Transcription
You wake up after a full eight hours of sleep and you're still tired. Why? Well, guess what? It may not just be your schedule. It may be your biology.
At the most fundamental level, your energy is produced inside your cells by structures called mitochondria. These are the power plants of your body. Think of them as batteries. And when your mitochondria are functioning well, you're going to feel energized, focused, and resilient. And when they're not, you're going to feel fatigued even if nothing else has changed.
You can improve how your mitochondria, your power plants, actually function. Let me walk you through five of the most important ways and how you can apply them in your everyday life.
The first way is exercise. Exercise is the most powerful way to improve mitochondrial function. And there are different types of exercises that can affect your mitochondria in different ways. It's important to know this. First, what you need to understand is that to get these mitochondria going, your body needs clear, repeated stimuli. So that's why exercise has got to be regular.
Three beneficial ways to do the exercise. Let's walk through them.
First, high-intensity interval training (HIIT). This involves short bursts of effort followed by recovery. This kind of exercise creates a drop in available energy inside your cells. And this drop is what activates, really kind of as a reflex, signals like AMPK and PGC1-alpha. These are the signals that tell your cells to create new mitochondria. Now, how often do you need to do this? Well, in practice, if you have high-intensity exercise two to three times a week and you do four to six intervals each time and make sure you do 30 seconds to 2 minutes of harder and harder effort, that's all you need to do. You don't need a trainer and you can find a simple short interval workout just even online. So, you can do this. You can actually get your mitochondria going and the goal is controlled intensity. You don't want to work exercise to exhaustion.
Second way of doing exercise is aerobic exercise. Now, sometimes this is called Zone 2, and that is steady effort. So let's talk about what counts as Zone 2 aerobic exercise. It's easy. Think about a 30-minute jog or a really, really brisk walk. And let me tell you what I mean by brisk walk. You exercise so your breathing is elevated, but you can still hold a conversation. This at this level is where your mitochondria do most of the work using oxygen to produce energy and becoming more efficient. You're basically training your mitochondria. So, how do you do aerobic training in practice? How often do you have to do it? Answer is 3 to 5 times a week, 30 to 60 minutes at a time and at a pace where you can talk but not sing.
Now, the third kind of exercise is resistance training. Resistance training can also improve mitochondrial function, especially in your muscles. And this is super important as we're getting older. So, let me tell you how you do this. Resistance training in order to be able to get your mitochondria going. First, you can try some bodyweight exercises at home. This is a good way to get started. And how often do you have to do it? Two to three times a week. What you want to do is focus on the major muscle groups and prioritize your form over heavier weight. Meaning, just don't go for loading yourself down with weight. Make sure that you're actually doing the weight training properly.
So, the interesting thing, the question to ask is, how long does it take for exercise to kick in to help your mitochondria? Well, well, first of all, you start activating all the pathways from the first time you're starting to work out. Within weeks, you're going to feel better stamina and better recovery. And over a course of months, these changes become more durable because basically, you're training your mitochondria. The key thing is just to get started. You don't need a gym. Walking, bodyweight exercises, simple intervals. That's a great start and you can do that at home without a trainer.
Oh, one important safety tip. You should always check with your doctor if you've got conditions like heart disease or you have any chest symptoms with exertion or if you've been really inactive before you start exercise intensely, you probably want to check with your doctor just to make sure everything is okay. And remember, when it comes to your mitochondria, the consistency of exercise, keeping it going over time, matters more than the intensity. So don't just do a few rare times like super intensely. Do it regularly and make sure you do it consistently.
Okay, this is actually how to get your mitochondria, the power plants, to produce more energy. All right, I want to talk about another strategy besides exercise. This is strategy number two to improve your mitochondria. And can you guess what the is the opposite of exercise? It is sleep. That's right. Sleep is when your body shifts from activity to repairing itself. And by the way, this is why one bad night of sleep can make you feel completely drained and out of sorts the next day.
So let's talk about what happens during sleep. While you're sleeping, good quality sleep. Multiple systems are restored. For example, your brain clears its metabolic wastes. Your immune system recalibrates itself. Your muscles repair themselves after the day's activities, whether you exercise or not. And inside your cells, your mitochondria undergo maintenance. It's like putting the mitochondria into the uh service center.
Now, here's the thing. During the day, your mitochondria, the power plants, get a lot of wear and tear because, well, they're producing energy. So, what happens when you're sleeping? Well, you got less stress, oxidative stress, and any mitochondria that got damaged from all the exertion they had to do to generate energy during the day, any damaged ones are removed from your cells through a process called mitophagy. Mitophagy. Mitophagy. All right? Damaged mitochondria out of the cell.
Now, there are also parts of mitochondria that wear down like proteins and membranes. And guess what? Those proteins and membranes get repaired or they get replaced. So while you're sleeping, all this repair and replacement goes on and after a good night's sleep, your mitochondria are renewed. So the next day, your cells are going to have the ability to have more energy and function more efficiently.
Okay. Now I got to say what happens if you don't get good sleep because so many of us have challenges getting sleep every now and then or sometimes regularly. If you don't sleep well, guess what? Your mitochondria function is going to decline. So, your batteries, the energy plants, are actually not going to work as well. Cellular stress increases when you don't get enough sleep. Your metabolism becomes less efficient. And guess what? You are going to feel more fatigued and have less energy and less resilience the next day.
How much sleep do you need for good mitochondrial health? Well, for most adults, it's about 7 to 8 hours. That actually would work out just right. And if when you sleep, here's a little pro tip. You want to sleep in a cool 67, 68 degrees, dark. Okay? Make sure you're turning off all the the little lights that might be going in your room. Shut the screen down. Cool, dark, quiet environment. All right? You really want to be able to get good rest and make sure you sleep at the same time every evening. That's really how you actually kind of ensure that you're getting good quality sleep. Oh, and of course, don't eat too late. That can actually keep you up as well.
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Okay, let's talk about the third strategy for improving your mitochondria, and that is morning light exposure. Okay, morning light, sun comes up, you get up out of bed, out of your dark room, and you step outside. Going into the sunlight in the morning sets your body's internal clock for the rest of the day. That's called your circadian uh cycle. And here's what happens when you step outside into natural light. All right, sunlight. Light enters your eyes. It activates your brain's master clock. In case you want to know what that's called, the brain's master clock. It's called, ready for it? The suprachiasmatic nucleus. Suprachiasmatic nucleus is inside your brain. It's the master clock that when sunlight goes into your eyes, this will synchronize the the biology of the rest of your body. And this system actually controls when your mitochondria produce energy. So they shift from repair mode during the night. They shift into active energy production mode during the day, which is really what we want, right? Nighttime, sleep time, repair. Daytime, activity time, generate energy. All right? So, natural daylight in the morning actually sends that signal to get your brain to be able to uh start the clock to get this mitochondria into uh sync.
Now, without this signal, okay, no natural light, mitochondria will work, but the but the function of it and how it actually cycles with your day becomes much less efficient. So how do you do this in real life? Here's how you put it into practice. All right, go outside after you wake, you know, uh put on a pair of shoes and walk outside uh within 30 to 60 minutes of waking. All right. And get five to 15 minutes of sunshine, natural light, if it's bright and sunny. Five or 15. Five to 15 minutes. That's not a lot. You can go for a walk, go to the mailbox, you know, go walk a dog, and you'll be totally set. And if it's cloudy, you know what? Extend it a little bit longer. 20 to 30 minutes. That's definitely like walking a dog around the block. All right? So, when you actually get up in the morning, okay, you got to do this pretty soon. Within an hour after you get up, get outside 5 to 15 minutes if it's sunny, 20 to 30 minutes if it's cloudy. And what that does again is it helps to set your energy clock through your eyes into your brain uh into the rest of your body so that your mitochondria are ready to rock. They're basically generating energy during the day and it puts them out of the repair mode which they've been in at night.
Fourth strategy for activating your mitochondria. It's something called urolithin A. Now, this urolithin A is linked to your diet and your gut microbiome and it's also linked to supplements that you can actually get. So far, we've been talking about things that you can control. But urolithin A is something a little bit different because it is actually formed in our gut by our healthy gut bacteria. But only 30 to 50% of people can actually do it very well. Meaning, less than half of the people can actually make urolithin A. Urolithin A is made in our gut by healthy bacteria. All right? And it's very important because it actually helps your mitochondria. I'm going to explain to you in one second how that works.
How do you get urolithin A? By eating foods like pomegranates and walnuts and even berries. And these foods all contain a bioactive polyphenol called ellagitannins. All right? Now, your healthy gut bacteria have to take the ellagitannins and convert them into urolithin A. That's a as in atom. And because not everyone can do that well, only about half of people can do that, um, it can be a problem. Now, why does this matter? Well, because what urolithin A does is it directly affects your mitochondria in a good way. All right? And we're going to actually talk about how your gut microbiome and your cellular energy actually connect.
Here's an important question. What if your body isn't producing enough urolithin A to activate your mitochondria? Again, the power plants of your cells. This is pretty common. Even if people are eating the right foods, their gut microbiome might not efficiently convert these compounds into urolithin A. So, this can lead to a real gap between what you eat and what your body is actually able to use.
So, let's do a deeper dive into what urolithin A actually does for your mitochondria. Well, urolithin A activates mitophagy. This is the important process that your body uses to remove damaged mitochondria or mitochondria that aren't functioning well anymore. And you need mitophagy to maintain a good, efficient population of mitochondria to support your body's energy needs. What can be helpful? Well, there's a clinically studied form of urolithin called Mitopure, developed by a company called Timeline. And it delivers urolithin A directly without relying on your microbiome to produce it. And in human clinical studies, this has been shown to increase the renewal of the mitochondria by up to 39% compared to placebo after about 16 weeks. And because this is important for energy, it's been shown urolithin A can improve your muscle strength as well. Mitopure has been shown to deliver significantly higher levels, up to six times higher, more than what diet can deliver alone when it comes to urolithin A. So this isn't about a quick boost in energy. This is not an energy drink. This is actually about taking your urolithin directly and helping your mitochondria improve its function over time. Going to have more energy. It helps your physical performance. And this is actually how you can help your body adapt to healthy aging. And for those who want a more direct, consistent way to get your urolithin A, you can get a 30-day supply of Mitopure, currently available starting at $99, and you can receive 20% off using my link below.
All right, let's talk about strategy number five for improving mitochondrial energy, and that is actually reducing nutrient intake. In other words, fasting. Now, again, this one goes against how most people think about eating, which is about as much as you can, three times a day, eating a lot of snacks, ultra-processed foods. Guess what? The human body is not designed to process foods continuously. All right? And when nutrients are always available, that whole problem of abundance, guess what? Your cells stay in a fed state, which means that it's always focused on storing energy and not repairing and restoring the cells, right? When you got a lot of food around, a lot of energy around, your cells have to focus on just storing it all up rather than fixing things. However, if you reduce your caloric intake, that helps your body shift into repair and maintenance mode. Remember I told you when you're sleeping, you're actually your body's in repair and maintenance. Well, guess what? When you're sleeping, you're not eating. When you're not eating, you're fasting and you're not taking in calories. And so this is why lowering caloric intake can be helpful.
Now, couple of ways that you can actually reduce calorie intake. One is actually just to restrict the number of calories you take in over the course of the day. If you restrict by up to 25% of your daily calories, guess what you're going to do? You're going to activate cell pathways that will help your cells repair.
There's another way to actually reduce your calories, and that's called time-restricted eating. This isn't about how much you eat, it's about when you eat. So what you do with time-restricted eating to help your mitochondria, you eat within, say, an 8 to 10-hour window. And that allows your body to have 14 to 16 hours with no food, no caloric intake, right? You're fasting. And during this fasting period, guess what happens? Your insulin, the hormone insulin levels drop. Your energy-sensing pathways looking for energy activate. And the cellular cleanup processes, mitophagy. All right, uh that actually help to clean up mitochondria are activated. So that's one way to actually help to uh by cutting down your calories to be able to increase your mitochondria's function and efficiency. And by the way, by eating earlier in the day and avoiding eating late at night, that is one way to sync this up with your circadian biology, right? Get up, go outside, get some sunlight. All right? Uh eat earlier, don't eat too late, and give yourself eat within that 8 to 10-hour window. Give your body 14 to 15 hours to be able to reset, repair, recalibrate itself. And that includes fixing the mitochondria.
Okay. Now, here's the thing. Just just fasting doesn't actually really do the whole job for you. What you need to do is lower your intake of refined carbohydrates and sugars, okay? Added sugars and try to avoid as much as you can eating ultra-processed foods. You know why? Those types of foods tend to help you overeat, right? They just kind of train you. Uh you become addicted to the flavors and they tend to keep your body in a constantly fed state and now you're not able to focus on repairing uh and and regenerating itself, renewing itself. All right.
How long does fasting or caloric restriction take to give you more energy through your mitochondria? Well, think about it. It's about days to weeks before you start to notice the improved general energy levels. All right? And longer-term benefits that you're going to feel really good over a long period of time, that can actually take weeks to months to actually develop. So, what I'm telling you is that these are different ways to be able to actually get your mitochondria activated to generate energy. Uh it's not a quick fix. It's something you do over time. Easy to do, easy to achieve if you actually follow these uh guidelines.
So, your energy levels are not just about how busy you are. It's also about how well your mitochondria are producing the energy that drives your body. And your mitochondria, they respond to what you do every day, how you move, exercise, how you sleep, or how well you sleep, and what you eat and when you eat, and how you live. If you want to improve your energy at the cellular level to activate your mitochondria, these are some easy ways to start. And if you found this useful, subscribe to this channel for more science-based insights on how to improve your health from the inside out, including your energy. See you in the next video.
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