83: Your Mitochondria Are Failing You – The Hidden Cause of Fatigue & Chronic Disease with Dr. Christian Jenski

The textbook of pharmacology interactions. In that book, 30% of drugs are mitochondrial toxicants. So just playing the odds, if you're on three drugs, you're on at least one mitochondrial toxicant. So you're on a statin and for your cholesterol and a proton pump inhibitor for your reflux. And, oh, by the way, I get this skin infection. They someone puts me on Cipro and now, oh, my gosh, I tear my tendon. You were on the trifecta of three very potent mitochondrial toxicants. All right, welcome back once again. And we are covering, finishing up our conversation about metabolic syndrome and the associated illnesses. And today we're going to talk briefly about mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondria, because ultimately they are the powerhouse of the cell. We're learning that aging is a mitochondrial dysfunction issue. Are the root cause. What's the one thing? What's the one. The ring that, you know, controls them all. The one thing, The Occam's razor, the thing that connects all the dots and in many ways, mitochondrial dysfunction is. So maybe briefly, Dr. Jensky, talk about, is this possible? Like, how can one thing. Tell me, I don't believe you.

How very dramatic.

I'm sorry, I don't believe you. How is this possible?

It's not only possible, but it's absolutely true. And it's happening all day, every day, in many people and definitely all of our patients. So the mitochondria that we once upon a time were taught and many people still believe, or the power plant of the cell. This is true. It's an ancient bacteria that was basically about to get killed and said, let's cut a deal, gets incorporated into the cell structure as an organelle that now functions to help us. And basically, without mitochondria, we're not breathing. So they make energy. Yes, but it goes so far beyond that. And ultimately what they're doing is balancing our redox poise. So are we oxidative or are we balancing our antioxidative status? Are we able to use an oxidative burst to attack an infection that we need? What is the state of our immune system? Is it balanced or not? Are we inflamed or not? What's our neurotransmitter status? Are our hormones doing what they're supposed to do? I mean, it's literally doing all those things and serving the purpose of making energy. And the canary in the coal mine, sensing both internally and externally what's going on and what it needs to do for us to really, truly function appropriately. So when you look at it through that lens of the breadth of what it does beyond just make energy, then what can contribute to mitochondrial dysfunction? What are the root causes as well? Undernourishment, overnourishment, being overfed. The one that nobody really talks about, like, we're in a state. Yes. There are food deserts in this country and around the world, we are overfed. And that is a problem. Micronutrient deficiencies, things like CoQ10 and B vitamins, MAG and carnitine, oxidative stress and poor reactive oxygen species clearance, gut dysbiosis and environmental toxins, lack of hormetic strasamine. Dive into some of these. Dive into, like the environmental toxin ones. What are some of the ones that are big. Include into that category medications that are mitochondrial toxicants. I mean, talk about some of these things and how you see them.

You know, going back to that question, how's this possible? You know, one of the big catchphrases these days has been senescent cells.

Yeah.

And then the cell danger response.

Yep.

And both of those are mitochondrial issues. The senescent cells, or zombie cells that can turn into cancer cells are cells that become dysfunctional energy production and become these inflammatory cells that don't work quite well. The cell danger response, by definition, you're getting stuck. Like, the cell cycle gets stuck, which ultimately what determines when the cells die, when cells get recycled, they take their body parts and share them. They basically deconstruct. Hey, I got this ribosome. I'm gonna give it to this cell here. Or if they're too bad off, they'll actually be attacked by immune system destroyed, the mitochondria kind of directing that. So anything that affects the mitochondria is going to be bad news. Yeah. As far as mitochondrial toxicants and drugs, this is something that I kind of. I don't like the word passion because passion implies emotions, but that's a big deal.

As emotional as you can be.

I'm passionate about it, you know, but it's like 30% the textbook of pharmacology interactions. And that book, I forget when I was reading this is a while ago. It's 30% of drugs are mitochondrial toxicants. So just playing the odds. If you're on three drugs, you're on at least one mitochondrial toxic. And so you're on a statin for your cholesterol and a proton pump inhibitor for your reflux. And, oh, by the way, I get the skin infection. They someone puts me on Cipro and now, oh, my gosh, I tear My tendon. You were on the trifecta of three very potent mitochondrial toxicants. One's over the counter drug. Yeah. And one's given out like candy and hopefully the sipper. We're not using that much anymore and people still use it. But it's something I learned in passing in medical school. It took me seeing people getting floxed and seeing people develop peripheral neuropathy from statins and seeing people on proton pulp inhibitors, you know, your Prosec Nexium protonics coming in for their cognitive decline evaluations. For me to be like, huh, yeah, I think this is real. You know, it's a big deal. It's overlooked 100 overlooked. Unfortunately, many in the functional medicine world don't have the clinical experience with the drugs. And so when their patients aren't, they're like, well, I don't know what to do with this. It's like, let's get you off of this. Let's fix the cholesterol so you can get off this. And if you get an infection, we have so many other antibiotics we can use. Let's just use something else.

That's such a great point. I never thought about it that way in the sense that we came from somewhere else and we came from conventional medicine in two different aspects, but used a lot of drugs because that was the standard of care and what was expected in those situations. And you in a primary care setting, probably as you were, your brain was evolving to be more functional medicine kind of related, saw it, most likely saw it and had a lot of like, aha, moments in the moment. Mine was anecdotal, like I think about in the ER and like these cases of where I was given certain drugs here and there that were absolutely indicated and potentially life saving. But then like, what was that doing to that person's mitochondria that might have created another problem or was exacerbating the problem that I temporarily fixed, you know. And so now having that pharmacological knowledge that you and I bring to the functional medicine landscape really allows for us to identify these things earlier and say, hey, you know what? Like metformin, like metformin has some data that shows it's a MIT mitochondrial toxicant. And we just talked about how it's prolongevity and it helps with pcos and it helps with weight loss and it helps reverse diabetes. And it's not. You gotta pick and choose your poison. And if mitochondrial dysfunction is at the root of all these things, it seems counterintuitive and counterproductive, but sometimes you have to play that card while doing other things to then maybe peel it back or use it intermittently in a cycling fashion because of the way that it activates sirtuin pathways or cyclic A and P. But like the reality is that there's a lot of stuff out there that we're taking willy nilly that's dangerous and damaging to the mitochondria. What are some of the toxins that we see commonly?

I mean one of my other things I'm excited about, not passionate, excited about petroleum distillates and petroleum products.

Yeah.

So I feel like that's come to public consciousness in the last several months with our current political state. People just didn't realize that these dyes, these blue dyes and yellow dyes, they're petroleum distillates. These natural colors, they're natural because they look natural. Yeah, they're. They're petroleum distillate byproducts. One of the big things with glyphosate aroundup which people talk about how bad it is. I remember listening to a lecture, it was a toxicologist talking about it and 93% inert ingredients. Petroleum distillates. Yeah. And so we talk about how bad the glyphosate is cuz it blocks the shikimate pathway and blah blah blah, but no one talks. Well, you're consuming all these petroleum distillates, these solvents. What do solvents do? Solvents break down fatty membranes. That's your gut, that's your neuron, your.

Brain, that's your myelin, those are your cell membranes.

Yeah. And so we can talk about the forever chemicals and pfas and blah blah blah, but these petroleum things. And for how many years have we been consuming partially plasticized petroleum products called Margin and Crisco? How long have we been consuming those? And the answer is a long time. Decades. Right. You know it's really funny. You take oil comes outta the ground, it's liquid and then we turn into the plastic in this place. That's what platts is, it's a polymerization kind of product. And you can take PVC polyvale chloride, you know, it's the piping in my house for my plumbing. We do all this kind of cool things with it. Maybe I'm passionate about, cause my dad was in this industry for some 30 some years and he got all this free Reynolds wrap he brought home and we wrapped everything in it. And that's probably one of the reasons why my aluminum levels are really high when I first started doing this. But no you can take something liquid and turn it a solid. Petroleum jelly. What's petroleum jelly? It's, you know, but no one's like, wait a margarine. Yeah. Corn oil, vegetable oil. Vegetable oil and corn roll are supposed to be. Right. Not this. No, this yellow liquid. Sorry. And so when you're consuming that, it gets stuck in your cell membranes, your cell walls. And ultimately, you know, what do we use to help revitalize mitochondria? Phosphatidylcholine, phosphatolinositol, Phosphatidylethanolamine. Right. These are phospholipids. These are fats that actually, particularly the PE and PI, that are super critical for mitochondrial function. We start putting in dysfunctional fats, you start making lipid rafts and the cell wall, all of a sudden, of course, you're going to call us dysfunctional mitochondria. Oh, by the way, there's this thing called aerotoxic syndrome. It's a illness. Airline pilots, airline stewards, or people working in oral factories where they basically develop this chronic fatigue fibro kind of picture from exposure to petroleum distillate mitochondria. Yeah. And how often are we exposed to petroleum distillates today? Et cetera? All times.

So you do a human oil change. Right. You give them goods, exchange out the bad ones, clean the diet up.

The body is so cool. If you give the body the right kind of fats, it just. It does the rest. Yeah. So lots of that. Then you have all the other chemical stuff. Yeah. Which I could elaborate on by the.

And heavy metals and mycotoxins and other biotoxins. I mean, those are all mitochondrial toxins. And then how does the gut affect mitochondria? I mean, we alluded to it a.

Little bit, but gut is interesting. It's. You're talking about the gut microbiome. Yeah. And so the gut microbiome, it's interesting because you have all these signaling molecules. Your micro MRNA became a big deal. Well, micro MRNA are things that are in plants. And a lot of these bacteria in your gut actually release these signaling molecules as peptides. And peptides are becoming a fancy kind of thing, GLP1s in the longevity world. But bacteria in your body make these organic acids. They make butyrate. Oh, my gosh. Short chain fatty acids. These are signaling molecules that go to the mitochondria and say, burn off this bad stuff. You know, not only do they help with leaking up, they also help revitalize mitochondria. What's the source of butyrate. The biggest source is fermentation in your gut. Yes, ghee has it. Yes, fermented foods have it. But the biggest source is actually the fiber you were talking about before eating.

And then the fiber in the right bugs, right? Akkermansia, risburia, Ruminococcus faecali bacterium. Get the right players, feed them what they want, and they make a bunch of magical stuff for you.

And the short chain fatty acids are key players.

They burn out the lipid rafts. Like that's part of that whole lipid exchange that you were talking about, that oil change. Like you. The cell membrane and the mitochondrial membrane is supposed to be this lipid bilayer that's fluid. And you get these bad fats in there. It just gets stuck. And then the mitochondria get stuck because they're in cell cycle arrest. Everything's just stuck. You got to unstick it. But if you put a bunch of margarine on stuff, it's going to be sticky, right? Like, that just makes logical sense to me.

Was industrialized seed oils. I mean, all of it. Which now finally again is coming to public consciousness. You know, people are now talking about, hey, there's restaurants now taking seed rolls out. There's that app you can get. So it's like, wow. Finally after, I think Crisco came into the American food system, was 1908, I think something like that. So it's like, wow, we might actually.

117 years we figured it out.

I know.

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So now we know what mitochondrial dysfunction kind of looks like we've gone really in depth about all the metabolic derangements that really at the core is the mitochondria. And we've talked a little bit about some other things that you wouldn't think of that not necessarily are a disease label, but rather how it comes to fruition. So what are your support strategies? I mean, you kind of broke this up into nutrition, lifestyle, gut detox, which we touched on a little bit. Some testing, like let's start with nutrition. How do you eat for mitochondrial health?

Well, it's interesting because, well, first you eat real food, of course, unprocessed, healthy fats, clean protein, all the usual colorful foods, yada, yada, yada. But actually one of the quickest ways to rejuvenate your mitochondria. You know, one of my things, the newest superfood is fasting. It's just like, you know, literally the stress that you're stressing your mitochondria, forcing your body to go from a sugar metabolism to a glycogen metabolism to a fat based metabolism that forces fluidity, it forces resilience in the cells that by itself improves mitochondrial function.

Yeah.

And so all of a sudden like, and what do we do? We get up and have breakfast, have a snack, have lunch, have a snack, have dinner, have a snack and wonder why our mitochondrial, the average American over nutritious. Yeah. In the mid-1800s, meal and a half a day, the ancient Spartans ate one meal a day. You know, this whole three square meals a day is marketing from the 50s and on. Right. And so part of our mitochondrial dysfunction thing is we are just overfed and overfeeding. Eating creates inflammation. Breaking down food creates inflammation. It requires nutrients. And when you were eating high calorie, low nutritional value food, it's automatically going to induce nutrient deficiencies and mitochondrial dysfunction.

So we didn't push that deficit.

Yeah. And so all of a sudden eating high quality food with some fasting, real food. Yeah, real food. Unprocessed, not ultra processed, no industrialized corals.

Diversified plants, lots of color, lots of polyphenols. What are some polyphenol rich foods? You said one already earlier about cardiovascular stuff.

Well, there's pomegranate, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, pomegranates, grapes, anything colorful.

Berries, olive oil, dark chocolate, coffee, tv.

Even nuts have polyphenols. Supplement wise. I really like curcumin, I really like resveratrol, I really like quercetin.

Yeah.

But those things are just eating a colorful diet is like, yeah, you know.

Of whole foods, of Whole foods, quality protein, healthy fats, lots of plants, lots of fiber.

We put some fasting in there.

Yeah.

You know, and the literature is interesting. The best kind of fasting. Sure. Let's sell a patient a prolonged kit, whatever. The literature, though, is with water fasting. Yeah. Three to five days. I mean, that, that actually elite athletes are doing that to actually improve their mitochondrial function so that before the race they can actually, when they exhaust all their energy, the mitochondria, like, we're fasted, buddy. We don't know how to do this. You know, ketogenic diet comes to ketogenic athletes actually for a while, like the Tour de France, like winners back to back were actually ketogenic athletes, you know, which is the exact opposite of Ralph's told, you know, I don't want you told. You played soccer like car bob.

Yeah.

And they're like, yeah, always.

Every halftime we had like oranges. Right. Or Gatorade. And then after every soccer game we would get snacks and it was usually.

Carb and sugar heavy. Yeah. Your second win, that's literally your. You felt your metabolism switch into ketosis and people who are really competitive will have that crash and it's like. Well, that was kind of self induced.

Yeah.

So.

So what about lifestyle? What are some of the lifestyle things you like to fold in? I mean, diet. That makes sense. Fasting makes sense.

Well, there's a lot of things like hit high energy interval training. That is huge breathwork inducing hypoxia. There's this fancy thing you can do where you actually get on bike and it gives you like 15 to 18% oxygen hypoxia and you exercise through that. Cold plunges, you know, there's a lot of things that actually will stimulate mitochondrial fun.

I love that one.

Yeah.

Cold plunging.

Great.

I mean, I don't do it as often as I would like. I've done it and my body always responds with a bolt of energy. And now what I do is I'll take a warm shower and at the end of the shower, when I'm done cleaning myself, I turn it all the way as cold as it can get. And I'll stand there for as long as I can stand there. And so there's ways to kind of hack it. Sauna's another one. Right. These therapies of hormesis. Right. So a hormetic stressor is something that stresses the body and not past some point. So the net gain is that when that stressor is removed, you're actually stronger for it. So it's benefit. It's exercise, it's fasting, it's cold plunging, it's sauna. It's things that we've already talked about. But hormetic stressors are great. Red light therapy, sleep. You've talked about, you know, some of the gut things. You mentioned butyrate. We talked a little bit about probiotics, prebiotics and the support of fiber liver. What kind of specific nutrients do you give for mitochondria? Like someone says, hey, doc, sounds to me like what you just said, all this mumbo jumbo is that my mitochondria aren't working. That's all I heard. And you know, give me five supplements, five specific nutrients that I should be taking.

Quinol, not CoQ10 because it's the active form, goes right in the cells. Some form of niacin. Whether it's nad, currently I'm using more nmn.

I like NR also. Okay.

Nicotine riboside is another good one. There's closer to making nad. It's kind of hard. Nad. NAD is a little pricey, but we won't go.

My understanding is that NAD doesn't get into the cell. It has to be converted into NMN to get into the cell to get back into nad. So why don't I just take the precursor, which is what I do. That or nicotine might. Riboside, Equinol. One of those.

Yeah. The NM and Mr. All Brain Fart. Carnitine. CL. Carnitine. There's regular carnitine and CL carnitine and this whole lipid shuttle kind of thing. If you're having someone with more neurological issues, I'm gonna use the acetylcholine. If it's not, I'll just use regular carnitine. I tend to use a product that has both of those in there. Yeah, I like creatine. Yeah, as well. It's great. I mean, one of the realities, a lot of these nutrients I'm talking about, like once you hit 50, like you don't make em as well, just so so you. You probably need a hundred milligrams of quinol. If you're a 50, you probably need three to five grams of creatine. Same thing for the carnitine.

Even measure levels for CoQ10. I'll measure levels and push them like normal is way too low. I try to drive their numbers up above three.

Yeah.

And then creatine is one of these things where I think everybody would benefit for the most part from 5 grams, 10 grams a day, something like that.

Kidneys work and drink plenty of water.

Yeah, super easy. And even there's good literature on even higher doses for bone health and brain health. 2050 milligrams. I mean, you really got to watch the kidneys. What about magic?

Well, there's. You said five, so depends on my day. And, you know, the next one that came to mind was ribose.

D. Ribose.

Yeah, it was ribose. And then B. Vimins.

Yes.

Because you look at the electron transport chain, it's B1, B2, it's B6. It's all this kind of stuff. Obviously magnesium. And, you know, magnesium. I probably should have put that at the top of the list. You're correct, because 80% of Americans are magnesium deficient.

Yeah.

So, yeah, maybe magnesium should be the top of the list.

So mag Bs, some ubiquinol, some NAD precursor, maybe creatine, maybe carnitine, Alpha lipoic acid, maybe a little bit. I make sure they're getting omegas or at least eating omegas. I might do some lipid stuff, some PC or something along those lines. Um, that's it. That's like PQQs. You can layer PQQ in maybe some ribose. And there are formulas getting closer to 12. I know, right? Like, there's so many of them.

And there are products that have, like, kind of everything in it. But it's like, if someone comes to me with cry fatigue, fibro, then I'm shooting for like five grams of creatine two, three times a day. Shooting for the C. Carnitine. A gram twice a day. Right. So it depends if just for health, if someone, you know, comes in, you know, my daughter, for example, she's on 200 milligrams twice a day of the ubiquinol, which is specific for my. So it really depends. If it's just general health versus I have a neurological therapeutic intervention. Those are going to be two different for. For individuals.

Can you test for mitochondrial function?

You can. There's a miter swab. It's like a little cheek thing you can do. I haven't done it just because it's expensive.

And what about indirect testing? What. How do you work it up? I mean, what are you looking at?

You're looking at metabolic stuff you can do, like, from carnitine. You can do free carnitine levels.

Free? Yeah.

Ldh, like, the dehydrate levels, you know, that's one of those markers that's up with metabolic issues. What other blood.

What about, like, OAT testing?

Okay, that can help if you want to. That's better if you're doing like organic acid testing. You get a bunch of different organic acids that are highly suggestive and it, it come across the citric acid cycle going to the electron transport chain. It'll give you what things are off and then you can kind of like plug in. Will help with.

Yeah, yeah. You can see macronutrient metabolism through the TCA cycle into mitochondria. So I love O testing and looking at that. You can get lactate and pyruvate through a basic lab. Yeah, you can get LDH through a basic lab. You can get in free fatty acid through a base collab. So these are all things that we test all the time. You don't even need to be a functional doctor, nor do you need to have an account with one of these functional labs.

Interesting because like the patients of mine I'm doing those in are like my autistic pandas. Pans.

Yeah.

Neurodevelopmental because they almost always have a mito issue. And then if you have a kid with an elevated pyruvate, it's like you have one of my young guys who's a past dynamic patient. Hypermobile, chronic fatigue. He's 13 or 14 now, doing great. But his pyruvate at one point in time was sky high. Now it's normalized.

Yeah.

It was kind of cool to see that and to see clinically correlate with him feeling.

Yeah, that's awesome. It also on the other end of that coin, when there's not significant pathology, I use this test for optimization. Like they're doing everything else good and their numbers look great. What does your nutritional status look like? Let's look at a traval or metabolomics or whatever your soup of of the day is and see what it shows. And I've also had it help me with the metabolic stuff. So if I have a pre diabetic that I'm stuck with and we do metabolomics and it shows that they have a really high B2 need. But when we measured B2 in their serum, it's completely normal, maybe even high normal. But their body's screaming for more. I wouldn't have known that. Now we give them a bunch of riboflavin 5 phosphate and all of a sudden they're A1C drops. There was a missing link there somewhere. So it could be really insightful in a very monocular way if you won't know if you don't test.

I've had some patients done thymine therapy on.

Yeah. Oh, that works great for the TCA cycle. I mean.

Yeah. What's it's like. And what's the dose? You know, thousand milligrams, 23000 milligrams of the stuff. And like. Well, what's the usual dose? 50. Yeah. And sometimes you're doing thyming shots. I've had some patients with tremors related to neurodegeneration, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's. Have them stabilize out some of my POTs. Dysautonomia patients. Yeah, using that, like that cocktail with some IV vitamin C and T. Do.

You do bimphotiamine in them?

My. I do. The other show I looked at was more allothymine, which is the garlic based one. But the reality is, to be honest with you, like, if I can get the person to. I'm gonna say, look, we can fiddle around this. How much does a B B one shot cost? Cheat. It's like five bucks. Yeah, let's just do this twice a week for two months. It's gonna help. Is not.

Yeah.

If it's like, oh my gosh, it's gonna help, then we'll do some oral stuff. Yeah, sometimes that's a hard sell. But it's otherwise you're like fiddling with stuff and then do I have the right dose or not have the right dose? Cuz really, you need one to 2,000 milligrams of oral thiamine to be equivalent to 100 milligram shot. I am. And that's a lot of pills. Right. So sometimes the selling point's hard to get someone to like dive into that. Well, a side note, you know, I'm really big about IV vitamin C. And for years I thought, you know, with my hypermobile POTS patients, I thought, you know, the magic is vitamin C. That's what's helping their dysautonomia in pots. And I read a book about dysautonomia and it was from a pediatrician at the Cleveland Clinic. And he would use thymine IV magnesium, obese. When does like these kids with heart failure and just all kinds of weird stuff ended up being mito issues. And the specialists were like, eh, all of our testing's normal. He's like, well, let's do this. Never get better. Right. And I started Rethinking like the IVs, is it the C or is it this mitochondrial support? And we put close to a gram of magnesium in our IVs. Right? They're getting lots of magnesium. They're getting 100 milligrams of IV thymine. They're getting 1 to 2 milligrams of B12 of methylcobalamin. They're getting these high doses and all of a sudden started rethinking. Is the magic really the mag, not the C, you know, so that was this was our end for metabolic issues, the metabolic mayhem that's going on. Hopefully this information was helpful just to help you wrap your brain around metabolic illnesses, metabolic syndrome, metabolism, mitochondria when you hear about it, because it's really popular right now and ultimately it's a big deal. If you have a topic you'd like us to talk about, something you've heard, read please on social media. Drop thing below. Ultimately, the purpose of these is to educate, encourage and empower people so that you'll know how to take care of your health. And of course, nothing here is meant to diagnose or treat anybody. You should all see your own doctor for that kind of help, and otherwise we'll talk to you all soon.

If you've lost trust in your body or in the system that was supposed to heal you, don't give up. Dr. Aaron Hartman's book Uncurable will help you rediscover what's truly possible. Visit UncurableBook.com to get your copy and start your healing journey today.