Welcome to Episode 461 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.
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TRANSCRIPT
(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)
Melanie Avalon
Welcome to Episode 461 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat, with no calorie counting, then this show is for you.
I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with B.C. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment, so pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine. If it's that time, then get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.
Barry Conrad
Hi friends, welcome back to the show. We have a very special episode today for you guys that I have just been looking forward to for so long. So the backstory on today's conversation, a while ago now, I don't remember when I first saw the term Urolithin A to start off with terminology, but I definitely saw it in a book about health and what I was learning about it, and this was a few years ago, was that it was a super important compound for our health and yet it's created by our gut bacteria. And then the tricky thing about it is that not everybody has the gut bacteria to actually produce it. So you can eat certain foods to create this compound, which has again, so many benefits that we're gonna talk about and yet you might not actually be producing it.
So I was like, well, that's a conundrum. So fast forward a little bit from there. I was super excited when I found a brand or they found me, I'm not even sure how it first happened, but I connected with a brand called Timeline and I was really excited because they made a Urolithin A supplement and friends, so I will tell you, we get like pitches and emails from supplement companies all the time and I am very hesitant and wary about new supplement brands just because there's so much out there, but I was so intrigued by Timeline because it was this Urolithin A compound that I've been hearing about. The ingredients were super clean, super pure and it had all these incredible endorsements from so many different people in our field that you guys are familiar with. So I was like, okay, I've gotta try this. I will say, and again, we're gonna talk about the benefits, but I have, and it's hard to say definitively because I know there are a lot of factors of things that people do, but I am fairly certain that this supplement has had a radical effect on my energy levels. In particular, when I think about myself pre-taking Timeline every day, I was sneaking in like a nap every day and I don't do that anymore. Like I very rarely take naps and I really do think it's the Timeline which features the patented ingredient, Midopera, which we will talk about. But in any case, I even went through a period where I ran out for a bit and I had like a panic attack moment and I realized some of my fatigue was coming back. So I absolutely adore this supplement.
I've met them like the company a few times at different conferences and they also make a skincare line which is absolutely incredible. And I will say whenever I talk with anybody about Timeline, like when it comes up in conversations, the response from fellow biohackers and all the people is just overwhelmingly excited and supportive about it as well. So all of that to say, I simply was dying to have the company on the show to learn more about the science that goes into this product. And so we're here today with Jennifer Scheinman. She is a registered dietitian nutritionist with over 20 years of experience in nutrition and wellness.
Barry Conrad
She has a master's degree in integrative and functional nutrition and advanced training from the Institute of Functional Medicine. And she is the senior manager of nutrition affairs at Timeline.
She is here to talk all about this mito pure ingredient, what this product actually does. I have so many questions. So Jennifer, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3
Yeah, thank you for having me. And gosh, wow, what an incredible introduction to Mitopure and your Ellifene. And I'm so excited to unpack all of that with you. You're not alone in, first of all, being sort of hearing about this as like the new kid on the block supplement. I think it's gotten, especially in the biohacking world, a lot more attention lately. But a lot of people have not heard about this. So nobody should feel badly if they haven't heard about it yet.
That's what we're here for. And your energy, I'm so happy to hear that. And we hear that really often as well. So excited to take the conversation and see where it goes.
Barry Conrad
I am super impressed by all of the preclinical studies, the clinical studies that are completed and then the ongoing clinical studies that Timeline is doing. And so to clarify really quickly for terminology so that even I use it correctly.
So Timeline is the company, Midopure is the name of like the urolithin A supplement.
Speaker 3
You got it. So our overall brand is, is timeline. And then all of our different products have mito pure specifically in there. And that is our clinically validated ultra pure form of your
Barry Conrad
Okay. Awesome.
Well, I will say it's so interesting because like I was saying, I really, really noticed the difference with the energy. And primarily it's in the marker of I know I was taking naps daily before timeline and might appear and like, no, I'm not. I remember I was like, there must be, because I noticed that benefit. And I was like, Oh, I'm sure there's like tons of studies on your lithium-A and fatigue and naps and sleep. And, oh, because the majority of the literature on this supplement, like you guys have conducted, which is amazing. But the focus is, is more on, from what I reviewed, because I was going through all the different studies on there. It is, there's stuff about energy and fatigue, but it's more about like this mitophagy and this mitochondria and muscle support. So I'm really, really excited to talk all about that before we go into that. So I was actually your background, like, when did you first start taking Midopure and how did you meet the company and what has been your journey?
Speaker 3
Yeah, so I have been a career dietitian. I've spent, gosh, almost 30, 27 probably years in the wellness industry from working in various different spaces. And probably about 10 to 15 years ago, I got really interested in this integrative and functional world of nutrition, moving away from the standard calories in, calories out mentality that I was taught at school. And I was also going through my own health journey at that point as well.
That's where, as I said, I went and got my master's in integrative and functional medicine and nutrition and just really diving into the sort of food as medicine type of concept and getting really interested in supplements and just how we can step up everything that we're doing for our health. And I found Timeline, actually. I did have my own private practice at that time. And I balanced it where I was also working with brands and helping to create education for consumers or other health care practitioners or just really translate all the science that they're doing into messaging that an everyday consumer can understand. And I was working with Timeline. And as I was reading their studies, I was just blown away because like you had alluded to earlier, you don't see incredible research like this very often in a supplement company. There's so many supplements out there. We can talk a little bit about that later around how to help people just identify a good supplement to take. The research was just so incredible that A, a supplement company had this quality of research, but it was a molecule to your point, like I had never heard of either. And has what I believe is such an amazing potential to impact so many different things around not only how we feel today, but just how we age. So when the opportunity came to work with them full time, I was ready to roll up my sleeves and dive in and just really passionate about educating people on what your LIF&A or Mydopure can do.
Barry Conrad
Like I said last night, I was going through a lot of the different studies and I was just blown away, especially the, I don't know if it's like the keystone one, but it's one that's referenced a lot in the, like the literature that you put out there, more forward facing to the audience about the 12% increase in, in muscle strength, because I know they tested like power, strength, a lot of different things. And there was varying levels for the strength.
And this was in a human trial with, with like, with like a lot of people, like, like these studies, they actually, you know, it's not like they're testing like six people to backtrack a little bit. One of the things I found most alluring when I was reading the potential benefits of your lithium A, and this might appear supplement was, they found, they had found in a human study that it led to, like I just said, a 12% increase in muscle strength with no change in diet or lifestyle, like, just by taking the supplement, which is wild, because they say, you can't, you know, take a supplement to build muscle or take a supplement to like lose weight or anything like that.
And I'm not saying it made them lose weight. But so how is that actually happening?
Like, what is happening to make the muscle stronger?
Speaker 3
Let's backtrack a little bit and talk about how mitopure works, because that will really help understand how we're improving muscle strength, but also circle back to why you're feeling so much more energy, because that's really kind of the missing link on how it works. And actually, I'm going to take even a further step back, if that's okay, and just talk about where this molecule comes from in nature, like where someone might find it. It is a natural molecule, and you sort of said this in the introduction, that our gut actually makes it for us. So what that means is you're not going to find your eryllithin A directly in a food source. What is going to happen is that your gut microbiome is going to take certain elements in the food that we eat, that we don't digest ourselves, and it will metabolize those elements. And so fiber is an example, not so much for your eryllithin A, but fiber is an example of what we call a prebiotic, something that feeds and fuels our gut microbiome. So, in the case of your eryllithin A, it is these polyphenols that are found not in a lot of foods, so in foods like pomegranates, berries, and some nuts, and that's about it. So not foods that we are eating on a regular basis, or eating, I mean, we should be, but most of the U.S., unfortunately, is not eating those foods regularly, and not even in the quantities that they should be eating it. So our gut takes those microbes, our gut takes those polyphenols and converts it into your eryllithin A. So we then get that benefit.
I almost think of it as, it's called a postbiotic, and I think of it as like, we give our gut microbes room and board, right? They get to live and reside inside our gut, they then get to consume and metabolize things we can't, and then the way that they pay us for that room and board are these postbiotics, these things that help benefit the human, you know, help benefit humans. And so other examples of postbiotics are some B vitamins and vitamin K. So these aren't like weird, crazy things, they're things that our body has definitely been sort of evolved, and now unfortunately, de-evolved to have because most of us are not eating healthy diets and don't have a good healthy gut microbiome. And another thing that you had mentioned is most of us don't have the right gut microbiome to make this, which is really unfortunate with so many of us not having very healthy guts, not diverse, different quality of microbes in our gut, even if you are eating a lot of these foods and vegetables or these pomegranates and nuts, you're just probably not making any urolithin A to get a benefit at all. So this is one of those rare places where when I'm thinking as a nutritionist on where are the changes that we want to do in diet and lifestyle, like that always has to come first. But the point of a supplement is to fill gaps where diet is probably not enough. And I think this is one of those really clear places where it's going to be a real challenge for most people to get enough urolithin A from their diet alone.
Barry Conrad
Yeah, so actually I have some questions while just while we're talking about that like the here were the OG form of urolithin A that we would be getting from our gut bacteria, because I'm actually working on a project with another fellow podcast guest right now we might be co authoring a book and it's all on short-term fatty acid production from the gut microbiome, but it's so basically the focus of it is is talking about postbiotics and metabolites of the gut microbiome and how how they service signaling molecules to the body which makes sense like basically they're creating these these signals to the body the body then reads as the state that the body is in like is it in a state of homeostasis is it in a state of stress like what what is happening but I'm really curious because I was reading the study last night where they were comparing taking mito pure to drinking pomegranate juice and in the study well first of all they they went and qualified whether or not people were naturally producers of urolithin A and like we were saying not everybody is so they realized some people didn't produce it at all some some people didn't have like baseline didn't have any in their system some did some only like a few had higher amount and then when they gave them like pomegranate juice for example which is that precursor then some people still didn't create it some people made like a little bit and then you know some made a lot but when they compared it to mito pure mito pure led to like a much more higher level of urolithin A in the participants and presumably all the participants compared to you know the producers who had to produce it on their own from the pomegranate juice but what I'm curious about is they were saying that like the natural the people were producing it naturally the curve was that there was like you know a smaller amount after like I think like four or six hours and then after 24 hours there was more compared to taking mito pure there was actually a bolus right in the beginning and then it would go down after 24 hours but then but it was still way more in their system than compared to creating it normally from the pomegranate juice but so my question is do we know how much like physiologically with what it's doing urolithin A in our body do we know how much we actually need to experience the benefits because I know you're about to go into you know what it actually does with our mitochondria and stuff so like is more even better or is it just that if you get that signal at all that's what works and is it possible that you could have like too much like could you oversaturate your system
Speaker 3
So what we know, you know, so there hasn't really been like a defined sort of like threshold of like, this is how much your olefinae should be in your bloodstream at all times, right? Like if you went to your doctor and asked them to test your olefinae in your blood, I mean, they don't really necessarily have the tools to do that, but they wouldn't necessarily know either how much to be looking for.
But what we do know is that when you, you would have to drink six cups of pomegranate juice to get the same amount of your olefinae in your blood that that single bolus that you alluded to from taking a 500 milligram supplement would be. So in my opinion is a very inefficient and probably not healthy way to get enough your olefinae to have these strength benefits that we talked about. So the strength benefits happen at 500 milligrams. So anything less than that, I cannot say with any certainty that like, oh, if you only have like a little bit of your olefinae, you're still going to get strength benefits. I just couldn't say that because we don't know what that like a minimum threshold is to be doing any sort of benefit. But if you wanted to get the same sort of threshold of 500 milligrams, six cups of pomegranate juice a day, I would not recommend that to anybody.
Barry Conrad
Yeah. And, and to that point, because people might think we don't know what happens at lower amounts, but, and just like, for example, on the study, which I was referencing already where there's the 12% increase in muscle strength, a lot of the benefits they saw, cause they, they compared like 500 milligrams to 1000 and they tested so many different things, but a lot of the benefits seem to occur, I think at the 1000 mark.
So it does seem like you need more in the system to potentially get these benefits. Is that accurate?
Speaker 3
Yeah. So we have tested dosing at 250 milligrams, at 500 milligrams, 1,000 milligrams, and 2,000 milligrams. And so at 250 milligrams, we have not seen really like the same benefits that we see at 500 that changes were not statistically significant. So that never made it to market, right? That just didn't seem like you're going to get any benefit from that.
We see, again, these wonderful strength improvements at 500. And we see we haven't really dived into how it's working. We'll get to there. But it's working on the mitochondria. And so we see at 500 milligrams that it is working on the mitochondria. We see extended benefits at 1,000 milligrams. And then the benefits seem to plateau. So can you get too much? At 2,000, it is still safe. But it doesn't seem like there's any added benefit to going above 1,000 milligrams. So at a certain point, it just becomes like, why? You're just spending money on something. You're sort of saturated at that point. 1,000 milligram seems to be really a great place to stay.
Barry Conrad
What about, no pun intended, the timeline, what is the role of the amount of time it takes to start a single benefit?
Speaker 3
So it depends on what benefits that you're looking for and how much you're taking. So what we see at the one month mark. So our first clinical trial that we did actually was looking at not only sort of like how much urolithin A is in our system, those sort of 250, 500, 1000 and 2000 milligram dosing, but just also what is happening biologically in our body. And we did that with muscle biopsies. And what we see at the one month mark is there is a significant improvement both at 500 and 1000 milligrams in all of these markers of mitochondrial function, including this mitochondrial recycling process, which is so key for us, you know, to that's an ability that starts to decline as we get older, we can dive into what that really means. Inflammatory markers, lots of benefits started happening at that one month mark.
Now the strength study that you keep talking to that was four months, you're not going to see strength improve without exercise overnight. So it's not surprising that we saw those improvements happen after four months. And then from what our customers say, and just what people I know who are taking might appear, it can kind of be across the board, like that energy that you're feeling sometimes, that's maybe around six weeks. It's not going to be an overnight success. I think that's something that people have to really walk away from, especially I like to say in our like Amazon Prime world, we're expecting to feel something tomorrow. That's not this, this is not an energizer like caffeine, or even like a B12 injection that you're going to feel immediately, because it's happening on the cellular level, our mitochondria have to change, they have to be recycled, they have to start then putting out enough energy for you to really feel so, you know, six weeks at a bare minimum, but I think four months is a safe amount of time to really give it to start noticing what you're feeling.
Barry Conrad
It's interesting. I actually, because I asked listeners for questions about, for this, and, um, one listener actually shared her experience with her effects on her, on her muscle. It was from Teresa. She said, I've been taking it about a year and a half. I noticed more energy, less brain fog, but I'm never really sure which supplement or combo is providing the benefits since I take so many.
That's, I understand that I've heard might appear can help with muscle growth. I've been training hard for six plus months and have not seen visible changes to my muscles, but I am gaining strength. I have doubled the weights and all lifts from where I started, but my measurements or my definition has changed. And then she has actually a question, but commenting on that. So that actually aligns with the study a bit. Cause absolutely. Yeah. That's what the study found too. Right.
Speaker 3
Yeah, so our study was not really set up to measure muscle mass. I do believe that they looked at that, again, in four months without exercise. I wouldn't really expect muscle mass to change anyways.
So there are different components of muscle health, not just the size, but to Teresa's point, like how strong you are. And that's equally as important for our muscle health as we get older. So that is truly the metric that we see, is this improvement in muscle strength. So are you able to lift more? I believe that long-term, that is going to benefit, or is going to translate to more muscle mass. If you are doing DEXA scans every year, I would only have to imagine that if you're stronger and you can lift more, you're going to put on muscle mass. We just don't have the data to back that up yet. But it sounds like what Teresa's experiencing is this sort of improvement in energy. I hear very often, too, improvements in brain fog and memory, and that's not surprising because your brain is saturated with mitochondria, producing energy 24-7 for your brain to think and do all of the functions it needs to do. So that's not surprising at all, that that's been her experience.
Barry Conrad
her question leads into, I think, what we're going to talk about with the mitochondria. It does make sense to me, because I hadn't really thought about it before, but now that I think about it right now, it makes sense that if this supplement is helping our mitochondria function better, then strength would be the thing you would expect to improve.
Because it's not like it's actually giving you protein and calories and building muscle. If you're stronger, like you said, you're more likely to do that. So then I think you as a byproduct might grow in mass, but it's the function that it's really addressing, which would be the strength. So to that point, her question was she says, what sets mitopure apart from other supplements like NMN, glutathione, spermidine, aren't they all for cellular health? So what is it actually doing?
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's a fantastic question. Here's how I like to think about it. I mean, your cells have multiple components of them, right? We think about the lipid membrane that surrounds the cell. There's the organelles that are inside the cells. There are co-factors for energy metabolism. There's a lot of things that impact cellular health.
So I'm going to just click in a little bit further into specifically the mitochondria because that's the area that we're talking about. And to just level set, it sounds like your audience is pretty on top of all of this, but the mitochondria are sort of fondly known as the powerhouse of the cell. So our little cellular energy packs are little energy factories. Side note, they do so much more for our cells in our body than just produce energy. They are the first place where steroid hormones are metabolized. They play a role in cell communication. I mean, they do so many things. So besides energy, they're like the CEO of our cell almost. They just play such a critical role.
But like all factories out there, if we just think of it in simple terms as the energy factory for a moment, no matter how well you take care of your factory, meaning that we supplied all the co-factors that it needs, that factory is just going to break down with wear and tear. And what's really unique to Midopure is it works on the mitochondria in two different ways. It helps to break down and recycle those mitochondria. And that's a mechanism that's unique to your lithium-A. And then it helps to build new mitochondria, which is where something like an NAD precursor like NMN or NR, or if you're doing like an IVNID, that's where that's going to work. When we think about cellular energy and you want more of it, you could build more factories. You could make that factory work better. But at the end of the day, you're going to have a lot of broken down factories and you need to remove them because there's only so much real estate.
And those damaged mitochondria, those damaged factories actually send out further damaging signals. So you want to move them out and then build new ones. So that's where your lithium-A comes in. And I think there's potentially a great case where some of these other supplements for mitochondrial health or cellular health can be stacked on top of that. But to me, it makes sense, you got to clean out the junk drawer first. You've got to remove the damaged dysfunctional mitochondria and then build new ones and then make sure those mitochondria are protected and have all of the different things that they need to work properly. Does that kind of make sense?
Barry Conrad
Yes, and so we talk on this show all the time, like all the time about the word autophagy. So when you're talking about breaking down recycling these mitochondria, is that the word mitophagy and is that basically autophagy in the mitochondria?
Speaker 3
Exactly. So it's just a very targeted form of autophagy.
So autophagy is sort of a general term that's happening sort of cellular wide, and then mitophagy is just specific to the mitochondria. So it's just, you know, instead of demolishing the whole house to fix the kitchen, it's just fixing the kitchen.
Barry Conrad
Awesome. So listeners will be very familiar with Autophagy because the reason we talk about it on the Interments in Fasting podcast here all the time is because we talk about how it's stimulated by fasting.
So actually to that point, have they done any, well, when you're taking might appear or does it matter if you take it in the fasted or fed state and have they done any studies on like if fasting catalyzes anything?
Speaker 3
Yeah, so it does not matter whether you take it fasted or in a fed state, we've studied it in both ways. And we see great bioavailability both ways.
We have what we talk about products, we can we can dive into this too. But if somebody is fasting, certain products might be more appropriate for them than others so that they don't break the fast. So right like the soft gels, you would probably want to take our gummies would break the fast. But you can take it with or without food, you can take it also really any time of the day, you want to be somewhat consistent in how you're taking it because it has about a 24 hour half life, it peaks at about six to eight hours. So you want to try and take it around the same time every day. But you can take it at night, you can take it during the day. We don't have any studies right now that are specifically looking at like an extended benefit while you're fasting. I think that's just a really interesting thing to think through.
Barry Conrad
Awesome. Yeah. So the way I take it, I take the pill.
Speaker 3
Pills off gels, yeah, the two little red, two little red pills, yeah.
Barry Conrad
with my one meal a day dinner at night. You guys sent me the gummies as well. And it's funny cause I don't really just eat food. Like I don't really ever, I don't have like any sort of gummies and these are sugar free and they don't have any problematic ingredients in them or anything like that.
But I had them and I was like, oh my goodness, these are like candy. It was literally, cause I haven't had anything like that in like years. And I was like, oh, this is dangerous for me. I can't, I'm just going to eat the whole bottle right now. So.
Speaker 3
Yeah, I've been told we should go into the candy business. I've had people ask, is it bad to take eight of these a day?
They are really tasty. I personally use them. I do tend to have a little bit of a sweet tooth, so they are sometimes my little after dinner treat, just because I'm like, oh, I want something a little sweet.
Barry Conrad
You're wildly good. So if you're the type of person who can have like a healthy relationship with wildly good gummies and not eat the whole bottle at once, get the gummies.
But if you're like me, don't because, wait, but yeah, if you, cause I might have eaten more than like at one time a lot. What happens if you eat a lot at once?
Speaker 3
To be honest, if you ate the whole thing at once, I don't know that it would be super harmful. Although I will say that there is some pectin in the gummies, so you might have a little GI distress from eating all of that. But yeah, if you ate eight, there's no harm. There's just probably no benefit, and you've now consumed the most expensive candy that is probably known to man.
I think it's probably a little more dangerous for your wallet, but I definitely wouldn't get in the habit of eating more than four a day, for sure.
Barry Conrad
That's so funny. I know.
I was like, because I love them so much. I was like, how can I come up with a self control system here and actually only eat the dosage I'm supposed to, but I switched back to this.
Speaker 3
I keep mine in the bathroom so that they're not like where food is.
Barry Conrad
I'm super curious, did you working at Timeline, did they ever offer to test you guys to see if you naturally produce your Elithin A?
Speaker 3
Yeah. So we have been, it's part of a clinical trial and it's something that I'm really hoping we will commercialize one day.
Our scientific team are just incredible. I mean, they're just so smart, so creative. And so they've developed a, it's actually like a dried finger, you know, like you take a little finger stick and you put it on a little parchment, not parchment paper,
Barry Conrad
Is that the preclinical trial right now? Or is it like in, is it one of the current ones? It has the word blood spot in the title.
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. And so we have this little kit where what we do is we send you a little bottle of pomegranate juice and then we send you a single dose of urolithin A and you drink the pomegranate juice and you test your blood and then you wait a little bit to make sure everything's out of your system. And then you drink, you take the urolithin A, you test your blood and you send it back to the lab and we show you like, are you a producer? And how much if you are, is the difference between from the pomegranate juice and the urolithin A?
So I have been given the option to take it. I've tried to take it multiple times. I have personally have really bad blood flow to my fingers and I also have like a needle phobia. So I personally like have just not been able to like complete the test myself. Like I stick myself so many times and I'm like, I can't do this anymore. But most of our team has tried it and has, you know, been able to discover whether they're a producer or not.
Barry Conrad
It's funny like the amount just with what I do, like the amount of times I have to like stick myself for things. A lot of the companies are not a lot, but quite a few now are using the one that sticks to your shoulder.
Have you seen that?
Speaker 3
I've seen that, I haven't tried that, but I would be much more open to that than like, there's only so many times I can stick my finger and like not get enough blood out. And I'm like, I can't do this anymore.
Barry Conrad
Yeah, I hear you. That'll be so cool if they if they do create something like that though.
Speaker 3
Yeah. And truthfully, while it is cool information to know, I still suspect I'm not a producer or a very big producer because I was a C-section baby. I was bottle-fed and not breastfed. So I just really never started out with a very robust microbiome. And I don't drink six cups of pomegranate juice daily. So even if I was a producer, it doesn't matter.
I know I'm not having enough of the precursors to get to that 500 milligram threshold. So it's kind of cool information to know, but it doesn't help inform my decision making. It doesn't really change that.
Barry Conrad
Actually speaking to the producers, and because you mentioned berries, do you know if it's all berries? The reason I'm asking is I actually, I eat an exuberant amount of berries, like a shockingly high amount.
And then actually a listener, I wonder if she consumes as much as I do, Amy, she said, if someone already consumes an abnormally large amount of berries, is it still beneficial to take this supplement? And then she wanted to know if so what the benefits might be, which we've been talking about. But yeah, do you know what type of berries and yep.
Speaker 3
So it is in mostly like raspberries, blackberries, blueberries. I think there is some of the alleged tannins in strawberries as well.
It's really difficult to know how much, you know, so it's six cups of, like, I know we're moving to a different fruit, but it's six cups of pomegranate juice would be the equivalent of 500 milligrams. How many pomegranates do you have to eat to get to six cups of pomegranate juice, right? So I can't imagine, even if, like, all you ate were berries all day long, that you are getting enough, assuming you're a producer, that you are getting enough. Now, I mean, we could probably have some interesting conversations on, like, do you have to only take 250 milligrams or not? I mean, it's just so much we don't know, right? I think that's where things might get more interesting as we start maybe developing a task that consumers could take and see how much is in their blood, but we just don't know that yet.
Barry Conrad
That will be so cool if they do the test. And do you know the test?
Is it just looking at the, whether or not your latin A shows up in the bladder? Is that also looking at the, what is it? Like the Fermic, Fermic UTs to vectoroid DDS reshape.
Speaker 3
So it's not looking at, it's not a stool test. So it's not looking at all at what are the probiotics that are in, that are actually the converters. And to be fair, we actually aren't a hundred percent sure on what those microbes are. So I couldn't say to you, hey, take this probiotic with all the berries that you're eating and ensure that you're gonna make your alithinate. Like we're just not, we just don't know yet.
We do know that people who have a much more healthy robust microbiome, they tend to be producers. We know that Acromensia tends to be present, but so I couldn't even say like bypass the mitopure and just take a probiotic with, you know, your pomegranate juice because we just don't know which probiotic that would be. And I went on a tangent and I forgot what I was at, what I was answering you.
Barry Conrad
No, I love tangents. We're talking about the mountain berries and whether or not. Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah, so yeah, so I don't know. I don't think we know that.
Barry Conrad
A similar concept is why some people might see benefits from soy and others not, especially like Asian populations, because I think people, especially like Asian populations have a gut bacteria that tends to produce this compound called equal or something from soy. And you know, a lot of populations or people just don't have that gut bacteria. So that could be a reason that some people experience benefits from soy and not others.
Speaker 3
One of the interesting things that we've seen, so there's, you know, the published study that you had alluded to that has, you know, that really only about like 30 to 40 percent of the population can make your lithium-A, but we're doing, based on this, like, we call it our Midopure Challenge, the at-home finger stick, and just some other population studies that our Chief Medical Officer has looked at. And so it seems like European, like Mediterranean-style eaters tend to have, like, France tends to be one of the highest producers in terms of population level, whereas, like, the U.S. and Canada, no surprising, we're really low.
And even, so he, our Chief Medical Officer is Indian, so he has tested India, and they're also really low. His thought on that is mostly because they are very aggressive with antibiotic treatment, especially in young kids. So, yeah, I think just, like, the point you made with Asian populations, I think it's just sort of where you grow up, how you eat, what your gut is like as you grow up. Are you, you know, playing in the dirt? Are you in a really sterile environment? What kinds of foods are you eating? Were you breastfed? Were you bottle fed? All those important things are just establishing your gut microbiome from a young age.
Barry Conrad
I feel really, because I know we're talking about how there's all these different supplements out there and how do you know what's doing what, but I'm just really blown away by the research behind this and reading all of it. And especially with how so much of our guts today, our microbiome is not the best it could be because of, like you said, the way we're raised and like C-sections and pesticides and especially food here in the US.
So I feel like most people would stand to benefit. It'll be really exciting if they do release that test because then they could start getting a lot more data about how different levels of producers, natural producers, how it affects if they're taking it or not. For sure.
Speaker 3
sure. And then just, you know, again, that reminder is like, even if you are a natural producer, are you eating enough, you know, like, you have a very health conscious audience.
So they are eating a lot of berries and maybe nuts and all these great precursors. But when we look at like the US as a whole, we're not doing that.
Barry Conrad
So what are some of the other things that they studied? We've mentioned like the 12% strength and then blood spot tests, but what else do they look at?
Speaker 3
Yeah, so there was a study in an older population which looked at a different parameter of muscle health that was looking specifically at muscle endurance. And so this population, they were closer, I think like 65 to 90 or 95. This sort of like pre-frail, you know, just population where muscle decline is happening pretty quickly. And similar, like no exercise or diet was part of this study. And this was only with a thousand milligrams. It was the higher dose. But we saw there a 17% improvement in muscle endurance. Again, after two months, no change in exercise.
So there's a lot of really interesting, great data around the benefits of urolithinae and muscle. And it's no surprise when we think about the mitochondria being that key player on how urolithinae works and the muscles needing a steady supply of energy from the mitochondria to perform whether it's your daily activities or obviously some sort of physical activity, exercise, sports. But now we are really looking at trying to uncover where else there might be benefits outside of the muscle because the mitochondria, other than your red blood cells, they're in every cell in your body supplying critical energy and they're declining in all of your cells besides just your muscle cells, the quality declines with age. And there's been quite a lot of research and interest just in mitochondrial health in general for aging, whether it's brain aging, whether it's immune aging, whether it's skin aging, just pretty much any system of the body that you can think of, mitochondrial decline is likely to be contributing to the decline in that system. So we're trying to unlock, could mitopure help in some of these other areas? And we just published a study is getting quite a lot of press. I don't know if this one came across your radar, but it was just towards the end of last year. It was a study looking at immune aging. And this was also done with that a thousand milligrams to sort of the double dose. But the idea here was, we think about immune health, we're in the middle of cold and flu season. And I think most of us only really think about immune health when we catch a cold and flu and it becomes a sort of like seasonal, like I got to up my vitamin C and make sure that I don't get sick this season. But I mean, this was working obviously all the time. And it is also a key driver of aging. As we get older, we get sick more often and it's more severe. We don't respond to vaccines. If people are taking vaccines, you don't respond to them as well as you get older, but also more cases of cancer, more inflammation. A lot of stuff is being generated by an aging immune system. So the idea here was, are we seeing a benefit in an aging immune system? And we looked at healthy 50 year olds. And this was also just a one month trial and several different parameters of immune health were looked at from immune profiles, like immune cell profiles, like the types of immune cells that are in our blood.
Speaker 3
There's these early responding immune cells called naive T cells, naive CD8 T cells specifically. And they're sort of like the first responders for when you get sick. And as we get older, we don't have as much prevalence of those in our blood.
And what we saw was the significant improvement in those early responding T cells after one month of mitopure. We also looked at other things like mitophagy, mitochondrial function. How are these mitochondria working inside the cells? And we saw more that biogenesis, like I had talked about the creation of new mitochondria, we saw more of that in immune cells. And the immune cells were switching to more amino acid and free fatty acid oxidation. That's kind of like a cleaner energy source than glycolysis. Another really interesting piece that I find fascinating in this study is they, this was on outside the body. They took immune cells and they exposed them to E. coli and the immune cells were much better at responding to that E. coli stimulus and clearing those pathogens out of the bloodstream. So that is also a really interesting study that I think is just looking at a whole new area of aging that we hadn't really thought about yet.
Barry Conrad
Wow, this is so incredible. And I'm really excited because like I said, the book I've been working on, the chapter I was just working on was literally all about this immunosynescence and how the immune system ages.
Because we used to think aging was like injury, but it's not necessarily injury per se. It's a change in like a confusion in information and signaling. And it really, really seems like these different byproduct metabolites from the gut microbiome are having a huge, huge effect on that. So that's absolutely amazing that, yeah, that your lithium-A can do all this. Wow. The different populations that you mentioned being studied have been, have all been older. So how does age come into play? Like can kids take this? Should kids take this?
Speaker 3
Yeah. So we have not studied it in children. The youngest participants in our studies have been 18.
So some of our studies are in older adults. The strength study was in middle-aged adults. And one thing I also want to bring out is because I think this is just a hot topic for anyone in women's health is that women often feel like we are not represented in clinical studies. And all of our studies had actually more than half were female. So all of the claims that we're able to talk about are definitely happening in women and in men's. I think that's really incredible. There's also some really interesting research that your audience, especially if they're like an athletic audience, might be interested in. And there's a few studies in younger populations, specifically in athletes. And these actually were males. So that's the one area that women were unfortunately not represented. But we looked at endurance runners. There was a study done outside of our research institution, but it did use mitopure. And that looked at soccer players. And another study that looked at strength-trained athletes. And in all three of those populations, those were all pretty young. In like early 20s, we saw significant improvements in different parameters of health and performance there. So we saw in that soccer study improvements in how high these athletes could jump. We saw in one of the studies we saw that creatine kinase levels came down. So that's sort of a marker of muscle strain. And it's a marker of how well you're recovering after exercise. So there have been quite a few really interesting studies looking at younger populations and athletes as well.
Barry Conrad
Not the same marker at all, but I remember just the muscle study I was reading earlier, they also looked at how it, it wasn't like the main thing they were looking at, but they found that it reduced levels of CRP. So it was having like a beneficial effect on inflammation as well.
Speaker 3
And we've seen that across the board. So we looked at certain inflammatory markers in that immune study because influmaging is closely tied to immune decline.
Almost every single one of our studies, we also looked at C-reactive protein and that comes down across the board.
Barry Conrad
So what about the skincare aspect, the topical application?
Speaker 3
Yeah. So that's another area where we have clinical data as well is, you know, the urolithin A when you apply it topically is triggering this mitochondrial recycling in the skin cells and basically making the skin cell act in a more youthful way. So the main things that we see, what that sort of means is twofold. So the number one thing, which I think is really the most fascinating and kind of unique is that our skin is more resilient to the damaging effects of the sun. So we expose skin to UV light applied either a placebo or the urolithin A cream and all this like erythema and inflammation and swelling that happens after exposed to UV light resolved much more quickly with the urolithin A. And because sun damage is like the number one driver of skin aging, I think that's so unique.
And, you know, the retinols and alpha hydroxy acids and so many of the things that we use to help slow down skin aging, you have to be really, really careful in the sun when you use them. And I'm not suggesting that like you shouldn't be careful in the sun anyways with urolithin A, but there isn't that sort of increased sun sensitivity that's going to happen. And in fact, there might be a little bit of a protective or even reversal of some of the damage that's happening. And then what we also see is all the genes that are signaling collagen organization and collagen assembly, those are all upregulated and that actually translates into reductions in fine lines and wrinkles. So it's a really powerful topical. We have a whole beautiful line there from cleansers to exfoliators to different creams and eye cream serums all across the board have 1% urolithin A and we're seeing these really beautiful improvements in skin, you know, hydration and moisturization and specifically though that like wrinkle depth and volume is happening from the urolithin A, which is really nice.
Barry Conrad
Amazing. What's your favorite product?
Speaker 3
So my favorite product is our Dewy cream. For me, it gives this just, it's like aptly named like it gives this really beautiful Dewy glow that I just like, I don't wear a lot of makeup. I just put on like a tinted sunscreen. And so this just makes my skin look really beautiful and Dewy.
The best seller is either our barrier cream or our serum. I think those two tend to be fan favorites, especially in the winter. The barrier cream is thicker. It's what you might think of as more of like a traditional night cream, that type of consistency, but you can certainly use it. Like we moved away from calling something a day cream or a night cream because there's really no reason why you couldn't use one at any time of the day. It's just really about what types of consistencies you like on your skin. I think best sellers are the serum and the night cream. Oh, and the eye cream is also really an incredible product, but my personal favorite is the Dewy cream.
Barry Conrad
So if they had sent me it when it was the day cream, is that the Dewey cream?
Speaker 3
That's the Dewy Cream. Yep. Yeah. So we just went through a rebrand just exactly. Yeah. So you might have some of our old packaging. So the Dewy Cream was the Day Cream and the Night Cream we're calling our Barrier Cream because it's really beautiful for just helping support the skin barrier.
Barry Conrad
amazing. Oh my goodness. So well, I bet listeners are super eager to, to get these products and get might appear. So you guys are so, so kind listeners can get up to 39% off, which is huge when you subscribe at timeline.com slash IF podcast. So again, go to timeline.com slash IF podcast and subscribe and you'll get up to 39% off. Do you know what the subscription if they can be canceled at any time or do you know how they work?
Speaker 3
They can't be canceled at any time.
Barry Conrad
Yeah. Okay. So that's a no-brainer. Do it.
And if you don't enjoy it, which I literally, it has become it's because like I said at the very beginning, there's a lot of supplements out there. I try a lot of things. I'm very, very intentional about the supplements that I keep in and like continue using daily and indefinitely. And this is one of them. Like it's a complete non-negotiable for me. It was already non-negotiable just from the effects I was experiencing. And that was before I even went and read all the clinical literature and you know, and talking with you and all these things. So I really believe almost everybody can really stand to benefit from this. It's absolutely, absolutely incredible. So and you said you take that you use the gummies.
Speaker 3
Yes, I sort of switch depending on whether I'm traveling or not. So if I'm traveling, I'll take the soft gels with me because they just travel a little bit better.
But I actually take all the products. We also have a really delicious berry powder that I mix into Greek yogurt. It doesn't have sugar or even an artificial sweetener.
Barry Conrad
Oh, I haven't tried that.
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's very tart, but since you're such a berry eater, you might really enjoy it. So it makes my plain Greek yogurt have a really nice berry flavor.
So I mix and match all of them depending on what I'm doing for the day. But my staple is usually the gummy or the soft gels if I'm traveling.
Barry Conrad
Awesome, awesome. What are you most excited about with the future of all of this?
Speaker 3
Oh gosh, we are starting to look at some new benefits potentially. Like we're looking at brain. We are, there is a clinical trial that I believe is going to be looking at like glucose metabolism. So there's just so much to learn and understand. And I think we've just barely scratched the surface.
You know, the research on mitochondrial health and longevity is just getting stronger and stronger every day. And then where your LIFIN-A fits into that, we're just barely scratched the surface. I'm really excited about that. And just more people, you know, it's really only been around for about five years, although the studies have been much longer. There wasn't a consumer product. So that's why I think while it's been studied for about 15 years, people haven't heard about it before. So I'm just really excited for people to start hearing about it and incorporating it in their life. And I wouldn't be here if I didn't think this was something that is really just such a foundational piece. Like I personally think of mito pure as I think of as like a fish oil or a vitamin D supplement. Just like what's in your foundational stack, not what's the like optimization stack. Like what's just, what's in your foundation. And that's really, really what I believe is that this should be in that foundational stack.
Barry Conrad
I cannot agree enough, and yeah, I'm so, so grateful. It's just funny because now I am remembering. I said at the beginning that I didn't remember how we connected, but it came to me. All this talking about it brought it out of the memories.
I remember when I first saw the pitch, and I was like, ah, this is just another supplement. I'm suspicious, and I have just done a complete 180. And like you said, I agree that it's a foundational source of something to optimize our bodies. So thank you so much. So again, listeners, go to timeline.com slash if podcast, or you can get up to 39% discount when you subscribe. You can cancel at any time. So definitely snag that discount. Yeah, anything else we do like to share, Jen, before we go?
Speaker 3
No, I think we covered it all. But your listeners can find out more at timeline.com or Instagram, which is timeline longevity. We love hearing from our customers. So whether you drop us a note on Instagram, or shoot us an email at care at timeline, we really... One thing I will say about the company is we love hearing from our customers. Our customers are always in our forefront of what... That's why we do what we do. So drop us an
Barry Conrad
I love it so much and I will say because we were talking before we started recording so I've met different people from timeline at booths at like Unimonia conference and Dave's conference and you guys have like the highest vibe and it is so clear how like personally passionate and obsessed you know you are like you walk walk the walk talk the talk whatever the phrase is it's very very evident so I'm just so grateful for what you're doing thank you for your time today this has been so great and I'm really excited for all the things in the future so thank you so much Jennifer.
Speaker 3
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Barry Conrad
Have a good rest of your day.
Melanie Avalon
Thank you Thank you so much for listening to the intermittent fasting podcast Please remember everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient doctor Relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes We couldn't do this without our amazing team editing by podcast doctors show notes and artwork By Brianna Joyner and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.
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