Control Mitochondria, Control Everything
Extend your lifespan, retain the energy of youth, and keep your muscle mass by controlling these tiny organelles.
Your body is made up of over 37 million cells. The average cell contains 1000 to 2000 mitochondria, which are energy-producing cellular "organs." These mitochondria constitute roughly 10% of your body weight.
Every millisecond, these mitochondria pump protons across a membrane to generate electric charges equivalent to the power, over a few nanometers, of a lightning bolt. Mitochondria have their own DNA and reproduce independently. They're symbionts, and in their absence, you couldn't move a muscle or undergo thousands of biological functions. Mitochondria play a huge role in energy production, sex, fertility, aging, and death.
If you could somehow influence them, you could greatly extend your lifespan and avoid the diseases associated with old age, while simultaneously retaining the energy of youth. Athletically, controlling the vitality and number of mitochondria in your muscle cells could lead to huge improvements in strength endurance that didn't decline with age.
The craziest thing? Controlling mitochondria is within our grasp, right now.
Mitochondria and Energy
Mitochondria are tiny organelles. Like organs, they each have specific functions, in this case, the production of energy in the form of ATP, the energy currency of the cell. They do this by metabolizing sugars, fats, and other chemicals with the assistance of oxygen.
A cell can have one lonely mitochondrion or as many as hundreds of thousands, depending on its energy needs. Metabolically active cells like liver, kidney, heart, brain, and muscle have so many that they may make up 40% of the cell, whereas other cells like blood and skin have very few.
Mitochondria and Longevity
The oldest people among us, those rare centenarians, are less prone to degenerative disease than the rest of us. They end up dying from muscle wastage rather than any specific illness. Similarly, birds rarely suffer from any degenerative diseases as they age. More often, they fly around as they always have until one day they just croak.
The answer to both the centenarians' and the birds' long, disease-free lives seems to lie with the mitochondria. In both cases, their mitochondria leak fewer free radicals. This is important because mitochondria often determine whether a cell lives or dies. This is dependent on the location of a single molecule – cytochrome C.
Any one of several factors, including UV radiation, toxins, heat, cold, infections, or pollutants can compel a cell to commit suicide, or apoptosis, but the unrestricted flow of free radicals is what we're concerned with here.
The underlying principle is this: depolarization of the mitochondrial inner membrane – through some sort of stress – causes free radicals to be generated. These free radicals release cytochrome C into the cellular fluid, which sets into motion a cascade of enzymes that slice up and dispose of the cell.
Now, there's a gene in certain Japanese men who are well over a hundred years old that leads to a tiny reduction in free radical leakage. If you have this gene, you're 50% more likely to live to be a hundred. You're also half as likely to end up in a hospital for any reason.
As far as birds, they've got two things going for them. One, they disassociate their electron flow from ATP production, a process known as uncoupling. This, in effect, restricts the leakage of free radicals. Secondly, birds have more mitochondria in their cells. Since they have more, it leads to a greater spare capacity at rest, and thus lowers the reduction rate and free radical release is lowered.
So we're left with this: increasing mitochondrial density, along with slowing free radical leakage, would likely lead to a longer life, free from most of the diseases typically attributed to old age.
Mitochondria and a Disease-Free Life
Since mitochondria have their own genes, they're subject to mutations that affect their health and function. Acquire enough of these mutations, and you affect how the cell functions. Affect enough cells and you affect the organ/system they're a part of.
The hardest hit organs are generally mitochondria-rich, like muscles, the brain, liver, and kidneys. Specific mitochondria-associated diseases range from Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, various muscle weakness disorders, and even Syndrome X.
Take a look at heart patients. Generally, they have about a 40% decrease in mitochondrial DNA. As evidence that mitochondrial deficiency might be passed down from generation to generation, the insulin-resistant children of Type II diabetics, despite being young and lean, had 38% fewer mitochondria in their muscle cells. Mitochondria dysfunction even predicts prostate cancer progression in patients treated with surgery.
Some of these mitochondrial diseases might not become apparent until the person with the funky mitochondria reaches a certain age. A youthful muscle cell, for example, has a large population (approximately 85%) of mitochondria that are mutation-free and it can handle all of the energy demands placed on it. However, as the number of mitochondria decline with age, the energy demands placed on the remaining mitochondria rise.
It ultimately reaches a point where the mitochondria can't produce enough energy and the affected organ starts to display diminished capacity. Clearly, mitochondria play a pivotal role in the genesis of a host of maladies, and maintaining a high degree of normal, healthy mitochondria could eliminate many of them.
Mitochondria and Bigger, Stronger Muscles
Muscle cells have a lot of mitochondria. The more you have, the better your performance capacity. The more mitochondria, the more energy you can generate during exercise.
As an example, pigeons and mallards, species known for their endurance, have lots of mitochondria in their breast tissue. In contrast, chickens, which don't fly much, have very few mitochondria in their breast tissue. However, if you were to decide to train a chicken for a marathon, you could easily increase the number of mitochondria he had, but only to a point since the number is also governed by species-dependent genetics.
Luckily, you can also increase the number of mitochondria in humans. Chronic exercise can increase mitochondrial density; the more vigorous the exercise the more mitochondria form. In fact, if you know any runners who tally upwards of 50 miles a week, tell them that 10 to 15 minutes of running at a brisk 5K pace could do much more for their ultimate energy production and efficiency than clocking more miles.
The short-duration, high-intensity running will increase mitochondrial density to a much greater degree than long-distance running, which, kind of ironically, will lead to better times in their long-distance races.
Weight training also increases mitochondrial density. Type I muscle fibers, often referred to as slow-twitch or endurance fibers, have lots of mitochondria, whereas the various fast-twitch fibers are each progressively less rich in mitochondria.
And, while it's true that heavy lifting converts slow-twitch fibers to fast-twitch fibers, the relative number and efficiency of the mitochondria in each type need to be kept at peak levels, lest the lifter start to experience a loss in muscle quality.
This is what happens as lifters age. An aging human may be able to retain most or even all his muscle mass through smart training, but the loss of mitochondrial efficiency might lead to a loss of strength. One supportive study of aging males showed that this muscle strength declined three times faster than muscle mass.
Clearly, maintaining mitochondrial efficiency while also maintaining or increasing their population would pay big dividends in strength and performance, regardless of age.
The Care and Feeding of Mitochondria
Luckily, there are several ways you can improve mitochondrial health and efficiency. There are even a couple of ways you can make more of them.
Since the main problem in age-related decline of mitochondrial health seems to be free-radical leakage, we need to figure out how to slow this leakage over a lifetime. Plain-old aerobic exercise speeds up the rate of electron flow, which makes the mitochondria less reactive, thus lowering the speed of free radical leakage.
Likewise, aerobic exercise, by increasing the number of mitochondria, again reduces the speed of free radical leakage. The more there are, the greater the spare capacity at rest, which lowers the reduction rate and lessens the production of free radicals.
The birds give us more clues. They "uncouple" their respiratory chains, which means they disassociate electron flow from the production of ATP. Respiration then dissipates as heat. By allowing a constant electron flow down the respiratory chain, free radical leakage is restricted. Aspirin is a mild respiratory uncoupler, which helps explain some of its beneficial effects.
Another way we might be able to increase the number of mitochondria (which seemingly has the added benefit of resulting in less free radical leakage) is through the use of dietary compounds like pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ). While PQQ isn't currently viewed as a vitamin, its involvement in cellular signaling pathways – especially those related to mitochondrial biogenesis – might eventually cause it to be regarded as essential to life. Taking PQQ (Buy at Amazon) (20 mg. daily) increases the number of mitochondria, which is exciting.
Other compounds that might work the same way are the diabetic drug Metformin and perhaps, since it shares some of the same metabolic effects as Metformin, cyanidin-3 glucoside (C3G). Indeed, C3G was shown in experiments to prevent or fix mitochondrial dysfunction. Take four capsules daily of Indigo-3G (Buy at Amazon).
Aside from increasing the number of mitochondria, several other dietary strategies can enhance mitochondrial function or increase their number:
- Coenzyme Q10 (Buy at Amazon). Supports mitochondrial function. Take 100 mg. daily.
- Creatine (Buy at Amazon). Provides fuel to mitochondria, in addition to possibly protecting mitochondria from age-related mutations. Take 5 grams per day.
- Nitrates. Improves mitochondrial efficiency. Nitrates are found in spinach and beetroots.
- Vitamin D. Improves oxidative function in mitochondria. Just be sure to use the microencapsulated form (D Fix (Buy at Amazon)) for better absorption.
- Resveratrol. In addition to its anti-estrogen/pro-testosterone properties, it also increases the size of mitochondria, plus leads to higher mitochondrial density. Take two Rez-V (Buy at Amazon) softgels daily.
References
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- Rucker R et al. "Potential Physiological Importance of Pyrroloquinoline Quinone." Alternative Medicine Review. 2009;14(3).
- Sinha A et al. "Improving vitamin D status of vitamin D deficient adults is associated with improved mitochondrial function in skeletal muscle." J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2013 Mar;98(3):E509-13. PubMed: 23393184.
- Tanaka H et al. "Impact of resistance training on endurance performance. A new form of cross-training?" Sports Med. 1998 Mar;25(3):191-200. PubMed: 9554029.
- Tesch PA. "Skeletal muscle adaptations consequent to long-term heavy resistance exercise." Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1988 Oct;20(5 Suppl):S132-4.
- Yu JJ, et al. "Mitochondrial function score combined with Gleason score for predicting the progression of prostate cancer." Zhonghua Nan Ke Xue, 2010 Mar;16(3):220-2. PubMed: 3057312.
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