Below is part of the abstract from the Podcast I linked to at the start of this thread... Full Abstract HERE.
Now, there's a number of new studies that have come out basically showing that mitochondrial dysfunction seems to be the big key to understanding chronic fatigue. And there's several key studies that have really shown this. There's work from Sarah Myhill who's an MD in the UK who pioneered a test called the ATP profile test, which was the first diagnostic test that objectively shows that people with chronic fatigue syndrome actually do have a very real abnormality, a very real dysfunction in their bodies.
Up until then, it's often regarded by, you know, conventional medicine as, you know, maybe hypochondria because they oftentimes couldn't detect anything wrong in blood test. So, this was the first time they actually found something, "Okay, we can see in people with chronic fatigue, they actually do have this very real serious dysfunction at the mitochondrial level." So, that was one big breakthrough.
There's also been some breakthrough pioneering research done by a researcher in San Diego named Robert Naviaux who runs a lab for mitochondrial medicine, and he's done just so many amazing studies. But a couple years ago, he did one called the Metabolic Features of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. And basically, this study did a comprehensive blood analysis of people with chronic fatigue syndrome. You know, so think of a standard blood test might have 30, 40, 50 different things that it measures. Well, this test that they use measures over 600 different metabolites in the blood.
So, it basically can create like a...this comprehensive like fingerprint for any different kind of condition that you test. ... And chronic fatigue syndrome, what they found was this huge number of abnormalities. They found close to 80% of the metabolites that they measured were off. And specifically, they were pretty much all shifted in a downward direction. They were all low. And what that means is, and basically what the research concluded, is that the state of the metabolism in people with chronic fatigue syndrome is basically almost like a hibernation-like state.
Essentially, all of the metabolic machinery, the mitochondria, the energy-producing parts of the cell, are being shut down. And instead of producing energy, the body is directing resources into kind of protection and into, you know, kind of this hibernation-like state. So, here's the other big piece that puts all of this together. There was research also conducted by this guy, Robert Naviaux, who runs his lab for mitochondrial medicine, and I believe it's some of the most important research that's been done on chronic disease in the last 50 years. I think this is literally some of the most important research that's been done in decades, and there's a number of other practitioners who agree with me on that.
And basically, he did a study called the cell danger response, and what they found is that mitochondria are not just these mindless energy generators that take in carbs and fats, and pump out energy, but they actually have this second role that almost no one knows about. And this second role is that mitochondria play this critical role in cellular defense. And what that means is that their job is to detect when there's any kind of danger present or threat present. And then, when they detect that, a danger or threat present, they're job is to turn off energy production and switch into cellular defense mode or the cell danger response, as what he calls it.
So, to make sense of all this, to put the pieces together, basically, people with chronic fatigue have this downregulation of their,all their metabolic machinery and it's because their mitochondria are detecting some kind of threat shifting out of energy-production mode into defense mode, and into this kind of hibernation-like state. And we experience, you know, kind of the subjective experience that we have of our bodies going into that hibernation-like state is that we experience chronic fatigue.
Now, if this all seems like kind of heady theory, abstract ideas, let me just ground this in something practical. Think of the last time that you got a cold or a flu. What was one of the big symptoms that you felt? It was fatigue, right? So, that experience of just the last time you got an infection and feeling that symptom of fatigue, that is the cell danger response in action. That's what you were feeling. You were feeling your mitochondria shifting out of energy mode and into defense mode, and the fatigue that you felt was a reaction to that.
So, that's essentially what chronic fatigue is. It is the symptom that we experience when our mitochondria are shifting out of energy mode towards defense mode. Now, the one last thing that I'll kind of make sense of here is that this is not a mistake. This is actually a very intelligent response by our body that is actually a protective response that is for our own benefit.
