Mitotherapy Breakthrough: Supercharging Your Cells ⚡️| Science Corner with David Friedberg
203 segments
So mitochondria are the powerhouse of
the cell as Tim just told us, educated
us, right? So every cell has hundreds of
mitochondria and mitochondria are what
are called organels. They have their own
DNA. In fact, evolutionarily
mitochondria were bacteria that
basically ended up in the symbiotic
relationship with what became our cells.
So we each have mitochondria, hundreds
of them in each one of our cells. Each
mitochondria has its own nucleus and has
its own DNA. And the mitochondria make
the energy that the rest of the cell
uses. That energy is called ATP. And it
eats up glucose or it eats up ketones if
you're in ketosis. And it uses that to
make the ATP. So every cell in our body
gets its energy, which is what it uses
to function from the mitochondria. And
so there's been a lot of research into
the relationship between mitochondria
and aging and that dysfunctional
mitochondria as they start to break down
and stop working and have damage may
actually be a key driver for many
diseases that we experience as humans
including many cancers, Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's, ALS, features of autism,
muscle tissues being weak, etc. So as
the cells get older and the mitochondria
stop working, we make new mitochondria.
But over time, the DNA degrades and the
mitochondria become less effective and
there are fewer functional mitochondria
per cell. The cell stops working right
and eventually the organism stops
working, right? Have you have you
learned anything about the connection of
creatine to mitochondrial health? It's
part of um some of the processes, but
there's some separate research on this,
but it's definitely worth spending time
on. People are crazy about hitting five
grams or 10 grams of becoming like a
trend. Yeah, I think it's Oh, yeah. I
know. Five grams. Yeah, something like
that. It's trending on Twitter. I think
it's kind of like a meme or a joke in
addition to being I don't I don't think
it's a joke. Is it is it But it does it
is there any science that backs that up
or not really for mitochondria? There
are questions on this like do you want
to focus on things that are increasing
biogenesis which is creation of new
mitochondria? Does that create a better
benefit on the creatine work? I've read
some of these papers. I actually tried
it for a while. I personally had a
allergy to it which is kind of rare but
happens but anyway we can talk about it
further. So so one of the key things was
um there were three papers that I wanted
to just highlight that kind of follow an
interesting theme. The first one was
from 2023 from WashU in St. Louis and
this paper, Nick, if you could just pull
up that image
of mitochondria being transferred. These
folks identified and demonstrated that
mitochondria can actually transfer from
one cell to another. So, if you've got a
cell that's got damaged or dysfunctional
mitochondria, they've identified three
mechanisms by which mitochondria can
move into a cell that needs more
mitochondria that are working and are
more functional. That's something that's
been theorized for a long time. People
have said, "Oh, well, we think
mitochondria transfer." But there wasn't
really evidence of this. So, as of two
years ago, these guys provided very good
evidence of mitochondria that we can now
put into cells. If it's floating around,
it can make its way into another cell
and as a result, it can rejuvenate or
provide energy to a dysfunctional cell
which might improve dysfunctional tissue
or improve disease. The second paper was
done um last month out of Columbia
University. And this was the first
mapping of the mitochondria in the human
brain. And so these folks created 703
tiny cubes of brain from a person that
passed away, a 54 year old donor. And
then they analyzed the mitochondria in
each of those cubes. And they used that
to make a map of mitochondria in the
brain. And what it showed was that
different parts of the brain, different
cells had different amounts of
mitochondria and different mitochondrial
function, which actually starts to
highlight how that difference in energy
production in different cells in
different parts of the brain may
actually cause some of the things like
memory loss or speech impairment or um
as we age, the fact that we end up
being, you know, kind of forgetful or
start to lose some of our capacity. that
the mitochondrial dysfunction in the
brain might actually be the key driver
of that aging um
symptomology. The third paper which just
came out came out of a team at Sha Jang
University in China. So what these guys
did which was really incredible is they
took stem cells. So stem cells that they
got out of human blood and they took
those stem cells and they figured out a
way to treat the stem cells that those
stem cells would start to make an excess
amount of mitochondria than they
normally would make. In fact they were
able to get those stem cells to make
854 times the number of mitochondria
that those cells would normally make.
And those mitochondria were on average
5.7 times more efficient at making
energy, ATP. So they created highly
energetic mitochondria and they made a
lot of them. And the idea that we can
put mitochondria into our body or into
tissue in our body to heal it or repair
it has been something that folks have
been trying to do research around for a
long time. But the limiting factor is
access to enough mitochondria. So this
mechanism that they developed where they
could take stem cells, make copies of
the stem cells, make lots of
mitochondria and then they isolate that
mitochondria and use it as a therapeutic
tool and they did it in cartilage that
was damaged and they were able to heal
that cartilage. So um this is a group
that does bone and and tissue repair
studies, but they applied the
mitochondria directly into the area
where there was damage to the bone and
the bone grew back and it actually
improved the healing in an incredible
way. So this this opens up the door to
this whole new therapeutic modality, a
new type of therapy called midotherapy
or mitochondrial therapy that based on
the series of papers that we're seeing
coming out recently, I believe could end
up becoming a really incredible um new
therapy that may ultimately lead to the
treatment for many diseases that we're
kind of dealing with right now. So, I
just wanted to kind of like this be uh
immediately applicable to say people
with sports injuries, you know,
meniscus, knees, ankles. You start to
think about those bones, spurs, chips
that basketball players, football
players go through. Would that this be
like the lowhanging fruit for this
technology? Yeah. I mean, what they did
this in and I think this was published
in a research magazine called Bone or
something. Bone and tissue or something.
Yeah. But they did I'll let my
subscription lapse. I got to thank for
reminding me. They did it in a in a
model a mouse model of osteoarthritis um
and it repaired this osteoarthritis. But
that's exactly right. And so that's
tissue where you can using a microscope
you can actually see the healing
happening. But you could see this being
applied for example uh to cerebral
spinal fluid where you can basically
increase the mitochondrial the energetic
mitochondrial production uh that finds
its way into maybe neuronal cells into
neurons in your brain and improves um uh
your brain function. or you could put it
into damaged hearts after heart attacks
and improve heart function. So there's
all these theories about how you could
use mootherapy as this becomes possible
to now produce lots of mitochondria and
use it as a therapy that can then be
applied to lots of disease states. So I
I I I think there's going to be a bit of
a blossoming of research in this area of
mitotherapy.
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