Dhru Purohit Show - The Everyday Toxins Accelerating Aging and Damaging Your Mitochondria and How to Protect Your Cells for a Longer, Healthier Life with Dr. Daria Mochly-Rosen

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

This episode is brought to you by LMNT, Bon Charge, and Birch Living. When we think of mitochondria, we often think of them as the powerhouse of the cell, but they do so much more. Mitochondria are responsible for intricate functions like detoxification, immune defense, and cell signaling. Their health is directly tied to our overall health. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Daria Mochly-Rosen to discuss why protecting our mitochondria is essential for long-term health. Dr. Daria reveals the top insults that damage mitochondrial function, such as air pollution, pesticides, and chronic stress, and explains how they’re linked to conditions like Parkinson’s disease. She also shares her groundbreaking research on aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 and emphasizes why, in today’s world, our mitochondria are under constant attack, making it more important than ever to reduce these burdens on the body. Dr. Daria Mochly-Rosen is the George D. Smith professor for translational medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is passionate about turning scientific discoveries into real-world treatments and helping people make informed health choices. She has founded three biotech companies and created SPARK, a program that focuses on translating scientific innovations to benefit patients. Following the success of the program at Stanford, which led to the formation of over fifty biopharmaceutical companies, SPARK now operates in dozens of universities around the world.  In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Rosen dive into:  What’s really hurting your mitochondria today (1:20) How air pollution, smoke and vaping chip away at your cells (2:40) The hidden danger of pesticides (9:00) Are we sensitive to electromagnetic frequencies? (17:55) Radiation’s surprising effect on your cells (22:45) The enzyme that could reveal your mitochondrial health (27:45) Should you worry about everyday radiation? (36:21) The control you do have over your health (41:51) Light, sleep, and mitochondria: the photobiomodulation link (42:46) Why chronic stress silently destroys mitochondria (47:16) The connection between mitochondria and aging (51:58) How exercise powers up your mitochondria (01:01:06) The secret of pairing endurance with strength (1:09:15) Fiber’s underrated role in mitochondrial health (1:14:21) Also mentioned in this episode: The Life Machines: How Taking Care of Your Mitochondria Can Transform Your Health For more on Dr. Rosen, follow her on LinkedIn or visit her Website. This episode is brought to you by LMNT, Bon Charge, and Birch Living. Right now, LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase. Head over to drinkLMNT.com/dhru today. Right now, Bon Charge is offering my community 15% off. Just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use code DHRU to save 15%. Birch is exclusively offering my community 27% off their Birch Living mattress—just head to birchliving.com/dhru today. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Darya Moschli Rosen, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you, Drew. It's wonderful to be here. You know, I found your new book incredibly fascinating. And I'll tell you how I explain it to other people. I think of you as a matchmaker, right? You know the term. Matchmaker, as somebody who might be putting two people together. There's this beautiful matchmaking that you do in the book, which is helping the lay person understand why they are already in love with. mitochondria. They just don't know. And I think that's the beauty of an incredible matchmaker is they're setting up two people together. Obviously, human and mitochondria are one and the same, but people don't know that they either should be in love with mitochondria or could be in love

with mitochondria. And here you are putting them together. What do you think about that? I like your idea. I think actually the book started as a matchmaking between my husband and I, because I had to explain the signs to a layman, and through that, and seeing how excited he is about what it is that mitochondria do for us, got the spirit of the book to be more like this matchmaking that you mentioned, explaining how this wonderful life machines are transforming our lives. I wonder if we might take a moment here to talk about some of the top things that could be mitochondrial insults, that you cover in the book. You talked about one of the first items,

which is there are examples, even throughout human history, of people having exposure to poor air. Now, in modern day society, we all know that smoking is bad, but smoking is one of the top things that would be incredibly bad for your mitochondria. But take it a step further, air quality.

So talk to us about smoking and air quality in our modern day and age, and what we know that it does to the mitochondria specifically. So let's start with the one that is definitely preventable in that smoking. So when you smoke, you generate toxin to the body. And one of the simple one to discuss is one that is also generated when you drink alcohol. It's called al-Dohdehyde. It's a small aldehyde that is you can measure in your saliva,

and its level are really high, And it's toxic because it causes the mitochondrial protein to be oxidized and therefore not function properly. It causes damage to DNA, so it causes cancer and so on and so forth. So in this case, easy. Don't smoke. Okay. But pollution, you know, you live in an area where air pollution is high.

What can you do to fight it? So for sure, if you have recommendation not to go out and exercise during certain bad air quality day, then don't do that. It's really good advice. So avoiding being present in that or by campfire for a prolonged time or barbecuing for hours. The person that barbecues oftentimes inhale a lot of the smoke from that. So trying to avoid it or watch wind direction and staying out of that.

It feels unsatisfactory if I say that to a person that doesn't smoke and doesn't barbecue. if these things are still in the air. And this is one thing that we keep emphasizing. You don't need to be perfected in everything. So you can help your mitochondria through other things, and maybe your other examples will allow me to elaborate. But simply said is there are quite a few ways by which through small lifestyle changes we can really improve our mitochondria and taking care of them properly.

Yeah, that's well said. I want to go back to the barbecuing. What you're really talking about is incredibly denatured proteins, right? And sugars? Is that like the charing, the charcoal, anytime you eat food, that's super crispy and black? And so yummy. Yes, it's charing. The charing is actually burned fat.

So fat can give aldehydes that is toxic. Charing could be the carbohydrate that are now buying. reactively binding to proteins. This create what is called age. Advanced glycation. Yeah. And products. Yeah.

And products. Ages. The whole example is always, eat too many ages and it's going to accelerate aging. That's right. So those are things that occur and give food this crispy taste. But also we have those occurring when you eat ultra-proluster. processed food because to give crispiness to a lot of those ultra processed food, they actually generate those age, those aldehydes.

And it's part of what the taste that we got used to. It's also a way to preserve food in a bit. So all those are again things that we can avoid. It doesn't mean that you should never eat, I don't know, your favorite cookie or whatever it is that is giving you pleasure because having pleasure again is also. so good for your mitochondria? You know, it's interesting, a little personal anecdote. I've always noticed that I don't do well with fried foods from a young age. I would have fried foods, and I would feel like I got like a sore throat, or I would have fried foods like French fries

or even some of the native foods that my mother would make from India that would be deep fried. And I'd always feel a little bit brain foggy. And I don't know if you've seen the modern sort of discourse that's out there, but some people are saying, okay, Okay, let's move away from seed oils and let's move towards beef tallow. Well, even if I have fried food, which is super rare in beef tallow, but I consume a little bit too much, I always feel a little bit of like brain fog afterwards. I don't know what beef tallies. Beef tallow, beef fat, beef fat, yeah.

So they recommend do that. Yeah, some people are switching from seed oils to beef tallow. And I was making the commentary that any kind of deep fried food that I have, I always feel a little bit of brain fog, and I can't help but to think that there might be some sort of impact that these foods are having, maybe even more so for me, I don't know, genetic predisposition or something with my health, where I feel like these foods are, again, too much of them or frequency is impacting my mitochondria. Is there anything there there? Yeah, I don't know, but I can tell you that listening to your own body is a very good thing. So the fact that as a child you'll figure it

out and start to avoid it is a very good thing. And I think many of us do not listen to our body. We feel that certain things are not good for us. I mean, you know, I have colleagues who, you know, on Monday morning, kind of, you know, I went out on Sunday, drank too much. I have such a terrible headache. I mean, come on. So you know what happens?

You can do something about it and prevent it from the next one. I think that when, especially now, when we are much more conscious about, and have great interest in change in a lifestyle in order to improve ourselves. We also during this process have to listen to our body. So it might not fit us all if we do one thing that somebody recommends that we do. So listen to our body is really important. The personalization of health. Exactly.

Yeah. A lot of young people have gotten the memo that smoking isn't great, but they've all switched over to vaping. Vaping. Equally bad. I'm saying equally a bit in a harsh. in a rushed way because I didn't compare side by side. I have a colleague that is in the Department of Anesthesia

that compared and says that they look very similar. They also generate aldehydes. They're also hitting up things in your mouth. And so they have the same health or similar health risk to smoking, unfortunately. Yeah. And unfortunately, you see much more of vaping now than probably not. as much as cigarette smoking in California, but still, I think that the switch over is more common

in some other parts of the world. I think it in the 50s, physicians recommend smoking. Yeah. Physician in the 50s also said, don't exercise. It's bad for your body. When you were in the hospital, they kept you lying down, not moving for a long time. I think that we learn a great deal. Yeah, we're always learning.

It's not their fault. That's what they knew then. Yeah. Totally. Totally, totally. You know, here's one that goes into your core area of researching in mitochondria and neurodegenerate diseases, and it's also a little bit controversial as well. And that's the topic of pesticides, right? Pesticides are abundant in our culture. And even organic foods, sometimes they'll have organic-friendly pesticides that they'll have to use. What do you want people to know about pesticide exposure and mitochondrial health? and how that's connected to our overall health and aging? Man-made catastrophe. Pesticides are helping us because they increase the amount of food that is available for us,

so it's really important, but it's also by itself is bad for us. What pesticides do is that they increase, again, aldehytic load, those reactive agents that are killing all our macromolecules or damaging our macromolecules. but there are some specific pesticides that work in, for example, in the mitochondria of particular target on Complex 1. So meaning that there's pesticides that have been designed to target the mitochondria. Is that what you're saying? No, but they happen to act on the mitochondria.

Okay, so they weren't intended, but they are incredibly good, even if they weren't designed that way, destroying the mitochondria. The mitochondria. And Complex 1, so in order to generate ATP, electrons have to, pump proton out from complex one, there is complex two, three and four, and then to Complex 5, which is the ATP machine, the ATP generating rotor. Complex 1 is very sensitive to some of the pesticides. And in fact, there are now quite a few epidemiological studies that shows that people that have

been exposed to pesticides early in their life or throughout their life are more prone to develop, for example, Parkinson's disease. And Copeland's one, and this function is known to be associated with Parkinson's disease. It's not the only cause because there are also genetic factors, but nevertheless, it's rather scary to see the correlation between working close to or living close to where pesticides are used oftentimes. Like a golf course. Like a golf store.

There was that big observational study that was shared. I'm sure you saw it. It was all over the headlines. Yeah, there was an article, I think, yesterday in the New York Times. Yeah. Op. Op. I did on the oral column. Yeah. That article actually was about a dear friend of mine's work, Dr. Ray Dorsey. And the work that he's doing to bring awareness to how his theory is that Parkinson's disease is a largely environmental. But when you look at his book and all the different things that he talks about, there are the insults on the body.

it's really perfectly matched with what you're talking about because the underlying mechanism seems to be amongst predisposition and other things is that pesticides, air pollutions, things like dry cleaning chemicals that are out there, they are destroying our mitochondria and making it very difficult for our body

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Drew, D.HRU to save 15%. It's time to upgrade your self-care routine with the same innovation you bring to the rest of your life. You know, listing pesticides and herbicides, put another category on avoidable stress to your mitochondria. Avoidable maybe through policy change. So, for example, in Europe, many of those cannot be used. Or through educating people that spray pesticides.

to protect themselves. Many people that are doing it are told to wear a mask or be covered, but, you know, it's hot. You do it every day. You kind of get tired of it. No, it's really bad, not only for you, but what you bring home

and also for you over time. But there are also, there's lots of interesting things about it that are inexplicable. So why pesticides are associated with Parkinson's disease, distraction of dopaminergic neurons, one subset of the dopaminergic neurons, in one tiny area in the brain. And one centimeter away from it, there is another dopaminergic neuron cluster called

ventral tagmental area that is associated with emotions and so on. And they are not destroyed. What's going on? I mean, there are so many things that we still don't know. Of course, I have theories about it. I'd love to hear your theory. Well, the dopaminergic neurons in the sub-saccharges in the, that at first nucleus, that is a socialist parking system, is maybe much more active than the one in the VTA in the student. That could be one explanation.

The other one is how many assisting cells they have around them. Assisting cells. Can you explain what that is? So the brain is built of, is made of neurons and many, many more. what are called collectively glia cells, and there are acesocytes and microglia that are, we're sought to be the glue of the neurons, but now we know that they are so, so important,

so critical in how the brain is working. Just as an example, to create a memory, acrocytes have too much on dendrites of the neurons to make sure that only certain connections are being maintained and then others are not. So this is important normally. And then in neurodegenerative diseases, microgrilia are causing inflammation.

They are kind of the immune cells in the brain. And cosmoat is called neuroinflammation, which is, of course, bad. But they also transfer mitochondria to the neurons, take bad mitochondria from the neurons. They transfer and metabolize neurotranspiters. I mean, these cells are really important. So it's possible that those cells in the two environment have better or less effective machinery to take care of it.

I don't know, but we'll find out. We know that the mitochondria are very sensitive to light. We'll chat about that in a second. What do we know about the mitochondria and their sensitivity to things like electromagnetic frequencies, Wi-Fi, all these electrical signals that are around us. What do we know about that? You know, of course, I've read about it, but I feel like the information out there

was insufficient for me to decide what's real and what's not. Do you think it's an area that warrants further study? All areas warrant more studies. I think that it's very important that every statement that we are making is based on well-studied work behind it. So yes. And it's possible that there is something there that we completely forgot or never really paid attention to. I gave you quite a few examples of how we thought, you know, it's good to smoke.

We need to continue to carry out fundamental research and always try to think about how we translate it. And I feel like translation research, one way is to make drugs, which is something that I'm very interested in and I've done a bit of that. and also translating information to the laymen so that they know how we came to certain conclusion and whether there are things they can do about it. So, yeah, always continue to study, continue to research, and it's so much fun. I mean, there are so many things that we still don't know. I mean, I'm paid to be an explorer every day. I mean, how much fun can that be?

Off topic, but I saw a talk yesterday by the head of Google's Deep Mine, who won the Nobel Prize. I believe he won the Nobel Prize for a lot of their work in the space of Alpha Fold. That was part of one of their projects that were there. Do you see AI being a part of the research of mitochondria

and are there things right now that are happening where people are using it or your university are using it to help us understand or model out what's capable or what might be great or not great for mitochondria? Okay, the short answer is possibly maybe likely. One of the things that our minds can do

an amount of information that we can handle relative to computers is not the same. And so connecting dots is part of the discovery process that maybe is possible when you can mine a huge amount of data. And that's the first basis of AI. How did AlphaFold form?

The machine, the computer looked at how known protein structure looks like and started to create rules about how they fold and what kind of sequence that made the amino acid that makes a protein dictate what kind of secondary structure, which are two possible secondary structure and how it folds to a tertiary structure and maybe quaternary structure when they interact with other proteins came up with rules and then it can take a new one that we don't know its structure and create the structure for it. This ability for computer is easy because you take lots of pieces of information and you can be a good predictor of the next one and the next one through learning, through

case studies. Looking at primary sequence and figure out what would be the secondary structure, I did it all my life. So I could do that. How it falls in three dimensions? No. I could see where it will be cornering the proteins and turns, but I won't know how the whole thing will fall after full skin.

First of all, when we talk about mitochondria within the same cells, they're not the same. There are mitochondrioles that are dormants. There are mitochondria that do one business and mitochondrial to do another business. And then in other tissues, they are completely different. So our problem is that at the moment, what we've done is with all the omic efforts, it's getting lists of things, characterizing things. Now, with this information, how they connect, you know, if you learn one process, can you predict the next one and the next one? I think AI would be able to do very well.

Yeah, it'll be super interesting. But not replacing humans. Of course, in conjunction. I think humans are very good in doing something the first time. Yeah, the creativity, the insight, the breakthrough. Yeah. Okay, so we were going down a list. I've been enjoying this part here, by the way.

I've been joining everything, but this part is really great because it helps our audience understand how these different insults are capable of impacting our mitochondria. And for those that care about brain health, that care about aging well, we understand that mitochondria are important, but we may not know all the different ways that they can be impacted. And in this case, we're talking about the 10 things that are out there. We've already worked through a bunch of them. And we have a few more, but the 10 things that are out there that are known to impact mitochondria for the worse. So I'm going to go through a few others to get your thoughts on it. Sure.

Okay. So the next one that we have is radiation, UV and environmental. We obviously, most people know, especially if they've seen Chernobyl on HBO, that radiation is not good for the human body. But one of the ways that most of us living in our modern world would be bumping up against radiation, UV, environmental is environmental toxins that are not good for mitochondria. This episode is brought to you by. By Birch, where better sleep meets better living. You know, as we move into fall, and we have these shorter days, we have these cooler nights, and we have these busier schedules, it's easy for sleep to take a back seat.

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that most people don't know. Most mattresses are filled with synthetic junk that can off-gas, harmful chemicals into your home, something I didn't want for myself or my family. Birch fixes that. I love that I know I can sleep well, knowing that my mattress is healthier for me, my loved ones, and my home. Sleep isn't just rest. It's your foundation for energy, focus, and health. And right now, Birch is exclusively offering my community 27% off sitewide, plus free shipping and a hundred night risk-free trial. To get this, just head over to birchliving.com slash drew to claim your offer today. That's Birch, B-I-R-C-H-L-I-V-I-N-G.com slash D-H-R-U, Drew, that's me, for 27% off today. Radiation is actually one I feel comfortable talking about, especially UV and X-ray and the like.

So radiation is a beam with high energy, and it can go through some mortis without changing them, and it can hit some mortis, proteins, lipids, DNA. and actually suddenly interact with them. So it's a question of chance. When we radiate cells, for example, in a dish, we can hit its DNA and then suddenly you'll start to see uncontrollable growth or cancer in the dish. And we know the same thing happens to us

when we are exposing ourselves to UV light in the sun. And our skin cells constantly screen for radiation. That's why our skin becomes darker with melatonin, to prevent entry of the radiation deeper. But we sometimes cells have been hit on their DNA. And over time, usually it requires more than one hit. They will generate a tumor. And we see them on the skin.

So that's one example of damage of radiation. But there are others. And I want to connect again with smoking through that. So you notice that people who tan a lot, especially, you know, European tends to tan a lot. You see that they have also many more wrinkles. Maybe now that with Botoxone, the like we see that less. But it's very typical that you see a very tend person. And as you come closer, you see that they are really deeply wrinkled.

The UV cause damage to the cells. And now they don't periphery it properly. They don't produce enough collagen. and so they the cell wrinkle. But smokers, if you look at all smokers, you find that they have lots of wrinkles as well.

And it's the same thing. It's this damage where the machinery that was supposed to clean it and part of the machinery is a mitochondria is overwhelmed. And so you see those damages. Those are two examples, radiation and smoking in this case.

case, but radiation from UV and for other things, there is damage that is formed and we can correct it. I want to tell you one experiment that I did not do, but I instigated. I'm working on an enzyme. One of my projects, by the way, one of my postdoc said about me, I keep talking about the fact that I'm interdisciplinary and she told me one day, no, you're just undisciplined. So guilty. I really, if I get excited about something,

I try to study it as well. So I work on a family of enzyme called aldehyde deodoronis, too. Aldehyde adrogyne is an enzyme that get reads of aldehydehyde inside their mitochondria. And it's best known for the fact that Asian, about 800 million people, have a mutation in this enzyme.

So when they drink alcohol, they flush. Right. Thought to be totally benign. people said, oh, in fact, in East Asia, they say, oh, that means that my liver is strong, and that's why I flash. So it was thought to be a sign of health. And we didn't know any of that, but anyhow, we came across this enzyme being critical to protect the heart during heart attack.

So we start to saying, why is it important during heart attack when there is no oxygen, why is it important? And we discovered that this enzyme is critical in removing aldehyde, when there isn't enough oxygen and so aldehydes are formed because there is more ross. And this enzyme is very important for that. And then we read the literature and nobody was interested in it. When nobody was thinking that aldeide, the atrogyrogen is important, in fact, it's good for your health.

They had of a big lab at the NIH that studies alcohol, East Asian, said, I have this mutation and I'm healthy. So my colleague Chiang Chen and I went to Taiwan because we thought there 50% of the people have this mutation, let's check. And we discovered endless amount of information that shows that this mutation is actually impacting your health. And how is it impacting your health? Because there is more aldehydes accumulating under a variety of conditions. So definitely alcohol. So if you drink alcohol or a spoke or chew.

little nut, which you might be familiar with, that's also common in India. It's increasing aldehyde in your mouth and in your gut and you get cancer. Okay. So that by itself already was enough warning for us. But then we found that there is disproportionate higher percentage of people that have a stroke or heart disease or parking zones. Or, for example, we talked to a dermatologist that was trained in the U.S. and they told us that they were very surprised

because they used laser to clear discoloration of the skin. And some of the women will come back because they will have lines from the laser. The laser created aldehydes. And if they don't get rid of the aldehydes, they get a brown line from the laser. Is that typically women with, like, darker skin color? Or it was happening to everybody?

I don't know. It was happening to a substantial number of people that this researcher said that they are going to genotype patients now to know whether it's correlated. But what I'm trying to say, that there were so many other diseases associated with this deficiency, and Ji Hong Chen and I started an organization

that we call STAR because the mutation is called ALDH2, star 2. So trying to push the agenda of telling people, look, there is something you can act on. You have this deficiency, you are at higher risk. And in fact, he continues to do it very effectively changed their policy in Taiwan. He spent a lot of time there,

and now there is interest in, there is guidance for patients and for physicians about what other risks are associated resist deficiency. Now it was picked up in Japan and in Korea and in the U.S. as well. What I'm trying to say with this story, these alde Heights accumulated under a variety of conditions. When Fukushima happened, I thought they should not send

East Asian that have mutation in this enzyme to go inside and clean it up because they are much more sensitive to that. And I tried to reach, I had colleagues there, I tried to reach people and I didn't succeed. Finally, I came back after several years. I went to Hiroshima and University of Hiroshima and I met a colleague there and I was telling him again about how I care about that. And he said, you know what? I have an idea. I will do a study in which we check whether their radiation from PET scan increases aldehydes in LDH2 deficient subjects. So those are healthy subjects that needs to go through this, check what happens to their mitochondria,

and actually in this case also aldehytic clothes. So it's aldehydes that come from lipid. And he has now a small study that I think he just submitted for publication that shows that indeed there is a correlation. We'll see whether it will be published or not. But what I'm trying to say, all these high-energy events like radiation. Like radiation, are generating aldehydes. And if your mitochondria are robust and they're not busy with other things, they can take care of it.

But if there are genetic predisposition or you have other things going on, they just can't handle that. You have to do other functions all the time as well. So it's difficult to take care of all the incels that come in. So if we curb those, it's very important. And it's partly what I'm hearing, you say that also if you are Asian descent, China, Japan, East, you know, East Asian, right? That typically would be somebody who also has, you know, the flushing effect, right? I think it's sometimes referred to as like a red glow. Yeah, right.

Even by people of that community themselves. I've had friends saying that. I don't know if it's derogatory or not. But you should be even more paying attention to the topic of things that damage the mitochondria, like radiation. Is that partly what you're saying? That's what I'm saying when you can avoid it. But I also want to tell you something about that it's not only East Asian. So for years, I would get email.

I'm not East Asian, but look at me. Here is I am with, before alcohol, drink for beer drinking, and here I am flashing constantly. And also if you check on YouTube and the like, you'll find a lot of those little systems. So finally, after a few years of that, so always, I'll write, I'm not a physician. If you're flashing, maybe you should take care of it. And I always thought, this guy doesn't know his ancestry or this woman doesn't know her ancestry. And decided after a while, okay, time to check it. So we have looked at the human genome sequences that have accumulated over the years.

or full genome sequences and ask whether there are any mutation in this enzyme in the human genome non-East Asian. And sure enough, we found, I think, six different mutations. I mean, we found many more because most enzymes have changes. But we found six that are two of them affecting 5% of Hispanic. I guess now they could ad mix American, I think. That's what it's the right.

ancestry group to affiliate. There is one that is in South Asian. There is one that is in Finnish people. So we isolated the gene. We generated the protein, and surely enough, the protein is less active. And it's less active or less stable or both. Not as severe as the one that is in Asian. So these people were right.

There's people that are not East Asian that are still having that same flushing, which shows that their body's not great at dealing with the built-up levels of... One of their enzyme, we have 19 aldehyde-hydrogenase. One of the enzymes, very important one for environmental health, is not functioning optimally. Another way to say it is what I said earlier. Listen to your body. Right.

Pay attention. Yeah. If you flush when you drink or if you don't feel it when you drink, Just don't. And I can tell you, I am one. I don't flash, but I'm Italian, half Italian. We always had a bottle of wine on the table, even as kids. My mom is from Toscan.

Never liked the things. And when I drink a tiny bit, immediately I feel off. Off. Don't drink. Just listen to your body. There are many other fun things to do. I want to come back to radiation for a second. Okay.

Right. Is there anything known in the literature through your work or somebody else's work that there are times in our life that you might. might go in for a CT scan. I turned 40 and I have a history of heart disease in my family and also being a South Asian background. I actually think at Stanford University, they have the South Asian Center for Heart Disease. Yeah, we have South Asian and we have East Asian. Yeah.

Because South Asians here in America have one of the highest, I think the highest risk of cardiovascular disease out of any ethnic minority. And so I wanted to see. And so I went for an advanced CCTV scan. I wanted to get a sense of like, where is my heart health and how is it? knock on wood, it was excellent. My score came back as perfect as my cardiologist had seen for a male that was my age. And there are situations like that that we might have to go in for, you know, radiation, a scan, whatever it might be. Is there anything that we could be thinking about doing besides minimizing unnecessary test?

That's probably number one. Right. Making sure you don't get, you know, certain tests too frequently, unless they're medically necessary. There's even a question about that with mammograms right now. it's a controversial thing, but the balancing act of, are there other tools that can look at breast cancer and is, you know, is the annual or mammogram of women above a certain age really the right approach or is there a better way to go about thinking about things? Again, everything is a cost-benefit analysis. But is there anything that we could be doing to protect our body during these moments that

you know of besides doubling down on exercise, sleep, etc.? Are there things that could help us when we know we're about to endure a little bout of radiation? You already answered it in a way. So first of all, it's those damages can be repaired. For damage to the DNA, we have a fantastic machinery that constantly work to correct damages to the DNA. In the mitochondrial, there is also a machinery, not so effective, but we have quite a few copies of mitochondrial DNA. So if it's damaged, it will be, removed and so eventually it will be taken care of. So I would say that over time, much of this damage can be reduced. The question is the amount and what else is going on in your body. So oftentimes

you take a patient for this treatment because something else is going on. And if you are stressed or you are, you know, you're sick with, you have a virus at the same time. So all these are increasing, bringing you higher to the brink where the damage is going to be too much for the mitochondrial to handle. But I would say that in general, the reason why we have a recommendation dose and interval between treatment and all that is because physicians were aware of that and were weighing the benefit versus the risk in that. I would say, you know, and again, I'm not a physician and not giving a recommendation,

but just as a scientist, I would say that if you prepare your yourself for something like that by, as you said, sleeping well, not being stress, being well hydrated, eating proper food, you know, reaching vitamins and so on. All these things will make your mitochondria overall in your body at a better state so they can respond to that and perhaps even mitochondria from areas that were not your ideas, it can help the ones that were. On a personal level, are you worried about things like an annual mammogram, do you seek out other solutions? Like these days, you know, there's a popularity of certain blood-based tests that people do,

like a grail's looking at cancer in the earliest stages. How worried or not worried are you about that? And how much has that led you to seek or not seek out other solutions for things that are regular, you know, exposure to radiation? I am aware of the risk of radiation. and I try to minimize it. So, you know, I'm going to the dentist and oftentimes I say, oh, it's been a while. So I said, okay, but I take care of my teeth.

So maybe we'll skip one more year, you know, things like that. A lot of people actually don't know that you can push back and you can say, hey, listen, I understand. Is there a real cause for a reason that we need it? My teeth have generally been in good health. Not always. Some people don't have great teeth, but they've been good. Is it absolutely necessary that we get x-rays right now? I think that considering it and this discussion is good when you have a physician

on the other side that is willing to listen to that, you can ask. You know, if it'd been, you know, you got x-ray several times and there was never actionable item coming from it, why do it? Right? If never, it never really advised you never saw a tiny cavity or a crack in your tools and so on, you know, things that we don't see, but the x-ray would. But it's not to avoid it. And I would say that physicians are very aware of that and sensitive,

at least the ones that I've encountered, never really pushed back if I said I didn't want to do something. Yeah. Regarding just a small comment that you made earlier, that for a 40-year-old it was okay. So don't we all want to go through any kind of medical exam and say, oh, you're 20 when you're 70? Or this is like, I've never seen.

And we always want to have this extra grade. But I think I really like that you said for a 40-year-old and you didn't kind of winched or complain because you probably don't feel 40, right? I mean, I don't know how it feels one's age. We have expectations that are not realistic about herself and about our control over our health. But there are quite a lot of things about our health

that are in our control. They are boring, small things. But we should be active in them and then realize that there are times where our health is at the states where medical profession is the only groups that can help us. What's really optimistic, why I'm optimistic about this time is that I think the more we know, the more likely we're going to be effective for you as an individual with our medical intervention. Are you aware of this whole field called a photo biomodulation? You're coming back to that. Yes, and I mean, yes, I've heard about it. Explain to our audience and give us your thoughts on it.

I have no explanation and I'm not going to go into that. It's a topic, it's one of those topics where every time a topic was brought up to our attention as we were working on mitochondria, we try to look for the basic fundamental research on it and see if we are convinced or whether we see enough. And this is an example of something that I can say only in passing maybe three years ago. I looked into it because of a friend who brought it up to my attention. And I thought, maybe not. Okay, got it. But I don't want to dismiss it.

And as I said, it's possible that now there are a convincing day to say something like that. Sure, sure. So just for our audience is on the same page, we're talking about how light can impact our health. and in particular how light can modulate mitochondria for better for worse. So the most basic version of that that a lot of people have heard about, which I don't think you'd probably disagree with, is that having too much of blue light or the wrong type of light at certain times a day has all sorts of downstream effects. The most obvious being that a lot of people are aware of right now from phones and indoor light

is that it can impact our melatonin production. But it goes much deeper than that. So this is one part that I'm very comfortable talking about, which is melatonin. So clearly, melatonin is a very important synchronizing of our clock, our biological clock, our daily clock. It's a very important agent, by the way, made in the mitochondria. So there is a connection directly between light and mitochondria. Of course. There are many. I have to say that.

So having, so we talked to Zitzer, a researcher at Stanford, who study sleep, about that. And he said, yeah, people who have a problem with having regular sleep pattern, it's really good to be exposed early in the day to the sun during the early hours. And then during sunset, so it kind of helps set your sleep pattern. Is this your sleep pattern to a certain rhythm that is normal? The light is critical in turning them on. Whether blue light from screen is an issue, when we asked him, he said, well, you know, maybe right next to your face,

but if you watch it on a television screen, you know, above your fireplace, you're probably okay. In my own, for myself, I don't see any effect. I tend not to use my cell phone after certain hours or my computers. But if I do, which I did last night, for example, I fall asleep after that, no problem. So maybe it's personal and you have to pay attention to yourself and decide. Yeah. But sorry, I don't have the full signs on that.

Oh, not at all, not at all. There's a really great medical doctor who does a lot of really good breakdown about the science. I'll send you a couple of videos. very evidence-based, you know, just talking, and again, he's very clear that this is emerging. So the conclusions aren't always there, but there can be a precautionary approach that people can take, especially in this day and age we have so much of our time spent indoors. And in particular, he talks about all the benefits. We hear so much about UV and the sun being so damaging to the body and to the skin and aging the skin,

which, of course, that's there. but we don't hear enough about the benefits of also certain wavelengths of light, including infrared light and how we evolved as a species to get some of that. And generating vitamin D so that your bone will be strong and all correct. I mean, there are certain things that are not, I mean, the signs behind them is really good. But there are also other things that I've encountered, so I kind of avoid talking about. well, totally, totally. Well, let's hit on a couple more that are things that hurt the mitochondria, right? One of those, which is not always sexy to talk about, but it's something that a lot of people go through

is the idea of chronic stress. So how does chronic stress damage the mitochondria over the long haul? And as you've mentioned previously, this isn't about being perfect. So what are the top strategies that you found that are out there. Again, you're not a physician, but you've seen a lot of the literature that's out there. What can we do to help combat that? Yeah, so chronic stress, think about the fact that during stress, your body is on ultra alert and it's very busy generating ATP for certain purposes. So, for example, making sure that your muscle are acting and you're responding to any noise and any sort of stimulus from the outside. You're busy responding to the environment.

You use all your energy literally, your ATP, focusing on that. So you don't do normal maintenance. And the mitochondria need constant maintenance. It's really essential that all the damage that occurs as a result of this nanomachine constantly working is that there are parts that get damaged through the extensive work.

And there are machinaries, there are mechanisms to fix them. But if you are constantly stress and you put all your attention on the, trying to respond to something that doesn't exist or maybe exist, but it's not really a threat, you end up not taking care of inside the body. You're not taking care of your mitochondria.

So what to do with this? I mean, some of us are lucky enough, that we can live life without survival, stress and so on. There are quite a few people who don't. And yet there are, even people under this condition can survive and take care of the stress by finding other ways to find release. So, for example, laughter, being with other people,

enjoying something beautiful that you see. I mean, oftentimes you hear people talking about being in a battle and suddenly see a flower or something like that, getting distracted by the horrors that are around them and kind of finding themselves relax. People can take a walk outside, do puzzles or go dancing. So all sorts of simple things that you could do

to improve your feeling. But there are also realities. I mean, there are parents that take care of terminally ill or very sick kids for other reasons. Oral spouses. that's extremely stressful. How can you avoid it? So here again, you need to make sure that you take care of yourself as well.

So if you want to take care of a child like that or a spouse or that for a long time, the only way you can do it is if you can take care of yourself as well. You can't really just push on, push on because eventually you crack. Your health cracks. I think recognizing that stress, you know, people say after that they are stressful, that they are exhausted, they are literally exhausted. They have used so much of their ATP for other things.

Their mitochondrial is not functioning well, and it's a cost of this prolonged stress. And then there are simple tricks to avoid stress. So, you know, we wrote the book that there was a period that we watched three hours of news at night. It was awful. And so now we still read the newspaper and we know what's going on, but we don't watch three hours of the news. And especially since the three hours is a repetition, a repetition, repetition. So, you know, finding a way not to have an argument just before you go to sleep.

It's another way to prevent stress. There is a small study that was done at UCSF by Lisa Apple, where she studied a mitochondrial dysfunction in women. don't remember exactly the overall study. There were caregivers, right? Caretakers. That's a caregiver that they ask, what kind of mood did you have last night before the morning blood test? And they found that when women were describing last night being nice or happy or whatever,

their mitochondria damage markers, which is pieces of DNA of the mitochondria and the blood were lower. In this caregiver studies, there is another thing that they discovered, upper poor aging. and stress, which is, you know about the telomere. Those are the kind of the edges of chromosomes. Yeah, what's the relationship between mitochondria and telomeres? Crazy. So as telomeres shorten, they send something to mitochondria that damage them. As mitochondrial are damaged, they send something that shorten the telomeres.

There is continuous conversation between these two guys. It's a downward spiral once they start the damage. Exactly. Is there an upward spiral as well, too? that if, you know, the mitochondria are healthy, they're protecting the telomeres. The telomeres are protecting the mitochondria. Healthy mitochondria are better for longer telomeres. If you ask whether length of telomere is reversible, there are studies that suggest that you can

reverse in part the lengths of the telomeres. Did you ever see that NASA twin study where they sent the, one astronaut is in space, one astronaut is here? Well, we have just one couple like that that they can. brothers. Yeah. One of the surprising things about it was that the astronaut in space, his telemere's lengthen, if I remember correctly.

Like being, and then he came back to Earth and they shortened. And everybody was a little bit, they were like, what was going on exactly? I didn't remember that part, but what I remember that the mitochondria were not as good. In space. In space, yeah. There is studies that follow it of 50 astronauts that spent time in space. and when they came back, they looked at their mitochondrial function and it was reduced, but that was reversible.

But, you know, there is an issue of space and that we need to sort out before we send people to Mars, for example. That long-term... Exposure to all the radiation and lack of gravity and everything. We learn something from space when we talk to a person who is helping astronauts dealing with... life in space regarding sleep pattern. We described that as well.

So the problem was that initially they would go, you know, around the world and they would have something like, I don't remember, 16 sunsets and sunrise or something like that. They couldn't sleep and also it was freezing cold. And then they would wake up by hitting themselves because there is no gravity. So suddenly they will have wake up for that. So if she did simple tricks, you think, how will solve this problem? that they can't sleep properly.

One of them is that they will let them sleep so they will not wake them up and let them sleep for eight hours so that they will not, regardless of what was going on. And then they made sure that they are warm. I mean, one of the astronauts said that he put two computers on the feet of his sack

so that to give himself warm. And put screens on the windows. You know, you don't need to see 16 satellites and sunsets, just put the screen on it. So simple things like that and then tying them properly. So we learned from space a bunch of things, not the least of which, how we evolve with gravity, with 24 hours, clock, sunrise and sunsets, and lots of things in our environment and were beneficial for us over evolution.

And so when we change it suddenly, we take some elements completely away, for example, being indoors all the time. or flying to space. There is a cost to that, and we need to learn how to adopt. Yeah, absolutely. For the person who is listening today, myself included, are there any ways or commercially available test where I can get a sense of how my mitochondria are working today?

Wouldn't that be wonderful if we have a little ring or a patch that will tell us? Because that will be very useful for us. If we change our practice, is it really positive or negative or our mind? mitochondria immediately. So right now there aren't good tests, but I can tell you that there are quite a few groups that are working actively to see if they can develop such a test. The advantage will be really immense. We can look at a snapshot. So, for example, we can take biopsis, but nobody will agree to have biopsis of our muscles every, you know, a few minutes or hours or days. Even days will be, it's painful.

Or we can look at the telltale of damaged mitochondria because when mitochondria are damaged, the cells throw them out. Either degrade them in what is called rhizosome or release them to the environment. It's important that it relates to the environment of the cells. It's important that it releases to the environment of the cells because it says, I've been stressed. So the other cells know either to prepare for it or to help the cells that is damaging. I mean, I'm using it.

Sure. Simple terms. But they also release to the blood. And so you can take a sample from the blood and see, for example, does it have mitochondria or mitochondria or mitochondria fragments? And those tests are available. And the example of the women who take care of ill children, that's exactly what they measure mitochondrial DNA in the blood.

What's that test called, like that they run in? It's not, by the way, I don't think that it's a clinically. prove what is called clear test, but it's a test that you use in a research setting. In a research center, and we do it as well. For example, we had a study on Huntington disease in which we generated an agent that inhibits neurodegeneration and prevent the death of the animals, or reduce the rate by which they died. It's called P110. And one of the things that we measured is mitochondrial DNA in the blood of the animal. and we showed indeed that mitochondrial DNA goes up in the disease

and it goes down when we treat it. So this P110 agent is delivered systematically benefiting the brain from a genetic disease that cause accumulation of proteins, not directly mitochondrial effect, and we fix it by treating mitochondria throughout the body with this agent. So tells us already quite a few things that were inexplicable for me when we discovered that in 2013.

How can an agent that is in periphery can affect the brain? Almost the amount that we detected in the brain was really low. And why affecting mitochondria prevented or slow down the damage from a genetic disease is that it's not associated with the mitochondria? And how does it work? So what it does is that it prevents mitochondria from breaking to two small fragments. So it reduces this split over splitting and then throwing out the fragments into the blood. You know, there's another story that you talk about inside of the book, which is a study of two women in their 70s.

And I think that that is a great story to tell here to talk about the path that's available for us if we take care of our mitochondria or if we don't attend to it. Can you talk about that? Sure. So those are imaginary women because we didn't interview. the women that were participating in this trial, but we did talk to quite a few people who are conducting studies of that sort. So one woman, her sarcoponia, her muscle, were not developed enough. She was weak and she had to sit down. The other woman was very active and while she was waiting, she was stretching and moving around and so on. Those are example of two women that both of them to begin with were not having health challenge, but one took an active

action to maintain their own health, where the others was more passive. And I think that that should give us lots of interest in trying to do the same. And in fact, there are quite a few clinical studies that showed, usually small studies, that showed the impact of exercising in old age versus young age. So even in old age, if you start a regimen of exercising, and again, since we are talking to people who are, may we want to take action, this you have to do. If you have an exercise before,

you have to get advice from your physician first. But once you start to exercise, and if you sample mitochondria in, for example, in the muscle, you can see a major improvement in their quality as you exercise. So you can reverse it. And we titled that little chapter, it's never too late, but it's better not to wait. So you have, even the 70-year-old woman, may be put on an exercise regimen

and her mitochondrial function will improve. There is another study, by the way, from Belgium in which they took cyclists, they cycled older life, and then they took people who have never cycled extensively, and they compared their mitochondria in their skeletal muscle, in their leg muscle. And of course, the mitochondria of those that never cycled or were quite sedentary was poor, relatively to match-aged, those that cycle throughout their life.

And then they put the non-cyclers through a regimen of exercise, I think for three or four months. And they caught up. They weren't as good as the one that exercised all their life, but they were domestically better. So even if you are at your 70s and you've never exercised in your life and you start slowly, you can really benefit your mitochondria and therefore your whole body's health, your brain, everything. You know, exercises are great opportunity to get into the weeds a little bit more about everything that mitochondria are capable of doing.

Break down some of the key mechanisms. if we were able to observe mitochondria during phases of cardio or resistance training or different types of exercise, what would we see about their capabilities in the human body? Even if we can't see unless we use all sorts of reagents that will measure how much ATP is made, how much reactive oxygen species are made, in other words, free radicals, how much building blocks and so on. Unless we see all of this, we won't see much during exercise. But if you're asking what happens when we exercise in these mitochondria

and how they influence the rest of the body? Is that? Yes. Okay. So the first thing is clear, and the one that people even in the 60 started to think about when you exercise, your blood flow is increasing, that bring more oxygen to your heart, to your brain, your lungs are expanding, and so on.

That's clearly the case. But then when you look at the mitochondria, right away, you see a bunch of things that happen that are actually affecting your whole body. As the mitochondia are in the muscle that are exercising, we find that the muscle release little treats. They could be treats from the muscle itself so they are called myokines

or small peptides from the mitochondria themselves that are really benefiting the whole body. So, for example, the first peptide that is made in the mitochondria by the mitochondrial DNA that was described is called humanine. And the first person that discovered it is a Japanese researcher and he thought it would be so important for Alzheimer's disease that it will bring back humanity to these people. Quite a few researchers are studying it,

and one of them is Hasiko and here, in LA, showed that humanines are released during exercise from the muscle. They benefit the brain. There are people who are over 100 years old, and they have a change in human, a different sequence in human, a different code in human, that is correlating with their long life. And there are others that have greater likelihood to develop Alzheimer's disease, and they have a change that is correlating with that. So humanine that comes from our muscle when we exercise is affecting our brain.

Especially good humanine, like this Japanese centenarian, is particularly good, and there is one that is not so good. So what does it tell us? Paris, it tells the rest of us that we probably have the good humanine, the normal humanine, that exercising will be good for our brain. But it also tells us something about medicine, right? This is a small peptide. Could we use it to help patients that have non-functional

or less functional human beings? So this is one example of quite a few little treats that the mitochondria generate. But I want to mention another one that most people think of it as a negative. So when you exercise, the mitochondria are working faster and there is always what we call leakage of electrons. So it's not a perfect machine and about 2, 5% depending on mitochondria of the electrons leak. And when you have a free electron, it doesn't like to be alone.

So then it binds to something else and that generates, for example, reactive oxygen species. This generation of reactive oxygen species is not bad. It gives a signal to the nucleus. I need more mitochondria. I'm damaging the mitochondrial right now through the exercise. So make sure that you synthesize soon so that next time I need to exercise, I have good mitochondria. And this small level of reactive oxygen species can also send signal to other cells in the body.

So too much of that is not good. not good. But having some is important. So this is another example of how the mitochondria in the muscle signal within the cell and outside the cell to prepare for the next route. We've already talked about almost seven to ten things that hurt the mitochondria. And throughout the interview, you reminded us that exercise, including strength training, which is getting getting a lot of attention these days, especially when it comes to aging, perimenopause, menopause, fragility, you know, avoiding muscle loss as we age, avoiding hip fractures. You know, there's so much conversation about that, which is fantastic.

But also endurance. Actually, do you want to touch on endurance and things like VO2 Max and mitochondria and their relationship together? Is there anything you want to say on that topic? Just regarding endurance, so oftentimes when people, people, ask me about exercise, they ask which one. Which one is, we should do.

And we have kind of a rule when people ask which one, the answer is always both. Both things. But in this case, there is also very good research. It shows that both are better than each of them alone. Yeah. So when

you are, you're building strength, you're working on increasing the mass of your muscle. indirectly, if your muscle mass increases, there are also more mitochondia. When you're working on endurance, you exercised a lot. There was more wrath. Remember that when the ATP is consumed, when the mitochondria working hard, they always leak some electrons that generate reactive oxygen species.

And those are a way to tell the nucleus, hey, I need more mitochondria here, make me more parts so that I can build more. mitochondria. So endurance exercise does that and increases the amount of functional healthy mitochondria. It also increases the process that is called mitophagy where damaged mitochondria are being eaten up, removed from the system. So they renew the mitochondria faster. So endurance give you more of that. Strengths may give you more muscle, so you'll have more cells that will have more mitochondria in them. And both of them are good. Exactly. Yeah. So not either.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's good. It's good to understand the why, especially at the mitochondrial level, because then I find that when people get the reason why something is so important, they're more likely to stick with it. I agree. Like even especially, like, let's say you have, you know, one of the things we didn't talk about that damages the mitochondria is chronic sleep loss. And there are phases of people's life where you have a new baby, something might be going on, you're a caretaker, where you're just not sleeping well, right? I've gone through different periods of that. And it's amazing to know that, hey, even if you don't sleep well, if you can get some form of exercise that's in there, I'm literally imagining me exercising, helping to get rid of

some of the damage mitochondria that came from lack of sleep. Like I actually visualize that and it makes me more likely to want to go to the gym or to do some sprints or to keep up with my normal routine. Or not to eat garbage food. Or not to eat garbage food. And the thing about that is that I always end up feeling better after I do that anyway. In other words, again, you listen to your body. Yeah. Yeah.

So you give perfect example and this is one thing that we constantly emphasize that it's not one thing that you could do to your body and it's not one thing or to help your mitochondria. It's not one thing that is a threat or the mitochondria. So you can mix and match. You can try to compensate. So, for example, if you have a crying baby and you wake up a lot at night, yes. So exercise can correct it. In fact, there is a study where they deprive people from sleeping. And some of them they allow to exercise and others they don't.

And they saw that there is benefit to that. Now, I want to emphasize, it's not forever. You have to sleep. Sleep is so, so important to our body, so important to our body. Now, there are people who have chronic problems with sleeping. And again, when we talk to Zizer, he says that he thinks that a lot of people with problems of sleeping is actually people who have a lot of stress, you know, conceived or real, and not that lack of sleeping is.

But anyhow, my point about that is that, okay, so you can beat yourself about the facts that you don't sleep enough or that you don't sleep well or it takes your time to fall asleep and then you stress further or you can say, okay, I have to take it as is and then I'm going to deal with it in another way. I have to, you know, eat properly and exercise or spend time in nature, very good,

you know, forest bathing. All these things have alternative. Love, love, so important. Spend time with friends, do something that is pleasurable, small things. I really think that you can look at the world as a scary place where things get worse and worse and, you know, news are bad and pollution and smoke. Or you can look at there are things in my control. Not everything is out of my control.

What do we know about any kind of key nutrients that are, in particular, particular really important for mitochondrial health. Okay, let me start with one that I did not know at all about. So we are all told all the time to eat lots of fiber, so we'll be regular. And what I discovered or what we discovered when we talk to microbiome experts, that the reason why we need to have a lot of fibers is actually this is how we feed our microbiome. that the microbiome munch on these fibers

and as a result of that they release a buterate which is the same thing as in butter except we get very little from it when we eat just butter. These are these short chain fatty acids? Short chain fatty acids they go into the cells that line

our colon and these cells don't use glucose but use buterate to fuel themselves and they produce then a thick mucus that provides another layer between the bacteria in the gut. Some of them are bad, some of them are good, preventing barriers so that they won't get into the body. And when you don't eat enough fiber, the bacteria can munch on this mucus that you have

become thinner, and the study in mice show that they become thinner. And so maybe bacteria can come in and cause inflammation, and we know that inflammation is then bad for our health and so on. So that was the one that I was surprised. Regarding getting the right, feeding the mitochondria properly, is of course providing them with these micronutrients and with minerals. So if you eat what we call balanced diet with lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, you get all these micronutrients properly.

And this is an example of some things that to know if you don't is a simple blood test. A simple blood test will tell you, oh, I don't have enough vitamin B12 or B6. Those are very important for the functioning of the mitochondria, but also functioning of other enzyme. So having the right vitamins in our body through our nutrients is very important. And the question is vitamin supplement or vitamins through our food. And again and again, research shows that when you consume it as part of your food, it's better because probably it's absorbed better. It's getting to the right place together with something else.

So those are things that are, these vitamins and micronutrients are very important for the normal function of mitochondia. And oftentimes we don't consume enough. So I think that's one thing that we can again take care of being conscious of that and correct it through eating proper food, yummy food. You know, in addition to eating food, you also talk about the role of not eating food, fasting. Sure. What's the connection between fasting and mitochondria health? So here is a field that flourished for a while in a major way

because there were studies starting with sea elegance, this one millimeter long. long nematose that chose that if you starve them, they live longer, starve them. You grow them in a dish on lots of bacteria, and if you reduce the amount of bacteria, they seem to be living longer instead of whatever, 14 days, they live 30 days or whatever number of days. Then they've done these studies in other animals. Importantly, in mice and rats in the lab, and they live longer. So, okay, let's starve humans.

we will live longer. The problem with that is that it takes many, many, many years and study of many people to see whether we actually live longer. So there is a challenge with the idea of starving. And importantly, and there are people who took it on, especially because of some health guru really suggesting that not eating is a good idea. The problem is that is multiple, not the little of which if you don't eat or if you watch your calories in a very strict way,

you end up not getting enough of these micronutriens that we are talking about. But also that the basis for starving animals was on the fact that those are animals that were living in the lab and getting food 24 hours. I mean, the mice and the rats in the lab have food and water 24 hours. And so they eat all the time. One of the critical thing is about eating all the time is that you lose the ability to switch the mitochondrial metabolic switch is not working.

And it's very important for mitochondia to work differently during the day and during the night. And a very big study that took four years to complete confirmed how important is other factors than just reducing the calories on the life of mice. So that study involved 960 mice, huge numbers. They were divided into five groups. And they were giving the normal chow, normal diet, access all the time. They were, one group was taking, they took the food away for two days or, so reduce the calories by 40%. And I don't remember now all the groups that they had.

But what was unique about this mice was that they were not your typical mouse that you get in the lab or biofirm. from services, so genetically identical mice. But actually, they collected mice throughout the world wild mice, and then they divided the same family of mice into these five groups. What they found out is that indeed mice that ate less, live longer. But within a group of mice of genetically diverse background, it's always the same mice that died first. So genetic plays a great deal in whether you live long or not.

But the other aspect that they found is that the mice that didn't eat enough and died, they usually died because they have immune problems. And these mice were still living in the lab so they were not exposed to pathogens. two pathogen viruses and so on. There are studies in humans that show that people who are very thin and having suddenly have to be in a hospital, especially as the age, they feel less well than people that have a little bit of reserve.

So, okay, so what about eating less? Definitely we consume too many calories. That's true. But one of the key things is that we consume, calories, all are waking hours. And perhaps that's not good. In fact, we believe that it's not good. So confining the number of hours that you eat to a lower number is important,

not only perhaps because of the ability to switch the metacondroform using fatty acids, using glucose to using fatty acids at night, but also because it means that you consume less. Because if you sit in front of the television and you continue to munch, you just take more calories and probably of not good calories. So the one thing that we took from this actually number of three years ago

before we wrote the book is that we try to not eat after dinner and we eat dinner early. So we try to not eat 12 to 14 hours. I have to say that it's not always working. Maybe one more thing about diet. Please. Definitely not one food.

I mean, they are crazy, oh, if you just eat, I don't know, cabbage soup for 10 days. One food is not giving you everything that you need, so it's not good. And also it's difficult to stick to it. And it's punishing unless you feel empowered by the effects that you're, you know, it's not good. So mixed food is very important. And the other thing about food and diet is it's not suitable for everybody. So for example, we say Mediterranean diet is very, very good.

good, which is a Mediterranean diet is what we eat, but maybe not for people from Finland. So we have to consider what we grew up with, what is our genetic makeup and so on. And if we make a switch, always listen to your body. Good rules of thumb. Good rules of thumb. I want to go back to your core area of expertise and your passion for turning some of these insights in the research space into potentially drug development or things that are there. I mean, so many people have become aware of the potential.

role of peptides, you know, sometimes they're being used in a way that's a little bit off-label, but there's a lot of emerging science where people are very excited about it. So what do you feel like the future holds for us in store when you're there observing how mitochondria can communicate with each other and send each other these little, to use your word, treats, these peptides to help with aging, to help with repair? What's possible for us as we move forward into the next few years and decades? I think your question is touching my own motivation of working on this book with my husband because I'm so optimistic about the future of medicine as a result of the knowledge that we acquire now

about how mitochondrial work, what happens when they don't work properly, and how we can help mitochondria help each other. So I think medicine is, it's exciting period where we'll see more medicine, I expect. the medical field more focusing on improving mitochondrial health and through that addressing chronic diseases. Regarding peptides, so yeah, the reagent that I used initially were short peptides. Not, you know, there are chemical entities that are like aspirin, you know, they are global and the peptides are tiny pieces of proteins.

I didn't work with natural pieces of proteins. I've picked up a piece from a protein that I was working on and realized that it can do something different from the whole protein. But mitochondia generate pieces of proteins that were in evolution refined so that they will do the magic that they do. So it's possible, for example, that we talked about, humanine in the beginning of the conversation. It's possible that humanine or other peptides like that can be given to complement what your mitochondrial were supposed to provide for patients

that generates them less well. So amazing. It's possible that you can find ways to enhance the ability of the mitochondrial deal with aldehydes. It's possible that you could improve the mitochondria sensitivity to switching from using glucose to using fat and so on. But I think the biggest thing in my mind is the discovery that the mitochondria are not home bodies. So they move in within the cells from the nucleus to the periphery. So for example, if you have a wound in your skin, the cells that needs to close the wound, push all the mitochondria to the front of the cell.

It's like in the army, the supplies. sent to the front to help the soldiers, mitochondria are doing that. If you're thinking about in a disease state like stroke and so on, researchers found that cells surrounding the area that was infarcted can send mitochondria to the area that was damaged

to complement for the damaged mitochondria. So mitochondria can move locally. They can also move in larger distances. So now there is a whole industry new biotech companies that are still working on the ability to actually deliver mitochondria by injecting them and helping the whole body. The first experiments were done at Harvard, I believe,

where they purified mitochondria from one part of the body of a little girl, one muscle, and then injected it to the heart to improve the heart, and it was working. And so they repeated it now, I think, 16 times. and it seems like it's improving the heart. There are lots of questions of whether this transplantation of mitochondria

is really, the mechanism is really understood, but the data are really good. And so there are now companies that are purified mitochondria and find ways to store them so that they can deliver them when needed. So maybe in the future you can go for mitochondia treatment and, you know, rejuvenate your pool of mitochondria. mitochondria. It's like something out of Star Trek.

It sounds like, but I don't think it's so far because there are now active clinical trials, multiple clinical trials in this field. We have to wait and see. There is a lot. Some people say it's not possible for the mitochondria to live outside the cell. But then you look at the data and definitely there is benefit in animal models, no doubt, and also in humans. So we'll see? I'm excited about it. There is a huge, prospect of focusing on mitochondria as a way to deal with whatever chronic disease is occurring.

And that's not to say that it's always a fault of the mitochondria. It just means that it was tasked with so much work that by boosting it, you boost the health. Yeah, that's such an important message. As we wind down here, and the audience is taking in all the beautiful knowledge, and the book is fantastic, by the way. In fact, we have a copy over here.

If we could just hold it up to the camera, the life machines, how taking care of your mitochondria can transform your health. And we have a link in the show notes so anybody can go purchase it. I highly recommend picking up a copy. What is the lasting thought that you want to leave, our audience, about the power that their own body and their mitochondria has? I think that our modern life are fraught with a sense of lack of control, that everything, things happening to us, stresses and so on. And I think that one thing that when you think about your own mitochondria is that we gave you a tool to feel like you can collect or knowledge to collect or to gain some control of what's going on with you. So control can be regained to a limit.

Of course, your genetic makeup and so on is going to remain an issue. But my hope with the book is that we gave some tools to deal with a sense of lack of control and also to be patient. with what's going on right now in development and kind of drugs that we will have just around the corner. I really believe that this is exciting times that human health will be taking care of better.

You know, one of the things that I was chatting about with your husband about is that it's so great in this day and age that there's things like podcasts because the audience and the community, one of their favorite things, is to hear directly from the researchers that are actually doing the work.

So obviously we have this podcast. We have your book, which again, I hope everybody picks up a copy of. Are there other ways that people can keep in touch with your research? Are you active on social media? Do you have a TikTok yet or Instagram? I am not active on social media. Any chance of making that happen?

Probably not because, you know, I'm really busy with other things. But people can look me up at Sanford and we provide their website for my husband's and so on. So, yeah. Well, this has been fantastic. and I'm so glad that your publishers and PR team reached out to us because I think that this topic is an important one that deserves a lot of attention. I really appreciate taking so much time with me, Drew. Thank you. It was fun.

Absolutely. Thank you. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. and it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about.

It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.