Unlocking the Cellular Powerhouse: Mitochondria Explained

 In this episode, Dr. Rodney and Karen Wirth delve into the critical role of mitochondria in overall health and energy production. They emphasize the importance of avoiding harmful seed oils, which can poison cellular processes and contribute to various health issues like fatigue, dementia, and cardiovascular problems. 

By substituting with healthier oils such as avocado and olive oil, individuals can begin to repair their mitochondrial function. The hosts also highlight the significance of moderate exercise and sleep in maintaining optimal cellular health, encouraging listeners to make small, consistent changes for long-term well-being and vitality. 

You can't change my mind about seed oils - here's why... podcast

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Transcript

Dr. Rodney: Welcome to Stance for Health podcast with Dr. Rodney and Karen Wirth, where becoming healthy is not complicated. Control your health by focusing on six areas of life that we teach you so you finally have the energy you have to do what you want instead of being a victim of your age. I have over 20 years experience working as a chiropractor and Karen is an author, speaker and longevity coach. We've seen how a tiny change in your habits today can open up your life to a powerful future. Start today and take your Stance for Health.

 Hi and welcome to Stance for Health podcast. I'm Dr. Rodney with as usual, my Hope Lady, Karen Joanne Sebastian Wirth. And we are tying together some really important concepts today.

So stay tuned and stay alert because a lot of our prior podcasts will make even more sense.

Karen: Yes, as one, I think it's because of the title, “You cannot change my mind about vegetable oils.” In that podcast I talked so passionately about my very health conscious mom substituting all of the good kind of fats with the ones that basically led to her macular degeneration and even the dementia. And so, the things that we want to talk about today center around a word that we use a lot with the laser. It's the mitochondria.

Dr. Rodney: What I want you to do is take a trip with me to understand better what the importance of the mitochondria. I think it is really an unsung hero.

Karen: Exactly. I mean, go back to Biology class (if you remember that far back) and you have the picture of the cell and in the middle of it is kind of a little squiggly other form in there, and that is the mitochondria.

Dr. Rodney: It's floating around doing all kinds of stuff, isn't it?

Karen: Yes. And if you have a younger student that was into science, like a couple of our health partners that have moved into nursing, when you say, do you know about the mitochondria? And they go, yes, that's the powerhouse of the cell.

Dr. Rodney: What's also interesting about mitochondrial health and cellular health is what the cells then make up tissues and organ systems. So what we're talking about is one of the most basic of all building blocks in the is what is it designed to do but produce energy for that cell.

The reality is what we're aiming at here is that you don't necessarily have to go back biology to understand what we're talking about. Just wrap your head around the fact that in organizations you have presidents, CEOs, and then you have what your basic worker bee. Worker Bee. You know, someone that's writing code or putting a stamp on a letter or, or onto the post office, sending an email, something like that. Where rubber meets the road. And this is actually feeding that person. This is feeding that person so that they can be more productive and not have the afternoon crash or the all day crash.

Karen: I love that.

Dr. Rodney: Or wake up with a headache and not feel like going to work. That's where the mitochondria is so important is because really, let's just say that one nerve cell requires billions of ATP adenosine triphosphate. That's the high octane fuel that your cells need to operate.

And if a mitochondria is not producing that, you're going to have name the disease, you're going to have expression of symptoms. Basically what you're going to end up with is a failure of an organ or, and it, and an organ that affects other organs, then affects systems. And then of course you're talking about, you know, name diseases and cancer and heart disease and dementia and those types of things.

Karen: Tying that back then to the podcast has been one of our most popular downloads. What do the vegetable oils have to do with diminished energy in the mitochondria?

Dr. Rodney: I'm so glad you asked that. We have byproduct that if you go back and listen to that, that degrades to something in your, and it stays in your mitochondria as effectively what I understood it as an aldehyde. It stays in there as almost like poison.

Karen: You know what that makes me think of? Formaldehyde.

Dr. Rodney: I'm with you a hundred percent on that. If you poison anything, it does reach down to the cellular level and the most operative place in the cell is obviously the mitochondria.

So that then affects the ability of that cell to then feel safe at producing and, and uniting the, the necessary molecules so that you, you can actually communicate with other cells well and, and therefore transport cell products across the cell wall and, and get it from the GI tract and into the blood and into the bloodstream and, and into the system. So you see how far reaching this is as a result.

Karen: And that's that transport system that's so important to get everything from one place to another.

Dr. Rodney: So there's a barrier between the brain and blood and there's also a barrier between the gut and blood.

And the two are so interconnected you can't damage one without the other. That goes back to what I said about systems. In other words, you don't have heart disease alone.

Karen: You're right.

Dr. Rodney: Or you don't have dementia. Alone, you probably have some sort of a gut permeability issue.

Karen: You don't just isolate a symptom or even just one part of your body. But we are eating more and more seed oils all the time. At the end of this, we're going to talk about how you can move away from this, but it's going to take some non negotiables like what we have done, because unless you can lower that consumption, you're going to continue to damage your metabolism. And I'm seeing more and more, especially when I work with people on the Sirona that want to lose weight.

They really have messed up metabolisms and a lot of them aren't eating anything. They're practically starving and yet they do not lose the weight, they do not regain the health.

Dr. Rodney: I want you to know that if you're listening to this today, this is coherent, this is cogent, this is clear, as clear as we can make it. This is affecting you. This is affecting you. And you think about the toxins in our world. This is a toxin that we can choose to avoid.

Karen: And there's never been a better time with more replacements. And we're happy to even do another podcast around that. How do you get out of swimming in these seed oils? Because they're in everything, particularly salad dressings, and the damage is real. People are thinking, I'm just tired all the time. If you're of a certain age, I'm getting older, but it's happening younger and younger.

Dr. Rodney: Start considering buying stock in avocado, because I think that's the next jump that people are going to make. It's a pretty neutral oil.

Karen: It is. We use it for anything that needs the higher heat. The reality of that is by just making some conscious decisions on that alone, you can begin to make the transition. The one thing you have to keep in mind about everything that we share on Stance for Health is we want to give you one small thing you can do that will begin to move the needle. Except it's not going to happen instantly.

Dr. Rodney: Right? In fact, the clear process that we partook of, let's say starting in 2020, it was 2022 before some of these symptoms started clearing for me. There are some things that can accelerate it, but a way to monitor this is going to be really important because we highly recommend that you find a way to test. We're talking about seed oils. So that's the introduction of Omega 6 or more clearly in most cases, arachidonic acid, if I can be specific, that's the one that you're testing against Omega 3.

And why this is so important is because Omega 6s keep you at a higher level of inflammation.

It's signaling inflammation in your body. And we all know, and all the research that's out there is pretty clear, is that you don't want your body in a constant state of inflammation because it really starts to damage your tissues. Because it's in that heightened state of alert, you have opportunity to build scar tissue and, and just different tissues.

Karen: It begins to pretty much snowball. And if you think about these things, it can affect your sleeping, it can

Dr. Rodney: affect your brain, your gut and how you age joints, especially your brain, health. That's why I want you to get your head around this today. This is so important to you. The listener is that when we say health, what we're talking about is an optimal state of physical, mental and social well being that encompasses a blue zone lifestyle. And remember when we're talking about blue zones, that's well documented cases that Dan Buettner did a study on people that are doing what we're talking about right here, they're probably living more with olive oil and avocado oil, heavy on the olive oil. If you take the Omega 6 to 3 test and it's so important to know that number because that will tell you something that will explain a lot. If you're having certain cloudy thinking, if you're feeling down at certain times of the day, you're having headaches, you're, you're having joint aches and you think well that's just, I'm getting older, that's normal.

Remember, there is a big difference between common and normal.

Karen: The other part that we've talked about so many times is that as you step away from ultra processed foods and eating out at restaurants, you are going to be eating more at home using the right oils or you're going to shop to find a restaurant,- shout out to HG Supply.

Recently they changed. They'd always been healthy, but in the last few years they've changed to absolutely no seed oils. And so it's fun to have a place where we can eat out and the food just tastes so good.

Dr. Rodney: It's important to know your number, your ratio or your percentage of omega 3s in your body. Mainly because there is some research to suggest that you can, depending on the quality of the fish oil, that you can take too much of it. So as far as supplementation goes initially, the thing to focus on really is let's get away from the insult of the Omega 6s as much as possible. And we're going to talk here in just a little bit about some of the other accelerants for your mitochondria. If we just wanted to lay the groundwork of what one of the easiest offenders that you can take control over. And that's why we say take your Stance for Health.

Karen: So when you're thinking about the ATP, I just want to read a quote here because so many people I've talked to lately are talking about they feel brain fog.

Dr. Rodney: Right?

Karen: And it's saying in your brain, one cell alone uses billions (with a b) billions of ATP molecules every second. Like a tiny city lit up with millions of bulbs all switched on at once. And they do not just sit still. They move toward areas that need more energy and even fuse together to share resources, especially when you push your muscles or challenge your mind. So isn't that fun that this will also allow our brains to come more alive?

Dr. Rodney: And you said brain cell and that's cogent to dementia. We could also be talking about muscle fatigue in a muscle cell and a cardio cell in a cartilage cell that, that produces ligaments or tendons in a synovium and, and or in the synovial fluid itself. This taints your whole body. It taints everything that a mitochondria touches.

Karen: I love that.

Dr. Rodney: It's like if you just keep going to the same gas station, getting 85 octane and your car needs 87. Right. And you're giving it 85. Yeah. It's going to damage the car. Well, everybody knows that. Or so with that, you don't have to keep going to the same gas station. You don't have to keep buying the same fuel. What we're telling you is you can feed your body different things, things and do different things. You can tell your car, your earth suit, how you want it to perform and start. It'll start over the next two years. It'll start making changes. When you make changes, your body will reward you with function and eventually feeling because it goes all the way back to the energy producer of your cells

Karen: and add to that moderate exercise. Yes, it can change it completely. It doesn't take a lot. I think that's part of what we've got to fight as well, is the, the weekend warrior mentality that you've got. If you can't give it all, don't do anything.

Dr. Rodney: We have a health partner that comes in. What is she, 82, 83. She's walking a couple miles a day and she. And she's a little depressed because it's only two miles. And she's used to more than that. The thing about, I'm saying about. About that is that. That it qualifies. Yes, that qualifies. Getting your heart rate up to around a hundred, one hundred ten, maybe one hundred fifty if you have to. And. And a lot of you out there, you're saying, hey, I got my. I got my heart rate up to 200 or 190. Oh, I did it for a half an hour. I did it for 20 minutes. When your mitochondria says, we're redlining here. Right.

Karen: And part of what we need to start doing is listening to our bodies more and knowing that we also have to sleep.

Dr. Rodney: Oh, sleep is huge, too. Another one of our podcasts is Sleep Secrets.

Karen: We've got two of those. We can link to that.

Dr. Rodney: We've also talked at length at times about the different types of exercise. We do strength training, we do HIIT, and now we've kind of combined that a little bit.

Karen: And HIIT is High Intensity Interval Training.

Dr. Rodney: Yes. And kettlebell strength training seems to combine those. That's where we are right now with that. But another one that's really interesting that actually produces proteins that helps produce something called autophagy, that actually helps to eat the mitochondria that are dead or dying. That's a heat exposure. And that's. That's another podcast.

Karen: And the thing about the. The heat exposure in the sauna, once again, it's not extreme. And I think if I'm getting any message from this podcast, is that you can take the small steps as long as they're consistent.

Dr. Rodney: And that temperature that you're referring to is. I saw temperatures as low as 120.

Karen: Really?

Dr. Rodney: And for as little time to start with as five minutes. If you're doing 20 minutes, that seems to be the sweet spot at around 165 or 170, if you can work your way up to that.

Listen to your body. If you feel lightheaded, if you feel like excess thirst or excess hungry, or you just feel like you want to growl at somebody, that's sometimes what I encounter.

Karen: Oh, really?

Dr. Rodney: Yeah.

Karen: So I think I live with that.

Dr. Rodney: I think that's one of the things that we have to pay attention to.

Karen: The important thing is that you eat during the daytime because you want your body to have the resilience to come against the stress and to not be a night eater all the way until the time you go to bed.

So in closing, let's revisit some of what we talked about. Why are Mitochondria so important to my overall health document.

Dr. Rodney: It is the million dollar question of health. It feels like a quantum leap between talking about ATP molecules, which are the energy currency of your cells, and then extrapolating or expanding all the way to an organ made up of cells. And here's this little mitochondria that screaming for attention back in the cell that all of these things that we've talked about today help.

In other words, what lifestyle things can we do since we now know that mitochondria are so important?

Karen: I'm glad you asked that. So some of the things you can begin to do is cut back on the seed oils, manage your sleep, move consistently and manage stress. Because all of those things, the poor habits, especially disrupted sleep, are going to weaken that entire energy grid affecting your thinking, mood, resilience and just your quality of life.

Dr. Rodney: The reducing or even eliminating your linoleic acid, ergo your seed oils, is not that heroic and it's not that hard. But it makes a big difference when you do it consistently over period of years.

Start looking at your calendar rather than your clock and I believe you'll the curbing your expectations for how far reaching this has become in our culture and how long it takes to to to make a difference.

It doesn't have to be heroic.

Karen: I totally agree and we are here to help you take your Stance for Health.

Dr. Rodney: Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for joining us at Stance for Health podcast where getting healthy and staying that way are not as complicated as you might think.

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