Claudia von Boeselager [00:01:57]:
Welcome to the Longevity and lifestyle podcast. Dr. Singh, it's a pleasure to have you with us today.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:02:03]:
Thanks for having me, Claudia. Absolute pleasure.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:02:05]:
I'm very excited to dive into this since discovering personally all about mitophagy and Urolithin A, which you are the world leading expert on this, so I'm delighted to have you on. But I'd like to start with the big picture, the hallmarks of aging study as it's a cornerstone of longevity science and perhaps some people in my audience are not that familiar with it. So could you talk us through the key findings and how they've shaped your work?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:02:31]:
Yeah, sure. This. So these, what we call the biological hallmarks of aging, these are a set of very intricately connected biological pathways that sort of intersect and as we age they kind of, you know, they tune off and, and and they kind of become the. They decrease and they become the causing, you know, pathways to accelerate aging. So Guido Kromer, Professor Guido Kromer's lab in France, actually described them about 12 years back in 2013. And there were nine key hallmarks of aging. These all link somehow to cell biology. And it's really linked to, you know, how the cells are poor SBAs, they become poor at nutrient sensing.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:03:20]:
So sort of they become very bad at absorbing regular vitamins, nutrients, minerals that are essential for the functioning of the cell. They link to genetic and epigenetic alterations that happen within their genome. They link to cross communication between the different cellular organelles. So there are multiple cellular organelles. And they kind of, as we all get old, we become grumpy. They become grumpy too. And then there are some other key hallmarks that are, I believe, really the centerpiece of these hallmarks. And these link to mitochondrial dysfunction.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:03:53]:
Mitochondria being these sort of batteries that power cellular energy and then chronic inflammation and things. And the gut microbiome. So these have been revised recently and a few more have been added, but somehow they all kind of link in. So things like macro autophagy has been added. So autophagy being sort of, or, you know, the self renewable capacity of the cells and, and we can talk about mitophagy. So in a sense, these are really, you know, the key hallmarks of aging. And the two that I think are really the centerpiece or three are really linked to chronic inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and perhaps microbiome dysfunction as we age.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:04:33]:
Yeah, And I think, as you said, they're all so clearly interrelated. You know, I think that's one of the challenges of traditional medicine, Western medicine, I should say, is that it looks, it's very siloed and it doesn't look at the whole thing. But aging is a holistic process across functions as well.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:04:49]:
Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:04:49]:
So mitochondria, as you were saying, are often the powerhouse, called the powerhouses of the cell or the battery packs of the cell decline to it. So how does mitochondrial dysfunction accelerate aging? Can you walk us through that? And why is such, why is it such a pivotal target for intervention?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:05:07]:
Sure. So I think there are a number of reasons why mitochondrial fixing your mitochondria as we age makes a lot of sense. One, it's well known the things already that are hitting mitochondria and accelerating sort of the mitochondrial decline with aging. And these link to things like, you know, us being more sedentary as, you know, society has evolved. We were all Moving a lot, gathering, you know, our foods and traveling. Now we just sit in the office and a lot of us. And so the sedentary lifestyle is really one of the biggest causes of mitochondrial decline. Fasting is another one.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:05:45]:
You know, our diets have changed remarkably. We eat a lot more processed food and things like this, not rich in fiber, etc. And so these things have really accelerated and they're easy to fix. You know, you started talking about how today medical doctors are not. And I'm one of them. We don't educate our, let's say, our patient populations or folks how to eat. Right, how to move. Right, right.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:06:12]:
So. So that. And why is it so critical? Mitochondria are in every human cell type except the red blood cell. And they are very key to just functioning capacity of. So, for example, in. In a skeletal muscle cell or a neuron cell in the brain, there are about many, many thousands of mitochondria. And they're almost like a power grid. They're almost like a Tesla battery that just gives energy to the cell to process the nutrients, you know, repair the damage caused by things like stress, et cetera.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:06:46]:
And so if you take out mitochondria from the equation, you basically have no energy left to even get up from your chair. And that's why they're so key.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:06:54]:
Yeah. And I also think, you know, everyone can relate to this as we age. You know, we're like, oh, in my 20s, you know, I had so much energy, I could manage on little sleep, etc. And one of the keys to living really well and longevity, in my view, is having vibrant energy until you are 89, 90, whatever age you. You'd like to hit. Right. So this is such a key focus. So let's break down mitophagy a little bit so people can understand.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:07:19]:
What is it. Why is it essential for longevity? What does it actually mean?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:07:25]:
Yeah. So mitochondrial health today, you know, can be improved in multiple ways. Okay, so let's break that down first. What are the different pathways so you can improve mitochondrial numbers? And this is something in the field we call as mitochondrial biogenesis. So, you know, you have a cell with whatever X number of mitochondria. A lot of them are functioning, a lot of them get damaged. The whole idea is that, well, if you can create near healthy mitochondria, you can shift the balance to more of good energy production. Right.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:07:57]:
And that's the process of biogenesis. And there are nutrients, like, for example, well, even exercise induces biogenesis. And even, for example, things like Resveratrol or NAD supplementation is known to hit these biogenesis pathways in. The second way of improving mitochondrial health is something called improving mitochondrial efficiency. So you take your pool of healthy mitochondria, they just function better as a factory. Right. So you oil them up and there are nutrients like creatine or l Carnitine or CoQ10 that are very, let's say, into integral to mitochondrial functioning and the whole transport chain of mitochondria. And they provide better fuel utilization.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:08:42]:
The third is really a sort of a real estate problem. So as I said, there's always a yin and yang between good and bad mitochondria. And with aging, that balance shifts to more bad buildings, if I can say, or bad mitochondria occupying the space. And if you don't clean that out, and that process is really called mitophagy, which means self renewal of the unhealthy mitochondria. If you don't clean them out, then you obviously get lower energy. You. You can't even have healthy new mitochondria. And so typically this process slows down with aging.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:09:14]:
And until very recently, there were no real, let's say, interventions that could stimulate mitophagy. So that, in a sense is really, you know, like, how do I say, garbage disposal pathway of your. Of your bad mitochondria.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:09:29]:
So it's like clearing it out. Like, because we know about zombie cells. Right. So the senescent cells. So it's similar with the mitochondrial them out. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:09:38]:
Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:09:38]:
Let's look at the role of nutrition in cellular and mitochondrial health.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:09:42]:
Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:09:42]:
We know that food is medicine and that diets play a major role in our health. But in this case, the connection is quite remarkable that you found a plant compound that triggers essential longevity pathways in our body. So let's talk about the microbiome and the remarkable compounds it creates, which, namely, is the postbiotics. And maybe you can explain what exactly is urolithin A.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:10:03]:
Sure.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:10:04]:
And why it is such a game changer for healthy aging.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:10:06]:
Sure, absolutely. You hit it. I mean, the gut microbiome, I believe, is a very key interventional strategy to delay a lot of these hallmarks of aging. And I see the gut microbiome as a polypharmacy almost. You know, it's filled with these undiscovered natural molecules that we're just starting to skim the surface. You know, it's like early stages of this research and, and probably your audience knows a lot about pre and probiotics. And so prebiotics Are, you know, things like fiber that you eat to nourish your healthy gut microbiome. Probiotic is, you know, these essential constituents of your healthy gut microbiome that, you know, you take these probiotics and you hope that you're going to restore your healthy gut microbiome postbiotics.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:10:54]:
I and this is a new field which is really sort of the, the end result of a gut, healthy gut microbiome. And, and the molecules our gut microbiome is going to make for our benefit, which is our us as a human host. And so a lot of these are essential vitamins. So I believe vitamin K is A, is a gut microbiome derived molecule, short chain fatty acids, things like butyrate or postbiotics. And so what we started out about almost 15 years back was really understanding all these superfoods and the constituents in them. So superfoods like berries, nuts and pomegranates. And it was known that these superfoods are very rich in a class of nutrients called polyphenols or a lot of folks call them antioxidants as well. Now what we started looking was how these polyphenols get metabolized by the gut microbiome.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:11:48]:
And that's how we stumble on a postbiotic called URL 10A, which is basically a simplified digested molecule coming from elligitannins, which is a class of polyphenols found in raspberries, cloudberries, walnuts, pecans and of course in the white stuff that encodes all the pomegranate shiny red arrows. What we found was this gut metabolite postbiotic URL of 10a was really very potent mitophagy activator and was renewing mitochondrial health.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:12:24]:
It's so exciting. And what are some of the benefits of urolithin A and having higher or focused doses of urolithin A? What, what, what does the impact mean for people?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:12:37]:
Yeah, so the one thing I forgot to mention in response to the last question was not everybody has the right gut microbiome. Oh yes, we use this molecule. And so I've gone and studied different parts of the world, different populations. The French, the Americans, the Canadians, even the Australians. And now I'm doing a study in my home country, India. The variance of the gut microbiome is very key. And so we've actually looked, for example, and there are other groups that have looked at the percentage of people who make this in the French and European population, where I still believe we are still very close to eating the right foods and farm to table kind of philosophy, we see about 30 to 40% people, healthy adults, have this molecule from the diet at different levels. In the US and Canada, it's more like 1 in 10.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:13:29]:
So it's like 10, 15%.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:13:30]:
Okay.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:13:31]:
India, we're just starting to get the data. It's almost like 5%. And that is, you know, very rampant antibiotic usage in India versus processed food in the US So I think a lot of these and some of our collaborators have looked at people who make the molecule and their health status versus those who don't make the molecule. It's clear that those who make the molecule is a Spanish group that has studied, for example, UA producers from the non producers and people are cardioprotected so they have less incidence of cardiovascular diseases. We started looking at it for the health benefits and we mostly found this molecule to be a mitochondrial rejuvenator. And we gave it to older adults who had sedentary lifestyle fatigue issues and they just feel more energy. They feel if you put them in an exercise test, they go 20% longer. We also gave it to folks like me and you, you know, 40, 50 year olds who are healthy, but you know, we could do with a little bit of energy at the end of the day.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:14:36]:
And it did boost in the absence of exercise and changing the diet. It boosted about 10% muscle strength and give more energy. So that's the findings we have today.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:14:47]:
It's very exciting and I think that's a very important point because there might be people listening and saying, well, my gut health maybe isn't in such a great state. So is it worth focusing on your lithium A or UA at the moment, or do I need to repair my gut health first in order to metabolize it? What would you recommend?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:15:05]:
I think both the avenues should be sought after. So I think food comes first. You know, this food first approach, I think we have done these studies where we have taken the 10% and we have given them a glass of pure pomegranate juice every day to sort of retrain their gut microbiome. And believe it or not, you can go up till 30, 40% because now you're giving them the dietary precursors. But majority of the people just lack the gut microbiome. And as I said, I mean, I, I don't make it. I've even now developed a test that can tell you if you're a producer or not. And I don't.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:15:42]:
And I have, I take all kinds of probiotics. So I think it's really the early Life antibiotic usage as a kid growing up in, in India that probably did most of the damage for me. So I, I think so. There's a way to do it through food and diet for sure. But to really get to what I call the therapeutic levels of this molecule and to make sure you're not just relying on natural bioconversion in the gut that may not be very precise, you're now getting precise dosing and I believe that that works for a lot of people as well. So both, both the approaches are very valid.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:16:23]:
Okay, excellent. I'd like to understand muscle health and aging around this as well. And so I thinking about people potentially who might be taking a GLP1 agonist or you know, concerns with muscle loss in that. But even people concerned with muscle loss in general and sarcopenia. Would UA urolithin A be helpful in this group as well?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:16:48]:
Absolutely. So. Well, muscle aging is where I've spent 15 years of my research career and it's remarkable if you just take. And we did the study which I still always talk about. We took 75 year old Dutch people who were all have been bike by cycling because the Dutch like to buy cycle a lot and, and had you know, been living a very active lifestyle training for 10 kilometer and a half marathons all their adult life. And we benchmark them to 75 year olds and Dutch people who do not move well are frail sarcopenic and we took little pieces of their leg muscle through a biopsy. Muscle biopsy. And the number one, well not even number one, the top 50 pathways that lit up as being down in the sarcopenic population was all mitochondrial pathways.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:17:41]:
And then we took those people and then we supplemented them with urolithin A for a month and we started seeing all the mitochondrial pathways come back up much like how exercise would impart. So I do believe so listen muscle is a longevity organization. If you don't have good muscle health you will not be able to move very well and your whole metabolism will be shot. And so I believe today that that's actually a population that should take these kind of supplementation because you know, if you're 70 year old and I have parents who are 80 year olds, you know, you're not moving much, you're not paying too much attention to your diet and that's where I think taking some of these advanced supplementation strategies will work. So. Yeah, absolutely.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:18:30]:
And ideally compounded with weight training of some sort.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:18:34]:
Absolutely. Combined with weight training high protein supplementation because ural DNA will hit the muscle quality but you still need to boost your muscle mass. And you mentioned about GLP1 that that's somehow coming a lot as not just GLP1 drugs were discovered about 10, 15 years back. And these were mostly prescribed as anti diabetic drugs.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:18:57]:
Yeah.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:18:58]:
And as a side effect, if I can say that they discovered that more serendipitously that these were having this sort of, you know, delayed gastric emptying and they also hit the reward center of the appetite control in the brain that they had these immense potential as weight loss. The problem I don't have it so much with 30, 40 year olds using it as I have it with 50, 60, 70 year olds using it. Because in 12, 80 months you lose about 10 years worth of muscle. I mean you're losing fat of course, but about 30, 40% of of your weight loss is muscle loss. And I think when most of these older adults stop because these are expensive drugs, the muscle doesn't come back, the fat does. And so I think in 10 years clinicians or 15 years will see a sort of a tsunami of accelerated sarcopenia. That's, that's where, I mean that's where I think a lot of education, as you were saying, needs to be on weight training and nutritional strategies.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:19:58]:
Yeah, I think that that's a really important statistic to understand as well, especially because you specialize in focusing around muscle as well. Because we know that one of the keys for longevity is having that strength also into later years, you know, grip strength, there's different tests you can do and so people that are for different reasons on the GLP1s and obviously more research is coming out showing various benefits potentially for Alzheimer's, et But to know that this is a real risk. So would you say it could be counterbalanced with heavyweight training?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:20:31]:
Yeah, I think. Well, these are modern miracle drugs, don't get me wrong there. I think just complementing with the right then everybody needs to have a trainer and talk to them and a nutritionist and talk to them. Right. And high protein supplementation and resistance training will go a long way and maintaining the muscle health.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:20:54]:
Yeah, let's look at immune function and beyond. So your research highlights your lithium A's impact on immune health. Can you share the science behind this connection and why it's so exciting?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:21:04]:
Yeah, sure. So I'm also trained immunologist in my initial research was actually studying why older people were falling so sick or not responding to a lot of vaccines like pneumococcal vaccine or flu vaccine. And believe it or not, all the hallmarks of aging, as I said, not only cross link with mitochondrial dysfunction, but they also cross link with something we called inflammaging, which is as we age, our inflammation goes up. And so what caught our eye was when we did all these initial studies with urlatana, that in every trial, whether it was older adults or overweight middle aged adults, we would see mitochondria go better. We would see the impact on muscle health and endurance in parallel. We would always pick this one or two biomarkers of inflammation, like C reactive protein being one of the most commonly utilized markers of inflammation, and that would be dampened. And so we got puzzled by this and so we did a clinical, randomized clinical trial just recently with, with the Buck Institute of Aging, hopefully gets published very soon. And what we saw was that a month of supplementation of urolithin A just does not have impacts on muscle mitochondria.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:22:25]:
It actually hits the mitochondria in your immune cells as well. And so our immune system has the main kind of elite forces the immune system has is something called T cells. And they are derived from an organ called the thymus. And in our 20s, 30s, this organ starts involuting. And so you're left with just a very small bucket of these cells floating around in your body. And what happens is that by 50s, they're almost gone. And so people don't respond to vaccines or can't respond to an infection when in their 60s. And cancer incidence also rises.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:23:03]:
So what we see is now it's almost like a recharging of the mitochondria helps these T cells come back into circulation, and it's almost like they can kill bacteria better, they can dampen inflammation. And so that's the finding we are seeing is sort of the more systemic effect and the impact on immune aging and immune fitness with aging.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:23:28]:
I'd love to touch on brain health, a topic close to my heart because unfortunately, my mother suffers with dementia and cognitive longevity. Right. So we all want to stay sharp and fit for as long as possible. So I understand you're looking brain health and your lithium A's impact on brain aging. Can you share with us what you're looking at, what you're hopeful of uncovering?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:23:50]:
Sure, yeah. I mean, we are a small life science company, so we of course started with muscle and then last three years were on immune. We got interested in brain not because of the research we had been doing, but the research being done by three really top neuroscience groups and cognitive health research groups in the world. So a group at Buck Institute of Aging, a group in Harvard, and the third group in National Institute of Aging, they all almost the same time published that in the brains of Alzheimer's and dementia patients, the number one pathway that was down was actually mitophagy in the neurons and the brain cells. And so they started looking at all kinds of repurposed drugs, longevity drugs, natural molecules. And they all kind of unanimously came and found that in these early, let's say, preclinical models of Alzheimer's, the one molecule that was showing a lot of promise was urolithin A. And so we got obviously interested because a lot of these guys, folks, professors, came to us and said, we want to run a clinical trial. Now, it's not that easy to run a clinical trial on Alzheimer's with a nutritional supplement because a lot of time regulatory agencies see it as a drug trial.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:25:10]:
And so we have actually now designed a trial that we've just started which is not going after dementia, but going after the 50 year olds who have brain energy issues. And there's a cohort in Norway that basically has REM sleep disorders. So they're healthy, but they have problems with their sleep patterns. And, and about 95% of them, it has been studied, will develop some sort of neurodegenerative decline. So we're trying to intervene much earlier rather than wait, you know, all the way at the end.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:25:47]:
Yeah.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:25:47]:
So we'll see if this is a randomized trial that probably will have data next year.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:25:52]:
But it sounds very promising.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:25:53]:
Sounds very promising. Yeah. I mean, as I said, the, the neuron cells have the highest abundance of mitochondria and they get impacted with aging. And as I said, mitophagy seems to be a very key pathway to impact on these cells. So there is hope and promise.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:26:12]:
Very exciting. Let's look at some practical applications for everyday wellness. So for someone feeling tired or burnt out, what's the simplest way to explain how urolithin A could help them reclaim their energy? And what are some actionable steps you would encourage listeners today to take to support their mitochondria and boost their vitality?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:26:35]:
Yeah, I'll share what I do. I mean, yeah, you know, I follow fasting the 168 pattern and I believe that helps a lot. Cognitively, clears my head longer. So definitely, I think diet is where it all starts. And then again, physical activity is probably the second pillar. Exercise is the best mitochondrial booster there ever was and will be.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:27:01]:
What do you do specifically?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:27:03]:
I do a mix of aerobic and resistance. So I alternate. One day I, I run 30 minutes and the next day I, I lift weights. Not with the trainer but, but I should probably.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:27:17]:
New Year's resolution.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:27:19]:
Yeah, New Year's resolution. And third thing is I, I, I take these advanced supplementations that I know help my mitochondria. So things like CoQ10 and obviously urolithin A. But I believe if your cells are happy as a foundation, your other nutrients will get absorbed better. So when I take vitamin D and magnesium and this is another line of research we are following, can you actually augment the absorption of a lot of these other nutrients? So I kind of stack my supplements like that, that I have cell based formulations as I mentioned and then I take things like vitamin D and magnesium and omega 3 which I believe have the highest scientific credibility. And then for other things for mitochondria I think linked to sleep, you absolutely need your seven, eight hours of sleep. Just looking in the brains of people who have these sleep disorders, I've been really, really amazed how shocked the mitochondria are. So I think sleep is probably another one and just a good social circle.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:28:21]:
Right. I think that's part of it. What will people specifically feel with urolithin A? I think the two clear things that I've heard is impact on energy levels. So people feel they have a little bit more fuel in the tank at the end of the day and can go on doing things better. And the second one, which I hear a lot is recovery. And actually it made me run a clinical trial in Australia with even athletes because I mean you would assume athletes have the best mitochondria, best muscle and recovery did stand out. So sort of this inflammation recovery aspect of recovering, you just get back on your feet after exercise or even falling sick after flu for example, which yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:29:07]:
Just across the board, which is so exciting because it's, it's quite rare. Right. Typically, you know, different of these Longev supplements are just targeting one one thing but mitochondria is so universal that I think it's really fascinating. So what would be the protocol? And maybe you can talk about timelines. Urolithin A mito pure product which I've been taking and absolutely adore and can definitely confirm all feeling, more vitality, more energy. The recovery also if I've done a heavy weight training session, etc. Is much faster. So what would be the protocol people should, should look at in that regard?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:29:43]:
If you are healthy, if you're doing everything already that I already talked about, the dose we find keeps your Mitochondria at a good health status is the dose is around 500 milligrams and so that. That is daily. Yeah. And again, this is not a magic pill. So you can't take it for a few days a week and think miracle will happen. It does take about a month to start seeing biologically better mitochondria and about two months to start seeing, oh, you know, my VO2 is better or my heart rate is variability, is looking better. So I think these are the. You need to give it time.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:30:27]:
And so start with 500mg of URL ATIN A. Now we have two different products, either fruit flavored sachet that you can mix in your berries and smoothies or shakes and that gives you the required dose of 500 in one sachet. Or we have the pills, the soft gels that you need to take two of those daily and the recommended time is in the morning. But again we have done studies with in a fasted versus a heavy meal and it really doesn't change its absorption. So you can fit it the way you want in your lifestyle. Now if you have some issues of fatigue and recovering from, you know, your body's recovering from inflammation, then I do as a, as a clinician, I do recommend going a bit higher a gram, getting your body back to its sort of homeostatic normal processes and then you can go down to 500 milligrams. So that will be my recommendation.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:31:30]:
So the increase would be to say three soft gel capsules or two sachets a day.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:31:35]:
Two sachets or four pills?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:31:37]:
Yeah, or four pills. Okay, that's really helpful. And also timeline has come with some amazing skincare products. Do you want to share a bit about those?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:31:46]:
Sure. You know, when we started again, as I mentioned, we did 15 years of research before we were convinced that this could make an impact in people's lives and launch it. I have to admit the first feedback that came outside energy was not oh, how athletic I feel or whatever. It was actually my skin. My, my husband or my wife told me that my skin is looking better and that actually created a seeded an idea in, in my head and our chief scientific officer and we started putting it in creams and started looking at, in the cells in older skin cells and from human volunteers. And to our surprise, it actually was in skin cells also their mitochondria and they were going down and mitophagy was being compromised. And putting urolithin A directly on skin cells was causing sort of another renewal, much like we had Seen with muscle cells. And so we designed skin products and we did randomized clinical trials about four of them.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:32:54]:
Safety and then efficacy. And we saw pretty much the same things that the mitochondrial energy is boosted so the skin is feeling more energ, more youthful or let's say more revived rather than youthful. And then the most standout feature was when we took skin biopsies. All the pathways of skin aging, like collagen degradation, inflammation in the skin, these were all down. And so we believe targeting mitochondrial revitalization is a very, it could be a very effective way to improve your skin health. So we have these skin products and we've tested them. There's things like day cream that you put or night cream that you put before sleeping, or a serum which a lot of people just love the serum. And clinically we see findings like improved skin hydration, better skin barrier and even lower wrinkles.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:33:51]:
These are some of the findings we are seeing.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:33:55]:
Is there any use case or cohort where you would say that urlithin A is not advisable?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:34:05]:
I would say all our studies are today in healthy adults, so pediatric population probably I would stay away from today just because we haven't looked at it. And you know, as an evidence based company, you have to first show effects there. Then I would say probably the dosing regimens will be totally different for a lot of the medical conditions. You know, so if you think about more medically medical uses of it, and we are staying away, as I mentioned, because that classifies you into sort of a drug kind of a setting.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:34:42]:
Sure.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:34:42]:
Otherwise I think it's. This is, you know, our ancestors probably all made this molecule because they're all fruit and gathering things in the, in the open, the forest and eating this. I mean, we, we ran a study actually where just giving mothers pomegranate juice. We see it coming in the first food, which is breast milk. And so we see enough urolithin A coming from diet and, and there are, you know, we see it in nature, so it's a very safe molecule. Just, you know, and that's why we studied so much.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:35:15]:
Yeah, it's not safe synthetic. Yeah, yeah. Because I know, I mean some people were looking at nad, et cetera, but there is, for people who have had cancer, et cetera, they just say, you know, tread with caution. So, but obviously this is a supplement for a healthy aging. And a healthy aging population. Let's look at the future of mitochondrial science. What breakthroughs or advancements in mitochondrial science are you most excited about right now?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:35:40]:
I would say well, there's the Holy Grail, which is cracking a mitochondrial biomarker. You know, that is a bit non invasive, that you can just go to your doctor and they'll tell you, they'll give you your score sheet of how good and unhealthy your mitochondria are. So that, that is missing. And I know a lot of people are working on it. We are working on it as well. The second, in terms of where mitochondrial research goes, I think it's really this, what we call the healthspan approach. Right. And you have a lot of organizations like XPRIZE now asking you to show in one clinical study that you're not only improving muscle, you're improving immune health, you're improving cognitive health.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:36:28]:
I think that's the trial we need to, to honestly run is where you take a cohort of 50, 60 year olds and you show they're, they're not only feeling more vital in all their key metabolic organs, but they have reduced their biological age or, or your mitochondrial age by eczema of years. So that's where we are headed.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:36:47]:
Very exciting. Biological age. Have you tested yours?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:36:52]:
I have. The problem I have right now with this field is, and we are getting into it is, is there are about 20 different biological aging clocks and if you go measure all of them, they'll all give you different results. And so I've done that. And one or two, I was 47, by the way, they showed me I was 40 or 41. And then two more, they showed me I was 49. So I'm not never sure, at least.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:37:23]:
If they were all in the right direction, you'd be like, okay, I'm fine.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:37:25]:
Yeah, so that's. But I think it's, there is a consensus coming in the field and as we advance on the technologies, these are really genomic technologies and we'll get there. I think there'll be a more concrete test out there.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:37:40]:
Amazing. Dr. Singh, it's been fantastic diving into your work. Where can the audience learn more about what you're up to and Timeline's groundbreaking products?

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:37:51]:
So for all the products, they can go check out timeline.com and if they want to learn more on the science, they can go to mitopure.com which is basically the proprietary urolithinate technology that is in all the Timeline products. Otherwise they can always write to me or to me through you. Either way, we'll be happy to answer questions.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:38:16]:
Wonderful. We'll link everything in the show notes. And also for you, dear audience, timeline is offering 10% off your first order so you can go to timeline.com claudia and we'll link all of this in the show notes too. Do you have any parting thoughts or message or recommendations for my audience today? Dr. Singh Sure.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:38:35]:
I mean I leave it with the again, a reiteration of what I said. Continue doing good exercise. Make sure you're taking your 8, 10,000 steps and doing your 30 minutes of exercise at least three times a week. Make sure you know you're following all the diet, high protein etc and fasting works, believe it or not. And think about this third pillar. Your cellular health is your foundation that can enhance all the effects of whatever you're doing and not something you need to add or just do because in isolation it will work. It's really the foundation how it will help. So yeah, that's my last thought.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:39:19]:
Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today and thank you dear audience, for tuning in. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show and share with family and friends. Thank you so much.

Dr. Anurag Singh [00:39:29]:
Thank you.