Natural LIght, Mitochondria and Your Energy Levels
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What’s Causing Your Fatigue
Charge Up!
Now the way that we can charge up ourselves is to make some lifestyle changes from optimizing our environment and also a big part of fighting fatigue is being conscious of how ourselves interact and exchange energy with the world around us.Two Simple Ways to Bring Up Your Energy
Two ways you can significantly top up your sources of energy include giving your body a healthy dose and the right kind of light and movement, and there's a couple of areas that Ari specializes in and there are also topics that we feature in the Supercharged documentary movie and also within our educational membership portal. In this podcast you're going to learn how to get to grips with what's causing your fatigue and what will enhance your energy, and you'll also find out some simple healthy lifestyle tips and strategies that are based on solid science that you can incorporate into your daily routine straight away. Ari really, really is an expert in the science of stepping up your game. To kick off I began by asking Ari to define what energy is from his perspective, and why he decided to make it his mission to alleviate fatigue and help people get their energy back.
Harry: Ari, what is the connection between energy and actually being healthy and getting that feeling of vitality and aliveness?
Organ Function and Energy
Ari: When your cells are struggling to produce energy, they don't operate well. Basically, everything that a cell does, whether it's a cell in your brain or your liver or your heart or any other organ in your body, in order for it to perform whatever functions it does it requires energy. Energy is produced in the mitochondria of the cells and when the cell does not have enough energy, it doesn't do those functions very well, and it translates into the poor function of that overall organ system of the body. If we're talking about the heart, poor heart function. If we're talking about the liver, poor liver function. If we're talking about the brain, poor brain function. Now if everything, all of the cells in your
body are not producing enough energy, it translates into the poor function of everything, everything's at a deficit for energy, and as a result your overall feeling that you have as a human being of what it feels like to not have enough energy in the cells of all your different organ systems is that you will feel the symptom of fatigue, you'll feel a lack of aliveness, you'll feel almost more dead, like you're not there to experience everything that there is to experience in the world. Fatigue for me is kind of like a life killer. It prevents you from engaging in your life in the way that you could if you actually had enough energy.
Chronic Fatigue
Harry: ...To charge up our cells we need to make conscious lifestyle changes that optimize our environment and specifically, this means you need to take action steps that will take care of and charge the mitochondria which are mighty little generators of energy inside our cells. As Ari has discovered, new scientific research shows why maintaining mitochondria is even more important than previously thought.
Second Role of Mitochondria in Cellular Defense
Ari: The big connecting piece here is the mitochondria. Most people know of the mitochondria as our cellular energy generators, our power plants, our batteries...There is research here in San Diego at the UCSD at a lab for mitochondrial medicine, University of California San Diego by a researcher named Robert Naviaux. Basically what he's discovered is that the mitochondria actually have another role, beyond just producing energy for the cell, something that is equally important and has been this kind of hidden secret factor of mitochondria that even people who know lots about the mitochondria really are unaware of. The second role of the mitochondria is cellular defense, which sounds kind of weird like why would it matter that the mitochondria are involved in cellular defense.
Mitochondria and Metabolism
Well, it turns out that the mitochondria are kind of at the hub of the wheel of our metabolism. They're controlling what happens in the cell in response to the kind of signals they're getting from the environment. This researcher at UCSD has discovered something that he's termed the cell danger response. Basically what this is, is the mitochondria are sensing what kind of signals they're getting from the environment, and depending on whether they're getting safety signals or whether they're getting "danger signals" of various kind of threats, whether biological threats, chemical threats, physical threats, any type of perceived danger or threat or stressor, they now shift their metabolic machinery and the cell's metabolic machinery towards something he's called defense mode which is basically mitochondria are shifting the cell to turn off energy production and shift into a mode of engaging that is designed to protect the cell and the host, us, from harm... a new paradigm of health and what creates energy and what creates fatigue, and it really hinges on the kind of signals from the environment that the mitochondria are sensing.
Harry: Now one of the signals we can be sending to ourselves, a lot of the time, is stress hormones. And if we're under a lot of stress, our bodies end up favouring the response, to fight for our survival, rather than expending energy or other bodily functions such as digestion. Ari, is there a similar mechanism at play here?
Nervous System and Chronic Fatigue
Ari: Part of what goes on at the cellular level is this, the changes in cellular function in response to certain kinds of threats and danger. What you're talking about is the autonomic nervous system, so the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, and it's kind of like a bigger picture layer of what's going on when something's in chronic stress mode. There are things that are occurring on the cellular level, at the mitochondrial level, the cellular level, the organ system level, the nervous system level, and so on. One of the things we know about people with chronic fatigue, for example, is they have a sympathetic nervous system dominance and an underactive or relatively underactive parasympathetic nervous system.
ATP
Ari: It's turning out that there's some emerging lines of evidence that are showing that our cells' ability to produce energy is affected by a number of different things, not just how much carbs and how much fat we pour into the system. We all know this intuitively. You don't get energy in proportion to how much fat and how much carbs you consume. In fact, you can actually get the opposite. If you consume lots and lots of carbs and lots of fat, you may actually feel fatigue. We get a food coma. We get this reaction of actually wanting to go to sleep. There isn't a direct correlation like one might logically kind of conclude, if carbs and fats are what are creating energy, then you might kind of just simplistically and logically conclude that adding more carbs and fats to the system should give you more energy. In fact, it doesn't work like that.
Live it Up Outdoors
There are all these other layers of complexity to the story. One of those is light. If we think about the concept of light exposure and electromagnetic radiation, in terms of our ancestors, we can look at certain factors. The biggest one is that our ancestors lived outdoor lives. They weren't stuck inside of insulated buildings with artificial lighting, fluorescent and LED lighting all the time, and they didn't stare at electronic screens every night, and their major light sources weren't the fluorescent light bulbs overhead and the TV screens and the computer screens next to them. They were outdoors in the light of nature, under the sun for hours and hours and hours every day. And the intensity of the sun is hundreds of times greater in terms of light intensity compared indoor lighting. That's one factor. They're in that light, and not just all these different wavelengths of light, so the blue light affecting our circadian rhythm, the red and near-infrared light, the far-infrared light, the UV light, all of these different types of wavelengths that are affecting different systems of the body. Then in the evening, after the sun went down, they built fires and then they sat around a firelight, which was emitting lots of far-infrared in the form of heat which has certain physiological effects, as well as red and near-infrared. They're bathing in these photons of electromagnetic radiation that are having all of these physiological effects. The overall amount of these things was hundreds of times greater than what modern humans are getting.
What Are We Missing
We're missing out on those hours in the sun every day, we're missing out on the hours next to a fire every day, bathing in the red and the near-infrared and the far-infrared. We're missing out on the effects of light on our physiology and we're paying a huge price for it. It turns out that light is actually composed of a number of different wavelengths. There are five different wavelengths of light that are bioactive in us that affect human physiology in various ways, and there are many different mechanisms and many layers to the story, but just to give you kind of a brief overview, some of these wavelengths of light are UV, and there are different types of UV, UVA, UVB and so on. We also have visible light so things like blue and red light which have various effects on various physiological systems of the body. For example, blue light goes through our eyes and feeds back into a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus which controls the circadian clock, the 24-hour rhythm, biological clock in our brain that tells us when to be awake and alert and active and energetic and when to go to sleep. That's why we get tired and sleepy at night and why we wake up in the morning. It has a huge impact on our energy levels. We also have things like red light and near-infrared light, and these have other effects which we can get into a moment on cellular function. Then there's things like far-infrared light as well which we feel as heat like if we go into a far-infrared sauna or you go in the sun and you feel the rays of the sun heating up your body. Well, that far-infrared energy has a number of other physiological mechanisms on our cells. It impacts circulation in our body. It can trigger certain reactions in our cells. It can affect the water viscosity inside of our cells.
Photons Travel Directly Into Our Cells
All of these things have subtle mechanisms that translate into how healthy we are, how energetic we are, and in terms of red and near-infrared light it's actually been shown, and there are numerous studies on this, that photons from red and near-infrared light can actually travel directly into our cells, can actually penetrate through our skin and go deeper inside of our body, and interact directly in the mitochondria, the energy generators of our cells, through a specific spot in the mitochondria called cytochrome c oxidase which it acts as a photoreceptor and takes those photons, and by doing this it can actually trigger the production of energy by the mitochondria. It's not just a matter of, again not just a matter of how much carbs and fats you pour into the system. But there's lots and lots of layers of things which are impacting our energy production. Just one other aspect of this, of how infrared energies and near-infrared and red energies can impact our cells, there's also research showing that it can impact the viscosity of water inside of our cells, and this has actually been shown to affect the rotation of the ATP synthase pump on the mitochondria, which is the last step of the mitochondria that they need to produce ATP cellular energy. So by altering the viscosity of the water in the cell, you can actually make it easier for your mitochondria to actually produce more energy.Under Training
Not moving enough under movement in particular. Now, this creates a different set of problems for the mitochondria. Basically, the way that this works is in order for our mitochondria to operate well, there are certain steps in the chain of how the mitochondria actually produce ATP cellular energy. At each step in this process, they send a hydrogen ion, a proton, across one membrane of the mitochondria into what's called the intermembrane space. As this process happens, these hydrogen ions build up in the intermembrane space. Now, in order for this process to happen on an ongoing basis, there has to be some kind of burning up of energy. Now, what happens when you're sitting for very long periods of time and you're sedentary, you're not moving your body, is that you're not burning up enough of the ATP that's being produced and so there's kind of a block in the machinery that takes place. It starts to kind of get clogged up as you don't allow these things to burn off and keep things flowing through the machine. What happens when that's going on is sparks start to get flung off from this machinery in the mitochondria, so electrons are being passed in the mitochondria as part of this electron transport chain to produce energy. Now, when somebody's sedentary too much it translates into some of these electrons kind of ... Because the machine's getting clogged, some of these electrons kind of get just flung off and released and in the process, they actually damage the membranes of the mitochondria and can become free radicals and things like that. Basically, being sedentary translates into direct damage of your mitochondria which is directly damaging and hindering your body's ability to produce energy.Experience the World
Ari: Our health and our energy levels can't be generated in a vacuum. You can't get healthy by just lying in bed and doing nothing all the time. There has to be some kind of movement, some kind of life, some kind of stimulus. Humans are meant to go experience the world. We're meant to move our bodies and movement is basically a nutrient. When we don't move our bodies we miss out on that. What I mean by it's a nutrient is there are so many different layers of physiological systems that are affected when we move our bodies. We affect our brain, we affect our nervous system, we affect our cardiovascular system and our lungs and the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the different tissues
and so on, and we flush out waste products that are located in different parts of the body and different parts of the cell. We get our lymph system moving to flush lymph fluid back through our body so that our immune system can process that. All of these different layers of activation are happening as we move our bodies. Movement is very much a nutrient in the same way that oxygen and food and water are nutrients. It's a required nutrient for life and when we don't move our bodies we suffer the same sort of consequences that we suffer when we don't put good nourishment into your body, you don't put pure water into your body and you don't breathe clean air/
Gentler Forms of Movement is Best
Ari: In terms of the actual science around movement and energy levels, overall the evidence supports gentler forms of movement for actually translating into how you feel in terms of your energy levels later that day. Gentler forms of movement like walking or yoga, qigong, things like that. Any type of gentle, long duration, endurance exercise. Any of that type of exercise tends to translate into better energy levels in the immediate aftermath of doing that physical activity. Whereas really intense forms of high-intensity interval training, and sprinting, and intense weight lifting types of exercises, can often translate into you feeling less energetic in the immediate aftermath of that physical activity.
So, there are a couple contexts here, one is how energetic a person feels in the hours or day after that burst of physical activity, and the other context is the long-term improvements in cellular health and cellular energy producing capacity and fitness, that occur through various types of physical activity. And all types of physical activity can translate into physical fitness benefits, that ultimately confer better energy levels, but in the immediate, definitely gentler. Things like walking and endurance exercise, translate into better improvements and energy levels. Now there's also an element here of, if you want the energy, you have to do the thing. And it's a little bit reversed in how we might normally
think about these things because we often think, "Well to go do this physical activity. And so I'd rather just sit here, lay here because I don't have the energy to go do that." And interestingly enough, the way that it works, is often the opposite. If you go do the thing, even though you may not have the energy at that moment, it will actually give you the energy. Not only in the immediate experience and aftermath of doing the thing but also, you're building the capacity of your cells to handle that. And do it becomes easier and easier to continue doing the thing. On the other hand, if you always make the decision not to do it, because you don't have the energy, you're creating an atrophy and
a degradation of the mitochondria in your cells, and a loss of their capacity to produce energy and power physical movement. So the more that you make the decision to not engage in that physical movement, the more your body loses the capacity to engage in it. And the more often you'll find yourself in that position of, I don't have the energy to go for walk, or go for a run, or do this workout. And we lose that capacity very quick. Just in the matter of a few weeks, we can lose a lot of that capacity of our cells to actually handle that kind of physical activity. So it's very, very important that we continue to engage in those activities. Even if they're not intense, even if they're not strenuous and you're not driving yourself into the ground, and wearing yourself out. But just maintaining a little bit of gentle movement all the time, is extremely important so that our cells continue to have that capacity to engage in that.
Harry: So what's the best way to get motivated to exercise, and follow through on our goals?
Motivated to Exercise
Ari: By going for a walk, by getting outdoors, by getting natural sunlight, by doing the physical movement, and by making the mental decision to go, even when you didn't feel like going. All of those things create a sort of empowerment that actually leads to more energy.
Hormesis to Grow Stronger
Ari: Hormesis is basically a transient metabiotic stressor that stimulates your body to grow stronger and become more resilient, and become healthier, and more energetic. Now if that sounds like an abstract idea, we're all actually more familiar with this concept than we realize. And we've all heard Nietzsche. say, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." So we all know that. You go through challenges in life, whether life challenges, or whether just brief experiences that made you uncomfortable in some way; psychologically uncomfortable, or physically uncomfortable, and you become tougher as a result, you become more resilient. And that's what hormesis is. Now we also know of exercise, and everybody knows about the benefits of physical exercise and if you look at the science, you know it translates into decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's, and dementia, and diabetes and so on. I mean almost you name the disease, and you can find research showing that exercise helps prevent or treat that disease in some way. Now, the reason that exercise works, and this is very important, it's not because exercise is intrinsically healthful, and somehow the more you do of it, the healthier you become.
Exercise is actually a metabolic stressor. It is a stressful thing for body, and by putting the body in that situation where you're creating this metabolic stress on it, as long as it's done in the appropriate dose, and then you give your body the chance to rest, and recover, and regenerate afterwards, you will stimulate your body to make certain adaptations that actually make it grow stronger and more resilient.
Our Emotions
Harry: One of the other key strategies for a supercharged life and overall health, and vitality is having a positive sense of purpose, something Ari clearly possesses. So I asked him, how does having a strong purpose give you energy?
Ari: There are various studies that have emerged around the concept of purpose in life. And how that impacts our health and our energy levels. In particular, there's some research that has come out of studies on the people of Okinawa. And in Okinawa, this is one of the blue zones. This is one of the populations that's known for being the healthiest and longest-lived populations on earth. And in Okinawa in particular, they have this concept of Ikigai. Which translates "Your reason for waking up in the morning." Your reason for being, and your reason for getting and doing whatever it is you do life. And you could also call it your purpose in life and just your purpose in general. Now, this research has shown that having a strong sense of purpose, and this reason for being, translates into all sorts of benefits; for your brain function, for your overall health, your risk of all sorts of different diseases, your vitality, your mood, your energy levels. All of these different things relate to this Ikigai. People who have a strong purpose, or reason for being, are protected from all these different diseases, and tend to be healthier and more resilient, and more energetic than people who don't have it. So I strongly believe that connecting with your purpose, your reason for being in life, is a critical part of the equation. And you can take thousands of dollars of supplements, and you can eat the best diet in the world and you can have the best health regimen, and do all of these things, and you can spend tens of thousands of dollars on all these fancy treatments and different technologies, and bio-hacking and so on, but if you don't have a reason for existing, a reason for waking up every day, and a strong sense of the purpose in your life that drives you, and motivates you to do what you wanna
do in life, you're still not gonna be healthy. And you're still not going to be energetic, and you're still gonna have mood issues, and you're still gonna not feel very good in life. So I think a big piece of this puzzle, that a lot of people maybe lose in this process of pursuing health through all these different fancy things that we now have access to, is just the simplicity of connecting with your
purpose.
Please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition, and is not a substitute for professional, medical advice. Please seek a medical practitioner before engaging in anything that we suggest today on the show.
