 Well, thank you for joining me back in 2011 when Grace and I first presented at the ancestral health symposium We brought up the idea of the micro biome the fact that inside of our guts we have anywhere from What is it 10 to 100 trillion bacteria living there estimates are fluctuating But we can dig deeper and say not only inside of our guts Do we have a micro biome but actually inside of our cells we have one as well And that's what we're gonna talk about today So what are we going to talk about? We're gonna talk about aliens, right? We are sending spacecraft Voyager has passed beyond our solar system last year and NASA and maybe Elon Musk is sending people out into the universe and what are we likely to Encounter we're gonna ask the question. Why are bacteria not the size of basketballs? Why are they so small? We're gonna of course talk about mitochondria, which is the subject of today's talk And we're gonna cover more Alright, this is me. I look a little bit different. Hi. I'm a naturopathic doctor here in Seattle Redmond we deal with gut problems autoimmune diseases and hard to treat cases and it's those hard to treat cases that are constantly pushing us to discover and learn more and Facing the micro biome and now the mitochondria are additional pieces that we need to tackle All right, so Dan party kind of beat me to this a little bit But I'm gonna try and encapsulate life on earth in just one slide So let's see if we can do it. Yes about 13 8.8 billion years ago the universe began So we believe about 4.5 billion years ago this ball of dirt that we are on now formed Come on you Somewhere between 4.3 and 3 billion years ago life began So it first was thought that they were what is called chemo autotrophic They got their energy from high energy Particles sulfur compounds and various things in the environment They life then went on to begin to utilize sugar in terms of the glycolytic pathways and about 3 billion years ago cyanobacteria or the first true photosynthetic life Evolved now we're gonna skip the magic moment for a minute. We'll come back to it But about 800 to 600 million years ago Multicellular life began so basically everything that we are able to see without a microscope 68 million years ago. We had t-rex 62 million years ago we had terror birds and Somewhere between two and three hundred thousand years ago modern humans made our debut on this stage So what happened between three billion years ago and 800 million years ago is the central Peace of what we're talking about today and that magic is known as endosymbiosis So symbiosis means the peaceful or coexisting living together what we do with most of our gut bacteria endo means inside of So in what's considered maybe the second rarest event to have occurred on planet Earth after the appearance of life itself About 1.8 billion years ago one life form swallowed up another life form And instead of one or both of them dying they decided that this seemed like a pretty good idea right and All of us that are present and all life that we can see are descended from this particular event Now it then went on to happen a second time And if there are any plants that are listening to this lecture you are all the descendants of that second endosymbiotic event Now if we encounter aliens We are most likely not going to encounter our friendly fun-loving Xenomorphs that like to burst out of people's chests most Alien life is probably going to be more of the bacterial Type because that endosymbiotic event is considered so astoundingly rare All right, so life on earth in one slide Thank you. All right So This endosymbiosis both life forms right the original cell and the swallowed cell Which we think is related to the rickettsia species or genus of Bacteria decided that they were better off and happier working together than they were separately, so All almost all of the cells in our body have mitochondria in them the sole exception that we're aware of our red Blood cells red blood cells do not have any mitochondria because they are charged with carrying oxygen around the body and mitochondria burn oxygen So it would be kind of redundant if the very things that were carrying oxygen around your body used it all up Now on the other extreme your liver cells have around 2,000 mitochondria per cell So again if we want to do the math and we say we have like 10 trillion Bacteria in our guts. I haven't done the math somebody else can do it We have you know between zero and two thousand of them inside every single one of the cells of our body Now what do mitochondria do? So the may their main but not exclusive function is going to be the production of energy With mitochondria we can produce about 13 times more energy than without them So people ask the question like why do we breathe? Why do we need oxygen? Fundamentally without oxygen mitochondria cannot function you cannot produce that 13 times more energy And in fact you cannot produce enough energy to keep the cells of your body alive And that is why we breathe and that is why we need oxygen Now that brings us to the question of why are bacteria not the size of basketballs? Setting aside some physics problems with size and cell membranes and volumes and such Fundamentally bacteria are so small because without mitochondria. They cannot produce enough energy to make themselves larger So you can thank mitochondria for the fact that you without a microscope can see anything at all Alright mitochondria however do far more than just produce energy while it is a major function They are involved with death signaling so they tell cells when they should die of course with cancer We know that many of those processes are in fact messed up They also are involved in a lot of cell signaling one key aspect that we focus on a lot here in ancestral health is Insulin and insulin resistance So insulin resistance largely is due to signals that are coming from the mitochondria Now Chris master John has given some very nice Lectures and podcasts talking about this topic But I wanted to mention that in general. I don't really believe in pathology I think most of what we see is really adaptive Physiology so trees are at their best when they are straight The tree that you can see that is leaning over in the background there is doomed to a shorter and less Successful life than the trees that you see in the foreground that are standing up straight So we could argue that that tree is pathological Because it will not live as long or as well as the trees in the foreground Or we could look at it and say that that tree has adapted to its situation and is trying to make the best of things So while in this picture. It doesn't look like it. We could argue that if in fact growing up straight Or that tree meant that it couldn't get sunlight Then it was faced with the option of making an adaptive choice That would in the long run do met or not even being able to live in the first place So when we look at insulin resistance for the most part We are looking at the mitochondria telling the system that they are Overloaded with nutrition and cannot continue to uptake and burn more fuel without causing irreparable Damage to themselves. So the very reactive oxygen species that can kill off mitochondria are necessary Signaling factors that tell them what to do. We need some reactive oxygen species But when we get too many problems arise right Other things that mitochondria do they produce steroid cholesterol and therefore the steroids and steroid hormones that we all like so very much Now there are a whole host of genetic mitochondrial diseases as you may or may not know mitochondria are the only known Orgonel or little piece of a cell that has its own separate DNA aside from the nucleus of the cell Now in the 1.8 billion years since this event happened they have actually offloaded the majority of their DNA over to the nucleus and mammalian mitochondria typically only have about 37 genes left But they do have critically important DNA Largely this comes from the mother so moms out there unfortunately mitochondrial issues are on you guys Although some data suggests that possibly some of the paternal or father's DNA in terms of mitochondria might come through As well, so we're not really going to spend any time on these There's not much currently that we can do about them But we're going to focus a little bit more on the interplay between what are thought to be a combination of genetic and environmental diseases that affect mitochondria and this list is far more relevant to what most people are facing So we see everything from autism and Parkinson's disease up there schizophrenia Which we just had a lecture on Dementia's and Alzheimer's diseases epilepsy's strokes cardiovascular disease Diabetes chronic fatigue syndrome as well. So a genetic weakness in mitochondria combined with environmentally disruptive factor Equals bad news for a lot of people that I see Alright, let's talk about the care and feeding of our mitochondria now It's important when we zoom down to this level We're looking at the leaves or even the part of leaves when we talk about mitochondria But we don't get lost there and we actually zoom back to the trees and the forest and put this in context Because as someone said yesterday people don't eat for their mitochondria Right, they eat for a whole variety of reasons and a lot of their life other facets of their lifestyle as well So I know I'm preaching to the choir here But just this will go out to the internet in case someone has not heard of ancestral Precepts or maybe a hundred years from now if they're dodging Terminators and you know they get a chance to log into the internet. They'll go whoa So we know that environmental mismatches in the There we go cool In the way that we eat in the way that we move or do not move in the way that we sleep or do not sleep in The way that we handle our chronic stress loads Which I believe are a really major factor and a lot of what's going on for us in our social connections Networks we also know that the mismatches in our microbiome in our genetics in our epigenetics and in our toxic and environmental Exposures that we get if we take all of these factors I firmly believe aside from some of those genetic pieces that we mentioned before We're looking at the vast majority of disease that is out there so Having laid that found that foundation we could talk about taking care of your mitochondria We can break it down to nutrition and exercise hormonal balance and toxicity and testing can be done if it's needed or desired so Mitochondria Respond to energy demands that are put upon them We know that cells have from zero to two thousand of them and they are constantly in flux We are losing and gaining mitochondria just like we can imagine the cell itself divides and replicates mitochondria have that same capacity so Exercise truly of any variety, but exercise or increased energy demand on the system The mitochondria will respond by not only up regulating themselves, but by creating more of them a Good nutritious whole foods diet We can argue ad nauseam about carbs and protein and fats, but we need a good quality nutritious diet to supply the foundational nutrients that mitochondria need and here are some of them So as we've said mitochondria produce a lot of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species. These are little Dangerous molecules or they can be if we don't have adequate what's called exogenous from the outside or endogenous produced on the inside antioxidants to take care of Those reactive oxygen species be vitamins Ben Lynch If you were here for his talk talked about the importance of folate and many of the other be vitamins in running What's known as the citric acid cycle or the Krebs cycle? Magnesium is a key mineral carnitine or acetyl L carnitine alphalopoic acid Coenzyme Q10 we're going to talk a little bit more about that one in a moment ribose phosphatidylcholine and Others are all important again a nutritious nutrient-dense whole foods diet should supply many of these things We know for example coq 10 which should be produced internally Is really best available in organ meats especially heart which a lot of people are not eating Hormonal balance is a critical piece of taking care of your mitochondria So anybody out there with thyroid issues or thinking about thyroid how actually we know that thyroid Causes us to have energy and metabolism. How does it do that one of the key ways is the t3? Hormone actually penetrates the cell and activates at the level of the mitochondria So when we talk about good thyroid function, we know that a key piece Is that we are taking care of our mitochondria and without good hormonal function without sufficient thyroid function in this case We can supply everything else that our mitochondria need and not that much is going to happen Now mitochondria are also very very sensitive to estrogen levels as well They have estrogen receptors which stimulate a whole host of different functions And we know unfortunately that problems in and around estrogen and the amount of xeno Estrogens and other things that we have on our in our environments our major factors and a piece of what's going on alright, I Wanted to talk about three common toxins that we all are either exposed to or at least know someone who is exposed to That can hurt your mitochondria The first is Tylenol, right? Now Tylenol is not deadly dangerous and if you happen to touch the box you'll keel over and die or anything, okay? However, most people do not recognize that it is a potentially problematic substance even more so the Most people can give too much to children as well Now there's whole debates about the fact that children are not equivalent to adults just scaled down in size as far as their different body Systems and pieces work and there's some real debate in the community about whether dosing for things like Tylenol and kids is actually You know you're giving them too much now We certainly know people with chronic pain issues can tend to take Tylenol like m&m's or other types of candy Right, we know some cases of football players for example who've overdosed on the use of Tylenol now What acetaminophen does? Again, it is the most common cause of acute liver failure in the United States now acetaminophen Causes this cascade where cellular glutathione becomes depleted it that leaves mitochondrial oxidative and nitrosidic stress Unbuffered so the my the glutathione that should stop or control that stress is no longer able to do it That's going to then trigger the release of apoptosis inducing factor remember we talked about that mitochondria control the death signals for the cell and then that's going to cause Nuclear DNA fragmentation which as you could imagine does not sound like a very good thing Okay, so high amounts of acetaminophen Deplete cellular glutathione. Where do we know that the most? mitochondria are in the body thousand mitochondria per liver cell approximately so the liver gets the brunt of it Unable to quench the oxidative and nitrosidic stress sends out the death signal and you have liver cells die and people go into acute liver failure All right, so acetaminophen can be used safely of course being a naturopath I think there are many other and better options for people But it can be used safely But we want to respect dosages and we want to be doubly careful with our children and watching their doses now I love the outdoors too. I suppose we all just need to take lipitor. This is a Canadian Lipitor ad that was out there So statins yes our favorite punching bag from the conventional medical community But we look at statins and we find you know mixed results right in cell cultures They find that statins are going to promote mitochondrial permeability, which is not a good thing They're going to again generate that apototic proteins, so they're going to start the death signaling We're going to find that they stop or reduce Coq10 production, which is going to interfere with the efficient functioning of mitochondria Human studies are going to yield conflicting results for people and it is again thought that genetics are going to play a role if someone is more Sensitive or has you know genetic weaknesses in these areas. They're going to be more susceptible Receptible we see that the incidence of what's called statin induced Myotoxicity myo means muscle so statin induced muscle toxicity Presents in between seven and about 30% of patients who are given statins We know that many times conventional doctors ignore these things people will come in complaining of them Especially if they're not really significant, but again in studies. We see that they present with mitochondrial damage You know reduced production of ATP, which is how we power our bodies increases in those reactive oxidative reactive oxygen species and The activation of apoptosis or death proteolysis the breaking down of protein muscle remodeling It's why we see fatigue and cramps and muscle pains and elevated enzymes suggestive of muscle Damage right so but roughly between 10 and 30 percent and of course dose scales So the higher dose statins you are someone is on the more likely they are to have these problems Alright now Interestingly, we've found that there is a correlation between statins and type 2 diabetes So why right what this suggests is that we see a reduction in insulin secretion And we found the same thing a torvastatin which is the The generic name for Lipitor again the same thing found an increased reactive ox oxygen species Collapse the the mitochondrial membrane potential Cause apoptosis signaling to occur and what's important is this was shown in the pancreas Right so if you have your mitochondria sending death signaling in your pancreas Which produces your insulin levels and you see your insulin levels falling? It's not really that big of a stretch to suggest that you are poisoning and killing off some of your pancreas All right The third toxin that can hurt your mitochondria and this is interesting so our good friend roundup All right, so what we see again and again a collapse of the electrical potential more Permabilization meaning the mitochondria can't work well now. This is the key interesting point Roundup and glyphosate are not the same thing Glyphosate is in roundup, but they are not the same thing Glyphosate which is considered the active ingredient of roundup alone Doesn't seem to affect the ability of the mitochondrial mitochondria to make energy But roundup does Okay, so we see here that mixtures of glyphosate and what it's called TN 20 which is a surfactant to help spread out and disperse the glyphosate That was a problem right TN 20 seems to disrupt the integrity of the cellular Barrier in other words it seems that mitochondria by themselves can prevent glyphosate from getting inside of them but you put in these surfactants which Which basically destroy the ability of the mitochondria to keep glyphosate out and now you have a problem Right, so three common toxins we are all exposed to glyphosate directly or indirectly we all have or will take things like acetaminophen and we all will probably be offered the opportunity to take statin drugs as well All right, so when we talk about detoxification just very briefly, right? We have what goes in what comes out and what stays inside and the difference in that is really up to the how well we can Biotransform or detoxify many of these substances and clear them from our bodies Now in a very condensed way we can obviously limit our exposure none of us need to take acetaminophen There are other and better choices We can refuse statins unless it absolutely makes sense for us And you know we can choose an organic diet and do our very best to reduce our exposure now again a Nutrient-dense diet with sufficient protein because protein is necessary in order to do a lot of the steps of Detoxification and this is where you know I very much disagree with many of our vegan and vegetarian Colleagues who feel yes, they are getting sufficient protein in some ways We are exposed to a toxic load that is unprecedented for our species or the world And so we need to make sure we have enough protein You can see Chris master John's talk yesterday for more about high protein diets Crucifers things like broccoli Cauliflower kale Alliums things like garlic and onions are all big superstars You must drink enough water if it is makes sense you can use supplemental nutrients in various herbs You must be peeing and pooping regularly you can talk to Grace about pooping. She loves talking about pooping And I've gone on a number of times about what is today a design flaw in our system known as enteropathic recirculation where You know we can sort of shoot shoot ourselves in the foot and in the interest of time I will move on now you can test for mitochondrial function Grace has talked about this other doctors have talked about this These are pieces of an organic acid test that look at key metabolites in Mitochondrial function as you can see for this individual Most of these metabolites are either normal or running on the low end We can see in another example most of these metabolites and this was a patient with chronic fatigue syndrome We're all running on the high end. They were not processing or running their their their Krebs cycle Effectively again, we can look for various things. This is to go glycine another marker That can look this person that was all very reasonable But testing can be done. Is this something you must run out and do of course it is not But if you have or suspect you have some issues there are tests that can be done Please just don't ask most MDs to do this Unfortunately, they don't know these things exist right now and we're hoping to change that Right one last piece that has caught my interest lately is what is known as photobiomodulation It has a cool name and it involves lasers, which are like awesome, right? So anything with lasers has to be like really cool So as you can see by its name modulation Biomodulation would be anything that you're changing a biologic system photo means light So while most people have never heard about it here In fact, I didn't even know about it until a little way is back It is gotten a lot of study worldwide and we see that what are called low-level laser Therapies have been shown to stimulate healing relieve pain and reduce inflammation now What makes this relevant to this talk is that they seem to do that through the mitochondria The use of infrared or laser lights seems to directly stimulate what is known as cytochrome C Oxidase a key component of the mitochondria and it leads to increases in ATP What mitochondria do for us and it activates a wide range of transcription factors? So we see cell surviving we see them growing This has been shown to be tremendously useful in anything affecting the brain Abdominal fat wounds lungs and spinal cords. So my opinion Anybody who's working with patients with burn issues anybody's who's working with patients with neurologic issues, you know These are not lasers that cut or burn These are low-level lasers and the worst thing that happens is mostly nothing So I have not done a lot with this, but it is certainly something that has piqued my interest And I do not think that like a laser pointer will get you the the effect that you need all right, so We have come to the end of our talk today about mitochondria You can go deeply into the leaves if you will looking at the different biochemical pathways and Chris master John Probably dreams about things like that But for most of us it comes down to fundamentals about the care and feeding of our mitochondria Which mostly coincide with the care and feeding of a healthy human body All of the things that we talk about in ancestral health are directly relevant to keeping healthy mitochondria and If you do those things and you find that you weren't your health is not where you want it to be Please know that there are other aspects to delve into there are other tests that can be done There are things Everyone out there, so I urge anyone who is sick or has problems. Please do not give up Please don't think that there is no hope for you. There is much that can be done for people. All right, if anyone is interested I can take some questions now Yeah, just a question about Protein levels and you referred to sort of the adequate amount taking enough and I wasn't at that talk yesterday But it seems to be a bit of a moving targets in terms of what the right amount is and sure and Marxist and recently in His revised book Reference at the amount might be lower than previously thought about a half a gram per pound of lean body mass What are your thoughts on that? Well, the thing is, you know depending on where you look you can Abstract in there. It's a complicated question obviously and you can see that no one You know has the answer or if someone has the answer you might want to be a bit skeptical of them, right? So it depends a little bit We know that in order in what I was referencing in order to detoxify We need to have sufficient levels of various amino acids that are necessary to run those pathways Right, we know that the body is going to have a pool of amino acids and it's going to have to Allocate them to various things so one of the arguments we can make is what is the state of the person? For example, we can take an extreme state to go back to someone with a burn injury Their protein intake needs to be extremely high because they're going to be trying to synthesize new skin new connective tissue And all these different processes that are going on for them Someone on the other end of the spectrum who's not particularly physically active not under a lot of stress not doing a lot Their protein needs are going to be Significantly lower so while I can't speak to you in terms of well should it be point five or point eight or one point two or one Point five what I can argue is that most people in our community get adequate levels of protein But a lot of people out there in the larger The larger audience we're see their scrape in my opinion. They're scraping by with you know suboptimal levels of protein Thank you. Yeah Great talk Tim. Thanks. I expected no less for me Pressure maybe I missed it, but what was the name of that mitochondrial test that you I'm sorry just just in general General. Yeah, the organic ass there that I can give you some specifics Keith But there there are a number of companies that run what are called organic acid Testing most of those tests will include sections for mitochondria Thank you. Cool. Yeah Anything else or did I dazzle everyone's into silence? Are you desperate for lunch? I? Have one more question sure the photo biomodulation. Yeah, I guess this is two-part question one How would you go about? Are there like practitioners who are certified in it or how would you find someone? Yeah, I mean that's part of my homework that I've been looking into who actually knows what they're talking about And I can share some more specifics with you Later if we want but basically I've been looking at who's been practicing and doing this for a long time and It seems to be you need the right equipment and you need the right protocols. It's just not enough to Grab a laser pointer and just start like waving it all over your body basically So there seem to be some people who know what they're talking about and I've been trying to track them down and figure out What's involved and then secondly do you know how long it takes to see those reductions and inflammation like yeah My understanding is that it can happen very quickly like general Protocols seem to be you're exposed to the lights for about 20 to 30 minutes And it seems to be like you can get a really rapid response And most of the protocols seem to be doing between like 10 and depending on what's going on for someone 50 sessions of those And it seems to be That you get an immediate effect and then you know as the system is able to reduce Inflammation and heal itself that those effects continue on for people and certainly And talking to some people with traumatic brain injuries and other issues They their experiences seem to be that things improve dramatically and then they might still continue Doing top-up sessions once in a while. So it's a really interesting. They're really interesting therapies to me Yeah, absolutely anything else All right, folks. Thank you