Unlocking the Secrets of Mitochondrial Health with Dr. Anurag Singh

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Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers. I'm JJ Virgin PhD dropout. Sorry mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness hall of Fame and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. When we talk about aging, we often focus on what we can see, like wrinkles, gray hair, maybe a few extra pounds. But what if the real secret to staying young isn't on the outside but deep inside our cells? I'm talking about mitochondria, those tiny powerhouses that keep our bodies running smoothly. These little guys are your ticket to feeling energetic, strong and vibrant. Well beyond 40 to help us understand this fascinating field, I brought in someone who's not just studying this stuff in a lab, but actually developing products and that can change the game for how we age. I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Anurag Singh to the show. Dr. Singh is a true pioneer in mitochondrial health. He's got both an MD and a PhD and he's leading the charge in developing cutting edge products that boost our cells energy factories. As the Chief Medical Officer at Timeline, he's led over 50 clinical trials and has a stack of patents and scientific papers to his name. In this episode, you're going to learn about a game changing compound called Urolithin A, which has been my secret weapon for healthy aging and can be yours too. We'll explore how this compound, which comes from foods like raspberries, walnuts and pomegranates can help combat muscle loss, boost energy levels, and even improve your skin health. And for those of you following the buzz around GLP1 agnist drugs for weight loss, we've got some crucial insights on how to protect your muscle mass if you're using these medications. This episode is packed with practical, science backed strategies you can start using right away. Let's dive into this energizing conversation with Dr. Anurag Singh and discover how we can all age with power. So I'm here at the health Optimization Summit. So I just did this talk and I was talking about powerful aging. And the big thing that I said was there's three things you got to do and you've got to eat protein first and you've got to take creatine and you've got to take mitrepure Urolithin A. So I'm super excited that you are here, Dr. Anurag Singh, to talk about what I called exercise in a bottle Urolithin A.

Thanks for having me, jj. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

I'm thrilled we're in person. That's even better.

Exactly.

Let's talk first. Let's just paint the picture of why muscle is so important as we are well beyond 40.

Sure. Yeah. Well, I always say muscle is the longevity organ. Right. And it needs a lot of energy. Right. So. And the energy is coming from mitochondria. In fact, if you look at muscle cells, they have one of the highest abundance of mitochondria. And so they're not only producing energy, they're also consuming it at a very high rate. And what happens with aging? If you look at the muscle function decline in that sort of aging trajectory, after our 30s, 40s, we started losing about 1 to 3% of our muscle mass and strength every year or every sort of in that spectrum. And now this gets accelerated in our 60s and 70s. And so if you're not proactively thinking about your muscle health and not taking nutrients, and we'll talk about it, proteins and other supplements to feed the muscle, then you're not gonna be able to move better in your 60s and 70s.

Here's what I've decided about those statistics. Cause what I found the most frightening about those statistics is you're losing muscle, you're losing even more strength. Like whatever muscle is, it's like two times as much strength, three times as much power. But I call those the sedentary stats. Like if you are doing the things we're talking about, I think that you can Take those statistics so far down like that, you won't be a statistic. So that's what we're really looking at today. But it's not going to be enough just to eat more protein or just to do some resistance training. And in fact, as you age, your margin for error goes way down. And you want every tool in the toolbox.

Absolutely correct.

Right. So that was why when I was talking, doing this talk, I was like, all right, well I travel like I always travel with urolithin A. So you talked about mitochondria. I still think it's important. Even though we all know it's the powerhouse of the cell. I still think it is important just to discuss really what happens to both mitochondria and muscle when we age and what exactly is mitochondria, why does it matter so much and what the heck is happening to it?

Sure. So there are these classical hallmarks of aging and mitochondrial dysfunction is one of the key elements. And people say it's a key element. But I think actually it's the element that links all the other key. It's the element, it's the element because it links to inflammation, it links to you, how you absorb nutrients and how you digest protein even. Right. Because these are the factories. So mitochondria are these sort of cellular batteries that are keeping us charged. Right. So think of them as like the battery in a Tesla car, for example. If you're not using them, I say they will go stress and they will go bad. And so there is. You talked about being more active and eating right diet. These are all tools that we have and known to improve mitochondria health. And so if you're not paying attention to your mitochondria, and we've done studies looking at 70 year olds who are training for fit half marathons versus those who are very sedentary. And one answer is it's really mitochondria at the root of all the muscle decline, cognitive decline even, because that's kind of a trajectory.

So we're going to get into GLP1 drugs today. And because there's been so much talk about how they impact body composition, I actually think that what it's done is just uncovered a way bigger problem because as we were talking offline, I don't think it's the GLP1 agonist, I think it's any poorly designed caloric restriction diet is going to cause muscle loss. It's like anywhere from 20 to 50% apparently. But specifically, let's talk about both with GLP1s and with diet, like what happens to muscle and what happens to mitochondria?

Yeah. So you know, with GLP1, let's start with that. So GLP1, these are great drugs. They were developed for people who had diabetes because they kind of counteract this hormone called glucagon that keeps insulin and other things in check. And so if it goes crazy, then, well, your glucose levels go crazy. But what they discovered as a sort of side benefit was that it also delays gastric emptying, kind of hits the reward center in the brain that keeps you eating more or less. And so it became clear that in addition to its anti diabetic effects, that it had these metabolic effects that could help you lower weight if you took for a year. And so what has become the problem for healthcare practitioners now? This has become a lifestyle choice. Right. So people are, those who don't need the drug are taking it and those that actually need it are not getting access to it. So I think that's the, the GLP1 story. And losing so much muscle and fat in such a short period of time is impairing mitochondria. It's impairing your metabolic health. And I think that's part of the problem. I think the conversation should be bring diet, bring exercise in hand to hand with the GLP1 story because these are element being regularly fed. Walking 8 to 10,000 steps is the greatest medicine we have to improve our mitochondria.

Right. I mean that's, I'm actually thrilled this is coming out because this always needs to come out. And you start to look at it and think, okay, if someone is. If we start to lose muscle mass starting at around age 30 and we know, as you said, it starts to double at age 60, accelerates and someone goes on one of these medications, let's say they're 50, without proper counseling, they could lose. And they're saying you would lose up to 50% of the weight from muscle. And let's say they had 40 pounds of weight to lose, they could lose muscle that they can never regain, possibly. So, you know, what about someone, I'd say even 30 plus starting to go on these with the risk of sarcopenia, it seems like you shouldn't be able to use these unless you're committed to the right diet and exercise.

I think 200% what you pointed out, even greater problem for the 50 plus as you said, because they're already on this trajectory of losing muscle mass and strength. And now if they're on GLP1 as you said they're losing about 15% of their body weight, which 5% is muscle mass or more or more in some other trials. So you're losing about 7 to 10 kilos of your hardcore muscle mass in a very short period of time that you're going to lose in 10 years normally. Right. And so I think wait another 10 years, you're going to see a lot more sarcopenia and frailty showing up.

That's frightening.

And that's my. I somehow see parallels with the statin world because when I was practicing medicine, people were giving statins to everybody, you know, you know, even if you had borderline cholesterol. And then they found out all these side effects on the muscle, that there were some kind of mitochondrial toxins. Right. So I see parallels with that, that there's too much of a push to go on. But these are great medicines, don't get me wrong. I think these are great for the target population. I just worry about this. 50, 30, 40, it's also worry. But I think they have residual energetics and muscle mass that can recalibrate and it will become a problem. But I think it's the 50 year olds again.

It could be any person on a diet on caloric restriction. This could happen with GLP1 Agnes or not. It's just the GLP1s and dampening the appetite make it even easier for it to have happen. And when you think about it, we lose, you know, we're losing. Let's say we go on that you said, you know, we could lose 10 pounds of muscle. That could take you a year to put back on.

I agree.

Like a good year, like. And that's. You're doing everything and that's really frightening.

And that's what the studies actually, if you look at all the trials, they're coming out now that follow people after they've taken the 15 or 18 months of these GLP1 agonists is that the fat is coming back after a while. Muscle does not. And that's the problem. I think that's the problem that I think as a community focused on nutrition and what other tools you can build, I think that education piece is missing today in the health community.

Again, I think this is exposing this problem that we've always known with yo yo dieting. And I remember reading something saying, yo yo dieting doesn't affect your metabolic health. I'm like, give me a break. You lose muscle and fat, you gain back fat. You lose muscle and fat, you gain back fat. How does that shift in Your body composition over time losing muscle not impact your metabolic health. It has to.

Yeah, it has to.

But the piece that they don't talk about is the mitochondria. Do we know what GLP1's is, Agnes, due to mitochondria, is it toxic like the statins are?

I think the initial research is not there, to be honest. I think it will start coming and I think this amount of weight loss is like starvation, I think so you actually have to see it's very similar as you mentioned, the caloric restriction in terms of following the same pattern, but it is even more accelerated. I think it's like starvation. Now the effects on mitochondria, there is some. Well, if you're very overweight, BMI over 30 plus and you're on these drugs, I think the mitochondria will be better off on their mitochondria front because you know, fat is not a stressor anymore. So. But in terms of healthy population, where it's becoming like a lifestyle push, I, I worry and I think there is some data that actually you could benefit with. For example, there's some great research on probiotics like akkermansia being natural GLP1 booster. So I think people need to think how can we naturally boost these levels? Because this is made by the body, right?

Yes. Protein.

Protein, yeah. Take more BCAAs. Take more. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's. I mean that's how I go and go. The original GLP1 increase is protein.

Protein.

Yeah.

And fiber. And I think Akkermansia is really interesting. So what role then someone's going on these and you want to design the perfect program? I would say, okay, let's optimize their protein. A pound, you know, a gram per pound of target body weight. Let's get them lifting heavy. But what role then would urolithin a play in here to help avoid this muscle loss?

Yes. So that's where I think I call it the GLP1 support protocol that you need to be thinking. As you mentioned, the two key components are keep your muscle active. Right. And eat one gram or even more if you're older for per kilogram of body weight. And then the third element, which I.

One gram per pound. So two grams per kilogram per kilogram.

So the more protein. Exactly. So I think that where mitopure urlatin A plays such a key role is that it sort of prevents the mitochondria from going in shock with this faster metabolic health change. And mitopure works by taking stressed mitochondria out and keeping your healthy mitochondria coming in and keeping your energetics of the muscle better. And I think that's where mitopure totally fits in. It has these great effects itself. If you are diabetic, if you're on this weight loss journey, it has these great metabolic health effects. So it's of kind, kind of like a junk support protocol.

Okay, so how does someone know that they have stressed mitochondria, that they have like, you know, let's walk through that. Is there any kind of test? How would one know that, oh, I've got to fix my mitochondria.

The question I get asked the most, how do I know my mitochondria happy or not? Well, in clinic today, the easiest. Well, let's say the easiest way to know is to, to think about your energy levels, the fuel you have left at the end of the day, right after whole day's work of activity efforts. We are here at this conference walking around. Do you still have some fuel left in the tank? That's your mitochondria. That's the fuel they're providing. A lot of times people who exercise feel, oh, am I recovering easier than before? That's again, your mitochondria are good. So these are kind of indicators of how good you're. You can do some lab testing, like look at your VO2 max levels because.

That'S so much fun. I'm kidding.

Yeah, you have to go on this incremental exercise test.

So I'm going to pause and we'll go to the next thing. But you mentioned VO2, and for people listening, VO2 Max is probably the biggest indicator now of all. Cause mortality. Absolutely. So mission critical to get this, your VO2 max optimized. And this is really looking at your engines. How do you take your air in and move it into your lungs, move your bloodstream, get it into your mitochondria, make energy. And so. And it's a really horrible test. It is so really icky. Although. So what you have to do is on a treadmill or a bike or a rower, they put a little clip on your nose, they put a very tight fitting mask on. We had to do this in grad school. It was like amazing that I made through grad school anyway. And then you had to run basically for 12 minutes as much as you could so that you could use as much oxygen. So you get a really good VO2 Max test. It's no fun at all. But I hear that Dexa now is going to do a predictor and that the oura ring is doing a predictor, which is nice because I think most people are like, I'm not doing that. How does mitopure urolithin a impact VO2 max? What's happening there to improve it and how much can you see improvement in it?

So we have done many of these randomized clinical trials in older adults in 50 year olds, sort of the target age group of the those aren't older. There's middle age. Yeah, that's right.

Jeez.

Older age, 50 middle aged adults. Now we've just completed a study in even elite Olympians. Now that we are almost around the Olympics kind of buzz in Paris. And in all those trials, believe it or not, we see about a 5 to 10% improvement.

That is huge.

Which is, if you look at all the exercise trials would take exercise, regular exercise, intervention of four, six months. And the fact that we are able to see this without changing diet or physical activity levels suggests that this is a very direct mitochondrial effect.

Wow. I like to call this exercise in a bottle. But I always like to then say that this does not mean don't exercise. This means supportive. But that is crazy. The difference in that. In terms of muscle quality, how are you discerning the increase in muscle quality when someone's using urolithin A? Like are you doing grip strengths tests or push up tests? Are you doing biopsies? Like how can you tell that someone's muscle mitochondria is improving?

Yeah. So we do what we call a battery of physical performance tests. So the easiest test is to make people walk for six minutes. And you line up a hospital, you know, kind of an aisle and you have a stopwatch and you see the distance they walk. And we have good idea of how much healthy people walk in six minutes, etc. This is the easiest tool available. Then you get to the complex tools like we were talking about, the testing for VO2. It requires heavy equipment to test with the masks and people complying. We use something called as isokinetic biotech testing, which is basically a tool to look at your leg strength. Leg strength is also a very good indicator of all cause, mortality and health span, et cetera. And that's where we pick up a lot of the effects of the molecule is on the leg muscles. We also take a look at hand grip. The muscle here, it's called the first dorsal ventrosti. It's the first muscle that goes bad actually with aging. And the mitochondria go back. So it's really how handshake they say a firm handshake is a good indicator as well. So all these tests we see an effect of about 10 to 12% improvement in strength. We also do most people don't like in clinical trials is we take a little piece of their muscle tissue with a procedure called muscle biopsies and then we do a whole 30,000 genomic scan of all the mitochondrial genes in an unbiased way. And that's where it's really black or white. Right. We see really bad looking mitochondria, change their energy profile and look very healthy like would exercise people.

Wow. How readily available is that test?

It's a difficult pitch to tell somebody to do that test. But now what we have just figured out and it's a trial we'll publish soon, is that a good way to mimic those findings is to take a blood draw and look at your what we call white blood cells. White blood cells might have also a lot of mitochondria. And if you're taking any oral supplement, much like mitopure, the effects in mitochondria that we are picking up in the blood cells are very similar and analogous to what we are seeing happening at the deep muscle genomic level. So that's an easy test. We can take a little blood draw or blood spot and tell how good your mitochondria are. We are also working with a few companies that are offering these kits now. There's one called Miscrents with Hemel. I did my MI screen me too. We are trying to now use these as surrogate markers which are not relatively less non invasive and they give you as good a readout. So these are the tests. The other test that I see is people don't say it's related to mitochondria, but there's a big link coming with inflammation and mitochondrial health and CRP in every trial. HSCRP is by far the biomarker that we see always being dampened.

Wow.

And so I personally it's a connection. So the connection is that actually your immune cells, when your mitochondria are stressed, they release these fragments of bad mitochondria that induce what we call during the aging process inflammaging the field. We're calling it as immune metabolism. So actually the mitochondria stress are becoming danger signals for your immune cells and they pick up the stress as well. And that is something we can do at a very deep level in a much less invasive way.

How much are you seeing this inflammaging like as looking at it through? I Guess you're looking at HSCRP. How much do you see it decrease?

We see HS CRP. We look at every interleukin also like interleukin 6 is also known to be very closely linked. We see almost like these are old people who are middle aged, a little bit sedentary. They have high CRP. Some of them come in with like 3, 4 which is like higher. And we see almost like a 30, 40% reduction. Athletes.

That is huge.

Athletes are inflamed. All these athletes of course are inflamed. They are super inflamed. And we see like after training, over training is inducing high levels of inflammation. We see that even getting better.

Wow. I've done some very weird things in my career and one of them is I worked with King World Production. They wanted to, to train the next heavyweight champion of the world. And what they did was they took failed out college and early pro athletes and they thought they could take. This was really ridiculous. But they took basketball and football, all these different players and I was the team nutritionist. But I got to look at all their labs and they were training them way too hard. But that was not my part. And I'd worked with a heavyweight champ razor erotic. So I never redick. I think I'd already done this but I was like their inflammation was off the charts. It was crazy. And I did not have this tool back then which would have been super helpful because I was like there just wasn't that much I could throw at them to get it down.

So we can with a very small volume. So we've been working with an institute called the Buck Institute of Aging in the US and you'll be amazed at what they can tell you from just a little amount of blood. So we've been collaborating and you'll see the story come out very soon.

Can you give us any hints?

Yeah. So this is again a study in 50 years middle aged adults done in Germany and the US and what we see is after a month of mitopure supplementation, what happens in immune cells is that you lose some of these stem cell like immune cells. So your thigh, there's an organ called the thymus, it recedes after 20s, 30s and so all these vaccines that we are putting on is just to, you know, you're left with what I say, a goody bag that after a while the virus changes its pattern or whatever. What we see in this study is that we have brought these young youthful immune cells back.

Wow.

They have better mitochondria and the mitochondrial Health is closely correlated with whole body mitochondrial health. So these are. And inflammation is down. So this would be sort of the trifecta. I'm trained immunologist and we've always said nobody knows what vitamin C does. Everybody takes it for immune immune system. But to link mitochondrial health to immune health and whole body mitochondrial health is. I think it's going to be the biggest paper we'll put out. Publication.

Yeah. Amazing. Well, especially nowadays. The one thing I did notice, like, there were a lot of things I noticed when I started using and I like to do. I love being my n of one and doing one thing at a time. Like, I don't do two things at a time because then I'm like, I don't know what happened when I started this, I just told the story upstairs in the talk of I was always the jar opener in the house and all of a sudden I couldn't open the jar. And I was like, a tough jar. I gave it to my husband. Then it happened again. The third time it happened, I was like, oh, and thankfully you guys came along at that time. I took the test with the pomegranate where. And maybe you can explain that test when I'm done telling the story. But I was not one of those people that converts pomegranate into urolithin A. Well, in the gut microbiome. I started taking this. The two things that I noticed was I could open jars, my grip strength improved. But the other thing was I could push harder at the gym. So that's always a big one. When you're someone who's worked out since you're 16, to see an improvement is hard. It's really easy when you're new, when you've been doing it forever. Getting improvements is a whole other ball game. So maybe you can talk about urolithinase, specifically what it is, how to know if you need it, how much do you need, et cetera.

So urolithin A is a natural compound. Right. It's derived from dietary precursors that are present in pomegranates, pecans, walnuts, all the good stuff that is found in Mediterranean diet, et cetera. The problem is you can drink lots of pomegranate juice.

I hope not, because it's like too much sugar.

Yeah, yeah.

When you sent me the pomegranate juice, I had to draw. I was like, I don't want to drink the pomegranate juice.

Yeah. If you drink too much pomegranate juice, you need something else called the gut microbiome to. To convert these polyphenols, antioxidants into urolithin A, which I call a postbiotic. It's what the pharmacy inside as I say, the gut microbiome is actually delivering for our benefit what we see. And I've done trials in France, Germany, us, Canada, now just one in India. French are the best. They must be eating a lot of fermented foods. They must be eating a lot of fruits and nuts. We see about 30, 40%.

I would think it'd be Asia.

Asia. We haven't gone to Japan yet. In Germany, it's a bit lower. U.S. and Canada is catastrophic. It's like 10%, if, you know, if at all.

And that's because our gut microbiome is a mess or what.

India. Zero. Zero. I am zero.

Zero.

I'm zero.

Why is that?

And that bugged me for a while till I figured out all of us. And I grew up in India for everything you take antibiotics, wiped out everything. Their gut microbiome is just wiped out the good stuff. So it doesn't. I mean, yes, you can retrain it by eating more fiber and giving probiotics. I can drink six glasses of pomegranate juice, take the 30 plus gram of sugar. Zero.

Well, what I've heard, though, is that if you wipe out the gut microbiome in your first two years of life, you're pretty much first thousand days.

Yeah, exactly.

And then I just did a podcast earlier today with our buddy, Dr. Naysha Winters, and she was sharing that colonoscopy prep. Wipes out your gut microbiome.

Wow.

I was like, oh, I didn't know that one.

So I think that type of delivery says anything. Yeah.

So many things wipe out our gut microbiome. We don't think of what it does. So. Wow. So very few people can actually make this concept.

Very few people can make it. And even if they make it, of all the people, I think there's about 2% that I call the blessed ones, because. Because they're making it the levels, what our supplementation protocol will give them. And so the other percentage they're making are making it what I call sub therapeutic. So they're not gonna get anything out of it. So that's why we invented the test. I bled, like thousands of people in the hallways just to figure out how it would work. And then it's an easy tool. Right. It just allows you to know, oh, my body does not have the right gut microbiome. And I been eating right, thinking I've been eating right And I need this. And so that's the why we created this advanced supplementation, as I call it. It's really the way I see URL today. It's like a foundation for improving your overall cellular health. Now you can put layers over it, you can, you know, do caloric restriction, you can do your exercise, you can take whatever vitamins and minerals, you'll just amplify the response.

But when you look at it, if you think about what are the biggest challenges facing us now, those aging muscle stats, which I think are the stats, they don't have to be, and then energy, right? So we're losing muscle strength and power. We've got energy problems, we've got immune problems. These are all mitochondrial problems.

These are all mitochondrial problems.

And for the most part, the way that we eat and what we've done over the years with our microbiome has caused the problem. So using Urolithin A, what are people needing to do? Like, what's the, how do you dose it? And specifically, especially, like with this podcast, we have a lot of people interested, some people on GLP1s or using things that mimic GLP1s like allulose, calicurve or in caloric restriction, doing what I call re comping where they're dropping fat and holding onto or building muscle. You know, where does this, how does this play a role and how much should they use?

Yeah, so our randomized trials and what we have been seeing is that you need a dose of about 500 milligram to maintain optimal cellular mitochondrial health. That's where we start seeing benefits after two to four months on strength, endurance, et cetera. But the trials where we have upped the dose to a gram is where we start seeing the inflammation effects, the anti inflammatory and the immune effects, because that dose starts to have bigger whole body effects. So I've been on a gram for a long time, going to the booth time. People who have fatigue issues or have whole body inflammation, they tell me that they've upped the dose and seen these effects. How does it all fit in into this story? Again, back to your point. I think this is where I believe even in the mitochondrial field there are other nutrients, right? There's NAD boosters, there's other things that hit mitochondria. But what makes urolithinate very unique is that it's a mitophagy inducer, which means that it's hitting this autophagy pathway in the mitochondria, cleaning out the faulty stress mitochondria and just giving Space for near healthy mitochondria, more energy. And that's how it's unique compared to other solutions.

Yeah. So I mean, the other things could support. But you've got to have the mitophagy.

Yeah. And that's what slows down with aging. That's probably what slows down with. Even in athletes with overtraining. Now that we are seeing the data from that trial, inflammation accelerates, even sort of this decline of mitofa. So I think this is the kind of the triad that happens with aging.

So going up to that higher level of 1000, is that something that you would need to do long term? Is this something if someone's got inflammation and they're now dropping fat and they're getting control of it, they drop down to 500. Where should the dosing ultimately be?

So to be honest, we haven't done these long term trials of, you know, upping the dose and then. But I do think from having taken the product myself and done trials and about thousand participants and hearing from thousands more of customers, I think it's really your perspective. If you feel you're already doing things to maintain a healthy health span and things. Right. Then 500 does a job. It keeps your mitochondria happy, as they say. Thousands. When you feel this, and a lot of people tell me, oh, I take it when I go for transatlantic flight and helps my jet lag. I've heard this from actually very recently, somebody telling. Or when you feel your body is inflamed. Right. So I think that. And you can always go down too.

That's a great idea. Like I heard about creatine for jet lag. Because everyone here, they're like, how is your jet lag? I don't have jet lag. I didn't do jet lag. But now I'm thinking I can even do it better by doing a creatine and mitopure combo.

People don't know it, but yeah, your whole sarcadin rhythm is controlled by the mitochondria as well. So it wouldn't make sense.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, nice. I'll do it on the way home. Perfect. Okay, so let's flip over. There's two things around skin. So first of all, this whole conversation around osempic face, which people are talking about, it's muscle loss, but it seems like to me it's fat loss. What is it really a thing or is it just what is it? And then I'd love to talk a little bit about skin and skin care.

Yeah. So I think if you look at the first things when the first few years these drugs came out that actually dermatologists and aesthetic medicine practitioners started seeing was that people who have been on this GLP1 semaglutide, you know, all these or similar drugs, they shrank the fat in their face as much as you said. And that to me, again, brings the starvation picture in mind. If you actually see a face of starvation, it's very similar the amount of fat you're losing in that short of time. And that's what people have now coined as ozempic phase.

Yeah, well, I was reading something and they were like, oh, it's the loss of muscle. I go, no, it's not. No, it's not the loss of muscle in your face. It's the loss of fat in your face. Which, you know, there was that famous actress I think was Rita Hayworth or something that said, you can either keep your face or your butt as you age. Pick one. So it's loss of fat, then.

It is loss of fat. And what people is a classical facial expression that they have more wrinkles, they have a sort of this hollowed, you know, sunken face kind of. And it's basically, I think, stress mitochondria and stress mitochondria result. Stress mitochondria results in poor collagen and kind of all coming together. And so skin health is compromised. And that, to me, is what ozempic phase is. And we've been working on it as well. We've been looking at how URL thin A is just not acting at a whole body level through nutrition, but how you can deliver it directly to the skin. Because skin cells and mitochondria, which decline as well. And we've had some great data that it does what we know it does on muscle cells, and now we know it does on immune cells, and now we know it does on skin cells, really.

So what have you found?

So what we did was we again ran a number of randomized clinical trials in different age groups, different skin types, you know, people having wrinkles, people having more of photo damaged skin. And we find exactly what we know the molecule does is two things. It improves mitochondrial health through mitophagy and it tones down inflammation. So skin aging is really two. Two parts, right? Intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic is your decline of cellular health. And extrinsic, which is the main contributor is the pollution. It's the environmental stress of uv, harmful UV rays. And so we think it's kind of the combined longevity solution of oral and topical together. Kind of is very synergistic.

And have you done any research on it? Like, what are you seeing with the use of these things?

Yeah. So what we see is basically we can recover this sort of wrinkle of, you know, people as they age, they have wrinkles and they have skin poor barrier and poor skin hydration. We see a lot of this come back. So we see about a 20% improvement in skin hydration. Barrier of the skin is strengthened to fight, let's say, the environmental stressors. And we see about a 10 to 12% lowering of the wrinkles after, like, eight weeks or two months of applying it. And we have tested different formulations, you know, things that you can put on your face in the day as a day cream or a night cream or even a serum, and they all tend to show the same effect.

Nice. Very cool. Yes. I ran out of the serum and our buddy Ian had been like, I'll send you some. I'm like, where is it? I'm like, hammer in the bottle. Like, don't leave me stranded here now that you've got me hooked on it. Excellent. Any last thoughts for our audience who, again, are, like, we say, well beyond 40, mainly female, really looking at how they can age powerfully.

Yeah, yeah. I think back to what I say is the three pillars of optimizing your health. Eat right, eat protein, as you said, eat more antioxidants if you can, move more, because those two are the best medicines for your mitochondria. And even if you're not on GLP1 or on GLP1 and worried about your metabolic health, do think about this sort of advanced nutritional supplementation protocol. We talked about mitopure being a very key element of that by keeping your mitochondria in good shape. But other things can be added, like creatine. And then you need to talk to your healthcare practitioners, your, you know, your nutritionist, dietitian and your. Yeah, do your conditioning strength, you know, conditioning. And I think those together, even if you're on these GLP1 medications and you wean out of them, you will be in this trajectory of good health longer.

I do see these, like, I always had my foundation, which were things like magnesium and vitamin D with K2 and fish oil. And now, like creatine and urolithin A are definitely part of the foundation. They're not the, oh, nice to have. They are that you must have. You don't have great mitochondrial health. You don't have anything 200%, so you've got to have it. And Again, we talk so much about doing things for autophagy. This is cleaning out the cellular trash of the mitochondria. It's super duper important. So I know that you guys are going to give us a 50% off a starter pack for timeline and we will put that@jjvirgin.com GLP1 altogether and it's number one. So everyone can go there to grab that special thing. And the big things you're gonna notice, you're gonna notice a difference in the gym, which I love. I'm always, you know, I'm so aware of. Do I actually notice a difference? And the two things that I've noticed a difference with are creatine and taking urolithin A. You just notice when you go to the gym. It's awesome. And then I'm a really picky skincare person. I get sent stuff all the time and most of it I never use. And this is one that not only do I use, I do take it with me everywhere. That's always the test. Did it get into the suitcase and then did I freak out when I ran out of it? Those are the true and that passes the test. So I'm hooked on the body lotion and the serum. I love them. So thank you so much for your time.

I appreciate you pleasure being this podcast. As always, jj, thank you for having me.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast@subscribetoj.com so you don't miss a single episode. And hey, if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey JJ here. And just a reminder that the well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply hello listeners.

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