I always introduce new concepts and alert people to what to watch out for.
One of the small chunks of what I am going to talk about is mitochondrial medicine. If you don’t know what that is have no fear most people don’t either!
Probably because it does not really exist yet! But it will so here we go. The story goes like this. Life on planet earth started somewhere around 4 gigayears (that is a 4 followed by 9 zeros!) 2 giga years later oxygen became a major gas in the atmosphere and breathing oxygen enhanced life forms’ ability to generate energy.
Now I can’t resist telling you
That what we now call fish oil was most probably there from the beginning even before fish! Those oils are essential parts of life giving membranes as well as many other critical functions.
But let’s move ahead a couple hundred millions years to a time when life was beginning to organize itself into more complex forms. Somewhere in this period the story changes big time and the mitochondria becomes engulfed by a series of other cells. But something special and strange happens. Instead of eating the mitochondria for food, a partnership developed and these new hybrids were able to make the absolute most efficient use of oxygen and energy the world had ever seen. This gave those life forms a special advantage energetically, movement wise and reproductively so they expanded to occupy a giant niche on this planet.
A billion and a half years ago our ancestors showed up. They still had the mitochondrial energy generating power houses as do we today.
Now you would think that because of their central role in metabolism, energetic, and epigentics the mitochondria would be front and center stage in our medical efforts.
Not so.
As a matter of fact doctors and scientists are just beginning to take notice.
Well at least in this country. It is my prediction that in the next 10 years or so these will be front in center in the discussion of health span, life span and multiple diseases, especially the ones there is no cure for like cancer, Alzheimer’s, congestive heart failure and so on.
Yeah all the stuff that has us stumped at the moment!
What DO we know?
- We know that there are 5 main steps in energy metabolism using oxygen and fat. We do know these are located inside the walls of the mitochondria.
- We know that the very first step is dependent on something call Ubiquinol, aka reduced Co Q 10.
- We know that as we hit 40 years and beyond, the time when aging starts to really catch up with most of us, that the levels of Co Q 10 go down.
And we do know that it is pretty easy to prevent that loss with Coenzyme Q10.
Now you can wait until Big Pharma comes out with a drug for this if you want. You can wait for science to say, “We knew it all along!”. And you can wait for the central of Co Q and the mitochondria to take center stage a decade or so from now when you are a decade older.
Or you can do something about it now.
Don’t wait: Later is not longer in terms of your life and health!
Doc