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Rethinking the Function of Mitochondria for Our Health with Dr Elizabeth Yurth
Season 1 · Episode 196

Rethinking the Function of Mitochondria for Our Health with Dr Elizabeth Yurth

Pushing The Limits

May 20, 20211h 7m

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Show Notes

As the powerhouse of the cell, mitochondria are associated with producing energy. However, studies regarding the function of mitochondria suggest that it does way more than powering the cell.

In this episode, Dr Elizabeth Yurth discusses the function of the mitochondria in our overall health. For instance, it signals the nucleus to repair the damage done by oxidative stress. Furthermore, the role of mitochondria is also to facilitate improvement in metabolism. Dr Elizabeth also explains how increasing butyrate levels in your gut microbiome is beneficial. This stimulates your mitochondria to release PGC-1α and NPK. As a result, it will have a greater capacity to eliminate waste and harmful substances in the cell. Additionally, we discuss fat tissue, blood sugar levels and metabolism.

If you want to know more about the function of mitochondria and how it informs your overall health, this episode is for you. Listening to this podcast will also help you understand your digestive health.

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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:
  1. Understand that the function of mitochondria is not only to produce energy but also to enhance cell growth and healing.
  2. Learn about the effect of butyrate and antibiotics on the mitochondria, as well as the diet and activities to boost mitochondrial performance.
  3. Find out more about the function of the mitochondria in regulating stress, blood glucose and ageing.

Resources

Episode Highlights [06:33] What Is the Mitochondria?
  • The mitochondria are bacteria classified as anaerobic organisms.
  • Humans have a symbiotic relationship with the mitochondria. With their help, we can survive outside water and air.
  • Mitochondria also have their own genome. You inherit them from your mother.
  • The communication between the nucleus and the mitochondria is imperative to our health.
[11:00] The Function of Mitochondria
  • In theories of ageing, mitochondria produce free radicals damageing our DNA.
  • The mitochondria release mitochondrial peptides when activated by oxidative stress.
  • These mitochondrial peptides are messages sent to the nucleus to signal it to heal your body.
  • When the mitochondria are stressed, it also activates the unfolded protein response (UPR). The UPR either gets rid of bad protein through autophagy or fixes them.
  • Tune in for more details about how the mitochondria initiate growth and healing.
[17:05] Damage in the Cells
  • The body tries to get rid of dysfunctional proteins.
  • You need to be careful of the amount of antioxidants you take. Taking too much may inhibit your body's response to bad proteins.
  • You should take your body through a cycle.
  • You go through an autophagy phase where you clear out the bad cells.
  • Then, you go through the growth phase, where you induce more toxic stress. In doing so, you can initiate growth and healing.
[19:32] Mitochondria Permeability Transition Pore (MPTP)
  • This pore is a gate that opens and closes the mitochondria.
  • As you grow old or when you are in worse health, it stays open longer. Then, it allows bad stuff to go in and out more often.
  • Melatonin keeps the pores closed most of the time.
  • Spermidine also induces mitochondrial biogenesis by restoring this pore structure.
  • Antibiotics like minocycline may have some very significant benefits to your cell health.
[23:14] The Effects of Butyrate on the Gut Microbiome
  • Your microbiome is most affected by butyrate.
  • To consume antibiotics and probiotics, you first have to keep butyrate in your microbiome.
  • Higher levels of butyrate may also help the cell, specifically the mitochondria. It improves aerobic metabolism.
  • High butyrate also regulates your PGC-1α gene to improve your aerobic endurance.
  • Sick people usually replenish butyrate by doing rectal suppositories. To know more about the full effects of butyrate, listen to the full episode.
[32:33] Relationship Between the Function of Mitochondria and Gut Microbiome
  • Butyrate increased the PGC-1α and NPK in the mitochondrial level.
  • As a result, your oxidative capacity is restored, and the mitochondria become healthier.
  • After inducing autophagy and getting rid of the bad stuff, Dr Yurth restricts the food consumption of her patients. Then, she will use spermidine at a higher dose.
  • At this stage, the mitochondrial peptides released will induce the nucleus to have a healthier genome.
[36:57] The Effects of Melatonin
  • Melatonin also affects the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (MPTP).
  • Interleukin-1 beta (IL1β) causes damage to mitochondria. High dose melatonin blocks IL1β.
  • Melatonin also creates a homeostatic reaction in the mitochondria. It's therefore anti-cancer.
  • High dose melatonin also restores your circadian rhythm. When you should take it depends on your genes.
  • 20 mg is a high dose of melatonin. This dosage is for people with cancer.
[42:18] The Importance of Mitochondrial Peptides
  • Mitochondrial peptides like the SS-31 helps the endoplasmic reticulum to be healthy.
  • Exercise helps induce mitochondrial peptides.
  • MOTS-c as a drug is an alternative for people who can't exercise.
  • You can also produce MOTS-c when you exercise.
  • MOTS-c helps with glucose metabolism, fat loss, turning white fat to brown fat, and overall metabolism.
[44:44] Why Brown Adipose Tissue Is Metabolically Active
  • When babies are born, they need something to keep them warm. Brown adipose tissue is functional for heat production and burns calories.
  • White fatty tissues are more common as you get older. It only coats your organs and provides little benefits.
  • Butyrate can convert white fat to brown fat, which can help you boost your metabolism.
  • Fat is also metabolically active. Men who are fatter convert their testosterone into estrogen.
  • Dr Yurth emphasises that a good diet and quality exercise is worthless without looking at hormones. Listen more to learn about how hormones affect your metabolism.
[54:20] Regulating Blood Sugar
  • As your blood glucose rises, you will feel temporary stress which is good for you. However, long-term high levels of glucose in your blood are damageing.
  • Dr Yurth mentioned the benefits of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM).
  • Go for a walk after a meal to regulate spikes in your sugar levels.
  • Chromium and cinnamon help maintain blood glucose. However, the positive effects rely on genetics.
  • A recent study revealed that eating protein before carbohydrates shows a lower blood glucose and insulin level.
[1:00:36] Enzymes and Breaking Down Proteins
  • Evidence shows that the dysfunction of the metabolic process starts in bile acids.
  • In treating neuromuscular weakness or building muscle, you should focus on your digestive enzymes. Integrate mass proteases and lipases into your meals.
  • Dr Yurth reiterates the importance of keeping your gut microbiome healthy through consuming butyrate.
  • Good bacteria such as probiotics, which are anaerobes, will not survive the colon site.
  • If you don't have a healthy gut lining, your immune system will see probiotics as foreign materials. This can cause a histamine response.

7 Powerful Quotes from the Episode

'I'm gonna make the case that actually every single disease, from cancer, to cardiovascular disease, everything related to ageing, osteoporosis, everything comes down to mitochondrial dysfunction.'

'I'm just a big advocate with diet, and with exercise, with everything, everything's done cyclically. Because we want to go through phases all the time where we're getting rid of bad stuff and then regrowing.'

'We're able to use the butyrate for fatty acid oxidation and actually improve aerobic metabolism.'

'As you're learning, the gut is everything. And now we're learning it may even be imperative to the mitochondria.'

'I think what it's going to come down to when we look at this mitochondria, it's not going to be trying to figure out what is my perfect dose of antioxidants. It's gonna be figuring out how do I get that mitochondria with the pores, letting the good stuff in and letting the bad stuff out?'

'What it's really trying to get across is just, you know, sensible stuff, we just did a thing you know, about just taking a walk after dinner, right?'

'That little bit of stress, like I said, what you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.'

About Dr Elizabeth Yurth

Elizabeth Yurth, MD, is the Medical Director and co-founder of the Boulder Longevity Institute. This institute was established in 2006. Dr Yurth is double board-certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Anti-Ageing/Regenerative Medicine.

She also has a Stanford-affiliated Fellowship in Sports and Spine Medicine. Here, Dr Yurth specialises in Sports, Spine, and Regenerative Medicine. Additionally, she also has a dual-Fellowship in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine (FAARM) and Anti-Aging, Regenerative and Functional Medicine (FAARFM) through the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M).

Dr Yurth serves as a faculty member in SSRP (Seeds Scientific Research and Performance) with 25 mastermind physician fellows. Here, she allows herself to stay abreast and teach others in the emerging field of cellular medicine.

An active athlete herself, Dr Yurth has worked with numerous sports teams at both the collegiate and professional levels. At present, she works as a consultant for high-level athletes from across the country. She aims to aid them in recovery and optimise performance.

Dr Yurth resides in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband and five children.

To know more about Dr Yurth's work, visit Boulder Longevity Institute and connect with her on Instagram.

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To pushing the limits,

Lisa

Full Transcript Of The Podcast

Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.

Lisa Tamati: Lisa Tamati your host here at Pushing The Limits. Super excited that you're here with me again today. Thanks for tuning in. I do love and appreciate your loyalty. And I would love to hear from you. If you've got something to say about the podcast, you've got some comments and questions about some of the topics that we have raised, please do reach out to us. We love hearing from our listeners. And if you can give us a rating and review if you're enjoying the content, that really really helps the show.

We've also got our Patron VIP premium membership now open. If you love our show, if you love what we do, what we stand for our values, our principles, the work that we put into this podcast, which we've been doing now for five and a half years, without any money or any—just for the love of it and for the passion of it. If you want to help support us and keep us going and want to get a whole lot of premium membership benefits, then head over to patron.lisatamati.com. I would love you to join our VIP tribe. That's patron.lisatamati.com. For the price of about a coffee a day or a little bit more, you can be involved. There's two tiers in there, with different levels of premium member benefits. And we would love you to join us there. So if you can please do.

Now today's superstar is Dr Elizabeth Yurth. And if you follow the podcast, you might have remember that name because she was on just a few weeks ago. And she is now one of my favorite teachers. I have been learning from her at the Bone Longevity Institute of Human Optimization Academy. And she is a brilliant teacher, and a brilliant orthopaedic surgeon and longevity expert. And she offers the world's most advanced research-based health care. And it's all customised to you. And the information that we're going to share with you today—today's topic if you like, is all around mitochondrial health. Now we do deviate a little bit because as we do in these conversations, we go off on a few tangents. But it is really all about understanding what your mitochondria are, why you need to know about it, how to keep them healthy, because these little bacteria if you like, and these little powerhouses of our cells are absolutely crucial to health and longevity.

And Dr Yurth says that the mitochondria, she thinks, are at the very basis of all diseases. So when these little guys go awry, that's when diseases come into play. And everything from cancer, chronic fatigue, to all of the diseases right across the spectrum can be affected by mitochondrial health. So we do a bit of a deep dive into that today. So I hope you enjoy this session with Dr Elizabeth Yurth. She's a lady who walks the talk. She's an incredibly amazing person, athlete, orthopaedic surgeon. She loves this. She breathes it the way she loves, as you know, in complete alignment with what she also teaches, so make sure you check out all her links in the show notes. Right.

Now before we go over to the show. Just want to also let you know about our NMN, our supplements. They're longevity and anti-ageing supplement. We are into longevity. We are into health span. We are into increasing our lifespan and healthspan. So if you want to get into having—to boosting your NAD levels in your body, we've recently done a couple of episodes with Dr Elena Seranova on this topic, then head over to nmnbio.nz. And grab your NMN supplements over there to get your longevity regime underway.

And in today's podcast, we talk a little bit about this. We talk also about spermidine, which we've also mentioned in other podcasts. There are some amazing compounds out there that are going to help us stay healthier and longer. And there's a lot of techniques and things that we can actually engage in. We don't have to be passive bystanders to our ageing, we can do things about it, we can slow it down, and even reverse it in some places. So I hope you enjoy this episode. So do check out my Longevity Supplement over at nmnbio.nz. And enjoy today's show with Dr Elizabeth Yurth.

Lisa: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. Super excited to have another wonderful guest that we've actually had on before and back by popular demand. That was a very, very popular episode. So I have Dr Elizabeth Yurth with me. Hi, Dr Yurth, how are you doing?

Dr Elizabeth Yurth: Lisa, thank you for having me again. I love being with you.

Lisa: Oh, it's just that, our last episode was just so full of information that I've had it on repeat going, for me, because there's so much in there and so many people have written and have been asking questions. So I want to get started by saying if after this interview, you want to talk to Dr Yurth and one of her team at the Border Longevity Institute, you can do that even when you're in New Zealand or Australia, you can do teleconsults. And yeah, so if you are facing some difficult health problem, and you really want some help, make sure you do that. And we'll have all the links in the show notes and so on. And before we get underway, there is a Bold Longevity of—what is it called, optimisation?

Dr Yurth: Human Optimization Academy, right? Yeah, from the Border Longevity site, or just go to bliacademy.com and sign up. But you guys have definitely signed up for that we actually are trying to really put together tons—and all the information you guys need to try. And you'll have one place where you can go get all of these things that we talked about, and all the things that Lisa talks about, and really be able to learn about them. Because as we know, doctors don't really learn this stuff very well. So you guys have to do it yourself. And so we're trying to give you a place to do. It's coming from a very experienced...

Lisa: Yeah, and if you want on the latest, so make sure bli.academy.com. And I'll put that in the show notes too guys, so you can find it.

Now today's subject is mitochondria, one of Dr Yurth's favorite subjects. Okay, for starters, what is a mitochondria?

Dr Yurth: What's really so cool about mitochondria, right, is they're actually they were actually their own little bacteria. So they invaded us back when we were threatened to kind of moving from an anaerobic to an aerobic environment. So when we went from sort of anaerobic organisms to actually living in air, we couldn't do it. And so these little bacteria got into the cells, and they formed a symbiotic relationship, so that we could survive outside of water and air. And so they were responsible for us being able to move out of the ocean and into an air or an aerobic environment. Well, they're actually their own little organism. Right? I mean, that that is weird, right? That we have this essential part of our cell. Now our essential part of survival is actually its own organism.

And it was a one celled organism, it gone to formed a symbiotic relationship, it allowed the bacteria to survive living inside ourselves. And if we allowed ourselves to survive, so amazing. And that's why they're so unique is that they actually contain a whole genome that is separate from your nuclear genome, right? So they have a mitochondrial genome that's completely different. And it's only inherited from your mother. So that mitochondrial genome is not inherited from your father at all. It's probably one of the reasons your mother's health at the time, because even though the mitochondria has its own genome, that genome is impacted by things you do. So if I have a baby, and I'm super unhealthy, I've altered that mitochondrial genome. And then I've transferred that mitochondrial genome only from me—the dad was great and doing everything right—to my children. So that's one of the...

Lisa: So that's the epigenetic…. Because I'm just about to go through IVF, as I said before, very interesting for me. So even though I'm going to have an egg donor...

Dr Yurth: You wanna make sure she's healthy, right?

Lisa: Yeah, she's just—she is, and we've got her on everything. Her DNA is coming into the egg, but actually, my mitochondria will be a part of this baby, if we have one.

Dr Yurth: So you will alter—so basically, she's, you're going to be, the baby will have her mitochondrial DNA. But because you will be growing this baby, you will be altering that mitochondrial DNA by epigenetic influences that you're doing, right. So now you're going to be changing some of that DNA structure, or the genome of that mitochondria by things you're doing. The mitochondria, so even though it's coming in, and again, you want her to come in with this great mitochondrial DNA in the first place. Right? So we want this good genome in the first place, which is why you do want her to be healthy and fit and all those things. And younger.

But then you know all about the epigenetics, and so you're going to be potentially altering some of that, too. So that's one of the really amazing things. Now, what we used to think is, all the mitochondria did was do oxidative phosphorylation, and make energy, make ATP. And that's what they did. They were our energy powerhouse. That's all we ever learned, right? High school was like, 'Oh, the powerhouse of the cell'.

So we now know, they do a whole lot more than that. So they're not just responsible for aerobic metabolism, and making ATP. So they're not just energy production. And in fact, there's the communication back and forth between the nucleus of ourselves and these mitochondrial DNA that's imperative to health. Well, I'm gonna make the case that actually every single disease, from cancer, to cardiovascular disease, everything related to ageing, osteoporosis, everything comes down to mitochondrial dysfunction.

Lisa: Wow. So this is pretty–

Dr Yurth: It's imperative and, and you're gonna start reading more about this, is that the key to fixing our health is going to be fixing the mitochondria. And we've already figured out like, you know, you I know you're big into NAD that, improving NAD and I know you have a product that does that. And that is— that's critical, right? To mitochondrial health. We know that's critical to mitochondrial health. But there's more to that story. And the big thing is that is that piece of communication, that mitochondria sends messages out to the nucleus, and the nucleus sends messages back to the mitochondria.

Lisa: Okay, so what are these messages that they're sending backwards and forwards? And why does this have to do with the function of the mitochondria itself?

Dr Yurth: Well, there's, as the body goes through the oxidative phosphorylation pathway, that Krebs cycle, that cycle that makes energy, right. And we know that we create these free radicals. And that's been one of the big theories of ageing is this free radical theory of ageing, that mitochondria produce all these free radicals, as free radicals overwhelm the body, they damage cells, and we get damaged tore into our DNA? Hmm.

Lisa: So we all thought that antioxidants would be the answer, recommended…

Dr Yurth: Right. We just take a bunch of antioxidants into the mix, and you're going to be great, because now, all those free radicals, you're not going to have any damage. The problem is that we know that there's been this—the mitochondria has a very, has a way to handle this oxidative stress. So there's a few things that happen. Obviously, stress is really critical to the mitochondria's health. So as it creates these free radicals, and and it's rust by things, it actually produces what are called mitochondrial peptides. So it has its own genome, right, that's now been activated by this stress. And it creates these—its own peptides that no other structure in your body can produce. So it's producing these little chains of amino acids.

And there's quite a few being developed now or that or that we were learning about, but the sort of the three main ones that we kind of have a pretty good knowledge about right now are something called MOTS-c. There's another one called humanin, and another one called SS-31. And those are what—the SS-31s, and a group of them are called small humanin-like peptides or SHLPs. Those peptides, so once the mitochondria is stressed, it encodes this DNA to say, 'Oh, you need to go out there and tell the nucleus to do some good stuff'.

So these mitochondrial peptides now go outside of the mitochondria, and they tell the nucleus to to heal things and get stronger and do better. And then that sends messages back to the mitochondria. So that stress, that oxidative stress actually, it's just like, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Lisa: And actually it's a fact on this.

Dr Yurth: It's really a fact that mitochondria health, that these medical peptides are imperative to health. In fact, humanin which were first developed actually was looking like a cure for Alzheimer's. And it may be really—well, it may be actually very, very baffling here, but very, very helpful in dementias and a lot of other diseases. We know that higher levels of humanin, people who live to be a hundred and above have much higher levels of humanin, so we know that these mitochondrial peptides, the higher they are, the healthier you are. No mitochondrial stress. If I just impound my body with antioxidants all the time, then I'm actually probably doing some damage. So cancer, right, so where—now again there, I can also overwhelm, right?

There's also another response, the mitochondria have, it's called the UPR, unfolded protein response. So as the mitochondria are stressed, and these damaged proteins that are produced when we're under stress, right, we get damaged or proteins, that's where we're kind of linking that to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and some of the plaques that form...

Lisa: The tau proteins and things.

Dr Yurth: Yeah, yep. When the mitochondria is stressed, it actually sends messages out to the nucleus to activate what's called the UPR, the unfolded protein response. A little protein response actually takes these bad proteins and it strings them back out and makes them normal. Or it says, 'These guys are so damaged. Let's just get rid of that mitochondria and initiate basically autophagy or mitophagy, eliminates the bad mitochondria that are too damaged. There's too many damaged proteins. We've overwhelmed the unfolded protein response'. Now it initiates this response to kill off the bad mitochondria.

See, if I'm just now taking a ton of antioxidants. Maybe I've blocked this response to get rid of all these bad proteins. Right. And I'm actually inducing more of these bad, abnormal proteins that are going to cause damage.

Lisa: I've talked on a couple of episodes with Dr Elena Seranova about—who is a molecular biologist on autophagy. And I think we talked about it too last time. So that's getting rid of the damaged proteins in the cells or in the mitochondria itself, getting rid of it. And we talked about fasting last time and how critical fasting is for autophagy in getting rid of these bad proteins and clearing things out.

So if we—so you're saying we can overwhelm this protein, and what do you call unfolding...

Dr Yurth: Unfolded protein response, UPR.

Lisa: Yeah, we can overwhelm it with too many antioxidants and actually stop it...

Dr Yurth: Stop the UPR from being activated. So now we don't actually kill it, we don't actually—either fix the damaged protein or get rid of the cells that are too damaged.

Lisa: Wow, okay. And so in this is this two-way communication between the mitochondria and the DNA, this is the nucleus of the cell. This is all within the—if we picture a big, nice fat round cell, and inside, you've got thousands of mitochondria per cell. And you've got the actual nucleus, which has that nice double helix, you see in the graph–

Dr Yurth: Where all the DNA is.

Lisa: –where the DNA, your code for life is–

Dr Yurth: Right.

Lisa: And these are talking backwards and forwards to each other to keep the health of the cell good. And then when we do autophagy, or mitophagy, we're getting rid of the damaged parts of the proteins that have been damaged through—is this through, so the damage that occurs in the cells is happening because of DNA breaks? And what are toxins and things like that, right?

Dr Yurth: Exactly, these reactive oxygen species that you know, they're starting to damage the DNA too much inside the mitochondria and creating abnormal proteins. Right? So now we've created these dysfunctional proteins that are going to do damage, so the body tries to get rid of them. And it's not, I'm not gonna say there's no place for antioxidants, right? But what you have to be careful of, is sort of cycling through phases where you're off of your antioxidants, and maybe inducing more autophagy, right. So we now want a little more oxidative stress to induce this healing response to give the cell some stress, and then maybe going on antioxidants for a little while to make sure that we don't ever have too many.

Lisa: Yeah, if you've gotten a lot of antioxidants, or sorry, or oxidative stress, because maybe you're exercising a heck of a lot or you've had an infection, or you've got something other high stress...

Dr Yurth: You eat like crap, or you're fat or… Then you might need extra antioxidants. And just to support the baseline of your functional health. But even those people, right, need them off and on, they should not be constantly. They should do phases, right? They should cycle it. I'm just a big advocate with diet, with exercise with everything, everything's done so quickly. Because we want to go through phases all the time, where we're getting rid of bad stuff, and then regrowing and getting rid of bad stuff and regrowing. Right?

It's just like cleaning your house. You got to get rid of all the crap, but then you're gonna…

Lisa: Bring the new groceries.

Dr Yurth: Yeah, right. It's get cluttered again. And then you got to go clean it all out again, and things get cluttered again. Yeah, I mean, that's the world's clutter wouldn't happen, but it does, right. Even the most pristine non hoarder person, there's still clutter that happens, and you still have to do your spring clean outs.

And that's—so I like to think about the body in the same way, you know, going into the spring clean outs where you go through a big autophagy phase where you're fasting, we're using hydro spermidine, where you're using things that will help to really clear out all the bad cells, all these damage, mitochondria that are producing too many reactive oxygen species, right? And then going through growth phases, where where I'm now maybe I'm inducing a little bit more toxic stress, I'm exercising harder, I'm lifting more weights, I'm running more, right, I'm inducing more oxidative stress. Maybe I'm eating more calories during that time. Now there's more oxidative stress cells a little bit stressed that actually initiate some growth and some healing. Right. And then I can do the same thing over and over again.

But there's really interesting new research leads when you kind of look at 'Okay, well, how does this all make sense'? So it's probably going to come down more to this. This is what's called the MPTP or mitochondrial permeability transition pore. And what they've now found is that that's probably where we need to focus is this little pore is letting stuff in back and forth through the mitochondria. So the right amount of things get through. So we know this little pore opens and closes. As we're in worse health, or older, it stays open longer, allowing more bad things to go In and out. So it's designed to open periodically, closed periodically. So for brief periods.

So what a lot of focus now is on anti-ageing. And mitochondrial health is focusing a little bit on this mitochondrial transition pore. In fact, there's a really cool study just came out where they're actually taking out these mitochondria and actually changing the pore structure for treating cancer. So they can actually make the pores in these cancer cells more permeable, so they can get drugs with a little nanobot that's poking holes in the mitochondria.

But on our home base, is what we really would rather do is keep these little mitochondrial transition pores closed most of the time, let them open periodically. So there's some interesting things that do that, melatonin does that? Oh, so higher dose melatonin seems to work primarily on this pore to actually regulate keeping it closed more often. So it's spermidine, that's one way spermidine induces cellular or mitochondrial biogenesis is by restoring this pore structure.

Lisa: And we're big into augmenting spermidine. I've just got my first shipment, I'm working on getting that down here guys.

Dr Yurth: Spermidine is kind of amazing. Because it really is so good for mitophagy, getting rid of bad mitochondria, but also mitochondrial biogenesis probably because it does focus a little bit more on this pore. Making more mitochondria, right. Right, make more mitochondria, we need more mitochondria.

The other thing interesting, I don't know how many of—how you or your listeners have looked at things like minocycline, right? Antibiotic, we always think antibiotics are bad, right? Yeah. Well, interestingly, minocycline and doxycycline. And minocycline is a little bit better, probably actually has a very nice anti-ageing effect, used periodically, to actually close off these pores, and let the cell kind of develop and grow more than mitochondria grow more. So minocycline has a really distinct effect on the mitochondrial transition pore as well, for this permeability pore. So there are a few simple things that you can use, and I like.

Lisa: And it doesn't want your good microbes and stuff when you take them.

Dr Yurth: You know, definitely antibiotics have the downside of changing the gut microbiome. And we know that there's downsides to that, which is why you're not going to stem minocycline all the time. But like anything, it appears to have some very significant benefits in our cell health. So by doing that, maybe twice a year, doing like a 10-day course of minocycline, you can actually restore cell health. Now, after that, do you have to really work on gut health? Probably depends on how bad your gut is. So if my gut is super healthy, it's probably gonna regenerate, divide, right? Otherwise, it would, I have a lot and I know you're really interested in some gut microbiome stuff. Because you're gonna be a really—you're gonna see a really big connection coming up here soon between the gut microbiome and mitochondria even. But we know the gut microbiome is most affected by butyrate.

So using tributyrate, which is sort of pre-butyrate that can turn to be right in your intestine. So if I had somebody on an antibiotic, do I throw—I'm just gonna throw probiotics into the mix? Well, no, because the probiotics aren't gonna survive. So what you have to do is first throw butyrate into the mix. Remember what the good bacteria in our gut do that we eat fiber? The anaerobic bacteria. Turn that fiber into butyrate. Butyrate has all these far reaching effects. Number one, it's imperative for the colonocytes, the colon cells to be healthy, that's what they—that's what they use for energy is butyrate. So they're different from your other cells, they use butyrate for energy. So when they use butyrate, for energy, I have these nice healthy colonocytes, they create a nice anaerobic environment where my anaerobes can thrive. And they can make more butyrate. And you have this nice cycle.

But butyrate has some really interesting effects. There was a great study for your distance runners using butyrate to increase performance. Because higher levels of gut butyrate also seemed to help the cell, the mitochondria, and actually produce you actually, were able to use the butyrate for fatty acid oxidation and actually improve aerobic metabolism by having higher levels of butyrate.

Lisa: Was it like yeah, the athletes with keto. Yeah, because butyrate is like, isn't butter got butyrate in it? Or am I? Butyrate, butter.

Dr Yurth: Oh, butter. So butter does have butyrate in it, yes. So you can even increase butyrate by eating a whole lot of butter. You'd be—so your medium chain triglycerides, the short chain fatty acids do have butyric acid in them. The problem with when you eat butyric acid, when you eat butyrate, it doesn't really reach this lower intestine very well. Okay, and so even though it has some benefits, probably some other places, you really have to get the gut bacteria. And so the only way to really get butyrate to the lower intestine is either to take a pre-butyrate form, which is I like tributyrin, one has research behind it, or to use it rectally. So that's the other thing you can do is use it rectally.

Lisa: Okay, then that gets direct into the colon and then can get the right to the cells there.

Dr Yurth: Yeah, and this actually has a genetic—do you remember your PGC alpha gene? So when you get hired to get butyrate, you actually upregulate PGC alpha. And that's one of the things that improves aerobic endurance in your long distance athletes. You can actually—they did a study with butyrate on improving endurance in sort of your distance runners, your higher level endurance athletes, and besides, it's significant improvements. Also in race horses. Same thing.

So butyrate does affect mitochondria in other places, including skeletal muscle, and around that. So there is this big connection that we're just learning about between the gut microbiome and mitochondria. So if I'm going to put somebody into minocycline. I'm going to also make sure I have them on tributyrate so I'm keeping that nice anaerobic metabolism going. I'm making sure I'm getting butyrate to myself. Now I've repaired the mitochondria. I've given it another source to work better. And I'm going to have overall better endurance, better health, better aerobic metabolism. Better Vo2max.

Lisa: Yeah, wow, that's just crazy. So butyrate—but if we just taking butyric acid or in through butter or that type of thing. Brother just arrived in the background. It's all good. Podcast life. At least the cat's not running from down as well.

So butyric acid, when I take it in the form of say medium chain triglycerides or butter and stuff, it's not going to help my colonocytes and my colon, but I still get through to the mitochondria and help.

Dr Yurth: Yeah. I mean, there's significant benefits to it, but you really want

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