Mitochondria Expert Reveals: The One Thing That Actually Kills Cancer | Dr Anurag opens a useful window into immunometabolism and cellular housekeeping. The conversation is not a shortcut or a spectacle. It is a reminder that healthspan is built through signals the body can understand and repeat.
Wherever they're spraying parakquotic, that's where Parkinson is the highest. Guess what parakot does? What? It's a mitochondrial toxin. It kills mitochondria. It damages [music] them beyond recovery. It's probably making spray in our food through all this, you know, the fertilizers or whatever they're spraying. And when mitochondria get damaged, [music] these mitochondria stop talking to each other. The grid just collapses. And do you think that this may be the reason why we're having a large population of people who are having fertility [music] issues at a young age? For sure. We can fix all these conditions that we talked about. Dr. Anorag Singh is an MDP PhD immunologist who spent 20 [music] years studying mitochondria and screened 4, 000 compounds to discover [music] one single molecule. And what he found changed everything. Cancer cells are always there. It's only when they see these tea cells go low energy deficit. [music] That's when the cancer really starts overtaking the whole system. If you rejuvenate the mitochondria, you get immune system in check and that allows you to defeat cancer. What's your take on creatine? [music] If you're taking creatine, the sweet spot is between 500 mg to a gram. Creatine hits muscle mass and that will give you the best muscle quality. Is that the same with it is better and it has no [music] smell. When we add one molecule in the mix, you get an even augmented effect. So, I'm Louise Nicola and this is the neuro experience. Anorag, welcome to the show. I want to first start by understanding why you do what you do. You're an MD PhD, so you've got both clinical expertise, but also the research side and you're an immunologist. Why do you do what you do? Well, thanks for having me on the show first, Louisa. It's an absolute pleasure. U so well, my journey started as a medical doctor and I was um seeing a lot of kids with food allergies actually. That's where my training was and I ran into an amazing mentor uh professor from Stanford who is also MD PhD and he told me hagg you like to ask the questions about not how to treat the
the questions about not how to treat the symptoms but actually get into the root cause of disease and so that's my how my journey started about 25 years back I got more interested in doing medical research and then I was convinced to do a PhD in iminology because just because I felt all my medical training hadn't led me to the path where I could fix the problem. I could fix the problems happening in symptomatology that a lot of chronic conditions show up with. Um, and most of the root causes of all these chronic conditions somehow led me to mitochondria and studying mitochondria and that's the journey for 20 years. Uh, ended up doing a PhD imology studying the role of mitochondria and immune different immune cells. Um and then one thing led to another got hired into into a big company in Switzerland moved there and somehow all roads led back to uh mitochondria again and uh studying how mitochondria affects uh aging process and so that's uh you know I don't I I don't see patients today but I I'm very close to seeing the research I do impact many lives. So mitochondria first of all, we'll unpack that, but I I want to just go into immunology just a bit just because I, you know, believe it or not, it's an area that really bugs me and for some reason I feel like I know nothing about it. Like I I want to understand why 80% of all autoimmune diseases occur in [clears throat] women. Oh yeah. I want to understand that you know uh in the neurology clinic we see a lot of patients coming in with MS for example and a lot of these deminating diseases and we can call them autoimmune but when I'm having to actually break it down like when patients say why is this happening like is this a genetic risk factor is there like is this no one in my family had MS it baffles me when I say it just happens well I do know a lot because I did have a close family member who got uh MS and and struggled with it So I do know that disease and the professor who trained me
disease and the professor who trained me had discovered anti-TNF which is probably one of the few options we have today to treat a lot of these autoimmune conditions. So let's unpack I I totally believe that immune health and metabolism is very intricately linked. This is a field that we're calling imunomabolism. It's emerging. But I do think it all starts with the the energy deficit in the immune cells. And so what I mean by that is like so in our body the two main kind of immune cells we have is one it's called we call imunologists are not very creative they they give like letters. So we have T - cells and we have B cells. Okay T - cells because they're educated in the thymus is a small organ that kind of peaks in young teenagehood and then involutes and you're left with these immune cells that are like the elite forces. They watch out for infections viruses etc. As we age, they get fatigued and their mitochondria become poor in poor health. And so, so there's mitochondria in these tea cells. Oh, lots of them. Okay. Just like the mitochondria in all of our cells. You got it. There mitochondria in every cell except red blood cells. And they originate in the thymus gland and they're programmed to when your body feels like it's under attack from a virus, they're programmed to go out there and what? Engulf the virus and kill it. Yeah. And same for cancer. They also they're these sentinels. So they're always watching out where the big threat to us as a host is going to come from the outside. And cancer cells are all always there. It's only when they see these tea cells go a little low exhaustion sort of low energy deficit that's when the cancer really starts kind of the overtaking the whole system. It's these tea cells that control all these even cancer cells. So it's not just infections, it's the uh cancer cells and to a certain extent uh autoimmunity can also be based and linked to immunomabolism too. Let's hone in on MS right and let's understand how what the relationship is then between MS and these immune cells and the
MS and these immune cells and the mitochondria then right so there are different kind of tea cells they come in different types there is uh what we call uh cytotoxic tea cells let's call them the elite forces they know who to go after whether it's the virus cancer or whatever they keep us healthy then to control them so they don't go overboard and do their up too eagerly. There are these for every 10 of these cytotoxic tea cells, there's one tea cell that is called T - regulatory cell. Uh that actually won the Nobel Prize this year, the discovery of T - regulatory cells. They keep all the other immune cells in check and when they go bad, that's when these the control process of immune regulation goes bad and that's what autoimmunity happens. So autoimmunity is actually a problem of these regulatory tea cells. Oh, so the the T-regs are like the CEO. You Yeah, [laughter] they are. They are in terms of the immune system. Yes. And correct me if I'm wrong. What's happening in the micro ga then? So microglea are like u immune cells in the brain. Yeah. They are a bit different than T - cells and B cells and they're more closer something what we call macrofages and dendritic cells. So what happens is these are the three key players in the immune system. The microphagin or microg ga or dendritic cells they are in all our peripheral organs there in the skin in the gut in the brain is microg ga they always sampling stuff is this foreign is this infectious is this uh an amyoid deposit in the brain or is it just and then they keep showing that to the te - cells it's almost like a continuous cross talk oh they're communicating right and I don't know if you've seen videos where once they see a cancer uh cell they engulf They break it down. They take the pieces and show it to a T - cell and that T - cell will recognize this that as cancer particle or what we call antigen and then it will go proliferate and then go and kill the the cancer cell.
and kill the the cancer cell. So that's programmed. So this is the programming of what we call I call it the immune relay. So you have these micro gleadendritic cells they with tentacles they're always sampling stuff. Then they find something that is foreign or dangerous. We can call it the danger signal in imunology. They then tell the te - cells. The tea cells then go after these. But to keep all this in check, you have this one CEO that you called the T - regulatory cell. And you could say then if we broke it down really simply that a lot of these autoimmune diseases occurs when the T - cell becomes dysfunctional. the T-reg cell the T-reg cells and to a certain extent also the whole immune system is shortcircuited that's the problem but how do we pick up on this because it's not like you go and get a you know your white cell count on a blood workup is not going to come up any different right so that's the problem today with uh modern medicine you know the doctors uh will just do a total blood cell count or white blood cell count maximum they'll look at lymphosy levels uh but they won't go and say what in this lymphosy population is is different. Uh that's the problem. Autoimmunity is caught because there's a third guy called B cell uh that makes antibodies. So that's like the last tier of this relay. And so when you detect these auto antibodies and autoimmunity is basically the immune cell recognizing yourself as foreign and that's what happens. you know, myelin sheath becomes foreign and things like this and that's yeah that's with the myelin sheath it starts getting attacked and what we pick up on in the lab or in the clinic is if we do a nerve conduction study you conduction block or slowing of conduction speed that's so fascinating because it's you know we get so many questions about what causes cancer and it's like well if I knew the answer to that it's but you're saying that there's a relationship now between our immune system and obviously cancer as well. Absolutely. And our metabolic health
Absolutely. And our metabolic health which is the third element which lot of scientists and doctors have they're just scraping the surface of this that there's actually a big role mitochondria have. If you rejuvenate the mitochondria you get your immune cell immune system in check. You also can get your CEO coordinated to monitor all this happening and that allows you to defeat cancer. That was huge. So, let me break it down. Are you saying, okay, so we came up with the T-Rex saw who's the CEO of the other immune cells, but you're saying maybe the CEO has a president that he has to talk to, and that's the mitochondria, the chairman. Yeah. Instead of me asking you, well, how do we improve our immune system, which I guess has so many layers, let's talk about the mitochondria, then. Yeah. I could go on and on. uh other than in our med school or even in in high school biology all they tell you is it's the powerhouse of the cell ATP production ATP energy currency and that's all everybody takes but mitochondria are essentially I believe one of they talk in my field of aging research the hallmarks of aging and then there's 12 of them and they're somehow cross-length I think mitochondria are the mother of all these hallmarks and when they link to all these processes you can link epigenetic dysregulation poor nutrient sensing. Uh we're looking at neurodeenerative diseases, neurodeeneration, protein misfolding. All this somehow links to bad mitochondrial health. One of the best ways to improve brain energy metabolism is to make sure that you have adequate ketones circulating in your body. This is why I ingest ketone IQ. I'm obsessed with ketones. They're one of the brain's most efficient energy sources, especially as we age and glucose handling changes. I use it for deep work or for long days when I want to focus without caffeine or crashes. But I also use it just in my dayto-day to make sure that I am neurologically
to make sure that I am neurologically adequately fueled. If you haven't tried ketones, you must. These ones taste great. And you can get 30% off your subscription at ketone. com / neuroplus. Get a free gift with your second shipment. One of the simplest longevity upgrades is reducing daily toxin exposure. That's why I switched to Carowway because their ceramic cookware is non-toxic because it has no PAS, no forever chemicals and I use it every single day. It's one of those quiet changes that adds up over time. So, if you haven't really looked into the science of your cookware and how you're cooking your food, you need to check out Caraway. Head to caraway. com / neuro to get 20% off anything on their website carowway. com / neuro 20% off. This is the best cookware on the market. And so what mitochondria are are these key cellular organels that evolutionary were ancient bacteria. they integrated with with us in ourselves to sort of in a symbiotic relationship over the evolution to sort of get the energy from us but then give us the ATP as you know sort of the powerhouse of the cell. So that's what mitochondria are. They are critical. Even when we are thinking getting up from a chair or thinking about you know how to write that email, it's your mitochondria that is absolutely key. Yeah. I mean look just getting up off a chair requires a V2 max of around 20 milliliters. Um so the mitochondria, yes, they produce energy and I believe that per cell there's what thousands are there about 5, 000 mitochondria per cell? 10, 000 depends on how metabolic the cell is. So our neurons will have 20 30, 000. Our skeletal muscles will have 10 20, 000. Then you get to like the immune cell which will have 100 to a thousand. So it really depends on how metabolic the the
really depends on how metabolic the the cell type is. Your cardiac cell will also have lots of them. Yeah. And they're responsible for every time we eat something and it breaks it down. The problem that we're having which what we see in chronic disease is these cells not only are becoming dysfunctional but they're also dying. I the mitochondria is dying. Is that correct? They're damaged. So in our bodies we if you look at a mitochondrial life cycle it's almost like the real estate of a neighborhood that if you live in you always have good buildings and bad buildings. So in our bodies or in our cells, you always have good healthy mitochondria and then you have the damaged ones and it's like a cycle. The damaged ones get recycled as building blocks for the new healthier ones. What happens with aging or with neuro degeneration for example with Parkinson disease is these damaged mitochondria just cannot be recycled very efficiently. And so you get this sort of 50 / 50 ratio you get shift to 20 LD and 80 bad damaged mitochondria. And that's why you need to get these damaged mitochondria out from your cells. And how does our mitochondria become damaged? So many ways. Uh diet, probably sugar, excess sugar intake. They just can't keep at it. They need time to renew and regenerate. So why is that? Is that because the glucose goes into the cell and the mitochondria just can't take glucose? Yeah. I mean they they like to burn fat you know they they prefer fatty acid oxidation but they they will also do the glucose burnout and then that's their preferences to use fuel is mostly fat utilization uh excessive glucose kind of impairs them they they just excessive glucose so they are of course there to metabolize glucose in our muscle cells if you look there's thousands of mitochondria and they have these glucose uptake receptors and and
these glucose uptake receptors and and that's what they do. They they kind of metabolize glucose, but it's really the excessive sugar intake and the glucose that we have. Uh second is the sedentary activity. It's what we call now the bioenergetic hypothesis. We we need to use the energy our body is producing otherwise it kind of just goes away and these mitochondria feel useless and they degenerate. they become zombie like and we see that I've done studies with 75 year olds who run marathons versus 75 year olds who are very sedentary and the top 30 genes if you do biopsies are all linked to mitochondria. So it's fascinating damaged mitochondria just overtake the good ones. That's yeah it's I mean there's so much to talk about obviously. Okay, so sedentary behavior and that means that exercise obviously can induce mitochondrial biogenesis and not just that it can also help dysfunctional mitochondria become functional again. You got it. So there's many studies and we are not the only ones who showed that that exercise is probably the best mitochondrial medicine out there. So if you get older people to just move, come to a spinning class or do gardening more over 6 months. If you take their uh look at their V2, it'll get better. If you take a look at their biopsies for mitochondrial expression, we have a marker called PGC1 alpha, which tells us if there's more healthier mitochondria coming, you'll see more PGC1 alpha in the muscle. So just moving helps. That's the biggest uh stimulator of mitochondria. Are you a fan of the low inensity zone 2 training? I am and actually do that uh as well. I think any exercise is good for them. So there's obviously different zones in the cardio and the aerobic but strength training also is important. So because of the myioine uh interaction there. Yeah, that that's my wheelhouse. We had um I I speak with Indigo San Milan which I'm probably sure you you've heard about and he's amazing you know linking the effects of lactate
you know linking the effects of lactate with cancer and I love this phenomenon right you know we everybody's knows now about mitochondria we hear about it so often it's become very it's having its moment it's become very mainstream now we have heard through the grapevine on Instagram that uh you know doing zone 2 is a better mover for mito mitochondrial biogenesis and that is primarily because you're producing the energy within the cell or producing the energy within the mitochondria itself. I'm fascinated with producing energy outside of that which the byproduct of that is then lactate. That's an interesting concept. This is something we haven't really looked into into our research but what is happening inside the cell is just not biogenesis. uh you can improve the efficiency of your existing pool of mitochondria. And then my research for the last 15 years is that you can actually turbocharge this mphagy process which we can talk about is just self-rejuvenating of the bad damaged mitochondria into good ones. So let's talk about that mphagy. So mphagy is fascinating. Uh it is essentially autophagy targeted to mitochondria. So autophagy uh at a cellular level means auto and fago right. So self renewal of the damaged cells these uh uh and similarly damaged mitochondria as they accumulate free radicals and get stressed they get damaged they put an eat me signal out. This is something called a protein called parkin. So if you actually look at uh older adults with Parkinson disease, you'll see Eberin mphagy because there are mitochondria after mitochondria that are getting damaged putting out this signal that there's a mutation in in the parkin uh protein or in the gene that regulates it and that what links it to mphy. So now in people with Parkinson disease they can't clear the damaged mitochondria because the
the damaged mitochondria because the signal is improper. So in aging it's a similar process but we have found that you can actually exercise is a great is a mphagy inducer but we've actually looked at thousands of natural compounds that can do that and we've discovered one that is a very very potent mphagy activator. So essentially taking the damaged guys out and making them building blocks of helier and inducing biogenesis. And is that uriththna? That is uritina found in pomegranates. Uh sourced from pomegranates. [laughter] Uh not found in pomegranates. Not found sourced. Oh. So when we eat freshly pressed pomegranate juice or a bowl of raspberries or peacans and walnuts, we are taking the precursors of urolithin which are polyphenolic compounds. Okay. So these are what we call eligotitanins. These are very complex phenolic molecules that uh is it part of the polyphenol family. You got it. Yeah. So these are polyphenols. So when you're taking a glass of juice, you're taking a high dose of polyphenols which are eligitanins. Now when you digest them, your gut microbiome will will see them and try to digest them. And the gut microbiome will then generate simpler postbiotic molecules out of these complex polyphenols. And one of them is uriththna. But here's the interesting part. Not all of us have the right gut microbiome. So a lot of us don't make uriththane naturally. Uhhuh. How do we know if we do? [laughter] Well, I mean, we'd have to be eating the polyphenols to begin with. So, yeah. So, there are two big factors as you said. One is you need to have the right diet. Correct. Yes. I've gone to the US, I've gone to Italy, I've gone to Australia, I've gone to India where I come from. And the prevalence of people naturally making is very different. very low. Okay. Well, in France and Italy where people are eating fresh food and more fermented food, it's higher. It's like 30 40%. In
food, it's higher. It's like 30 40%. In the US, it's 10%. In my country of birth, which is India, because of the high antibiotic usage early on in life, it's almost like 2 to 5%. Why is that? Because they just shoot your healthy gut microbiome early in life by giving you antibiotics for everything under the sun. So if you get common cold, a doctor trained in India will give you antibiotics and that will take away not only the bad guys but the good guys too. I think of skin the same way I think of my brain. It's a barrier system that weakens with stress and inflammation. That's why protecting it is so important. And I use Jones Road Beauty. Their moisturizer and face wash are simple, clean, and focused on supporting the skin barrier instead of stripping it. It's skin care that actually feels calming. If you want to try this and you want clean products that go into your system, go to jonesroadbeauty. com and use code neuro for a free cool gloss with your first purchase. Okay. So many of us uh don't have the correct microbiome to actually even make uraliththn to begin with from the diet. So then what exactly is uriththnan a doing when we actually ingest it? If we take it in pill form for example in a supplement form what is it actually doing to our mitochondria? So it when you take it in pill form it'll peak about 6 to 8 hours in blood. Yeah. It will go to the target organs. Let's say muscle in the case we spend most of the time looking at muscle. It will the mechanism of action is it will find a target that is on these damaged mitochondria initiate that target and then initiate the process of mphagy. So within a week, 2 weeks, we see all the damaged mitochondria starting to go out and more PGC1 alpha, which suggests to us that there's sort of a renewal happening at at a not just a cellular level, but at a tissue level. And then
level, but at a tissue level. And then about a month, two months later, we'll see more physiological effects. How can you know if it's coming from a specific organ itself? So when you measure PGC1 alpha, for example, is that the only way of measuring mitochondrial? No, there's different ways. So the ways uh we have used one obviously is looking at total mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria have their own DNA that comes from our maternal side. So it's very which is different from our regular DNA. So you can actually have probes that quantify how much mitochondrial DNA you have. That's one. Second, yes, you can look at proteins and genes linked to mitochondrial renewal like parkin protein I was talking about. You can look at PGC and alpha. But the best way we have seen is you actually take older adults or healthy adults, you put them in an MRI machine and you make them exercise in a MRI machine and you look at the ATP uh levels dur as you as they exercise you deplete the ATP levels and then you stop exercising and how fast the ATP comes back is away how good your mitochondria are. So that's what we have done in our trials. And what's that rate? what should it be? So between uh let's say you're looking at the generation of one ATP molecule and you need this pathway called the phosphocreatine pathway because that's you know kind of the pathway you need to make ATP and so let's say one one molecule of ATP if an healthy adult or older adult make it you'll find it about 60% depleted or 70% depleted in in the older adults who are very sedentary so we are looking for about a 10 to 20% increase in mitochondrial renewal, you're looking for 10 to 20% improvement in ATP production. So [snorts] that's where we are kind of using as a sort of gold standard. But in clinical world, doctors are so far away from doing that cuz not everybody has an MRI setup to put people in maybe I've never actually seen that and now I
I've never actually seen that and now I want to can I come to Switzerland and actually look at this? This is we did these trials in University of Washington actually where a professor uh one of the leading prof it's something called MRS magnetic resonance spectroscopy. So it's like MRI but you're actually looking at specific metabolites and you can look at NAD you can look at phosphor creatine you can look at ATP. [clears throat] Who's the lead on that? Uh now there are at least six or seven labs around the world that are doing it. Yeah. Uh it comes from this lab of professor Connley who's unfortunately passed away recently but he's set up these uh seven Tesla magnets around different top centers around the world and and that's how they measure human performance and mitochondrial performance and athletes and old adults even I wonder how this would play in Alzheimer's disease. So for example uh you know what we see as well with this you know in women specifically we've quantified this with PET imaging uh women you know have a 20 to 30% reduction in brain glucose metabolism generally due to the loss of estrogen receptors in the brain. I wonder how this uroliththnan a compound would have an effect on helping that process of uh [snorts] glucose regulation into and out of the neuron in the brain to enhance brain metabolism. So as an evidence-based person, we don't have the actual clinical data today on on UA and cognitive function. What we have is almost like hundred publications from different labs on pre-clinical models of different neuro human yeah these are models of human uh neuro degeneration and so what they have seen is that in Alzheimer's patients or Parkinson patients mphagy turns out to be the most impacted biological process second is neuroinflammation these micro gaia or are inflamed like anything that you were talking about and they have
you were talking about and they have screened about 4, 000 and repurpose compounds, natural products to see which can have an effect and across this is not coming from us. This is coming from Harvard lab, Buck Institute and another group at National Institute of Aging where they independently found that urolithna was the the top compound that had an effect on sort of reversing this mphy defect. So there are trials now there are three trials we're running in partnership somewhere one is happening at the national institute of aging uh with people who are diabetic uh and they're looking at their mitochondrial function in their muscle their brain and in their immune cells because you can actually measure all these three organs and look at their mitochondrial health and the goal is if you can fix these three organs you probably can impact a lot of their functionality. So that's one trial. The second trial is funded through a collaborator from the Alzheimer's Association and they're looking at mild cognitive impairment uh which is early dementia kind of and looking at how uralithna will have impacts on neuroinflammatory markers impact on phosphotal impact on betaide etc. The trial we are doing and we hope to kick it off is we are looking at two different populations. One is the aging people, people like me who are kind of in that trajectory in 101 15 years uh where we want to see if uralithna crosses the bloodb brain barrier. So we're doing spinal taps and then we are doing the imaging modalities like you said PET scans and MRS. A group we are working with is fascinating. They're actually looking at um REM sleep disorders in 40 50 year olds and they have found that all these people in 20 years turn into neurodeenerative. Well, actually, if you're talking also about REM behavior disorder, um the where you wake up and strangle your bed partner, um that can predict Parkinson's disease 20 years before it's meant. Yeah. So, they're actually looking
Yeah. So, they're actually looking at these folks who are in their early 50s, recently diagnosed with this REM behavior disorder. They know that mitochondria are shot in there because they know their problems with these test modalities. they do sort of uh FDG PED and they know their problems in glucose uptake and so they're trying to see if uralithna can fix that early on and well of course 20 year trials will be long but the goal is to in aging I believe you need to intervene early in the 40s and 50s and then you can take the benefit so this is the kind of research we're doing if it didn't cross the bloodb brain barrier would that mean you'd have to involved some form of phospholipid uh either that and we do see effects uh systemically on a lot of these markers that like ceramides or asylcarnitins that cross and they are damaging to the cells or what we think possibly could happen is this sort of the gutb brain axis where you condition a lot of these immune cells or other factors systemically and then you can impact uh the behavior of a lot of these cells that are resident in the brain. So if I took a helicopter view for everybody now and just say this and correct me if I'm wrong. If we have better performing mitochondria and if we have more mitochondria per cell we have a better ability to fight off autoimmune diseases. Yeah. Cancer, neurodeeneration, mood disorders. I think the list is endless. I think the list must be endless. Yeah, the list is really endless. But those four would be the top four for me too. What's your take on I have to ask this cuz I'm obsessed uh with creatine. I love creatine. So, we are such a focused company in postbiotics and mining the gut microbiome. As we evolve, we obviously looking for molecules that have synergies and one of the molecules that we find a lot of synergy with is creatine because creatine hits sort of this muscle mass and boosting. You know if you take muscle cells in the lab and we've done that and you put steroids in them they get damaged
they get damaged right you can put creatine and you can see the myot tubes or myoblasts as we call them back to their proper shape. When we add uralytina in the mix you get an even augmented effect. So going forward I think the trials we want to do is the combination strategy where you can take your urla you can take creatine at the required dose and you can hit just not the mass muscle mass but the energetics and that will give you the best muscle quality. That's kind of where we are. Yeah. And right now what we're seeing is that you know a large body of data has shown that even if you take five grams a day it saturates the muscle. But now there's like pre-clinical data on Alzheimer's disease patients, although it's a pilot study on a very small showing that if you take 20 g of creatine a day, one shot even, yeah, just one, it can raise brain creatine levels. But the problem is when it does that, what does that do in terms of cognitive performance? Now um I'm a huge believer of cognitive reserve because you know end of life if we can get two people they've you know one has a headful of amalloid and doesn't get Alzheimer's disease right which is insane and then you've got another person with you know mild cognitive impairment possibly dementia or cause dementia and they don't have as much amaloid as this person like why did this occur and I always bring it down to the fact that it's cognitive reserve so being able to maintain your cognitive reserve throughout your life is inherently the most important thing. So if we can do what does it take to do that? Well, we need a lot of energy. Absolutely. And I always talk about the dendrites when they connect with one another and we we every time we see something new, every time we have a new thought, we create a new connection. But in order to preserve that connection, the brain needs so much energy. Yeah. It's just like having, you know, muscle energy. So how do we do that? Well, we need better functioning mitochondria. And it's so amazing what you said because we actually go at a very cellular level. We we get the biopsies then we do transmission electron microscopy. So we can actually [snorts]
microscopy. So we can actually [snorts] focus section by section but it's the muscle or the brain uh brain you can't get biopsies but in in models you can so you can look at it uh or your immune cells and we see as you get older or if it's a condition like um frail person or sarcopenia these thousands of mitochondria we say they're actually a network they they are talking to each other in a healthy person in a very functional if it's a fit person in people who are sarcopenic or with neurodeeneration, these mitochondria stop talking to each other. It's almost like you have a grid and you the grid just collapses. So, they're still there. They're there in a damaged form and they're almost like grumpy old people who are not talking to each other [snorts] and and it's like crushed spaghetti. They actually I wish I had brought these images because I wish you did too cuz I'm trying to put it into my head. Everybody thinks of mitochondria as long elongated sort of tubular structures which are which have these sort of what we call christain in between. Uh but they don't exist in isolation. They exist in a network. Okay. And in in aging if you look at an age sedentary person they're not elongated. They're actually oval and round and fat [clears throat] and they are far away from each other. And so there's very poor energy transfer happening. If we can fix that circuitry, I believe by making them in good shape, these elongated shape, and they're back to talking to each other as a network, we can fix all these conditions that we talked about, I believe. Okay. So, it's about the communication between them. You know what the analogy was that I was putting in my head? Um, it was me at school as a 5-year - old where we're all holding hands and it's fun and games cuz you don't know much. You haven't been that damaged at that when you're five. We all love each other. But then you see as we get older it's like okay well I've had an argument with this person and things are changing then we go through puberty and we get all this damage that occurs to us and none of us are talking. Yeah it's kind of like that
it's kind of like that it is these images are so shocking. Uh and you get them exercising or in in our studies with with this postbiotic supplementation you can [snorts] fix the grid. You can fix this energy process that's happening at a very deep cellular level. But just like with creatine, you can't just take a bololis of it and sit down, right? It's a stimulant in terms of if you take it, it'll help you lift heavier. It'll give you more energy to go to the gym to actually get the work done that's going to help you with the mitochondrial biogenesis. It would probably be the same with uralithn, right? You can't just sit down a sedentary person and just take what's the dosage? So in the trials, so we've done u 250 milligram all the way till two grams daily for for almost four months. Yeah. We find the sweet spot is between 500 milligram to a gram. If you're healthy, if you're doing everything right, if you're taking creatine, if you're exciting, 500 milligram keeps your mitochondria happy. They're already happy because you're doing a lot of good things. But 500 milligram keeps the mphagy at a basil level. That's the dose. uh if you're healthy [clears throat] fit person that's the dose the gram is my favorite dose because I work with a lot of uh older adults and people who are struggling with brain fog especially etc that's like the quick fix so if you take a gram for a month two months you get the damaged mitochondria out and that's what's needed if if the equilibrium has shifted to so you think it takes around one or two months to see an effect I think it takes a couple months and it's not a magic pill that you pop in and expect in one week that uh as you said you just can't keep popping it and hope miracle will happen. You need to but in biology we have a cycle approach right you know what we see is that you have one night of sleep deprivation and we've seen in this uh landmark PNAS study it can raise amaloid beta levels by around 4%. Right? Over time, the more amaloid in the
Over time, the more amaloid in the brain, you know, can disrupt the neuronal functioning that allows you to get back into sleep. So, it's a cycle, right? And I would think that it's a cycle with uriththna as well. You know, you take, let's just say you take a gram a day, but if you're going out that night and sleep depriving yourself and drinking, then it kind of negates the effects or does it maybe does it level out? So the data is saying it does a quick fix with the mphagy uh in about couple of weeks and then it's all about maintenance. You get a lot of biogenesis and you maintain that. And actually an Australian researcher came to me and said well you've shown it a lot of data on old people and overweight people and middle-aged people. I want to actually test it to the extreme. I want to go after Olympian middle distance runners who are you would assume their mitochondria are at their peak. And she actually ran this trial. We just published it in sports medicine. And what she showed was there is no augmented improvement on mitochondria there because these folks are already at V2 max of 667. Believe it or not they got till 70 72 with the mopure or uralin. uh it's it's chemical name is what it helps them with is the recovery process. So the the sort of the damaged mitochondria part are helping in the signaling downstream of inflammation. So I think if depending on different people they see different effects. Somebody feels less sore after a gym. Somebody feels Yes, that's what I felt. Okay. So I was taking the capsules, the Mido Pure. Um and I I felt my doms dis not disappear, but I felt it was so much easier for me to go and do another leg day 3 days later. Right. Wow. And and the dose you were taking, if you don't mind me, two capsules, 500 dos. Yeah. So, I should take four. Possibly. If you have a a big workout that day, I would definitely take a gram. Well, I think it's also dependent on what you're optimizing for. And actually, this this leads into my next question. I don't know if you've done any studies on this. Um, I hear that I
any studies on this. Um, I hear that I keep saying I hear cuz like I read too much and I don't even know what sometimes I'm reading. And but is it true that the most dense population of mitochondria in a female is in the ovaries? That's fairly true. And fairly true. Yes. And kidneys also. Kidney is another place where it's very rich. And that's why I say I hear because now you've just introduced a whole new organ to me that I didn't really know that there was a dense amount of population. Yeah. And the tubular epithelial cells that line the kidney you can imagine because there's so much energy demand there for you know clearing out the waste and excrety products etc. So yes the reproductive organs uh the ovaries have a high demand of energy. sperms. If you look at sperms, the way they get there, the motor has the densest collection of mitochondria. It's the mitochondria that fuel them to get to, you know, where they need to go. So, and do you think that this um may be the reason why we're having a large population of people who are having fertility issues at a young age? For sure. I I think if you are into mitochondrial research and you're not looking at reproductive health, you are missing what I think will be the next big discovery is how fixing the mitochondrial health can fix not all but some of the issues we are seeing in in the fertility space. Yeah. Because it's such a wild space. We've brought on a lot of um fertility experts on the podcast and it's interesting. And we hear people who have got, you know, a very high AMH, um, who can't fall pregnant, but then you've got a woman who's been given an AMH of like 0. 01, but falls pregnant naturally and has two, three kids. And it's like, why? There's nothing in the, you know, you don't get taught this at med school. So why is that? And, you know, maybe the hypothesis really comes down to mitochondria. There were companies there are companies that are attempting to uh transfer healthy mitochondria into the eggs and then you know kind of so there
eggs and then you know kind of so there are a lot of um different experimental yeah very experimental already but the thought is that fixing mitochondrial function in in the usite can fix the problems with ovarian aging we'll see how it pans out we'll see how that pans out in the next 10 years uh now let's talk about um have you done any research or or are you bullish on red light therapy. I use it and I do think mitochondria like that particular wavelength uh near infrared I believe and I don't know what the photon length is actually. Me neither. I I'm not a big expert in in that field but I do know mitochondria prefer red light. They are also very sensitive to temperature fluctuations. So I know one of our adviserss has looked at cold versus hot temperatures. They do prefer colder temperatures. So I don't know if you know sauna versus taking an ice bath what the literature is there but these are areas that need to be explored in the whole biohacking space with mitochondria because we do know that getting into cold water like doing cold water immersion ice baths can you can get a rapid release of anorepinephrine uh and we do know that it does induce mitochondrial biogenesis um but I have been doing red light therapy now I've become really um excited about it. I do a red light bed um and I do that once a week and then the clinic I go to Daron's Next Health Clinic every week and he just told me that they're getting a whole new bed in there. Um I don't know what what it means but I mean I know when I go in there I actually feel it. I can feel I maybe it's just me but or maybe it's placebo which is a real thing but I do feel pulsating. I stay in there for about half an hour. I'm sure there's some serious science uh already existing and that can be done. I was listening to Dave Palmer yesterday at this conference I was and he was showing data with different sound and photo modulation
different sound and photo modulation that can really impact the amount of amyoid deposits in the brain and I was like wow it's a new study that was released. Yeah. So I think that's where we are headed is just not popping more pills. I think it's uh hitting your mitochondria needs this multi-prong approach whether it's red light or cold b you know ice bats or uh photo modulation or or taking targeted nutrition or drugs even. So timeline nutrition I've been taking so you guys have gummies as well. Yeah. Can I push back on that just for a moment and maybe you can educate me. So um I saw this report which had nothing to do with your gummies. just had to do with actual creatine gummies where they took like some of the best uh performing creatine gummies on Amazon and they did a huge study on them and they actually found that the gummies didn't contain any creatine whatsoever. So basically people were just buying these little sugar balls thinking that they're getting creatine in them. And when you actually look into the science it's because if you you have to heat up this gummy in order to produce a gummy. And in that process, you're actually breaking down the creatine. Is that the same with uraliththna? No. Uthna is a very it's heat resistant, very stable molecule. It's heat resistant. Uh and you can put it across different temperatures. It won't budge and it has no smell. So you already have an advantage over something like omega3 or creatine or even a lot of these NAD precursors that are a bit unstable. And for omega3 of course the smell is a big problem. So what what we see and before we launch any product format I I go and run what we call bioequalency studies. So I would take a cohort of 12 15 people. I would give them the two soft shells that you you take uh which gives them 500 milligram and then I will take another cohort of people and I'll give them two gummies that are delivering the same dose. And then I would do every
same dose. And then I would do every hour I would take a little amount of blood and I would look at the levels of where ural lita is peaking and when it's an identical match only then we will launch that product. So the gummies actually give the same exposure to urithna that um the two pills would give or a powder that we also have a powder will give. So I have also made a test. I think I didn't answer that question. And how would I know if I'm making urolithin a naturally? We don't sell it, but I've developed a test um where you can actually measure with your blood from your finger prick just a few drops if you're actually a natural producer and then you can take the gummy or the pill and you can see the increase um in the levels of your lia just with a pin prick test. Yeah. Wow. It's definitely a compound that I want to start including which I already do. Uh but I think I might up my dose. I think a gram if you're really into training in certain weeks, months, then that's a good dose. And and what I see about the gram dose, which is beneficial and augmenting, is it has these immense immune benefits. So it's hitting not just the mitochondria and the muscle, it it is because it's a higher dosage, it's hitting the mitochondria universally across in different cell types. Yeah. It's not discriminative. It just goes through and if you can take a gram a day for a month or two. Yeah. I think two months is where most people start seeing benefits. So at least a couple of months. Yeah. You're also a very big proponent of uh looking after your gut microbiome. Right. So what if we have dysfunctional gut microbiota? Is that the correct term? And then we take these capsules. What happens then? So most people who can make it like me I have tested myself hundreds of times daily u I can never seem to make it and I think it's back to my growing up years in in India where as they say the gut
in in India where as they say the gut microbiome is really seated in the first thousand days of your life I mean you can improve it but uh wait the gut microbiome is seated in the first 1000 days of your life yeah depending on how you were born cesarian or not depending on whether you were breastfed or formulafed depending on if you got a lot of antibiotics or not, how many times you went saw the D. So that's the natural birth gives you more diversity high diversity, but that doesn't mean that if you were born by C-section. No. And that's why they there's this whole field of probiotics, right? There's this you can nourish your microbiome back to what it should have been. But I have sequenced actually people who make lots of it naturally. Mhm. I've gone and pulled these people out and said you are a super producer. I want to know what's the alexir inside you because the gut microbiome personally I feel is a polyfarm pharmacy. We just found uralithin, but I think there are hundreds of these molecules that are beneficial to us. And when I look at their microbiome versus somebody like me who doesn't make it, my microbiome is just not diverse enough and not rich enough. And it's missing things like acromansia versus these people who I call them blessed people because they have the right microbiome. They'll have lots of accommensia. They'll have a very rich diversity score, etc. So, we haven't found that one strain yet that we can probably make a probiotic out of it. But I think the answer lies in in a healthy gut microbiome. Yeah, I've started taking I it's a field that I don't know anything about. It's so confusing to me just because I've spent no time. But I do know there is a real relationship between the gut and the brain. And a lot of people ask me this. They're like, "Oh, but if you have, you know, poor gut microbiome, does that mean you're going to get uh neurodeenerative diseases?" And I said, and it's always no, but it's, you know, you've got like 15 different modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer's disease, and that could be one of them indeed. And and some of these, I was trained by
And and some of these, I was trained by an amazing neurologist in my early days of medical training. And he would always make me look at the how to diagnose a Parkinson patient and of course when you see them coming in, you see the tremor, etc. But he's like, just focus an egg on the medical history. They almost almost all of them are constipated. They have problems with their GI tract before and that shows up months years before they actually get these sort of neuromot problems. Then comes the problem with smell. So there is some sort of a gut uh connection with the brain. But most of these people will have problems with their gut before they manifest the neurological problems. You know, it's interesting. I also interviewed um somebody who's like a a leader in Parkinson's disease and he mentioned that Parkinson's is is a man-made disease and it's predominantly coming from the chemicals in our water and dry cleaning chemicals. He's so passionate. He I said to him, you know what I said? I live on top of a dry cleaning. He walked after the podcast, he walked me home, right? It was like a 30-minute walk. He's like, I'm not going to go back. His anurologist goes, I'm not I'm coming. He goes, "I need to see this place." And we went in and he asked them, he said, "Do you dry clean your products here?" And they said, "No." And he said, "Okay, you're safe." And I asked him why. And he's in the process of shutting them down. Because he said that the chemicals are seeping through the vents and going up into everybody's apartment, which is causing people to get Parkinson's disease. Wow. I know. I saw data actually very recent at a conference where they were showing where they're using this fertilizer parquat wherever they're spraying parquat. That's what it is. Parakquat. Yes. Yeah. Wherever they spraying paraquat in different uh agricultural lands. That's where Parkinson is the highest. Well, the golf course study. Yeah. Exactly. He also said that uh river in it's called gowanas in the um in Brooklyn and it's actually heavily in
in Brooklyn and it's actually heavily in there like there's a lot of parakquot there or one of the the substances there and that's where you get the most dense population of Parkinson's disease. Guess what paryot does what it's a mitochondrial toxin. It kills mitochondria. It damages them beyond recovery and they're in dry cleaning products but they're also in other products. Yeah. It's probably making sway in our food through all this, you know, the fertilizers or whatever they're spraying. Yeah. I now wash my fruit aggressively. I buy this fruit wash. I think you just get it from Whole Foods. Like scrubbing it. And that's what Ray Dorsey, the author of this book and the Parkinson's disease expert, told me to do. He's like, "No, you go scrub it with soap." I said, "Soap?" He said, "Yeah." He's like, "And like leave it there and scrub it with a" And so now you should see my sink at home. There's like fruit wash and then there's like a scrubbing for the fruit and the vegetables and like it's really becoming tiring. I'm thinking of just moving to Greece just because of this where there's like I can just farm the fish myself. Yeah, certainly there's truth to Mediterranean lifestyle and diet that is so beneficial to us. I'm sure we're coming to an end and I want to ask does AI play a role in anything that you're doing now? because I'm becoming both scared and excited about the role that AI is playing in medicine uh specifically for um you know for what we do in neurosurgery. you know, we're we're reconstructing skulls and we are doing 3D images of skulls and 3D printing these new skulls and we're using, you know, all forms, but one of the the best ones we're using is a um titanium mesh and we're giving people their lives back, right? And we're doing all of this because of AI and technology and I want to know is there a role that AI is playing in your field? I think it's coming uh and it's going to hit us with an impact because so it starts at the discovery phase. So we know for example with the discovery of urolithna we actually went through 4, 000 compounds found in pomegranates to find this one magic is it patented? So you can patent a natural molecule but you can patent its effects. Okay. So we
you can patent its effects. Okay. So we have the patents around how it works on mitochondria how it could be beneficial for muscle regeneration or for getting neuro degeneration. You can patent the manufacturing of this. So the uritina we make as a supplement is 100% identical to the natural but we synthesize it through a chemistry process. So that process is patented and most vitamins today vitamin C being a prime example are synthesized right. So a lot of companies own or used to own the patents but AI comes in because I think it can fasttrack that process that took us 15 years by almost you know take 10 years off because it can look at the structure of a beneficial molecule. It can figure out okay this is a structure that is beneficial and pretty much what a medicinal chemist would take many years to figure out. It can then even synthesize uh new molecules that resemble this natural molecule. And that's kind of where we are headed. We we have a spin-off of the company which is making these next generation molecules built on neural structure that are novel. So you you kind of own the molecule and then you can go after neurodeeneration and you can go after more pharma like use cases than just the nutrition. One of the things I was really surprised and fascinated by was your you guys have broken out into the skincare range. Um skincare's, you know, I've only just become extremely excited about my skinincare routine. You know, when you're in your 20s, you don't really care about it. Uh as you get in your 30s and older, you're like, you start to notice things. And then I was really fascinated when you guys brought out skinare products and I got some I got the face cream and then you had um there's this exfoliant which made me think about the fact that our skin cells have mitochondria and we don't think about that. Yeah. So I I was having this discussion uh how did you come to skin uh from all the muscle research and actually came
the muscle research and actually came when we launched after 15 years the the oral products. I'm still in contact with the first hundred uh people who started buying our product in the US and a lot of them would tell me hey doc your supplement is having an effect on the skin and so that got got us curious is there going to be the similar effect on skin and we so we started looking at 20 year old skin cells versus 40y old skin cells versus 70-year - old skin cells and I was shocked because it mirrored everything we had looked at muscle it mirrored everything we are looking at neurons it's almost like the energy crisis that happens around our 40s in every cell type and then all the pathways get disregulated. When I say mitochondria are the engine, they actually are involved in collagen synthesis. So we start seeing in you know in trials we're doing now when you apply it topically you actually can stop the collagen degradation and synthesize collagen and it shows up as you know less wrinkles in longer term clinical trials better skin barrier etc. So these are this is what uh where we headed and actually we have a big partnership with the biggest cosmetic company L'Oreal Lancome now. Oh congratulations. I am so excited for you and the company. Thank you. Um thank you for coming on here and sharing your knowledge. Absolute pleasure Louisa. Thanks for having me.
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
The immune system is not separate from metabolism. T cells, regulatory cells, and inflammatory pathways all depend on mitochondrial function to respond with precision.
Mitophagy and autophagy are the body’s cleanup systems. When damaged cellular parts are cleared well, tissues can maintain clearer signals and better resilience.
Mitochondrial science is promising, especially in immune and brain health. It still requires precision. Mechanisms are not the same as guaranteed outcomes, and disease claims deserve medical guidance.
"The body changes when the signal is clear, repeated, and followed by recovery."
Support mitochondrial health through sleep, movement, nutrition, and recovery before chasing single molecules.
Be cautious with supplement claims that turn mechanisms into promises.
For autoimmune, cancer, or neurological concerns, use this as education and work with qualified clinicians.
The strongest idea running through this conversation is restraint. Longevity is not built by chasing every new lever. It is built by understanding which signals matter, applying them deliberately, and allowing the body enough calm to adapt.
