By Elizabeth Yurth, MD, ABPMR, ABAARM, FAARM, FAARFM
What is Spermidine?
Spermidine is a polyamine. Polyamines are essential to cell growth and critical to cellular homeostasis. Discovered in 1678 alongside the invention of the microscope, this natural chemical, present in all living organisms, has been found to impact many vital biological processes and has been extensively researched over the last half-century. What makes spermidine worth paying attention to is its link to aging and its ability to naturally induce a process known as autophagy.
Why Does Spermidine Decline with Age?
Spermidine decline is directly related to age. While the level of polyamines, including spermidine, varies between organisms, a common characteristic across species is the notable drop in spermidine levels with age. Various theories have arisen to explain why spermidine declines with age. Research has demonstrated that age-induced factors such as reduced uptake, diminished transport processes, an altered microbiome, reduced intracellular biosynthesis, and increased degradation all lead to a lower level of available spermidine in our bodies.
A decline in spermidine can also be seen through changes in physical characteristics, including thinning hair, reduced nail strength, and skin aging. Studies show spermidine encourages the upregulation of epithelial stem cell-associated keratins, meaning that spermidine is essential to epithelial stem cell utilization, including in the renewal of hair follicles and skin cells.
Spermidine, Autophagy, and Skin Health
The reason spermidine impacts signs of aging, such as the growth of hair, skin, and nails outwards, is its role in cellular regeneration and clean-up. Spermidine directly impacts skin health via upregulation of epithelial stem cells. This is a cellular turnover process called autophagy (aa·taa·fuh·jee).
Our bodies perform cellular housekeeping through autophagy. Autophagy means “self-eating.” It is the way our cells clean out and recycle unwanted cellular debris. As we age, autophagy is dysregulated, increasing damaged cells that can cause aging and disease. Improving autophagy is critical to healthy aging.
By removing these toxic and damaged cells, cellular regeneration can occur. Without autophagy, these “bad” cells remain and proliferate, ultimately leading to disease and decline in many biological processes. As we age, there is a decline in autophagy, which likely explains why age tends to bring various signs of degradation, including outward manifestations of aging like brittle hair or wrinkled skin.
The signs of aging, including disease, physical decline, and skin degradation, are all related to the collection of toxic debris in our cells. Autophagy is directly responsible for removing toxins and cells exhibiting signs of toxicity, resulting in slowing the aging process.
Research shows that increasing the uptake of spermidine leads to increased autophagy and, by extension, slows the aging process, including the physical, outward signs of aging.
How to Increase Spermidine in the Body
Spermidine is generated in our bodies from putrescine and the oxidative degradation of spermine. It has also been discovered that the gut microbiome generates relevant amounts of spermidine. Approximately one-third of bioavailable spermidine comes from each of our tissue, our gut, and our diet.
There are several approaches to increasing spermidine in the body – mainly through supporting the natural production of spermidine in our cells, our gut, and our diet.
The health of the gut impacts the bioavailability of spermidine. A healthy intestinal microbiome is important to many elements of health, including the promotion of spermidine availability and autophagy. Recent research indicates that we might be able to improve the bioavailability of spermidine by improving our gut health.
Preclinical studies have shown that the introduction of a certain probiotic, LKM512, results in suppressing inflammation that damages gut health. Additionally, the introduction of arginine in combination with LKM512 resulted in an increase in available spermidine.
Eating a spermidine-rich diet can help increase spermidine levels in our bodies, though getting substantial amounts of spermidine from our diets can be difficult given the levels of spermidine in readily available foods. Spermidine is found in many foods, but popular sources are shitake mushroom, wheat germ, and amaranth grain. Other sources of spermidine include items that have undergone a fermentation process.
Spermidine can be upregulated via ingesting foods or products rich in the compound or by an intake of foods that improve the gut microbiota. However, to achieve clinical levels of spermidine consumption in the diet (levels at which research was conducted), it may be necessary to take supplemental spermidine. Spermidine can be supplemented with natural, plant-based products like SpermidineLIFE. This supplementation helps address spermidine deficiency by offering an easy way to get high doses of spermidine in your diet.
As we age, the unfortunate reality is that spermidine levels decline, leading to a loss of autophagy and ultimately manifesting in outward physical signs like skin aging – wrinkles, dullness, unevenness, dryness, spots, and roughness.
The good news is that equipped with this knowledge; we can take our health into our own hands and fight off this aging process. Increasing spermidine levels through diet, focused gut health, and supplemental spermidine products could be vital to overall skin health and aging beautifully. Elizabeth Yurth, MD, is Co-Founder and Medical Director of Boulder Longevity Institute, where she has been providing Tomorrow’s Medicine Today to her clients since 2006. Along with her 25-plus years as a practicing orthopedist specializing in sports and spine medicine, Dr. Yurth has made it her mission to learn and share the latest scientific research on how to truly heal the body at the cellular level. She is Fellowship trained in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine and has completed +500 hours of CME training focused on Longevity, Nutrition, Epigenetics, Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy, Regenerative Peptide Treatments, and Regenerative Orthopedic Procedures.
Longevity Labs brings scientific and tested solutions inspired by nature to prolong healthy lifespan. Leading the world in the development of natural spermidine products to support cellular rejuvenation and renewal, Longevity Labs introduced spermidineLIFE® to Europe in 2019 and the U.S. in 2020. As the world’s scientists, researchers, universities, and clinicians expand clinical testing into spermidine, spermidineLIFE® by Longevity Labs has become the worldwide research standard used to expand upon the list of transformational health benefits found in all-natural wheat germ-derived spermidine. Longevity Labs is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and Denver, Colorado, with production facilities in Graz, Austria. For more information, visit https://spermidinelife.us/pages/about
