The Cellular Reason Your Body Feels Different After 30 with Jennifer Scheinman

biggest misconception people have about the relationship between aging and energy?

The biggest misconception about aging and energy is that you're going to feel tired when you get older, gonna have less energy. And two of those particularly that I think play a role in just like the energy slump that we start to feel as we get older are mitochondrial decline and then this decline in the ability to recycle our mitochondria as well. And we can talk a little bit more about that, but that doesn't mean you have to feel tired as you get older. It just means we have to think about how we nourish our bodies and the behaviors that we do in a little bit more of a different way.

All right, Jennifer, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

Hi, thanks for having me.

I was so excited to have you here. I was sharing with you a little bit of a pun. The, the longest timeline that I've had with a company is Timeline Nutrition because I'm so obsessed with you guys. So I know that what we're going to talk today— talk about today is going to really inspire this audience. So as I was kind of explaining and sharing with you, this podcast ultimately is how to become more rooted, more rooted in your health, your happiness, and what I believe is this inner knowing that we all have the capacity to heal. So to start things off, I always ask everyone in that seat, tell me 2 or 3 things that help you feel more rooted in who you are.

Well, my background is as a dietitian, and so food has always been a central theme in my life, and that really makes me feel very rooted. I chose nutrition for two reasons. One is just that I think it's a way, like through food, to share culture and experiences and pleasure. And I just like love that aspect of food. And then obviously it's driving so much biology. So good food. Healthy food is something that definitely makes me feel very rooted. Connecting with people, I think that's probably— and that's, I think, one of the things I love about food too is that it's such a way to connect with people. And then physical activity, just finding time to move my body in ways that make me feel connected both like physically to the earth. I'm very into yoga and lots of like when we connect and feel ourselves like grounded with the earth. But just also moving to music is another way that also just makes me me feel just grounded and rooted as well.

So good. You know what's so interesting? I have a feeling you are probably the only person who has mentioned food, which I love because food does that for all of us. It's something that we all connect over. It makes us feel a certain way. And yeah, although it's— I noticed the difference and I want to point this out to listeners. It's not nutrition, although you and I are nutritionists and dietitian. It's not the science aspect. It's the actual substance itself. Self and like the capacity of what it does as a love language for us. It's so powerful. So I'm so happy you said that. On the flip side, you've been through a healing journey, which we're going to talk a little bit more about. Do you notice when you drift, and what are the things that cause you to feel uprooted in your life?

I think the things that cause me to feel the most uprooted are when things are changing rapidly and they're not in my own control, right? When somebody else is sort of dictating. I travel a lot for work and it's not usually on my terms, right? It's someone else sort of dictating that travel or projects that get thrown my way that seem to come out of left field. That makes me feel very uprooted. Miscommunications with people as well. When, you know, just, you know, communication is an art and it's like probably one of the most vital things that we can do well. And that can make me feel very adrift when sometimes I feel like I'm saying one thing and the other person is hearing another thing or vice versa. So yeah.

Oh yeah. It's funny, the little things, right? The little things that take a massive toll on the body. And I don't know about you, but I have a very severe history of being a people pleaser. So when the communication thing comes up, I'm like, I'm really hit until I— you too.

Yeah.

Until I pull back and like, okay, you're a new version of yourself. You don't have to behave this way anymore. So yeah, I love pointing these things out because, you know, often our listeners think that experts who show up to have these conversations, we've got it figured out. We don't fall off the wagon as people people say, uh, we don't get uprooted. So it was important to really share that. So before we get into the conversation, we're going to do some rapid-fire questions. Don't stress about it, don't overthink it. Whatever comes to mind, we're going to dive deeper into, into all of it. All right, here's the first one. Overrated or underrated? NAD supplements for energy and aging.

Overrated. Do you want me to expand?

One habit Yet. Not yet. We'll get there. One habit that's silently destroying your mitochondria that most people do every day.

Just one. Poor sleep.

Yeah. True or false? Most Urolithin A products on the market actually contain what they claim.

False. Big, big false.

I really led you into that one. One free thing that someone can do today that has a direct and proven impact on mitochondrial health.

Get outside to see the sun in the morning.

And dance too, right? I feel like that's going back to your first question.

Yeah. I mean, there's so many.

Yeah.

Just thinking of what—

yeah.

Or maybe not thinking of every day.

What's one body signal that people keep ignoring that's actually their mitochondria asking for help?

Brain fog.

I want to know more about that one. All right. Biggest misconception. This is the last one. Biggest misconception people have about the relationship between aging energy?

Oh, the biggest misconception about aging and energy is that you're going to feel tired when you get older, gonna have less energy.

Ah, let's unlearn that. I really am committed. Let's like find our tribe where we can go out into the world and really like unlearn what media and society is saying that is inevitable about aging, because we're learning that the opposite is true. And this is actually— this is what ties us into the conversation. You know, so many of our listeners— and listeners, please tune in to your body— If you're somebody who's suffering from fatigue, from brain fog, as you said, from slow recovery, from stubborn body fat, or, you know, hormonal imbalance, right? Maybe you feel like you suddenly lost the resilience for your body to heal. Sometimes we just attribute this to aging and we accept it as is. But if we really tune in, then we can actually just think of it in a different way. Is, is this maybe just symbolism for our cells just not functioning the way that they could be functioning. Not that they should be, but that they could be functioning. So when we think about this, I'm sure you speak to audiences all the time where, you know, there's this understanding where after 30 it's just this downhill, you know. I think we've all felt it too. Just symptoms show up out of nowhere in our 30s and in our 40s, right? And we can't always explain it. You know, a lot of us feel like we're doing the right things. We're eating well, we're doing our best to try to get our sleep, we're moving our bodies, but what would you say, or how do you describe to this person what's actually happening at the cellular level?

Yeah, but you bring up such a good point. I sort of joke that like my warranty ran out at 35, right? That's when you start to—

Yeah, right.

Out of the biology that's happening. And what is happening is, I mean, under the hood, things are actually happening that are contributing to how we feel every day. There are— science has labeled these 12 hallmarks of aging, which are basically these biological pathways that are things that can actually be studied and can be— there can be interventions for in the lab. And these are what are driving our cells to age. And two of those particularly that I think play a role in just like the energy slump that we start to feel as we get older are mitochondrial decline and then this decline in the ability to recycle. Our mitochondria as well. And we can talk a little bit more about that, but that doesn't mean you have to feel tired as you get older. It just means we have to think about how we nourish our bodies and the behaviors that we do in a little bit more of a different way. We just can't get away with the things that we used to do when we were younger and not have any repercussions. We just have to be a little bit more self-aware and take better care of ourselves.

Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly. And what's interesting, and I'm sure you've experienced this as well when you're working with patients or with clients, often there's so much more to it. So not only is society and media telling that, our doctors might be saying, yeah, you know, it's your age, it's normal, it's inevitable. But then when I understood NLP and understanding the power of one's thoughts and one's belief systems and stuff like that, all we know is what we know. So if we're seeing our parents or our grandparents age in a certain way or getting dis-ease or disease in the body, then a lot of it has to do with our belief. And now there's all this biology around our belief as well. And so it's such a multifaceted approach. Like, and this is why I was excited to have you on, because it's so much more than food and exercise, right? It's the power of your choices every day and, you know, what you believe about your healing journey and stuff like that. So let's break this down, starting with the mitochondria. There's probably been millions of episodes at this point around people understanding that the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. And I get so frustrated at that because it's like, it's so much more than the powerhouse. It's like the power plant and the electricity and communication system that communicate to every cell and system within the body. Like, it's so much more than that. So how do you break this down for people to really understand what is the role of the mitochondria in the human body?

So I'm trying to rename the mitochondria the CEO of the cell, and I, I can't take credit for that name, but I think that that really exemplifies how critically important they are besides just energy. And not that energy is not important, but that's what we learned in high school biology, which was quite some time for me, quite some time ago for me.

Yeah.

And so the science has really evolved and we know so much more about the mitochondria now and the roles that they play in everything from cell signaling, telling your cell when it's time to basically retire, recycle, create a new one. They can communicate when they're part of the immune system so they can send signals to the immune system. They're also the site, the first site of hormone production. So that's inside ourselves, even melatonin. That's happening inside our mitochondria, not the entire synthesis process, but that first step. So they are master regulators of so much more than— and I don't mean to say just energy because energy is critically important, but there's so much more than that.

So much more than that. Yeah. I had Dr. Deanna Minich. Do you know who she is? She's a brilliant female doctor. And what I loved about that conversation, I love that you mentioned hormones. Is that if we're, you know, going so deep into this conversation around hormones but doctors aren't having the conversation around mitochondria, then we're really, you know, potentially missing the impact of what hormones could be when it could be a matter of just optimizing our cellular health. So let's talk about early signs then. You know, a lot of people, we might just assume, oh, you know, I definitely have a lot of damage, I'm under a lot of stress, we're just alive in today's modern world, but When we think about this, what are some of the common symptoms? So you'd mentioned brain fog as being one of the hidden symptoms, which kind of surprised me. I wouldn't have associated that, or I've never heard anyone kind of make the connection between brain fog and mitochondrial health. So for someone listening, what could be some of the early symptoms that they would experience from suffering from mitochondrial— poor mitochondrial function?

Yeah, the biggest things that people will feel are fatigue, sort of that, that you know, full body energy slump, muscle, like not really feeling like you're recovering from exercise or just like getting more fatigued at exercise. And then brain fog as well. And the reason that all of these systems we start to feel is because these systems are all requiring a lot of energy from the mitochondria. So when there's less energy output, you're going to feel that in different ways.

So really any symptom, like now that you say that, it's almost like we cannot talk about any physiological symptom with really without understanding the mitochondria behind it. Right. And I remember Anurag Singh, so one of the scientists with Timeline came on and I, I loved it so much because I could just geek out with this scientist who just like talked about the cell and looking under a microscope. And I remember when he made the connection describing You know, if you stub your toe, the mitochondria in the toe communicate to the brain and the systematic kind of communication network that happens there. And in a world where we're so focused on digestion and gut health, everything also works upstream, right? So mitochondria of the gut are going to be connected to the mitochondria of the liver, to the mitochondria of the heart, to the mitochondria of the brain. So, you know, for people to really tune into that, how do you describe to them then that this doesn't have to be a normal part of aging, or maybe as they become more symptom-oriented, I guess, in their 30s and 40s. How do you help people believe that this is something that they can reverse?

Well, I think you hit on a really important point, is that we are sort of moving away from this, like, organ system, right, where we go to, like, cardiologists, go to gastroenterologists, and understand that, like, our cells, whether they're a gut cell, a brain cell, a skin cell, a muscle cell, right, they're all working in tandem. We are one whole body, and that's And it's just really a matter of like, where is that gonna show up for you, right? For some people it's going to be, you know, in joint pain. For some people it's gonna be in brain fog. For some people it's gonna be how it's showing on their skin. But all of that is stemming from cellular decline just showing up in different places. So when we take a step back from where the symptom is showing up and think about what is driving the physiology of cellular decline, and a piece of that puzzle, a very big piece of that puzzle is the health of your mitochondria. It's actually, it's, exciting because there are things that we can do today that are going to help support them.

I feel like we should hover on the hormone thing for a second. My gut says a lot of people will want to know more about this. So when we think about the fact that every hormone in the body— estrogen, testosterone, DHEA, progesterone, and so many more— you know, if this is a hormone that relies on a conversion step, as you said, within the mitochondria, right? And yet all of these women out there are going on some sort of, you know, hormone replacement therapy, but they're still not getting the results or the answers that they need. What should they be looking for, or how could they have this conversation? Or have you done any talks on this, on making that connection for them?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I mean, it's difficult because traditional doctors are not trained to think about this, right? And it's hard enough right now where we are in the menopause space to even get traditional doctors to be more comfortable with prescribing HRT, right? And so if we take it to this mitochondrial level, I think unfortunately, like, most traditional doctors, their mind's going to be just a little bit like, I, I can't think, right? So that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be advocates for our own health and we shouldn't know the way that our body's working. So the science, at least that I'm aware, and correct me if you've seen anything different, there's, there's not great data in humans. A lot of this is still in animal models, and that's unfortunately where we are right now. But there is definitely this link between estrogen depletion as we go through menopause and, and mitochondria, right? There's this like bidirectional relationship between them. Both as like the seed of that first step of conversion, but then also our mitochondria have estrogen receptors on them. So they are also like receiving a signal from estrogen. So, you know, I think the conversation is still in its early days. I don't think that mitochondrial support necessarily replaces hormone therapy, but it might be like a tool if you're someone who's not interested or can't use hormone therapy. And I think, and that at least for me, As I've been going through perimenopause, it's been really a time to reflect on my aging trajectory. And a piece of that is the mitochondria outside of just like what's happening in my ovaries. My brain is aging, my heart is aging. All of this is happening because of the decline in estrogen. And so taking care of my mitochondria will help to slow down some of these other aging processes.

I think that the science is proving to us that we have to look a lot deeper. And I was on a call last week with Ian Davidson from Timeline and I was having a day and I said, why is no one talking about cellular health? I was meeting with all these clients who feel like they're doing all these right things, but they're being prescribed band-aids without actually going to the root of what the suffering actually is. I think that the future of health— a year ago I would have said would have been about mitochondria— but if we literally look at a person's cell, how your cells are functioning, how they have been functioning over time, and I think that the very unfortunate and sad reality about living in today's modern world is we are more impacted by stress than ever before in history. And a lot of us have become so accustomed to living with higher levels of consistent chronic stress every single day, and this is associated with poor mitochondrial health. So maybe let's put this through the perspective of— let's say someone out there is looking at supplementation for mitochondrial health. If they're not addressing their stress, what would the impact be?

Well, I think there still is some impact. I, when I wear my nutritionist hat, and I get the feeling you feel this way too, but you know, these foundational practices have to come first, right? We do have to take care of our diet. We have to take care of our sleep. We have to manage our stress and have a good way and a good outlet for that exercise, right? These foundational things, I don't think we're at a place where anything is going to, replace those things. Do you think that things like supplementation can play a really important role, especially in helping to fill gaps? Because most of us know the foundational things that we should be doing. We just haven't been able to implement them in a regular practice, right? And that to me is the beauty of where a supplement can come in.

I feel like, um, it's just, it's so boring. Like, there's nothing sexy about talking about sleep, time outside, reconnecting with nature, reconnecting with people that you love as the protocol. We still live in a world where we're so addicted to the protocol, and yet here, time and time again, when we understand the human body and look at science is actually proving how our physiology can shift just by mastering those basics that you just mentioned, optimization happens, right? So I love that you, you brought that up. And I have a feeling, like me, you went into this journey with a little bit of a health scare or health crisis. What happened to you and how did you notice your physiology change so deeply?

Yeah. So I think most of us who tend to go in a little more of a sort of holistic and sort of integrative medicine approach had our own journeys where conventional medicine let us down. And I was in my sort of late 30s, early 40s, and was struggling with debilitating fatigue and these sort of phantom pains and brain fog and just weird nerve tingling. I mean, so many weird random things that were just progressively getting worse and worse. And conventional medicine just continued to say, like, your blood work is fine. We don't know what is wrong. It's in your head. Go, go see a psychologist. And then I finally found a functional medicine provider who was like, I'm not entirely sure what's going on. But we're going to work together and we're going to find something. And that shift alone already had me feeling better, right? That somebody was willing to go into the trenches with me. But that was truly where I personally found this marriage of conventional medicine, of science, and where, you know, we can push the envelope a little bit with science and then also just getting into like this sort of energy of healing and putting myself in a more healing place. And that was a huge shift for me. And what turned out was I had Lyme and went through lots of different healing protocols to finally get to where I am today.

Were you working as a practitioner then?

I was working as a practitioner then, which was really hard because, A, I am a very empathetic person, so I'm taking on my clients, sort of like their energy, which I'm already feeling fatigued, but I was also feeling a bit like a failure because I was like, I can't— my diet is as pristine as it can be and I don't feel better, so maybe I don't know what I'm doing, right? I think there was a lot going on about that.

There was a practitioner that put up a post a couple years ago on how, you know, every nutritionist or doctor or who— anyone who has a message online should post their blood labs for everyone to see. And I just thought, good God, if anyone thinks that I have perfected this healing thing, I'm always on a journey. But in many ways, I think that that's what helps us help other people more because we're experiencing things in real time. We're trying different modalities, we're meeting with different practitioners until we finally found the one or two people who see us. So I love that you share— I'm really happy you shared that because a lot of people don't feel seen by their doctors or practitioners, and nor do they have the time, right? If they live in an area of the world where functional medicine or holistic healing isn't you know, mainstream or well-known, then that alone causes even more stress and worry. And I think we know that the longer that we ignore our symptoms, the accumulation of the impact within the body asking for help and sending out that SOS. So that's really great that sadly this journey that we have to go through to pave the way, it's a beautiful thing for us to go through so that we can have these conversations. So I'm really happy that you shared that. All right, let's get back to Timeline. And I really want my audience to know, they know that I don't talk about or share any supplement or brand that I don't wholeheartedly believe in or understand the science of or ask for research. And you're one of those brands that have put the scientific data at the forefront for your customers from the beginning, which says a lot. And I feel like now, as your brand is growing, you're doing so much more to help the consumer really understand the power of the mitochondria. But I wanted to talk about urolithin A. So urolithin A is starting to get a little bit more traction than it was even a year ago, for crying out loud. So can you talk to us about, do we naturally produce this? Who doesn't? Why we would want to supplement with it? And then we'll talk maybe into the nutrition about it, um, afterwards.

So urolithin A is what's called a post- biotic nutrient, which means we don't get it directly from food. We are relying on our gut microbiome to make it for us. However, most of us don't have a healthy gut microbiome, so we're not getting the benefit of this molecule. So either we don't have the right gut microbiome or we're not eating enough of the dietary precursor. So there's sort of two things that are happening there. If you don't have the right gut microbiome, you can eat all the dietary precursors that you want. You will never convert and make urolithin A. Um, but for the vast majority of people who are able to produce it, they would have to just eat an obscene amount of pomegranates or pomegranate juice or walnuts on a daily basis. More than— it would be like 6 cups of pomegranate juice would be the equivalent of what 500 milligrams of urolithin A is. And I don't want anybody drinking 6 cups of pomegranate. So it's really—

that's a lot of sugar.

It's really hard.

Yeah.

Know if you're making it and be, even if you are, you're probably not getting enough of it through your diet alone.

So let's go deeper on that because, okay, so you have to have functional gut health, right? Optimized digestion. But even then, isn't it true that only, what is it, 30 or 40% of people naturally can then produce meaningful amounts of it? So just depending on the state of your gut microbiome and like, I guess, the biodiversity of it, Yeah, and like, even then you could be doing all the right things, eating the walnuts, eating the pomegranate seeds and the juice and the berry and all those, all of those things. But again, if your lifestyle or your stress levels are impeding your gut performance, then you're not going to be producing your urolithin A. Why do people want to increase the urolithin A within their bodies?

The downstream impact that it has is tying it all back full circle is on the mitochondria. So it has a very unique ability to trigger this recycling of our mitochondria. So as we get older, our mitochondria are declining with age, but our body is so miraculous in the fact that it knows things that are critically important to itself, like mitochondria, and it has the ability to recycle these mitochondria. But that also goes down as we get older. So the way that I sort of think about it is like the cleanup crew of your mitochondria goes on retirement and what Urolithin A does is it kind of reactivates them or brings in a younger cleanup crew so you can get rid of that damaged mitochondria.

And when you're speaking to communities or, you know, when you're on tour, I can imagine you see a lot of faces light up when you talk about what impedes your mitochondrial function. So you'd mentioned things like poor sleep, obviously stress and diet, but are you noticing more like within the past year and the things that you're learning from your scientific team, are you understanding more about what assaults the mitochondria than before?

I mean, so many things. They're, they're very sensitive. So things like alcohol and smoking, no surprise. Environmental toxins can damage your mitochondria. As you mentioned, stress, sleep. So the everyday habits that we have, there's several things that are contributing to, you know, the dysfunctionality of our mitochondria. But even in a perfect world, age is also going to be one of those drivers of mitochondrial dysfunction. So you can do all of the things. I mean, it's impossible to do all the things, but you can do as many of the things as you can. But we still have age that's kind of coming in as this sort of second player to, to what's happening to our mitochondria.

Have you seen any studies on light and blue light exposure or long-term light exposure? Is there impact there?

Yeah, it's been a while since I've done some reading on that, but yes, I do believe I've seen some impact of light for sure. For sure natural sunlight and, um, is going to be important for your mitochondria. Your mitochondria play sort of a dual role in sleep where they help support your circadian rhythm, but then you have to also take an active role in supporting your circadian rhythm to support your mitochondria. So yes, I do believe that I've seen some research on blue light for sure. We know that red light is actually healing for the mitochondria.

Yeah, I just think about, you know, I think a lot of people might be sick about hearing about blue light and blue light exposure because a lot of us have to be on our screens, or we work at jobs where we're on screens for at least 8 hours a day. But when we think about obviously the impact of the blue light, but the impact on an eye that becomes really fatigued, and the eyes that are connected to the brain, which becomes a lot more fatigued, and the brain having a higher concentration of mitochondria which then become a little bit more challenged, and the communication for the brain to the rest of the body, like, it's like a really systemic impact. It's not just focused on, on one area, it's systemic. So yeah, tune into the symptoms. Recently, um, I just noticed that I was feeling a little bit more brain fog. Is there a test for mitochondrial health yet?

So there are some tests out there, um, with I think varying degrees of there's, there's not a perfect test out there.

So yeah, not yet.

Clinical studies, what they tend to do is they tend to use this high-tech imaging where they can actually look at the mitochondria and they can measure its respiration. That's not something that your doctor's gonna have access to. So there are some tests out there that I think are interesting biomarkers. Our research team hasn't been overly excited about them, but there are certain tools that I know practitioners are using in their practices.

Yeah, I figured we'd hear a lot more about it if that was the case, if they were actually very accurate. So anyways, I digress. Experience a lot more, um, fatigue and brain fog, and I just noticed in the mornings I felt a little bit more swollen. I was getting bloated and stuff like that. So I went and I did a Total Toxic Burden test from Vibrant Wellness. I don't know if you've seen it. And, uh, yeah, sure enough, it came back with like all these parabens, which I haven't used products with parabens in them for over a decade. All of pesticides and herbicides that come from food, even though we buy organic. Plastics came back, and I just thought, holy moly, even as somebody who, like many of our listeners, gosh, I'm a nutritionist, I feel like I'm doing all of the right things, and yet just existing in our environment today, you know, our body takes a lot of the toll from just being exposed to so much. And obviously I'm in Los Angeles, so maybe we get an extra dose over here. But the second I got my results, I remembered my instinct was, all right, I've got to go on a detox. I've got to really start to purge or do something intense. But again, lately with this kind of obsession or curiosity around cellular health, my instinct was to ask, how do I support my cellular health first? So for listeners who might, you know, get a result like a Total Toxic Burden test like me, or from somebody who is listening and saying, you know what, I am experiencing a little bit more fatigue, or my recovery is taking a little bit longer, or maybe their output at the gym isn't what it used to be. Give us some pointers, and we're going to get to the supplementation aspect, but what other modalities or practices are you seeing having the most impact for mitochondrial health? So outside of sleep, exercise, and supplements, outside of those things, yeah, like you mentioned red light therapy.

Well, I think the most interesting is being a good modality. Yeah, the most interesting things that I'm seeing for modalities for mitochondrial health health outside of supplements and diet and sleep and the basics. Red light therapy seems to be very interesting. Cold plunge and on the other spectrum, sauna. So anything that is sort of stressing your body in a good way is going to, in a good way, stress your cells. So those are some of the things that I'm sort of most interested in learning a little bit more and kind of understanding how they, how, you know, they can help support our mitochondria because I think you make a really important point that we just live in a very toxic environment and you can drive yourself crazy with constantly getting these tests and feeling that you need to do this crazy detox, which sometimes you probably do. And sometimes this is just the environment that we live in and supporting your cells so that they can work better seems like such a more sustainable approach.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And again, you know, we have access to so much and obviously for you and I, this is our work. But I feel like for listeners, the more that you can understand your biology, maybe that'll inspire you a little bit more to take change. Or what I'm hearing, especially now with urolithin A, to really understand how, like, personalization can be super, super key when we get into talking about our vitality and how we want to live. And when we think about the things that it's going to take for us to live these kind of full lives and having our vitality and our posture and our energy and all of those things. So we talk a lot about healthspan or lifespan, but I think it should really be about vitality span, like the quality of the years that we're adding, the quality of our posture and our physiology and our brain and our mind and our mood and all of these things. And I feel like that's something that's just not happening enough. We've become so focused on longevity, but but not around how longevity should feel for us or how we want to feel when we get to that age. So let's talk about mitochondrial health then through the lens of healthspan and vitality. What are some studies saying and why is this kind of like another nudge of inspiration to really tune into mitochondrial health?

Well, I had mentioned earlier these sort of 12 hallmarks of aging, which are what are driving our biology., to, to, to age and become dysfunctional. And that are also contributing to the chronic conditions that we so often see and are associated with aging. And the studies are very clear that mitochondrial dysfunction is a core piece of that. And so that is why, you know, you had said something before earlier in the podcast that I just want to come back to because it resonated with me was that how we look at people aging and just sort of our perception of aging. I think we're in this really exciting time where we are changing that narrative and we have tools to also help us not only visualize a different process of aging that maybe our parents or grandparents went through, but we have tools now that also can help support that. And we know that the mitochondria are a key player in how we're going to age.

So good. Yeah, as a nutritionist, I don't know if I've said this before, or maybe I have a thousand times on this podcast, I really think that the future of our health and aging well is going to be about our mitochondria and fiber, believe it or not, and fiber which ties to the gut microbiome, right? And just that diversity so that we can fuel the wisdom of the body. And like, who knew about urolithin A? And I think that urolithin A needs to be part of that conversation. So So now if we understand, okay, there's a key supplement out there that's, um, focused on optimizing our mitochondrial health, there's all these studies out there proving to us that by supplementing with this ingredient, the impact on our body— how can people understand what's actually working or what's not working? So Timeline, as a brand, you've had longevity in the industry, but now you see it like it's becoming the Wild West, the whole supplement industry. It's, it's a lot. The supplements, the practitioners, the protocols. And a lot of people, I think, might be supplementing while they're running on empty, running on fumes. So we've talked about some of the lifestyle factors, but let's talk about supplement— supplementing-wise. What are some of the things that people can actually tune into feeling once they're supplementing with urolithin A?

The thing that I hear the most often, and that I noticed myself, um, the first thing is not being sore at the gym anymore. That was just a huge thing for me that I could go to the gym and do a really hard workout and expect to wake up the next day and feel like, oh, I did a huge leg day. I'm not gonna be able to walk and actually feeling pretty good the next day. So that's the first thing. The second thing that people feel, I call it subtle energy. So it's not like I just had a cold brew or I just had a B12 shot to have that instant energy. This is much more subtle. It's almost like the dimmer light is turning on as opposed to the switch. So for me, I shared a little bit about my Lyme journey. When I found Mitopure urolithin A, I was, I mean, sort of air quoting, done with my healing journey, but I still did feel a lot of fatigue and I just thought like, well, this was a 10-year journey. I'm just 10 years older. This is just one what I should feel like at this point. So I started taking Mitopure and I saw a friend I hadn't seen in like 6 months and she's like, "How are you doing? How are you feeling? What's going on with Lyme?" And I was like, "You know, now that you say that, I feel really good." Like it's not always in your face reflection. Like I'm not crashing and burning at 3 o'clock. I have the energy to get through my day. I just feel like myself again. I think that's the key. I feel like myself again. And so for people, depending on how in tune with their body they are, that might be more obvious for others. Yeah, but that's kind of this, this key is just feeling like you have the energy you used to have.

I love that, the subtle energy that you feel, right? Look, I think we can all agree that there's no perfect pill out there or perfect protocol out there, and we all want to wake up after doing something once feeling like a million bucks. But that's just— it's not how it works. So over the years when I'm working with my clients, I think I'm a great investigator. So I'm investigating, asking a lot of questions. What's your energy like in the morning? What's the quality of your bowel movements? How do you feel in the afternoon? What is your mental focus like? How are you sleeping? What is your recovery like? And we're not used to asking questions like that for ourselves because we're going through life feeling so busy. So tune into the subtleties of what you're feeling and then notice if you felt any shifts. Shift. So I'm actually going to echo that with you. I was living in the belief that with perimenopause was the onset of, well, you can't work out the way that you used to. It's going to take you longer to recover. You're going to feel so much sore from doing, you know, a workout that was half as intense. And I was like, oh man, that stinks. And, you know, sometimes, especially now if we're focusing on weightlifting or even with yoga and mobility and stuff like that, I started to feel it. Like, I was sore for a few days When I brought my Mitopure back into it, I noticed the same shifts. It wasn't immediate, but I would say probably at about my— after my first month in, I could lift a little heavier. My joints weren't sore first thing in the morning. Like, I do this first thing, open and close my hands first thing in the morning, and I just didn't have that stiffness. And I guess my nutritionist brain went on, and I remember being on your site and looking at the case study after case study that's done with professional athletes leads. Are there any studies that kind of, that you were surprised by or that you could share that jump out to you that would be relevant to this?

I think the study that is most impressive to me is the one that was done in sedentary adults. So, and we actually did two studies. So one was done in middle-aged adults and these adults, so the sort of gold standard of a clinical study, just for your audience when they're hearing study information from any supplement brand, a gold standard is called a double-blind placebo-controlled trial where you know, or you So they don't know who's getting the treatment and who's getting a fake. And after 4 months, this group of sedentary adults had a significant improvement in muscle strength without an exercise intervention or without a diet intervention. Now, I know I said earlier, and I still mean this, there is no replacement for diet or exercise, but most people, the vast majority of people, are not eating the way that they should be or moving their body in the way they should be. And so to me, the fact that there is a molecule that you can take a safe dietary supplement that can help move that is just really, really impactful to me.

So what's the impact then? You know, if you're taking— I always say take the red pill. If you're taking 2 of these capsules daily, what are you getting? What's the dose? What's the equivalent to pomegranates that I'm consuming daily from this?

So the 2 red pills or gummies, we have a couple of different formulations, but the dose The standard dose is 500 milligrams a day, and that is the dose that we saw to see that improvement in muscle strength. We also have seen with that dose that there is, you know, when we look under the hood, that the mitochondria are rejuvenating and recycling. So that's a great place to start is that 500 milligrams. But it took 4 months to get to that result. So this is not an overnight success. This is not Amazon Prime your way tomorrow into better mitochondria. I wish we could all order better mitochondria. But it's— so it's this sort of slow, steady improvement that's happening.

You have gummies, and I have a really big problem with your gummies because I can never just eat 2 of them. And I don't prescribe a lot of gummies, but these are 2 that I recommend, especially if you're someone who has a sweet tooth, to have 2 of those, like, after a meal really kind of hits the spot. But they're so good. Like, they really are so good. So do you alternate between one or the other? I can imagine you probably travel with the gummies. Take the capsules at other points.

Yeah, the other way around. I actually travel with my capsule into my little like pill case, and then I have the gummies kind of exactly as you said. I, I use them as like a little sweet treat later in the day because they are— they're, they're sugar-free, so they're made with stevia, natural flavors, natural colors. You know, not only is the quality of urolithin A important to us, but we wanted to make sure that that we're not putting any junk into our supplements that you don't need. So that was like a 3-year project to get a gummy that tastes good, has a good texture, that the color doesn't fade because you're not using fake dyes. Like, that was not an easy feat. And we've— I've actually been told, like, we should go into the candy business because they're so good.

Seriously, they really are good. Yeah. And the ingredients are fabulous. This. And the science behind it is incredible. So, okay, we've got the capsules, we've got the gummies, and we've also got skincare, right? So mitochondria of the skin, which is your largest organ. And how do you feel? Tell us about the skincare. Let's talk about the skincare just for a second. Yeah.

So we often don't think about our skin as an organ. We think about it more just as like the aesthetics of how do I look and how do I present to the world, which not to discount that's also important, but it, but it has a job to do. It's our barrier from the outside world. And your skin is a highly energy-demanding organ in order to keep your skin barrier healthy, in order to do cell turnover. And so it was this sort of aha moment that our science team had that, well, you need the mitochondria in your skin to be healthy as well for your skin skin could be healthy. And so, yeah, that was really what led them down this, um, sort of same quality of research on the skin to formulate and develop these topical products where the Mitopure does absorb through the skin cells, um, and it's helping to regenerate and rejuvenate the mitochondria of the skin cells. As a result of doing that, what we see is that all the genes that are regulating collagen and assembly and organization, they are sort of up. And we also see that the skin is more resilient to the damaging effects of the sun, driver of skin aging. And then to bring it back full circle into just how we look, what we start to see is in just 2 weeks, a noticeable, visible improvement in, in skin aging. And when you take that out to 8 weeks, it becomes a statistically significant improvement in wrinkle depth and wrinkle volume. So all of that, again, coming from these little power plants.

I remember when you guys rolled it out and I just thought, oh my God, this makes so much sense. We need to be using products that support the actual systems of our body. And obviously with my background in cosmetics and stuff like that, I was just so hyper-aware of how many things I was putting onto my skin and whether those things were supporting me and the way that I want to look and the way that I want to feel or depleting me and actually making things worse. And obviously, you know this as a woman, you know, there's so many things and treatments that are out there which are fine to do, do the things that you want to do, but are you supporting your kind of cellular biology beneath all of it so that you've got the same health— health span for your skin? And my husband, when you guys first launched, he goes from his color to red instantly in the sun. And while we were traveling, and we both remember like, wow, he wasn't getting as burned as he typically would in previous summers and stuff like that. So we can attest to that. And I really wanted to have her on all the products just because like I've seen them work, I've felt them work, and I obviously have the longevity using, using the brand and recommending them to all of my clients. Okay, so there's my love affair for the brand. Shifting gears just a little bit, let's go into the, the wisdom side of things. So when I was studying you and just going a little bit deeper into understanding mitochondria, something that you've shared before is the maternal legacy. Of the mitochondria. So unlike our DNA, mitochondrial DNA is inherited almost exclusively from our mothers, which is fascinating, right? And in my world, I talk a lot about, um, you know, the studies in recent years where they're proving that feelings like trauma are actually given to us through our mothers and that bloodline. So can you share a little bit more about this finding and what that means for mitochondria?

Yeah, well, it becomes an interesting way to study hereditary traits because we can look at mitochondrial DNA and know that that's coming back from mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. And I think it's just, you know, as a woman, I think that it's just this beautiful sort of story of how we are. When I think about it more spiritually and not necessarily scientifically, but just how this energy is being passed down from generation to generation, to your point that we can pass down trauma, but we can also pass down good habits habits as well, right? We know that the microbiome also is passed down based on whether you were vaginal birth or you are a breastfed baby. And so this sort of connection between the generations, I think, is just a really interesting way to just tie in just connection, both sort of physical connection, emotional connection, and then the science of what we're starting to understand between how our mitochondria passed down through our mothers.

The way that I interpret that is just a reminder of the wisdom that we all hold. So here we are in this world where we are so excited when we see the science around mitochondria, or even with gut health. Like, we talk so much about gut health, and yet we still don't know everything. Things are unfolding every single day. We're so far from understanding everything, which goes to show that there's an intelligence working within the body and intelligence to how the body functions. And I think we can all kind of feel a bit inspired by that, understanding where we come from, recognize if it's something that we want to celebrate or not, but just the capacity that research is proving or validating that this is something about us that we can shift or evolve from or change or even nourish within ourselves. And I think that's something that we should all feel really inspired about. About, because intuitively there's so much more. And like, look, it's the inspiration for this podcast. I love the science, know the science, research the science, understand how it pertains to you, but never forget the fact that there's so much more that's operating within your physiology and how you feel and how you'll— you're going to age and how your body and your mind and your spirit are, are impacted, right? And when you go through a healing journey, and obviously everyone knows this, but nothing matters when you don't have your And so people like you and I, and I'm sure many of our listeners, when we go through those moments, I don't know, it's like the greatest invitation from our body to say, you've been ignoring me for a little, a little while now. Those symptoms, I've been sending you the SOS and you haven't been tuning in. So I'm sending you a really loud signal right now. It's time for you to tune in. I can help you heal, but you have to understand what's happening beneath the shed, right? So that's how I interpret it. And I have a feeling mitochondrial health is going to be just like the gut health. There's so much more that's going to evolve from our understanding. It's wisdom within the body, things that ancestors probably knew but didn't know how to describe it or anything like that. But I think it's, it's so powerful. And the other part of that is understanding what I'm sure you talk about all the time, which is autophagy. So the power of autophagy, right? And I think we went through a bit of a craze with fasting, and I think we did a good job but understanding that fasting is actually a practice that comes from wisdom in so many of our cultures and our background. But when we think about that, what are things that you want people to understand when it comes to autophagy or the impact of autophagy on the mitochondria? How does it make sense to go from restriction to fueling a cell when we think that the cell needs information to fuel itself?

Yeah, well, the mitochondria have their own specific form of autophagy called mitophagy. So they are— the way I sort of like to explain it is you don't necessarily have to demolish the whole house if just the kitchen needs a renovation. So the mitochondria have this unique ability to recycle themselves. And I think my, you know, my take on fasting has sort of evolved. I think there is this ancient wisdom. I think every religion that we look at has some sort of fasting protocol that, or ritual that they've evolved to utilize. But I, my experience with at least the subset of patients I used to work with is that a lot of women were sort of using it as like an optimization tool rather than using it like modality and almost as like a restriction, dietary kind of control. And when you're approaching it from that way as opposed to sort of looking at it as a healing ritual in a way, you know, and balancing it with good nourishment. It just was, it was something I sort of moved away both from myself and moved away from in my practice. And now I don't work with patients anymore, but myself, I really look at it as, again, like in my religion, there are episodes where we fast. And so that is part of like a spiritual connection for me. And there are other things that we can do to trigger mitophagy, like urolithin A, like exercise and other things that we can do out there to support ourselves without having to approach it from this very optimized, restricted type of place.

It's such a fine line, right? You know, I think a lot of listeners probably went through that same period of, all right, we're doing the fasting thing, we're seeing a lot of people talk about it and do community fasts, and all of a sudden it went from doing that in a supportive way to getting that badge of honor, like, oh, I made it to 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours. I can do this all the time. Then I start working with women who actually lost their appetite. "No, I don't really need to eat," which then is an issue of metabolism, right? And digesting food and taking in nutrition and nutrients, it's a source of life. It's associated with our vitality and our gut microbiome, right? But I think that you are 100% right. We took the science but of course we went so deep into the hardcore aspect of it thinking that more is better when that's just not the case. And I think that that, as practitioners, it's something that we see over and over again. A lot of people find a good thing, they want to go really intensely with it or hardcore at it for long periods of time when that's not the answer. Our ancestors knew this, right? All these— whatever religion or culture that you came from, they didn't do it all the time. They did it with reason. There's often a spiritual backing behind I think we have to remember, I often say that the clients that I work with who have a lot of success or feel really rewarded or see a lot of physiological changes mentally, spiritually, and emotionally are the ones that turn their healing journey into more of a spiritual journey. And that doesn't mean spiritual journey in terms of religion, but spiritual journey is in like tuning into yourself and like the miracle of having this physical body that's functioning with, with you just doing your thing every single day. I think it's quite powerful. Um, I think listeners always want to know this. I'm not going to ask you what you eat, although I'm sure everyone wants to know. Give us a perfect day scenario from— let's just say you had a day and this was going to be your day to optimize your mitochondria. We've dropped some, you know, some beneficial tips and tools, but give us an outline from when you wake up in the morning to when you go to bed at night. What are some of the practices that you would prioritize for mitochondrial health?

So the things I'm really working on, both on a perfect day and just, you know, most days are not perfect. So the days that I'm just trying to continue to establish good habits, especially now that it is nice out, one of the first things I do is I get up in the morning and I take my dog for a walk and I go outside and I make sure that I'm getting lots of, well, if it's sunny out, but as much sun, direct sun as I can in my eyes and not looking at the sun directly, but you know what I mean? Just walking outside, getting sun. That's the first thing that I do. I am an exerciser who exercises later in the day because I've always worked from home and that was sort of my shutdown. So, I actually tend to then in the morning try and spend a little bit of quiet time with either a cup of coffee or a tea and read, whether it's just catching up on the news or finishing up a nice fiction book. Then I'll have a breakfast which is full of protein, protein, vegetables, and fiber. And then I'll have a nice productive day at work and then I will shut down and I will do some strength training or I will do some cardio. And I usually will also do a short yoga. Just, I'm, one of the things as I've gotten older is I'm working a lot more on mobility and taking care of my joints, my muscles, as opposed to being really hard and pushing in every workout. And then I'll have a nice lunch, was in there somewhere, then I'll have a nice healthy, well-balanced dinner. And then I will start to try, this is another thing I'm really working hard on, is to not get in front of blue light or to not get in front of, of computer again once I've sort of shut down and after dinner, and I'll try and again go back to— I've been very in a reading phase, so go back to reading and then lights out.

Yeah.

So it's sort of simple and boring, but it's simple.

Simple and boring. Yeah. And I'm happy you answered the question that way because I really want listeners to just tune into how many times have we heard this from experts and scientists who come on that the power is in the basics every single day and I'm sure if you and I were working with whoever was listening right now, if any of what Jenn just talked about feels challenging or not within reach within your life right now, schedule it. Pull out your calendar. Schedule time to have a high-fiber, high-protein, good-quality fat meal. Schedule in your calendar, you know, a morning walk or an evening walk, how the bookends of your day, if you schedule it over time, 1, 2, or 3 things are eventually going to become ritualized. And it's the rituals that, that keep hold because you notice how you feel. You will probably notice when you have better mitochondrial function, you'll have better mental focus, better energy, maybe a bit of a better mood. You'll show up and want to do more. It's when healthy living just becomes a little bit more effortless. So schedule it. Thank you for sharing that. I cannot wait for the day where all of us can just like do a little prick test and look at a screen and we can see the state of our mitochondria. Mitochondria, and we can really understand like, wow, this cell today is not so happy. And this is the cell that's responsible for my energy and my recovery and my output and my mood. I'm really going to own in on my mitochondrial health today. Like, I think we're— we'll probably get there at some point. Same thing with our blood labs. It'll be so, so simple to access this information. But yeah, I think that there's wisdom in that. And I do want to ask also, you'd mentioned the type of workout that you like. Are there studies on a specific type of workout that is better for mitochondrial health than others? Is it different for all of us? There—

so all exercise— exercise is probably the best thing you can do for your mitochondria, whether it is endurance, whether it is HIIT, whether it is strength training. There does seem to be though this particular benefit of HIIT that I've just been reading about that is really helping to optimize what's called mitochondrial biogenesis specifically. So the creation of new healthy mitochondria. But again, I think in a world where we are just over-optimizing everything, like there has to be this balance of all different types of fitness and figuring out, you know, strength training has to be part of it. For your heart, you're gonna need to do some cardio and then HIIT is a nice way as well to kind of just help both with cardio and then this mitochondrial piece. So exercise, any kind, good for your mitochondria and good.

Yeah, so good. And I'm curious too, even personally, how are you feeling about workouts in perimenopause? I feel like my 30-year-old self was so addicted to HIIT and it felt really, you know, powerful and motivating, and now it feels a little bit depleting, but I understand the science around it. So I'm doing it in a different way, but how would you describe or prescribe exercise or workouts during this perimenopause season?

Yeah, I'm doing it in a bit of a different way as well. I used to be sort of the cardio endurance girl that would just, you know, steady state, get on, you know, the elliptical and be on there for 30 minutes. And I have really shifted to strength training because I know the importance of building good quality muscle. I do, do sort of short bursts versions of HIIT where it's not like a massive HIIT class. I might just do like some Tabatas on the bike once a week. And then I personally am just based on some injuries that I've been repeating to have is spending a lot more time on flexibility, balance, and, and mobility. So yoga and then just other flexibility things as well. But I think strength training really does have to be be there for a midlife woman.

It's just, um, I'm with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's no longer about the 60-minute HIIT class. Maybe it's a 30-minute workout where you're doing intervals in between. And I'm finding that I'm just focusing on recovery. The next day is just my recovery day. I'm giving my body exactly what it needs to recover from feeling that intensity, and then it feels more rewarding as well. Yeah. All right, tell us something good. What are you most excited about in the world of mitochondrial health and cellular health and things that you're learning over at Timeline?

Well, so Timeline specifically, one of the things I'm most excited to learn is our research team is hard at work trying to unlock other avenues where urolithin A has potential benefit because as we know, the mitochondria are everywhere in the body. So they are actively researching brain health. And that's something that's actually happening even outside of our, of our research team, looking at how it can slow cognitive decline or potentially even play a role in things like neurodegenerative disease. There's just some really interesting preclinical work that's happening around gut that's, you know, in so many different areas of aging. And so it's just a matter of time to know what's the dose and what's the time to start to see these types of improvements throughout the body. So that's really what I'm excited about is what's the next unlock.

So cool. Yeah, I remember Anurag saying the most concentration of mitochondria are around the ovaries the heart, and the brain. Is that correct?

So all your, you know, your organs that are just highly energy demanding, um, but the ovaries particularly, I think I'm thinking about them a lot more as I go through perimenopause. The ovaries have the greatest concentration in a woman's body of, um, of mitochondria, and it's the fastest aging organ in a woman's body. So that connection, I'm really looking forward to science kind of solidifying what that means and how taking care of your ovaries through mitochondrial health, hmm, play a role. There's this very interesting conversation that's been going around about thinking about our ovaries as not just a reproductive organ, but as an organ of longevity. And I'm really excited to hear more. Yeah, more about that science.

I see that and I love it. Let's switch the dialogue. It's completely unnatural to think about our reproductive system that way, right? It is our our life force within us, responsible for so much. Yeah, I'm so excited for that. I will stay tuned for that. If you can tell us, do you communicate with your audience still? My cheeks are hurting from smiling so much because I just— I love this conversation so much. Obviously, I've geeked out over the products that I absolutely love. But tell us, you know, do you communicate with your audience or how can people find you specifically?

So me specifically, I do communicate mostly around sort of perimenopause and the things either I'm going through or I'm discovering from the research So that's Jen Scheinman Nutrition. And then everything you would ever want to know about longevity science, mitochondrial health, and urolithin A, our social media team is just incredible. And so that's that timeline longevity. So two great ways to find some more information.

Fantastic. We are going to link out everything below. Use code MONA at checkout to also save. To leave listeners with just one takeaway on prioritizing your mitochondrial health, my favorite t-shirt, by the way, is I love my mitochondria. That I stole from someone in your— at your team at Expo West a couple of years ago.

We get our design team, like our products and our website are so beautifully designed and our design team really wants to take that t-shirt and like elevate it. But man, people love it so much that we feel a little bit like we shouldn't touch perfection when we have it. But my one takeaway for how to support your mitochondrial health health. Obviously, Urolithin A might appear such an easy way to do that, but I think the other thing would be just thinking about them as an active player in how we age and how— and that tending to them through diet, through exercise, through lifestyle is critically important to not just how you feel today, but how you're going to feel in the future.

And let's just call it as it is, it's an ingredient provided from nature that has the capacity to optimize how we live and show up in this That's why I love you guys so much. Jenn, thank you so much for today. I could talk to you for hours and hours. We'll make this happen in person next time.

Would love that. Thank you so much for having me.