When was the last time you thought about your mitochondria? It wouldn’t be surprising if it was 7th grade biology where you learned they are the “batteries” of your cells that provide energy for your body.
But what if I told you that the health of your mitochondria is crucial not only for your longevity, but for the proper function of your brain as you age?
It seems like something we should understand and know how to take care of, doesn’t it?
And yet you may never have had a conversation about it, especially with your doctor. You may talk about cholesterol and blood pressure even with your friends, but what about your cellular health?
Actually, you have had those conversations. You might be talking about having less physical energy, forgetting why you walked into a room, the signs of aging on your face, your graying hair, or any number of things associated with aging.
What we think of as aging is the gradual “rusting” of our cells. That “rusting” is called oxidative stress. It causes dysfunction in our mitochondria as we age. While some of that is natural, it’s common in my work to see oxidative stress scores in someone in their early 70s that correlate with a person in their late 90s. Those people are suprised and alarmed, but there’s good news.
Even with accelerated aging, what goes up can come down. Not to the level of your youth, but when oxidative stress levels start coming down, and mitochondria start functioning better, people start feeling better and cognition often improves.
Left unchecked, could accelerated aging eventually lead to a diagnosis of MCI and eventually Alzheimer’s? Yes, in some people it does—oxidative stress and inflamation are tightly linked and known to be drivers of Alzheimer’s disease. The mitochondrial dysfunction goes along with it.
Interestingly, a 2021 clinical trial demonstrated that targeting a specific part of the mitochondria in mice blocked neurodegeneration and protected against Alzheimer’s disease. The result: key symptoms of Alzheimer’s improved, such as brain cells communicating with each other and creating the synaptic activity necessary for forming memories.
While this mouse study offers important implications, you have to remember that if you give a mouse Alzheimer’s for an experiment –– we call that mouseheimers –– you know what caused it. The researcher intentionally impaired the mitochondria. That means the researcher caused the mitochondrial dysfunction. That makes it easy to reverse.
In humans it is more complicated. You have to find out what’s causing the mitochondrial dysfunction.
While they may be able to come up with a drug to improve this specific aspect of mitochondrial dysfunction, what happens if you don’t control what’s causing it in the first place? This is what the ReCODE protocol consistently comes back to and why it has worked for so many people.
The Good News Beyond the Drug Pipeline
In this trial, cell-to-cell communication in the brain improved, energy production increased, and neurodegeneration was blocked by reducing oxidative stress and inflammation—the major contributors to brain cell death in Alzheimer’s. Importantly, what this research does is validate a foundational truth:
Supporting the health of your mitochondria is an essential component of protecting and restoring cognitive function.
Alzheimer’s is a decades-long progressive network insufficiency. Because it develops slowly, symptoms appear much later in the disease process. However, you have a substantial window of time to influence the trajectory of your brain health if you make cellular health a priority.
Hidden Threats to Your Cellular Health
Alzheimer’s doesn’t have a single cause. Specific functional lab testing can uncover the underlying disruptors that include:
High levels of mycotoxins, metals or environmental exposures that are neurotoxic
Inflammatory markers consistent with Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS), the underlying driver of Inhalational Alzheimer’s.
Blood-brain barrier disruption and intestinal permeability (”leaky gut”)
Early insulin resistance (with blood sugar still in “normal” range), elevated homocysteine, various infections and many other things.
You also can identify some of these threats on your own, in your environment and lifestyle, and take steps to reduce or avoid them.
The right lifestyle adjustments combined with targeted cellular support can address many of these root causes, optimizing both brain and body wellness. In the rest of this post, we're moving on to the the steps you can take and targeted support you can use to start improving your mitochondrial health