Know Your Physio

Brad Currier: Your Mitochondria Are Dying: How to Trigger "Cellular Recycling"

• Brad Currier • Episode 149

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Is your body running on broken engines?

We often obsess over what we eat, but we rarely think about how our cells process that fuel. If your mitochondria (the engines of your cells) are dysfunctional, it doesn't matter how perfect your diet is—you will feel tired, you will recover slowly, and you will age faster.

In this episode, we sit down with Brad Currier, a PhD in muscle physiology and scientist at Timeline, to discuss Urolithin A—the breakthrough molecule that acts as a "recycling program" for your cells. Brad reveals why natural food sources are virtually impossible to rely on (you’d need to drink 1.5 liters of juice daily), how this molecule compares to fasting for longevity, and the shocking data coming out of studies with Olympic athletes.

In this episode, you will learn:

  • The "Junkyard" Theory: Why mitochondrial dysfunction is the root cause of low energy and poor recovery.
  • Mitophagy Explained: How to trigger the selective breakdown of "zombie" mitochondria to build fresh, healthy ones.
  • The Pomegranate Reality Check: Why you can't eat your way to therapeutic levels of Urolithin A (and the sugar cost of trying).
  • Fasting vs. MitoPure: The difference between "global" starvation (fasting) and "surgical" cellular repair.
  • Olympic Secrets: How elite runners are using this specific protocol to lower perceived exertion and muscle damage.
  • The Future of Longevity: How this impacts not just muscle, but skin, immune health, and cognitive function.

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Brad Currier:
The direction you are going is more important than the position you are in. Whether you feel like you're at the top of the game or whether you feel like you're in the dumpster doesn't matter. Whether you're at the top or the bottom, if you're going in a positive direction and the direction you want to, then that's what's most important because you'll either stay on top, you'll get to the place you want to be by focusing on that process and not just where you are right now. One of the main things I took away from my PhD was the ability to recognize what I don't know. When the mitochondria dysfunction, it's not just that we have less energy. It really impacts the health of everything else our cells are doing. Mitochondria are also really involved in calcium homeostasis. So when that gets out of whack, if the mitochondria is not working, the consequences of poor mitochondria health are numerous throughout the cell.

Andres Preschel: Brad, here we are, man. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Great to have you, man. Pleasure to be here. Really looking forward to it, yeah. Let's dive right in, bro. Love it. Any chance we can have a good time in the sunshine state? I'm all for it. Oh, yeah. I mean, you only have 24 hours. We've got to make the most of this, man. Welcome, dude. Welcome. It's great to have you. So let's start with why, man. Tell me a little bit about why you do what you do.

Brad Currier: Yeah. That's a good question. I think as I've been looking at this, why I do what I do is I've always had this constant curiosity to understand how things work, coupled with just the desire to be the best version of myself. So I guess if, you know, kind of as a little background, I grew up in Toronto area, went down to St. Louis Lindenwood University for my undergrad. And I was just fascinated with sport at the time. I was down there in a golf scholarship and at that time I was really obsessed with how do I be the best golfer that I can be? How do I be the best student that I can be? And in kind of that pursuit got involved with the athletic performance side of things and how do we perform to the maximum of our capabilities. And that just evolved kind of throughout my path. So that, you know, transitioned eventually into looking at, okay, how do we live the healthiest quality life and wanted to do a PhD that was a little more focused on general population.

Andres Preschel: You went from golfer to PhD. You said, I want to be the best at golf and you ended up

Brad Currier: Yeah, well, you know what, I found out pretty quick that I'd rather be betting on my brains than my body. Golf was a good time. Wise of you, yeah, for sure. I think with everything I've gone through, whether it was then the PhD and doing muscle physiology, running clinical trials, looking at how the muscle works and how does exercise and nutrition influence its metabolism, to now focus in more on how do we make a meaningful impact on people's lives? How do we translate what we know from the science into actionable things that can help, you know, a couple hundred thousand grandmothers play with their grandkids. That's, uh, that's a lot more exciting and fulfilling to me than the original kind of be the best athlete I can be. Best golfer. Yeah. And so that, that's kind of, um, through it all, there's been a curiosity to just understand how things work and marry that with being the best version of myself.

Andres Preschel: And when did that wisdom take place? When did you go from, hey, I want to be the best golfer to I want to be a researcher. How did that happen?

Brad Currier: You know, I'd say, you know, when I was younger, going into my undergrad there, it was even like 50-50. I always would consider myself a bit of a book nerd, but Uh, also with golf, I loved it and I wasn't very talented, so I needed to kind of embrace the physical training side to maximize what I had. It was, uh, I figured if I can make myself the best athlete, I'll probably help my golf game. Um, and it was pretty even going into my, the start of my university, but it was really my second year. where I got involved thanks to a guy named Chad Kirksock. He's actually the president of the International Society of Sports Nutrition now, but he was my mentor and really introduced me to research. It just opened my eyes to seeing what we could do scientifically with these elite performers. And it wasn't so much that my passion or desire for golf waned. It was just that my interest and curiosity for research kind of surpassed it. And so that was really the transition in like my second year. There's the mentorship, seeing what's possible, having access to the kind of research. Yeah, exactly. Just seeing how it worked. I mean, it was a complete new world to me. We were in the gym training with the team. It was, you know, Tuesday morning, 5.30 AM. And there was this guy in a tie over in the corner, had some, I think it was some of the St. Louis Blues hockey players at the time, but they were jumping on this plate. And I was looking over, I said, what's going on there? So I went over, he asked, he was just had moved to Lindenwood as a professor, setting up his lab and kind of told me, you know, it's an exercise physiology lab. We do a lot of performance, body composition testing, primarily with these athletic populations. And I, I mean, I was hooked. I was studying exercise science at the time and I ended up taking his research course that year. So yeah, it just kind of opened my eyes to seeing, you know, you can, you take this love for and curiosity in science and your curiosity for sport and performance and do them both in the same place. And that I would say is really how the desire, the shift, as you say, you know, really happened. It was just my desire to really learn more about that.

Andres Preschel: Yeah, you had an intention, you wanted to fill it with the right process and that process was science. And I want to ask you, you know, what do you have to say about Let's say your gratitude for your education. I see a lot of people online that are self-proclaimed experts and they're very passionate, but what do you have to say about your education and how important it is to have that real scientific credibility in order to speak on behalf of what's happening and helping other people?

Brad Currier: Yeah, well, I think, you know, as we, as we talk philosophically, like education is one of the most important things across the board. And, you know, that obviously takes very different shapes and forms. Um, I think in terms of a formal academic training, I'm extremely grateful and have, you know, endless gratitude really for my family because they were the supporters and just encouraging the, you know, the academic pursuits. for me but really it was just education of any kind you know that that half my family doesn't even have a you don't have a degree beyond high school and they're some of the smartest people I know right you know education doesn't have to be a formal degree but with the formal degree does come you know some areas where you are well trained and you're tried and tested there's a a great kind of figure and uh the name of it slips my mind right now but It's kind of, you know, knowledge on… Dunning-Kruger effect. Dunning-Kruger effect, exactly. Where it's like how confident you are and how much you know. Oh my God. There's a lot of people, you know, we all go through that phase where we're learning and we're getting confident that we're learning. You think you know it all. But the, I would say really the, one of the main things I took away from my PhD was the ability to recognize what I don't know. And I think that's the true value is that you can recognize where your limitations are. With, you know, some of that good training can come from other words, voice too, but there's a lot of people who have learned a factor too and feel very confident for sure. Um, definitely if you go do a pretty rigorous, uh, academic training, then you'll hit that point early on. Some of the most confident people are the, uh, first semester masters students. And then, uh, you fought, find them two years later. that the confidence is low, even though their knowledge is sky high. And eventually, yeah, you just kind of find you know, your limitations, you know, you know, but you even more so know what you don't know. Yeah. And when you don't know something, you've got you've developed the strategies to learn and problem solve. Right. So I have immense gratitude for the opportunities I had and the support I had from my family to, you know, pursue education. But then I would say just what I took out of it, the scientific or field specific expertise, you know, it's maybe not even the top three things I found most valuable about doing my doctorate.

Andres Preschel: It's more so like the process of seeing science for what it is, acknowledging what you don't know, and having methods to the madness to help you outline, all right, how do we figure this out? How do we put a study together and learn something new?

Brad Currier: Exactly. Knowing the ins and outs of running a specific a stable isotope test. I know you're talking about some of that, I think, with some of your previous guests, but, you know, how to measure metabolism of a certain protein and muscle or knowing how a certain statistical model works. That doesn't really do much in 99.9% of your life. But if you can have the confidence and some skill sets to know if you encounter something that you aren't sure about, you can find your way through that. And, you know, you can systematically and effectively solve problems and gain knowledge. That's really what it is. You learn how to learn. And so I think that was, you know, I have immense gratitude for the academic training.

Andres Preschel: Yeah, because, you know, one of the, some of the critiques that I see online about nutrition science is that the folks that are studying it are looking at outdated research. And, you know, I went to school and I know that it's not just about learning what's there, it's understanding how it works and how you can further the field, you know, especially if you did your PhD, right? So what do you have to say about that, you know, the outdated literature in a classroom setting?

Brad Currier: Yeah, I would say, um, I think that with, you know, the more you study, you spend a lot more time reading than you do saying, and, uh, you know, reading is, uh, is one of the most valuable things. You know, you learn to read and then you can read to learn. I think there is a lot of people in that phase where they're very confident without maybe having the knowledge to back it up, um, that are as well read as some others who are maybe a bit quieter. And in the exercise physiology and nutrition, like, you know, firsthand from studying it, some of the best work was done in the 60s, 70s, 80s. Like, there is really incredible research done. You know, you can go through, I would joke that if you have a, what you think is a unique study idea, you know, go back 40, 50 years and someone, whether it, you know, be John Hawsey or, you know, Ben Saltine, like someone's probably already done it. And that's very true, but I'd say the kind of added level to that isn't just thinking that newer is necessarily better, but it's actually recognizing the value and knowing that, okay, this one study from 1974 is extremely valuable because it showed us that weightlifting can actually improve mitochondrial volume. And that's one of the few studies we have that shows that. So that's a valuable… It's foundational knowledge. It's foundational knowledge, exactly. But if you look at that and were to see something published in 2017 on that, it's like, okay, well, how novel is that really? Like, are we building on the field? Um, the, the time something's published doesn't, you know, necessarily relate to its value. So what I'd say to your, your original questions, I'll circle back. Is that, is newer always better? No. Um, I think the real value is being able to see where the, the good research is, whether that's from, you know, 1965 or 2025. So, the outdated knowledge isn't necessarily a bad thing for learning basics or foundational research, but repeating it or people dressing it up, you know, the same thing, dressing it up as something new in today's day and age shouldn't be viewed as groundbreaking.

Andres Preschel: Right. And if we can fast forward, how did your initial intent to, you know, dive into the field of performance science and nutrition, how did that become you know, your responsibility now furthering what we know in these clinical trials.

Brad Currier: Yeah, how did it kind of come to that? Well, I think that, you know, from the performance side, it won, it was, it's really cool working with athletes. I'm honored to have had the chance to both research, coach, and, you know, just train with a lot of them for three, four years there. What shifted for me was, I guess, the added meaning I felt after what I said before, having the ability to make a meaningful impact in everyday people's lives. I was very lucky that I grew up with four healthy and very present grandparents in my life. They're instrumental in really who I am today. And their good health allowed them to do that, and the thought of being able to help a grandmother, a grandfather, or just any person through their entire life have that positive role in the next generation's upbringing was a lot more exciting to me than trying to help an elite runner shave a tenth of a second off their 100-meter time. So, the shift to more of a healthy aging happened and that was as I was finishing up in St. Louis and wanting to go do my PhD, I knew I wanted to keep researching and wanted to add, I was also studying chemistry during my undergrad, I wanted to add some of the biochemistry that I was learning. into this research setting. And so Stu Phillips, who I did my PhD with, is, you know, one of the best in the world for exactly that, using stable isotopes to measure metabolism in all sorts of scenarios, whether it be, you know, aging or young individuals who are exercising, maybe they're bedridden, immobilized.

Andres Preschel: Sorry, for those who want to be familiar with this language, what does measuring stabilized isotopes and metabolism mean within the setting?

Brad Currier: Yeah, of course. So it's just a word. Basically, you know, one of the key methods that we use in that lab, and there's a handful around the world that do it, is when you can use stable isotopes to measure metabolism. So if we think of atoms, like we've probably heard of things like carbon or hydrogen, right? There's a molecular weight or an atomic weight to these atoms that occurs in nature. When we have an isotope, it just means it's the same chemical, but with a slightly different weight. And so it happens by when you have an extra neutron in the atom, but this stable isotope is something where it acts the same way as the original chemical, but it's slightly heavier. And so what we can do is actually give people say like water or a solution with a stable isotope of say the amino acid leucine. And that'll get incorporated into their, all the leucine that's in their body. And what we do is we can take things like muscle biopsy. So if we add this tracer, which is basically just a flag, you know, that acts the same as leucine, but it's one we can identify. Um, we take a muscle biopsy. We say, wait a couple hours, or we put them through exercise. Measure and tour. Exactly. And we, you know, take another muscle biopsy. We could see how muscle biosynthesis. Yeah, we can see how much of that tracer has been added into the muscle. So you can measure things like muscle protein synthesis. And certainly there's a whole wide range of measures. I was very fortunate to learn from one of the best kind of how that works. But basically, we were able to take that biochemistry and use those methods in these clinical trials where we're studying things like exercise or nutrition in both young and old individuals.

Andres Preschel: Nice. And then how did that transform into timeline, urolithinae?

Brad Currier: Yeah. So that, that came about, uh, as I was doing my PhD, there was Stu, um, the interest in one running clinical trials. It was awesome to actually be able to test boots on the ground. Like how, uh, how are these interventions impacting our muscle health? Um, and one of the studies got involved with was actually involved, uh, involved MitoPure, Timeline's, you know, main product.

Andres Preschel: You were working with MitoPure at the time.

Brad Currier: No, it was a project that Stu had come up with. We had the opportunity to run. And so I got to know the team at Timeline a little bit while we were doing that project. And really from there, as I was going through finishing up my PhD the last couple of years, I was realizing, okay, you know, I don't think, you know, professorship or, you know, academia is really the route I want it to go. Yeah. Honestly, I just don't feel like I have the desire to lead and build out my own research program at an institution. And to me, it was much more appealing to go beyond the science and see not just how can we use science, but how can we translate this into meaningful you know, action items or things that people can apply to their own life.

Andres Preschel: Satisfying your original intention that started all this.

Brad Currier: Yeah, it's like the science is one thing. You can have the best product, the best data, but that's only part of actually making an impact on someone's life. You know, the arc of discovery is huge from the time someone discovers a molecule in the lab to finds a way to turn it into a nutrient or a drug that someone can have to go through all the clinical trials and then to actually have a product that people can use and benefit from. It's a huge arc and I've done a lot of the science part there, but there's so much more that goes into actually getting this helpful molecule or whatever it is. in the hands of people where it can have a benefit. Right. So for me, the when the opportunity to join Timeline came about, it was a no brainer because, you know, all the sciences, you know, world classes, but they've been doing that for over 15 years. No way. And yeah. And so Timeline was founded 2000. Six. Yeah. Seven. I should probably know the exact year, but 2006 ish. 15 years to 10. Uh, yeah. So it was, um, well, we're 2025 now. No. So over 15 years, it was 2005, six, seven. 20 years. Yeah.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. I didn't realize that they had been around that, that long.

Brad Currier: Yeah, it's quite uncharacteristic, I would say, putting in the hard miles of doing the rigorous science to really be led by the science. It's quite unusual, particularly in the nutrition or cosmetic space. Unusual, but efficacious and great to know. I mean, that's great. That's the philosophy. We're a group of scientists who are going to continue to be led by the science, and science takes time. So yeah, the opportunity came about to join the team there, and it was a no-brainer for me because not only do you get to keep doing the science, but you also get to be involved in trying to help bring such a helpful product to people where it can make a meaningful difference.

Andres Preschel: And how long have you been with them?

Brad Currier: Just under a year. So I just joined in January. I moved over to Lausanne, Switzerland. So all the R&D and some other team members are based there. You're living in Switzerland? Yeah. No way. How's your Swiss? Yeah, well, I'm in a French part. Je peux parler un peu français. Oh, you're Canadian. Yeah, but in Toronto, we grew up speaking English. Is Swiss even a language? No, actually, it's not. So funny enough, they have four languages.

Andres Preschel: French, German, Dutch.

Brad Currier: No, but French, German, yeah. So I think it's like 70%-ish of the country German speaking. Where I am near Geneva is French-speaking, maybe about 20% of the country. 10%-ish is Italian. There's one or two Cantons, which are kind of low. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a Italian border, just on the kind of south east, east there. Yeah. And then the original, I guess, I don't know if it's original, I'm still learning my Swiss history as I live there, but there's a one area that speaks a language called Romanche. Nice. And that I think is historically and a language native to the area, but Yeah, four national languages. I speak none of them, so it's been a fun ride getting acclimated there.

Andres Preschel: That's unbelievable, man. And what would you say over the course of the 20 years the Timeline has been around, what would you say are some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs that the company has had?

Brad Currier: Yeah, I think if you're to look at the highlights, there's a couple and maybe actually just the first thing to highlight is the time and knowing that the folks that were starting this, so our president, co-founder, Chris Rinsch, along with Patrick Aubuchir, and you know, when the co-founders were starting this, they were in it for doing it right at

Andres Preschel: What did they want to accomplish when they get Golden Eagle?

Brad Currier: What was the idea? So the mission really was, there are a lot of natural products that have health benefits, right? What is it about those things, those foods that cause them to be beneficial? So at the time, if we think back the 20-ish years, pomegranates were really having a heyday. Yeah, they were, you know, rightfully so, but whether it be associations with areas that eat a lot of pomegranates and seeing lower incidence of cardiovascular disease or whatever it was, the antioxidant profile. Antioxidants, nitrates, fiber. Exactly. Pomegranates were having a hot moment. And so what the founders did there was they actually wanted to look in the pomegranate and say, OK, what is it in the pomegranate that's having these beneficial effects? And that led to what I would say is the first major discovery, which is urolithin A. And we'll get into what that is, I know, but urolithin A, or what's branded now as MitoPure, it's a postbiotic, which means that when we eat foods such as a pomegranate, our gut microbiome will transform the components of that food into a new molecule. So it's not a prebiotic or a probiotic, where it's either adding to the bacteria that's in our gut or feeding the bacteria in our gut. It's actually our gut microbiome transforming the nutrients that are in a pomegranate into a completely new molecule.

Andres Preschel: So it transforms urolithin A into something else.

Brad Currier: So it, it actually, it transforms the polyphenols that are in your euthanase. So they transform it into your euthanase and then that's released into circulation. And originally it was thought to be a waste product. You know, they're looking at, you break down the pomegranate into all its pieces. You can imagine everything that's in there is no shortage.

Andres Preschel: Yeah.

Brad Currier: And then when they're looking at this point, it's in preclinical models, you know, looking at all the things it's getting metabolized into, where it's going. And urolithin A was just kind of thought to be a waste product. But as they're going through and ruling things off saying, no, this isn't having these effects or whatnot. Uh, the, the lead researcher who they're working with at the time, um, this is based out of the Swiss Institute of Technology. It's kind of like Switzerland's MIT or the EPFL is the, uh, the acronym for it in French. But the, uh, the professor who was doing some of this work, You know, the story came running across campus because he had just found these incredible results and he was banging down on Chris's door saying, what is this? You know, what is this molecule you gave me? It's extending the lifespan. Chris thought it was like a waste product. Everyone did. You know, you metabolize it, here's a waste product. Like you get ammonia when you break down amino acids, whatever it is. And so they thought it was this waste product, but a professor saying, you know, this extended lifespan in these C. elegans, these worms that you use to measure lifespan, it's extending lifespan like 48%. It's making the animals much stronger, more vitality. What's going on? Like, what is this? And it's a waste product. So they thought, no, it's actually a postbiotic urolithin A. So, that would, I would say, would be like a major discovery. And, you know, we can go into as much detail as you want, but I would say the highlights are, one, the discovery of it. Second would be showing the benefits of what it can do in these preclinical models. So, that was published in Nature in 2016, the major… The major… It's a big deal, published in Nature. Top paper, and you know, like I said, scientists who are in it to do the science right. Next from that would probably be the, again, published in Nature Medicine and Nature Metabolism were the first two major publications. First showing just what it's doing in these preclinical models, that it is actually improving things like muscle strength and the cellular performance by improving mitochondria. At this point, it works. Yeah, so these are like worms, rodents. But the second publication really was in humans, showing it's safe, it's bioavailable, it's improving the signature of mitochondrial health. So all the proteins associated with mitochondria, it's increasing them in a dose-dependent manner. And then it was getting into the randomized controlled trial.

Andres Preschel: So how many pomegranates are you eating per day, man?

Brad Currier: Yeah, none. I got my mitofury. And actually, funny enough, that was a study. And we can go into it as much as you want. But really, it was showing, OK, we found it. In animals, it's having these benefits by improving mitochondria. Specifically, what urolithin A does is stimulate mitophagy. So that's the- Cleaning of the mitochondria. Exactly. The selective breakdown of dysfunctional mitochondria. Huge. Show it's safe and effective in humans at doing that same thing. And then you get into the randomized control trials where you start seeing that, you know, it improves strength 12%. It improves the mitochondria health of these overweight, middle-aged, older adults. And now most recently, benefits that it has for skin and immune, other very mitochondria dominant cell types. I would say those are kind of the main arcs along the way. But there was actually a study comparing it to pomegranates, which is just exactly that, because at the end of the day, it's about making people's lives better. Get the benefits, and I'm food first all the way. If you can get something from food, you should get it from food. And so this was one, it was a study led by our chief medical officer, Dr. Anurag Singh, who really was pioneering a lot of this, the whole clinical development of MitoPure. And what they did is they said, okay, well, let's feed people pomegranate juice because that is an extremely concentrated form of those polyphenols. So we'll feed them that, we'll measure their blood for the following 72 hours, see how much urolithin A there is. And then we'll have them go away for a couple of weeks, wash out, come back, take a dose of MitoPure. And you do this in a randomized fashion so it's not biased. And what ultimately they found is that to get the same exposure to urolithin A that you would from one dose of MitoPure, you need to drink a liter and a half of pomegranate. It's a lot of sugar. That's a lot of sugar. At that point, you're cutting your foot off. And it's expressive. It's not cheap. It's not cheap. The pomegranate companies are riding that wave. So then that was really actually the second clinical trial that was done in humans, just showing that, OK, this is one of the rare cases where supplementation is necessary to have these benefits. You think of something like creatine.

Andres Preschel: And how did you guys find the dose?

Brad Currier: Yeah. So in that first study, the safety study, you could call it a phase one, but it's a nutrition product. So it's not really a right to call it that. That's more of a drug and pharmaceutical term. But really that first safety study, you do something called a single and multiple ascending dose. So really you have from all the animal data, what you think is the equivalent dose in a human, you divide it by 10 or 100, a massive amount to reduce it to a very minimum level. And you essentially start just going up. You titrate it. You titrate it. And so this was starting at 250 milligrams all the way up to 2 grams. And really what was found in that first study was that 500 milligrams to 1 gram, is where you see the best benefits. So you see that turnover, that improvement of the mitochondrial profile in these muscle biopsies, all the gene expression. But after one gram, it kind of plateaus. It doesn't really have any added benefit beyond there. So in that first study, you're not just looking at the safety, but you're also refining what that dose is. And it's a pretty standard procedure in a pharmaceutical lens. Obviously, it might appear it's nutrition, it's a food supplement. You want to have sophisticated research and that's the way to do it right. Exactly. That's been exactly the approach is take the rigorous biotech approach. to nutrition, which a place we and you know, you know that firsthand. It's a it's a bit of the wild, wild west. So if you can help me. Yeah.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's bad. And let me ask you this, man. Is this something that you can take and feel? You know, can you feel the difference when you take something like myopia? Yeah, it's a great feel the mitophagy. Can you feel the mitochondria responding to this?

Brad Currier: Yeah, it's a great question. And it's one, you know, just full transparency, we don't have clinical data on the perceptions that people have. What I would say is that in terms of the clinical benefits, you know, we see things like the improved muscle strength and endurance after eight weeks, and extending out to 16 weeks, so two and four months. at a cellular level, we see that improvement in the mitochondrial health after one month. And in the perceptions that people have, again, this will be anecdotal, because we haven't studied it. But it is things where a lot of times what people report is, you know, they feel more energetic, they've recovered quicker from their workouts, if they sleep is actually one that we were measuring in a study right now that we might get into. But A lot of people talk about their sleep quality improving. Duration stays the same, but the refreshment that they have when they wake up is much better after the product. So those are things that people have reported back. In the clinical sense, we see the actual cellular biology improve after one month. We see the physiological benefits after eight weeks and more to come on that in terms of what people are actually feeling, because that's something we don't have clinical data on yet, but we're working on right now.

Andres Preschel: Really technical, specific question that I don't expect necessarily an answer to, but, you know, you're back on Next Phys, so it'd be interesting to be entertained. Is there a specific time where maybe there's, I don't know, an accelerated rate of mitophagy happening where you can take your Lithin-A and, you know, take advantage of what's going on in that moment? Or, you know, is it irrelevant? Is the half-life a certain way where it doesn't even matter when you take it or how?

Brad Currier: Yeah, it's a great question. And I'll start with the end, which does it matter? No. With the pharmacokinetic profile or the kinetic profile of urolithin A, once a day is sufficient for its benefits. It peaks in the blood after about six or eight hours and remains slightly elevated up at 24 hours. So a daily dose is what's recommended. In terms of what time, whether it's the morning or the evening, We haven't compared them. We have studies that have used both and there hasn't been a difference. Same thing whether it's fasted or fed. So really the most important thing for the benefits are just to take it daily and consistently. Like so much, consistency is the name of the game. But I guess to your point of if you wanted to talk about, okay, where might we be able to look at this and having an enhanced benefit, you can kind of take a step back and say, all right, what is mitophagy? Well, that's just the mitochondria specific autophagy. So that's that cellular breakdown, that recycling system, that's in our cells. Isn't DNA amazing, man? Shout out to DNA, man. That's unbelievable. Biology, man, it's one where the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know, and your fascination just goes through the roof. It never ceases to get more interesting.

Andres Preschel: Didn't mean to cut you off, but… No, it's just a little bit to appreciate science.

Brad Currier: There's so much where the appreciation for the beauty of just the world, the more you learn about it, it kind of hits you in the face. It's tough to believe it's all happening. Yeah, I guess if you're asking like when would mitophagy be highest naturally without it, without something like mitopure, two cases, one when we're fasted and second is when we're exercising. So fasting, you know, that's something that a lot of people maybe don't practice regularly. But I think we forget that most of us fast for about 10, 12 hours a day. Overnight, that's when we're not giving our body food. So it will start breaking down more net proteins in our body, including the mitochondria, overnight until we have break fast, breakfast. And so that's a time where, OK, maybe if we have our MitoPure right before bed, does it have an added benefit? We haven't seen it in studies, but I think that would be the hypothetical example of where would we maybe enhance natural mitophagy. Doesn't seem to have an impact with the effect mitopure has. And the other is exercise. Exercise not only increases muscle protein synthesis and the formation of new cellular structures, but also increases breakdown. Really what exercise does is it starts everything's turning over. we're making more and we're breaking more down. Over time, yes, that kind of molds our muscle or whatever tissue into its new structure, its new phenotype, whether that be bigger muscles or, you know, better blood supply to our muscles. But so exercise would be one that So, maybe MitoPure does have an effect. And we're just starting to see the results of studies, certainly from timeline, but also independent investigators now. So, actually, we just had two studies in that sports and performance area published over the last couple months. Yeah, it seems to have some promising signals in the athletic sense.

Andres Preschel: It's incredible. I mean, something comes to mind for me is there's an incredible study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Cavill et al. 2019 on the evolutionary, you know, call it the history of, well, that's redundant, the evolution of fasting. Why do we have these evolutionarily present mechanisms that are triggered by fasting and what are the cascading effects that it has? And it's a fascinating study. It actually, towards the end of the study, there's a protocol that people can incorporate to get some of these benefits, you know, the switch between the glucose and ketone switch and how that's responsible for everything that increases in CREB to, you know, mitophagy and autophagy and such. But I want to mention, you know, and I'd love to get your take on this, as it pertains to fasting, I think there was a big call, like a trend with fasting and like a fasting-mimicking diet. And I think a lot of people maybe overdid that. I actually overdid it in my case. I was like, just, I went off the deep end with fasting and like these low-carb diets and as a young, healthy male lifting often, it wrecked my hormone profile. So, I would love to get your take on fasting and how folks can incorporate it responsibly, both men and women. There's a lot of limited research on women and their approach to fasting, and they are more sensitive according to the time of the month and the female biorhythm. But I would love to get your take on fasting and perhaps how you can make the most of it responsibly.

Brad Currier: I think with fasting, like anything, if you're going to adopt a new routine, you need to first ask, what's the purpose? Why are we doing it? So certainly if weight loss is that reason for you, then you know that, you see if it works and you can adhere. A second thing, though, that I would really ask people to consider if they're looking at taking fasting, Is there age and the time of life that they're at? You know, we're young, healthy people. You know, a lot of people in our situation, if we were to say, you know what, I'm going to do a two day fast or a three day water fast. Is that going to ruin us? Probably not. Maybe if we go off the deep end, like you're saying, I'd be curious to chronically fasting like every day, 16 hours in it. Okay. Yeah. So I'm curious about your experience doing that though. You know, like if we were to do that one off for like once a year, might not have a huge impact. Where I would just caution people is that say you're a 65 year old or 75 year old, you know, that long without food could be very detrimental.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. You end up being so catabolic that you end up losing your muscle mass, which at that age is my, in my opinion, just extremely important.

Brad Currier: It's a huge, you know, watershed moment of losing muscle and So I wouldn't recommend fasting to most older adults for that reason. Of course, everyone's individual, but I think those are the two things I would encourage people to consider if they're looking at a fast. It's just one, what's the ultimate purpose? And two, know yourself and the place you're at, because fasting might not be the best option for you to accomplish your goal without really sacrificing too much elsewhere.

Andres Preschel: Right. And actually, as this paper points out, and I'm going to bridge the gap between this and your alternative in just a second, but as this paper points out, we should technically be experiencing a small degree of ketosis between meals. And most people, you know, they wake up, they eat, and then they snack throughout the day. So, it's not just like the 14 to 18 hour window traditionally, but it's also making sure that we're eating whole, nutrient-dense food, we do our best to have that element of glucose stability, maybe walking after our meals, or eating protein fiber first, et cetera, but definitely experiencing some degree of ketosis between meals. So for me, nowadays, I fast maybe 14, rarely 16 hours, and 14 is naturally, it's a little more intuitive, but I make sure that I don't eat between meals. And I'm doing a much better job of monitoring my hormones in the process and getting enough carbohydrates.

Brad Currier: Yeah.

Andres Preschel: You know, carbs are so important.

Brad Currier: Very, especially like you're saying, as an active guy performing, you have that enough carbs. That is one where a ketogenic or a fasting diet can certainly be beneficial for some people. But, you know, you talk about circumstances where maybe it's not most you know, that those wouldn't be most conducive to your ultimate goal, athletic performance is a great one. And that work, there's been great work done by a guy named Marty Gabala, as well as some others, but looking at a ketogenic diet, or dietary ketosis, what that does to performance, and, you know, it doesn't help.

Andres Preschel: If you're an endurance athlete, perhaps, right? But if you're like resistance training, then you have to pull the glucose from somewhere. Exactly. Don't have glucose from your food. Gluconeogenesis, you convert your muscle into glucose and now you're losing your muscle mass.

Brad Currier: Yeah, that's absolutely right. And the resistance training, and it's interesting, Marty's actually done some work in the endurance area as well, and looking at like time trial performance in cyclists, where there were a few different ways you could do it. I mean, to study someone who's in dietary ketosis, very tough for most people to get there, like you're saying, to cut carbs completely for several weeks to actually start seeing the ketone bodies elevate in blood. What you can do is actually you can have a ketone supplement that will induce. Ketonate, K4, hydroxybutyrate. Yeah, exactly. That it'll induce and it tastes terrible.

Andres Preschel: It's the worst tasting supplement I've ever taken in my life.

Brad Currier: It tastes terrible.

Andres Preschel: It does its job in terms of elevating the ketone. That's the thing is you taste it and you're like, this is going to influence my physiology. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. This is going to work and this is going to do something.

Brad Currier: Yeah. You don't know what it's going to be, but you know that something with that strong of a taste has to, good or bad has to do it. But yeah, they've looked at that. And so time trial performance actually worsens in these endurance, like really highly trained cyclists. They see the respiration rate change, which would make sense. Your body's using a different fuel source.

Andres Preschel: You see a downward shift in our queue, which isn't always beneficial for some athletes. You know what it is beneficial for? Do you want to nerd out for a second? I discovered this by accident. I took some ketonate K4 before bed, and because it shifts our IQ and stabilizes the glucose, my HRV skyrocketed because I'm breathing less times per minute, so there's more parasympathetic influence. My HRV, every time, if I can only get like six hours or less of sleep, I take my ketonate K4. Interesting. I get much better recovery. I feel much better overall.

Brad Currier: Oh, that's really cool. It is the, you know, that's one. And I mean, obviously wearables have been great for that and, you know, just being able to monitor things like that on the daily, but it is so cool where you can see, like we talked about these studies and, you know, that's the averages of groups and whatnot, and that's what you need to ultimately build a body of evidence. But just as an individual, it's so cool using those wearables to actually see how your daily life impacts things like your sleep, your HRV. It's a, it's really cool. That's wicked. You should try it, it's fun. Maybe I'll have to call up one of my buddies who does ketone research and maybe have him send over a thing and I'll look at the HRV with and without the ketone. For sure, I'll have to try that out.

Andres Preschel: I can introduce you to Dominic D'Inglantonio, who is one of the world-leading experts in ketones. He was actually just featured on the Tim Ferriss podcast.

Brad Currier: Okay, right on.

Andres Preschel: He lives in Florida at the keyboard. He's a professor at the University of South Florida, US. USF? USF. Yeah, okay.

Brad Currier: Is USF Tampa area? It was, right? Is it around Tampa? I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andres Preschel: I'm pretty sure, yeah. Oh, right on. Well, I'm flying there tonight. That's awesome. Yeah, he's a brilliant guy. Good stuff.

Brad Currier: Yeah, no, that'd be cool. You've given me an idea. I'm going to try that. I can introduce you guys.

Andres Preschel: That'd be fun. That'd be cool. I wanted to ask you, you know, considering that butylethionate has its targeted approach with the mitochondria, right? When you do something like fasting, let's say you're fasting, right? Can this help you gain further benefits of fasting? Can it help preserve muscle mass as we were describing? Maybe on a calorie deficit independent of fasting, can urethane help you preserve muscle while you're cutting and essentially losing fat, you know?

Brad Currier: Yeah, that's, that's a good question. And I think with some of those scenarios, the outline, whether it be fasting or whatever it is, that's inducing like global autophagy, right? So everything's going to start, you know, breaking down your body, you're essentially starving your body, you know, in a very short period of time, but your body's saying, Okay, you know, I need glucose, I need fat, you know, I need these lipids just to keep functioning. And so it'll start breaking down parts of your body to provide that really to the key organs, you know, brain, you know, our central kind of visceral organs, muscle, exactly how you outlined, you could, you'd break down muscle, gluconeogenesis, you convert that to glucose, your brain has that as a fuel source. That's global autophagy, global cellular breakdown. What's unique about MitoPure is that it specifically targets a mitochondria, and you see the dysfunctional mitochondria selectively broken down. So it's not just breaking down anything that's in the yard, it's taking the broken toy and saying, okay, we're going to break that down into parts. So I'd say that that's a key difference in terms of what it does for preserving muscle. That's something, you know, there's no published research on in the case of, say, a fast or any atrophy type inducing event. There's nothing published on that. I'll take a guess. What do you think? Yeah, I think if I had to guess, I'd be really curious to actually more so look at the bioenergetics of the cell, because you can have muscle mass, but that's not necessarily the same as muscle quality. So I would be curious to look at how the quality of the muscle is preserved. What do you mean by quality? Yeah. So by quality, I would mean by things like the strength, uh, the metabolic sensitivity, uh, of it. So, you know, there's a, maybe you lose muscle mass because, you know, if we're cutting out something like physical activity or, you know, that, that would be a huge driver of maintaining muscle mass, but what happens to the insulin sensitivity of the muscle? What happens to the actual muscle strength? Because if those can be preserved, even if we're losing mass that, you know, that would be promising. So. Right. I think my best guess would be because it's targeting the mitochondria, and the mitochondria are powering all of our cells except our blood cells, you know, all parts of our physiology, whether it be in the case of something like muscle strength, the actual muscle, the nerve innervating the muscle, the health of this connective tissue around that muscle, those are all going to be improved if they can have enhanced mitochondrial health.

Andres Preschel: So what's happening is, as mitophagy happens, you mentioned this briefly, I just want to expand on this point. When mitophagy happens, you take a dysfunctional mitochondria. I also want to define what that means in a second. But you take a dysfunctional mitochondria and you break them apart. Are those parts waste products or can they be repurposed for something else?

Brad Currier: Yeah, great question. They can totally be recycled. So, you know, mitochondrial proteins, like anything, are just a collection of amino acids. So when we break it down, you know, those proteins… Do you just urinate them? Well, you can, so you'll excrete some as urea, but a lot of times those proteins won't even leave whatever tissue or cell they're in. So whether it be muscle, mitochondria, when those proteins are broken down, a lot of times they're just reincorporated back into protein. So you can take- It's recycled. It's recycling. That's exactly what it is. So you're breaking down the broken version of it into its original parts and rebuilding a newer, healthier one.

Andres Preschel: Wow, and how would you describe a mitochondria that isn't working properly? Like what's happening and why is it happening?

Brad Currier: Yeah, what is mitochondrial dysfunction? I think this is one where it can be helpful for a lot of people to think of it like the powerhouse, but like, you know, like an energy factor.

Andres Preschel: Don't say the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell at least once on every other fitness podcast. That's right. I'm not running a real fitness podcast.

Brad Currier: So we'll get them out. The mitochondria is the powerhouse of itself. It does a lot more. You know, it is, it's an energy factory, right? So certainly dysfunctional mitochondria aren't going to be as good at producing energy, but because of that, how they do that, they have a lot of other impacts when they stop working. So the mitochondria really is where we take all the food we eat, it goes through the mitochondria to get converted into the cellular energy, right? That all our body can actually use. It is like an electrical factory in there. So not only would maybe the energy output decrease, but when things start going wrong, which could simply be, you know, proteins as they age, they become less effective, they break down, we get things like reactive oxygen species being released from the mitochondria. And that'll have other impacts in the cell. So actually, there's a great researcher out of Yale named Gerald Shulman, who has really nice work showing how these reactive oxygen species from the mitochondria can impact insulin sensitivity. Essentially, they hit on the IRS-1 signaling axis, and this induces insulin resistance. So the whole pathology of, in this case, type 2 diabetes, but also things like cardiovascular disease, hypertension, how mitochondria dysfunction is kind of, you know, there's a really good case to be made for why it's at the heart of the pathogenesis of these conditions that are the everyday killers. So that's a great example of when the mitochondria dysfunction, it's not just that we have less energy. it really impacts the health of everything else our cells are doing. Wow. Mitochondria are also really involved in calcium homeostasis. So calcium is a key signaling molecule. Among other things. Absolutely. And so, you know, when that gets out of whack, if the mitochondria is not working properly, that, you know, really the consequences of mitochondria, poor mitochondria health, you know, are numerous throughout the cell.

Andres Preschel: What would you say are some of the lifestyle habits or perhaps call it like diseases or tragic injuries that someone might have that can lead to mitochondrial dysfunction?

Brad Currier: that can lead to mitochondrial dysfunction.

Andres Preschel: Like who should be the most concerned about whether they have, you know, maybe they had elevated mitochondrial dysfunction?

Brad Currier: Yeah. Obviously aging is an obvious one. Aging is an obvious one, which is everyone. You know, I would say, actually, probably one of my top candidates would be inactivity. Inactivity, as we were saying, exercise is really this— We're not biased.

Andres Preschel: It's like two exercise physiologists speaking on a podcast, by the way. Yeah, exactly. Take home message.

Brad Currier: Do exercise. Good night, folks. That's all we have to say. It's, you know, inactivity. really is the what I would say underpins so much of our health as we age just individuals throughout society. It is the best that lifestyle intervention we can do for our well being. And it's also the probably the most deleterious when we don't do it. So, you know, the average individual in this country, part of my research before joining Timeline was a lot around like exercise guideline development. You know, currently we have less than half of people doing the aerobic exercise that is even recommended, right? Like 47% was the most recent I checked. OK, but more than half. And what is the guideline? What should they all be doing? So the guideline for that generally healthy adult 18 over 18 years of age is 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a week. So you can think of that as you go for a 50 minute run three times a week or maybe You know, 30 minutes, you get on the, you know, on a spin ergometer, you know, five times a week. But moderate to vigorous, you know, that could be just an elevated kind of jog around the neighborhood. You know, you do that each day when you get home from work or something. That's the guideline. So less than half people are meeting that. But I would say what's even more consequential is that less than 24% of people are meeting the weightlifting guidelines. And again, remember, this is all self-report. So I think you're pretty safe to say, all right, take that 48% and 23.2%, chop those in half, because people are going to say they do more than they do. Either way, when you look at people who are actually doing some weightlifting and some aerobic training, we're looking at not even one in five people. And I think that really is detrimental for health in the sense that Exercise stimulates that turnover we're talking about, right? It gets ourselves making new healthy structures, but also breaking down a bit unhealthy structures. And what does mitochondria dysfunction accumulate most from? Inactivity would have to be near the top of the list in terms of our lifestyle. And actually, there's a there's a great paper published a few years ago, looking at the hazard ratio or the risk, you know, kind of relative risk that you get for different diseases based on any exercise you're participating in. And so this was one where Just doing either aerobic or weightlifting exercises, you see anywhere from a 10 to 30% reduction in your risk for things like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, all-cause mortality. And when you combine the two, just participate in not even meeting the guidelines. that's increased to like 30, 40% for some of these disease risks, which really speaks to how powerful just doing any exercise is, that you're having something that's reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease by 35%. If that was in a pill, that'd be the best selling thing in the world. So I think inactivity is a huge one when it comes to mitochondria dysfunction because of our lifestyle.

Andres Preschel: Sweet. And, and how do you, if you take someone that's very active, like a lot of the listeners tuning in right now are folks that are on the elite level of fitness. Okay. Those folks are getting a lot of turnover, they go to Contra every day. Do you think that those folks, you know, would still benefit from something like Biotopure or Ulithanae?

Brad Currier: Yeah, that's a great question. And this, I love, it's, when you get people who are really on the edge of human physiology, that's where you really see how, just how incredible, you know, our bodies are. It's, It's pretty neat when you get to work, and kudos to anyone who's done the work to get them into that position. Yes, actually, I do think it would be helpful. And we actually just finished a study. This was with Professor Louise Burke down in Australia. It was a study led by a guy named Jamie Whitfield, Dr. Jamie Whitfield there. And what they did is they took mitopyr in this really elite population of distance runners, middle distance runners. Louise is Mount Rushmore of kind of sports scientists, like, you know, anything around nutrition, physiology, she is all-time great in this.

Andres Preschel: Mount Rushmore of exercise, that's a good one.

Brad Currier: Louise has to be up there, her and her husband John are both up there. So really cool to just have the opportunity to, you know, have something that you're making tested by one of the best. And really what they did is they had this population of elite middle distance runners. And when I say elite, I don't mean like they did a marathon. I mean, these are people who are training for and going to the Olympics. And what's mid-distance? Mid-distance, in this case, we're looking at, say, anywhere from like four or five miles-ish. The actual events that these people do would all be in that range.

Andres Preschel: By the way, I just want to mention, I am not a runner, I'm a sprinter, but I have a lot of respect for the guys that are getting the world record. The guys that have 4 or 5 minute miles, that to me is like, you're really pushing it because you're basically sprinting for a mile or a couple of miles. That's, that to me is like, that's performance, man.

Brad Currier: Like that. Right when you're on that edge of it's just long enough or just short enough where you feel like you should be sprinting the whole thing, but it's just long enough that it sucks to do that. Oh yeah. There was a really cool bit actually I saw just on the sports and where they're most challenging. So it was things like, you know, the, uh, the 400 meter for running or the, uh, 200 and swimming where you get in that range of like 45 seconds to like two, three minutes. Yeah. Because that's exactly where you're in that shift, right? Yeah. You can't keep up your sprint the whole time, but you're not really easing off enough to, uh, that you would if you were doing say five or six minutes, even so.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. It's like 90% of like an outlaw sprint.

Brad Currier: Yeah. Sucks. Well, it's awesome, but it feels terrible. Yeah. Oh yeah. Maybe arguably worse than the ketones. Yeah. Are you sure? For sure, close. But yeah, so I guess on this study, it was really cool what they did. It was during one of their altitude training camps leading into one of the last Olympic cycles. So four weeks, these elite runners, randomized to mitopure placebo, took it for the four weeks. And what they saw is that after the supplementation period, in these elite runners, markers of muscle damage were lower after the time trial. So a key enzyme, creatine kinase, there was a significantly less amount of it in the blood after their time trial following supplementation. And what was really neat is that these athletes perceived exertion was actually significantly lower in the MitoPure group. How much lower? So in this case, you know, you're just using a Borg scale. So you're looking at, it was about a point and a half, two points. which, you know, is the difference between saying I am, I'm all out or I'm working very hard to this is slightly hard. And when you think that the performance or time trial performance didn't change, but if you've got less muscle damage and you're feeling less exerted, you know, that speaks volumes to what it could be doing for your recovery or your ability to train, you know, at a, at a, at a higher intensity. So that, that was just published in sports medicine, I guess now about a month ago. Wow. And really has opened our eyes.

Andres Preschel: That's what you emailed me about. You said, new study, let's talk about it.

Brad Currier: Yeah, so this is one of them. Yeah, so we've actually had three come out in the last month, two on sports, this one by Jamie and Louise, and then another actually also from Australia, but in academy soccer players. We can get into that. The other one was in nature aging, showing how MitoPure was reviving an aged immune system. And it was a randomized trial there that was just published last week. Wow, man. I think I sent you the sport ones. I might have mentioned, because the immune one just came out on Friday.

Andres Preschel: Wait until you're on the immune podcast.

Brad Currier: I think when we were checking, yeah, exactly. You know, a lot of mitochondria, MitoPure helps. But yeah, so I think that that's really given us excitement about further exploring the muscle recovery aspect and what MitoPure could be doing for these elite athletes, but particularly in the recovery and repeated performance area.

Andres Preschel: Wow, that's fascinating. I mean, I'm excited to get back on the MitoPure for my sprinting, because at this point, I've sprinted so much that I've pretty much standardized it. I know how hard I can and should go, and I have a certain protocol each week. So I think at this point, it's a good time to run a little scientific study. I have a good group that comes with me, so I could randomize it. There you go. You got your own study going. That'd be cool. I will get you the product, and you'll have to let us know what you see. That'd be awesome, man. So, we're running short on time. I would love to dive into a couple more questions that I have about this topic specifically, and then we have a few rapid-fire questions just for some clips online. Yeah, yeah, love it. So, okay, so, you know, as far as myopia and urithania is concerned, I mean, Where do you see this research going? And what kind of visibility do you think that it should have? You know, in nutritional science?

Brad Currier: Yeah, I would. So to your first part of where do I see it going? A timeline. Originally, it was all about healthy aging muscles. Key to that. I think it's rightfully considered the longevity organ. Two ex phys guys probably wouldn't opposed of that in many ways, but. A lot of those first trials were in muscle aging, muscle health in that middle age, older adults. Mitochondria are certainly important in muscle, but they're also critical in a lot of other tissues. And where I see it going is expanding not only the benefits of MitoPure, but really where it's applicable. So as I mentioned, you know, yeah, we can show some of these performance studies, which are incredible in elite athletes. But some of the other areas we're looking now in terms of what it does for skin health, because the skin's largest organ, a lot of mitochondria, just started our 11th clinical trial on skin. You know, immune, we just had that published in NatureAgent showing that it reduces inflammation and revives individuals' aged immune system. Those are two areas that we're going to continue exploring. Another big one is brain. And so we're actually currently running the largest randomized trial ever on a nutrition supplement in humans. So we've got 650 people that are taking… Well, for brain health, for mental health. Yeah, so what we're doing in this case is we've got the product, you know, with MitoPure and a placebo. Individuals take it for two months and then they have, in this case, what we're doing is a few of the validated questionnaires and metrics used by people like the FDA or the National Disease Council to look at cognitive function. You know, so how is your executive function? How well rested are you? How are you sleeping? to get some insights into what that's doing in this massive population of individuals all over the United States. Wow. So we've got that going on. We're wrapping that up soon. So that hopefully next time we chat we'll have some results on. Amazing. I think because you're targeting the mitochondria, you're targeting the cellular health at that micro level, the benefits are really widespread and uncovering more of those will be will be fun. And most of the research now, you know, I would say maybe Timeline does 20% of the research on MitoPure. As interest has grown and these positive results have come out, most of the, you know, there were 100, over 100 publications on urolithin A last year. While most of them are done by people completely unaffiliated with Timeline. And so it's really cool to see the benefits expand and also have that be done by independent investigators outside of it. You're in a good spot. I think that's where I see it going and it's a really exciting time for sure.

Andres Preschel: You know, something I want to ask you about is how urolithin A and MitoPure compares to other very popular like anti-aging supplements. Call it like, you know, NAD, NMN, NR, CoQ10, rapamycin. Have you had a chance to compare these at all and what's your take and what's your impression? Can they work synergistically perhaps?

Brad Currier: Yes, I would say one for the difference. It's helpful to look at what are they actually doing in the cell, right? So if we can think of the, these are all things targeting the mitochondria, right? And we can think of the mitochondria in three phases. There's the mitochondrial biogenesis, where we're making new more mitochondria. There's mitochondrial efficiency, or fusion and fission, where we're improving the function of existing mitochondria. And then there's mitophagy, where we break down the dysfunctional mitochondria at the end of their life. I would say what's unique about them is that MitoPure is the only clinically validated molecule that hits that mitophagy part. You know, NAD, they're trying to improve the amount or energy availability from mitochondria. Something like CoQ10 is working to make the existing mitochondria more efficient. So where are they different? MitoPure is really the only one that breaks, hits that mitophagy part. Could it complement things well? Like could CoQ10 and MitoPure work really well together? I think so. And that's just not something we've studied yet. But certainly an exciting question that we would like to, to really get that whole, you know, entire mitochondrial health. Mitochondria squeaky clean, efficient. I want all the bad ones dying off. Yeah. And that's actually something that's cool. I don't think a lot of people realize is that mitophagy, when we break down the parts of the mitochondria,

Andres Preschel: You can reuse them to make new, good parts.

Brad Currier: So there are cellular mechanisms that feeds forward into biogenesis. And so we've seen that in a lot of the studies, whether it both be preclinical and… So indirectly, it does influence all these processes. Well, the other two processes. Yeah. So by breaking it down, You see that signature of breaking down mitochondria the first few days, and a week in you're building new mitochondria. So it really does hit that whole cycle. And that's why I think something like MitoPure and CoQ10 would be a really interesting combination to explore, because you'd really be getting that full cycle. I think to your point of just how else do they differ, obviously wouldn't be genuine if I didn't sit here as a scientist and say, what's the evidence? You know, MitoPure is by far the most studied of them, just launched the 25th clinical trial on it. Most of the other supplements I would wager don't have you know, double digits. And what there is, I would say, is kind of mixed efficacy. So, for me, those would be the two key differences I'd highlight is just what's the mechanism of how they're working and what's the evidence supporting them.

Andres Preschel: Okay. Well, I've got some rapidifiers for you. Love it. Let's do 30 seconds or less for each one of these. Okay. What's the biggest misconception about muscle loss and aging?

Brad Currier: and it's inevitable. Exercise, eating enough protein, they are so powerful and we don't have to lose muscle at the rapid rate that we think we do. We can maintain and even get stronger a lot of the muscle health well into our seventh, eighth decade.

Andres Preschel: Dude, excellent. Who shouldn't take urolithin A? Who shouldn't take urolithin A?

Brad Currier: Anyone who doesn't care about their mitochondria. Oh my gosh. It's safe across the board. Obviously, MitoPure is the FDA approved, not just self-grasped, but actually approved. It's the highest quality, safest one. So if there's someone that shouldn't take it, I'm not sure who that is.

Andres Preschel: Can you feel your mitochondria working better? Or is it all placebo?

Brad Currier: Yeah, so in terms of the perception, I know we talked about what people feel. Personally, what I feel is that I sleep a lot better, I travel a lot, the jet lag completely non-existent, I recover from my workouts a lot quicker. Those have been the anecdotal things I've noticed, certainly lines up with what other people have said and some of the studies we mentioned will have some good insights from a clinical data perspective on what people are actually feeling when they're on the product. I'm not going to go over 30 seconds, but uniquely one thing where people actually notice the biggest difference is when they stop. That regularly when people say, you know, I was taking it for four months, was feeling pretty good. I wasn't sure if it was doing much, so I stopped. And then they say, I got back on it immediately. They say, I didn't realize I was just feeling good, but it was a drop off after they stopped taking it. Sweet.

Andres Preschel: And dude, I mean, I can't believe we're already here. But my final question for you, if you could put a word, message, or phrase on a billboard, somewhere in the world, what would it say and where would you put it?

Brad Currier: Yeah, it's a good question. Different mantras I've told myself over the years that have been pretty effective for me. But I think what I would say at this point is, The direction you are going is more important than the position you are in. I think that's something that over the recent years has really stuck with me or resonated with me and some close people in my life. Whether you feel like you're at the top of the game or whether you feel like you're in the dumpster doesn't matter, you know, that you are where you are, but the direction you're heading is what's more important. So whether you're at the the top or the bottom if you're going in a positive direction and the direction you want to then that's what's most important because you'll either stay on top you'll get to the place you want to be by focusing on that process and not just where you are right now.

Andres Preschel: That's incredible.

Brad Currier: Yeah, it's great. Where would you put it? Where would I put it? Well, where would a lot of people see it? I feel like something like Times Square is way too obvious. I've heard people say the moon.

Brad Currier: Yeah, that's hilarious. That would be quite the billboard.

Brad Currier: There's an advertising company for you. If it's one, if it's one type of spot, I'd probably put it on a bathroom stall. I mean, everyone reads it now. I don't think there's a stall used by everywhere in the world. So maybe, uh, if it's a type of place, probably a bathroom stall. What else? Even if you're on your phone, you end up looking at what's written on it.

Andres Preschel: Like while you're washing your hands, something like etched into the, like the mirror. It's a little post-it note on the mirror. Nice. Yeah. Brad, what an honor. Andres, thanks so much. That was awesome. Really appreciate it. For sure, man. We crushed it. Thank you all for listening.