Catharine Arnston: The Power of Algae – The World's Most Nutrient-Dense Superfood

16:09Darin Olien:And it's perfectly in the food matrix. So the body knows what to do with it. You've got all the cardinoids.

16:14Catharine Arnston:You've got all the... It's not just the macronutrients. It's all the micronutrients. We'll dig into a couple of them. Like this blue pigment, phycocyanin. And a lot of people know about methylene blue, which has had a big pop in popularity. And methylene blue, which is a produced chemical, can't hold a candle to the benefits of phycocyanin, which is the blue pigment in spirulina. And it works with your body. The methylene blue is kind of like a sledgehammer that creates a new pathway.

16:47Darin Olien:Yeah, it creates this whole other energy pathway.

16:49Catharine Arnston:And it can be damaging if you take too much of it.

16:52Darin Olien:Right. Yeah. Yeah, so I've always been someone that I've looked around the world at foods and plants and medicinal plants and adaptogens and everything else. So I've always created my life around food first, food matrix first. People say, oh, the flu season, vitamin C. Okay, well, go to vitamin C. Go to alkaline-rich foods. build your body from the inside out. And it's interesting, as a side note, I have friends who have developed frequency technology. Oh, sweet. Yeah, that you can, upon it, well, first off, the technology is it can scan your body for deficiencies in about 30 seconds. Yeah. And it's interesting, one of the scientists said, I said what's it like when someone's taking like an isolated vitamin and mineral if they're deficient in it isn't that a good thing he said the interesting thing is to your point that when you're taking isolated vitamins and minerals it can cause stress in the body because it's unrecognizable it's not to say again that the body figures out a way to use part of it because it still needs it, but it's not the ideal.

18:17Darin Olien:Yeah. Right? And that's where I love this kind of thing where it's like you've worked hard to grow it correctly, to make sure there's no toxins in it, and then to deliver the highest potency of nutrients because that's where we should lean first. Right? Food first, getting those matrices.

18:38Catharine Arnston:Safe food.

18:39Darin Olien:Safe food. And, yeah, so let's talk about a few of the constituents because this gets really exciting. The color kind of starts insinuating and very clearly starts demonstrating the polyphenols, the anthocyanins, the antioxidant capacity, the glutathione capacity.

19:04Catharine Arnston:You're speaking my language. This is why I love algae so much. You're getting me excited.

19:10Darin Olien:There's a lot going on with algae. So let's highlight a few of those things.

19:14Catharine Arnston:Well, a couple of things that I know people are very interested in right now is protein. And the United Nations has endorsed spirulina algae as the answer to world hunger for 50 years. You can go online and they had a global conference about spirulina being the answer to world hunger because it has the highest protein in the world. It's by weight, of course. And our spirulina has 64 % protein. Just to put that in context, chicken steak or fish is about 22%. So it's very, very high in protein. Now, and I'm not knocking anybody. I'm not a vegan, by the way. I eat whole foods. That's what I eat. I eat a lot of eggs.

19:53Catharine Arnston:But when you are eating animal protein, your body can't break it down that way. It has to break it down into amino acids.

19:59Darin Olien:It still has a lot to break down.

20:00Catharine Arnston:It has a lot to break down. And it can take up to three days if you don't have all the factors and cofactors and enzymes and coenzymes. And everybody these days seems to have compromised digestion. So you may have eaten 50 grams of chicken, but you only may absorb 10 % of that as aminos. And it took three days to get there. With spirulina, when you take five grams of protein, which is you get in 30 tablets, you get five grams of aminos. So it's very efficient protein. And it can either, we're not recommending that it necessarily replace your protein, but it can certainly add to it. And if anyone's on a GLP-1 or we just, you need protein for everything, not just muscle, but all of the, in the electron transport chain, the things that move the electrons along are proteins.

20:45Catharine Arnston:Proteins are critical. So spirulina has the highest in the world. Chlorella has the second highest. Spirulina is 64. Chlorella is 60%. So you need not only the protein, but bioavailable protein. And so that's probably a very important thing. The other thing, it's a complete protein. Collagen powder is not a complete protein. It's missing tryptophan. They have to add it. So this has 18 of the 20 aminos, including the nine your body can't make. So when you're taking spirulina, you don't have to worry about mixing it if you're a vegan with rice or whatever. It's all there for you. Get the full deal.

21:17Catharine Arnston:So that's one of the things that I want people to understand, that it's an excellent source of protein. And because spirulina is a bacteria, when you chew it or swallow it, I will admit most people swallow it because it's very chewy because of all the protein. it's into your bloodstream within seconds if you chew it within minutes so you don't have to wait

21:36Darin Olien:three days right well that's that's a really really important thing because if you put plates of food and we're so easily going okay if people are eating steak i don't but if people are eating steak that is a high energy consumptive thing that the body it's very stimulatory so the body has to use a lot of energy, hydrochloric acid, protease enzymes, all of this stuff to break down. To do what? Exactly what you said. Get it into the individual amino acids. And with spirulina and many plants, it's easy to break that down into the spirulina a lot more efficiently. Yeah. So just from a protein perspective, it's extremely beneficial.

22:23Catharine Arnston:Very efficient.

22:24Darin Olien:Yeah.

22:26Catharine Arnston:It's may not know this, but your body expends 15 % of your energy on digestion. So not only does spirulina, we'll talk about how it creates energy at the cellular level, not only does it create more energy, it literally gives you back energy because it doesn't use that 15%. So your body's going, oh, I got 15 % more energy to do thinking or cleaning out my colon or whatever. So it creates energy and preserves energy. So that's a number one. So that's one great thing about spirulina. Yeah.

22:59Darin Olien:So let's talk about the antioxidants because there's multi different avenues of antioxidants here. Yeah.

23:08Catharine Arnston:Well, before I get into the super oxidismatase, which I do want to talk quite a bit on, I want to address chlorophyll, which is an antioxidant and it's also a pigment. And chlorella has the highest chlorophyll in the world. It has 25 times more than liquid chlorophyll and 500 times more than arugula. What's so important about chlorophyll? Well, if you go online, you'll see that the chemical composition of chlorophyll is almost identical to the chemical composition of your hemoglobin. The difference is your hemoglobin and your blood has iron in the middle, which is what carries oxygen, and chlorophyll has a magnesium.

23:43Catharine Arnston:So chlorophyll builds your blood. The problem is our soils are so damaged that there's no nutrients in them. So the plants aren't pulling up anything, including chlorophyll. My arugula goes yellow after day three. Why? Because there's hardly any chlorophyll in there to start with. This has the highest concentration. So when you're taking algae, especially chlorella, but also spirulina, you're getting maximum therapeutic amounts of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll also kills bacteria. So if you chew it, like I do, the chlorella tastes pretty good, you're killing bacteria in your mouth. It also kills bacteria in your gut, in your colon, and there's so much colon cancer going on right now.

24:23Darin Olien:Yeah, the bad bacteria.

24:23Catharine Arnston:The bad bacteria, because it introduces, and chlorella has fiber, which feeds the gut biome, so it's very helpful. So chlorophyll is very important for building your blood, because when you have healthy blood, you're going to have a healthier body. And it's an antioxidant, so that's a really, really important one.

24:39Darin Olien:And the other thing, the chlorophyll, especially in this day, I wrote a book. I have to give you a book, my fatal convenience book. Oh, yeah. And so with the environmental toxins, we have this huge surge over the last decades of heavy metals. Yeah. And one of the greatest chelators of heavy metal is chlorella. And that chlorophyll just taking those heavy, binding to those heavy metals. So just by the act of eating this really dense, incredible food, you're doing mechanisms that you don't even know is happening just by being human these days. Hell, the toxic load of traffic and the air quality and the heavy metals and the PM 2.5 and all of this stuff.

25:26Darin Olien:We need chelators in our body.

25:28Catharine Arnston:And you can't do a cleanse once a year, once a quarter, once a month, once a week even. I say taking chlorella particularly is like giving your body a shower from the inside every day because we are exposed to stuff every day and it accumulates.

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27:02Catharine Arnston:I read that the average adult in America has 700 toxins in them. We weren't built to sustain that kind of toxic load. and the way it causes so much distress at the cellular level. I'm a baby boomer, and so I think maybe you might be too, but I'm probably older than you. But in the old days, there used to be car radios, and when you were in between stations, all you heard was, right? That's what toxins are doing in your body. The cells are trying to talk to each other, and they can't because there's this interference from the toxins. So we have to clear out the toxins. And the other thing is, even though spirulina, I call it, it's your nutritional insurance, and chlorella, I call it your health insurance, putting the nutrition in is really important.

27:46Catharine Arnston:But if it can't be absorbed, it's not doing all the great justice to you or your cells. And the toxins are like someone stealing your parking spot. If someone's in your parking spot, you can't park there. So chlorella pulls out the car that's like the towing truck, pulls out the toxins that are blocking the nutrition from getting into your cell. So now the nutrition can get in. This is why using both algae together is the best solution because chlorella will pull out the toxins so that now the nutrition can get in. So it works in harmony with each other.

28:18Darin Olien:Yeah. And this is, you know, again, like it's easy to see. If you look at one of the bits of power here, you can see the color. Yeah. You can see that's the green pigment. That's the chlorella. That's the real stuff. And to your point, because of the stripping of our food, we need to do everything we can. We're getting hammered more and more and more, less and less nutrition. Why, you know, this is contributing to the detrimental effects of life for us and an exponential level. So nutrients, nutrients are just.

29:01Catharine Arnston:It's the gold standard. Yeah. And we've lost that standard. All I can say is a shout out to RFK for, you know, getting things on track. Because what happens as you get at any age, but particularly after the age of 40, we're being hit with so many environmental issues that you absorb them. And then cumulatively, it starts to cause a lot of damage. But there's also an internal issue that happens, which is what I want to circle back to this particular antioxidant found in spirulina called superoxide dismutase. It's a mouthful, also known as SOD, and it's not well known, but it should be because there's 25 ,000 scientific papers documenting how this particular antioxidant called superoxidismutase prevents inflammation, every chronic disease, Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, all proven.

29:52Catharine Arnston:And your body makes this antioxidant for you from the moment you're born, just like it makes melatonin and estrogen for women and testosterone for men. But after the age of 40, your body slows down the production of these, and I'll explain why in a minute. And so you're now exposed because you don't have this antioxidant that's been there protecting you.

30:13Darin Olien:This endogenous powerhouse. Exactly. We're losing more and more of.

30:16Catharine Arnston:And the reason why is that historically, we have been on Earth for 2 million years. But up until a couple hundred years ago, the average age was about 30. We died somewhere around the age of 30. So biologically, we are programmed to die around 30. So Mother Nature is very intelligent. She's not going to have us making certain nutrients if we're going to die. well you don't need estrogen because you're not going to be making babies or never used to after the age of 40 so this one antioxidant super oxidism taste is one of the ones our bodies stop making after the age of 40 and what does it do well the way your body makes energy is through this thing called the electron transport chain and the best way I describe it to people is like it's like a relay race and everyone's seen a relay race where you have a runner who has a baton and they pass the baton to the next runner and then the runner runs another distance and hopefully they win the race.

31:15Catharine Arnston:Well, the way that your body is making this energy instead of a baton, it passes electrons. And instead of a runner, you have these molecules or proteins and the proteins pass the electron to the next protein who passes it to the next protein. And then there's four of them. And at the end, you need oxygen. So it can literally cross the finish line to create what's called ATP. So when you're younger, up until the age of 40, this works really well because a byproduct of this stuff called ATP are free radicals. And free radicals are a molecule that have an unpaired electron. So it's very unstable and very damaging.

31:53Darin Olien:Right. It looks for that electron and pulls it from the inner environment. Steals it.

31:57Catharine Arnston:Steals it from somebody else. It's like the kid who stole your lunch at school.

32:01Darin Olien:And that's a natural process. It's a natural process. Yeah.

32:04Catharine Arnston:Absolutely. And normally you have these antioxidants that have extra electrons that neutralize the free radical. The problem is in your mitochondria where all this energy is being made have a second membrane. All of your body, all the cells in your body have what's called a lipid membrane. And the mitochondria have one too. But they have a second inner membrane. I can tell you where they came from later on. Which is impenetrable by most antioxidants. vitamin d vitamin c vitamin e none of those can get into the inner membrane there are a few chlorophyll glutathione and this one called superoxy dis mutase they can get in so back to the story we've got these runners passing the electrons a byproduct is free radicals and the most damaging free radical is called superoxide and it's only made in the mitochondria and what What it does, it's a free radical, it will cause the mitochondria DNA to get damaged because the DNA is right where the free radicals are produced.

33:10Catharine Arnston:The superoxide dismutase, which is an antioxidant, dismutase means to dismantle, if you look in the Latin, whatever. So the dismutase reduces the free radical superoxide into water and oxygen. Ta-da! ta-da, mitochondria are saved because now it's not being damaged. It's like having a big golf umbrella, but you lose it after the age of 40.

33:36Darin Olien:It's a beautiful, it's, you know, when you look at how miraculous the body is in that way. It's incredible. It's like, listen, okay, so we have metabolism. We have cellular metabolism. We have mitochondria that has its roots as a bacterial evolution and the fact that it's evolved. but it realizing that it has these free radicals naturally, that it's produced this superoxide dismutase to mitigate the normal free radicals. And then over time, through lifestyle, through other things, that is accelerating, meaning that the superoxide dismutase is being used up not only with aging but from the environmental pressures and all of this stuff more and more so we need to do everything we can to bring in that balance again because our world is different because our foods are different because our environment's different right so again it's kind of going back to to the the the most powerful mechanisms to support so that we can stay healthier at a cellular level because it literally all starts there.

34:53Catharine Arnston:Exactly, exactly. And what people don't know, even though there's these 25 ,000 studies proving what superoxide dismutase does for you, nobody knows that the highest concentration of it is in spirulina algae and the second highest is in chlorella. But here's the kicker. Superoxide dismutase is not just an antioxidant. It's also an enzyme. And all enzymes are deactivated by high heat. So that's over 114 Fahrenheit. And most other algae companies use high heat to dry their algae, but we never have. And that's why I kept wondering, why does ours work so much better? So we preserve it. So it's like, you know, I tell people, if you get the cheaper stuff, it's like getting a great deal on a car, except you open the lift the hood and there's no engine.

35:39Catharine Arnston:Yeah, it's not going to go. It looks great. Now, you could get also active superoxidismitase in fresh or raw spirulina. And there's places like the Hippocrates Institute or the Gershon Institute, and they take in very sick patients who are like stage 3, stage 4 cancer. And what's one of the first things they do and what they do every day is they give their patients fresh spirulina every day. There's lots of other nutrient reasons why they do it, But the superoxidismutase helps restore the mitochondria so they can start growing again and start building cellular energy again so that you can start getting back on your feet both mentally, physically.

36:16Catharine Arnston:So it's very powerful.

36:18Darin Olien:It's also changing the environment, right? It's flooding your body through this alkaline powerhouse. Right. So all this chlorophyll, all these vitamins and minerals are coming in there and driving up the antioxidant capacity. And then that's the amazing thing. The body knows what to do at that point. And it starts regenerating. It starts healing. That's where you don't have to get into claims. All you're doing is supporting the mechanism that is innately within the food. And then the coenzymes, the constituents that are there to feed us exactly what we need.

36:58Catharine Arnston:And so I always try to do my best to say it's not algae that's doing this for you. It's the nutrients found in algae that are preserved by us that give your body what you need. And what's unfortunate is that people know more about how their cell phones work than how their bodies work. And we haven't grown up with an operator's manual for our body. Now, the good news is, as you just pointed out, your cells know what to do. But if you don't know what to give your cells, I'm not much of a cook. So when I go into the kitchen, I need a recipe. And I have two sisters. They are wizards in the kitchen.

37:34Catharine Arnston:They don't need a recipe. They'd probably be offended if someone gave them one. They know all the different combinations, and they can make amazing dinners. Me, I need a recipe, and I need to know exactly what to buy to put into the recipe. I should probably marry someone who's a chef because I will never do anything well in the kitchen. But when I have the recipe and I have the ingredients, I can do okay. Our bodies are the same way, except nobody's given us the recipe. And ironically, and I'm sure you'll agree with this, the recipe is actually pretty simple. It's all the stuff that nature gave to us.

38:06Catharine Arnston:And what is that? Fresh air, sunlight, sleep, movement, and algae. Algae I put right in there as a foundational food because if you follow all these basics that have always driven health but they've been overshadowed by the prescription drug big medical community convincing that you that you need a certain pill when you have a symptom. Guess what the symptom is? It's the red light in your car saying you're out of oil. The symptom is not the problem. The symptom is the alert that you need to do something. So when you just take the drug, the prescription, it's only masking the distress from the symptom.

38:45Catharine Arnston:It's not creating the health benefit or getting you back on track. And algae's nutrients will get your cells working again so your health can be restored or or you don't ever have to go off the track

38:58Darin Olien:you know speaking of that i'd love to hear because you have an interesting origin story to this you to the point where you had a sister was having some issues and you were in corporate world full on but it you know people can get the energy of who you are from even talking with you so like Like you pivoted and went full on. You weren't even looking to create a business. No, I didn't even want a company. You were looking to help your sister in a crisis. Yeah. Tell me about that.

39:32Catharine Arnston:So I'm Canadian, and I mention that because I have two sisters. That's all I have left in my family, so they're very special to me. And my younger sister, 17 years ago now, developed breast cancer, and we were stunned. And her oncologist, which is a cancer specialist, told her that she needed to change her diet to an alkaline diet. They said that. Yes, and it's stunning that she said it. First of all, I think it was in Canada that this happened. Also, her oncologist was a woman, and women tend to be a little bit more open to nutritional interventions. So we were just very, very lucky for both those situations.

40:08Darin Olien:So the doctor sparked something and said this to her, said it to you. Said it to her, yeah. Yeah, said it to her, and then she passed that on.

40:17Catharine Arnston:And then so she came back from the doctor's office and said, I need to find out what an alkaline diet is. And I had an MBA. I was doing international corporate work. Nothing to do with nutrition. I knew nothing. But I'm a very good researcher. I always have been, and I love my sister. So I said, don't worry. I'll figure it out. And it turned out to be a plant-based diet because of the chlorophyll and the phytonutrients that have been proven to build your immune system. And she was going to go through chemo, so her doctor wanted her to have a strong immune system. However, I also found out there was a German scientist by the name of Otto Warburg, who back in the 30s got a Nobel Prize for discovering cancer cells cannot exist in cells that are alkaline.

40:55Catharine Arnston:So I think this was the other reason why her doctor wanted her to have an alkaline diet. So anyways, I went to town, found all sorts of alkaline foods for her, including algae, but it wasn't the only thing. She did go through chemo. She completely healed. And then as I learned more about alkaline diets, I thought, wow, this is so powerful. Like, now this was 17 years ago. Nobody was talking about plant-based nutrition 17 years ago. So I thought, somebody should do something about this. So I'm just kind of that take-it-on-yourself kind of girl. And I thought, I'll do something. I don't know how or what or why.

41:30Catharine Arnston:But I gave up my corporate career, a 25-year corporate career, and I just thought, I am going to find a way to get people healthy.

41:36Darin Olien:Well, when you see the miraculousness of your sister healing and then going, oh, there's something here and you didn't know it necessarily, you're like, wow. And, you know, spirulina chlorella is one of the most powerful foods you can take in to drive your body into that healing response and that alkalinity and improve oxygenation. And Otto Warburg's work was just transformative because of that. Because it really speaks, again, I'm going to hit this over and over, the environment that the body is in.

42:14Catharine Arnston:Yeah.

42:14Darin Olien:If you're toxic loaded with environmental toxins, acidity, all of that stuff, you're breeding outcomes that are inevitable. So when you change those environments and you put your body in a better chance to kick ass, it knows what to do. And the entire universe of nature is now given a better chance to flip the switch.

42:41Catharine Arnston:Yeah.

42:42Darin Olien:And it happens kind of quick when you start to really dial it in.

42:46Catharine Arnston:Yeah. And if you want a very simple analogy, we all had goldfish, I'm sure, when we were kids. Well, if you didn't clean your goldfish bowl, you come in one day, poor Goldie's upside down and dead. And the goldfish bowl is murky. That murkiness is what's going on in your body. All you have to do is clean the goldfish bowl. Goldie's fine.

43:07Darin Olien:Because they always had that alkalinity strip or you would test it. Because, again, if you get that environment of that fishbowl off, it's breeding something else and it's going to kill.

43:21Catharine Arnston:Well, and that alkalinity occurs everywhere. For example, there were a lot of countries in Europe that were not allowing fish farming to be done. Because fish farming, what they do is they put a netted area offshore where they have the fish growing. But what was happening is as the fish were pooping, it was very acidic, and it was causing dead zones in the ocean. And then, of course, it was washing on shore and killing all the vegetation on shore. So they were outlawing all this fish farming. You know what they did? They started feeding the fish algae. Problem solved. The poop wasn't acid anymore, didn't cause dead zones.

43:58Catharine Arnston:It does the same thing in your body. There's dead zones in your body because there's not enough oxygen in there. You need oxygen to survive.

44:05Darin Olien:So many different layers to that, both in the cell, out of the cell, different areas of the body, digestive system, the endocrine system. All of it works better in clean environments. So it's literally what you put in, you start creating in your body. But the challenge, I don't know what you think about this, but the challenge with humans is the body is so damn resilient. that it's not like if I eat a bad meal today, I don't necessarily feel it right away, or at least I don't see the downstream effect that it's the environment that's changing. So the body just keeps going. And so over time, we're either creating health or we're creating a disease state.

44:57Catharine Arnston:Yeah. Every single thing you put in your mouth is either going to create health or disease. disease. And to your point, so the body will compensate for that bad meal, but it takes a lot of work, which is energy, cellular energy that could have been used for something else, protecting you from a virus or helping you with your lymphatic system. And so cellular energy is like money. When you have more money, you have more choices and you can do more things. When you have more cellular energy, you have more choices and you can do more things. So keeping your mitochondria healthy so it can generate cellular energy for you should be everyone's number one goal.

45:37Catharine Arnston:But they can't feed themselves. They rely on us to feed them because the body takes in food, converts it to glucose, and then it gets into the cell. And then this electron transport chain moves the electrons along to create energy efficiently. but the trouble is certain foods like processed carbs sugar create more free radicals in that electron transport chain in that um in that relay race and that what happens is when the runners are close to one another even in a race they can pass the baton easily so same with your mitochondria when when the four molecules are close to one another they can pass the electrons easily so you get lots of great ATP.

46:17Catharine Arnston:But when you have too many free radicals, the mitochondria expand. And so two things happen. Now those molecules, the runners, are further and further apart from one another. So they can't make the pass. So two things happen. You get less cellular energy because the electron didn't make the pass. And guess what? That electron didn't disappear. It turns into a free radical. So now the expansion, it damages the mitochondria even more. So it expands even more. eventually it explodes, spills out all the free radicals to the neighboring mitochondria and the neighboring cells. This is why chronic disease is a downward cycle.

46:53Catharine Arnston:This is why we need something with superoxidismutase as an interception to stop that downward spiral because our bodies need to protect the mitochondria and spirulina has this nutrient superoxidismutase that does that.

47:08Darin Olien:Yeah, it's this exponential spiral that goes with us or against us, right? And I remember years ago looking at live blood microscopy, right? And when you see the cells coupling and that environment is acidic, that environment is the hydrative effect is gone. And then all of a sudden you start getting nutrients in there and hydration and all of the stuff and the cells themselves start having more space. They're starting to communicate. There's a vibratory aspect. It's really fascinating.

47:46Catharine Arnston:It's unbelievable. I don't go, I really don't even, I haven't been watching TV and I don't go to movies anymore. I'm just so fascinated by the science and the deeper you go, the more amazing you realize the body is. And to your point, so in your blood, the hemoglobin, which is what carries oxygen, has a negative charge around it. Mother nature is so brilliant. Why is there a negative charge around it? So they don't clump. Because if you've ever held up magnets, you see they repel one another. So the hemoglobin have these negative charges around them, so they don't, so they repel one another. So that allows them to stay nice and round and can move through the blood vessels and into the tiny capillaries.

48:25Catharine Arnston:But when you are stressed, have too many toxins, it strips off the negative charge, eat an acidic diet, it strips off the negative charge from the hemoglobin. So now they clump. Two things happen. They can't carry oxygen, so you get fatigued, and they can't make their way into the capillary to deliver nutrients, including oxygen. The spirulina chlorella restore the negative charge instantly. They are the most alkaline foods in the world. And your body would do this normally anyways. What it does to restore the alkalinity in your blood, which has to be 7.34 or your cells are 7.1 is it pulls out magnesium potassium all the minerals from your bones from your organs and from your cells to naturally buffer to buffer it but if you do that too many times that you get osteoporosis and it wears down your immune system so this is why the alkaline diet is so important because it's it's not stealing the minerals from other parts of your body to keep your blood alkaline.

49:24Darin Olien:Yeah, and that's what people kind of lose. Like, of course, what we're saying is the blood range is really tight, and it's not going to change. Your body's going to do everything it can to make sure that that buffer zone is exactly where it needs to be, or else you'll literally die. The problem is the other aspects of what your body's doing in order to keep that buffering, and it starts robbing and stealing in order to keep the most precious thing balanced. And we don't need to do that because if we eat this alkaline rich food, and again, the easy way to think of that is whole fresh food. Fresher, the better.

50:07Darin Olien:The more local, the better. Fresh foods, nuts, seeds, legumes, fruit and season, all of that stuff. hell i remember in seventh grade class we grabbed a potato and put two electrodes in it turned on a light bulb yeah like that's yeah i made a potato head i would have rather done the electrodes yeah but but but that's that's the vitality yeah that exists in whole foods so when we're diet heavy and processed food it's it's dead yeah it doesn't have this alkalinity anymore. It can't because it's created. It doesn't have any nutrients either. Yeah, it has created food. Yeah. And so we have lost this very, very important communication that food is.

50:55Darin Olien:Yeah. It's communicating. It's, you know, like you said, these batteries of cells, 70 trillion cells.

51:05Catharine Arnston:Yeah.

51:05Darin Olien:that are these batteries of vitality. But if we're dumping things that don't allow those batteries to thrive, then slowly over time, all of a sudden you'd be like, what's happening? What disease state is starting to show up? And that's where, you know, shout out to whoever that doctor was to go at least. Oh, I know. It's crazy.

51:29Catharine Arnston:I can't believe it. We were so lucky.

51:31Darin Olien:Yeah. And God, if every doctor.

51:33Catharine Arnston:Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, maybe. It's happening. Awareness is certainly growing. We're very big on education and energy bits because we want people to understand the science, understand themselves, understand the nutrients. We're not just trying to sell them something. As you mentioned earlier, I wasn't planning on building a company. I just wanted to help my sister get better. And then I thought, well, I can help more people. But your analogy about the battery is really important because people understand in an office tower, for example, you can't do any work without any lights. And if you have a power outage, you kind of, you know, it's like having a snow day at school.

52:07Catharine Arnston:You might as well go home. Your body is the same way. The mitochondria are not just the lights in your building. They are the electricity source themselves. And as you have this lack of superoxidismitase or too many environmental toxins.

52:23Darin Olien:Dehydrated.

52:24Catharine Arnston:That are damaging and killing, basically, your mitochondria. You have fewer and fewer lights on in your building. And it's slow and steady, and eventually you're getting brain fog and, you know, you're waking. Aches and pains. And you blame it on whatever, but it ultimately is due to damaged mitochondria. And spirulina with this nutrient antioxidant called superoxidism, we can literally turn your lights back on. And the first thing that gets turned back on is your brain. Why? Because your brain and your neurotransmitters have the most mitochondria per cell. There's 2 million per cell. That's a lot.

53:00Catharine Arnston:That's a lot. So we've had people with dementia or Alzheimer's. And there's a great book by Dr. Chris Palmer, who's a psychiatrist and also on the Harvard Medical School faculty. And he wrote a book called Brain Energy. And in it, he documents how literally every single brain issue, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, doesn't matter what it is, ultimately comes from damaged mitochondria. So we need to turn those mitochondria back on. And once they're turned back on, then you're in a much better shape and it doesn't take long.

53:35Darin Olien:Yeah, the body is, the brain specifically is just constantly using up so much energy that if your body's deprived of that energy, then yeah, it only can help these conditions. And we know with Alzheimer's, by the time they're diagnosing it, it has matured very far down the road. So these are, you know, like you said, these are health insurance protocols. This is the CEO of our own health.

54:14Catharine Arnston:Right.

54:14Darin Olien:We need to, every bite we take. Counts.

54:17Catharine Arnston:Every bite counts.

54:18Darin Olien:Every bite counts. Yeah. And, you know, I've always been, the more I ran around the world and I saw the incredible nature of food, then it just became so obvious that we have these allies as food. And the more we're consciously consuming nutrient density, the greater and greater we are to ensure that we're not going to end up, you know, debilitated.

54:50Catharine Arnston:Right, because we are living longer, and aging is natural, but declining is not. And somehow our society has convinced us that that is true, and we know there are pockets around the world where that isn't true, and people are living very active lives into their 90s and 100s. And we think, oh, how lucky, how remarkable that is. But it doesn't have to be remarkable. It can actually be the new standard, but you have to know what the roadmap is and putting the right things in and pulling the wrong things out, it really doesn't get any more complex than that. Put the right things in and pull the wrong things out.

55:28Catharine Arnston:Spirulina puts the right things in. Chlorella pulls the wrong things out. And everything else is bonus.

55:34Darin Olien:Yeah, because, I mean, you personally, so you saw your sister and you started learning about this even before you started a business. how has spirulina and chlorella and these microalgae impacted you because you have so much energy you're so clear you look amazing like what was that yeah personal journey for you when you

55:57Catharine Arnston:started including this well i i've been taking both the algae every day for the 15 years since i've been almost 16 years since i've been doing this and i do eat more than your average person And we tell people you can start with 10 spirulina tablets and 10 chlorella. But for therapeutic amounts, try to get into 20 to 30 a day. And by the way, you can eliminate most of your supplements. So I hesitate to tell people how many I've been taking, but quite a few. But, I mean, I built a company bootstrapped. I was on Shark Tank, didn't take any money from them. I had five friends give me$10 ,000 each 15 years ago.

56:32Catharine Arnston:So other than like$60 ,000, I built this thing myself. I was by myself for the first five years. I used to sell the bags of tablets from my knapsack to my friends at my health club. And I went through a lot and slowly started making momentum. But I worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day for 15 years. I now have a team, so I'm very, very fortunate. But I'm in my 70th at 7-0 years. I have no chronic diseases. I take no medications. I actually take no other supplements, none, none, except spirulina and chlorella every single day. I want to show people, and this is my own skin. I don't take Botox.

57:18Catharine Arnston:This is my own hair. There's no extensions. It's my own teeth. Everything's the real deal. I do live a very clean life. I mean, I prioritize sleep. I do yoga as much as I can. I walk three miles a day. I'm very, I follow, someone said, well, who's your mentor? Mother Nature. And so with Mother Nature, Mother Nature, first of all, nothing happens overnight. So you didn't get sick overnight, and you're not going to get, you know, you're not going to correct everything overnight, but you will correct it. And most, it's all free. And, you know, we have a little discount code, but if you take 10 tablets a day of these things, it costs you a dollar a day.

57:59Catharine Arnston:This does not have to be expensive or complicated. Open your mouth, people. Just put this stuff in. I designed the packaging. I taught myself package design because I couldn't afford anybody. And I try to make the packaging as vibrant on the outside as what the algae does for you on the inside. And I just want people to know they don't have to get sick as they get older. It's not necessary. So algae is part of the foundation, but following the other, you know, just simple. I mean I have a very simple life and I have mostly millennials working for me and of course when I was their age I was doing all the crazy things that they like to do now but man I just give me some peace and quiet and a nice walk with the sunset and my algae and I don't know I'm I'm probably the happiest most peaceful I've I know I am in my entire life because I'm lucky because I'm following my path.

58:56Catharine Arnston:And I will, I also want people to know, whatever your soul wants you to do, it will never shout at you. Your ego is what shouts it. Ego wants all the attention. This little voice inside me after I helped my sister kept saying, you can do more, you need to do more. This is your role to do more. I kept arguing, you find somebody else who knows the science. I don't know any of this. But I refused to give up. And I thought, okay, my family thought I was crazy. My friends thought I was crazy. Remember, I had no science background at all. And here I was doing a deep dive into something that was very science and nutrition driven.

59:31Catharine Arnston:But I just, but I know I'm very creative. And I thought, I can do some, I don't know what I'm going to do. And the universe will not give you the full answer. It will just give you enough to get to do the next step. And then once you've taken that next step, it goes, oh, okay. All right. You're still with me. All right. I'm going to give you the next one. And then the next one. And the key is never to give up, but it will not yell at you. You have to be open to what it's trying to help you understand what you are here to do. And I feel so blessed that I have found that because most people don't.

1:00:08Catharine Arnston:It's available to everyone. I don't know if you've ever read the book A Course in Miracles. Of course. I've read it three times. Now I just read my notes that I wrote. Yeah, for sure. And it's a very difficult book to read, but I would encourage everybody.

1:00:22Darin Olien:It's a big boy.

1:00:23Catharine Arnston:It's like three Bibles put together.

1:00:25Darin Olien:It is so powerful, though. It is.

1:00:28Catharine Arnston:I live my life by that. But it's easy to get off track because nobody else does. Or when I find a few people that do, it's like coming home. It's like, oh, I don't have to explain myself. But simplicity and natural, anything from nature will always steer you correctly. Get out into the forests. Get your shoes off. Breathe in the fresh dew from a rain or from the leaves. You drink it in. Your cells drink it in. And it's free. Yeah.

1:01:03Darin Olien:Well, you're a sister for sure. Because, number one, the best answer I've ever heard in who's your mentor, Mother Earth.

1:01:15Catharine Arnston:Yeah, absolutely.

1:01:16Darin Olien:And that is so powerful. If people just for a second take that in for a second, what would that, where would your life go? How would it be steered if you just listened to that? And the other important thing, because I love purpose. I love passion. I love everything I've done. I've never listened. I've never had a regular job other than a paper route when I was 11 years old. But you are so right, and I love the way you put it. The ego is a maniacal, constant, caught in this reality, trying to control, following the amygdala fear response all the time. It's crazy, right? But the soul is a feather touch.

1:02:08Darin Olien:It's a whisper. And when you listen, it does get stronger. You do start to listen. and I also love what you said, the action forward will then reveal the next step. It will open the next door, but you don't know it all. The ego wants to know everything before you start. And that's not how it works. That's not how it works. But the trust of yourself, the trust of leaning in, the trust of taking action when in the face of everyone telling you you're crazy.

1:02:44Catharine Arnston:I filed bankruptcy. I had my car repossessed. My condo was in foreclosure for three years, but I refused to give up because I knew there was something I was supposed to do with this. And I'm not proud that any of that happened, but I just point out that I had not a dime, not a dime. In fact, a funny story, there's a company called Panera Bread, I don't know if And they had one store in Boston called Panera Cares. And the idea was that if you didn't have any money, you could just come and pay whatever you could afford. You could get all the menu, sandwiches, soups, whatever, and five cents a quarter.

1:03:26And so, honestly, I had no money.

1:03:29Catharine Arnston:So I went in there three times. But I had been in corporate, so I had a nice wardrobe. And I would pay my 25 cents for a sandwich or something. The third time I went there, the manager came up to me and he said, look, I think you can probably afford the menu prices. So we would be grateful if you did that next time. I was so horrified. I never, ever went back again because I thought, he has no idea. I look like I have money. I have not a nickel to my name.

1:04:02Catharine Arnston:But something in me, that little voice that I was committed to listening to, and sometimes when you, I think I was 50 or 51 when that happened and sometimes when you have to get to a certain age where you start questioning, well, maybe the things I've been doing, maybe they weren't so great and so the option to help my sister was so much more valuable to me. It made so much more meaning, brought so much more meaning to me than anything else and when I put that as my priority, my life changed. My life changed. I thought I was helping her. I think she was helping me. That's how the universe works.

1:04:40Darin Olien:Yeah, and you went all in.

1:04:41Catharine Arnston:I went all in.

1:04:42Darin Olien:And you listened to that. And I think, listen, Catherine, I think it is so important, especially today. I've been in the supplement world for 25, 30 years, right? I've seen all of it. I've been in manufacturing facilities. I've seen people put weird shit in. Like I've never understood. I still don't understand how people can sell things that don't have, you know, don't have ethics and everything else. But it's important for people to understand the genesis of, yeah, we're talking about these incredible now products. But these are the muse of your passion, your purpose, your manifestation to represent something that means something to you and something that healed your sister and something that can help people.

1:05:37So for me, that matters the most.

1:05:43Darin Olien:Yeah. Because your company is built upon that. Integrity. Exactly. And in this world and in this space, that's rare. Yeah. Well, thank you for saying that. And there's a reason why I don't align with every other day I get a company coming and I look at it and I go, nope. Right? Or I'm like, I already know where you're getting that from. Nope. Yeah. And so when you and I started talking and you guys were transparent with me and like so I was looking, you sent me the physical, not even PDFs. You sent me the physical third party verifications and I was like, oh, this is number one. This is different.

1:06:33Darin Olien:Yeah. Because I know the difference. I've worked with all the different types of labs. I've been in a lot. And now just hearing you here, and I hope people really, and I know they've already felt that. That's the difference, man. And also to preserve the integrity of this incredible constituents of food. The thing that would always bum me out when I would see a package of something and people were marketing, and I would test it, And I would go to the country of origin where it was coming from. And I'm like, that's not it. It's no longer there. It's neutered. The constituents of what you're marketing is not even close to lining up with what you're selling.

1:07:25Darin Olien:And that to me, I'm a Minnesota kid. I'm a simple what you say is your word. And when I see people overtly and then as a company-wide level don't act with integrity, that is horrifying to me. For what? For a profit?

1:07:50Catharine Arnston:Yeah.

1:07:50Darin Olien:When your roots are rooted in health, vitality, and preserving this incredible food so that it can deliver the nutrients to help the body do its thing, it's the best. Yeah.

1:08:05Catharine Arnston:Well, I explain to people because I used to speak at entrepreneur conferences. When you build a company, you have to make a choice. Are you going to build a brand or are you going to sell stuff? Building a brand is like falling in love because it takes a very long time. It's based on integrity. People have to trust you. And those things take a long time. When you're selling stuff, it's strictly transactional. So it's sort of like going speed dating. So do you want to do speed dating or do you want to fall in love? I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to have meaning. I wanted to be meaningful. And that takes integrity and time.

1:08:44Catharine Arnston:And in this world that we live in where people are hustling and there's so much pressure to perform and make money and profits and flip and whatever, that's why I couldn't take investors because I knew they would not see my vision or they would make me cut corners. And so I just thought, I'm going to just have to tough this out. And I didn't know it was going to take this long. But I'm in. I'm in. I'm in for life. Like, what else do I want to do? Nothing. changing the trajectory of someone's health is so meaningful for me and we get testimonials every day from people whether they're you know they're no longer incontinent or their kids no longer have you know they're on the spectrum the the testimonials are crazy and that's what we live for that's what i live for um i do have a larger team now and i have to build a successful company because they have families to support and of course you know but i i'm just the voice of algae I, Mother Nature, the universe somehow tapped me on the shoulder and said, you're the one.

1:09:42Catharine Arnston:And I am very proud to be the one. But I can do it because it's not about me. I'm just the voice. I am just the conduit to bring this food that's been here for 4 billion years. It's a multi-billion dollar industry in Asia. They don't leave their house in Japan without chlorella every day. They understand what it does. so this is not about me this is me trying to find a way to communicate mother nature's gift to us for health by the way that blue phycocyanin one of the things it does kills cancer cells proven so who wants chemotherapy nobody i know mother nature has given us a way to protect us from that just like superoxide dismutase protects you from your mitochondria so you don't have heart disease all the things that we need mother nature has provided to us and some of it is in the algae i just needed to find a way to help America and anyone outside of Asia understand it.

1:10:38Catharine Arnston:But they live in such a fast-paced world where it's so transactional, just helping someone to trust me. Listen, please, listen. I've recorded 200 teaching videos, only a minute and a half, because that's about the length of span anyone will spend with a video. And I'm doing another 100 in a couple of weeks. I will do anything to help people understand what this stuff will do for you if you get it from a healthy, safe source like us.

1:11:06Darin Olien:Yeah, it's beautiful. And I can tell the passion and the purpose behind it, and that resonates with me a thousand percent. On a practical level, you know, these bits of power that you're selling.

1:11:23Catharine Arnston:I like that, bits of power. These bits of power that you're selling.

1:11:26Darin Olien:What are the best ways that people, number one, I think any way you can get them in your body is good. Yeah. How are people consuming these? What are the favorite ways that you see the customers getting these in?

1:11:43Catharine Arnston:Well, I had some to show, but they're little tiny tablets about the size of a baby aspirin. So they're very tiny. Spirulina is very chewy because of the high protein and the high essential fatty acids. So most people prefer to swallow the spirulina tablets. If you can chew it, it's great, but it is an acquired flavor. I love chewing it. You chew them? God bless you. All right. Of course. All right. I did this morning. And I throw it on my smoothie bowl.

1:12:09Darin Olien:And I just like, because I'm weird, I love chewing it because I can feel it. I can feel the vitality. I can, yeah.

1:12:20Catharine Arnston:Yeah, it's like plugging yourself into an electric current. So swallowing is one option. Mixing them. Chlorella tastes better. So if you want to try chewing one of them, I would start with chlorella because it tastes more like a soy nut or sunflower seeds. They both, particular chlorella, taste delicious with sea salt on them. I have a flavor. It's a salt and vinegar flavor. They both taste delicious. I mix them with pistachio nuts or macadamia nuts. When you mix macadamia nuts and the chlorella, the recovery bits, you think you're eating potato chips. I swear to God. So I'm going to come up with a trail mix.

1:12:53Catharine Arnston:I'm going to call it mac and bits. Cute, right? Right. Because it will be so cleansing. But anyway, so eat it with a trail mix, grind it up, and put it into a smoothie. You will need to grind it up because they don't chop up necessarily in your smoothie. My sister puts them on top.

1:13:10Darin Olien:But it's easy to swallow, even if they're not chewed up. I'm just like, swallow it.

1:13:13Catharine Arnston:Yeah, you could do a handful, 10, 20, 30. Honestly, they go down in a pop. Our marathon runners, triathletes, they take 30 before a race, usually for a pre-workout. Take it about 10 or 15 minutes before your workout. It'll get into your – that spirulina is the pre-workout. And then they take 15 more each hour to sustain their energy and focus.

1:13:33Darin Olien:Yeah, and the HevaGlo and the oxygen transport, all of that stuff is huge.

1:13:36Catharine Arnston:Yeah, so swallow them, chew them. They're food, so you can have as much as you want, but 10 is an entry level, 20 is better. 30 a day would be therapeutic amounts or have 30 tablets of spirulina for lunch. There's only one calorie per tablet. If anyone's on a GLP-1, please take spirulina because it will protect your muscle. You won't get muscle wasting. but usually people have the spirulina in the morning or the afternoon or before work because that's when you're tired and hungry and you want energy and then they generally take the chlorella before bed you could again take it anytime you want it helps with digestion helps with bowel movements it helps with the repair and your body goes to repair and detox when you're sleeping so taking it before bed is really will get the maximum value yeah thank you for that i'm gonna

1:14:23Darin Olien:I'm going to try it with, I've got to give you my Baruca nuts I found in Brazil. Oh, yeah, I read about that. They're so incredible. And I think that combination is going to be incredible.

1:14:33Catharine Arnston:But adding it to nuts is a great idea for a snack in the midday or something.

1:14:38Darin Olien:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect.

1:14:38Catharine Arnston:We have a lot of hikers who love to take them because they come in little pouches because you need maximum nutrition when you're hiking and you want too much weight. So the tablets are tiny. You throw a few of the pouches in your knapsack. You're good to go.

1:14:53Darin Olien:And I got travel coming up, and I always now take those little packets with me. Oh, look at just some more. Great for the plane. Yeah. Because when we're filming and stuff, it is so intense. Yeah. And I got to be sharp. Yeah. I got to be aware. Yeah. And I literally average because of the schedule and the upside down sleep cycles. I get like four or five hours of sleep. And so when I'm traveling, I actually try to dump more nutrition in my body because I know my body's under different stresses.

1:15:30Catharine Arnston:And you said you're leaving when? This week, yeah.

1:15:32Darin Olien:Or, excuse me, next week.

1:15:33Catharine Arnston:We might be able to overnight use some more individual pouches because they're unbelievable for your focus. I'll throw as many as I can in myself. I'll call the office.

1:15:45Darin Olien:Thank you so much for this deep dive in one of my loves, and that is microalgae. And it's wonderful to meet you.

1:15:57Catharine Arnston:The algae gal, that's my name. The algae gal, I love that.

1:16:00Darin Olien:Well, someone has to take it to that place and to get it commercialized and make it, you've made it easier to consume. I used to get frozen delivered to my house. And honestly, it was very expensive. So much of it went bad. I know. And I would still do it. And it was hundreds of dollars I was losing. And I didn't know you existed. And so when I found it, and when I did the deep dive on your company, I was like, oh, my God. This is awesome. because again I'm not here to to like I'm just here to say listen this is something I've done for a long time yeah I've looked at facilities around the world growing it some were horrifying again I spent I was in the trenches of where most supplements were coming from so when I say they weren't done well they weren't done well so I I wouldn't gamble on companies because it was it was just horrible.

1:17:08Darin Olien:So anyway, it's a long way of saying thank you for the work you're doing and for other people to now benefit from something that's super important for their health.

1:17:17Catharine Arnston:Well, I'm on a mission. So hopefully in 10 years, I think taking algae tablets, we will say, did you take your bits today? Because they're bits of nutrition. We're trying to separate ourselves from the supplement industry because we aren't a supplement. And we do have a discount code for your listeners, Darren, if they come to our website, energybits.com, and works on canisters, bags, pouches, just your name. So Darren, D-A-R-I-N, and it works on everything.

1:17:49Darin Olien:All of you have a discount. You get a discount. Thanks to Catherine.

1:17:56Catharine Arnston:Love you to bits is our little saying. Love you to bits. Yeah, it's Mother Nature at her finest, and we just protect her so that she can protect you. We're better together, as I say with algae. Better together. Better together.

1:18:14Darin Olien:Mother Nature wins every time, so let's go with her. That's right. Amen to that. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's great. Awesome. So good. Woo! Holy shit, that was awesome. Wow.

1:18:57Well, Thank you.

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