Why GLP-1 Users Need to Protect Muscle: Mitochondria, Strength & Longevity w/Jennifer Scheinman, MS RD

GLP-1 medications can be life-changing, but rapid weight loss can also mean losing muscle if you are not actively protecting it. In this episode, Ana Reisdorf sits down with registered dietitian Jennifer Scheinman to talk about why muscle strength matters just as much as muscle mass, how mitochondria influence energy, mobility, and healthy aging, and what GLP-1 users can do right now to support muscle with a balanced diet, enough protein, exercise, and smart supplementation. They also break down the emerging research on urolithin A, including how it may support mitochondrial recycling and muscle strength, why that matters for fatigue and long-term function, and where it may fit into a practical GLP-1 lifestyle.

About Our Guest:

 Jennifer Scheinman is a registered dietitian with about 25 years of experience across clinical practice, private practice, and the wellness space. She currently works as the Director of Scientific Communications with Timeline, where she focuses on evidence-based supplement education and longevity research.

Timeline Instagram: (@timelinelongevity) • Instagram profile
Jen Instagram: Jen Scheinman | Perimenopause Dietitian Nutritionist (@jenscheinman_nutrition) • Instagram profile

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*The content of this show is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The goal of this show is to provide various points of view about GLP-1 Medications. The personal and professional opinion of the guests and their content does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Ana Reisdorf or GLP-1 Hub.

Transcript

Jen (00:00)
So muscle is not just about the mass, it's about the strength. It's about, think about it, when you get older, it doesn't matter how big your muscles are, it's can you get yourself off the floor if you fall If you're a grandparent and playing with your grandkids, can you get off the floor if you sit down and play with them, right? It's much more about functionality of the muscle than just how big they are.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (00:18)
GLP-1s can be life-changing, but fast weight loss also takes muscle with it, and losing that muscle can have real consequences for how strong and mobile you stay as you age. Welcome to the GLP-1 Hub Podcast. I'm Ana Reisdorf.

registered dietitian and GLP-1 user of over three years and counting. Today, dietitian Jennifer Scheinman walks me through why your mitochondria hold the key to strength and mobility on these medications and what emerging research says you can do to protect your muscle without completely overhauling your routine.

If this episode helps you, please leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if you're watching on YouTube, make sure that you share your thoughts in the comments. Also, a quick thank you to Timeline for sponsoring this video. Check the show notes for a code for 39 % off in their store just for our listeners. Now let's get on with the episode.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (01:20)
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Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (02:28)
Welcome to the GLP-1 Hub podcast. I'm really excited to have a wonderful colleague of mine, Jen Scheinman, today to talk about muscle mitochondria, longevity, and a really cool ingredient that she was involved in some research about that might help you out. So can you introduce yourself, Jen?

Jen (02:45)
Yeah, hi. Thank you so much for having me. So like yourself, I'm a dietitian. I have been a dietitian and in the world of sort of wellness and health for gosh, it's probably close to 30 years, at least 25 years now. And I have done and worn a lot of hats in the wellness space. I think like so many other dietitians starting in clinical.

practice working at a hospital, private practice, and now I have found myself working as the Director of Scientific Communications with a supplement company.

done lots of different interesting things and have just been really, really passionate, think, especially as people are turning to supplements and just helping them learn how to choose safely and effectively and things that are actually gonna be meaningful in this vast sea of noise around supplements, particularly when it comes to longevity. Yeah.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (03:35)
Yeah, there's a lot of noise in the supplement space. I feel almost bad sometimes for the consumer, like how do you tease it all out? know, because it's a lot and yeah, it's a lot. So we're going to focus today on muscle health. We talk a lot about that generally on the podcast, but like, why do we care about our muscles? Like what do they do for us? Why do we want to not lose them?

Jen (03:45)
It's a lot. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I think the conversation, especially in terms of like longevity, has turned a lot towards muscle because I think for so long, we just sort of thought about muscles as something that like gym bros wanted. Or if you were an athlete, this was something that you needed to focus on. And it was more of like an aesthetics type of thing than really understanding like the deep metabolic.

benefits that having muscle is. And they're basically, think, like one of the things I've heard very often, which I love, is like, it's your glucose disposal system, right? So as you're utilizing your muscles, whether it's cleaning the house or going for a walk or doing like heavy exercise, your body is taking all that excess glucose that's in your bloodstream and starting to use it for energy to power.

your muscles in the way that they work. But what we're also learning not just does it have the metabolic benefits, but it's also important for skeletal health. It's important for even immune function. There are immune cells that are tied to your muscle cells and it really is this having adequate muscle health. And I'm not even just talking about like muscle mass, but muscles that perform and are strong and have power doesn't necessarily even have to be big muscles. They're just strong, powerful muscles. Helps you age better.

So lower muscle mass and lower muscle strength is highly linked to mobility, also just mortality and morbidity, like how healthy we are in our older years. So I think that's part of why the conversation has gotten so big around muscles, because healthier and working on your muscles now, whatever age you are, whether you're 20 or 70, working on your muscles now is gonna help you age better.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (05:32)
So how, why do we lose muscle or do we lose, like how does it work?

Jen (05:37)
Yeah, just, mean, everything in the body, unfortunately, starts to decline with age, and that's just sort of a fact of life. We unfortunately live in a very sedentary world right now where we are not stimulating our muscles regularly. I mean, I think the statistic is like less than 70 % of the population gets the.

physical activity guidelines, like the minimum guidelines for activity, right? So we're not stimulating and building our muscles. We're not necessarily, although everybody's talking about protein these days, whether you're on a GLP-1 or you're a menopausal woman, seems like protein is the thing, right? But we're not necessarily eating healthy diets. So that muscle loss that normally happens with age is being accelerated just from our poor lifestyle.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (06:20)
So what happens when you're 80 and you like have a low amount of muscle you lost some because you didn't do your workouts or eat your protein?

Jen (06:28)
Yeah, so I mean, you definitely don't have the same metabolism of someone who maybe had exercised their whole life. But I think the biggest, most important thing is that you're a much higher risk of falling. And if you fall, you could be injured much more significantly. look specifically, I'm thinking about like women who trip and fall and then they have a hip fracture because they didn't take care of their muscles or their bones. And that is...

just the downfall, right? Like then you end up in a nursing home, then you end up sort of in this like cascade of things where your quality of life really goes down.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (06:59)
Yeah. And so why does GLP-1 exacerbate that loss? Like what do GLP-1 users need to think about when it comes to their muscle?

Jen (07:08)
Well, it's anytime you have a weight loss, think GLP ones are getting very much demonized for this because the weight loss is fast. But anytime, I mean, back in the days, I used to actually work in a bariatric clinic and ⁓ that was fast weight loss after having surgery. Or even honestly, if you're just losing weight through diet alone and you're not paying attention to your protein, what happens is your body doesn't necessarily just say like, I'm gonna take the fat stores for energy. It's not like, it's...

it can start to break down your muscles as well. And so specifically for GLP-1, since obviously that's a big part of your audience and just that seems to be what most people are turning for weight loss these days, when it happens really fast, you don't have a lot of, you you don't have good protein in your diet, you're in a calorie deficit.

your muscles are gonna start to break down. And what we see is that that breakdown is also very quick and it can be sort of significant, especially if it's used in like a middle-aged or older adult population where that muscle breakdown is already happening because you're sort of in that aging area. And then I think when we tie on top of that,

You know, again, like most people haven't lived an active lifestyle and haven't necessarily eaten a healthy diet. You're just sort of creating this sort of storm of things that are potentially gonna really impact your muscle quality. And that doesn't mean, I don't mean this to be like doom and gloom. It's the reality of what it is. But I think the thing that's so...

important is like these tools can be so helpful if we are also paying attention to our diet and our exercise and this is such a great opportunity. I think some of the people that I work with who are using GLP-1s like this is almost like they feel like it's a fresh start like it's like now they're like excited to focus on eating well and they're excited to focus on getting into the gym in a way that maybe they weren't before because they start to just feel better about their bodies or it just feels like they're getting to hit the reset button.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (08:55)
Yeah, no, I think it's hopeful for sure. just we it it's like wonderful with some caveats. That's how I kind of look at it. Like, like it's definitely game changing for a of people, but it's not just like a, know, you don't have to think about anything anymore with it. So so yeah.

Jen (09:04)
Totally.

For sure, for sure. There's

risks that come with everything, right? And so it's understanding and just taking the ownership that, you know, this is the time to start thinking about your muscles if you haven't already.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (09:15)
Okay.

Right, so you do a lot of research around mitochondrial health and that plays a role in muscle health. I believe there's a connection that I'll be honest, I don't really understand very clearly, but that's the reason why you're here. So tell us what the mitochondria is and how they play a role in this whole muscle longevity space.

Jen (09:26)
Yeah.

Nah.

The mitochondria is something that most people probably like never heard of, or it's giving some sort of like post-traumatic stress for high school biology, right? Where you had to like think about it. And there's almost this like reflex mitochondria powerhouse of the cell, right? Like if you remember it at all, that's probably how you remember it. And...

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (09:50)
Eheh

Jen (10:01)
What your mitochondria are is I think of them almost as like the battery inside your cell. So they are generating that power, whether, and this is not just for muscle. So your brain cells, your immune cells, every cell in your body, except just fun trivia fact, except your red blood cells, runs on the energy from the mitochondria. So.

And when we said earlier, like your muscle declines when you age, well, so do those boundary packs. And that's part of why you start to notice whether it is bone health or muscle health or skin health, those energy packs are starting to decline as you get older. And then that shows up as, in part, it's not the sole driver, but it shows up in part as like these declining systems as we get older. And if you think about your muscles and their main thing is to...

propel you around in this world and to power yourself from getting up from a chair or going to the gym or playing basketball or whatever it that you're doing.

those muscle cells have tons of these battery packs in there to fuel your body. And so as they start to decline and you start to have less cellular energy, you start to kind of feel that. You start to feel that in terms of muscle weakness and you start to feel that just even in terms of like total body energy and fatigue as you kind of get

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (11:14)
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Jen (12:11)
⁓

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (12:11)
Right, right. So the muscles really rely on the mitochondria to do their job. Like that's how they're able to help you walk across the room.

Jen (12:20)
Absolutely, yeah. So each cell in your body, just like your cell phone, think about that, Whatever app you're using, you still need to have power in that cell phone, right? Like once the cell phone battery dies, it doesn't matter whether you're on your Instagram app or your Gmail app, like none of those apps work if the cell phone battery is dead. And so if you can kind of think about it, your body in similar way, is once those batteries start to die.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (12:28)
Mm-hmm.

Jen (12:40)
But again, not all doom and gloom, we do have things that we can do to help improve the quality of those battery packs and even to create more. like, I think our bodies are just so cool in the sense that we have this built-in system to actually like recycle those batteries as they start to die, we can generate new ones. And a fancy word is called mitophagy, which basically is just mitochondrial recycling. And the things that will do it are exercise,

caloric restriction or fasting, or this really interesting molecule that I've been doing a lot of work with called urolithin A, which is a bit of a mouthful, but what that molecule urolithin A does, and it's the only molecule that has been proven. So fasting and exercise we know will work, but the only sort of external molecule that we've found that will also stimulate that mitochondrial recycling is this urolithin A. So it sort of has this really unique role in helping your body. And then, right, if we put all those pieces and connect all those dots,

Those old damaged mitochondria, we can recycle them, create newer ones, and then that means your muscle cells can do their job better. And what we see in the data is that that ultimately translates into stronger muscles.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (13:47)
Okay, so let's start with those three things that you talked about to strengthen the mitochondria or help them recycle. So number one, real basic like exercise. Like what does that mean per like minutes or?

Jen (13:57)
Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, I think that if you are striving to meet the minimum requirements of exercise, right, which is moderate to vigorous intensity exercise, like, what is it, 75 minutes a week combined, right, you will be starting to get that mitochondrial rejuvenation. So strength training also will help to...

improve your mitochondrial health. So you want to be doing exercise that is, when I say strenuous, like doesn't have to mean that it's like all out, but that it's not like a meandering walk, like that is certainly great. And there's benefit to that. But you want to be feeling like you're stressing the system a little bit. So maybe it's a quicker walk, depending on where your level of fitness is. If you're someone who works out a lot, maybe it's HIIT training. So that's it's enough to give your body a stress. And then, yeah, so

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (14:41)
Okay, and then the fasting.

Jen (14:44)
To be honest, I don't know the magic number of how many hours you need to be fasting. I suspect that if you are doing a 12 to 14 hours of time restricted overnight eating, that you will be starting to trigger that fasting response, that recycling response.

I don't know about you, I think that this time restricted eating, there is definitely some benefit for that, but these sort of longer fasts that people are doing, especially when we're concerned with muscle and getting enough protein and getting enough nutrients, they're not necessarily like my favorite in terms of like, if your sole goal is just like stimulate your mitochondrial health, that wouldn't necessarily be my like go-to thing for like a human in the real world.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (15:24)
I am familiar with the research on fasting personally, like, and it's very interesting, but for GLP-1 users specifically, there's already so much around nutrition and adequacy, like getting enough that I just don't think it's beneficial to like pair that on top of that. So let's talk about the third thing, which is adding something. I love things that add.

Jen (15:46)
Yes, that are

simple and don't take away from the things that you should be doing. I would never say this is an alternative to exercise. That's the foundation. Good diet, always the foundation. This really interesting molecule, it popped up really on my radar about five years ago, which truthfully is... So this molecule has been studied, I'll say it again, urolithin A, because I know that that's a hard one when you hear it a first time.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (15:58)
Sure.

Jen (16:11)
The research around it is over 15 years old, but there was never really like a supplement behind it. So there was no like marketing out there. And so it just, people hadn't really heard much about it. And the clinical research, meaning the research that's done in humans is also kind of more in that like five year range. And I think that's a thing that's really important to hear as, as your listeners are sort of thinking about this is that this molecule has been studied in humans. So the data that I'm sharing, like this isn't stuff that was done in

you know, like a lab rat or in even cells in a Petri dish, like this was done in real living human beings. And that's important just back full circle a little bit about when choosing supplements, like we want to look for ones that have actually been studied in real humans. So, yeah, so I'll talk a little bit about where you would find it in nature and then kind of like the benefits of taking it as a supplement. Because it is a natural, like this isn't like a lab made type of thing that some researcher came up with. It's something that,

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (16:45)
Mm-hmm.

Jen (17:05)
It is in nature, but it's not actually in the food that you eat. So this is where it gets a little bit tricky. Your gut microbiome should theoretically be making it for you. So when you eat certain foods, and in this case, pomegranates, berries, and nuts, so it's not even in like a lot of foods that people are eating regularly. So pomegranates, berries, and nuts, when you eat them, if you have a healthy gut microbiome, your body will make your ellipidae for you.

And it should be no surprise, most of us don't have a healthy gut microbiome. So most of us aren't getting this nutrient for two reasons. We don't have the right gut to make it and we're not eating enough of those foods. So we're not normally getting the benefit of it that we should normally get. So that's where sort of a supplement could come in.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (17:45)
Okay.

Mm-hmm. And so what does it do? Does it encourage the growth of the gut bacteria that make it or is it like put in its place for that like?

Jen (17:58)
Yeah, so taking it in a supplement actually just sort of bypasses the need for a healthy gut. Again, not that you shouldn't be focusing on your gut health, because here's the thing, we don't actually know what strain of bacteria makes it. So I couldn't even tell you, take this probiotic and have a cup of pomegranate juice and you're going to make all the urolithin A.

What the researchers had started doing was just like, let's forget what gut microbiome makes it because you still would have to like have a lot of foods that most people don't eat. And what's the benefits of just bypassing that directly giving you this like sort of clinically validated source of it. And so no gut microbiome needed to get the benefits when you it in a supplement form.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (18:37)
Okay.

Sure. So what, when it gets into supporting the health of the mitochondria, like how does that relate to muscles? Cause I believe you, you guys did a study that found some benefits for muscle health. Can you, so can you explain like what you did, what you found, what it was all about?

Jen (18:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, so there's actually

several studies linking the benefits of muscle health to ⁓ urolyphin A. So I'll keep this sort of a high level and we'll kind of go through where the research started. So the first human study was like, is it even doing anything to the muscle mitochondria? So like when you take it.

does it actually get in your bloodstream? Like, does it have the effect that we think it should have, that we saw in animals? And so we do that with a muscle biopsy. So we actually fed people either Urolithin A in varying doses, 500 and 1,000. I think we also studied 250 in that study. And then we took muscle biopsies. So we take a little tissue and we look at it under the microscope.

I feel like my lab friends would be laughing at how simply I'm saying this, but you look at it and you can see by different gene markers and different pathways in those cells, you can see that there is mitochondrial turnover that's happening. And so there's a statistically significant improvement with both 500 and a thousand milligrams compared to not taking it at all.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (19:35)
No, didn't.

Hmm.

Jen (19:53)
So that was the first thing. So we know that it's working, but the question then to your point is like, well, just because I have healthier mitochondria, does that have any sort of meaningful health outcomes? So the next study was to answer just that. And we looked in sedentary middle-aged adults. They had average BMI of 29. We didn't.

put them on any sort of exercise regimen. And in fact, they were instructed not to change their exercise. So if they didn't exercise, don't start. We didn't change their diet either. So it was just, so the gold standard trial is a randomized placebo controlled trial. So they either got...

Urolythin A, where they got nothing. And we measured several different parameters of their muscle health and quality. And what we saw after four months, again, without exercise, a statistically significant improvement in muscle strength, which is pretty amazing. Especially, again, everybody should be exercising, but we know that most people aren't. So this can be a really nice tool to help augment, like,

you know, if you're in that transition of just trying to get yourself to the gym and you're trying, you're looking for like that little added support.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (20:57)
So for the strength, was it like more muscle cells or just like the muscle you had became stronger? Like what, how did that work out?

Jen (21:04)
Great question.

So the muscles that you had became stronger. So there's several different things that we should point out about muscle health. It's about muscle quality. So I think in like social media, everyone's talking about like muscle mass and like how much and, partly also when you're a GLP-1 user, you're losing muscle mass too. So like the amount of muscle.

like the pound of muscle that you have on there. So we didn't see, and to be honest, this is not a surprise, we didn't see that you had more muscle growth. You didn't have more muscle mass. That is very hard to do without exercise. yeah, I, you know what, you need, exactly, you need.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (21:37)
Yeah, I think so. Girls are sitting on a miracle here. Like, just sit around, take this thing.

Jen (21:44)
to have enough protein, you need to be in a calorie surplus, like you need to be strength training. So I'm not surprised that you didn't see that, but what happened was the muscles that you do have were stronger and more powerful because they had more battery in there.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (21:58)
Mm-hmm.

Jen (21:58)
And that is a key part of muscle. So muscle is not just about the mass, it's about the strength. It's about, think about it, when you get older, it doesn't matter how big your muscles are, it's can you get yourself off the floor if you fall down? If you're a grandparent and playing with your grandkids, can you get off the floor if you sit down and play with them, right? It's much more about functionality of the muscle than just how big they are.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (22:20)
Yeah, interesting, interesting. So if you wanted to really focus on retaining that muscle and retaining the strength of that muscle, like what would that look like in terms of a lifestyle dietary pattern that could include the Urolithin A2?

Jen (22:34)
So the first thing, I mean, is just a well-rounded diet. There is so much focus on protein and that is obviously key for muscle. So usually around, we say like one to 1.2 grams per kilogram to make sure that you're getting enough protein. But, and I think this is especially important for GLP-1 users who maybe are struggling because their appetite is just not there. Like that doesn't mean we forget about.

carbs and healthy fats as well. So well-balanced diet, all of that plays a role in our muscle because carbs are part of the energy of like what your muscles use. I mean, in fat too, and can, know, and protein, all those things can help that power pack, right? The energy that comes from your mitochondria, that's where all that magic happens. But it's a well-balanced diet. You need to have good fiber to keep your gut healthy. But then,

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (23:00)
Mm-hmm.

Jen (23:21)
The next level up is sort supplementation. And I think that urolithin A is foundational. I think there's a couple other things that can be foundational too. I creatine is a great place to be for muscle. What happens with creatine is it helps supply energy to the muscle cells too in a different way than from the mitochondria. But for the maximum benefits of creatine, you've got to strength train. So creatine doesn't really have a lot of magic on its own. But the interesting thing is urolithin A does.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (23:42)
Mm-hmm.

Jen (23:47)
So I think they make a really powerful

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (23:49)
Interesting, interesting. So are there any negative side effects or think people that shouldn't take your Urolithin A or any warnings that you might have?

Jen (24:00)
It's honestly, it's a very safe molecule. I obviously people should always talk with their own personal doctors and healthcare providers before they start anything. the studies that we've done, so there are several other studies that have been done in older adults, in athletes.

So there's lots of data out there and in all of those studies, it had a very, very nice safety profile. So no difference in terms of like the placebo, there was no difference in adverse events. People were using sort of standard medications on some of these studies like, you know, things for blood pressure or statins or, you know, things for blood sugar. So it seems to be really safe. And honestly, like...

I have not really heard of any side effects from it either. the other thing that I think is, which we didn't touch on, that I think is sort of important for people who might be struggling with like fatigue on a GLP-1 or just fatigue because life is just life. Because you are also targeting that like foundational piece of muscle health, which is again that that mitochondrial power pack.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (24:40)
Okay.

Jen (24:59)
people are reporting that they feel more energetic on it as well. And I like to call it more of like a subtle energy or feeling like yourself again. So it's not like I just had a cup of coffee and I have that like energizer go, go, go. It's not like an immediate type of thing. It's just when you sort of reflect back and you're like, God, I used to like really crash at three o'clock and I had to go and like have a coffee and like wake myself up. You just sort of are like, ⁓

wow, my day is over, and I still feel really good. So it's this just feeling like yourself again, which I attribute to just your body is pumping out more energy from those cells.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (25:34)
Right, right. That's interesting because a lot of people on GLP-1 do struggle with fatigue. And some of it is probably just a low calorie intake, know, inadequate nutrition. So, but that's good to have something that might be able to help with that because I know that it can be debilitating for some people.

Jen (25:39)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah,

absolutely. I think what I love about your lineage is that bridge. When you are really tired, it's hard to get to the gym. It's hard to eat healthy and cook for yourself. You end up in this vicious cycle. And this can be a tool, certainly not a miracle. I don't want to portray that, but something that can just, again, maybe start making you feel a little bit more like you've got the energy to do those self-care things.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (26:18)
Right, so you're really into longevity sort of space and stuff like that. What are some of the areas that you're kind of excited about or research maybe even that your company is doing around longevity?

Jen (26:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I think the mitochondria in general, so any one of your listeners who, and there was actually, there was just this great New York Times article that was like, why is everyone talking about the mitochondria? I think the mitochondria are, I call it the next gut health. So if we think about like 10 to 15 years ago, gut health was sort of emerging as a key player in our health, and a lot of people were like, what?

There's critters, there's this bacteria that lives in my gut and your gut matters more than just whether you go to the bathroom or not. And now, everybody's talking about the importance of gut health for things like immune and skin and brain. It's all linked and interconnected. think mitochondria, the research linking mitochondria, not just to muscle, to brain, to immune, even skin, again, every cell that has a mitochondria is susceptible to mitochondrial decline. And so the research that's coming out, like I said,

really very well established, the link of mitochondria to just aging in general. And so now, Uroliphen A is starting to get studied in some of those areas. So there's some really interesting research that just came out in October linking it to immune health and immune fitness. You can use it topically, so it helps with skin health. And now, it's starting to be studied in other areas like brain aging as well. it's, I think one of the things I love about longevity is now we're sort of taking this step back from like,

compartmentalizing things where it's like, just think about your heart and just think about your brain and just think about your bones. Where it's like, let's actually just think about your cells, because the cells are, they have different jobs, but they all are sort of working in the same environment and talking to each other. And so that's where this mitochondrial piece comes in. It's kind of foundational across all organ systems.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (28:11)
That's so interesting. Like the mitochondrial gut health thing. It's something I hadn't heard, but you're right. Like 10 years ago, it all gut health, gut health, gut health. now, you know, but the cells are the foundation of our body. So it's definitely, definitely something to focus on. So for GLP-1 users who are using the GLP-1 for the purpose of better health and longevity, you know, what are your basic recommendations for them to really use it in a positive way?

Jen (28:37)
how to use a GLP-1 in a positive way. So, I mean, think that's really a conversation between GLP-1 users and their providers, right? And getting yourself down to a weight that feels manageable, that feels realistic, that feels healthy, where you still have appetite to eat.

a balanced healthy meal and that you're at a weight that's not compromising your health, swinging the pendulum too far the other direction. But these are all really very personal conversations that I think everyone has to have on their own with their doctors and be realistic. I think there's also this conversation of like, we just don't know yet, right? Like we don't have data that's.

all that long term and we know it's safe and effective, but like, is it safe and effective for 20 years? I don't know. Do we have that data? But what we know is being overweight is not healthy, right? So it's kind of like weighing the risks here. But I think for me, the most important thing is just still making sure that whatever medication you're using or anything that you're using, you still are ability to...

live a healthy lifestyle, right? Like if you've got debilitating fatigue or absolutely no appetite and you're not eating anything all day, like that doesn't seem like a win in my book.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (29:42)
Yeah, definitely. I think we should focus on finding some balance so we can support our mitochondria for the long run. Yeah. So Jen, where can people find out about you and the Urolithin ⁓ company that you work with?

Jen (29:48)
your muscles, all of it.

So I work with a company called Timeline. And so that is easily found at timeline.com and our branded urolithinase called Mitopure. So that's another way that people can find that. if people are social media followers, it's timeline longevity is our Instagram handle. And so you can find that there. And then I'm personally on Instagram at Jen Scheinman underscore nutrition. But there's lots and lots of like, if this piqued your interest at all, there's so much really interesting stuff.

on the timeline.com website where you can learn more about the mitochondria and how it works. And then some of that emerging research that I talked about as well, where we're starting to enter into learning about immune aging and brain aging and how that can also be really an important thing that we're focusing on with that foundational mitochondria.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (30:40)
Yeah, it's really interesting how much research you guys are doing into this molecule and looking at all these different aspects. It's really, really fascinating. So thank you so much, Jen, for being here. Yeah, no problem.

Jen (30:45)
Yeah.

Thanks for having me.

Ana Reisdorf, MS, RD (30:54)
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the GLP-1 Hub podcast. I really enjoyed talking to Jen all about the mitochondria and how we can support those little energy producers in ourselves. And if you wanna stay up to date on the latest research and get advice on your GLP-1 journey, be sure you're on the steady state newsletter. You can find the link to join that in the show notes and I'll see you in the next episode.