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So mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell as Tim just told us, educated us, right? So every cell has hundreds of
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mitochondria and mitochondria are what are called organels. They have their own DNA. In fact, evolutionarily
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mitochondria were bacteria that basically ended up in the symbiotic relationship with what became our cells.
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So we each have mitochondria, hundreds of them in each one of our cells. Each mitochondria has its own nucleus and has
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its own DNA. And the mitochondria make the energy that the rest of the cell uses. That energy is called ATP. And it
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eats up glucose or it eats up ketones if you're in ketosis. And it uses that to make the ATP. So every cell in our body
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gets its energy, which is what it uses to function from the mitochondria. And so there's been a lot of research into
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the relationship between mitochondria and aging and that dysfunctional mitochondria as they start to break down
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and stop working and have damage may actually be a key driver for many diseases that we experience as humans
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including many cancers, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, features of autism, muscle tissues being weak, etc. So as
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the cells get older and the mitochondria stop working, we make new mitochondria.
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But over time, the DNA degrades and the mitochondria become less effective and there are fewer functional mitochondria
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per cell. The cell stops working right and eventually the organism stops working, right? Have you have you
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learned anything about the connection of creatine to mitochondrial health? It's part of um some of the processes, but
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there's some separate research on this, but it's definitely worth spending time on. People are crazy about hitting five
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grams or 10 grams of becoming like a trend. Yeah, I think it's Oh, yeah. I know. Five grams. Yeah, something like
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that. It's trending on Twitter. I think it's kind of like a meme or a joke in addition to being I don't I don't think
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it's a joke. Is it is it But it does it is there any science that backs that up or not really for mitochondria? There
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are questions on this like do you want to focus on things that are increasing biogenesis which is creation of new
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mitochondria? Does that create a better benefit on the creatine work? I've read some of these papers. I actually tried
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it for a while. I personally had a allergy to it which is kind of rare but happens but anyway we can talk about it
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further. So so one of the key things was um there were three papers that I wanted
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to just highlight that kind of follow an interesting theme. The first one was from 2023 from WashU in St. Louis and
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this paper, Nick, if you could just pull up that image of mitochondria being transferred. These
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folks identified and demonstrated that mitochondria can actually transfer from one cell to another. So, if you've got a
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cell that's got damaged or dysfunctional mitochondria, they've identified three mechanisms by which mitochondria can
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move into a cell that needs more mitochondria that are working and are more functional. That's something that's
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been theorized for a long time. People have said, "Oh, well, we think mitochondria transfer." But there wasn't
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really evidence of this. So, as of two years ago, these guys provided very good evidence of mitochondria that we can now
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put into cells. If it's floating around, it can make its way into another cell and as a result, it can rejuvenate or
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provide energy to a dysfunctional cell which might improve dysfunctional tissue or improve disease. The second paper was
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done um last month out of Columbia University. And this was the first mapping of the mitochondria in the human
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brain. And so these folks created 703 tiny cubes of brain from a person that passed away, a 54 year old donor. And
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then they analyzed the mitochondria in each of those cubes. And they used that to make a map of mitochondria in the
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brain. And what it showed was that different parts of the brain, different cells had different amounts of
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mitochondria and different mitochondrial function, which actually starts to highlight how that difference in energy
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production in different cells in different parts of the brain may actually cause some of the things like
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memory loss or speech impairment or um as we age, the fact that we end up being, you know, kind of forgetful or
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start to lose some of our capacity. that the mitochondrial dysfunction in the brain might actually be the key driver
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of that aging um symptomology. The third paper which just came out came out of a team at Sha Jang
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University in China. So what these guys did which was really incredible is they took stem cells. So stem cells that they
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got out of human blood and they took those stem cells and they figured out a way to treat the stem cells that those
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stem cells would start to make an excess amount of mitochondria than they normally would make. In fact they were
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able to get those stem cells to make 854 times the number of mitochondria that those cells would normally make.
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And those mitochondria were on average 5.7 times more efficient at making energy, ATP. So they created highly
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energetic mitochondria and they made a lot of them. And the idea that we can put mitochondria into our body or into
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tissue in our body to heal it or repair it has been something that folks have been trying to do research around for a
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long time. But the limiting factor is access to enough mitochondria. So this mechanism that they developed where they
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could take stem cells, make copies of the stem cells, make lots of mitochondria and then they isolate that
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mitochondria and use it as a therapeutic tool and they did it in cartilage that was damaged and they were able to heal
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that cartilage. So um this is a group that does bone and and tissue repair studies, but they applied the
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mitochondria directly into the area where there was damage to the bone and the bone grew back and it actually
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improved the healing in an incredible way. So this this opens up the door to this whole new therapeutic modality, a
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new type of therapy called midotherapy or mitochondrial therapy that based on the series of papers that we're seeing
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coming out recently, I believe could end up becoming a really incredible um new therapy that may ultimately lead to the
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treatment for many diseases that we're kind of dealing with right now. So, I just wanted to kind of like this be uh
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immediately applicable to say people with sports injuries, you know, meniscus, knees, ankles. You start to
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think about those bones, spurs, chips that basketball players, football players go through. Would that this be
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like the lowhanging fruit for this technology? Yeah. I mean, what they did this in and I think this was published
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in a research magazine called Bone or something. Bone and tissue or something. Yeah. But they did I'll let my
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subscription lapse. I got to thank for reminding me. They did it in a in a model a mouse model of osteoarthritis um
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and it repaired this osteoarthritis. But that's exactly right. And so that's tissue where you can using a microscope
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you can actually see the healing happening. But you could see this being applied for example uh to cerebral
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spinal fluid where you can basically increase the mitochondrial the energetic mitochondrial production uh that finds
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its way into maybe neuronal cells into neurons in your brain and improves um uh your brain function. or you could put it
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into damaged hearts after heart attacks and improve heart function. So there's all these theories about how you could
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use mootherapy as this becomes possible to now produce lots of mitochondria and use it as a therapy that can then be
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applied to lots of disease states. So I I I I think there's going to be a bit of
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a blossoming of research in this area of mitotherapy.