A mitochondrial expert explains how urolithin A activates mitophagy, the cellular cleanup that slows aging. Only 40% of people naturally produce it, but you can get it from pomegranate, walnuts, and cranberry, or through supplements like Mitopure. Sleep, strength training, and low-processed diets also boost mitochondrial function.
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We live in a toxic world, so it's hard to combat all of these stressors with our bodies. And I'm also a fan of things like urolithin A, where it really does target mitophagy directly. I do think that oral supplementation can definitely benefit everyone because it's like only 40% of people can actually create their own, like, urolithin A.
Something people don't really talk about is like, you know, skin health related to mitochondrial health and how much energy it takes to have healthy skin. As we age, you said the mitochondria become more injured and damaged just because of aging cell because of insulin resistance, because of generalized inflammation in the body, because of sun damage, because of poor diets, because all these reasons that we accelerate mitochondrial injury. And it doesn't just affect the energy in the cells in our tissues and organs, but in our brain, but also our skin. And I think some people don't really realize, and that I would love you to talk about this process of sort of how do we take care of our mitochondria and how do we think about like the repair and regeneration renewal of mitochondria? That's a concept in medicine called autophagy, which means cellular cleanup, essentially means self-eating. Like at night when we sleep, our bodies will gobble up with lysosomes all these old parts and recycle them. But also the mitochondria have a process like that too, called mitophagy. So can you talk about mitophagy and skin and how that all connects and how accumulating damaged mitochondria leads to more skin aging and how to use mitophagy to help clear and fix that for healthy skin aging?
Yeah, there's, there's, and there's multiple ways to address mitophagy. So yes, mitophagy Mitophagy is what you said. It helps clear out that kind of the damaged mitochondria, the mitochondria that aren't functioning because they're really just like taking up space and then the cells aren't working as well. So, to optimize mitophagy, we want to decrease the stress in the cell, the oxidative stress in the cell. So, doing things like decreasing processed foods, those can add to the stress in the cell, decrease UV radiation. And, that's a whole nother topic because I know the sun is important too.
Vitamin D.
Circadian rhythm, vitamin D. All of that. But there's a way to do it responsibly. But yes, but, but minimizing like chronic UV exposure. So there's that. There's nutrition, actually, you know, sleeping adequately. Sleep is when we're doing so much repair, not only, you know, within our, within our skin cells, but like our whole body. So, so important. And then stress, minimizing stress. Stress contributes to more oxidative stress literally within ourselves. So minimizing that. I know we've talked about strength training. When it comes to exercising, we know it's nourishing ourselves like with the circulation, but it's also improving things like insulin sensitivity. And when you have just all these other markers functioning better, then unless— and you have less inflammation, your mitochondria are going to work better. So by minimizing all these things, you can have—
And it also increases the number and the Yeah, the number of mitochondria. The function of mitochondria, exercise.
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, I know exercise, I think, is like so amazing for mitochondria. And there's also supplements that you can take too. Like, we live in a toxic world, so it's hard to really combat all of these stressors with our bodies. I mean, yes, we do have—
You need the foundations, but supplements help.
You have the foundation, but supplements do help. And things that are anti-inflammatory are helpful. I mentioned, you know, we talked about omega-3s for a while, and then, you know, vitamin D supplementation can also help with that oxidative stress too. And, and then I'm also a fan of things like urolithin A, where it really does target mitophagy directly. And you, you can get some endogenous urolithin A, like, you know, it's a byproduct of like things like walnuts and pomegranates from your gut. But, but I do think that oral supplementation can definitely benefit everyone because it's like only 40% of people can actually create their own, like, urolithin A.
Yeah.
So, and urolithin A, we know, helps with mitophagy. autophagy within your cells. And I mean, there's, there's oral versions, there's topical versions, but that's something that I would certainly consider. I would also consider things like, you know, just polyphenols, whether it's through foods or through supplements. You know, there's decent data with EGCG, which is from green tea.
Yeah.
As well as like, like cocoa flavanols. And then I mentioned carotenoids earlier, which include things like astaxanthin and beta-carotene. These all help kind of reduce that oxidative stress burden within your cells, which then will in turn help with mitophagy.
Astaxanthin is something that's in salmon because it's from the algae.
It is.
And it's what the salmon eat that makes them orange.
It makes them orange. Right, right. I know some people—
It's like carrots. It's like the same thing.
Yeah, carrots. I know there's this trend with young people called tan maxing and they are consuming all these carrots and astaxanthin supplements so they could look better.
I did that once. I wasn't intentionally. I'd said carrot juice was good for me way back when, and I was drinking carrot juice every day and I was like, Wow. I'm like orange.
So orange. Yeah.
It was crazy. I want to double-click on urolithin A. For people listening, it's what we call a postbiotic. So when you eat certain compounds, and these are polyphenols, it can be pomegranate, green tea, cranberry, walnuts, whatever, your bacteria, if you have the right bacteria, will process that and create metabolites. And some of those metabolites have beneficial effects. So, you know, people don't understand that probably a third or half of the metabolites in their bloodstream Are from their gut microbiome. They're not, they're not made by your cells. They're made by these bacteria that are producing all these molecules. And when you have bad bugs, they're producing bad crap and they're producing, when they have good bugs, they're producing these beneficial things. And so urolithinase, like you said, most people don't have microbiome because they're, I mean, I, I give talks and I'm like, who here has never taken antibiotics? I've been in a room of 1,000 people. Like nobody will raise their hand. We're like, I think once somebody raised their hand out of 1,000 people. Like, oh, I never took antibiotics. But like, it's not very common. I mean, all of us have had antibiotics.
Yeah.
We kind of kill off the bugs. And so it's really important to help to support that, those bugs, but also like you can actually take a supplement, your L-theanine supplement. And it's something that actually I use every day, mostly from a metabolic function, from a brain function, from a muscle function, from mitophagy. I don't think about it for my skin so much, but now I do.
Yeah.
And I think There's a lot of data on it. And one of the things it also does, seems to do, is reduce inflammation. So it can reduce CRP. It helps with all these benefits. So I think it's one of those supplements that has a lot of research. And I think it, you know, this is literally millions and millions of dollars of research on this, which is not typical for most products. So I think I'm impressed by it. It's published in Journal of American Medical Association, major journals. It's not like in some supplement journal somewhere. It's, this is good science. Yeah. So I think, I think this phenomenon of, of, um, taking care of your mitochondria as a concept, This is really important. You're only as healthy as your mitochondria. And when you age, your mitochondria decline and function declines. And a lot of the things that we know for healthy aging, whether it's overnight 12 to 14-hour fasts or whether it's exercise or whether it's urolithin A, these are all things that help your mitochondria function better. So I think it's so important.
And with urolithin A too, I learned that you have to be cautious too with which products have urolithin A. There's really just that one, MitoPure, that has the properly studied amount or the accurate amount of urolithin A. Because if you look at some other brands, they've been studied with third-party testing where it doesn't actually show the adequate—
Yeah, the dose. The dose. Yeah. If you take 1 milligram of aspirin, it's not going to do anything. I agree. I have been a big fan of Timeline Nutrition and Mitopure for a long time. I've taken it for a long time. I think that's why they're one of the sponsors of my show. And I think Just to be transparent about it, I think it, you know, yes, they're, they're sponsoring the podcast, but also like, I, I looked at the science and you have, and, you know, it makes sense and it, and it's, it's valid science and it, it's impressive compared, compared to a lot of other products people take.
Yeah.
It's, it's impressive. Yeah. If you love that last video, you're going to love the next one. Check it out here.
