hunger, spirulina, for 49 years. They had a global conference on it. It's been used for centuries around the world. The Egyptians used it. The Aztecs used it. It's been grown safely and carefully in fresh water in Asia for 60 years.

[00:03:11] It's a multi-billion-dollar agricultural crop in Asia. So that's Japan, Korea, Taiwan. And the only problem with algae here in America was two problems. The quality has been very poor, and we'll talk about that, and I address that, and nobody really knows what it is and why it is-- it's more than just a superfood that you put in your smoothie for extra protein or chlorophyll.

[00:03:34] This stuff literally stops cancer, stops Alzheimer's, stops heart disease, stops and prevents ,or helps you recover from virtually every chronic illness. It's all scientifically proven, but the science has not been shared. Oh, and the most important thing is it comes in these little tiny tablets, they're about the size of a baby aspirin.

[00:03:56] You can have a handful in the morning of spirulina. We'll talk about that. A handful of chlorella in the evening, and in seconds, if you can drink water-- I chew mine because they are chewable-- you can get all the nutrition that you need for your health, for your longevity, to protect you from every single chronic illness in the world.

[00:04:19] But it won't help you if you don't take it. So that's my mission, is to help people understand what algae is, the two different ones we're going to talk about, why they are so powerful, why we need them so desperately right now. By the way, it's also the most eco-friendly sustainable crop in the world, so it's also good for Mother Nature.

[00:04:37] And it's all science-based. You just don't know about it. I tell people algae isn't new. It's just new to you. So I'm here to help you understand what it is, why you need it, and honestly, your life will transform before your very eyes effortlessly.

[00:04:52] Luke: So awesome. I've said this many times on the show when I cover a specific topic where we really niche down on that, that, I can't believe I haven't covered this yet.

[00:05:03] Catharine: That's okay.

[00:05:04] Luke: But it's one of the things that's--

[00:05:05] Catharine: Never too late to feel great. That's what I tell people.

[00:05:08] Luke: Yeah. But I've been using chlorella, spirulina, astaxanthin, blue green algae 20 years, but when I got into it, it was only super health nuts. It was a fringe thing in the back corner of the health food store. But it's just my area of interest and passion. So I've been using it consistently for that whole time with great results and feeling awesome.

[00:05:34] But for some reason, like I said, I just haven't done a show about it, but it usually happens that I'm aware of something, and it's something that's in my day-to-day life, but I'm always waiting for the person who has, a, enough expertise and, b, passion about it. So when I found you--

[00:05:50] Catharine: That would be me.

[00:05:52] Luke: Yeah, and your company ENERGYbits, I was like, this is why I haven't done a show. I'm sure I've interviewed people that know a bit about it, but this seems to be your life's--

[00:06:00] Catharine: I know a lot about it.

[00:06:02] Luke: So I 'm really stoked.

[00:06:04] Catharine: And I'm eager to share. That's the most important part.

[00:06:06] Luke: Awesome. We know how you got into it, and a little overview there. Let's start off and just dive into all things spirulina.

[00:06:15] Catharine: All things algae.

[00:06:16] Luke: Yeah.

[00:06:17] Catharine: Get on the algae train.

[00:06:19] Luke: Also, I think, and I'm sure you've discovered this as you've been sharing this around the world, is that some people probably have somewhat of a negative connotation of algae because you think about, oh, my swimming pool, it grows algae, or there's certain creeks that you don't want to swim in at different times.

[00:06:34] Here in Austin, we'll have warning signs. There's a dangerous algae. Don't let your dog in the water, this kind of thing. So I think we have this relationship with it where we think it's gross and icky, and even in some cases, dangerous. So I'm excited to let people know that not all algae is created equal.

[00:06:52] Catharine: Absolutely not.

[00:06:53] Luke:  But tell us about the history of spirulina and where it came from when people began to use it as a food.

[00:07:00] Catharine: Sure. And before I do that, I just want you to know, poor algae gets the bum rap on those algae blooms because algae only shows up when there are toxins or bacteria in the water. Now, you can't see the toxins or the bacteria, but algae kills and absorbs them. And it does the same thing in your body, as you're going to find out.

[00:07:19] So algae gets the bum rap, but it's the cleanup crew. So it's there to protect you. Yes, it will absorb the toxins, which it does in your body too, so you definitely don't want to go near it because it will be toxic, but it's actually cleaning up the water. And when we talk today about spirulina and chlorella, we are not talking about that kind of algae because that occurs in wild water, and the algae we grow is grown in triple-filtered spring mountain water, and we'll talk about the production process in a minute.

[00:07:51] So algae is actually its own food category. It is not technically a plant. It is not an animal. It's its own food category. And you'll be interested to know that algae, particularly spirulina, which is called a cyanobacteria, because, as you're going to learn, spirulina is definitely not even a plant. It's a bacteria.

[00:08:11] And it was the first life on earth 3.8 billion years ago. Just to bring you up to speed, we humans have been around for, I think, two million years. And algae, especially spirulina, was the first life, not just the first plant. The first life. Before spirulina, Earth was just gas and water. Nobody knows why this single cell organism showed up, but it did, and it's still here.

[00:08:36] So I think there's something spiritual about the fact that it was the first life. And as you'll learn, if we get a chance to talk about it, your mitochondria, which we're going to talk about, which determine your health, evolved directly from cyanobacteria. So pretty crazy stuff.

[00:08:53] So first life on Earth, and is its own food category. And there are two main subcategories within algae. One is called macroalgae, and the other one is microalgae. We're going to talk mostly about microalgae today because that's what spirulina and chlorella are. But let me tell you what macroalgae is.

[00:09:12] So it's that big stringy stuff that washes up on shore, also known as seaweed, or dulse, or kelp. Now seaweed, it's only in the sea, hence the name sea weed, and it is still good for you because it's loaded with fiber and iodine because it comes from the ocean, but it has virtually zero nutrition.

[00:09:33] I used to buy big bags of kelp noodles, and a whole bag would have five calories in it because there's virtually no nutrition. So that's macroalgae, the stringy seaweed. Microalgae, which is what we're talking about today, is virtually the opposite. It has either zero fiber or virtually no fiber compared to seaweed, which is all fiber.

[00:09:54] And it is the most nutrient-dense food in the universe. It's so tiny. It's called microalgae because it's microscopic. You can't see it by your eye. Something like a million cells of microalgae would fit on the head of a pin. So that's why when you consolidate them into these little tablets that we have that are about the size of a baby aspirin, each one of these tiny little tablets has the same nutrition as an entire plate of vegetables.

[00:10:21] And it's got 40 vitamins and minerals, highest protein in the world. Ours is three times the amount of steak. Highest chlorophyll in the world. You see how concentrated nutrition is, and I call it efficient nutrition, and we'll get to that in a minute. So microalgae, very concentrated nutrition, virtually zero fiber, and there's tens of thousands of strains of it. Macroalgae, there's only a few strains. Microalgae is everywhere.

[00:10:50] It's not just in the sea. It's in your swimming pool, as you mentioned, your aquarium, the lakes, the rivers, the streams, the soil. It's also in the soil. But the two that are harvested as food crops are spirulina and chlorella. And these are grown in fresh water. 99% of it is in Asia.

[00:11:13] That's where the entire algae industry started. It actually started in Japan. So whether you go to Costco, or Whole Foods, or Target and buy your spirulina or chlorella there, they're pretty much usually grown in fresh water. You'll find out what distinguishes our brand from those ones, and it's all in the production process because those ones use high heat because they're lower priced, so they have to get to market quickly.

[00:11:36] And the high heat kills some very important nutrients that you want because they kill free radicals. They stop free radical damage in your mitochondria, and they kill cancer cells at night. Those are pretty important things to talk about. So ours have those nutrients in them. But generally, spirulina and chlorella are the two that you see around, and they are harvested as food crops.

[00:12:01] They're known as a superfood because they have so much concentrated nutrition. But as you're going to learn today, I call them super duper foods because it goes way beyond being a superfood, and it will nourish you in ways that nobody knows about because nobody's told you, but I have the science to help you understand it. So that's the two categories, the macro and microalgae. And then within micro, you've got the spirulina and chlorella, which are harvested as agricultural crops.

[00:12:32] Luke: In the production of chlorella and spirulina, the commercial production, what does it look like in the vats or the tanks where it's growing? Is it like it would look on a fish tank, a slimy film that's on the edges of its container?

[00:12:48] Catharine: Yeah, slimy is probably a good word to describe it. Spirulina is simpler to grow. Chlorella is very complex. And so it looks a little bit like the seaweed, but then they-- so we grow ours in Taiwan, which is known as the gold standard for algae. The certifications are harder to get, and it's a very big industry.

[00:13:14] Most algae, unfortunately, that you find in any of these stores, we don't sell ours through mass retailer because it's physician grade and such high quality. So we sell only through biohacking centers, longevity centers. We're now working with the IV drip community, chiropractors, and some prestige retailers, but it's because the water we grow it in is triple-filtered.

[00:13:39] This is very important because algae, like we talked about at the very beginning with the pond scum thing, will absorb whatever's in the water. So if the water is not clean, very carefully clean, it will absorb whatever's there. And so a lot of people were eating algae that grew in Klamath Lake. And I have scientific papers--

[00:14:00] Luke: I was going to ask you about that, the Klamath Lake blue green algae.

[00:14:03] Catharine: Yeah, please don't use that.

[00:14:04] Luke: I used to take that. It was frozen. It was in a frozen thing, and then you would have to put it in the refrigerator and thaw it out a little bit. It was very volatile and prone to spoiling. But I always wondered about that because of-- I wasn't even thinking about water pollution, but just the air pollution.

[00:14:19] Catharine: There are microtoxins in wild bodies of water, so it's the lakes, the rivers, the oceans. You just can't keep them out. It took me two years to find a lab that tests for microtoxins, so I think we're the only company-- we do third party lab tests for nutrition, and metals, and all the other toxins, but we do a separate set of labs for microtoxins.

[00:14:42] Of course we never have any because it's grown in triple-filtered spring mountain water, but please, whoever's listening, do not ever eat any algae that comes from an ocean or a lake because you just can't keep them out of the algae. It's impossible. And most people don't test for them. So the quality of the water is very, very important.

[00:15:03] There's different strains of algae, by the way, just like there's different strains of beef. You have Kobe beef, and then you have, if you even want to call it beef, McDonald's beef. We use the higher quality strains, so there starts with the higher concentration of nutrition.

[00:15:19] And then the most important thing that you need to know is that we do not use high heat to dry it, and virtually everybody else does. And I want to underscore this because growing algae is not like growing broccoli or cauliflower, which are pretty standard things to grow.

[00:15:38] Growing algae is more like growing wine, and the production process determines all the different flavorings and elements in it, as well, actually, as the angle of the sun. This is one of the reasons why Taiwan is known for having the highest concentration or quality. It's the sun angle as well as the production processes they go through.

[00:16:02] There is some algae grown in Hawaii, but it tends to be milder, again, because of that angle of the sun. I plan to grow it in America when we're bigger, and I drew a line on the globe from Taiwan to see where it would get me in America, and it's smack dab in the middle of Florida. And I'm actually moving to Florida the next year. It'll be more where the orange groves are. It needs to be in a subtropical environment.

[00:16:33] And because algae grows in water, you can put it anywhere on land where you're not taking land away from other crops because you create this ponds of water. There is algae now being grown indoors in glass tubes, just to let people know. And they refer to that as fermented algae.

[00:16:54] I don't know whey they call it-- and it tends to be a little milder, not as concentrated in the nutrients, but ultimately, that's probably where the algae industry will have to go. Because as the United Nations indicated, it has the highest concentrated protein in the world. And to feed the world, we will need to probably start growing it in those glass tubes because there's some grown in Iceland, for example.

[00:17:20] It's underground. Six floors of glass tubes being fed with LED lights to grow this algae. Now, they grow theirs primarily for omega-3 purposes. There's other companies that grow it just for the phycocyanin, which is the blue pigment. We'll talk about the healing properties of that in a minute.

[00:17:38] So there's different methodologies. The world is waking up to algae. It's been around, as I said, for billions of years, used as an industrial crop for over 60 years in Asia. But because, and we'll address this in a minute, our food supply is so damaged the levels of chronic disease are on a trajectory that's unacceptable to anybody.

[00:18:00] And it's primarily because we're missing critical nutrients and have too many toxins. And as you're going to find out, algae addresses both of those, hands down, better than anything else in the world. We just need to get it into people. So we do grow ours in the-- I'm a purist the way Mother Nature intended it to be, but who knows?

[00:18:20] Maybe one day, as we get bigger and need to get this to more people, that could be a methodology that we use. So that fact that we don't use high heat to dry it and we would continue doing that however we grew it in the water is essential for preserving the nutrients. And I can get into that now, or we can get into it later. And then what we do is we package it in UV-protected packaging bags and canisters.

[00:18:47] Luke: Which people watching the video can see your--

[00:18:49] Catharine: Yeah, so this is important because light will pull the chlorophyll out of the algae. The funny thing about algae is that we are required by the FDA to put an expiry date on it. So it's usually three years. So it's a pretty good, extended lifetime. But technically, algae never goes bad.

[00:19:08] So you could literally have this for 10 or 20 years, still would be fine. May not taste very good. And here's why. Algae is the most interesting crop. Any other crop, tomatoes, corn, wheat, if the growing conditions deteriorate, like no sun or no rain, they die. In fact, I think they had too much rain in the California area right now, and so the poor wine growers are panicking.

[00:19:33] But anyways, if the growing conditions deteriorate, any other crop will die. Not algae. It will just go dormant indefinitely until the growing conditions return. And then it will grow again. And a great example of this is the National Geographic sent some scientists up to Antarctic a number of years ago-- they wrote it up in a paper-- to do some testing on the ice.

[00:19:57] And they took some ice samples that they carbon dated to be a billion and a half years old, and in one of them, there was some algae in the ice. So they took it back to their offices, and out of curiosity, they put it in a Petri dish with some water. Darn things started growing again.

[00:20:14] And so because we don't use high heat, ours is raw, so it is a raw food, and it will grow again. And it will preserve the nutrients. Everybody else's isn't raw because they use high heat, so it kills it. But crazy about that.

[00:20:31] Luke: That's so interesting.

[00:20:31] Catharine: And just another little side note on algae, the passage where Jesus was feeding people manna from heaven and kept them alive, they now think he may have been scraping algae off the rocks because the algae, when it's on the rocks, it's exposed to sun, so the sun pulls out the chlorophyll, so it's just this white dusty stuff on the rocks.

[00:20:57] But it still has all the protein, all the polysaccharides, all the nutrition. So yeah, I don't know. There's stories about algae that go way back, and that's why I get so excited to tell people about it, so that you can start introducing it to your life, and to your body, to your family. Pets love it. Because we've got to do something about this disaster, this crisis that we're in in terms of our health, the issues of chronic diseases, our environmental issues. And algae is the answer for just about everything. It's pretty cool.

[00:21:33] Luke: That's so interesting about the fact that it doesn't spoil. And I didn't know that, but when we moved from California to this house, I have cupboards full of supplements, and super foods, and stuff, and I don't remember where I got it, but I had a big old jug of spirulina powder.

[00:21:51] And I put it in one of those little containers that sucks the air out of it. Push button on the top. You saw it downstairs. But for those listening-- and it was just in boxes in the garage for a year and a half in Texas heat, and cold, and everything else. And then when I unpacked, I almost threw it away because I figured it'd be bad.

[00:22:08] And I opened it up, and it smelled exactly like it smelled when I bought it. And I've been eating it for a year because I had a big old jug of it, and I've never had any indigestion, or burping, or any sign that it was spoiled, but I was just winging it without actually knowing. So that's interesting.

[00:22:25] Catharine: Now you know. God bless Mother Nature

[00:22:27] Luke: But that probably lasted because it wasn't exposed to light, though, because saw it was in a clear container. And you're like, you don't want to put it in a clear container, but it's been in boxes or cupboards. It's never been left out. But if you left spirulina or chlorella and it's raw, stay out to dry in the sun, it would just--

[00:22:46] Catharine: It will eventually go white.

[00:22:47] Luke: Okay, so all the chlorophyll and stuff would just evaporate out of it.

[00:22:50] Catharine: Although it's interesting because spirulina, we'll get to this in a minute, is a blue green algae and it has two pigments in it. The blue one is called phycocyanin, which is spelled P-H-Y-C-O-Y-N-I-N. You would never run across it in your daily life, so it's a bit of a mouthful. And we'll get to that hopefully soon because phycocyanin has these remarkable properties if it's not heated with high heat over 114 degrees Fahrenheit.

[00:23:19] It is proven to kill cancer cells. So I've never left spirulina out in the sun because I'm wondering whether-- I think the blue would probably be pulled out as well. So you'd be, stuck with something that was just a bunch of white tablets, but all the other nutrients would still be in there.

[00:23:37] Yeah. And by the way, that blue pigment exists nowhere else in nature. Not in blueberries, nothing. It's only in spirulina, and it's a antioxidant as well as. As I say, we'll get into some geeky science later on.

[00:23:55] Luke: I definitely want to do that. With the phycocyanin, I was aware years ago using spirulina, if you pour some of the powder in a glass, it'll definitely have a pretty strong blue pigment. And then maybe if you rinse the glass out in your sink afterward, you're like, God, it's like blue dye. And then I noticed a few years ago, different companies started selling just the pure blue phycocyanin powder outside of algae. What's the deal with that?

[00:24:22] Catharine: I'll have to check into it because I've noticed that as well. I think there was a period a few years ago, people were decorating all their cakes with the blue from the phycocyanin, so yes, they do come up with powder. But again, if they've used high heat, and whenever you're buying any of those powders that are mixed, I won't name any of them, but usually spirulina and chlorella are the first two ingredients, but they have to use high heat to mix them.

[00:24:54] So you're still getting some of the nutrients, but high heat, and I've got the scientific papers that show, deactivates the phycocyanin from this ability to kill cancer cells. So I tell people, why would you do that? It's like shooting blanks. Yes, you're getting half the value of the algae from the nutrition, and you're getting the protein, but man, with cancer rising the way it is, and we all have cancer cells in our bodies, but if you have a strong immune system and if you have strong mitochondria, they keep them at bay.

[00:25:29] But these days, nobody has strong mitochondria, and virtually nobody has a strong immune system, so that's unlikely. So we all need this more than ever now, and the only way you're going to get it is if you do get spirulina that has not been heated, and that's pretty much-- I don't know about anybody else.

[00:25:51] I know it's just us, although you did mention frozen spirulina. Frozen spirulina will also have active phycocyanin because it has not been exposed to high heat. So you're safe on that. Just find out where they're growing it. Not a lake, I hope.

[00:26:05] Luke: Yeah. The water and the air. That's funny about the Klamath Lake thing. Like I said, I always wondered about that, the quality of the water. Because the thing about it is you think, oh, it's a lake. It's natural water. It's got to be clean. But there's all sorts of other inputs, brooks, and streams, and runoff, and things like that that are going into the lake. So if you look at it, even if it's crystal clear, you don't really know.

[00:26:28] Catharine: Like I said, when an algae shows up, people blame the algae. It's just there because there were toxins and bacteria there. And it does that in your body. That's why I call algae the cleanup crew, whether it's on a beach or in your body. And the chlorella is the better cleanup crew. It's actually a detoxing, chelating algae.

[00:26:49] And we'll get into some deeper detail about that, but spirulina, as you're going to find out, is the one that protects and nourishes your mitochondria. And those of you who don't know what mitochondria are, they determine everything to do with your health. And they get damaged as you get aged. They decline in numbers as you age. I don't know if this is when you want me to go into this.

[00:27:15] Luke: You go into anything whenever you want.

[00:27:17] Catharine: Okay. We're going to do a deep dive on spirulina, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:27:20] Luke: You can go stream of consciousness on my show. I have my notes, but I rarely follow them.

[00:27:26] Catharine: When I started this, I didn't have a science background, although I now call myself a citizen scientist. And I encourage all of you to think of yourselves that way as well because the knowledge is around. It is available. It did take me 13 years of digging around, studying PubMed articles.

[00:27:45] I've probably read 3, 000 at this point. I didn't know anything, but I just am determined to find out why algae is so powerful, and why ours works better than anyone else's. I've done all the heavy lifting for you, so you don't need to do all that, but you could if you wanted to, and I'm all about empowering people to find the truth.

[00:28:04] And honestly, when you start taking algae, you know you've hit the truth. This stuff is amazing. So I feel like they're my children, and I'm so proud of them. But they're not my children. They're Mother Nature's child. I'm just the spokesperson for algae. I make it easy for you to understand, and I grow it in a way that it carefully preserves its nutrients. So I'm the caregiver of algae for you.

[00:28:31] Both algae do amazing things for you, but if you could only choose one, I would say go with spirulina for a whole bunch of reasons. First of all, it was the first life on earth, and chlorella evolved from it. Also, every single person in the world, from newborns to your grandparents and pets, can digest spirulina.

[00:28:51] Chlorella, there's a teeny, tiny number who might have some detox reactions, but spirulina is not a detoxing algae. In fact, in Japan, I read that if babies are born and they would die because they can't digest mother's breast milk, they have tried everything to keep these babies alive. The only thing seems to be spirulina and water. And I was curious about that. And I did a deep dive on that and found out that the amino profile of spirulina is virtually identical to mother's breast milk, the same aminos in the same proportions.

[00:29:23] Luke: Really?

[00:29:23] Catharine: Yes. And it also has something called GLA, which is an essential fatty acid called gamma linolenic acid, which technically is an omega-6. And you go, ooh, bad omega-6. And normally, I would agree with you, but it's only when omega-6 is heated that it becomes inflammatory. And because we don't use high heat on ours, it behaves like an omega3 -because it has not been exposed to high heat. And proof that unheated GLA is good for you is because the only place that has more of it is mother's breast milk.

[00:29:56] And GLA is in there because the baby's brain doubles or triples in size within the first couple of years. And GLA is one of the critical nutrients, essential fatty acids that helps with that brain development. We all need that kind of brain development, but you can't get it from mother's breast milk after the age of two, so spirulina is your number two. And again, should be taken by every single person in the world.

[00:30:21] Luke: I didn't realize you could feed it to newborns and little ones. That's really cool.

[00:30:25] Catharine: There's no fiber. It's a bacteria. So zero--

[00:30:29] Luke: You know what would be a great idea? Maybe you've already thought of this. I don't have babies yet, but one thing I'm pretty aware of is the lack of healthy formula on the market. The formula is like peanut oil, and it's just crazy toxic. But wouldn't it be cool to make a formula with spirulina?

[00:30:47] Catharine: Oh, totally.

[00:30:47] Luke: I don't know if the FDA would let you do it, but--

[00:30:47] Catharine: You have no idea the things that I have planned, but we are still such a small company, and we're still trying to get knowledge of algae and properly grown algae out to the world. But I'm 13 years in, and I've probably got another 13 years ahead of me, but I'll share my age with you, anyone who's on YouTube.

[00:31:07] I'm 67, so I'm not exactly a 30-year-old, although a lot of people think I'm in my 40s because my skin is so great. And it's because I eat so much algae because you're going to find out it has more collagen than collagen powder. It has the antioxidants that stop free radical damage of your organs, of your brain, and of your skin. I don't do any botox. This can replace botox.

[00:31:34] Luke: Your skin does look great. You're 67?

[00:31:35] Catharine: 67.

[00:31:36] Luke: Yeah, whoever is--

[00:31:37] Catharine: I'm in ching towards 70, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:31:39] Luke: Whoever is watching the video, no lie. No lie. I know most people listen to the audio, but yeah, your skin does look great.

[00:31:47] Catharine: Great in general, but certainly for my age. And spirulina is the one that has the most collagen, the most protein, so it's very, very healing for your joints, for your skin. And also you need protein for muscle development, and particularly as you get older, you need that protein so your muscles don't atrophy, and get into scarpini, I think is the term, but you need healthy protein anyways at any time.

[00:32:24] And not everybody has time to cook proper meals or the budget to have grass-fed animal protein. And if you look on our packaging, you'll see, we generally recommend, for maintenance purposes, 10 tablets of spirulina in the morning, or throughout the day, or before a workout, and 10 tablets of chlorella in the evening because it's a detoxing algae.

[00:32:45] But if you can get to 30 a day, it's much better, or even more. And if you have a health condition, God, you need at least 30 of the spirulina or more. And we'll walk you through that later on, but spirulina is known for being nourishing, and energizing, and it gives you energy at the cellular level as well as in the moment because it has 18 of the 20 aminos, including the nine your body can't make, so it's a complete protein.

[00:33:13] And it's very high in B vitamins, including B12, by the way. And no, it's not an analog B12. It's the real deal. So the B vitamins convert all the aminos into energy for you so that your brain wakes up, your body wakes up, and most importantly, because it has these antioxidants. We'll talk about a few of them. Chlorophyll, phycocyanin, the blue pigment, superoxide dismutase, also known as SOD, a little bit of melatonin.

[00:33:45] These are antioxidants that get into the inner membrane of the mitochondria to protect it and stop it from free radical damage. And because it does that, it improves the amount of ATP, which is cellular energy. Cellular energy is like money. When you have more money, you can do more things, and you have more choices.

[00:34:11] When you have more cellular energy, which is called ATP, you can do more things, and you have more choices. Cellular energy is where the rubber hits the road, and it comes from healthy mitochondria, but the mitochondria, and I'll get into it a little bit deeper in a minute, are constantly being damaged, particularly after the age of 30 and 40.

[00:34:35] And isn't that interesting that that's when chronic disease really starts to take hold, is after we hit 40? And you say to yourself, at least I said to myself, there's got to be a connection here because the mitochondria, as I mentioned earlier, evolved from cyanobacteria.

[00:34:54] So these cyanobacteria were by themselves for a billion years, and they generated ATP and released oxygen on earth, and then larger aerobic cells could grow, but they didn't generate ATP very well. So they actually absorbed the original cell, the cyanobacteria, but didn't digest it, and instead, they co-existed.

[00:35:17] It's called endosymbiotic theory. Proven by science, this is the history of the evolution of life. The big cell that was aerobic absorbed the small cyanobacteria, which was anaerobic, and became mitochondria. Your mitochondria came from cyanobacteria. The reason I mention that is because when that absorption happened-- all of your cells, by the way, have what's called a lipid membrane.

[00:35:43] That is a fancy way of saying fats. Your cells have fat membranes around them, and this allows, and you want them to be healthy. This is why you need vitamin E and D3, and also, by the way, chlorophyll, which is a fat-based pigment, to keep the cell membranes healthy and moist so that nutrients can get in and toxins can get out.

[00:36:04] So when that original cyanobacteria was absorbed by the larger bacteria to become mitochondria, a lipid membrane was put around it because it's like all other cells, but that first membrane that was there from the very beginning didn't disappear. It's still there. And so your mitochondria are the only cell in your body that have two membranes.

[00:36:27] First one is the lipid membrane, which has these things called porins. Think of them as windows. They're open to allow nutrients, and antioxidants, and proteins in, and outer toxins out. But your inner membrane of the mitochondria doesn't have any of those. It's like an ICE unit.

[00:36:45] Virtually nothing can get into that inner membrane of the mitochondria, which is where the ATP is produced. Not drugs, not most antioxidants, blueberries, vitamin C, vitamin E. No, nothing. The only things that I have found that can get into that inner membrane happen to be in the largest concentration in algae. Glutathione, superoxide dismutase, and chlorophyll. Hmm, no surprise because mitochondria came from--

[00:37:14] Luke: Wow, that's--

[00:37:15] Catharine: Pretty interesting, right?

[00:37:17] Luke: That's some cool research.

[00:37:18] Catharine: And usually, I these visuals, and I'll send you the deck so that your community can go to your site and see all these visuals.

[00:37:26] Luke: I would appreciate that. And for those listening, we're going to put the show notes at lukestorey.com/algae because you brought all of these visual presentations, and I'm like, ah, most people are going to be listening. So let's just give everyone who wants it a download at lukestorey.com/algae.

[00:37:42] Catharine:  I want to assure you. I have buttoned this up so carefully for you because I want you to understand why you're getting sick, why you are fatigued, why you have brain fog, why children-- there's lots of reasons why children are getting on this spectrum, but what you can do about it, and what you can do about it that is natural, healthy, and effortless.

[00:38:06] And it's algae tablets. And I'll walk you through. I've laid the groundwork for you to understand that mitochondria are like a fortress, that nothing can get in there except these antioxidants that happen to be in algae. And why is this so important? You all know that you have your regular DNA. There's about 22,000 of them. It's called nuclear DNA.

[00:38:27] And your DNA is found in your cell. You probably would never know, but your mitochondria have their own DNA. And there's only 37 of them compared to 22,000 of your regular DNA. And you think to yourself, huh, how could 37 little mitochondria DNA be important?

[00:38:47] Let me tell you. They are like the air controller at an airport. Your mitochondrial DNA control everything. They control your regular DNA. They control the communication of your cells. They control everything, the healthy cell death. And so when your mitochondria DNA get damaged, and they do, and I'll tell you why in a second, this is what causes your health to decline.

[00:39:14] This is what leads to disease. This is what leads to rapid aging. This is, ultimately, the source of everything. So protecting your mitochondria and helping them not be damaged is your number one goal. And I'm going to give you some easy tips, some of it relates to algae, some of it is just lifestyle, on how to do that.

[00:39:35] And I'll do a little segue because there's a great book that came out about a year ago on brain health because this is a big issue right now. The book is by Dr. Chris Palmer. He is a psychiatrist at the Harvard Medical School. And his book is called Brain Energy. And he's also a practicing psychiatrist.

[00:39:55] The whole book is about how all brain issues, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, doesn't matter what it is, all are based on the fact that your mitochondria are damaged. And why is that? It's because your brain has the highest concentration of mitochondria in your entire body.

[00:40:12] There are two million mitochondria per cell in your brain. Per cell. Just think about it. That's a pretty packed cell. The next highest, by the way, are women's eggs. And after that is your heart and your muscles, but two million per cell. So when they're damaged, one of the first things that goes is your brain functioning.

[00:40:36] And as you're going to find out, spirulina heals your mitochondria, protects your mitochondria, protects everything, telomeres, everything. So anyone listening who has any Alzheimer's in their family, any anxiety-- who doesn't have anxiety these days? The easiest, fastest, proven, safest, food-based way to get things working again is to take spirulina, algae, but please be sure it's either frozen spirulina or hopefully ours because we've maintained and preserved the nutrients that are going to help you. And I'm going to tell you what those are.

[00:41:08] So back to the story. Mitochondria, lockdown, two membranes-- nothing can get in there, not even drugs-- except these few antioxidants. And so what's happening is the reason why your mitochondria are getting so damaged-- I know it's like a mystery movie, right? Oh my god, how are the mitochondria going to survive? What can we do?

[00:41:26] The reason they're getting so damaged is because we talk about this production of ATP. It is magical, but there is a process, and the key part is this thing called the electron transport chain. When you eat food, your body digests it, it goes into glucose, then it goes to your cells.

[00:41:44] And there's a couple of stages where it gets turned into electrons. And then these electrons have to be moved along this thing called the electron transport chain. And the final stage is this generation of ATP cellular energy. So think of these stations like you would a relay race. But instead of the runners, you have these four molecules. And instead of a baton being passed, it's electrons being passed.

[00:42:09] And also, you could think of them as hydro towers. If the runners were close together as they pass the baton, it would be an easy pass off, and they can get to the finish line. We all use cell phones. If you're in an area where the cell towers are far apart from one another, it drops your signal, right? But when they're close together, the signals are strong. The same thing happens in this thing called the electron transport chain.

[00:42:35] Because when you get all these electrons from your food that need to go along this little relay race kind of thing, if there's too many free radicals, it damages the mitochondria making this energy, and those stations start separating, and separating, and separating.

[00:42:53] So instead of the electrons being passed to generate the ATP, they escape. They leak out. And what happens when they leak out? They turn into free radicals. And so there's more free radicals, which cause more damage, which causes the stations to expand, which causes more free radicals.

[00:43:10] So you see what's happening. You go into this downward spiral. And at the same time, all those electrons are escaping, and they're not doing their job, which is to be moved along the runner's relay race to generate ATP. And so you have less and less ATP, so you have less and less cellular energy to do what it needs to do.

[00:43:29] Now, cellular energy is way more than just having energy to run errands or have a great workout. Cellular energy is what propels absolutely everything in your body. We're talking your lymphatic system. We're talking about your neurotransmitters, your heartbeat, your digestion, your elimination, cell turnover.

[00:43:49] Absolutely everything is propelled by cellular energy. So when you have decreasing amounts of it, it's like having a pie, and you have to share the pie with a 1,000 people. You're not going to get much pie with a 1,000 people. So everybody gets a very, very minute amount of pie.

[00:44:09] And that's what happens to your body, your immune system, your brain, your heart. They get a very minute amount of cellular energy to work optimally. And this is why you're having problems. But when you have something like spirulina, I'm going to tell you in a minute what it does and why it improves it.

[00:44:26] It's like having a 1,000 pies. Now everybody has some pie. Your heart's happy. Your brain is happy. Your immune system's working. Everything is working because now the efficiency of the creation of that ATP and the cellular energy has just magnified exponentially, and you can sustain that.

[00:44:46] I tell people aging does not need to mean declining. Yes, we're all going to age, but you don't have to decline. And the blue zones are indicative of that. Let's look at what they do. And algae is a very important part of that solution. There are other things too, the movement, and sunshine, and community, and love, and sleep, and all that stuff.

[00:45:06] But you've got to pay attention to the nutritional piece. And exercise does improve your mitochondria, but it still doesn't protect you from free radical damage. So back to the mitochondria and the free radical damage. So in the mitochondria where that ATP production process occurs, your mitochondria DNA are located right there.

[00:45:27] So nobody tells you that a byproduct of-- I'm telling you now-- ATP production is free radicals. And your mitochondria DNA are exactly beside where all this free radicals are being produced. Your nuclear DNA is in the cheap seats. It's in the cell. It's not inside the mitochondria like your mitochondria DNA are.

[00:45:51] It's like sitting too close to a fireplace or too close to a bonfire. If you sit too close, sparks fly, and you might get burned. That's what's happening to your mitochondria DNA. Their average lifespan is about 10 days. Your average DNA lasts a lifetime. And so whenever your DNA gets damaged and mutated, they're sending wrong signals.

[00:46:13] It's like if you're in a crowd and someone says, can you get me a can? Or it sounds like-- it just gets distorted. The signal gets distorted, and so nothing works properly because the DNA of the mitochondria controls the cellular communication and your other regular DNA. So nothing works properly.

[00:46:37] Everything deteriorates when your mitochondria DNA get damaged. And the way they get damaged is from all this free radicals that are being produced as a byproduct of ATP production. And I'll go into a couple of the interesting processes with the psycocyanin and this glutathione that are two of the key antioxidants that can get in there.

[00:47:00] So here's the cool thing. Glutathione and superoxide dismutase-- superoxidase dismutase is the most powerful antioxidants, and it's in the highest concentration in algae in the world. Now, your body, God bless Mother Nature, produces-- your body, everybody's body-- superoxide dismutase from the moment you're born.

[00:47:19] And this is the key antioxidant that can get into that inner membrane to stop free radical damage. From the moment you're born until the age of 30, it stops producing it. And by the time you are 40, you have virtually zero superoxide dismutase. And this is the antioxidant that is the main antioxidant that stops the free radical damage of the mitochondria.

[00:47:42] And I was curious about that because the free radical that's being produced in this mitochondria during the ATP production process is called superoxide, and it's known as being the most damaging free radical of all free radicals. And I was curious about that. What's this bad boy made of? What's going on here? For those who don't know, a free radical is a molecule that has-- all molecules have ions that circulate.

[00:48:14] And so it's an unpaired electron on this molecule. And nature loves harmony. So if you have a molecule that has an unpaired electron, it will go and grab, steal somebody else's. It's like somebody stealing someone's lunch at school. And then that person doesn't have lunch, so maybe they go grab somebody else's lunch, so it just causes ongoing tissue damage.

[00:48:36] And antioxidants have extra electrons, so they donate the electron to the free radical to balance it out, calm it down. They go, come on, calm down. We got some food here for you. Don't go and steal somebody else's lunch. And superoxide, the reason it's so damaging, it has three unpaired electrons.

[00:48:59] So it is three times as damaging. Superoxide dismutase is this antioxidant your body naturally produces until the age of 30 or 40 that neutralizes that damaging free radical and turns it into harmless water. I say it's like having the firemen in there. But superoxide dismutase, this nutrient that's in the highest quantity in our spirulina is also found other spirulina or chlorella, but it's an enzyme.

[00:49:31] And enzymes are killed by high heat when it's over 114 Fahrenheit. All enzymes are killed by it. And all the other algae companies use high heat to dry their algae because they're lower priced and they need to get to market quickly. So they use high heat to dry it. But we don't, and we never did.

[00:49:47] I didn't even know about this superoxide dismutase stuff until recently. I knew enzymes were important, so we've never used high heat. So our superoxide dismutase, also known as SOD, is alive and well. It's like having the fireman in there, putting out all the fire from the free radicals so that you can be protected.

[00:50:04] And by the way, there are 25,000 scientific studies, you can go on there, anyone, on PubMed, Google, documenting how superoxide dismutase, this antioxidant found only in spirulina because it's not found in any food-- I'm going to repeat that. Not found in any other food. 25,000 studies prove that it stops heart disease, stops Alzheimer's, reduces inflammation, reduces any kind of lung-- it's so powerful.

[00:50:37] And you have it. You have this powerful antioxidant until the age of 40, and then you don't. Then you are exposed. And to me, it's no surprise, that's exactly when chronic disease starts kicking in, because we are no longer protected as we did. And I was curious that Mother Nature's so freaking intelligent, why would she deprive us of this powerful antioxidant after the age of 30?

[00:51:05] Here's why. We used to die at 30. We've been on earth for two million years, and until about a 100 years ago, we died at 30. Our biology has not caught up with this new lifestyle that we have. And there are other nutrients, melatonin-- older people have a hard time getting to sleep. Why? Because their body's not creating melatonin for them anymore.

[00:51:28] That starts to decrease after the age of 30. Same with glutathione. All these protective nutrients, and in this case, antioxidants, that are naturally produced in our bodies stop being produced in any medicinal quantities after the age of 30 and by the time you're 40 or 50, you have virtually zero.

[00:51:50] Fortunately, you can get melatonin tablets, and so that will help you with sleep. But superoxide dismutase, there are some tablets out there, but they prove that they get killed in digestion, and it just doesn't work. But it works in ours, our spirulina particularly, because it's a bacteria, no cellulose wall for your body to break down to get access to the nutrients.

[00:52:15] So that superoxide dismutase, it's like putting it on a jet-propelled, or Tesla, straight into the mitochondria. Boom. And stops free radical damage. Here's the good news. Whatever health condition you have, whether it's good or bad, it's not permanent because your cells are constantly regenerating themselves.

[00:52:37] We have over 30 trillion cells in our body, and every day, 30 trillion die, and everyday 30 trillion more grow. So if you have a health condition that's bad or is causing you health symptoms, and you've got a diagnosis, do not despair because, I promise you, you start giving your body what it needs, and spirulina, hands down, is number one, at least ours or frozen spirulina, which is hard to find, and expensive, and expires quickly, blah, blah, blah, but it will go to work for you.

[00:53:11] And we'll talk later on about pulling toxins out, which chlorella does, which is the other thing that you need to do, is get rid of those toxins. But spirulina, it's like having an ambulance right there. And remember, it's food. And it's not just the superoxide dismutase is one of the important ones.

[00:53:27] And if it's not heated with high heat, it will be active. If it's high heat, it's deactivated. It maybe show up on a measurement, but it's not working. So the good news is you can correct your health condition naturally. And there's other things you can do too, like red light therapy. And sleep is number one for me because that's when your body goes through a repair and detox cycle, and we'll talk about that in a minute too, but this is how you get your cellular energy back.

[00:53:55] When the mitochondria are being protected, they're not being damaged. And when they're not damaged, the right cellular communication happens. And when the cellular communication happens and the mitochondria are functioning better, the process of ATP production is more efficient. They'll have less leakage of electrons.

[00:54:12] By the way, the other thing you can do, and I wanted to share this with you, is the highest quantity of free radicals that are produced in that process through that electron transport chain thing are from carbs. Carbs generate the most free radicals, processed carbs. So we're talking sugar, processed food, bread, pasta. Any simple carbs generate massive amounts of free radicals.

[00:54:38] And so you are getting leakage of electrons which damage your mitochondria. So the easiest first step for anyone listening, just reduce your carb load, get more fats, more healthy protein. You don't have to go keto. You could if you wanted to, but that will reduce the number of free radicals being produced, just as a start.

[00:55:01] Even better is fasting or intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting and algae create the smallest number of free radicals. So intermittent fasting is so great for you. You don't have to do a full-on fast. Just do intermittent fasting, any amount, because that allows your body to use up all the glucose that's stored, maybe get into some autophagy, which is cell apoptosis, which are the healthy cell processes.

[00:55:30] So the great thing with algae is virtually zero free radical's being created, and it strengthens that process by which the ATP is produced, and it protects your mitochondria from damaging. There is no downside. I have studied this stuff for 13 years. There is no downside.

[00:55:50] Instead of asking yourself, why should you be taking spirulina, algae every single day, you should be asking yourself, why wouldn't you? Because it's the golden ticket. It is the key that unlocks the door to great health. And it's effortless if you take it in tablet form. It's safe for your children, it's safe for your pets, it's safe for your grandparents, and I'm just on this mission to get into people.

[00:56:16] Luke: That was a lot of really good information. And on the pets, you just made me think of something. As I told you earlier, my freaking dog loves your ENERGYbits, especially the spirulina. Those are like treats to her. I just throw them on the ground, and she'll chase them as a treat.

[00:56:34] And then the chlorella, I'll put a couple in her food. She'll eat those sometimes, but she will never turn down a spirulina, which is a good sign. Obviously, you don't want to give your pets anything that's not safe for them to eat, which I did once. I gave my girlfriend, at the time's, dog acai. I didn't know. I didn't look it up.

[00:56:52] Yeah. And I just thought, oh, they can eat blueberries. Because I would always feed them blueberries. And I gave the dog acai, and it got very sick. So for those listening, acai is a no go for dogs, but I did look up algaes, and they're fine for pets. So yeah, I think it's one of the probably most economic and powerful-- it's a food, like you said. Not a supplement. But for people that want to supercharge or biohack their pets--

[00:57:16] Catharine: Oh, totally.

[00:57:17] Luke: It's probably the best thing out there.

[00:57:19] Catharine: Yeah. And as you mentioned, biohack, if you're doing red light therapy, cryotherapy-- we were just at an IV drip therapy conference. If you could take 30, it's great. 10 is okay. 30 is even better. If you stack it with the therapy, take it with the therapy, you are going to supercharge, extend, and deepen the results of whatever therapy you're doing, and then continue taking a maintenance level of the algae tablets, especially, again, the spirulina at home, to maintain that boost that you just got.

[00:57:50] And for those of you aren't familiar with cryotherapy, it's when you go into a chamber or ice baths, similar sort of thing. Your body thinks it's dying because it's exposed to such cold. So what happens is it pulls all the blood to your core. And so if you have the spirulina, if you've taken it before you do that while the blood is all in the core, it's being so nourished with all this superoxide dismutase, and protein, and 40 vitamins, and minerals, and chlorophyll.

[00:58:19] So it's nourishing the core, number one. And when that is happening, that blood is in your core, this helps your body clear out the dead cells through a process called autophagy or apoptosis. Now, as you get older-- let me just back up. Your cells can replicate. Remember I said they're constantly replicating, about 50 times.

[00:58:43] But once they've done it about 50 times, it's like someone who's ready to retire. And if you have healthy cell death, that's called autophagy or apoptosis. So the person who's retiring, in this case, the cell, goes, hey, I've had a great run here. Really been great hanging out with you, but time to go.

[00:59:01] And so it goes through this process where it breaks itself into smaller little subcells, which is effectively like giving away your best books and your best accounts to the new generation that's coming in, and you wish them luck. And the cell just goes away and becomes five or six new, younger, healthy cells. And that's good. And spirulina improves that process, and I'll help you understand that in a minute.

[00:59:26] But if you let your cells subdivide and they don't go away, that's they're called zombie cells, or another technical term is called senescent cells. And these cells are the person that should have retired, refuses to retire, is a problem, kicking over garbage cans, bumping into people, and in your cells, they're inflammatory.

[00:59:48] And very often, sometimes these turn into cancer cells. And when that happens, they go through a process, it's technically called necrosis, where they basically explode. And so all the damaged gunk that's inside the cell explodes out into the neighboring cells. This is why cancer grows so quickly. So it's an unhealthy way to have cell death.

[01:00:11] You want the controlled, managed time to retire cell death, which the algae helps facilitate. Trying to come up with analogies to help people understand these complex things that are going on in your body because if you can understand how they're similar to what happens to you as a human, then you can understand what's really going on.

[01:00:35] And if you understand your body and what it needs, just like if you have a baby, you learn what the baby needs and hopefully give it what it needs. We're just big babies here. We still need nourishment. We still need things, and yet we're not getting them, and this is what causes your cells and your health to deteriorate.

[01:00:57] There's an easy fix. It's called spirulina. And soon we'll talk about chlorella, if it's healthy and grown carefully. And again, it's effortless because we don't want this to be complicated. There's enough complexity, enough anxiety. There's enough people trying to figure out protocols.

[01:01:13] I know so many people have anywhere from 20 to-- Dave Asprey takes, he says, 100 supplements a day. You don't need to go to that level. In fact, you can clear out at least five or six of those supplements. If you take spirulina every day, you will not need a fish oil. Please don't take fish oil.

[01:01:29] Most of it is rancid by the time you get it anyways, and you're killing the oceans. You can replace your multivitamin. You're absorbing about five or 10% anyways because supplements are made from extracts that don't exist like that in nature. Your body recognizes food.

[01:01:42] Algae is food. This has 40 vitamins and minerals. You can get rid of your multivitamin. You don't need a CoQ10. This has CoQ10 in it. You don't need a biotin. This has more collagen and protein than anything else in the world. It has more collagen than collagen powder, so you can get rid of collagen powders, even vegetables, and you will save yourself time, you will save yourself money, and you'll absorb more of it because it's food.

[01:02:07] Luke: You won't just be making expensive pee.

[01:02:10] Catharine: Yeah, yeah.

[01:02:11] Luke: Going back to the free radical piece, something came to mind because I'm just always wanting to learn how to deal with this issue, and that's the EMF in our environment. In this house, we've gone to great lengths to make it as low, if not no EMF in some of the rooms. And there are many issues with EMF exposure.

[01:02:32] You're basically getting radiation sickness to put it broadly. But ultimately, one of the main issues is the free radicals that are produced by that stress of your body, as you described the process of making ATP. It's like a defense system of your body for it to fortify itself and be resilient against that non-native threat. These free radicals are produced.

[01:02:57] And I noticed this specifically, when I fly on airplanes, probably because of the Wi-Fi, and solar radiation, and God knows what, but I can tell when I'm in an environment. I'll start to get more fatigued when I'm in a high EMF area. On airplanes, a lot of people don't put their phones on airplane too, so their phone's emitting radiation. You have 150 phones surrounding you or at concert or something like that.

[01:03:22] Common sense to me would dictate that fortifying your mitochondria, as you described with spirulina, and the SOD, and the glutathione, and so on, is probably a pretty good internal shield for EMF damage. Have there been any studies about radiation at large, whether it's EMF-based or not?

[01:03:41] Catharine: Well, It's interesting. I was at JJ Virgin's summit, Mindshare Summit, just last week, and I befriended a gentleman who just wrote a book on EMF. And I haven't had a chance to read it yet. It was on how to protect yourself. But as you said, it does create these free radicals. Anything that creates free radicals damages your mitochondria DNA.

[01:04:02] So anything that preserves and protects your mitochondria DNA from damage will protect you from damage. It's really that simple. And it's funny that people throw around the word super food so much, but the way these antioxidants work that are found in algae, are far more than a superfood.

[01:04:23] Like I said, it's super duper. They do give you back that super many kryptonite level on them. This gives you back that shield of protection automatically. And at the same time it does that-- this is what I love so much about algae. Maybe you're taking it because you're an athlete and you want better performance.

[01:04:41] By the way, we fuel entire Olympic athletes, NHL teams, ultra runners. We've ultra runners that go a 100 miles with just water and our spirulina. So maybe you're taking it for that, or maybe you're on a weight loss program and you just-- there's only one calorie per tablet. You could take 30 for lunch for 30 calories and be nourished for five hours and not have hunger.

[01:05:04] Whatever purpose you take, there are about a 100 other things or more that it's doing for you. So maybe you're taking it to protect you from the EMF damage at the mitochondrial level, but you're also going to get chlorophyll. We haven't even talked about chlorophyll yet, which by the way, the chemical composition of chlorophyll is a virtually identical to the chemical composition of your hemoglobin.

[01:05:27] The only difference is chlorophyll has a magnesium atom in the middle, and your hemoglobin has iron in the middle. But for centuries, they would give injured or people when they were having surgeries liquid chlorophyll. Not blood transfusions. Liquid chlorophyll. Why? Because it builds your blood. Because it's virtually identical to your blood. And the highest chlorophyll is in chlorella, although there's a fair amount of it in spirulina.

[01:05:50] So whatever purpose you're taking the algae for, there are a 1,000 other benefits that you're going to get. You'll get clearer skin. Your blemishes will go away. Your hair will grow faster. Your digestion will improve. This is the gift that keeps on giving. And again, I cannot take credit for this.

[01:06:06] It's Mother Nature at her best, but I will take credit for ensuring that we grow it in a way that preserves all these nutrients because most people don't. And we make sure that it's safe, and we test for the safety because I think we're the only company that tests at an FDA-approved lab here in the US to ensure that it has the nutrients we say it has and not any of the toxins that shouldn't be in there.

[01:06:29] And I know we talked a little bit about the superoxide dismutase that, again, is not found in any other food, and not in your body after-- where are you supposed to get this stuff? You don't.

[01:06:41] Luke: But you just reminded me of something. Man, I don't know. Many, many years ago, one of my practitioners recommended this liposomal SOD, and it in a syringe, but you had to have-- it was really, really expensive, and you had to keep it refrigerated, otherwise it would lose its potency. So I was always trying to strategize how to take some before I got on the airplane or bring it on the airplane in a little ice pack.

[01:07:08] Catharine: You have the answer now.

[01:07:08] Luke: Yeah, that's cool. This is going to go in my-- like I said, I love spirulina anyway, but I've never taken it on an airplane, probably because it wasn't in little tablets like yours, so it was difficult to work with and very messy and stained stuff and all

[01:07:22] Catharine: And I forgot to bring some with me, but we do sell them in these little pouches with 30 tablets per pouch, and you can get them on our website at energybits.com. Hey, we are even sold on Amazon. So if you have any questions and you don't want to buy a big quantity, just go to amazon. They're $6 each. Again, what have you got to lose? Give it a try.

[01:07:40] It's funny because I never made the connection between the EMF on planes. We have so many people that tell us that they would never dream of traveling anywhere without their pouches of spirulina and chlorella because that's what keeps them healthy on-- but I didn't make the connection with the EMF.

[01:07:59] Luke: It's going to go in my travel protocol now. On my website, I have a web store of just all my favorite products. I don't sell anything, just recommend products like you have. And there's categories, and there's a jet lag and travel category, so I'm going to put this in there.

[01:08:16] But just anything I've discovered that make travel suck less. I always say, I like to go to different places, but I don't like to travel. It's the travel in between going to a cool place that wears me out so much. Some I'm somewhat less so because I apply all these protocols, but I found, as I started to get older, I don't know, go to Hawaii, or Mexico, or wherever, and I have to spend the first day recovering from the travel and miss a day of my vacation. Or then coming back home, I have to spend a day to recover before I get back to life, and work, and family, and all that.

[01:08:49] Catharine: It's twofold. So when you travel, the jet lag, so the spirulina, because of the high concentration of SOD, which is protecting your mitochondria from all that free radical damage from the EMF, that's happening. But also, because now it's functioning better and because spirulina creates virtually zero free radicals and it's nourishing, it's increasing the production of ATP.

[01:09:14] So when you travel, you get fatigued. So now you're protecting yourself from the EMF, you're improving your ATP production, so you have more cellular energy so that you're-- and it goes to your brain.

[01:09:25] So here's the thing about cellular energy because people used to say, I don't want to take this too close to bed because I don't want all that energy. And I wrote a paper, a short description, which I will send to you as well that you can post, because I want people to understand the difference between a stimulant and cellular energy.

[01:09:42] So a stimulant is something from caffeine, chemicals, sugar, and it speeds up the movement of molecules from your brain to your body. So it speeds everything up. So that's why you get that jolt from the caffeine and you're alert, but you also, unfortunately, have your crash afterwards.

[01:10:00] And it's not particularly good for you. It's not healthy to be jarring your body like that. And that would keep you up because it's still moving the molecules quickly. That's completely different from what we're talking about, which is cellular energy. Remember, again, that pie. If you have more pie, everything in your body is going to function better because everybody's getting a bigger slice.

[01:10:22] So if you take some spirulina and then you go for a run, you will have the best run ever. It will be faster, less effort, and you won't even notice it. I promise you. Or if you're lifting weights, you will end up lifting more, and you won't even notice it. On the other hand, if you have it before you're driving or you're doing something with a lot of focus, your focus will be better because your body determines how it's going to use that ATP.

[01:10:53] Some people say it actually helps them sleep because it will move the ATP to wherever the need is at the moment. It's steady. The difference I make is, stimulants are like throwing paper on a fire and you get this burst of flame. Algae is like putting a log on the fire. Steady.

[01:11:16] And if you didn't do anything when you took the algae, you didn't go run or you didn't do anything dramatic-- by the way, I tell people there's no drama with algae. It's steady eddy. It's just, mm. You might not even notice it, but what you will notice is that you're just more alert. You're not fatigued. You're not hungry. It's just in the background. It's just like having a great night's sleep or a walk in the fresh air. No drama because it's just steady, and it's occurring at the cellular level.

[01:11:46] So on that note, I want to give you another reason why the spirulina gives you more energy. Chlorella will not give you energy, and we'll dig into it because it does have amazing health benefits for your gut, for your immune system, but it won't give you energy.

[01:12:02] So again, spirulina, high protein, high B12s. It converts it quickly in the things like superoxide dismutase, get to the mitochondria, protect it so the ATP production is more efficient, fewer free radicals damaging your mitochondria. I know I'm moving through this fast, but I want to keep reiterating it so you can start to see it's not smoke and mirrors.

[01:12:21] It's just biology. It's metabolic health. And if you understand that, then you can understand what your body needs. But here's a really cool thing about spirulina. And this is another one of those antioxidants that can get into the mitochondria to stop free raggle damage.

[01:12:36] But here's the coolest thing about this blue pigment called phycocyanin, and I'm going to spell it for you again because I want to encourage you to empower yourself. Go on Google. Go into PubMed. See that I'm telling you the truth. So it's spelled P-H-Y-C-O-Y-C-I-N-I-N. We'll have this in a handout for you as well.

[01:12:57] So that blue phycocyanin doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe, just in spirulina. But again, remember, it's deactivated by high heat, so it's in ours or frozen spirulina. So what does this blue phycocyanin do? Remember I talked about, in the process of generating ATP, there's these four stations, like four hydro towers passing, instead of electricity, they're passing electrons along.

[01:13:26] This blue phycocyanin, there's two little molecules, little helper molecules, in those four stations. It's like having a Tesla and you just floor it and get those molecules moving faster. One is CoQ10, and we'll talk about that because it's motivated by chlorophyll. And we'll talk about that when we talk about chlorella.

[01:13:48] But the other little helper molecule is called cytochrome c. And think of this little molecule maybe as a shuttle train or shuttle bus. You're at the airport, but you can't get to your station, you can't get to your gate until you get on that shuttle bus. So this cytochrome c molecule is like that little shuttle bus that's going to get you to that ATP, that final production.

[01:14:10] So in healthy cells, the phycocyanin, the blue pigment, speeds up that process. Vroom. So that is one of the reasons why you get more energy from spirulina, because this little cytochrome c molecule is sped up by the blue pigment only found in spirulina. Pretty cool.

[01:14:30] Luke: That's trippy because methylene blue has a similar mode of action. That's interesting that there's two blue-- it's not natural, obviously. But yeah, it's interesting.

[01:14:41] Catharine: Okay. It gets even trippier. Wait till I tell you what happens next. Listen to this. This is why I'm just so passionate about-- one of thousands of reasons. So the phycocyanin speeds up that little cytochrome c molecule, vroom, so you get more energy. However, if it's a cancer cell or a senescent cell-- so the senescent cell, remember, was the cell that had subdivided 50 times, is now considered a zombie cell, is inflammatory. We need to get rid of it because they cause damage in your cells.

[01:15:13] So if you have a cancer cell, the blue pigment, phycocyanin, identifies that it's a cancer cell, and instead of speeding up that cytochrome c molecule to generate more energy, it ejects it. And that ejected cytochrome c molecule, this is one of the pathways, goes and kills cancer cells and kills the senescent cells. Boom.

[01:15:39] Luke: That's crazy.

[01:15:40] Catharine: This why I call algae intelligent food. First, you have to be intelligent to take it. And it knows what to do in your body.

[01:15:50] Luke: Anyone that's still with us in this conversation at least has enough intelligence for that part.

[01:15:56] Catharine: But isn't that flippy?

[01:15:57] Luke: That's so cool.

[01:15:58] Catharine: And here's what's amazing. That's why I wanted you to know how to spell it, because they're using phycocyanin in cancer treatments now, in the chemotherapy. And the way they can determine if the chemotherapy treatment is working is they measure how much cytochrome c molecule is in your blood.

[01:16:16] Who wants to get chemotherapy? You can get this exact result from active phycocyanin. Now, again, I don't know if the dried phycocyanin is active because they may have used high heat, may have deteriorated the quality, but it's in ours. I know that for sure.

[01:16:35] Luke: So with the cancer cells, if you're taking phycocyanin via spirulina orally-- I'm thinking about just dosage. If I had cancer right now, I'd be like, cool, I'm going to eat a quarter pound of spirulina a day. You know what I mean? Is it bioavailable and digested enough where that phycocyanin is getting into your blood?

[01:16:59] And say you had cancer in your toe or something, for example-- I don't even know if that's possible, but I'm thinking of what's furthest away with the least amount of blood flow. How do we know that that phycocyanin is going to be carried into the area where those cells are dividing?

[01:17:15] Catharine: Great question. It's like stem cells. It goes where it's needed. This is part of the intelligent food thing. So the other great thing about spirulina, remember, it's not a plant. No cellulose wall. If you chew this stuff, as I do, although I will say it's a very acquired taste-- full disclosure. It's a very earthy, chewy flavor. Most people don't like it, but if you do, rockstar.

[01:17:46] Because now it gets into your bloodstream in seconds because it goes sublingually through your mouth. But even if you swallowed it, it will get into your bloodstream within about 10 minutes. And then it goes directly because it's so rapidly absorbed, so it never gets damaged in digestion.

[01:18:03] And we've had customers tell us, by the way, if you put these in a dish, because I used to do this over and over again-- I put some spirulina in one dish, and chlorella in another dish and put some water on it. It really won't dissolve. And so we've had customers going, how can it get absorbed? It does.

[01:18:22] Water is not the same as your blood. If you put a piece of broccoli on a plate and put water on it, that won't get absorbed either. But it does in your stomach. So you have to know the biological things that are going on, but anyway. So it's rapidly absorbed, and it is a bit like stem cells, which will see where the damage is. And there's a really interesting study. I'll see if I can try to find this, the source for it, but years ago, they did this test.

[01:18:54] The trouble with chemotherapy is that when you take chemotherapy, all cells get killed, not just the cancer. So they did this experiment, and they injected the algae, and I think it was spirulina-- I can't remember which one it was, and I don't know whether they gave it intravenously or what-- but they injected the algae with the chemotherapy.

[01:19:13] The patient took the algae. The algae found the cancer, attached itself to it, and delivered the chemotherapy. No other cells got it. When I tell you this is intelligent food-- remember I told you algae never dies? It just goes dormant. This stuff is intelligent food. Remember, first life on earth. Intelligence.

[01:19:37] Luke: That's wild.

[01:19:38] Catharine: It's wild. It's absolutely wild. It can detect a cancer cell from a healthy cell, and it knows what to do. It's got the instructions built into it. Oh, cancer cell. Boom. Another cool thing it does, again, this blue phycocyanin, not found in any other food anywhere on the universe and not an algae that's been dried with high heat, has what's called anti-angiogenesis properties. I apologize. I have all these big words, but you can look this one up too.

[01:20:07] So angiogenesis is the process by which blood vessels are grown. So when you have a cancer, especially a tumor cancer, it hijacks your blood vessels and moves them to feed the cancer. And so there are things that are called anti-angiogenesis that stop that process.

[01:20:25] And in fact, there's a very fabulous nonprofit organization based in Boston. They invited us to their conference about seven years ago because I didn't even know about this. The organization is called angiogen.org, but there's lots of science devoted to try to find things that have this property, and the blue phycocyanin in spirulina has this property. So not only does it kill cancer cells, it is stopping the growth of blood vessels to feed the tumors.

[01:20:56] And just to go back, you said if you had cancer, how much of this would you take? And we have customers emailing us. They were given two weeks to live. They had colon cancer. They had breast cancer. I started the company because my sister had breast cancer.

[01:21:10] And they would send us their lab tests. Within a week of taking the algae in large quantities, their lab tests went down and down and cancer went into remission. I have to be very careful. I'm not saying that algae will kill, or stop, or prevent cancer. But what I am saying, and which is proven scientifically, is the nutrients, certain nutrients that are found in algae have been proven to have anti-cancer properties.

[01:21:39] So I need to have that caveat because I don't want to be shut down by the FDA. The nutrients are proven, and they happen to be in algae, but not all algae. If you had cancer and you're in remission, you should be taking 30 spirulina tablets.

[01:21:59] We have two brands. One's called ENERGYbits. One's BEAUTYBits. They're identical. One's for a girl, for women because I want women to feel looked after. And the other one's blue. So we have a boy spirulina and a girl spirulina. You should be taking 30 tablets a day forever. If you currently are fighting a cancer diagnosis, you should be taking minimum 30, probably 60. And I don't usually tell people this because I get so freaked out.

[01:22:25] I have about 150 combined between the two of them every single day and have for the last 13 years, and I'm very healthy. It's food. It's like you can't have too much salad. You can't really have too much broccoli. This is not a drug. It is not even a supplement. It is a food, and it knows what to do in your body.

[01:22:45] And I want to tell you about a small clinical trial we did for brain health in a few minutes, which also proved it reduces inflammation. And then once you have a clear diagnosis, it could take a month, three months, six months, a year. You could go back to a maintenance level of 30 because you need to know your body is always creating cancer cells.

[01:23:07] But if you have strong mitochondria and a strong immune system, it will protect you and prevent them from overgrowing. But these days, honestly, everybody I talk to at this-- everybody had a family member with cancer currently. It's one of the two.

[01:23:24] Luke: Yeah.

[01:23:24] Catharine: It's unacceptable for me.

[01:23:26] Luke: I would be in that category too. It's crazy. That's why I asked about it and about the blood flow and the ability for the phycocyanin to get where it needs to go. So I'm thinking about a case-- I've used my tone as an example, but say someone has skin cancer or rectal cancer, areas that are really easy to get to. Would there be any more radical application of actually applying it to skin cancer--

[01:23:53] Catharine: It's funny.

[01:23:54] Luke: Or doing an enema of spirulina?

[01:23:56] Catharine: Somebody actually wrote us that they were doing enemas with the spirulina and the chlorella. I don't have any research on that, but I'm a big fan of coffee enemas. I know the Gerson Institute are thinking of working with us, same with the Hippocrates Center because both of them use frozen spirulina. And the Gerson Institute does coffee enemas.

[01:24:18] And I know the Hippocrates Institute does regular enemas, but the frozen spirulina is good for them to give their patients because they know their suppliers. And I think they probably make their own, but when the patient is discharged, it's really hard to find frozen spirulina.

[01:24:34] It's messy. It expires quickly, and blah, blah, blah. So ours is the best they have found so far. I don't have any research, but it probably-- and I know John Lieurance does high, high dose of melatonin, though enemas, and he says it works beautifully.

[01:24:53] Luke: Yeah. That's where I first saw the ENERGYbits, was at Advanced Rejuvenation Center in Florida. I had heard the name, maybe seen it online. And then John has it right up on his counter, and he sells his own supplements. So I was like, he sells his own supplements. Why does he have this stuff in there? He's like, oh, you got to get on board. And as I told you, he's coming by this afternoon.

[01:25:11] Catharine: So the enemas and suppositories are a great way to direct nutrition, same with IV drips for rapid absorption, particularly if you have a compromised digestive tract or colon. But the great thing about spirulina, it has no fiber. So we work with gastric bypass patients because they can't get enough nutrition because they can't have enough food, so this solves the problem. We have people whose entire stomachs have been removed because, especially if you chew it, it gets absorbed instantly, very, very rapidly, through your blood if you swallow it.

[01:25:49] Luke: Cool. I want to let people know, if you want to check this out, which I highly recommend, obviously, go to energybits.com, and we got you 20% off-- thank you for that-- by using the code LUKE. energybits.com. Code is LUKE. And again, we'll put that in the show description, and you can just click right on it. Is there anything else about the phycocyanin we want to talk about, or do we want to talk about the chlorophyll?

[01:26:11] I know we haven't even gotten to chlorella yet, but I don't know when I'm going to see you again, so let's get it all out. You obviously don't have a problem talking. I love when guests aren't looking at their watch like, I'm getting tired.

[01:26:22] Catharine: Oh God, no. I do talk about algae all day long, every day because I'm on a mission. I never even wanted to start a company. I just wanted to help my sister. And then when I learned about the power of plant-based nutrition, I thought, I need some certification. I need to know something.

[01:26:39] So then I went to IIN and got a quick health coaching certificate, and then I taught, and then I learned about algae. So every step along the way, I just wanted to make a difference. And so suddenly, here I am with a company. But algae is the platform for solving our health issues, our crises, our children, the environment.

[01:26:59] Yeah, we can talk about the eco-friendly sustainability of it as well, but yeah, I can talk about algae forever because I'm on a path, like I said, the universe picked me, and I fought it for ages because I didn't have a science background, but I stepped up, and so I'm here now.

[01:27:18] And I'll talk to anybody who will let me share my knowledge with them because my goal is to stop you from being sick. My goal is to give you optimal health back. Health should not be a privilege. It's a right. It's our right to be healthy. We have been healthy. We can get back to it. But you need to be proactive. You need to be educated.

[01:27:40] Advocate for yourself. Find the best sources because all algae is not the same. It's like wine, like I said, so you've got to find people who you can trust who are doing the right thing. And I'm also, I told you earlier, a trained Reiki healer. I don't practice, but I think there's really good energy. And by the way, algae is the highest vibrational food in the world.

[01:28:02] Luke: According to what metric?

[01:28:03] Catharine: If you use the Kirlian photography, especially if it's raw, it will emit very high--

[01:28:09] Luke: Oh, really?

[01:28:10] Catharine: Yeah.

[01:28:10] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:28:10] Catharine: Yeah, it's pretty cool. And when we talk about chlorella, we'll talk about the vibration technique that we do. But when I first started, I literally personally hand-blessed every single bag that we sold because we're all energy. And so I think there's just good energy in our algae, in addition to the powerful nutrients that Mother Nature put in there for you.

[01:28:34] Luke: Cool. And the spirulina, other than the SOD, phycocyanin, glutathione, is there anything we didn't cover that--

[01:28:42] Catharine: That is unique? The fact that it is a complete protein. Both of them are complete proteins, and also both of them are ketogenic. So there's zero carbs. So those of you who are doing intermittent fasting, and I encourage you to do that, it does not decrease your ketones or increase your glucose. It's vegan. It's paleo.

[01:29:01] Oh, I want to mention something else because I work with a lot of-- I meet a lot of carnivores. And one of the reasons why people go carnivore is because they have very compromised digestion, which may have occurred from eating plants. And I've been on Dr. Steven Gundry's podcast three times, and he's formerly a heart surgeon, now very into holistic health.

[01:29:24] Luke: Yeah. He's been on here on the show talking about lectins and--

[01:29:27] Catharine: Lectins and oxalates. That's where I'm going.

[01:29:29] Luke: Yeah. Made me terrified to eat a cashew ever again.

[01:29:32] Catharine: Yeah, I know, I know. You can eat pistachios. They're very low. Insane macronutrients. So here's the thing about lectins and oxalates. So they're in certain plants because these are land plants. And evolutionarily, they had to protect themselves from bugs and predators coming and eat their leaves, and their seeds, or their babies.

[01:29:50] So they develop these lectins and oxalates, which are pointed proteins that taste terrible and give them stomach distress as they do with humans, which can puncture your stomach lining and cause autoimmune because food gets into your blood.

[01:30:04] Luke: And kidney stones.

[01:30:06] Catharine: Kidney stones.

[01:30:07] Luke: And oxalates, which I just learned the other day, sorry to interrupt, which I was so bummed about, that cacao is really high in oxalates.

[01:30:16] Catharine: Is it? Oh, man.

[01:30:18] Luke: Take your K2.

[01:30:19] Catharine: Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. We can talk about K2 when we get to chlorella. So algae doesn't have lectins and oxalates because it's never been a land plant. It started in the ocean, so it didn't have to defend itself from bugs and animal predators because it's in the ocean. So that's why Dr. Gundry loves us and loves algae so much, because it fits right into his protocol.

[01:30:44] So whether you're a carnivore, paleo, and you can't get any more ancestral, by the way, than algae because it's the first life on earth. Keto, vegan, low-carb, low-fiber, fits into every lifestyle, and is so nourishing whether you're on a-- and you could, as I say, have it while you're doing intermittent fasting and it won't interfere.

[01:31:03] So summary, very nourishing. I do want to talk a little bit about brain health because again, spirulina is very, very powerful for brain health. And the main reason, again, is because it protects the mitochondria from damage, and your brain has the highest amount of mitochondria per cell.

[01:31:22] But also, that superoxidase mutase protects your telomeres. Your telomeres are these little caps. They're like little mittens that protect your DNA. And every time your cell subdivides, it shortens a little bit. And after 50 subdivisions, your DNA can be exposed, and this can cause it to unravel or replicate damaged. And so because the superoxide dismutase protects the telomeres, it stops that process.

[01:31:53] And also, the spirulina is loaded with essential fatty acids, including some omega-3-- not a lot, but that GLA. Your brain is, I think, 20% fat. It's the highest user of energy, but it's very high in fat, so you want healthy fats. It has K2, mostly more K2 in the chlorella. K2 pulls out excess calcium. You were talking about kidney stones.

[01:32:14] So I'll just do a little side note on K2. So people get gout, and a lot of heart disease is caused by arteriosclerosis, which is hardening of the arteries. And I tell people, what do you think is hardening? It's calcium. And anyone who's listening, if you're taking calcium supplements, please stop. And also, if you're taking iron supplements, please stop.

[01:32:36] Those two alone cause massive health issues. We are taking so much calcium and D3 to improve the absorption of the calcium. But the problem is, the calcium is getting absorbed into our soft tissue. Our soft tissue are things like our brain, our blood vessels, our organs like kidneys, and there's a nutrient called K2, which isn't found in any food except grass-fed animal protein, algae, or this Japanese dish called--

[01:33:07] Luke: Natto. Yeah.

[01:33:09] Catharine: Natto. And what does K2 do? It moves excess calcium out of your soft tissue and into your bones, where the calcium is stored. And if you have too much calcium, it damages your elastin, which causes wrinkles. It can contribute to kidney stones, which are basically uric acid and calcium.

[01:33:29] It causes arteriosclerosis, which is hardening of the arteries. This is why so many heart surgeons recommend spirulina and chlorella, but spirulina for preventing sclerosis, and the SOD helps a lot with that, but also this vitamin K2. But back to the brain. So we did a small clinical trial about six months ago because I'd read all this research about the spirulina being healthy for your brain health.

[01:33:57] So I thought, I want to be absolutely 100% sure. And we're a small company, so we couldn't do a big fancy one, but we worked with a group called the Grey Team. This is a nonprofit based in Florida. grayteam.org, if you're interested. Their sole purpose for existing is to stop the suicide rate of military veterans, which is a heartbreaking 35 to 50%. 35 to 50% of military veterans are committing suicide. Unbelievable.

[01:34:25] So this group is doing anything they can to change that trajectory. So they were looking at some nutritional interventions. So we took five of their veterans who had been discharged for at least 15 years because they'd had mental health issues. One had multiple sclerosis. One couldn't sleep, depression.

[01:34:42] And all we did was a brain scan before we did the test, and we did another brain scan 30 days after, although we could have done it after two weeks and found the same results. All they did was take one pouch of our ENERGYbits spirulina tablets. So 30 tablets a day. That's it. They were told not to change anything else. No changes in their diet. No changes in their lifestyle. No changes in their sleep.

[01:35:04] And we did the brain scans before and after. Before, it showed all the inflammation. After, zero inflammation. And their sleep improved. We also had a device that measured their HRV. One person's HRV improved 50%. It was crazy what this stuff did, and that's all they did.

[01:35:24] Luke: Wow.

[01:35:24] Catharine: Thirty tablets completely changed the trajectory of their anxiety, their sleep disorders, their multiple-- this one gentleman was in his 70s, and his tremors even went away. That was it.

[01:35:35] Luke: That's crazy. I just put a spirulina under my tongue, by the way. So if I start talking funny, that's why.

[01:35:41] Catharine: Okay. Yeah, yeah. Or your teeth go blue.

[01:35:43] Luke: When you talked about the sublingual absorption, I thought I could use one right now.

[01:35:47] Catharine: Yeah, yeah. And as long as it's in your mouth, it's killing bacteria there too, because a lot of disease starts in your mouth. And of course, you're swallowing the saliva, carries all the bacteria down to the rest of your body. So yeah, there's spirulina in a nutshell. Great nourishment, great for protecting your mitochondria from free radical damage, your brain health, and energizing still. Satisfies your hunger. You can't go wrong.

[01:36:13] Luke: Badass.

[01:36:14] Catharine: Badass. Badass boy all the way around. If you have kids and you send them off to a soccer practice or a game, give them five or six. When they're children, give them half a tablet or a full tablet compared to their age. So if they're 10, give them maybe five a day. If they're six, give them three a day. You could give them plenty more, but if you want to be on the-- just to introduce it to them.

[01:36:36] And then once they're 12 or 15, give them an adult dose if you can get up to 30 a day. I've had children at some of my events who grew up with this stuff, and they would chow down 50 or 100 right in front of me.

[01:36:49] Luke: Wow.

[01:36:50] Catharine: I have pictures. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:36:52] Luke: Cool. Let's--

[01:36:53] Catharine: Should we switch gears chlorella?

[01:36:55] Luke: Yeah, let's get into chlorella here.

[01:36:57] Catharine: If you haven't given up, if folks are listening, honestly, it's worth the wait because chlorella is equally as powerful in different ways. It's a green algae. Spirulina is a blue green, so it has those two pigments. Chlorella has one pigment, it's called chlorophyll, which you know is what makes plants green.

[01:37:14] But it has the highest concentration of chlorophyll in the world. A lot of people are taking chlorophyll water, which is great, but it's called chlorella because of chlorophyll. And ella means small, although Ella Fitzgerald certainly wasn't small. Maybe she was once. But chlorella has 25 times more chlorophyll than liquid chlorophyll. And liquid chlorella is just liquid chlorophyll.

[01:37:39] Luke: Wow. I used to take liquid chlorophyll. I think it was made from alfalfa or something.

[01:37:45] Catharine: Yeah, yeah. So it's a plant. So this has 25 times more than that, but you're only getting chlorophyll. With this, you're getting more chlorophyll plus you're getting 60% protein, 40 vitamins and minerals, important ones like vitamin K2, glutathione. Chlorella also has the highest glutathione in the world, which we'll talk about in a minute.

[01:38:03] So number one, highest chlorophyll in the world. Chlorophyll is the most alkaline nutrient in the world. We didn't talk about this when we were talking about cancer, but I think the reason why my sister's oncologist wanted her to adopt an alkaline diet is because it has been proven in science, and there was a German scientist back in the '40s that won a Nobel Prize for discovering that cancer can only exist in cells that are acidic. Not alkaline.

[01:38:32] And there's a scale of 0 to 14, and your cell pH needs to be 7.1, which is just slightly alkaline. And chlorella, or rather, algae in general, are the most alkalining food in the world so it keeps the cell at that slightly alkaline state so that it again prevents cancer from even taking hold because when it's more alkaline, it shows there's oxygen, the cell is communicating, things are functioning properly.

[01:39:02] So chlorophyll really helps with that. Number two, since we're talking about chlorophyll, earlier I may have mentioned that the blue pigment is a water-based pigment, like that cytochrome c molecule is a water-based transport thing. Chlorophyll is a fat-based pigment. So why is that important?

[01:39:24] Remember, I said at the beginning, your cells have a fat membrane also called lipids. And that's why you need vitamin E, and D, and omega-3 to be sure that they're porous, which allows things in and out. Chlorophyll is a fat-based pigment, so it behaves like the omega-3 or the D. In fact, I haven't even taken omega-3. I don't take anything except algae. And I had some lab tests lately, and my biological age from a test I did is 32. Pretty stunning, right?

[01:39:57] Luke: Yeah.

[01:39:59] Catharine: Go algae. So when you're taking something with such high chlorophyll, you're healing your cell walls just like if you had some omega-3. So don't worry when you see our numbers on the actual algae don't measure up to what you're getting in a supplement. There's other things. Remember that harmony? Algae is like an orchestra. It has all the nutrients in it that Mother Nature knew you needed. All the factors and cofactors, they work harmoniously.

[01:40:24] When you take an isolated supplement, it's in isolation. It can't possibly have the harmonies that exist. It's the difference between going to a traditional doctor, and maybe you have a liver specialist, and you have a brain specialist, and you have a bone specialist, and they don't really talk to one another.

[01:40:40] When you go to a functional medicine doctor, holistic health addresses the entire body and how it works harmoniously. So the same thing works with algae. It works harmoniously with its nutrients. So the chlorophyll being fat-based is healing your cell walls. And as I mentioned earlier, it has the chemical composition that's virtually identical to your hemoglobin.

[01:41:02] So those two things alone are very powerful for your health. Chlorophyll also kills bacteria. So years ago, there used to be a gum called Clorets, and it was based on chlorophyll. So it kills bacteria in your mouth, in your organs, in your colon. Wherever it goes, it's killing bacteria, and that's a very important property.

[01:41:22] Remember, it's the cleanup crew. Algae is the cleanup crew. Chlorella is particularly the cleanup crew. And in fact, it's the demolition group for things you want to remove because spirulina has no cell wall. Chlorella has the hardest cell wall in the plant kingdom. And that hard cell wall attaches to anything that shouldn't be there.

[01:41:44] Remember, intelligent food. So it attaches to lead, mercury, radiation, aluminum, glyphosate, pesticides, alcohol. Those of us who are still occasionally having a little glass of wine or something after dinner, you take 30 tablets after alcohol, you will be stone sober in an hour and a half, and you will never have a hangover.

[01:42:05] So chlorella is truly the cleanup crew. It's been used for centuries this way. The United Nations used it at Chernobyl to pull out radiation. Yes, it pulls out radiation. So anybody who's taking chemotherapy, definitely take a serving, 30 tablets, I would recommend, after your chemotherapy. It will stop up all the excess chemotherapy so that you're not as nauseous.

[01:42:28] I know your mother-in-law might want to, if you can try to help her with this. So chlorella is very much a recovery, detox, healing, cleansing algae, and it starts with the chlorophyll. And that hard cell wall. It also has the highest glutathione in the world, which is also a detoxing antioxidant, particularly for your liver.

[01:42:52] And lots of people go get IV drips of glutathione, which is terrific. But the half-life of glutathione is a couple of hours. So you get a burst of cleanup. Lots of people go there after they've been partying so long, and then it's over. When you take it from algae, it's the log. Remember, it's the log on the fire.

[01:43:11] So the glutathione burns longer, stays with you longer, so it's cleansing longer. It's great to stack. If your IV drip place doesn't have it, bring some with you. Take your spirulina before your drip, and then take the glutathione afterwards to pull out any of the toxins and extend the value of the drip.

[01:43:31] So chlorella, cleansing, hard cell wall, pulls out toxins, kills bacteria because of the chlorophyll, high glutathione, which is very cleansing, still has 40 vitamins and minerals and has the highest K2 as a daily requirement of K2. Now, we're talking K2 and K1. I didn't go into the greater depth about why everybody's short on K2, but I'm going to tell you now.

[01:43:55] So K2 is related to K1, and you know that K1 is in anything that's green. Unfortunately, humans, when we eat anything that's got K1, we cannot convert it to K2, but animals can, particularly cattle. They have two stomachs, by the way. Maybe this is why they can do it. They have the bacteria that converts K1 to K2.

[01:44:18] So up until the '60s, in North America, we were getting all the K2 we needed. And remember K2 pulls out excess calcium from your blood vessels and moves it into your bones. And excess calcium in your blood vessels contributes to heart disease. So up until the '60s, we were fine. We were eating cattle because they were grazing on pastures, and they could convert the K1 to K2.

[01:44:47] And then in the late '60s or maybe it was early '70s, somebody realized, if we fed the cattle corn or hay and move them into an enclosure, they would get fat faster, and we would make more money. Boom. That's what they did. And instantly, the source of K2 in our diet disappeared because there's nothing green about corn.

[01:45:10] So overnight, and you can check stats, heart disease escalated exactly at the time of moving of animals from pastures into corrals and feeding them corn happened. And as I said, you can get K2 supplements now, but they are made from fermented chickpeas. I don't want to do too much on K2, but K2 is a very complicated vitamin.

[01:45:37] And there's different types. There's M4, MK. And the kind of K2 that can get into all of your cells is from grass-fed animal protein, natto, or algae. I think it's M4, but I could be wrong. Again, the type that comes from the fermented chickpeas is fine, but it cannot get into your brain.

[01:45:59] And you still have excess calcium in your brain, and that contributes to Alzheimer's and some other issues. So I just tell people, if you want the real deal, be sure you're eating grass-fed animal protein. You probably won't ever eat natto. Japanese do. This is one of the reasons why you want chlorella, because it has your daily requirement.

[01:46:18] Spirulina has some, but chlorella has more. So now you're taking all these great things, and we generally recommend the chlorella at night. Why is that? Oh, I forgot. It also has the highest concentration of tryptophan in the world, five times more than turkey. And tryptophan is the precursor to melatonin, and melatonin is what helps you sleep.

[01:46:40] So this will help you get into deep sleep. It won't make you sleepy, but it will help you, when you're sleeping, get into that deeper stage. So why do we recommend chlorella at night? I eat it all day long. So you can take it all day long, and it's fine. And I eat mine because I love the taste of it.

[01:46:57] But when you are sleeping, this is why sleep is so important, this is when your body goes through a detox and repair cycle. And if you are not getting proper sleep, you are not repairing. You are not cleansing. You are not detoxing. Your brain actually has its own thing called the glymphatic system, which is like a lymphatic system, and your brain shrinks a little bit.

[01:47:19] So it's like having the ScrubaDub street cleaners in there while you're sleeping. But if you can't get proper sleep, then you're not getting enough of that done. And so because the tryptophan does help you get to the deep sleep, and because while you're sleeping and aluminum is in your brain, there's all kinds of toxins in your brain, the average adult, I read, has 700 toxins in their bodies now. 700.

[01:47:45] Our immune systems were not built to sustain that kind of toxic load. You've got to get them out. Because they lodge in the cell membrane. They lodge in the mitochondria, and they prevent your health from being optimal. It's like when you have awful heated omega-6, which is, to me, a toxin.

[01:48:08] So when you have those toxins sitting in your cell membranes, the good stuff can't get in. It's like someone's stealing your parking spot. Remember those things they call porins, they're openings that things can get in and out? So if the toxins are sitting in your porin, which is supposed to allow healthy nutrients in and out, because there's a toxin blocking the way, you're stuck.

[01:48:30] Chlorophyll, by the way, because it's a fat-based pigment, I say, when you have dirty windows, you can't see out and sunlight can't get in. So think of chlorophyll as window washers for your cell walls. It helps restore the health of the cells so that toxins can get out and nutrients can get in.

[01:48:47] And chlorella, algae is the best for making that happen. So it's very important to get your sleep. It's very important to have chlorella, algae before you go to bed. You can take it any time of day, but definitely to ensure that-- it also stimulates peristalsis, which is known as a bowel movement.

[01:49:05] And you've got to get rid of the junk in your trunk because-- I don't know what the percentage is. I think more men have colon cancer, and I think it's primarily because they're not eating much fiber. And so these days, so many people are constipated. When you travel, you get constipated. Take medication, you get constipated. You eat dairy, you get constipated. You eat carbs, you get constipated.

[01:49:28] It's a real problem. That problem goes away when you take chlorella because it has fiber in it, so it feeds the gut biome. So you can get those short-chain fatty acids. It stimulates peristalsis. It's like magic. It's absolute magic. And we need to get rid of those things. And when you don't have good bowel movements, what's in your bowel? Stuff your body didn't want. It's like, no, get rid of that. No, no.

[01:49:54] And so if it's stuck there and your blood is circulating, it's picking up those toxins and recirculating them. Not a good thing. So chlorella will help move that through. It's been used for IBS and Crohn's disease for decades. And it's a combination of the detoxing ability of the hard cell wall, the glutathione, the chlorophyll, the K2, kills bacteria, the fiber feeds short-chain fatty acids.

[01:50:21] And by the way, 80% of your immune system is in your gut. 80%. And there's something called the vagus nerve that connects the brain to the gut. So your gut is considered your second brain. So when you're starting to heal your gut and your lower intestine, which the chlorella does, you're automatically helping to heal your brain.

[01:50:44] And same with the spirulina. As the brain heals, it will start healing your gut. It's a two-way street, although they've found that there's actually more communication from the gut to the brain than the other way around. But the vagus nerve is the thing that connects them.

[01:51:01] And I came up with this analogy to help people understand the two different algae, and I try to make it fun just so it's not too sciencey, geeky. So because I speak at a lot of conferences and I'm staying at nice hotels, I get room service. And I thought, spirulina gives you everything you need for the day. It gives you nourishment. It gives you energy. It gets your mind working. It's like room service, right?

[01:51:27] Luke: That's right.

[01:51:28] Catharine: And chlorella cleans out all the junk in your trunk, gets all the rid of the stuff that you don't want. It's very cleansing. It's like housekeeping. So think of spirulina as room service for your body and chlorella as housekeeping. Another way I describe chlorella, it's like giving your body a shower from the inside every day. We take a shower from the outside. But what about all that garbage?

[01:51:55] And it's not just yesterday's garbage or last week's garbage. We are accumulating so many toxins. And when they test things, and they hardly test anything, they test them in isolation. We don't exist in isolation. These toxins layer upon themselves, whether it's spores from mold or glyphosate from your organic food getting sprayed by the neighbor next door. It's the fumes from your clothes. It's the smoke. It's the EMF. You need to get rid of those.

[01:52:25] Now, chlorella is a detoxing algae that does that. And so while you're pulling the toxins out, not always, but may have some detox symptoms, which could be slightly some stomach upset, or maybe some breakouts, or a headache. Doesn't happen all the time. It doesn't happen to everyone.

[01:52:42] And it's not the chlorella that's doing it to you. What's happening is it's pulling the toxins out. They're now circulating in your blood on their way out. And the way you get rid of them is through respiration, sweating, urine, and bowel movements.

[01:52:58] So this is where saunas come in really handy. If you have access to a sauna or you take a sauna regularly or anytime, take some chlorella before the sauna because it will help remove the toxins from the cells. And then you can sweat them out. Sweating is really great.

[01:53:17] There's great companies that have miniature sauna things. I have one. I haven't taken it out of the box yet. They laugh at me all the time. But this will help with that process of detoxing so that you can clean all this stuff that shouldn't be there. So they work very much in different ways. Again, spirulina, great for brain health, chlorella for gut health and immune health because your immune system is in your gut. So they're very compatible. They're like your super couple.

[01:53:47] Luke: With chlorella and its ability to chelate heavy metals and get the toxins out of your body, as you're describing, just hearing that it had those qualities, I've thought of it like activated charcoal or something like that. And so I've thought about chlorella and thought, maybe it's just getting the toxins out of your GI tract but not going into your blood, but what you're describing is--

[01:54:13] Catharine: Oh, it's true chelation. Yeah.

[01:54:14] Luke: Because you absorb it, it is actually cleaning the cells in your blood, not just any toxins that happen to be dumped into your GI tract.

[01:54:22] Catharine: Oh, way more than the GI. So a couple of things you mentioned. Activated charcoal. I'm not really a big fan of it, and here's why. Activated charcoal will pull out all minerals, including the good ones. So you run the risk, if you're not careful, of becoming dehydrated because you lose all your electrolytes.

[01:54:38] Never happens with chlorella because it introduces magnesium, potassium. I think it has a little bit of sodium. It introduces all the electrolytes, and it only pulls out toxins. Remember, intelligent food. It knows what to do in your body, and it's not just your GI tract. The best way, if you want to test this out, is if you had some wine, or alcohol, or whatever, and you took 30 tablets because you need the 30 for the detox, otherwise, it's just giving you the wellness benefits of the chlorophyll.

[01:55:12] So in an hour and a half, you will be sober. Why? Because it will pull the toxins out of your blood because your blood is liquid. So in an hour and a half, it will be fully functional in something that's fluid. It will take about a week to 10 days to pull the toxins out of your cell structure.

[01:55:32] And it could take anywhere from a month to six months to pull them out from your organs. And it's all about the density of the cells. So your blood is very liquid cells, so it's very easy to be affected. And you'll see that right away. It also pulls out lactic acid, which is why athletes like to use it after sports.

[01:55:53] So it pulls out the lactic acid, so you'll have a much faster recovery. And anybody who does a lot of sports competitively, either professionally or personally, when you're training hard, and then you do the run, or the race, or the game, you're whipped, and so your immune system just tanks. So this will protect your immune system.

[01:56:15] For a while, a lot of teams were using this, which they still use them because teams travel together, often in buses, and they often sleep in college dorms, and so if one person gets a cold, it goes through the whole team very quickly. So families, you know. When you have your kids at school, one comes home with a cold, pretty quickly, the rest of the kids get them.

[01:56:38] So this is why it's so great to give to your children. We had teachers saying to some of our customers who had been giving this to their children all winter in cold parts of the United States, what are you doing with your kids? They're the only ones that don't have colds. And it was the chlorella.

[01:56:55] Luke: Are these two algaes safe for pregnant and lactating women?

[01:56:59] Catharine: Yes, they are. Yes, absolutely. And I encourage mothers, and we have some articles about that as well. And there's lots of science about that because whatever, obviously, you're eating goes to the baby. So clearly, spirulina, hands down, you're going to have an Einstein on your hand.

[01:57:15] There's so many toxins, and you need to be-- and you, the mom, it's tiring building a baby or building a child, so it helps you with your energy, and it helps nourish the baby. And on the chlorella, it's pulling toxins. It's not dumping them into the baby. It's pulling them out of you, so it's protecting you as well as the baby. And even when you're nursing, it kills bacteria. So when you're breastfeeding, there'll be less bacteria, and there's science papers about that as well.

[01:57:47]  

[01:57:47] Luke: Awesome. Now, what about the cell wall of the chlorella? I've seen different companies over the years market broken cell wall chlorella, like reishi mushroom, and different things like that will use that as part of their marketing.

[01:58:00] Catharine: Yeah, great question. So as I mentioned, chlorella has the hardest cell wall in the plant kingdom. Spirulina has none, so there's no cracking. So what they discovered years ago was that if you didn't crack the cell wall, you couldn't get the nutrients. It would still maybe do some detox, but you wouldn't get access to the 40 vitamins and minerals and all this other juicy stuff.

[01:58:19] So the original company that developed the chlorella and the algae market, and I'm very respectful of them and very grateful, is called Sun Chlorella. They're based in Japan. They are the granddaddy of algae, especially chlorella. And they still sell. Mind you, they haven't changed their packaging or anything in the 60 years that they've existed.

[01:58:39] And I've contacted them before I started my company. And they discovered you had to do this cracking. So they developed a technique, and everybody except us, that I'm aware of, uses this technique, which is tumbling the chlorella physically with glass beads. And the physical banging up of the glass to the chlorella is what cracks the chlorella cell wall. So it's structural.

[01:59:05] But the problem is the glass heats up, and lead from the glass leaks into the chlorella, taking the chlorella to remove heavy metals. And here, you got lead. Also heat just scrambles the nutrients. It's not as--

[01:59:20] Luke: So the friction from the tumbling of the glass creates that heat.

[01:59:23] Catharine: And the FDA, just so you know, has regulated, any chlorella in America must be cracked cell wall. You can't find, and shouldn't find, and shouldn't take anything that's not cracked cell wall chlorella. For whatever reason, you can get uncracked cell wall in France, but I wouldn't recommend that because then you're not getting access to all the nutrients.

[01:59:48] So when I was starting the company, remember, I just want to help my sister, and then I want to help other people. And I was going into this just cautiously and through gut intuition that I heard about this glass stuff and lead leaking into the glass. Oh man, there's got to be another way. That doesn't sound good to me.

[02:00:07] And a new technique had just been developed. It was a little bit more expensive, but that's what we use. And we pass our chlorella through a sound chamber. And it's the vibrations that crack the chlorella cell wall. So no heat, no lead. And I chuckled because I know you're from California.

[02:00:24] Someone said, oh, your chlorella has good vibrations. Yay, for California, good vibrations. So I'm proud that we have, I feel, a cleaner chlorella. I'm grateful to Sun Chlorella. They put chlorella on the map, but this is a better technique for doing it.

[02:00:45] Luke: That's cool. Yeah, it's like when a certain sound frequency cracks a crystal glass, right?

[02:00:51] Catharine: Yeah.

[02:00:51] Luke: Oh, that's really interesting.

[02:00:53] Catharine: Yeah, so that's why I'm very proud of what we do. I know that this is the safest, purest, cleanest functional food you'll ever put in your mouth. I met Dr. Jeffrey Bland, speaking of functional, who's the father of functional medicine. He's set up the Functional Medicine Institute. We're hoping to be working with him.

[02:01:10] Dr. Mark Hyman is a really terrific functional medicine doctor. He was one of my instructors when I was learning my nutrition. We hope to be working with him as well. For the last eight years, we've only sold through functional medicine. Dr. Will Cole, another terrific functional medicine who's been working with us for eight years. Because I did all the science. I knew they needed science.

[02:01:35] I knew they needed lab tests. I hunkered down. We're the only one delivering science. We're the only one delivering lab tests, proving the, efficacy and the safety. I'll do whatever it takes to get people healthy again. We need to turn this around, and it needs to be easy and sustainable, but both sustainable for them to keep new habits and also sustainable for the environment because there's so many people there-- I tried a keto diet so many times. I just couldn't do it because I can't digest fat.

[02:02:05] And there's people saying, change your entire life. Reasonable habits are hard to break. And so rather than taking something out of someone's life and telling them you can't do that, you can't do that, I'm saying, look, here's something you can do. If you change nothing else, like that clinical trial we did, if you did nothing else, just add this. And if you can swallow water-- because if you don't like the taste, you can swallow them-- in seconds, you will be nourished. In seconds, you can turn this around. And more is better.

[02:02:42] Luke: Awesome. I want to remind people lukestorey.com/algae is all of the show notes, and we'll put everything you referenced in there as well. And then energybits.com with the code LUKE gets you 20% off. Thank you so much for your dedication and your passion.

[02:03:01] Catharine: Yeah, yeah.

[02:03:01] Luke: I feel like you could keep going probably for four hours.

[02:03:05] Catharine: I told you I'm getting a PhD now because I've learned so much and I find it so fascinating, but here's the problem. None of this is actually new, but scientists like to talk to other scientists. They have science speak, and there's jargon. And so for us, I'm one of you, whoever's listening. I'm one of you.

[02:03:22] I didn't have a science degree. I didn't know what any of this meant. But when I first started this, we actually got noticed mostly by the sports community, so I used to give lectures at triathlon clubs because this was helping them have better runs, and helping them with the spirulina, and helping them recover faster, less muscles.

[02:03:42] So I was at the MIT Triathlon club giving a lecture, and this was very early in my days when I was doing this, and I didn't know as much science as I know now. They were literally heckling me because they said, how can something with one calorie per tablet give me energy? Because they were still working from the old paradigm that calories equals energy.

[02:04:05] And as I've explained, it's all about ATP and cellular energy. And he said, how can that happen? And I was so new at the very beginning. I said, you know what? I'll have to get back to you on that because I honestly hadn't started my deep dive into the science. So I said, I will find out because it was working, but we didn't know why, and nobody else is telling you why either.

[02:04:31] All the other algae companies, I can almost promise you, most of them have a supplement panel on the back of their packaging. They think this is a supplement because they haven't paid attention. They haven't done the deep dive. This is all we do.

[02:04:46] Most companies sell a 100 or a 1,000 other things, and they just find some contract manufacturer in China and slap a label on it, and then boom they're selling algae. I've got pictures of people that are selling spirulina, chlorella in little capsules, and pictures of ground up rocks. When they took it apart, it was ground up rocks or ground up seashells.

[02:05:08] You don't know what you're getting. And you do with us because I'm trying to make a difference. It's informed every decision I've made along the way. I hire people based on their DNA of caring for people first and then their skill set second. I hope to grow this one day in Florida, as I mentioned. It will take a lot of money. We're self-funded. I was on Shark Tank. I don't know if I told you that I was on Shark Tank six years ago. They didn't invest. I didn't want their money. I just wanted the visibility. They made fun of me, and they heckled me too.

[02:05:37] Luke: Are you serious?

[02:05:38] Catharine: Yeah. You still see it.

[02:05:39] Luke: Oh, man.

[02:05:39] Catharine: My episode has been aired about 50 times. It was literally six years ago.

[02:05:44] Luke: That's interesting because you make a really compelling case, obviously.

[02:05:48] Catharine: know a lot more now. Yeah. And you only have eight minutes with them. The process of getting on Shark Tank, they say, is more difficult than getting into Harvard Business School. 40,000 companies apply every year, and you work with producers, and you send them your videos, and material, and samples, and literature, and you have to sign away your life and videos. But the sharks never see you till the moment you are in front of them.

[02:06:14] And so you have to have your pitch. And they made fun of me because my whole thing wasn't about making money. My pitch was about changing people's lives. And so I gave my pitch, and then they said, Catharine, you didn't tell us what you're looking for money wise, or your valuation.

[02:06:28] And I told them. They laughed at me. But you can see my ugly first packaging, by the way. I'm your classic entrepreneur. I have taught myself supply chain. I have taught myself sourcing. I have taught myself production. I taught myself package design. I design everything. I'm the chief scientific officer. I have a whole team now.

[02:06:48] So I just tell you that because if you see the Shark Tank episode, it will have my first generation packaging, which was pretty ugly. But I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and made it really beautiful because I want you to feel comfortable. I want you to put this on your countertop and make you feel happy. The packaging is as vibrant on the outside as what algae does for you on the inside. It's also my ode to Mother Nature.

[02:07:16] I use all images from nature. Can you tell I love Mother Nature? She is my mentor. And also, those of you who are struggling with chronic health condition, it will change if you do the natural things, I promise you, but it's not going to happen overnight. Seasons don't change overnight. Your child doesn't grow from a baby to an adult overnight.

[02:07:45] There's stages that you need to go through. Just be patient. Remember, think of yourself still as just a bigger baby. Show yourself self-love. I call this algae love because honestly, it loves your body to bits. And my sign off on my emails is, thanks for loving your body to bits with algae, because it truly does love your body, and it came from the same place.

[02:08:09] And we just have to help people understand what it is. And as I said to people, algae is not new. It's just new to you. And just think about it. You didn't know about chia, or matcha, or kiwa, or collagen powder, although these things have been used indigenously, mushrooms, CBD, for centuries until someone brought it to your attention, made it easy to understand, easy to take, in our case, also safe and pure.

[02:08:35] So again, algae is not new. It's just new to you. The science is there. Dig into the PubMed if you want. I've got lots of it, so you don't have to work as hard. We'll send you lots of the articles. My wish is that we can turn this situation around and get a different trajectory. And you can still eat, but I call this health insurance because if you have algae, spirulina, and chlorella every day, eating is just then back to entertainment. It's social, tastes, but we're not getting the nutrition that we need from our food. And so we need something, and supplements, I don't feel, are the answer.

[02:09:15] Luke: Awesome. You've taught us a lot here today.

[02:09:19] Catharine: Sorry, I went a little longer than I was planning.

[02:09:22] Luke: No, there is no longer on this show. You can talk as long as you want. We'll talk until I feel like we're done. And I feel like we've created a nice package of information for people. You've mentioned Mother Nature as being your mentor. My last question for you is this. Who have been three other teachers or even teachings, might be a philosophy or anything, that have influenced your life and your work?

[02:09:43] Catharine: Yeah. There's a book called A Course in Miracles. I've read it twice. I'm on the third-- it's heavy-going, and you won't get most of it, probably the first or second time. But I read that first time, I think, about 10 years ago. I think I bought it 15 years ago, but it will mature-- it's like good wine. When you're ready for it, it's there. So that was a terrific book. I have a lot of respect for Wayne Dyer. He's passed, but I've read all his books.

[02:10:12] I'm also a big fan of the Abraham Hicks Community. I get their email every morning. I've been to their sessions, all of which are more spiritual in nature, but I truly feel algae is a spiritual food. And I'm a very spiritual person. And I know that this is my path, to help people understand this gift that we got from Mother Nature.

[02:10:38] Interestingly, my family and my immediate social life were very conservative, traditional people, so I've been slowly finding my people. I may have mentioned it earlier, I'm moving to Miami. I live in Boston right now. We're very heavy science, and there are clusters of people gathered around the world.

[02:10:58] We get together at conferences. These modalities have existed for centuries, but then the pharmaceutical industry interjected its way, and people think if you just take a pill, it'll solve-- a pill for an ill, I think is the expression. But we all know these are symptoms that we're feeling, and the issue is more upstream.

[02:11:22] And I'll promise you, it always gets to your mitochondria. So anything we can do-- I tell people I never eat alone. I always eat with my mitochondria. So if you can keep that in mind and be more cognizant, take back your control. You are in the driver's seat. You always were, but we gave it away there for a while.

[02:11:43] And there's lots of people out there willing and wanting to help you with modalities that are healthy and natural. Just simple things like getting some sunshine, getting some movement, getting good sleep, breathing, hugging. I can help you with the nutrition, and they will facilitate all the other stuff, but we're spiritual beings having a human experience, and we want the best human experience.

[02:12:13] We treat our cars and cell phones with more respect sometimes than our bodies. And I think, partly, maybe it's not respect. We just know how they work. We know how our cell phone and car works better than our body. So my goal is to help you understand a little bit about how your body works so you won't be angry with it. Because when you're angry with your body, you're fearful, and that just generates more anger and more fear, and we want to get you off that cycle.

[02:12:42] When you're younger, it's easy to love your body, but when you get to that stage where your body's not making those things for you anymore that kept you healthy, which is after the age of 30, that's when the anger, and the frustration, and the fear kick in. And if we can't stop that cycle, it's really hard to bring you back. So things like algae will certainly help you with that.

[02:13:05] Luke: Awesome. Thanks for bringing us back today. Thanks for your passion and your expertise. It's been a blast to talk to you. Like I said, after all these years of being aware of algae and just waiting around for the right person, clearly, I was waiting for you, so thank you.

[02:13:19] Catharine: Thank you. I was waiting for you too.

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