What is the most efficient way to manage multiple level relationships using WordPress Pods CMS

This is my first time using Pods in WordPress, so forgive me if this is a bit of an easy question to answer. I’ve done a bit of searching for an answer to this problem, but haven’t found anything that answers my question specifically.

I have two different kinds of pods created.

1. Areas of Study: Such as Physics, Sociology or Computing
2. Case Studies: Details on case studies performed in various areas of study

Each Case Study Pod has a relationship field linking it to a specific Area of Study Pod. (In this example, assume that a specific case study can only be related to a single area of study. This may change in the future, but for now, this should suffice.)

Each Area of Study has a relationship field linking it to a specific WP Page (e.g. a detailed page that describes the details for the Physics Area of Study).

What I want to do, is while looping through various Case Studies, be able to obtain the link for the WP Page, it’s specific area of focus is related to.

I technically know HOW to do it, but I’m not sure it’s the most efficient way of doing it.
This is what I have done, and it seems to be working:

<?php 
$case_studies = new Pod('case_studies');
$case_studies->findRecords(null, 200);
$total_rows = $case_studies->getTotalRows();

if ($total_rows > 0) {
        while ($case_studies->fetchRecord()) {
                // RETRIEVE AREA OF FOCUS DETAILS
                $aof = $case_studies->get_field('area_of_focus');
                $aof = $aof[0];

                // GET AREA OF FOCUS POD
                $aofs = new Pod('areas_of_focus');
                $params = array('where' => "t.id like '".intval($aof['id'])."'");
                $aofs->findRecords($params);
                if ($aofs->fetchRecord()) {
                        $page = $aofs->get_field('focus_page');
                        $area_of_focus_url = get_permalink($page[0]['ID']);
                        echo '<a href="'.$area_of_focus_url.'">'. $aof['name'].'</a>';
                } else {
                        echo $aof['name'];
                }

                // CASE STUDY DETAILS GO HERE
        }
}

?>

This seems like it’s at least an O(n²) algorithm, if not more. I really don’t know the internals of the Pod class, so it could be even more expensive than that. Also this will be executing several MySQL queries instead of a single query.

Would it be better if I used some MySQL joins in the initial case study query so that I don’t have to have it run a bunch of other queries? Or are there any other functions within Pods itself, that can allow me to retrieve more details on relationship fields?

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.