Brain Health Unlocked: The Power Of Algae

Catharine Arnston

Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to share my almost 15 years of research on algae nutrition that nobody outside of Asia knows about, even though there are 100,000 studies documenting it. The people listening will be very excited to learn about something that’s been gifted to us by Mother Nature 4 billion years ago but has not been explained to you.

Heather Sandison, ND

You even mentioned spirulina before we hit the record. I was like, is spirulina an algae? I had no idea. Will you break it down? What are the different algae out there that we might have come across as consumers? What are the differences between them?

Catharine Arnston

Yes. Because they are quite different. First of all, algae is its food category. There are two main subcategories. One is called macroalgae, and the other is microalgae. We’re talking about microalgae. As you mentioned, spirulina is a microalgae. But let me tell you what macroalgae is first. You can understand the distinction between the two of them. It’s that big, stringy stuff that washes up on shore, also known as seaweed, dulse, or kelp. Now it’s called seaweed because it’s only from the sea, and it has lots of fiber and lots of iodine. It’s good for you for those reasons. But it has virtually zero nutrition. To sum up, macroalgae is from the sea. High fiber, zero nutrition. Microalgae are the opposite. It is everywhere. The sea, but also the lakes, the rivers, the streams, the soil, your aquarium, and your swimming pool. It everywhere. Microalgae, unlike macroalgae, there are only a few strains. Microalgae, there are tens of thousands of strains. Now, these are called microalgae because they are microscopic; you cannot see them with your eyes.

You can get a million microalgae on the head of a pin. That’s how tiny they are. This is what feeds the whales; this is what feeds everything in the ocean. If you are, learn about it here. I call algae microalgae intelligent food because you have to be intelligent to take it and also know what to do in your body. We’re going to tell you some of that. But microalgae is the opposite of macroalgae; it has almost zero fiber or has either zero fiber or virtually no fiber. It has the most nutrients in the universe. We have a quote from NASA that says one gram of algae has 1000 times more nutrition than any other fruit or vegetable. As I said, it’s everywhere. It does contain iodine if it’s from the ocean. There are various strains of microalgae. There’s blue-green, green, and red. But the two most popular are the two you’ve probably heard of, which are spirulina and maybe Chlorella. 

Spirulina is one strain of blue-green algae. It is not the strain of blue-green algae that closes your beach. That’s a different strain. Spirulina is only harvested as an agricultural crop in fresh water. Yes, there is blue-green algae in the ocean. But it’s not spirulina. Spirulina is grown hydroponically, which means fresh water is grown and triple-filtered. Our company’s called ENERGYbits. We grow ours in triple-filtered spring mountain water in Taiwan. When we air dry it without high heat, which you’re going to find out is very important because it contains very important antioxidants and enzymes that protect your brain, we’ll talk about that in a minute. Then we just press them into tiny tablets that we call bits because they are bits of nutrition. Spirulina, a blue-green algae, is very high in protein, very high in collagen, and contains 40 vitamins and minerals endorsed by the United Nations as the Answer to World Hunger. It is also endorsed by NASA as having the most nutrient-dense food and very powerful nutrition. The other algae, which we sell and that you may be familiar with, is called Chlorella. Now it’s called it’s a green algae. It showed up on Earth a billion years after spirulina. It is wellness algae. Spirulina is an energizing, nourishing algae, as we’re going to talk about. Is that energizing at the cellular level? The energy that it generates is made by the mitochondria in your cell. The mitochondria are what generate all this cellular energy, including in your brain, for you to function. We’ll talk about that more in a minute. 

Chlorella doesn’t generate energy, but it removes toxins, which are all heavy metals. Lead, mercury, radiation, and things like aluminum are known to contribute to Alzheimer’s. Lots of brain disorders are due to these heavy pesticides that have gotten into your brain. Chlorella is a wellness and detoxifying algae. Highest chlorophyll in the world. Chlorophyll, by the way, builds your blood. It’s almost the same chemical composition, but the problem is that virtually no chlorophyll exists in our vegetables anymore. Chlorella has 500 times more chlorophyll than arugula, and it even has 25 times more chlorophyll than liquid chlorophyll. I’m not making this up. These are numbers from the Linus Pauling Institute. Chlorella is a wellness algae that pulls out toxins, cleanses your body, and removes heavy metals. It does have a bit of fiber, so it feeds your gut biome and the healthy bacteria there. Of course, your gut and your brain are connected through the vagus nerve. Chlorella is very much a healing, wellness, and cleansing algae. Most people we recommend take it. We tell you to take it at night because that’s when your body goes through a detox-to-repair cycle. It also helps you sleep because it has the highest tryptophan level in the world. Tryptophan is a precursor to something called melatonin, which is well known for helping you sleep.

Spirulina and Chlorella are two types of algae. They are microalgae. They are harvested as food crops. They are not supplements. This is important to understand because your body absorbs nutrients from food better than it does from supplements. Spirulina isn’t even a plant; it’s a bacteria, which is very important because there’s no cellulose wall for your body to break down to get access to all the rich protein. It has all 18 of the 20 aminos, including the nine your body can’t make—and has very powerful nutrients like antioxidants. There’s a big, long one called superoxide dismutase that protects your mitochondria and has a blue pigment in it called phycocyanin, which has been proven to kill cancer cells and also protect your brain. Spirulina is very much a brain food, not only because your brain, by the way, has the highest mitochondria in your entire body, which has 2 million mitochondria per cell. When you heal the mitochondria, the first thing that gets healed is your brain. 

There’s a great book I can strongly recommend about this called Brain Energy by Dr. Christopher Palmer. He’s a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. His book, Brain Energy Talks, talks about how everything from Alzheimer’s to post-traumatic stress disorder to depression or anxiety is due to damaged mitochondria. Because we’ve done our clinical trials, there are tens of thousands of clinical trials out there that show that spirulina, the nutrients in spirulina, protect and restore your mitochondria. That’s why I call spirulina brain food, because it is so healing for your brain and can either help you prevent or recover from some dementia, Chlorella, is also helpful for your brain because it pulls out toxins, but it’s a wellness detoxing algae. You can see how they were quite different but in conjunction with one another.

Heather Sandison, ND

You kind of alluded to the fact that there’s not that much chlorophyll in food anymore, but especially now, it’s important to be taking these highly nutrient-dense foods as algae. Why is it so important now, more than ever?

Catharine Arnston

Yes, it’s a great question. Well, I read a lot about this, and the scientists are calling this era that we live in The Great Nutrient Collapse. How sad is that? The reason why is that over the last 20 or 30 years, we’ve started using what’s called monocropping, where they put the same crop on the same soil, and so it depletes the soil. If the soil is depleted, there are no minerals for the plants to pull up. Plus, so much of our vegetables and food are now coming from countries far, far away. They harvest them before they are ripe. That means the enzymes and the nutrients can’t get to the leaves or the fruit. Even though you’re eating, even if you’re eating organic, you are not getting the nutrients that your grandparents use. They’ve even done tests. They found that broccoli has like 10% of the nutrients in it that it had 50 years ago. The other problem is that the ozone layer is damaged. The plants now have more sugar in them, less chlorophyll, and fewer nutrients. 

On top of that, our food supply is overprocessed. If everyone is eating things that are in white, packaged bags, heat kills nutrients, by the way. Any time you’re eating anything that’s been processed in a plant, a vegetable, or a factory, you’re losing nutrients. Even if you put nutrients back in, they’re artificial. Your body can’t recognize them. This great nutrient collapse is contributing to all of our health issues. People know that their cell phone needs to be plugged in every night to be recharged, so it works. But they don’t understand that your body is the same. You simply cannot give it things that don’t have nutrients in them and expect it to operate. It’s like a building. If you don’t replace the light bulbs in your offices, eventually the offices are going to go dark and nobody can do any work. Your body’s the same way. what? Those lights are in your body. They’re mitochondria. As you age and as they get older and damaged, they don’t create the energy. It’s like light bulbs going out. Algae turn the lights back on in your body, and it does it through nutrient density. On top of that, the other reason why people are getting so sick is that we are surrounded by toxins. 

I read that the average adult in America has 700 toxins in their bodies, and our immune systems simply weren’t built to sustain that kind of toxic load. If you marry that with the fact that your mitochondria aren’t generating enough energy, there’s never enough cellular energy to recover from anything or protect you from anything. You are susceptible to things like heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s—all these chronic illnesses that are hitting us. But when you have a strong immune system and you get that from proper nourishment and removing toxins, I tell people that if you have too many toxins in your body, it’s like someone’s taken your parking spot; the toxins lodged in the cell wall. They take the spot where a healthy nutrient or a healthy fat like omega-3 could get in, but it can’t get in if the receptor cell is blocked with a toxin or an acidic or inflammatory omega-6. You need to remove the toxins from your body and nourish it at the same time. Now you can get the nourishment that the mitochondria need to generate that cellular energy. Turn the lights back on, and everything works.

Heather Sandison, ND

There’s great nutritional depletion. It’s a little, but it can kind of be depressing for some people. Tell me why. Well, let’s talk about something a little lighter, and we’re excited. You’re getting your Ph.D. Can you tell us the science and the topic of your thesis that you’re working on here? I know it’s in algae.

Catharine Arnston

Yes, well, it’s focusing on natural health, so I have a lot of coursework. I have a master’s, and I’ve spent almost 15 years researching metabolic health and mitochondrial health. But I need to get the basics of cellular biology and physiology. The first year is just going through a massive reading list to make up all the missing pieces. I call myself a citizen scientist. I’ve spent all these years going into PubMed, teaching myself because I had to understand why people were getting sick, why our algae were working so well, and why hours worked better than anybody else’s. It was a matter of understanding how the body worked. I had to understand molecular biology; I had to understand plant biology; and I had to understand evolutionary biology. I figured it out. But some of it’s too. It’s unfortunate in this era we live in that we don’t think anyone’s smart unless they have a bunch of degrees after their names. In the old days, you just learned, and so I don’t have a lot. Some people don’t think I know what I’m talking about because I don’t have a Ph.D. I thought, what? I’m going to get that Ph.D. because A, for my satisfaction, and B, so I can teach you to speak with authority to my peers and help them understand this little specialty that I seem to have developed. 

I wasn’t trying to develop it, but I got into algae because my younger sister, 15 years ago, developed breast cancer. Her oncologist told her to change her diet to an alkaline diet. They didn’t tell her what it was. I love my sister. I have no idea what it is either, but I’ll find out. It turned out to be a plant-based diet because of the chlorophyll—again, the phytonutrients that build your immune system. In helping her, I started researching plant nutrition and stumbled upon algae, the most nutrient-dense food in the world, used, grown, and used safely in Asia. For the last 65 years, multibillion-dollar crops have been studied and documented in 100,000 studies endorsed internationally, and no one in America knows about them. Why? Because it’s not grown here, and no one’s told you about it. I tell people, well, a few years ago, you probably didn’t know about collagen powder, chia, matcha, or some of these other indigenous foods.

Well, algae is the same way I tell people. Algae. Isn’t new? It’s just new to you. I have taken it upon myself to help break through, go through all the science, and find the nuggets that explain why it works so well for preventing Alzheimer’s, preventing heart disease, and gaining strength in your immune system and its food. God loves Mother Nature. It’s its food. It was the first life on Earth a billion years ago. It’s there, but the trouble is, it’s not a shiny object. It’s been around for so long. It’s been so visible. It’s invisible. I’m kind of giving it a new life. I make the science easy to understand. I make sure it’s all referenced in PubMed, and we package it in small tablets that we call bits that you can swallow. Now it’s effortless. Ozempic has taken off because it’s effortless for people to lose weight. Well, Spirulina Chlorella algae, we call ENERGYBits and RECOVERY Bits. They are effortless too. If you can swallow water, you can get the nourishment you need for the day, and you can protect your brain from just about anything. There are higher medicinal quantities, but if you take ten a day and it takes 2 seconds, so it’s and there are no contraindications, which means it doesn’t interfere with anything that you’re doing. It’s safe for everyone, from newborns to children to teenagers, your pets, and your grandparents. There’s more nourishment in one tablet than you probably have all week. God bless Mother Nature.

Heather Sandison, ND

You’re the founder, CEO, and scientific lead of ENERGYBits. My understanding of Spirulina Chlorella includes important factors that go into how it’s grown. I’ve heard of glass-grown Chlorella versus some of the other ways to grow them. When you talk about how it ENERGYBits, you uniquely grow your Spirulina and Chlorella.

Catharine Arnston

Well, we’re a bit of a purist. I think Mother Nature always knows better. We grow ours outdoors in what’s called ponds, but they’re hydroponic ponds, I guess you would say. What makes us special? There are a couple of things that make us special. It’s grown in triple-filtered spring mountain water. That is important because algae will absorb whatever’s in the water. Algae is the one vegetable or plant, whatever you want to call it, that you should never eat wild because, in the ocean, there’s a lake called Klamath Lake where they grow it. There are what’s called microtoxins in wild bodies of water. They’ve studied them. You can’t keep them out, and algae will absorb them. These cause brain issues; they cause damage to your cells. You have to keep the water clean. We do third-party lab tests here in the United States, not only for nutrition and heavy metals but also for microtoxins. We never have any because we grow them through triple-filtered spring water and the less expensive the algae, do not. That’s number one. 

But the more important one is that we are one of the few companies I don’t know about, but almost every other company except ours uses high heat to dry their algae. This is so unfortunate because many of the nutrients that are found, particularly in spirulina, are deactivated by high heat. The other companies have to do it because they’re lower-priced algae, so they have to sell more, so they have to get to market quickly. This is the way they do it. But when you do that, here are two powerful nutrients, particularly as they relate to your brain and Alzheimer’s, that are deactivated. One is called superoxide dismutase. I’m sorry it’s such a long word, but the short form is SOD. There are 25,000 studies. That’s a big number. Proving that this superoxide dismutase helps prevent Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer, and every other chronic disease. It reduces inflammation. It’s powerful. But here’s the problem: You can’t get superoxide dismutase from any food. Zero. Except spirulina. There’s a smaller amount in chlorella, but spirulina has the highest concentration of anything. It just doesn’t exist anywhere else. 

Your body normally makes superoxide dismutase for you from the moment you’re born until the age of 30. After the age of 30, it slows down. By the time you’re 40 or 50, you virtually have none. The trouble is that superoxide dismutase, which is an antioxidant that protects your mitochondria from free radical damage, is an enzyme, and high heat kills enzymes. All of those other algae that are using high heat to dry their algae are deactivating that one critical nutrient, superoxide dismutase, that protects your mitochondria and therefore protects your brain. That doesn’t happen with us because ours is raw food. We don’t use high heat. You could also use, which I endorse, frozen spirulina because it has not been treated with high heat, but it’s messy, expensive, can’t travel with it, and expires quickly. That’s one nutrient oxygen superoxide dismutase proven to protect you from Alzheimer’s or any dementia of any kind damaged by high heat. But not with us. 

The other nutrient you need to know about is the blue pigment in spirulina. It’s called phycocyanin. I’m going to spell that for you because you’ve probably never heard of it before. It’s P-H-Y-C-O-C-Y-A-N-I-N, and it’s the blue pigment in spirulina. Spirulina is a blue-green algae because it contains two pigments: phycocyanin is the blue one, and the green one is chlorophyll. What’s so special about that phycocyanin? I wanted to spell it for you so you could google this and find out for yourself. It is proven to kill cancer cells. I’d say that was pretty important. Whether it’s brain cancer or colon cancer, breast cancer doesn’t matter. But phycocyanin is also deactivated by high heat. If you are using any of those other lower-priced algae, you may be getting some protein and some nutrients, but you’re not going to be getting active phycocyanin but you will with ours or you will with frozen spirulina. 

Now, the way that the blue pigment kills the cancer cells—the energy that’s generated by your mitochondria—is done through a process called the electron transport chain. I don’t want to get too geeky, but if you’ve ever watched a relay race, a runner will have a baton, and then they run a distance, and they pass the baton to the next runner, and then that runner runs the next distance, and then hopefully they win. Well, the way that your cellular energy is generated at the mitochondrial level is very similar, except instead of passing a baton, there are what are called molecules. They’re like the runners. But instead of passing a baton, they pass electrons, and so at the finish line is the generation of ATP. In the blue phycocyanin that’s in spirulina, in healthy cells, there’s a little helper molecule, sort of like having a Tesla. It takes that electron from one molecule to the next and speeds it up. In a healthy cell, it generates more ATP cellular energy. This is why spirulina generates energy. Cellular energy is why we call our ENERGYBits. 

But in an unhealthy cell, the blue phycocyanin identifies that it’s cancer, or what’s called a senescent cell, and rejects that helper cell called cytochrome c, and that goes out and kills the cancer cell or the senescent cell. That’s why I call it spirulina or both algae, quite honestly, intelligent food because it knows what to do in your body, and you have to be intelligent to take it. You probably don’t know much about mitochondria, but I would encourage you to Google it and learn about it because mitochondria if you can keep your mitochondria healthy, will keep you healthy. It’s that simple. But the problem is they’re damaged by free radicals, which are a byproduct of this ATP production. The mitochondria have two membranes, so most antioxidants can’t get in there. The only ones that can get in there, ironically, are the ones that are found in the highest concentrations in both algae; superoxide dismutase, glutathione, and chlorophyll.

Pretty cool. Not only when you take algae, are you improving your cellular energy so you can improve your mitochondria, so they can improve your brain health, and it can provide all of the cellular energy. You are also getting the few nutrients that can get in there and barricade those mitochondria from all those free radicals, and they turn the free radicals into water and oxygen. By the way, algae is also the most alkaline food in the world. Your cells need to be in a slightly alkaline condition or state, with a PH of 7.1, to ensure that they are maintaining oxygen, preventing cancer, and keeping communication working. Algae is yours, and I think it’s your new best friend. I can’t imagine life without it. I’ve been taking it every single day—both the spirulina in the morning and the chlorella at night—for 14 years. It is the purest. At least ours is. The purest, cleanest, concentrated, safest, and most powerful food you will ever put in your body, say, for your entire family. We can help people regain their health, protect their health, and put this Alzheimer’s issue behind us because the trajectory we’re on is not acceptable to me, and I’m sure it’s not acceptable to you.

Heather Sandison, ND

Yes. Tell us where our listeners can find out more about ENERGYBits.

Catharine Arnston

Yes, well, our website is energybits.com. That’s E-N-E-R-G-Y-B-I-T-S, and even if you don’t want to buy anything, just come in. We have a blog every month with lots of science and lots of links, but it is very concentrated on nutrition, and we have a 20% discount code for your listeners. It’s RAS,  which stands for Reversing Alzheimer’s Summit. That will give you 20% off everything. Just to give you a little thumbs up, a large bag has a thousand tablets in it. If daily maintenance is like taking ten tablets a day, if you have a health condition like Alzheimer’s, we would encourage you to take 30 tablets a day until you get a clear diagnosis. But if you do take ten a day and use your discount code, it works out to a dollar a day. You can protect your brain for a dollar a day. We’ve done clinical trials that prove that in 30 days, in people with all sorts of dementia and brain issues, the inflammation was gone. It would have probably been gone in two weeks, except we didn’t do the brain test until 30 days after the test. 

But this is a remarkable food. Now, if you don’t want to give the full bag away, you can also go to Amazon, where we sell them for $6. The two spirulina brands—these are the ones for brain health—are called ENERGYBits. We have a second brand called BEAUTYBits. They are identical, so we just package them differently. Someone says you have a boy spirulina and a girl spirulina because one’s blue and one’s pink pretty much. But it’s just to make people comfortable. The Chlorella is packaged in green because it’s a green algae, and it’s called RECOVERYBits because it helps you recover your health, build your immune system, and pull out those toxins that may be lodging in your brain. The two of them work very closely together. But if you take 10 spirulina in the morning and 10 Chlorella at night, that’s your maintenance dose. Honestly, it’s going to be a game-changer for everybody. We work with hundreds of thousands of doctors and consumers. It brings us joy every day to hear about the things that we’re doing with the algae. It’s Mother Nature at her best. We just grow it safely for you. But she’s, it’s her. It’s her invention. Let’s pay attention to Mom.

Heather Sandison, ND

Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your passion and energy around Chlorella, Spirulina, and ENERGYBits. It’s been such a pleasure having you.

Catharine Arnston

Thank you, Dr. Heather. I appreciate it.