Enhancing Muscle Quality and Longevity | Dr. Anurag Singh

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:00)
Welcome to The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, where cutting-edge science meets innovation and practical application for everybody. In this episode, I sit down with MD. Ph.D., Anurag Singh. He did a Ph.D. and research and medical training in immunology. We talk all about the importance of healthy skeletal muscle and aging, and this amazing compound, urolithin A. I've gotten a ton of questions on it. We talk about how this one chemical compound may in fact help protect your muscle and your mitochondria. As always, this information is free. Please take a moment to subscribe, share it with a friend. Now let's jump into the show.
Dr. Anurag Singh, welcome to the podcast.

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (0:56)
Thanks for having me. Pleasure.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:58)
You're an MD. Ph.D. I would love for you to share a little bit about your background because it is so extraordinary.

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (1:06)
Sure. I trained as a young clinician early in India. About the age of 19, I was in med school. Then from there, after I finished my MD in Internal Medicine, I moved to the US to train as a physician scientist, trained in allergy immunology, started seeing patients. After a few years of practice, I felt there was something missing. Modern medicine is missing the preventive approach. I was seeing a lot of COPD patients, a lot of kids with that.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:36)
For allergy and immunology.

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (1:37)
Yeah, a lot of kids with asthma. Nobody was asking, why is this happening? Why is the rate of asthma and allergies going up? Or how can we stop it early on? And so I was very lucky in the research field. You need to find the right mentors. I was really lucky to find two amazing mentors. One of them is called Professor Rajatral. He looks like a Santa claus, but he actually is like Santa claus. So he trained me and he told me always, you can do part-time research on regizek.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:05)
And what was his specialty?

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (2:06)
So he was an immunologist and the other guy was an internal medicine doctor. So these two professors trained me and got me hooked into research. And from there, 20 years now, all into doing research and clinical trials.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:21)
What was your Ph.D. in?

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (2:23)
So Ph.D. was actually an immunology Ph.D. and the focus was to really understand why we're seeing such high incidences of asthma in kids. And certain kids resolve asthma. So it was really trying to figure out the immune regulation of asthma and finding this new cell at that time, the new B cell. B cells are known to make antibodies, but the ones I found during my Ph.D. was actually regulating the immune response.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:49)
Wow. Your parents must be very proud.

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (2:52)
Yeah. So I don't know how much you know about Indian culture, but if you're a doctor, you see patients. That's the myth. And so in many ways, you know, I've gone against the grain. Yeah.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:04)
You went to medical school at 19?

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (3:07)
I know.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:08)
That's very young.

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (3:09)
It's very young.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:10)
And then, because the traditional age for here in the US would be, I don't know, 23

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (3:18)
Yeah.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:19)
18, yeah, 19, so around 23 or so. Okay. 19, you then went to, was it what university? UConn?

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (3:29)
Yeah. So I trained in India. So in India, there's one of the top med school is called the, it's actually like the Walter Reed equivalent in India. So it was the Army Med school. Trained, I could have been an Army physician or surgeon.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:44)
Hard pass on that one.

**Dr. Anurag Singh** (3:46)
Yeah. So then I left that because again, I didn't see myself doing 30 years as an Army doctor. And so I trained, I had a scholarship from the government of India to move, to train to be a physician scientist in the US. And UConn was a great bed for me to do that, because they had the right mix of doctors who were researchers. So I love my time there.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (4:09)
Oh, I love that. And I want to share with the audience why I wanted you on. You research a compound called Urolithin A, which I have had many questions on. In addition, you have looked at and researched skeletal muscle and mitochondria. We'll talk all about frailty, sarcopenia and protein. But I would love for you to share a bit about how you got interested in this compound called Urolithin A and the origin story for how it even became of interest.