If you could only choose one supplement to support mitochondria ...

[circular]

including oxidative stress, what would it be and why?

[pguyer807]

D-Ribose. I have discovered I have SEID (formerly CFS). My battle is with energy, particularly with exercise and any intense mental work. I have followed some of the research with docs who are trying to help people with this disporder and they all recommend
d-ribose.

My issue has been with blood sugar, it causes a s[I,e then a pretty dramatic drop. Also my fasting glucose has gone up.
I'm going to try different doses to see if I can figure out if in fact this is causing my bs issues.

It is supposed to take 3 weeks to feel a difference but I noticed a big difference in a few days. Taking 5grams two to three
times a day.

[pguyer807]

Didn't mean to double post that! I need my d-ribose! Maybe with a shot of caffeine.....

[TheresaB]

WahlsFOODLISTS.docx

If you could only choose one supplement to support mitochondria ...

I don’t know enough to answer this question directly, but I will approach it from the side.

In a strategy specifically aimed at enhancing our mitochondria function, my husband and I follow Dr. Terry Wahls' triage protocol on micronutrients. (Dr Wahls beat progressive Multiple Sclerosis largely through diet and functional medicine. Her TED talk is “Minding your Mitochondria” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc and earlier this month she published
“The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions” and previously published “The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles”

Following this protocol means eating a lot of raw non-starchy veggies a day (we eat a big dinner salad every evening) with:

• 1/3 being (deep, leafy) greens
  1/3 sulfur (mushrooms, cauliflower, garlic, etc)
  1/3 colored all the way through (with at least 3 colors: beets, carrots, blueberries)

She recommends 9 cups total of veggies a day, we don’t quite get there, but we’re close. I’ve attached a document “Wahls Food List” which goes into more detail as to what is considered green, colored, or sulphur. Her list allows some foods that are on Dr Gundry's forbidden list, so we've adjusted accordingly. And of course, we avoid junk/processed foods which force mitochondria to burn through a great deal of junk generating free radicals and inflammation.

As far as supplements, in Dr Bredesen’s paper, “Reversal of Cognitive decline: A Novel Therapeutic Program” published Sept 2014, one of the strategies of his protocol is to “Optimize mitochondrial function” and in the table the approach to this is supplementation with CoQ (coenzyme Q) or ubiquinol, -lipoic acid, PQQ (polyquinoline quinone), NAC) (N-acetyl cysteine), ALCAR (acetyl-L-carnitine), Se, Zn, resveratrol, ascorbate, thiamine. But I haven’t a clue as to which supplement is best and/or how much to take.

However, of those, I supplement with resveratrol. And Circular, I believe you are already familiar with this product, Longevinex http://www.longevinex.com/ but for purposes of any newbies on the block, we take this brand of resveratrol based on the recommendation of our doctor, Dr Gundry. But we started more for SIRT1 activation to drive longevity genes, than mitochondria specifically.

Evidently some resveratrol supplements are worthless. This was what Dr Gundry said during our consult, Jan 2016, about Longevidnex.

“I’ve been a huge fan of a supplement that you get out of Las Vegas called Longevinex and if you’re not on Longevinex, then you probably ought to be, both of you. It’s Longevienx.com. I’ve been taking it for 10 years at least, I have no affiliation with them, I don’t think they even know I exist. They’ve actually got some of the only data that proves that their formulation of resveratrol is an active form that actually works in humans. I got turned on to it by David Sinclair the Harvard Researcher on Resveratrol years ago. Because he was actually taking it during all his research even though he could take his own compound. Turns out his compound was worthless but he made $600 million on it and Merc threw it away after they bought it and discovered it was worthless, but that’s a great story anyhow. So, I like it a lot, it will cost you maybe 80 cents a day which I think is well worth doing. They make two varieties, you don’t need the more expensive one, you need their basic one and just take one a day on an empty stomach.”

(bold font, my emphasis)

[apod]

Is there any concern of glycation with D-Ribose? I'm curious how the negative glycemic index works around a ketogenic state.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl ... ne.0024623

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 6512000062

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19216769

etc.

I would think it varies depending on your weakest links. If you don't get much sun or D3, then maybe d3. If you're low on magnesium, maybe Mg. If you're not sleeping well, maybe something like low-dose melatonin. If you're not making much glutathione, maybe something like NAC or Whey. If homocysteine is high, maybe B-Vitamins / TMG. Outside of patching the dietary / epigenetic weak spots, the NAD+ boosting stuff is kind of interesting, like nicotinamide riboside, and the ALA+ALCAR combo has some mitochondrial-boosting pubmed literature behind it (although I do have some concerns of heavy metals and conflicting data.)

CoQ10+PQQ seems like a safe bet for now.

Although it seems sort of woo-wooy, I've been hearing about light therapy more often lately.... this is what you need, haha: https://www.novothor.com/

[Fiver]

Exercise. It activates most of those pathways to mitochondrial biogenesis. And stimulates the anti-oxidation systems.

[LG1]

Exercise. It activates most of those pathways to mitochondrial biogenesis. And stimulates the anti-oxidation systems.

I agree! Exercise is my #1.

[Stavia]

Exercise. It activates most of those pathways to mitochondrial biogenesis. And stimulates the anti-oxidation systems.

Love it.
Big picture always!!

[Bettylacy]

Having just completed my bi weekly Masters swim, i hope it is exercise!

Science Newsfrom research organizations
How exercise -- interval training in particular -- helps your mitochondria stave off old age
Date:
March 7, 2017
Source:
Cell Press
Summary:
Researchers have long suspected that the benefits of exercise extend down to the cellular level, but know relatively little about which exercises help cells rebuild key organelles that deteriorate with aging. A new study found that exercise -- and in particular high-intensity interval training in aerobic exercises such as biking and walking -- caused cells to make more proteins for their energy-producing mitochondria and their protein-building ribosomes, effectively stopping aging at the cellular level.

[Fiver]

Well, I cheated. Exercise isn't really a supplement. I just like to think about healthy mitochondria to get me through the last mile on my run For full disclosure: I followed the resveratrol story closely and took it for a short time. I spend some time learning how to make grape plants produce more resveratrol for a project I was involved in - it's too bad that story didn't pan out better. I also take Q10 occasionally now. I own a bottle of GNC's Brain Formula - which by my eye looked like one way to cover some of the Bredesen supplements (so I bought it for my mom and it was a buy one, get one free deal) - but my limited experience is that it makes me feel a little "off". So I've put a toe in the supplement stream too. And fish oil, of course.

Plant phenols are my thing - so I feel good about drinking tea and coffee and eating just about anything rich in plant phenolics. I have the market corned on blueberries. After reading the other thread here I'm secretly hoping to get a bottle of Gundry's Reds into my lab to compare it's properties to other substances thought to be beneficial.

However, the clearest and most reliable ways I know of to work the whole AMPK / sirtuin web to stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis seems to be exercise and/or caloric restriction. I think it's also very helpful to avoid pesticides and industrial compounds and the like that can turn the mitochondria into little reactive oxygen reactors. But I live in an area surrounded by farmland, so that's hard to do. And my gut tells me that stress reduction is critical - that prolonged stress damages the brain - but I don't have data to back that up.