 So, what are mitochondria? Mitochondria are known as the energy-producing organelles that live in almost all the cells in your body. With a couple of exceptions, there'll be a test at the end of all this. No, there won't. But if you want to ace the test, red blood cells don't have any mitochondria. So mitochondria are fascinating. Many, many years ago. We think about two billion years ago, ancient bacteria were eaten or engulfed by other cells. And rather than, if you will, being eaten alive, that bacteria thought it was a pretty nice place inside this other cell and in exchange for nutrients from that other cell, the bacteria made energy for that cell in the form of ATP, adenosine triphosphate. And that's the energy currency that you spend every day to power everything that goes on in you. Without ATP, I got news for you, you're dead. And without mitochondria functioning right, you're either dead or all of the things that we think is just a process of getting old, like our energy level slowing down, our thinking slowing down, can all be traced back to your mitochondria and how well they function. The second important point is that your mitochondria, because they actually are ancient bacteria, are viewed by your immune system as ancient bacteria. And if the cell dies or mitochondria are actually spit out of the cell for not doing work properly, your immune system can think you're literally infected by bacteria, even though they're your own mitochondria. So it's really important to realize their ancient origins. Now what's really interesting about mitochondria is that they have their own DNA and they can divide separate than when the cell divides. We all remember cell division where all the chromosomes separated and then came back together and you made two cells from one. Well the mitochondria can do that inside the cell. So for instance, let's suppose there's 100 mitochondria in a cell and believe it or not, there can be thousands in muscle cells. There can be thousands in your heart muscle cells. There can be thousands in a neuron. You can actually make several hundred more, several thousand more using the tricks that we're going to talk about in this master class. And that's one of the real keys to getting you more energy. Because quite frankly, the more mitochondria you make, the more energy you make. And believe it or not, the better functioning your mitochondria will be. So that's why bottom line, taking care of your mitochondria is job number one. And there's lots of ways of taking care of mitochondria. But I first want to start about why we have not been taking care of mitochondria. Mitochondria essentially are a system with inner and outer membranes. And in between this inner and outer membrane exists what's called the electron transport chain. And there's an old joke in science that the only purpose of life is to move an electron from one level of charge to another. And interestingly enough, that actually probably is correct. In this electron transport chain, and remember in the book we talk about electrons and protons. And hopefully everybody remembers high school biology where protons are positively charged particles and electrons are negatively charged particles. And batteries have a positive end, have a negative end. And electricity, energy moves from one charge to the next charge. And in the process of the electron transport chain, electrons are moved along the mitochondria. And kind of like a game of hot potato, where it's tossed from one carrier to another. And in the process, protons, which are contributed, believe it or not, by the food you eat, are also bouncing around inside this chamber. And the protons are desperately trying to get out. And the way this chamber is designed is there's essentially only one place for the proton to get out. And that's at the final end of this chamber. And the protons, which are bouncing around, they're trying to get out, they're pushing on the walls, get me out of here, they see an exit. And when they go through this exit, it's actually a turn style, it's a revolving door. And as they go through this exit, and almost down a winding staircase, just like water powers a water wheel in a mill, you generate ATP from those protons escaping this chamber. And that's actually what a mitochondria does for you. Now here's the problem. Mitochondria can get the substrates for doing all this from essentially three macronutrients. They can get it from carbohydrates, which are sugars. They can get it from proteins. And they can get it from fats. Now each of these has a slightly different way that it enters the electron transport chain. And it has a slightly different method of producing energy. Now what's fascinating, if you think about it, is we're actually a beautiful design to deliver these energy making components to mitochondria at different times, rather than crowding in all at once. So most of the time when we eat a whole food meal, in general carbohydrates, let's just call them sugars, are absorbed first. And they're taken to your mitochondria as primarily glucose, and there they're converted into ATP. Okay, so far so good. Proteins take a much longer time to digest and to be broken down into individual amino acids, which are then absorbed and can either be used for building cell walls, building muscle, repairing tissues, or if you've got an excess, they too can enter into energy production into your mitochondria. So they would come in general after the sugar has been down the electron transport chain. Then there's fat. Most fat is actually not absorbed directly into your bloodstream, unlike proteins and unlike sugars. Let's hop on a big fluffy moving van called Kylo-microns. And this fluffy moving van doesn't enter the bloodstream, but instead enters the lymphatic system. And most of us have heard about the lymph system. The lymph system picks up fats from your gut. In fact, if you were to eat a fatty meal and I was in your chest, I could actually watch this fatty meal coming up from your gut in some very big lymph channels, some of which can be as big as my little finger, and enter your vena cava, your superior vena cava, or your in nominate vein and dump into your bloodstream. And that actually takes a while. So fat in general arrives much later for processing to make energy, or if all of your energy needs have been met by sugar and protein, then fat is directly taken to your fat cells and deposited as fat. So in general, the way you were designed is the mitochondria should really only have to worry about one energy substrate at a time. But what's happened in our modern diet through the use of ultra-processed foods, processed foods, turning something that was whole? Let's use an example like cassava. So cassava, if you sat around and ate it as a cooked root, I can guarantee you that that simple starch would take a remarkable long time to be digested and arrive as sugar at your mitochondria. But if you take something as wonderful, say, as cassava, and make it into a fine powder, you will digest that starch instantaneously, and it will arrive quicker than you could possibly imagine to your mitochondria. The same thing has happened with grains. Back when people actually ate grains whole, it took a significant amount of time to break down all the walls in that grain to get to the starch. Now when we grind even wheat into a white powder, that powder becomes sugar in your bloodstream faster than if you actually ate table sugar, which takes actually longer to digest than white flour. Anything that we make more quickly digestible is heading right for your mitochondria. So imagine what happens when you take proteins and break them all apart and make protein isolates, amino acid peptides, sugars that are now in powdered form, and you emulsify fats so that they're picked up simultaneously. Now you have all three components arriving at your mitochondria for processing simultaneously. And living in the LA area, that is rush hour on the freeways. And as you know, during rush hour, things traffic flow comes to a stop or barely moves. And people get angry and there's road rage. Well the same thing happens with your mitochondria. And your mitochondria literally sputter to a stop or the mitochondria says, this is ridiculous. I can't handle all this traffic. I've got to put some stops into place to stop myself from being armed. So think of those as on ramps to the freeway with stop lights. And we only let a certain number of cars into the freeway at a certain time. Your mitochondria are so elegant that they've designed systems to prevent you from overpowering them. And sadly, those systems are a series of fat molecules that are called ceramides. Many of you may have heard of ceramides because there are a number of cosmetic products with ceramides they're used to plump the skin. And ceramides actually thicken cell walls. So one of the mitochondrial defenses is to make ceramides on cells, particularly fat cells, to number one, try to keep sugar and protein from even coming in. But number two, the fat cells keep getting fatter and fatter. And believe it or not, fat cells can burst. And if they burst, that actually produces inflammation. So the fat cell to try to hold things in is actually producing ceramides to toughen things up. There's a beautiful paper that I refer to in the energy paradox called Death by Ceramides. And sadly, if you look at people with high levels of ceramides, it correlates extremely well with dementia, with Alzheimer's, with heart disease, with diabetes. Now, where do ceramides come from? Well, again, they're manufactured from certain fats. And the main fat that makes ceramides is called palmitate, palmitic acid. Now you hear the word palm, and palm oil is a source of palmitic acid. But you manufacture most of your palmitate from, get ready for this, fructose, fruit sugar. Palmitate is manufactured in your liver from fructose. And it's got a fancy name called de novo lipogenesis. And it turns out that your liver, if it's inundated with fructose, will turn it into fat. No, I'm not making this up. Fructose in your liver makes fat. It makes palmitate. It's taken to cells, particularly fat cells, where it's made into these waxy compounds called ceramides. And the more ceramides you have, the worse your mitochondria are going to work. The worse your brain is going to work. The worse your heart is going to work. And there's no reason that that paper isn't called death by ceramides. So that's one of the reasons I've told you to increase your energy levels. Number one, give fruit the boot. And secondly, we've got to stop constantly inundating our mitochondria with all three energy substrates simultaneously. I want you to think about that. I want you to think of Russia, or I want you to think of a traffic jam, and think that every time you eat things that are easier to digest or are predigested, you are slamming your poor energy-making factories of mitochondria with more than they can handle. And they'll protect themselves from you by making ceramides that will do you in inadvertently.