If you missed the last episode, go back and listen to it, but the takeaway was that your MITOCHONDRIA ARE REALLY, REALLY, IMPORTANT for autoimmunity, or anything else. Like - the most important thing for your health. These little cellular batteries power your brain, your heart, your muscles, everything. When they become dysfunctional, it leads to symptoms like fatigue, weight gain/inability to lose weight, brain fog, malaise, and eventually disease processes like autoimmunity, dementia, and metabolic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.
HOW DO MITOCHONDRIA MALFUNCTION?
To understand how mitochondria MALfunction, you have to understand some basics about how they are SUPPOSED TO FUNCTION PROPERLY (and how to test that!) so that you can support your mitochondria appropriately with strategies I will discuss in the next episode.
In this podcast I describe 4 main aspects of mitochondrial function that you need to understand in order to understand your personal metabolism:
1. Glycolysis - this is a sugar-fermenting pathway that actually occurs outside the mitochondria, but dysfunctional cells can get "stuck" in glycolysis, which ferments sugar to produce energy less efficiently than "respiration". YOU DON'T WANT THAT!
Viruses induce a glycolytic shift, it helps them survive. Toxins induce a glycolytic shift. But most of all, a high sugar diet and a sedentary lifestyle will encourage your cells to get "stuck" in this glycolytic shift, which is a hallmark of many cancer and Alzheimer's cells.
2. Kreb's Cycle and Oxidative Phosphorylation - sounds fancy, don't get PTSD from high school bio, but this is the BIG MOTOR that we want our cells to use, and glycolysis is the TROLLING MOTOR (listen to episode 30 if that doesn't make sense!). We WANT the body to use the Kreb's Cycle and then the Electron Transport Chain to produce ATP (energy) because it produces the most energy with the least exhaust!
3. Electron Transport Chain - your food gets broken down and goes through the Kreb's Cycle and those electrons get put into something called the Electron Transport Chain (ETC), which is a "chain" of 5 proteins that pass electrons from one to the other, this drives the pumping of protons and like quantum cellular magic, out spits ATP, or ENERGY. YOU WANT THAT!!!
Poisons like cyanide and carbon monoxide shut this down immediately and you die. Popular supplements like CoQ10 help this. You want electrons passing through this chain at the highest rate possible!
4. Beta-Oxidation - this process shuttles fat into the mitochondria to be burned for fuel, and many people have broken or "less-than-optimal" beta-oxidation function (think: "I can't burn this last 20 lbs even though I'm exercising!")
If you have metabolic issues, it's really important to know what's wrong with YOUR mitochondria - you could have issues in #1, #2, #3, #4, or in ALL FOUR!!
Many basic lab tests actually give you an idea of your mitochondrial function (iron, thyroid, blood sugar, inflammation....almost all labs because mitochondria power all functions). These labs are obviously very important for any case or condition, but my favorite testing for mitochondrial function is Urinary Organic Acids testing that actually shows specific markers for Glycolysis, markers of Kreb's Cycle dysfunction, Beta-Oxidation dysfunction, and much more, and gives us more detailed answers on how the mitochondria are malfunctioning so that we can support them properly!