[00:00:01] Luke: All right, Catharine. Here we go for round two.

[00:00:03] Catharine: Round two.

[00:00:04] Luke: So for those listening, Catharine's last appearance would be episode 505, and we're going to link to that and everything we talk about today in the show notes at lukestorey.com/algae2. So I know a lot has happened in your life and career and with your company ENERGYbits since we last talked, hence me wanting to sit down with you again and get the updates.

[00:00:28] I'm someone who's been a long-time fan and user of all different types of algae, and so when I met you, it was very refreshing to find someone who actually had the science and data to support what I intuitively felt was a really good staple in one's diet, which it has been in mine off and on for years. So I guess the first thing I want to talk about is your recent educational milestone at your age, which is not when people typically start learning new things and getting diplomas for them. So give me an update on what's going on with your life right now.

[00:01:08] Catharine: Well, I am very proud that at the ripe old age of 68, so I'm just a couple of years shy of 70, I got my PhD in natural health. And I'm particularly proud because my original background or education was in business. I have an MBA, and that was, gosh, 35 years ago.

[00:01:30] So it's been quite a while since I was part of a formal educational program. But in the last 15 years as I had been working with my company, ENERGYbits, and algae, I just had to hunker down and dug into the science, and it turned out I loved it. I didn't know I was a science geek, and I basically taught myself everything about mitochondria health and what algae does to help with that, and brain health, every aspect of health, and we'll get into some of that.

[00:02:01] But I secretly kept thinking, oh, I wish I had the credentials that give me more confidence and also would give other people confidence in me. So about three years ago, I started exploring where I could go and how long it would take, and I found this great school that would give me credit for my 15 years of research on mitochondria health with algae. So I didn't have to write a thesis, and I had to go through the exams, which were like writing medical boards.

[00:02:31] But I passed, and my team is very proud of me. We're busily updating all of our website materials. Some people are saying, "Well, can we call you Dr. Arnston?" Which is a little pretentious, but some people are. But yes, I'm very proud, a, that I did it because it was a lot of work. And b, that I did it at my age, which it's one of the topics we're going to talk about today, is how society has convinced us that there's age appropriateness for certain activities. And I'm here to tell you, no, there isn't.

[00:03:05] The only limit that you ever place is you place your own limits. But it's hard to get to that place where you feel comfortable, with your choices that don't seem to mirror what the rest of the world is doing. And I would encourage people to listen to that little voice and follow it wherever it takes you, whether it's to get an advanced degree, career change, lifestyle change. It doesn't matter. And there's no age limits.

[00:03:37] I was telling you earlier, I was admiring Vera Wang, something she had done I'd noticed online. And I checked and found out she was 75. And I thought, God bless her. And then I realized here I was using the same thing that, oh, at 70 you shouldn't be doing something so extraordinary.

[00:03:53] And so one of the things I have uncovered through our conversation is that things that hold us back very often is obviously societal expectations, but often also your energy. As you get older, your energy decreases. And so you don't have energy to strike out a new path, learn new things, meet new people.

[00:04:18] And also as you get older, and there are reasons for this, you often have chronic illnesses that diminish your joy in life because living with pain takes a lot of the joy out of your life. And I read that the average adult in America over the age of 40 has at least one chronic disease.

[00:04:39] And when you get to 65, there's three. How do you explore new opportunities? How do you have a little moment with yourself realizing and saying, this life I've been leading isn't really my joy. If you are so limited by your energy, chronic illnesses, it holds you back. You just say, "Well, I guess I'll just stay here."

[00:05:07] Luke: Right. That's a really good point. It's like if you get to the point in your life, hopefully we're all-- I think many people listening to this would qualify. We're evolving. Your interests change, and you might have points of discovery of your passion or your purpose that are bigger than your job or career.

[00:05:24] But that's a really good distinction there that even if you get to that point, if you're older, you might not have the energy to execute on that idea. And then it's just one of those dreams that slips through your fingers that's never actualized because you literally just don't have the vitality to proceed.

[00:05:41] Catharine: Right. And the other thing on top that I'm also proud of, I did the PhD while I continued running the company.

[00:05:48] Luke: That was what I was wondering.

[00:05:49] Catharine: It's not like I just put the company on hold because I already worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day. So I had to squeeze it in, and I did because it was very, very important to me. And fortunately because I take algae every day, both the spirulina and the chlorella-- the spirulina gives you energy, and the chlorella keeps you healthy-- I had the energy, and I had the health that I needed to take on this additional load. I'm glad that I did pass because that would've been very sad. But then I wouldn't have given up. I would've tried again.

[00:06:26] Luke: I have a feeling you would've. Yeah. From what I know of you, you're pretty tenacious.

[00:06:30] Catharine: Yeah. So I don't want to make myself look anything special. The only thing that is special is that I have uncovered what truly matters to me. And I will pursue that. And what matters to me is the path that I'm on right now, bringing algae to people and helping them understand how it helps them in so many ways, and to make it easy for them to understand, easy for them to take it.

[00:06:57] I'm so grateful because most people don't find their path because it's a little voice that never speaks loudly. Your ego always shouts and is very dogmatic and instills fear in you. Your little voice, which is your soul, never instills fear. It's always love and always whispers. And so it's always hard to hear it when the ego is there and there's so much else going on, so many other expectations from your family, from society, from the social media about what you should be doing. And the only thing you should be doing is listening to yourself.

[00:07:38] Luke: I love that. Yeah. I was reading something about aging and the concept of retirement recently, and it highlighted that, and I forget where I read this, it's like consuming so much content all the time, but it stuck out to me that the term retirement has its origins in nautical terminology.

[00:08:01] Catharine: That's interesting.

[00:08:02] Luke: Yeah. And that it was originally applied to retiring vessels, seagoing vessels. So you would retire a ship, and that means the ship is no longer functional and has no utility and no value.

[00:08:16] Catharine: Oh my God. Oh, it's awful. Makes me sick.

[00:08:18] Luke: Yeah. Isn't that sad? And so it's like the way our society is programmed, you go to school as a kid, then you graduate high school, and then you're expected to go to college and specialize in something and then build a career around that. And we have this carrot in front of the horse sort of thing. Oh, when I'm 65, this is all going to end and then I'm just going to chill and I'm going to retire.

[00:08:41] It's like we're imposing upon ourselves through the influence of society that what we're looking forward to for us is freedom and the opportunity to pursue our passions. As you said, by then, many of us won't have the energy to do so. But the idea of retiring for me is terrifying because that would mean I've ceased to live.

[00:09:02] Catharine: Exactly.

[00:09:03] Luke: Because the things I do for work now, talking to people like you for example, or writing my book, are things I would be doing anyway even if it wasn't my job.

[00:09:11] Catharine: Right. So you're lucky too, but you did the work to find that passion and to listen to that voice. So the funny thing I'll tell you is that I was thinking about this about six months ago. I just remembered it now. I tell people that I'm retired, but re-tired. You have tires on your car, you retire them. You make them better again. You put on new treads, new threads, new treads. And that's what I'm doing.

[00:09:42] I've got new treads and new threads, and I am retired. And I'm ready to rock. And everybody should be. I know before we started taping, we talked earlier about how the society expectations has boxed everybody in. And so is a bill of goods, I think. And it doesn't matter whether it's the food, the medical industry, all these things that we trusted and believed in from, at least for me at an early age, I'm realizing aren't quite what we were told they were.

[00:10:19] Our food is so overprocessed now. Our soils are so over cropped. Even if you did eat vegetables, they don't contain the nutrients that your grandparents used to have. Even when you go to places like Whole Foods, man, they got the canola oil in everything. And this illusion that you work till you're 65 and then it's nirvana, that's an illusion.

[00:10:45] The medical industry, because they're so focused, and I feel sorry for the doctors who-- my niece is a ER doctor. They went into the profession to help people, but then the insurance companies have controlled the medical community. They're only allowed 10 minutes to see a patient.

[00:11:05] And the whole medical industry is based on treating an ailment after it's manifested. And historically, centuries ago, medicine men, everything was closer to the earth. There was such respect for nature medicinals, plants and seeds and things like algae.

[00:11:29] And I think we really need to get back there because that's where life is. That's where it all started. And we need to get back there as soon as we can, honestly. So that's why I love algae so much, because it was the first life on earth almost 4 billion years ago.

[00:11:49] So you can't get any more ancestral than spirulina and chlorella algae. And me personally, it has kept me going. I had some biomarkers done. I'm going to have some more. But as I said, my chronological age is 86, but my biological age is 30. And nobody can--

[00:12:10] Luke: 68. You just did dyslexia.

[00:12:12] Catharine: Did I say 86? Sorry.

[00:12:13] Luke: I was like, you're really crushing the theories.

[00:12:15] Catharine: Yeah. Right. 68. Sorry. That's old enough. Although hopefully I'll be planing. So anyway, so it's--

[00:12:22] Luke: People ask me about-- I've never done one of those tests. I know there are different things. What's the name of the test that determined chronological versus biological age?

[00:12:33] Catharine: The one I was going to tell you about because I'm going to do it with their company, there's a company called TruDiagnostic. And the gentleman, Bryan Johnson, who's been spending millions of dollars to reverse his age, I think he spent collectively 5 million, 2 million a year, doing all these stem cell therapies and whatever.

[00:13:04] And he's taken a couple of years off his age, and he uses TruDiagnostics. As soon as I get home, actually this week, I'm going to sign up for one of their tests because they have a fairly extensive list of tests. But the one I did, it was funny, it was about a year and a half ago at Dave Asprey's Biohacking Conference in Orlando.

[00:13:25] And I'm very good friends with Patrick Porter, who's the founder of BrainTap. And BrainTap has a device that you put on your head and, using sound and light, it helps your brain relax. And so it allows you to have a much better, healthier experience in the moment and later on. So normally they do these biomarker tests before people put the BrainTap device on and then they do it again afterwards

[00:13:56] Luke: Are you talking about the HRV clips?

[00:13:58] Catharine: Yeah.

[00:13:58] Luke: I have one of those. It's cool.

[00:14:00] Catharine: So for me, they said, why don't we do the test with you and then you go have some algae and then come back an hour later and we'll test you again? So that's what we did. And so in that one-hour night, the equivalent-- and I will tell people, all the things that are really good for you are literally free or almost free, like sleep movement, sun, and algae.

[00:14:22] Because when we'll tell you about the algae, works out to about a dollar a day if you have 10 tablets. Anyways, I took the equivalent of maybe $12 worth of algae in the space of an hour. And then they measured me again. And in that space of an hour, after spending the equivalent of $12, my biological age dropped to 30.

[00:14:42] Luke: That's so cool.

[00:14:43] Catharine: I 65 at the time, 66 at the time. So I'm going to put a challenge out to Bryan Johnson who has spent $5 million. And not everybody has $5 million to invest. And God bless him because he's also pushing the limits. He's showing people what's possible.

[00:15:04] But the reason I like algae so much is that you don't have to spend all that money. You don't have to go out to all these clinics. You can if you want, because if you stack it with red light or cryotherapy, sauna, and we can talk about some of that, the benefits you get are even more amazing because it works to reduce inflammation in the mitochondria and pull out toxins.

[00:15:26] But if you don't want to do any of that, all you have to do is you can take 10 tablets of spirulina in the morning, swallow with water, take 10 chlorella tablets a night, swallow with water. In seconds, you get all the nourishment you need, and your body gets the immune support that it needs. That's why I call spirulina your nutritional insurance, because it fills all the nutritional gaps that we all have.

[00:15:49] And I call chlorella your health insurance because it keeps your immune system strong, pulls out toxins, has the highest chlorophyll, which kills bacteria. So the two of them work quite differently together, but they're effortless. So you don't have to have any fancy-- you certainly don't have to have PhD. You certainly don't have to drive in your car to some cryotherapy center unless you want to. You, your children, your grandparents, your pets in the comfort of your home, you can reverse your age.

[00:16:18] Luke: I'm glad you mentioned pets because Cookie here is off camera. Her absolute favorite treats are your spirulina and chlorella. She's that picky, to be honest, but that's something, I'll throw them on the floor and I say, "Hey, do you want your crunchies?" She knows exactly what that means. So if I want to get her to come to the door to go for a walk, crunchies, throw a couple of those on the floor, it's like an instant. But I always like testing how attractive animals are to things. I'll do experiments with two types of water or this and that, AB test, and see what they're drawn to.

[00:16:58] Catharine: Yeah. They're smart.

[00:17:00] Luke: Yeah. I find it really affirming that she just intuitively or innately knows that that's really good for her and seems to like the taste. She seems to prefer-- she'll eat both, but she'll go for the chlorella first.

[00:17:13] Catharine: Interesting.

[00:17:14] Luke: Maybe because it has protein or something. I don't know.

[00:17:15] Catharine: Well, they both have high protein, but I encourage people to muscle test. We have a brand where there's two algae, the spirulina and chlorella mix. And I encourage people never to start with that one. It's called VITALITYbits, because very often most people prefer one or the other, let's say 50% of the time. Because they both do great things, but they do completely different things in your body. So it's better to try them separately to find out how you respond to each one, because you will respond differently. And you can muscle test them.

[00:17:46] I've spoke at the American Naturopath Medicine Conference in Vegas in August, and people were doing lots of muscle testing, and fortunately we passed every single time. And I literally got a standing ovation with my lecture. They gave me 45 minutes, and people were coming up and said, "They have to give you two hours next time." Because that was a very medical community. So they really appreciated the deep dive in the science.

[00:18:15] But they understood that they do different things. And muscle testing is very simply just hold your arm up with the whatever it is that you are testing in your other hand, and someone will try to push your arm down. And if it's good for you, your arm will stay solid. And if it's not good for your highest good, they'll be able to push your arm down. So it's very, very easy to do, and you can just do it again in the comfort of your home.

[00:18:42] Luke: I can't imagine anyone testing negative for algae, provided it's a clean source.

[00:18:48] Catharine: Yeah. Well, some people do. That's the whole thing. The clean source is the big issue. A lot of people don't test positively for either one, and it's because the algae has not been grown as carefully as ours, which is why we get so many accolades from doctors because we do third party lab tests.

[00:19:06] We grow it in triple-filtered spring mountain water, don't use high heat, which I do want to talk about because that preserves all the nutrients. But it's an easy test to do. And sometimes some people are allergic to peanuts. Well, peanuts aren't great for you anyways. But whatever your compositional makeup is, maybe there's just something that's not good for you in that moment.

[00:19:28] Because the other thing you have to remember is, I love this expression, you never stop stepping the same river twice. The river is always changing, and so are you. And our bodies are constantly changing every single nanosecond. You have a trillion cells die every day, and a trillion new ones grow.

[00:19:45] Maybe you've had a exposure to some allergy, and maybe now you have more mast cells circulating. So maybe one day it's good for you and the next day you need to take a break. So it's always good to muscle test. Doesn't hurt. Doesn't cost anything.

[00:20:05] Luke: To that point, I think that's one of the limitations of lab work in the functional medicine realm. There's a lot of reliance on lab work. And so you find a deficiency or a toxin and then you supplement your way out of that. But I've noticed over the years, and I still think lab work is useful, but I don't think it's as reliable as a determinant of your health because of the river concept.

[00:20:33] I test my vitamin D, testosterone, whatever today. Next week, go do it. It's going to be different without changing anything. Just on the the fluid nature of our biochemistry. It's so flexible, and there's so many different influences. You mentioned sunshine. So it's like, did I get sun today?

[00:20:50] Did I do some breath work? Did I take a sauna? Even if I keep my diet the same, just your environment. Are you in Hawaii ,or are you in Boston in January? It's going to change so much based on your environment, your circadian rhythm and all that that I don't think it's as solid of a determinant as we sometimes hope it is.

[00:21:09] Catharine: Well, on that note, I had some blood tests done recently, and everything came back normal. But then someone told me the company that does the tests, normal is the other people that have used those tests, what their blood tests came out. So you're always being compared to whatever group of people that lab has been testing.

[00:21:29] But if you are older and your labs come out poorly, it's because you're being compared to other tested people who are also poorly. Maybe you should be tested in compared to healthy people.

[00:21:45] Luke: Totally, totally. Yeah.

[00:21:46] Catharine: So what's normal? What's normal is that these markers are down and these markers are down because everybody gets this test, their markers are down. Well, I don't want to be compared with people who are sick. I want to be compared to people who are healthy. So you're right. It's good to get tests done because it does give you a baseline. But this is the problem with the medical community, that the tests are done in isolation, and a holistic approach is far better.

[00:22:12] And maybe you have some mental health issues and it's related to your gut. But they'll probably prescribe some depression medication. And what they really should be doing is taking a holistic approach and find out whether maybe you have some biome issues, because your gut and your brain are connected with something called the vagus nerve.

[00:22:35] And if you aren't populating your gut with healthy bacteria, it determines what's going on. The cravings, for example, for carbs very often are from the bacteria. You have candida, which is overpopulation of a certain type of bad bacteria. You know intuitively maybe a big bag of Oreos isn't good for you, but you've got these cravings because you have this unhealthy bacteria populating your gut. And then you feel horrible as you should after eating a big bag of Oreos.

[00:23:15] And so now your depression and your insulin is all over the map. And so I always harken back to taking a holistic approach, listening to that voice. And if you're not getting answers that resonate with you, you need to find other people who can guide you.

[00:23:38] And fortunately, functional medicine, natural paths, holistic healers, there's a lot of people out there. It does take a lot of work to find the right person for you, but I remind people, you are worth it. You only have one shot here. Yes, it's quite likely you'll reincarnate another time, but that's another time. We're here now.

[00:23:59] And so you deserve to feel the best. I tell people it's never too late to feel great, never. And maybe you don't even know what great feels like. That should be your tipping point. If you're feeling low energy, if you're not sleeping well, if you've got anxiety issues, depression, and women in particular, it's more prevalent in women for a lot of reasons, you need to explore that and be prepared to make some changes.

[00:24:28] But not to at least identify it and explore it, you're not doing yourself any favors, and you're holding yourself back from a rich and loving, vibrant life, and everybody deserves that.

[00:24:45] Luke: As someone who has what I think would be ample and endless supply of algae, if I owned the company, I would probably just be eating pounds of it a day.

[00:24:57] Catharine: I almost do.

[00:24:58] Luke: How much do you eat?

[00:25:00] Catharine: Yeah. I'll put it in context for us.

[00:25:02] Luke: Or is there a lot of diminishing returns? I don't even know how you quantify it-- in ounces or number of tablets or whatever-- but say someone is well healed and they can afford as much algae as they want, is there more benefit to taking, you mentioned 10 tablets? Is there more benefits to taking 100 than 10?

[00:25:19] Catharine: Yeah, yeah. So I say, because most people are on a budget and you want to be realistic about what you can do, that's where I came up with the 10 of the spirulina and the 10 of the chlorella on a daily basis. That will give you protein, 40 vitamins and minerals. And because spirulina is actually a bacteria, it gets absorbed instantly. So it's very bioavailable.

[00:25:44] Chlorella does belong to the plant kingdom and does take an hour and a half to kick in. So that's 10 tablets. Generally you're hungry and tired in the morning, so that's what spirulina does. It stops your fatigue. It stops your hunger. It gives you energy, mental focus, and it's great for intermittent fasting.

[00:26:01] Chlorella, because it's a detoxing wellness algae and repairing algae and your body goes through a detox repair cycle when you're sleeping, we generally recommend the chlorella before bed. You can take it any time of day, but before bed. But to get a therapeutic amount to uplevel, I believe 30 is a better number for everybody, if you can afford it to achieve because just thirty tablets of spirulina will give you five grams of protein, which I know doesn't sound like a lot, but when you eat 30 grams of animal protein, which is about the size of a fist, your body has to break it down into aminos, and that takes anywhere from two to three days and you often don't absorb them also.

[00:26:44] Even if you ate 50 grams of animal protein, very often you absorb five grams as amino. So it's like 10%. With spirulina, you eat five grams of protein and you get five grams of amino. It's completely bioavailable because it's doesn't have a cellulous wall for your body to break down.

[00:27:04] So if you chew it like I do, it gets into your bloodstream instantly. You can have it for lunch. There's only one calorie per tablet. Each tablet has the same nutrition as almost a pound of vegetables. So a pound of vegetables--

[00:27:23] Luke: That's what I love because I hate vegetables.

[00:27:25] Catharine: Right. Children and men particularly hate vegetables, by the way.

[00:27:30] Luke: I tried for years to be a good person and I'm like, oh, you got to eat your greens. And I think in the past couple years, I'm just like, you know what? I actually just really don't enjoy it. Why would I do something I don't enjoy, like chewing on broccoli for an hour and a half?

[00:27:42] Catharine: Yeah, I know.

[00:27:43] Luke: I'm like, just give me a steak, some water, and salt, and I'm good.

[00:27:48] Catharine: It's a good point because a lot of people who go paleo, it's because they've had some-- or carnivore, rather-- stomach issues eating vegetables. And a lot of that was because of lectins and oxalates, which damage your stomach lining and can cause autoimmune.

[00:28:04] So I want to shout out to our carnivore friends. You can have spirulina and chlorella too, because it has nutrients that you are missing like chlorophyll and a few other ones I want to talk to you about. But there's no lectins or oxalates. This is why Dr. Steven Gundry loves us and our algae, because lectins or oxalates are in things like spinach and kale and very high amount in almonds too.

[00:28:29] Luke: And raspberries too, I found out. Yeah, raspberries are crazy high in oxalates. Yeah.

[00:28:35] Catharine: Seriously? Oh my God.

[00:28:35] Luke: Yeah. Because my wife's had kidney stone issues throughout her life and stuff, and she's always crushing raspberries. So I was doing some research on oxalates and trying to help her minimize those and, yeah, one of the highest is raspberries. And she'd eat raspberries every morning.

[00:28:49] Catharine: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:28:50] Luke: Yeah. It's crazy.

[00:28:51] Catharine: I was never a big fan of kale. I would eat it occasionally, but I'm glad I didn't. And same with spinach. And almonds are off the menu because they're very, very high. So for carnivores, you can take this too because chlorophyll is a very, very pigment. It's what makes plants green. And the chemical structure of chlorophyll is virtually identical to your hemoglobin. The only difference is chlorophyll has magnesium in the middle, and your hemoglobin has iron, which carries oxygen.

[00:29:22] But chlorophyll also kills bacteria. It's very detoxing. It heals your cell walls because it's a fat-based pigment. So everyone's missing this really, really important pigment if you're not eating vegetables. And I do say, stay away from spinach, kale, and almonds, but you can certainly enjoy these.

[00:29:43] So the 30 of the spirulina, back to the quantities, you can have that for lunch. And everyone who is still on the treadmill working busy, who has time for lunch? You wolf down your meal, or you eat carbs because that's what's available everywhere. It's not good for you. And if you're eating frantically standing up, you don't digest very well, so you'll get indigestion.

[00:30:09] You can just have a pouch of 30 tablets, and your hunger will be gone. Your brain focus will be secured. Your energy will be high. No digestive distress whatsoever. You can give this to newborns. So it's a really great stop gap. Or if you're doing intermittent fasting, you won't be hungry until you decide to have that one meal somewhere.

[00:30:30] So 30 is terrific. And your grocery bill will go down, and you won't buy as many supplements. You don't need a multivitamin. You don't eat fish oil. Please stop eating fish oil. It's rancid by the time you get it. You're killing the oceans.

[00:30:42] Luke: I know. I know.

[00:30:43] Catharine: Please, please, please do yourself a favor. Do the fish a favor. And I tell people, where do you think the fish get the omega-3 from? Yeah. They get it from algae. So you can wipe out fish oil.

[00:30:53] Luke: You skip the middleman.

[00:30:54] Catharine: Skip the middleman. Everybody I know has anywhere from 5 to 25 supplements on their countertop.

[00:31:03] Luke: If you saw inside my cabinets-- sometimes I wonder about that because I interview so many people like you that are so brilliant and everyone has their specialty with different compounds and molecules.

[00:31:17] Catharine: So you want them all.

[00:31:19] Luke: Yeah. So I'm just well, if these 10 things are really good for you and there's data to support that, then I'm going to take them all. But what I've noticed over the years, and I don't know if this is true, but my intuition tells me that because your organs like your liver and kidneys and so on have to process and identify these metabolites and decide what to do with them, that overwhelming the body with a lot of different supplements every single day might not be the greatest idea.

[00:31:51] And I'm speaking to myself, reminding myself, because I'm just a more is more personality. I'm pretty extreme about everything I do. And also I think I'm just a n equals one researcher because I want to share information with people, so I'm willing to do something that's maybe a little more extreme so I can tell people not to do it that way. But yeah, do you think the body can be overwhelmed in terms of its ability to take so many signal inputs at once?

[00:32:18] Catharine: Well, the way I describe it, and I have a lot of respect for a handful of individual companies who I know do have really high-quality products, there's only a small number of them because there's a lot of junk out there.

[00:32:32] Especially if you go to places like Target to buy your supplements, please don't do that. I won't identify any of the particular brands, but the reality is, in most cases, with some exceptions, your body only absorbs about 10% of whatever's in that supplement. And that's why the numbers are so high, whether it's vitamin C, vitamin E, because the supplement industry knows your body isn't absorbing them.

[00:32:55] Because most cases that supplement is made from either extracts or synthetics, or both. And those nutrients, the vitamins, there's over 200 components, truly, in vitamin C, not just ascorbic acid. It's just one of them. So when you are taking-- you see vitamin C/ascorbic acid, that's just one part of the vitamin C.

[00:33:19] So your body doesn't know what to do with it because it doesn't exist like that in nature. It has all these other factors and co-factors. So I tell people, taking just ascorbic acid and thinking that it's going to do the job of a true vitamin C in an orange or a broccoli is like just going to work with your shoes on. Where's the rest of the stuff? That's not going to get you through the door.

[00:33:41] And so you're taking all these supplements, but they aren't getting absorbed because it's not what you eat or take. It's what you absorb that makes the difference. So I've made this analogy taking any kind of supplement, it's like listening to a soloist. They could be a good soloist, or they could be a grade three soloist, but it's a soloist.

[00:34:02] Taking algae, which is created for us by Mother Nature-- I can't take credit for it. I will take credit for growing it carefully. Has over 40-- probably has 100 different components to it. We've measured over 40 by now.

[00:34:15] It's like listening to the orchestra because there's synergies and harmonies that come between the different nutrients. You don't have to worry, well, should I be taking fat to absorb this vitamin E? Should I be taking citric acid to absorb blah, blah, blah. It's already in there.

[00:34:34] This is like having a Cordon Bleu cook create the recipe for you. It's already been cooked up for you. It already does amazing things. And individually, those supplements will never have the same benefits that you get from taking algae because they uplevel each other automatically.

[00:34:52] Luke: The entourage effect.

[00:34:53] Catharine: And the most important thing is it's food. Algae, we press them in these little tablets. It's food. The FDA regulates it as food. It has what's called grass certification, what stands for generally recognized as safe, what they only give to food. It's a vegetable crop. We grow it in fresh water, hydroponically, and then we air dry it and press it into tablets.

[00:35:17] It's a multi-billion dollar agricultural crop in Asia-- that's Japan, Taiwan, China, India, Korea. They take it every day and have every day for over 65 years. It's as big as the beef industry is here. And this is what gets me so excited. I know. I'm sorry to talk fast and loud because this industry has existed for so long, and the Asians have been taking it daily for so long.

[00:35:44] And the Japanese, by the way, have the best longevity, lowest cancer rates, low obesity rates, and great skin and hair. And they do not walk out of their house without taking chlorella, for sure, probably spirulina. Why should they be the only ones enjoying all these longevity and health benefits from algae?

[00:36:03] Nobody here knows about it because it's not grown here. And until I came along, nobody started explaining the health benefits of it. People know spirulina is a superfood and it's good for you and it will give you some protein and chlorophyll, but they have no idea of the deep longevity health benefits.

[00:36:23] It has nutrients in it proven to kill cancer cells. I'd say that's pretty important, and I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that. It has nutrients in here proven to prevent heart disease. 25,000 studies prove a nutrient called superoxide dismutase prevents heart disease, prevents Alzheimer's, prevents just about everything. But you can't get it from any other food, and your body stops making it for you after the age of 40.

[00:36:52] And spirulina has the highest concentration of it, only if it hasn't been exposed to high heat. So there are nutrients in these two algae that will blow you away, but no one's told you about it or explained it to you, and you didn't know them because we only grow corn and weed and other crappy stuff here.

[00:37:11] Luke: I know. We were just in Indiana to visit Alyson's family, and she finds it boring, I guess, because she's from there. But I really like it because it's so sparsely populated. It's just like farms everywhere. And I noticed after a few days there, I'm driving around, oh, it's so beautiful and green.

[00:37:28] And I go, "Oh man, it'd be so cool to live on a farm out here." And then I started to realize, based on the signage, there's these ID tags on the various farms that indicate what I later figured out was the big ag company that has ordained those particular plots of land, and it's all mono crop.

[00:37:49] And then I started looking at some of the plants. The corn is obvious. And I was like, "Everyone's growing this other thing. What's this other thing?" And I realized it was soy. And it's just thousands of acres of GMO corn and GMO soy, and I'm sitting there looking at this beautiful land, lots of water, lots of sun, what could be a fertile hotbed of nutritionally dense food, regenerative agriculture, etc. And go, God, what a waste.

[00:38:17] To think of all of those resources going into something that is not only not good for you, but also kills you eventually. Just like, ah. So that's why I love talking to people like you and people that are doing agriculture and old school/--

[00:38:32] Catharine: Regenerative.

[00:38:33] Luke: Yeah.

[00:38:33] Catharine: Regenerative ag.

[00:38:35] Luke: I was about to say innovative, but it's really just mimicking nature that's been here forever, long before we were farming. One thing I wanted to ask you about the processing though was I know a big key to keeping the nutritional value and the vitality of algae alive, as you've indicated, is processing it with low heat or no heat. And I've always wondered, because what I do is I usually just throw my ENERGYbits in my morning smoothie in the powerful Vitamix, and sometimes I'm wondering, am I ruining it?

[00:39:10] Catharine: No, no.

[00:39:11] Luke: From the heat of the friction. But I'm using really cold water.

[00:39:15] Catharine: Yeah, no. It's when you get to temperature of 114 degrees, which kills all enzymes.

[00:39:22] Luke: Got it. Okay.

[00:39:23] Catharine: And I have some science papers that I can give you a link to, you can share with your community, that have studied one of these nutrients. We're going to talk about superoxide dismutase because it's also an enzyme. So it's deactivated after it's exposed to high heat. And most of the other LG companies do use high heat to dry it, so you miss that. And same with that blue pigment called phycocyanin, which is spelled P-H-Y-C-O-C-Y-N-I-N. I also have science papers--

[00:39:50] Luke: That's that PhD paying off.

[00:39:52] Catharine: That PhD. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:39:53] Luke: I can never remember how to say that word, let alone--

[00:39:57] Catharine: I know. Why would you even know about it? Because it's not-- people barely know chlorophyll, but it too is deactivated by high heat.

[00:40:05] Luke: In smoothie shops now they'll have that phycocyanin, that blue pigment. To me it's a parlor trick. It makes something look beautiful. Is there any validity to the benefits of it as an isolate, or are we missing the entourage effect that you're speaking of that nature has created a synergy of all these different nutrients in something like spirulina?

[00:40:31] Catharine: Well, if you want something pretty, then it's going to do the trick. But again, it depends on the company that made that phycocyanin powder. How did they dry it? You have to go back a little further to find out. So if they used high heat to dry it, then you're getting a pretty blue shake, but you're not going to get the health benefits from the phycocyanin.

[00:40:54] And phycocyanin, when it is untreated, is a very powerful antioxidant that scours what's called reactive oxygen species in the mitochondria. It has a really powerful capability, and I do want to talk about it because it works in this complex called the electron transport chain, which is where your ATP is produced. And when you have a healthy cell, that blue pigment speeds up that process by which the ATP is produced by speeding up a molecule called cytochrome c. But--

[00:41:29] Luke: It's like nature's methylene blue.

[00:41:33] Catharine: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:41:34] Luke: It's a similar mechanism of action than methylene blue.

[00:41:38] Catharine: But it's better than methylene blue because methylene blue, again, is an isolated supplement. And it doesn't do all these other things. The other things that I want to tell you about are pretty powerful because this blue phycocyanin, as I mentioned in a healthy cell, speeds up the production of ATP.

[00:41:57] It's one of the reasons why spirulina gives you energy, is because of the blue pigment generating more cellular energy for you. However, in a senescent cell, which they call it a zombie cell, a cell that's subdivided so many times that it doesn't know to die. It's like somebody's been retired, but they insist on coming to the office and hang around and bother everybody. So that's a senescent cell. Should go away, but just refuses to.

[00:42:23] So in a senescent cell or a cancer cell, this blue pigment identifies that it's a senescent or a cancer cell, and it ejects this thing called cytochrome c, which releases something called caspases, which kills the cell. This is why I call it spirulina intelligent food. You have to be intelligent to take it, and it knows what to do in your body automatically.

[00:42:48] Luke: So it acts as a senolytic in terms of ridding the body of senescent cells.

[00:42:57] Catharine: Yeah, yeah. But more than just senescent cell, the cancer cells. Because here's the thing. Cancer cells are not able to go through this process called apoptosis. I'll get a little geeky. But in a cell, when the cell is healthy, first of all, cell pH tends to be slightly alkaline, is how I got into this whole thing of alkaline diets, which indicates there's oxygen in the cell, that the mitochondria are functioning properly, and that the cell is communicating with each other.

[00:43:32] But when a cancer cell starts growing, the pH becomes acidic. It stops behaving like a healthy cell. And one of the capabilities it loses is the ability to kill itself. There's something called programmed cell death. I know it sounds horrible, but it's really important, and it's called apoptosis.

[00:43:53] Because when a cell has been around for a while and it goes, "So this has been a great gig. Thank you so much." And it knows it's time to go, what it does is it forms these things called blebs. It really basically subdivides itself into five or six other new cells, and all of the DNA and the RNA and all the goodies get transferred along.

[00:44:17] This is what a good retiree would do. When it's time for the retiree to go, they say, "Hey, it's been great being here. Here's my projects. Good luck with everything. Here's how to do it. Bye-Bye." So with a healthy cell, it knows when it's time to go. It subdivides itself through this process called apoptosis. It dies, but it gives away all of its good stuff.

[00:44:38] A cancer cell does not have that ability, so it can never kill itself. This is why it grows so quickly, because it doesn't know it's sick, so it just keeps replicating and replicating and replicating. So the fact that this blue phycocyanin found in spirulina, if it is raw-- ours is raw. You can also get frozen or fresh spirulina. Will have the same benefit. That phycocyanin detects if it's a cancer cell and ejects this thing called cytochrome c and kills the cancer cell. They use it.

[00:45:10] I wanted to spell it, and I'm going to spell it again. Make sure everybody knows how to spell it. So I want people to go online to find out that this is absolutely true. Because some of the chemotherapy companies are using phycocyanin in their treatments now.

[00:45:25] Luke: No way. Really?

[00:45:25] Catharine: And it's spelled P-H-Y-- get a pen handy. P-H-Y-C-O-C-Y-A-N-I-N. So what I want you to do is Google phycocyanin and cancer treatments. And you'll find what I have found. They are already using phycocyanin in cancer treatments to kill cancer cells. And the way they determine whether the treatment is working is they measure the amount of this stuff called cytochrome c. Because it's ejected when the cell  is killed by the phycocyanin.

[00:46:00] And I have even here, and I'll send you the report about this, they did a lab test. They took a Petri dish and put cancer cells in it and dyed the cancer cells purple. And then over 24 hours, they took pictures of the Petri dish. And after 24 hours, the cancer cells were virtually gone.

[00:46:20] Luke: That's insane.

[00:46:21] Catharine: It's insane, right? So this again, Mother Nature has looked out for us, but you have to make sure you're getting-- so, a, it has the nourishment that we need. I am also the one that did the analysis on all the amino acids in spirulina and found out they are virtually identical, the same aminos in the same proportions as mother's breast milk.

[00:46:44] And we know that mother's breast milk is the perfect food. But after the age of two, you're out to luck. You're not going to get any mother's breast milk unless there's something weird going on. So this gives you the same nutrition virtually as mother's breast milk. There's even an essential fatty acid called GLA, gamma-linolenic acid, and spirulina has the highest amount of it in the world, second only to mother's breast milk.

[00:47:11] Now, GLA is technically an omega-6. And normally you would say, oh, omega-6 are terrible, which is true. But this omega-6, because we don't treat it with high heat, it behaves like an omega-3. And same with mother's breast milk. This GLA is in mother's breast milk, not treated with high heat. And it's important because it helps the baby's brain grow.

[00:47:33] The baby's brain doubles or triples in size in the first couple years after birth. So the GLA is very important for brain health, but if you've exposed it to high heat, it's inflammatory like your every other omega-6. But because we don't, it behaves like an Omega-3. So mother nature has given us so many things. So a, I call this Mother Nature's breast milk because it was gifted to us by Mother Nature and it's virtually the same--

[00:48:03] Luke: Like breast milk of the sea.

[00:48:04] Catharine: Breast milk of the sea. And the other thing, and I mentioned this earlier, this was the first life on earth. Cyanobacteria was the first life on earth, not just the first plant. First flat out life before-- spirulina is a cyanobacteria. And before cyanobacteria, Earth was just gas and water. Nothing lived, no oxygen.

[00:48:25] Nobody knows why this little single bacteria called cyanobacteria started growing, but it did. And after a billion years, because it would produce ATP, it released oxygen on Earth. So after a billion years, other life forms could grow. And the next one was a plant, chlorella.

[00:48:46] And these other life forms, they were aerobic. The other one was anaerobic. But they didn't generate ATP as well. So what happened? It's all documented in science called endosymbiotic theory. So the large cell that was aerobic but didn't generate cellular energy very well absorbed the original little anaerobic cell called cyanobacteria.

[00:49:11] And that little original cell became our mitochondria. Crazy. So algae became your mitochondria. Proven in science. As MIT professor back in the '60s, it was a woman, she discovered this. She was ridiculed by her colleagues for 10 years, and then they realized she was right.

[00:49:30] So you go into any research about the origins of mitochondria, it all comes back to cyanobacteria, like spirulina. I still get goosebumps when I think about it because everything that's in spirulina is so nourishing to your body and your mitochondria because they're family. They're family. Mitochondria and spirulina are family. And so I've come up with a new name for spirulina. I'm calling it spirituallina. Because there's something pretty spiritual about being the first life on Earth. And you are only the first life once.

[00:50:11] Luke: That's so cool. I want to talk a bit more about the research and the latest research because I know there have been some interesting developments since we last spoke, but before that, I was just reminded of the fact, and Jarrod will know this because I send him these emails because he posts our videos to YouTube.

[00:50:29] But about a month ago I had posted something about colloidal silver, and YouTube gave me a strike, which I've had a lot of videos deleted because of the unacceptable people I talk to sometimes, which are usually more in the conspiratorial range, not so much in health.

[00:50:48] They deleted that video and then I appealed it, and when I appealed it, I missed the opportunity to give them a response and submit it. I clicked submit and I was like, "Oh shit, I didn't put my response in there." Oh, well. I lost that, and I had a strike. And then a couple of days ago, another colloidal silver one, they notified me that it had been removed because it's medical misinformation according to them.

[00:51:15] And so this time I appealed it, but I did a bit of research, and I sent them with my appeal, all of these PubMed, NIH studies, proving unequivocally that silver has antimicrobial properties, which is what they claimed was medical misinformation. And I was spreading dangerous theories about alternative medicine.

[00:51:38] And you just have to look up the chain who controls an institution like YouTube and you see that everyone's in bed with each other on that certain level. And then they replied saying, "No, that's medical misinformation." And just ignored all of the studies. Basically, I was telling them, don't you guys trust the science? Remember that TM Trust the Science?

[00:51:58] Catharine: Right.

[00:51:59] Luke: And they're like, we don't care. We're ignoring the science because of whatever their vested interests want them to do. So in terms of when we're looking at the research that you outlined a few minutes ago around the ability for this substance to kill cancer cells and so on, you, as I would say the world's foremost expert that I'm aware of on the topic of algae and someone who owns this company and you're marketing the benefits and you're selling a product--

[00:52:25] Catharine: I'm putting myself in danger.

[00:52:26] Luke: Do you run into censorship like that where there's a verifiable data point or multiple data points which prove the efficacy or the claims that you're making, yet the institutions that we, unfortunately, still rely upon to share information are saying, we don't care because it doesn't comply with our agenda, which is probably to sell more pharmaceuticals and so on?

[00:52:49] Catharine: So I'm always very careful, and I'll say it also here too, that I'm not a medical professional. Even though I have a PhD, I'm not a medical professional. And I never make a claim, very careful not to make a claim that algae can do anything.

[00:53:05] What I do tell people is that there are nutrients found in algae that have been documented in science to do various things. So for example, the phycocyanin has been documented and is currently used by chemotherapy companies to kill cancer cells. So I'm just repeating what has already been researched and is currently being used in the pharmaceutical industry and in other nutraceutical industry.

[00:53:33] So I'm just confirming. But the difference between me and the pharmaceutical companies is that they're not telling people what's one of the things that-- so it's not just doing it, just the phycocyanin. But in this case, in isolation, it does still work. 99.9% of the world has probably never heard of phycocyanin and certainly is not aware of these great healing capabilities.

[00:54:05] But that's one of the things I'm trying to do, is bring awareness to the fact that it's way more than a superfood. It has these other nutrients that aren't found anywhere else that can do amazing things. For example, there's a healing institute called the Hippocrates Institute. It's in Palm Beach, Florida, that's 50 years old. It was established by Ann Wigmore.

[00:54:30] And there's another one called the Gerson Institute in Mexico, but they have an office in San Diego. Both of them take very, very sick patients who are stage 3, stage 4 cancer, very, very ill. They have a 95% success rate with healing these people. And what do they do?

[00:54:49] One of the first things they do, give them raw spirulina. Because it has all of these nutrients that have been known and they know to have healing properties. They also do other things like red light therapy, sauna, and meditation. So there's a lot of components to it, but it's chlorophyll, lots of chlorophyll, chlorella.

[00:55:10] So these nutrients have been used by people who are aware of them, but the awareness just has not made its way to the mainstream. So the blue phycocyanin, when I saw this research, I thought, this is unbelievable. And then when I'd say there's 25,000 studies documenting the efficacy of this antioxidant called superoxide dismutase-- 25,000, that's a big number, to prevent heart disease, to prevent Alzheimer's, to prevent virtually any chronic disease because of the ability to reduce inflammation, prevent free radical damage.

[00:55:49] It's pretty powerful. But you can't find superoxide dismutase in food. It doesn't exist. There's an incy wincy amount in broccoli, but spirulina has 7,000 times more superoxide dismutase than broccoli or any of the cruciferous vegetables. So it's virtually useless.

[00:56:12] And there are SOD supplements, but they get damaged in the gut. So this is why I keep going back to the orchestra. We've only scratched the surface of the nutrients that are available in spirulina and chlorella and started to understand what they do. But there's so many more. But somebody has to take charge.

[00:56:34] And there's 100,000 studies found in PubMed, 100,000. There's 60,000 on spirulina, about 40,000 on chlorella already documenting all these things that it reduces inflammation, improves brain health, helps reduce Alzheimer's, helps with gut health, immune health, skin health, everything. 100,000 studies.

[00:56:58] And they know about them in Asia, but they don't know about them here. So I'm doing even more now that I'm aware of all these research papers, and I've done my part to interpret them to make it easy for people to understand. But, as you alluded to, we have done some of our own clinical trials recently.

[00:57:17] So it's not just spirulina in general. It's our ENERGYbits spirulina. Because I want people to know that we have done specific research so that we can say for sure that something is working.

[00:57:31] Luke: Tell me about those studies.

[00:57:33] Catharine: Well, one we did last year. I don't know if I remember talking about it on your podcast last year. Both of them are small because we're still a small company, so we have limited resources. The one we did last year was for brain health, because there's so much anguish and depression. And this particular organization is a nonprofit that works with military veterans. And the suicide rate with the military veterans is between 35 and 50%. Think about that.

[00:58:01] Luke: Oh man.

[00:58:02] Catharine: Almost 50% of military veterans are committing suicide. It's just heartbreaking. So this group called the Grey Team, greyteam.org-- I encourage people to look them up-- they're trying all sorts of things to mitigate this. And I met them at multiple biohacking shows.

[00:58:20] So they said, let's do a small study. So we took a handful of their military veterans who had been discharged for at least 10 years because they had post-traumatic stress disorder. All we did was give them a pouch of our spirulina tablets a day. There's 30 tablets in one of the pouches. And they were told not to change anything else.

[00:58:40] And also we used a device that measured their HRV and their sleep. It's called the WAVi machine. So we did a brain scan before they started the test. It was a 30-day test. And then we gave them the spirulina. We gave them a box. They just took it every day. Didn't matter what time of day, how many at one time.

[00:58:58] And then we did a brain scan after the test was finished 30 days later. After the 30 days, virtually all the inflammation had disappeared. And this is really important for anybody in contact sports, football, soccer, MMA, because there's so many brain injuries. And for years what was happening with sports and the coaches, the athlete would have a concussion, and they would do a brain scan.

[00:59:25] And when you have a concussion, you have inflammation. And you do one of these, the scans, the brain shows up just as blue. It's just inflammation. Normally, if it's a healthy brain, there's lots of colors. There's red and yellow and green. And so the coach would want to know when to allow the athlete to go back into play, and they would have to do another brain scan.

[00:59:45] So when the blue from the inflammation from the concussion was gone and the red, green, yellow, when they did the brain scan was back, good to go. Your brain was working again. So when we did these brain scans, the first scan for all these individuals was blue, showing all inflammation, no brain activity.

[01:00:03] Luke: Wow. And this is just from psychological effects of PTSD?

[01:00:07] Catharine: Yeah.

[01:00:07] Luke: Wow. So this isn't like a mortar went off next to their head and they have a concussion or something?

[01:00:12] Catharine: Well, honestly, in some cases it may have been, but it was long ago, 10 or 15 years ago.

[01:00:17] Luke: Got it. Okay. So it wasn't an acute physical trauma.

[01:00:21] Catharine: No, they had trauma from whatever reason, and they never were able to get out of it. Because your brain goes through a loop. And when you're in post-traumatic stress disorder, and I'm not a brain expert, although there's a great book called Brain Energy that was written by Dr. Chris Palmer. He's a psychiatrist at the Harvard Medical School. In his book, he talks about how all brain issues-- post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, doesn't matter what it is, is due to damaged mitochondria.

[01:00:52] So with these individuals, we show it after giving them spirulina, and it has the nutrients that heal the mitochondria like that superoxide dismutase, the blue phycocyanin, the GLA, which is that really good essential fatty acid. It's proven to reduce inflammation, improves your telomeres, improves just the restorative capabilities of your brain.

[01:01:17] And it did after 30 days. Ta-da. One gentleman had multiple sclerosis and his tremors even went away. So 30 days, and they did nothing else except add the spirulina. We were pretty impressed. And we want to do a larger study because I would love to get this into the military, both as a preventative and a corrective nutrient to help anybody who's in the military. It makes me so sad because they give all the military individuals these food that's the pre-made foods, PMEs or something.

[01:01:59] And here's the thing. To qualify as one of these PMEs, pre-made food for the military, your item, the food item must have a shelf life, are you ready, of 14 years. 14 years. So you know everything that they're feeding any of the military people is loaded with toxins and chemicals and pesticides. And if you didn't have a brain issue before you went to the military, you're going to get one from what they're feeding you. It makes me so sad.

[01:02:32] Luke: I was going to ask you about that because I'm going to record a podcast on prepping soon with a friend of mine, Jesse Albert.

[01:02:39] Catharine: Yeah. It's great for prepping.

[01:02:40] Luke: Yeah. And I just had that thought. I was like, oh, shit. If you kept these ENERGYbits sealed and away from light and oxygen, do you know how long--

[01:02:49] Catharine: They would never go bad.

[01:02:50] Luke: Really?

[01:02:50] Catharine: Literally never go bad. We have to put an expiry date on them. It's three years. The FDA requires it. But I never throw any of my algae out. And so I have some of our old ugly packaging from years ago. It's five or six years old. I eat it. I eat it. So it won't taste as fresh, but most people do swallow it. If you do expose it to light, it will pull the chlorophyll out. But the protein and all the other nutrients will still be there. But you do want to try to keep it away from light. But yeah, if you seal this and keep it in the bags, it doesn't have to be refrigerated.

[01:03:25] Luke: I'm going to order some and put it in my prepper kit. We have some beans, rice, honey, coconut oil, things that will last that have calorie density, at least not necessarily nutritional density. But this would be a good way for you fellow preppers.

[01:03:40] Catharine: This is perfect for preppers. Yeah, fellow preppers. Well, 50 years ago, the United Nations had a global conference on spirulina algae, 1974. You could go online and search for this too. I pride myself in the fact that I never say anything I don't have the actual paperwork or links in science for.

[01:04:01] So 50 years ago, they declared spirulina algae, the answer to world hunger. A, because it has the highest protein in the world, but also has the most nutrient dense and it's a sustainable crop. So they grow, like you said, crappy soy in India or rice. Honestly, the world should be growing spirulina everywhere. Because this is truly the answer.

[01:04:25] But we can't get there until we get more people being aware of it. I'm a purist. We grow ours outdoors with the sunlight in triple-filtered spring mountain water. Yes, there is blue-green and green algae in the oceans and the lakes. It's not going to be spirulina, because spirulina is the one that's grown as a agricultural crop.

[01:04:47] So if you read about a blue-green algae closing your beach, we're not talking about spirulina. That's just another brother, another blue-green algae. And by the way, poor algae gets the bad rap because it only shows up and closes your beach, why? Because it kills bacteria and absorbs toxins. And you couldn't see the bacteria or toxins, but you could see the algae bloom. So algae gets the bum wrap. By the way, it does the same thing in your body, kills bacteria and absorbs toxins.

[01:05:14] Luke: Oh, that's interesting. So it's like blaming the fireman rather than the fire.

[01:05:18] Catharine: Yeah.

[01:05:19] Luke: In terms the oceanography an it's--

[01:05:22] Catharine: Don't get angry. It's trying to keep you healthy, keeping the water healthy. I mentioned that because I'm a purist and I like to grow the algae. We grow ours outdoors. As I said, it's a multi-billion dollar agricultural crop in Asia.

[01:05:36] They're called ponds, but they're literally hydroponic farms. And it takes about a month to grow and about two or three weeks to dry, and then we press them into these tablets. However, to do it in that format, outdoors with the sunlight, you need to be in a tropical environment. So a couple of things.

[01:05:58] That's why we growers in Taiwan, a. It's the perfect tropical environment because growing algae is like growing at wine. It's affected by the angle of the sun. And also Taiwan takes great pride-- they're not China. They're a completely different country, and they take great pride in the efficacy and the carefulness, and getting the certification GMP is very difficult.

[01:06:20] So Taiwan is perfect because of the climate as well as these other conditions. But I drew a line from Taiwan across America, and where did I get? Boom, middle of Florida. So my dream is to grow spirulina and chlorella one day in Florida. It has exactly the same climate. It's going to take a lot of work and about 10 million or $20 million.

[01:06:43] And so it's not going to happen overnight, but long term, that is my goal. But even still, that's not going to feed the world. But I want you to know there is a way to do it, and it's already happening, and it's so cool. And maybe one day we'll do this too. There are companies in places like Spain, France, and even Iceland that are growing algae underground.

[01:07:08] Luke: Really?

[01:07:08] Catharine: Yeah. In Iceland, there's a company growing spirulina algae underground. They have five floors, and what they do is they grow it in glass tubes with LED lights. And it's 90% as good as the original outdoor. It's not quite as good. Maybe 80 or 95%, but it's good enough.

[01:07:28] And they do the same thing. We're talking to a company we're working with in Spain that's doing something similar. This is ultimately the answer. You could bury these production facilities in the Sahara, in any country in the world, any country in the world, and grow spirulina and chlorella at 75 to 80% as good as the original outdoor stuff, and that will feed the world. That will feed the world.

[01:08:00] Luke: God, it's crazy. I'm so glad we have these conversations because I'm hoping there will be some creative entrepreneurs listening to one of these podcasts. Sometimes it's like, wait---

[01:08:10] Catharine: Somebody has to do something.

[01:08:11] Luke: Rewind. What did you say?

[01:08:13] Catharine: Regenerative agriculture is important, but when it comes to nutrient density, spirulina heads and shoulders above absolutely everything else. And they use it for everything else. There's a lot of companies doing fish farming.

[01:08:27] And what fish farming is, you put a bunch of fish on a net and then feed them crap. Salmon, unfortunately, is all pretty much grown in fish farms. But a lot of countries were banning fish farming because the fish, they're so close together, and of course fish poop.

[01:08:44] And so their poop was acidic and was creating dead zones in the ocean and washing up on shore and killing all the vegetation on shore because it was acidic. So what was the solution? Feed them algae. Bingo. Poop wasn't acidic anymore. Problem solved.

[01:09:01] Luke: Wow.

[01:09:02] Catharine: Dead zone gone.

[01:09:04] Luke: That's crazy.

[01:09:05] Catharine: Cattle burping and farting from eating corn, which is very acidic, causes stomach distress. So this is a main cause of the depletion of the ozone layer, is farts and burps from cows, from cattle. What did they do? I've got studies that prove it. They fed them algae. Problem solved. Gas gone. No more burping, no more farts. It works for us too.

[01:09:32] Luke: That's good. That's good to know. I should feed all of our podcast guests some of this before.

[01:09:36] Catharine: Yeah. So anyways, you can see why I have this love affair with algae. There's so much. It's like having Einstein as your child.

[01:09:43] Luke: That's why I love talking to you, because I think I get it, and then there's a lot more information. I want to make sure to tell people--

[01:09:49] Catharine: But I do want to talk about this other clinical trial.

[01:09:51] Luke: All right. Hang on one sec because I want to tell people that missed it in the beginning, all of the show notes and links and everything will be at lukestorey.com/algae2. And also, before I forget, if you guys want to check these ENERGYbits out, of course, I highly recommend them. Otherwise, we wouldn't be sitting here talking, and I wouldn't be eating them every day. You can go to energybits.com, and use the code LUKE for 20% off. And we'll put that in the show description. All those links will be clickable on your podcast app. All right. Take us to the next study.

[01:10:21] Catharine: Okay, so last year's clinical trial was about brain health. And now we wanted to test mitochondria health because anybody who's in the longevity, health community knows that mitochondria are the most important thing to keeping you alive and living well. Every single chronic disease, they're realizing, is due to damaged mitochondria-- every single one. Doesn't matter whether you're talking about, Alzheimer's, cancer, or heart disease.

[01:10:55] Mitochondria is where the rubber hits the road. Now, some people aren't familiar with mitochondria. They're basically the little organelles. They're called organelles that are inside all of your cells that generate this thing called cellular energy also known as ATP.

[01:11:09] And they're so important because without cellular energy, you don't live. This is what your body uses for breathing, digesting, thinking, walking, talking. Everything is propelled by this stuff called ATP. And when you have less of it, you have less cellular energy to think, to walk, to breathe, to recover from disease, prevent disease. It's just that simple.

[01:11:32] Luke: Or grow babies

[01:11:33] Catharine: Yeah, have babies. And their greatest number of mitochondria are where your greatest energy needs are. Your brain has 2 million mitochondria per cell. That's the highest in your body. The next is women's eggs. There's something 700,000 mitochondria per cell in women's eggs.

[01:11:52] The next highest is your heart. There's about 7,000 to 8,000 per cell. After that, it's muscles. There's about 5,000 per cell. And then your average skin cell fat cell is about 1,000. So the greatest energy needs, because your mitochondria generate the energy and these organ use-- your brain uses the highest amount of energy in your entire body.

[01:12:14] So keeping the mitochondria healthy is critical. And the downside is, as you get older, you have fewer mitochondria because they get damaged by toxins, by glyphosate, by insulin spikes, by anxiety, stress. All these things damage the mitochondria, so they die. And when you have fewer of them, you have less energy.

[01:12:41] So you want to keep the number that you have as high as possible, and you want them to be performing optimally. But by the time you're 40, you have fewer and fewer mitochondria. And I make the analogy of your body to think of an office tower, comparing your body to an office tower. In the office tower, all the work gets done in the offices.

[01:13:00] Well, in your body, all the work gets done in your cells. Now, in the offices, the thing that allows you to do the work are the lights. If you don't have any lights, it's really hard to do any work. In your cells, what allows them to do the work are the mitochondria. So think of the mitochondria as your lights, your light bulbs. And it gets even worse because in the building, the lights are fueled by electricity.

[01:13:25] In your body, the mitochondria are not just the light bulbs, they're also the electricity. Now, in the building when the light bulbs go out, you pick up the phone, you call maintenance, they come fix it. Good to go. In your body, as your mitochondria get damaged and die, there's no maintenance people to come and turn your lights back on.

[01:13:43] So as you get older, literally your lights go out. It's that simple. And so we need to find a way to turn people's lights back on. And the lights that are working have the brightest capability. So that's why I want to do this clinical trial, because I have read almost 25 to 30,000 papers.

[01:14:03] I haven't read that many, but there are that many about how the different nutrients in spirulina help protect the mitochondria. So I thought, well, let's put ours to the test and see if it really works. So we did the small clinical trial, and very importantly, I want to give a big shout out to a company called Mescreen, M-E-S-C-R-E-E-N. You can find the mi mescreen.com. And the reason why they're so important is because their chief scientific officer, Hemal Patel, has developed the first ever mitochondrial blood test.

[01:14:35] Luke: Really?

[01:14:36] Catharine: You can buy it online.

[01:14:37] Luke: Civilians can buy it.

[01:14:38] Catharine: Yeah.

[01:14:39] Luke: Oh, I want to do that.

[01:14:40] Catharine: Normally 599. You can get it. If we have a code ENERGYBITS, you can get it for 399, but all you do is they send you a kit. You do a drop of blood, put it in the kit, mail it back to their lab.

[01:14:51] They do the analysis, and they tell you about your mitochondria health. So this is really breaking stuff, breaking science. So we met them and we said, oh my God, you can do mitochondria health testing because we need a way to find that this stuff is actually working.

[01:15:05] So we recruited a small group of people, 50% women, 50% men. We chose people over 55 because after 40, and certainly by 50, that's when you are really seeing chronic disease. That's why you're really experiencing chronic mitochondria damage. So we decided that would be the age group. So all we did was we recruited a small group of people. We did a Mescreen blood test at the start of the clinical trial.

[01:15:32] We gave people spirulina algae every day for 30 days. They did a second Mescreen test after day seven, and a final one after day 30. They were told not to change anything else. Also, these were people that had to say they'd never taken any algae tablets or algae, period, or any greens powders. And most of them, as I said, all of them are over 55.

[01:15:58] So after 30 days of taking the spirulina, no other change in their lifestyle or habits or diet or whatever, we got the results from the seven-day test. We're still waiting for the 30-day results to come in. But I do have the results from the seven days. And some of them, it increased the mitochondria respiration, which is the ability to generate ATP by almost 20%.

[01:16:26] And then there's something called spare capacity of mitochondria respiration, which is, the HRV for mitochondria. How quickly could it respond to more. And so that went up 20%. Then there was another study that measures the amount of ATP through mitochondrial generation through this thing called the electron transport chain, versus a process called glycolysis.

[01:16:48] Glycolysis is a way that cancer cells generate ATP. We all generate a little bit of ATP energy through glycolysis, but it's very inefficient. When you generate energy through the ATP through the electron transport chain, you get 36 ATP compared to 2 ATP from this glycolysis. So by using the spirulina, it showed that the ability to produce ATP through this better pathway increased almost 15%. Now we're talking about--

[01:17:22] Luke: This is in seven days?

[01:17:23] Catharine: Seven days.

[01:17:24] Luke: What?

[01:17:24] Catharine: Seven days. It also decreased what's called basal reaction species by 5% and decreased the reactive oxygen species by 5%. And I remind people, this is done without drugs, not a supplement. Algae is a food. And they didn't do anything else in seven. So I was having a conversation with Hemal. And by the way, Hemal and his lab does all of the brain work, brain research for Dr. Joe Dispenza.

[01:18:03] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:18:03] Catharine: Hemal and his team are a brain trust. And he's been working with Dr. Dispenza for many, many years. So this guy is incredible. And I was so impressed with him, and we're going to do more work with him for sure.

[01:18:18] Luke: When do you get the results of 30-day?

[01:18:20] Catharine: We should get the rest of the results by next week. So it's very close, but I didn't have them in time for--

[01:18:24] Luke: So we'll them available by the time this comes out.

[01:18:29] Catharine: We may because we also want to write it up. It's either going to be a case study or a-- he is not sure if we have enough data for a paper. So we're going to do a much larger study for publication in scientific paper. So I want to follow his direction because he knows how to write papers and I don't. And there's a whole protocol, so I'm letting him take the lead.

[01:18:50] Luke: It's not just an Instagram post like, Hey.

[01:18:52] Catharine: No, no, sure. I'm going to the A4M, which is a big medical conference. I'm hoping to be speaking, but if not, we will be speaking about this because this is breaking science for sure, and it's combination of Hemal's team and using spirulina, at least our brand.

[01:19:08] I can't say this for everybody, but he did give me the okay to use a quote that he said when in conversation with me, which is pretty powerful. So I'm going to read it to you. So this is, again, Hemal Patel, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer for Mescreen, and you can check them out at mescreen.com.

[01:19:24] When he oversaw the data from our seven days of this clinical trial, he said, "The only other time I have seen such dramatic improvements in mitochondrial health was in an intermittent fasting clinical trial we did last year. In that study, it took three months for the 70 participants to achieve the same level of improved mitochondrial health that was achieved in just seven days by the participants taking ENERGYbits, spirulina algae tablets daily." Bottom line, you can do intermittent fasting for 90 days and get some of the benefits or take ENERGYbits spirulina tablets for seven days and get the same benefits and more.

[01:20:11] Luke: I'll choose the latter.

[01:20:12] Catharine: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ultimately, if you want to do both, you'll just uplevel and whatever.

[01:20:17] Luke: Fasting's a lot of work.

[01:20:19] Catharine: So I was pretty pleased. Again, it's very early, and it's a small study, and we have to replicate it, and we need to do a bigger one. But this is, again, not a drug. This is just a food carefully grown to preserve the nutrients. And it reinforces all the research I've been reading about all these capabilities of these superoxide dismutase. The highest glutathione in the world, which is also a critical antioxidant that reduces free radical damage.

[01:20:48] Because what people don't realize, free radicals are a molecule with an unaired electron, and it's unbalanced. And so it tries to balance itself out by stealing another electron from another molecule, which causes damage to that molecule, which causes tissue damage. So you have these things called antioxidants that have extra electrons to give away to neutralize and calm down and balance out these free radicals.

[01:21:15] It's like the kid who comes to school with extra lunches for all his friends. But the problem is the mitochondria have an inner membrane. They're the only part still in your body with two membranes. All of your cells have what's called a lipid membrane. And any antioxidant can get in and out of that membrane.

[01:21:34] But the mitochondria have this inner membrane that does not allow most antioxidants in. Because remember, mitochondria started as cyanobacteria. It was its own individual cell that then got absorbed by the larger cell. So the original exterior cell never disappeared when it got absorbed. It's still there.

[01:21:59] It's part of our ancient history, and it does not allow most antioxidants in. The ones that it allows in are pretty much all found in algae in the highest concentration. Superoxide dismutase, glutathione, and chlorophyll. These are all antioxidants. Other antioxidants can get in there like melatonin and CoQ10.

[01:22:21] So I just want to say it's not the only ones, but these are the biggest ones in spirulina. So the fact that these antioxidants can get in there to stop the free radical damage is amazing. Because when you stop the free radicals-- because the free radicals are a byproduct of ATP. They're going to happen anyways.

[01:22:39] And I don't if I mentioned this, but your body makes this thing called superoxide dismutase from the moment you're born. So you are protected from the moment you're born until 30. And it slows down the production of superoxide dismutase after 30. And by 40 you have virtually none. And isn't it interesting that after the age of 40, this is exactly when all these health issues kick in, weight gain, brain fog, autoimmune, chronic disease, heart disease. It's escalating.

[01:23:09] And I believe it's because the mitochondria are no longer protected from these free radicals because your body simply isn't making superoxide dismutase like it did when you were a baby, a teenager, until the age of 30. It's just like you slow down your hormone production. You slow down your melatonin production after the age of 30.

[01:23:28] You don't want to know why? We've been on earth 2 million years, and up until about 150 years ago, we died at 30. Our biology has not caught up with our changed lifestyle. All of our systems, all of our body thinks we're dying at 30. And so it goes into this slowdown mode, and it's a downward spiral.

[01:23:51] People can't sleep because they don't have melatonin. But sleep is so restorative. That's when your body repairs itself. So if you aren't sleeping, you aren't getting repair. Chlorella, I'll mention, by the way, has the highest tryptophan in the world, so it helps you get to sleep. But also, your mitochondria control hormone and things like insulin and estrogen.

[01:24:17] Well, not insulin, but estrogen starts dropping after people, women in particular get into perimenopause and menopause, and that really affects brain health. So if we can get the mitochondria functioning again, everything else starts working again. It's like we turn your lights back on.

[01:24:34] Luke: When you mentioned the free radicals and the oxidative stress piece, and that this has the ability to help mitigate that because the antioxidants are available to the mitochondria, it brought to mind an issue about which I'm deeply passionate, and that is EMF mitigation.

[01:24:54] And so there's a lot of things you can do in your external world. There's not much you can control, but we've done a lot in this home, for example, to harmonize the frequencies in a more esoteric way to blocking the frequencies with paint and things like that. But I think there's a lot to be said for fortifying the body with different substances like vitamin C, vitamin E, so on, potent antioxidants that help you be more-- hydrogen's a good one.

[01:25:25] I use that constantly on flights. It's really helpful. But I'm very sensitive to EMF. The EMF issue is growing exponentially. It's just everywhere. You've got Starlink now, so even if you're out in the middle of the woods, you're still getting blasted. Are you aware of any research or just even intuitive ideas based on the internal protection, the antioxidant protection from the damages of EMF?

[01:25:53] Catharine: Well, I can't reference any in particular, but anything that damages the mitochondria damages your health. It's that simple. And anything that restores the mitochondria will restore your health. So the EMFs are very, very damaging, and that's why another thing people can do is red light. Because it also restores the mitochondria. It also reduces inflammation.

[01:26:19] So anything that's going to reduce inflammation and improve the production of cellular energy and improve simultaneously the mitochondria health will help protect you from that. And remember, these are pigments. There's two powerful pigments. The blue one, phycocyanin and spirulina, and the green one, chlorophyll, the algae generates energy from the sun.

[01:26:47] And so it's a great other area to go into for future research and testing. As we get bigger, I just want to be going down that scientific route over and over and over again so we can start showing people real test results. So I'm sure it would have some to protecting--

[01:27:07] Luke: It seems to me intuitively that mega dosing algae before you're going to be exposed to high EMF, which air travel to me is the worst offender because you've got solar radiation, and now they've got Wi-Fi on all the plane.

[01:27:21] Catharine: Well, think about it. The United Nations used chlorella algae after the Chernobyl explosion back in the '60s because it's the only thing known to pull out radiation. And when the Fukushima disaster happened about eight years ago, the entire global supply of chlorella was bought up by the Asians within 24 hours because they also know it's the only thing that will remove radiation from you.

[01:27:49] We have customers who are going through chemo, radiation for cancer, and what they do after their chemo treatment, the next day, they take a double, triple dose of the chlorella to pull out the excess radiation so they're not as nauseous. So if chlorella and the chlorophyll and the other nutrients can pull out radiation, I am pretty confident that there will be some equally clear evidence that it will protect you from EMF.

[01:28:19] Because I have not yet found anything that this stuff doesn't do. It just needs be tested and measured. And not to beat up on Elon Musk, but I've been reading over and over again, people that are driving Teslas around are getting sick because of the EMF that is being emitted by that battery that's in the car.

[01:28:42] Luke: Alyson just drove home in one.

[01:28:44] Catharine: Oh, really? Oh man.

[01:28:46] Luke: People ask me about this a lot, and based on relationships I have with a couple of building biologists, Brian Hoyer and Ryan Blaser, guys that have been on the show that their whole life is about EMF, it's true that Teslas are high in EMF, but the bad news is that all new cars that are run on computer chips--

[01:29:06] Catharine: I know. Yeah. Same thing.

[01:29:07] Luke: We took a drive a couple of days ago, and I felt great. I got a great night's sleep. I woke up feeling good. We took a drive into 5G land out in Austin on the freeways, and I felt super sick. I was feverish and nauseous on the home. I feel sick when I drive my car. And so I'm like, do I need to buy a 75 Ford pickup truck or something?

[01:29:29] Catharine: I know. I know. Yeah.

[01:29:30] Luke: I like my car. It drives really well. It's convenient, but you've got radar coming the bumpers. You got the Wi-Fi, a router or modem rather in the car, Bluetooth, the Apple car play thing. I haven't tested mine, but I have seen some testing on pretty much all modern cars are just EMF nightmares. And it doesn't bother all people. That's the thing. Alyson is not bothered by it. She drives her Tesla around. She feels fine. I'm just, unfortunately, one of those people who's more sensitive to it than some.

[01:30:02] Catharine: And you're right. It's like not everybody's affected by certain foods. So not everybody can digest dairy. Everyone's sensitive, and that's why you always have to come home to your situation. This is the never step in the same river twice thing again. You are a unique individual with your own energy. I was going to say thumbprint, but it's actually your own energy motif, I guess, and different blood type.

[01:30:33] You have to just pay attention to what's making you feel good and what's not making you feel good, and then do something about it, but not everybody's affected by everything obviously. But I do want to mention that a lot of people are aware that detox is important. They may not know that the average adult in North America now has 700 toxins in their body. And most of these have not been tested. And the few that were, were tested in isolation. So who lives in isolation? Yeah, no one.

[01:31:01] So we're getting these layering of toxins and then they stick into your cell walls so that even if you are eating nourishing foods, you can't always get absorbed because the toxin is sitting in the cell receptor. So I tell people, you can't just detox once a year or once a quarter, once a month.

[01:31:23] You should be doing this daily. And this is why I love chlorella algae so much. I'd say it's like giving your body a shower from the inside. It just pulls out anything shouldn't be there. Whether it's alcohol, glyphosate, pesticide, probably EMF. I don't know how it manifests in your body quite honestly, but that's my go-to for sure.

[01:31:41] But for detox, you do need the more therapeutic dose. 10 tablets would get you the chlorophyll, which is cleansing and kills bacteria. But you do need the 30. But we have to defend ourselves. We started off by saying you want a mindset and you don't want to to be living your life in defense mode, which is fear-based and aggressive.

[01:32:07] But you have to be intelligent and be aware of what's going on out there so that you can do the best to look after yourself emotionally, physically, and also in terms of toxicity. So it is just being well informed.

[01:32:22] Luke: What about marine phytoplankton? I'm curious about the difference there.

[01:32:27] Catharine: Well, interesting you mentioned that because--

[01:32:29] Luke: I've been using that for a long time from Activation Products. They have a company called Oceans Alive. It's a little dropper bottle. And I feel good on it. It's something I use on flights a lot. It's really high in SOD. And I think it's another kind of sea plant or algae or something. What's the difference between marine phytoplankton and these two?

[01:32:50] Catharine: I'm not a phytoplankton expert, but it appears phytoplankton is grown in wild bodies of water, so lakes or oceans. And the problem is you cannot keep microtoxins out of wild bodies of water. So algae is really the only thing that I can think of that it's worse to have it wild. It doesn't matter. Mushrooms, truffles, everything else. You have your own organic farm. Grow it wild. It's always good for you.

[01:33:22] But with algae, because algae or phytoplankton will absorb whatever's in the water, these microtoxins are really hard to measure. Took me two years to find a lab that tests for them because they usually test algae blooms, but they test our stuff, and we never have any. But I've got some scientific papers that they were analyzing phytoplankton and spirulina and chlorella, comparing the ones that were harvested in fresh water versus wild bodies of water in the wild. And the wild bodies of water ones always had microtoxins in them. It just is what it is.

[01:33:56] Luke: The one that I'm taking is grown, I believe in Spain in a sealed photo bioreactor.

[01:34:04] Catharine: Okay, well then you're fine.

[01:34:06] Luke: For that purpose.

[01:34:07] Catharine: Okay, then you're fine. There is is a company that grows it in Klamath Lake, and this was the one--

[01:34:13] Luke: I've heard that. Yeah.

[01:34:14] Catharine: That was tested, and I don't want to say their name. But it is what it is.

[01:34:19] Luke: I've heard that. Yeah. The thing is, with anything grown in our environment, especially in large bodies of water, whether it's a lake or the ocean, you've got chemicals being sprayed in the sky. There's no getting away from toxins. So I think if you're producing a product that's very concentrated, like marine phytoplankton for example, it's very, very dense.

[01:34:42] Catharine: But be sure it's grown in--

[01:34:44] Luke: Everything from the environment that it's absorbing is also going to be concentrated.

[01:34:48] Catharine: Exactly. So that company, whatever method they're using then, you called it photo bio--

[01:34:53] Luke: They grow it in a bioreactor basically, a sealed environment.

[01:34:58] Catharine: Well, that's the same thing I mentioned in Iceland. They're growing spirulina for the omega-3. This is the future. This is the future for feeding the world, for making sure things are safe. Because our world just is not safe from toxins any longer, whether you're talking about the soil, the ocean, or the air. It just isn't. So in 20 to 30 years, you're going to be seeing-- and the great thing about spirulina and chlorella is that in Asia, they do this already.

[01:35:27] They put it in everything. Here we put chia seed or other seeds in snack foods or whatever. They put algae in everything because of the nutrient value, the protein. So they inject it even into their protein. So this is where we will be heading in 20 or 30 years. So that's why I tell people, learn about algae now because it's not going away anytime soon.

[01:35:54] It's waited for 4 billion years for you to learn about it. We just made it safer for you to take. I designed all the packaging so it wouldn't look weird. I've done my very best to go through the science because people think of it as pond scum. And it's like, no, you have no idea. It does things for you that you have no idea.

[01:36:16] It's like in the Wizard of Oz, there was Oz pulling all the levers for all the sound effects and doing nasty things, but spirulina and chlorella, they're pulling all the levers to do good things behind the scenes. It's amazing what they do, but nobody knows about it. And I'm trying my best to help people understand it.

[01:36:37] Luke: Well, if you keep doing podcasts, it might not be 30 years. Have you looked into the photo activity of phycocyanin or some of these other pigments thinking about methylene blue, as we mentioned before. It's very photoreactive. So if it's exposed to UV and infrared light, it potentiates the effects especially on mitochondria. Would there be some benefit in taking this algae and getting in an infrared sauna or getting in sun or red light therapy?

[01:37:12] Catharine: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:37:13] Luke: Tell me about that relationship.

[01:37:14] Catharine: Because the red light therapy reduces inflammation and helps restore mitochondria, which so does the various nutrients, the chlorophyll, the phycocyanin, and superoxide dismutase. So if you take any of the algae, I generally recommend the spirulina before any treatment. Doesn't matter whether it's red light, sauna, cryotherapy, the hyperbaric. Take a before, 10 or 30, however many you want, because it will uplevel the results.

[01:37:48] Because it's probably 10 times, 10 or more. Especially with red light, people may not be aware, but thousands of years ago in India, they used to get up at sunrise to do their yoga practice because the red light just before sunrise, that's when it was the strongest. And it has healing properties. So does spirulina and chlorella.

[01:38:14] The healing properties, when you pair it with red light or any of these other modalities is extraordinary. And not only does it help with the healing and the reduced inflammation. I have a paper, and I can send it to you, that studied chlorophyll. When you marry chlorophyll with red light, could be sunlight, could be red light device, what it does is it recirculates the CoQ10 molecule. So it generates more cellular energy.

[01:38:44] I'll just do a little background, tell people about cellular energy. It's created through a process called the electron transport chain, and the electron transport chain has four molecules, and electrons are passed from one molecules to the next. It's like a relay race. If you ever watched a relay race, you have a runner, and they pass a baton to the next runner, and then that runner passes the baton, and then they hope to cross the finish line and win.

[01:39:10] Well, instead of runners, you have these molecules. And instead of a baton, you have electrons. And so going from one runner to the next into the very end is where you generate this ATP. Now, what's interesting is in these four molecules, you have two little helper molecules. One is CoQ10, and the other one is this cytochrome c that I've already mentioned. CoQ10 is actually a fat-based molecule. And I mention that because the pigment called chlorophyll, and chlorella has the highest, is a fat-based pigment.

[01:39:43] I love how nature has just made everything so elegant and so simple. So when you have chlorophyll and red light, it regenerates that CoQ10 molecule, which goes from a antioxidant state to a oxidative state, and then back again if you have the red light. So it speeds up the production of ATP. So when you put the two of them together, you get more ATP production and less inflammation.

[01:40:08] And then again, there's that other helper molecule called cytochrome c, which when you put phycocyanin, which by the way is a water-based molecule, and cytochrome c is a water-based molecule, when you put those two together, you get more energy as well. So if you take it before red light, you'll have even more reduced inflammation and more ATP. If you do it before cryotherapy, or cold plunge, your body is exposed to cold, so it thinks it's dying.

[01:40:38] So it pulls all the blood into its core where all the organs are to protect them. So if you have spirulina in your body while you're in your plunge or your cryo, you are nourishing all of your organs. And with all these nutrients that stop cancer, help reduce inflammation, restore your but mitochondria, one of the things that cryotherapy does, which also algae does, is it helps your body go through something called autophagy.

[01:41:09] That's cellular cleaning. Think of it as just spring cleaning, but it's going on all the time. Your body can't do spring cleaning autophagy when you're eating all the time because it's constantly getting food in, getting all those electrons through the ATP production. It doesn't have time. It's like asking someone to clean their car while they're driving their car. It can't be done. You got to park that car to be able to clean it.

[01:41:31] So when you go through intermittent fasting or cryotherapy, or taking spirulina in particular, this helps your cells go, "Oh, I have time to clean up." So this helps you stay healthier and protect your mitochondria. And same with this process called apoptosis, which I mentioned earlier, which is program cell death. Cryotherapy also helps with that. I don't know if red light therapy does, but the algae does for sure.

[01:42:01] And with saunas, the great thing about saunas is-- well, let me back up. Your body removes toxins four ways, breath, sweat, urine, and bowel movements. So when you're in a sauna, that is the perfect time to be removing some of your toxins. So because spirulina has chlorophyll in it, which kills bacteria and helps you release-- and chlorella obviously is all chlorophyll, taking either one of them before and certainly chlorella after the sauna will pull out even more toxins and give you a really great refresh. So they stack really well with all the other modalities.

[01:42:38] Luke: That's so cool. And I'm so glad to hear that because just the way I live my life day to day, well, every day I take multiple ice baths, but on a good day, like this morning, I took a sauna, but I'm already using your ENERGYbits.

[01:42:53] Catharine: Yeah, yeah. So you're good to go.

[01:42:53] Luke: Intuitively, I haven't timed it exactly like that, but I think I have it in my system every day. So I'm getting one or the other. But I like the idea of being more targeted with it. So it's like, I definitely am getting the spirulina and the ice bath effect because I use the spirulina in my morning smoothie, then I go jump in the ice bath probably a half an hour later. But I like the strategic timing of the chlorella with sauna. That's actually a really cool idea.

[01:43:19] Catharine: Yeah. And for anyone who's listening, try to take spirulina 10 or 15 minutes before whatever biohack you're doing. And then I always like to suggest the chlorella because it's the cleanup crew. It just cleans up whatever got released. By the way, speaking of cleanup crew, I know we haven't addressed it, but I want to talk about it, bowel movements. Because people are constipated if they're traveling, taking medication, eating lots of dairy, processed foods. And the trouble with constipation is that, I call it the junk in your trunk, it's sitting there.

[01:43:56] Luke: Not the good kind of junk in your trunk.

[01:43:57] Catharine: Right. And it's stuff your body didn't want. So it's all the garbage, and you need to remove it because-- and it's sitting in your colon. Your blood is circulating around and picking up all those toxins that your body didn't want and recirculate them. I say it's like having a garbage truck parked in front of your house forever. You want to get rid of that stuff.

[01:44:17] And so chlorella stimulates what's called peristalsis, which is the bowel movement. A lot of people eat fiber to help with bowel movements, but a lot of people don't like fiber, don't like vegetables. And this is why I'm telling everyone, chlorella could technically and actually literally replace your need for vegetables. It gives you the chlorophyll and the phytonutrients that you find in vegetables, and it stimulates peristalsis, which is what you would get from the fiber in vegetables.

[01:44:47] And you can swallow them if you don't like the taste. Although chlorella actually tastes pretty good. I put sea salt on it. I mix it with pistachio nuts, which are very low in lectins by the way. So you can have it as a bedtime snack. Carnivores, I know you are constipated. I know it.

[01:45:06] So this will not interfere with being a carnivore. It has no lectins or oxalates. It will give you all those that you need to get rid of the stuff that's sitting there. And colon cancer is on the rise, particularly with younger people. So it's nothing to be laughed about.

[01:45:23] Luke: I'm glad you brought that up because that's something I've observed over the years as things come in trends. There's a thought sphere in the wellness space. And when I got into this stuff in the late '90s, it was all about colon cleansing, juice fasting, saunas, and making your own kombucha. And it's like these trends that come.

[01:45:45] But one of the things that was so helpful to me early on, because I was extremely toxic in my late 20s and changed my whole life inside and out, I was following a guy named Dr. Richard Schulze of the American Botanical Pharmacy. And he's an old-school American herbalist, and he was always emphasizing the importance of irregularity.

[01:46:12] And he would cite these studies of indigenous peoples who defecate three times a day, usually about 20 minutes after each meal. And that if you're not going on a regular basis like that, to your point, you're just reabsorbing all these toxins.

[01:46:26] But anyway, to me, that was such a fundamental and just innate truth that seems so obvious. And I think we get caught up sometimes in these sophisticated biohacking regiments and all this stuff. Yeah, she's not going to leave you alone now. Okay, Cookie, we get it. She's such a good advertiser. But anyway, back to the point. I'm getting distracted here.

[01:46:49] We get caught up in all of these detox protocols and heavy metal chelation and fasting and this diet and that diet, and to me it's like if you are not regular, you will never be healthy no matter how much you work out. Red light therapy, hyperbaric, all of that is negated if your food is sitting in your gut petrifying and reabsorbing all the toxins it's trying to get rid of. So one of my missions is to make pooping sexy.

[01:47:19] Catharine: Yeah, right. There you go.

[01:47:19] Luke: I was going to bring it back.

[01:47:20] Catharine: Bring, bring, bring.

[01:47:21] Luke: And it's not a topic we like to talk about. I might tell a friend, like, "Oh, I had a great colonic therapy today." And I'm like, it's embarrassing. Because then you start to picture what happened. It's like, ah. But I think it's something we--

[01:47:32] Catharine: I've tried everything because I'm in this business.

[01:47:34] Luke: I think we need to be adults and recognize that this is such a crucial function, and for so many different reasons, it's missing. I think in the biohacking space, everyone gets caught up on all these complex ideas and miss this, you got to be regular first off, especially if you're going to be detoxing your organs, doing liver cleanses, gallbladder flushes, all this stuff. So great. You're getting your eliminatory organs to dump all these toxins. Where are they going? They're going into your colon.

[01:48:04] Catharine: Yeah, exactly.

[01:48:05] Luke: And if you don't have the runway cleared there, you're going to have a backup of airplane traffic. You know what I'm saying?

[01:48:10] Catharine: Yeah.

[01:48:11] Luke: So I'm glad you brought that up and reminded me and the audience how important that is.

[01:48:15] Catharine: The thing I also just want to circle back to is that, in the biohacking community, there's so many devices and all these shiny objects thing. And if you go on social media, everybody's got the answers. Either it's a protocol or-- and I just always go back to nature. The things that really work have been working for centuries, and most of them are free, your life should not be so complex.

[01:48:51] So the things that I really stress are sleep. This is when your body repairs itself. This is when you get rid of toxins. This is when your get stem cell circulating. By the way, algae stimulates that as well. And this is when you can start getting ready for a bowel movement in the morning. So sleep is paramount.

[01:49:10] For number two, I put algae. And it has been around for 4 billion years. The spirituallina, first life on Earth. And it's very affordable. It's not free. But with your discount code at work, if you take 10 tablets a day, it works out to a dollar a day. Take 10 tablets of spirulina a day, a dollar a day. 10 chlorella, a dollar.

[01:49:32] That's as affordable as you're ever going to get for insuring your own health. And again, your nutritional insurance and your health insurance. So we've got sleep. We've got algae, movement. Mitochondria health are determined by things like good stressors, and you need exercise.

[01:49:53] You need weight bearing exercise. And as you get older, they're realizing you don't have to decline if you've looked after yourself, but you have to maintain your muscle capability. So I hope to be 90 and 100 and doing everything I'm doing now, because I now know what I need. I need sleep. I need algae. I need movement and sun. I have never used sun-- what do you call it? Sun protector.

[01:50:18] Luke: Oh God, no.

[01:50:19] Catharine: Because it's full of chemicals. So you just want to be smart about your sun exposure, but it's giving you access to the red light that your mitochondria need. It allows your body to generate important nutrients. We've demonized the sun, but you need it. And breath, whether it's through meditation, walking, yoga, because that also calms down your parasympathetic system, calms your mind. And by the way, when you're calmer, you absorb nutrients better. Did you know that?

[01:50:57] BrainTap had some interesting science about that as well. That's why if I can't eat, I only take algae. Because if I eat in a stressed environment, gives me indigestion, and I know I'm not absorbing. So sleep, algae, sun, movement, and breath. And algae's the only one of those that you have to pay for. And it's very affordable.

[01:51:18] Luke: I'm so glad you brought that up. And that's something that I do my best to convey all the time. Now, it's difficult because I interview people here and they might have a 20,000-dollar PEMF frequency machine.

[01:51:32] Catharine: Right. Oh, I'm in love with everything.

[01:51:34] Luke: I just got a PEMF device, it's $25,000. I'm just like, ah, I want to tell people about this. But it's like, dude, most of my life that would've been like so far out of my reality.

[01:51:45] Catharine: I've used-- I've rented one of theirs. I've tried virtually. I endorse everybody because also I know most of these people in the industry. They're my friends and almost everybody got into this industry because either they or a family member or someone close to them had a health condition that was not corrected by the conventional medicine.

[01:52:04] So they started lifting the hood and finding a better solution. But what I want to help people understand is you don't need them all. Start with the basics. Start with what you can do, which is get to bed earlier, move and breathe, and a little bit of sun. And then if you want to uplevel, algae's here, waiting for you. It's been helping people for centuries.

[01:52:28] The Egyptians used it. The Aztecs lived on it. I have a funny, interesting story, but the Aztecs in Spain, in Mexico, they were a very strong, powerful community before the Spanish conquered them. And when the Spanish came over, they saw these huge swamps. Well, they thought they were swamps and they drained them all. It turns out they were growing spirulina.

[01:52:48] Luke: Really?

[01:52:49] Catharine: Spirulina was a main food source for the Aztecs. And when they drained them all, they all got weak, and the Spanish conquered them. How amazing.

[01:52:59] Luke: That's crazy. I didn't know that. I was actually going to ask you about the historical relevance, and this will be a good place to probably wrap it up. I want to let people know that, as you said, and I fully agree, that most of the things that will really support your health and vitality are actually free.

[01:53:17] I want to see if you agree. What I think the limit we have around that is, and why more people don't acknowledge that or believe that, or buy into it or practice it, it's that the things that are really good for us that are free, whether exposing ourself to something or avoiding--

[01:53:33] Catharine: Are sexy.

[01:53:33] Luke: Yeah. And they require more self-discipline. So you talked about the ancient Indian tradition of sun gazing at sunrise, which I do almost every day because it's just so many benefits. But that means I sleep with my curtains open a little bit so that the sun wakes me up when it comes up.

[01:53:52] It's one little lifestyle change, and some mornings I'm like, ah, God, I don't want to get up. And I'm like, I don't want to miss that red light. So it requires some self-discipline, getting in an ice bath. Well, ice bath isn't free, but finding a cold body of water's free.

[01:54:05] Catharine: You do a cold shower.

[01:54:07] Luke: Right. But the discipline to do it is harder than some of these fancy technologies or some of these very sophisticated supplements. So I think that's why people have a hard time buying in. It's the simplicity and that sometimes the most powerful things we can do are the most obvious. So that's part of it. But it requires discipline. If you do a breath work practice, to do that every day, that takes a lot of willpower to get yourself on the mat to do whatever your practice is.

[01:54:38] Catharine: Yeah. And there's two things I'd like to say regarding that. That's why I love the spirulina and the chlorella algae tablets so much. Takes no effort at all. If you can swallow water, you just put 10 little tablets in your hand, down the hatch, you're done. That's it. It takes longer to make a meal. It takes longer to go grocery shopping. It takes longer to take out your garbage. You can get the nourishment and health requirements that you need in seconds without any work. This is why I'm so--

[01:55:07] Luke: That's my kind of practice.

[01:55:09] Catharine: Well, that's what everybody's kind of practice is. So that's the first thing, is that people need to know there are some things that don't require any effort. And spirulina, the tablets, for a while you could only get them in powder, and you had to make your smoothie. And if you didn't like the taste, it was horrible. You don't taste anything when you swallow these, and there's no repeat.

[01:55:31] It goes down. It stays down. You can have it on an empty stomach because it's food. I can't take supplements. I don't know anybody can take supplements in the morning and not feel nauseous, because they're extracts, and they're synthetics. This is food. So that's number one. Absolutely effortless. Every age group. Any dietary requirement.

[01:55:50] But the other thing that's interesting that I want to point out about the discipline is that you have to have an open mind. Because most of us, we've been programmed to think that speed and convenience are good for us. Because then you get to do more. You can multitask more.

[01:56:07] Well, it turns out multitasking actually isn't good for you. It's not good for your brain. It's not good for your body. So you have to have an open mind to trying things that maybe you didn't have or know about when you were younger or even now as an adult. And so part of my journey has been to help open people's minds about algae.

[01:56:27] Please stop thinking about it as pond's scum. Please start thinking about it as a gift to us from Mother Nature that will give us everything that we're missing right now and more. I wrote a little mini book we'll have available to shows to give away called The Algae Love Story, because it truly is a gift of love from Mother Nature.

[01:56:48] It does everything that love does. Love sustains you. So does algae. It grows over time. Algae grows. Love is so good for you. Love just gives you everything you need and more, and so does algae. So I want to help people understand love is important, and so is algae. And love takes work, but algae does not.

[01:57:11] Luke: That's a beautiful place to end on. And Cookie is going absolutely berserk now for those listening. She is not going to let us keep going because I keep tossing her little ENERGYbits, and she is cracked out like I'm feeding her raw liver or something. There you go, Cookie.

[01:57:29] Catharine: She wants the chlorella.

[01:57:30] Luke: Actually, she's digging both of them. I gave her a bunch of chlorella and I was like, oh, she's just as ravenous for the spirulina. That could get expensive depending on how big of dog you have.

[01:57:40] Catharine: Yeah. Right.

[01:57:41] Luke: Luckily, mine's small, so a couple of these is not going to cost me anything.

[01:57:44] Catharine: So anyways, yeah. I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to share my passion and my knowledge with your community. And we're all trying to help people live a healthier, more balanced life, and it ultimately comes down to the simplest things. They're not sexy, but they ultimately are the best things for you.

[01:58:02] And in many cases they cost very little or nothing. And I put algae right in there. And in our case, even if you don't want to buy any, just come to our website and learn about it because there's a lot to share, a lot to learn. And algae is not going away.

[01:58:19] Luke: Awesome. Well, thanks again for making the time to come see me again. And thank you for your passion. I think that's one of the things I love about you, as a podcast guest, is you are fired up. You're not doing this shit by rote.

[01:58:33] Catharine: No. No nuts.

[01:58:34] Luke: You went and got your PhD. You're like, I'm going hard. And also at 68 too, man, a lot of people, like you said, don't have the energy physically, but also just for many of us, unfortunately, the fire of our passion dwindles or we never find it. So I'm just stoked you found your passion, and you're not resting on your laurels--

[01:58:56] Catharine: Without anyone who meets me.

[01:58:57] Luke: Yeah, it's cool.

[01:58:59] Catharine: I'll slime you with my passion.

[01:59:01] Luke: I love it. I love it. Well, thanks for doing what you do.

[01:59:04] Catharine: Thank you, Luke. Thank you.