Here’s a question for you guys.
What’sone of the most important aspects in the quest to defeat aging?
Answer?
It’s the health of the mitochondria.
Those tiny powerhouses that produce ATP, the energy source for your entire body.
When the health of the mitochondria is impaired, ATP production slows down,
everything starts to slow down, and we begin to age.
And that’s what we’re going to examine in this video.
What causes a decline in mitochondrial health and the impact that it can have on aging.
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OK, so this is the second video in my series on mitochondria.
In this video, we’ll be taking a look at mitochondrial health.
And more importantly, what can cause a decline in mitochondria function,
and the impact that that can have on aging.
In the next video, we’ll look at strategies for improving mitochondrial health.
So…let’s jump right in.
And let’s start by taking a look at what mitochondrial health is…by defining it.
Now, I could talk about things like the ratio of fission to fusion that’s taking place in the mitochondria,
or the increase of oxygen reactive species or the decrease in NAD+,
or even about damage to mitochondrial DNA.
But really, mitochondrial health can be condensed down to one specific thing.
How efficient the mitochondria are at producing ATP, the universal energy source of the entire human body.
Now, this can be impacted by three different aspects of mitochondrial health.
The first is how efficient each individual mitochondrion in the cell is at producing ATP.
The more efficient it is, the more ATP that mitochondrion will produce.
The second is how many efficient mitochondria there are in the cell.
If you have more mitochondria in the cell producing ATP, the ATP production of that cell will go up.
And the third is how efficient the cell is at removing dysfunctional mitochondria.
The more efficient it is, the more cellular resources are available to the efficient mitochondria for producing ATP.
So if mitochondrial health is determined by how much ATP the mitochondria can produce,
then mitochondrial dysfunction can be defined as a state in which ATP production goes down,
when you’re producing less and less ATP.
Either when the efficiency of the individual mitochondrion goes into decline,
though impairment of cellular respiration, or when the number of mitochondria in the cell goes down.
And usually it’s both, combined with a reduced cellular capacity to remove those dysfunctional mitochondria,
though an impairment of mitophagy.
And when this happens, less ATP is produced, the body has less energy with which to function,
and everything slows down.
Which is kind of the very definition of aging.
Mitochondrial dysfunction is a factor, either directly or indirectly,
in almost all forms of age-related chronic diseases.
But researchers have recently discovered that signs of age-related mitochondrial damage
appear nearly a decade before the onset of permanent mitochondrial dysfunction.
What kinds of signs are we talking about?
Symptoms of poor mitochondrial health can include fatigue,
muscle weakness or loss of muscle coordination, problems with vision or hearing,
and brain fog or cognition issues.
If you’re experiencing two or more of these symptoms, that would be especially significant.
They also found that mitochondrial decay and dysfunction are reversible.
It is possible to reverse mitochondrial damage,
however, interventions must be made early on, before the damage becomes irreversible.
So, what causes mitochondrial dysfunction?
Aging is often cited as a leading cause of mitochondrial dysfunction,
but I don’t think “aging” as such, is a granular enough explanation.
To really answer the question,we need to look at the causes on both the macro scale and on the micro scale.
And on the macro scale the two leading causes of mitochondrial dysfunction are poor nutrition
and a low activity level.
You eat crap, and that crap gets into the mitochondria and shuts ATP production down.
As you age, that crap accumulates and then you get an accumulation of crappy mitochondria.
Now that might seem a little simplistic,
but as you’ll see in the third video in this series, where we talk about improving mitochondrial health,
good nutrition plays a huge role.
But so does activity levels. As people age, it’s a natural tendency to slow down,
to not expend the kind of energy that we did when we were young.
As we slow down, we place lower energy demands on the mitochondria,
and in response, they produce less ATP.
This causes us to have less energy, so we slow down even more,
and suddenly we’re in a downward spiral,
moving less and less and asking our mitochondria to produce less and less ATP.
And as it produces less ATP, it becomes incapable of producing higher amounts of ATP,
and now we’ve got mitochondrial dysfunction.
But things also happen on the micro-scale that contribute to mitochondrial dysfunction.
Now, a lot of these processes are triggered by the things happening on the macro scale,
but they soon develop downward spirals of their own.
And changes in morphology is one of the big ones.
Within the mitochondria, there’s normally a balance between mitochondrial fusion and fission.
Mitochondrial fusion is one of the ways that the mitochondria overcome small or slight amounts of damage.
The mitochondria fuse together, which allow these slightly damaged mitochondria
to integrate their contents as a form of genetic complementation,
which in turn enables different mitochondrial genomes with different defects
to individually encode for what the others lack.
But as they become more damaged, they trigger mitophagy,
a specialized form of autophagy where the mitochondria get recycled.
Mitophagy triggers fission, where the mitochondria break apart, into smaller and smaller components.
Fission lead to mitochondrial fragmentation, which plays a role in the degradation of malfunctioning mitochondria.
However, as we age, accumulated damage and lower ATP production causes a decline in mitophagy.
As a result, mitochondria don’t fragment, stuff doesn’t get recycled,
and fusion and fission fall out of balance, with more fusion happening than fission.
Another problem that happens at the micro scale is that levels of reactive oxygen species can rise.
During cellular respiration, electrons can leak from the electron transport chain and bind with oxygen,
creating reactive oxygen species, or ROS.
These molecules can damage mitochondrial DNA,
and because mitochondrial DNA is so close to the inner membrane of the mitochondria, where cellular respiration occurs,
because it replicates far more often the nuclear DNA,
and because it lacks many of the repair processes of nuclear DNA,
it’s more susceptible to this type of damage.
It’s been estimated that mitochondrial DNA has a 10-fold greater mutation rate than nuclear DNA
and far less repair capacity.
Reactive oxygen species can also drive muscular weakness, inflammation, bone loss,
senescent cells and the suppression of the immune system.
Normally, this type of damage is caught by quality control mechanisms in the cell
and eliminated through mitophagy, but as these processes go into decline as we age,
more and more of this type of damage accumulates.
Finally, as we age we see a drop in levels of NAD+,
which is critical to communication between the nucleus and the mitochondrial DNA and to cellular respiration.
As NAD+ levels drop, so does ATP production.
So, what impact do malfunctioning mitochondria have on the aging process?
Mitochondrial dysfunction has been identified as a factor in almost every age-related chronic disease there is.
Metabolic syndrome, which leads to diabetes II, starts out as mitochondrial dysfunction.
Most cancers are thought by some to be attributable to mitochondrial dysfunction.
So is cardiovascular disease, such as heart attacks, strokes, and arteriosclerosis.
It’s also thought to contribute to the formation of plaques,
leading to neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and MS,
and to many autoimmune diseases, as well as sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass, and chronic fatigue syndrome.
And most, if not all, of the 9 hallmarks of aging can be either directly, or indirectly,
attributed to poor mitochondrial health.
In fact, mitochondrial dysfunction is one of the hallmarks of aging.
Now, because of the critical role that the mitochondria play in the proper functioning of organ systems,
mitochondrial dysfunction can lead to a decline here, as well.
Take,for example, the immune system.
Something called mitochondrial Damage-Associated Molecular Patterns,
also known as mtDAMPs, can activate the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines.
Mitochondria also play a role in the innate immune system’s signaling against viruses,
which is why elderly people are more susceptible to viral infections.
Declining mitochondrial health can also lead to a drop in T-cell function.
Mitochondrial dysfunction also plays a role in the aging of skin, affecting cell signaling,
wound healing, pigmentation, vascular homeostasis, hair growth and defense against infection.
It’s also responsible for drug toxicities in the elderly,
with many of the drug classes used by older folks carrying a mitochondrial toxicity.
So, I think we can all agree that if someone if trying to turn back the clock on aging,
mitochondrial dysfunction is a state that needs to be avoided.
Now, given that age-related mitochondrial damage can be detected nearly a decade
before the onset of permanent damage, and that it is reversible…
how does one know whether or not one suffers from mitochondrial damage?
Well, there’s a couple of tests that you can take, but they’re not cheap.
The first is called the ATP Profile Test, and it was developed by a Dr. Myhill in the UK.
The test itself costs about $400 and the interpretation of the results costs about $300.
But apparently it not currently available to overseas patients, which would include patients in the US.
The other test is called the MitoSwab. It’s a simple swab of the inside of the cheek, and it costs about $400.
It analyzes the function of the electron transport chain
and it also measures the number of mitochondria in the sample.
It can be done at home, and it’s possible that it might be covered by some insurance companies or Medicare.
It’s done by a company called Religen Labs, and I’ve include a link in the description below.
OK, that wraps it up for this video, the second in my series on the mitochondria.
In the last video in this series,
I’ll be addressing strategies that you can employ to improve your mitochondrial health,
even if you’re already detecting some symptoms of mitochondrial dysfunction.
So be sure to watch for that video.
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Thanks for watching, and I’ll catch you next time.