For those of you who took at least one biology class, you probably at least vaguely remember what the mitochondria are. But that was probably a long time ago. Let’s do a quick refresher.

So you are aware that your body is composed of cells. By some accounts, every person has, at the very least, 15 trillion cells. Every single one of those cells has its own little ecosystem inside of it, as if they were their own little organism. The nucleus is like the brain, mechanisms in the cell wall take in oxygen, water and nutrients and excrete waste. There is a reproduction process. It’s really its own little world.

But like anything living or mechanical in the world, there needs to be an energy source. In the case of a cell, that energy source is tiny little organelles called mitochondria.

The mitochondria act, in a sense, as the cell’s digestive system. They take nutrients in from the cell and convert it into energy in the form of Adenosine triphosphate (ATP). They then release the ATP into the cell, where it is used to power every cellular process and thus, every process in the human body.

That being the case, you can imagine how important your mitochondria are. If they are not working properly, you have no energy, but worse than that, your physical processes stop working. Immunity gets weaker, detoxification pathways shut down, brain function suffers, your muscles atrophy. It’s just not a good situation.

History of an organelle

Mitochondria weren’t always just a part of the cell.

Currently, about one in every three bacteria that lives at or right near the ocean’s surface are part of a family of bacteria called the SAR11 Clade. These bacteria are particularly small and they live by collecting dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen and combining it with sunlight to generate ATP (this will become very important later).

These SAR11 Clade bacteria are prokaryotic, meaning they don’t have their own nuclei. The prevailing theory is that, at some point in the ocean’s very long history, a variation of the SAR11 Clade bacteria combined with eukaryotic single-celled organisms (with a nucleus) like amoeba and became the mitochondria that now exists in nearly every living organism’s cells.

Fascinating stuff just simply from a biological-evolutionary standpoint. And that’s a very bare-bones explanation.

We are in the habit of damaging our mitochondria

Remember their close evolutionary relationship mitochondria have to bacteria? Well, the physical similarity the mitochondria have with bacteria, still after all these years,  is enough that when you take antibiotics, your mitochondria are damaged or killed along with whatever pathogenic bacteria you’re trying to get rid of.

That’s particularly concerning considering about 40% of the time a child goes to the doctor, they leave with a prescription for antibiotics. As a result of the “superbug” scare, these stats are starting to go down, but about 60% of kids who go to the doctor with a common cold—which is viral—will get a prescription for antibiotics. The CDC, just this year, released a statement saying that 1 out of every 3 prescriptions for antibiotics is unnecessary.

We are killing our kids’ mitochondria. In the quest to save our little cellular power plants, the first step is to avoid antibiotics if at all possible. Granted, sometimes this just isn’t possible. That’s why it’s important to heal your mitochondria as well–which we’ll get into shortly.

The foods you eat—particularly sugar—also damage your mitochondria. And the process by which this happens is important because it relates to cancer as well.

Every chemical process has a by-product. When your mitochondria creates ATP, one of the byproducts is a compound called reactive oxygen species (ROS). This is a free radical, so it has the potential to cause damage to the DNA. When genetic damage reaches a certain point, it turns into cancer. Generally, it’s not a problem. Your body gets rid of free radicals all the time (it helps if you eat/drink antioxidants) and actually, an interesting use of ROS is that when it builds up in a cell to a certain point, it signals the cell to die.

Cancer cells don’t listen to ROS anymore, so they don’t die. They just reproduce endlessly. Furthermore, cancer cells don’t use their mitochondria for energy either. They use glucose directly, not ATP. This is a huge deal and one of the major differences between cancer cells and normal cells.

If you’re on a sugar/carb-heavy diet, the sugar creates more free radicals than your mitochondria normally would. These free radicals speed up the process of genetic damage and overwhelm the cell, making it more likely to turn into a cancer cell. Furthermore, once a cell has turned into a cancer cell, the presence of sugar feeds it because it is skipping the mitochondrial process.

Healing and protecting the mitochondria

In preventing mitochondrial damage AND repairing it, the best nutritional approach is the ketogenic diet. This means effectively eliminating sugar and carbs from your diet and focusing mainly on dietary fats.

The lack of sugar (and the replacement of an energy source of ketones) means less free radical damage and essentially starving any cancerous or precancerous cells of fuel.

Featured heavily in a mitochondria-centric ketogenic diet should be a healthy dose of cruciferous vegetables. You want to get the following nutrients into your system to help mitochondria do its job:

• CoQ10 (beef, sardines, mackerel, liver) or supplement
• L-Carnatine (red meat)
• D-ribose (mushrooms, beef, eggs, anchovies, herring, sardines)
• Magnesium (brazil nuts, almonds, spinach, pumpkins seeds)
• Omega-3 fatty acids (fatty fish, avocados, coconut oil, olives)
• B-Vitamins (most meat and fish)
• Alpha-lipoic acid (spinach, broccoli, yams, tomatoes, liver, Brussells Sprouts)

Inflammation also damages mitochondria. Most Americans are on basically an inflammation diet. This includes sugar, grains and processed foods.

If you cut these out, you’ll automatically be healthier than 90% of the population. More importantly, you’ll start bringing inflammation down, which has so many benefits other than protecting your mitochondria.

To bolster the situation further, include anti-inflammatories in your diet: ginger, turmeric, garlic, bromelein (from the core of a pineapple) and berries.

Get more sleep. Your body clears out more free radicals when you sleep than when you are awake. Poor sleeping patterns and too little sleep (which so many of us are guilty of) inhibits this process. Start getting as close to 7.5 hours of sleep a night as possible – that’s the sweet spot.

Interestingly, one way to get better sleep and fall asleep faster is to get rid of blue light for an hour or so before you go to bed.

“Blue light?” you ask.

Let your light shine

Remember back to the beginning of this post when I mentioned the bacterial ancestor of mitochondria uses light to make ATP. Light has a profound effect on your mitochondria as well.

Blue light (that has shorter wavelengths) damages mitochondria, slows down the process of ATP production and increases ROS production.

Red light, with longer wavelengths, does the opposite. It stimulates ATP production and inhibits ROS free radical production.

Normally… say 60-70 years ago, this wouldn’t really matter. The problem today is that we are surrounded by blue light. The screen of your computer, TV and phone emit blue light. The lights in your office emit blue light. Energy-saving light bulbs emit blue light. One of the reasons they save energy is because the spectrum of light they emit is so narrow and limited to the blue light waves.

All of this damages our DNA and we don’t balance it out with red light because we’re indoors so often.

One solution to this is to simply go out in the sunlight during the day more often. If you’re to the point where you need to really repair your mitochondria, you can consider certain therapies. One being a cold laser therapy. It emits concentrated beams of red light into your skin.

You can get infrared light bulbs and spend 20-30 minutes in front of them a day. Or you can just have one on in the room at all times to help. It will send red light your way all day.

Take care of those little mitochondria folks. The happier they are, the better off you’ll be.