Look, we all know that autophagy is a great strategy to slow aging process because autophagy is the body’s natural way
to recycle cellular components and revitalize the cells.
And fasting is a great way to ignite autophagy.
But what if you hate too fast?
Well, today we’re going to talk about a natural compound that can induce autophagy, without fasting.
And that’s spermidine.
Before we get started, I’d like to take a moment to remind you guys that for the next few weeks, I’ll be posting video less often than I was,
because I’m in the process of putting together an online course, and that’s taking up a lot of my time.
I announced this in the last video, and I was surprised by how many comments I got that were in support of my online course.
If you’d like to be put on a mailing list to be notified about updates in the course, or how to enroll in the course,
click on the card right up here
and that’ll take you to a page where you can send my your contact info and I’ll make sure that you’re on the list.
In today’s video, we’re going to be taking an in-depth look at spermidine,
a compound that might possibly extend your lifespan in a different way from other interventions.
Well take a good look at what spermidine is, how it works, the impact that it can have on the aging process
and how you can boost your spermidine levels through your diet or suppementation.
But before we get into the unique ways that spermidine interacts with your body, we need to take a look at what spermidine is.
At the molecular level, spermidine is a polyamine, which is simply a compound with more than two amino groups.
And it’s endogenous, meaning that we produce spermidine in our own bodies.
In fact, it was first discovered in human semen, which is how it got its name.
Now, this was back in 1678, and it was discovered by one of the pioneers of microscopy, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek.
But since then, spermidine has been found in all the cells in the body.
It can be created in tissue or by bacteria in the gut.
And it seems to be a universal prerequisite for growth, along with some other polyamines.
OK, so, how does spermidine work? What does it actually do?
Well, put simply, spermidine induces autophagy.
Autophagy is Latin for “self eating” and it’s a process that goes on inside of our cells.
When nutrients are low, the cells can generate additional energy by recycling old and worn-out or malfunctioning cellular components.
But in addition to producing energy, this process renews the cell and revitalizes it.
And it makes it more healthy.
So autophagy is an important process within the body.
Under normal conditions, autophagy is ignited in the body by fasting,
and you need to fast for at least 24 hours to induce autophagy. And that’s just to set if off, to get it started.
You want autophagy to continue for a while, which means that you need to continue your fast for a lot longer than 24 hours.
But let’s face it. Fasting is unpleasant for most people, and it requires a lot of discipline.
That’s where spermidine comes in. Spermidine can induce autophagy without having fasted for 24 hours.
Or having fasted at all.
And the way that it does this is pretty interesting.
Spermidine inhibits acetlyltransferases.
Now, while this reduces the acetylation level in cells, it also inhibits mTORC1, or the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1,
something that the longevity drug rapamycin also does.
This activates the AMPK pathway and starts up autophagy.
So spermidine ignites autophagy by inhibiting mTORC1 and activating the AMPK pathway.
Alright. We know what spermidine is, how it’s created and what it does.
What kind of impact does all this have on the aging process? On longevity?
Well, the answer to that is kinda profound. By inducing autophagy, spermidine impacts a lot of different aging pathways.
If you’ve been following this channel for a while, then you know that I’m a huge fan of fasting, because fasting ignites autophagy.
And autophagy has been shown to be hugely beneficial for health and for longevity.
But beyond that, spermidine has been shown to have some very specific effects.
First, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a prerequisite for the growth and proliferation of cells.
But it’s also been shown to have a beneficial effect on both inflammation and on apoptosis, the programed death of cells.
Spermidine also works by influencing lipid metabolism.
Lipid metabolism helps to regulate your lifespan and if this process becomes dysfunctional,
it can result in dire consequences on your health, your lifespan and ultimately how you age.
And a big part of this is adipogenesis, the creation of fat cells from stem cells.
Spermidine is apparently indispensable for adipogenesis and it helps to modify your lipid profiles.
Next is the impact that spermidine has on cognition and memory.
There was a mouse study carried out at the University of Graz in Austria by Sabrina Schroeder and a team of researchers.
This study examined how autophagy led to improvements in mitochondrial activity in the brain,
and this autophagy was ignited by spermidine.
Autophagy improve mitochondrial function in the brain, which resulted in increased ATP production, or more energy for the brain to use.
And this can slow down or even reverse the cognitive decline that comes with aging.
This study also found that dietary spermidine has the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier
which could also improve cognitive performance and partial learning memory.
Now, scientists have not exactly been able to fully comprehend what the relationship is between autophagy and learning memory.
But from the evidence, we know that autophagy triggers the learning memory mechanism and also helps to improve cognitive performance,
especially in aging animals.
The researcher carried out tests on the hippocampi of mice.
The hippocampus is the part of the brain that plays the central role in memory formation.
They found that taking in spermidine helped to enhance respiratory capacity for the mitochondria,
which not only helped them better understand how spermidine works, but also demonstrated that taking spermidine improves
cognition and memory…in mice.
But mice have very similar aging pathways when compared to humans, and the results look very promising for us two-legged types.
But does taking spermidine actually extend lifespans?
In a mouse study that was published in January of this year, researchers sought to find out how spermidine would affect the
organs usually affected the most by aging.
So, for six months they administered aged mice with spermidine, through their drinking water.
At the end of the trial, they found that the mice that were treated with spermidine showed appreciable anti-aging effects
unlike other mice of the same age who weren’t treated with spermidine.
Thanks to the spermidine treatment, the mice used in the experiment developed less liver and kidney damage.
Also, the bald spots typically found on aging mice were decreased in mice treated with spermidine.
What impressed the researchers the most, though, was how spermidine functioned to help protect the heart.
Spermidine helped to reduce the shortening of telomeres in cardiac tissues.
Telomeres are caps on the ends of the chromosomes that prevent the strands of DNA from being eroded.
And in the mice treated with spermidine, the telomeres were almost the same length as those in younger mice.
So all of the afore-mentioned research begs the question: does taking spemidine actually improve lifespans in humans?
Well, apparently it does.
A study done in 2018 concluded that
“two prospective population-based studies report for the first time that nutritional spermidine uptake is also linked to reduced overall,
cardiovascular and cancer-related mortality in humans.”
Now, these studies were based on food questionnaires where they calculated the amount of dietary spermidine
each individual consumed in their diets.
“High spermidine uptake constituted an independent favorable prognostic parameter for reduced mortality,
meaning that this variable predicted a reduced incidence of death even after correction for possible confounding factors such as
age, body mass index, consumption of alcohol or aspirin, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, physical activity, sex, socioeconomic status
and even dietary quality, supporting the idea that spermidine might indeed be causally involved in a reduction of overall morbidity and mortality.”
Now, one of the great things about this study was that this was spermidine that was normally consumed the their diets,
not from supplemental spermidine.
Now, there’s a point that I’d like to make.
If spermidine can activate the AMPK pathway and shut down mTORC1, all on the way to igniting autophagy,
what effect does taking rapamycin have on spermidine?
I looked through the research and I can’t find a thing about the effects of taking spermidine and rapamycin.
If they both shut down mTOR1, is spermidine possibly a substitute for rapamycin?
What happens if you take them both? Do they magnify the effects of each other?
And what about fasting while taking spermidine. Or spermidine and rapamycin.
It’s obvious that a lot more research needs to be done, here.
If you guys have any info on this, let me know in the comments.
OK, where does this all leave us.
Unfortunately, spermidine levels, like just about everything else, go into decline as we grow older.
So all of the endogenous means of creating spermidine, in the tissues of our bodies or in our gut, won’t do us no good here.
Which means that we need to turn to exogenous sources.
The good thing about spermidine is that you can easily get it from the food you eat, mostly from plant and fungi-based foods.
So, you’ll get a good dose of spermidine from vegetable sprouts, mushrooms, peas, cauliflower, and broccoli.
These veggies all have a significant level of spermidine and it’s great to know that spermidine seems to be stable even in the presence of heat.
This means that cooking your veggies won’t destroy the spermidine in them.
Now, unfortunately, animal-based foods are not a great source of spermidine.
For example, in 1 gram of mushrooms, there are about 160 micrograms of spermidine.
In comparison, 1 gram of meat only gives you 20 micrograms of spermidine.
So, if you really want to get the benefits of spermidine, you might want to eat more plant and fungi-based foods.
Next, let’s talk about bioavailability.
Spermidine is apsorbed in the gut very easily, even though it doesn’t get metabolized completely.
Your body metabolizes about 40 to 80% of the dietary spermidine that you consume.
OK, but what about safety?
Good news is, spermidine is very safe to take, which makes sense when you think about it.
You’re supplementing with something that the body actually makes on its own.
There was a randomized placebo-controlled trial carried out for three months.
During that trial, 1.2 milligrams of spermidine were administered to one group while the other group was administered a placebo.
At the end of the trial, it was found that spermidine is a completely safe supplement to take.
On a side note, one thing that was also noticed during the placebo-controlled trial is that spermidine might help with hair regrowth.
Those in the group treated with spermidine experienced an increase in hair growth from the hair follicles compared to those placed on the placebo.
Now, even though you can get all the spermidine you need through your diet,
I know that some of you will want to supplement your dietary spermidine.
There’s a company out of Austria that offers pure, natural spermidine in supplemental form.
They extract it from non-GMO wheat germ and according to Dave Asprey,
it’s the first spermidine supplement that he’s found that meets his criteria for clean ingredients.
This company is called SpermidineLIFE, and I’ve included both a link to their product as well as a discount code in the description below.
OK, that wraps up another video, hope you enjoyed it.
In the meantime, have some shrooms and boost your spermidine levels.
And you might want to check out this playlist on balancing the AMPK and mTOR pathways.
I’m outta here, catch you guys next time.