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
You Can't Ignore Your Mitochondria Forever | Ep. 085
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Every diagnosis has a story that began long before it received a name. By understanding and supporting the terrain, including the health of your mitochondria, you create the conditions for greater resilience, long before symptoms demand your attention. Prevention begins with paying attention to what your body has been trying to tell you all along.
If you're looking for a deeper understanding of cancer, metabolic health, and the principles of terrain-based medicine, we invite you to continue learning with us. Our free live webinars are designed to empower you with practical, science-informed insights that help you ask better questions and make more informed decisions about your health.
Visit our website to register for upcoming free live webinars, where you'll also have the opportunity to ask Dr. Rue your questions about cancer, health, and longevity in a live Q&A. We look forward to learning with you.
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
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I think a lot of you have heard the phrase HPA access by now and might be a little familiar with what HPA dysfunction is. What I want to do with this episode is go into a little bit more detail to provide clarity whether it's something you're familiar with or something that you may have an idea of and are not quite sure about. Before we get into the definition of HPA or HPA dysfunction, I want to start by defining a few terms. The first one is cortisol. Cortisol is the main stress hormone, and typically when it's chronically elevated, it can do a lot of damage to the body. But short term, it is really important because it helps the body to prioritize what matters, which mostly entails breaking down stored fuel for quick access, but in doing so, it ends up putting rebuilding projects like tissue repair and immune surveillance on hold. Then we have catecholamines, which is really just adrenaline and no adrenaline, or put simply, fight or flight hormones or messages. These messages go beyond just speeding up your heart. They directly bind to receptors on immune cells, and we now know on tumor cells themselves, thereby encouraging blood vessel growth towards tumors and making it easier for the abnormal cells to spread. You also have reactive oxygen species, or ROS. This is oxidative stress. And ROSs are basically byproducts of your cells running in emergency mode for too long. And in high amounts, they damage the mitochondria directly. The same organelles we spent this entire series calling the battery of the cell. So then the next question becomes: what does all of this have to do with HPA access? And I'm getting to that. So HPA axis is short for hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. And it is one of the body's main stress response systems. And it is especially relevant in functional and integrative medicine. So here's how it works. The hypothalamus, which is found in the brain, detects physical and emotional stress. Then when that happens, it releases CRH or in full corticotropine releasing hormone. When this CRH is released, the pituitary gland in turn responds by releasing ACTH, which stands for adrenocorticotropic hormone. And then you also have the adrenal glands, which are typically found on top of the kidneys. These adrenal glands will respond to that ACTH by producing cortisol. It also helps to regulate blood pressure, the immune system, as well as immune function in general. It can also affect your mood, memory, alertness, as well as just how your body responds to pressure. So then, with that being said, now let's talk about HPA dysfunction or HPA dysregulation. HPA dysregulation can happen when you have chronic stress, and that chronic stress leads to long-term production of cortisol, catecholamines, as well as reactive oxygen species. In other words, HPA dysregulation results in metabolic reprogramming, which is basically a fancy way of saying your cells shift how they make energy. Under chronic stress, cells favor a faster, cruder method of fuel production over a slower, more efficient, healthy one that healthy cells typically rely on. The exact shift also happens to favor tumor growth. So now let's bring this back to why we're even here. This series has always been at its core about mitochondria voltage and what it actually costs your body to stay alive and heal. We took this long detour into grief, fear, and everything underneath it. Because I don't think you can honestly talk about mitochondria without talking about what silently drains them for years before a diagnosis ever shows up. That's what anxiety does. It's not separate from mitochondria. In fact, it's one of the clearest examples there is of something that can ultimately affect mitochondria. Next time, I want to talk to you about how to actually recognize this not only in yourself, but in someone you love, and then give real practical tools that can help calm a system that's been running this hot for far too long. Before I sign off, I'm excited to announce my upcoming webinar, Metabolic Dysfunction in Chronic Illness and Cancer. It is going to be on August 6th at 5 p.m. Pacific Time, 8 p.m. Eastern Time, and it is absolutely free. It is going to be done via Zoom. And if you'd like more information, please go to the description of this episode, or you can go to our website, New Legacynatural Medicine.com, to find out more. I hope to see you all there. But until then, see you in the next episode.