Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Learn to see your body through a different lens.
There comes a point where you begin to sense that what you are experiencing cannot be fully explained by symptoms alone. Patterns repeat, progress feels incomplete, and something deeper is asking to be understood. I’m Dr. Rue, a naturopathic physician focused on chronic illness and integrative oncology, where the work is not about chasing conditions, but about observing the terrain in which they arise.
In this space, we explore how the body adapts, how systems communicate, and how environment, metabolism, and lived experience shape what you feel day to day. The body is not random, and it is not working against you. It responds in ways that reflect its internal and external worlds. As you begin to understand those responses, your relationship with your health begins to change.
These are quiet, intentional conversations designed to bring clarity without removing complexity. If you have ever felt that your experience does not fit into a simple explanation, you are not alone. This is a place to listen more closely, to reconnect, and to begin seeing what may have been there all along.
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Why Your Body Builds More Mitochondria | Ep. 053
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Why would the body invest precious resources into building more mitochondria? The answer is surprisingly simple: because it anticipates a greater demand for energy. The body is constantly paying attention to the world around it, adapting to the signals it receives. When those signals suggest that more capacity will be needed in the future, the body responds by expanding its energy-producing network.
This is one of the remarkable signs of a healthy, adaptive system. More mitochondria means greater resilience, improved endurance, and a larger reserve to draw from when life demands more. It is the body's way of preparing for tomorrow rather than merely surviving today. In many ways, the creation of new mitochondria reflects the body's confidence that it can become stronger than before.
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram | X | New Legacy Natural Medicine
Why would the body build more mitochondria because you exercised for thirty minutes? Think about that for a moment. The workout is over. The challenge has passed. Your heart rate returns to normal. Your breathing settles down. Everything appears to be back to baseline. So why doesn't the body simply move on? Why invest energy building your mitochondria? Why upgrade the system at all? The answer reveals something fascinating about how the body works. Your body is not designed to only react to the present. It's constantly preparing for the future. And exercise is one of the strongest signals it can receive about what the future might look like. When exercise begins, something interesting happens. The demand for energy rises almost immediately. ATP starts getting used faster. Oxygen consumption increases. Muscles begin asking for more energy than they needed just a few moments before. For a brief period, the body experiences what you might think of as a controlled energy shortage. Not a dangerous one, a temporary one. A signal that says, we may not have enough capacity if this becomes a regular occurrence. And that signal matters. Because the body isn't asking, can we survive today's workout? The body is asking, what if this happens again tomorrow? Imagine a town that experiences a major flood. The town cleans up, repairs the damage, and life goes on. But what if floods keep happening? Eventually the town stops focusing only on cleanup. It starts building better drainage systems, reinforcing bridges, expanding infrastructure. Not because of today's flood, because of the next one. Exercise works in much the same way. One workout is an event, repeated workouts become a pattern, and patterns are what drives adaptation. We've already discussed some of the mechanisms involved in that process. AMPK senses changes in energy demand. Reactive oxygen species act as signaling molecules. PGC1 alpha helps coordinate mitochondrial biogenesis. But today I want you to see the bigger picture. These pathways are all trying to answer the same question. Should we prepare for this happening again? If the answer is yes, the body begins investing. More mitochondria, better energy production, greater efficiency, improved resilience. Not because you're trained for a marathon, not because you're trying to lose weight, but because the signal suggests that future demands may be higher than current ones. That's what makes exercise so powerful. It doesn't simply challenge the body, it changes the body's expectations. The body starts preparing for a future that hasn't happened yet. And over time, those preparations become visible. The same walk feels easier, the same stairs feel easier, the same workout feels easier. Not because the challenge changed, because you changed, because your biology adapted. One of the biggest misconceptions about exercise is that the benefits come from the workout itself. They don't. The workout is the stimulus. The adaptation is the benefit. The workout is the question. Adaptation is the answer. And that's one of the most remarkable things about mitochondria. They're not fixed, they're dynamic, responsive, trainable. Every workout becomes a vote, a vote for the kind of future your body should prepare for. The big takeaway is this exercise doesn't make you healthier because it burns calories. Exercise makes you healthier because it gives the body a reason to build greater capacity before that capacity is desperately needed. In many ways, exercise is less about today's workout and more about tomorrow's preparation. But here's where things get really interesting. Not all movement sends the same message. A walk sends one signal, long duration exercise sends another, heavy strength training sends another, and each creates a different set of mitochondrial adaptations. That's exactly where we're headed next. Because one of the most powerful mitochondrial therapies available to almost everyone isn't intense exercise at all, it's walking.