Healthy Aging: A Deep Dive into Your Mitochondria – with Dr. Anurag Singh

Dr. Mindy  

On this episode of The resetter podcast, I bring you Dr. On your eggs sing. Now a little bit of a background on what you’re about to listen to, we are dive deep into mitochondrial health. And I love the way we approached it in a way of looking at powering up your mitochondria from an anti aging perspective. So a little bit about Dr. Singh that I think is really interesting is not only is he the Chief Medical Officer at timeline nutrition, which you’ll hear us talk a lot about. But he has an MD in internal medicine and a PhD in immunology. And he has worked at some of the top consumer health companies, and he’s been at startup companies like timeline, He has authored over 40 articles in top science journals, and has been awarded over 15 patents. This man is a force. And why I wanted to bring him to you is because timeline Nutrition has a really some really interesting products that are key for mitochondrial health. But hopefully those of you that have been listening to me for a while know that I’m not here just to tell you to take a pill and all of a sudden your life will change. I’m here to show you a lifestyle that will not only slow aging not only balance hormones, but will have you really truly loving the body that you’re living in. And timeline Nutrition has come up with a really key product that involves a post biotic called your retinol a and your retinol A is a nutrient that our mitochondria need. So we’ve talked on here before about light, you’re gonna hear us talk a little bit about light here. We’ve talked about ketones, we’ve talked about CO q 10, and nutrition that you need to support and good fats that you need to support mitochondrial health. But we’ve never talked about why you need your ethanol A. And in this conversation, not only are you going to learn why this nutrient is so important, but I’m hoping that you are going to learn why your mitochondria are the route. Listen to this for a moment. Your mitochondria are necessary, they are at the root of all of your health challenges. They are also at the root of being able to not only slow down aging, but to prevent health challenges. The mitochondria aren’t that important. So I walked him all the way through tell us why the mitochondria are that important? What do they do? How do they affect muscle growth? How do they affect skin health? How do they affect our immune system? What lifestyle changes do we need to make to keep our mitochondria healthy as we age, I went out this from as many angles as I could find, so that you all could benefit from building a lifestyle that works for these mitochondria. So Dr. Singh, and know that if you’re interested in getting his product, you can go to timeline nutrition.com/pelz. And they will give you 10% off on their product. And I highly recommend that you try their product for several months, you will notice a difference as the months continue on. So at the back half of this conversation, we dive into the product. At the front half of the conversation we really go over mitochondrial health and what you need to know about it. So Dr. Singh timeline nutrition, enjoy

Dr. Mindy  

a doctor Mindy here and welcome to season four of the resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, well let’s just jump right in Dr. Singh. Let me start by just welcoming you to the recenter Podcast. I’m so excited. I probably am one of the rare few that’s really excited to talk mitochondria. So but I think after people listen to this, they’ll understand why so welcome. I’m happy you’re here.

Dr. Anurag  

Thanks for having us. Thanks for that Mindy.

Dr. Mindy  

You know, what’s really interesting is I really find the mechanics of cellular energy, super fascinating. In fact, again, I find things like the Krebs cycle and how our cells take In our food, and they take in vitamins and minerals, and they convert that all into energy to be totally fascinating. And what I’ve seen over the last several decades is more and more people are understanding this one little part of their cell is key to energy building muscle, to slowing down aging, and we are now throwing out the word mitochondria over and over again, like a buzz. It’s kind of like a buzzword without fully understanding all the things that the mitochondria do for us. So can we start with the conversation there? Why do we need to think about our mitochondria? And what are all the amazing things that these little powerhouses are doing for us?

Dr. Anurag  

Sure. Yeah. So a great question to kick it off. So mitochondria, essentially, are these tiny organelles inside a cell. They’re like the energy factories, right? So they are involved in in, in making energy there are transmitting the currency of energy in our bodies, it’s a molecule called ATP. And without that, you won’t be able to get up from a chair. Without that you won’t be able to think clearly. So that’s the key role of mitochondria. In a nutshell if to simplify it, think of them as the batteries, powering your your your car, right or your electric car, if you if you take out the battery from a Tesla, the Tesla will move, right. So that’s exactly the role of the mitochondria in our bodies. And they essentially involved in everything from our from sensing the nutrients that we are getting in from the food, they’re involved in protein synthesis, a lot of when you’re taking your high protein shake, for example. These are the cellular organelles that are involved in the protein synthesis aspects of the cellular machinery. And then, you know, really, they’re in walled is sort of the central pillars, get all the cellular organelles to talk to each other. That’s where they play a very integral role.

Dr. Mindy  

And so are you. Does everybody have the same amount of mitochondria? Or can you like I’ve heard when you’re younger, and if you’re really athletic, you build a lot of extra mitochondria, because perhaps you’re building more muscle? Like, are we all given the same amount of mitochondria? Or does it vary from person to person? Or do we even know?

Dr. Anurag  

The mitochondria are found in every cell type except the red blood cells, right? So now the more metabolic, the cell type, so typically, the muscle, the skeletal muscle, the cardiac

Dr. Anurag  

cell, the neuronal cell, these have 1000s of mitochondria, because their their requirement of energy is very high. And so what happens basically is compared to a platelet for example, which is a kind of an immune cell that has only about eight to 20, mitochondria, the muscle and the neuron cells have about, you know, 15 to 30,000 mitochondria. And so what happens with aging, or as we all ages, the number of mitochondria in these in these very metabolic energetic organ cells, so typically the brain or the muscle or the heart cell, or the liver cell, they start veering, and they start declining because now we are building a pool of unhealthy mitochondria and the healthy mitochondria are diminishing. And so that’s what happens with aging. Okay, and so what diminishes them if we if like, if the name of the game is more mitochondria mean more cellular energy, which ultimately means more energy for every organ in our system, more energy for us, as we start to age, are there certain behaviors we can do to make sure that we keep our mitochondria healthy? Sure. So typically, mitochondria in a life cycle, exist in sort of a healthy state and an unhealthy state, right. So you they, you know, you start with this process, and I’ll try to sort of break it down into the three sort of life cycle aspects of a mitochondria when they’re healthy. That’s the process we called as sort of fission and fusion, which means now the mitochondria are talking to each other, they’re happily talking to the other organelles. There’s another phase called biogenesis, which means creating newer mitochondria. And that’s when a lot of small fragments in the cells come together from the mitochondria to make new mitochondria. And then there’s a third aspect, which is my toffee G, which is basically collecting a lot of poor mitochondria and cleaning them out. So there’s always a balance. When you say, how do you grow new mitochondria, you need to have these three systems that I just described in absolute sync. So the creation of the new mitochondria, the West that you have, so they are talking and being more energy producing and then the cleaning of the mitochondria. And so what can you do? Well, there are two interventions actually, that are super well studied. One is, well, intermittent fasting or calorie restriction, right? That’s your favorite topic there. This is well known to induce by

Dr. Anurag  

robust creation of new mitochondria, it’s also known to clean the poor mitochondria out. And then the second aspect is milled regular exercise or aerobic and resistance. Exercise regimens are known to have a very robust impact on mitochondrial health. And the third pillar, which we’ll probably get into it is, what can you do in terms of from constitute constitutes of your diet that can have robust mitochondrial effects that kind of supplement exercise and intermittent fasting because not everybody’s in 100%, always compliant to these two other mechanisms.

Dr. Mindy  

So I want to go back to one of the things you said of those three things that I have, I’ve been really deeply thinking about, which is the mitochondria talking to each other, can or communicating with each other. So I’ve been really deeply for the last several years, unpacking a concept called cellular danger response, which is, and you’ll probably explain it a lot better than I can, but where the cell goes into a crisis, and then the mitochondria stop pushing out ATP, they start alerting all the other cells that there’s a crisis at hand. And this is a deal when it comes to autoimmune conditions, cancers, chronic diseases. So before we move on to all the wonderful things you can do for the mitochondria, can we address cellular danger response? And what we can what we need to know about that? Fascinating

Dr. Anurag  

question. So So typically, mitochondria, as he’s just described, are the sentinels of good cellular health. So when things go wrong, for example, if they’re under a lot of stress, if you’re not eating right, or, or they’re suddenly you know, a lot of stress on a cellular level from external factors such as even, you know, hot temperatures or cold temperatures, they are known to modulate these kinds of stress signals with the mitochondria of the what I described before this sort of, they’ll go into sort of from a healthy state to an unhealthy state, and the body will try to, to release these unhealthy fragments of poor functioning mitochondria, which we call fragments of mitochondria, or mitochondrial DNA, this will go and then alert the other cell types, typically, immune cells will pick it up and see it as a danger response. And they will basically start responding and creating an immune reaction to it. And that’s where you were trying to get into that a lot of times this leads to autoimmunity, because sometimes a lot of the viruses and bacteria managed to trick ourselves and make this release happen from the mitochondria. And that leads to things like autoimmunity. So what can we do that, so I think boils down to really the central tenet, that mitochondria are this key hallmark of aging that connects every other Hallmark, or cellular behavior. And if you can improve mitochondrial health, you can then dampen the sort of stress response. And that’s essentially what we are discovering, actually, as we do more and more trials, we think we are improving mitochondrial health, which we see the data, but in essence, and a parallel sort of biomarker that we pick up as the sort of immune reactive markers, like C reactive protein, for example. And whenever we see mitochondrial health go better, the immune system looks a bit quieter and damping. And so I think there’s a very key nexus between the danger response that you are describing and how good your mitochondrial health is.

Dr. Mindy  

And does the danger response happen? Because you’re not giving the mitochondria? What it needs? Or does it happen because of physical, emotional, chemical toxins that come into the cell and start to put it into this reactive state? Or is it both?

Dr. Anurag  

Yeah, it’s what we call as oxidative stress. So basically, it’s creating stress with with these highly reactive oxygen species, mitochondria are this you know, sort of factories where a lot of oxygen consumption is happening, and a lot of oxygen is sort of being produced for you know, that’s, that’s sort of why we feel fatigued, or we feel more energetic, kind of, at a whole body level. And so what happens is, if we accumulate too much of this, what we call his Ross or reactive oxygen species, this leads to damage of the mitochondria. And if you have too much damaged mitochondria, your cellular health will just go off and you won’t be able to fight. You know, you won’t be able to feel very energetic or or mount even a proper immune response. So that’s what’s happening at a cellular level.

Dr. Mindy  

And so if we looked at the mitochondria as a, I always, I love to refer to things in our body as like pets. Like I always think of the mind, the microbiome like this, like, if you really thought of your microbiome as like a pet you were trying to keep alive that was gonna make you feel really good. Here are all the things you would do to keep that pet alive. I feel like the same thing with the mitochondria. It has a checklist of things that it needs, like you mentioned, intermittent fasting helps it? Well, I look at that, what does intermittent fasting do, it can stimulate can produce ketones, which is one of the requirements of the mitochondria, it can help with what you talked about my toffee G, if you fast long enough, so it can clean those mitochondria up. We also know that the mitochondria has a bio lipid membrane, like the outer part of the cell, so we need to be giving it good fats. We also know that there are certain things we should be eating, like I heard organ meats, or have certain capabilities of feeding the mitochondria. So if the mitochondria was a pet that we wanted to keep alive, what, you know, what do you think of the checklist I just created? And what would you add to that checklist?

Dr. Anurag  

No, it’s fascinating. Well, actually, there’s a big field of research that is upcoming, and that’s called the, the microbiome mitochondria axis, because essentially, mitochondria are nothing but ancient bacteria that involves, you know, within ourselves and sort of this symbiotic or mutually, you know, agreeing relationship, where, you know, we would, as hosts, humans provide energy to these ancient bacteria, and they would process our nutrients and give us you know, energy in return. So that’s kind of the the network between microbiome and the mitochondria story. Now, what is a checklist? I say there, you know, I think most of the things you mentioned, diet, exercise, advanced sort of supplementation with things that are known clinically proven to improve mitochondrial health. Sleep is a big one, your circadian rhythms is how you’re sleeping, believe it or not, effects mitochondrial health and, and stress, you know, stress that a lot of neurocognitive disorders are now ultimately pointing down to metabolic disturbances in which at the root is mitochondrial dysfunction. So those five I think, are pretty much if you think about them, you love and you address them, you’ll have good mitochondrial health.

Dr. Mindy  

And what about light? I’ve heard like that mitochondria has sensors for different light, you know, frequencies or vibrant sees like red light. Is that true? That actually has a receptor site for that?

Dr. Anurag  

Yeah, there’s a lot of new research that is just coming out, I guess, in the last couple of years, how they’re sensitive red light, I think it really boils down to their ability to regulate things like sarcasm and rhythm, and even a hot versus cold. We worked with a professor close by our where we are based in the university switching to technology. And he even studies how hot temperatures and cold temperatures modulate mitochondria. And so yes, there’s a lot of new fascinating literature coming out showing that things like red light and cold temperatures, and maybe that’s why a lot of people, by hacking community are doing a lot of these cold plunges that these are things that you can use to improve mitochondrial health.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, yeah. It’s fascinating because I think it when you look at the biohacking community, and you look at everything from hyperbaric oxygen to red light to plunges, you start to see that at the root of everything we’re trying to do with all of those bio Hacks is improve mitochondrial health. So that’s why I think all of us understanding it in the best way possible is key for longevity.

Dr. Anurag  

Absolutely. And, you know, probably listeners may have heard a lot about these hallmarks of aging, or on different, you know, episodes of your podcasts. But essentially, there are now 12 of them went and they all linked to Tila, mad trician or stem cell exhaustion in our body or for communication between our cell organelles. At the central I think the right at the at the middle is these mitochondrial dysfunction, because if you correct that, you can correct basically all the others as you’re describing. And it’s amenable to being to making it better, right? So if you can eat 20% and less or if you can move, walk and do your 10,000 8000 steps that are recommended, you are in fact improving your mitochondrial and cellular health. So I think these are key learnings. Okay,

Dr. Mindy  

this that was a brilliant point. And I want to make sure that nobody misses that because when it goes to either slowing down aging or overturning a diagnosis, it can get very complicated. We can get like, I call it shiny object syndrome, where we’re like, I’m gonna go do that and I’m gonna go do this. But what I love about the mitochondria and this discussion and why I’m wanting to break it down in the simplest way possible, is if you correct the milder end, you get your mitochondrial health in order. If you correct the dysfunction of the mitochondria, you address so many things like it’s one target that can amplify Why your health in so many different directions? I’ve taken people who have been really, really sick and just thought through the lens of their mitochondria, what do I need to do to get their mitochondria working? Well again. And once I do that, you start to see the body heal itself. It’s it’s really, I want to make sure nobody lost what you just said, if we’re looking at the hallmarks of aging, mitochondrial dysfunction is a root issue that we need to address. So let’s take in that thought, What do you think when we look at some of the things specifically that menopausal women go through? So you talk to you, when we first got on this call, you talked about skin aging, that’s a big thing that we’re concerned about. I also want to talk about muscle. Because as you as we go through the menopausal process, the movement of hormones goes from our ovaries to our adrenals. And when the adrenals are super stressed out, they start to break muscle down to grab nutrients. And that’s the muscle is rich in mitochondria. So now we’re losing all that mitochondria. So can you can you talk a little bit about both of those? And how, what we can do to preserve muscle and to slow down the aging of skin? Sure.

Dr. Anurag  

So I think, let’s start with those two, I think bone health from what we are seeing is a third, another third. Yeah, we can. Yes, we see so so muscle health is, I think the peak and muscle mass and muscle function around the third decade of our lives. And then with each decade, we are losing about 10%. So in the moment, we are hitting our 50s 60s Especially around that time even accelerates and becomes almost like 15 20% of muscle mass and muscle strength loss. And, and so as clinicians as an as somebody who’s seen a lot of old, frail populations in my past life, before I became a physician scientists is that a lot of these people will come in with the classical complains of work energy, and, oh, I went for a walk or I did gardening and my my muscles were sore. And I think for long, the, the whole fundamental, let’s say agreement in the muscle field was, oh, just boost your muscle mass, right, just boost and get more mass Oh, take a gram of protein for every kilogram of bodyweight. And then you know, as you get older, you know, increase that even more. But you can increase more muscle, or let’s say protein intake. But if you’re not improving the machinery in our muscle cells, which is all linked again, to mitochondria, after a certain age, and this is again, well known, you hit this anabolic resistance, so you you’re gonna even if you’re increasing your protein intake, your body’s just letting it out because it’s not able to process it. So that’s something that happens after 50. So if you can make yourself more energetic, if you can improve the energetic capacity, I think you can have even better results with things like protein and other nutritional supplementation, because now you have this really dual combo. So muscle out typically that’s where, and we’ve looked at 60 year olds and seven year olds who are, were moving more were eating more protein and versus 6070 year olds, we’re not, you know, very sad entry, for example, men and women both same, what we see is basically that mitochondrial health is absolutely key in their skeletal muscle, so So the better your mitochondrial health, the better your muscle health. So that’s, I think, proactively if already in your 40s, you know, early in the 50s people are dressing these things, then sort of the trajectory towards losing more muscle mass and strength will be will be diminished. So that’s the muscle piece. skin aging is a big piece of the puzzle. Now the skin cell also has a lot hundreds of mitochondria. And what we see actually happen in the muscle happens in the skin as well. So when we look at a 30 year old woman’s skin cell versus a seven year old woman’s skin cells, we see the mitochondria number hasn’t really changed. It’s just their inherent capacity to make more energy, sort of what we call the energetic supply of the cell has really gone down. And so if you could boost this energetic or rewired this energetic supply, I believe, and we are seeing the results actually in our trials with some of these nutrients is that you can put more collagen in because again, mitochondria are the sites for collagen synthesis. And so you have more collagen that you’re losing in your skin cells over aging and that’s how you can correct the skin. Bone at mentioned quickly is the same. We have looked at the bone cells in in sort of different models of osteoarthritis and in people that lost her thright us they have huge issues in my toffee G and a toffee G in their bone cells. And so that sets off a whole cartilage degeneration process that gets accelerated.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so like osteoporosis is a is a dysfunction in my toffee G and I talked a toughie G,

Dr. Anurag  

osteoporosis has an element of mitochondrial dysfunction, osteoarthritis has a big, big component because now you set in motion with poor mitochondria held this sort of inflammation aspect that then leads to, you know, pain. And that results in a lot of, you know, bone degeneration. And that leads to a lot of problems and mobility in general. So combine muscle and bone issues together, and that’s in your 50. That’s a huge problem to address.

Dr. Mindy  

And, and so if one of the fuel sources for the mitochondria is protein, but the mitochondria becomes more dysfunctional, and I would say even though cell as a whole becomes more dysfunctional, as we age at bringing those amino acids into the cell for activation, now we’re in we’re in what I call a quagmire. What do we do? Like how we’re at a funny little juncture, juncture, as we age, where we’re like, okay, I know I’m supposed to eat more protein, so I can get more amino acids. So I can build muscle, and I can help with my, you know, slow down the aging of skin. But, but my but my cells aren’t taking in that protein in the same way that it used to. So I just keep eating more protein. And and then how do I fit that in the fasting window is a question that a lot of people in my community ask. Yep, so we did this really funky spot where we totally understand everything you’re saying. We’re excited about keeping our mitochondrial health mitochondria healthy. But we need other solutions to power up those mitochondria. What else do we have? 

Dr. Anurag  

typically, today, the whole mitochondrial, let’s say, targeting field is split into improving and creating new mitochondria. That’s what I was describing as the is the sort of the pathway of mitochondria lifecycle, it’s we call is mitochondrial biogenesis. So there are compounds such as an ad boosters, there’s resveratrol compounds, such as those that have been studied to and what you’re doing basically, is creating more near mitochondria and who are young and healthy and will produce energy. And the second is there’s, you can prove the efficiency of mitochondria. So that just means now instead of four ATP molecules, they’re producing five ATP molecules per per mitochondria. And that’s yes, kind of. That’s where signed me up for that. Yeah, so there’s a lot of work done there. On compounds such as CO q 10, coenzyme, q 10. For example, that’s where it but what happens with aging is that now suddenly, we have this trash bin right in, in in our cells and or in our mitochondria. And that gets stacked up that gets filled. So there’s very little space for near healthy mitochondria to come in order for the healthy mitochondria to let’s say, talk to others even because there’s a lot of garbage. So braiding. Now we can, we are ourselves, by default, just slow down to clean this way. So think of this as your trash bin in your home, which gets fulfilled and if you’re not cleaning it, your house will not smell very nice. And that’s exactly what’s happening in our cells. So calorie restriction does this very well. It stimulates a toffee G and my toffee, G and that’s the, the garbage disposal machinery. Now there are nutrients and the one we have discovered and put about 10 years of research behind is molecule call your Lipton a, and that activates naturally my toffee G similar to what calorie restriction or fasting would do. And that’s how it kind of takes the waste out. And now you have a lot of space to grow new mitochondria.

Dr. Mindy  

So your ethanol a when I first learned about your product, I thought how can I know so much about cellular health, about nutrition about detox fasting, and I’d never heard of your ethanol A. So can you talk a little bit about it? Because again, when I first started trying timeline, I was shocked at how much more consistent energy I had throughout the day. So it made me fascinated by this one particular and it’s a prebiotic, right that you’ve that isn’t Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about Sure. So Oh, it’s a post biotic.

Dr. Anurag  

Yeah, so your lesson a is is a is a gut metabolites. It’s made by the gut microbiome. That’s the link to the microbiome mitochondria that I was talking about. So a lot of us are eating the right foods, such as the pomegranate or walnuts and pecans if you’re eating things like what are known, and even in Mediterranean diet, or if you’re just sticking to healthy foods and not sort of like raspberries for example. Not these contain a lot of antioxidants that we know are good for you. Well What we discovered was that it was not these antioxidants or poly phenols that are so for example, in the pomegranate is the richest source of polyphenols, called ellagitannins. Now ellagitannins have been studied or pomegranates have been studied for 1000s of years, hundreds of clinical studies, some going in favor, so I’m not going in favor, what we discovered was, depending on the gut microbiome you have, and you may have it, or you may not have it, you may have levels of a molecule that has the post biotic earlier tonight. And if you do produce your live today, your mitochondria are much better shape. So when we started studying needed, we found that only about 30% of the healthy adult population was had some levels of your Lipton a, in their in their blood, when we looked at the blood levels of your listener. So we figured out why not directly calibrate and give, you know, sort of direct doses of the of the post biotic and see if that would have the sort of cellular rejuvenation effect on our muscle cells. And that’s how we got into the two year old today.

Dr. Mindy  

So I’m thinking about the woman who’s maybe been on multiple antibiotics, maybe decades of birth control, and her God is completely destroyed. And then she comes roaring into her menopausal years and now has a major shift in hormone production from her ovaries, her adrenals her stress is super high. And so now her she’s noticing more muscle wasting more muscle soreness, she’s not sleeping or moods are off. I mean, the whole I can paint the whole picture for you because I have been her. So what I just heard is that there could be a link between the lifestyle we had in our younger years and production of your ethanol a as we move into our older years. And that if we are if we are supplementing with your ethanol a not only is it giving the mitochondria a nutrient, I’ll just call it that even though it’s supposed biotic, a nutrient that it needs to be able to give us ATP for energy. But is it possible with the addition of your ethanol aid does it repair the microbiome, from all the destruction we we endured in our younger years? So

Dr. Anurag  

I’ll tell you my personal story. I grew up in India and in India, when you’re sick as a kid, and you always get antibiotics, irrespective whatever you get the wireless, Elissa or bacteria really unless, and so I took I got exposed to a lot of antibiotics. And then I moved to the States. And then finally, last 15 years in Switzerland. And so the first time I we discovered this molecule, I actually bled my self and started looking at if you know, after drinking a glass of pomegranate juice pure 100% squeezed bombed as my body will make it or not, my body just refused to make it. And so then I went a month of eating only berries and not in sort of whole fresh food diet. I could never change my microbiome. And so that actually led to this whole idea. Well, then they are so many folks. And we’ve looked actually we’ve looked in, in the US we’ve lived in France and Italy, we’ve lived in Canada, it seems like the more exposed to fermented foods, the more exposed to sort of the Mediterranean diet, you are these are the areas of France, Italy, where we see this 30 40% People who have us cannabis, it’s like 10%, right? So whenever you’ll hear me say, Oh, 30% people healthy adults can make it? Well, it’s depends on their geography. So in the US, we’ve done hundreds of people in a clinical trial, only 12% came with some level of Euro tunay. So they are probably more people eating, let’s say, the healthy diet. And then so we we then gave them the healthy diet. And we saw that you could convert about 30% and even in the US population to making the molecule. But that brings the question, why are the other 60% 70% never able to make it? And the answer lies in the gut microbiome, it’s really the richness, it’s really the diversity. So I think you can probably change it. But that requires months and months of you know, sticking to a fermented diet and really following it. And that’s where direct supplementation really helps, because you can actually give that those high levels of your Lithonia which is a cellular nutrient exposure to your to your body. And for those, you know, for that for this nutrient.

Dr. Mindy  

And if you add in your ethanol A is that now something you got to add in every day for the rest of your life? Or is there a moment you get you you’re like rehabbing the mitochondria and you’re getting them back up to speed so that they can produce the ATP you want all on their own.

Dr. Anurag  

So we’ve done a number of randomized, placebo controlled clinical trials, what we see is that you need to give it’s not a magic pill, right? It’s like caloric restriction or intermittent fasting, you need to give yourself the time to repair. So that’s the first month kind of where we see the mitochondria are. If you take biopsies, if you take blood cells and we look in their mitochondria after one month of supplementation, we see that the now the mitochondria are in this sort of new growth phase. And then when we give them a give the supplementation longer for two to four months, we start seeing the whole body effects. Now the question you’re asking is, well, after that, can you wean off and then maybe your mitochondria will be in good shape? Well, I think you will have some much like exercise of fasting, if you stick to a regimen, you will get the benefit out of it. But as soon as you drop, you know, if you’ve not become non compliant to it, you’re probably at a certain point and to lose the effects. And then you’ll have to redo the whole regimen again. So I think there’s, it’s in the same category, because we know the biological pathway that we’re hitting is the same as what exerciser or fasting is hitting.

Dr. Mindy  

I’m such a fan of like a multi therapeutic approach where we’re pulling in a lot and and I think as I just want to make sure everybody’s catching the through line of everything, we’re saying, if you’re looking at fasting, you’re looking at fermented foods, you’re exercising, you’re working on your stress, and you’re adding in something like your ethanol a there there becomes this mitochondrial lifestyle that you are now in sync with that is going to slow down the aging process. If somebody comes to a product like timeline, and they want to use it for the first time, it would make the most sense to me, that you would make sure you’re doing those other pieces I just mentioned. And that there would be a bit of a power up phase where you’re coming in with perhaps a high dose of your ethanol a for a period of like you said for, let’s say, three to six months, and then there would be a maintenance dose after that. Because the way I see the body is that if we’re always doing the same thing at the same time over and over again, we’re not applying any hormetic stress, we’re not tricking the cell to move into a different action that we want it to move in. So have you all looked at if you come in with a therapeutic dose, and then a maintenance dose with retinol a and what that would look like,

Dr. Anurag  

No, we haven’t done those studies. But I can tell you because I have get a lot of real world because we you know now have 1000s of customers on it. And that actually led us to to develop tests even where you know, you had first No, get to know. And we haven’t lost that test. But that’s sort of in a prototyping clinicals studying phase where if you can already know where you’re at today levels are Are you a producer? Are you not a producer? If you’re a producer, are you a low producer? Are you a very high producer of meaning that your gut microbiome already is in great shape to to harness some of the you know, you’re lifting a foot from from the dietary exposure, then you stick to a dose we know which is around 500 milligram and you stay on it right because then you’re getting these other exposures. Now for someone like me, it’s the body just refuses to make your lip tunay. I always say well, you’d then you need to and then again, you have to gauge as a practitioner or you know where this person is in terms of their whole body health, right? If they are in a stressful state, then you start with a higher dose, as you’re saying. And then after a few months, switch them to a lower maintenance dose. I think that that I think it’s really on a case by case. You have to really look at look at that as that.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, and I think like when you said it earlier, like any D co q 10. I think methylene blue is a real popular one right now that a lot of people are using for mitochondrial health. And what I’ve learned in the research that I saw on your ethanol A is and what I’m hearing you say is it’s unnecessary, unnecessary nutrient, and for those mitochondria. And so when you’re giving that on a consistent basis, just like if you get if you decide to dive into an ad shots or methylene blue Ivy’s like you’re giving these mitochondria, a nutrient that it’s been depleted of as its aging, is that is that and as we age, we have to we really have to think about this more. It’s so so this is what I really want to bring to everybody’s attention is yeah, maybe your 30 year old self didn’t need to think about this. But your 50 year old self that may not feel like your 30 year old self needs to start to think of all the ways you can power up those mitochondria and it becomes more necessity more of a necessity as we age.

Dr. Anurag  

I 200% agree with that. So I think the way I see and I’ve always seen your alternate sort of the, the foundation right so if you’ve got your cellular held in good shape if you’ve got your mitochondria, repairing them So if at a much faster rate, even if you’re taking any D supplementation, now you’ll absorb an A d better, right? Because now you’re you’ve rewired your mitochondria it to be in a much better energetic state. So they absorbing whether it’s multivitamins or protein, you know, that is coming in or amino acids through this protein synthesis pathway, or NAD, you’re just gonna have and that’s I know that a lot of people like to stack in the in the community take multiple supplementation, I think that’s how I see it’s really the foundation strategy that people need to think about is to improve the the sort of repair capacity of yourselves.

Dr. Mindy  

And that’s how I saw it, too. When I started to dive into looking at your ethanol a, I was like, wow, why are we so excited about NAD? Why are we so excited about all these other things, but we haven’t really highlighted this one post biotic. So I’m glad that I was seeing that through the same lens that you created a timeline for. Now talk a little bit about timeline as a product, because you have tablets, you have serums, you have shakes, and where I really want my community to see this is as something we might be able to do within our fasting window. And we can do it it as a way of not only powering up the mitochondria, but I also am thinking of it as a beautiful addition to so many of us that are trying to eat more protein. And we can be getting similar effect on those mitochondria to keep our muscles strong. But do it in the fasting window, maybe requiring less protein in our eating window. I’m not sure if that’s a right analogy or a right way of thinking. But talk a little bit about your products and about and can we use them in the fasting window and would it make it so that we don’t have to eat as much protein in our eating window. So

Dr. Anurag  

we have three product types and they’re all delivering the same dose, daily dose of the product so you have the the fruit flavors of these are Berry and pomegranate flavored sort of Tippin sachets that you just can mix it in yogurt or, or your shakes. And that and that sort of speaking also to the roots of of the discovery from the pomegranates and the berries are the precursors come from. So that’s one of the more popular products then the the second one, which is probably the biggest uptake is the soft gels. So these are pills, they they have 250 milligrams of the compound people like to pop pills exactly

Dr. Mindy  

the day, every day, they’re very easy for sure. And they

Dr. Anurag  

fit in with the fasting lifestyle, right. And these are the ones we have actually studied the most in all, we’ve now run 15 randomised trials, the ones we really see people absolutely being very highly compliant to and we can count the number of bills at the end of the trial, for example, is the is the soft shell pills. So it fits perfectly with the fasting as you know, zero caloric value doesn’t impact the high protein shake, we launched that because I always felt that, you know, if you if you combine good tastes with two different benefits. So improving muscle mass with your muscle quality or energy, you would have a combo. So that one, of course, because it’s 20 grams away, you have to put some sort of things in there to its natural sugars to sort of so that I wouldn’t recommend that fits in with the fasting lifestyle. But it does, you know, if you’re making shakes, if you’re doing for example, you’re 16, eight intermittent fasting and you will still want to, you know, eat something healthy and you do shakes and that’s where it fits in. And a lot of people like this protein shake a lot because of that.

Dr. Mindy  

I think actually, it’s really good for breaking the fast. That’s how I use it. So I’ve been using the pill, the supplements in my fasting window, and then I’ve been using the shake to break fast and I feel like then you can get your protein you can get all the nutrients that are that are in there. So one of the questions we get a lot in the fasting community is if you’re taking certain supplements within a fasting window, are they either breaking your fast or Are they pulling you out of a toffee G so if we look at amino acids as being a key nutrient for building muscle, one of my theories is that if we do an amino acid supplement within our fasting window, that is it could pull us out of a toffee G I don’t think we have any I don’t think we have any research on that. But with your ethanol a I’m thinking that it only enhances because of what you said my toffee G and a toffee G in the cell when you take it in the in the fasting window so it would actually be helpful to do it. In a fasting window, it would amplify the fasting effects. Yeah, have thoughts on that?

Dr. Anurag  

Sure. So we’ve done actually studies comparing your litany effects to fasting. So typically, the you know, these studies look at the the induction of autophagy, the sort of the percentage and the healthspan extension in different aging models. And it’s very similar. So if, for example, autophagy induction is 30% fouling of fasting period and different experimental models you’re looking at comes very close. And if you combine both of them, you see an additive effect. And in all our trials, actually the window yet, we have told all the study participants where we see the best results coming in is after an overnight fast, that’s the first thing that take, and that already makes sure there’s enough fuel, it’s an exposure that can amplify that response in the mitochondria, or at the cellular level. The second is exercise. And often I get asked the same question and exercise is, well, it will this be additive if we exercise and our mitochondria already, you know, my toffee G is happening, because if so we’ve actually done now a trial, we have not done a clinical trial, combining it with intermittent fasting, but we have done it in a in athletes, who are we’re training for even Olympian level races. And we found that combining exercise with the earlier today led to a better recovery, less inflammation because believe it or not these these athletes also get inflamed because of the the amount of training they do. And so we think there’s a magnitude of response, you can even builds make it addictive with fasting and exercise regimens.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, and it’s the stalking that I think is really interesting, because if we break down really what biohacking means and I realized that we probably should have started off the conversation as we’ve thrown that term around. Not everybody knows what that means. But all it means is that you are lining up your health habits with the way your body wants to be treated. That’s the way like you’re lining yourself up with your own self healing. And when we look at that the through the biohacking through that lens, there are many things behaviors you can do at one time, that will amplify yourself healing. And so what you just taught me was okay, we could fast and we could work out in a fasted state. And we could do timeline at the same time. And now we are really putting our mitochondria into a power position is the way I would look at it. Yeah,

Dr. Anurag  

that would be a triple booster if we can do all those. And that would be a dream trial for me to run for the future. If I guess we usually we restart in populations where we know mitochondrial dysfunction exists like bits of dentry population or, or a bit, you know, older population that would the age is the stressor. But I think if you’re practicing exercise tonight, we have to get published this very cool data that we just got recently with exercise being amplified that might appear I think, if you can add the fasting element that that itself and I think that would work, actually the way you said is you get this three prong attack on your cellular energy that just sets you up and you have more fuel left and at the end of the day.

Dr. Mindy  

And then I’m also thinking and then if you get when you go back into food, you would do a timeline shake. So you’re getting that protein. And you can add in other protein powders and other to hit that 30 gram mark that’s going to start the initiation of mTOR and the and the sensors within the muscles. So now you’ve literally stacked like four or five different strategies that your body wants to keep not only the cells healthy, but to keep preserving that muscle because I do believe that muscle as we age is this key organ. I agree with the zeitgeist of the moment, which is that muscle is that organ of longevity. I agree. And so then the question really becomes, well if I’m a fasting lifestyle, how am I going to fit this all in? And you’ve solved that problem? Like it that’s the way I look at it. You literally solved a huge fasting issue that is being discussed right now. And I want to go back to the powder you put in the water because my experience and I don’t know if you all have tested this, but the powder in water not only tastes amazing, but it doesn’t spike blood sugar at you guys. Have you have you done any trials on what it does to the blood sugar.

Dr. Anurag  

So it’s happening right now. It’s actually a trial. We are partnering with the The National Institute of Aging, which is the premier Institute in the United States to for all things aging, and we had data, we knew, because, you know, I did a small pilot study where I stuck, basically these glucose sensors. And I gave everybody a glass of pomegranate juice. Now, just pomegranate juice has 30 grams plus of sugar, and that spikes, the blood glucose. And if I, if I gave this, folks, the mighty pure berry powdered before a few hours before, so I could time the peak of your let’s name the blood to then the glucose Peak Peak wouldn’t happen. Now this is again, just a pilot that I did. And so now we have more groups that have shown that in pre diabetics, this could work as well, just like you were saying, you’re actually running this big trial now with the National Institute of Aging. That’s

Dr. Mindy  

amazing. It’s amazing again, I literally when I saw your product, I was like, Oh, my gosh, where have I been? How did I not know about this?

Dr. Anurag  

Yeah, I mean, glucose, people don’t think about it with glucose is being metabolized glucose metabolism is happening at the mitochondrial level. So if you could impact mitochondria protein synthesis, you know, say same thing. So I think if you modulate your mitochondria, I actually think glucose sensors could become like a de facto way or non invasive way to actually look at some of your cellular health or your mitochondrial health. We

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so you just gave me another idea. So if it helps if the mitochondria helps with glucose regulation, then that person that’s struggling to metabolically switch and get into ketosis, and needs more support around the mitochondria. Let me back up would it would behoove them to look at healing the mitochondria to make sure they can make that switch happen? And one of those missing things might be your ethanol? A? Yeah,

Dr. Anurag  

I totally agree. And that’s the way I see it too. And, and there may be ways to combine it also, with the ketones or other ways, you know, MCT is a good fat sort of things to to even boost it further to live even only talking about fasting and an exercise. But I do think that there are other ways to sort of mimic fasting and that could be augmented with combining it with your litany. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

you need to come up with a product that can go in everybody’s coffee.

Dr. Anurag  

Sure, yeah. So the beauty about your lips today, compared to other, let’s say, natural compounds that have very robust health benefits is, for example, Omega three, it doesn’t smell very good. If you know, as a soloist is fishy odor, Euro today is tasteless, is odorless, and you can leave it at different temperatures. And it just would not budge, and you can blend it with a lot of different things. So that’s the advantage we have in terms of a product formulation. So yeah, we’re working on Yeah, how to make I just can

Dr. Mindy  

I see a whole way to enhance our fasting window now after talking to you and I and you know, coffee is such a powerful tool with the Add MCT oil in your fasting window to keep you in that fat burning state? I’m now thinking okay, how do we get some your retinol a products in there? Now, of course, you can take the supplements. And that works well. So last question, I want to ask you, and this is one since you’ve been talking a lot about studies, have any of the studies you’ve done been on women only? And do you have plans to do study timeline on women only?

Dr. Anurag  

So a lot of our studies are predominantly woman participants because, you know, so far, the study we did in the 46 year old, the disposition of us was about 60 70% Woman versus 30%. And woman and and then we’ve done a study in 70 to 90 year olds. And they’re also we had, out of the 66 subjects we recruited about 40 were women so and I’ll never forget, for as long as I do clinical trials in my life, the oldest participant I’ve ever recruited was an 89 year old lady and she called me up saying, Well, I finished the trial. I know the trial is still blinded, and you may have to finish but I can tell you I saw your product and and I garden and I feel my sore muscles. So can you send me your product after you know which product I was and tell me if I wasn’t the right product or not, believe it or not, she knew she wasn’t the right product. And so I a lot of our trials actually have a very good representation of women and now we’re running the skin aging trials, which is mostly you know, involving 40 5060 year old women in the trial. Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

Thank you. Thank you. We need the most you know, and when I look at that just skin aging And, you know, it makes me scared when we’re putting poisons in our skin to slow down the aging process. And what is that long term for those mitochondria? It’s like a, it’s sort of a double edged sword, right? So you put in toxins into your skin to make yourself look younger, but then you deplete your mitochondrial energy, which ultimately means that you’re aging faster. So if we can use a product like your ethanol, a to power up those mitochondria and Slow Down Aging, now we’re in congruent with how our body wants us to be living. So I love that you’re doing so much on scan? And are you seeing any difference in men and women with your product.

Dr. Anurag  

So a lot of research early on, for example, in different aging models was done either in male sort of rodents or female rodents in the data was very similar. Our trials, we don’t, you know, specificly recruit only men or women. And as I was mentioning, most of them have about 60%, and the men and 40% men, we see same responses. And I’ve done sort of what we call a subgroup analysis, looking at if the rates are better in women versus men, and that seems to be the same, the mitochondria, yeah, the mitochondria are, you know, essentially behave the same way in both genders.

Dr. Mindy  

It’s an interesting thought I’d never looked at, you know, I’m always looking at the gender difference from a hormonal perspective. But I don’t look at it from a mitochondrial perspective. But I would just, I would think that the point of the mitochondria is to allow your hormones to be to work at their best. And so if you’re in a male body, that means testosterone going up into the brain to convert to estrogen. And if you’re in a female body, it just means you know, all that, well. Hormones mean more than just sex hormones. But again, we’re back at root cause, like,

Dr. Anurag  

Exactly So believe it or not, mitochondria are also the factories where a lot of these hormones are getting made, right. So a lot of research now in the mitochondrial field, when I go to really like top longevity, or scientists are starting is actually infertility or women’s health, because there are a lot of these issues, you know, in the reproductive field that are now pointing to two issues, you know, poor mitochondrial health. And same with same on the sort of the other spectrum where a lot of issues with men and testosterone production is being linked to sort of might have poor mitochondria that so I think, you know, it’s really the context, as the mitochondria evolutionary are these sort of cellular energy factories and this, you know, depending on their environment, they change or can be modulated, but at the core, they are there to provide Energy and Process nutrients.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah. Wow. So cool. Well, Dr. Singh, I really appreciate you creating such an amazing product. And I’m going to encourage my community to really test it in their fasting window. You know, I think that there’s two things I would expect my community to find is muscle strength, and building of muscle becomes easier skin, what like we talked about the the skin aging changing. But then just overall vitality. Anything else you would add to that list of if you’re a 50 year old woman trying this product that you would expect to see shift for the positive? Yes,

Dr. Anurag  

I think the number one feedback and there’s obviously the clinical evidence and the real world evidence and you know, the amount of feedback I get that points to people feeling better, more better energy, more strength, and just better recovery. Like if you do exercise, a lot of 50 year olds swear that they are recovering better, and the body is less damaged, because you know, and they’re doing even better than they were in their 40s. So I think that the immune aspect, we forget that, as I mentioned, the inflammation as we’re all aging, our bodies are getting inflamed, and I think you just damp in your your body is less damaged and the danger signals we would talked at the start. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

I you know, it’s funny, you say that I actually have noticed less soreness, and I work out hard and often. And my recovery has been amazing. So I hadn’t attributed it to timeline. So that that was that I can really vouch for that one, not only consistent energy, but I just don’t get sore after a workout. So that’s, that’s impressive. I’m 54. So I’m gonna give you some of that credit. So Sure, thanks. How do people find you if they want to order the product? And I will leave links in the in the show notes. Yeah,

Dr. Anurag  

they can go to our website timeline nutrition.com. And if they wanted to learn more on the science and clinical evidence and subscribe to receive sort of even learning more, they can go to Mito pure.com, which might appear as the sort of the proprietary trade name for your lemonade that are tied Emeline company markets.

Dr. Mindy  

Beautiful. And then I have to ask you my last question that I asked every guest. And so if you were to name one superpower that you have, as a human that you bring to this world, what would your superpower be?

Dr. Anurag  

My superpower will be empathy. You know, I was trained as a doctor I’m trained to, to listen and understand, sort of, and, yeah, I mean, really connect all the dots that you know this, let’s say the symptoms of a person at a whole body level and find this root cause. And that’s why I switched to actually becoming a physician scientist, because I realized my core strength was digging deeper and really going at the root cause of these issues. We all have aging. And so that’s my superpower. I think,

Dr. Mindy  

you know what, I think we need more people on this planet with empathy as their superpower. So that is a heck of a superpower. So, really appreciate your doctor saying, I cannot say enough about your product. It is one that will stay in my personal regime forever. And I’m just so grateful that there are scientists like you out there really digging deep into understanding what we can do to slow down aging. So massive appreciation.

Dr. Anurag  

Well, thanks for having me. Wonderful. Being on your podcast and talking to you. Thanks so much.

Dr. Mindy  

Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.