THE KEY TO A LONG LIFE: CARING FOR YOUR MITOCHONDRIA

“Longevity” wasn’t even a buzzword yet in 2007, when Dr. Chris Rinsch started his company, Timeline, that’s devoted to it.

“Timeline was founded by scientists and doctors with this idea of really changing the way we go about thinking about nutrition,” Rinsch, the company’s co-founder and president, says. “The idea was the convergence of science, nutrition, and consumer altogether to bring products to market that are founded and based on solid science, the same type of science that you think about when you associate biotech and developing drugs.”

For Swiss company Timeline, that meant looking at mitochondria, the power center of our cells. As we age, our cells have less energy and are less efficient at renewing themselves from within.

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The inevitable decline in mitochondrial function is one of the biological hallmarks of aging.

“What’s important about mitochondria is that they’re in all of our cells except red blood cells, so they’re very important to manage and to maintain cellular energy levels throughout our body,” Rinsch says. “When we talk about maintaining mitochondria function, that comes into another category. How can we take care of mitochondria? Why should they have a decline in function?”

The team at Timeline used their knowledge of certain foods that contain polyphenols, such as pomegranates and walnuts, to help develop a purified form of Urolithin A, which they call Mitopure. The supplement aids in muscle function and the skin creams and serum help with signs of aging, Rinsch says. A two-month supply of Mitopure softgels is US$200. Other products include a day cream and a night cream, both retailing for US$250.

Rinsch recently sat down with Penta to talk about Timeline’s longevity products that were created using Mitopure.

Penta: What did you set out to do with Timeline?

Chris Rinsch: Our plan from the beginning was looking at how to improve the health span of people throughout their lives by incorporating specific “actives” into their diet, either through nutrition or through dietary supplementation. We were identifying active polyphenols from foods and identifying these compounds that have specific health benefits. On that journey we arrived at Urolithin A.

What is Urolithin A and how does it prolong one’s life?

First, let’s back up and talk about mitochondria. Mitochondria provide the energy to our cells for all cellular processes. What has been observed in the scientific community is that depending upon our diet, our lifestyle choices, and our age, mitochondria function declines. The decline in mitochondrial function has been linked to a number of age-related conditions. One of the ones that we have studied the most has been muscle function.

Why does mitochondria function decline?

When mitochondria are producing energy, they get damaged because of the reactive oxygen species that are created during this process. The cells have this sort of Pac-Man mechanism inside of each of them that basically cleans up the damaged mitochondria and recycles them so that the cells can make healthy mitochondria, keep the mitochondria functioning at its peak, and also maintain energy in the cells. This Pac-Man mechanism is called mitophagy; it’s one way that cells are able to maintain basically all of the mitochondrial function throughout our lives.

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Which brings us back to Urolithin A.

Urolithin A is a gut-microbiome derived from polyphenolic compounds found in foods such as pomegranates, berries, and walnuts. We identified it together with professors over at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. It’s the first molecule that stimulates this Pac-Man mechanism—mitophagy—to clean up the damaged mitochondria.

We ran studies that showed that after four months of taking our product that there was an increase in muscle strength by around 10% after just two months. In the elderly population, we showed an improvement in endurance in the hand muscle and the leg muscle. In athletes who were taking our product for four weeks, they had an improved muscle recovery. We spent a lot of time looking at muscle function, but it’s not the only … benefit area that improving mitochondria can work on.

Where are other areas?

Practically speaking, if you improve your mitochondria function throughout the body, you should be improving the functioning of a lot of tissues and organs. One of the areas that we’ve been going into more is exploring immune health. We have a clinical study that’s just finishing up where we’re exploring and looking at the effect on all the different immune cells. Skin, for example.

How do your skin products help with longevity?

We’ve seen in studies just looking at Urolithin A alone that it supports what’s called extrinsic aging. When you’re exposed to UV light, for example, you can cause skin inflammation. When the skin is treated with Urolithin A and MitoQ Pure, we’ve seen a decrease in skin inflammation, an improvement in wrinkle reduction, and an increase of collagen production at the cellular level.

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What are some lifestyle changes that support mitochondrial function outside of supplements?

Exercise, for sure. Another lifestyle choice is caloric restriction. And then when you think about lifestyle choice, you also think about diet, and you think about the Mediterranean diet and also eating these very polyphenol-rich foods, like pomegranate, which is where Urolithin A comes from.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

2024-01-08T19:05:51Z dg43tfdfdgfd