Have you nourished your mitochondria today? If you’re asking – mighty-what-now, it’s not surprising, they’re pretty tiny part of your body but taking care of these essential components of your body’s cells might be a major key to more energy, better sleep – and even slower aging.
To give you an idea of how tiny your mitochondria area, there are roughly 30 trillion cells in the human body and inside every one of them is thousands of mitochondria. They’re beyond minute! But when it comes to having a body that thrives, they punch above their weight. ‘The mitochondria are known as the powerhouses of the cell,’ explains cardiologist Dr Ross Walker, an expert in preventative medicine. ‘They help generate most of the chemical energy we need to perform vital, daily functions, such as breathing, regulating metabolism, and maintaining the immune system.
On top of this, they also play an important role in generating the chemicals your body requires to save and recycle waste as well as break down waste products, and this reduces levels of harmful free radicals associated with the inflammation that we now know is the cause of many modern diseases.’
This combination means that experts are now linking healthy mitochondrial function to better overall health. ‘If your mitochondria are not working at their best, tiredness and weakness can set in, and this may affect our heart health, energy production and even male fertility,’ says Dr Walker.
Mitochondrial function slows down with age – and it seems this plays a role in the slowing of our body that characterises aging. In fact, when, in a 2016 study, researchers at the UK’s Newcastle University managed to remove the mitochondria from old cells, the cells acted younger; they repaired quicker than before and produced lower levels of inflammatory chemicals and free radicals.
Keeping your mitochondria healthy might therefore help your body function more effectively now– and in the future.
The good news is, many of the things you’re probably already doing for your health make the mitochondria happy – they like exercise – particularly high intensity exercise – and they thrive on diets full of antioxidants – particularly resveratrol that’s found in purple foods like blueberries, red grapes and beetroot; this has been found to increase mitochondrial number in some early studies.
They even like a bit of self care – a ten-minute massage after a workout triggered the growth of new mitochondria more than just the workout alone found a study by Canada’s Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
However, one of the most essential supports for mitochondrial health might not be anything you’re currently adding to your current healthy regime – and that is the nutrient coenzyme Q10.
CoQ10, as you might also see it called, is an antioxidant that’s found naturally in the body, but that you can also take in from foods including oily fish, offal meats like liver and wholegrains. ‘However, when you reach the age of about thirty, the ability of your body to produce coenzyme Q10 starts to decline,’ says Dr Walker. ‘We also start to lose the ability to convert one form of CoQ10 – known as ubiquinone to the type that our body actually uses, called ubiquinol.’ One way to counteract this natural fall in function is to supplement with a product that already contains ubiquinol like L1FE CirQul8 by Jeunesse Global.
Dr Walker sees looking after your mitochondria as one of the pillars of creating a healthy well-functioning body. ‘Think of it like this,’ he suggests. ’It doesn’t matter what sort of flash car you are driving, if there is no energy in the car, it doesn’t move. It is the same for the cells in the body – you need to look after your powerhouse.’
