In this video interview, Dr. Michael Haley gets over his fear of eating raw algae. Tim White from https://www.rawlivingspirulina.com/ discusses the benefits of spirulina and explains how people consume it in its live form.
VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS:
- 0:14 Who is Tim White from Raw Living Spirulina
- 1:26 Growing spirulina on a farm in a greenhouse
- 2:30 What is the difference between spirulina powder and living spirulina?
- 3:38 What are the benefits of eating spirulina?
- 5:38 What are some of the nutrients in spirulina?
- 7:11 Why I don’t take Vitamins – “Nutrient Dense Foods” what is the difference?
- 8:32 How long can you live on just spirulina?
- 10:13 How much spirulina should you eat in a day?
- 11:14 How much spirulina can you eat?
- 12:54 Dr. Haley eats raw living spirulina (raw algae) for the first time
- 14:08 Why does Tim like his spirulina in coconut water?
- 17:15 What is the blue phycocyanin?
- 18:55 Where do fish get their omega 3’s from?
- 19:30 What is the best food source for GLA (Gamma Linoleic Acid)?
- 20:11 Why does spirulina alleviate arthritis?
- 21:17 Why you should not blend spirulina
- 22:28 Where can I get raw living spirulina?
- 24:07 How long does raw living spirulina last in the refrigerator?
TRANSCRIPT:
[Music]
You know I got to say, I met you a few years back, and, what really interested me – not the fact that you’re one of my customers; that already told me a lot about your standards when it comes to, you know, how you eat and, and, you know, the fuel you put into your body and how you live.
We had some discussions, and I would say that you’re one of the guys, you know, not over the top, because I don’t think you can go over the top, but I think if I said that you were in the top 1%, that would probably be an insult, okay, because you can be in like the elite of the top 1%, you know.
You have that standard that just speaks volumes. And now, years later, fast forward to now, you’re doing something new that I know very little about. and that’s what I’m here to find out more about.
Also, you know, the whole concept made me a little nervous, because, you know, when it comes to things… you know, we raw, we eat fermented foods and stuff like that. I’ve consumed lots of algae’s but I’ve never consumed anything raw in the algae Department. What are you doing? Catch me up to speed.
Okay, we’re here at Cals Farms which is our new farm for growing spirulina. Right behind us you see the paddle wheel turning and we are growing Spirulina algae which is originated on this planet 3.5 billion years ago. It’s very unique to this planet. It’s the reason why life is here. Without spirulina we would not be alive; we wouldn’t have trees wouldn’t have any any life on the planet.
And most of the Spirulina that most people are familiar with is a powder. It’s the dried product. It even says raw on the label, most of them. If we if we look at it deep down under microscope you can see that it’s not alive, it’s not living. So what we’re doing is we’re trying to keep it in its living state. We’re not doing any processing; we’re not cooking it, we’re not heating it, were not dehydrating it, we’re keeping it just the way nature intended it to be which is what I believe is most beneficial for health.
We are living creatures and the living organisms need water to absorb nutrition. Without water, there’s no life. And we need to find food, nutrition, that has water inside of the cell that the human body can not only recognize, but absorb. So it’s not necessarily what we are are consuming, it’s what we’re absorbing.
Yeah, you know, and I agree completely with you. I’ve consumed powdered algaes and, you know, once they dry it, and take the water out of it, they take the life out of it. and you know sometimes I stir them back in water and stuff but when you put the water back in the life doesn’t go back, right?
Correct, right, yeah. You can’t take a powdered algae… spirulina or any type of powdered algae, put it back into a bowl, and wait and see if it’ll grow. It will not regrow again.
Man has not been successful reconstituting life yet? No, not at all. [laughter]
Okay, so, first before we get into the actual algae itself, what would you say some of the benefits are?
I don’t know, how much time do we have? Everything from weight loss to cancer. The National Institute of Health has enormous volumes of research data on spirulina. Interestingly enough its most of it is research was done on powder spirulina. So if we if we were to look, we don’t find any any research done on the living form. But we can imagine, if it’s doing this much benefit for somebody in powder, amazing benefits are probably aware right there for living.
I agree, I mean, you take the water out you take the life out, the nutrients, if anything we’re only degraded when it became a powder. But in the live form, all the nutrients are there that might be supporting the immune system to fight cancer or whatever it is, whatever the benefit is.
When you take the water out and you take a life out not only is it no longer live but the nutrition begins to deteriorate.
I always liken to like this: You know, if you took the life out of the human body, within a few days you wouldn’t even recognize who that was because of the deterioration. Once the life is removed, things break down. And it’s the same way in the food that we eat. It begins to change once the life has been removed from it.
Right. And actually you can… if you don’t water a plant, it starts to shrivel up. There’s no more water. That’s the same thing with us. If we’re not drinking, we’re not hydrating ourselves, and we’re going to get all dry we’re just going to shrivel up and die.
The most important nutrient on the planet is oxygen. The number two most important nutrient is is water. Now we can go, you know, seven minutes without oxygen.
You can! okay. You’re in shape. Sixty seconds (I know) I need some more. but uh no I agree, yeah oxygen, water, and then you know, and interestingly, because we said, well what else is important? It’s funny because, in a, when it comes to nutrition, you know, we have these government recommendations. And you have to have this many vitamins and stuff. And they have this little handful of vitamins listed. But everyone forgets about those those tiny micronutrients the phytonutrients the things that we get from the plants and I would imagine there’s a huge spectrum coming from algaes.
Huge. It’s off the charts. The USDA has a score for a lot of the nutrition that’s in food. And if you look up the nutrition for say say protein, it’s a hundred and seven for spirulina. Whereas compared to about ninety six wheatgrass. And then it kind of trickles down from there. So, and that’s based on a score from zero to 100.
So it’s a complete protein that’s every essential amino acid and it’s only missing one of the non-essential amino acids. So your body, when your body is trying to repair or trying to rebuild new cells, it has to look for one of each of the nine essential amino acids and pull those and then create a structure… create like explain it as the framework of a car is the protein. Now spirulina is up to 71 percent protein. (Wow) 55 to 71 percent protein. And that’s bioavailable. That’s 100% bioavailable protein in it’s living form. Whereas in a powder form, you’re only going to get two to three or four percent bioavailability at most.
Wow, that’s huge.
That’s huge.
Do you take vitamins?
I take vitamins in my food. I don’t take any vitamin supplements.
Okay. I kind of knew that. But, you know, as we’re talking about these things, you know, “nutrient-dense foods”, right? We’re eating foods that have the… we don’t need vitamins – you don’t want isolated vitamins. You’re getting the whole spectrum and you’re getting all your amino acids you’re getting your…
And the cofactors. What’s the body recognizes. You can imagine if you sitting in your bedroom and you hear a knock at the door you don’t open up the door and there’s an eyeball hanging in the middle of the doorway. And you are immediately going to close the door and scream.
I hate when that happens.
I think I know.
I hate that.
You’re going to run back to “honey there’s an eyeball hanging in the front of the doorway”
The last time that happened to me I turned white as a ghost.
That’s your isolated nutrient. Now if now if you were to imagine opening the doorway when there’s a knock at the door and there’s a beautiful human being complete, you open up the door, you welcom them in your house. That’s the body, the human body recognizin the whole complete food (right) and allowing that to come into into the cell. (yeah) when it’s an isolated nutrient the body says “I don’t… I need all of it! I’m going to let you keep going. Bye.”
It was meant to work together.
It was meant to work together. correct, right. (yeah) we can’t duplicate nature.
Right. Hey what’s the longest you ever went on just the algae?
Just consuming the spirulina?
Yes.
About a week.
And what happened in that week?
I felt amazing. Didn’t want, didn’t want to stop.
Why did you? [laughter] Well we got to live, right? We have…
It is the only foods that you can survive on. It’s hard to travel to and you know like go to Whole Foods and say can I (absolutely) have, you know, Raw Living Spirulina?
Correct [Laughter]
All right. Um, how does this work? how do you eat it?
Okay, we just happen to have some of our first harvest we just did yesterday at our new farm here in Vero Beach Florida. And I’ve heard that you have not tried it before.
I have not, I must admit. (okay) I’ve had this little concern, because, you know, I’m like, I was brought up on fast food, and you know, things come in packages and they’re preserved and they sit on shelves forever and stuff like that. I’ve been making a transition over the last couple decades, but this is like the next level.
The way the next level. I don’t know if there’s going to be another level above this. But this, we call this raw living spirulina. It is what it is, okay. So don’t have to make up any marketing gimmicks – no weird weird names. It is what it is.
Now that looks like like about a pint or something like that.
This is a pound. This is net weight one pound. And inside this jar is 25 billion living spirulina cells. They’re all alive.
I think that must taken a long time to count the first time because
the first time, yes.
And how long would it take for you to consume that?
Most people, one tablespoon per day is what, a good recommendation. There’s 1.5 billion living cells in one tablespoon. We have a hundred trillion cells in our body. So it’s going to provide the body with all of the micronutrients. It does have a very nice balance of the macronutrients which is the protein carbohydrates and the fats at 71% protein at 23% carbohydrates and about 7% lipids or fats. It only has 350 calories in a jar. However, we find that people that consume an entire jar, if they can get the whole jar down in one day, they’re full. The body does not want anymore food.
So you think of the USDA now saying 2,000 calories, it’s 2,000 calories because the body is not getting what it needs. When the body gets what it needs, it says “Ok I have enough. I have all the nutrition that I need in my body. I don’t need anything else.”
Yeah. that’s exciting. So you have consumed like maybe close to a jar in a day?
I’ve consumed about 3 jars in a day.
Wow. That is so cool. Now, the first time, if you’re going into this for the first time, is it like probiotics where you have to start off small or can you just dive right in?
It depends on where you are in your health. If somebody has a lot of toxin buildup; if somebody’s overweight; if somebody’s doing it fighting a health challenge, you want to start slowly. It’s a very powerful detoxifier. So it’s going to go through the body. It’s going to be recognized to the cells. The cells are going to open up. The cells are going to pull the… The spirulina is going to pull out the toxins… and, and replace those toxins with the nutrition. So it’s a constant exchange through all the cells cleaning out the body and feeding the body at the same time.
So if I’m like really toxic and I have a big spoonful am I going to run to the bathroom? And I mean, am I gonna be like “we got to stop this I interview and pick up… or
For you, you’ll be okay.
I think so I hoipe so. but?
but yes we have found people that yes, there’s… it works fast. It works the fastest one an empty stomach because there’s no cellulose in spirulina. So the body can absorb it into the stomach right through the epithelial cell walls of the stomach lining instantaneous into the blood. Where most food that has cellulose or fiber has to pass through the digestive tract and start to break down and absorb and pull out the water and nutrition. This doesn’t have to. This can go right into the body and be absorbed very quickly
This is exciting. I want to try it.
Okay there’s a nice beautiful spoon.
All right, so now you’re saying for the first time you would start off with like a spoonful like this?
Yes.
Okay yes. And I think you said a tablespoon… would be like a tablespoon…
About an ounce a day. (Oh No Oh) First thing in the morning and on an empty stomach is the best way. Now you notice that there’s no smell and there’s no taste.
Now it looks like spinach, like maybe if I was to cook spinach.
Looks like a cooked spinach or a green yogurt.
Only… a green yogurt. Because it has like a… almost like a puffy, you know, it’s not really heavy. It’s kind of light. I can’t wait to try this. Mmmmmm. Not at all what I expected. I feel like I just had like green pudding. (green pudding). It is not at all what I expected. The texture is actually delicious. I’m wondering what my teeth look like right now?
Still white.
Still white. Ok [laughter]
You know, you know, like when the kids get in the, you know, the green candies with all the dyes and stuff and then they smile and everything, just like, you know, their tongue is green and their teeth are green and stuff. so this is not doing that, right? Anyone? [laughter]
The best way that we like to take it is… use a little whisk… and just twist out about the same amount and then we love it in coconut water.
Oh YUM. And I think this is neat too, because you actually gave me my coconut connection with Larry the coconuts.
Larry the coconut guy.
And, you know, that we were talking about your standards and stuff. That’s kind of that’s one of those things that, you know, told me a little bit about who you were and, and, you know, where you were standard wise. I love raw coconut water and you guys just…
We just opened it, so fresh coconuts from Florida. We just opened it up.
Now isn’t that the best ever?
I don’t have to eat anymore. I just, I need, (the best ever) Raw Living Spirulina, and I can get these from my yard.
And coconut water is just like aloe. It’s a great delivery vehicle into the body. So it helps to deliver and drive the nutrition in through because it has that… that, that, that liquid. High content water content and it also has the electrolytes and the minerals.
Spirulina is very high in iron. And coconut water is is actually very close to our blood profile. They actually used coconut water to, in the, in the war days, to when the soldiers were injured. They would inject coconut water into the veins instead of a blood transfusion. But coconut water doesn’t have iron. So when you mix spirulina in, now you’re and the chlorphyll… and the blue phycocyanin which we’ll talk about in a minute, that gives you the perfect blood purifier nutritional bang for your buck right there. It doesn’t get any better than that. I don’t think that anything else on the planet that is better than that right there.
It makes sense. you know when you look at, you know, chlorophyll versus the hemoglobin, and the subtle difference.
No.
Interesting because I think I could probably at least get a green mustache out of this, right?
You can.
Yeah, I probably have one now maybe? No?
You gotta go green.
Nothing, not yet, maybe a little bit? This is this is absolutely delicious. I am shocked because I did not at all expect that delicious creamy texture.
From an algae.
Did not. I mean, I thought it was gonna be like, I thought I was going to have to fake my way through it. You know, put on a fake smile and be like, “Oh, this is good.” [laughter] It’s amazing. I could do this for a long time. I can see where doing this for a week would be like, “yeah!” I want to do this. I want to – I want to do a week cleanse, you know, coconut water and spirulina. That would be great.
And what people were doing-
I don’t want to, I’m going to do a week cleanse… spirulina and coconut water.
Excellent. Excellent. And you add your aloe to that. That would be absolutely beautiful.
Yeah, yeah, I’m going to cheat and add aloe to it because I haven’t gone without aloe for a long time.
Yeah. This is beautiful.
Okay. All right. you were telling me about the the blue.
The blue. Ok. So the spirulina is a blue-green algae. The green color that you see that we all see on the surface is the chlorophyll. And that’s on the outer cellular wall, pretty much. It’s very thin cell wall. The inside – it’s like a water balloon. So inside the water balloon is is a blue liquid called phycocyanin. And that’s where all the nutrition lies. That’s where the the blue spectrum of the sun’s rays are captured by the spirulina algae, and it’s the only food, it’s the only plant, that creates this blue color. It’s a true blue color. And some might say well what about I eat some blueberries. No, that’s a, that’s a, it’s a purple. It’s actually kind of a fake blue. It’s not a real blue from the real blue color from the spectrum of the sun. The water is magnifying that blue which is increasing. If you ever scuba dive or underwater and you look at your hand and it looks bigger, the water water is actually magnifying the sun’s rays so it’s magnifying the nutrition.
Spirulina is like little little batteries. And it’s capturing the energy from the Sun. When we consume that, it releases that energy and we are loaded with energy. You’re going to be running around all day long like and won’t be able to stop. (Yeah) So much energy you want to do it.
You know. you’re you’re bringing up a great point. The Sun is the source of all fuel (yeah) for life as we know it. So then interesting to you know if you look at the things, you know, some people take things like omega-3s, the oils and stuff like that. And they take a fish oil to get omega-3s. But the reality is, it starts with a small fish eating the algaes (correct) getting their omega-3s from that, you know, direct, the Sun to the algae, you know, fills it with life and then the fish eat up the chain and then they take the oils out of the big fish – OR – you can just eat the algaes (right) and, skip the fish.
and skip all that. Go to the source! Go right to the source. We don’t need to go through secondary third fourth fifth. Go right to the beginning just like the fish did.
Excellent.
And spirulina has what’s called GLA. It’s a gamma linoleic acid. Very high in GLA. In fact, mother’s breast milk is number one. It’s a an essential fatty acids. It’s an omega fatty acid. It’s essential which means we have to get it from our food, which means our body can’t make it. Like the, like like protein, we have the essential amino acids and a non-essential. The non essentials our body can can create. But the essentials we can’t. So mother’s breast milk is number one. Spirulina is number two highest concentration of GLA. And GLA is excellent for arthritis. It it lubricates the joints. And that’s probably one of the highest feedbacks that we, that we get is that “I’ve been, I started taking this and my arthritis is gone -my pain is gone.
And what happens, we, we were, been growing…
Common feedback. not, not you, you know, I don’t know that you’ve ever… I’ve never heard any pain complaints from you.
No pain.
So yeah, I can understand that as a common feedback. (yes) right.
Yes, absolutely. And what’s happened is when people stop taking it, the arthritis symptoms start to come back and starts to return. So they know immediately it’s got to be the spirulina that’s helping to dramatically.
Number 3 is actually primrose oil.
Very neat, (yeah) excellent. I love it and I’m like guzzling mine and I’m trying to restrain myself actually.
That’s okay. If I was at home I’d be like… you know, but uh, and I got like the dregs in the bottom of the glass, let me check this out, and you can kind of see like the blue around the edges.
And it dissolves very very easily. One thing you should never do is to put it up blender, (yeah) because it will destroy the cells. It will rupture the cells. Because, you know, imagine a little water balloon. Cell wall ruptures and you’re going to cause, create oxidation, and it’s really big – people making smoothies and they want to know if they can stick it in the smoothie, and…
I would, I would mix it gently with a whisk or by spoon.
Yeah, you know I even, when it comes to the aloe, for the same reason. When the people are making their smoothies, I say, okay, well, if you’re going to use the blender, you know, make everything first and then you know if you want a flash blend it or stir it in or something like that at the end.
Right.
But, you know, yeah. NO! There’s a live quality, You know. Don’t take the life out of it. It’s meant to be as it is. I’m over my fear. (awesome) I’m not only over my fear but it’s like magnetic. Like I feel I have to stay the course. I have to do more. It’s a very, that I did not expect this. So, thank you. Is there anything else anything else I need to know, like where do I get… How do you ship it?
Okay, so we ship it, we’ve been shipping it in styrofoam coolers for a few years now, and, I, I don’t like the fact that styrofoam is not biodegradable. It’s going to the landfills and I’ve been trying, we were trying to get away from this for a long time. We found a company, we found a company, amazing company called vericool. and they’re out of California and they make a 100% compostable 100% recyclable box. No, no EPS styrofoam. It’s very very cool just like the name suggests.
So this is a startch, and so you would open up that lift up that pouch and then inside there would be the payload area (cool) where the, the box and the ice packs would be. So we ship it with the ice packs. It is very perishable. It will last about two weeks in the refrigerator in its fresh state. After two weeks it’s going to start breaking down, the cells are going to start rupturing. It’s going to start to create a little bit of a fermentation – a little bit of a probiotic effect. It’s not going to hurt you, but you want to consume it in it’s fresh form or you want to freeze it.
Now you can freeze it. Now we ship these, and we harvest it very gently very carefully. And we chill it and then we pack it in glass jars. So the spirulina never touches any plastic in its container, which I totally believe stay away from all the plastics, stay away from a styrofoam, stay away from all the chemicals.
Okay, so once you receive it, in two to three days, we ship FedEX, so it arrives at your door in two to three days depending on where you are. You want to take it out, you want to put in the refrigerator. You want to keep it in the refrigerator for, till two weeks. Open up the jar at least once a day to release the gasses. Take your spoonful out, One or two or whatever, you can consume as much as you want.
We do have people that do a one-week cleanse and they do one whole pound a day. We seen amazing amazing results. Just totally reclaim and renourish and recharge the body back to, back to the baby.
There’s no way I’d be able to have that in my refrigerator for two weeks or even one week or I don’t know. I, might, maybe initially but I’ll probably be careful to start up. I’m not going to do a tablespoon or two or three a day. I’m going to be… doing it… yeah. it’s got that full effect. So I don’t think anyone’s going to have that problem where they say, “oh what do I do… it two weeks and I haven’t finished it and it’s starting to ferment or anything like that.
So what you can do is. if you… we’ve ship it in boxes of two, Two pounds at a time. so if you want to keep one pound in the fridge and put, you take the other pound and you put them in these ice cube trays. I do. So this is a BPA free food grade silicone. You notice it’s really soft. So when you spread the silicone on top, one whole jar will fit in here. There’s one point three ounces per cube. You can open up the jar, open up your fridge freezer, pull out, lift up the lid, take, you take one of your cubes, push it out, put it right into your in your glass, put it in your car and drive to work. And it will start to dissolve and you can drink it on the way to work. It’s perfect.
Great. I love it. Okay. What’s the website?
“raw living spirulina dot com.
Okay, Tim this is awesome. You just took my nutrition to a whole new level. Thank you thank you very much Michael. [I] Appreciate it.