Every living thing on earth has a finite amount of energy with which to accomplish its daily tasks . . . it’s daily limit of energy before fatigue occurs.
That’s because we all have energy-producing factories in our cells called mitochondria. These mitochondria are our bodies’ batteries that fuel us with energy by transforming the air we breathe and food we eat into ENERGY.
How you expend that FINITE energy is dependent upon the health of your body and the health of your mitochondria.
If your mitochondria have to spend all of their energy in “Repair mode” trying to repair the mitochondrial membranes from damage or to regenerate energy by seeking more food and compounds with which to manufacture ATP so they can go about normal business of powering your body with the energy you need to work, play, and function, then your energy to do the things you want to do will suffer.
And, of course, our energy is finite. It’s not a never ending supply. That would be a nice idea. Think of all the things we could accomplish if we didn’t have to sleep—if we had endless energy.
But humans do not have infinite energy. Nothing living does.
But the real trouble with living in the 21st century today is that our mitochondria are becoming damaged from lack of healthy air, healthy food, healthy water, healthy everything. Combine this with a diet devoid of compounds we need to fortify our mitochondrial membranes like phospholipids—which our “cooked” diet is completely devoid of today—and you have weak mitochondria, leaky mitochondrial membranes, and, consequently NO ENERGY.
Our mitochondrial membranes are suffering hit after hit from free radicals that damage these mitochondrial membranes like bumper cars that just bump, bump, bump against them until our mitochondria are bruised, torn, and leaking our life-giving ATP all over the body. Then, deprived of their nerve center, their energy hub, the mitochondria die.
Today, many of us are spending all our time in Repair Mode instead of Production Mode. We are spending all our precious energy on mitochondrial membrane repair.
While we’re complaining about low energy levels and chronic fatigue, our bodies are screaming back at us with “Hey, I’d like to give you energy to go for work, playing with your kids, or making that birthday cake for the twin but first, I have to repair my factory walls so the factory can keep producing.”
So today, I want to explain how crucial it is that we nourish our mitochondrial membranes and repair these membranes so your body doesn’t have to expend all your finite energy on REPAIR instead of POWERING you with energy.
So today, I want to talk to you about how healing these membranes can power your body with energy. Phospholipids are just one supplement that can help to seal your mitochondrial membranes, so that you can then concentrate on rebuilding the battery, the mitochondria, within.
We have trillions of mitochondria all over our bodies. The more energy the organ needs, the more mitochondria it has packed in its cells. The heart, for example, is jam packed with mitochondria because we have to have a beating heart to survive, right?
Your mitochondria are housed within a bubble—a membrane, that encloses them just as that hard plastic housing encases your car’s battery. That car’s battery is its source of electricity, it’s energy, and, like our cells, is filled with a power cell and liquids that help it to generate its life force—its energy that fuels the car and makes it go . . .
But what if we took a hatchet to that shell? Eventually, we’d do enough damage to penetrate the casing and cause all the vital liquid inside to leak out. What happens then?
The battery has no electrolyte and no charge . . . No energy.
Now, picture what toxic gasses might do to that casing. Or corrosive liquids. Bleach? Hydrogen peroxide? DDT?
Toxins like these would melt that battery casing, right?
Our energy powerhouses—the mitochondria—are the battery cells within our cells, and they, too, are housed within a protective casing called the mitochondrial membrane.
Like the battery subjected to toxins, our mitochondrial membranes can melt and become “leaky” in the presence of toxins and other damaging agents such as disease, bacteria, viruses, pollutants . . . vitamin deficiencies that weaken the mitochondria and their membranes.
Our body even tries to protect us from this kind of damage by shielding our mitochondria within two membranes. So we have the cellular membrane and, more importantly, the mitochondrial membrane. A membrane within a membrane. Evidently, the body strives to doubly protect our energy stores. They are that crucial to our survival on earth.
The body does this all the time.
Look at the way we gain fat around the belly when under a lot of stress. The body has to protect you where bones and hard tissues cannot and the body assumes we’re in danger when we experience stress . . .
The body always tries to protect your vital organs and organelles. The basic truth at the heart of all plant and animal life, folks, is that live things do everything in their power, even if the human being is not consciously aware of it, to stay alive.
The mitochondrial membrane is so crucial to energy that scientists underscore its connection with fatigue with this kind of finality: “fatigue begins and ends with the mitochondrial membrane.” All cell death, many diseases, and disorders like chronic fatigue are “in a large part due to disrupted, damaged, increasingly permeable mitochondrial membranes.”
Like leaky gut syndrome, see, leaky mitochondria directly impact human energy levels.
Just as nutrients leak out of our gut and contribute to energy loss from a lack of vitamins and minerals to nourish our cells, combined with toxins that permeate the gut and leak into the system, triggering inflammation, an exhaustive immune reaction, and all the deadly dominoes that fall after that one, leaky mitochondria are just as impacting on our energy levels and are possibly THE chief villain behind chronic fatigue syndrome.
Indeed, toxins leaching into the system could, just like toxins we breathe, damage these cellular membranes and drain us of all the energy housed within . . . so, although I’m getting ahead of myself, it’s important that we tend to our cellular membranes in general—and the gut lining is nothing but cells – with membranes.
Because the mitochondria are our energy conductors, the crucial battery within our cells helping us achieve the very cycle that powers our bodies with energy, that crucial cycling of ATP into ADP and back to ATP, nourishing our mitochondrial membranes and keeping them intact is one way we can protect and reharness our energy stores.
Let’s talk about how damage to mitochondrial membranes can impact our energy levels and what we can do to strengthen the mitochondrial membranes to regain our lost energy stores.
Why You Need to Seal Your Mitochondria to Prevent Energy Leakage
We need a virtual fortress of membranes. The kind of strong membranes we had as children would be most ideal. Can we get those back? Well, stick with me!
If we keep our batteries firmly within their casings, then yes, we can tap into a whole new level of energy we haven’t known for decades, before years of oxidative damage has bumped and bruised our mitochondria into lethargy.
As all kinds of research is proving today, repairing mitochondrial membranes can help cure fatigue and restore energy in persons of all ages, even the elderly.
Do you remember John Travolta in the boy in the plastic bubble? It’s a pretty old movie but still a part of popular culture.
In that movie, John’s character was a man who could not breathe the air normal humans can. His system was too ultimately fragile (or so they thought until the end) to be subjected to the normal slings and arrows of the environment.
He had to live like a hamster inside a huge, plastic Habitrail-like system full of fun things to do to keep him entertained. He could only touch people through those glove extensions like mothers use to touch their babies when they’re in an ICU chamber.
Our mitochondria are like that boy in the bubble.
They cannot thrive without their plastic bubble—the mitochondrial membrane. They will die without that protective barrier.
In fact, damage to that membrane induces death, a cellular death process called “apoptosis.” You can remember this term easily if you think “pop” and now they’re gone.
As Michael Ash notes, “significant oxidative damage to mitochondrial membranes represents the point-of-no-return of programmed cell death pathways that culminate in apoptosis or regulated cell death.
So the fatigue-mitochondria connection is immense for all kinds of reasons, as I will explain below.
First, this membrane itself is crucial to the way the body powers us with energy.
To explain, the mitochondrial membrane houses our Electron Transport System – and the membrane itself is crucial for helping achieve a process called “oxidative phosphorylation.”
To explain oxidative phosphorylation in laymen’s terms, these mitochondrial membranes are part of the complex signaling process in which we recycle ATP into ADP and back again into ATP.
Complex signaling along the Electron Transport System helps us manufacture ATP out of nutrients, and yields the first substance, ATP, that is transformed into ADP and then back again into ATP every ten seconds as we need and utilize energy.
The ATP-ADP cycle is the very signaling mechanism that gives us energy.
Second, since the mitochondrial membrane is where food, water and oxygen are converted into this crucial substance, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which supplies energy to all your cells, mitochondrial leak equals leached-out nutrients and a, consequent, inability to manufacture ATP to power your cells and give you your much needed energy.
Third, mitochondria themselves produce free radicals inside the cell as they manufacture ATP, much like a car’s engine releases harmful fumes as it runs. In fact, the very process of creating ATP within cells also creates free radicals as an inherent side effect – as by-products produced as a consequence of this constantly-creating-and-
This is one reason our own body manufactures antioxidants and needs antioxidants to counteract this production of free radicals. As we age or are subjected to free radicals in the environment, without enough antioxidants to counteract free radical production from within and that we endure from other sources, membranes can endure further damage. So we need what free radicals we can keep out of the blood and inside the cell to stay right there, inside that mitochondrial membrane.
What it boils down to is that the animals (and humans) that enjoy the longest lifespans leak free radicals (ROS) more slowly than their more swiftly leaking counterparts.
For example, let’s look at how important slow mitochondrial leakage of free radicals is for one species and how scientists are studying its implications for human health.
According to Gustavo Barja at Complutense University in Madrid, pigeons leak barely a tenth the ROS of rats, and, consequently, live nearly ten times longer:
“ROS leakage is so low in pigeons that they can afford to have much lower antioxidant levels than rats, and still live longer,” says Barja. “The question is, why are pigeon mitochondria so leak-proof?”
The answer could have profound implications. According to Alan Wright at Edinburgh , the cellular threshold for apoptosis is calibrated by the rate of ROS leakage: “Species that leak ROS slowly have a lower rate of apoptotic cell loss in degenerative conditions, including those that apparently have nothing to do with oxidative or nitrosative stress.”
So, yes, the health of mitochondrial membranes for containing these ROS species is important for health, energy, and a long life span in all kinds of ways.
Fourth, inside the delicate mitochondrial membrane are proteins, caspases (a family of protease enzymes playing essential roles in programmed cell death), and other enzymes that are just fine when they stay within the mitochondria—but become toxic outside that membrane, where they then course through the body, triggering the formation of potent inflammatory compounds called inflammasomes.
Scientists have found that these inflammatory compounds are directly connected to inflammatory diseases of all kinds and conditions like cancer, obesity and insulin resistance,, metabolic syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome.,
Fifth, our cells and their fragile membranes are subjected to toxins and other damaging compounds in the air, our food, the cleaning products we use—everything that passes through our skin and into our cells and passes into our lungs that we breathe from fingernail polish removers, to toxic cleansers, perfume, bleach, breathing leftover residue from very harsh industrial cleansers used in office buildings, government buildings, and hospitals, etcetera.
So, our cells suffer damage that can cause us to lose energy, because maintaining that cellular lipid mitochondrial membrane traps all our energy-making systems firmly within a protective case where no leakage can occur. Besides toxic damage, our mitochondria and their delicate membranes are damaged through disease and aging as well.
As Garth Nicholson notes,
As a result of aging and chronic diseases, oxidative damage to mitochondrial membranes impairs mitochondrial function. As an example, individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome present with evidence of oxidative damage to DNA and lipids, such as oxidized blood markers and oxidized membrane lipids, that is indicative of excess oxidative stress. These individuals also have sustained, elevated levels of peroxynitrite caused by excess nitric oxide, which can also result in lipid peroxidation and loss of mitochondrial function as well as changes in cytokine levels that exert a positive feedback on nitric oxide production.
In laymen’s terms: yes, membrane damage directly impacts our energy levels and the damage to these membranes is chiefly oxidative damage, which directly impacts our DNA and the energy-generators of our cells, the mitochondria.
What Nicolson is referring to when he points out that people with CFS have elevated levels of peroxynitrite and changes in cytokine levels and this positive “feedback” of nitric oxide production is this, explained quite understandably in this excerpt below I found in the book Explaining ‘Unexplained Illnesses: Disease Paradigm for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Fibromyalgia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Gulf War Syndrome, and Others.
This is important to understand – and as this researcher points out below, this kind of oxidative damage can even come from trauma and stress:
short term stressors such as viral or bacterial infection, physical or psychological trauma or exposure to various toxic chemicals . . . raise the Nitric Oxide (oxidant) levels in the body, exacerbating their symptoms. The elevated Nitric Oxide levels react with Superoxide in the body, a byproduct of a number of bodily processes, to form the very harmful rogue oxidative species Peroxynitrite.
The formation of Peroxynitrite causes a wide variety of oxidative damage to the body, particularly to mitochondrial enzymes, membranes and also hemoglobin, as well as destroying the protective antioxidant enzyme Superoxide Dismutase (SOD) (and other mechanisms for stimulating Superoxide production), thereby allowing Superoxide levels to build up, causing more of the Nitric Oxide to react with this Superoxide, thereby perpetuating or worsening the condition [CFS] by producing more Peroxynitrite.
In short, oxidative damage resulting from a number of sources toxins, stress, traumas (physical, emotional, mental, psychological), pesticides, aging, and disease can all lead to mitochondrial membrane damage that impairs the mitochondria within, leading to a condition of chronic fatigue, and which may be connected to other inflammatory diseases and disorders. The correlation between CFS and Fibromyalgia, for example, runs throughout the literature and has been noted by researchers over time.
What kind of toxins cause oxidative damage? All of them. Everything we breathe, touch, and eat that contains toxic compounds.
Let’s just look at what toxic food does to mitochondrial membranes.
This important study below found that most of the patients they examined who had chronic fatigue syndrome also exhibited elevated serum loads for pesticides consumed in conventional produce:
[the] study concluded that choosing organically grown dietary fruits and vegetables is important for CFS patients, since they have elevated serum levels of chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides compared to normal control subjects.70 The authors noted that certain chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides, such as 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis(P-
That’s just one source of mitochondrial membrane damage, conventional produce sprayed with toxins.
But our world is permeated with toxins like these coming at us from all directions, even within. We are literally engulfed with toxins.
Meat too, is full of toxins as you know, hormones, pesticides on the grains cattle eat, and antibiotics cattle HAVE TO BE INJECTED WITH or die are not good for mitochondrial membranes and cattle are typically treated with these, as you probably know, because of the dirty, disease-ridden environment they live in, one which I picture just dripping with bacteria, fungi, and viruses.
So imagine the impact of an entire constellation of toxic damage from toxins in the environment, home, and workplace to our cellular membranes + membrane damage from aging + damage from normal infectious bacteria, viruses, fungi and diseases + normal free radical production within that can do its own damage without enough antioxidants left over to neutralize them, and you can see how all these work together to weaken our membranes, drain our mitochondria stores within, and leave us feeling depleted. Yes?
So what can we do to repair our mitochondrial membranes and regain lost energy?
We need a fortress. An impermeable building to protect our army of mitochondria so they can go about their business of keeping us energetic and thriving.
What do we need to do that? Good raw materials. Top notch supplements that help build up cellular membranes.
We’ve got to protect our energy stores like the precious jewels that they are. Without these energizing jewels, how can we imagine, create, play, work, run, leap, move, invent, wonder, love . . . and are we doing any of this with the enthusiasm and energy that we could be?
I don’t think we are. And my whole mission is to change that.
How to Strengthen Mitochondrial Membranes and Light Up Your Mitochondrion with Energy
So, if damage to our membranes is resulting in the leaking out of all our vital “go go juice” – then restoring it seems the reasonable solution, right?
And it most certainly is.
One trick to knowing what the body needs is to look at what it already has in its stores that makes us thrive and what needs to be replaced to replenish our depleted stores.
This goes for vitamins and minerals of all kinds in the body as well as phospholipids, phytonutrients, fats, and more. The body holds onto our fat soluble vitamins like crazy, for example, storing them up like squirrels preparing for winter, famine, or siege – which gives you some clue as to their importance, yes?
Indeed, deprived of vitamin A, you will go blind and children in underdeveloped countries who do go blind from lack of vitamin A die within one year of that loss. This is another reason fat free diets are so dangerous and many people who dieted in the 80s and still eat low fat are suffering with macular degeneration, I believe . . .
Where am I going with this?
Well, if we look at what our membranes are made of, we’ll be able to supply our body with the first aid kit full of bricks and mortar it needs to repair and create new mitochondrial membranes.
So what are our mitochondrial membranes made of?
Phospholipids—phospholipids of several kinds.
Our mitochondrial membranes contain a blend of phospholipids that actually make up all of our cell membranes throughout the body, chiefly:
• Phosphatidylcholine (PC)
• Phosphatidylethanolamine (PE)
• Phosphatidylserine (PE)
• Phosphatidic acid (PA)
• Phosphatidylglycerol (PG)
• The precursor for cardiolipin (CL) an important compound also located within the mitochondria itself
Today, we can replace these phospholipids using oral supplements and begin a process called Lipid Replacement Therapy (LRT). This sounds like something that must be performed by a doctor or surgeon, but it is not. Good, quality phospholipid supplements are available over the counter and anyone can buy them. Some like the supplement I’m going to be mentioning a lot today, NTFactor, contain all the most crucial phospholipids mentioned above that you need to build those mitochondrial membranes.
Well, the explanation is that once we ate a chiefly raw diet—both raw meat and raw vegetables and fish.
Cooking was an invention. But there were early men who had to discover it. The first men might have eaten raw foods, chiefly.
However, cooking was not a necessarily good invention for our membranes because phospholipids are made of the stuff of raw foods.
Raw egg yolks have it. Many people won’t risk eating them though.
Also beef brains. Raw brains are best as cooking destroys many of its phospholipids. So you can see why we’re not getting enough of these in the diet, right? You can see why would we need to supplement with these.
Not many of us are eating brains today, especially not raw brains.
This lack of dietary phospholipids is what I believe is at the heart of CFS, a true phospholipid deficiency in the modern diet of virtually all of us.
If you’re thinking maybe we need a kind of initiation rite diet – kind of like Kevin Costner had to go through in Dances with Wolves and dive into some raw buffalo liver, well, that might just be what the doctor ordered as far as building mitochondrial membranes.
But not many of you are going to do that, so let’s get real and talk phospholipid supplements and foods you might actually eat—like shellfish!
Study after study confirms that supplementing with phospholipids improves energy in CFS patients by almost 50% in mere weeks. In fact, in this 8-week study of a group of 20 individuals with a mean age of 68.9, after 4 and 8 weeks of supplementation with NTFactor:
Mitochondrial function at four and eight weeks of NTF use in moderately fatigued subjects increased by 15% and 26.8%, respectively, and restored mitochondrial function to levels similar to those found in young adults.
It is important to note, here, that when the study participants stopped taking NTfactor, fatigue soon returned. This indicates that either long term or continuous supplementation may be necessary either to maintain or further improve CFS.
Phospholipid therapy has also proven highly effective when combined with some other supplements, such as COQ10. The individuals in this study had endured CFS for over 17 years, and had tried some 35 or more different supplements to alleviate their fatigue on average with 0 benefits for improving their fatigue levels.
Yet, when given phospholipids supplements in the form of NTFactor combined with COQ10 and NADH, their fatigue levels improved on average by 30.7% at the 60-day mark. Patients on the supplement stated they felt better and more energetic each day they took these supplements noting that “reductions in fatigue were gradual, consistent, and occurred with a high degree of confidence.”
As the researchers note, there were improvements in all types of fatigue across the board, including the ability to complete tasks, improvements in the intensity of fatigue, more desire for socializing and sexual activity , as well as reporting a 28% increase in cognitive activity, especially in memory and clarity of thinking.
In a 2006 study, Nicholson and Ellithorpe found that supplementing with a combination antioxidant supplement called Propax containing NTFactor improved fatigue levels even more, by a whopping 40.5%. As this Propax supplement contains a huge list of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fatty acids, I’m not going to list them all here. However, it looks like a great supplement with many rewarding and energy-yielding compounds that have been researched in connection with relieving fatigue and worked, such as CoQ10.
Before I discuss COQ10, mentioned in the study above, as well as other supplements I’ve discovered through intense research that also repair mitochondrial membranes, let me talk a little bit about how to get more natural phospholipids in the diet, without having to eat raw beef brains, because I recommend eating a diet rich in phospholipids daily.
The best sources are raw egg yolks, caviar, krill oil, and shellfish (indeed, raw oysters are a rich and delicious source of undamaged phospholipids that many people love to eat).
Food for thought:
You will hear from some researchers about the wonders of soy lecithin for mitochondrial membranes.
The thing is that although lecithin is rich in phospholipids, when they are digested, lecithin does not retain its phospholipid structure, so although you may encounter mentions of soy as a supplement, I don’t recommend it.
Although the body can potentially re-assemble the constituents back into phospholipids, typically it is only young, healthy individuals who are efficient at doing so.
So, again, I recommend foods like
• egg yolks
• shellfish
• oysters
• or salmon eggs (just like caviar but cheaper than Beluga! in a raw state is ideal to get undamaged phospholipids)
• krill oil supplements (a high quality one)
Cooking may disrupt the structure and integrity of the phospholipids. This study explains how cooking meat destroys its phospholipid content. So, yes, it’s easier just to get some NTFactor!
Other Supplements That Repair Mitochondrial Membranes
CoQ10 resides on the mitochondrial membrane and is one of the most crucial antioxidants for mitochondrial health. COQ10 facilitates the electron transport chain, helping transfer electrons into ATP for energy.
It also aids in the transformation of food into energy within the mitochondria and yields a highly protective effect on membranes, protecting them from oxidative damage of all kinds. In fact, the more available CoQ10 in the mitochondria, the less free radical damage to the mitochondria, period.
Acetyl l-carnitine is already contained in your mitochondrial membranes. ALCAR is broken down in the blood by plasma esterases which are transformed into carnitine which is then used by the body to transport fatty acids into the mitochondria for breakdown.
ALCAR is an antioxidant and it plays a vital role in oxidation of fatty acid metabolic pathways. It is a constituent of the inner mitochondrial membrane and has many fundamental functions, including the prevention of mitochondrial enzyme oxidation.
It is also used to produce the antioxidant glutathione (GSH), which aids in reducing oxidative stress, and in protecting cells against lipid peroxidation. ALCAR is playing a role in treating mitochondrial disorders of all kinds today and is crucial for both repairing and protecting mitochondrial membranes.
For example, l-carnitine (for short) has proven in studies to significantly repair mitochondrial membranes in animals. It also exerts a protective effect on mitochondrial membranes, even in the presence of acute alcohol ingestion, which would normally do major oxidative damage to the mitochondrial membranes and impact the blood brain barrier as well. Studies indicate l-carnitine may, then, protect mitochondrial membranes from other types of toxic oxidative damage.
Astaxanthin is absolutely essential for mitochondrial membrane repair and exerts miraculously reparative effects both within the mitochondria and in its membranes as well.
The reason astaxanthin is so vital for mitochondrial membrane repair is because it has a molecular structure that allows it to actually insert itself into the mitochondrial membrane and then span the width of the membrane, acting as a protective sealant, wherever rupture might occur.
It’s much like that polyurethane spray-on foam sealant that expands to fill whatever holes might be in your walls and ceilings. Although I do not recommend using that stuff. Talk about toxic.
Back to astaxathin.
As researchers remind us much of “mitochondrial decline [is] due to cumulative ROS damage” but astaxathin exerts myriad effects on the mitochondria that exert protective effects against oxidation without, in the mitochondrial membrane, and within, by limiting the mitochondria’s innate production of free radicals boosting mitochondrial activity within.
One way astaxanthin does this is by increasing oxygen consumption without increasing generation of ROS. Even when subjected to powerful oxidants like hydrogen peroxide, astaxanthin proved to protect mitochondrial membranes and the inner mitochondria against the H2 O2 oxidant effect.
The concentrations of astaxanthin required for these in vitro effects (100-800 nM/L) are achievable in humans by dietary supplementation.”
Shilajit is an ancient Indian herbal compound used by native Indians for centuries, much like green tea and ginseng are in Asian countries of all kinds. Shiajit has proven in studies both to boost to reverse the symptoms of chronic fatigue in animals. It contains some powerful mitochondria-boosting compounds.
All kinds of research is emerging on the benefits of this ancient phyto-pitch type element found in the Himilayas that looks much like chunky bark stuff, to boost CoQ10’s mitochondria and energy-boosting mechanisms in the body.
In one study, for example, when lab mice forced to endure highly strenuous physical exercise, when given a combination of shiajit and CoQ0, their ATP energy production in muscle cells increased by 27% while ATP in the brain was boosted by 40%.
Another element of shilajit—fulvic acid—has been shown to further aid CoQ10 in producing energy in the mitochondria and also to help protect mitochondrial membranes from oxidative damage.
All fats we eat play a part in constructing every cell and membrane in our body.
Remember that as you eat fats and be selective with the fats you eat because let me make an important point here – bad fats and oxidized fats, become a part of your cellular membranes.
Those industrial seed oils, for example, are directly incorporated into your mitochondrial membranes, causing immediate oxidative damage to cellular membranes of all kinds, including the mitochondrial membrane.
You don’t want to undo all your hard fought for work to get strong cell membranes with fast food or refined carbs made –both of which are packed with these industrial seed oils, which are utterly polluted with chemical agents and toxins. In short, eat clean and organic and stick to oils like organic coconut oil, grass fed butters like Kerrygold, and organic, cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil.
Also, you can nourish your cellular membranes with healthy Omega 3s in high quality krill and algae oils. Both are rich in DHA and EPA which enhances mitochondrial energy, strengthens mitochondrial membranes, and helps protect these membranes from oxidative damage., ,
Why not fish oil? Well, because fish oil has been proven, as you might already know, to contain toxic, oxidized oils, like the toxic fats we were discussing.
I’m noting one study here but there are many, many studies which assert that the vast majority of commonly sold fish oil supplements, including major brands sold at the most popular drugstores, contain largely oxidized, rancid oils.
Studies have shown that a combination of R-ALA and L-Carnitine actually work to boost the effectiveness of one another, protecting mitochondrial membranes from damage and enhancing mitochondrial function as well.
We know all this thanks to some amazing studies by a biochemist named Bruce Ames, who found that when he gave his oldest lab rats, ones who couldn’t even run on a treadmill, a combination of carnitine and ALA, what happened? They could run better, swim better, and their mitochondria showed significant improvements in function.
In short, both are powerful mitochondria healers and supplements and work best when taken in conjunction.
Conclusion
The study of our energy-producing, energy-yielding, source of our energy—our mitochondria — and how to nurture them, protect them, and give them the crucial compounds and nutrients they need to give us what we want—maximal energy to “be all that we can be” — is a field of study that is very ripe right now.
In fact, studies into our mitochondria are virtually exploding with discoveries and epiphanies about how to maximize health and save humanity from deadly disease, cancers, and perhaps even aging.
It’s a fascinating field and I predict one day we will go and see a mitochondriologist much like we go see endocrinologists. But wait. Perhaps this one visit would hold so many vital secrets for health, we might only need the mitochondria specialist. Perhaps . . .
What is so fascinating is that scientists are learning things that are changing the way we think of ourselves and where we came from – our very evolution from first things.
If you’ve heard the “primordial ooze” theory, that mankind evolved from microorganisms in a pool of water at some point in the earth’s long history, studies of our mitochondria suggest that long before we were walking on two feet like Lucy, we might have been a simple bacterium that was eaten by another microorganism, as the very structure of the membranes of the mitochondria suggest, by the way.
I want to leave you today with the speculations of a researcher who just published an article in March of 2017 on a discovery about our humble origins, from the consumption of a bacterium by a archaeon (a kingdom of single celled organisms) that indicate primordial ooze theorists might have been right all along:
An engulfment of a small bacterium by a larger archaeon more than a billion years ago resulted not in death, but in one of the most successful partnerships on earth. As you sit there, each of your cells (apart from your red blood cells) contains hundreds or thousands of the descendants of that bacterium, still earning their keep as part of that endosymbiotic deal struck in some ancient pool. However, a billion years of intimacy has blurred the distinction between these partners and shaped them irrevocably.
Be well, and protect your mitochondria. They are the keys to cellular health and, thus, optimum health. To regain your energy and to have maximum energy, you must begin rebuilding the very building blocks of your body first – the cells. All else follows from that.
Heal the mitochondria first—do this for 6 weeks.
Now, let’s feed the mitochondria and really get your energy back.