Joe: [00:01] My Cured Collective family, welcome to Part II of our December master class. Hope you all enjoyed the first episode four our stress reduction, stress reducing regimen the Cured way. If you follow me and you are a listener, a continuous listener to this podcast, you have seen that the design aspects around what we do and what we create and who we are at Cured really comes down to being and showing up as our best human self. And CBD, the product, the ingredient that started the company, is really good for the calming properties, is really good for the anti-inflammatory properties. Now, that’s great; it’s helping so many people, and we love to talk about CBD, educate around cannabinoids, obviously, CBD specifically. But Cured is so much more than that, and I’ve been saying this for a long time, but very intensely for about a year now. And with the release of our Rise and Zen products this last year and with some exciting things that we have coming up in 2020, I want to talk more about every aspect of being a human being, what we need to do every single day, how we need to be able to show up, to get ourselves into the mental state, to get work done that we need to do, to be able to focus on tasks at hand, to have clarity, to have the nourishment that we so deserve and need to show up and live life to its ultimate potential, and give our body what it fully deserves. So, another piece of the Cured daily regimen is showing up from a performance aspect. For me, somebody that has trained heavily in bodybuilding, has been somebody that approaches and enjoys athletics my entire life, I take caffeine, and I’ve taken stimulants, I’ve taken pre-workouts, I’ve taken so many different things to get myself into my most efficient flow state, as I would like to call it, because that it what is most important, is getting into the state where we are all-consumed by the task at hand. So, this podcast, this short master class, Series II, Part II of our master class series, is geared 100% towards performance. I want to start with a nutrition aspect and a product we designed specifically for nourishment of your body that helps you perform, and that’s the CBD-infused cookie dough product.

[03:07] I’m going to get into our Rise product after this, because this is the most important piece; but, if we’re not nourishing ourselves with the proper macronutrients and nutrition and making those snacks available, those meals available when we need them, then we’re not going to be able to create the ATP, the energy that we need to show up and perform. We came out with this really in the first 8 months of the company. CBD-infused cookie dough. It’s high in healthy fats. It’s made from all organic ingredients. The re-release of this product is coming here in the next couple weeks. You guys, as the Cured Collective listeners, are always the first people to hear these announcements. We don’t get a lot of downloads on this podcast and that’s quite alright. What we do is we put this information out to you guys that listen, because we want you guys to hear it first, and you guys are the ones that are here to learn, here to connect, here to understand, so here you guys go. If you’re listening to this the week of the release, we are coming up on about 2 weeks away from the re-introduction of peanut butter chocolate chip, peanut butter cookie dough – peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dough – product, which has been a fan favorite for a very long time. We’ve gone through some packaging iterations. We are now going to be showing up in Erewhon Market in California in the SoCal area. Those of you that live in L.A., please go by Erewhon once it’s in store and help us move that product out of the store to show them that we have Cured family there in L.A. Truly appreciate you guys doing that; and if you do do that, take a picture of it, send it to me, and I’m going to send you some free Rise and Zen samples. Again, @josephsheehey on Instagram. If you go buy a cookie dough product from Erewhon Market, take a picture of yourself doing it, I’ll send you some free Rise and Zen samples. That is our segue into the main performance product from Cured. As I did in the managing stress episode, I also want to talk about the other aspects of life. So, before taking our products, what do we need to be doing? We need to be exercising. We have to be moving our body. We have to embody and understand what it feels like to be in our own physical presence, and what is so important is to have some type of daily movement. That not only helps us release energy, but also actually helps us have better energy throughout the day, and helps us fall asleep, helps us then show up and have better brain and cognitive function and performance; so, we always want to do that.

[06:01] Now, on top of that, to get into that state, we’ve created a product to support working up (?). We’ve also created a product that’s, most importantly, for showing up and being able to think, being able to write, being able to read, being able to work during the day, being able to focus and have the mental clarity that you need to get whatever task at hand, what task it is that you have at hand. For most of us that have to work for a living – that get to work for a living, I should reframe because I’m really, I’m so, so blessed to be in the position that I am, to have built Cured now over the last couple years and say that I get to do this every single day as my job, and I wish that for everybody – but those of us that work on a day-to-day basis, we gotta be able to get into our flow state to be able to concentrate, to be able to get the task at hand done. And that is exactly why we created our Rise daily nootropic product. If you haven’t yet done so, I highly recommend listening to Cured Collective episode 10 with Cali Simpson that talks all about adaptogens, herbs, and mushrooms. She’s the actual designer, the clinical herbalist that put together our formulation for the Rise and Zen products, and it took almost nearly a year. But I want to talk about why you should use Rise, how to take it, and when to take it. Rise should be used as a daily performance enhancement or focus, mental clarity product. You can take it on an empty stomach or with food. I’ve actually noticed most recently that I actually get the best benefit from it when I take it about 15-20 minutes after I eat. There have been times I’ve taken it on an empty stomach, and I do notice that it works, but I actually notice it working better for me when I take it after food. So, that’s how I recommend to take it. The serving size on there is 1-3 capsules. It is a very powerful product. If you are someone that hasn’t used stimulants or caffeine or the like in the past, I recommend starting with one or two capsules. If you’re going to combine it with caffeine, definitely start on the lower end of the dosage chart, but you can go up to 3 capsules per day. We also want to say that it’s very important to do the 6:1 or 6 weeks, 6 days to 1 day off – 6 days on and 1 day off, 6 weeks on and 1 week off. It’s important to cycle adaptogens. Many herbalists will recommend this, and Cali talks about it in our podcast with her, episode 10. Take a look at that, reach out to us if you have questions on that. But it something, and most adaptogens, and the study and literature out there say to go through kind of a cyclical process with those. So, highly recommend doing that. Maybe taking it 5 days of the week and then taking it off on the weekend, or however else your work schedule works. But definitely take it in the earlier hours of the day. I have taken 1 capsule later in the day when I work out, you know, around 4 or 5pm, 6pm, and I haven’t noticed an issue with falling asleep; but it does tend to last for up to 8 hours.

[09:11] So, if you do believe it would affect you falling asleep, make sure you take it before 2- 3pm, but I always recommend for those of us that do work earlier in the day and start work early in the day, take it with your first meal. Play around with the serving sizes. It is very, very clean. There’s absolutely no crash to it, and the ingredients are just incredible. We have a blend in there that we are working on trademarking. That is our Cured Flow blend, and it includes several herbs. I want to point out a couple, specifically rhodiola, ginseng, and gotu kola. So, these might – the gotu kola may be one that many people haven’t heard of – but all these ingredients are coming from, basically, ancient Chinese medicine; and these have been used for thousands and thousands of years, and, again, are not synthesized. We are creating products based 100% on nature, and that’s what we did with this product. So, with rhodiola, the main reason people use it – it’s been called a super-adaptogen, so it’s one of the most powerful – and it’s really good for concentration and memory. That, in combination with the other herbs, ginseng, gotu kola, are all coming together to help amplify the brain function and memory purposes, or focus, of this product. Ginseng is known really, really well for its antioxidant properties, and it’s also really good for brain function. Gotu kola, again, is known for improving cognitive function, but it’s also known for reducing anxiety. So, that, in combination with the broad-spectrum CBD extract that we have in there, are the pieces that actually balance out and round out the supplement, make it really nice, smooth, and balanced supplement. Supplements can be overpowering, and that’s why we have the CBD in there. Many people have asked that, why do you put CBD in a focus product? Well, at low concentrations, it’s performing the exact way that we want it to. We don’t want it to be overpowering, but we want it to have the calming, balancing properties that are used, or can be very beneficial in combination with something that might be or feel stimulating. So, we don’t want people to feel cracked out, more or less. You can drink your coffee, you can take CBD, and you get that balanced blend. Same thing going on here with Rise, but we don’t have any caffeine in this product. Now, let’s talk about the mushrooms in it. We’ve got lion’s mane and cordyceps. Lion’s mane is known really, really well for the cognitive enhancing properties. Cordyceps is an amazing product – amazing mushroom, rather – and it’s been studied a lot for the increase of blood flow and oxygen utilization.

[12:09] So, there are a lot of, actually, athletes that are using strictly cordyceps as something taken before a pre-workout, or going for a run, or playing a soccer game, playing a sport. I have to say, when I’ve taken the Rise in combination – I like to add it with a little bit of caffeine before I work out – man, I haven’t had more amazing workouts, and I have to say that the cordyceps, when I’ve taken them just by themselves before a workout, I’ve noticed the same thing. So, that oxygen utilization is so, so important, especially for endurance athletes, but anybody that wants to go be able to perform in the gym, and better utilize the oxygen that you’re intaking while you’re performing. Those of us that live at higher altitudes here in Colorado, it’s great to use.

Then, we also have a Vitamin B complex in there. Vitamin B is extremely important for energy levels and brain function. I’ve taken Vitamin B, and different forms of Vitamin B, and if you look at it, it’s the whole complex broken down. There’s several aspects to Vitamin B. But, I’ve taken it everyday for a very, very long time. There are several people – Danielle Broida from Four Sigmatic – when she was actually on our podcast, talks about the combination of Vitamin B with mushrooms. When we went to talk to Cali about creating this product, we started to discuss putting a little bit of Vitamin B in there, and she said 100% yes. Everybody needs it. If we don’t have it, that can be extremely damaging to us. So, it’s something that we all need. Vitamin Bdeficiencies are not something that you want to get, so what better than to put it into our Rise product that is used for performance, and you’re getting your daily Vitamin B dosing. On top of that, you’re also being able to show up and focus and be your best human self and get what we need to get done every single day and be proud of it. You know what? We’re here for you at Cured to make sure that this has happened. That’s why we created our performance package, and Rise, of course, is the golden star in there. There is a full podcast, as I said, with Cali Simpson talking about the design of this product. But ever since creating this, it has been flying off the shelves. Our retail partners are loving the Rise. If you haven’t yet tried it, I highly recommend staying tuned to our Instagram, @curednutrition. We will be re-releasing sample packs here in the near future if you want to just try samples to begin with. So, stay tuned to that. Make sure you’re on our email list. That is the Cured performance package. I look forward to seeing you all on the next of our master class series episodes. Hope you all have a great day.