You’ve likely heard about the perils of consuming processed foods – It can make you tired, promote muscle weakness, impair your vision and hearing, provoke digestive issues, migraines, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. You might be wondering what all these things have in common? Too much processed food can damage the functioning of your Mitochondrial!
You might be wondering … how are processed foods connected to my mitochondria?
First, let’s define mitochondria. You might have recently read about these little powerhouses inside your cells. They take the fats, carbs and protein that you eat and combust them for cellular energy much like how the engine in your car burns gasoline. Mitochondria provide the energy to keep your body running, and are the prime driver of metabolism, which you need to maintain low levels of body fat and to keep a healthy weight.
NUTRIENTS THE MITOCHONDRIA NEEDS
To be functioning at their best, your mitochondria need very specific nutrients. They need B vitamins, antioxidants, and amino acids (the building blocks of protein). Just like your car engine, the mitochondria throw off “sparks” as its combusting your food for energy, and it needs a constant supply of rainbow colored foods to provide the antioxidants needed to quench these sparks also called free radicals. If you aren’t eating enough antioxidants, the sparks become a flame and not only can you end up with inflammation, but your mitochondria stop working optimally.
In addition to antioxidants, B vitamins are critical. When you eat lots of vegetables, and whole foods (the food looks like it did when it was grown, picked, slaughtered) you get a lot of B vitamins. Remember, you are also eating what the animal ate, and so how you source your animal protein matters too for it’s nutrient density.
NUTRIENTS THE MITOCHONDRIA DON’T NEED
OK, now that you know what you should feed your mitochondria, what shouldn’t you feed it? Processed foods! Not only are these foods missing the nutrients you need, but they have “anti-nutrients” that are damaging to the body. Sugar is clearly inflammatory and damaging, but these processed foods also have loads of added chemicals, bad fats, and toxins that are hitchhiking with the food when you eat it. This is why it’s critical to read nutrition labels to discern whether your favorite crackers, breads, canned goods, and even products marketed as healthy, are really ok. Remember, if your mitochondria are ok, your cells and then your body will also function at its best.
Be a Nutrition Label Detective:
Examine the ingredient list: Would you find every ingredient in your grandmother’s kitchen? If not, step away. Is there any kind of sugar in the first three ingredients – anything from cane sugar to honey to date sugar – it’s a desert.
Take a look at the grams of added sugar: We recommend staying under 24g of added sugar daily. What does that mean? 4g of sugar equals 1 teaspoon. It adds up fast.
For grain and grain replacement products, such as breads, crackers and gluten-free products: How many grams of fiber does it have? There should be a minimum of 3 grams per serving.
What processed foods should you avoid unequivocally? Seed oils, such as canola (rapeseed), corn, cottonseed, peanut, grapeseed, rice bran, soybean, safflower and sunflower. Using extra virgin olive oil for cooking? Make sure you do not expose it to high heat – it converts to an “anti-nutrient” trans-fat! Our favorite high heat oil is avocado.
Foods to Eat for Healthy Mitochondrial Function:
Eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, you have heard this before –but it is critical. Be sure to include red, blue, purple, yellow and green fruits and vegetables, the deeper, darker colored food are the best. Gradually increase the number of servings that you have a day to reach 9 cups a day. Find your farmer’s market and get to work. You can do it! Be sure to add some seaweed into the mix for iodine.
Eat more omega-3 rich foods. We do not make omega-3 fatty acids in the body so they must come from the diet daily. Include wild fish, grass-fed meats and omega-3 rich eggs. Boost this brain food — the brain has lots of mitochondria — by adding one to two tablespoons of flax or hemp oil, or seeds, to your vegetables.
Build your meal from the foundation of vegetables up, then add your omega-3 rich protein, some legumes, like your favorite beans, for fiber, toss in some dulse or seaweed, sprinkle with nuts and seeds, douse with a healthy oil for dressing and you are good to go – literally go, because eating this way you will give you more energy to go!
Two Other Factors that Boost Mitochondrial Function:
Intermittent fasting and calorie restriction increase your ability to generate energy while increasing the number of mitochondria in the cells. A simple way to practice intermittent fasting is to eat no food (you are allowed to have herbal tea or broth) for 12-14 hours overnight, from dinner to breakfast. Calorie restriction can be done by eating only vegetables for 600 – 800 Calories in one day, perhaps one day each week.
Reduce your intake of carbohydrates. This shift causes your body to switch to using ketones (produced by burning fats) instead of glucose as its primary source of fuel. Ketones are efficiently used for the generation of energy in the mitochondria while increasing the number of new mitochondria.
But Food is Only One Aspect to Boost Mitochondria Function
Mitochondria are especially damaged from Covid or other viruses; Lyme or other tick or bacterial infections; and Environmental toxins, especially mold; as well as aging. Often, the chronic fatigue experienced by people trying to recover from a significant illness comes from damage to the mitochondria. Because of this, we have created a Mito Recovery Program.
Testing and Repairing Your Mitochondria Damage:
Our Mito Recovery program is a comprehensive evaluation and treatment approach for your mitochondria, to help them recover and to finally restore your health.
The first step is to identify why and how your mitochondria got damaged, and then to help you eliminate these exposures if they are environmental or infectious. Common culprits are infectious disease, mold, and environmental toxins.
We will check the functioning of your mitochondria with MitoSwab testing. The test is done with a simple scrape from the inside of your cheek, and results show us your mitochondrial biogenesis (total numbers of mitochondria) and the functioning of Complexes 1, 2, 3 and 4.
We measure levels of oxidative stress and glutathione.
Treatment: Based on these results we offer targeted treatments, which may include Infusions (NAD, glutathione, lipoic acid, CoQ10, carnitine, B vitamins and magnesium), supplements, and intermittent caloric restriction/fasting (great for mitochondria function!). For example, low Complex 1 responds well to NAD. Riboflavin is good for Complex 2, and CoQ10 for Complex 3. And both Glutathione and lipoic acid are great for treating oxidative stress, which is an issue for all the 4 complexes if they are damaged.
Suspect your Mitochondria Need Help? Schedule an appointment with one of our Functional Medicine practitioners. Call 914-652-7800 to book your appointment.
Meet Melissa: Melissa Rapoport is the Manager of Health Coaching and Lifestyle Programming at Blum Center for Health in Rye Brook, NY. She combines her graduate work in Developmental Psychology with her education in nutrition, health and coaching to create highly individualized programs that result in lifetime change. A contributing author to three international bestselling books, Melissa’s greatest joy is her relationship with her two daughters. To learn more about Melissa’s coaching practice at Blum Center for Health, click here.