mitochondria Archives - Hormones Matter

It’s Just ATP

Published on August 11, 2025

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A while back, I wrote an article called ‘Just a Vitamin Deficiency‘ in an effort to dispel the notion that vitamin deficiencies are inconsequential to health. Truth be told, I have written dozens of similar articles hoping to change the tide of disregard. A few weeks after publishing the vitamin article I began this one. I wanted to address the growing body of research suggesting that ATP production is somehow immaterial to health and healing. The two ideas are connected, of course, because without vitamins and minerals we cannot produce ATP and without ATP we cannot catabolize nutrients from the foods we consume into more ATP. In health, medicine, and research, we seemed to have lost sight of these connections in favor of ever more complicated, and indeed, bifurcated explanations of our ill health.

I decided not to publish this article originally. It seemed redundant. Then, lo and behold, another article hit social media once again bemoaning how energy production was unimportant relative to all of the other cool functions overseen by the mitochondria.

The analogy of mitochondria as powerhouses has expired. Mitochondria are living, dynamic, maternally inherited, energy-transforming, biosynthetic, and signaling organelles that actively transduce biological information.

To be fair, the article is exceptionally detailed and very well done and I agree with the authors overall. They clearly demonstrate the complexity of mitochondrial function. Where I have a problem though, is in the failure to recognize the primacy of ATP over all other functions. This is among my top pet peeves in the world of mitochondrial research and medicine. It is as if the simple act of making energy is not sexy enough to consider in health or disease. While I understand that the mitochondria are central regulators of just about everything and I understand that there are dozens or more cool pathways that are managed directly by the mitochondria and their various signaling proteins, what I do not understand is how we seem to miss the fact that all of these functions, and I mean all of them, require ATP. Indeed, decrements in ATP capacity often initiate, and certainly sustain, many of the negative reactions we see outlined in the annals of mitochondrial research.

In this particular article, the authors concede that defects in oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) impact all of the functions they so eloquently describe.

Because most biochemical reactions taking place within mitochondria are directly or indirectly linked to OxPhos and Δψm [mitochondrial membrane potential], including substrate and ion uptake, mtDNA perturbations have widespread consequences for several metabolic pathways.

For the uninitiated, OXPHOS is the process by which the metabolized products of the foods we consume are shuttled through various enzymatic reactions within the mitochondria to ultimately produce ATP. Defects in OXPHOS not only imperil energy production but also set into motion a cascades of negative reactions. From an article published earlier this year:

OxPhos defects trigger mtDNA instability and cell-autonomous stress responses associated with the hypersecretory phenotype, recapitulating findings in plasma of patients with elevated metabokine and cell-free mitochondrial DNA (cf-mtDNA) levels. These responses are linked to the upregulation of multiple energy-dependent transcriptional programs, including the integrated stress response (ISR).

OXPHOS is clearly important to mitochondrial function, and why wouldn’t it be? The synthesis of energy, of ATP, is the foundation of life. Think about it for a moment. Energy is fundamental to survival, not incidental, but fundamental. So, if energy wanes all of the functions dependent upon said energy become disturbed. Sure, there are other mechanisms by which a particular pathway may become unfavorably altered, and sure, delineating those mechanisms is important, but each and every one of those patterns requires energy to execute. The degree to which energy metabolism is inadequate to the task will influence, if not determine, the pattern of response, irrespective of the other variables that may be at play.

Breathing, for example, requires energy and not just the mechanical act of inhalation and exhalation, but the absorption, trafficking and metabolism of oxygen (O2). Of course there are a lot of factors that can impede breathing and oxygen management that seem outside of the purview of mitochondrial influence, but in reality, they are not. Energy or ATP is required at every step, including arguably the most important step – the utilization of O2 to create more ATP.

For O2 to be used, we need ATP.

For ATP, we need functional mitochondria.

For functional mitochondria, we need macro- and micronutrients.

Food provides the substrates that allow the mitochondria to produce ATP. It provides macronutrients like protein, fats, and carbohydrates, and perhaps most importantly, food provides the micronutrients to utilize that fuel. It’s that simple, or at least it used to be, before industrial food manufacturing so thoroughly decimated the food supply leaving vast swaths of the population starved for vitamins and minerals.

The ills of modern food production notwithstanding, without sufficient micronutrients to metabolize food into fuel and ultimately into ATP, alternate processing pathways are used; pathways that consume more ATP than they produce, and pathways that burn dirtier and emit more toxins than the body has the energy/ATP to deal with. This is the root of all metabolic disorders and more often than not, most modern illness, regardless of diagnosis.

So, while detailing all of the cool things that mitochondria are responsible for is important to understand, especially if we are ever to move medicine away from the compartmentalized model that it has so fixated on, let us not forget ATP is the basis of life.

Perhaps, in our investigations mitochondrial function, we ought to examine ATP capacity, not just output but capacity, and the pathways therein used to produce this ATP and manage the metabolism of foods. Perhaps then we will finally understand how critical the right nutrients are to mitochondrial health. Perhaps we also ought to look at how to support native mitochondrial function, not by blocking aberrantly altered pathways, but by providing the mitochondria with the most basic building blocks for optimal ATP production – nutrition. If we can get the mitochondria to more efficiently produce ATP, would that not then favorably influence everything else?

From that perspective, it seems obvious that ATP, the energy cells consume to do all of the things that cells do, would be fundamental to health, and to life itself. Like all of the other things that should be obvious to modern medicine though, it is not. Sadly, it does not appear to be obvious even to those who research and treat mitochondrial illness. ATP capacity is not something we can ignore, but we do, and this, I believe, is one of the biggest failings of modern medicine and modern mitochondrial research.

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This article was published originally on August 16, 2023.

Energy Medicine

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on July 30, 2025

14360 views

I have written many posts on Hormones Matter and have tried to answer the questions arising from each post. These questions and my answers have been so repetitive that I decided to try to make it clear what “energy medicine” is all about and why it differs from conventional medicine. It is only natural that the posted questions are all built on our present ideas about health and disease. What I am about to say is that the present medical model has outgrown its use. Therefore it is obvious that I must discuss what this means. First of all, why do we need a “medical model”? In fact, what is the difference between complete health and its lack? The Oxford English dictionary gives the definition of disease as “a serious derangement of health, disordered state of an organism or organ”

The American Model of Medicine

As I have said before, the present American medical model was aimed at making a diagnosis of one of many thousand described diseases. It was devised from the Flexner report of 1910 that was initiated by Rockefeller. Rockefeller wanted to make medical education adhere to a common standard, thus creating the present “medical model”. The Flexner report used the methodology of diagnosis that was current in Germany. This stated that the patient’s report to a physician is called “history”, involving the patient’s description of symptoms and their onset. From this, the physician may or may not have an idea what is wrong. The next part is the physical exam where a hands-on search of the patient’s body is made for evidence of disease. This is extremely complex when put fully into clinical operation and also may or may not provide clues to a diagnosis. The third operation is laboratory testing and it is this constellation of abnormal tests that provide scientific evidence for the nature of the disease. Each test has been researched and aside from one that is either positive or negative, others have a normal range reported in numerical terms. Perhaps, as an example, the test for cholesterol level is the best known. Each test has to be interpreted as to how it contributes to arriving at a diagnosis. Finally, the physician has to try to decide whether medical or surgical treatment must be offered. Please note that the surgical removal of a sick organ may be the signature of medical failure, for example, removing part of the intestine in Crohn’s disease, for it represents a missed opportunity to treat earlier in the disease process.

Laboratory Tests and A Drug For Every Disease

It is the constellation of symptoms described by the patient and the abnormalities found by the physical examination that constitute a potential diagnosis to formulate what laboratory tests should be initiated. It is the constellation of laboratory tests that may or may not provide the proof. There are problems with this. For instance, there may be test items in the constellation that create confusion, such as “it might be disease A or disease B. We are not sure”. Tests that are “borderline” positive are particularly confusing. The diagnosis finally depends often on who was the first observer of these constellations. For example a person by the name of Parkinson and another person by the name of Alzheimer, each described clinically observed constellations that gave rise to Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Since they were first described, the pathological effects of each disease have been researched in painstaking detail, without coming to the conclusion of the ultimate cause. Finally, the pharmaceutical industry has indulged in complex research to find the drug that will reverse the pathological findings and produce a cure. Because this concept rides right through the objective, each disease is thought to have a separate underlying cause and a separate underlying cure in the shape of a new “miracle drug”. Witness the recent revival of a drug that was initially found to be useless in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. This revival depends on the finding of other pathological effects discovered in the disease, suggesting new clinical trials. When you take all these facts into consideration, it is a surprisingly hit and miss structure. For example, we now have good reason to state that a low cholesterol in the blood is more dangerous than a high one. Why? Because cholesterol is made in the body and is the foundation material for building the vitally important stress hormones. Cholesterol synthesis requires energy and is a reflection on energy metabolism when it is in short supply.

The Physicians Desk Reference, available in many public libraries, contains details concerning available drugs. Each drug is named and what it is used for, but often there is a note saying that its action is poorly understood. Just as often, there may be one or two pages describing side effects. In fact, the only drugs whose action is identified with cause are the antibiotics. The rest of them treat symptoms but do not address cause. Antibiotics affect pathogenic bacteria but we all know that the bacteria are able to become resistant and this is creating a problem for the near future. It is interesting that Louis Pasteur spent his career researching pathogenic microorganisms. However, on his deathbed it is purported that he stated “I was wrong, it is the defenses of the body that count”.

It must be stated that the first paradigm in medicine was the discovery of pathogenic microorganisms and their ability to cause infections. Many years were spent in trying to find ways and means of killing these organisms without killing the patient. It was the dramatic discovery of penicillin that led to the antibiotic era. I like to think that Louis Pasteur may have suggested the next paradigm, “assist the body defenses”.

Energy Medicine: A New Paradigm for Understanding Health and Disease

When a person is seen performing on a trampoline, an observer might say “hasn’t he got a lot of energy!” without thinking that this represents energy consumption. Energy has to be captured in the body and is consumed in the physical action on the trampoline. Many people will drink a cup of coffee on the way to work believing that it “creates” energy. The chemical function of caffeine stimulates action that consumes energy, giving rise to a false impression. Every physical movement, every passing thought, however fleeting in time, requires energy consumption. The person who has to drink coffee to “get to work”, is already energy insufficient. He/she can ill afford this artificial consumption of the available energy.

I am going to suggest that the evidence shows “energy medicine” may indeed be the new paradigm, so we have to make sure that anyone reading this is conversant with the concept of energy. In physics, “energy is the quantitative property that must be transferred to an object in order to perform work on, or heat, the object. Energy is a conserved quantity, meaning that the available energy at the beginning of time is the same quantity today. The law of conservation of energy states that “energy can be converted in form but not created or destroyed”. Furthermore, Einstein showed us that matter and energy are interconvertible. That is why the word “energy” is such a mystery to many people. What kind of energy does the human body require?

We are all aware that the electroencephalogram and the electrocardiogram are tools used by physicians to detect disease in the brain and the heart. If that means that our organs function electrically, then where does that energy come from? We do not carry a battery. We are not plugged into a wall socket and the functional capacity of the human body is endlessly available throughout life. The only components that keep us alive are food and water. Everyone knows that foods need to contain a calorie-delivering and a non-caloric mixture of vitamins and essential minerals. The life sustaining actions of these non-caloric nutrients is because they govern the process of energy capture by enabling oxygen consumption (oxidation). They also govern the use of the energy to provide physical and mental function.

The calorie bearing food, consisting of protein, fat and carbohydrate is used to build body cell structure. This is called anabolic metabolism. If body structure is broken down and destroyed, weight is lost and the patient is sick. This is called catabolic metabolism. In healthy conditions, food is metabolized to form glucose, the primary fuel.

Thiamine (vitamin B1), together with the rest of the B complex, governs oxidation, the products of which go into a cellular “engine” called the citric acid cycle. This energy is used to form adenosine triphosphate (ATP) that might be referred to as a form of “energy currency”. Without thiamine and its vitamin colleagues in the diet, ATP cannot be formed. Research for the next stage of energy production has yielded insufficient information as yet concerning production of electrical energy as the final step. The evidence shows that thiamine may have an integral part in this electrification process, although much mystery remains. Suffice it to say that we are electrochemical “machines” and every physical and mental action requires energy consumption.

Maybe the Chinese Were Right

In the ancient Chinese culture, an energy form called Chi was regarded as the energy of life itself. Whether this really exists or not and whether it is in some way connected to the auras purported to surround each person’s body is still conjectural. It would not be too absurd to suggest that it might be as yet an undiscovered form of energy and that it is truly a reflection of good health. My personal conclusion is that some form of electromagnetic energy is the energy that drives our physical and mental functions and that it is transduced in the body from ATP, the storage form of chemical energy. There is no doubt that acupuncture does work and certainly encourages the conclusion that the meridians described by the ancient Chinese thinkers are an important evidence of electrical circulation. There is burgeoning evidence that energy is the core issue in driving the complex process of the body’s ability to heal itself. The idea that the physician or anyone else that purports to be a “healer” is a myth, because we have the magic of nutrients that are capable of stimulating energy production as already described. The “bedside manner” is valuable because a sense of confidence and trust results in energy conservation. Remember the proverb “worry killed the cat”.

Illness and the Lack of Energy

As essentially fragile organisms, we live in a situation of personal stress. We are surrounded by micro-organisms ready to attack us. We have built a culture that is enormously stressful in many different ways, I turn once again to the writings of Hans Selye, who advanced the idea that we are suffering from “the diseases of adaptation”. He recognized that some form of energy was absolutely essential to meet any form of physical or mental stress. One of his students was able to produce the general adaptation syndrome in an animal by making the animal thiamine deficient. Energy metabolism in Selye’s time was poorly understood. Today the role of thiamine is well known. As I have described in other posts and in our book, the lower part of the brain that controls adaptive mechanisms throughout the body is highly sensitive to thiamine deficiency. Alcohol, and sugar in all its forms, both overload the process of oxidation. Although energy metabolism depends on many nutrients, thiamine is vital to the function of mitochondria and its deficiency appears to be critical. Because the brain and heart are the dominant energy consumers it is no surprise to find that beriberi has its major effects in those two organs. Symptoms are just expressions of oxidative inefficiency of varying severity. This is the reason why 696 medical publications have reported varying degrees of success in the treatment of 240 diseases with thiamine. Its ubiquitous use as a drug depends on its overall ability to restore an adequate energy supply by stimulating mitochondrial function. It is also why I propose that energy deficiency is the true root of modern disease.

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More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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This article was published originally on November 19, 2019.

Rest in peace Derrick Lonsdale, May 2024.

Food Composition and Hyperglycemia

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on June 25, 2025

8221 views

Over the last few months, I have written a number of white papers on thiamine for contract. They may or may not be published in part or in full at some future date. Among them, I was contracted to write separate papers about thiamine in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. As I began writing the first article, I realized that these were not separate topics. Rather, each disease process was simply a different manifestation of the same core problem: persistent hyperglycemia. This, in turn, was a direct response to our current ultra-processed, chemically-laden, refined sugar, garbage-food environment; a problem we all seem reticent to confront.

The garbage foods that we consume lead to metabolic dysfunction marked by, among other things, hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia, in turn, leads to specific metabolic adaptations that result in the inability to efficiently convert consumed foods, not just sugars, but amino and fatty acids as well, into energy. (See here for details.) Poor energy metabolism then drives cravings and overeating as a compensatory reaction to increase metabolic energy, which in turn, further entrenches hyperglycemia and its metabolic cascades. It is a deadly spiral, the likes of which are evident in skyrocketing rates of metabolic ill-health. A recent study found that only 12% of the population, 20% if the authors were generous in their description, could be considered metabolically healthy.

From my perspective, it is this shift in metabolic capacity, in the pathways used to metabolize food that drives much, if not all, modern illness. Importantly, many of the disease processes we now consider to be separate entities, like diabetes, the various cardiovascular diseases, the neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia, cancer, and even the litany of chronic autoimmune, inflammatory, or pain and fatigue related disease processes, may not be separate at all. They may just represent the way the consumption of ultra-processed foods and the resulting hyperglycemia mix with the individual’s unique genetic and environmental circumstances to form disease. In other words, food provides the spark, hyperglycemia is the kindling, and how and where the flame burns is determined by the individual’s genetics and the totality of his or her life, lifestyle, and environmental exposures. It all begins with food though.

What Are Ultra-processed Foods?

Just about everything in the middle aisles of a super market or purchased from a fast food establishment would be considered ultra-processed. These products are:

…formulations of several ingredients which, besides salt, sugar, oils and fats, include food substances not used in culinary preparations, in particular, flavours, colours, sweeteners, emulsifiers and other additives used to imitate sensorial qualities of unprocessed or minimally processed foods and their culinary preparations or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product.

In other words, most of the American diet. These products are highly palatable, densely caloried (because of all of added sugars and fats), and loaded with synthetic chemicals, but have no discernable endogenous nutrient content. Sadly, almost 60% of the American diet for adults and close to 70% for kids aged 2-19 years is comprised of ultra-processed food products.

Processing is not the only problem though. Conventionally grown and raised food and livestock have all but bred out of their products any semblance of nutrition in favor of bigger, faster-growing, and more attractive products. In the place of nutrients, we get excess sugars (yes, conventionally grown produce has a higher sugar content than organic or that was grown in the past), along with lots of herbicides, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and veritable laundry list additional mitochondrial poisons. From farm to table, the composition of modern food products is lacking nutrients while rich with potential anti-nutrient and toxicant compounds. Is it any wonder only 12-20% of the population can be considered metabolically healthy or that hyperglycemia drives modern illness?

Why Hyperglycemia?

Backing up just a bit, let us talk about how discussions of hyperglycemia are framed conventionally and what that has to do with the composition of the foods we ingest. Most discussions of hyperglycemia involve either the absence of sufficient insulin as in the case of Type 1 diabetes or a developed resistance to insulin as in the case of Type 2 diabetes. In either case, there is insufficient insulin available, either absolutely or relative to need, to transport glucose from the bloodstream into the cells and this results in hyperglycemia. Much of the research involves defects in pancreatic islet cell function, glucose receptors and transporters relative to these diseases. In general, diet exacerbates hyperglycemia. With type 2 diabetes, however, diet accounts for almost all of the disease process itself. In many, but not all cases of type 2 diabetes, diet also induces obesity and may provoke a host of additional disease process affecting the heart and the brain. Indeed, Alzheimer’s disease is now considered an outgrowth of persistent hyperglycemia and has been categorized as type 3 diabetes.

This linkage of diabetes with obesity leads many to conclude that if the individual just reduces his/her calories and/or increases activity and loses weight, the diabetes, the obesity, and the assortment of other disease processes that ensue, would resolve and/or be prevented. For some this may be true, but if the persistent rates of obesity, despite reductions in caloric intake are any indicator, this aspect of diet is only indirectly related to the disease at hand. My research involving the some of the metabolic pathways associated with hyperglycemia, leads me to believe that hyperglycemia represents more than just an excess of calories, carbohydrate or otherwise, and that changes to pancreatic islet function, and glucose receptors and transporters are simply adaptive response to ailing mitochondrial metabolism. What is causing metabolism to fail? The American diet of ultra-processed food-like products that are high refined sugars, trans fats and chemical toxins, but low in usable macronutrients and micronutrients – that is the root of these illnesses.

Micronutrient Deficiency Underlies Hyperglycemia

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the fuel source for cellular function, the energy currency that all organisms require to survive, is derived entirely from food. The foods we eat provide the macronutrients – protein, fats, and carbohydrates, and the micronutrients –vitamins and minerals – that, with a little oxygen, are then processed by the mitochondria into ATP. Absent frank starvation, the key variables in this process are the micronutrients. Thiamine and its activating partner magnesium are especially important because they manage the gates to this process. Micronutrients derived from foods allow for the catabolism of consumed macronutrients so that it may be turned into ATP. Vitamins and minerals fuel the enzymatic machinery that allows energy factory to work. Insufficient micronutrients slow down enzyme capacity (the energy machinery), causing a backup of macronutrients (a supply excess), at the gates. That excess has to be dealt with. Some of it is forced through alternate pathways that, through a variety processes, break down and salvage some of the macronutrients as a way to temper the backup, but most of the excess either just floats around in the blood or is stored in the fat cells. The glucose that floats around in the blood and desensitizes the glucose receptors and transporters and re-regulates pancreatic islet function – that is hyperglycemia. The glucose that is stored as fat – that is obesity.

Those macronutrients that cannot be processed because of absent micronutrients, not only lead to the hyperglycemia cascades and the various diseases processes associated therewith, but their consumption produces little to no energy or ATP and, in most cases, consumes it. In other words, despite ingesting an excess of calories, the mitochondria, and thus the human in which they reside, are starving. If macronutrients cannot get into the factory, the factory cannot produce ATP. The result is cravings and overeating, which no amount of willpower will overcome. This is why a simple reduction of caloric intake, absent recognition of food composition, does not work for many with type 2 diabetes. They are already starved for energy. Proteomic studies in rodents fed comparable diets illustrate this pattern of poor energetic capacity with reduced expression of the proteins involved in energy metabolism and increased expression of those marking oxidative stress and aberrant cell proliferation (cancer pathways).

A Technical Aside

In more technical terms, when the excess sugars cannot be processed via oxidative phosphorylation or through the pentose phosphate pathway – processes that ultimately produce ATP and other important substrates – they are diverted through salvage pathways like the polyol/sorbitol, hexosamine, diacylglycerol/PKC, AGE pathways. This leads not only to decrements in ATP production but the macro- and microvascular cell damage associated with persistent hyperglycemia leading to heart disease and neurological dysfunction.

Similarly, in the absence of sufficient micronutrients, thiamine in particular, the catabolism of branched chain amino acids suffers, resulting in increased branched chain keto acids, especially short and medium chain acylcarnitines. Surplus acylcarnitines then overwhelm the b-oxidation pathway involved in fatty acid metabolism. This, in turn, leads to incomplete fatty acid metabolism (dyslipidemia) and the formation of the pro-inflammatory diacylglycerol and ceramides associated with metabolic dysfunction. The hyper-activation of ceramide synthesis expedites cell death, blocking complex 3 of the electron transport chain in the mitochondria.

Inadequate micronutrient availability, and again, thiamine and magnesium especially, further imperials the alpha oxidation of fatty acids. This is the step before beta-oxidation. Poor alpha-oxidation results in increased phytanic acid and disrupted sphingolipid homeostasis; two patterns with linked with a variety of neurological sequelae. All of this is linked to persistent hyperglycemia, which evolves from inadequate micronutrient content relative to demands.

Coincidently, COVID death is linked to both increased ceramide synthesis and disturbed sphingolipid homeostasis.

We postulate that SARS[1]CoV-2 causes endothelial damage by binding ACE2 and misbalancing the renin-angiotensin pathway, dysregulating sphingolipids and activating the ceramide pathway, known to mediate endothelial cell apoptosis in the setting of radiation damage. Such injury also generates reactive oxygen species, vasoconstriction and hypoxia, and ultimately the deposition of platelets on an exposed vessel basement membrane initiating the intravascular coagulopathy and multi-organ failure, pathognomonic of severe COVID-19 and death.

Underlying both processes are micronutrient deficient patterns of hyperglycemia, e.g. insufficient thiamine, magnesium and likely other nutrients, but most have not been investigated. Inasmuch hyperglycemia accounts for much of the risk for COVID severity, it is difficult not wonder if these pathways were not already entrenched pre-virus and the virus simply escalated the negative adaptations beyond rescue.

Food Composition Matters More Than Caloric Intake

From this perspective, it is clear that it is not solely an excess of calories that causes hyperglycemia, or even an excess of carbohydrates, although both play a large role. It is the quality or composition of the food that is the problem. Modern foods are calorie dense, sure, primarily because of the use of refined sugars and added fats. They are also loaded with chemical poisons, which we all seem to disregard as important. Carbohydrates derived from natural, organic, and unadulterated fruits, vegetables and grains, carry with them vitamins, minerals, fiber, and proteins that allow the body to convert the macronutrient substrates into useable energy. Indeed, a diet rich in these types of foods is unlikely to induce hyperglycemia or obesity. In contrast, processed foods, while high in carbohydrates, fats, and chemicals that are toxic to the mitochondria, carry few to no micronutrients, little to no fiber, or other compounds that can be used by the body to produce ATP all the while carrying an abundance of chemical toxins. From a metabolic standpoint, ultra-processed foods are nothing more than edible poisons. They demand more energy to process than they add and wreak havoc with far more systems than were illustrated here. The hyperglycemia and associated damage that ensues is evidence of this process. If we are to tackle these health issues, the entirety of modern food landscape relative to metabolic health must be addressed.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

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This article was published originally on October 28, 2021.

Gastrointestinal Disease and Thiamine

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on June 9, 2025

17878 views

The gastrointestinal (GI) tract, long thought to be specific only to the process of digestion, starts at the mouth and ends at the anus. Modern research has revealed that it has a very complex relationship with the rest of the body, especially the brain, and this post is aimed at giving the reader a glimpse of this research.

The Impact of Medication on the GI Tract

Every year many new medications are approved for clinical use, several of which can cause clinically significant GI tract toxicity. An article in the medical literature describes the drug-induced injury to the fragile lining of the tract. A drug by the name of Flagyl is used for resistant bacterial infections. Its chemical name is metronidazole and occasionally it results in the complication of encephalopathy (brain disease). It has been proposed that the adverse effects of the drug may be due wholly or in part to its conversion to a thiamine analog (the drug has a similar formula to thiamine and acts as an antagonist to the action of the vitamin). It seems that this happens enough that a Metronidazole Toxicity group has been formed online and has a considerable number of people with complaints regarding the use of this drug. Because the encephalopathy is said to be uncommon, it is apparently accepted as an occasional side effect, even though many people have been crippled from its use. The number of people reporting serious symptoms in the Toxicity group tends to negate the conclusions of officialdom that this encephalopathy is “uncommon, if not rare”.

Thiamine Deficiency and Obesity

This is defined by a formula known as the body mass index. Obesity is a growing worldwide epidemic currently affecting one in 10 adults. In the United States the incidences is as high as 40%. A publication claims that the only proven long-term treatment of severe obesity is surgical modification of the gastrointestinal anatomy, termed bariatric surgery. Complications are seen in patients who fail to follow the recommended changes in lifestyle. They include nausea, vomiting, so-called dumping syndrome, acid reflux and nutritional deficiencies. The authors note that “despite caloric density, the diet of patients prior to bariatric surgery is often of poor nutrient quality“. Unfortunately it needs to be pointed out that it is exactly why they became obese in the first place. Bariatric surgery is “shutting the stable door after the horse has gone”. Although obesity has been viewed traditionally as a disease of excess nutrition, the evidence suggests that it may also be a disease of malnutrition. Thiamine deficiency (TD) was found in as many as 29% of obese patients seeking bariatric surgery. They can present with vague signs and symptoms. In many posts on this website it has been pointed out that high calorie malnutrition is a widespread scourge in America and is responsible for the high incidence of obesity. The “vague signs and symptoms” are typical of early TD (beriberi) and are often misdiagnosed as psychosomatic.

Constipation or Diarrhea

The commonest form of bypass surgery for obesity, without going into the details, is known as Roux-en-Y. I do not know the reason for this nomenclature, but for surgeons it defines the technique. A publication in the medical literature described thiamine deficiency after gastric bypass and hypothesized that this is common. Of 151 patients, 27 met the criteria for thiamine deficiency, a prevalence of 18%. Eleven of these patients reported constipation after the surgery and treatment with thiamine improved it.

A 29-year-old patient has been described who had experienced sudden blindness and a disturbance of consciousness after two months of chronic diarrhea and minimal food intake. Amongst other physical signs, hemorrhages were seen in the eye. Leaking of blood from capillaries has long been recognized as a phenomenon that might be found in thiamine deficiency. It is of particular interest that the examination of cerebrospinal fluid revealed it to be normal, but magnetic resonance imaging showed changes that were interpreted as typical of thiamine deficiency. After administration of intravenously administered thiamine, both visual acuity and the visual field rapidly improved with the simultaneous recovery of consciousness. No indication was provided to explain a two-month period of diarrhea, although it was accompanied by “minimal food intake”.

A patient with Crohn’s disease and long-standing diarrhea resulted in combined thiamine and magnesium deficiency. Despite massive doses of thiamine given intravenously the symptoms of the deficiency could not be suppressed until the magnesium deficiency was also corrected. Many posts on Hormones Matter have discussed the relationship of magnesium with thiamine. Both of them work together as cofactors for a number of vitally important enzymes that govern energy metabolism. Obviously, literally any lapse of health can occur if energy is insufficient to meet the demands of living. Therefore, it is possible to understand that fatigue and other disorders related to ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are the manifestation of an intracellular mild thiamine deficiency.

It is important to note that, in spite of finding the levels of thiamine and thiamine pyrophosphate in the blood to be normal, 10 patients out of 12 showed complete regression of fatigue and 2 patients showed partial regression when thiamine was administered. Note the doses of thiamine that were given. They ranged from 600 to 1500 mg/day given by mouth. The thing to understand here is that this was not simple vitamin replacement. These authors were using thiamine as a completely non-toxic drug, revealing genuine pioneering. Other authors have noted that micronutrient deficiencies occur in Crohn’s disease. They reported two patients with Crohn’s disease who complained of sudden-onset eye and brain dysfunction and confusion while receiving prolonged total parenteral nutrition. Magnetic resonance imaging allowed definitive diagnosis of Wernicke encephalopathy, a well-known brain disease occurring as a result of thiamine deficiency.

The Gut – Brain Connection

Within the last decade, the complement of bacteria living in the human bowel, now known as the gut microbiome, has become a focus of attention. The GI tract was once regarded simply as a digestive organ, but recent research has led to finding that the microbiome may have an impact on human health and disease. Surprisingly, it has become a focus of research for those interested in the brain and behavior. Multiple routes of communication between the gut and the brain have been established. Recently the gut microbiota (the complement of bacteria) has been profiled in a variety of conditions, including autism, major depression and Parkinson’s disease. Of course, there is still debate as to whether or not the changes observed are primary in causing the disease or merely a reflection of it. Other authors have raised the question of the importance of the microbiota in the pathology associated with autism, dementia, mood disorders and schizophrenia. It is interesting that the GI microbiome has been regarded as a complex ecosystem that reportedly establishes a symbiotic mutually beneficial relation with the host. It is said to be rather stable in health, but affected by age, drugs, diet, alcohol and smoking. Smoking leads to modifications of the bacterial complement and is linked with absence of a protective effect toward ulcerative colitis, and deleterious for Crohn’s disease.

An interesting slant has been placed on this problem of relationship between the host and the bacteria which make up the microbiome. It is pointed out that thiamine is an essential cofactor for all organisms, including bacteria and the role that gut microbes play in modulating thiamine availability is poorly understood. Little is known about how thiamine impacts the stability of microbial gut communities. In order to study this, a model gut microbe (Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron) was chosen. The study showed that thiamine acquisition mechanisms used by this microorganism not only are critical for its physiology and fitness but also provide the opportunity to model how other gut microbes may respond to the shifting availability of thiamine in the gut. Importance of this means that the variation in the ability of gut microbes to transport, synthesize and compete for thiamine is expected to impact on the structure and stability of the microbiota. The authors conclude that this variation may have both direct and indirect effects on human health.

The Role of Energy Metabolism

The question of whether bacterial changes in the gut are primary or secondary makes us think of which is the “chicken” and which is the “egg”. Bacteria are complex one-celled organisms and they require energy to perform their normal function, just the same as our body cells. Therefore, thiamine is as important to bacteria as it is to us, bringing us back to considering the frontier of medical thinking that energy metabolism is the core issue of health and disease.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay.

This article was published originally on May 6, 2019.

Rest in peace Derrick Lonsdale, May 2024.

Mystery Illness: You Are Not Alone

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on April 21, 2025

13191 views

Hormones Matter is a health oriented website edited by Chandler Marrs, PhD. She has long recognized the need for people to report their “mystery illnesses”, simply because they are slipping through the cracks in modern medicine. My association with Dr. Marrs is a very fruitful one because we both have the same viewpoint. This viewpoint embraces the concept that the present disease model is antiquated and badly needs to be revised. In a recent post, I have defined what we mean by a “medical model”. We both have found that a common health problem, largely unrecognized for its true cause, is a polysymptomatic illness that is almost invariably labeled psychosomatic. I will try to explain.

Food, Energy, and Illness

Much of our food is broken down to glucose, the primary fuel of the brain. This has given rise to a common concept that taking virtually any form of sugar is a way to develop “quick energy”. Before the processing of sugar in the body was understood, athletes would sometimes load up on it. We now know that this defeats the purpose. Very much like a car where an excess of gasoline “chokes” the engine, an excess of sugar has a very similar effect, particularly in the brain. An additional effect of sugar is the extremely sweet taste that sends a signal from the tongue to centers in the brain that gives the person an extreme sense of pleasure. It has been shown in animal studies that sugar is more addictive than cocaine and a book was published in 1973 entitled “Sweet and Dangerous”. The author, Dr. John Yudkin, was a professor of nutritional studies in a major London hospital. He was able to show that sugar was the cause of many modern diseases. It is indeed hard for people to understand that such an appreciated delight is dangerous to our health. If we turn to nature, you will find that sugar is never found in its free state. It is always found in fruit and vegetables where fiber is a vital component in its processing. The sweet taste from eating a banana or an orange is the way that Mother Nature designed it and it is a healthy way of experiencing a sweet taste.

Glucose is burned (oxidized) in cellular “engines” (mitochondria) and it is a very complex process. The net result is energy that is stored in a chemical substance known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The nearest analogy would be a battery because the energy that drives all our mental and physical functions is electrical in nature.

By far and away the commonest personal story posted on Hormones Matter is a polysymptomatic illness that is the result of inefficient energy transduction and its major effect is in the brain. To put it as simply as possible, food is not being converted into energy in sufficient amount to meet the stresses of merely being alive. The most susceptible part of the brain that is affected is the part that controls our ability to adapt to living in an environment that is essentially hostile. Using a specialized nervous system and a bunch of glands that produce hormones, this part of the brain signals every organ in the body to participate. Now obviously, if no energy were produced we would die and that is indeed a major cause of death. However this common polysymptomatic illness affecting so many people is based on an inefficient energy production, not a complete lack. It can vary in its degree of severity depending on nutritional and genetic factors. The dominant effect is “psychological”, symptoms such as undue fatigue, depression, anxiety and anger. It can run the gamut of our emotional reactions. In fact, because of its emotional implications, I have suggested that the common state of violence in America is a reflection of our uncontrolled hedonism. Can a person nursing a perceived grievance become violent if the emotional controls are too easily activated?

Energy lack is quickly recognized as dangerous by the brain. It causes a sense of panic to be felt by the affected person. That is why “panic attacks” have been recognized incorrectly as a “psychological disease that requires a medicine to tranquilize the patient” whereas they really represent a fight-or-flight reflex, naturally designed to get the affected person “out of perceived danger, i.e. energy deficiency”. The affected person seeks medical help, but this effect in the brain is seen by most physicians as “psychological”, as though the patient is inventing the symptoms. The diagnosis is, “it’s all in your head”. The irony is that although the symptoms are indeed the result of a function “in the head”, they are evidence of a sick brain lacking in adequate energy and therefore have an understandable origin and meaning. Also, the symptoms are easily erased by administration of non-caloric nutrient supplements when they are initially experienced. If allowed to continue unchecked, sometimes for years, they may lead to the irreversible damage characterized as a neurodegenerative disease.

Because the dominant effect is in the part of the brain that controls the specialized nervous system, it begins to send out exaggerated “panic” signals to the organs of the body. The result is a variable assortment of physical effects— heart palpitations, breathing problems, diarrhea, often alternating with constipation, whole body pain, migraine headaches, nasal congestion, nausea with or without vomiting, chest or abdominal pain, pins and needles etc. In other words, any organ in the body may be activated or non-activated because the pattern of our adaptive mind/body machinery is adversely affected. The very important point is this: each and every action of the brain/body union requires energy, even sleep!

Perhaps the most common symptom is severe fatigue and this has given rise to a common diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). It is worth noting that it is often associated with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and it seems to be medically accepted that two diseases, both of “unknown cause” can occur in a patient at the same time. That seems to be a product of illogical thinking based on the present medical model.

Share Your Story

Anyone encountering this website is encouraged to write his or her health story and share it as a blog post. These stories help raise awareness about the scope of illnesses affecting us all and add to the knowledge base. To share your health story, send us a note here.

If you have specific questions about health and illness, we recommend that you “surf” the site because there are many posts on a variety of topics with long and detailed comment threads, one or more of which may be similar to your own story and may answer your questions.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

Image by Leandro De Carvalho from Pixabay .

This article was published originally on December 2, 2019.

Rest in peace Derrick Lonsdale, May 2024.

The Exquisite Simplicity of Health and Illness: Mitochondria and Energy

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on March 11, 2025

17535 views

For years I have struggled to get people to understand the relative simplicity of what causes us to get sick. Our medical model implies that each disease has a specific cause, and therefore, has a specific treatment. If you look seriously at what makes us tick, there are several obvious factors involved. Yes, we are provided with a “blueprint”, given in code called DNA, by our parents. Since the discovery of DNA, medical research has emphasized almost to exclusion of other factors, that genetics is the primary research area. The most amazing recent finding is that our cellular genes (the blueprint) can be manipulated by our diet and lifestyle.

Diet and Stress

Even though the great Hans Selye studied the effects of physical stress on animals, we have neglected it in relationship to human health. He said that humans were suffering from what he called the diseases of adaptation. What he meant by that was that any form of “stress” has to be met by an adaptation that requires a huge amount of energy. The brain causes the body to go into a defensive mode when we are attacked by a microorganism and it should not be surprising that it requires energy. Sometimes a severe form of stress is associated with fever that should be regarded as an automated defensive action. In fact, I knew of a patient in whom the cause of her persistent fever could not be determined by standard laboratory methods. It was written off as “psychosomatic”, because of personality factors.

The idea, however, seems to me to be a reduction to absurdity based on collective ignorance of the underlying mechanism. The symptoms that we develop are caused by all the actions that make up the defensive mode and we call that the disease. For example, fever is part of the defense because it renders the attacking organism less efficient. Hence, the attacking organism is a “stressor”. Perhaps prolonged mental stress can produce fever in a metabolically abnormal brain because of causative misinterpretation by the brain.

It has long been time-honored that we bring the temperature down artificially as part of the treatment for infection, thus losing an important part of the defense. It wasn’t the flu virus that caused Reye’s syndrome, a disease that caused the death of many children. It was the aspirin given by the mothers to bring their child’s temperature down.

Energy Deficiency and Mitochondria

When you read a telegram giving you bad news, when you ride a bicycle, when you run cross country or shovel snow, we take it for granted that the energy will be forthcoming, that is if we think about it at all. Energy deficiency in the heart muscle could easily explain the “drop-dead” phenomenon occasionally experienced by elderly people in the winter when shoveling snow, usually written off as a heart attack from coronary disease that could easily be part of the event. Could that death have been prevented by analyzing the state of nutrition for that individual?

Another great discovery is that we have a separate set of genes that preside over the functions of our mitochondria. These are the organelles within each of our cells that produce the energy that enables us to function. Sick mitochondria produce sick people, because energy consumed must be met by energy synthesized. We now know that mitochondria have their own genes completely separate from the “blueprint” genes. Mitochondrial genes are passed to the children by the mother. When damaged mitochondrial genes are passed on to children, it becomes a form of maternal inheritance. An obvious question is whether the damage to genes can be caused in adult life from malnutrition or whether the damaged genes passed on to the children are invariably inherited from grandma.

Energy synthesis depends upon an exquisitely complicated set of nutrients that are derived from what we eat, so nutrition becomes the third factor. It is therefore very likely that an element of each of these factors is always involved. Yes, it is true that a genetic mistake may be the primary cause, but a lot of genetic mistakes are really risk factors that begin to produce a given disease in relationship to “stress” and “nutrition”, both of which always play a part.

We now know that the induction of the first symptoms of beriberi, a well-known vitamin deficiency disease that has dogged mankind for centuries, can be fully initiated by sunlight exposure in a person with marginal deficiency. There may be mild symptoms attributed to other “more acceptable” causes or even no symptoms of vitamin deficiency prior to sunlight exposure. In the early investigation of beriberi, the appearance of symptoms in many individuals at the same time misled the investigators who concluded that it was due to a mysterious infection. We now have reason to believe that ultraviolet light imposes a “stress” in an individual whose metabolism is marginal, thus initiating the true underlying cause.

Healing Comes Naturally If We Let It

The human body, as we all recognize, is beautifully designed and healing is a natural phenomenon built into our system. The body knows exactly what to do, but like stress factors, healing requires energy. So, it seems to make absolute sense that we cannot possibly produce healing by the use of compounds that are completely foreign to our cellular system. Shouldn’t we be using methods that assist the healing process by stimulating mitochondria to produce the necessary energy? Surely, the only possible assistance must be through the use of nutrients. At present, we know that there are well over 40 separate non-caloric nutrients that we must get from our food to maintain health and this may not be a full complement.

Feeding the Body Fuel to Heal: Of Vitamins and Minerals

I give this as a forerunner to news that I came across quite recently. I am reasonably sure that it will be known by people who love American sports. Everyone knows the name of Bernie Kosar, the great quarterback of the Cleveland Browns back in the good old days. Bernie understood the highs and lows of football. He had hundreds of concussions, broken bones and torn ligaments over 8 ½ seasons. In retirement he suffered pounding headaches, sleepless nights, anxiety and increased weight. Speech slurring made people think that he was drunk. Amazingly, his family didn’t believe that he had genuine symptoms and thought that he was merely trying to gain attention. The slurred speech was thought to be due to alcohol, the weight gain from overeating. After his retirement, apparently he spent some time in Florida and he learned there of a physician who was using intravenous vitamins to treat the kind of symptoms of which he complained. He tried it and immediately began to feel better. In fact he was so impressed that when he came north to live in Ohio he looked for a physician who could continue this treatment. He was directed to a doctor Pesek, founding holistic physician and CEO of Vital Health in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr.Pesek uses holistic superfoods and megadose vitamins to treat his patients. Kosar gets two or three intravenous infusions of vitamins a month. His headaches have decreased, his sleep is improved and he has lost 60 pounds in weight. This is loss of accumulated water in the tissues, a signature of mitochondrial disease, not loss of fat. In fact he is so impressed that he is going to bring it to the notice of the NFL concussion settlement. He wishes that he had started it earlier. He says that “he knows of guys who are older and some who are younger than me and it goes south quickly”.

Healing the Brain

Because the methodology is “out of the box”, it is likely that a common explanation would be the so-called placebo effect. But that effect has to have a mechanism and perhaps the approach with nutrients actually stimulates this effect. What we know about brain injury is that the damage upsets the normal balance of metabolism. It causes a release of oxygen radicals, a phenomenon that can be likened to the production of sparks in a fire. The damage is cumulative, eventually giving rise to the kind of symptoms experienced by Kosar and also by Mohammed Ali, who went on to suffer from Parkinson’s disease. Neglect the early symptoms, almost always mistaken for psychosomatic disease, and the damage slowly accumulates, eventually becoming irreversible and untreatable. I suggest that this is represented as one of the many neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. Under the present medical model, it might easily be assumed that intravenous vitamins are a specific treatment for the effects of concussion and should be reserved for that. The point is that there are many avenues to metabolic imbalance. For example, if type I diabetes was determined by a genetic effect, why do the symptoms not appear for many years? If genes are solely responsible, diabetes should be present at birth. The answer is that other factors come into play including malnutrition and aging. In fact, in the state of genius, it might be that even the best possible diet does not provide sufficient energy, perhaps explaining the long-term illnesses of the historical figures, Mozart and Charles Darwin, both of whom suffered lifelong from symptoms that have often been regarded by historians mostly as psychosomatic.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

Image by PDPics from Pixabay.

This article was published originally on July 31, 2017.

Rest in peace Derrick Lonsdale, May 2024.

The Winnowing of the Western Diet: Reconsidering Food Sensitivities

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on December 17, 2024

9443 views

A few weeks ago, I posted some articles on Facebook regarding the need for protein in one’s diet (here, here). I believe that the lack of protein in the modern diet and the subsequent substitution with processed carbohydrates is one of the leading contributors to metabolic disease. Over the last 50 years or so, we have become increasingly afraid of eating protein and fat. Convinced by industry-sponsored advertising and ill-conceived medical science postulating that only calories matter and that eating fat makes one fat, we avoided the higher calorie foods like meat and shifted our diets towards lab manipulated but lower calorie and lower fat, ultra-processed carbohydrates. This has left much of the population starved for both macro (protein, fats, and plant-based carbohydrates) and micro (vitamins and minerals) nutrients. Ironically, the push to avoid high-calorie foods has resulted in higher calorie intakes in those who regularly consume ‘low-calorie’ foods than those who consume the higher calorie whole foods.

Similarly ironic, a corresponding form of malnutrition develops as a result of the low nutrient content in these industrial foods – this despite nutrient fortification. We have labeled this type of malnutrition as high calorie malnutrition. It is a metabolic starvation of sorts that develops concurrently with obesity, but also, with many disease processes including, I would suspect, food sensitivities. With the choice of highly processed foods, excessive calories must be consumed to meet the minimum nutrient requirements. Sugar is metabolically easy energy. So too is fat. Protein, by comparison, is not. Unfortunately, sugar, though technically energy-rich, is nutrition poor, and therein lies much of the problem. Worse yet, the fats used in most processed foods are hydrogenated, and thus, provide few health benefits but carry many risks.

When I bring up the notion of eating more protein, fat, or simply eating more nutrient-dense foods in general, I am met with resistance, sometimes philosophical, but oftentimes, based upon long-entrenched food sensitivities that develop over time, eventually winnowing the number of non-triggering foods down to almost nothing. Over the last several years, the breadth and depth of individual food sensitivities has exploded. Sensitivities to protein and fats, in particular, seem to be growing, but also to fruits and vegetables and, of course, grains. These are not allergies in the traditional sense, though there may be an altered histamine response involved. Rather, they may represent a complicated response to a lack of particular nutrients that results in the inability to digest or metabolize certain foods.

In response to the aforementioned posts on protein, a reader asked:

Chandler Marrs, what about the inability to absorb protein? …About 17 years prior to my husband’s death, he started eating all kinds of junk food (carbs). Every piece of crap he could pick up at Dollar General…he had never had a sweet tooth or liked junk food till then. Visiting with his neurosurgeon after my husband’s death…on diet and progression of his issues, he told me that when [my husband] went to junk food it was for energy, that he was no longer able to absorb protein. He told me that my husband was doing what his body dictated he do, the only thing he could do for energy…

I don’t know the history behind this gentleman’s illness, nor any of the details beyond what was posted above, but I would not be surprised if cancer were involved, perhaps in the brain, either originally or one that metastasized. The reason behind my suspicions is that cancer involves a switch in energy metabolism, wherein sugars are no longer used effectively in the manufacture of ATP – cellular energy – creating a sense of starvation, particularly when other fuels are absent and/or the machinery used to convert the other fuels to energy is deranged. Even if cancer was not part of this gentleman’s illness, the craving for sugars and the suspected inability to absorb or utilize proteins and fats for energy production points to a common metabolic adaptation to a longstanding nutrient-poor diet. It is a chemical conditioning of sorts, much like a drug addiction, that nets cravings for the foods/fuels that maintain the new normal, whatever that state may be.

What is often missed in the discussions of food sensitivities is that to digest and metabolize foods and convert them into usable and beneficial substrates for health, the machinery responsible requires nutrient co-factors e.g. vitamins and minerals. Absent those co-factors, food cannot be processed into ATP in the mitochondria. And absent ATP, none of the other processes in the body work. Since those co-factors come from the foods themselves, it is a reciprocating process. Nutrient dense foods provide the cofactors to process more micro-and macronutrients while effectively producing the requisite ATP. In contrast, nutrient poor foods provide an excess of sugars – potential energy – that can never fully be converted to actual energy or ATP because the machinery responsible for processing those foods is starving for nutrients, and thus, does not work very well. When one is not able to convert the food to energy nor to derive what few nutrients may come with these foods, cascades of ill-health begin. One of those cascades involves storing the excess as fat. To the extent one is able to store this fat, though unsightly, I imagine is a highly adaptive response, as individuals with similarly poor diets who do not or cannot store fat, risk a comparatively higher rate of all-cause mortality.

Returning to the question of food sensitivities, or more appropriately, the inability to digest and metabolize particular foods, I suspect that longstanding dietary factors, along with genetic and/or environmentally induced epigenetic variables, create and then maintain nutrient deficiencies that inhibit one’s ability to ‘eat’ certain foods. Across time and as those foods are avoided, nutrient availability continues to decline. Mitochondrial function is perturbed but adapts to the new environment, resulting in chemical reactions that induce inflammation and the other patterns so common with metabolic disturbances. This may include intense cravings for certain foods that are metabolically more accessible, like sugars. Admittedly, sugars are exactly what a body in this state does not need, but much like the cravings for drugs in an addiction model, I suspect the body has adapted to having this substance present in high concentrations. It has re-regulated itself accordingly, and because of this, both the absence of the substance and the addition of other, metabolically less well-adapted substances, cause great distress chemically. These changes are then experienced symptomatically.

We know from addiction models, that when a substance is present continuously and in high concentrations, the body adapts so that it can maintain some sort of homeostasis and survive. Receptors, transporters, enzymes, and the like, are reregulated. Some upregulate, others downregulate. As this reregulation occurs, the body becomes chemically conditioned to its new state, seeking to maintain it at whatever cost. When what is in excess carries no nutritional value, as it so often does, we have the bonus of starving the enzymes that make metabolism possible, further imperiling health. At the root of much of this reregulation is nutrition or lack thereof. Every enzyme in the body requires nutrient co-factors to function. Absent these nutrients, metabolism falters; not just the metabolism of foods to energy but the metabolism of drugs, the metabolism of neurotransmitters, hormones, and the like. Absent nutrients, we have widespread changes in the totality of our biochemistry. How those changes manifest is dependent upon the individual’s genetic makeup and environment, but make no mistake, they are occurring.

While it is clear that one can avoid many of these problems by eating a nutrient-dense diet, it is not as clear how one recovers these functions once they are lost. Do we simply feed the offending substance until tolerance develops? Or do we tackle the enzyme issues first, supplying the requisite nutrients in the form of supplements so that they function more effectively and then re-introduce the offending foods? I don’t know the answer, but my instincts tell me that enzyme issues have to be addressed first and the vitamin and mineral deficiencies corrected before the offending foods can be reintroduced. What I do know, however, is that something must be done. Human beings cannot live well or for very long without protein and fat. Those are requisite substrates for health.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, and like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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This article was first published on June 20, 2019.

Poor Nutrition Stress: The Enemy of Health

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on August 14, 2024

9107 views

In previous posts, I have indicated that stress can initiate or exacerbate disease and medication or vaccine adverse reactions. Read that statement, you might think I am attributing the onset of serious disease and adverse reactions to a psychosocial cause. That is not the case. Stress comes in a myriad of forms, some external, some internal, and although much of what we call stress relates to psychosocial responses to perceived threats, I think stress encapsulates so much more. At its most fundamental level, stress represents a physical state where the body is performing less than optimally. Let me explain.

What is Stress?

I define the word “stress” as a physical or mental force that is acting upon you. An example of mental or psychosocial stress might be an insult from a person, meaning that the stress comes from a source outside the body. On the other hand, it might be the realization that a deadline has to be met, a mental source from within. Any form of injury is an obvious source of physical stress. Physical action such as shoveling snow is another form of stress, demanding energy consumption imposed by the individual who wishes to get rid of the snow. Being infected with a virus or by bacteria is a form of stress that demands a defensive reaction. In each of these instances, the body reacts to the inflicting stressor. Sometimes, when the resources are available, it reacts efficiently. Other times, when the resources are not available or when additional factors intercede, the body’s response to the stress is ill-adapted.

Your Body is Your Fortress, Your Immune System the Soldiers

Perhaps an analogy might help to provide an explanation for the remarks that follow. I imagine the body as being like an old fashioned fortress. The people living within it go into action when the fortress is attacked by an enemy from outside. It would be of little use if the defense soldiers went to the eastern battlements if the attack came from the west and so there had to be a central figure that would coordinate the defensive reaction. The nature of the attack would be spotted by a guard on duty and the central figure informed by messenger.

The body represents the fortress and the lower part of the brain represents the central figure that coordinates the defense. The cells in the blood known as white cells can be thought of as soldiers, armed with the necessary weapons to meet the nature of the enemy. Suppose, for example, a person’s finger is stuck by a splinter carrying a disease bearing germ. The pain, felt in the brain, recognizes its source and interprets it as a signal that an attack has occurred. White cells in the area can be regarded as the “militia under local command” and a “beachhead” is formed to wall off the attack. The white cells sacrifice themselves and as they die, they form what we call pus. If the beachhead is broken and the germs manage to get into the bloodstream, it is then called septicemia and the brain/body goes into a full defensive reaction where high fever is the most obvious result. Such an illness is an attack/defense battle.

The symptoms that develop from such an infection represent the evidence for this defense, feeling ill, pain and developing a fever are excellent examples. Micro-organisms are most efficient at 37° C, the normal body temperature. The rise in body temperature, initiated by the brain, makes the microorganisms less efficient and may kill some of them. One therefore has to question the time honored method of reducing the fever, during illness, as being an example of good treatment. While reducing fever improves the symptoms caused by the infection, it also reduces the efficiency of the immune battle raging within.

The outcome against the stressor is death or recovery; although it is possible sometimes to end up in a kind of stalemate, represented by prolonged symptoms of ill health. Chronic illness may be viewed as the immune system’s inability to eradicate fully the stressor.

Poor Nutrition and Stress

As I have emphasized in previous posts, the autonomic (automatic) nervous and endocrine systems are used to carry the messages between the body and the brain that enable the defense to be coordinated. This demands a colossal amount of cellular energy, no matter the nature of the stress. That energy to fight stress comes from oxidation of the fuel that is provided from nutrition. Of course, the greater the stress the greater the energy demand, but in the end the equation is quite simple. If the energy required to meet the stress is greater than the energy that is supplied, there must be a variable degree of collapse within the defensive system. That collapse presents as intractable symptoms, where the body is unable provide the energy needed to sustain health. This is the secret of the autonomic dysfunction in the vitamin B1 deficiency disease, beriberi. It is also the secret behind the initiation of POTS because both conditions are examples of defective oxidation. You can read more details regarding thiamine deficiency, beriberi, POTS and other health issues from previous posts on this website

High Energy Demands Equal High Nutritional Demands

Nutrient density of diet might appear to be perfectly adequate for a given individual, but inadequate to meet the self-initiated energy demands of a superior brain/body combination in a highly active individual such as an actively engaged student or athlete. Our genetic characteristics, the quality of nutrition and the nature of life stresses each represent a factor that all combine together to give us a profile for understanding health and its potential breakdown.

Epigenetics and Mitochondria: The Stress of Our Parents

Epigenetics, the science of how our genes are influenced by diet and lifestyle, is relatively new. Epigenetics considers the possibility that genes can be activated and deactivated by nutrition and lifestyle. Stress can come in many forms, from psychosocial trauma, poor nutrition, environmental and medical toxin exposures, to infections. Stress impacts how our genes behave. Even though one may inherit a hard-coded genetic mutation from a parent, that mutation may not be activated unless exposed to a particular type of stress. Similarly, an individual who may have no obvious illness-causing genetic abnormalities but stress, in the form of nutritional depletion, exposures or trauma, can turn on or turn off a set of genes that induce illness. What is remarkable about epigenetics is the transgenerational nature of the stressors. The memories of stressors affecting our parents and even our grandparents can affect our health by activating or deactivating gene programs.

We also have to consider the state of our mitochondria, the “engines” in each of our cells that produce the energy for cellular function (to learn more about mitochondria and health, see previous posts on this website). Mitochondria have their own genes that are inherited only from the mother. Damage to the DNA that makes up these genes sometimes explains the similarity of symptoms that affect a given mother and any or all of her children. For example, although this damage may be inherited, we also have scientific evidence that thiamine deficiency, known to be the result of poor diet, can damage mitochondria. A bad gene might be the solitary cause of a given disease, but even where this is known as the cause, the symptoms of the disease are sometimes delayed for many years, suggesting that other variables must play a part. A minor change in cellular genetic DNA might be alright to meet the demands of normal living, but impose a risk factor that could be impacted by prolonged stress or poor nutrition, and disease emerges.

Nutrition is the Only Factor that We can Control

The imposition of stress on any given individual is variable, most of which is accidental and out of our control. Therefore, if we represent these three factors, genetics, stress and nutrition as three interlocking circles, all of which overlap at the center of such a figure, there is actually only one circle over which we have control and that is nutrition. We now know from the science of epigenetics that nutritional inadequacy can affect our genes. By examining the mechanism by which we defend ourselves against stress, we can also see the effect of poor nutrition.

Poor Nutrition Equals a Poor Stress Response

Using these three variables, perhaps we can begin to understand several unanswered questions. Why does a vaccination negatively affect a relatively small percentage of the total population vaccinated? Or why do some medications negatively impact only some individuals? It might be because of a genetic risk factor or because of a collapse of the coordinated stress response related to quality of nutrition or a combination of both. Why does a vaccination tend to “pick off” the higher quality students and athletes? Again, the same kind of answer; high quality machinery demands high quality fuel. Since the limbic system of the brain has a high energy demand and represents the computer that coordinates a stress response we can understand the appearance of beriberi or POTS and cerebellar ataxia, all examples of a deviant response to stress. Nutrition, therefore, should not be looked at as supplement to good health, but as the foundation of health. When disease or medication and vaccine reactions emerge, efforts to identify and then restore nutritional deficiencies must be the first line of immune system health. Without critical nutrients, the body simply cannot mount a successful stress response and the battlefield will expand and eventually fall.

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Image by Pedro Figueras from Pixabay.

This article was published originally on May 6, 2014.

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