“Mitochondria seem to be able to exist, in the form of free-living bacteria, without our help. But without them, we die in a matter of seconds.”
-Lyall Watson
I was in my mid twenties.
I first got sick and that was followed by having chronic fatigue.
It was such a heaviness I’d never experienced before.
It didn’t matter what I ate regularly or how much I slept in those days.
I felt really heavy and unmotivated, no interest in anything.
It was an exhausting feeling and it took me a very long time to go away.
Eventually I was free from chronic fatigue but I learned a big lesson about our cellular mechanism especially about regeneration of power houses in our body for healing.
Few weeks ago, I was with my eldest daughter in a doctor’s clinic.
She had some health issues and we were in her doctor’s clinic for a follow up visit.
I met a middle-aged man in the clinic and he initiated the conversation while waiting for the doctor.
Immediately after a couple of minutes of conversation he said,
“Some days, for no reason, my body feels like it is made of nothing. My muscles feel like they just can’t do anything, I feel very tired, soft and fatigue very quickly. I was a very strong, energetic, and efficient person before. It feels so sudden, like I’m physically moving through quicksand, my doctor couldn’t relate my past and present life.”
Disconnected human body and its whispering: ME/CFS
I went into flashback immediately and correlated his story with my situation many years ago.
Of course, he was very dissatisfied and unhappy about what’s going on in his body.
What to say I just listened to him and politely asked him for any progress of diagnosis up to now.
He said, “I was diagnosed with CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome. My doctor did not even address the issue of my physical exercise pattern, even though it was an important part of my life and it’s such a key issue for managing ME/CFS, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.”
When I heard the word CFS, I immediately realized the disconnection between our human body, it’s whispering with us, and disease diagnosis.
In my own experience as well as acquired knowledge, the real understanding this disconnection is very crucial for healthy living.
His feeling was saying that his doctor isn’t getting ready to know him properly.
His doctor was looking for a problem, trying to fix the problem, and telling him what to do.
But he is looking for a conversation with his doctor, not his instruction, for that, I’m sure his mind is coming up with many questions for the doctor and the doctor should be very patient with him.
This, in my view, is a disconnection in our health system, his body wants a conversation and his doctor wants to give him an instruction.
In our short chat, he showed the curiosity to know the strength in our body, its origin, good and bad parts of it, and the role of genetics.
After passing half-way through life experiences and being a science researcher, I’ve realized that nobody in this world knows everything, we all kind of know one area that we study and spend time on it.
The only way we can uplift one another in society is by contributing and sharing the knowledge and information to each other about what we know.
This man’s curiosity which is also related to my past experience is the reason why I am writing this post.
After the conversation with this man in the doctor’s office, I realized immediately that very few people are aware about why our body becomes tired, fatigued and lethargic so quickly.
I asked him if he was exercising regularly and all of the sudden he started to feel tired and fatigued quickly.
I wasn’t testing his medical or scientific knowledge which I never do because we all have our own life, own circumstances, own choices, and experiences in life.
We all should respect each other and appreciate what we have to offer.
I only wanted to know how much he is aware about our biological body and its relation with energy, food, and regular lifestyle choice.
I asked him if he knew the power house of our cells, mitochondria, and how they operate in our body which are basically the center of our tiredness, fatigue and lethargic body.
He said, “no.”
Ultimately, this “no” initiated me to go a little deeper into mitochondria and let people know about them and their specificities.
Mitochondria and our energy
Among many reasons, one of the most probable causes from research is that there are probably differences in mitochondria in people who suffer from ME/CFS.
And these problems may be associated with detoxification pathways which are related to mitochondria.
Mitochondria are powerhouses of cells, they are basically the batteries in our body.
There could be many other reasons but defects in mitochondria are very concerning in overall health and especially fatigue and tiredness in our body.
Our body’s energy storage and production systems play the key role to our body’s ability to produce energy, fight fatigue, and protect our body from inflammation.
Energy metabolism is the phenomenon by which our body converts food, water, and oxygen we take into energy.
Proteins are broken down into amino acids, the most basic components of protein that our body absorbs.
Likewise, fats are converted into fatty acids.
And carbohydrates are converted into sugar.
Once these simple products get into our cells, they are taken apart by a complex set of reactions to power our body.
The excess energy that we produce is stored in special fat cells called adipocytes.
To access this stored energy there is a requirement of coordinated hormone signals in our body.
So in simple terms, energy is generated in the factories of our cells, the mitochondria.
Every cell in our body except red blood cells has hundreds of them.
They have their own genes called mitochondrial DNA, because a long time ago they were their own organism before they came to join our body.
In reality, mitochondria were so powerful at converting oxygen into energy that other organisms absorbed them and they became part of us.
Our mitochondria are essentially batteries or energy sources of our body like the batteries in our cell phone or laptop.
The air we breathe and the food we eat charge these batteries so what type of fuel we take inside our body determines the health and longevity of our cell batteries or mitochondria.
Remember, all the mitochondria in a cell are in constant contact, communicating with each other about what is going on in their part of the cell.
They know whether they are happy or sad or frustrated.
They sense fluctuations in stress and sex hormones, blood pressure, blood sugar, and even how much ice cream and pizza we just ate.
They know when we are sleeping or reading or working.
They know when we are awake and doing meditation or sexual activities.
It all means that they are completely in tune with our body.
Dr. Martin Picard, PhD, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University says “It makes more sense to think of mitochondria as the information processors of the cell. They are equipped with a surprisingly wide variety of receptors to sense what’s going on in the cell, they integrate all this information to maintain the health of the organism.”
Since the mitochondria know all the internal communications, they influence the activity of the cell and get it to send signals to our body.
If things are quiet and smooth, they may lie low, relax, and enjoy.
If things are busy or stressful like we are doing heavy exercise or weight lifting or running a marathon then they ramp up.
Sometimes, the stress for mitochondria is too much and they get damaged, therefore, too much exercise is also not helpful, and the body treats damaged mitochondria as a foreign invader.
Supporting our mitochondria is not only charging our batteries but also promoting their longevity to run our body machine efficiently.
Fatigue is the result when the batteries run low.
One reason that happens is because mitochondria cannot keep up with the behaviors and choices of our current lifestyle.
Low physical activity, ultra processed food, bad breathing habits, poor sleep, and high stress cause life altering changes in cell metabolism.
In response to all of these cellular stresses, our cells make more mitochondria.
Quickly made mitochondria are sometimes damaged and cannot run smoothly, causing the body’s battery to run dangerously low.
It is useful to explore what supports our mitochondria and to make small shifts toward supporting our health.
Happy mitochondria and diet
Now the question is what makes our mitochondria happy.
Plant based foods, intuitive eating, adequate hydration, regular exercise, restful sleep, and managed stress are keys to make our mitochondria happy.
Ultra processed foods and extreme or minimal exercises both are responsible for making our mitochondria unhappy and sick.
Poor sleep in both quantity and quality, poor oxygenation, limited microbiome, and high stress are equally important to make our mitochondria unhappy and sick.
The concept of mitochondrial nutrients has been adopted in recent years through research.
It indicates the adequate nutrients to keep proper mitochondrial function in our body.
Different research experiments have shown that components of polyphenols, plant-derived compounds, and polyunsaturated fatty acids, can improve mitochondrial metabolism, biogenesis, and antioxidant capacity.
Such effects are valuable to counteract the mitochondrial dysfunction associated with many abnormalities.
The beneficial feature of polyphenols-enriched olive oil, vegetables, nuts, fish, and plant-based foods are the key nutrients to make mitochondria happy.
L-carnitine is one of the key nutrients that has been studied for its role in mitochondrial health to help in the elimination of toxic metabolites.
Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is another dietary enzyme that has also been researched for its role in mitochondrial health and on fatigue symptoms to restore fatigue, sleep, and quality of life among ME/CFS patients.
Ari Whitten, The founder of The Energy Blueprint and author of “Eat for Energy” gives a deep dive into supercharging our mitochondria with a framework for restoring cognitive function, alertness, and an abundance of energy.
Mostly what research tells us is that health problems don’t just jump out on us from the dark room randomly.
They come through the accumulation of our life choices over time.
It’s not about just making our mitochondria happy, it’s about life, it’s about connection, it’s about love and it’s about all these things that mitochondria have given us.
I still think that our body is a temple, a sacred place and mitochondria are the batteries to light the temple.
They are the foundation of doing work for people around us, doing work that we like in community and connecting humanity because they give energy to perform such work.
The more we better ourselves and become clearer and healthier, the more we treat our bodies as temples and mitochondria as batteries of the temple.
Better we become healthy human beings, the better we can contribute towards the community.
Conclusion
Finally, I would like to share one of the lessons I learned recently.
In order to be proactive about our own health, we have to take personal inventory of our lives honestly.
We have to sit, think, and start a conversation about what we want out of this body, life and whole experience, and what actually we are doing everyday.
We have to think proactively about what we are looking for because health is very personal now.
It’s becoming the conversation with the body itself, it’s not all about only medical intervention by medical professionals.
For example, if we have a tumor in our internal organ then we have to seek help immediately from a medical specialist, but if we want to live a happy and healthy life up to age ninety, then we have to start conversation with our own body immediately.
Steve Sisgold’s book “What’s Your Body Telling You?” is a best resource how to know our body’s clues so that we go through life fully connected with our true desires.
It’s an integration of a holistic but personalized approach in life.
Please, don’t ignore the conversation with your body, the earlier we start the better for our psychological well-being.
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.