Increase Your Mitochondria, Your Body Will Thank You | The Acid Drop

foreign Dr David Perlmutter here we're going to talk about mitochondria today mitochondria you know the energy producers the powerhouses within every cell brain cells may have as many as a thousand mitochondria in each Neuron a mitochondria are seen diffusely throughout the body in virtually all of our cells interestingly not in our red blood cells but certainly in our white blood cells and having good mitochondrial function and numbers within our white blood cells is an important player as it relates to a proper effective immune function and keeping inflammation in Balance we know that mitochondrial dysfunction or problems with the mitochondria is something that's at the the core of some of our most pervasive issues like cancer and coronary artery disease cardiovascular disease in general and certainly as it relates to the brain and things like dementia the brain is a very energy hungry or organ the brain weighs what three to five percent of the total body weight and yet at rest may be consuming as much as 25 percent of the caloric expenditure of the entire body so the brain does use a lot of energy and as such it is highly dependent upon functionality of the mitochondria so the question that becomes how can we enhance mitochondrial biogenesis what a great term that is it simply means what can we do to increase the number of mitochondria that are available for energy production and one of the simplest measurements that can be done to look at mitochondria involves looking at the levels of mitochondria within the red blood cells it's a simple blood draw and then you evaluate actually the DNA mitochondrial DNA which is different from the normal cellular DNA that lives in the white blood cells that gives you an indication as to how many mitochondria are present within our white blood cells and it does serve as a surrogate marker for us to make Assessments in terms of what mitochondria are doing throughout the rest of the body so as it turns out there is research that demonstrates that we can in fact increase our mitochondrial density in this case measured in the white blood cells and this was an interesting study that looked at the effect of a low fructose and low sodium diet on the DNA that was measured of mitochondria in white blood cells in human subjects and again it's really very important at least in this study they recognize the importance of dysfunction or problems with the mitochondria as being a major risk factor in things like obesity diabetes and hypertension and because it is related to obesity diabetes and hypertension we then know that it is related to the downstream issues that are consequences of obesity and diabetes and hypertension things like coronary artery disease Alzheimer's disease and even cancer are the downstream manifestations or bro brought about when these mechanisms are activated so we've connected some dots then between mitochondrial dysfunction and some of the most important degenerative conditions on the planet things like heart disease and cancer and stroke for example and certainly Alzheimer's disease so I'd like to consider the statement however from a different perspective from the perspective of down regulating mitochondria making mitochondria less functional and how that may have acted as what we call a survival mechanism so when we have high levels of fructose and or high levels of sodium in the diet it really primes the body or at least the bodies of our ancestors for survival by down regulating or making less functional the mitochondria why because when mitochondria are less functional we have less energy utilization and that can be a really powerful Advantage when there's not a lot of food around so if the mitochondria are not burning as much energy it might allow survival when the very energy that it would burn is less abundant and in addition we know that when mitochondrial function is compromised it leads to the generation of fat and that of course can be a survival mechanism now let's look at the nuts and bolts of the study it looked at 36 overweight pre-hypertensive adults and put them on either a low sodium defined as less than or equal to six grams a day or an isocaloric meaning the same number of calories low sodium and low fructose meaning less than 20 grams a day of the fructose diet and followed these individuals for eight weeks and compared them to controls and it looked at the measurement of how much DNA related to mitochondria was seen in the blood test which looked at the white blood cells in a normal blood test and the study went on for an eight week period of time again comparing a low sodium diet to a low sodium and low fructose diet and what did they find they found that with time just putting them on a low sodium diet led to a at week eight you see in the amber color already the mitochondrial DNA is starting to tick up and when you compare that on in week eight to being on low sodium and cutting down the fructose to 20 grams a day a dramatic increase a 70 fold increase in the mitochondrial DNA basically the number of mitochondria in the white blood cells that are present now because we're sending less alarm signals to our bodies to make fat store fat and to ratchet down mitochondrial function now the authors of the study proposed a mechanism and that is that the mechanism for protection could relate in other words how did it protect against damaging uh the mitochondria to decreasing oxidative stress as changes in oxidants parallel the changes in mitochondrial density what does that mean higher levels of oxidative stress threaten the viability the life the number of mitochondria when you put people on a low sodium low fructose diet you're putting them on a lower threat a lower oxidative stress level as it relates to their mitochondria so more mitochondria are created and these mitochondria survive that's what we want what they noted in the low sodium low fructose group this gets a little technical but they loaded that they noted that the level of something called dnph dinitrophenylhydrazine was decreased by 52 percent now that sounds pretty scientific let me tell you what that means that's a marker of oxidative stress that's a marker of the damaging action of chemicals called free radicals it's the reason we take antioxidants in addition and that number went down quite dramatically the uric acid level went down by 22 percent in people who are on a low sodium low fructose diet why might that be well fructose directly raises uric acid and sodium raises uric acid a little bit indirectly because it increases the conversion of glucose into fructose which then raises uric acid that's called the polyol pathway so this is really quite a fascinating study that demonstrates by lowering sodium and reducing fructose consumption there is a dramatic effect upon the number of mitochondria and therefore mitochondrial function as we see with less oxidative stress demonstrated by the reduction in the dnph that was an interesting study wasn't it showed that low sodium and a low fructose diet combined after the eight weeks was associated with a dramatic increase in mitochondrial density as measured Again by the amount of mitochondrial DNA that was found in the white blood cells again a surrogate marker basically for DNA of the mitochondria throughout the body and therefore mitochondria throughout the body we want to do what we can to help our mitochondria work help them repopulate help them regrow enhance what I mentioned earlier called mitochondrial biogenesis meaning the growth of new mitochondria and at the same time rid our bodies of defective mitochondria which is something called mitophagy part of what the broader term autophagy and here we've learned that a low sodium low fructose diet is really effective in doing that and I think you know the area that is United by low fructose in low sodium the mechanism that they share is of course this Downstream production of uric acid so we are Upstream of uric acid we know that uric acid is a an instigator of oxidative stress can damage mitochondria can compromise cellular function can increase inflammation can compromise nitric oxide therefore lead to poor blood supply and at the same time a compromises insulin sensitivity so the downstream effects of higher levels of sodium in the diet and higher levels of fructose in the diet is an elevation of the uric acid and this was a a very dramatic demonstration a 70 fold increase in after eight weeks of the mitochondrial DNA in the white blood cells very interesting information and I think for many of you this will be quite thought provoking hope you enjoyed our time together today I did thanks for joining me I'm Dr David Perlmutter bye for now

Channel: DavidPerlmutterMD

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Keywords: david perlmutter, dr. david perlmutter, grain brain, dr. perlmutter, brain maker

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Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022