‘Mitochondrial Dysfunction’ Is Not Dysfunction: Experts

Written by Marina Zhang on December 24, 2023. Posted in Current News

But scientists such as Dr. Robert Naviaux, who leads the Mitochondrial and Metabolic Disease Center at the University of California–San Diego, have pointed out that the time for thinking of mitochondria only as the powerhouses of the cell has passed.

When a person battles infections, chronic diseases, and injuries, mitochondria produce less energy and become inflamed and oxidative. This can lead to fatigue, lethargy, and organ dysfunction due to reduced energy output and the body’s response to inflammation and oxidative stress.

Mainstream medicine labels this as “mitochondrial dysfunction,” implying that mitochondria aren’t producing as much energy as they should.

However, when mitochondria are misbehaving in this way, they are doing so in response to changes in cellular signaling. What would be considered “dysfunction” if the cell were safe, becomes a protective and essential new function of mitochondria under conditions of cell danger.

Therefore, it isn’t a breakdown but a response essential to healing, according to some scientists.

“The decreased ability to make energy could be an adaptation for something else,” Martin Picard, who holds a doctorate in mitochondrial biology and is an associate professor of behavioral medicine in psychiatry and neurology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told The Epoch Times.

Triggers vary, but the recovery steps are the same, he said. All injured cells must undergo these processes to return to a healthy state.

The cells switch from anaerobic respiration, which doesn’t use oxygen, to aerobic glycolysis, meaning they start to consume oxygen again.

The little energy made at this time is essential for creating the new building blocks for the production of new genes, proteins, fats, and cellular material to replace the cells lost during infection or injury.

With any injury, some cells may remain forever trapped in one of the three phases. That’s why cuts can form scars and why certain infections may leave people never feeling the same again. Over time, enough of these blocked cells can lead to chronic disease symptoms.

Another way of examining this blocked state in chronic disease is the lack of communication within diseased cells.

Health requires communication between mitochondria. But injury severs this connection until the cell danger response restores it. “This kind of biological communication is vital because losing those alone causes disease,” Mr. Picard said in a TEDx talk.

His research has shown that ATP, the energy source created mainly by mitochondria for use and storage at the cellular level, initiates the cell danger response. Therefore, he focused on anti-purinergic drugs that block ATP from prolonging the defense mechanism.

A day into the clinical trial, one child said, “I finished my dinner,” a sentence longer than the ones he usually used. A nonverbal child began practicing sounds and expressed a food desire within the first week.

Suramin works by blocking cell receptors to ATP, helping reset the prolonged cell danger responses.

Scott Marsland, a nurse practitioner, has found that wearable microcurrent devices have been helpful in treating fatigue in long COVID and vaccine-injury patients. This may be a sign the mitochondria are moving out of a persistent state in a specific phase.

“I find microcurrent to be really helpful for people who can’t get over that stage,” Dr. Shannon Bybee, a functional medicine physician from The Hansell Center for Functional Medicine, told The Epoch Times. She said she also tries to unblock trapped emotions such as anger and fear that manifest in certain tissues.

“As I’m [treating and] talking to the patient, I listen for key words; is there anger, is there fear, is their unwillingness to change?” Dr. Bybee said. “Surprisingly, the [emotions] are usually along the lines of the Chinese meridians, when we talk about anger being trapped in the liver and fear and anxiety being trapped in the stomach.”

Qi forms from food and air, resembling mitochondrial energy, Dr. Jingduan Yang, a psychiatrist and TCM practitioner, told The Epoch Times.

“In Chinese medicine, we’re told that a scar is a disruption in the flow of energy across a channel,” Anthony Fazio, who has a doctorate in acupuncture and Chinese medicine and is a licensed acupuncturist and TCM practitioner, told The Epoch Times. He said that by treating scars, he has seen rapid improvement in unexplained symptoms.

Mr. Fazio treated a patient with severe wrist surgery scarring who underwent a second operation requiring titanium plates and an implanted pain reliever. The patient had constant pain radiating from his wrist up to his neck and lower back and used the implant up to 10 times a day for relief. “So I started working on all the scars on a weekly basis,” Mr. Fazio said.

Some of these are vitamin D to calm inflammation and aid energy production, glutathione and sulforaphane extracted from broccoli seeds as antioxidants, and alpha-lipoic acid to reduce oxidation.

Although they don’t directly unblock pathways, these nutraceuticals provide nutritional support so mitochondria have what they need to recover when ready.

Children with neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric diseases due to the persistent mitochondrial dysfunction may see their symptoms reversed.

Source: Epoch Times

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