Episode 13 – How To Support The Mitochondria

Shownotes

The Mitochondria are often referred to as the energy powerhouses of the cell. Healthy, abundant and well functioning mitochondria are important for health and abundant production of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of the cell. In this episode Anna explains the factors that influence mitochondria health and function and the dietary and lifestyle practises that can support better energy production.

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How To Support The Mitochondria

Hello, and welcome another episode of the chronic fatigue and burnout recovery podcast. I am your host Anna Marsh, and today we’re going to be talking about all things mitochondria. Before we dive into that, I’ll pre-frame this episode by saying, if you’ve listened to some of the other episodes in the past, I talk about fatigue or low energy as something impacting the body’s ability to make ATP, the body’s energy currency.

And of course, there are multiple mechanisms or combinations of mechanisms, which can result in poor ATP or low energy production. One of those mechanisms is poor mitochondrial health or some metabolic roadblock in the body’s process of making energy via the mitochondria. So we do want healthy and well-functioning mitochondria for energy production.

What you’ll probably start to realise, as I talk a little bit more about mitochondria today, is that a lot of the practices that we would use to support the mitochondria or the health of the mitochondria are also practices that we would use when considering other aspects of energy and biochemistry, some of which I’ve already talked about in previous episodes, like blood sugar, or oxygenation or digestive health. This is where we want to see the body, not in a reductionist approach, so reducing systems down to isolated processes, but rather seeing the body as a network of interlinking symptoms. That’s why when we work on one aspect of our health, it can start to improve other aspects that we didn’t think we were directly targeting, that it can have that knock-on benefit.

When we are talking about the mitochondria today, there may be a little overlap in terms of some of the other things I’ve discussed in previous episodes. That means I might not go into those specific details because you can go back and listen to a podcast on blood sugar; for example, I might make small references to what you can do in this episode. So as we dive in, I guess the first thing to cover is what the mitochondria are.

I appreciate that I’ve thrown this word around a few times, and we’re only a few minutes into the podcast episode, but it might be helpful to understand what it is. Our human bodies are made up of cells, and all cells have mitochondria within the cell. The mitochondria are often referred to as the cells, energy-producing powerhouses or energy-producing factories because it is through a series of biochemical transactions or biochemical processes that happen within the mitochondria that the body produces a well should I say, can produce ATP.

We can make a little bit of energy not using the mitochondria, which I’ll talk about in a moment about how that happens. Still, we make most of our energy using the processes inside the mitochondria and the mitochondrial membra...