“Mito Phase” stands for a technique to invigorate and renew your mitochondria.

Mitochondria (Mito) are intracellular powerhouses that produce ATP, the currency of energy in our body. 1/3 of your body weight is made up from the mito within your cells. These little structures sit inside each of your cells where they convert glucose and oxygen to create all the energy needed to run every aspect of your cellular functions. They keep your brain running, your hormones secreting hormones, your heart beating, your lungs absorbing vital air, your immune system functioning to protect you from all the virus, bacteria and molds in our environment, your gut absorbing nutrients and really anythings else you can imagine your body would need energy to do anything and everything. You should appreciate your mitochondria and take case of them but we don’t always get practical ways to do this. In this article we will be discussing a protocol founding on solid, event science to care for your mitochondria. Taking care of your mitochondria can potentially make positive changes in your health and longevity. Studies show mito function can impact the quality and length of your life in almost every way you can consider. A worth while effort indeed! We are going to dig into a few technical subject such as Autophagy, Mitophagy, Cellular Senescence and  NAD+. Lets get into it and make sense of the 4 day protocol called “Mito Phase”.

“Mito phase is a four day program where the first 2 days are focused on NAD+ loading and the next  2 days focused on activating Mitophagy, Autophagy and cleaning up Senescent Cells. this cleaning/ recycling of mitochondrai and old weak zombie cells is done using Senolytics and a 24 hour fast from lunch to lunch. “

First let’s discuss why you might want to supplement with NAD+. NAD+  or Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide. NAD+ is a sister to Niacin which is a vital vitamin that you cannot live without. NAD+  is a critical coenzyme found in every cell in your body, and it’s involved in hundreds of metabolic processes. Maintenance of an optimal NAD+/NADH ratio is essential for mitochondrial function the maintenance of the mitochondrial NAD+ pool is of crucial importance. From plants to metazoans, an increase in intracellular levels of NAD⁺ directs cells to make adjustments to ensure survival, including increasing energy production and utilization, boosting cellular repair, and coordinating circadian rhythms.  By the time we are middle aged, levels of NAD⁺ have fallen to half of youthful levels. Several studies in recent years have shown that treatment of old mice with  precursors to NAD⁺ can greatly improve health. Observed effects include increased insulin sensitivity, reversal of mitochondrial dysfunction, reduced stem cell senescence, and extension of lifespan (Bai et al., 2011; Gomes et al., 2013; Yoshino et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2016).

Euler-Chelpin, in his 1930 Nobel Prize speech says “NAD+ is one of the most widespread and biologically most important activators within the plant and animal world.” Ref

NAD+ levels are related to the  expression of NF-κB (Tirumurugaan et al., 2008) and low-grade inflammation is a primary driving force of aging, a possibility is that addressing inflammation is the answer to slowing he aging process. Doctors in the know and scientists in the field all conclude that  molecules that maintaining  NAD⁺ levels will allow people to celebrate many more anniversaries. Inflammation is not just linked to aging but is present and involved in almost all disease processes.

NAD+ levels naturally decline with age and various stressors can deplete your NAD+ at a more rapid rate. Poor restorative sleep and alcohol use are the top 2 stressors that deplete NAD+ however any stressor will drain away NAD+. Anytime you have a higher demand on energy, immune activation due to infections stress, mental stress, emotional stress, physical stress, structural stress, elecromagnetic (EMF’s) stress and chemical stress are the main “stress” categories. We cannot avoid these completely and so inevitably our NAD+ levels will be taxed creating a need to replace NAD+.

In this article titled “Why NAD⁺ Declines during Aging: It’s Destroyed” the author  states ‘NAD⁺ is required not only for life but for a long life…the decline of NAD⁺ during aging, with implications for combating age-related diseases.” Ref

I don’t after advocate ignoring underlying stressors driving inflammation and only supplementing with NAD+, but approaching it from both sides… well you might be looking at the future of medicine.

Mitochondrial dysfunction is a hallmark of metabolic decline (vitality) during aging. Ref  Your constantly replacing your old weak dysfunctional mitoc with new healthy fresh mito. The population of all the mito of a given cell constitutes chats called the Chondriome.  Like your MicoBiome we have a healthy pool of them or a unhealthy pool and this dictates how functional they are.  The average cell in your body has between 1,000-2,000 mito. Again they turn over as they get old they are recycled and its a process medicated through a gene expression ruled by mTOR. The mTOR pathway is a central regulator of metabolism (vitality) and physiology (function). Without getting too deep into mTOR for now lets just leave it at the fact when mTOR is inhibited we shift into a cleaning and recycling phase where we see Autophagy and Mitophagy. Autophagy is a latin word that translates into “self-eating”. Autophagy is the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells. Ref

Mitophagy is the selective degradation of mitochondria by autophagy. It often occurs to defective mitochondria following damage or stress. Ref

Remember all the types of stress? These ALL have an impact of the demand for Mitophagy to be activated through mTOR! Ref So what activates mTOR and Autophagy? Fasting is the primary activator of this process! We will circle back to this soon but first we need to talk about senescent cells, what they ae and how they have a detrimental effect of health and life span as they accumulate due to poor autophagy which normally remove and recycle them into fresh healthy cells and fresh healthy mito.

Cellular senescence is an irreversible cell-cycle arrest mechanism that acts to protect against cancer. Ref

Basically cellular senescence is a permanent state of sleep a cell goes into. This state is associated with a release of inflammatory products and a higher consumption of energy pulling it away from your healthy cells. Ref They are zombies in the literal sense!

Production of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines is emerging as a common feature of senescent cells irrespective of the senescence-inducing stressor or mechanism (Fig. 1).

Cultured cells usually reach senescence within several weeks after exposure to senescence-inducing stressors, but remain viable for months thereafter. ^REF

This means these “Zombies” will float around spewing inflammation and sucking the life out of your body by deferring vital energy that would normally be going to healthy cells.

So what’s the answer? How do you clear these senescence cells from the body?

It happens to be the same process that’s involved with Autophagy and Mitophagy where mTOR is involved. Fasting and Senolytics are the best answer to clean, clear and recycle these “zombie” cells. This is why we stack the most powerful senolytics on the planet with a 24 hour lunch to lunch fast that can be done each week or pulsed as directed by your health care provider.

John Lieurance, ND, DC

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468501118300063

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5088772/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4214092/