← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
The Silent Killer Inside Your Cells (And How to Fight Back)
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Amitay Eshel
Foreign welcome to Biohacking Beauty, the podcast where we unlock the secrets to youthful skin and longevity through science backed biohacking strategies. I'm your host, Amitay Eshel and as always, we're brought to you by Yungus Skincare, the company that my wife and I founded. The leading brand in biohacking your skin for peak performance and anti aging results. Today is a solo episode. I would like you to imagine if you had a biological clock inside every cell of your body. A built in timekeeper that determines how quickly you age. Well, in a way you do. They're called telomeres and they play a crucial role in aging, cellular function and even skin health. Today we're diving into into telomeres. What they are, why they shorten, and more importantly, how can we slow or even partially reverse their deterioration through targeted interventions and lifetime and lifestyle strategies and also other longevity pathways. If you're interested in optimizing your lifespan and maintaining youthful, vibrant skin, this episode is for you. So let's get started and let's get started with the basics. What exactly are telomeres? So think of telomeres, and this is very well known kind of explanation. Think of telomeres as the plastic tips on the end of shoelaces. Their job is to protect your DNA, your genetic instructions from fraying every time a cell divides. But here's the catch. Each time your cells replicate or divide, telomeres shorten. And when they get too short, the cell either becomes dysfunctional or dies. So why does this matter? Short telomeres have been linked to premature aging, increased risks of disease and slower repair mechanisms in the body. And that includes, and actually that is very stark in our skin. Now, what causes telomeres to shorten more rapidly than they should? Natural cell division over time is one thing, but also oxidative stress and inflammation, poor lifestyle habits like inadequate sleep, chronic stress and poor diet, and also cosmetic interventions that exceeds the cell's ability to divide properly. Essentially, telomeres are a biomarker of how well or how poorly your body is aging or how well you treated your body. But the good news are that there are proven ways to slow this process down and even in some cases reverse it. This brings us to the concept of cellular renewal. Our body's ability to repair and regenerate cells. When cells cellular function is optimized, we can better protect telomeres from excessive shortening. So let's break down into maybe like three categories. The key processes. So first of all is cellular energy and nad. Obviously you're going to find it in a lot of what we're talking about, but because it's true. So our cells need energy to function and NAD is at the center of that energy production. NAD fuels DNA repair and keeps enzymes like sirtuins. So many times you'll hear me or other people say genes, sirtuins and enzymes, sirtuins, so that is interchangeable. So it's the genes and the enzymes that they encode help them stay active, which helps maintain telomere length. As we age, NAD levels decline. But supplementation with nad precursors like NR or NMN or injections or NAD IVs can help restore these levels. Side note is Chromadex, which is a company that owns Truniogen, which is a kind of the leading in army patent, just came out with a, with an nriv. I don't actually know if they came out with it or not. They've been behind the scenes talking about it for a couple years now. I don't, I'm unaware of the data around it. If it's better or worse. Something definitely worth exploring and see how you feel if it's available to you. But that's just in case anyone out there has heard about it, is thinking about it. So normally IVs and injections will be the NAD molecule and supplements will be the precursors because NAD doesn't go very well as a supplement. Okay. Another thing would be autophagy and proteases. So autophagy is the body's ability or a built in kind of mechanism to clean for cleanup. It clears out damaged cells and their parts in reducing oxidative stress which lower oxidative stress. Stress equal equals lower telomere shortening, fasting, exercise. And certain compounds like spermidine and spermidine pre and post cursors like spermine and putresine promote autophagy. You want to look and that's a side note, maybe if anyone wants, we're going to do a full episode about that. But you want to look for a spermidine compound that has all three. Three and it's very hard to figure out which one has all three or not. So I'll give you two companies. One is a company that obviously we make products with, which is Fermidine Life. And another one is primidine. Primadine is more available in Europe whereas fermidine is also available in Europe, especially in the central Europe like Austria, Germany and here in the United States it's more popular. Primidine is more popular in the UK either or works. Okay, so what we know by the way, is that autophagy is extremely important. And autophagy actually needs spermidine in the DNA level to get. Remember I said about sirtuins, it's like the genes and the enzymes they encode, right? So it's, it's the instructions and the actual action. Same thing about autophagy. There is the instructions in the DNA and in order, in the same way sirtuins need NAD in order to express that DNA. Also autophagy genes need spermidine in order to express that DNA. So it's not only that we take spermidine to mimic fasting, we take spermidine also to actually have fasting work as far as its beneficial effects in the body. So supplemental spermidine. That's all I'm saying. So the next will be epigenetics and longevity pathways. So certain genes control telomerase activity. The enzymes that again helps, that helps maintain telomere length. Nutraceuticals like resveratrol, spermidine that I mentioned, injections of ghkcu, copper peptide can support these pathways and help stabilize telomeres over, over time. So that's something important to, you know, now that we understand how cells work to preserve telomeres, the question is like, what are the best interventions to support this process? So if you're looking to protect your telomeres, the foundation starts with daily habits which is, let's start with like exercise and movement. Moderate exercise like walking, cycling or resistance training has all have all been linked with longer telomeres. But be mindful, excessive exercise, high intensity training without recovery can cause oxidative stress and accelerate telomere shortening. So bear that in mind. Another one is sleep and circadian rhythm. So sleep is when the body repairs DNA and clears out damaged cells. Deep quality sleep help reduce oxidative stress, inflammation, which both impact telomere length and to the positive and to the negative. Another one is stress management because chronic stress releases cortisol which is directly linked to telomere shortening. So one thing we can do is a few things we can do is mindfulness practices. Breath, work and meditation have all been shown to increase telomerase activity and slow telomere loss. Beyond lifestyle, nutrition and targeted supplementation play a huge role in telomere maintenance. So here's the, here are the top compounds to look for NAD precursors which NR&MN, which support cellular energy and DNA repair. You could also do IVs and injections of NAD. Another one is spermidine. We talked about it, GHK3 peptides. They are available in pills, but there is very little evidence that they work. That would be an injectable form. Resveratrol and terastilbene, which activate longevity genes and may help stabilize telomeres. That is also debated but they are also lowering oxidative stress so in any way they are recommended. Another one is vitamin C, obviously not ascorbic acid but sodium ascorbate as a supplement and vitamin E because they act as powerful antioxidants to protect against oxidative damage. And within that I would also give an honorable mention to C60 which is a less common or obviously I love it and we've had a couple of people on the podcast talk about it. But C60 is another antioxidant that I use and that you can use there one that is specifically for skin would be glycine. Gly S O D I N is another antioxidant that is good for skin in general but also telomere length in the skin. Another one is omega 3 fatty acids help reduce systemic inflammation, preserving telomeres. And if you want to use a better I believe fatty acid in in you could use it together with omega 3 or separately it will be fatty 15 is the brand and we've obviously had Stephanie Van Watson a couple times on this podcast. So by the by the time I'm recording it, we've already recorded the second interview. I'm not sure which is going to come out first, but highly recommend fatty 15. And if you are curious about like why what's the difference, I would recommend listening to the podcasts. So incorporating these compounds, whether through what I mentioned, whether I recommended it through, you know, supplementation, whether we do it through food or skin specific can make a measurable impact. Now let's talk skin specific. Why does telomere shortening show up so vividly in our skin? Our skin is exposed to environmental aggressors as a as a talk often. 20% of the reason our skin ages is what's going on kind of inside our body and 80% is those environmental aggressors like UV radiation, pollution, oxidative stress, emf, heavy metals. These accelerate telomere shortening and telomere what we call telomere attrition leading to wrinkles, collagen loss and slower wound healing. So the question is like what can we do? You know. First and foremost are topicals with nano encapsulated NAD precursors, copper peptides and spermidine. They all help to rejuvenate the skin at the cellular level and are very good for telomeres. There are a couple companies. One is called Skin818 or something like that. Another one is TA65. And these companies are. Are basically companies who are centered around telomeres and interaction with them as their claim to skin rejuvenation. For the most part, like I've said about other companies, whether it is companies that look only at senescent cells, whether it's companies that only look at collagen production, whether, whether it is companies that only look at, you know, there are going to be companies in the next few years looking at methylation. So all of these things, when you look, take one mechanism. As we can see, we can use many ingredients that are good and we've mentioned them in other episodes and we use them in skincare like copper peptides, fermitine, nad, things like that, vitamin C which we mentioned as supplements, C15, fatty 15. But these are not here because we only have these ingredients and we're trying to tell you that it's. That that's only what you should use. What happens is you want to create a system, skin care system that targets as many of the reasons our skin ages at once. And if you focus down on a specific mechanism, a lot of times it doesn't translate to how the skin looks. At the end of the day, you can take a cell, you can put a compound on it, it's going to show amazing results. But at the end of the day, it doesn't translate to skin health that well. And not, not to bash any of the companies that I mentioned. If this podcast convinced you, all you need is to lengthen your telomeres, go ahead and choose one of those companies. But at the end of the day, we want to use compounds that benefit telomeres but also other things. And that's why I mentioned the ingredients that I mentioned. Having said that. So what do these companies use? They use something called astragulus extract. We use it in care, which is our first formulation. And since we use, you know, spermidine, copper peptides, things like that, we don't need to use it in the newer formulations. But Astragulus or Astragaloside 4, which is the compound in it, has been shown to interact positively with telomeres less topically, more, more internally. But that is their, their target. We don't use it anymore since it is, you know, you, you only have so much you can put in a formula. And we want to use ingredients that also provide telomere benefits, but also other benefits. Okay, let's talk about professional treatments like red light therapy. None that is professional, but you know, sorry, not professional but like equipment. So red light therapy would be one, chemical peels in a spa, when combined can actually improve telomere length. So when you have a chemical peel and red light therapy on top of it, it can improve telomere or it could benefit the telomeres. Obviously Yungus chemical peels are with copper peptides. So obviously that is as far as I'm concerned, the best solution. But this is another approach. A holistic approach on focusing on internal and external interventions really offers the best results for maintaining youthful skin and benefits the telomeres the most. Okay, before we wrap up, I want to clear a few common myths about telomeres. First is can we fully stop telomere shortening? And the answer is no. But we can slow it dramatically. And in some cell types we may even restore some length by boosting telomerase, which is kind of what we talked about today. The second is like do only older people need to care about telomeres? And the question is not at all. Telomere health starts very, very early. And the sooner one implements protective strategies, the better their long time, long term results are. Another one, would would NAD supplements or topicals alone fix everything? Although they are powerful and we may see results in the short run if we only do that. Telomere protection requires a holistic long term approach. Sleep, diet, exercise and stress management all play a significant role in that. Another thing that I would say is hormonal balance. A balance between estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, especially in women, but also in men, is crucial for telomere length. So here's how you can start applying what we talked about today. Prioritizing sleep, stress reduction and a nutrient dense diet is very important. Incorporate key supplements and skincare ingredients. Be consistent because cellular renewal is again a long term game and a long term investment. But by taking these tips, you can actively slow cellular aging and maintain health healthier telomeres for years to come. So in conclusion, telomeres are really more than just a marker of aging. They are a blueprint for longevity. That's why I, I like to look at them as a marker of how well we're doing. By stimulating cellular renewal through NAD autophagy targeted interventions, we have a real that we have real tools to protect our telomeres and promote healthier, more youthful skin and body function. Well, this was a short episode. I just wanted to touch on telomeres. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe and stay tuned for more deep dives into longevity peptides and cutting edge anti aging science. Until next time, keep optimizing it.