Low energy and fatigue are all too common today.
In a survey of 10,000 people conducted by researcher and New York Times bestseller, Tom Rath, only 11% reported having a great deal of energy the previous day. His latest bestselling book, Are You Fully Charged devoted an entire section to Energy.
Tom shared some great ideas on increasing energy but the subject of this post wasn’t mentioned in his book, though some of his recommendations had a positive impact it.
What I am going to share with you is the most important thing you need to get right to not only have great energy but great health. It’s also the secret to reversing chronic disease.
This was my main focus in reversing chronic Lyme disease and I continue to focus on it to continue to optimize my health.
Sadly very few doctors pay attention to this and many of them probably haven’t thought much about it since they learned about it in med school. Luckily this essential component of your health and wellness is receiving more widespread attention.
What am I talking about?
Your mitochondria. Great health comes down to your mitochondria and how well they function. The better your mitochondria function, the better your mind and body perform.
Mitochondria are known as your cellular powerhouses. They create nearly all of the energy that you need to do all of the amazing things you can do…at least when they’re working optimally.
To have great health your mitochondria need to function properly. The more energy your body makes the better you will be.
Not enough energy = sickness and disease. No energy = death.
We know this from the work of Dr. Doug Wallace. He has studied mitochondria for the past 40 years and is considered by many to be the top researcher in the field. One of his discoveries is that we inherit all of our mitochondria from our mother and we don’t get any from our father.
Now here’s what’s really interesting.
His research also shows that 85% of disease is a result of poorly functioning mitochondria Share on X
The belief that many diseases come from our genes is faulty. This is good news because it means you have a lot more control over your health.
Sadly few doctors are paying attention to Dr. Wallace’s’ work. After reading this you will have a perspective that very few have.
Good health is attained when you optimize energy production at the most fundamental level.
That level is your mitochondria and they work at the smallest scales imaginable.
Thanks to the work of Dr. Wallace, we know that disease states happen when our mitochondria function poorly, not because of our genes. We get sick due to poorly functioning mitochondria. So to be healthy we know that we need our mitochondria to be working well.
There’s a fancy name for when mitochondria don’t function properly called heteroplasmy. The higher the percent heteroplasmy in your mitochondria, the more mutated mitochondria you have that aren’t properly functioning and creating energy. One way to look at this is that your body is having brownouts.
It turns out there is a threshold for disease of around 70% mutated mitochondria. You naturally lose mitochondrial function as you age however different environmental factors can speed that up. The research shows that most of us can be fine with 65% mutant mitochondria but once you hit 70%, disease starts to manifest.
Heteroplasmy rates or brownouts can vary throughout your body and this determines the disease we get.
High heteroplasmy rates in your brain lead to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease or in children this can cause autism, and high heteroplasmy rates in the heart lead to heart disease.
Let me give you an understanding of the power of your mitochondria when they are functioning as they should. You have 1,000 – 3,000 mitochondria in most of your cells and you have the highest density of mitochondria in your organs. The highest density are in your brain, eye, and heart with up to 10,000 mitochondria in these cells.
In fact, we now have equipment that can measure the magnetic field of the human heart and it can be detected up to 20 feet away. The mitochondria in your heart create this magnetic field. They literally have tiny nanomotors in each of them that spin, creating this magnetic field.
These tiny nanomotors are how your mitochondria create ATP, which is the energy of life. In one day your mitochondria produce more than your own body weight in ATP alone. Isn’t that amazing?
We just learned that the heart and brain have the most mitochondria. At this moment your heart has about 700mg of ATP however it requires 6,500 – 7,000g of ATP a day for your heart to beat! Your brain needs even more, and ATP in your brain has to turn over 10,000 times a day for it to function optimally.
Mitochondria are extremely small. One mitochondria is 1 micrometer or 1,000 nanometers. To give you an idea of just how small that is, there are 1,000,000 nanometers in 1 millimeter. So a mitochondria is 1/1000 of a millimeter wide.
It’s hard to fathom but there is a whole world in each of your cells.
Now let’s talk about the energy output of your mitochondria.
One mitochondria creates 160 millivolts of energy. There are a thousand millivolts in a volt so this doesn’t sound like much. But let’s add it up.
A healthy human has 1017 or 100,000,000,000,000,000 mitochondria and when you add them all up you get 30,000 volts which is equivalent to a bolt of lightning. A bolt of lightning produces enough energy to power 15,000 3,000 square foot homes.
All of your cell and mitochondrial membranes are made from lipids, which are fats. This is why eating a high fat diet can be beneficial for those dealing with health conditions. We need lots of healthy fats to build new cells and mitochondria.
So the human body creates an amazing amount of energy to do all the things we can do.
To regain and improve health the key is to optimize your mitochondria. Coming up in another post I’ll share with you some things that you can do to help optimize your mitochondria.