 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. Well, by now you've probably heard me talk a lot about super foods, foods that are loaded with essential nutrients like omega-3s, polyphenols, and antioxidants. You might also know that some of my absolute favorites include foods like avocados, mushrooms, and macadamia nuts. Well, today I'm joined by Catherine Arnston, a wellness thought leader and experienced entrepreneur who says there's a newer superfood on the radar and is one of the most exciting yet. In fact, she says it could be bigger than collagen. Oh my gosh. And NASA has even referred to it as the answer to world hunger. Today we're talking all about algae. Catherine and I are going to explain how certain types of algae can be used to support your energy levels, immune response, skin health, and so much more. We'll also explain how algae works to fill nutritional gaps and ultimately how it can help protect you from serious illness. Before we dive into all things algae, I want to make it very clear that although algae is loaded with nutrients, it is not to be considered a replacement for any medications or other recommendations made by your doctor and no, it can't replace vegetables and other nutritious foods altogether either and no, it is not a recognized treatment for the treatment of viral illnesses like COVID-19. Instead, think of algae as a way to enhance your nutritional intake and support your health but not to replace other healthy practices. And if you do decide to make room for algae in your diet, make sure to run it by your healthcare practitioner. Okay, let's get started. Catherine, it's great to have you on the show. Well, thank you, Dr. Gundry. I've been a big fan of yours for years and read your books, so pleasure to be here with you today. Well, great. So, okay, let's just dive right in. What the heck is algae? I think most people think of it as its pond scum. Is that what we're going to talk about today? Well, I guess it can be perceived as pond scum, but I hope by the end of this discussion, people will realize that it's a super food that everyone should be taking because it will help improve your energy, your focus, your skin, your digestion, not to mention the world itself. But just to give you some context, algae is its own food category. It's not a fruit and it's not a vegetable, which is why it has no lectins or any anti-nutrients like I'm trying to, I'm blanking on, oxalates. So algae was the first life on earth almost four billion years ago, and they have fossils to prove it. And after about a billion years of it growing, it released enough oxygen on earth that other life forms could grow, and then eventually life as we know it came to be. So algae was the first one here and it's still here, so I say it's got to be something special about something that's lasted multiple ice ages, dinosaurs, and everything. So algae is a type of plant. It's not technically a plant because it started in the ocean. It's considered a sea vegetable and it's everywhere. It's in the oceans, the rivers, the lakes, your swimming pool, yes, it's in your swimming pool, your aquarium, and those are all wild algaes and they're fine for the fish and fine for the animals, but they are toxic to humans. So don't stick your head in your swimming pool or grab a spoonful from your aquarium because those will not be good for you because algae also absorbs whatever's in the water. So as we know, there are lots of toxins in the oceans and you certainly don't want to be taking algae as it's supposed to be benefiting you. So the two algae we're going to be talking about today are spirulina and chlorella, which are the two algae that are harvested as food crops. So again, I want people to understand that algae is a food and I don't know if you can see this, but I'm showing you a picture of an algae farm. Algae is not a supplement. Supplements are made from extracts in factories with high heat that can kill the enzymes and the nutritional value and algae is grown in fresh water. We grow ours in triple filtered spring mountain water and then we air dry it without heat so we preserve the enzymes and then we don't add any binders to it. So it's a nutrient dense food and we have a quote from NASA that says, one gram of algae has the same nutrition as a thousand grams of fruits and vegetables. That's one to a thousand. That's unbelievable. So that's one of the reasons why they feed it to the astronauts. It's the first plant they want to grow in, Mars in space because of this nutrient density. And as you're going to find out, we sell our algae in tiny tablets that are about the size of a baby aspirin and each one of those tiny tablets has the same nutrition as an entire heaping plate of vegetables. But vegetables that you didn't have to buy, cook, clean or eat or have worry about lectins or oxalates. So let me stop you there for a second. So what you're saying is that most of our... So you're not out there in a boat with a net picking up algae that's floating free in the sea. Most of us kind of have this concept that that's where our say chlorella is coming from. So actually, you're farming this. Farming it. Absolutely. It's being farmed. It's called hydroponic farming, which lots of vegetables, tomatoes, I know they have oxalates, not a good thing to probably reference, but lots of vegetables are grown in fresh water. So that's why... In fact, algae is a multi-billion, that's with a bee, multi-billion dollar agricultural crop in Asia where they've been growing it for over 50 years. And just to show you how big it is in Asia, it's almost as big as the beef industry is here in America. They take it every day in Japan. They don't take vitamins. They take chlorella algae every day to build their immune system, help them with their energy, their digestion. It's amazing. And you're going to learn about both of these algae today because... And I point out that the Japanese have some of the best longevity, the lowest cancer rates, and great skin and hair. And I attribute some of it to the algae. So why... I know it's been used in Asia for literally centuries. So why is such a routine part of their culture and their food supply? Why is it not known about here in the West particularly? Yeah. Well, that's a great question. I wondered myself, and I've been studying algae now for 11 years, and when I started reading the science because it's the most studied food in the world and all the references I give you today about the benefits are all available in the NIH library. And I thought, my gosh, with all this great research, why don't people in North America know about it? So here's why. This is what I think why. Number one, algae has been grown in Asia, as I mentioned, for 50 or 60 years. So it's quite common for them to be driving on the highway and see a big truck go by with a bunch of algae about to be dried. So it's part of their lifestyle. It's in... They put algae in everything. They're dried goods, they're teas, they drink it as powders, in tablet form as we do. So it's as normal to them as unfortunately probably eating doughnuts is here. So number one, it's quite a common agricultural thing to see, to eat, and use in Asia, but not here because algae isn't grown in America for a variety of reasons, mostly because they don't know about it. But that's about to change because the White House in 2019 as part of the Farm Bill passed the Algae Agricultural Act to encourage farmers to grow algae here because they have realized it's the most nutrient-dense, eco-friendly, sustainable crop in the world and needs to be grown here. But because we didn't grow up with it, when you live in the Midwest, you might see trucks going by with wheat on the way to the mill, or you might see... I live in Boston and we see trucks with Dunkin Donuts driving by. So it's just not part of your vernacular. That's number one. Number two is it has been sold in America for the last 50 years. But because the Asia, it's all grown in Asia and that's where all the marketing, all the customers are, they've continued to use their Asian packaging that looks like this, okay? But what does that tell you? Nothing. And so it looks weird. It sits on the bottom of a shelf gathering dust. So I design everything for our company and we're going to find out that Chlorella helps you build your health and your wellness so it helps you recover from health. So I called ours recovery bits and I designed packaging that was a lot easier to understand and here's another picture of one of our packaging. The energy, the spirulina gives you energy. So I thought, well, let's call it energy bits because it makes it more obvious. It also builds your skin and hair. So I created one called beauty bits. So the packaging has been very Asian and not very consumer friendly. So I made sure that we made a difference and we certainly improved that. So you mentioned just a minute ago about all of the published studies on the health benefits of algae. And because algae really isn't high on people's lists of, oh, I need algae for my health, give our listeners kind of a rundown of, okay, what the heck are the health benefits besides? Exactly. Okay? Sure. So as I mentioned, there's two algae. The first one we're going to talk about is spirulina. It's considered a blue-green algae because it has two pigments in it, a blue one called phycocyanin and a green one which is called chlorophyll, which most people know about. So what is algae spirulina known for? It's known for satisfying your hunger and giving you energy mentally and physically. How does it do that? Spirulina has the highest concentration of protein in the world. Ours is 64% protein. That's just to compare with animal protein. It's about three times the amount of protein found in animal protein. And that's why the United Nations actually endorses it as the answer to world hunger because of this high protein. Importantly, all that protein is already in amino acid form, so your body doesn't have to work to get access to it. And it's loaded with B vitamins, which convert the aminos into energy. It's loaded with iron that carries oxygen, which gives you energy. It's loaded with essential fatty acids like omega-3 that helps with your brain thought. It's known as a vasodilator that opens up your blood vessels so your nutrients and your oxygen can flow better to your muscles and your brain. And so that's why athletes, we work with NHL teams, Olympic teams, runners, triathletes who use it to give them energy. And it doesn't upset their stomach because, of course, there's no caffeine, chemicals or sugar or lectins or oxalates. So spirulina is a very energizing algae both physically and mentally. But I know we're going to talk a little bit about intermittent fasting. The other great thing about spirulina is because it's so rich in protein and essential fatty acids, it satisfies your hunger. And there are no carbs. So it's great for intermittent fasting or if you're on a keto diet because it does not decrease your ketones or increase your glucose. And this has been studied and documented. So a lot of people use it for intermittent fasting. You might have four or five or five or ten tablets in the morning. It doesn't break your fast at all. But you're not hungry. You're not tired. And it gives you all the nutritional value that you need anyways so you can eliminate a lot of those fake supplements you might be taking. By the way, there's only one calorie per tablet. So if you take five or ten tablets for ten calories, you can have your hunger satisfied for hours and get all the other nutrients. There's 40 other vitamins and minerals in it. So I don't know anything that can do that. So it's a great meal replacement for assisting you with weight loss, intermittent fasting. And as I mentioned, it gives you the energy. So most people take the spirulina, which we call energy bits, in the morning, in the afternoon. And you're tired. You get a slump or before a workout. So let me stop you there. You mentioned blue-green algae. And on the internet, you look up blue-green algae and you see these sites that say, oh, my gosh, blue-green algae is lethal and don't come near it and it'll kill you. What say you? Well, that's why at the very beginning I pointed out that algae grows everywhere. And if it comes from the ocean or the lakes or the streams or your swimming pool, it's toxic. So yes, the blue-green algae in your ocean is going to be toxic because it's wild in the environment. It is not toxic when it's harvested like we do in fresh triple-filtered Spring Mountain water. And we're probably the only company that I know in the United States that does third-party lab tests at an FDA-approved lab because we sell our algae tablets both on our website, keepits.com, but mostly through doctors, functional medicine, longevity centers, and they need to see that there are no toxins in our algae. So we do third-party lab tests. We even do a third set to prove there's no mitotoxins in there. So we are totally buttoned up. Not every company is, but we certainly are. But that's why if you go on the internet and you see stuff about toxic blue algae, I can promise you it's relating to algae that's grown in the ocean or somewhere wild. Gotcha. So that's not your blue-green algae. That's not us. That's not us. All right. Next question. Everybody worries about essential amino acids and the entire range of amino acids. Where does spirulina fall into this? It's a complete protein. It has 18 of the 20 aminos. So it has all the aminos that your body cannot make, which is why it's considered a complete protein. And I'll tell you something really interesting. I saw a chart from a medical book that dated back to the 40s or 50s, and it had a chart that showed all the amino acids in mother's breast milk. And I thought, gosh, that looks awfully familiar. And sure enough, it's virtually identical to not only the same aminos, but the same proportions of those aminos found in spirulina and actually chlorella. So as you've pointed out, it's not just the aminos. It's what percentages are there. And so we all know that mother's breast milk is the perfect food. Well, guess what? Spirulina is going to be your number two, because it's virtually identical to mother's breast milk. And you can't very well get mother's breast milk after the age of two, at least not to my knowledge. All right. Now, so everybody... But do you want me to talk about chlorella? That's where we're going to go next. Tell me, okay, they're both algae. What the heck is the difference between chlorella and spirulina? Yes. Well, spirulina, as I mentioned, is a blue-green algae, and it has two pigments in it. The other important difference between the two of them is that spirulina is technically a bacteria. It does not have a cellulose wall, which is the other reason why it gets into your bloodstream so quickly, and it has the highest concentration of protein. In contrast, chlorella has the hardest cell wall in the plant kingdom. In fact, it's so hard that it has to be cracked to production or your body wouldn't absorb the nutrients. But here's the cool thing about that hard cell wall. It attaches to toxins of any kind. It is a chelator. It will pull out lead, mercury, radiation, aluminum, which is important if you're getting vaccines. It also identifies alcohol of any kind, wine, beer, spirits as a toxin, and pulls them out so you'll be sober in an hour and a half and you'll never have a hangover. Athletes love it because it detects lactic acid as a toxin, so it pulls it out so your muscles aren't sore the next day, which is one of the attributes that the Olympic teams really loved about it. Number one, chlorella is a detoxing algae. Spirulina is a nourishing and cleansing, but not a detoxing algae like chlorella. That's the first difference. Spirulina has no cell wall, chlorella has the hardest cell wall. Number two, spirulina has the highest protein in the world. Chlorella has the highest chlorophyll in the world. That's why it's called chlorella. Now what's so important about chlorella? Well I could talk about that or chlorophyll all day, but I'll give you a couple of key points. First one is that the chemical composition of chlorophyll is virtually identical to your blood. Why is that important? Because when you take chlorophyll you are literally building your blood and proof of this is that up until even including World War II when they ran out of blood for transfusions they would give the injured liquid chlorophyll and they would heal just as fast as if they had a blood transfusion. And we'll send you some images and you can go online to see this. So the only difference is chlorophyll has magnesium in the middle and your blood hemoglobin has the iron atom, which is what carries oxygen. So number one, chlorophyll builds your blood. Number two, chlorophyll builds your cells, the health of your cell walls. We all know now that the health of your body is determined at the cellular level and the mitochondria within those cells. And one of the ways to keep those mitochondria healthy is to ensure that they are getting the nutrients they need and that you're getting rid of the toxins that they don't. And the way you do that is you keep your cell walls healthy with healthy fats. Well chlorophyll is a fat-based pigment compared to the blue pigment in spirulina which is a water-based pigment it's called phycocyanin. So that chlorophyll is because it's a fat-based pigment will heal those cell walls and the best analogy I give to people is you know when you have dirty windows you can't see out and sunlight can't get in and that's not very nice. So think of chlorophyll as window washers for your cell walls. It facilitates the movement of nutrients into your cells and facilitates the removal of the toxins which help preserve your mitochondria. Now I'll tell you something really cool that I've been doing some research on while other people have done the research I've just been reading it and if they've found that when you match red light therapy or sunlight with chlorophyll your mitochondria actually generate ATP and it's quite an extraordinary finding and I think it's going to be pretty cool in the future but that's just an extra little bonus of chlorophyll. The other thing about chlorella is as I mentioned that hard cell well well that hard cell well has fiber so that fiber helps to heal your or feed your the gut your gut biome so they can release the short chain fatty acids that you need for gut health which I know is your specialty but it gets to do that for you without oxalates or lectins. So chlorophyll because it has the chlorophyll it pulls out toxins it also has vitamin k2 which pulls out excess calcium from blood vessels or skin and moves it into your bones. It's known as a wellness algae it's a healing algae it helps you recover from your day recover from drinking recover from sports. So that's why we call our chlorella algae recovery bits because we thought that was a whole lot easier to remember and to say. So it's a very much a wellness healing algae and detoxing algae and because your body goes through a detox and repair cycle when you sleep we generally encourage people to take the chlorella algae before you go to bed that way it will facilitate a better detox a better repair cycle and by the way it also stimulates peristalsis also known as bowel movements and we know that elimination is a very important part of your health. So the two of them work very beautifully together energy spirulina in the morning and the afternoon to give you energy satisfy your hunger and the chlorella at night to facilitate a wellness building your immune system which I think we're going to talk about in a minute as well and getting rid of toxins that certainly aren't doing you any good. Yeah let me stop you there. I think several things you brought up are very important for people to understand. We have no ability to digest the cell wall of a plant not even a termite has the ability to digest wood the cellulose is undigestible and we actually have to have a microbiome that's capable of doing that for us just like a termite does. So you're right chlorella has to be cracked the cell wall has to be broken and it's maybe you're going to tell us but it's possible to buy chlorella that hasn't been cracked and you're throwing your money away just like I've talked about if you eat whole flaxseeds I got news for you you're throwing your money away because we have no ability to break through the outside wall of a flaxseed we don't have the enzymes to do that. So that's a very good point it definitely does that. The second thing I use chlorella for binding heavy metals in my patients and knock on wood when I put them on chlorella to lower mercury to lower lead for instance we've never had to resort to intravenous chelation to do that we've been able to do it with chlorella and activated charcoal without intravenous chelation so I can attest to the fact that chlorella absolutely works for binding heavy metals. Yes and actually the United Nations used it at Chernobyl to remove radiation after the disaster there after the Fukushima disaster eight years ago the entire chlorella world supply was bought up within 24 hours because everyone in Asia also knows it's the only thing that pulls out radiation so if anyone's doing any chemotherapy it's very beneficial to pull the excess chemo out so you're not as sick. We work with biological dentists who use it to pull out mercury as you pointed out for their when they're pulling out fillings so they take it as well as their patients it's pretty powerful stuff but I'll circle back on the crack chlorella topic a little bit because it is a very important one first of all the FDA has regulated that only cracked chlorella can be sold in North America so anything in that you purchase in North America of chlorella will be cracked you can buy uncracked chlorella in other countries and for the same but I I question why anyone would for the same reason that you just pointed out but here's the important thing you need to know about cracking chlorella the original company that developed the technique who I'm very you know grateful for their name is Sun chlorella they're in Japan and they developed the technique of cracking the chlorella and they tumbled it with glass beads and so but the problem there is that the glass heats up and led from the glass leaks into the chlorella now they denied that that happened and then of course the state of California tested it and found out there were high levels of lead now it's not just that Sun chlorella uses this technique virtually everybody who sells chlorella everybody like we're talking 99% uses their technique now when I was starting the company I heard about this possibility there would be lead in the chlorella and I told my team well how much lead would be too much I would say any lead so we I pursued further research and found a new technique which is the one that we use which is we pass our chlorella through a sound chamber and it's the vibrations that crack our chlorella so there is no heat no chance of lead and it preserves all of the nutrients because of course there's no heat involved as well someone told me Leah recently they said oh your chlorella has good vibrations and that was pretty funny so it sounds like how we break up kidney stones with lithotripsy we literally blast them with sound waves and it sounds like you're blasting your chlorella yes yes so and and and while we're talking about vibrations algae is known to be a very what's called high vibrational food and if you ever do any muscle testing we always pass the test not only because it is so nutrient dense but because we have no toxins or you know anything that's harmful in in in our algae for you so it's it's a very very nutrient dense food as I said each one of those little tiny tablets has the same nutrition as an entire plate of vegetables so I eat them all day long all right so all right so you've got spirulina and you've got chlorella and they're clearly different who needs who needs what or does everybody need both or or their complementary or no you you know you're you're a chlorella sort of person or no you look like a spirulina person to me well personally I think everybody in the world should be taking both of them every single day and here's why a lot I'm sure you will and you'll appreciate this or agree that most of our illnesses in certainly in North America are because of two things one lifestyle choices which are predominantly we're not getting the nutrients that our bodies need to perform optimally and number two we have too many toxins in us those are two of the biggest reasons now the reason why we're not getting the nutrients is because people are eating processed food or even if you are eating vegetables the soils just don't have any nutrients left in them they've been so monocropped or they're coming from so far away they're they're they're harvested before they're completely ripe so they don't have the same nutrient value bottom line you're getting calories and and fiber but you're not getting nutrition of course your body is not going to perform properly so so what are you going to do at the same time the ozone layer has been deteriorating and they've done studies to show that there's more sugar now in our plants and less protein and nutrients so we're we're in a bind you know even if you are trying your best to eat healthy you're just not getting the nutrition that your grandparents did I think algae especially spirulina is our last shot at getting the nutrients we need in a pure fashion from real food really organically grown food and the here's the beautiful thing it's it's effortless I when I taught nutrition for a year trying to get people to eat more plants and I found out everybody was you know aware that there they should probably eat more vegetables although you know I agree with you there's a lot of concern about certain ones with the lectins however that wasn't any so I wasn't giving them anything new what I learned was there were too many obstacles everyone's busy they didn't maybe live near a grocery store or they were too heavy to carry home or they're they're take too much room in the fridge or too long to clean to cook to eat their husbands wouldn't eat them every single excuse in the world there are no excuses with spirulina or chlorella tablets you open your mouth if you can breathe you can get your nutrients that you need it's it's in seconds even if you just take two or three a day you will get the nutrition that your body has been missing for decades because it's just not available from our soils anymore so that's number one number two it's so critical to get rid of toxins it doesn't you can't live in a bubble and then and we're surrounded by talk fumes from the carpeting from our exhaust from from our clothing it doesn't matter what you do you're you're going to be getting toxins into your body and a lot of them you know from you know fish from mercury so chlorella is not only you know a way to get rid of those toxins at the same time it's building your immune system and the immune strength of your immune system is critical particularly during this period with covid and al um you but your immune system can't work properly if it doesn't have the nutrients it needs to defend you and chlorella algae has virtually all of the nutrients your your immune system that science has shown your immune system needs to function optimally so that's why i think you should everybody should be taking it they're safe for kids pets um you can give them to everybody from your newborns to your grandparents um and it's effortless like i said so it's it's your grocery bills will go down you don't need other than the products they buy from you dr gundry they don't need any other supplements um it it will uh because they're both keto vegan paleo they work with every single dietary uh choice in the world so um you know they play well in the sandbox so so let me ask you uh i've written about algae oil in one of you know a couple of my books um what do you think about algae oil sure as a cooking yeah as a cooking oil yeah absolutely um anything to do with algae you know um i just watched a netflix movie maybe you've seen it's called sea spiracy and it's um i encourage everybody to watch it it's about the um the damage that the commercial fishing is doing to our ocean um environment and a lot of people it's not you know cooking oil but a lot of people are using fish oil and the demand for fish oil is killing the oceans and a lot of scientists point out as i do as well because a lot of people are they're using the fish oil for the omega 3 and and we remind people well where do you think the fish get the omega 3 from they get it from algae they just consolidate in their body so whether you're cooking with algae oil or you're taking algae for the omega 3 benefits and the ocean uh uh a sustainable benefits anytime you can get algae into your body either spiraling or chlorella you are helping yourself and you are helping the environment yeah i'm glad you said that because uh as you know uh i make a plant-based uh long chain omega product which comes from algae and so yeah so you don't have to you don't have to kill a few fish to to get um you know a long chain omega 3 fats now yeah yeah and we're not just the only company that's doing that so well it's it you know it's exciting for me to hear how much you already know about algae because it's it's been under the radar for so long but i can assure you and your community that it's about to explode on the scene and i remind people you know 20 years ago we didn't know about stevia 10 years ago we didn't know about chia or macho or kiwa or cbd or uh but these were all food groups that had been used in mushrooms uh in other countries for centuries and the most recent discovery has been collagen and there's a company called vital proteins that's really uh been responsible for educating people about collagen and the importance of it but i point out algae has everything that collagen has plus it has chlorophyll and 40 other vitamins and minerals plus it's sustainable i don't know if people know this but collagen is made of ground up bones so fish bones animal bones so if you have a sustainability desire uh algae would not only answer that for you but it would give you everything you're getting from collagen plus you don't have to mix it that's true so you mentioned you know cultures you know have been using algae for a long time now seaweed is also another edible type of algae is where does that fit in the spectrum yes well algae is a food category breaks into two subcategories one is called macro algae and the one we've been talking about is micro algae seaweed is a macro algae uh spirulina and chlorella are micro algae and they're called micro algae because they are microscopic in size you can't see these almost 100 would fit on the head of a pin but macro algae also known as seaweed dulce kelp also has nutrient nutritional value uh it provides a lot of fiber and it provides a lot of iodine because it's grown in the ocean it actually doesn't have a lot of nutritional value it's about a hundredth of what you get from from algae but it does give you fiber it does give you iodine the micro algae because it's not grown in the ocean at least the harvested does not contain iodine i wish it did although it's probably good news for people that are concerned about iodine so so they are quite they're they're it's tasty i just actually bought some kelp noodles i'm gonna experiment with um so it can it can be a great addition to your meal planning uh but it it's just be aware it's not a nutritional nutritionally dense food it's just a fibrous food yeah and we we actually recommend kelp noodles in in all my books and they're they're a great easy way to get a lot of fiber without the downsides of lectin into your diet and i and i'll add a something of interest uh early on uh long before uh we were finally getting iodized sea salt uh i was giving my patients spirulina tablets to improve their thyroid function and uh the spirulina was very useful and we documented that across patients in boosting their thyroid function we've subsequently because of now trader joes used to sell spirulina it was cheap and it was organic and we were really happy and then they stopped doing it and so we went to having patients use iodized sea salt now but uh we had years where we boosted thyroid function with spirulina so i wouldn't write it off as as not a source of iodine well it there could very well be other reasons why it's uh doing performing well for for thyroid function we we work with a lot of keto and um nasa scientists who use it and take it with them on different missions um and they do blood work the whole time and they found that the spirulina in particular reduces inflammation to levels never seen before um it the um it still has a high amount of chlorophyll it has lots of other phytonutrients that are remarkable and i'll just circle back just to give you one little little tip on uh how much nutrition is in this algae and things that we're still discovering as i mentioned spirulina is it has two pigments in it one the blue one's called phycosine and well there's some science on our website and there's lots of science that you can go online to learn about the doctors the medical community has found out that that phycosine and um does too well related to covid it does a very important thing it actually acts as a shield to prevent that prevents the the virus from entering your cells the virus enters your cells through a receptor cell called ac e2 receptor cell and for whatever reason this spirulina sits on top of the receptor cell and prevents that from happening now that's pretty powerful stuff if you ask me and by the way almost all your receptor cells are in your nose throat lungs gut and that's exactly where the virus attacks and as proof of the value of this there's uh the university of pittsburgh uh pharmacology department just developed a covid nose spray that prevents the virus from getting into your body and of course guess what it's made of algae of course now so that's so i just point that out because there's so many there could be many reasons why the spirulina was helping uh with your thyroid patients another interesting benefit of of spirulina and the again that blue pigment is that we again we were contacted by doctors because they said do you know that your spirulina prevents the growth of blood vessels to tumors and cancers it's called anti angiogenesis when uh the angiogenesis process is when your body is building new blood vessels and tumors basically hijack those blood vessels to feed themselves well the blue pigment for again for whatever reason stops that that uh that process and i think part of it's because that blue pigment is a water-based pigment remember i said chlorophyll is a fat-based pigment i'm going to show you a chart this is the beautiful blue oops upside down but there we go this is the beautiful blue that comes out of the blue green algae spirulina and this is how the green the chloral the chlorophyll see how it clumps because fat and water doesn't mix but the blue pigment with your blood and the and your and your um plasma is is related so so anyways i i uh you know i don't know if you know this but i was on shark tank a little while ago and uh mark cuban made fun of me and he said we don't think you're really in love with being an entrepreneur you're you're just in love with algae and uh my response to him was well if you knew as much about algae as i did you would be in love with it too well so all right so let's talk about energy bit what what's what inspired you to start this company and well um yeah good question uh i was mining my own business i'm an mba uh i was doing international business had nothing to do with nutrition or the body and then my younger sister in canada developed breast cancer she's fine now by the way she's just past 10 years cancer free but as she was preparing for her chemotherapy her oncologist recommended she change her diet to an alkaline diet now they didn't tell her what it was or what it was good for her so the first call she made was to me because i'm her big sister i love her uh and i'm a good researcher i can find out anything so i said i have no idea what this stuff is but we will find out and it turned out primarily to be a plant-based diet because of the chlorophyll and the phytonutrients that have been documented by science to help build your immune system and our alkaline so i did some research she changed her diet she went through chemo uh and she completely healed um and in the process of helping her i started learning about plant-based nutrition which of course this was 12 years ago and nobody was talking about it like they do now and after i read so many books i thought man somebody's got to tell the rest of the world about this so i gave up my 25-year corporate career i enrolled in a nutrition school it learned something about nutrition i went to the institute for integrative nutrition and then i taught nutrition trying to get people to eat more plants and that's when i had my epiphany that people knew they should eat more plants but it was just too much work so i went back to look at everything i'd recommended to my sister to try to find an easier way for people to get the nutrition that they needed without all the work and that's when i when i hit algae that's when the miracle happened and i started reading about all the research and nasa and united nations and and uh i decided to uh 11 years ago 10 years ago i was going to devote the rest of my life to helping people understand algae so i'm the chief scientific officer i've written about 300 papers i educate people i speak on conferences podcasts i will do anything to help people understand this gorgeous plant provided to us by mother nature that's not pond scum it just uh i tell people well it's just algae's just misunderstood like aren't we all very good well good for you uh oh katherin has been a real pleasure to have you on the podcast and learn more about you so where do listeners go to learn more about you and energy bits you got it uh well we have a website energy bits en er g y b for boy i t for tom s for sam dot com where you can uh learn more about algae there's lots of science there um again and we have a 20 discount code for your community if you go when you go to the shopping cart uh just type in the word doctor gundry all one word no dot in the middle just doctor gundry and you'll always get 20 off anything you purchase now i don't want people to have sticker shock when they go to the website remember our our quality is so high and we're the only algae sold by doctors and remember that that quote i said about nasa one gram of algae has the same nutrition as a thousand grams of vegetables so a bag of our algae is normally 120 with your discount it brings it to 96 but the thousand tablets in that bag has the same nutrition as 551 pounds of vegetables well now that's three dollars a pound that would have been $1500 so 551 pounds that you didn't have to carry home clean cook or eat that alone should get your interest right and you only need a few tablets a day and then you'll save money on everything else including your food so uh just as a recap spirulina we actually have two brands of spirulina we have energy bits and we have a second one called beauty bits because it also builds your skin and hair and we found out that women didn't like our blue packaging so someone said oh you got a boy spirulina and a girl spirulina so spirulina is the energy bits and the beauty bits the um chlorella is called recovery bits because it helps you recover your health and then we actually have a um a fourth brand that we call vitality bits which is 50 percent spirulina and 50 percent chlorella and you can you can buy them in the large bags or they come in boxes of single servings there's 30 tablets in a single serving and as I said if you just start with five or 10 tablets even two if you want to get started uh or if you don't want to make the big commitment although we would encourage you to because you'll it's amazing food you can buy single servings on amazon for four dollars each and then come back to energy bits dot com and use dr the big one for the big stuff so uh yeah it's good stuff all right well keep growing algae and we'll keep getting the word out okay all right I appreciate it be well it's it's good stuff Catherine thanks a lot thanks dr country okay bye bye bye okay now it's time for our audience question this week's question comes from vet amaro who wants to know if cactus is safe to eat uh boy is cactus safety uh in fact it's interesting I actually took a picture of a cactus growing in our yard in palm springs and I took it because a cactus obviously has a really good protective system against not being eaten by its predators and it's all of those prickly spines and I took a picture of it because you can see the prickly spines on the cactus and it's telling you you know I don't want you to eat me but you can't see the lectins that are sitting on a grain of wheat or on the outside of a bean uh but they're there to try to convince you not to eat them and it just so happens that if you get past the lectins or the spines in this case of a cactus the inside is incredibly good for you so a peeled cactus is one of the best sources of prebiotic fiber there is and in fact there's really good work that uh eating nopales peeled cactus is actually really good for reducing pre-diabetes for reducing insulin levels and it's because of the prebiotic fiber that supercharges your postbiotic production that I talk about in the energy paradox so yeah cactus is incredibly good for you you just got to get past its protective barrier just like you gotta watch out for the protective barriers in grains and beans you can get rid of them but you got to know how to do it great question time for the review of the week this review is from Betty red 67 who enjoyed my episode with Shane O'Mara on walking she says plant paradox is changing my life I have had gut issues for years my complaints fell on deaf ears with my physicians 28 days on plant paradox and I have no more reflux no stomach inflammation my joints feel better and I sleep better now I have lost five pounds but it looks like 10 I am thrilled now I will walk well thanks so much for sharing this wonderful news Betty and you know your point is actually well taken uh sadly physicians don't know that this is a problem the other thing you bring up is very important that I've noticed in 21 years of taking care of my patients so many times patients are either so overweight or hurt so much that even simple things like exercise even walking is simply too hard to do and the idea that you should eat less and exercise more you know is is impossible so what's exciting is exactly what you wrote about by changing what you eat you get rid of all these issues but the benefit is you lost some weight and now you're ready to go out and do some walking so that's great to hear that's why we do this and you know thanks for writing in I encourage me to keep at keep doing what I'm doing you know these reviews make such a huge difference in how many people we can reach with our message about diet nutrition and health which is why you can play a major role helping other people across the globe transform their health and energy all by rating and reviewing us on iTunes in fact I can't wait to read your review soon because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you before you go I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you