All about the Mitochondria

Welcome to Make America Healthy, where our goal is to empower you, educate you, and inspire you to take more control of your own physical and mental health. My name is Beth Shaw. I’m the host of this podcast, the author of 4 books on health and wellness, and the founder of Yoga Fit Training Systems, the world’s largest yoga mind body school. On today’s make America healthy, we’re going to talk all about the mitochondria. Maybe you’re like, what is that?

So we’ve got an expert here. We’ve got Mona Rosine, who is from the True NIAGEN company. She is a dietitian nutritionist, and she’ll introduce herself in longer form. We want you to know that this is a very important topic that you should all know about so that you understand how to get maximum power and efficiency and health from your physical body and also how that will impact your mental health. Mona, welcome to make America healthy.

Thank you so much, Beth. Glad to be here. Thanks. Thanks. Do you wanna give us a little bit of a deeper dive into your background?

Sure. As mentioned, I’m a dietitian. Been working with NIAGEN as our brand. The company is ChromaDex who are the makers of TRU NIAGEN, and it is to support cellular function, and we’ll get into that in a little bit later. I’ve worked in supplements as well as the food space for, oh gosh, almost 20 years now.

So it’s been a while. But, definitely excited to be here and talk a little bit more about mitochondria. Thank you so much. Now you and I originally met at the DTC Expectives conference, which is actually a pharmaceutical event Yeah. That I’ve been presenting at for a number of years.

And it’s always interesting and fun to be in the more natural health space and be at these pharmaceutical shows. They actually they gave me an award this past year, which I was, pleasantly surprised about given what I do really has nothing to do with pharmaceuticals. But I always like to joke that I love pills, mostly natural ones. So tell us a little bit about the mitochondria and why we should all know about it. Sure.

In start, at a much broader level, many of us have heard that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. It is an organelle in the cell. So an organelle is just a small cellular component that has specific functions. And the mitochondria specifically is responsible for pretty much all the different cellular functions and chemical reactions that happen within the cell. For instance, creating energy is one of its primary functions, and that is used in order to, like, fuel all the rest of the cellular, functions and chemical processes that ultimately allow you to do work, to do whatever it is that you enjoy, to think, to exercise, to sleep, and all of that is run by the mitochondria.

How would we know, as the average layperson, how our mitochondria is functioning, and what might be some signs and symptoms of mitochondria that are not living up to their full potential. Most of the time, this is obviously involuntary function. Thank goodness. I would hate to think about trying to make my mitochondria work. That would be an all day job.

If we’re moving along through life and usually when we’re younger, there’s no issues because, one, there’s less exposure to different type of environmental toxins, but, 2, everything just works more optimally when we’re young because we’re we tend to be healthier at that age. Obviously, there are some exceptions. When we begin to get older, there might be appearance of certain symptoms that could be a fatigue, could be some soreness of some sort, disease of some sort. All of that could be linked back in some way to what’s going on with the mitochondria. Is there something that is not allowing it to go through all the chemical process optimally the way it was created to do?

So for instance, different types of symptoms or reasons why the mitochondria might not be functioning might very well would be exposure to certain environmental toxins, not eating well, so not getting the nutrients that we need. And we all know that the American diet is quote, sad, the standard American diet. Highly processed foods, very little fiber that’s involved, very little high quality protein, and all the processed white flour, white sugar, all that very high in sugar. Those types of dietary habits can impact how well the mitochondria will function and we may not know it right away. It takes years, maybe even decades for people to realize what their behaviors 20 years ago is all of a sudden resulting in some kind of mitochondrial dysfunction, which could be moving into some other kind type of disease down the road.

That’s in a nutshell, how the mitochondria function and a little bit about how some dysfunction could occur. I’ve been working out lifting weights since age 15, and I have a goal of getting stronger as I get older. Would it be a realistic goal for people to improve their mitochondria function and make it better than it was in their twenties, let’s say, in their forties or fifties? It’s definitely a goal to have. We know by research that exercise will increase mitochondria.

So mitochondria can divide, and you can create more mitochondria, which is what you want because that will allow and adapt to the exercise that you might be doing. As you begin to lift weights and or do certain types of endurance activity, your body will see that stressor that’s put on, which is actually a good stressor, and then adapt to that and get stronger, and certain cells, like muscle cells, can create more mitochondria. And that just helps to create the energy that those muscle cells need in order to perform that type of an exercise. So lifting weights is extremely important especially for women as we age and and get into the menopause years where losing bone density happens. Everything goes crazy once you hit menopause, and you may not change anything.

Staying strong to the best of your ability not only supports the mitochondrial health, but also supports bone health, cardiovascular health, brain health, even that because we know that exercise clears up the mind as well. Let’s talk a little bit about yoga, meditation, stress reduction, and their effects on the mitochondria. I haven’t seen any data specifically about yoga and meditation on the mitochondria. I’m not sure if it will increase the number of mitochondria or even increase the size of the mitochondria. However, what we do know with regards to yoga and meditation and just mindfulness overall is that connection to how our body respond responds to stress.

So usually when it comes to, a mindfulness routine, if that includes yoga, that’s great. If it includes different types of meditation, that’s also necessary. We know that our body begins to function better. Digestion improves. We have that gut brain connection.

So digestion is very important from that aspect. We know that we’re able to handle any kind of emotional stress or even some physiological stress that comes at us if we have a mindfulness and even a yoga type practice. So to manage that. I haven’t done as much yoga as I should. We’re gonna change that because I know you’re coming to our Scottsdale yoga fit mind body fitness conference in July, and we’ll be inviting you in to participate in our longevity workshop.

You’ll get an opportunity to do some yoga fit and see it’s a very strength based program. So we work a lot against our own body weight to create more strength, as well as obviously flexibility and balance. So in terms are there any tests that one can do to establish their baseline of how the mitochondria is functioning and then continue to monitor it with changes such as true NIAGEN to make it better? Oh, wow. There are to test the mitochondria specifically, if I remember correctly, there’s a test called organic acids.

Usually, some functional medicine doctors know about this type of a test, and it shows all the different reactions that are happening within the cell and and different nutrients and what could potentially be disrupted per se. That might be a test to look into and speak to a health care professional who understands that type of a test, and then they can explain whether or not that can help support the function of help you monitor at least the function of the mitochondria and how it’s improving with different types of supplements. From an NAD perspective, so true NIAGEN is a form of vitamin b 3 and it’s been proven to increase NAD in the cell, and that occurs in, some in some parts of the mitochondria as well as the cytoplasm within the cell. And there are different types of blood tests that you can have done. Some might just be a simple dry blood spot test where you just prick your finger and put it on a cart.

That’s pretty easy, noninvasive. You can do it at home, and that can measure the NAD in the blood. And so through supplementation with TRU NIAGEN, you can increase NAD by up to 50% with 300 milligrams daily or by over a 140% in 2 weeks with a 1000 milligrams daily. So we can see that and we can monitor that. And we do know that, increasing it, there was one really great study that was done in, the Netherlands that showed with supplementation, escalating doses up to a gram per day showed actually a mitochondrial biogenesis.

And what that means is that the mitochondria actually, we got more mitochondria through supplementation with TRU NIAID. So that was That’s really amazing, and that means I need to double my dose of of your product that I’ve been taking your product on and off, I I wanna say for 5 or 6 years now. I guess I need to ramp up my dosage. Yeah. We do know that different types of metabolic stressors such as excessive sun exposure, poor diet, as I mentioned earlier, excessive alcohol intake, viral exposure will all decrease NAD in the cell because NAD’s primary function is to not only defend ourselves against those types of metabolic stressors, but also create energy in the form of ATP so that our body is able to go through all the different processes that it’s supposed to do to allow you to do work and to rest and to play.

We were just at the a 4 m conference together, and, one of the lectures that I heard said that 25% of all Americans have fatty liver disease. That’s interesting. But it seemed like a super high number, which means one in 4 people have a fatty liver. And with the obesity rates as they are now, that’s not too surprising, As well as people like their alcohol in this country for sure, which can contribute to it. So I’m not really sure how aware our listeners are about the potential of fatty liver disease, which then can lead to a whole host of other issues, including heart disease and, obviously, diabetes.

If one is does some research after listening to this show and is very committed to their mitochondria as one of their baselines of health, Aside from strength training, I’m gonna ask you a little bit about cardiovascular exercise and its effects on NAD levels and mitochondria. Do you have any research for our listeners who like to do cardio? So it depends on the type of cardio that somebody is doing. We know that there’s the can standard zone 2 cardio where people are it can carry on the conversation, but they’re at the point where it’s a little bit difficult but not too difficult. There’s thoughts that type of exercise is not going to increase NAD.

It’s not going to really impact the mitochondria. Other types of endurance and cardio cardiovascular exercise such as high intensity interval training, especially as women get older and get into menopause will stimulate different neuro neurological connections in order to have a change in the body. So in order for our bodies to increase mitochondria through exercise, the exercise needs to be different than what we’ve done before and harder than what we’ve done before because otherwise our body has already adapted to it. So if it’s not challenging, it’s unlikely it’s going to support and do anything different for improving the mitochondria. It could help to maintain the current state, but not necessarily improve it.

So I’d recommend somebody who is going to only do I would always recommend strength training of some kind at least a couple days a week. It’s just so important for so many different aspects of health. But to make sure their cardio is challenging and not just a walk in the park, like, literally, a walk in the park. And for those of us who have been exercising for over 30 years, it is difficult to keep changing it up and keep challenging yourself. Mhmm.

Yep. We fall into routines, and it’s challenging to push yourself past a certain point. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about TRU NIAGEN and for people who are thinking about taking it. What can they expect to can they expect to to feel differently, to see some positive results, and then how long?

Yeah. So it is in it’s very different for each person. Some people might experience an increase in energy and they might feel a different in actual increase in energy. Other people may not. So it’s very much if you think about vitamin d.

If people take vitamin d, they don’t feel anything with vitamin d. And there’s some people who take 2 NIAGEN and they feel this increase in energy. They might sleep better. They might see a change in their hair texture or their fingernails. They might see a change in how their their brain health is functioning, especially as they get older.

But there’s other people, like, for me, I don’t notice anything different when I take it. It’s like a like I said, vitamin d or fish oils, we don’t know, but what what we do know is that it’s working in the cell. So the great thing about TRU NIAGEN and and this form of vitamin b 3 is one that you can take it in doses high enough to impact NAD in the cell, whereas regular niacin, you can’t take in high doses because of the flushing effect that it has. It’s funny you should say that I take NIAGEN. I take your 2 NIAGEN product, but I also take Niacin every morning.

We had doctor Patrick Porter on from BrainTap a few weeks ago, and he was like, the importance of niacin for cognitive function and brain health. So I’ve been ramping up my niacin intake every morning, and I definitely I’m probably flushing right now, actually. Yeah. You could feel that the flush Yeah. I I actually enjoy that feeling, but I’m a little strange in that respect.

But you can take niacin and TRU NIAGEN. Is that correct? You can, if you want. There’s nothing that is an interactive. They’re different forms of the same b three vitamin.

So just a little different chemical structure. So TRU NIAGEN is Nicotinamide Riboside. Niacin is Nicotinic acid. That’s the chemical name for it. So that’s why you get that flushing effect.

And when the RDAs were created years ago is they were created in order to prevent a deficiency disease, and the deficiency disease for niacin is pellagra. So the RDA was set at, I believe, it’s sort of 15 or 30 milligrams per day to not only provide support that our body needs to create NAD and everything that the cells need, but also to prevent pellagra. But what we do know is very similar to Tell our listeners what that is. Pellagra? Yeah.

Yeah. It’s a deficiency disease where it’s usually a skin disease. So people might get, like, red dots all over their face, and it’s very uncomfortable. And I think there’s the certain points to if it’s undetected, death could occur for severe niacin deficiency, which we don’t see this at in this country. Aren’t do they supplement a lot of products with niacin?

So for instance, they will fortify Yeah. Enrich. So in flour, in white flour, when it has gone through the whole processing and stripped of the bran layer and you only have the endosperm left, all the nutrients have been out. So according to the FDA, you have to enrich it back to what it originally was prior to the processing, and that includes different types of b vitamins, include, like, folic acid in there, and a few others. So that’s the enrichment process, and you’ll see that on cereal too.

When you see total cereal where it’s a 100% of all the vitamins and minerals, it’s because they add that. Well, they don’t tell you that was all the glyphosate and Roundup that has been sprayed on that white flour. Unless you’re buying organic, but it’s still processing white flour. It still gotta be enriched back. Yeah.

I’ve been gluten free for 14 years now, and it it was really a game changer for me. And then to find out what they are putting on conventional flour and wheat really wouldn’t never make me wanna go back to eating gluten again. I’ve been gluten free too for many years, so I’m right there with you. What else, should we know about our mitochondria? Other ways to help improve the function of the mitochondria is is, you know, eating a balanced diet, making sure you’re getting exercise.

There’s some other nutrients that are that could be involved in supporting the mitochondria. Things like quercetin and fisetin and those types of cellular nutrients that help support cellular function overall. So those could also be combined with trunias in order to have a better mitochondrial function. Coq10 is another one that’s important for mitochondrial health. That energy, it’s interesting because the energy that’s created by the mitochondria is in the form of ATP.

When you say I have an increase in energy, they’ll think the caffeine rush that they get when they take a drink of a shot of coffee or whatever it happens to be, an energy drink. But the energy that’s created in the mitochondria is ATP. You don’t get that burst of energy. In a sense, it feels a little bit more like a sustained energy because it’s allowing your body to do what it was created to do because you’re providing it with the nutrients that it needs in order to optimally function. And is your product something that can be taken all the time, or do you have to cycle it?

No. It can be taken daily indefinitely. Yep. Moving forward for people, you know, stay away from processed foods. That’s not so easy in our society today because pretty much everything is a tainted food source, and all it takes is a trip out of the country for a couple of weeks.

And you’ll notice, you’ll feel different, because our foods are not as regulated. And I think they’re getting less regulated, and you could probably speak to that a little bit more. So staying away from processed foods, drinking clean water that’s filtered, obviously, exercising, getting proper sleep, staying away from excessive amounts of alcohol. Where do prescription drugs fall into mitochondrial function? Do they have any effect on the mitochondria in a negative or positive way?

I think it depends on what the drug is. I’m I’m not an expert in pharmaceuticals, but we all know that prescription drugs, depending on what their role is, can either turn on or shut down certain pathways in the body. One of the things that I think is so amazing about how our bodies were created is that nothing works in a silo. Everything works in synergy together. So when you shut down one pathway, the cool thing about, again, of our bodies and how they create it, there’s backups.

But when you have pharmaceuticals that come into play and there’s nothing against pharmaceuticals that are necessary when they’re necessary, it could shut down something and we don’t necessarily know what is the downward effects of absolutely everything by certain pathways being shut off and or turned on, depends what the function is of the drug. So I think it’s just important to know everything that you can before you start taking something and talk to your doctor and speak to what are going to be the side effects on this. How is it going to impact my sleep? How is it going to impact my function at a cellular level? Pharmacists might also be able to help answer that question a little bit better.

I know if I’ve had questions, if I ask my pharmacist, I’d get a lot better answers than if I ask usually the doctor because they just are steeped in that deep of detail within how pharmaceutical functions. I have, taken antidepressants on and off since my late twenties, and I’ve been currently off now for about a year and a half. And every time I think if I have a really bad PMS, I’m like, I’m gonna start taking these pills again. I for a friend who’s a pharmacist, she said most antidepressants are hard on the microbiome, and they really wreck it. There’s a lot of choices that people have to make that are hard choices.

It’s either figure out natural supplementation and coping skills to work through things and as well get your blood test done to check your hormones, your vitamin levels, and all of that to see if that could be impacting your mental health as well as getting your microbiome tested. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. One for every thing that we take that is man made, and I’m not really talking about supplements here. There is a downside, and all you need to do is watch a commercial for any processed pill from conventional medicine to see how many side effects come. You’ve been talking a lot about menopause.

There’s some new pill for menopause out there, but then if you listen to all the side effects as wow. What do you do? Yeah. It was interesting because I think that one pill about menopause was to help with get eliminate hot flashes, but one of the side effects could be hot flashes and I was like, okay. One of the things I wanted to mention about the microbiome too is the other aspect of what is destroying our microbiome is the fact that we are so sterile these days.

Everybody’s using heroin that could also disrupt and destroy the microbiome. Once you put hand side hand sanitizer on, a lot of times we touch our mouth, we touch our face, and all that stuff gets ingested and could destroy the microbiome. The other aspect is washing your hands does the same thing. It just makes sure that we wash our hands after whatever bathroom, obviously. The gym, lots of germs in the gym.

And even things like conventional mouthwash can destroy the microbiome. Yeah. There’s a lot of things that we just think are, in a sense, good for us, but may not be the best method. Yeah. People really do your research.

My make America healthy friends, do your research. Then the NIH always has great papers, and I think that’s a source that is actually not tainted. If people are looking for white papers on your product or scientific research, can you give us a website that they can go and look? There’s a couple places. There are PubMed, which is where all of the the research the 3rd party research is is stored per se, and they can just search n r or nixamide riboside or even NIAGEN in PubMed, and they can come up with all of the research that we have published.

We have over 30 human clinicals published in well over 300 preclinical studies that have been published on TRU NIAGEN and NIAGEN, specifically. Other places that they could go is our website truniagen.com, and there’s some science on there. And there’s another, website called about nad.com where they can find some other science and aspects of and that’s more just general unbiased data that you’ll find on about nad.com. So I’ve done a couple of NAD, IV drips, and they’re very long. And and for someone like myself who has no patients to sit anywhere for 4 hours, that’s why I I don’t do them.

They’re also very expensive. I know that we can be injected intramuscularly with NAD now. So there are different delivery methods for NAD. I’m I’m thinking that TRU NIAGEN is a an easier, more affordable source than going to get a shot or an IV. Yeah.

So TRU NIAGEN is pardon me? Is it as effective as getting an NAD drip or a shot? Yeah. So true NIAGEN is the precursor to NAD. So it helps your body create it on its own.

Whereas getting NAD via IV, one, it’s extremely painful. The side effects are horrific. A lot of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, could happen during the actual IV itself. The, the interesting thing though about NAD, it’s a very large molecule. And in order for it to cross the cell membrane, your body has to take it apart.

There’s a phosphate on that molecule, and that phosphate cannot cross cell membrane, so that has to be removed. When that’s removed, one of the components that’s left is nicotinamide riboside and that easily crosses the cell membrane and gets in a short process and creates NAD in 2 steps once it’s in inside the cell and inside the cell membrane. And that, is why NAD, like, in an IV may not be as beneficial. Whereas TRU NIAGEN, when you supplement with a precursor, it enables your body to increase it on its own and naturally and quite quickly. Within 2 weeks, you’ll see a significant increase in NAD in supplementation.

Amazing. Now I keep hearing the word nicotine, and I have several friends in the health and wellness space who say that nicotine is good for you. They chew natural nicotine gum. I remember going to, present at the biohacking conference, and Dave Osprey and all of his, colleagues were spraying with the the liquid nicotine in their mouth. I may have done a a fair amount of that during COVID because they said at one time that nicotine prevents you from getting COVID, and I also found it to be a very powerful cognitive enhancer.

I I did stop that practice, though, because I’m sure there were a whole bunch of other chemicals that I was putting in my body with that. Talk to us a little bit about nicotine. I wanna clarify that nicotinamide riboside or nicotinamide is not nicotine. Is it a derivative? Is it related?

Not at all. There’s no relation whatsoever. So as I mentioned, vitamin b 3 niacin is nicotinic acid. And that’s might be they’re so close. So nicotinic acid, which is not nicotine.

It’s a form of niacinamide might be another thing that you’ve heard. Another way to say nicotinamide or niacinamide, you’ll hear that a lot for facial serums where the you’ll have niacinamide certain percent that will go on to serums and help with skin health, but that is not related to to nicotine. Nicotine is a completely different chemical, and it is a chemical. And I don’t know enough about nicotine other than it’s in cigarettes, and it’s in vaping, and it’s in gum, so I don’t know enough to really comment on nicotine. Just a second.

Thank you for clarifying that. So where can we find TRU NIAGEN, and do we have a code for our listeners? TrueniaGEN.com is where anybody can go to order TRU NIAGEN. And I don’t have a code right off hand, but I’m sure I can get you a code. Okay.

Great. We’ll put that in our show notes for our listeners, and we’re looking forward to having you for our yoga fit longevity program debuting in Scottsdale, Arizona in July at Yoga Fit’s Mind Body Fitness Conference. I will see you soon, Mona. And if you wanna share any personal links for people to find you on social media, you can do that. You can find me on LinkedIn.

Just find my name, Mona Rosine, and, that’s that’s the probably the only one professionally. The other ones are my personal sites. Okay. Great. Now thank you so much for educating us on all about the mitochondria.

We’d also like to thank our show sponsors, Lifeboost Coffee, making clean, organic, mold free coffee with no pesticides, and it’s shade grown. They pay their farmers an equitable wage. Check out my new mindfulness blend that I created for them. It’s half cap dark roast, and you can save 15% at checkout by using the code yoga fit at lifeboostcoffee.com. We’d also like to thank our title sponsor, Yoga Fit Training Systems Worldwide, the leader in yoga mind body fitness education, hosting conferences that are live, trainings that are live, virtual trainings, corporate wellness.

We have an extensive yoga therapy track, and our YogaFit Warriors track is for anyone who has had PTSD, anxiety, depression, or trauma. You can save 15% at checkout by using the code mah24. That’s mah24@yogafit.com. You can find me on Instagram at Beth Shaw Health. Check out our new Make America Healthy social media on Instagram and Facebook.

And if you enjoyed this show and know someone who could benefit from it, we thank you so much for sharing it. Until next time, stay healthy, stay happy, stay educated, and enjoy your day. Namaste, everybody. Thank you so much. Make America healthy.