Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:09] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the whole Health Revolution podcast. This week's topic has been inspired once again by my events over the week. And this was from a client of mine who came to see me. A new client came to see me on Zoom, a one on one client. And she came to me for fatigue. She's got terrible fatigue and she was really struggling. Some days she, she has good days, but other days she really struggles. And I could tell by her demeanor that she's actually quite an energetic person. So she's been really struggling with this. Now, fatigue can be very difficult because we can feel tired for so many different reasons. Maybe dehydration, poor sleep quality, you're not eating enough nutrients that are giving you the energy to fuel your day. Maybe you're not eating enough food. It can be stress or hormonal, or maybe there's some hypothyroid. So as you can see, when someone's tired, it's never a simple thing. Sometimes it is, they might drink more water and suddenly, wow, they've got lots of energy.
[00:01:10] But this is where taking a thorough case take is crucial for me to see, okay, what's the underlying drivers of this? Why is this person so fatigued that it's actually impacting her life?
[00:01:23] And as you know, in neutropathy, we seek to get to those root causes. And so tonight I want to talk about our mitochondria. Now, these are little tiny powerhouses that are inside our cells. And by the end of tonight, you're going to understand why looking after these guys is really important. It's one of the most important things that we can do for our health and our well being. First up, what are the mitochondria?
[00:01:48] They are small structures inside our cells. They're one of our organelles, which are the little things that are inside our cells.
[00:01:54] Your cells have the nucleus and they have lots of other things. And mitochondria are one of them. And they're like little engines that keep everything running. Every cell can contain.
[00:02:06] Amazing, isn't it? Depending on its job. So you've got some cells that are in, say, the muscle and the brain, and they'll have lots of these mitochondria because they use a lot of energy compared to, say, skin cells, where they don't really need that energy.
[00:02:21] Their main role is to produce energy in the form of a molecule, and that's called ATP and that's short for adenosine triphosphate. You might have heard of ATP if you've been around the gym and exercise, et cetera. That's our energy.
[00:02:35] And it's like our body's currency of fueling everything from contracting your muscles to sending nerve signals, to repairing our DNA. Without our healthy mitochondria, our cells simply cannot function properly. So you can see they're really, really important.
[00:02:52] So what do they actually do? They don't just make energy is one of their main jobs, but they also help to regulate things like cell growth and repair hormone signaling, our immune function. And they also help in the process of clearing out the old damaged cells. And that called apoptosis, or cell death. And this is a very normal thing. When you go to bed at night, this is what's going on in your body. It's amazing.
[00:03:18] So, yes, they're not just batteries, they're more like conductors of the entire orchestra of our body.
[00:03:25] So important.
[00:03:26] So if you didn't know what a mitochondria was before, hopefully by the end of today you're going to know all about them and you'll know the importance of these little guys.
[00:03:36] So what happens when these guys don't work properly? When our mitochondria become damaged or they don't get enough nutrients that they need? We start to feel it in several different ways. And that can be like my client that came to me this week, low energy fatigue. I mean, fatigue is extreme low energy.
[00:03:53] Even if you feel you're sleeping enough, you might experience brain fog or poor concentration. It can affect your mood. You've got no motivation. You just don't have that get up and go. Maybe you feel a bit depressed. It can also affect your muscles, muscles. And you can feel quite weak.
[00:04:09] Walking up the stairs or doing a little workout in the gym. Just feels you feel a lot more tired than you used to and you feel that you're not recovering as well. Or maybe you're just out of puff way too soon. And you know that it's not just your fitness.
[00:04:22] You can recover slower from illness and also increased inflammation. So if our cells are unhappy, there is going to be inflammation in the body and that's going to come out in so many different ways systemically and over time. What happens is if we're not nurturing these little mitochondria, we get what's called mitochondrial dysfunction. And this can then be linked to many chronic health conditions. Now, chronic health conditions, which is obviously what I deal with a lot, and we're talking about things like type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. Although insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes can cause mitochondrial dysfunction as well, we're looking at things like Alzheimer's, neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, heart disease, chronic fatigue syndromes and fibromyalgia. So I've had a personal experience with this and I know that when I take certain supplementation to help my mitochondria, which we'll talk about later, I feel a lot better.
[00:05:23] Even accelerated aging. So when our mitochondria are unhappy, we're going to age faster. So that's not a good thing. We want to try and keep our youth for as long as we can. When you feel flat or drained or like your body isn't bouncing, bouncing back, it could be your mitochondria just crying out from some tlc. And here's a fascinating fact. The mitochondria actually have their own DNA, and that's separate from the DNA that we find in the nucleus of a cell.
[00:05:50] In fact, you only inherit your mitochondrial DNA from your mum. So in many ways your energy is part of your maternal lineage. So how can we nurture these mitochondria? There's lots of ways. And the good news is that we can actually. They're highly responsive and they can actually resp what we do within weeks. So here are some ways that we can look after our mitochondria. Number one is nutrition. No surprise there. We want to prioritize nutrient dense foods such as vitamin B rich foods, magnesium, coenzyme Q10 antioxidants, and these sorts of things are found in green leafies. Green leaf is always a star player. All the plant foods, nuts and seeds, oily fish, because you got your healthy fats, your omega 3s and those colorful vegetables that are full of antioxidants. We also want to reduce the sugar and ultra processed foods, which is what this program is all about.
[00:06:46] These things cause oxidative stress and this will damage our mitochondria. Oxidative stress damages cells and this is what you're going to end up with, with damage to the organelles that are inside those cells.
[00:06:59] So we want to include healthy fats like olive oil, avocado, omega 3 rich foods, those fatty fish, and that supports that mitochondrial membrane, the outer layer, movement, exercise, especially interval training and resistance exercise. So pushing weights actually increases the number and the efficiency of our mitochondria. So exercise once again is so important and it doesn't mean busting a gut in the gym. This could be maybe if you're on a walk, taking a few hills now and again, just getting your heart rate up for those little intervals can be excellent. It's a fantastic way of training. Could be walking on the treadmill and just taking it on an incline for 30 seconds and in back down. It doesn't have to mean jogging or high impact exercise. You can do interval training and still keep that low impact and resistance training, pushing things that are heavier than what we're used to, or pulling, pushing, moving weights. Very, very important. We also want to get enough quality sleep now, as I said before, the mitochondria repair themselves while we sleep. So if we're not getting to sleep at a good hour, this is going to reduce your opportunity for these guys to repair and this can accelerate their damage as well.
[00:08:12] So the ideal time frame to sleep is. The best sort of time to sleep is between 10 and 2 in the morning around about that. If we can make sure that you're asleep at those times, then you're going to be doing your body so much good stress management. Once again, stress, we know stress is a killer and it comes out in our body in so many different ways. But what it does is it creates inflammation and it also creates oxidative stress which damages the cells.
[00:08:42] Simple practices like breathing. And this is one of the things that I gave to my client this week. She's very busy and I said, you know, we've got to bring something in now. She was saying to me, actually it was interesting that in October her work's going to slow down a bit and it'll all be fine then. But you know, why wait for another month while all this damage is being done? She's exhausted already. And I said, we really need to bring this in now. Even just five minutes a day in the morning is going to be beneficial. And I saw her a week later and she was actually doing some really good things and already starting to feel quite good.
[00:09:17] So simple practices like breathing, deep breathing, box breathing, 4, 7, 8, breathing, whatever it is, meditation, walking in nature, reading a book, journaling, writing what you're grateful for. All of those things can be really, really good for you just to reduce that stress and how you cope with it.
[00:09:37] Another thing that's nice and natural is sunlight exposure. So we like sunlight and we also like cold exposure. So natural sunlight, if you get, if you can go out in the sun first thing in the morning, it actually helps to regulate our circadian rhythm and gives us a good dose of vitamin D as well, both of which are going to support our mitochondrial function as well as cold showers. And this was another thing I said to her, oh, you know, have you tried cold showers just for a few seconds at the end of your shower. It's winter actually, and it's autumn, no spring now, but it's still quite cold here in New Zealand. So maybe it might be a bit more sort of appealing in the summertime. But having that little cold burst at the end of your shower while you're breathing in a nice relaxed manner, maybe doing that box breathing with a little cold burst on the skin just gives your body that signal that yes, you're in a stressful situation with the cold water, but you're coping because you're breathing and you're relaxed. And so it can really be beneficial for stress management. And this is also going to improve our mitochondrial efficiency.
[00:10:43] Fasting. Fasting is excellent for our cell health.
[00:10:48] Now when I say fasting, we do a natural fast on the program because I do encourage no eating after dinner so that we were getting a 12 hour or even more fast overnight. That's a natural fast. We should be doing that every day and giving your body even during the day, not grazing all day long. So having few hours in between when you eat food is one excell for gut health, which I know I've spoken about before.
[00:11:15] But it's also good because the mitochondria, it gives the mitochondria break basically and they can, and that can encourage repair.
[00:11:24] And so if you're digesting food all the time, they're not going to be regenerating and replenishing as well as they normally could do.
[00:11:35] So fasting is excellent. And that's where you might have heard that fasting can be very good for anti aging. That comes right down to the cell mitochondrial health.
[00:11:46] There's also some supplements that are very good for mitochondrial support. And I take one of these myself, which is a CoQ10, which is called Coenzyme Q10, 100 to 300 milligrams daily supports ATP production, that energy production, and it's also a very powerful antioxidant.
[00:12:05] Antioxidants are going to help our cells, help our liver, they're wonderful. And we should be eating plenty of them with plant foods as well over the day.
[00:12:14] Magnesium, we're not eating it in our diet. We really should be supplementing.
[00:12:19] And there is also the argument about our soil not being rich in magnesium because we've stripped our soils of all the goodness over the years.
[00:12:29] So even if we are eating foods that are rich in magnesium, are we meeting our daily needs?
[00:12:34] So we're looking with magnesium, you're looking between 2 and 400 milligrams a day.
[00:12:40] It's an essential CO factor in ATP production, meaning it needs magnesium to actually be able to produce ATP.
[00:12:49] And so looking at citrate or glycinate, they're usually the best tolerated forms.
[00:12:55] A good B complex, especially if there's stress in the picture, if you are highly stressed, if you're over 40, we need these B vitamins even more so as we age, if we're stressed, we use up these B vitamins very quickly. So a good B complex. If you can get a methylated form, excellent.
[00:13:16] I will say, if they've got folic acid in it, please choose a different type.
[00:13:21] It's not very good. If your body's not metabolizing that form, it can be quite dangerous in the body.
[00:13:28] So always look for a B complex that is one methylated and two, it's not got folic acid, it's got folate or folinic acid instead, or methyl folate. That's what you want. It's a really good form to have.
[00:13:42] Another supplement is ALA, which is alpha lipoic acid. 200 to 600 milligrams a day, is a potent antioxidant and it helps recycle other antioxidants as well.
[00:13:54] It also supports glucose metabolism. So my clients that have blood sugar dysregulation, type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, if there's any blood sugar issues going on, I will usually look at an ALA for them, depending on what else they're doing.
[00:14:08] And another one is your omega 3 fatty acids. If you're not eating fatty fish or lots of omega 3 rich foods at least two or three times a week, then in my opinion, I really feel you should be supplementing. And we're looking at between 1,000 and 3,000 milligrams a day. And that supports your mitochondrial membranes and that helps to also reduce inflammation.
[00:14:31] So omega 3s can be taken long term.
[00:14:35] And I often prescribe these with clients if they don't eat any fish or any good healthy fats.
[00:14:43] Coincidentally, if you've got the little bumps, I think they call it chicken skin, on the backs of your arms, they're tiny little bumps, look like little sort of goosebumps, I guess, but they're always there. That can mean that you're deficient in omega 3.
[00:14:57] You see it on a lot of kids. I've seen it on kids. And so if I see that, I'll often prescribe an omega 3. With these dietary and lifestyle changes, mitochondria actually respond really quickly if we look after them. So with the right nutrients, we're feeding them A good variety of foods and anti inflammatory diet, the types of foods that you're eating on the program anyway. Some people can notice improvements in energy in just a few weeks.
[00:15:25] Lifestyle changes such as better sleep and stress management also make a difference almost immediately. But the star play here when it comes to mitochondrial health is exercise. It's one of the most powerful tools you can use because it doesn't just repair our mitochondria, it stimulates your body to grow brand new ones. And when you think we've got thousands of these in each cell, in some of our cells, really important.
[00:15:51] So this process is called mitochondrial biogenesis. A little bit of biology there. And that can start within a few weeks, just over and build over a few months. So this is where consistency is really needed with exercise. And it doesn't have to be much, even if you can only do 10, 15 minutes a day, most days it's going to be better than one hour a week because it's that consistency that we're looking for. So while some benefits are felt quickly, the real magic happens with consistency over time. The more you nurture your mitochondria, the more resilient and energetic you become.
[00:16:26] It's a win win, it really is. So my weekly challenge to you is I'd like you to choose one small way to nurture your little mitochondria. And here are a few options for you. And you can pick whichever one feels most doable.
[00:16:40] One is to swap one processed snack for a colourful, antioxidant rich food. Maybe you want to make your own protein balls, We've got those on one of the meal plans. Maybe you want to make some chickpea, roasted chickpeas, anything like that. Colourful foods, berries, fantastic. Frozen berries can be really nice.
[00:17:02] Number two is to add five minutes of interval movement, like a brisk walking, maybe add some stairs or a few squats into your day.
[00:17:12] Number three is to switch off those screens 30 minutes earlier at night. And this is one that I struggle with quite often, I must admit. And what this is going to do is going to give your mitochondria a much better sleep window. So remember, we're looking at the hours between 10pm and 2am as being the best hours when you get that regenerative sleep.
[00:17:32] And that's when your body's doing all of its housework. And so do this for a few weeks and notice how your energy feels at the end of, of each week. Small changes can have a big impact over time. So thank you so much for joining me tonight or if you're joining in in the recording then. Welcome.
[00:17:50] I hope you've found this call really helpful and quite interesting.
[00:17:54] I am a bit of a science geek and I must admit I get quite excited about these types of topics, but I think it's something that we should all be aware of. You know, what really makes our body work. And so your mitochondria. They're the spark plugs that keep you going, treat them well and will reward you with energy, vitality and resilience.
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