Ashok Gupta explains that mitochondrial dysfunction isn't permanent damage but rather mitochondria receiving inhibitory signals from your nervous system. He argues the real problem is whole-system regulation, not the mitochondria themselves, and that treating the nervous-immune system can restore function.
Yes, absolutely. We do mention mitochondria at some point in the book. And in terms of damaged mitochondria, once again, I believe that this is a condition of function versus organic damage. And what I mean by that is it's not that the mitochondria are damaged, it's that they are functioning incorrectly based on the signals that are getting from the central nervous system. And we know that the mitochondria, for those of you who don't know, mitochondria are the little energy producing structures within all our cells. They take that ATP, they convert all the glucose and everything that's in our bodies convert that into energy. And those little mitochondria we know in these conditions aren't functioning correctly. So I don't think they're damaged. I simply think that they've got the signal from the sympathetic nervous system to not operate at their optimal level for whatever reason. And there are some researchers and doctors who focus on the mitochondria. But it's a very reductionist philosophy which is let's treat the body like a car and let's hone in on this piece of the car over here and see, oh, that's the reason for the problem. But actually, you zoom out, we are treating the whole system together, whole nervous system, the whole immune system. So any mitochondria issues I believe are downstream.
