How Your Mitochondria Influence Your
Health
January 24, 2016
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HERE to watch the full interview!
Story at-a-glance
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Mitochondria are tiny inclusions in your cell,
originally thought to be derived from bacteria. Most
cells have several thousand of them comprising 15 to
50 percent of the cell volume. They’re the source of
over 90 percent of your body’s energy
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Your mitochondria have enormous potential to
influence your health, specifically cancer, and
optimizing mitochondrial metabolism may be at the
core of effective cancer treatment
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Important nutrients and co-factors for mitochondrial
function include all B vitamins, magnesium, omega-3
fat, CoQ10, acetyl L-carnitine, D-ribose, and
alpha-lipoic acid. Exercise is also important for
mitochondrial health and function
By Dr. Mercola
Mitochondria: you might not know what they are, but they are
vital to your health. Rhonda Patrick, PhD is a
biomedical scientist who has studied the interaction between
mitochondrial metabolism, aberrant metabolism, and
cancer.
She's also done research on aging at the Salk Institute for
Biological Sciences in La Jolla, California.
“I’ve had a variety of experiences doing research on
aging, cancer, and metabolism,” she explains. “Now,
currently, I’m in Oakland, California, where I’m doing my
post-doctoral research, working with Dr. Bruce Ames...
The primary focus of the research is the role of
nutrition in preventing age-related diseases like cancer,
neurodegenerative diseases, and different
inflammatory-related diseases like obesity and type 2
diabetes.
I've been doing a lot of research currently on
nutrition, specifically what roles micronutrients play in
biological processes; how inadequacies and certain
micronutrients can lead to insidious types of damage that
can accumulate over decades, [and how they] lead to things
like cancer and Alzheimer's disease."
Part of her work involves the identification of early
biomarkers of disease. For example, DNA damage is an early
biomarker for cancer. She then tries to determine which
micronutrients might help repair that DNA damage.
She's also investigated mitochondrial function and
metabolism, which is one of my own most recent passions. Dr. Lee
Know's book, "Life - The Epic Story of Our Mitochondria", is a
really good primer if you want to learn more about this topic
after listening to this interview.
Your mitochondria have enormous potential to influence your
health, specifically cancer, and I'm starting to believe that
optimizing mitochondrial metabolism may in fact be at the core
of effective cancer treatment.
The Importance of Optimizing Mitochondrial Metabolism
Mitochondria are tiny organelles, originally thought to be
derived from bacteria. Red blood cells and skin cells have very
little to none, while germ cells have 100,000, but most cells
have one to 2,000 of them. They're the primary source of energy
for your body.
In order for your organs to function properly, they require
energy, and that energy is produced by the mitochondria.
Since mitochondrial function is at the very heart of
everything that occurs in your body, optimizing mitochondrial
function - and preventing mitochondrial dysfunction by making
sure you get all the right nutrients and precursors your
mitochondria need - is extremely important for health and
disease prevention.
For example, one of the universal characteristics of cancer
cells is they have serious mitochondrial dysfunction with
radically decreased numbers of functional mitochondria.
"The mitochondria can still function in cancer cells.
But one of the things that occur [in cancer cells] is that
they immediately become dependent on glucose and they're not
using their mitochondria even though they have mitochondria
there. They make this metabolic switch," Patrick says.
Dr. Otto Warburg was a physician with a Ph.D. in chemistry
and was close friends with Albert Einstein. Most experts
recognize Warburg as the greatest biochemist of the 20th
century.
He received a Nobel Prize in 1931 for his discovery that
cancer cells use glucose as a source of energy production. This
is called the "Warburg Effect" and, sadly, to this day it is
essentially ignored by nearly every expert.
I am beyond convinced that using a ketogenic diet, which
radically improves mitochondrial health, could help most
cancers, especially if used in conjunction with glucose
fermentation poisons like 3-bromopyruvate.
How Mitochondria Produce Energy
To produce energy, your mitochondria require oxygen from the
air you breathe and fat and glucose from the food you eat.
These two processes — breathing and eating — are coupled
together in a process called oxidative phosphorylation. That's
what the mitochondria use to generate energy in the form of ATP.
Your mitochondria have a series of electron transport chains
in which they pass electrons from the reduced form of the food
you eat to combine it with oxygen from the air you breathe and
ultimately to form water.
This process drives protons across the mitochondrial
membrane, which recharges ATP (adenosine triphosphate) from ADP
(adenosine diphosphate). ATP is the carrier of energy throughout
your body.
However, that process also produces byproducts such as
reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are damaging to
your cells, and your mitochondrial DNA, which are then
transferred to your nuclear DNA.
So there's a trade-off. In producing energy, your body also
ages from the damaging aspects from the ROS that are
generated. How quickly your body ages largely depends on how
well your mitochondria work, and how much damage can be
minimized by diet optimization.
Mitochondria's Role in Cancer
When cancer cells are present, the reactive oxygen species
produced as a byproduct of ATP production normally send a signal
that sets in motion a process of cellular suicide, also known as
apoptosis.
Since you generate cancer cells every day, this is a good
thing. By killing off damaged cells, your body can eliminate and
replace them with healthy cells.
Cancer cells, however, are resistant to this suicide
protocol, and have a built-in defense against it as articulately
explained by Dr. Warburg and subsequently by
Thomas Seyfried, who has done extensive research on cancer
as a metabolic disease
As explained by Patrick:
"One of the mechanisms by which chemotherapeutic
drugs work is they create reactive oxygen species. They
create damage, and that's enough to push that cancer cell to
die.
I think the reason for that is because, a cancer cell
— which is not using its mitochondria, meaning it's not
producing those reactive oxygen species any longer — all of
a sudden you force it to use its mitochondria and you get a
burst of reactive oxygen species because that's what
mitochondria do, and boom, death, because that cancer cell
is already primed for that death. It's ready to die."
The Benefits of Avoiding Late-Night Eating
I've been a fan of
intermittent fasting for quite some time for a variety of
reasons, certainly longevity and health issues, but also because
it appears to provide powerful cancer prevention and treatment
benefit. And the mechanism for that is related to the effect
fasting has on your mitochondria.
As mentioned, a major side effect of the transfer of
electrons that the mitochondria are involved in is that some
leak from the electron transport chain to react with oxygen to
form the free radical superoxide.
Superoxide anion, the product of a one electron reduction of
oxygen, is the precursor of most reactive oxygen species and a
mediator in oxidative chain reactions. These oxygen free
radicals attack the lipids in your cell membranes, protein
receptors, enzymes, and DNA that can prematurely kill your
mitochondria.
Some free radicals are actually good and your body
requires them to regulate cellular function, but problems
develop when you have excessive free radical
production. Sadly that is the case for the majority of the
population and why most diseases, especially cancers, are
acquired. There are two possible solutions to this problem:
- Increase your antioxidants
- Reduce mitochondrial free radical production
I believe one of the best strategies for reducing
mitochondrial free radical production is to limit the amount of
fuel you feed your body. This is a noncontroversial position as
calorie restriction has consistently shown many therapeutic
benefits. This is one of the reasons why intermittent fasting
works, as it limits the window that you are eating and
automatically reduces your calories.
It is particularly effective if you avoid eating several
hours before going to sleep as that is your most metabolically
lowered state. A review paper1
that provides much of the experimental work for the above
explanation was published in 2011, titled "Mitochondrial
DNA Damage and Animal Longevity: Insights from Comparative
Studies."
It may be too complex for many laypeople, but the take-home
message is that since your body uses the least amount of
calories when sleeping, you'll want to avoid eating close to
bedtime because adding excess fuel at this time will generate
excessive free radicals that will damage your tissues,
accelerate aging, and contribute to chronic disease.
Other Ways Fasting Promotes Healthy Mitochondrial Function
Patrick also notes that part of the mechanism by which
fasting works is that your body has to rely on lipids and stored
fats for energy, which means your cells are forced to use their
mitochondria. Your mitochondria are the only mechanisms by which
your body can make energy from fat. So, fasting helps activate
your mitochondria.
She also believes this plays a huge part in the mechanism by
which intermittent fasting and a ketogenic diet may kill cancer
cells, and why certain drugs that activate mitochondria can kill
cancer cells. Again, it’s because it creates a burst of reactive
oxygen species, the damage from which tips the scale and causes
the cancer cells to die.
“Of course, there are a lot of very other interesting
mechanisms that occur when you’re fasting,” she says.
“Your body also clears away damaged cells through a process
called autophagy, which basically means when a cell that’s
damaged, it can die. But if it doesn’t die, sometimes it
becomes what’s called senescent and this happens a lot with
aging. What that means is that the cell is not dead but it’s
not really alive either. It’s not doing its function.
It's just kind of sitting around in your body
secreting pro-inflammatory molecules, things that are
damaging other nearby cells thereby accelerating the aging
process because inflammation drives aging in so many
different ways. Autophagy clears away those cells that are
just sitting there creating damage and not doing much else,
which is nice because that's also a very important
biological mechanism for staying healthy."
Feeding Your Mitochondria
In terms of nutrition, Patrick emphasizes the importance of
the following nutrients; important co-factors needed for your
mitochondrial enzymes to function properly:
-
CoQ10 or ubiquinol (the reduced form)
- L-Carnitine, which shuttles fatty acids to the
mitochondria
- D-ribose, which is raw material for ATP molecule
- Magnesium
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Omega-3 fatty acids
- All B vitamins, including riboflavin, thiamine, and B6
- Alpha-lipoic acid (ALA)
As noted by Patrick:
“I prefer to get as many micronutrients as I can from
whole foods for a variety of reasons. One, they are
complexed with fiber help with absorption. The nutrients are
also in the right ratios. You’re not getting too much. The
balance is right. And there are other components that are
probably yet to be identified in there.
You have to be very vigilant in making sure you’re
eating a very broad spectrum [of foods] and getting the
right micronutrients. I think that taking a B complex
supplement is good for that reason.
It’s the reason I take one, and also for the reason
that as we age, we also do not get B vitamins into ourselves
as readily, largely due to our cell membranes getting
stiffer. This changes the way B vitamins are transported
into the cell. B vitamins are water soluble so they’re not
stored in fat. There’s not really an upper toxicity
associated with them. If anything, you’re going to pee a
little bit more out. But I really think they’re beneficial.”
Exercise Helps Keep Your Mitochondria Young
Exercise also promotes mitochondrial health, as it forces
your mitochondria to work harder. As mentioned earlier, one of
the side effects of mitochondria working harder is that they're
making reactive oxygen species, which act as signaling
molecules. One of the functions they signal is to make more
mitochondria. So, when you exercise, your body will respond by
creating more mitochondria to keep up with the heightened energy
requirement.
Aging is inevitable. But your biological age can be quite
different from your chronological age, and your mitochondria
have a lot to do with your biological aging. Patrick cites a
recent study showing how people can age biologically at very
different rates. The researchers measured over a dozen different
biomarkers, such as telomere length, DNA damage, cholesterol
LDL, glucose metabolism, and insulin sensitivity, at three
points in people's lives: ages 22, 32 and 38.
"What was found was that, if you look at someone who
was 38, they biologically could look 10 years younger based
on their biological markers, or 10 years older. Even though
they were the same age, they aged biologically at very
different rates.
In fact, if you took a photograph of these
individuals and showed it to another bystander and ask them
to guess their chronological age, what was interesting, and
this is part of the publication, is that people would guess
their biological age rather than their chronological age."
So regardless of your actual age, how old you look
corresponds with your biological biomarkers, which are largely
driven by the health of your mitochondria. So the point is that
while aging is inevitable, you have enormous control over the
way you age, which is really empowering. And one of the key
factors is keeping your mitochondria in good working order.
As noted by Patrick, "youthfulness" is not so much about your
chronological age, but rather how old you feel, and how well
your body works:
"I want to learn how to optimize my own cognitive
performance and my athletic performance. I want to also
increase the youthful part of my life. I want to be 90. I
want to be out there, surfing in San Diego just like I was
when I was 20. I would like to not degenerate as rapidly as
some people do. I like to stave off that degeneration and
extend the youthful part of my life as long as I possibly
can so I can enjoy life."
More Information
To learn more about Patrick’s work, please visit her website,
FoundMyFitness.com. She also has a
podcast where she interviews health professionals and
scientists on a variety of topics related to health. On her
website, you can find videos in which she summarizes key
information in clear and easy to understand layman’s terms. You
can also sign up for her newsletter, in which she publishes
longer, heavily referenced articles.
Click here for the free report, “Nutrigenomics, Epigenetics,
and Stress Tolerance: A New Heuristic for Lifestyle Strategy,”
which covers some of the topics covered in this interview today,
including: the role of DNA damage in aging cells and cancer
cells, how blood cells from people show they age at different
rates, how intermittent fasting increases autophagy (which
clears away damaged cells) and increases genes that produce more
healthy mitochondria, and more! You may also want to review her
report, “How
to Personalize Your Nutrition Based On Your Genes.”
© Copyright 1997-2016 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
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