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Mitochondria may contribute to neurological and psychiatric disorders: research

• treeman79 5y ago
  https://sjogrenssyndromenews.com/2021/05/11/damaged-mitochondria-may-drive-autoimmunity-sjogrens-study-finds/ https://sjogrenssyndromenews.com/2021/05/11/damaged-mitochon... Brain fog is something I’ve suffered the last several years. Eventually got a diagnosis of autoimmune Sjogrens. Similar to Lupus. A link between mitochondria and autoimmune has been of great interest to me as I battle to keep my wits.
  • garganzol 5y ago
    Did you have a trigger event before onset of a disease? Intoxication, infection, hypoxia or the like?
    • treeman79 5y ago
      Severe chemical poisoning
  • GordonS 5y ago
    Did you have any other symptoms, such as dry mouth and eyes?
• cgugino 5y ago
  Great share; fascinating to see the potential and how this greatly expands on the previous role of the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell.
• krustyburger 5y ago
  I remember playing the Squaresoft RPG Parasite Eve and enjoying it despite how silly the mitochondria-oriented premise seemed. It would be amusing if it turns out that mitochondria are indeed hugely powerful in determining human outcomes.
  • alashley 5y ago
    Great game, I never finished it, but I've always hoped to find something nearly as far-fetched ever since I played it.
  • falsaberN1 5y ago
    Can't wait to become a karate angel. The game (and the Japanese novel of the same name it was based on) mostly went by pseudoscience but it was interesting. Then the game added a bit more fire and stuff. And then very weird sequels that aren't apropos to this discussion. Er, anyway. Imagine the publicity if it turns out to retroactively have some scientific basis though. Need to check if the author is still alive nowadays.
    • serf 5y ago
      >Then the game added a bit more fire and stuff. the 97 movie version of the novel 'Parasite Eve' had tons of fire, too. Pyrokinesis was a major thing in the movie (and in the game); maybe the game wanted to portray a similar visual continuity to the movie? The New York setting of the game was a lot more interesting than the back-woods Japan 'BioLab' style setting of the movie.
      • falsaberN1 5y ago
        I think it was less pyrokinesis and more "ordering the mitochondria on everyone nearby to overload and cause spontaneous combustion". The intro is a whole theater's worth of people combusting when the mitochondria on the antagonist "awaken" in presence of the protagonist. It's based on the book (and referenced by the scientist character, Maeda, as "the case in Japan") but it's a lot more actiony and flashy with all sorts of mutated animals and orange goo.
• colechristensen 5y ago
  No. (I hate such headlines) This is the 21st century. There's no one weird trick to being healthy, successful, having a high quality anything. Biological systems are complex and don't have a single variable which needs optimizing, they have many, need many, and every variable with leverage needs to be thought as a part of a whole.
  • whatshisface 5y ago
    Every part of your molecular biology is there for a reason. They're all necessary conditions for health. You take out the the mitochondria, the Golgi apparatus, the microtubules, some random protein that regulates membrane permeability, it doesn't work anymore. There isn't a part of your cellular biology which isn't important for a healthy brain. Your cells don't have infotainment systems, and if they did they'd be like the ones in a modern car that also unlock the doors and start the engine. (Edited to correct terminology)
    • hollerith 5y ago
      OK, but "microbiology" doesn't mean what you think it means. (It is the study of microbes, i.e., very small independent life forms.) "Molecular biology" though would fit right in to your comment.
  • torh 5y ago
    Spot on. Yet, people love "one trick" wonder -- just go on YouTube and search for "golf swing" or "lose fat", it's so easy you don't even have to leave the house.
  • f6v 5y ago
    Yeah you’ll rather blow your brains out than try to understand the totality of feedback loops in our bodies. The thing with biology is that you can always try to nudge one subsystem to fix something, but then there’s the next and the next, ad infinitum.
    • drchickensalad 5y ago
• seaorg 5y ago
  I don’t have the time or energy to write a full explanation, but my life has been consumed by this topic for the past two years. I became very ill after a stressful life event and it became clear to me that it involved mitochondria and inflammation, even though that was bizarre and inexplicable at first. I have been lost in the metabolic rabbit hole ever since. All I can say is that if you have a disease that is tangential to this issue, endogenous ketones will almost certainly have some kind of effect on your symptoms — for me they are almost a complete cure. Take it from someone who’s whole life has revolved around this topic for years: this is a huge deal, it’s real. There is a medical revolution in the pipes having to do with metabolism and inflammation. This article isn’t a scam.
  • zain 5y ago
    Does "endogenous ketones" just mean following a keto diet? What were your symptoms?
    • chasebank 5y ago
      A quick google suggests 'endogenous ketones' are ketones produced from inside the body, as opposed to 'exogenous ketones' which are supplemented.
    • diydsp 5y ago
      Fasting can make the body produce them too.
  • agumonkey 5y ago
    What else have you seen around this topic ? I was reading about NAD levels (i'm not even sure it's fully related, my mind is fuzzy these days).
    • bionhoward 5y ago
      Ketones are related to autophagy which de-junks our cells. The ketones trigger recycling because they're produced when the body runs out of stored sugar. Junk buildup is considered a hallmark of ageing in the SENS literature
• ameminator 5y ago
  Probably not, but I do hear that they are the power-house of the cell.
• frereubu 5y ago
  I recommend commenters don't rise to the bait of the headling ("the key" is stupid) and respond to the précis instead: "Some researchers suspect these bacterial ancestors living within our cells may contribute to a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders."
  • faeyanpiraat 5y ago
    I second this, don't get discouraged by the other comment thread, this is actually an informative piece.
  • RivieraKid 5y ago
    Thanks for this recommendation. I will definitely consider it.
  • ramraj07 5y ago
    Even the précis with an accented e is flawed. This is still akin to saying the ALU in the computer CPUs is the key to solving all our cybersecurity issues, like in a uselessly pedagogical way it might be true but it’s mostly bs. The fact of the matter is our biological systems and signaling pathways evolved with no particular plan in place, so of course various components inside a cell play important roles that might not sound intuitive to anyone. The mitochondria are very much a part of our cell notwithstanding having their own dna, how many trillions of generations do you need before you stop pointing out that this family member was adopted or something ? I’m not saying that these pathways should not be studied, but it’s very annoying that scientists resort to such disingenuous messaging not just to the public but also to grant review committees. My favorite other outrageous (important, but still outrageous) strictly true but kinda bs statements include: 1. We are more bacteria than ourselves because we have more bacterial cells (our cells are 1000x larger so no shit) 2. Using only 10% of your brain 3. Your immune system is responsible for X 4. Your gut micro biome is responsible for X (Though 3 and 4 have exceptions like when the autism researchers finally conceded that maybe the parents were not bsing after all and there’s a gut immune connection).
    • whatshisface 5y ago
• aerovistae 5y ago
  To this day I have to stop and think every time to remember which is which between mitochondria and midichlorians.
  • Baeocystin 5y ago
    Easy to remember: Midichlorians are the ones which led to the standardization of the computer/music interface.
    • failwhaleshark 5y ago
      Does the wavetable daughter-card improve the Jedi lightsaber sound fx? Also, I can't remember the pinout of the midichlorians cable.
• stevebmark 5y ago
  Fluoroquinolone antibiotics like ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin are well documented to damage mitochondria, both function and their DNA. "Brain fog" is a commonly reported side effect from people who are permanently affected by fluoroquinolones. These drugs: - Delete backup mtDNA - Cause oxidative damage to mitochondria, impairing their function - Impair mitochondrial replication It makes because fluoroquinolones are designed to block bacterial DNA replication by plugging up the enzyme that glues DNA back together after it's separated during cell division. mtDNA replication is very similar to bacterial replication. They damage eukaryotic cells too, likely through a different mechanism.
  • jjtheblunt 5y ago
    Factual datapoint: my grandmother was on Cipro intermittently for years (in Illinois) and was lucid as could be all the way to 104, quite amusing too with so many decades of observation.
    • stevebmark 5y ago
      That's dose length is awful to hear, I hope she didn't suffer from any other major side effects of fluoroquinolones, like neuropathy, tremors or twitching, tendon ruptures, or retinal detachment. It's also unclear why some people have no obvious effects, while others get permanent side effects.
      • vimy 5y ago
        Probably something genetic.
• papito 5y ago
  At this point, I would be starting every morning by consuming about four dozen foods, beverages, and vitamins that will allegedly make me a perfectly healthy human.
  • bogota 5y ago
    Not to mention most of them contradict each other. I have completely given up on trying to figure out what is healthy beyond trying to get fruit, vegetables, and not too much fat in my food. Anything beyond that seems to devolve into a never ending pile of research and sudo research.
• jillswift 5y ago
  If you remove all the mitochondria from a brain, it stops working. So, maybe they are on to something.
• tgbugs 5y ago
  I've had a bias in this direction for quite a while. When learning about neurodegenerative diseases back in college over a decade ago my conclusion at the time was that something metabolic was going on. Nothing else made sense to me as an explanation for how symptoms and pathology for a disease could show up after 60ish years. At that time I couldn't figure out how to make the link though, so it was a leap. I was in a lab meeting maybe 4 years ago or so and my PI had just come back from a conference on Alzheimer's. He reported back that groups had started investigating the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in the disease and had been able to find that lineages with variants in genes related to mitochondria and energy homoeostasis were far more likely to have or develop Alzheimer's. I haven't kept an eye on progress in that line of research, but it is in line with what is being reported/speculated here. Finally, a couple of years ago I ran into the father of someone I went to middle school with and I learned that he was a biochemist. Somehow the conversation wound around to the challenge of understanding neurodegenerative diseases. I asked him for his take on a disease that only presents after 60ish years. His immediate answer was DNA damage during mitosis. But neuron's don't divide. And then it hit me. There IS something that is still dividing inside the neurons! It is the mitochondria! The other possibility is the astrocytes, the microglia, or some other mitotic cell population in the brain, but the mitochondria really stand out as fitting both the fact the neurons don't divide and the instinct from a veteran biochemist that something that takes so long to appear must be related to DNA damage.
  • pdfernhout 5y ago
    Like the article says: "“It’s too soon to make any firm conclusions about a lot of this stuff, but it sure looks like the mitochondria are disrupted in many kids with autism,” Frye says. “And environmental exposures, especially early on, may be programming the mitochondria to have different types of respiratory physiology.”" You might find this of interest too from eleven years ago: https://drhyman.com/blog/2010/12/09/breakthrough-discovery-on-the-causes-of-autism/ https://drhyman.com/blog/2010/12/09/breakthrough-discovery-o... "Let’s look more closely at what this new study in The Journal of the American Medical Association tells us about mitochondrial dysfunction and how this may lead us to new methods of treatment—methods similar to the ones I used to help reverse Jackson’s autism. ... This study forces the question: How do children acquire energy deficits that affect their whole system, not just the brain? The causes of mitochondrial dysfunction are well known, specifically as it relates to metabolism and the brain, and I have documented them in my books UtraMetabolism and The UltraMind Solution. They include environmental toxins(iv)—mercury, lead and persistent organic pollutants(v)—latent infections, gluten and allergens (which trigger inflammation) sugar and processed foods,(vi) a nutrient-depleted diet,(vii) and nutritional deficiencies.(viii) These are all potentially treatable and reversible causes of mitochondrial dysfunction that have been clearly documented. I found all these problems in Jackson, and over a period of 2 years we slowly unraveled and treated the underlying causes of his energy loss which included gut inflammation, mercury, and nutrient deficiencies. Over time, the tests for his mitochondrial function and oxidative stress (as well as levels of inflammation and nutrient status) all normalized. When they became normal, so did Jackson. He went from full-blown regressive autism to a normal, bright beautiful 6-year-old boy. This is just one story, but if autism can be reversed in one child, if there is any possibility of effective treatments or a potential cure, it forces us to ask critical questions: How did this happen? Can it happen in other children? What were the biological patterns found and how were they treated?" And if it applies to young brains, why would it not apply to older brains?
• DoreenMichele 5y ago
  It's good to see a piece talking about both genetic and environmental factors in an "and" kind of way rather than an "either/or" kind of way.
• neonate 5y ago
  https://archive.is/oXonX https://archive.is/oXonX
• msteffen 5y ago
  Just to note, I believe Terry Wahls has been arguing a version of this for at least a decade (https://www.amazon.com/Minding-Mitochondria-2nd-progressive-wheelchair/dp/0982175086 https://www.amazon.com/Minding-Mitochondria-2nd-progressive-...) and has written a diet (the Wahls Protocol) directed towards mitochondrial health. I've been interested in her ideas ever since close family contracted an autoimmune disease.
  • faeyanpiraat 5y ago
    Look for unbiased meta-analyses on this topic. I haven't found any evidence that diets can cure or significantly modify MS disease progression. I'm affected by it so believe me if I say that I really wanted to find something reassuring, but the evindence is just not there.
    • lambdaba 5y ago
      I've had MS and fully recovered with a carnivore diet (started with "paleo", similar to Whals protocol). I've come to believe it's all about gut permeability. There's a clinic in Hungary practicing this with various illnesses, calling it a "paleolithic ketogenic" diet (very high fat, low food volume, again for fast gut healing). I'm fully convinced that I would have been crippled by now if not for the dietary changes. I mention this often in online discussions and usually get a lot of pushback. It's very strange to me how people can doubt that diet plays a MAJOR role in health.
      • faeyanpiraat 5y ago
        May I ask which clinic are you talking about?
        • lambdaba 5y ago
          Paleomedicina. Zsofia Clemens, one of the researchers, has a Twitter presence as well. They likewise get pushback from the name alone, but hopefully motivated people will look past that.
• garganzol 5y ago
  It looks like a lot of people in this thread experienced the effects of mitochondrial dysfunction by themselves. Here is my 2 cents based on some experience with the topic. Autoimmune manifestations may be just a normal reaction of the organism to dysfunctional cells on their way to apoptosis. Apoptosis occurs when the percentage of broken mitochondria reaches a certain threshold. So you get the inflammation. It may look like the organism attacks its own tissues by mistake - but actually there is a reason. When the inflammation kicks in, it also affects surrounding healthy cells adding insult to the damage. You get some kind of progressing encephalopathy that eventually leads to neurodegenerative disorders. A plausible treatment for such condition: inhibit inflammation while trying to restore the normal mitochondrial function. A gentle way to inhibit the inflammation is to use nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Acetylsalicylic Acid (Aspirin). Restoring normal mitochondrial function is considered impossible if you have an inherited mutation in mitochondrial DNA (1 in 50000 of population). However this is a pretty rare condition while the most of mitochondrial manifestations (1 in 5000 of population) are acquired from environmental factors such as poisons, drugs, infections, nutritional imbalances. The treatment for such an acquired mitochondrial dysfunction is two-fold: 1) eliminate the initial vector (poison, infection etc. 2) reverse the damage that occurred in mitochondria. Infections, drugs and poisons are self-explanatory. The nutritional deficit is more intricate. But in case of mitochondria, it is basically covered by the Thiamine (B1 vitamin). The only gotcha is that you won't feel the effect with supportive B1 doses like the usual 2 mg per day. You would need therapeutic doses and a more bioavailable form for that to work, like 300 mg of Benfotiamine per day. Now once that is covered, you would just stop the progression of mitochondrial dysfunction. But that may be not enough if it went too far. You might still have the apoptosis, the associated constant inflammation and the resulting degeneration. What you can do to rejuvenate mitochondrial function is to use substances like Nicotinamide Riboside (100 mg per day). This is an efficient B3 vitamin precursor without the typical side effects of Niacin. It restores cell respiration by playing the role of an electronic transport in aerobic glycolysis pathway (Glucose + Oxygen -> ATP) which occurs in a healthy mitochondria. Nicotinamide Riboside is the preferred form of B3 because it also plays the role of a mitochondrial growth factor which is a big win in case of mitochondrial deficit. Now once you combine all these methods, you may be onto something. By modulating the inflammatory response you win the time to restore the mitochondria thus avoiding massive cellular apoptosis. By gradually restoring the mitochondrial aerobic glycolysis pathway, you are gradually reducing the associated lactic acidosis which also plays a huge negative role in neurological diseases. You break the viscous cycle of anaerobic glycolysis swapping it with a normal, healthy aerobic pathway. If the damage to the tissues and nervous system is not too substantial, it may be a full recovery given some months of therapy.
• londons_explore 5y ago
  Don't mitochondria only come from maternal cells? If the contribution was significant, wouldn't we have seen folk tales about "if your mum goes mad, you'll go mad too!". Yet, as far as I know, no such tale exists.
• bayesian_horse 5y ago
  I checked their research: Every affected patient had mitochondria.
  • failwhaleshark 5y ago
    They'd be dead as dead parrot jokes if they didn't or hypomitochondriacs if they got low.
• leucineleprec0n 5y ago
  This isn’t even new, the idea that the bioenergetic functions of neurons play a central role in pathological disorder is a one of many different popularized theories. This place discovers the basics day in and day out, lol.
• autismdisorders 5y ago
  Wow this thread and article are a gold mine. I have struggled my entire life with various disorders. ADHD, many symptoms of autism, depression, extreme loss of energy and lethargy. For a long time I thought that I had chronic fatigue syndrome after I grew very sick from a viral infection. Everything everyone is saying here resounds very strongly with a mitochondrial energy problem. Diet helps me a lot. I have tried many diet approaches, recently a high protein diet has really been working well. I dont know what is wrong with me, but something isnt right.