357: Debunking Algae Myths

Catharine Arnston And Ashley James

In this podcast, you will discover the truths about the nutrient-dense algae Spirulina and Chlorella which would help debunk myths about them. Find out why these algae could be the answer to the world’s problem with food crisis.

[00:00:03] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast! I'm your host Ashley James. This is episode 357. I am so excited about today's interview. We're back on the show. Catharine Arnston was the founder of Energybits. We've had her on the show for three episodes before. So…here's your fourth episode with us.

[00:00:27] Catharine Arnston: [laughing]

[00:00:28] Ashley James: Welcome back!

[00:00:28] Catharine Arnston: I'm a … frequent flyer with Ashley James. [laughs]

[00:00:31] Ashley James: Yes, you are. Frequent flyer for sure. Catherine was on episode 234, 265, and 266. I highly recommend going back and listening to those episodes to dive deeper into this topic because we've talked about how Chlorella and Spirulina, how these crops are made, the science, the safety studies behind it as a food source, the nutrient values of it, why they're so beneficial in terms of how they work to detoxify the body and provide really readily available protein. Also, we talked about things like Vitamin K2. We dived into so many topics in those first three interviews. Today we want to do some major debunking [laughs].

[00:01:16] Catharine Arnston: [laughs]

[00:01:17] Ashley James: I'm so glad you came back on the show for this specifically. Dr. Andrew Weil who's quite famous in the holistic health space and I really value a lot of the things he's brought to the space.

[00:01:28] Catharine Arnston: Yes. We have a lot of respect for him.

[00:01:30] Ashley James: We do. We have a lot of respect for his work and in no way is this going to be bashing anyone. If you're regulars, you know that I don't do kind of fearmongering and bashing of other people. But we have to understand that when someone writes a very negative article about something, it does cause hysteria. And so, after he wrote an article about the dangers of toxic Chlorella and toxic algae and you don't want to eat it because it's so dangerous, there are so many toxins in it, and he kind of got people in the panic. And since algae in general, Chlorella and Spirulina, has been seen many years as a superfood, also now, people are afraid and I got a few emails, a few Facebook messages of listeners going… “You've been telling me that Chlorella's been really healthy and now Andrew Weil saying it's not, who do I believe?”

You know I'm really afraid and so I reached out to Catharine because of course you are a great expert in this field and Catharine said “Thank you for reaching out. Here's all the research that proves that … his article is flawed. We were just discussing before I hit “record” is that I personally know a lot of heavy hitters in this whole holistic health space. People like, for example, Dr. Mercola. These people who write all the time and we think every article comes right from the doctor themselves but…

[00:03:01] Catharine Arnston: But… [laughs]

[00:03:02] Ashley James: But… [laughs]

[00:03:04] Catharine Arnston:   Not so… [laughs]

[00:03:04] Ashley James: The truth is most doctors, they have blogs, write articles, they are not actually the person writing, they have a whole team of people that they hire to be writers, to create content so that they can have more clicks and get more (you know) make more money and  seems like likely he had his writers do this whole article that is kind of set the whole holistic world in a  frenzy and like you said, you saw that recently, Andrew Weil posted another post about the benefits of algae, so he's contradicting himself…

[00:03:39] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:03:39] Ashley James: …which just goes to show he has a team of writers, they're all coming up with their own stuff ‘cos they have to create click baits so they want to put fear in you by making this like, “Oh, the dangers of algae and watch out and there are toxins in it and so then you click on it through his newsletter, through whatever you saw on Facebook and it gets the clicks

[00:03:56] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:03:55] Ashley James: Now he's talking about the benefits of algae and they totally contradict each other. Catherine, I love that you are grounded in science. You have so many PubMed studies that you're going to give us, all the links in those studies are going to be in the show in today's podcast learntruehealth.com, everyone is going to be able to go and see the actual research. But you're here to debunk it so first of all, for those who've never read the article that Dr. Andrew Weil or his staff wrote about toxins in algae, could you please illustrate what that article says and then what's the actual truth?

[00:04:33] Catharine Arnston: Yeah. Well, as you said, I also have a lot of respect for Dr. Weil, and he was one of the first out there in holistic health, natural health but you have to realize that he runs a business enterprise and then this article where he is writing quite inflammatory comments about Spirulina and Chlorella that are incorrect, he also directs you to purchase his products to get the nutrients that would be found naturally in algae. You have to realize that everybody's got something to sell you, so you have to read between the lines, obviously, I'm also selling algae and I'd like you to buy ours nonetheless…

His article was about the fact that there are toxins and there's two terms that are often used: one is “mycotoxins“, neurotoxins, and something like called BMAA and they're basically all toxins so, in the article where he said there were toxins in Spirulina, he was referring to a study that was done on an island in the Polynesian area, what they had done was they found that there were, the natives in this small island, a lot of them were having mental health issues and it turns out they were eating seeds from a particular plant and then they found out that there were Spirulina growing in the roots of the soil of these plants and so what they did was they tested the seeds of the plants. They did not test Spirulina. They did not test anything to do with Spirulina. They tested the seeds in the plants. And found that there were micro neurotoxins in the seeds. And from that, they made a huge leap of assumptions which in the scientific world, you can't connect the dots here. Neurotoxins came from the Spirulina… well, actually, it wasn't even Spirulina growing in the soil. It was blue-green algae.

Now, you have to realize, algae are like a category, a food category. Just like you have fruits and within fruits you have bananas and apples or you have vegetables, you have Kale and broccoli, so algae is of huge category, and within that you have four sub-categories, you have red algae and brown algae which are basically both seaweeds and then you have blue-green algae and green algae. One of the blue-green algae of probably 25, 000 out there, one of them is Spirulina. And one of the green algae is Chlorella. Now the reason why we sell  Spirulina  and Chlorella  and why these are the two that you'll pretty much see for sale in health food stores is because they're really the only two safe ones that you can eat without having any toxins of any kind and they're harvested, they're grown in freshwater just like maybe tomatoes, it's called hydroponics. They're cultivated crop and ours, we pride ourselves because I spent years trying to find the safest, purest company that would grow it for us. We grow it in freshwater tanks, triple-filtered mountain spring water, water's tested every day, and we put binders when we dry them and we do [inaudible]… anyways, all of which is to say is that, to claim that toxins in any kind of Spirulina which is just one of many blue-green algae are  the equivalent of saying that you tested some water in the swamp and the water was poisonous so therefore don't drink water.

[00:08:18] Ashley James: [laughing]

[00:08:19] Catharine Arnston: That's how ridiculous the huge expanse of connecting the dots is. They were testing blue-green algae that existed in the soil in the roots of these plants, but they didn't test the blue-green algae and it wasn't Spirulina either, it was just a blue-green alga. And what I point out to people is that any algae whether it's blue-green, green, doesn't matter what it is, if it's grown in a swamp, if it's grown in the ocean, if it's grown wild, in soils, it will be toxic. Just like you can't drink water from the swamp or from your toilet or from a river if it's near a polluted area. It is going to be polluted. Algae absorb whatever's in the water so if you test something and any test that you see… any research if they've tested it and the algae are grown in any of the above swamps, ocean, polluted areas, yes, it will have toxins. Just like if you take a glass of water from the swamp, it will be toxic as well.

So, two things here, not only did they not use or test [inaudible 00:09:38] three things, they did not test Spirulina which is a specific strain, so that's number one. And here is making this huge assumption that Spirulina's at fault – it was not. It was some kind of blue-green algae but not Spirulina, number one. Number two, it wasn't harvested blue-green algae, it was the equivalent of growing in the swamp and number three, they didn't test the algae. They tested the seeds that were in the plants that the people were eating [laughs]

[00:10:08] Ashley James: The study that they did, was the conclusion that algae or Spirulina was dangerous or was it the conclusion of Andrew Weil's writers?

[00:10:20] Catharine Arnston: Well, even in the study they indicated that there's still a lot of uncertainty but his writers forgot to mention that or didn't see it, because in so many studies, they're quite long and they're very scientific so it can be, maybe, buried, so that's one thing, and as I mentioned, then he came out with another post that says I'm writing directly from the post now, he says “note however that Spirulina, a common variety of blue-green algae does not produce neurotoxins and was given a favorable safety rating after an extensive review by the United States pharmacology, pharmacopeia dietary supplements information expert committee in 2010 [laughs].

[00:11:12] Ashley James: So that's a different post?

[00:11:14] Catharine Arnston: Completely different post from the same person. In one, he's saying that that the writers used flawed science because they didn't test Spirulina. They just tested the seeds from a plant that had blue-green algae growing in toxic soil [laughs]. It was a wrong assumption anyways and he completely reversed his position in another post. So that's just stuff that he has used. I will provide you and your readers with additional PubMed documents. There's one that says, from a couple of years ago, they studied to see if there was BMAA which is a neurotoxin. At this time, I believe they did study Spirulina and they concluded that there wasn't any in there. And in fact, I reached out to the company, the lab that did the studies for this PubMed article and I'm hopefully going to be retaining them to specifically study our Spirulina and Chlorella, ours specifically Energy Bits and Recovery Bits to prove that there aren't any in ours. This is a very complicated study and the second lab I found in the entire world that has the capability of detecting what's called BMAA. And there's another study that I have that I will share with you, where [I think 00:12:50] this is a number of years ago. They did samples again of blue-green algae, not Spirulina and definitely not Chlorella and they pulled them out of the Klamath Lake and the conclusions were… they did lab tests of the water in the lake and they found that there were toxins and neurotoxins in the lake and therefore any samples that came from the Klamath Lake… of the algae… also had toxins in them. But any algae that were grown agriculturally under pure growing conditions like ours did not. Do you start to see a pattern here?

[00:13:31] Ashley James: Right.

[00:13:31] Catharine Arnston: Anything that's growing wild, you hear about the algae blooms and the toxins… Anything algae that are growing in the ocean, in the lake, in the swamp, anywhere other than closely monitored, carefully harvested in freshwater tanks like ours are, in clean water, will have toxins for sure. Just like if you pull a glass of water out of a dirty river, or a swamp or some polluted area there will be toxins in that too. Compare that to clean… reverse osmosis, or whatever source of water you have. You can't just throw literally the baby out with the bathwater and say “Oh, we tested the swampy water and found toxins so you shouldn't drink water.” That's effectively what they're saying.

[00:14:27] Ashley James: [laughs]

[00:14:28] Catharine Arnston: I mean, it's almost ridiculous when you think about it but I don't want to come down too hard on them because I will tell you: there are very few people in the world and definitely in America that understand algae and have studied algae as much as I have. And I did that because… your listeners know already if they've heard any of my previous podcast interviews with you or read anything about me, I wasn't planning on building a company.

Ten years ago, my younger sister had breast cancer, her oncologist told her to change her diet to an alkaline diet. I helped her research what foods that were because of the phytonutrients and the chlorophyll that builds your immune system. She changed her diet. She went through chemo. She completely healed. I started learning about plant-based nutrition ten years ago when nobody was talking about it and decided it was very powerful, very compelling research and that I was going to try help people eat more plants and then I found out that people don't want to work that hard, know their vegetables and so that when I discovered algae which is the most alkaline plant in the world and a multi-billion dollar industry in Asia and completely either misunderstood or completely just not known in America. I decided I would spend the rest of my life helping people understand algae and why it's probably the safest, purest food that you can put in your body. People are very confused with algae or don't know it and don't know who to trust…

[00:15:58] Ashley James: Yeah.

[00:15:59] Catharine Arnston: And I want to build a big company so that we can have a positive impact in the world and help people around the world get access to algae because even United Nations says it's the answer to world hunger and so endorses it. I don't know if I mentioned earlier but even in January of this year, the United States government, the White House, and the Congress passed the very first Algae Agricultural Act because even they understood now that algae are the most nutrient-dense food in the world. It's the most sustainable crop in the world and it's all grown in Asia. So now, they're trying to encourage farmers here to grow it by providing grants and subsidies. Everyone knows we're going to have a problem providing proper food for the world and we have a problem already in America with our agricultural processes and basically there are no minerals left in the soil and using glyphosate is killing the soil and us, so we need better alternatives and algae is the answer. Algae is truly the answer. I am determined to help people understand this and who to trust what to read, how to understand the differences between the two of them and slowly more and more people will understand algae and it won't be so weird and won't be so confusing.

[00:17:18] Ashley James: [laughing]

[00:17:19] Catharine Arnston: You got to start somewhere. But it is upsetting to me because I know so much to have an article like with Dr. Weil published and I'm sure he didn't even see it. But to have it published with incorrect information and to frighten people unnecessarily, I'm so happy that we can set the records straight. I can provide you and your listeners with the actual scientific documents. They can read them for themselves and they'll come to the same conclusions that I did that there was a huge massive assumption that is basically flawed science. It's very flawed so it's wrong [laughs].

[00:18:03] Ashley James: I was very fascinated to hear in our first interview when you said that algae are the most studied food on the planet. That I believe you said that there were a hundred thousand studies combined – 60,000 of them studying Spirulina and by 40,000 studying Chlorella and that it's been proven to be safe over the last fifty, sixty years. Right?

[00:18:31] Catharine Arnston: Over and over again. Well, in fact, I'm glad you mentioned this. I was invited two weeks ago to speak at a global algae conference.

[00:18:46] Ashley James: [laughing]

[00:18:46] Catharine Arnston: The company that put it on held algae research conferences in Europe for 8 years. And this is the first time they did one in America.

[00:18:53] Ashley James: That's cool.

[00:18:57] Catharine Arnston: I was asked to speak on how to educate consumers of [inaudible 00:19:01] algae which is what I basically do all the time. When I was at the conference and I gave my talk, before I spoke, I asked everybody in the room to raise their hands if they were either a scientist, an agriculturist, an engineer, a production person… basically on the science side of algae. 99% of the hands went up. This is what happens all around the world. All this knowledge about science has stayed within the scientific community for the last 50 years. Scientists like to talk to other scientists. There's no shortage of research and data and PubMed – whether it's about athletic benefits or inflammation reduction or helping with brain functioning or reducing anything – whether it is blood pressure or heart disease, the science is all there.

Nobody [laughs], until me that I am aware of, has been able to dig in to the science and I probably read 2,000 reports at this point and tried to capture the key, sort of takeaways, and rewrite it so that the average consumer, or even practitioners… we were [inaudible 00:20:27] with chiropractors, doctors, functional medicine. They have to know a lot of stuff. Even they don't have the time to really dig through the science and so I'm helping them get sort of the overview of why this stuff works and then if they want to learn more, I can give them the science. I'm the first person to be able to do that for people. It's my pride and joy because I love science and I love helping people. I also do it visually. I design all of our packaging and all of our materials. I want people not to be afraid of algae, to understand that it is a remarkable plant that's a gift from Mother Nature herself and the first life on earth 4 billion years ago. It's something that has been here 4 billion years longer than we have and it's still here. I feel that my path in life is to help people understand algae, why it's good for them, why we need it and help them to understand, how to read between the lines when they see something like Dr. Weil writing about it and casting some confusion in the process.

[00:21:39] Ashley James: It also teaches us to not to be reactionary when we read one headline…

[00:21:45] Catharine Arnston: Right.

[00:21:45] Ashley James: …or one article. Or one article that states one study. We need to go deeper instead of having that immediate reaction of fear because that's what the writer wanted us to have.

[00:21:56] Catharine Arnston: Exactly.

[00:21:56] Ashley James: They wanted us to… like you said that article then sells supplements. What they're trying to do is get all the people that buy algae for their supplements, stop them from doing that and buy theirs instead.

[00:22:09] Catharine Arnston: Right.

[00:22:09] Ashley James: It's a clickbait. Looking now at what you've said, it's even more clear to me that Dr. Weil didn't write that article because when he does do something, it's thorough and it's enlightened. I can definitely that this is just one of those circumstances where the writer of some big doctor has created further myths in the health world. Thank you for clearing up those myths.

[00:22:34] Catharine Arnston: Yeah. I wouldn't fault him because he's such a big guy and he has a magazine. He's got a whole true food. I don't know if you know: he runs, he's a co-owner of True Food restaurants in the California area. He's a busy guy. It's no different than getting angry with your local doctor for not being able to do heart surgery. Algae is a specialty. There are so few people that understand it and can explain it as I can, not to pat myself on the back, but I'm doing this really as public service almost. He doesn't have the time to devote algae… ultimate irony like in the next few years. He's third selling [laughs] Spirulina or Chlorella.

[00:23:17] Ashley James: I bet.

[00:23:19] Catharine Arnston: That would be like touché. Right? [laughs]

[00:23:20] Ashley James: Right. [laughs]

[00:23:22] Catharine Arnston: Proof that the was wrong. [laughs]

[00:23:25] Ashley James: I got into Chlorella when I had Dr. Klinghardt on the show and we've talked about this in past interviews so we're not going to get too into it.  But for those who haven't listened to your other three interviews with me. When I got Dr. Klinghardt on the show, he's been a doctor for forty years and he's helped reverse autism and reverse cancer and autoimmune disease and things that people often go to miss the absolute last resort and they've been very sick. I've been to his clinic and I met the people fly in from around the world. His clinic is only ten or fifteen minutes away from where I live but people fly in around the world so I've been there a few times then I've got to meet the people that fly in for all kinds of conditions and one of the first things he has people do is start eating Chlorella immediately. Most of his protocols for most diseases is to eat Chlorella.

[00:24:19] Catharine Arnston: Right.

[00:24:21] Ashley James: 30 to 40 bits at a time. For those who've never had energy bits: they're like the size of M&Ms, like…

[00:24:33] Catharine Arnston: Baby aspirin.

[00:24:34] Ashley James: Baby aspirin. I think the last time I said they're like little aspirins, but I don't want people to think that they're pills that you swallow. It's more like chewing.

[00:24:43] Catharine Arnston: Right. Yeah.

[00:24:44] Ashley James: It's like if M&Ms were green and healthy for you, right?

[00:24:48] Catharine Arnston: Right.

[00:24:48] Ashley James: [laughs] I started off by… because I haven't discovered you yet… I tried a different brand, one that Dr. Klinghardt I think partially owns, he was like “This one's the best!” Right?

[00:25:04] Catharine Arnston: [laughs]

[00:25:06] Ashley James: I couldn't stand up the flavor. It was fishy to me. I really didn't like the flavor, but I wanted the health benefits, so I was doing different things to try to make it taste good. And then you and I met digitally, virtually online. I tried Energybits. You have Chlorella and Spirulina. Your Energybits are the Spirulina, your Recoverybits. Energybits.com is the website but when someone wants to buy the Chlorella, which I'll explain in a sec., Chlorella is the Recoverybits. When I tried your Recoverybits, I was really surprised. They tasted good.

[00:25:44] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:25:44] Ashley James: And that they became almost like a… The first few times, I was like “Oh, wow! That was a different flavor. I was expecting not to like it and then I was like, “Wait, this is good.” And then my son, who was a toddler at that time, I think he was two, I was trying to do everything to get veggies into him, loved them and he still does. He loves the game of chewing them and making his tongue turn green. And we stick our tongues out at each other. The Chlorella and your Spirulina both taste really good to me.

[00:26:17] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:26:18] Ashley James: I have friends who make trail mixes out of them and they love to send me the recipe like walnuts and raisins or cran raisins and pistachios, dark chocolate… They send me these different recipes, but they come up with trail mix where they mix the Energybits in and I have friends who told me that they can't believe it. They have a handful of your Energybits and they not only feel full, they actually [inaudible 00:26:43] more energy. And I noticed it, too. When it's just yourself noticing something, you're like “Maybe it's a [inaudible 00:26:49]. You get five friends and they're all like “Yes, I really feel it.” The Chlorella, you don't have to chew them. You can throw them in your blender with water and make a smoothie out of it. Not a big deal if you don't want to chew something that's green. But the reason why Dr. Klinghardt tells everyone to do Chlorella every day. It's that it's a chelate, it's a binder.

[00:27:11] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:27:12] Ashley James: It binds to heavy metals like mercury and aluminum. It even binds to toxins and pulls them out of your body.  And when you were talking about how algae act like a sponge, that if you grow algae in swamp water, that the algae are going to be toxic because it's actually sucking the toxins out of the swamp water…

[00:27:30] Catharine Arnston: Right. [inaudible 00:27:30]

[00:27:33] Ashley James: Is there some sort of a seam mechanism that when we eat them, it sucks…

[00:27:37] Catharine Arnston: No.

[00:27:38] Ashley James: No?

[00:27:39] Catharine Arnston: No. I'm glad you mentioned that. Algae is a plant so it's absorbing whatever, it's a living organism, whatever's in the medium that is in existence, so the medium is water. It's just absorbing it. The way that it pulls out toxins is quite different. Just to make a distinction, Spirulina and we call ours Energybits is because Spirulina gives you energy. It satisfies your hunger and gets you focused. It has no cellulose wall because technically, it's a bacterium like I mentioned it gets absorbed really quickly. Chlorella is the only one…Spirulina has a lot of chlorophyll and is used for cleansing, but it is not a detoxer. Chlorella is a detoxing agent, is a chelator because unlike Spirulina, it has no cellulose wall. Chlorella has the hardest cellulose wall in the plant kingdom, so hard that actually it has to be cracked for production or it wouldn't absorb the nutrients. It's that hard cellulose wall that attaches to toxins in your body. It doesn't matter whether it's lead, mercury, aluminum, alcohol, lactic acid, radiation – it just knows what is inappropriate in your body, and it attaches it and pulls it out of your body. Quite different from when it's just sitting in the water, it just absorbs as a growing organism absorbs whatever's in the water but the mechanism by which it pulls out toxins is different. It has nothing to do with the absorption, the attachment to the toxins.

A really important thing to note is that not only Chlorella pulls out toxins because of this attachment capability of its cellular wall, but it also has the highest concentration of chlorophyll in the world. That's why it's called Chlorella. It's got a thousand times more than greens, 25 times more chlorophyll than even liquid chlorophyll. The reason why I want to mention this is because only about 10% of chlorophyll is absorbed in your stomach. The rest of it stays in your entire digestive tract so it travels through your liver and all the way down to your colon. Everything that you're going to be reading, if you're not already reading, is all about how you have to maintain the health of your cells, your cell walls, your mitochondria, and your liver. Your liver is where the action starts, and so chlorophyll cleanses all those. It cleanses your liver. Because it's got this capability to absorb carcinogens and it's because it's a fat-based pigment, it's very cleansing to the cell walls and because chlorophyll is a fat-based pigment, it heals the cell wall.

I tell people “If you don't have fats in your diet, your cell walls get really brittle and dysfunctional and so they can't let nutrients in, or toxins out. It's like having a dirty window because you can't let the sun in, and you can't see out. Chlorophyll is effectively like window washers. It's cleaning your cell walls so that nutrients can get in, and toxins can get out which, of course, facilitates healthy mitochondria. Chlorella has that two punch; it's got that high-cellulose wall that pulls toxins and it's got the highest chlorophyll in the world. It also has other wonderful [inaudible 00:31:10] bits that we can talk about, a little bit like K2 which pulls out calcium from your blood vessels and puts it into your bones and prevents heart disease and prevents osteoporosis. It has the highest concentration of RNA and DNA in the world which, as you age, your cells get damaged, so this helps your cells to go back healthier. It's quite a remarkable plant of the plant kingdom. It's great that you mentioned that when you tasted Dr. Klinghardt's and compared it to ours. You'd think that something like algae that are grown in water, it would be the same wherever you grow it but it's not. It's like wine.

[00:31:54] Ashley James: [laughing]

[00:31:55] Catharine Arnston: I like Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. I am very fascinated with my Sauvignon Blancs. I have tried them from Sancerres from Italy, I've tried Sauvignon Blancs from California. Nothing matches that fabulous fruity flavor from the Marlborough area in New Zealand. Algae is the same way. In Hawaii, it's really mild. In India, algae is very pungent like horse manure, the stuff from China, who knows what's in there, that's where all the cheap stuff comes from, Japan doesn't grow Spirulina and we don't know whether there's radiation in the water so it really depends on what country you get the algae from and which company is growing it for you, how rigorous their growing mechanisms are. To ensure that you're getting something that's really pure, fresh, and clean, and nutrient-dense because there's also a different strain of algae just like there are different types of beef. We can have Kobe beef, or we can have, I don't know what they call it, Mcdonald's hamburger beef.

[00:33:01] Ashley James: [laughs] It's soy lent green.

[00:33:04] Catharine Arnston: Yeah, so there's a lot of variety and that's part of what people need to understand. The source that you use is 99% of everything. You could try a cheap algae, which may come in a tablet and eat it, or you can try ours and I'm so glad that you're chewing yours and in fact, I love them so much and I started about six months ago eating them with almonds or eating them with macadamia and then I started with even having them with just sea salt, or almonds, or macadamias, you're in for a treat.

We're hoping to do trail mixes next year with all those, or in fact, we're working with the spa community and we're putting together like an algae sampler package for them to offer to their clients. Just like they have a granola-tasting bar. We're going to give them an algae-tasting bar. You can get some Chlorella, add in some almonds or some shaved coconut chips or banana chips. Man, now, you're getting a snack that's healthy for you. It's truly a snack. This stuff is healing. We're in such a toxic world that we've got to get something started in our body to start pulling all those metals out of our brain, our liver, and everywhere else. I am very proud of our Chlorella. I love our Spirulina, too. It's like having children: “Yeah, I love you, too. I love you. too.”

[00:34:34] Ashley James: [laughing]

[00:34:36] Catharine Arnston: “Don't worry, Mama loves you.” [laughs] Your listeners have children, so you cannot show anybody too much favoritism because someone is going to get really upset so Spirulina has its place. Most would find it a tougher flavor to enjoy but it is totally chewable but the Chlorella, I tell you, is a game-changer. I don't think I can live without it quite honestly. It's my favorite food in the whole world.

[00:35:03] Ashley James: Well, I am a big fan, too. Dr. Kinghardt says to take your Chlorella before you get in the sauna or before you do something that aids in detoxification as well because it will further give you the benefits. When I think I already know everything there is to know, you always surprise me…

[00:35:23] Catharine Arnston: [laughs]

[00:35:24] Ashley James: …and bring in more information. That was so cool. I didn't really know that Chlorella was fat-soluble so that it's aiding in the liver so much more because of that which is really…

[00:35:38] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:35:40] Ashley James: Scientists are using algae now in oil spills to soak up oil spills to break apart or digest oil spills or even finding out ways of digesting plastic. There are so many applications but the application that they've been researching for well over 50 years, has been how to end world hunger. You've talked about it before, Spirulina: why it's so popular to study it. It's a crop that grows really fast. We have to have sunlight and very clean water. Last time I had you on episode 266, you talked about the potential for growth in the United States and I think that it was sort of in talks in the Senate or in the House or somewhere in D.C. It was getting it passed.

[00:36:38] Catharine Arnston: Yup. It's getting passed now.

[00:36:39] Ashley James: That's very exciting.

[00:36:40] Catharine Arnston: And I just want to point out that CBD oil now is like everywhere.

[00:36:46] Ashley James: Right.

[00:36:47] Catharine Arnston: It had been under the radar, under current new development for a probably a decade but it wasn't until 2018 farm bill that legalized CBD oil that as a result of that farm bill, that's when CBD oil industry exploded. It's taking off and someone said to me that they felt that humping algae were the answers to everything, and I said “Oh, I think I have to agree [inaudible 00:37:15] that one. The farm bills of 2018 are what spurred the CBD oil growth and the farm bill this year that includes the algae agricultural act has already spurring interests in algae here in America. It's going to take a little while to kick in but trust me, algae is probably going to be the most important  crop of the 24th century because it has all the nutrients and I point out that: farmers that grow corn, or weed, or so many are selling crops for us that are not that really healthy for us and require a lot of water mass. Did you know that 80% of the freshwater in our aquifers isn't used by consumers? It's for agricultural purposes.

[00:38:06] Ashley James: It's actually for making, most of it, feed for animals. So why not cut out the middleman and just eat plants?

[00:38:16] Catharine Arnston: Yeah, exactly, it’s destroying the plants, destroying our aquifers and you get one crop a year. You grow your corn; you get one crappy crop a year. With algae, it takes months to grow and a couple of weeks to dry so you can get 10-12 crops a year on the same amount of soil. And requires a third of the water. There's no carbon footprint. There's no garbage, there's nothing. You can reuse the water. It can grow on arable land. You can grow these things on deserts as long as there's sunlight and a really great clean source of water so that's why the government sat up and took notice. They know all about nutrition. They know that [inaudible 00:39:09] all the science about it. They know that it's growing in other countries. They realized they can get some really great agricultural crops from it and so they're really encouraging farmers to grow. I certainly hope to grow it in America. It could be well for 5 or 10 years.

When I was in that algae conference, they pointed out some of the folks, the people from Florida, and they pointed out that in Florida, the orange groves were hit by some sort of light of some kind. There's a lot of lands now available to grow crops. They can't grow the oranges any longer. I'd always assume we would grow it in [Nevada 00:39:51] or maybe Southern California but I'm going to circle back and take a look at Florida. You'll never know, right?

[00:39:59] Ashley James: You just want to make sure wherever your growing is far from where people are spraying…

[00:40:05] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:40:06] Ashley James: …of crops and spraying pesticides. Like in Texas, there's just so much spraying of mosquitoes and things like that.

[00:40:14] Catharine Arnston: I know. You need to be really careful. Yeah.

[00:40:16] Ashley James: I'm so excited about the amount of readily absorbed protein that's in Spirulina. It is the food that people can live off. Right? Someone can buy a bunch of packs of your energy bits and use them as emergency storable food.

[00:40:34:05] Catharine Arnston: Yeah. There's this term for the people that think the world is going to end…

[00:40:40:08] Ashley James: “Preppers.”

[00:40:41:13] Catharine Arnston: Preppers. Yeah. They do buy a lot of ours because we do have to put an expiry date on the bag as required by FDA but literally it never goes bad. You can have this stuff for 20 years and as long as you keep in the pack, it doesn't have to be refrigerated. Nothing. It's there. A funny side now is that LGLs will never die if their growing conditions deteriorate, it just goes into hibernation until the sun comes back or the water conditions come back. There was an article, I think in National Geographic about some explorers that were in the arctic circle. They took a little chip of glacier from like three billion years ago and apparently, there are a few algae attached to it, so they brought it back and put it in a petri dish and put some water on it. This three-billion-year-old piece of algae started growing.

[00:41:34:04] Ashley James: That's so cool.

[00:41:35:23] Catharine Arnston: Like seriously. “A” – it lasts forever, and “B” – the protein in both Spirulina or Chlorella is already in amino acid form. When you eat animal protein, your body has to break it down to amino before it can be absorbed. It can take up to three days for that process to happen if you don't have the factors and co-factors, you may end up only absorbing 10%. So let's say 50 grams of chicken for dinner; within a couple of days, you may have only absorbed 5 grams of a [deci 00:42:11:12] amino acids. With algae, because the species is Spirulina because the proteins are already in amino acid form. Your body can absorb it. It gets 99% absorbed. It's called “bioavailable” within minutes. One serving of our tablets, either Spirulina or Chlorella, gives you 5 grams of protein. So 5 grams of a single serving of our algae tablets is really the equivalent to your body as 50 grams of animal protein because you end up in many cases only with 5 grams.

Obviously, for vegans, that's really important because they're always looking for more high protein sources and I also want to point out, we're talking about Spirulina, it has the nutrient profile specifically on the amino acid side that's almost identical to mother's breast milk. it's all the same amino acids in the same proportions. It also something called “GLA” which is an essential fatty acid that's really important for your brain. And the only place that has more GLA is mother's breast milk. And the reason…

[00:43:22:29] Ashley James: Wow.

[00:43:23:21] Catharine Arnston:  …why is because for baby's brains to double, triple in size within the first year or two after birth. It's very tough to get mother's breast milk after you age, too.

[00:43:34:17] Ashley James: [laughs]

[00:43:36:25] Catharine Arnston: If you want the same benefits as mother's breast milk, Spirulina is your answer. And of course, you get all the other benefits like 40 other vitamins and minerals you don't find in mother's breast milk. It's pretty cool.

[00:43:51.16] Ashley James: I love it. Yeah. I like that you brought up that Chlorella, like the word “Chlorella” you have to think of the chlorophyll because I've drunk liquid chlorophyll before. They usually…

[00:44:02:26] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:44:02:25] Ashley James:  …buy it with like, it has peppermint oil [inaudible 00:44:05.25] so it's like “Mmm, it's minty.” I learn this like, I don't know in the 90s, that if you drink chlorophyll that your poop wouldn't smell; that your gas wouldn't smell. For people who have really bad digestive problems, bad-smelling gas or maybe they're just going through something, right?

[00:44:23:07] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:44:23:07] Ashley James: They're trying to dial in their own diet, but they've got stuff going on, that drinking liquid chlorophyll will help neutralize. It's like a deodorant for your gut because it's neutralizing your toxins.

[00:44:34:19] Catharine Arnston: Right.

[00:44:35:24] Ashley James: I remember, I think I was a teenager, drinking going like “My poop doesn't smell [inaudible 00:44:38:28] and it also turns your poop green which is great for St. Patrick's Day. Like “what's going on down there?”

[00:44:46:21] Catharine Arnston: Right. Right. [laughs]

[00:44:46:01] Ashley James: I was just like “This is the coolest thing in the world. How did they not know about this? And what you're saying is that when you eat your Chlorella, your Recoverybits, you're getting way more chlorophyll so it's more cost-effective because I think those bottles of good liquid chlorophyll can be quite expensive. You're saying you're getting way more [00:45:11.16] by getting your Recoverybits, your Chlorella. And then if someone wants to make it liquid, they can throw it in a blender with some water…

[00:45:20:13] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:45:20:29] Ashley James: Make a smoothie or whatever or chew them up.

[00:45:23:25] Catharine Arnston: People who get wheatgrass shots… it has 25 times more than wheatgrass.

[00:45:28:01] Ashley James: Wow.

[00:45:29:05] Catharine Arnston: Liquid chlorophyll is made from alfalfa sprouts. There's no comparison. I call it efficient nutrition because it has such high concentrated amounts. I mentioned this previously and I'll mention it again because it has always stunned me… Anybody's welcome to go online and check this out because it's the truth. The chemical composition of your blood, your hemoglobin is identical to chlorophyll with the exception of one atom; in your blood. there's an iron atom in the middle and chlorophyll has to make this amount identical.

I tell people “It's got to be a tip-off about how important chlorophyll is to your body and where [inaudible 00:46:11.13] ran out of blood for transfusions for the injury they used to give them liquid chlorophyll because it would help them heal as fast as a blood transfusion. Chlorophyll builds your blood. End of story. It builds everything. If you want to get chlorophyll, go ahead and have salads, I love salads, but you're not going to get much chlorophyll out of it because our soils are so damaged. We really are eating for entertainment now.

[00:46:36:08] Ashley James: [laughs]

[00:46:38:23] Catharine Arnston: If you really want nutrition, you've got to go to places like algae because there's nowhere else that's going to give you the nutrient value. Chlorella, which we call our Recoverybits because it helps you recover health. Hands down, it's scientifically documented with the highest concentration of chlorophyll as well as other things. It is pretty amazing. If there are any moms listening and can't get their kids to eat vegetables, just give them a few tablets a day and their chlorophyll needs will certainly be met. Phytonutrient needs will be met, and probably their protein so don't worry [laughs].

[00:47:17:10] Ashley James: Right. Go listen to the previous episodes. I don't want to redo the whole story because for those who have heard it, they want to hear it again. My son, the first time I tried to get him to eat, he was about two years old. I tried to get him to eat the Energybits. He was giving me a look like because he's not going to eat anything green. He just went through that face, it was like: “I don't want any vegetables with green. He was eating vegetables yesterday and I was not. I played the game right: I chew them and stick my tongue out and my tongue was green. He's like “Oh, that is cool.” You can…

[00:47:53:00] Catharine Arnston: [laughing]

[00:47:55:08] Ashley James:  …get kids to like it. And then he…

[00:47:56:09] Catharine Arnston: Yeah.

[00:47:57:05] Ashley James: …calls them green crackers or green cookies, “Can I have green crackers?” because they crunch like crackers. He loves them as a snack.

[00:48:09:17] Catharine Arnston: Yeah. Pets love them, too, by the way [laughs].

[00:48:11:16] Ashley James: Oh, I've got to try that. The Chlorella, or Spirulina, or both?

[00:48:17:19] Catharine Arnston: Yeah. Either one. Sometimes, they show a preference for one or the other. The animals are so smart. They know what' good for them. A guy, who has been a customer for a while, sent me an email. It was a couple of years ago. He's a hiker. He went out backpacking. His camp was raided one night by a couple of big black bears so he took off, and when he came back, his bag is full of supplements – they were all still there but the bags of Energybits and Recoveybits, he says, were ripped open and licked clean [laughs].

[00:48:47:08] Ashley James: [laughing]

[00:48:50:13] Catharine Arnston: Bears know what's good for them. Right? [laughs]

[00:48:51:24] Ashley James: Oh. That is too funny.

[00:48:53:18] Catharine Arnston: I laughed too hard when I read that one.

[00:48:57:05] Ashley James: That is too funny.

[00:48:57:26] Catharine Arnston: Even at the expense of treatment for your pets, but hey, we want them to be healthy as well. it's really good for them.

[00:49:05:02] Ashley James:  Last time, we spoke… you had a customer, right? It brought tears to my eyes. That she is a young mother with young kids and going through chemotherapy and very ill. Do you have any updates on her story?

[00:49:23:10] Catharine Arnston: I don't. In fact, I was thinking about that the other day. I wanted to find out and this is a woman who had been sick for about 8 months, bed-ridden, and somebody who was a customer of ours. I sent her a couple of bags, one of Energybits and one of Recovery. We subsequently gifted her some. Within a week, he was able to get out of bed and she tried everything. Her children were so relieved and made sure mommy took her green medicine.

[00:49:52:03] Ashley James: [laughs]

[00:49:53:16] Catharine Arnston: We continue to get people telling us allergies have gone away. They don't have to take their allergy medication. It's like a natural reduction of the anti-histamine. We've had people tell us that they don't need their pressure medication any longer. I always urge people to talk to your doctor about any kind of decrease in any medications that you're having, perhaps you can start taking some of the algae while you're taking whatever you're doing and see how you're feeling.

[00:50:29:23] Ashley James: Right.

[00:50:31:11] Catharine Arnston: There's this one customer, when I [tripped in 00:50:31.09], she forgot her meds and so she just doubled up on her Spirulina and after her 10-day trip she came back and she realized, she didn't need them anymore. She never continued to take them.

Another gentleman who was on a restricted income, he's retired, he emails us all the time because, I think he's about 70, and all his friends have either heart disease, cancer, [inaudible 00:50:57.25] sick. He says “I don't take any [inaudible 00:50:59.04] except your algae and I try to get them to take it because I feel great and I don't even have the expense of health insurance I used to have. It keeps him healthy. He doesn't have to take drugs. He doesn't have to spend a lot of money on other health care issues. I'm just proud of what else it does for people [laughs].

[00:51:24:22] Ashley James: Awesome. It's so cool.

[00:51:26:04] Catharine Arnston: Yeah. I know a lot of your listeners are women and I did want to see if we could talk about osteoporosis, heart disease. I don't think we covered that in the other interviews.

[00:51:38:09] Ashley James: Let's do it. We did talk about K2. Let's dive into osteoporosis…

[00:51:42:01] Catharine Arnston: Okay.

[00:51:42:13] Ashley James: …and heart diseases and how we can use algae to support our bodies and not [inaudible 00:51:47.08] diseases.

[00:51:50.07] Catharine Arnston: The K2 bits, I am not sure if many people are aware of what K2 is. It's a vitamin that was recently discovered 25 years ago and it's related to K1 but it's as different as night and day between K1. K1 is found in foods that are green: kale, spinach. What it does is that it helps your blood coagulate so it's important. But K2, the only source of K2 is in grass-fed animal protein or frankly algae especially the Chlorella algae. You can also get it in a dish called “Natto” which nobody eats as a Japanese dish. You say “Why is it in grass-fed animal protein? Here's why. Animals have bacteria in their gut that allows them to convert K1 which is in green things like grass and Kale. It allows them to convert K1 into K2. As we humans, eat any grass-fed protein whether it's dairy, or beef, or whatever, we absorbed the K2 because they have that conversion. The problem is, back in the 60s and 70s, all the cows and chickens and everything was taken off the pastures where they were had previously been chewing happily on green grass and they were moved into enclosures and fed corn which has no green in it which is very acidic which also causes stomach distresses. That's where you get all the cow issues [inaudible 00:53:28.14].

The supply of K2 from our diet basically disappeared completely. Interestingly, at the same time that that happened, the rise in heart disease had escalated. Ax exact mirror of these two incidences. The medical physicians, heart specialists, are now realizing that one of the main causes of heart disease is too much calcium in your blood vessels which basically causes them to get rigid and calcify. The blood vessel builds up with all the calcium there, which shouldn't be there, it's immobile, it can cause some fractures that lead to stroke. “Why is the calcium there?” “How did the calcium get in your blood vessels. All of us certainly clean our house where it's like: “Who put the shoes there?” “That's not supposed to be there?”

[00:54:24.03] Ashley James: [laughs]

[00:54:25.10] Catharine Arnston: [laughs] There's a place for those. Well, your body needs to be told that calcium is not supposed to be in the blood vessels. It's supposed to be in your bones. Without K2, that's where it goes. In fact, without K2, calcium does not go to your bones. It goes to your soft tissue. This is your blood vessels. This is your skin, your organs, your brain. Basically, anywhere but your bones. There's some protein matrix in the Vitamin K2 that does two things: it moves the calcium out of soft tissue and puts it into your bones and at the same time, it traps calcium into your bones and teeth. By adding K2 in your diet, you're getting multiple benefits: you're helping to prevent heart disease and also prevent problems with your organs. Your kidney stones are calcification. It's too much calcium gathered in your kidneys. You get K2, boom, those are gone.

They're realizing Alzheimer's partly result of again of calcification in the brain. K2 is very, very important. Yet, there are very few foods that you can find it in. People are taking supplements, but they don't behave the same way or as effective as K2 that you find in food. Any time that you get a nutrient in food, it's always better for your body. It will always perform better. I've also read K2 has complications to it, there are different versions, different flavors I guess that you want to call it.

There's one called M4 which is what you find in algae, which you find in food, apparently, that's the only version of K2 that the brain can absorb. In your supplements, there's always something called M7. I'm not sure if that's going to be helping prevent Alzheimer's. K2 is a very important piece of one of the many benefits of the algae particularly the Chlorella. Chlorella has twice as much K2 as Spirulina. Just to show you sort of comparisons of food that: how much K2 is in food groups. If you have 100 grams of Chlorella, it has what you call 240 mcg (240 mcg in a hundred grams of Chlorella) Compare that to milk, that's one. One mcg.

[00:57:04.07] Ashley James: No. 

[00:57:05.27] Catharine Arnston: Beef. Again. One. Salami, I don't why it's got 9. Egg yolks a whopping 15. 15 compared to 240 in Chlorella. There really isn't any comparison. If you want the efficiencies ok K2 and you want it from food, you really need to get it from something like Chlorella. If you're vegan, you don't want to be eating your grass-fed proteins.

[00:57:34.13] Ashley James: Right.

[00:57:36.15] Catharine Arnston: I'm very proud of the fact that has high K2.

[00:57:40.13] Ashley James:  Man, I got to get a bag for my mother in law.

[00:57:45.00] Catharine Arnston:  Yeah. It's really amazing. The reason I mentioned this is because people don't really realize that heart disease is a very big issue for women and so osteoporosis. In osteoporosis what happens is that: your bones get brittle and porous. The reason they're becoming brittle and porous because in your early years your bones are being built. Your bones store minerals like calcium. But they also store lots of minerals. But after the age of 40, rather than building up your bones, you're starting to lose bone structure. It's so important as you age that you maintain your bone structure to prevent this porousness. One of the reasons why bones get porous is because we have acidic foods in our diet. Emotions and stress can cause acidity in your blood or even if you over-exercise because you throw out lactic acid – that makes your blood acidic. Your blood needs to maintain a pH level of 7.34. If you eat too much acidic food like dairy or processed food or even meat or eggs, your body and your blood know that it needs to neutralize that immediately or you would die. What it does is it pulls out the minerals that are stored in your bones to immediately dilute the acidity of your blood to bring it back to that pH 7.34. If you do that, over and over again, day in, day out, month in, month out: you're pulling critical minerals out of your bones which contributes to porousness and osteoporosis and fragility of your bones.

Two things that are so important for bone health is weight-bearing exercise continue to build your bones and ensuring you have proper K2 to make sure your calcium is being absorbed. Make sure your diet is healthy so that you're not extracting those minerals. It's like overdrawing at a bank account. Right? You don't want to overdraw it too many times. You don't want any of those problems. I' very happy that algae have all those minerals: magnesium, potassium, calcium. Anything that your bones need. In addition to K2, it's like a package deal. It's a one-stop-shop. It's food. It's not processed.

It's really very helpful, particularly for women. 80% of osteoporosis patients are women. Over the age of 50, it's a real problem. I just wanted to be sure that… women are particularly a target for this because our bones are smaller than men's. They're frailer from the beginning. They're thinner. Our bone structure is just different. That's why men don't have as much of a problem although it still hits men. But women are, particularly at risk.

[01:01:11.12] Ashley James: What started for you to have the light of moment? Have you wanted to create Energybits? Was that your sister was told by her oncologist in Canada that she should go in an alkaline diet because it was better for recovery from cancer…

[01:01:31.07] Catharine Arnston: Correct.

[01:01:32.04] Ashley James: …and also prevention? It's a healthier diet for the lifestyle to help the body because, in an alkaline state, the body doesn't create disease in it. In an acidic state, diseases are rampant for many reasons. You saw the algae, Chlorella and Spirulina, have an alkalizing effect in the body because they readily absorb nutrients the body uses to bring the body back to balance. It has vitamins and minerals. It also has the chelator effect that takes out the toxins. There are many reasons why Chlorella and Spirulina help the body come back in the balance. I had a guest send me some pH test strips. I'll make sure the link is in the show notes. These test strips are very affordable. They're like 5 bucks or something. They're very cool. You can use them both for urine and for saliva. She explained this is Kellyann from potandenergysystems.ca. She has a whole ionic foot detox system.

[01:02:46.01] Catharine Arnston: Oh, we've spoken. I've spoken to her. She's terrific.

[01:02:48.22] Ashley James: Right. Yeah.

[01:02:49.11] Catharine Arnston: She's a [Victoria 01:02:49.13].

[01:02:52.00] Ashley James: [inaudible 01:02:52.00] me. Yeah. She talks about how testing your pH is…. test yourself once a week. It's like a self-check-in. I had a [inaudible 01:03:03.13] one of my mentors. He wrote a book all about teaching people how to do their own physicals. If you do your own sort-of physicals throughout the year, it's not like a big surprise when you see your doctor and find out you've been going on the wrong path for the whole year. Like “Wow, your blabs are really looking bad. We need to like to make some changes. Well, if you've been doing your own check-in with yourself when it's still a whisper. Right? Check-in with yourself: “Oh, wow, my pH is awfully [inaudible 01:03:29.11], what's going on? I need to adjust my diet. I have to increase my greens. I need to get more sleep. Drink more water. We just need to look.

If we tested something simple like tester pH and you can test your saliva very easily. Testing your urine’s, a little bit different because in the morning you want it to be acidic because the kidneys were concentrating it and pulling all the stuff. But then you want to see if you tested your urine throughout the day, you would see the acidity come down. You don't want it to be more acidic in the afternoon that it was first thing in the morning. Then that's definitely a sign that there is a problem. What's easier is just testing your saliva.  If you're in those good rangers, the nice green, dark green, 7 or 7.5 or 8, then that's great. Good. I've walked around with these test strips, some of my friends and family, and I have been shocked. I'm always alkaline, ” I was like patting myself in the back, and then my husband came in who has more alkaline than me.

[01:04:30.20] Catharine Arnston: [laughing]

[01:04:33.21] Ashley James: He eats like a pound of blueberries a day. He gets those antioxidants. I go to friends and family and like they're clearly acidic. I've actually seen people be able to get their test strips to move into the alkaline state. It's just a way that we show ourselves that we're moving the right direction. If we could take our blood pressure once a week, take our glucometer reading once a week, just to check in: “what's going on?” “How am I doing?” “Am I in the right direction or in the wrong direction? Just like people get in the scale, measure themselves, and push themselves to the gym and see like: “Am I getting better or worse?” It just gives us a good reading.

I would love to hear from the listeners. I have a ton of listeners that buy the Energybits because I've heard from so many listeners. You. You've heard from so many of my listeners as well. I'd love to hear if any listeners have played with the test strips and have seen if using their Chlorella and Spirulina have seen their pH get better. Catharine, have you seen that in your many years working?

[01:05:51.22] Catharine Arnston: Yeah. I don't do the pH testing myself. However, what I will say, is more like great things about pH testing if you can do it. It brings you back to focus on your own body. I think what's happened in the last 50, maybe 100, years is we handed over responsibility for our health to anybody in the white jacket. They don't have the time to understand what's really going in their bodies. They're so focused on drugs to mask whatever condition is causing you some distress. You don't want to mask a condition. You want to correct the condition [laughs]. The fact that you're doing some testing forces you to slowly reorient your focus on yourself and just like having a great sleep, you know when you feel good. You know when you take our algae that it's good for you. You just feel better. The more that you can tune in to your own health and whether it's your test strips or anything, I can promise you the more empowered you will become emotionally, spiritually. You will take back the responsibility to treat yourself well. Because you'll start to treat your body like something that deserves respect as it does.

It's there to support you but if you give it foods that are just temporarily exciting like white bread or something, or maybe a pastry. Sure, it's a minute or two of great satisfaction, and then you get like two days’ worth of trying your body struggling, trying to get rid of the unhealthy components that it's now faced to try to digest and absorb and whatever. Over time, you start realizing, “I think I'd rather feel better for two days than feeling great for a minute.”  You start to evolve into a much more thoughtful, present individual and only seek out foods, people situations, emotions that make you feel better. It's a much better way to be. I like any kind of testing that anyone can do if nothing else. It changes the focus inward. It makes you look inward and gives you the tools to feel empowered to know that yes, you can make a difference in your health. Yes, you can. Do not accept the standard drugs, surgery options. Those may be necessary but there could be alternatives less invasive and more natural. That would be my sort-of final word on that [laughs].

[01:08:48.14] Ashley James: [laughs] Wonderful. For those listeners who don't know Catharine gives us a very generous discount by using “LTH” as in Learn True Health on our website. Energybits we get 20% off. Thank you so much. That actually makes your price incredibly competitive with those very cheap quality ones out there. The ones on Amazon made in China that kind of thing which I would never recommend and then the ones that say they're really healthier sold by other doctors. Then, you give us our discount – your taste is better, made with better quality, you have third-party testing, you do triple filter for your water. There's clearly a quality difference. You clearly are like the Ferrari algae [laughs].

[01:09:48.14] Catharine Arnston: [laughs] I like that. I have never thought of it that way.

[01:09:53.11] Ashley James: Never getting it for, I don't know, Toyota prices. For the price of a Honda, you can get a Ferrari. That's awesome. I'm a big, big, big fan of Energybits. Just to clarify, the Chlorella which gives us the wonderful benefits of detoxification has the nutrients, has the chlorophyll in it, that's called “Recoverbits.” So when you go to energybits.com, you find the Recoverybits and then you put it in the coupon code “LTH for 20% off” for those who want the energy from Spirulina, and the protein and also the other nutrients we talked about [inaudible 01:10:33.05] the Energybits, you do have a separate bag called “Beautybits” and it's the exact same thing, so not to be confused. I like your story behind this you told before…

[01:10:44.25] Catharine Arnston: [laughs]

[01:10:45.04] Ashley James: I think it's so funny that somewhere… because they carry it in their purse, or they'll carry it in their gym bag and they just preferred to have something more feminine, so they wanted the pink bags. For those who love pink, to look really cute, you can buy Beautybits, it's the exact, same as Energybits. What a different package. What else I like about your bags is that every bit comes with tin, so you don't have to carry the whole bag around. You can just feel up your tin with your day's amount of like 40 little M&M-sized bits and then you can carry that in your purse, or your car, or whatever. It's always a great snack to have in the car when the kids or the husband or you are hungry in the car and you're like: “Oh, I don't want to go to a drive-thru because I don't eat that stuff anymore. I don't want to feed my kids fast food. Oh, this is so great. There is a bag of Chlorella or Spirulina. If you wanted both and you're like “I can't decide. I want all the benefits. What do I do?” Catherine made a 50-50 mix of Chlorella and Spirulina so each little bit is made of…

[01:11:54.24] Catharine Arnston: Blend.

[01:11:56.28] Ashley James: Yeah. Blend of it. That's called the Vitalitybits. Each one has a little bit different texture, a little bit different taste. I like trying all three. The last thing we talked about…

[01:12:09.18] Catharine Arnston: It's like a bits buffet. [laughs]

[01:12:11.03] Ashley James: Yeah. Right. I like your idea of putting like all the other trail mixes around. You take a little bit of that dark chocolate or take some cranberries, and some coconut flakes, make a little trail mix with the Energybits. I love it. That's so cool.

[01:12:27.09] Catharine Arnston: Stay tuned.

[01:12:28.12] Ashley James: Yeah, right. I have tried it, by the way, with the macadamia nuts. It was absolutely delicious, so I do agree with you. The last thing is if anyone wants to eat Chlorella, they should eat 30-40 bits in one sitting. Because if you eat too few, it creates a detox effect that people would have felt negative. Because they feel the detox effect if they eat too few. I've had so many people say “Oh, I feel worse after eating Chlorella.” I'm like “How many did you eat?” “Well, I had 5.” You have to eat 30 or 40 so that you give your body enough to not only kind of stir-up the toxins but to grab on to them and absorb them. I've seen this several times. The best thing is to make sure you eat enough of the Chlorella. I've had an experience where I was going through, not because of Chlorella but because of a parasite [inaudible 01:13:19.23] I was doing, I felt so sick, I was having one of those flu-like symptoms from detoxing too quickly. I immediately ran to my Recoverybits and just started to take mouthfuls of them. [laughs]

[01:13:34.26] Catharine Arnston: That's too funny. I'm sure your listeners: you can't have actually too much and I don't even want to tell you how much I eat every day but it's just a very nutrient-dense food. On the other hand, with the Spirulina, in both cases, we recommend 30 as a single serving but we're finding that people are so nutrient-deprived that even if you take 5 tablets of the Spirulina, you'll feel the difference. It's not like a lightning bolt from the sky because there are no stimulants and either the algae. But with Spirulina, you just feel fresh. You feel like you just had a great night sleep. Hunger is gone. Fatigue is gone. You don't need to dissolve drugs the next day, you don't need to take more to get the same effect.

[01:14:20.03] Ashley James: [laughs]

[01:14:20.08] Catharine Arnston: You can take them for when you're on your way work or have them at 2:00 when you're tired. You can also have them before bed because they won't keep you up. It's not that kind of energy. It's like giving your car the high-test gas, it just purs with performance. You want to put with the pur performance [laughs].

[01:14:39.11] Ashley James: [laughs] Take them at the bed, and you told this last time, and I've tried this and it's right. And I've had listeners tell me, that when we take them at night, there the nutrients the body needs to make melatonin. People are telling: “Not only do I have more energy in the day from Energybits but I am sleeping better.” It really does make sleep better. I always run to Energybits specifically right before the interview because sometimes I do 2 or 3 interviews in a row. I'm exhausted and hungry. I don't have time to run to the kitchen, it's so great to have a handful of it. I really do feel that sense of being refreshed. I'm not hungry anymore. It's not like I'm looking to replace a meal but it's like a supplement and a snack at once. I'm a big fan.

[01:15:31.28] Catharine Arnston: I think we should create a new category. Instead of calling it a superfood, I think we should call it a “super snack.” [laughs]

[01:15:36.16] Ashley James: Super snack. There you go. That's right.

[01:15:41.02] Catharine Arnston: …or I'm going to call it “super-duper food” [laughs]. It's more than a superfood so it's not enough. These are my children.

[01:15:48.26] Ashley James: Right. Exactly, It's a super-duper food. It's like way up there at the top of the food pyramid. Yeah. We're going to make our own new pyramid of superfoods and Spirulina and Chlorella will be at the top and dark chocolate is going to be at the bottom.

[01:15:58.26] Catharine Arnston: [laughing]

[01:16:02.19] Ashley James: Very cool. It's been so great having you back on the show.

[01:16:07.09] Catharine Arnston: Oh, thank you so much. It's so great to be here and chat. I know we could talk longer but I think we have to call it…

[01:16:13.02] Ashley James: [laughing]

[01:16:14.29] Catharine Arnston: Everybody probably has to get some bits. [laugh]

[01:16:18.11] Ashley James: Yeah. I'm definitely going to have my bits after this conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the show again. Please come back anytime you have more to share. I'm really excited to follow the progression of farming in the United States for Chlorella and Spirulina and see where it goes. I would love to see in 5 to 10 years your company like producing, farming your own, that would be so amazing. I won't go do a farm tour. I'm just imagining you and me walking down the aisles of the tanks in the valley desert of Florida. That would be so wonderful to have that connection where you can see right from the beginning until the end… see every step of the process. I'm really looking forward to Chlorella and Spirulina being in every home. Something that we all consume on a daily basis because of the benefits both for the environment and for our health. It's been wonderful having you on the show. Please come back…

[01:17:24.11] Catharine Arnston: Thank you. Okay. I'll get all those articles for you on the toxin stuff. We'll get that posted. My parting word would be: instead of asking yourself “Why you should take algae?” I would ask to say to yourself: “Why wouldn't you?”

[01:17:40.14] Ashley James: [laughs]

[01:17:41.03] Catharine Arnston: [laughs]

[01:17:44.24] Ashley James: There's no reason not to.

[01:17:47.18] Catharine Arnston: Alright. Thank you so much. Use your discount code “LTH” for your 20% off.

[01:17:54.18] Ashley James:  Hello, True Health seeker, have you thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition and how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for integrated nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health-coaching certification program and it really blew me away. It's so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint, of how we can help people shift their lives and shift their lifestyles to gain true holistic health.

I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google [inaudible 01:19:08.21] for integrated sports nutrition or IAN and give them a call or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. Check them out and see if it's something that you'd be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program.

I'm such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctor's offices. You can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and health goals.

There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach so check out IAN. Check out the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they'll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon, and the next round of classes are starting at the end of the month so you're going to want to call them now and check it out. If you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you getting to optimize your health? Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you?

Go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic True Health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are of the highest quality at the best price. That's takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. That's takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

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Vitamin K2 And The Calcium Paradox by – Kate Rheaume – Bleue

 

Recommended Links:

Learn True Health – Episode 218

Learn True Health – Episode 227

Learn True Health – Episode 265

Downloadable Information About Chlorella And Spirulina:

why is our spirulina and chlorella the safest and best

mothers milk and spirulina-have the same nutritional profile chart and explanation 3 pages

chlorophyll content in sprirulina and chlorella compared to other vegetables- one page (2)

Vitamin K2 is found in RECOVERYbits chlorella helps prevent heart disease, Alzheimers and osteoporosis


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Ashley James

Health Coach, Podcast Creator, Homeschooling Mom, Passionate About God & Healing

Ashley James is a Holistic Health Coach, Podcaster, Rapid Anxiety Cessation Expert, and avid Whole Food Plant-Based Home Chef. Since 2005 Ashley has worked with clients to transform their lives as a Master Practitioner and Trainer of Neuro-linguistic Programming.

Her health struggles led her to study under the world’s top holistic doctors, where she reversed her type 2 diabetes, PCOS, infertility, chronic infections, and debilitating adrenal fatigue.

In 2016, Ashley launched her podcast Learn True Health with Ashley James to spread the TRUTH about health and healing. You no longer need to suffer; your body CAN and WILL heal itself when we give it what it needs and stop what is harming it!

The Learn True Health Podcast has been celebrated as one of the top holistic health shows today because of Ashley’s passion for extracting the right information from leading experts and doctors of holistic health and Naturopathic medicine

 

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