Episode
265
Why we love our mitochondria
Jen Scheinman | Registered dietitian, Timeline
BY PETER BOWES | Tuesday December 17, 2024 | @peterbowes
Longevity Fest in Las Vegas, one of the world’s premier gatherings of health professionals, has just wrapped up for another year. The meeting of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) attracts experts from around the world. Doctors, nurses, researchers and health entrepreneurs share insights into the latest biotech, supplementation and health protocols to promote a long healthspan – the number of years we live free of chronic disease.
We met up with Jen Scheinman from Timeline to discuss advancements in longevity medicine, and preview a special Live Long podcast series focussing on women’s health and Urolithin A, the postbiotic nutrient that helps recycle dysfunctional mitochondria, promoting energy and muscle strength. Scheinman, a registered dietitian, highlights the excitement around new studies on immune aging and the potential for individuals to focus on their longevity, aiming for a healthier life rather than just a longer one.
This episode is produced in association with Timeline, with which Live Long and Master Aging (LLAMA) has an affiliate relationship.
CHAPTERS (time stamps go to YouTube)
- 00:00 Longevity Fest embracing growth with more than eight thousand health professionals
- 01:14 The Mitochondria Connection – Understanding Urolithin A
- 05:50 Navigating the supplement landscape
- 09:20 The future of longevity medicine
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COMING UP: Throughout January 2025 we will feature a special series of interviews with prominent women health practitioners, diving deeper into topics such as mitochondrial health, muscle strength, hormone balance and longevity from a female perspective. We’ll be talking to Felice Gersh MD, Terry Wahls, MD, Stephanie Estima, DC and Cynthia Thurlow, NP.
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[00:00:22] Jen Scheinman: Yes. I’ve been coming personally for three years, and every year it’s just incredible. Not only the amount of physicians and other practitioners that are here, but also the excitement around what’s happening in the space of longevity.
[00:00:35] Peter Bowes: And just to explain, the people that come here, this is a professional event. So it’s health providers, it’s doctors, it’s nurses, it’s researchers in the field of human longevity. So it’s not open to the public in that respect. But I suppose the beauty of it is that the experts and the professionals here can gain new knowledge and then pass it on, maybe decipher it a little bit and pass it on to their patients.
[00:00:58] Jen Scheinman: Yes, exactly. So we’re seeing, you know, from physicians to nurse practitioners to even health coaches coming here, getting the latest science from the experts that are either conducting the studies or are really leading the charge in longevity medicine and then taking that back to their communities.
[00:01:14] Peter Bowes: Urolithin A which is Mitopure – explain to me, we’ve talked about it many times on this podcast, but explain to me what it is.
[00:01:21] Jen Scheinman: So I always like to start with where you find it in nature, so people kind of can understand where this exists, and it’s what’s called a postbiotic nutrient. So we know a lot about the gut and the fact that our gut microbiome is so critical to our health, but we’re just uncovering these molecules that our gut produces for us, called postbiotics. So we don’t get it in food directly. We need a gut, a healthy gut to make it for us. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have that, and we’ve actually studied the population, and really only about 30 to 40% of the population can make this molecule. And what it does is it triggers this recycling process inside our cells. So if people remember back fondly to high school biology and the mitochondria we think powerhouse of the cell. These are energy generators, but unfortunately they decline as we get older. And what urolithin A this molecule can do is take those dysfunctional, broken down mitochondria, recycle them, create new ones. So your cells are essentially acting in a more youthful way with more energy to do their jobs.
[00:02:17] Peter Bowes: And that’s why you love your mitochondria.
[00:02:19] Jen Scheinman: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:02:20] Peter Bowes: Would you like it if people love their mitochondria more, or at least had a greater awareness of their significance for our everyday health and our future health?
[00:02:29] Jen Scheinman: Absolutely. I sometimes joke that I think people have post-traumatic stress from high school biology and first hearing about the mitochondria, and I want people to actually get excited about this little tiny organelle. They are so mind blowing in what they do for our body, even beyond energy production. And when you think of aging and you think of all the chronic conditions that come along with aging, whether it is muscle wasting, muscle decline, brain function, even how our skin ages, a key piece of that. A key hallmark of that is actually due to our mitochondria. So if we can love our mitochondria and take care of them and nourish them, then we can essentially hopefully slow down how we’re aging.
[00:03:10] Peter Bowes: And at the heart of this is, is energy is muscle strength, both of which are crucially important as we get older, especially muscle strength, to try to avoid that frailty, which would inevitably and probably will inevitably come along for everyone at a certain age.
[00:03:25] Jen Scheinman: Absolutely. If you’re not doing something to actively slow down how your muscle age and that includes diet, healthy diet, strength resistance training, but adding external molecules potentially like urolithin A, you are inevitably going to have muscle decline. That starts to happen.
[00:03:41] Peter Bowes: Now this is a product. This is science that’s been evolving with your company for a number of years now. A lot of research went into this before the product went onto the market. Could you just quantify for me what has gone into this and the lengths of the research that people back in Switzerland. You’re based in Switzerland, your parent company and what’s gone into this.
[00:04:02] Jen Scheinman: So honestly, I think there’s just been some incredible dedication to the science that’s gone into the development of this. I have been a dietician working in, you know. nutrition for almost 25 years. And I have never seen a supplement company that has done this level of research. So they approached this molecule almost like a biotech, even almost pharmaceutical type of approach, where they study this molecule all the way from worms into humans to really understand its mechanism of action, its safety, the dose that you need to really get a beneficial effect from it. And that’s just very unique to see in the supplement industry. And just the founders of our company and the scientists who have led the charge with this, it’s just very unique and very passionate about changing the way that we deal with supplements.
[00:04:48] Peter Bowes: And that still evolving science, because you now have the benefit of big data – data from people around the world who are using this supplementation. I’m curious to know what you’ve learned from what people tell you about how they feel after they’ve taken this supplement for a relatively long period of time. And by that I mean a number of years.
[00:05:07] Jen Scheinman: Yeah. So what we do here is that it’s mimicking in the real world what our clinical trials have shown, which is an improvement in muscle strength, improvement in muscle endurance. The other things, though, that I hear almost on a daily basis, is things like my recovery after a workout is so much more improved. I can go to the gym and I do a hard workout, and I feel great the next day. And we do have some research actually about to be published showcasing that as well. The other thing that I hear and I also personally have noticed, is I call it like a subtle energy where it’s not like you just drink a ton of caffeine, you just feel like yourself again, you have energy to get through your day, you know, to spend time with your friends and family, to work hard, do the things that you need to do. Do the things that you love to do and just feel better.
[00:05:50] Peter Bowes: What do you say to people? Maybe not the the audience that you have here, but people who say, I’m really confused about which supplementation I need to or should be using or should be trying because there are so many. And I’m just bewildered by the potential benefits of different supplements that are marketed around the world. You see the ads on TV, in magazines. Where should people start?
[00:06:14] Jen Scheinman: So I think the most important place to start actually, is with the quality of any supplement that you want to take. And that’s one of the things that Timeline is also very dedicated to being very transparent in our quality. So looking for third party testing like NSF for sport. We are also a clean label certified. So that’s one way to know that actually it’s a quality supplement. And the next is to look at the published research. As I mentioned, it’s very unique what we’re doing. There are some other companies that are doing some amazing work in the supplement space. So you want to make sure that the research is there to, you know, for any of the claims that they’re making so that, you know, that you’re spending your money on something that will actually work and actually help you.
[00:06:50] Peter Bowes: Well, I’ve been following the progress of the Urolithin A science that you’ve been evolving for a number of years. In fact, before this product went on the market. And one of the reasons I’m here this weekend is to talk to some of the people, the health professionals, the doctors, the nurses that you are involving in your research. And we’ve been doing those interviews. We’ll be rolling them out over the next few weeks. And there’s some real stars amongst the group of people that you’ve collected together for us to talk to.
[00:07:17] Jen Scheinman: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we are I think again, back to the quality of research. We have really attracted the top minds in the longevity, the health space, because they’ve seen this research. And so some of the people that we’ve been working with that were here at the show, I’ll start with Doctor Felice Gersh. She is a ob/gyn who has really been pioneering, you know, changes in longevity and just female health perspective. We also had Doctor Terry Wahls, who is changing the way that we think of chronic conditions like multiple sclerosis and how lifestyle interventions and supplements can really help to reverse the really tragic symptoms that happen with that. We also spoke with Doctor Stephanie Estima, who is a chiropractor and very active in the women’s perimenopause and menopause space, and really talking a lot about the critical importance of muscle health and strength training as women get older. And then Cynthia Thurlow, who is a nurse practitioner. She’s done quite a bit of work in the fasting community and is also now really passionate and doing a lot of research and a deep dive into gut health as we age and its role in immune health.
[00:08:23] Peter Bowes: And what’s interesting to me is the the range of specialties that you’ve just mentioned there and that really does it kind of helps us join the dots that everything is connected. You could be talking about the gut microbiome. You could be talking about the mouth microbiome. You could be talking about your muscle strength or the energy that you feel at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. All of these aspects of life really do go together. And I think that’s where it’s interesting to talk to people to help me, and I think everyone to just to figure out that this is a holistic approach to health.
[00:08:57] Jen Scheinman: And I think when you do sort of make friends with that concept of the mitochondria and think about them, they’re in actually every cell in our body except our red blood cells. And that’s actually the true secret to how this works. So if you’re taking care of your mitochondria, that means your muscles are going to be better. That means your brain health is going to be better. That means your skin health is going to be better. And that’s truly the foundation to it.
[00:09:17] Peter Bowes: What are you excited about looking ahead to the future?
[00:09:20] Jen Scheinman: Gosh, we’ve got a lot of new studies that are coming out that I’m excited about. The first one that should hopefully be published sometime in 2025 is looking at actually a different take on aging, and it’s looking at immune aging. So a lot of times we think of immune health as boosting immune through a flu season. Right. But actually we should be thinking about our immune system aging just like any other organ in our body. And we’ve got some really exciting research coming out around that. We have some exciting research coming out in the sports and performance. So looking at athletes and there’s going to be a lot of other research looking also at like brain aging, a lot of different areas of the aging population.
[00:09:56] Peter Bowes: Well, we’re going to be, as I say, rolling out these interviews over the next few weeks, which I’m really excited to do. Just one final question. As you leave this event here in Sin City, Las Vegas, there’s nothing sinful about what’s around us here, but what kind of energy are you taking away with you? What have you learned just through talking to people here?
[00:10:15] Jen Scheinman: I think it’s just an excitement for the future. I think we’re on this cusp of really being able to take our health, our longevity, into our own hands. And I think doctors are utilizing the amazing tools that are here. They’re getting excited about it. Patients are really open to it and excited about it. So I think we’re just on a really nice trajectory to have people live, not necessarily just longer, but healthier. That’s the true thing is, how do you get all the quality in the years of your life? And that’s what we’re really passionate about.
[00:10:42] Peter Bowes: Well, Healthspan is something I think I talk about with all of your guests that we’ve just mentioned, and it’s probably worth repeating again what we mean by healthspan. It’s living to a good long age, but being free of those chronic diseases which, sadly, will inevitably come along.
[00:10:59] Jen Scheinman: Exactly right. When you think about living to 100, if 20 of those years are going to be in a wheelchair or in a nursing home, that’s not the same as living to 100. And, you know, being able to do the activities that you love, enjoy your retirement, enjoy your grandchildren.
[00:11:10] Peter Bowes: Jen, great to talk to you. I’m looking forward to following the progress of your work. Thank you very much.
[00:11:15] Jen Scheinman: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Peter.
The Live Long and Master Aging (LLAMA) podcast, a HealthSpan Media LLC production, shares ideas but does not offer medical advice. If you have health concerns of any kind, or you are considering adopting a new diet or exercise regime, you should consult your doctor.
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