How to Give Yourself a Metabolic Tune-up

Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman and welcome back to my vlog. Are you tired and worn out? Do you feel burned out? You have sore muscles, brain fog, fatigue? Maybe you have metabolic burnout. Imagine if you could find a way to tune up your metabolism, to increase the amount of energy you have and be able to think clearly and feel less achy. Imagine if you could prevent diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson's and dementia. Imagine if you could heal fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome and imagine if you could get to the root of aging and slow the whole process down and eliminate most of the age related diseases. All that is possible by giving yourself a metabolic makeover or what Bruce Ames calls a metabolic tune-up. You might have heard of the rats fed those high doses of resveratrol, the red phytonutrient found in wine, in red wine. They live 30% longer while eating a bad diet. In fact, they even became fitter and lost weight without changing their diet and eating the equivalent of the standard American poor quality diet. Now how could they eat more, eat bad food, not exercise, and become fitter and live 30% longer than the average rat? One word, mitochondria. Remember that word, mitochondria. The resveratrol protected and improved the function of these little energy factories in our cells called mitochondria through its effects on a special set of master aging genes. Okay, so what are mitochondria and what do they have to do with more energy, losing weight and living to 120 years old without any disease? Well, mitochondria are little tiny factories that turn food and oxygen into energy. In each cell there are hundreds to thousands of these little energy factories. They exist in greater amounts in active organs and tissues like muscles, heart and brain. Now this is the place where your metabolism is happening. The role of your metabolism is to take the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat and process it to make energy, the fuel for life. In fact, the fuel for your car is gas, the fuel for your body is called ATP and is produced from the combustion of food and oxygen. The place where we burn the oxygen and food is in the mitochondria, those little factories in our cells that make energy for running everything in our body. When they're not working properly, you suffer from all the symptoms of low energy, fatigue, memory loss, pain, rapid aging and much more. Along the way, many things can go wrong that impede your metabolism, make it run less efficiently or practically shut it down. Fatigue is the most common symptom of poorly functioning mitochondria. We need to keep them in top shape. The reason we poop out as we age is the consistent, constant insults and injury we give our mitochondria. Now, we have over 100,000 trillion, that's a big number, 100,000 trillion of these powerhouses in our body. Each one contains 17,000 little assembly lines for making our ATP from oxygen and food, our major energy fuel. They use over 90% of the oxygen we breathe. They take up 40% of the space inside heart cells. The only problem is they're very sensitive to damage. And the injury is from uncontrolled oxidative stress or free radical activity, which results from toxic insults, infections, allergens, stress, and just eating too much poor quality food. Dr. Bruce Ames, the renowned scientist from the University of California at Berkeley has spent the last decade discovering how we can give ourselves something he calls a metabolic tune-up. In one study, he gave old rats who were tired, who wouldn't get up on the treadmill anymore, and you couldn't find the cheese in the maze or swim very far, two molecules that boost metabolism and make the mitochondria run better. They are alpha-lipoic acid and acetyl-L-carnitine. These are mitochondria energy boosters. Overnight, these rats became young rats. They got up on the treadmill themselves. They swam long distances without fatiguing. and they could easily find the cheese in the maze like young healthy rats. How could that happen? Well he simply gave the cells the raw materials they need for optimal function. As we age our metabolism burns out from a lifetime of damage and insults. So again the way to get healthy, the way to optimal health or to what I call ultra wellness is very simple. Ultimately the goal here is to give everyone a metabolic tune-up. First find the things that damage your metabolism in mitochondria and second Give your body the things that it needs to help the mitochondria function optimally. Take out the bad stuff, put in the good stuff. It's a very simple principle of medicine that can have profound impact on your health. So what does damage the mitochondria? Well, these little energy factories are sensitive to insults. And they're not well protected and they're easily damaged by toxins, infections, allergens, stress and poor diet. The biggest insult over time is eating too much food or too much empty calories, that means nutrient-poor calories. Vegetables and fruit, whole grains and beans, nuts and seeds, these are nutrient-dense calories. White flour, sugar, processed foods, these are calorie-rich foods which have very few nutrients. When the food is burned or metabolized with oxygen in the mitochondria, then waste is produced in the form of free radicals that create a chain reaction of rusting or oxidation. Unless we have enough antioxidants in our diet from from the colorful fruits and vegetables that were enough of the ones we make in our body, we can't protect ourselves from the damage to our mitochondria. So when we eat empty calories, meaning sugar, flour, processed foods that don't have the antioxidant levels of colorful plant foods like fruits and vegetables, we produce too many free radicals that destroy our mitochondria, produce fatigue, metabolic burnout, and all the diseases of aging. Imagine that a slow progressive process of deterioration that contributes to or is the cause of practicing every known disease is occurring inside of you at this very moment. It is the result of dietary choices, lifestyle habits, stress, and environmental exposures. Imagine also that you have the antidote. So for a more in-depth explanation of how we age and the rusting process of our tissues and our cells and organs, please refer to the written blog on energy. So what can you do to protect your mitochondria and prevent rusting? First, you have to address the causes of damage to the mitochondria. And here's what you got to do. Eat less processed junk food, sugar and empty calories. In fact, you should really avoid them altogether. Next, detoxify. Get rid of environmental toxins and internal toxins as best you can. Next, you have to address inflammation. Then you have to balance your hormones. These are all things that I've talked about already in these series of blogs. Now, in order to protect and boost your mitochondria, here's a few key things you can do that aren't just taking things away or avoiding things but actually putting things in. First is exercise. Now, interval training, which is going fast and slow, it's sort of like that wind sprints you did in high school, interval training increases the efficiency and function of the mitochondria and strength training increases the amount of muscle and the number of mitochondria. Next, I want you to eat real, whole, colorful plant food. Eight to 12 servings of fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and seeds. and whole grains every day, which are full of antioxidants and phytonutrients that protect your mitochondria. Next, you can take mitochondrial protective and energy-boosting nutrients like acetyl-L-carnitine, lipoic acid, coenzyme Q10, N-acetyl cysteine, NADH, ribose, resveratrol, and magnesium aspartate. You don't have to take all of them, but these are all the kinds of things that can help boost your mitochondria. Next, you can increase omega-3 fats to help build your mitochondrial membranes and protect them. So taking care of your mitochondria will allow you to increase your energy, lose weight and age well. It's a cornerstone of creating optimal health or what I call ultra wellness.