What's going on ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com. And today I have special guest Catherine Arnston on the line. She is the founder, CEO, scientific research specialist and pretty much everything with regard to energy bits. So she's going to dive in deep with regard to spirulina, chlorella, algae in general. How are you, Catherine? Awesome.
I'm loaded with algae so how else could I be Now this is good I've I'm excited to dive into this because this is an area that I have very little experience and expertise so basically none. So to treat me as such and and just totally enlighten me and the listeners and and give us kind of a good overview of what algae is, how it can be used and its benefits in the keto space and beyond.
OK, well that's I could talk for days on that but I won't but thank you for giving me this opportunity and and there is no shame about not knowing about algae because. You are with the majority of the world outside of Asia and that's why I exist. And I'll just give you a quick backdrop. I didn't plan to be an algae expert, trust me. I was following a traditional corporate career. I had an MB, A doing international business, blah blah blah.
And then my younger sister up in Canada developed breast cancer and her oncologist who the cancer doctor, told her she needed to change her diet to an alkaline diet because it would help her heal. They didn't tell her what it was. Or why it would work. And she's my baby sister. So I said I have no idea what it is either, but we'll figure this out together.
And I did research for her and found that it's basically a plant based diet because of the phytonutrients and the chlorophyll that builds your immune system. So she did go through her her chemo, she did change her diet. She completely healed. 10 years later, she's still cancer free.
Meanwhile, I started reading more about plant based nutrition, found out how powerful it was and well documented and thought that this knowledge needed to get out to America. So I thought, heck, I guess I'll I'll do what I can and gave up my career corporate career. Went back to school, study nutrition and try to get people to eat more greens, but found out they're either on a keto diet so they didn't want to eat greens or they don't like the
flavor or it's too much work. So I thought, well, gosh, if I can't get people to be healthier with greens. I got to find something that will give them all the greens that they need without the work. That's keto. And that led me down a rabbit hole. And I thought where I found algae and when I discovered algae and that scientific profile and that it was ketogenic and paleo and vegan and the most nutrient dense food in the world and the highest concentration of protein in the
world. And endorsed by the United Nations, NASA, and just about everybody else. But unknown outside of Asia, I decided that was nine years ago. I would devote the rest of my life to helping people understand the power of this wonderful nutrient, this food. It's a gorgeous crop and because it can, it will change lives and it will change our our world because it's the most eco friendly, sustainable crop in the world as well.
So with that being the backdrop, and I've now spent nine years researching algae, I will apologize. Upfront to you and your listeners for being extraordinarily passionate about algae, because when you know as much about something that's so good as I do, you are eager to share it. It's like I've got this this. I feel like the genie with the the, you know, the little gizmo that you can rub and all your wishes will come true. And inside it is algae, and I want everybody's wishes to come
true. If I could just get them to take the algae, it would probably happen. No. I love it and love it a. Little history about algae, and this is also what makes me so determined to get the knowledge of this little plant out to the world, is that most people probably do not realize that algae was the first life on earth. Not just the first plant, the first life on Earth 4 billion years ago, before algae, Earth was just gas and water.
I have no idea why algae, and it was spirulina in particular. It's a single cell Organism and frankly it's a bacteria and we'll talk about that in a minute. It started growing and algae releases oxygen while it's growing, and in fact almost 90% of all oxygen on Earth even to this day. Is provided by algae. Algae in the wall, in the oceans, in the lakes. That is what allows us to to breathe.
And so after about a billion years of spirulina growing and they have fossils to prove the, you know that carbon data to almost 4 billion years ago, there was enough oxygen on Earth that other plant life could take take form. And that's how life on earth started nurturing itself. So I tell people there's got to be some things magical. That was the first living form on Earth and by the way has outlived everybody. Ice ages, stone ages and it's
still here. So that is also very compelling to me as someone who's quite interested in the history of the world and I hope your listeners feel as well. So let me there's probably about 25,000 strains of algae. They grow everywhere as I mentioned, but about. 99.999% of them are poisonous and you certainly do not want to stick your hand in your local swimming pool or pond and scoop up a bunch of algae because I promise you it will make you sick.
And algae absorbs whatever it is in the water, so if it's in a stagnant pool, it's absorbing whatever toxins and are in there. So the algae that has grown for consumption is a crop. That is no different than kale or broccoli and it's your listeners will find this interesting to know that it's not grown in the ocean. The the algae that you consume in from us or from other companies is a crop that's grown in fresh water.
It's related to seaweed, which is from the ocean, but algae is grown in fresh water and we grow ours in. Are in Taiwan, which is world renowned. We're having the highest constant, highest quality algae and we grow ours outdoors because I feel that's the that was the original way Mother Nature had it and it's grown in triple filled ours is grown in triple filtered spring mountain water. So again algae absorbed
whatever's in the water. So you need a very clean source of water to ensure that you've got really high quality algae. So the two. Crops, algae, crops that are grown for consumption are spirulina and chlorella, and some people have heard the expression blue-green algae, Well that's spirulina and Chlorella is a green algae. They think of, you know you have fruit and within the fruit category you have bananas and oranges and apples or
vegetables. You have within the category vegetables you have, you know, bean sprouts and kale. Well, within algae as a category you have. Chlorella and spirulina. So let's talk about the differences between the two of them and what they do in your body. And then we can later on talk about why they're important for either sports or a ketogenic diet or for health benefits. So spirulina, as I mentioned, was the very first plant life on Earth and it is what's called a
blue-green algae. And the reason why it's called a blue-green algae is because it has two pigments in it. One pigment is called phygocyanin and it has certain healing properties and the other pigment which most people will be familiar with is chlorophyll. Now spirulina technically is a bacteria. Up until a few years ago, I hesitated to tell people this because. Up until a few years ago, people were quite concerned about
bacteria. And now, thank goodness, everyone realizes that we actually have more bacteria in our bodies and we do cells. And the bacteria, if you have good bacteria, they are almost more important to your health than even your own cellular structure because they contribute to the health of your immune system to digestion. So I'm quite proud now to tell people that spirolina is a bacteria, and what that means is the reason why that's important.
Is a couple of reasons. First of all, it does not. Spirulina does not have a cellulose wall, so it gets absorbed into your bloodstream almost instantly because there's nothing for your body to break down. The other really interesting thing about spirulina is that it has the highest concentration of protein in the world, all of which are already in amino acid form. So again, nothing for your body to break down when you eat.
Animal protein, it can take up to three days for your body to break that down into amino acids, and if you are missing all some factors and cofactors, you could well end up only absorbing, you know, 10% of that. And so all of that is done, doesn't all, all of the protein is what's called bioavailable because there's nothing for your body to have to break down. So spirulina.
Because it has this protein that has all these gorgeous amino acids, and it's loaded with vitamin B, which of course converts glucose to energy. It gives you and your body energy naturally in a very steady form. It's also loaded with iron, which carries oxygen, so you
have energy. It's It's also loaded with essential fatty acids, both the Omega threes and something called GLA, which is. Typically an omega-3 but behaves like an Omega or technically Omega 6 behaves like an omega-3 because it reduces inflammation and it's also loaded with antioxidants. So spirulina is known as being an energizing algae. And now it's not energizing like sugar or caffeine. You don't get any sugar shakes. It's our first customers actually were endurance
athletes, Olympic athletes. Run marathon runners because it gave them steady energy and didn't upset their stomach like all those sugary gels did. And it's certainly not you don't. If you're a keto athlete, you don't want to be taking those anyway. So it's a terrific food source for having energy at work, energy before your workout. We have surgeons, truck drivers. It just improves your focus. We have parents whose children
don't have a DHD&E. Any longer, and it's the reasons why it works so well, are all just based on the nutrient profile of spirulina. There are no additives, no caffeine, no sugars, no chemicals, no toxins, nothing. It is just clean, pristine keto 0 carb nutrition 1 ingredient, 40 vitamins and minerals 64% protein, which is 3 times the amount in in animal protein. So. It is a slam dunk when you want some energy or you want your
hunger satisfied. The only downside to spirulina is probably that it doesn't taste very good. Yeah, you'll have a swallowing habit though, which makes it nice. But you know, my algae are like my children to me. And so, you know, so it has, you know, it makes it gives a personality that you that it's got this sort of side to it. I personally love to chew mine because I love. This the feeling of eating something, and I eat them with almonds and sea salt, which
helps improve the flavor. And I remind people that there's another product that I can't, you know, that a lot of people take. I don't endorse it at all. It's Red Bowl and it's not good for you at all. It's got all sorts of terrible chemicals in it, and people don't like that flavor either, but they use it and so. You would get better energy from spirulina.
Again, it's a flavor that you would probably need to get adjusted to, but if you do not like the flavor, you can grind it up and put it into smoothie, or you can just swallow it. We made them very, very tiny. So that's why we call them bits, because we think they're so cute. They're bits of food, but you can swallow them and you get exactly the same benefits as if you swallow them. So Spirulina blue-green algae generally used for either energy satisfying your hunger. Intermittent.
Fasting, it's fantastic for intermittent fasting because it does not decrease your ketones or increase your glucose. It's great if you're diabetic. Again it lowers your glucose if you're diabetic. And also we we have a very, it's a terrific preworkout fuel that's natural and not a single additive. And and again the tablets are very easy to travel with. We give you a little tin inside our bag so you can refill them and all that sort of.
So it's it's been used for. Hundreds of years, quite honestly. But in in Mexico in the 1600s, the Mexicans were using it. It was discovered by the Dutch chemist in the late 1800s to have the highest concentration of protein. So. So it is really amazing food crop. So that's spirulina. Now its sister is Chlorella.
Chlorella developed about 100, about a billion years after Spirulina. And it is officially in the Plant Kingdom because it has a not only does it have a cellulose wall where spirulina does not, it has the hardest cellulose wall in the Plant Kingdom. So hard, in fact, that it has to be cracked at production. But and so it does take a little longer to get into your bloodstream. But here's one of the beautiful things about this remarkable the hard exterior cell wall.
It attaches to toxins and chelates them out of your body like nothing else it's been used by. Biological dentist for decades for pulling out mercury when they take out people's ammograms. It's been used by Mercury Poisoning Association. It also pulls out radiation. It was used at Chernobyl. Fukushima Hiroshima because it's known as the only thing that pulls out radiation. It will pull out lead. It will pull out. Athletes love it because it
pulls out lactic acid. So they use the spirulina as a preworkout and they use the chlorella as a post workout so your muscles aren't sore the next day. It also pulls out alcohol, so if you take it after you drink alcohol, whether it's beer, wine, spirits, you don't, you are sober in an hour and a half. And you will never have a hangover. So it's very it's known as a very powerful chelator, far better than activated charcoal.
Activated charcoal pulls out all minerals in your body, all that, you know, it pulls toxins, but all minerals. Chlorella does not do that. Chlorella only pulls out toxins. And in fact it's loaded with 40 vitamins and minerals. So it it only it restores minerals. And does not take minerals out, it only pulls out toxins. I I call it intelligent food for two reasons. You have to be intelligent to take it and it knows what to do in your body. It's it's considered an
adaptogen. So in addition to being longing to the plant Kingdom, well let me say one other thing, it does belong to the plant Kingdom, but it's not technically a plant. It's considered a seed vegetable. And the reason for that is chlorella and spirulina do not
have any of the downsides. Of plant of plants, there's what's called antinutrients, phytic acid lectins that are found in a lot of plants that can cause damage to your stomach lining and lead to food allergies and inflammation, fatigue, and there are no lectins, there are no phyto, none of these, what I call antinutrients in either of the algae. So even though Chlorella does belong to the plant Kingdom, it's technically. We call a sea vegetable because it doesn't have any downsides,
only upsides. A couple other really amazing things about Chlorella. Remember, spirulina has the highest protein in the world. Chlorella has the highest chlorophyll in the world, and most people know that chlorophyll is what makes your plants green, and that's why your mother's told you to eat your. Veggies when you're young. So what does chlorophyll do? Well, chlorophyll is a fat based pigment and the reason why this is important is because anything that's fat based is going to
heal your cell walls. And we're all learning that, you know, aging and health all starts in the cell, the cell wall, the mitochondria. You need to do things that are going to keep those mitochondria healthy and your your cell walls nice and lubricant so that the nutrients can get in and the toxins can get out. So, chlorella. In addition to pulling out toxins because of the chi chlorophyll, it builds your cells, it builds your immune system, all those phytonutrients.
And in fact during World War One when the injured when they ran out of blood transfusions for the injured, they would give them liquid chlorophyll and they would heal just as fast as if they'd had a blood transfusion. And if you know a lot of people may not believe me, but then I invite you to look at the cellular structure. Of chlorophyll, and you will find that is identical to the cellular structure of your hemoglobin, Absolutely identical X with one exception.
In the centre of your hemoglobin is an iron atom and then the centre of. Chlorophyll is a magnesium atom. Now if that one atom wasn't there, our blood, our blood literally would be green. And the reason why that that iron atom is important because that's what carries oxygen in your blood and helps gives you an oxygen of course gives you
energy. So you have to say to yourself, huh, if something is virtually identical to our blood hemoglobin structure, it's got to be something important about it. So you do need to have it in your. In your daily diet, and I know we'll circle back to the keto diet and very few people are eating a lot of greens because they don't want the carbs. But so you're you know you're cheating your body and your longevity by depriving yourself of chlorophyll so you can get.
Way more. You can have a room full of chlorophyll. It's, you know, you would have to eat a room full of kale to get the equivalent chlorophyll that might be in a couple servings of the chlorella. So it's very, again very efficient nutrition and ketogenic. So you're never coming out of ketosis. And still you're getting your chlorophyll met needs met. Chlorella just a couple other top notes of Chlorella has the highest concentration of RNA and
DNA in the world. What that means is it helps as you age your DNA and RNA are damaged and so this helps them to grow back healthier. So that's very good news for those of us who are over 20 and also has as I mentioned very high amounts of of iron, so that boost your your oxygen and reduces fatigue. And there was something else that was going to say, Oh yes, the chlorophyll, it's very high in K2. Are are you familiar with K2? But the importance of K2? Yes, yes.
So vitamin K2 is a relatively new vitamin they discovered at about 25 years. Ago, which I guess is new in the science world and it's so different from K1. People know that K1 is in green vegetables and helps your blood clot. What K2 does is it removes calcium from soft tissue like blood vessels, your skin organs, your brain and it moves it into your bones where calcium should belong. So in one fell swoop, it K2 will help reduce heart disease Alzheimer's.
Kidney stones, wrinkles and help prevent osteoporosis because everyone's taking calcium and they're taking D3 to help absorption with calcium. But it's being absorbed in the wrong places. And chlorella, both spirulina and chlorella have K2, but Chlorella has twice the amount of K2 in in it that spirulina does, and there's very few food sources that have K2. They are. It's really only it can only be found in grass fed animal protein or a dish called nata which nobody in America eats.
And the reason why it's only in grass fed animal protein is that animals have extra bacteria in their gut that allow them to convert convert K1 into K2. So when we eat animal protein we do get the K2 because it's already in the in the animal. But not everybody can afford grass fed animal protein and it may be difficult to find and you still may not be able to eat enough of it to get sufficient K2 into your diet. And there are K2 supplements now.
But K2 has multiple different variations and all the supplements are made with something called MK47 which is an artificial it's made from I think fermented chickpeas and algae and animal fed protein has M4. And the reason why I I feel M4 is the better K2 is a couple of reasons. One is M4 is the only K2 version that can get into your brain your. So you know, brain health is obviously very important and if I am also just a believer in sort of the more natural sources
for health and nutrition. So I'm really trying to get people to take what you know is more natural because if it comes from food, it has all the factors and cofactors so your body knows how to absorb it and what to do with it. So in summary, Florella is a Wellness algae, that's what we call it recovery bits. Ours is recovery bits because it helps you recover your health or recover from sports. It's got the chlorophyll that builds your immune system, It
pulls out toxins. It's got the K2 to prevent heart disease or osteoporosis. It's got the RNA&DNA that speeds up your, you know, it keeps your RNA&DNA healthy and it has this interesting thing. They didn't know what else to call it. So they call it Chlorella growth factor. Chlorella is the fastest growing
Organism in the world. If you've read anything about alternative fuel, biofuel, they were always using Chlorella as the material they were trying to trap the energy from when the cells divide because it's the fastest growing Organism.
So what that means for you and your health is that when you take Chlorella because you've got this RNA and DNA and all these other wonderful nutrients, it helps your cells grow faster and so you heal from injury or surgery in in much less time with thanks to all these wonderful nutrients in Chlorella. It is, it is hands down to me I believe the most important food frankly in the world.
I think it's even more important than spirulina because we're so full of toxins in our world and and we're struggling to stay ahead of, you know, eliminating them, the ones that have been gathering in our bodies and trying to get rid of the ones on a daily basis. So. So I think Chlorella is very powerful. Spirulina has all that wonderful protein, but the Chlorella is very, very detoxifying. So those are the 2 main algae that are grown for consumption purposes.
And they are, if you grow them carefully like we do, I the safest, purest, nutrient dense food, bar none in the world. And the irony is, they're a multibillion dollar industry in Asia and they're all it's all grown in Asia, India, Taiwan, Japan, China. Don't ever get any from China because you can't trust the labeling there or even the
purity and the quality. So I was thrilled to see that in January of this year, the White House and Senate, Congress, everybody, they sign into into being the very first algae agricultural act as part of the farm bill because they're realizing that algae is the most nutrient dense food in the world is most cost efficient. You can, you know when you grow corn or wheat, you get one crop a year, right? And and it's mono cropping and you're killing the soil and it's
not good for the planet. It's not gluten's not good for us anyway. So but farmers get lots of subsidies to grow this stuff. So it's bad for everybody. And yet with algae, because it takes a month to grow, you can have 10 or 11 crops a year, not just one. And since it grows in water, it can be grown in in arable areas. So you can grow it in a desert and it uses a tenth of the land to get 100 times more protein and it uses a fifth of the
water. So they've realized it's eco friendly, sustainable, nutrient dense and it needs to be grown in America. So I'm so excited about that because now LG farmers will start to get some respect and so maybe some money to to grow it because it needs we need it here in America, we need it everywhere in the world.
I don't know. You probably aren't aware of this, but back in the 70s, nineteen 74, the United Nations had a global conference on on spirulina and declared it then as the answer to world hunger because of its high protein concentration. So there's so much science about allergy. There's almost 100,000 studies on the health benefits. So it's all evidence based.
But the problem is the knowledge and all this science has been stuck in the scientific world and it hasn't made its way out to consumers or practitioners or athletes. And so that's basically what I've done. We've made sure our quality is, is is unquestionable and we do a third party lab test here to be sure that doctors can feel confident when they recommend it to their patients.
But but I pride myself on going through the science, digging through, trying to connect the dots for people and making it easier for them to understand what this stuff is. It's not pond scum. It's a nutritional rock star. And the good news about chlorella, Remember I mentioned spirulina is a little tough flavor to get to. To around. Chlorella tastes delicious.
It tastes more like a soy nut. It's very dry and when you put sea salt on it or you mix it with almonds or macadamia nuts, you swear you're eating potato chips.
It is off the charts fantastic. So I can hardly wait to launch a, you know, a trail mix or something, because if we can show people how this tastes really good, especially the Chlorella. And while you're eating something that's tasty and you're basically giving your body all the nutrients that it needs to either combat an illness or prevent one, it just doesn't get any better. At least I don't think so. Yeah, no, I think, I mean, I
just listen to your talk. It's it's apparent that you're very passionate about it and for good reasons too. I mean, I've dug into algae a little bit and. The research that I've uncovered is is pretty pretty profound. I mean, I don't think that people realize how beneficial this stuff truly can be. Out of curiosity, why do you think the States are so far behind Asia? Sure. Well, it's not just the States, it's any country outside of Asia.
And and there's three main reasons that I have I believe is why it's it's not well known. One is that as I mentioned it, it's all grown in Asia. So just like you know they've been using, you've been eating sushi for decades and they've been eating green tea for decades. When your market is close to the source of your product, the the awareness is just more is just deeper.
So algae's been sold in America for 50 years, but because the market isn't very well developed, the Asian suppliers basically have been selling the product here with the same Asian packaging maybe just made it English, but it looked it looks weird, it looks like it should be on the bottom shelf of some Chinese, you know pharmacist so so that's not very consumer
friendly. So that's one reason is that just the packaging has been unfamiliar to people and you know it's not very welcoming #2 is there are homeopaths and some vegan trainers, A handful of people in America that are aware of algae and back in the 60s there was a little boom of interest as sort of part of the anti war anti whatever.
But most of that came from China and it was discovered that a lot of it was poor quality or they, you know, there might have been some toxins included in there or they, you know, I've got pictures where you know, they were in capsules, they had ground up rocks to dilute the quality and the efficacy of of the algae get you know get more for their money. So the most of the suppliers up until recently, certainly until us, have been focused on high volume, low quality.
So when I I wasn't even planning on starting a company, I just want to help my sister and then I could help more people. So I just decided for me quality was #1. So it took me years to find which countries had the best algae, which, you know, companies I could work with. And so I'm very proud that we have very, very high and stringent controls. And because we sell our algae through doctors and chiropractors and homeopaths and natural paths they have to be sure that the quality is
unquestionable. So we do third party lab tests by FDA at FDA approved lab so that show that there are no toxins. The nutrients are exactly what they we say they are So we so that so we've eliminated the problem with quality because that you know a lot of people if you're a trainer and you've got athletes on your team you don't want to recommend something to them that could be hazardous to their health and get them kicked out of their sport.
So, so number one, we made the packaging more friendly, #2, we eliminated the quality issue. The other reason is that nobody has taken the time like we have to go through the science and it takes a lot, it's a lot of work to go through. You know, I haven't gone, I haven't gone through 100,000 studies, but I've gone through thousands, certainly thousands of studies to try to understand the and pull out the, the most
important connections. For example, I think I'm the first person that really realized that the nutrient profile of spirulina is almost identical to mother's breast milk. And I only stumbled across that because I saw some chart with mother's breast milk and I looked at all the amino acids and I thought, gosh, that looks a lot. That looks familiar. And then I ran to our chart that showed all of our amino acids and spirulina and everything else that was in it.
My gosh, it's the exactly same amino acids in the exactly same proportion. And then had other other nutrients and and you know, we all know that mother breast milk is, you know, mother's nature's perfect food. Well, you know what? So is spirulina because it's virtually identical to mother's breast milk. I thought that was a pretty cool revelation. So I'm quite proud that we've, I've taken a lot right. And I personally have taken a lot of time to try to do the
heavy lifting on the science. So that I could explain to people in sort of more layman's terms what these nutrients are doing and what nutrients your body needs to perform at its best to reduce inflammation to protect yourself from virtually anything. Because our food supply is so damaged or crops and our soils are so over farmed, there's nothing really left for the poor old plants to pull out of the root. They've got all kinds of toxins.
Even if you eat organic that's you're still not getting the nutrients. They're finding that because of the CO2 levels and the ozone layer is being just, you know, ruined, decreased plants these days have more sugar and fewer nutrients than they did 50 years ago. So we're just nutrient deprived. We had somebody once who we recommend 30 tablets for a single serving. We had somebody e-mail us. They had two tablets and they
were anemic. And man, she said she had so much energy, she went for a run and she redecorated her house and painted her kitchen. You know, it's like, if that just doesn't tell you something. I mean, man, if we could get proper nutrients into people and their children and this stuff is safe for any age. Newborns, pets, granddads, I know we could help people be healthier, avoid a lot of illnesses, have more energy, just enjoy life and live longer
with higher quality of life. And that's very, you know, very compelling. So the reason why algae isn't known in a in America or anywhere else is lack of education, lack of poor of good packaging, poor poor quality control, and let's face it, the Pharmaceutical industry and the bio biotechs, they want you on drugs. They're not going to, they're not going to spend time researching something that they can't get a patent on. This is you can't patent broccoli.
You can't patent kale. You can't patent algae either. It's a it's a food crop, so they're not going to do it. And the food industry, big corporations, what they they don't nurture and develop new markets. They wait for somebody else, a little company like us, to find an opportunity, nurture it, educate people, and then they eventually acquire it. That's what's happened with, you
know, CBT. That's what's been happening with Paleo, that's what's been having collagen, lots of keto products, whether you know Kettle and Fire, any of these wonderful young companies that have been developing products that are healthy, full of nutrients. They've had to do it from scratch because we companies don't do that sort of thing. So it's really left to people with passion who choose to pursue something because they want to make a difference like myself.
And that's what carries us through the difficult times, trying to get people to take a look at something that's good for them. And we're doing it because we know it's good for them. We just want them to take the time to understand why. Yeah, I really, really appreciate that. I think a lot of companies, you know, they're just out there to. To find a part that makes the money as opposed to finding a part that fits a need and fills that gap And and you being motivated originally by your
sister. I mean that right there. I mean to me that it just gives you so much more weight in everything that you said today. You know, like I really appreciate. What you're driving motivation is yeah and and it's it's the truth and you know I live for the emails we get from our customers about their cancer going into remission or they have normal blood pressure reading for the first time or they're a 70 year old who's now running races again and and winning in their category.
I mean we're making a difference and it and when you build a company with that in mind it it informs every single decision. It changes how I hire people, the way we spend our money. Once we get bigger, you know, we'll just pour all the money back into organizations that we can support. Might, might, long term dream is to give this stuff away at disaster areas and put in, get in school lunches. Algae never technically goes bad. It's either in its packaged form or even it's growing.
I'll tell you a funny story, algae is the only crop that never dies. It will just go dormant for as long as it is required and then it will start growing again. I I I read an article in the National Geographic, some some researchers went up to the North Pole and they got some, they excavated some rock from some prehistoric glacier from, you know 3 billion years ago and they brought it back to the lab and they found some algae in the in the rock.
And out of curiosity, they, they took a little bit of it and they put it into a Petri dish and put it in some water and lo and behold, it started growing again. Like, how crazy is that? So I and we get people emailing us, you know the expirations dates gone by. Is this still safe? It's safe forever. That's why I would I talk about giving it to disaster areas. I mean we could airlift this stuff to places and it could be there for 10 years and it would still be fine.
So it's it's a remarkable food that way. It's a remarkable, unusual plant that can do amazing things. But yeah, I'm I'm very passionate because I know I've seen the science, I know what it does. I just want more people to bring it into their life so they can start feeling great again. Absolutely. There's a, you know, I look at several of the graphs and whatnot comparing, you know, vegetable nutrient profile to that of like a meat, for instance.
And especially, like in the the keto space, there's a pretty popular graph that illustrates, you know, meat just totally blowing. Kind of like I think a broccoli out of the water as it relates to, you know, nutrient density where where does you know chlorella and spirulina stack up against other vegetables is there? I mean I know it, it totally blows them out with with regard to most things, but is there any hole in that graph whatsoever?
Like is there anything that is not met with the same kind of density as another vegetable or or no? Well, we have a nice quote from Nasau that says 1 gram of spirulina has the nutrient equivalent of 1000 grams of any other fruits or vegetables. So that's pretty powerful. That's why they feed it to the astronauts and in fact I read today in in an article that they're they really want to grow algae in their their missions to Mars.
Not only because it releases so much oxygen like I mentioned before, but because it is so nutrient dense. But in it, it is a complete protein number one, and with 40 vitamins and minerals it's it can replace your vitamin, your multivitamin. It can replace your minerals, your calcium, magnesium, potassium. You probably don't need Co Q10. You definitely don't need fish oil as most people know that. You may or may not know most fish oil goes rancid. It's just the nature of
oxidation. It can't be prevented. So it's not your best source of omega-3. Even though omega-3 is very, very important, and I tell people, guess where the fish get the omega-3 from, they get it from algae. So, so and algae will give you all the omega-3 and other eccentrified acids that you need. And they are in smaller quantities, but they don't, you know, they don't go rancid and they're certainly vegan. I will say, however, there is
virtually no vitamin C in algae. So what I do to compensate for that is I when I get up in the morning, I always have a couple of glasses of water with lemon squeezes in them. So if you're on a keto diet and you don't want, you know, fruit is not something that's obviously going to be on your regular routine, mutine, I think the, the, you know, if you want to take a vitamin C tablet, that's great. Or the lemon, the lemon juice would also be an alternative.
So that's the only nutrient that I feel that is important because it is an antioxidant. But there's other really powerful antioxidants in the algae. Chlorophyll obviously is one of them. And in Spirulina, there's something called SOD superoxide vismutase that actually is. Even more powerful as an antioxidant than anything else. And there's it's very difficult to find in any other food. But other than the the vitamin C and there's not a lot of D3 either.
So I will probably, you know, suggest that people take D3, but if you live in the South you you're good to go because you can just go step outside. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like I'm always listening to your different podcast guests and. Experts in nutrition to see what I can do differently with my nutrition and it sounds like if I just stick with the, you know, high quality sourced red meat with. You know, some energy, bits and squeeze of lemon in my juice
with with one of my keto bricks. I'd be good, good to go for the day. That's all I need really, for your energy. Yes, and and and so generally we suggest because people like the energy throughout the day to take the spirulina in the morning or the afternoon. But definitely don't cheat yourself out of the chlorella.
And because your body goes through a natural detox at night, if you wanted to get into a routine, we would say take your spirulina in the morning, in the afternoon and take your chlorella at night. And and the reason for that is your body is you're sleeping, you're going through natural detox. Also, chlorella has the highest concentration of tryptophan. So it does help you sleep.
Now it won't, it won't make you sleepy during the day, but it will cause you to, you know, have because trypophan is a precursor to melatonin which helps you sleep. So it does facilitate that. Also take it after a workout. So spirulina is good for a preworkout, Chlorella is good
for a post workout. And again, you don't need any of those carbs when you're, you know, when people transition to keto, there's often this what's called the keto flu and it's because your body is releasing so much water and when the water is being released, it's carrying lots of minerals and so including, you know salt. And so it's the it's the deprivation of those minerals that can cause you to feel a
little fatigued. So in but the the algae, both Spirulian and Chlorella are loaded with minerals, potassium, magnesium, a little bit of sodium. So it's really helps prevent that keto flu, although I do also still encourage people that, you know, that's why one of the reasons I like to suggest putting the sea salt on your algae, if you like the chlorella, now you're getting even more salt and the minerals and you're boosting your immune
system at the same time. So it helps alleviate that keto flu and then you know it just keeps you topped off as you keep going. And you're recommending, you said, what, 3030 of these tablets. Today, that's what we recommend. And the reason people say, well, how did you get to 30? When we first started? As I may have mentioned, we were working with a lot of athletes, marathon runners, triathletes, Olympic athletes. We actually had so many Olympic athletes.
I sent two of my team to the Winter Olympics and Sochi, and we were invited into the Olympic Village for both the American Olympic Village and the Canadian, because I'm Canadian. But where was it going with this? So. So we, we found that, you know, for the athletes to get energy. We started with 10, then we went to 2025. It wasn't until we hit 30 that they consistently felt a boost of energy.
We've so that's how we we do single servings with 30 and we recommend 30. But since then we've realized the average person is so nutrient deprived that even 5 or 10 at a time will make a difference in your health. And it's like a lot of things you kind of have to sort of play around with what your perfect blend is. I still personally like to suggest 30 if you are doing a workout or you're getting started in the day.
But if if you get energy from 5:00 or 10:00 then that's that's cool, take 5 or 10, it'll certainly make your your LG last longer. On the other hand there is no upper side. It's like you can't eat too much salad or you we have we fuel 5 NHL teams and they take they have 75 or 100 spirulina ground up in their smoothies before a game and then they take the same amount of the Chlorella tablets after the game to pull out the lactic acid.
And I personally have about that much myself anyways, and I have for about the last eight years, and I couldn't live without this stuff. So it's just like a very healthy food snack. You can't, you know, or vegetable. You can't have too much of it. And because there's only one calorie and there's zero carbs and it's ketogenic and vegan and pure and toxin free and all those other jolly good things, it's a it's a real blessing to
your body. So if you want to start with a smaller quantity to see how you feel, that's great. It's also great for children and we recommend 1 tablet per age. So if they're three, we suggest maybe three a day. If they're five, give them five a day. And pets. I'll just warn you, your pets will love this stuff and it will become a, you know, a very habit, a very expensive treat if they if they start using it. But I I also say, hey, how many, how many foods can you and your
pet enjoy together, right? Yeah, yeah. No, this is good. I did not even know it can be applied to that. But I mean, it makes total sense. We have our dogs Keto now, so it only makes sense to to give them this. Yeah, yeah, well, I have some friends who you know this one friend. She had a small lap dog and she made the mistake of leaving her bag of spirulina tablets on the counter and somehow this little lap dog jumped up on the counter, got to the bag and ate the entire bag.
So almost 1000. She was so worried that she was going to die and I said no, no, no, he'll just throw up what she did. He was perfectly fine. But this dog had tried them and man, when he realized they were up there, he was going to do everything he could to get access to them. And another friend of mine has a she lives in a three story house and she has five cats. And she said she could be pulling her bag out of the fridge and it'll rustle a little bit.
And those cats, they will hear that and they will run down the stairs and circle around her legs waiting for her to give them some. So it's very, it'll be very interesting. I would love to have you give your dog summons and let me know what the reaction is. Because animals are very smart, they know it's good for them. Instinctively, they go and eat grass when they're not feeling well because they know that the chlorophyll and the grass is
very healing. So they know that there's so much chlorophyll and stuff in this in the algae that it's good for them. Absolutely, absolutely. So what about just kind of dive into the process of how it's made? Cuz like, I've seen the videos. I've seen not videos, but I've seen some pictures of like these I call like plantations, algae plantations almost, I guess. Yeah, that's probably a good term for it, Yeah. So just walk me through that. Sure.
Well, the farms are not small, so this isn't something like you would have in your local garden. They can be as large as, you know, football stadiums and you can tell what kind of LG farm you're looking at based on the shape of the of the farm space. So spirulina is called spirulina because it grows in a spiral.
So it first they started in a, they started in little test tubes just to grow it to get sort of like a little seedling and then they move it out into the the water tank, I call it a tank. I don't know what some people refer them As for spirulina, A runway, because spirulina is the way it's farmed. You put the beginning, you know it's almost the the seedlings at one end and it it's, it's sort of like a rolling lane. It's very long and narrow because what it will do is grow from one end.
It will spiral its way, filling up the runway with this sort of stringy CBD looking kind of fiber until it reaches the end. So that's spirulina grows in spirals in long, narrow, as I say they call them runways and chlorella. It actually grows, it puffs out. Remember I said it was the fastest growing Organism, So it puffs out in in a circular fashion, so it's in round tanks, and so it grows. It starts in the middle and it grows out to the sides of the circle. So what makes a difference in
the quality? First of all, there's different strains of algae, just like there's different quality meats. You know, you can have Kobe beef and grass fed beef and then you have that stuff, I think they call it beef at McDonald's. But you know there's variations. So same with algae, there's different strains and some have more nutrients and some have
more protein. So we use the highest strain and then it, you know, it depends on the quality of the water which so ours is triple filtered spring mountain water because you want to be sure that there's no toxins and then you gather up the algae and dry it. Now we don't use high heat to dry ours. We just sort of shoot it up into the air and this and it's, it dries naturally, it filters down into a pile and do that multiple times.
And the reason we don't use high heat is to preserve the enzymes. So it's still considered a raw food. A lot of companies and this was again stuff that you'll find at Target or some of these now foods or what very inexpensive algae, they use high heat because they're a volume producer. So that kills the new, the enzymes and it also deteriorates the quality of some of the nutrients. So that's you want to be careful of that And then we what's called tablet we we push the
water. There's a you know conveyor belt that push the water out of the out of the dried algae and put into almost like little muffin tins. So it forms these little tablets. There isn't. There are no binders. There's nothing else in it. When a lot of companies have to use binders to keep the LG together or they what they do is they put it in a powder inside a capsule, but sometimes they could put other fillers in that capsule and you don't really
know what that's in there. So we don't do any of that. We make sure ours is just 100%, there's only one ingredient and that's that and that's it. Nothing else and and on that note I just want to make one sort of distinction between spirulina and Chlorella. Remember I said spirulina is a bacteria and does not have a cellulous wall. Chlorella has the hardest cellulous wall that I mentioned earlier needs to be cracked in production.
So when I started the company I found out that the common technique used to crack the chlorella is they tumble it physically with glass beads. Now this technique was formulated by the granddaddy of Chlorella, which we're very grateful that they learned how to grow Chlorella. It's called Sun Chlorella. So I'm very, very grateful for them for starting this back in the 50s.
And they patented this technique, it's called Dyno Mill and virtually every other Chlorella company in the world uses their technique, which is to tumble the the Chlorella with the glass beads. So it basically pulverizes the cell wall so that because if it wasn't pulverized or cracked, your body could not absorb the nutrients inside. However, there was always suspicion that the heat from the glass, the glass heated up and that lead was leaking from the
glass into the chlorella. Now they denied that this was happening, but just when I was starting the company, just the state of California was informed of this potential problem. So they did some tests on their chlorella and did indeed find that the amount of lead exceeded acceptable levels. I tell my my team, well, how much lead could be too much lead, you know, would it be any lead.
So I decided we could not use that technique because the state of California had determined that that technique was not was harmful to your health and they forced the company. They said you can either stop selling or put a warning on your label. So they do have a warning on their packaging that says, you know, this, this, this contains A substance known by the state of California to cause, you know, brain, brain defects and whatever.
And so I found a new technique right around that time that had been developed with more expensive where they passed the clarella through a sound chamber and it's the vibrations that crack the clarella. So no heat, no lead, That's. So that's what we use. And I was telling this to somebody a few days ago and they said, oh, good vibrations in your Chlorella. Yeah, I'm. And I'm, you know, I'm actually a Reiki healer too. And I'm all about energy and vibration.
So I'm very, very happy that we have clean Chlorella and spirulina but and it's good vibrations and we've had, we've had lots of people actually contact us and tell us that
they've muscle tested. They've never been able to take Chlorella before but they muscle tested ours and found out that they could take it and I think it's because it's doesn't have the lead in it. So, so yeah, so Chlorella has to be cracked to production and we pass our through the sound chamber and then we package it into UV protected bags.
And the reason why this is important is because sunlight will if if you have light packaging or you know light colored bottles for your spirulina or Chlorella, the light will pull the Chlorella out. No, it's not damaging to the algae, but it means that you're losing some of the power of the chlorophyll which is very cleansing. So we made, we made sure that our packages were 99% UV protected.
So we have large bags that are sold on our website and then we sell single servings through doctors and nutritionists and chiropractors and you can find and and and Amazon, we sell them on Amazon. So, so that's and our packaging is all done under proper FDA regulations and then we do the when we we import the algae in bulk from Asia for the packaging and then we have each batch tested at a third party lab that's been approved by the FDA and we get those and we share
those lab tests with all of our doctors and nutritionists and people who recommend or sell our product to their patients and clients because we want them to know that we have nothing to hide and that everything is safe and pure and clean and toxin free. So we're doing everything we can to ensure a healthy, safe, nutrient dense product that will, you know, can be used for many reasons, whether it's therapeutic or as a snack or for, you know, athletic performance or keto diets, whatever.
And we were just at the Metabolic Health Summit in Long Beach 2 weeks ago. Dominique D'agostino is one of the founders of that. Yeah, I was there. I saw your booth. Were you there? Yeah. Yeah, I I needed. I guess you were there then. I didn't even think that the swing by and shake your hand. Oh man, Oh well, we'll be there again next year. So, so wow, that's so exciting. I'm hoping to speak out next year. Yeah, yeah. Are you going to any of the other conferences? Well, we do.
We're doing about 20 conferences this year. We do a lot of chiropractic conferences and we're going to a lot of Plantbased Dr. conferences. We're starting to work a little bit in the spa industry. So I think it's too late for us to be at Keto Con, but we'll probably be there next year, but we'll definitely be at the that metabolic health again next year. And and for the last three years we've been at low carb USA and I've spoken at them for the last three years as well.
Have you ever been to any of those? Not the low carb USA I was. I was going to go to that one, but I had to pull the trigger on the meta and go to the Metabolic Health Summit, so I opted for that one instead. But I plan to go there next year. Yeah. Met of all outstanding and I've told them that and we're we're going to support them and do as much as we can to help them because they're doing all the
right things. They get really great speakers that's a very, you know it's so wonderful to be part of this community. We're all helping one another and connecting one another and it's it's it's like a big family. So because we've got an important message to share. So you were there to see the BMX. Yeah. Yeah, Josh Perry was there. Yeah, that was awesome. That was really in the Charlie Foundation. It's such a great group of people.
We really love them. Well, I can definitely tell that Y'all Energy Bits is breaking out into the keto space. I mean, I think I heard of Y'all's product initially on a Tim Ferriss podcast, I wanna say. I think he was using it, but I mean it was just so cool to see. I mean y'all are. I mean your brain has kind of
become more in line with keto. I see that in the space and it's just just cool to see you know how the cross can path, how the paths can cross rather and it benefit you know all groups no matter what your nutritional protocol is exactly. We're also going to be at Fitcon in the keto corner section because I don't believe there are any other keto sports
nutrition products out there. Everything's carb and sugar based and there's a growing number of keto athletes and we want to know that we're here to support them because the out the spirulina will give them the energy and keep their keto, keep them in ketosis and the Chlorella will pull out their lactic acid and speed up the recovery. So we're very excited. We haven't even done a fitness
show in five years. So and we and they we met the keto, the Fitcom people at this metabolic health summit, they said please come to the keto section. So we said, all right, we're in, we're gonna be there. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, keep doing what you're doing, keep spreading the word like you are. And I mean, I mean that's that's the best way to go about it, just spreading it organically naturally like that. I mean, that's how you really
gain momentum. Yeah. And I I am available to answer any questions anyone has, because I want everyone to understand that this isn't something it may They may think algae is weird, but but it's not. It's just unknown.
It's it's just unfamiliar. So just like keto was unknown and unfamiliar, and first people thought it was weird and there's pushback, but now the science is trickling out to show that there's benefits, especially even if you can't get to the full keto state low carb, you've got it. People have got to get rid of those carbs and sugar. I mean, it's so damaging. It's just crazy to think about it. It's gone as long as it has. So we're no sugar. Keto, vegan.
Whatever your dietary protocol is, I have the science that will help you understand why it works. Because you know, knowledge is power, right? And so, and if I don't have an answer, I will, I will find it. I could tell you you're very passionate about this, which is just invigorating and exciting to witness. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I'm loaded up with algae. What can I tell you? My mitochondria are just firing on all on all, you know, bullets
or whatever. And I I tell people selfishly, I need people to take the algae because I have a feeling Dave Asprey and I are going to be the ones that are going to live 180 years. And then I I need to be sure people are my friends are around to hang out with me. So. Yeah, well, definitely, definitely. Where where can people go to to to get some of this stuff and and try for themselves? You bet. So we sell it on our website at energybits.com and I'd love to give your listeners a 20%
discount code. So when you check out, you'll see a coupon box and if you enter the word Keto Savage all one word, you'll get 20% off. It works on everything all the time so. That's the that's the best way to do it. Remember, Energy Bits is the spirulina. We actually have another spirulina called beauty bits. So it's really more of a spa, but it's exactly the same as energy bits, just we packaged it in pink. Someone said, oh, you've got a boy spirulina and a girl spirulina.
And basically, yes, that's that's the case whatever, whatever it takes. And then Chlorella, which is a green algae, is packaged in green and called recovery bits. And then we have a blend which is vitality that's 50%. Thorel and 50% spirulina, but yes, energybits.com And if you aren't ready yet to try full bag, we also have a couple of the options for you. We sell on Amazon and you can
purchase single servings. They're $4.00 each through Amazon. Or you can go to our homepage and click the find a retailer because we have practitioners, chiropractors, spas, gyms all over the country who sell the single serving. So there may be one nearby you, and you could. You could. Try a single serving from them. But Amazon is great for single
servings. We really encourage people to try the single servings first, so you know for sure that you like it and then you'll get a better price because you'll get the 20% discount on energybits.com. But the other funny thing is I'll mention I was on Shark Tank a couple years ago and they, they keep airing my segment and they aired it again the day before the metabolic health summit. And so there I was or no the Cal Jam. Yeah, we were at Chiropractic showed last week and I had people.
Morning coming up to me. No, I have. Were you on Shark Tank? And yes, I was, but I thought that was pretty funny. But you'll start hearing more about algae and hopefully energy bits soon. We're just a very tiny company. Very bootstrap, but tiny but mighty. That's, that's what I like to say about us. I have most respect for you for that. I mean growing a small business myself like you get, you got to have so much passion and so much desire to hustle on a daytoday basis.
So that's off to you there. Well, we'll we'll make sure you get some algae to keep. Keep your hustle happening. I love it. I love it. Well, Catherine, I can't thank you enough. I mean, I truly feel like your your intentions and motivations are so pure and and I could just, you know, tell that you're excited and passionate about what you're speaking about. So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you and so much. You keep killing it. Yeah.
Well, let's definitely hook up at the metabolic summit next year. Absolutely. Absolutely. Until then, Catherine, have a great one. OK. Thanks a lot, Robert. Bye, bye, bye, bye.