#294 REDUCE MORTALITY BY 1/3rd? - Spermidine Benefits for Anti-Aging and Autophagy

Siim Land (0:00)

Hey, welcome back to the channel, my name is Siim Land, and in this video, I'm gonna talk about the longevity benefits of spermidine.

And in this video, we'll just go through some of the research, what are the mechanisms, how it works, where can you get it from food, and yeah, other kind of things. Make sure you click like and subscribe as well for future videos about optimizing your health and performance. Do it! So the most eye-opening study that I came across is this 2018 study, higher spermidine intake is linked to lower mortality, or prospective population-based study. So in this study, they took about 800 participants between ages of 45 to 84, 49.9% of whom are male, and they did find that the spermidine intake in their diet was linked to lower all-cause mortality, they had less cardiovascular disease, and they had also lower blood pressure. And this wasn't the first study, there was actually some previous studies as well, such as the Salzburg Atherosclerosis Preventive Program in subjects at high individual risk, or the SAFIR study. And they also found that there was basically a kind of linear association between spermidine intake in their diet and overall reduced mortality. So let's look at the study, you know, what is spermidine? Spermidine is basically like this poloamine, and almost like a poluketion that has like this negative charge, and it basically interacts with different kinds of intermediaries in the metabolism, like DNA, RNA. So it acts almost like an intermediary in the metabolism, and it has many potential, let's say pathways to improving oral health.

Some of the potential beneficial effects of spermidine have been found to, at least this study claims that they are like reduction in blood pressure, increase in antioxidant defense, increase in nitric oxide and arginine bioavailability, reduction in inflammation, reduction in arterial stiffness, reduction in cell growth, reduction in necrosis, increased in autophagy, chromatin silencing, protection against vascular disease and cancer. So yeah, it's quite a broad spectrum of things that it does, but the most important one that apparently is considered to be the main mechanism by which spermidine has this longevity benefits is through the activation of autophagy. So spermidine is a powerful promoter of autophagy and in many different contexts. So spermidine promotes cardioprotective autophagy.

The autophagy enhances spermidine, reverses arterial aging.

Spermidine alleviates cardiac aging by improving mitochondrial biogenesis and function.

Spermidine inhibits vascular calcification in chronic kidney disease through a modulation of SIRT1 signal pathway, so it has pretty good cardiovascular benefits.

So in this study, they created these three basically cohorts of people, which were like low spermidine intake, normal or moderate spermidine intake, and high spermidine intake. And the results show that the high spermidine group had a significantly better basically health outcome and a lower mortality in general. As you can see, then the deaths in the high spermidine group were 67, whereas in the low spermidine group it was 171 So almost three times more deaths in the low spermidine group. And I mean, it was a pretty long study as well, like a 20 year follow up. And these associations are also supported by other animal research that spermidine just extends lifespan in like roundworms and fruit flies and basically mice and other animals as well. Besides the cardiovascular benefits, then the spermidine also helps with brain function and brain health. It has neuroprotective effects also through autophagy. So autophagy also has neuroprotective effects and spermidine boosts that the positive effect of spermidine in older adults suffering from dementia, so cognitive decline can benefit from that. Spermidine inhibits neurodegeneration and delays aging, basically with mitophagy in C elegans. And autophagy itself is also one of those processes that is linked to longevity and better health. So with deficient autophagy, these animals, they tend to die sooner, they have worse disease, whereas if they have autophagy activated, then they live longer. And funny enough, like the process of autophagy is kind of central to the longevity benefits and life extension benefits you see in calorie restriction as well.

By basically if you block the autophagy and you still feed those animals in calorie restriction, they're not gonna live longer. Whereas if they have autophagy activated, then they do live longer. So calorie restriction, the reason or part of the reasons why calorie restriction is beneficial for longevity is also because of the autophagy. Other ways to activate autophagy is like exercise and calorie restriction and inner fasting and saunas, but specific compounds like spermidine or coffee, different kinds of polyphenols, they also have those effects. Wow, winning. From a dietary perspective, then there are very few foods that actually boost autophagy and the foods that are high in spermidine, which tend to be these kinds of, you know, wheat germ, mushrooms, aged cheese, soy, even like natto.