This week’s Puzzle Piece is a reprint from an article Dr Mercola wrote on mitochondria and diet.
I am on the Ketogenic Diet and just received Dr Mercola’s
book, which I highly recommend. Also the best formulation for
mitochondrial resuscitation is Opti-Mito-Force, as was documented and research presented by Marc Harris, ND at Homecoming 2017.
Story at-a-glance-
- A foundational cause of most degenerative diseases is the
fact that your mitochondria are not receiving sufficient amounts of
proper fuel. As a result, your mitochondria start to deteriorate and
malfunction
-
- Your body requires the metabolic flexibility to use both fat
and glucose for fuel. Conventional dietary advice fails because eating a
high-carb diet for a long period of time makes you unable to
effectively burn fat
-
- To regain the ability to burn fat for fuel, you need to
minimize net carbs, increase healthy fats, and restrict protein to
adequate levels
By Dr. Mercola
Modern food manufacturing processes have utterly failed at
improving health and increasing longevity. The evidence is both clear
and overwhelming: Cyclical net carbohydrate intake is the primary factor
that determines your body's fat ratio, and processed grains and sugars
(particularly fructose) are the primary culprits behind our skyrocketing
obesity, diabetes and chronic disease rates.
Today, two-thirds of the American population are overweight or
obese; 1 in 5 deaths is obesity-related; half have
pre-diabetes, diabetes or other chronic illness; and 1 in 3 women and
half of all men will develop some form of cancer in their lifetime.
There’s an answer to all of these terrible health trends, and it
all starts with the nutritional composition of your diet. Most people
simply eat far too many processed foods, net carbs and too few healthy
fats, and too many unhealthy fats, which results in gaining and
retaining extra body fat and becoming increasingly insulin resistant.
Most also eat too much protein for optimal health and, while
exercise cannot compensate for the damage done by a high-carb, low-fat
diet, most do not get enough physical movement either. These factors set
in motion metabolic and biological cascades that deteriorate your
health.
The Root Cause of Most Degenerative Conditions
My new book, “Fat for Fuel” was released May 16. This book, which
is the most important book I’ve written to date, explains the metabolic
advantages you gain once your body regains the ability to burn fat for
fuel.
The book was peer-reviewed by dozens of leading natural health
experts and researchers, including Perlmutter. Peer-review is a gold
standard in science and the medical literature, but there are very few
peer-reviewed books, which is a feature that sets “Fat for Fuel” apart
from many others. I’m deeply grateful for everyone’s input.
As explained in the interview, and in my book, a foundational
cause of most degenerative diseases is the fact that your mitochondria,
the little powerhouses located in most of your body’s cells, are not
receiving sufficient amounts of proper fuel. As a result, your
mitochondria start to deteriorate and malfunction. This dysfunction lays
the groundwork for subsequent breakdowns of various bodily systems.
Your mitochondria generate the vast majority of the energy
(adenosine triphosphate or ATP) in your body. Were all mitochondria to
fail, you’d be dead in seconds.
In addition to generating the energy currency of your body, ATP,
your mitochondria are also responsible for apoptosis (programmed cell
death), and serve as important signaling molecules that help regulate
the expression of your genes. This is a function that even most doctors
are unaware of.
Your mitochondria are nourished by certain nutrients and harmed by
others. So, a healthy diet is a diet that supports mitochondrial
function and prevents dysfunction, and having the metabolic flexibility
to burn fat is the key.
The vast majority of people on the planet who eat a primarily
processed food diet are burning carbohydrates as their primary fuel,
which has the devastating effect of shutting down your body’s ability to
burn fat. This is why obesity is so prevalent, and why so many find it
nearly impossible to lose weight and keep it off.
Fats Versus Carbs
Ideally you will have the metabolic flexibility to burn either
carbs or fats for fuel. Unfortunately, saturated fats have been wrongly
demonized as being harmful, and when food manufacturers started removing
the fats from their processed foods, they added sugar instead. For a
long time, this was viewed as a healthy substitution. Today, the
evidence clearly demonstrates the fallacy of this view.
When your body burns primarily carbs for fuel, excessive reactive
oxygen species (ROS) and secondary free radicals are created, which
damage cellular mitochondrial membranes and DNA, leading to the
degenerative diseases that are so prevalent today. Healthy dietary fats,
which are a cleaner-burning fuel, create far fewer ROS and free
radicals. This lays the groundwork for many of the metabolic benefits of
this program. Fats are also critical for the health of cellular
membranes and many other biological functions.
Metabolic Mitochondrial Therapy — Fat and Carb Basics
The program I’ve developed is called metabolic mitochondrial
therapy (MMT). The initial phase of the MMT program — which ends once
your body is able to effectively burn fat for fuel — can take anywhere
from weeks to months or longer, depending on how metabolically damaged
you are.
It is called MMT because I review a variety of other strategies to
improve your mitochondria other than diet, such as cold thermogenesis,
photobiology, detox, exercise and the importance of electromagnetic
fields.
The initial strategy of this program is the restriction of net
carbohydrates (total carbs minus fiber) to 20 to 50 grams per day, but
only until you start burning fat for fuel. To replace the lost carbs,
you increase healthy fats, so that you’re getting anywhere from 50 to 85
percent of your daily calories from fat. Examples of high-quality
healthy fats include:
| Avocados |
Coconuts and coconut oil (excellent for cooking as it can withstand higher temperatures without oxidizing) |
Animal-based omega-3 fat from fatty fish low in mercury like wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies and/or krill oil |
| Butter made from raw grass fed organic milk |
Raw nuts (macadamia and pecan are ideal as they’re high in healthy fat while being low in protein) |
Seeds like black sesame, cumin, pumpkin and hemp seeds |
| Olives and olive oil (make sure it's third party certified, as 80 percent of olive oils are adulterated with vegetable oils) |
Grass fed (pastured) preferably
organic and humanely raised meats. Avoid CAFO (concentrated animal
feeding operation) animal products |
MCT oil |
| Ghee (clarified butter), lard and tallow (excellent for cooking) |
Raw cacao butter |
Organic, pastured egg yolks |
Fats
to avoid include trans fats and highly refined
polyunsaturated vegetable oils. The former acts as a pro-oxidant; the
latter are high in damaged omega-6 and produce toxic oxidation products
like cyclic aldehydes when heated.
Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, when taken in large amounts, cannot
be burned for fuel. Instead, they’re incorporated into cellular and
mitochondrial membranes. Here, they become highly susceptible to
oxidative damage, which ultimately damages your metabolic machinery.
It’s important to emphasize that MMT is not merely adding more
healthy fat to your current diet or eating as much fat as you want. It
is absolutely crucial to restrict net carbs, or else you’re merely
increasing the number of calories you consume. Raising the amount of fat
and decreasing net carbs is what pushes your body into burning fat for
fuel. Eating high amounts of both fat and net carbs will NOT allow your
body to make this shift, as your body will use whatever sugar is
available first.
Metabolic Mitochondrial Therapy — Protein Basics
The program differs significantly from Paleo in that it restricts
protein to adequate levels. A general recommendation is to limit your
protein to one-half gram of protein per pound (1 gram per kilo) of lean
body mass. To determine your lean body mass, subtract your body fat
percentage from 100.
For example, if you have 30 percent body fat, then you have 70
percent lean body mass. Then multiply that percentage (in this case,
0.7) by your current weight to get your lean body mass in pounds or
kilos. As an example, if you weigh 170 pounds, 0.7 multiplied by 170
equals 119 pounds of lean body mass. Using the "half-gram of protein"
rule, you daily protein requirement would be 59.5 or just under 60
grams.
Certain individuals and life circumstances do raise your protein
requirements. This includes seniors, pregnant women and those who are
aggressively exercising (or competing). As a general rule, these
individuals need about 25 percent more protein.
Why Limit Protein?
The reason for limiting protein is because excessive protein has a
stimulating effect on a very important biochemical signaling pathway
called the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), which has significant,
adverse metabolic consequences. Importantly, this pathway plays a
significant role in many cancers. It's also a significant regulator of
the aging process. When you reduce protein to just what your body needs,
mTOR remains inhibited, which helps minimize your chances of cancer
growth.
Excessive protein can also be converted into body fat and, through
some pathways, sugar. So, net carb restriction normalizes the insulin
pathway while protein restriction normalizes the mTOR pathway, both of
which are important for optimal health. It’s well worth noting that
cancer is just one expression of the same metabolic problem found in
most other degenerative diseases. The same pathways are involved in most
if not all of them.
Feast-Famine Cycling Basics
Another crucial difference between MMT and most other ketogenic
diets is something called feast-famine cycling. Continuously remaining
in nutritional ketosis can actually cause counterproductive side
effects, and is likely not optimally healthy in the long term. The
ketogenic cycling is implemented once you’re out of the initial stage
and your body has regained the ability to burn fat. At that point, you
begin cycling in and out of nutritional ketosis by upping your carb and
protein intake once or twice a week.
After a day or two of “feasting,” you then cycle back into
nutritional ketosis (the “fasting” stage) for the remainder of the week.
By periodically pulsing higher carb intakes, consuming, say, 100 or 150
grams of carbs opposed to 20 to 50 grams per day, your ketone levels
will dramatically increase and your blood sugar will drop.
Why is this pulsing so important? It goes back to the workings of
insulin. The primary function of insulin is not merely to drive sugar
into the cell but rather to suppress the production of glucose by your
liver (hepatic gluconeogenesis). When you suppress insulin for too long,
however, your liver starts making more glucose to make up for the
deficit.
The result? Your blood sugar starts rising even if you’re not
eating any sugar at all. In this situation, eating a high-sugar meal
will actually LOWER your blood sugar (because you activated insulin,
which then suppresses glucose production in your liver). In the long
term, this is not a healthy metabolic state, and cycling in and out of
nutritional ketosis will prevent this from occurring.
The Role of Iron Is Also Vital in Mitochondrial Function
Iron also plays an important role in mitochondrial function, and
contrary to popular belief, excessive iron levels are far more prevalent
than iron deficiency. Virtually all men over the age of 16 and
post-menopausal women are at risk of high iron. Menstruating
women are protected since they lose blood, and hence iron, each month.
While most people damage their mitochondria by eating a high-carb,
low-fat diet and/or excessive protein, elevated iron levels can cause
profound mitochondrial damage as well.
When you have high iron levels in your mitochondria, it enhances
oxidation, creating high levels of damaging ROS and free radicals.
Fortunately, high iron is simple to fix. Simply check your iron level
with a serum ferritin test, and if your level is high, donate blood two
or three times a year to maintain a healthy level.
An ideal iron ferritin level is between 40 to 60 nanograms per
milliliter (ng/mL), the same as vitamin D. Below 20 ng/mL is a
deficiency state, and you definitely do not want to be above 60 or 80
ng/mL
THE END of Dr Mercola’s article.
Get and enjoy his book and supplement your Mitochondria with Opti-Mito-force.