In the latest episode of CHIP Talks, we delve into the often overlooked yet crucial aspect of our health: mitochondrial health. Mitochondria, the powerhouse of our cells, play an essential role in energy production and overall cellular function. But why are they referred to as the 'philosopher's stone' of health?

Mitochondria are responsible for converting food into energy, and understanding how they operate is vital for maintaining our health. In this episode, we explore the three primary modes of energy production in mitochondria: glucose mode, fat mode, and light mode. Each mode has its unique characteristics and efficiencies, with glucose mode being quick but inefficient, while fat mode is slower yet far more powerful.

The discussion highlights the importance of diet in mitochondrial function. Eating habits can significantly impact how our mitochondria produce energy. For instance, after consuming a meal, our cells enter glucose mode for about five hours, which can hinder our ability to fight diseases, including cancer. The episode emphasizes the need for a balanced approach to eating, advocating for intermittent fasting to allow our mitochondria to operate in fat mode, which enhances our energy and immune response.

Furthermore, the episode dives into the implications of mitochondrial dysfunction in various diseases, including neurodegenerative conditions and autism. It explains how mitochondrial health is interconnected with our overall well-being, making it essential to prioritize their care.

Listeners will also learn about the endocannabinoid system's role in regulating mitochondrial function and how it connects to our energy levels. The episode wraps up with insights into new products designed to support mitochondrial health, underscoring the idea that a healthy lifestyle begins at the cellular level.

Join us for this enlightening discussion that could transform your understanding of health and wellness. Tune in to CHIP Talks and discover the secrets to maintaining healthy mitochondria for a longer, healthier life!

Hello, everyone; welcome to another exciting version of CHIP Talks. Today, we're going to talk about mitochondrial health. I've done some past CHIP talks on mitochondria and called them the philosopher's steps. I believe that they are. Understanding the mitochondria, what they need, what they want, and how they function will be one of the secrets to health, helping us understand our function. If you have healthy mitochondria, it's really hard to have an unhealthy cell. If you have healthy cells, having an unhealthy organ is hard. It's hard for you to be unhealthy if you have healthy organs.

That's why talking about this stuff is so important: we have to start from the ground up. When we look at human function, we look at how you work. We must start with the most basic, critical systems and then rebuild human function. So, the endocannabinoid system is a giant part of that exercise because it is a basic part of how we work and function. Cells are a basic part of how we work and function.

We have to understand what a cell needs. People always ask me, Chip, why are you so confident in what kind of eating behaviors you should adopt? I just understand. I've studied what a cell wants and needs; that's what it's all about. You can put all kinds of food in your mouth, but ultimately, you're just defining that, distilling that down into what a cell needs.

If you understand mitochondria, you understand life

Let's jump into mitochondria. Again, I've called these guys the Philosopher Stone because I think they are. I think that if you understand mitochondria, you understand life. What happened long ago is a cell, like an eucrotic cell, we’re mostly eucrotic cells.

There are three types of life on the planet. Okay, there are erotic-type cells; that's what we are. There's the whole class of bacteria, then there's a class called archons, or, you know, which are interesting in between. Let's say our bacteria. But those are how cells are classified. You can have a bacterial cell, a democratic cell, or one of these archon-type cells. Now, what looks like it happened a long time ago, this is cool, is that you, chronic cells, can do something called autophagy at some point. If they're in an organism, like you see something they don't like or want to eliminate, they'll just engulf it. They'll just Pacman it; they're just literally like Ms. Pac-Man used to do with all the dots.

They'll just gobble this stuff off. Then, they have processes inside themselves that help degrade whatever they just gobbled up. At some point in evolution, an eukaryotic cell gobbled up a little bacterium and decided to keep it. It decided it was valuable that it was producing energy. That might be super interesting.

Life might have started at this point when you had a eucaryotic cell engulf a little bacterium to create mitochondria. However, mitochondria are the powerhouses of cells, like their unique individual organisms inside cells. Inside a heart cell, there might be thousands of mitochondria. Usually, in science, the going number is just a thousand. You just assume there are a thousand mitochondrions in a cell. Now, some cells don't have any mitochondria like red blood cells. Why? Because they have to carry oxygen. If they had mitochondria, the mitochondria would eat all that oxygen because mitochondria use oxygen for fuel. Oxygen fat in us.

Let's break this down. Let's talk about mitochondria in detail. Let's talk about what they do, what they want, how they work, all that stuff so that we can better understand them and also better understand, let's say, how they contribute to disease, how they contribute to the overall pathology of aging things like that.

We must understand these guys because they give you life without mitochondria. We are plastic, we are cut wood, we are not living, we are not metabolizing. You have to metabolize to be alive. So, let's talk about the mitochondria. There are three differences. It's not like there are three different types of mitochondria, but let's say there are three different states that mitochondria want to run in. So, the most basic state is where they produce energy from fermentation glucose. This is a really fast exercise.

Mitochondria can do this fast. Please give me that glucose. Bam. I produced energy. But it's not very efficient at all. One unit of glucose kind of produces two units of energy. That's not efficient compared to some of the other forms of energy production. But that's a cell's default mode if you will. It's the most basic way that a cell can metabolize. It's something that a cell can do without, let's say, needing light in photosynthesis or having fats oxygen in fatty acid processing. Those are the other two ways that mitochondria can produce energy. But in glucose mode, I call it glucose mode or sugar mode, a cell is quick but inefficient, not as powerful. It doesn't have the power to do multiple things. It can just do one thing. So, cancer cells operate in this mode. They kind of get stuck in between beta-oxidation glucose mode. But they operate in this mode so they can rapidly reproduce and expand. But they're not efficient at all in how they do it.

They're, you know, eating, let's say, a bunch of amino acids glucose from you when they're doing that. Some bacteria like that are also, if you hear, gram-negative, anaerobic type bacteria. Some bacteria process oxygen, and some don't. The ones that don't have to run this mode. So, mode one is glucose mode. Super quick, but super inefficient. Mode two for mitochondria is the fat mode. That's how we're built to run.

We're built to run in a fat mode, where our mitochondria produce energy from dietary fats and oxygen. They do this by moving electrons. Okay, so we'll discuss this in more detail in a second. But they move electrons through four different processes. When they do that, they create potential energy. Okay, we'll talk much more about that soon.

The third way that mitochondria produce energy is through light photosynthesis.

The third way that mitochondria produce energy is through light photosynthesis. We know from plants that plants produce energy from light. To do this, you have to have chloroplasts. Chloroplasts are the variable energy things inside a photosynthesizing cell.

They'll ramp up in energy release, ramp up in energy release, ramp up an energy release. The mitochondria use this process to energize the entire plant. So, those are the three modes. So, glucose mode, fat mode, or light mode. In light mode, those mitochondria are a little different. They're a little bit more sophisticated, let's say, than our mitochondria. The light mode has to; you must have other guys in a cell.

You have to have a chloroplast, for sure. In fat processing mode, you need another guy in a cell to process fat. You've got to have a peroxisome and an endoplasmic reticulum. Why? These guys help prepare fats for burning, kind of getting everything ready.

Then, they bend to shape the fats as they're processed. So, endoplasmic reticulum flow holds fats. Right. So that's what it does. Okay, so that's a little about how mitochondria produce energy. Interestingly, we can control, to a certain degree, our global or macro mitochondrial energy states by eating.

When we eat, we go into glucose mode for about five hours. Why? It's because our cells have to deal with fat and can't run on fat and deal with it simultaneously. Why do we need to deal with fat? Well, every time you eat a meal, fats are the most important thing to your body. Fats are king. Fats are king to a cell. Everything that you need to run comes from dietary fats. So, as far as humans or mammals go, fats are king.

Those fats have to be processed in certain ways to be put into, let's say, the mitochondria. That can't happen when you've just eaten. When you eat again, there's an analysis between the fats you just ate and what you have stored in your triglycerides. If what you have stored in your triglycerides is better than what you just ate, then there's little action. If what you just ate is better than what you have stored in triglycerides, then you will be swapping your fat tissues out of your liver to reconfigure those triglycerides. Again, this happens every time you eat more than 50 calories.

It's a lot of work. When that work is done, you want fast mitochondria, not efficient mitochondria. The mitochondria will run on glucose. Five hours after we eat, our mitochondria will flip, and they will. This is macro. Again, if you're running a marathon just eating, the mitochondria in your legs are beta-oxidizing. But this is just kind of at the macro level.

When we eat, though, we go into glucose mode. Five hours after we eat, because that's how long it takes to process everything, we'll flip back into fat processing mode. In fat processing Mode, we're roughly 20 to 50 times stronger, more energetic, and more, let's say, horsepower than we are in glucose mode. So, glucose mode is fast but not very powerful. Fat mode is slower but way, way, way more powerful.

You could think of it as: In glucose mode, we're powering one house; in fat mode, we're powering 25 houses. Does that matter to your immune system? Does that matter to your ability to defend yourself, heal yourself, think, act, work out, or do whatever? Absolutely, yes. So we want to be running. We want our mitochondria to be running in fat-processing mode.

So eating is consequential. It's consequential to your immune system.

Eating is consequential. This is why we talk so much about intermittent fasting and the consequences of eating. It's consequential to your immune system. So, if you're sick again, you want your mitochondria running in fat mode. You want all those 25 to 50 houses powered on so that you can heal yourself and fight off whatever's infecting you. If you have cancer, if you have things like that. Again, we have no way to fight cancer when our cells are running in glucose mode. When our mitochondria run in glucose mode, there is no way to fight cancer: none, zero, zip, nada. Five hours after you eat, when you flip into fat mode, you have two ways to fight cancer. You've got a process called autophagy, a protein called p53.

If you have cancer, this is super important. Again, eating is consequential. You want to minimize the amount of time that you eat. You want to get your nutrients. Everybody needs to get their nutrients. But we want to minimize the time we stay in that fed state. The last third way mitochondria can work is in light mode. You know, you do some of this, and we do. There's a whole realm of science called biophotons. That's interesting. Our mitochondria will, under certain circumstances, deal with emitting some light. Now, what can go wrong with mitochondria? Well, a lot of things.

When your body is stressed, what happens in the mitochondria when running on fat? It's complicated what has to happen. There are four different enzyme complexes. If anybody wants to look it up, this is called the electron transport chain. Four enzyme complexes move electrons through these four complexes; we're also moving protons. When you're separating positive and negative charges, you're putting membranes between them. When you do that, you create potential.

You can think of a battery as a 9-volt battery. That's like a membrane with a dam, let's say, that looks like a dam damming up all of this water. The deeper and higher the water, the more voltage you have, at least in a battery. The same thing happens inside mitochondria.

You're building a dam, then you begin to put water behind that dam to build potential, and then you release that dam, which creates energy. So, that happens through four different reactions in the mitochondria when we're in fat-processing mode. Now, here's something super important. Well, a couple of things.

If you don't have those CO factors, like CoQ10, it is a super important factor in how this works. It doesn't work. What happens is electrons leak out of the mitochondria, which creates oxidative stress. The last thing you want is a little free electron running around in your body because, guess what, he's going to react with something. That might be a good thing, or that might be a bad thing, but that's what reactive oxidative stress is.

There's also a nitrogen side of this RNS, but that's what happens when, let's say, there's a lot of inflammation. When there's a lot of inflammation, intermediaries must grab these electrons and move them along. They're called iron-sulfur clusters. These guys can get wrecked during inflammation. You can't move electrons through these four complexes if they get wrecked.

Understanding these four complexes, how they work, and making them the most efficient possible is the secret to everything. It's the secret to no aging, to a very, very healthy life, to being the best you can be, to hopefully looking like you're 40 until you're a thousand years old—things like that.

Again, those happen. Those secrets are found within mitochondria. Understanding what mitochondria need and how they could go wrong in neurodegenerative diseases. These are all diseases of the mitochondria. We might point to other things; we might point to other, let's say, insults. But what's happening is the mitochondria are dysfunctional in seizures. Again, what is a seizure? It's a dysregulation of energy. That can be explained through nerve cells, how they are firing, and their rest versus action potential. But at the core of all that are mitochondria. Mitochondria power everything. They are the philosopher's stone. They're the secret to life. They're, they're at the core of everything.

Almost everything in our society wants to force us into this glucose-processing mode.

Now, a really interesting thing is happening in our society. This is just an observation. You could call this a CHIPS conspiracy theory if you want, but I could write you a peer-reviewed medical paper on this conspiracy theory.

I think it's pretty obvious and well-established; we're beginning to wake up to this. But for some reason, almost everything in our society wants to force us into this glucose-processing mode. Okay, and what do I mean by that? Give me some examples of that chip. Please tell me what you're talking about. Well, I'm talking about the USDA telling you that you need to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that six small meals are better than one big one, and things like that. Because that's just wrong information, that's just information sending you down the wrong path, a path of inefficient function with the possibility of disease. If we're always in sugar mode, how do we defend ourselves? How do we run our immune system? You have to run everything in you. You're a very complicated machine. Plus, run your immune system at 50 or 25 times less power. It's just not going to work.

You won't be as robust as you could be if you eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You're not going to be as strong. You're not going to be as able to defend yourself. So, just that. Just that alone, you know, is enough to change your life and health. Now, let's look at some other things. These guys need mitochondria, proper fats to run, and a proper fat system. Those fats are associated with the endocannabinoid system. Now, the endocannabinoid system, if it's our master regulatory system, would have to have control over mitochondria because they control energy.

I must have a way to turn you upside down as to energy in the master regulatory system. If it is the master regulatory system, it turns out that such a way works in practice. This is fascinating; every single one has no system in your body where every cell will express a receptor. Not only every cell but every organelle inside of every cell will express a receptor. The only system in your body that does that is the endocannabinoid system. Why? Because it's the mammalian master regulatory system. You have to control every single cell, not just every organelle. So, mitochondria will all express a CB1 neuroreceptor on their outer membrane.

Why? Well, it's a way to control calcium. If you look at how cells work, there's a lot of, let's say, sophistication nuance to a cell. But when you get down to how a cell works, it's positive and negative. So, it's trying to do things with its cell wall. It's trying to change polarity inside so that there's more difference between inside and outside, or it's trying to lessen that.

Cells always go through this process of making their walls more permeable or locked up. As they do that, they increase or decrease electric potential. This is how some cells move, but it's how they work at their core, which is this electrical potential. Okay? Mitochondria are no different. Mitochondria are constantly messing with electrical potential. However, this is all controlled by the CB1 neuroreceptor calcium. So, calcium is positive. It is a positive ion CA+, if you will.

What that means is that this is so confusing. And, you know, let's say electrical properties stuff, they almost have to have your, you know, decoder ring to get it all straight. But calcium, since it's a plus, so it's a plus ion. What does that mean? That means it's positively charged.

That means that it has, let's say, more protons than electrons, if you will. But the best way to think of it is that the little plus sign is just a hole. It's an electron hole. So, calcium is ready to accept electrons. Now, if you have mitochondria that are going crazy, he's leaking electrons, and that calcium will suck up those electrons. But that change changes the cell's polarity about the outside of itself, or the mitochondria, in this case. But anyway, for the endocannabinoid system to have control over energy status, it would have to have control over every single mitochondrion. It does. Every single mitochondria will express a CB1 receptor on their outer membrane. So that's cool stuff. That further supports, let's say, the endocannabinoid system as our master regulatory system in our master control system, all the way down to mitochondria, which is cool, cool, cool.

With mitochondria, autism is probably one of the most sophisticated diseases.

What else do we want to talk about? Mitochondria? I guess a couple of things. You know, again, in sickness, a way to make you sick is to mess with your mitochondria. Let's talk about autism quickly because it's always good to have an example.

Autism is a fascinating disease, but it's good to talk about it. With mitochondria, autism is probably one of the most sophisticated diseases on the planet. Why? Because it's, where's the insult? Is it due to infection? You know, there are definitely aspects of autism that look like they're infection-related.

You've got lots of inflammation; you got a whacked-out immune system. You got a whacked-out gut biome. Is it fat processing related? Yeah, it is because Delta 6 desaturates, fits, and starts. Autistic people don't build the immune system with the same robustness that we do. This is why they need such a sophisticated gut biome. But this all, all of these things, I could go down probably 30 different things here, but, but all of these things lead back to mitochondrial dysfunction. Why would mitochondria be? It's really interesting. In autism there are two major things that are common among all autistic people. All autistic people have lower circuits. You can't say this about, oh, they're infected, oh, they have high white blood cell counts. Oh, it looks like Clostridium bacteria is doing it all. No, none of that is common. The common thing, though, is lower endocannabinoids.

All autistic people have lower circulating endocannabinoids. They also have a lower, let's say, higher rate of these iron-sulfur clusters being destroyed. Again, this has to do with mitochondrial dysfunction. So, the mitochondria in autism are always messed up. They are, and that is the core key thing. It now looks like autism is a loop between these oxidative stresses, destroying iron-sulfur clusters necessary for mitochondrial function and building endocannabinoids.

It's a loop. It's a loop. It's a loop. But it's a bad loop. It's a consequential, ah, loop, let's say. But it is a mitochondrial loop. If you look at seizure neuropathy, all those things are dysfunctions in mitochondria. If you look at Alzheimer's, dementia, and Parkinson's, those are dysfunctions in mitochondria. So, we must get the mitochondrial story right now. One of the things we will be doing is coming out with a new TrueMedX product called Mito, a tablet product. But I want to develop a super-power powder product that will feed the mitochondria properly. If you have healthy mitochondria, you're going to have healthy cells. If you have healthy cells, you're going to have healthy systems. You will be healthy if you have healthy systems and organs. It all kind of starts from the inside out.

Watch for more information about mitochondria and what we're doing at traumatic events because we'll be coming out with more of these wonderful products. So, right now, find some TrueMedX for you. Mito, that's a very good product. Look at what's in it. You know, run that through whatever situation you want to run it through to see if that will work for you. But I guarantee you it will work for you. Try that product. It will kick up the function of mitochondria.

This helps with everything. If I had cancer, I would want to be kicking up the function of my mitochondria. If I had any kind of, you know, neuro disease, I would want to kick up the function of my mitochondria. If I had seizures, if I had neuropathy, if I had, you know, heart issues. The heart is run. What keeps your heart beating beats at the rate it does mitochondria. There's no more important place for mitochondria than in the heart. The heart is probably the biggest user of mitochondria all the time. Keeping those guys healthy is important because we want a long, healthy lifespan with a healthy heart.

We'll leave it there for today. We'll see you guys back next week for another exciting version of the Chip Talks podcast. Bye.