The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #13 Featuring Registered Dietician Jen Scheinman! THE MITOCHONDRIA and UROLITHIN A EPISODE!! The role of mitochondria in cellular health, In depth analysis of Urolithin A , Gut Health's impact on mitochondria, MITOPURE and more!!
Tue, 18 Mar 2025
Tune in to The Dylan Gemelli Podcast featuring Registered Dietician and Timeline Nutrition Expert Jen Scheinman! Get ready to be educated on cellular health and MITOCHONDRIA!! There is a deep dive into the role of mitochondria in cellular health, Learn everything you could want to know about Urolithin A, proven studies, benefits, and why it is such a breakthrough! There is a discussion on the impact of gut health on mitochondria as well as the role diet can play. Learn about Timeline Nutrition's MITOPURE and the amazing benefits it has proven to provide and SO MUCH MORE!! DO NOT MISS THIS EPISODE!!!To PURCHASE MITOPURE visit Dylan's landing page and use code DYLAN10 to save!!https://www.timeline.com/promotions/dylangemelliCheck out Jen's homepage NEXT JEN HEALTHhttps://nextjenhealth.com/Follow Jen on social media!Instagram: @jenscheinman_nutrition/Facebook @jenscheinmanRDN______________________________________________________________________Follow Dylan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok @dylangemelliHuge thank you to everyone for the support! Please make sure to subscribe, like and comment!!Email [email protected]://rss.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastApplehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/id1780873400I Hearthttps://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-249695201/Spotifyhttps://open.spotify.com/show/3In4QlJj4IvHqq0eduKj7mPandorahttps://www.pandora.com/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/PC:1001096187Stitcherhttps://www.stitcher.com/show/1096187FM Playerhttps://player.fm/series/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastPodchaserhttps://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-5933919Listen Noteshttps://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-dylan-gemelli-HDjBueWOVvG
Chapter 1: What is urolithin A and why is it important?
In short, can you kind of just give a basic breakdown of what is urolithin A? Because it sounds kind of wild and it sounds like, oh, it's something new, fad, which I can tell you it's not. What is urolithin A and why is it so important?
Yeah. Well, before I do that, I just thank you for sharing some of your experience with the supplement industry. And we have a very similar pathway in the sense that I've been in the wellness industry myself for, I think the bio I had you read said almost 20 years, but it's actually probably almost 30 years.
And I joined the team at Timeline, I think the same reason why you and so many of the other amazing educators and partners that we have is because They look at the science and they look at the transparency in, you know, Mito Pure specifically, the branded urolithin A supplement. And it's so different than what's happening in the supplement industry. And we can get into that later.
But I think that's just really important for your audience to kind of understand is like the type of research we're going to talk about today is not everyday research that supplement companies do on the regular. And this is really raising the bar on the way brands should be really like marketed and thought. putting supplements together.
With that, let's just start with what, you know, it's a mouthful, urolithin A, right? That's probably most people have never really heard that word before. And if you haven't, you're not alone. I mean, as a dietician, really only about three or four years ago, I learned what urolithin A was. And that's not because it's newly discovered. It has been
studied extensively for over 15 years, there just wasn't really a branded supplement on the market with marketing dollars behind it to start talking about it. But there's some incredible research that we'll talk about. So let's start with just what it is. Where do you find it in nature? So a lot of times we're talking about supplements and we're talking about nutrients.
We're talking about things that we find in food. And your eliminate is a little bit different. It's not directly found in the food we eat. Instead, we are relying on our gut to make it for us. Right. And I'm sure your audience, like any other health savvy kind of consumer out there, knows the critical importance of the gut. Right. Right.
And one of the reasons our gut is so important is we have these microbes, these bacteria that live inside our gut. And one of the things that they do is they create a molecule. It's called a postbiotic. Basically, like a metabolite of things we can't digest and absorb. So I like to say often that our gut microbiome, we give room and board and they pay us back. So.
They basically, room and board, meaning they get to live inside our gut. They get to digest things we don't eat, like fiber, or in the case of urolithinate, polyphenols, which are plant compounds. So we don't digest those. Our gut microbiome does that for us. And they pay us back in these metabolites. And in this case, urolithinate, called a postbiotic nutrient.
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Chapter 2: How does gut health affect mitochondria?
And that is kind of what mitochondrial decline is, is that that factory starts to break down. So that's one of the hallmarks of aging. We also have this ability, as we talked about, to recycle those factories where you will demolish them because you only have so much cellular real estate. Right.
So just like any other factory, like you can keep building new factories, but there's only so much real estate.
Right.
You want to demolish the broken down factories, the broken down mitochondria, take what still works, recycle them and build new ones. And that process is called mitophagy. Another one of the newly added hallmarks of aging was a decline in that mitophagy pathway. And your audience, if you talk about fasting at all and calorie restriction, your audience is probably familiar with the word autophagy.
That's that cellular recycling. So this is just a very, very targeted form of cellular recycling that happens on the mitochondria. So you're starting to see this increase. influx of dysfunctional mitochondria, right? Higher mitochondria, lower ability to recycle them.
So you're really getting this mismatch and this imbalance of dysfunctional mitochondria, which has been correlated in so many chronic conditions. And then there's one more interesting hallmark that also came out, which is chronic inflammation, inflamaging, right? This inflammation that's happening inside our cells, which then contributes to damage throughout the cell.
And that's another hallmark of aging. And interestingly, when people take the dietary supplement urolithin A, we do see markers of inflammation come down as well. And so there is this understanding of urolithin A in a supplement form can target three different hallmarks of aging, which is pretty incredible.
And when you start thinking about health span and how to kind of push back against the things that bring our demise ultimately, right? These chronic conditions, I do think urolithin A can be a really big player in that.
I've got so many questions now to go off of that. I'm going to try to, sometimes I have the tendency to throw too many at once. So I'm going to try to remember all these and give them, feed them to you here. So the first one is,
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Chapter 3: Can urolithin A help slow down the aging process?
Would you expect like a high-sensitivity C-reactive protein to come down by taking it? Think markers like that. What kind of markers can we look for? Look, I don't want exact numbers. I just want possibilities here on what could happen because everybody's different. Doses are different. Conditions are different. So that's something I stress to my audience.
I'm programmed to do that because I understand how people think. And so promises are one thing and averages are another thing. Would you expect to see some drops in that? And are there any other blood markers that one may look at to go, oh, wow, this is changing. This may be helping me in this regard.
Yeah. So in our studies, we did see exactly, as you said, C-reactive proteins, a great marker of inflammation. And we did see that come down in our studies. So I think that is an interesting marker.
Again, whether you're using urolithin A or anything, I think that's an important thing you want to be asking your doctor to check because it is really helping to assess the full body inflammation that's happening. Now, when we're talking really just about mitochondrial health and testing in general, it does get a little more tricky because...
There are some biomarkers that people are using, but there really isn't a great go-to-your-doctor test for mitochondrial dysfunction. Now, in a lab setting, when our scientific arm is studying mitochondrial dysfunction, and when we talked about the hallmarks of aging and all of that, there are some fantastic clinical labs that you would use in a study setting.
So for example, usually it's done with a muscle biopsy where you're taking a bit of muscle tissue and then you're looking under, you know, very high tech imaging to look at mitochondrial function. You're measuring, you know, gene markers of mitochondrial function and other, you know,
There are markers that are showing that free fatty acid oxidation is happening or amino acid oxidation is happening. But there just isn't like for you and me to go to our doctor and say, hey, can you test my mitochondrial function? There are some newer direct-to-consumer or practitioner tests that are emerging on the marketplace.
I'm not sure, you know, and our research team is like full of scientists that have been studying mitochondrial health for their entire career. Like, I'm not sure those tests are there yet, but I think they're an interesting tool for people to have in their back pocket. You know, would I put all of my weight on them? Not yet.
So that's a frustrating answer in the sense that there's just not a good way to test your mitochondrial function. I think how you feel is one good way, right? Like fatigue, not bouncing back from workouts the way that you used to, you know, brain fog. Those are great indicators.
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Chapter 4: What are the benefits of urolithin A for athletes?
I know.
You know, I always joked before I actually even really like started studying this in depth. I was like, my warranty went out when I turned like 33. Right. It was just like, you know, like I could bounce back from anything. And then all of a sudden I was like, what? Well, I like tweak my back. And instead of like the next day being OK, I'm like, oh, that's not to cut you off.
But that's a good point, because this is like an extended warranty that we're looking at. I mean, metaphorically. Right. Isn't that kind of how we would look at this? Yeah.
So, you know, so I think in sort of like the general pop, right, like this, your third decade is when everything like men, it's testosterone, you know, women, our hormones still hang in on that. But they're starting, you know, like by your mid 30s, you know, 40s for sure. We're starting to see, you know, we start to enter perimenopause, muscle decline starts to happen.
But I think, you know, with people who maybe lived a very inactive lifestyle, like that might be happening earlier. If you're eating a junk food diet, your mitochondria are going to be sensitive to that. Right. And so there's not necessarily a hard and fast rule that you're great until you're 30. So I think if you're also doing everything right. Maybe it's a little bit later.
You know, so I think things like tools like Urolithin-A, just like, you know, fitness and nutrition, like those are things that you want to start earlier, the better, and hopefully are going to help to slow down and cushion some of the more dramatic things that happen as you start getting into your 30s, 40s and later. But not to say that if you are in your 70s and just want to start now, like...
that's not too late either, right? That's definitely, you know, it's never too late. So, but yeah, I mean, people, there are definitely, you know, things like mold exposure and Lyme disease and chronic fatigue syndrome and all of those things will also damage your mitochondria.
So if you are a younger person and you're suffering with that, then you're having some degree of mitochondrial dysfunction. But for just sort of general pop, yeah, your 30s is probably when things are starting to starting to, your warranty is getting towards its end.
Like hitting a hundred thousand miles on the car, right? It's just, it's when everything starts to go. Okay. So yeah, I mean, and, and I think unfortunately that seems to be kind of general. Now here's another question then in terms of age and use of the product that I want to get into, because we're talking about the, the mitochondrial, you know, help and function, but
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Chapter 5: How does diet influence mitochondrial function?
The vast majority of people in the US. And so even if your audience are people who are doing a lot of things to take care of their health, I bet they have loved ones that are not always right. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that I found so remarkable when I first started digging into the science around urolithin A was, wow, this is having an impact in people who aren't exercising.
Yeah. And that is huge, right? Because there are so many reasons why people don't exercise, right? Like, you know, I think most people want to do some sort of exercise. But, you know, as a career dietitian, I know how hard behavior change is and getting people to stick with it, right? They start a program and they stick with it for a couple of months and then they fall off and
And so the intention is there. There's a million reasons why it doesn't stick. But the thought that you can get some benefit from a dietary supplement to maybe help bridge that gap. Or if you have an injury and you can't get to the gym, there are a lot of things. And that was just what was so interesting to me was that we saw these benefits in strength, for example.
These were in middle-aged adults who took, like you, 500 milligrams. And over the course of four months, We saw this significant, robust improvement in muscle strength, you know, after just four months. And we didn't change diet. We didn't change exercise. So, you know, and I think one of the reasons people struggle also to exercise is they don't have the energy to do it.
Like it's almost this like paradoxical thing where like, you know, You got to like figure out how to have enough energy to work out. And then when you work out, you do have more energy. But it feels like a really big boulder to lift when you just are fatigued and don't have the energy to like cook a healthy meal and to get to the gym.
And so what if there there was something like Mito Pure that could kind of help move you along and you could start to feel like you have a little bit more energy and a little bit more like yourself and start to. revitalize the energy centers that are happening in your muscle cells. And then you can maybe get yourself to the gym.
And then the power of the gym is really like, that's really what is the exercise and diet. I've said a million times, like nothing's going to change that. You've got to do that.
But it's really nice to know that there are tools out there that can help support all that hard work that you're doing, or maybe get you to a place where you feel like you have that, just that slightest bit more edge to get you to the gym to cook a healthy meal.
Okay, so we're going to go into your wheelhouse then with this is where I want to shift to because I'm very curious as to what your thoughts are on this and how this can affect the mitochondrial health, the effect on urolithin A maybe benefiting or not benefiting. Let's talk about the diet aspect of this.
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Chapter 6: What age should you start caring about mitochondrial health?
So let's just first address diet and urolithin A, and then we can kind of talk about mitochondrial health. So, you know, it kind of doesn't matter, like, what you eat in order to get your, like, if you're taking a dietary supplement of urolithin A, if you're taking MitoPure, like, you... You know, it's going to work regardless of how you're eating.
Now, of course, how you're eating, though, is like the foundation of like your good health, right? So like a healthier diet with urolithin A is going to be a much different experience than just like urolithin A on its own.
So you're not going to like play around with how your body like digest and absorb it, whether you're eating carbs or whether you're eating a high fat diet, like your body will still absorb it and utilize it. But of course, your mitochondria, like remember, we talked about like the raw materials are the food that you eat.
And so the quality of what you start with is going to play a role in the type of energy that comes out. And the sort of other ingredients that go into producing ATP are things like the vitamins, the polyphenols, the nutrients that you get through your food. So I mean, there is a lot of like You've got to be carnivore diet. You've got to be vegan diet.
I think everybody, it's kind of almost become like a religion at this point of what's the best diet. But there are certain things that are absolutely going to play a role into your mitochondria. You've got to make sure that you're getting all the key nutrients, things like CoQ10, B vitamins, polyphenols.
Besides, we talked about the oligotannins are the polyphenols that your gut will turn into your olefin A, but there's other polyphenols that are protective on your mitochondria. So things like what are in things like green tea, right? They're olive oil, right? A lot of these polyphenols are going to be protective of your mitochondria.
My personal belief, right, is a lot goes into food and longevity and diet, right? And like when we look at like
the long-lived communities around the world right like they're eating very sort of traditional types of diets that are full of plant food that are full of whole food they're not eating a lot of like processed things that's really i think what you know whether i think there's like a therapeutic reason why some people are going to do great on a keto diet i think there's a lot of
People have philosophical reasons around not wanting to eat meat. I think there are places for all of that for you as an individual to decide what's the right diet for you. I personally, I don't feel great. I have tried a keto diet millions of times. I've tried to get through the keto flu. I just don't feel great on a keto diet. I think that my body and I think that we all have different genetics.
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Chapter 7: Can younger people benefit from urolithin A?
Like if you eat a big salad that has like tomatoes and carrots and maybe you throw some like seeds in there and some chickpeas and some olives, like, boom, you've just gotten probably like seven to five of your daily there. Right. And then you like have dinner and you make something with a tomato sauce that has basil and onions and garlic and tomatoes and maybe you throw in some like peppers.
Boom, you've just gotten like another five to 10. Right. So it's not as like crazy as it should be. But that's an interesting rule of thumb. I've recently been reading some research about and kind of a nice sort of target for people's 30 different plants.
You know, one of the things that I changed, I have been like, one of the things I could never live without is peanut butter. And I started to have walnut butter and pistachio butter and sub. And oh my gosh, it's like, first of all, it tastes better once you get used to it.
But second of all, you can see the way that you feel and how, even blood markers for me that I'm a three month a guy blood marker. So I know, but I can see just the little small changes, but yeah, those are great points and really great ideas. Um, so I talked to you briefly about this. I just had Dr. Gundry on a week, talked about this for like 45 minutes.
Um, and I want your thoughts on this because there's such a understanding now. And it seems like, I, I don't know, I would say at least over the past, like five to 10 years where this prevalence of understanding the role that the gut plays in everything really, um, How does your gut health factor into your mitochondrial health?
And like, can you stress and discuss the importance of understanding gut health and addressing it and how that ties into not, I mean, let's address the mitochondrial aspect, but just like the whole totality, because it's like the central area of problems. It's like the antagonist of everything that we're having go on here. So could you kind of just touch on that?
Yeah, I mean, and Gundry probably does a million time better job than even I could do, right? But I think we are just starting to, as much as we know, we're still just beginning to understand the critical importance of the gut.
And it's interesting because I also say that like, where mitochondrial health is today, the concept of it and like the awareness in the public is almost like where gut health was like 15 years ago. So if your audience is also like, I don't want to learn more about the mitochondria.
Like, guys, I think you're in for a ride because I think like just how gut health 15 years ago, people were like, I got to care about my gut. And now like we talk about it every day, like mitochondria is the same way. Like in five to 10 years, the science is there. It's just the awareness isn't there yet. And so it's the wave. I hate to call it a trend, but it is like the next wellness wave. Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What are the key nutrients for mitochondrial health?
The thing though, that's really unique is like, a lot of people can't tolerate retinol. So even though they've sort of become the gold standard in terms of like, I hate to use the word anti-aging, but like anti-aging skincare, a lot of people can't use them, right? Like they are really irritating. They're really drying. They're really flaky. You have to be super, super careful in the sun.
And we've done lots of studies on the safety of urolithin A and it is, you don't get irritation. You don't get sensitivity to it. And There also seems to be this almost like photo protective effect, which I think is very unique. So while I'm still a firm believer that you have to use sunblock, you are getting some protection from the damaging effects of the sun with urolithane.
And what we did in a study was we exposed the skin basically to UV light and we applied either a placebo cream or we applied a urolithane cream. And it's called erythema. That's this like
inflammation that happens after you've been exposed to the sun and all of that quieted and resolved much more quickly with the urolithin A. So that's really, you know, something that pretty much everybody can tolerate. It's, you know, it's very safe. There's not going to be issues with flaky or sensitivity to it.
And you get that dual effect where it's targeting the intrinsic, like the internal factors associating with aging that mitochondrial decline, but it's also helping to target the number one thing that causes skin aging actually is the damaging effects of the sun. So you're getting sort of that like dual effect
Wow. So, I mean, you can't really go wrong. So let me ask you this then. Could you utilize both the cream and the pill or powder at the same time? And so let's say, let's just say I'm taking 500 milligrams of this. And then I'm putting the cream on as well. Is there a is there a equation there? Am I getting another 500 milligrams with the cream or how does that work? Is that totally different?
It's a different to me. I don't know. Like it's a different equation. So one person it's done in a concentration. So one percent urolithin A in these topicals. What I got is what is found to be effective. I don't know how that like correlates into like a milligram dose that you would take.
But yes, you absolutely like I personally look at it as like, you know, working on my inside and working on my outside. Right. You've got to do it both ways. There have been some reports we haven't studied this. Right. So that when you do take the pill, some people have noticed like I feel like my skin looks better.
That's where I was going.
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