Cindy Convery's road to wellness led her to collagen — a protein responsible for healthy joints and skin elasticity. It’s in your bones, muscles, and blood, comprising three quarters of your skin and a third of the protein in your body. As you age, your existing collagen breaks down, and it gets harder for your body to produce more. One way is to reduce aging and support our joints is to use supplements.

But it's not that simple. As Cindy describes,  a major issue is that you don't know where the collagen comes from, or how pure it is. The search for pure, planet-friendly ingredients led her to a Nova Scotia company which used sustainable harvests of wild marine collagen from North Atlantic cod. After much experimenting for taste and efficacy in her home kitchen, she created PureWild.

Her proprietary blend that allows "the wild marine collagen to essentially disappear into the pure juices and herbs in each bottle of PureWild Co." And it's not as if she doesn't have the training to create a delicious drink;  Cindy attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. We talk about the road to success; paved with false starts and anxiety, but also the incredible support of fellow Ojai residents like the Trudeaus of Rainbow Bridge, Bill Moses of KeVita and Flying Embers as well as her Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma, of which she is an enrolled member. 

Cindy also talks about her wide-ranging careers in the entertainment industry, working with George Lucas at Industrial Light & Magic, where she became acquainted with another Ojai resident, the artist Jeff Mann, and her move to Ojai to get out of the rat race and put down roots and give back to the community.

We did not talk about trebuchets, MK Ultra or Vaclav Smil's "Energy & Civilization."