33. Catharine Arnston, MBA: The Benefits of Algae - Spirulina and Chlorella

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in healthcare. Welcome back to another episode, everyone. Today, we are going to be speaking about algae, and specifically, spirulina and chorella. Two algae that you guys have probably heard of, at least in the wellness industry. Those green things that you can mix up in your smoothie and probably heard many, many benefits. Luckily, we have Catherine Arnston, who is the founder and CEO of a company called Energy Bits. She started Energy Bits, which was actually on Shark Tank, because her sister was advised by an oncologist that an alkaline diet would help her heal. So Catherine sprung into action. She decided to research alkaline foods, and she came across algae. And to her surprise, she found that it was the most nutrient dense food in the world that Asia has been using forever. But we haven't been here in the U.S. So I could go through all the benefits of algae that Catherine talks about, but I think you should hear from her now. All right. Let's get started. All right. Catherine, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. It's great to get together with some other like-minded folks. Yeah, we are so stoked about this composition, because it's a topic that I think when we talk about algae, everybody has heard of the term, but probably not in the context that we're going to dive into today. So super excited to learn about that, but I'd like to start with your background. You don't traditionally have a science-based background, right? You kind of had an MBA, and you have a business degree, but now you are the chief scientific officer of energy bits, which is primarily all dealing with all things algae. So how did you even get started in this? I know. It's crazy. I probably should have been a scientist because I love digging into the science with them. That's why I've spent so much time on this. So yes, I'm a MBA in international business, born and raised and educated in Canada, lived in the United States for 33 years, mostly Boston. And I was enjoying my corporate career, and then out of the blue 13 years ago, my younger sister in Canada, developed breast cancer. Now, first of all, I need to tell everybody she's fine. She healed. She's 10 years cancer-free, but 13 years ago, it was a huge blow. And as she was preparing for her chemotherapy, her oncologist, which of course you know is a cancer specialist, advised her to change her diet to an alkaline diet because it would help with her healing. Now they didn't tell her what an alkaline diet was or why specifically what specifically would do. So the first call she made was to me, her big sister who loves her, and I'm just a really good researcher. I've always been able to find stuff. I'm always interested in finding out why things work. So I said, I have no idea what this is, but I will find out and I did. And it was on the internet, and I just googled alkaline diets and found out it was primarily a plant-based diet because of the chlorophyll and the phytonutrients that have been proven for decades to build your immune system. And we can dig deep into the whole alkaline thing later on if you wish. So after giving her lots of suggestions, I, in the process of giving her suggestions, I ended up reading about eight or nine books. I read about two or three hundred papers on plant-based nutrition. Now you have to remember this was 13 years ago and plant-based nutrition wasn't on anybody's radar like it is now. So as I learned all this science and thought, saw how powerful it was, I thought, man, someone needs to tell the rest of the world about this. And even though I had no science or even a nutrition background, I thought, I'm just a passionate person, I'll figure it out. And so I enrolled myself in, I gave up my career, I enrolled in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which was a holistic nutrition school in New York. It's now just online, but at the time it was live, 1,600 people in my class. I went down on weekends. Now it didn't give me a really deep science background, but it gave me enough of a groundwork to understand nutritional protocols. And after I graduated in July 2009, I put together my own curriculum teaching plant-based nutrition at corporations and hospitals, basically anybody who would let me in. I would give them for free. And this is what led me ultimately to algae, because as I was teaching people, the importance of eating vegetables, I found a heck, I wasn't telling them anything new. Our mothers have been telling us to eat our vegetables since we were kids. But what I did learn was that there were too many obstacles, preventing people from doing this. That's face of vegetables. Way a lot. They're heavy to carry home from the grocery store. They take a lot of room up in your fridge. They take a long time to cook, to clean, to eat. Men and children are notorious for not wanting to eat vegetables. So there was too many barriers as I thought, okay, I've seen the science of the importance of plant-based nutrition. If I can't get people to eat more vegetables, I need to find something that's fast and easy and nutrient-dense and green that will give them all the nutrition that they need effortlessly. Back to the internet, I went, blah, blah, blah, digging around, all the things I found for my sister. Nothing was really working until I got to algae. And that's when the magic happened. Turns out, algae is the most alkaline food in the world. So that was the first box that needed to be checked. Turns out, it's also the most nutrient-dense food in the world. We have a quote from NASA that says, one gram of algae has the same nutrition as a thousand grams of fruits or vegetables. That's one to a thousand. And as you're going to learn, as we talk about this microalgae, and we're going to talk about the two that we sell, spirulina and clorella, microalgae is so tiny. It's called microalgae because it's microscopic in size. Virtually a million of them could fit on the head of a pin. So when you consolidate all that dense nutrition in these teeny tiny, infinitesimal, single-cell organisms, that's why it's so nutrient-dense. There's a reason why they're called superfood. And I actually call them super-duperfoods, but that's neither here nor there. It's also the most protein-rich food in the world. United Nations had a global conference in 1974, which you can Google and find about spirulina algae being the answer to world hunger, because A, it is the most protein-rich food in the world. It has three times the amount of protein is stake, and as you're going to learn, all that protein is already in amino acid form, so there's nothing for your body to break down. And B, it's an eco-friendly, sustainable crop. It could feed the world. And if I do my job right, it will. So alkaline, nutrient-dense, and door-spy international agencies, high-end protein. Oh, did I mention that it is the most studied food in the world. There's about 60,000 studies documenting improving the different benefits that we're going to talk about today, of spirulina, and about 40,000 on clorella. That's a big number. That's not 10. That's not a thousand. That's not even 10,000. That's 100,000 studies. So the point I'm making is what it does is virtually irrefutable. It can't have that many studies complementing one another without seeing some sort of degree of accuracy. And on top of all that, it's been used for centuries. It's been used in Asia for over 75 years in Japan. They don't leave their house without taking clorella algae. And I'd like to point out that the Japanese have the lowest obesity rates, the lowest cancer rates, the best longevity rates, and great skin and hair. So with knowing, as I dug through all this, I thought, this is crazy. Why don't people know about this here, out in North America, or frankly, anywhere outside of Asia? And I thought, well, I'll figure it out, but I'm going to devote the rest of my life to getting this stuff out to the world because it is the most effortless way to give your body the nutrients it needs, whether it's chlorophyll protein, macronutrients, micronutrients, electrolytes, and it takes zero time. If you can swallow water, you can nourish yourself instantly. It's good for children, pets, babies, grandparents, no counterindications. So that's why I am so pumped about algae. Yeah. Now, we can certainly see your passion. Now, Katherine, I'd love to take a step-by-step with spirulina and corolla. But before we do that, you mentioned microalgae. That's primarily what we're going to be talking about today. Yes. So as opposed to macroalgae, I mean, what are the differences in where are each of them found in nature? Yeah. Great question. So as I like to tell people, algae is actually its own food category. It is not a fruit. And it's actually technically not a plant either because it started in the ocean. You'll be interested to know that algae was the first life on Earth almost four billion years ago. And it did start in the ocean. Before algae, there was no life on Earth. It was just gas and water. I have no idea why it started growing, but it did. And algae provides 80% of the oxygen on Earth. And when it started growing, it released all this oxygen. And after a billion years, it was spirulina that started. Corolla was able to grow and then after that, other life forms. So first of all, first life on Earth and it's still here. So it's everywhere. It's in the oceans, the lakes, the rivers, the streams, the soil. You're swimming pool, you're aquarium, algae is everywhere. And there are two, as you mentioned, two main categories, macroalgae and microalgae. Macroalgae is that big stringy stuff that washes up on shore. It's also known as kelp, dulce, seaweed. It's very high in fiber as iodine because it comes from the ocean, but virtually no nutrition. I mean, I eat kelp noodles and a big bag of them will have like five calories and zero nutrition, but it fills you up. That's not what we're talking about, but it's so good for you for the fiber. We're talking about microalgae, which as I mentioned is microscopic in size. And there are tens, probably hundreds of thousands of strains of microalgae everywhere. Now, there's two main types of microalgae, blue green and green. Blue green because it has two pigments in it, one is called phycosignin, which is a blue pigment. And the other one is a green algae, mostly because it only has one pigment, which is green. Now, I also want you to know there are tens of thousands of strains of blue green and green algae. The only two that are harvested as food crops are the two that we're talking about, which are spirulina and clorella. And I'm going to show you a picture. This is spirulina, which is a blue green algae. You can see how it's a bit darker. This is clorella, which is a green algae. So we, now, I just mentioned something that may cut people off by surprise. That, first of all, algae is a food. It's not a supplement, it's not made in factories. It's grown in fresh water. Well, spirulina and clorella are grown in fresh water. All those other algae, so when you read about toxic algae, blue green algae blooms, yes, they're out there. But it's not spirulina and it's not clorella. They are only harvested as in fresh water. No ocean toxins, fresh water. Yeah. And then we air dry it into a powder and then press them into these tiny tablets that are so nutrient dense that each one of them has the same nutrition as an entire plate of vegetables that you can effortlessly have. So that's the overall scheme of things. Now, as I mentioned, there's lots of blue green and there's lots of green, and the only ones we're going to talk about are spirulina and clorella, which are represent 99.9 percent of the algae that is for sale on the marketplace. Distinguishes us is that ours is pure, safer, more nutrient dense, and we can walk, I can walk you through later on, you know, why, you know, what we do to make it that way. But you also mentioned that, you know, in the forest Asian culture, it's highly prevalent in their diets. Whereas here in the states and in the West from world, quote unquote, it's really, it's prevalent in the terms of that we see it wash up on shore, but we're not really eating it. It's not incorporating your diet. People think of it on scum. Exactly. Why is that the case? Sure. And I, I wondered about this myself, and that's why it took me so long to get going because I thought this can't, this can't be true. I mean, all these things that this stuff does can't be true. And if it is, why don't people know about it? So here's why. I can, if we have time, I'll give you the backstory about why algae started, you know, becoming a big industry in Asia. It's actually quite fascinating. But nonetheless, it started being, the Japanese are the first ones to learn how to cultivate it for mass consumption, and this was back in the 1950s. Ironically, it was the US government that showed them how to do it. And it was a result of them feeding algae to the Japanese after Hiroshima destroyed all of their food, and they were giving, and the Marshall plan, under the Marshall plan, they provided them with food. Now they gave them the clorella because it has high protein, but they found out that everybody who took it healed from the radiation. So anyways, so the Japanese are the first ones that decided to grow clorella algae for mass consumption. And that was back in the, you know, early 50s, 1950s, late 1940s, whatever. So it took them 10 years, and then they nailed it, and then it started, they started getting more farms growing in Korea, China, Taiwan, India, and then they started branching out into spirulina. So, so 99.9% of algae is grown in Asia, and 99.9% of the users of algae are in Asia. So people in Asia grow up with it. You know, here in Boston, we have Dunkin' Donuts, so you know, it's quite normal to get Dunkin' Donuts truck driving by, and you live in the Midwest, it's quite normal to see a truck with wheat going by on the way to the mill, and I used to live in Western Canada, and we quite normal to see trucks driving by with logs. Nowhere in North America is anyone seeing any trucks driving by with algae. It's not part of an acular. We did not grow up with it, and I point out to people, algae is not new, it's just new to you. Right. We didn't know about stevia, we didn't know about chia, we didn't know about kiewa, we didn't know about hemp seeds, and recently we didn't know about collagen, and it took somebody, you know, with some passion and commitment to, you know, do the dig-deeping to find out, you know, what these nutrients were, why they weren't here, and to educate people, practitioners and consumers and media about what they were, and then to start an industry. So I'm not, I didn't plan on doing this. Remember, I just wanted to help my sister, that's all I wanted to do. But then as I learned the science of algae, I felt the responsibility to take it to the next step, and I just kept going. And so now I'm kicking, my MBA skills are kicking in, I was just really a passionate caring person who wanted to, I saw the problem with, you know, the Centers for Disease Control, as you know, say that 97% of chronic illness is lifestyle related, which means, you know, primarily nutrient deprivation, too much toxins, and in some cases also, there's other pillars, of course, sleep and exercise, but nutrition, lack of proper nutrients, and too many toxins are killing people. And it's so unnecessary. So as you can see, I'm getting worked up here, I don't think people just don't understand how their bodies operate. We know more about our cell phone and our car than we do our bodies, and so, but I've discovered that lecturing people doesn't work. So you have to make something compelling and exciting and alluring to attract people to what you have to say. So you know, I'm a marketing, you know, I have a marketing background, and so when I saw the science, and I saw what had to be done, I thought, I got to make this stuff cool and hip, safe and pure, of course, because I know once I get it into people's bodies, it will know what to do. It's called an adaptogen. So, you know, I design all our packaging, we'll show you some of it later, but, you know, I made it as beautiful as I can, so the people are, I want it to be happy. Algae makes you happy because it makes you healthy, so it's a great combination. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's why we don't have the podcast. Pardon me? Yeah, absolutely. And this is the point in the podcast, right? It's to try to get the education out there about wellness and nutrition and those chronic diseases, so happy to have you on here for short. You know, I did have a question for you, though. Why is it that only spirulina and chlorella are the two that are harvested? Why aren't other types of algae harvested? Yeah, because I know this red algae, well, that's a good question. It's no different than anything. Once a momentum kicks in, people are hesitant to invest more money in new things. They want to, you know, something's working. Just keep going with it. So keep it. I say. You have to, there's so, algae is just on the teeny tiny edge of being discovered in terms of the nutrient value and what all the compositions do. You know, we barely know what different pigments do. And there's so many healing properties to pigments and I can talk a little bit about two wonderful healing attributes of the blue pigment in spirulina. But you know, that's one of the reasons why I want to be successful. I want to be the billion dollar company, not because I care about money because quite honestly, I've never paid myself and I still don't pay myself. I want to have the resources, the financial resources, to fund research, to set up an algae academy to allow people to get certified in algae, nutritional, you know, intervention. I want to teach people around the world how to grow it. But I don't want to do it as a nonprofit. I want to do it as a profitable company. So I have my own, I can do it my way. And I can support all, you know, organizations like you who are educating people about the importance of these sort of easier preventative things that they can do with greater ease is once you get sick, sickness doesn't show up on your doorstep like a UPS package. It grows quietly and silently inside at the cellular level and your symptoms won't manifest in many cases for eight or ten years. And at that point, people, when you start getting pain or the disease or the heart disease or whatever cancer is with my sister, it's scary and it takes over your life and it takes years to unravel and get you back to homeostasis. That is a process is unnecessary. We can avoid the illness if we know how to manage our health better, but that takes education. Right. All right. So let's get right into it, Catherine. Let's talk about spirulina and the benefits and let's get nerdy if we can in here. So go ahead. Let's start off with why spirulina is so great, right? Because this is buzzword that people hear when they think about wellness and detox and all these things. Sure. Well, and just to just to hit off the pass, Clorella is the detoxing algae. I'll tell you. Oh, okay. Two sound bites. Algae is a nourishing and energizing algae and Clorella is a health and wellness and detoxing algae. Simmer harmoniously, but they are quite different. They're completely different. And that's why generally we recommend spirulina in the morning, which is when you're hungry and you want energy and focus. And generally we recommend Clorella at night because your body goes through detox cycle when you're sleeping and repair cycle and Clorella facilitates that. So let's pull back the curtains and talk a little bit more in detail. So spirulina, as I mentioned, energizing and nourishing, why is that? As I said earlier, it has the highest concentration of protein in the world. Now, that's a pretty big and bold statement, all validated by science. You can go anywhere you want in the NIH or any science books. It is what it is. Now, the cool thing though about this protein is that it's already in amino acid form and algae is a complete protein. Now, I know there's a lot of buzz these days about collagen powder, but I point out collagen powder isn't a complete protein. It doesn't have any trip defend in it. And it's not sustainable. And it's just aminos. Clorella or algae has all the same aminos as collagen times 100. The percentages are off the charts plus it has chlorophyll and all these other things. So all these aminos all separate so they can get absorbed by your body instantly. That makes it 99.9% bioavailable. Now it's not only it's bioavailable because they're all independent aminos, but also because spirulina is technically a bacteria. It does not have a cellulose wall. So there's nothing for your body to break down to get access to the aminos. They get absorbed instantly when we first started, we were actually a sports nutrition company because the runners and then the cyclists and then the triathletes found out about all this great protein and it gives you energy because of all the high B vitamins. And it did not upset their stomach like all the bars and gels did because there's no sugar, caffeine or chemicals. So we were endorsed by Olympic athletes, Olympic teams. We still work with them all and NHL teams. But anyways, point being, the spirulina gives you energy because of all the aminos. It's converted instantly into energy because very high all the B vitamins, all the Bs. And then it has other attributes and other nutrients like high essential fatty acids, including omega-3. It also has a GLA, which is gemelineic acid, which is technically in omega-6. Now we know how bad omega-6s are, but here's the thing. Omega-6s are only bad for you when they are processed because they become inflammatory at that stage. Because our algae is not, we do not use high heat to dry it, it's unprocessed omega-6. So it behaves like an omega-3. And if you want to, if you have any question about that, I point out that the only place that has more GLA than spirulina is mother's breast milk. Yes, mother's breast milk is loaded with GLA. Why? Because it helps with brain development. And the baby's brain doubles the triples and size in the first couple of years. So if it wasn't so good for you, mother nature would not have put it in mother's breast milk. So it is very good for you. And it also facilitates brain thought. The spirulina also is releases nitric oxide, which is the vasodilator. So oxygen and nutrients can get to your brain and your muscles very quickly. It has boron, which helps with brain thought processing and coordination. Very high in iron, which of course carries oxygen. So all of these things that's loaded with electrolytes, all of these things work harmoniously. Because algae is food, algae comes from nature, we're from nature. So you don't have to add anything to make it work properly, it gets absorbed quickly, and all those nutrients go to work to give you energy and focus. Now the kind of energy you get isn't like a lightning bolt, you won't feel like you want to jump off some tall building in a red suit, which is probably not a good idea. It just gives you steady energy and the best way to describe it, I describe it as you just feel fresh. Okay. That's it. You just feel alert. And I don't know about anybody else, but that's how I like to feel. And it helps with reducing inflammation, it has all, you know, lots of other attributes. But it's zero carbs. So it's great for intermittent fasting. It's great if you're on a ketogenic diet. It's just, it fills all the nutritional gaps easily and effortlessly. Because if you swallow some of these tablets, you're good to go. So that's spirulina. Now before we switch to chlorella, I do want to tell you a couple of cool healing attributes of that blue phycosignin. So that's that blue pigment, that's only in spirulina. And again, this is all, this is all evidence-based, the blue pigment has what's called anti-angeogenesis properties, which you probably know means you know that endogenesis is when blood vessels are re-rooted to cancer and tumors. So the blue phycosignin, for whatever reason, has been proven to stop that. It also has been proven to stop cataracts in your eyes. It's been proven to stop a lot of other illnesses and a really additional cool thing that it does, especially given the COVID world that we live in. It intercepts the COVID virus. It has been shown to sit on top of the ACE2 receptor cells, which of course are predominantly in your nose and your throat, and prevents the tentacles from the COVID virus from getting into those cells, which of course prevents it from entering your body, so it just sloths off. And as further evidence of this, the University of Pittsburgh's Pharmacology Department has developed a nasal spray vaccine based on algae, and I'm pretty sure it's based on this attribute we're using the phycosignin to stop the receptor, sit on the receptor cells. So there's lots of other healing properties of phycosignin, and there's way more research that needs to be done on it. And the one about the tumor cells, you know, the anti-angeogenesis, I didn't even know about that. And you were contacted by the Angeogenesis Society, which is actually here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, angeogenesis.org, funded by Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and all the bills. And they were holding a global conference here in Boston. And they contacted us, and they said, did you know that spirulina has these properties? Would you come to our conference and set up a table? So is it? Sure. We'll come and join you. So I would welcome people to visit that association's website, and you'll see all the science about it. So it's pretty cool. So Catherine, I want to jump in really quickly. At the outset, you had mentioned in terms of Clarella having more of the detoxifying benefits. And I put that in quotes, because I think defining that term is really, really important. So I'd love to kind of hear your definition of what you think is different. But before that, at least doing my homework, some of the data actually is quite robust. Although in animal studies that I had noted that spirulina is one of the few molecules that has a good body of evidence supporting its, you know, it's, quote unquote, again, detoxifying effects for heavy metals. And again, as I mentioned, it's primarily animal studies, but I mean, what are your thoughts about that? Were you speaking relatively to the other molecule? Or is it just suggesting that I'm pretty sure whoever's doing the studies has either got their algae mixed up, or is there's some misunderstanding in the interpretations. Spirulina is not a detoxing algae. It is a cleansing algae because it has lots of chlorophyll, and we'll talk about the importance of chlorophyll for cleansing when we switch over to Clarella. Detoxing means the ability to pull out heavy metals as you alluded to. And the only reason why Clarella can do that is because it has this hard cell wall, the hardest in the plant kingdom, that for whatever reason, it attaches, it detects toxins in your body, doesn't matter whether it's lead, murky radiation, alcohol, lactic acid, it detects it and keylates it all the way out of your body. So it will cleanse and detox your blood in an hour and a half. Your cells take about seven to ten days, and organs take anywhere from two to four months. And the length of time is determined by the density of the cells. But Spirulina does not detox. I'd be interested in seeing what reports you're referring to. And that's okay because that's what I do is there's a lot of information on the internet. There's some very well-known doctors who I won't, you know, reference it by name who have written. I would need to do that. They who have written papers. I don't think they wrote them because they would not, they didn't do their research because I referenced the papers that they were referencing and it was bad science. So I'm a very buttoned up person, like I said, I probably should have been a scientist. So what happens is people get so busy and so big that they don't circle back to check their details. I'm a detail person. And if something comes up in eleven years of spending my time researching algae, I have not once found one paper that negates a finding that I had found previously. What I do find are people who haven't done their research and are making assumptions and publish those assumptions without digging a little further down. Like for example, some people will say, well, Spirulina's toxic and has mycotoxins. Yeah. Not Spirulina, but Blue Green algae does if it came from the ocean or it came from a lake. But people think Blue Green algae is Spirulina. It's not. It's like saying all dogs are, are, are, you know, golden retrievers. No, golden retriever is a type of dog. Spirulina is a type of Blue Green algae. They are not the same. They are, it's a subset, okay? And a lot of people just don't understand that because no one has explained it to them. And that's okay. That's why I'm here. Yeah. No, I'll send it to you. I mean, at least, you know, one of the resources that both Darshan and I love to use is examined. And what they do is a great job kind of assimilating the data. And at least in this study that I'm looking at is this was published in 2013 and plus one. I'm happy to send this to you. Yeah. It's again, a rat laboratory animals that are looking enrassed. The dosing they had is 300 milligrams per kilograms, noting that it can attend you at mercury accumulation in the testes, which is partially contributing to the antioxidative effects. At least that's what they're theorizing. So, without having read too deeply into the paper, I mean, I'll send it to you, but there are a few seem to be that way. Well, as I said, spirulina is cleansing because of the chlorophyll. And perhaps because of the small size of the animal, it has such a cleansing process and has a different digestive system than an adult or a human that maybe it was able to in that small, concentrated animal structure. But in humans, spirulina is not a detoxing agent. I will re-emphasize that. Do not think you're detoxing when you take spirulina. You are cleansing, definitely cleansing, definitely helping your mitochondria, definitely helping your cell walls, but don't count on it to pull out toxins. It might help with the elimination of toxins, but if you truly want a detox, Clarella is the algae to do that. Here's a quick message from our sponsor, CompHealth. There are a lot of podcasts out there, murder mysteries, breaking news. There's even a podcast about garden nodes. But instead, you're here learning how to be the best version of yourself, smart move. Do you know what else is a smart move? Working a locomotinent assignment with CompHealth. Now I know what you're thinking. If you are a physician, you already have a job. That's the best part. You can work flexible locom assignments on the side for extra income, or you can work locomotives full time too. And to top it all off, locomotives almost always pays more on average. Just head to financialresidency.com for slash CompHealth and see what locomotives can do for you financially. And now back to the show. Gotcha. All right. So let's just switch gears. Let's talk a little bit more about how Clarella does that. Mechanistically speaking. I'd love to hear that. Well, as I mentioned, you know, spirulina, nourishing, energizing, satisfied hunger, gollets for good stuff, and highest protein in the world. So Clarella, it's claimed a fame as twofold. One is that it has this hard cell wall, the hardest in the plant kingdom that pulls out toxins. And it has the highest concentration of chlorophyll in the world. And I'm going to show you something. It's your community may already know this. But the chemical composition of hemoglobin is virtually identical to the chemical composition of chlorophyll. The only difference is that hemoglobin has iron in the middle and your chlorophyll has magnesium. Now why is that important? Because up until the last 50 years, chlorophyll was always used for healing purposes. Even of its recent as World War II when they ran out of blood for transfusions, they would give the injured liquid chlorophyll because it would help build their blood. Chlorophyll is green when we look at it. But when you take it and put it under a UV light, it's red. We see a green because of the reflective nature. Chlorophyll builds your blood. I can't say it anymore simply than that. And when you have a healthy blood, you're going to have a healthier body, healthier organs, healthier digestive system. Everything's going to be healthier. That's why with the rat situation, whether it was the spirulina or the clarella, it gets very healing. But clarella has twice the amount of chlorophyll as spirulina because it's the only pigment in it. Chlorophyll has 500 times more chlorophyll than arugula. It has 25 times more chlorophyll than even liquid chlorophyll. There is nothing in the world with more chlorophyll than chlorophyll. So that's why it's called chlorophyll because of the chlorophyll. How much chlorophyll do you have to take, or sorry, chlarella, do you have to take in order to get those benefits then of kind of the blood composition of the plant? We have dosage charts. We get asked this all the time because algae is food. Some people get satisfied with one nut. Some people need a whole bag of nuts to get satisfied. So we encourage people to experiment, try as few as you want, two to three tablets of either the spirulina or chlarella will certainly improve your health regardless of where you are on the health circle. But I think to really enjoy maximum benefits, you really need to be taking 5 or 10 spirulina and 5 or 10 chlarella for wellness. Now if you want the detox benefits, you're going to need to take the 20 or 30 tablets. And you can cycle in and cycle out of detox. But 5 or 10 will certainly give you wellness benefits, even possibly fewer. For detox, it won't pull the metals all the way out of your body. It's not enough juice. It's like magnets. It has to hold on to it and get it all the way out of your body. And so you need sufficient amounts of chlarella to do that. In terms of maybe we could quantify either milligrams or grams. What is the data support when we're looking at, again, going back to the detoxifying effects and the literature, are you familiar with what the studies have looked at, what dose specifically? Not necessarily tablet format, but grams or milligrams? No, I'm not familiar. I've never seen anything that recommends anything in particular. And again, algae, there's lots of different science about it, and we're going to tell, you know, all the things I'm telling you now, and we'll talk about chlarella. They all take a different angle, maybe it's cancer, maybe it's prevention of metabolic disease, maybe it's ATP generation, electron transport chain. It could be the skin. But so there's a million angles, and you know, I have yet to find one that recommends how much to take because it's such a, it's such a flexible number. It depends on the size of the person, the age of the person, the lifestyle, the amount of toxins. It's like, you know, doctors prescribe things based on the individual patient's needs. You know, there's some general, we know generally that chlorophyll is cleansing, and that generally, spirulina is nourishing and energizing. And generally chlarella removes toxins and builds your immune system. And there's some general dosage amounts that I've just referred to. But if you need to get into more specifics, you've got to drill down and do the proper science. And I have not found any because, you know, I'm already a single voice in the wilderness here. We have to, you know, continue the, you know, researching this. It's just as simple as that. So I can only reference what I've been aware of in the studies I've seen. And I have not seen anything that tells you specifically what dosage amounts you need because it's very so widely. Sure. Absolutely. All right. Let's get, if we can get back on the chlorophyll, I think you had a second point. Yeah. All right. Back to chlarella. So we already talked about chlorophyll being similar to your blood composition, at least in the global oven, so which is important for building healthy blood. The other thing I want to point out, and we talked about this a few minutes ago, about how spirulina has the two pigments at it, phycosine, and which is blue and chlorophyll, which is green. Now this is what happens when you put some spirulina in water. See how the blue pigment disperses evenly through the water? Well this is what happens when you put chlarella in some water, okay? I did this experiment 30 or 40 times. I finally figured out what was going on, like why did not, why doesn't it disperse? Here's why. It's an ink lot test. Phycosine is water-based pigment. Chlorophyll is a fat-based pigment, because of fat-based pigment, heals your cell walls. Cling in your healthy starts at the cellular level, and what's inside the cell? With the mitochondria, whether there's toxins, whether there's too much reactive oxygen species, which is trash, effectively damaging your cells and is causing acidity, and the only way to get that out is to be sure that your cell walls are permeable, and you need healthy fats to do that. Because chlorophyll is a healthy fat, it does that. It facilitates the movement of nutrients in and toxins out, and this is what's cleansing about chlorophyll. That's why spirulina is also cleansing because it does have chlorophyll in it, but it's because there's twice as much in chlarella, it's particularly cleansing. So that's number two, why you need chlorophyll and why you need chlarella, because there is nothing in the world with more chlorophyll than chlarella. Number three, now we get to talk about that heart cell wall. That heart cell wall has fiber in it. Now we have to, you have to have your head in the sand, not to know about the importance of fiber and your gut biome and the bacteria down there, and so this helps feed those bacteria, the fiber they need to release those short-chain fatty acids, which is very healing to your gut and make sure that that communication between the brain and all the vagus nerve and all that stuff is working. So that's why chlarella, one of the reasons why chlarella has been used for decades for IBS and Crohn's disease, A, it's got the chlorophyll, which is cleansing, B, it's got the heart cell wall that has fiber in it, and the third issue we'll talk about now is that heart cell wall attaches to toxins. And there's, as I mentioned, it's lead, murky radiation, aluminum, it doesn't matter what it is, where it is, could be in your brain, could be in your organs, could be in your skin and pulls them out. That's why a lot of cancer, certainly for men, is in colon, their colon because they're eating, they're not eating enough fiber and the stuff that should be removed continues to sit there and circulates and the blood picks up the toxins and contributes to disease. So chlarella can help with that, not only because it's detoxing, but chlarella stimulates periostolsis. This is why it's great for people who are getting older, constipation is a big issue. Great for people who are on a keto diet, keto people have constipation. People who are on prescription drugs, constipation, you know, nobody wants to talk about, you know, I think, you know, mental health is finally coming out of the closet, isn't something that we need to address. Well, so is constipation, it's a huge issue. And I am so thrilled that chlarella stimulates periostolsis. So that's one of the reasons why we recommend people taking it at night so that, you know, you'll have a nice bowel move in the morning and things will be moving along pretty good for you. Chlarella also has a lot of other nutrients that are healing. That's why it's known as a wellness allergy. We call our chlarella recovery bits because it helps you recover from illness or prevent illness from sports because it pulls out a lot of the acid, but some of the attributes are it has the highest RNA and DNA in the world up until chlarella sardines were known to be the food with the highest RNA and DNA. Nope, it's chlarella. Chlarella also has the highest triptophan in the world. Triptophan is a precursor to melatonin and serotonin up until recently. People thought turkey had the highest triptophan. Nope, it's chlarella has five times more. In fact, turkey doesn't even have that much, it's just kind of a weird thing that happened there. Chlarella also has something called chlarella growth factor. They didn't know what to call it because it just chlarella is the fastest growing organism in the world. If you've done any research on biofuels, it's always with chlarella. They're either trying to tap the energy as the cells divide or they're trying to tap the fats that are inside it, but it also stimulates your own cells to grow faster. Chlarella also has your daily requirement of vitamin K2. This is the vitamin most people don't know about. It was only discovered about 25 years ago in Harvard. What it does is it moves excess calcium from soft tissue into your bones. Your community may know what that soft tissue is, and I'll give you some examples. Heart, your blood vessels. They're realizing a lot of heart disease is the calcification of your blood vessels. It's hardening of the arteries. It's calcium that's hardening. Another thing is wrinkles. Calcium gets into your skin, a soft tissue, and damage is the elastin. Elastin is like the structure that holds up your skin. Collagen is the filler, but elastin is the structure. When it gets damaged, it collapses, and so the K2 will move out that excess calcium and extra move out also the reactive oxygen species and get rid of that, so there's less damage to the elastin. Kidney stones, guess what? Calcium, right? The reason why there's very little K2 and people's diet is because the only food sources of K2 are grass-fed animal protein, I just called nato, which nobody eats here, or algae. You can take supplements, but here's why nobody has K2 and their diet anymore. Up until the 60s, animals, no matter who they were, were grazing on grass. Everything was working because the animals can convert the K1 that's in things that are green like grass. They have an extra bacteria that can convert it to K2. When we ate the animal protein, we were digesting and absorbing K2. In the late 60s, early 70s, the farmers realized that if they fed the animals corn and put them in enclosures, they would get fat faster, which is what they did. Instantly, the supply of grass-fed animals disappeared, and so did the K1. Because there was no K1 in the diet of the animals, no K2 when we ate the chicken or the beef. That's the disappearance. That transaction was done exactly the same time when heart disease started to escalate because of all this calcium in the blood vessels. Now, grass-fed animal beef is more popular, it's expensive, and now there's now K2 vitamins, but the K2 vitamins are made with fermented chickpeas. K2 is a very complicated vitamin, there's M4, M5, there's all these different types of K2, and the only type that your brain can absorb is the one that's in the algae. It's only from animal fed or animal-type food, so it's the algae or from the M4, from the animal protein. People were asking me about this well, if it's K2 can only be created by animals with this extra bacteria, why is it in the algae? I don't know why it's in the algae, it just is, but again, I point out that it was a single cell organism from four billion years ago, and I don't know, it's just what it is. And to your point, to be a healing algae, I was just going to say it. Sorry, I'll go for it a little off here. Yeah, between the chlorophyll and the triptophan and the four other vitamins and minerals and the detoxing ability of the hard cell wall, Chlorilla is just a wellness algae. It will never satisfy your hunger, it will never give you energy, but it does pull out toxins, because your body goes through a detox repair cycle when you're sleeping. If you have Chlorilla in your system, while you're sleeping, it will be a much better crisper, more complex repair in detox and prepare you for a bowel movement that is important. Right, now I was just going to mention, I think it's important for the audience to at least make a comparison here, right? When a lot of people take vitamin D, they'll also find that supplement with vitamin K. And it's for the exact reason that you kind of talked about in terms of the calcium and getting that vitamin K to take the calcium, put it back into the bones. I didn't have a question for you, though. Is Chlorilla also high in omega-3s? Because I think it's important for us to talk about algae, right? And where we talk about how fish, and especially how fish have high omega-3s, but where are they exactly getting it from, right? It is the algae itself. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if anybody's, if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to watch it. The Netflix movie called Sea Spiracy, S-E-A-S-P-I-R-A-C-Y, terrific movie, documenting the damage being done to the ocean environment by the commercial fishing. And the two main reasons are people are overfishing to get access to the fish oil and to the fish. Now I remind people, where do you think the fish get the omega-3 from? They get it from algae. So they just consolidate it. The original source of omega-3 is algae. And most people don't realize that most fish oil is rancid by the time you buy it. It's just the way it oxidates. There's nothing you can do about it. But algae never goes bad, and it never oxidates. So why risk that and also save the ocean? But to your question about whether Chlorilla has it, it is a no, it has very little. That's why the two of them work better together. We actually have a product called Vitelibits, which is the blend of the two of them. Spirulina is the one that has the higher concentration of essential fatty acids. It has that omega-3 and the GLA, which behaves like an omega-3 because it's not dried or processed. Chlorilla has very little essential fatty acids. So for brain health, for ADHD, we've been working with trainers and teachers who give the Spirulina to their kids, and I encourage all parents to give this to their children at all times. But certainly before they go out and play their soccer game, don't give them a Luna bar, sorry, Luna. But any of these sports bars loaded with either soy or sugar, which are damaging and inflammatory, Spirulina will give them extra focus because of the protein and the essential fatty acids and zero sugar or chemicals, and they can swallow them if they don't like the taste. Most people do swallow the Spirulina, but that's, it's the one that has the better brain functioning. That's why this is part of the focus, not in Chlorilla, yeah. So Katherine, I got to ask, in terms of, I mean, it sounds like obviously with the fatty acid profile, you're alluding to EPA and DHA, particularly DHA when we're talking about brain functioning, right? We have a better understanding of that is primarily beneficial in terms of the neuro-cognitive benefits of it. Now, what is the, not really understanding, because I know a lot of people, they don't eat fish for whatever reason, maybe they're vegan or whatever, and we kind of keep talking about this. In fact, one of our previous guests, Dr. B, came on and he's primarily plant-based, and this is the point that he brought up, but what I don't really know, and maybe I just need to do more research, is again, when we're talking about dosing, to get, for instance, we know that EPA is typically three grams, in terms of that's what has been studied, DHA, maybe a little bit less than that, and people will recommend anywhere from one to three grams of EPA and DHA. So how would somebody translate that to algae consumption? How would they go by doing that? Yeah, it's a tough question, because the, the, the, anything that's processed, anything it doesn't matter whether it's your twinkies or your fish oil. If there's heat involved, there's damage being done to that entity that you're putting in your body. I don't want to call a twinky food, and I hesitate to recommend ever, fish oil, because I know what happens to it. When you're talking, certainly, but our spirulina, where there is no heat used, it has, and because it has so many other nutrients that work harmoniously to facilitate absorption and execution for the best outcome in your body, it's really hard to measure. I point out many people don't know this, but supplements put, the numbers are on, on supplements for the amount of vitamin C or whatever the vitamin or mineral is, are so high, because your body only absorbs 5 or 10% of it, because supplements, including fish oil, are made from extracts, okay? They don't, these extracts don't exist in nature that way, and they're exposed to heat. So when you put them in your body, your body goes, huh, what the heck is this? I don't know what this is. I can't recognize it, so I'm only going to absorb a small percentage, because I'm not really sure what it is. I tell my millennials that, you know, taking a supplement is like, you expect, and expecting the vitamins, it's like going to work with just your shoes on, like no clothes. Mostly we don't realize things like, the scorpic, you know, vitamin C, they think vitamin C is a scorpic acid? No. There's about 222 components to vitamin C, of which a scorpic acid is one component. There's factors in co-factors in enzymes and co-inzymes, and so when you don't give your body all of those additional things that normally should be in food, it doesn't get absorbed, it doesn't go to work, it's not as bioavailable. So I can't give people a straight answer about, you can't mix apples and apples when you're talking algae and something that's a processed food, even if it's fish oil, because I don't know what the absorption rate, I don't know the acidity rate, I don't know the toxicity rate. As I said almost all that fish oil is rancid, I don't touch it, I haven't, I used to try to take it years ago when I was trying to be keto and I kept burping it up and made me sick, and I'm just going to forget this stuff, and now I'm glad I did. I wouldn't touch fish oil with anything, you couldn't force me to take, you couldn't pay me to take fish oil, and I don't need it, because I take algae, so I'm sure I can't answer your question, but what I will tell you is that there's a huge difference between nutrient dense food that has been carefully cultivated, that your body recognizes and anything that's processed, I don't care what it is, it just doesn't get absorbed and used efficiently, and can cause more damage than it can improve your health. I think that, I mean, we definitely agree there, I think that there's no disputing the fact that when it comes to actual real food, any type of supplementation, that's the reason why it's called supplement, right? It's supplement to a good diet. I will disagree with you on the fact that I do think they're a role, I mean, I think it's super important for people to understand that there's fish oil, and then there's good quality fish oil. I mean, in terms of the, you know, then being oxidized, I mean, I think a lot of different companies, for instance, I don't want to mention any names here, because we don't have any relationship or just, I will say that we'll disclose it, I don't get paid by Carlson or whatever, but I take Carlson's, another good one is, I think Nordic Naturals, I think that some of the things they do in terms of how they use the preservatives, rosemary extract is one, I want to say, maybe vitamin E is another one that they kind of help to preserve that. I mean, in their ways that, you know, having dark bottles, because I know that light is the one that's going to help oxidize that, but again, that's, it's super important for us to be able to tease out that who is doing it the right way, and again, understanding that that oxidization does happen. Yeah, I'm sure, and I'm familiar with those companies, and I applied anybody who's doing their best to provide the safest product possible, because people are hurting and they're confused and they're getting conflicting stories from different people, and not everybody, I'm not an expert on fish oil, I just read as much as I could to understand what I thought was going on, and I had my own personal experience. The only thing I can talk with some great, um, affinity is algae. Yeah, no, no, I mean, that's certainly your, your expertise, and that's why I apologize to the fish oil community, if I've offended them, and I don't mean to, I'm just, I've just discovered that there's, there's a lot more to everything than anyone ever expects. And so, um, that's why here, here, here, I am trying to correct some misunderstandings about what algae is that people think it's pond scum, and messing up their day at the beach, and, and I'm here to tell you otherwise. And so, I'm quite open to being corrected about fish oil, but I have, and to your point, I mean, I think that there are, there's a great opportunity for making errors, right? And particularly because what the supplement industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, I know we're digressing a little bit here, but I do think it's an important point to talk about that. Anything you're putting, that's going to be not natural food sources, and even, I mean, there is opportunity for contamination within the food sources. Again, that's an entirely different conversation. But on the note, I'm talking about real food sources, right? With the exception of what we're going to talk about energy bits a little bit in a second, but if people elected to just opt for pure food sources, and they wanted to incorporate algae into their diet, what are good sources? I mean, can you just go by spirulina from X grocery store or, or Carolina, how do you go by doing that? Yeah, well, it's every, you know, the irony is it's been sold in America for 50 years, and most of it, and most of it is not high quality, which is one of the reasons why I started this. Plus, no one's educating people. They're marketing it incorrectly as a supplement, and it's not. It does have grass certification, which stands for, generally, recognized as safe by the FDA. So it's food. Only food gets grass certification. The issue is, the stuff that you're buying from Target, or probably even Whole Foods sadly, is probably grown in China, 90% of it, of algae comes from China. And these are companies that, you know, have 50, 500 other different products, they just, they don't pay attention to the detail it's contract manufacturing, they're, they probably just, you know, get the, get the bottles pre-made, they slap their own label on it. But, you know, you don't know for sure how it's grown, you don't know for sure that there's no contamination, you don't know for sure if there's any other binders or fillers. There's so many things that can go into a supplement that doesn't have to show up on the label. And maybe they would never put on the label anyways, because they're just not tested. The, the, the FDA, people think the FDA regulates supplements. They don't, what they regulate are the labeling packaging requirements on supplements and food, but they don't regulate it. They only regulate pharmaceutical drugs. That's it. Okay. So, people think they, the FDA is looking out for you. Sorry. Nope. So, you can be bringing, you can be buying product, you know, putting stuff in your body, thinking it's going to do some good for you. And maybe it has, you know, I'll give an example. So, clorella, okay, there's a company called Sun clorella. And I'm very grateful to them because they were the granddaddy of clorella. They started the entire industry 50, 60 years ago. And that was not an easy thing to do. And they discovered, gratefully, that you have to crack the clorella cell wall in order for your body to absorb the nutrients. You don't have to crack spirulina because there is no cellulose wall, as I mentioned, it's a bacteria. So, clorella has the hardest cell wall, cellulose wall in the plant kingdom. And if you don't crack it, your body can't absorb the nutrients. So, they discovered, they created a technique where they tumble the clorella with glass beads. And what happens, however, is the glass heats up and led from the clorella leaks into the, into it, led from the glass rather leaks into the clorella. So now you're taking clorella that has lead in it. The biggest, the biggest problem is, though, that this technique was licensed by just about everybody in the industry, growing clorella. And when I started my company, I learned about that, and I said, well, that's not going to work for me. If there's even a hint of lead getting into my clorella, I don't want anything to do with it. There's got to be something newer, better. And there was. They had just finished creating a new technique, which was to pass the clorella through a sound chamber, and it's vibrations that crack our clorella. We don't use the technique, everybody else it uses. This way I can ensure there is no lead from the glass getting into the clorella. And there's no heat that scrambles the nutritional profile. But no one would know that. There's these different techniques, right? And it seems with the way it's grown, the way it's dried. Most companies, because they're high volume, low value producers, they use high heat to dry the algae, so they can get it out to market faster. Well, the high heat kills the enzymes, and again, it scrambles the nutrients. So they're not as absorbable, all the enzymes are dead, our enzymes are live, so our spirulina is the live food. So it's the clorella, sorry, raw food. Spirulina is a live food, not clorella, because it has the cell wall cracked. So like anything, whether it's shoes or algae, there are levels of detail that companies go to based on what their priorities were and how they're positioning the product. I was never intending to build a company, I just wanted to help my sister, and as I got further along, and I'm hands on with everything. And I chose everything from this algae type, the strain, because there's different strains of algae. There's velgaris and perideso, they have different concentration of protein and nutrients. It depends on where it's grown, because the sunlight has different effects. Taiwan is world-renowned, we're having the highest quality algae, and that's where we grow ours, although my goal is to grow it in America, and I would have to grow it either in northern Texas or in northern Florida, because it's the same latitude and longitude known as Taiwan. There is spirulina growing in Hawaii, but it's very weak because it's a different part of the globe, and it just has the sunlight hits it at a different level. So there's all these nuances, and I'm growing algae as a whole another specialty. It's not my specialty yet, but I'll be digging into it pretty soon. I hope it's the last ten years on the nutritional component, so I could explain why it worked so well. And I chuckle because it all started about nine years ago when the triathletes started using our products, because they loved the energy they got, so they started inviting me to speak at their clubs. So I would get up on stage at a triathlon club and be heckled by the athletes, because they said, how can something with one gallery give me energy? So it was like, I'll have to get back to you on that. And that's what started me on my journey, that I'm going to find out why this stuff works. Like, I knew it worked. I didn't know why. Now I know why, so I can go back to them, and I can spell it all the different reasons. And it just meets the biological needs of the body, so perfectly, that it's a miracle. And you couldn't create this in a lab and improve on it in any way. This is Mother Nature at her best. And I'll just tell you one cool thing. I was looking at an old science book that showed the amino acid profile and all the nutrients in Mother's breast milk colostrum, and I thought, gosh, that looks awfully familiar. So I went back and I checked the amino acid profile of our spirulina and wouldn't you know, they're virtually identical, okay? We all know Mother's breast milk is the perfect food. Well, so is algae, because it's virtually identical to Mother's breast milk, and because it was the first life on earth, I consider it Mother Earth's breast milk for us, because after the age of two, it's pretty unlikely you're going to get any access to Mother's breast milk. So, spirulina is number two. Yeah. We'll send you that art. So you can see the chart. You can see for sure yourself. I don't make this stuff up. Remember, I don't come from a science background, but I'm very curious and I'm very determined to get to the bottom of things. I've only been able to get as much, you know, so many answers as the access I have to science and I don't do the science full time. I run the entire company. I mean, I design all the packaging. I do all the finance. I do all the operations. I do the supply chain. So I would love to have, you know, 24 hours on the science, but I don't, I don't not able to. I do as much as I can, but, you know, there are limits. Absolutely. I think, Captain, there's two things that I really want to highlight. The first is, you know, sometime in this conversation, you said there's something behind everything, right? And I think for you, that's algae, and you really took the initiative to really do a deep dive, really try to figure out what's going on. But even in just today's world where there's so much research coming out, so much nuance, I think it's important for all of us to realize that there's more than just the surface level on every single topic, right? Newer and newer things are coming out, and it's important for us to keep an open mind, right? It's a reason why you're saying there needs to be more research done on algae, so that we can really take out all the benefits and use it for the greater good. And the second thing, honestly, is just your motivation to finding your passion, right, learning across this, but making something out of it, which I think is truly inspirational. I did want to ask about your Shark Tank experience, because you are the second person I know who went on Shark Tank, so my list is getting bigger. So can you just tell us whatever you can? How was that? Yeah, sure. It was great. You know, and for years, people, when I go to all these different events, people would say, oh, you should go on Shark Tank, but I wasn't interested in having them as an investor. I'm so funded because I didn't want that kind of ego driving my business, which has a different kind of bottom line. My bottom line is to make a difference in the world first and profit second. But eventually, I thought, oh, what the heck, let me just at least try. And I didn't know anybody. I didn't do anything special. I just went online, and I got the form, and I filled it out, and it's a lot of work. It's almost a full-time job getting on there, because once you get to send all your samples and all your financials and all, there's like questionnaires, like 50 pages of questionnaires, you have to submit. And then they assign a producer to you, and you meet with them like weekly, you have to submit videos, you send more material, you do a pitch, it's just like non-stop. And then they, because what they do is they film the entire year of shows in two lump sessions. And they won't tell you if you've won a spot until 48 hours before the next filming starts. So they just tell you to keep your calendar clear. So finally, I got the word that yes, I was selected, and they got me a ticket and flew me out. Once I got on the show, everything was hunky-dory, as we say in Canada. They flew me out, put me in a hotel, we had a rehearsal. You never meet the sharks, it's always with the producers. And so, and I only went on to get visibility. Again, I was not interested in their, in their funding. And they made fun of me, and, you know, Mark Cuban said, we don't think you're in love with being an entrepreneur. You're just in love with algae, and my response to him was, well, if you knew as much as I did, you'd be in love with algae too. And they didn't invest, and that was fine. But I will say, they have erred my segment, at least 25, possibly 30 times. So I got what I wanted. People recognize me at airports, when I go to conferences, you know, I think it's the glasses. So they are pretty savvy. They fought. Yeah. So, you know, but it was a great experience. They say getting on shark thing, as hard as getting into Harvard, 40,000 companies apply a year, and they only pick 100. So, you know, I, and that was, you know, you'll be amazed to know that was filmed three years ago. So, people sometimes, you know, send me emails saying, why don't you have blah, blah? And it was like, well, that was three years ago. I'm way over that now, you know, that's long gone. I'm just determined to, you know, grow the company, and to make a difference. And, you know, like, and I used companies like Kindbars, and it is an example, or Vital Proteins. They took collagen from nothing and grew it into a billion dollar company. There's so much, as I mentioned, yet to be done with algae, although I'm not the only person in this algae community, with so funny as it's, there's a huge thriving algae community. It's just that the public doesn't know about it. I'll give you some examples. There's a company called Gore-Tex, they make hiking outdoor clothing, and two years ago, they launched an entire clothing line, all based on algae, because it's the most sustainable crop in the world. Reebok, two years ago, launched a running shoe that was completely made of plants, and the liner was made from algae, because it kills bacteria. Unilever has invested in a company in the UK that makes packaging for water bottles and condiments completely made of algae. And you can eat your water bottle after you've drunk your water, and if you don't, it will decompose in 24 days. There's a building in Amsterdam that is completely powered by algae. It has plates of glass on all four sides filled with water, and algae is growing in there. I don't know how they do it, but they tap the energy of the cells dividing to power the building. There is no electricity, there is nothing else. This stuff is unbelievable, and even Bill Gates invested 200 million in algae as a biofuel about 10 years ago, all the biofuel companies are switching over their algae production to nutrition, because Elon Musk has found the better solution, which is to tap the energy source from the sun and just put it into a power source. And even if you used algae as an oil replacement for fossil fuel, you would still have to move it, and that still causes environmental damage. You don't have to, you tap it from the sun, you just use it where you need it. So algae is in food groups in Asia, they eat it like we do in the tablets, they have it in powder, they have it in their teeth, it's in protein. Just like 10 years ago, you didn't buy tortilla chips with chia in them, but everywhere now, your snack foods all have chia, algae is going to be the next thing, I know people think I'm a bit crazy about this, but trust me, look back on this podcast in 20 years, and algae will be everywhere, it'll probably be everywhere maybe in five, definitely 10, and I will not have to be explaining what it is, because it will be as normal as it is in Asia. It was on a podcast by a, hosted by a Japanese woman, she lived in Norway, but she was Japanese. And at the end, she said, she said, I've never met anybody outside of Japan who knows as much about clarella algae as you do, and she says, the problem is in Japan, it's so normal there, they don't know how to explain it to someone who doesn't know what it is. It's like, how do you explain air? Well, if me and Ultima are going to have this podcast in 20 years, we'd be stoked. So, I mean, that's a goal, definitely is, and we'll definitely be promoting this throughout the year. So, well, the future is bright, and the future is algae catheter, and so, yeah, I'm in a living example of it, I couldn't live without it, I turned 65 in two days, and I have no digestive issues, I have no mental issues, I have no health issues, I take no medications, no other vitamins except, I do take D3, I will admit to that. I sleep well, I have great bowel movements, and I have no wrinkles. You definitely don't look 65, yeah, absolutely. People can't want to see this video, but, yeah, awesome, Catherine, well, thank you so much, I mean, that's been really awesome. I do want to wish you a happy early birthday, especially for most, and then, you know, again, people, or maybe we'll listen to this, they might have some more questions, maybe they're interested in kind of learning more about what you're doing, so where can people find you? How do they get in touch with you? Yeah. Well, our website, EnergyBets, ENERGYB4BOYITS.com is where our main website, that's where you can buy the bags or boxes of algae and tablets, the large bags, or have a thousand tablets in them, and I don't want people that have sticker shock, the bag of a thousand tablets is $120, but we have a 20% discount code for you, Med redefined, so just put that in the coupon box and you get 20% off, so that bag now is $96, now I know that's still a lot, but what I'm going to remind people is of that quote from NASA, this is one gram of algae has the same nutrition as a thousand grams of fruits or vegetables, so that bag of a thousand tablets has, I did the math, has the equivalent of 551 pounds of vegetables, and at $3 a pound, that would have been about $15 or $1,600. By the way, it's 551 pounds of vegetables, you didn't have to carry home, clean, cook or eat, so I call it efficient nutrition, so anyways, EnergyBets.com is the main website, we also are very active on social media, EnergyBets is our main handle, but we also have one for beauty bits, which is beauty bits, and if you aren't ready to buy the full bags, you can go to Amazon and we sell them in single servings, $45 each, try them out, see if you like them, and then come back to the website. If you have specific questions, you can email us at customercare at EnergyBets.com. We do our best to provide solutions, I've written about 500 different sort of summaries about the different attributes of algae and how it helps with brain health, children health, skin health, digestive health, whatever issue is facing you. If you're really determined, I have put together probably at least 3,000 links of the hundred thousand articles that exist, that you're welcome to dig through and find stuff. This is the problem, there's not a lot of research on algae, there's literally too much, and it's hard to, we work your way through it to find what it is that you're looking for. I've accumulated, let's say, 2 to 3,000 of them, happy to share, it's taken 10 years to get them together. Yeah, we will definitely link that into our show notes, so. Yeah, well I don't spend all those out to everybody, but I will send you some lots of links to some of the more important ones, because this research dates back quite a while, like almost a hundred years, so that's not, like I said, algae's not new, it's just new to you, but lots more to come, I hope. And thank you for what you're doing, because it's hard to stay on top of what's going on out there, I speak at biohacking conferences, speaking at the biohacking congress in a couple of weeks in Miami, but it's all over the place, if we can just regroup our medical community to focus more on prevention. There's so much education that's required, you'll stay as busy, I promise, but your patients will be in less pain. Absolutely, super true. And with that, Catherine, one last question for you, how do we put the health back in healthcare? How do we put the health back in healthcare? Well I think putting care first is probably the way to do it. And I think what it is is putting self-care into healthcare. I think we all work too hard, and we need to love ourselves first and foremost, it's not selfish, and self-care is earth care as well. When you are looking after yourself by nature, you will feel better and feel happier, and you'll notice the earth and care more about it too. So for me, self-care is the way to put healthcare back together. Awesome. Well thanks so much for coming on, Catherine, really appreciate it. You're welcome. Well thank you. Thanks Catherine. I just want to thank Catherine so much for coming on to this show and explaining all the benefits of spirulina and the constant research behind it, and she's just been such a pioneer in the field, really chasing her passion and her purpose, and I'm excited to kind of see where that will end up. And if any of you are interested in purchasing spirulina or clarella tablets from her, check out energybits.com, and you will be able to find all the products that she has on there. If you found this episode fascinating, if you know somebody who takes spirulina, but they actually really don't know why they're taking it, send them this episode. Share the love, and as always, subscribe and rate if you can. Here is the disclaimer. Everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute the practice of medicine, and we are not providing medical advice. No physician, patient relationship, is formed, and anything discussed in this podcast does not represent the views of our employers. They recommend that you seek the guidance of your personal physician regarding any specific health-related issues. And until next time, let us know if you have any questions, but we will see you.