The Superfood Algae that WILL change your life! : 1213

There's a nutrient that is currently used and shown to kill cancer cells. It's endorsed by the United nations as the answer to world hunger because of the highest protein. It's endorsed by Nassau as being the most nutrient dense food in the world, a thousand times more than any other fruit or vegetable. I have never found anybody who doesn't enjoy the benefits of this because it gets absorbed so quickly. It determines everything about your longevity and your livelihood. There's 25,000 studies proving that it stops heart disease, Alzheimer's, inflammation. 25,000 studies. You can't argue that.

You're listening to the human upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about the most annoying topic ever. Superfoods. Why do I say they're annoying? Because every company out there, it seems like, will find some weird Amazonian food that has one benefit and is full of toxins from plants that mess you up. Things like spinach or kale or even almonds are examples of this where they're not really superfoods and you can ignore all the negative aspects and you can just pay attention to one good thing. And then you can get people to eat quinoa and not tell them they have to prepare it properly and all these things. So I like to say coffee is a superfood because it has tons of evidence behind it. And there's something else that I've been talking about since the very start of the biohacking movement, and that is specific algae that have the ability to, say, pull toxins out of the body. And there's an old story that I shared from back in my days when I was doing a lot of advanced yoga. I would eat sushi and then I would try to do a one legged pose with my eyes closed. And if you ever tried to do that, you typically fall over. And I could do this, but I could not do it on the days after I ate sushi. And it's because the mercury from the sushi was affecting my balance. And it's subtle, but it's measurable. So I thought, well, I don't want to give up sushi because I like sushi, so what do I do about it? So I went for this little algae called chlorella. And chlorella binds directly to mercury, so I would do that. And my balance was improved with my eyes closed on one leg. Today our guest is Katherine Arnsten, who is founder and chief science officer of energybeds and a recently minted PhD, which is awesome.

Thank you.

And we're going to Go deep on spirulina and chlorella, because these are actually superfoods in that they don't have a strong downside and they have a very big upside. And there's a bunch of new research on these, specifically around mitochondria, that makes it worth your attention. So you're going to learn what are these things if you've never heard of them, and when and how should you use them to improve your performance, to affect longevity, to affect energy in the cells. And Catherine's very knowledgeable on mitochondria and energy production in the body. It'll be an interesting and fun conversation, really, about where she's focused her life's work in the last, what, 10 or so years?

Fifteen.

Fifteen years. All right. Why.

Why algae? Well, I tell people I didn't discover algae yet discovered me. And, and I'm actually Canadian. I've lived in Boston for 35 years. But I mentioned the Canada piece because I had a corporate job, like many of us, including yourself, earlier on and then. So I was quite content with my career. And then out of the blue, my younger sister, who I'm very close to in Canada, developed breast cancer. And her oncologist, which is a cancer specialist, told her to change her diet to an alkaline diet because it would be helpful with her healing. She was going through chemo. They didn't tell her what it was or why it was good for her. She called me, her big sister, who loves her. Good researcher even then. And I discovered that an alkaline diet was a plant based diet because of the chlorophyll and the phytonutrients and blah, blah, blah. So I helped her learn about plant based nutrition, which led me to algae, the most alkaline, nutrient dense food in the world. Also, there was a German scientist back in the 40s by the name of Otto Warburg.

Oh yeah.

Who discovered that cancer cannot exist in cells that are slightly alkaline. So I think that was the other reason why her oncologist wanted her to have an alkaline diet. So anyways, I just learned about algae and discovered that because it has so many nutrients in it, it's endorsed by the United nations as the answer to world hunger because of the highest protein. It's endorsed by NASA as being the most nutrient dense food in the world, a thousand times more than any other fruit or vegetable. What about liver?

Is it more nutrient dense than liver? Depends on which nutrients, I guess.

I actually stand corrected because their reference was fruits, vegetables, which of course liver is not got it. But also it's been used safely and daily in Asia for over 60 years where it is a multi billion dollar agricultural crop. So it had all these healing properties. We're going to talk about some of them. The mitochondria health, the reduced inflammation, improved ATP production, brain health. But all these benefits have not been explained here in North America because it's not grown here. People here don't know, they know it's a superfood, they know it's got protein and chlorophyll, but they have no idea of the deep science behind what it does for mitochondrial health. And you and I and all your community know mitochondria, where the rubber hits the road. It determines everything about your longevity and your livelihood and your ability to not have chronic disease or accelerate aging. So I've been doing a deep dive for 15 years on mitochondrial health and why the nutrients in algae, particularly spirulina, are documented to facilitate better mitochondria health. And there's two in particular, but we'll talk about a number of them, but one is an antioxidant called superoxide dismutase, also known as sod, and the other one is a blue pigment. Spirulina is a blue pigment, a blue green algae called phycocyanin. Superoxide dismutase. There's 25,000 studies proving that it stops heart disease, Alzheimer's, inflammation. 25,000 studies, you can't argue with that. And same with phycocyanin, they use it now to kill cancer cells. They use it now.

So there's a couple things we need to chat about in the conversation.

Yeah.

First one, alkaline diets. Isn't that like 1970s? Couldn't I just take some baking soda?

You could, I guess, yeah. But it's more. The whole idea is that when your cells. Because this range goes from 0 to 14 and so anything else not inside cells, right? Yes.

Inside cells can't go from 0 to 14.

No, but that is the range of alkalinity.

Oh, of course.

And your cells would never be 14 or 0 or you would basically be dead. But as long as your cells are, your cells are slightly alkaline. So 7.1. That indicates that there's oxygen in the cell, that the mitochondria are functioning, the cells are communicating. And so this is one of the reasons that helps prevent cancer cells from growing or frankly any cells.

How would we know if our cells were alkaline or not?

That's a good question. Well, there are tests that you can do, but there's, it's, you know, like.

Consumers don't have access to those. We can test our urine and saliva or sweat, but they're not good indicators of the cell ph.

I'm not an expert on, on alkalinity. I just know that's what got me started in my research. And I didn't stay in alkaline research. It was just a milestone to get me where I am now. So.

Got it. So for listeners, I also went down the acid alkaline thing for a long period of time is one of the reasons I even tried a disastrous 18 months of becoming a vegan than a raw vegan. And the reality is that your body regulates your blood alkalinity very, very carefully because you die if it's off a little bit.

Correct.

And it's called breathing that does that. It's carbon dioxide is how you do it. So people will say, well, this food which is acidic like a lemon or a lime, oh, but eventually it becomes alkaline in the cell. And it's true, citric acid does that and so do a lot of the fruit acids like those you find in coffee and many other things. So I find so much nonsense online about acid and alkaline or drinking alkaline water, which turns off stomach acid. But there's also evidence that says taking a quarter to half a teaspoon of baking soda, which is very highly alkaline, away from meals extends lifespan in mammals by about 10%.

Yeah.

So clearly having an alkaline buffer is important so that your cells can have a slightly alkaline thing and the type of food you eat is an influencer.

Yeah.

The reason that I'm really interested in algae and with the work you're doing has more to do with sod. Yes, you mentioned that a little while ago. When your cells make energy, this ox redox reaction inside your mitochondria, they also make free radicals.

Correct.

The role of SOD is to clean up those free radicals so they don't cause damage.

Right.

So what does algae do for sod?

Well, spirulina algae, at least ours, has the highest concentration of SOD in the world. And we have lab tests that, that prove that. So the, there's so much research. And you're right about the sod. The reason why so superoxidis is so important is because as you mentioned, it, it neutralizes free radicals. The most damaging free radical is called superoxide. And I, I was curious about, well, what makes it so damaging. It's because it has Three unpaired electrons. Most free radicals have one. So superoxide, which is predominantly produced, I think, only produced in the mitochondria, is extraordinarily damaging. So when you have this antioxidant called superoxide dismutase that neutralizes it better than anything else, it has a great impact. But the problem is, well, here's the good news. Your body makes superoxide dismutase from the moment you're born. But just like a lot, as a. Like a lot of things, like melatonin hormones, your body slows down the production of superoxidecymatase after you hit 30, and by the time you're 40, there's virtually zero. So up until then, your mitochondria, DNA, which are inside the mitochondria themselves, have been protected from these free radicals, thanks to your body, generating superoxide dismutase. But after 40, the way I describe it is think of superoxide dismutase like a big golf umbrella. A byproduct of ATP is free radicals. You can't stop it. But if you have this superoxide dismutase, it behaves like a large umbrella, basically protecting you. Because if you've had one of those big gulf umbrellas, you're in the middle of a rainstorm, you're good to go. So while you're up to 30, you're protected from these free radicals. Once you hit 40, there's fewer of the superoxidicities being produced. So that big gulf umbrella is now about the size of a totes umbrella. And then by the time you hit 40, it's like a cocktail umbrella. No more protection. And the problem is you can't find it in therapeutic amounts in. In food. And there are a few sod supplements, but they have found that they get damaged in the stomach, gut lining. Now, spirulina is a bacteria, it's a cyanobacteria. And why is that important with the conversation of sod? Because as a bacteria, it has no cellulose wall, so there's nothing for your body to break down to get access to it. If you chew it like I do, although most people do swallow it, it's absorbed into your bloodstream. And instantly swallowing takes about maybe five or 10 minutes. So all the nutrients, including the 40 vitamins and minerals, but particularly the superoxideesmatase, gets into the bloodstream and gets directed to the mitochondria. So where it can do amazing things.

Is the sod directly present in spirulina, or is it causing my body to.

Make more no, it's directly present. But here's the catch. Superoxide dismutase, which is an antioxidant, is also an enzyme. And so what happens with the other algae companies that are lower price and lower quality? They need to get to market quickly. So they've been always using high heat to dry their algae so they can cut corners and get to market quickly. We have never used high heat. And I have scientific paper that shows that the functionality of superoxidizing is completely reversed, damaged, unfunctional, after the temperature of 114 degrees.

All right, this is worth mentioning. A lot of people don't have a good picture of what an enzyme does. We've all heard about enzymes. So in normal physical chemistry, what happens is you mix two chemicals together, it takes a certain amount of heat for that reaction to happen. When you have an enzyme present, it takes far less energy for the same reaction to happen because it makes the reaction happen more easily. That's why life exists. It's why biochemistry is different than regular chemistry. And I'm saying this because my grandfather actually wrote under the general chemistry heading for Encyclopedia Britannica, so kind of comes from my family. And the difference in those two worlds is because enzymes. And enzymes are notoriously sensitive to heat.

Yes.

They don't work if Your body is 2 degrees too high or too low and they're damaged permanently at temperatures that are not very high. 114 degrees.

Yeah.

So what you're doing is you're drying your spirulina at low temperatures so that the enzyme activity is present. And since sod is the primary enzyme.

Yes.

Okay, that makes sense.

Yes. And actually there's places like healing centers like the Hippocrates Institute and the Gershon Institute. Hippocrates has been around for 50, 50 years, and they have a remarkable success.

Older than that, I thought. Hippocrates. Just kidding.

Anna Wigmore started the Hippocrates Institute. But. Yes, yes, he's the. You know. But they. They have huge success rates with people who are very sick. Stage three and four cancer. And one of the first things they do is give them raw spirulina. Why? Because the superoxide dismutase has not been damaged by high heat. We hope to be working with them because once the patients leave, it's hard for them to continue taking raw spirulina. So because ours is raw, we're hoping to be able to work with them. But, yeah, this is a very, very critical antioxidant. And when you see that there are 25,000 studies that have proven the validity of superoxide dismutase to protect against chronic disease, heart disease, Alzheimer's, protect telomeres, but nobody knows that you can find it in spirulina if it's raw.

Is there an issue with getting too much sod?

I don't. I can't imagine that ever happening. Because what happens in the mitochondria, as you know, is it's a very tightly control. And the electron transport chain is where the actual cellular energy is generated. And so it's very tightly controlled through calcium. And there's a molecule I want to talk about called cytochrome C. And so this is why. What happens when people start to. They. They're eating the wrong food. They're not. They're. They're aging. They're not having the protection. The mitochondria, there's so many free radicals, it gets out of control. You always want some free radicals because the ROS keeps the balance of the redox. So. But I've never ever heard or read about there ever being too much subroxidismutase. So everyone's in deficit.

Oh, yes. 99.99% of people are in deficit, except me. A fair point. And it's because there's lots of studies that show if you take excessive amounts of antioxidants, you don't get the benefit of oxidative molecules. So there was a time when I had high levels of toxic mold. I was fat, my brain wasn't working, and I was taking, like, fistfuls of vitamin C. Way too much vitamin E, like every antioxidant I could find. And then I started taking a stupidly high dose of sod. Right. And that combination of all that together definitely suppressed the ox. Redox. This is how you make energy. Just because if you have no free radicals present, you can't have oxidation.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't think you could get there from spirulina, but I would just say some people who listen to the show will just go all in on something.

Yeah.

So don't go all in on antioxidants. And is spirulina very well documented to have all sorts of health effects? Yes. Is sod behind it? Yes. If you have an inflammatory condition or you have cancer or any of these things that produce extra superoxide, which is most inflammatory things, you're going to need a source of sod.

Right. The other thing I want to be sure people understand is all antioxidants are not created equal, particularly when it comes to mitochondria And I'm sure you're aware, too, there was a lot of research done about 10 years ago looking at predominantly vitamin E and vitamin C and to see if it would help with longevity issues or recovery from fitness. And they got zero benefits. Zero. And here's why. The mitochondria are the only cell in your body, organelle, in your body, that have two membranes. It has a lipid membrane around the outside, like all your other cells, but has the second inner membrane, which is impenetrable by most antioxidants. Vitamin C can't get in there. Vitamin E can't get in there. And so the ones that can get in there, that have these amazing antioxidant capabilities include superoxide dismutase, glutathione, and chlorophyll. And algae, spirulina. Algae has the highest concentration of all three. So. And by the way, the reason why the mitochondria have that second inner membrane and the reason why things can't get in there is because normally your cells have something called porins, which are little channels that allow proteins and enzymes and other things in and out. No porins in the inner membrane of the mitochondria. And why is this? Because algae, a cyanobacteria like spirulina, was the first life on Earth almost 4 billion years ago. And then after. And it released oxygen while it was growing. And after a billion years, there was more oxygen on Earth, So larger cells could grow, but they weren't generating ATP very well. So the large cell basically absorbed the small cell, which was the cyanobacteria, and it became your mitochondria. So it's all documented in something called endosymbiotic theory. It was discovered by an MIT professor back in the 60s. She was ridiculed by her colleagues for 10 years until they realized she was right. And so, anyways, she was very right.

In the world of biohacking, I teach now that the ancient bacteria, Mitochondria.

Yeah.

That they're actually still controlling a huge number of your behaviors invisibly.

Oh, absolutely. Well, because they're the highest amount. So you. You have mitochondria in all of your.

Cells, except red blood cells.

Except for blood cells. Correct. But your brain, the highest number of them, are where your greatest energy needs are. And your. Your brain has the most. There's 2 million mitochondria per cell. The next highest is women's eggs. There's about 700,000 per cell. After that, it's your heart, which is about 7,000 per cell and then muscles. So the first thing that improves in the brain cells.

Did you.

What was the number 2 million mitochondria per cell?

Oh, per cell in your brain. That is a much higher number. And when I wrote my Brain mitochondria book, I found 15,000 in heart and brain cells and a similar number in ovaries, 8,000 in.

No, no. It's interesting. I can find you the research.

I'm curious. I always like learning new things.

Yeah. So Chris Palmer, a psychiatrist at the Harvard Business School, wrote a book two years ago called Brain Energy. And in the book he documents how all brain issues, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, doesn't matter what it is, ultimately are due to damaged mitochondria. And he's absolutely right. And so one, this is why I love the spirulina in particular so much because. And I do want to talk about some of the other nutrients in it. It facilitates your mitochondria to start functioning better. It stops, stops the, the damage and it allows it to, to regrow through fusion. And so it's amazing, the first thing that improves when you improve your mitochondria is your brain functionality.

It's funny, I wrote Head Strong, which is my biggest brain in mitochondria book. And like, if you want your brain to work better, there's two things you have to do. First, upregulate mitochondrial function, more energy. You're going to feel it in the brain first. And number two is increase neuroplasticity via bdnf, which is controlled by mitochondria as well.

Right, Right. The mitochondria control hormones. They. So there's. With women who are going through perimenopause or menopause, there's so much new research coming out about how the mitochondria and diabetes, there's so many connections to the mitochondria because they drive the, the hormonal, the creation of hormones. And as you get older, that's another thing that drops as you get older, especially both for men and women. So I tell people, compare your body to a building. And in a building you have cells or a building, you have offices, and that's where the work is done. And in your body, the cells are where the work is done. Now in the building, the thing that allows you to do the work are the lights. Now in your body, the thing that allows you work to be done in your cells are the mitochondria. Now in the building, when the cells go or the lights go out, you just pick up the phone. You call maintenance, they come and replace it, easy peasy. In your body, that's not happening. Well, what could be the maintenance people would be the superoxidismutase. But after 40, they, they all just, they strike and they leave and they never come back. So. And it gets even worse, because in the building, the lights are powered by electricity. In your body, the lights are not just the mitochondria, they are powered by the mitochondria. So I tell people, we gotta get your lights back on, because as you get older, your lights go out, which diminishes your ability to generate cellular energy, which diminishes the ability of your body to prevent any kind of chronic disease, accelerated aging. You don't sleep well, you don't digest well, you don't think well, weight gain, everything, everything, everything is due to mitochondria damage.

We are aligned on that. We'll say the whole biohacking movement is very mitochondria centric. You talk about phycocyanin. What is that?

I'm going to spell it for people because I'm sure most people have never heard of it. And I want people to really know about it because it's a very powerful nutrient in spirulina as well. And it's called, it's a physical C, O, C Y O, N I, N. Phycocyanin. So what is it? Well, it's a pigment and it's only found in spirulina. It's not found in any other food source or anywhere else in the world. What is so special about phycocyanin? It's proven to kill cancer cells. Proven. So you can google phycocyanin and cancer treatments and you'll see the same research that I have found. So what does phycocyanin do and how is it working to kill these cancer cells? I talk about spirulina as being intelligent food for two reasons. First of all, you need to be intelligent to take it. And number two, it knows what to do in your body. And I'm going to explain this right now. One of these nutrients, phycocyanin, is the gatekeeper of determining whether you have energy and life or whether you kill a cell. And what it does is it triggers a little helper molecule in the electron transport chain called the cytochrome C molecule. It's a little helper molecule that moves between the molecules, between 3 and 4 in the electron transport chain. And if you're not familiar with the electron transport chain, I Tell people it's sort of like a relay race. You've seen a relay race. You have a runner who has a baton, and they run a distance. They pass the baton to the next runner, who then runs a distance, and then they hope to win and cross the finish line. In your electron transport chain, instead of runners, you have molecules, and instead of a baton, you have electrons. So the goal, instead of crossing the finish line, is to generate ATP. Now, the good thing is there's two helper molecules. One's called CoQ10 and one is called cytochrome C. And I'm going to talk about cytochrome C. In a healthy cell, this blue pigment called phycocyanin speeds up that. That helper cell so that more energy, more ATP can be generated. That's one of the many reasons why spirulina gives you energy, because it's speeding up this little cytochrome C molecule. So you generate, you cross the finish line faster. However, this is the cool part. If you have a senescent cell or a cancer cell, the phycocyanin detects that, and instead of moving the cytochrome C molecule along, it ejects it, which triggers something called cap azes, which kills the cell. In the chemotherapy industry, they are using cytochrome C, they're measuring it, they're using phycocyanin in their treatments, and they determine if the treatment is working by how much cytochrome C molecules are in the plasma. Raise your hand if you'd like chemotherapy. Yeah. Yeah, right. I didn't think so. Mother nature has given us our own capability of killing cancer cells because, you know, we have cancer cells in us at all times. Whether or not they spread is determined by the health of your mitochondria, the health of your immune system, and many other factors. But you need to keep them under control. And if. And if. I think phycocyanin is the answer, and just to be careful, because I don't want the FDA to shut me down. I'm not saying that algae kills cancer cells. I'm just saying that the science has shown that there's a nutrient in spirulina called phycocyanin that has been. Is currently used and shown to kill cancer cells.

Okay. If you look at the mitochondria as making, well, it makes heat, electricity, a bunch of mitochondrial stuff that it needs. Actually, it doesn't make glutathione. It makes energy to make glutathione that it takes back into itself. But once it makes the electrons, it has to do something with them. And it needs an intact transport chain.

Correct.

And so it's like produce and then get it where it needs to go for each electron. And that part, especially in chronic fatigue. Long Covid and I did have chronic fatigue from toxic mold exposure. It messes you up. You're just really, really tired. And listeners who are big fans might have picked up something. This is a blue, green pink pigment. Is there another blue dye that people have been talking about for mitochondrial function called methylene blue?

I don't know if it has the same impact on cytochrome C. I honestly don't.

It doesn't have the exact same, but it has a very similar one. What you'll find when you're using spirulina is that spirulina is helping the normal cytochrome C pathways work. Methylene blue, which is not a natural molecule, but something that can be helpful for mitochondrial function, it overrides some of the body's natural ways of routing electrons, which is good if you have broken electron transport and maybe not good if you have. If you have it working. Or a more natural molecule that your body is designed to use, like spirulina with phycocyanin is probably going to be a better one.

I'm sorry, you're saying that methylene blue would be better than phagocyte?

No, I'm just saying spirulina would be better because. Yeah, spirulina is going to allow your body to choose how electrons are transported. And what methylene blue does is it overrides that.

Yeah.

And I think there's room for both, to be perfectly honest. But. So this isn't like, you know, one is better than the other, just that.

They just do different things.

Yeah, they do different things in a similar part of the body.

Yeah.

Uh, and I. I use both at different times. Yeah. So there's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah.

But the most interesting thing, if you get into the nerdy bits, is you should have a product called Nerdy Bits. Would that be funny?

That was Naughty Bits.

Oh, yeah, that would sell.

That's another. That's another podcast. That's very long time ago. I'm sure you have naughty bits now.

Oh, no, not me. Heavens, no. There's. There's crazy behavior inside the cells in the body. So when the body senses free ATP, which means a mitochondria somewhere blew up and spit out its ATP, it causes. It's basically a signal throughout the body that causes changes in all of the Mitochondria.

Yeah.

And when there's a dysfunctional mitochondria that goes through the process you just described, it's basically tossing out pieces of itself, which is a signal to all the others because mitochondria are a distributed intelligence. They're ancient bacteria, but they all vote and they all talk to each other and they can fuse together and they can move around where you need more energy. It's actually incredibly complex and brilliant and elegant. And if you're saying, well, here's more of a compound that you need in order to transport electrons, it just logically follows that of course you're going to have more energy. And the interesting thing is that, well, I'm just be blunt. I kind of maybe I have a little bit of a bias. I fell for the vegan nonsense. Like it broke my health. It took me a long time to recover.

I'm not vegan.

Don't worry about that.

Give me a good steak.

But you know, the spirulina algae is like part of that like weird, I'll be black weird, 1970s like jog until you drop and like drink some green juice kind of vibe. So I've always had this like eh, I don't really know. But in addition to all the science you just talked about, you did a new clinical trial. And this is a trial using technology that we talked about at the biohacking conference.

Right.

And this is out of UC San Diego. Dr. Hamil Patel, who's been on the show.

Correct.

Is just a brilliant biologist. I've personally visited his lab. I've done the ME health screening. So you looked at what happens when people take the energy bed spirulina.

Right.

And after seven days, what did you guys find? I know it's not published that, but you can probably.

Yeah. So after reading literally 60,000 studies on the different benefits of spirulina, including the mitochondria, health and inflammation, I thought, well, I need my own science, I need my own clinical trial because everything we do at EnergyBets is science based and I'm very science based. So I met the folks from MI Screen and at your conference. Sweet. Yeah, they were right beside me.

That's biohackingconference.com biohacking.

Yes.

Join us in Austin next year.

Absolutely. We'll be there. We're already signed up. We've been there for years. And they have developed this unique, unbelievable study or capability using a simple blood test that you can go online to buy@mi screen.com and it will determine there's different Markers that will tell you the health of your mitochondria. So I said I want to work with you. So we, we lined up a small clinical trial. We want to do a larger one, but we needed to get something quickly under our belt. So it was a small group of people, they were over 50 off, over 55. Half women, half men. And all we did was give them spirulina allergy tablets every day for 30 days. So they did a me screen test.

These were specifically your energy beds Raw.

Spider, our particular brand because there's lots of science out there. But I needed to know for sure about my brand because we are the ones that don't use high heat. So I knew there was some greater efficacy or I sensed there was even anecdotally we have people just telling us all these great things. So we did this test. We did a MI screen test first to get a baseline of their mitochondria health. Then they took the spirulina algae every day for 30 days. But we did a Mi screen test at seven days and another one after 30 days. And so we have the data back now from the first seven days. And Hemal Patel's team has been analyzing the data for us. And what he has found is that there's a variety of different markers, but the production of energy through ATP production versus glycolysis was dramatically improved. The maximum mitochondrial respiration increased almost 20%. The spare capacity of mitochondrial respiration increased almost 20%. We mentioned the increased in mitochondria, ATP versus glycolysis increased almost 15%. And then the number of ROS decreased both at a basal and a stressed level. And what I want to do is read the summary that I quote from, from Dr. Patel who gave me the authority to, to share this with people. And he said the only other time I have seen such dramatic improvements in mitochondrial health was in an intermittent fasting clinical trial we did last year. In that study it took three months for the 70 participants to achieve the same level of improved mitochondria health that was achieved in just seven days by participants taking energy bits spirulina tablets. So, and now this is the early research and we don't know what the results are going to be. But, and because the thing with intermittent fasting is you're shortening your eating window so there is fewer free radicals being released in the ATP production. So that allows the cell to go through autophagy and also to stimulate apoptosis, which is the, you know, healthy, non inflammatory growth of, of your mitochondria so now not only does the phycocyanin improve the cell health, the co. The superoxide dismutase in the spirulina increase the, the ability of the electron transport chain to work better. There's glutathione that reduces ros. Phycocyanin is also an antioxidant which reduces ros. So. And all of these things work together to also improve autophagy and apoptosis. So I was pretty excited. I was like, you know, it was like Christmas for me. It's like, oh, my gosh, all the.

Stuff that you've seen now has some more data behind it.

Yes.

It's funny, the first major book on intermittent FAST was called the Bulletproof Diet. And it's probably, it's somewhere near a million copies, I think, at this point.

Yeah.

And it really helped to kick off the intermittent fasting trend. And it does work. There's abundant evidence that it works. But like you said, it takes three months. And I just, I have a pretty good track record of figuring out what improves mitochondrial function.

Right.

And throughout the last couple years, I've had several different companies come on with new molecules or new data on old molecules or molecules in energy bits case where it's processed differently, where you can get a 10 or a 20% increase in mitochondrial function without having to skip breakfast, without having to skip dinner. And so you might want to do all the above, but you might not need to. And frankly, if you can get it in less work and less time, there's nothing that says, well, you wrote a.

Book and work smarter, not harder.

Right, exactly right.

I think we're, we're checking all your boxes of all your books. So this is great.

Yeah. So there's so many things that we know now and that are available now. And if you're like, I feel like crap all the time and my brain doesn't work 20% better, we'll try this stuff for a week and see if you notice a difference.

Yeah.

But here's the weird thing. Many people won't notice a difference. You know why?

They're stupid.

Not at all.

They're dead.

Well, that's part of it. They won't notice a difference because when something comes back online, you're like, oh, this is how I always feel.

Yeah.

And so what I found, I first learned this experimenting with nootropics, or actually smart pharmaceuticals back in the 90s when my brain was really dysfunctional. I took a compound called piracetam and a very well studied pharmaceutical for cognitive Enhancement. And I was so pissed after a week of taking it that I just said to have said, I can't believe I spent like $1200 getting this stuff here. And it didn't even work. And then the next day I couldn't remember something. Yeah, wait a minute. Yeah, yesterday I could remember things. So what it feels like unless you're really chronic fatigued out, when your energy comes back online, you just feel more like yourself. And then I would say, try it for a week or two. And then if you're doubting, you say, I don't feel anything. Go cold turkey. Wait three or four days. How many times did you forget a word? How many times did you get emotionally dysregulated? So sometimes turning it back on is hard to feel, but then losing it again is more noticeable.

We found that people, when they notice that plunge in brain focus, efficacy, energy after a day of stopping to take. And we, and we have, we have people writing in testimonials, we don't even ask. From this one woman, she had terrible Alzheimer's. And she wrote and said, I couldn't even remember to, you know, where I lived, I couldn't function. The microwave and I had been taking your algae. And then I even forgot, I stopped and then I forgot about them. So she said, my partner reminded me to take them. And she said within 24 hours her brain was functioning again. And so it doesn't take long. And we had another woman who was 86 write us. And she said she had been incontinent and she couldn't sleep longer than an hour. She had no energy. And then she started taking these and her incontinence went away. She was able to sleep five hours. And she wrote us, this is exact testimonial. She said, today I walked three miles. I went to see my great grandson at school. I went to visit a friend in nursing home. I came home and I cleaned up my garage, started painting my kitchen, and at five o' clock, I decided to have dinner because all she had had was the spirulina. She says, my grocery bill has gone down, my health has improved, my energy has improved, and I just joined CrossFit. God bless her, right?

It's amazing what happens when you, when you resuscitate your mitochondria. But here's the scary thing. 48% of people under age 40 have early onset mitochondrial dysfunction, according to studies in one of my books. And everyone over age 40 has it. We just call it aging. Yeah, but you can resuscitate them and and this is an effective way to do that.

Yeah.

And I want to be clear. There are many ways in biohacking. You can use red light, you can use sunlight. Stack, stack them all. But 20 in seven days is very impressive.

Yes, that's what I say. That's why hemol came up with this quote. And we can't wait to get the rest of the data. We can't wait to do another one. And again, it was about our particular brand. There's lots of other science out there, but. And I'm going to be, you know, because I'm so science based, I can't wait to do even more research with. But we've been a small company so we had rather limited resources. But I want evidence for everything. And so that's our future trajectory for sure. I want to make a contribution to the science based, the knowledge that's out there. Because the reality is mother nature created algae. I did not. So I can't take credit for spirulina or chlorella. What I can take credit for is growing it so carefully that we preserve the nutrients and ensure there aren't any toxins. I tell people growing algae isn't like growing broccoli, it's like making wine. It's the production processes that are so critical. So there's lots of garbage out there. But don't cheat yourself.

There's something worth noting. One of the reasons I'm cautious around spirulina unless I know where it comes from, is that there's a toxic form of blue green algae.

Yes.

And some of the places where they grow it, even some of the fancy brands, they're in the same water that has the toxic strains. And these are really bad for you. In fact, they make a toxin similar to mold toxins. And I've had experiences where I've tried a spirulina drink at some vegan place and then like my brain just shut down. Like what just happened. I'm sensitive to those toxins and I've never had that experience at all with energy bits.

Because you control your production, grow it in fresh water. So the toxin in particular talking about, it's called, are they microtoxins? And they are, are found in wild bodies of water like the ocean and like Klamath Lake. There's a company that grows it in Klamath Lake. I have scientific papers that tested algae grown in Klamath Lake and it shows there are microtoxins. It took me two years to find a lab that tests for mycotoxins. We Send ours every, every batch to them. And we never have any because we sell through doctor's offices, biohacking clinics, online, of course. But we want, you know, we have people's health as our priority and so we, we make sure that there are none because it's grown in fresh water.

And it's also important. You're talking about micro toxins. Yes, these are very small molecule toxins. It's different than mycotoxins, which are fungal derived toxins, but the mycotoxins are also small molecules. So technically fungus makes mycotoxins that are microtoxins and, and algae makes microtoxins that have a similar effect. So just to avoid confusing people and, and it's funny because you're talking about this precision growing of algae. Well, what do you think makes Danger Coffee different? Precision growing and processing of the beans where you control the whole process so that you don't get toxin formation and then you feel good when you, when you drink it.

Yeah.

So it's a similar mindset. You just have to really pay almost an absurd level of attention.

Yeah.

Including the temperature that you're drying in at and everything to get the results.

And that's why I have so much admiration for you, Dave, and your conference, because every vendor who's at your conference and so far that I've observed, and certainly the people there have gone the extra mile to make sure they are very careful. The food supply that's out there now, it's a minefield. I mean, I literally, even Whole Foods, I can't buy almost anything there anymore. There's. Everything is so toxic, it's full of seed oils. I'm amazed everybody isn't dead in America because the food supply is just, is harming us. There's no question.

Well, there's such strong evidence for it and it's different in the US Than it is in other countries.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's a very weird situation.

Yeah.

Maybe there's some kind of political solution for that. If not, it's just going to come from people not buying stuff with seed oils and a lot of toxins.

But we have to educate them because they just don't know. And that's why I'm so proud of what I do and what my team does and what I'm so grateful for what you do and what you're encouraging in the community, which is to, you know, focus primarily on that excessively. Not just primarily excessively on that quality. It will take a while for the rest of the world to catch up. We're in the early adopter stage, there's no question. But that's okay. There's a lot of us, and because we're so healthy, hopefully we'll continue multiplying and there'll be more of us in another five years.

Well, speaking of healthy, I want to ask you about one more thing. Talk to me about skin health and the algae that you make.

Well, skin has mitochondria in it just like every other body part. There's only about a thousand mitochondria in a fat or skin cell, but you have free radicals that are causing damage. So spirulina is beauty from. We say it's beauty from the inside because it's nourishing your body at the cellular level. People pay so much money for creams and lotions topically, some of them it's a joke because, like a collagen molecule so large it can't get through the skin cell to be functional. But when you nourish your body and your skin from the inside, it's helping stop free radical damage. The chlorophyll is alkaline. It kills blemishes because blemishes are caused by the inside out from the inside. It has a vitamin called K2, which moves excess calcium out of soft tissue in your brain, your blood vessels, your heart and your skin. Because. And K2. Excess K2 will damage your elastin and your. And your. And your collagen.

Excess. You mean excess calcium.

Excess calcium. So you need K2 to move it. And the other cool thing, because we know collagen helps with our skin algae. I did the analysis. Has more collagen in it than collagen powder. I did the analysis on a per amino acid basis.

So it just had more collagen, has more collagen building blocks in it.

Yes, more amino acids. So up to 400% more of some of them.

So that's just the reason I'm calling that out, is there are brands. So I'm the guy who made collagen a billion dollar industry, right? And there are now companies out there saying this is vegan collagen. But it contains no collagen. It just has amino acids.

Right.

Is a problem because one of the things collagen does is it has dye and tripeptides where the aminos are stuck together in a certain way that. That performs a signaling mechanism. So it does have strong amino acid availability within spirulina, but it's not the same as collagen.

No, because it has all of the nutrients also that your body needs to make a collagen. And in collagen powder it's missing tryptophan and it's also missing zinc I believe. So they add it in, it's all. Maybe you don't, but I've looked at. Some of.

You don't want tryptophan, it's one of the reasons you want collagen.

Well, it's not a complete protein, so.

No, but you're getting other protein. The idea is to change the ratio of tryptophan and methionine to glycine. And collagen's high in glycine. So what we're doing is we're manipulating ratios. So you want about 20 grams of collagen to do that. And does this have methionine and tryptophan in it?

Yes, it has. Yes, it has 18 of the 20Aminos, including the nine your body can't make.

Which are the two that aren't in there. Do you know?

I don't know actually, I'm so curious now. Yeah, but it does have all the nine that your body can't make, so.

So it does, it counts as a complete protein.

Absolutely.

Which is super cool.

And the other important thing is that it's bioavailable because spirulina again is a bacteria nothing, no cellulous wall for your body to break down. It's absorbed almost instantly. Chlorella does have a hard cell wall. That's hard cell is what attaches to toxins like mercury that allows you to do your, your tree pose in yoga. But it takes about an hour and a half to be fully absorbed. And for anyone who is listening, who is still having the occasional cocktail, wine, beer, spirits. One of the toxins chlorella pulls out is alcohol because your body converts it into toxins. So I know we talk mostly about spirulina. Chlorella is equally powerful for different reasons. It's very much a cleansing, detoxing gut health algae. Whereas spirulina is a mitochondrial brain function energizing algae and very nourishing. I call spirulina your nutritional insurance because whatever you eat afterwards, you take 10 tablets a day, you've covered your basis. 30 a day would be for sort of therapeutic dose. And for Chlorella, 10 a day will give you the chlorophyll and all the other gluteus high glutathione. But 30 would be for detox purposes.

Let's talk about dose timing. So with spirulina you take 10 normally or 30 if you're on an aggressive protocol, do you take this empty stomach in the morning, at night? When do you do it?

Empty stomach is fantastic. And I, and most people I've talked to can't take supplements on an empty stomach. It's going to make them nauseous, including myself. But you have to remember this is not a supplement, this is food. So I have never found anybody who doesn't enjoy the benefits of this because it gets absorbed so quickly, either one of them. So 10 we have NHL players who take 75 spirulina before a game because they need all that focus on the ice. And they take 75 chlorella after the game to pull out all the lactic acid so they have a faster recovery.

There's something else really important. There's a lot of pro athletes who listen to the show. I'm reminded of Nick Foles, who took almost all of the stuff I made when he won the super bowl, who's become a friend. And if you are in a sport where you're going to hit your head, say maybe you're in mma, this is for, for Joe Rogan and friends, you're going to get hit in the head. You know it. For hockey players, one of the things that causes the most damage isn't actually the hit itself. It's the inflammation cascade, which includes superoxide.

Right.

So if you have things like ketones present and there's lots of ways to do that, I've been talking about that for years. And you have the ability to have extra sod if you do get hit in the head. You don't get the inflammatory problems that happen after it. Right. And so you're going to have less of the long term damage to the brain that Daniel Amen has talked about.

So we actually did a small clinical trial on that too, last year.

I didn't know about that one.

Yeah, yeah. We did it with a nonprofit group called Gray Team. They're based in Florida. And then their goal, greatteam.org is to reduce the suicide rate of veterans, which is at a heartbreaking 35 or 50%. Very, very high. So they've been trying all sorts of modalities. They use Brain, Brain Tab and they. I met them again at your show. Your show is where everybody goes. So they said, let's do a small clinical trial. So we did a small group of military veterans who had been discharged for up to 10 years because they'd had post traumatic stress disorder. And once again, all we did was give them 31 pouch of 30 tablets of spirulina a day. We used a wave, the WAVI machine. We did a brain scan beforehand. They were attached to devices to measure the hrv, sleep and all other activities. And then we did a brain scan after the 30 days of taking just the 30 tablets of spirulina. The brain scan before showed everybody's brain was completely inflamed. It was all blue. And when it's blue, it indicates there's no brain activity. You want multiple colors. After the 30 days, both the parietal and the orbital brain were completely colored back. The inflammation was completely gone. One Gentleman had Mom, Mississippi, his tremors went away. Somebody's HRV increased 50%. Remarkable improvements in again 30 days. So it's a great organization. A shout out to them for thanking for working with them. We hope to do more with them. Any kind of brain contact sport, please start taking spirulina because it will help with that recovery or. And veterans, anybody who's got any kind of health issue. Yeah.

Mitochondria are central to brain function. Yeah. So it makes sense. A final question for you if you're willing to answer it.

Okay.

We talked about skin earlier and you have great skin.

Thank you.

Do you talk about your age?

Yeah. In fact, I want to tell you something because I am 68. I just turned 68 about a week ago. And a couple of years ago, also at your show, I met at the Brain. I'm very close to the Brain tap, folks. Patrick Porter. And normally they do these tests to try to establish some markers of someone's chronological biological age. And then they use the brain tap to see how it improves. But in my case, they said, let's do a test with you, then take your spirulina and your chlorella and come back an hour later and we'll test you again. So we did that. And using their device and their markers, my biological age was 30. My chronological age at the time was 65. Biological 30. So I want to have a showdown with Brian Johnson, who's been spending $5 million. You know, I applaud him for doing all this great stuff, or 2 million a year, but 5 million collectively and he's taken a year and a half off his age.

No, way more than that.

Oh. He said, well, maybe I'm reading an old article, but in the equivalent of an hour and the per. And $12, I knocked 30 years off my age.

So as measured by.

By these heart rate variability, there were lots of different markers that I'd have to check with the Brain Tab, folks But I'm going to do the test with true age. Yes. Yes.

Cool.

And I'm going to. Because they have a leaderboard. So I'm going to, I'm going to do my test with him and I'm going to get on the leaderboard and then I'm going to see if Brian Johnson wants to have a showdown.

Well, I mean.

Well, we'll get you involved too.

It, it's not really about a showdown with that in the, the Aging Olympics, the way you or the way it's set up is that you. How rapidly can you reverse your age?

Correct.

And I'm very interested in how cost effectively and with as much convenience as possible can you reverse your age? So I spent two and a half million dollars reversing my age over 20 something years.

Yes.

Which is still a huge amount of money.

Yeah.

But I, I don't think most people are going to, to spend a couple a year and half of that is probably measuring it versus just doing it.

Yeah.

And so kudos to Brian. He's been on the show a couple times. He's a friend of text.

No, no, I think it's great. But not everybody has his resources and so this is a great segue for me to tell people that, you know when you take 10 tablets a day, and I did the math because we sell them in these large bags of a thousand tablets and we have a discount for your community upgrade to give them 20% off.

Okay. So let's, let's make that official. So go to energy bits.com use code upgrade and here's what we worked out for you. It'll cost a dollar a day if you take the doses we just talked about in order to give this a try. 20% mitochondrial improvement, totally worth doing. And I think you'll feel a difference. And if you do, you probably want to keep taking it because this is a cost effective way to have more energy now and probably live a lot longer. There's a lot of science behind this.

And if for all it's worth, I'm evidence that it works.

You really are. It's hard to imagine that you're 68 and your skin is ridiculously good and you've been doing this for 15 years.

15 years I have. I don't think I've missed a single day in 15 years. And I have it in my handbags, my gym bags, my, my suitcases. I do eat real food. I do intermittent fasting and I try to eat now one, one big meal a day. But this is my go to And I really want to help people understand the science of why it's working and then get it out to them.

So there's a little add on point I'm going to make here. Most women over 50, a single meal a day is not good for you because you can't get enough protein. The reason it's working for you is that you're getting a lot of amino acid availability from spirulina.

Correct.

So you're basically getting a protein boost.

Yeah.

Otherwise you probably weigh somewhere around 100 ish pounds. So you need a hundred grams of animal protein per day. Try and eat that in one meal. It's, it's possible. I do it. It's hard and I'm a little bigger than you.

Yeah.

So I don't want to encourage most women over 50 to do one meal a day every day. It's probably going to age you because cortisol will go up. But if you're getting appropriate amino acids, you probably could do it. Or you might do two meals a day and add some spirulina because free aminos, they're actually more available than you're going to get from food unless you take enzymes with your food.

Right.

So just to make sure that we're, we're covering all bases.

Yes. And these are my personal choices. I'm not recommending them necessarily. Again, this is why I call spirulina your nutritional insurance.

Yeah.

It just gets you where you need to go and then everything else is a bonus. And then chlorella, I call it your health insurance. And sort of make sure that you've got your immune system looked after and your chlorophyll needs. By the way, both of them are keto. They're great for carnivores. Why, you may ask? Because they have zero lectins or oxalates.

I don't know. They're not an animal. These carnivore people are pretty radical, but they.

Part of the reason they went carnivore was because they had stomach issues. And a lot of that came from lectins and oxalates.

Lectins and oxalates in chapter one of the bulletin Diet.

Yeah, well, I know you had. I just saw something about that recently. So it's. So I just want to ensure people whether you're carnivore, vegan, paleo, ancestral, you don't get any older than algae. Low carb locale. It fits with every lifestyle.

If we talk about carnivore, I did a carnivore thing for like three or Six months before it was called Carnivore, when I was edge testing the bulletproof diet before I published it. And I felt great for a while, and then I started getting some autoimmune things when my gut bacteria got a little aggressive and gave me a leaky gut. So I gave myself an egg allergy that way. And I see this happen reliably. And one way to help deal with that is your gut actually can ferment gelatin or collagen, which could help, but there are medicinal nutrients from plants that your body benefits from. And the reason we feel better eating meat and less plants is because most plants are really not that good for you. But some plants are useful and I would say even necessary. And so I like spirulina in particular because it has all the good stuff and there aren't any anti nutrients or toxins that I'm aware of in it.

Yeah.

And so even something like oregano, which I'm a huge fan of. Right. It has some anti nutrients, but the benefits are so much higher that it's worth it. So this is one of those things. If you're carnivore. Ish. I like that this would be the right approach for you because it's got the green stuff and specifically you're not going to get polyphenols except inspirulin. You do?

Yeah.

So carnivore plus polyphenols equals way better than just carnivore.

Yeah. And that's why Dr. Stephen Gundry's endorsed us. And I've been on his podcast two or three times. He spoke at your conference again recently. That was actually. That was in Beverly Hills, I think.

Yeah.

So he loves our product, so I'm very grateful for him helping to share the benefits of it as well.

So I will see you at the next Biohacking conference.

Absolutely.

Biohackingconference.com in May in Austin. We're expecting about 4,000 people and the biggest and best show ever. And so you can meet Katherine and you can hang out and ask her questions, and she'll force spirulina on you aggressively, without apology, as she should.

Well, thank you, Dave.

And a final note, as we wind down the show, if you buy bulk spirulina powder, it doesn't work. You just need to understand what we're talking about here is raw and it has enzymes that are the reason it works. So sometimes you're saying, well, I'm going to stretch my budget, which I fully support. Stretching your budget. Just stretch it in a way that works. With a discount code. It's a dollar a day. Try it for a month and see if it's worth a dollar a day. It probably is. And that's energybits.com use code upgrade and 20% discount. I'll see you on the next episode. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.

The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.