Fatigue is such a common symptom among those struggling with chronic illness. It stems from a multitude of issues in the matrix of life.
Chronic fatigue affects three main areas: pain, drain, and brain. These areas manifest themselves as body pain, muscle pain, fatigue, inability to heal, brain fog, headache, and most neurological issues.
Although an early sign of deeper issues, fatigue is commonly a symptom we attempt to ignore. We push through to save ourselves from the judgment of others, or simply because there is just too much to do.
We live in a culture that incentivizes not only burning the candle at both ends, but going at it with a blowtorch.
From this misguided prioritization on busyness, we fear judgment from our peers as being lazy. Or we heap shame on ourselves because of the inability to keep up with life’s demands.
In your search for energy, you’ve likely come across the importance of mitochondria. Mitochondria are components within our cells from which we derive 90% of our energy.
You have likely heard them referred to as the “power plants” or “energy factories” in our cells. With so many of us dealing with fatigue, restoring the mitochondria is a major step in your freedom from chronic illness.
Required focus for energy factory restoration:
- Control and contain the damage
- Deliver the raw material
- Secure the structure
- Get the crew together
Control and Contain the Damage
First and foremost, mitochondrial damage needs to be assessed. What are the depths of your fatigue? Do you show outward signs of chronic fatigue (brain fog, wrinkles, muscle loss, chronic pain or “brain, pain, and drain”)? How did the mitochondria come to this condition?
At this point, the context of your fatigue must be understood. By presenting your doctor with an overview of your “health journey,” you provide the groundwork needed for surveying the damage and initiating a clean-up strategy.
Only by knowing how fatigue entered the scene can there be successful resolution. David Haase, MD (educator for Institute for Functional Medicine) refers to the complexity of fatigue as a “multitude of interacting, interlacing factors.”
In fact, it is up to your practitioner to not only connect the dots of your personal history, but to connect with you in order to best understand the source of your fatigue. Through meaningful and intentional partnership, a doctor and patient can add the “why”, “when”, “where”, and “how” to the “what” (i.e. merely your symptoms) of each individual case history.
This is the entire essence of context, after all. It provides the why behind choices made, as well as the how, where and when impacting your life, even now. Investigating context means going beyond the obvious symptoms and knowing the actual person.
Deliver Raw Material
Keeping with our analogy, a factory is only as good as the raw materials it receives. For our mitochondria, these come in the form of food and oxygen.
Mitochondria are able to combine the air we breathe and the food we eat, turning it into the energy we need. Thus, they are deeply interdependent upon the vitality of our gut and lungs.
If you are reading this, you are likely breathing; but how well? Stressful encounters, on a daily basis, have trained us into shallow breathing. Deep, diaphragmatic (belly) breathing works like the bellows a blacksmith uses to create a fire of intense heat. Take time each day to focus on your breathing and stoke the fires in your cells.
Diet is one of the most significant sources of mitochondrial injury; but it is also the best remedy. The food we eat either fuels us or fatigues us.
There are four main points to be mindful of in a mitochondria-healing diet:
- Fats-avocados, butter, olive oil, nuts and seeds, coconut oil, fish
- Phytonutrients – every color of fruit and vegetable, every day
- Anti-inflammatory – herbs, spices, minimally processed, organic
- Reduced carbs (no or low grain), high fiber
This essentially highlights a ketogenic diet (low carb, high fat), which tends to be the most friendly to strengthening mitochondria.1 However, this does not mean that all of those struggling with chronic fatigue can handle a ketogenic diet.
Digestion must first be optimized in order to process hard-to-break-down fats and proteins. Namely, this means repairing the liver, gall bladder, stomach acid, and enzymes along with happier gut microbes.
Secure the Structure
Our mitochondria can be very delicate and easily injured by a number of factors. The membranes of the mitochondria are where the brunt of damage is felt.
Free radicals are normally produced by our mitochondria as a byproduct of energy production, much like smoke from the stacks of a factory. With sufficient antioxidants from our diet, these free radicals are easily neutralized.
But when we are under too much stress, uncontrolled inflammation, and our diets are lacking, free radicals lay siege like Vikings assaulting the gates of a fortress.2
The fate of the mitochondrial membrane is intricately linked to the membranes of the gut and the brain (i.e. leaky gut and leaky brain). Damage to one area means damage to the other.
A leaky gut allows more toxins to build up in our body. Toxins flooding in from the gut now burden the brain.3 Weakened mitochondria also inhibit the brain’s ability to repair its barrier and drain toxins.4
Dietary and supplemental fats are a great way to shore up damaged membranes. Omega 3 supplements (especially DHA when chronic inflammation is present), along with grass-fed meat, wild-caught fish, nuts and seeds are efficient ways to build up mitochondrial membranes.
Get the Crew Together
A proper factory needs a good crew to maintain and run its systems. Our mitochondria need co-factors to run enzymes for proper function.
Access to the raw material (oxygen and food) is essential, but if the co-factors are not in place, the cellular machinery does not turn.
These co-factors are nutrients that should come from our food. However, in chronic cases, the extra leverage of the following nutraceuticals is needed:
- CoQ10 (specifically in the form of ubiquinol)
- Magnesium-magnesium malate, glycinate (threonate are preferable)
- Acetyl L-carnitine
- Alpha lipoic acid
- N-acetyl-cysteine
- B vitamins
- D-ribose
Of course, all nutrients are better through whole foods. In most chronic cases, though, foods are too weak to replenish weak bodies.
Not all nutraceuticals are created equal. Nor are all of the above nutrients (especially B vitamins) appropriate for everyone. This is where a partnership with a practitioner, sensitive to these matters, is most helpful.
For lasting success in restoring your mitochondria, we must go beyond propping them up with stimulants and crutching with supplements.
This can only happen when a practitioner takes the time to fully investigate fatigue through mindfully gathering your history, targeted labs, heart rate variability assessments, and an appreciation for the energetic aspect of the body.
Restoring your mitochondria will give you both the energy to heal and the energy to thrive!
References
- J Lipid Res. 2014 Nov; 55(11):2211-28.
- Methods Mol Biol. 2012; 810:183-205.
- J Nucl Med. 2012 Apr; 53(4):601-7.
- https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/brain-drain-glymphatic-pathway-clears-av-requires-water-channel
