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First, to grasp the sheer scale of mitochondria’s impact on our overall health, consider this: Each of us has quadrillions (that’s thousands of trillions) of these energy factories in our bodies.
Each mitochondrion is filled with some 17,000 biochemical assembly lines, all designed to produce a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP — our bodies’ major, most elemental fuel.
The more energy a tissue or organ demands for proper function, the more mitochondria its cells contain. Mitochondria are especially abundant in the cells that make up our hearts, brains, and muscles.
In fact, the heart is so energy-intensive that up to 40 percent of the space in its cells is taken up with mitochondrial power plants.
The density and health of the mitochondria in your organs and muscles are, to a large extent, a reflection of your current level of health and fitness (lean muscle tissue, for example, contains far more mitochondria than fat does, and a strong heart is likely to be denser with mitochondria than a weak one.)
The more healthy mitochondria your body contains, the better you’ll feel, and the more robust your metabolism will be. A mighty mitochondrial force translates to better energy and focus, and greater ability to sustain high levels of activity without fatiguing.
Mitochondria produce energy by breaking down food, explains Bruce H. Cohen, MD, a neurologist at Northeast Ohio Medical University and an expert in mitochondrial disease. Then they release that energy in the form of ATP, along with some byproducts, like carbon dioxide, water, and free radicals.
The health implications of such mitochondria-related damage can be far-reaching, says paediatric neurologist Jong Rho, MD, of the University of Calgary and Alberta Children’s Hospital.
But even those of us who start life with healthy mitochondria can undermine and deplete them through basic wear and tear, or through outright abuse.
Stress, sedentary lifestyles, free-radical damage, and exposure to infections, allergens, and toxins can all cause our energy-generation network to falter.
But one of the chief reasons our mitochondria deteriorate, says Cohen, is that we eat an excess of poor-quality foods and a deficit of healthy ones.
Mitochondrion (Singular)
The empty calories of sugars, flours, and other processed foods force mitochondria to burn through a great deal of junk — generating free radicals and inflammation as they go — before useful nutrients can be siphoned out.
The glycemic impact of such foods (to say nothing of their trans fats, chemical additives, and other pro-inflammatory factors) only exacerbates the damage.
And unless we are eating plenty of phytonutrients, antioxidants, healthy fats, proteins, and fiber, we aren’t giving our bodies the basic tools they need to repair the damage.
It’s important to recognize, Cohen adds, that from a genetic standpoint, our mitochondria were never designed for the food environment and lifestyle to which we now subject them.
Furthermore, he argues, our ancestors rarely lived to 70, 80, or 90 years. So we are now asking our mitochondria to perform longer under far more challenging conditions.
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