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As winter brings shorter days and longer nights, this episode of The Energy Code leans into the season of rest and repair. Dr. Mike explores why darker months are ideal for dialing in sleep and recovery, reads eye-opening excerpts from The Life Machines on mitochondria’s role in psychiatric disorders and cancer, announces a new supplement variant (BioLisin Light), and surveys fresh mitochondrial research—from nano-engineered “mito boosts” to sprint-interval adaptations, immune tuning, blood biomarkers, and even three-person IVF to prevent mitochondrial disease.

00:00:01:19 - 00:00:32:17
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Welcome to the Energy Code, the show that unlocks the secrets of your mitochondria from light, water, and magnetism to powerful molecules and proven lifestyle upgrades, we will continuously search for and add to what I've dubbed the Mitochondrial matrix by decoding the most efficacious signs and strategies, ultimately providing the blueprint for limitless vitality. This is the energy code. I'm your host, doctor Mike Koski.

00:00:32:20 - 00:01:06:13
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Welcome back everybody. Thanks for joining me on another episode of The Energy Code. We're we're getting pretty close here to the shortest day of the year, which, if you're like me, kind of has a negative connotation because these late mornings and early evenings are not really necessarily fun. The especially up here in the northern part of the US, where the winter, the late fall to early spring months are cold, dark, overcast.

00:01:06:16 - 00:01:32:22
Dr. Mike Belkowski
It's kind of just grueling days in terms of being able to enjoy the outdoors in the beautiful sunshine and that kind of thing. But we got to remember, while these late fall to early spring months may not be quote unquote fun, they physiologically they biologically play an important role. So again, just for perspective, just remember where we are now six months from now ish, the sun's going to be rising.

00:01:32:22 - 00:01:56:13
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Around 430 is going to be setting around 1030. So they're kind of almost on the flip side of the spectrum. Like almost too long of days. And again, if you respond to light, well that means you're gonna be waking up early or you're going to be going to bed later. So you're gonna have shorter periods of rest. So with that in mind, we need to take advantage of these shorter days.

00:01:56:15 - 00:02:27:18
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And I don't know, maybe you're not going to necessarily go to bed earlier and wake up later if your schedule doesn't allow. But regardless, maybe kind of just slowing down and and really allowing your physiology to take advantage of this period of the year, really just like a quarter of the year, more or less, to really rest and recover and then more or less prepare for the six months from now where you're going to be outside more, you're going to be up more, you're going to be sleeping potentially less because you want to be outside.

00:02:27:18 - 00:02:59:01
Dr. Mike Belkowski
You want to be enjoying the light more than in these sluggish, slowish, grueling winter months. And we've got to remember that resting recovery is tantamount with quality sleep. So these winter months are perfect for really optimizing one's sleep, cadence and sleep hygiene. And sleep rituals, because the more you can do that, you're going to lean into the optimization of that growth hormone release that happens in the evening while you're sleeping.

00:02:59:03 - 00:03:18:16
Dr. Mike Belkowski
You're going to optimize that Glenn Fat system, which is like the lymph system where it's passive, but it's mostly active when you're sleeping at night. And that releases and removes and helps get rid of toxins in your body, especially the brain. So you want to help detox? Well, you got to have restful sleep. And we can go on and on and on about the benefits of sleep.

00:03:18:16 - 00:03:36:27
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And I think you guys understand that. But, you know, just take advantage of these these cold, darker, shorter day, you know, weeks and months of the year and really lean into that rest and recovery for your body and for your mind. Because before you know it, we're going to be singing praises about the summer skies and the green grasses.

00:03:36:27 - 00:04:01:01
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And I cannot wait. But for today's episode, guys, I want to briefly read a passage from a book I'm reading. It's been on my shelf for a while, but I'm finally getting to it now. It's called The Life Machines. It's by Daria, Molly Rosen and Emmanuel Rosen. And as you can potentially guess from the title of the book, it's all about the mitochondria.

00:04:01:04 - 00:04:30:16
Dr. Mike Belkowski
The subtitle actually is how taking care of your mitochondria can Transform your health. And so this is like one of the book of all books you want to read. If you're interested on the newest and and most articulate information regarding the mitochondria and how it impacts all aspects of your health, I'm about a third of the way through right now, and it's very well written, and there's a lot of great information to glean from it, even if you're already well versed in in the mitochondria, it's probably right up there with the mitochondria.

00:04:30:16 - 00:04:53:04
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Manifesto. Not quite there, but maybe a couple pegs down, but still way up there in terms of books that I would highly recommend for those wanting to learn more about the mitochondria and their impact. So I'll put a link to this book in the show notes for you guys to check out. But the passage I want to read from today is what chapter is this?

00:04:53:06 - 00:05:18:06
Dr. Mike Belkowski
It's either 2 or 3. Excuse me, chapter four actually. And the the chapter is called Engine Malfunctions. So just going through and discussing, you know, what happens when the mitochondria breaks down. What are some diseases associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. So on and so forth. And so there's two pathologies I just really wanted to highlight because of the information provided.

00:05:18:09 - 00:05:48:12
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And it's going to be psychiatric disorders and cancer. So we're going to begin here from this book. And then after this I'm going to go over some of the most interesting pieces of mitochondrial research from the past. Us six months or so. So we'll go through those and kind of review those articles, which I think will be a good will be a good one to punch following what we're going to discuss here in the book in terms of just making this a mitochondrial comprehensive episode.

00:05:48:14 - 00:06:20:10
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So again, this is from the book entitled The Life Machines. And we're picking up in chapter four in the section entitled Psychiatric Disorders. There is a mounting evidence that associate psychiatric disorders with mitochondrial dysfunctions, but the idea still faces some resistance. Carmen Sandy, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, remembers the first time she presented her group's research on mitochondria.

00:06:20:12 - 00:06:48:04
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Some prominent neuroscientists who sat in the front row were shaking their heads as she presented, and after her talk, they pulled her aside and told her that she was wrong. The experience repeated itself when she presented her findings at the 2015 British Neuroscience Association meeting in Edinburg. After that, I was very stressed. Every time I had to present, I developed a kind of PTSD, she said half jokingly.

00:06:48:07 - 00:07:25:00
Dr. Mike Belkowski
As someone who has been studying stress and anxiety, she knows a thing or two about the subject. What was so controversial in her talk wasn't the idea that mitochondria change in the brain under certain conditions, but that they were the primary drivers of the change? In other words, she argued that depression and anxiety are not necessarily driven by changes in neuron to neuron communications that affect the mitochondria, but the other way around, the changes in the mitochondria impair communications between neurons.

00:07:25:03 - 00:07:53:20
Dr. Mike Belkowski
This may mean that by treating the mitochondria, we can decrease the burden of psychiatric disorders. An idea that still goes against the dogma in the field. Proving causality, not just correlation, is one of the toughest challenges in science. And Sandy and her team were able to demonstrate in rats so far that correction of mitochondrial dysfunction is sufficient to decrease depression and anxiety.

00:07:53:22 - 00:08:25:03
Dr. Mike Belkowski
They found that highly anxious animals showed increased depression like behavior and that their mitochondria were different too. In the more anxious rats, the mitochondria in a certain area of the brain regulating reward and emotionality were different from normal ones in several ways. For example, the team found that in a subset of neurons, the mitochondria had a lower level of a protein called middle fusion two, which is important for fusion.

00:08:25:06 - 00:08:57:15
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And now the kicker to begin establishing causation. When Sandy's team raised the level of matter of using two in these neurons, the anxiety like and depression like behaviors almost disappeared. Those rats that previously exhibited anxious behavior, for example, by avoiding open spaces, behaved more like non anxious rats. Conversely, reducing matter of using two levels in the same neurons of normally non anxious animals.

00:08:57:18 - 00:09:41:13
Dr. Mike Belkowski
In this case, they used mice resulted in increased anxiety and depression like behaviors. There are many clinical studies that demonstrate a correlation between anxiety or depression and mitochondrial dysfunctions in humans. For example, an international group of researchers led by Jonathan Flint, a behavior geneticist from Oxford University, looked for evidence of mitochondrial abnormalities in 11,670 Chinese women with and without recurrent major depressive disorder, and found an abnormally higher amount of mitochondrial DNA in the saliva of the woman with major depressive disorder.

00:09:41:15 - 00:10:14:07
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Considering what we discussed in the last chapter about the link between mitochondria and telomere length, the following may not come as a surprise that the Chinese woman who suffered from major depressive disorder also had shorter telomeres. These researchers also found an abnormally higher count of mitochondrial DNA and shorter telomeres in mice exposed to chronic stress. Importantly, efficiency of ATP production in the livers of these mice was reduced in response to stress.

00:10:14:10 - 00:10:43:10
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Together, these studies in human and mice indicate a strong correlation between mitochondrial dysfunction and depression. Correlation does not prove that mitochondrial dysfunction can cause depression or vice versa. But as we saw in Carmen Sandys studies, there are initial indications that mitochondria might be the drivers. While the key role of mitochondria in psychiatric disorders is not yet widely accepted, it's gaining ground.

00:10:43:13 - 00:11:11:26
Dr. Mike Belkowski
More researchers recognize that a lot of what's going on in our brain has to do with metabolism. And since mitochondria are metabolic hubs, their central role is clear. Although the jury is still out about this in his book Brain Energy, Harvard psychiatrist and researcher Christopher Palmer put it this way, quote, mental disorders. All of them are metabolic disorders of the brain, he wrote.

00:11:11:29 - 00:11:37:01
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And he didn't stop there. Quote all the symptoms of mental disorders can be tied directly to metabolism or more specifically, mitochondria, which are the master regulators of metabolism. End quote. All right, guys, I have a hot off the press juicy update for you, my loyal Energy Code listeners. So yes, you are the very, very first people to hear about this new update.

00:11:37:03 - 00:11:57:01
Dr. Mike Belkowski
As many of you know, this summer bio light released a supplement called BI Olefin, which is the first of its kind to combine your lithium A and your lithium B. Plus there's some taurine in there as well. That supplement is priced at 149 a bottle, which is a month supply. So we're iterating on that product and we are making a more price friendly version.

00:11:57:01 - 00:12:33:25
Dr. Mike Belkowski
It's going to be called Bio Listen Light. And it's going to be two simple ingredients Euro list and a and taurine. So if you're not as interested in the muscle building and anabolic exercise performance benefits of your listen, be amongst the anti arthritic joint health support benefits of your lithium. Be in your more focused and interested on the mitochondrial recycling mitochondrial renewing properties of your elephant a then the bio lithium lite version is going to be the one for you, and it's priced about 30% less than the quote unquote regular bio.

00:12:33:25 - 00:12:57:08
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Listen by Allison Light will be at 109 per bottle again for a month supply. So keep your eyes and ears peeled for the bio Light newsletter, bio light, social media posts for the official release date of Bio Lithium Light. And like we do with all of these new product releases, supplement releases, we will offer a 20% discount code that you can couple with the subscription.

00:12:57:08 - 00:13:17:09
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So again, you can get the best price possible when this product first releases. About a little over 30% off. If you do the discount code plus the subscription option, I will keep you posted through newsletters through social media when that product is officially released and it's officially on the bio Lite website. You guys are the first to hear about this product release, and I hope you're excited!

00:13:17:09 - 00:13:55:27
Dr. Mike Belkowski
If you've been interested in getting into your lithium and optimizing your mitochondrial energy and your redox potential. Now back to the episode. And now moving on to the section entitled cancers. The difference between a regular cell and a cancer cell is not unlike the difference between a mensch and an egocentric jerk. While a cell in normal tissue is constantly working, the balance between its own needs and the needs of the community of cells that belongs to cancer cells couldn't care less, and they employ an arsenal of strategies to grow with total disregard for the signals from the tissue around them.

00:13:56:00 - 00:14:29:19
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Like members of a crime organization, they're obsessed with expanding their territory. They steal, they push, and they outsmart other cells, which makes them a formidable enemy. Some of their sneaky, asocial behaviors become possible by suppressing or bypassing certain mitochondrial functions. One such function is programed cell death. A regular cell care so much about its surrounding cells that under certain circumstances, it would kill itself to prevent damage to the tissue.

00:14:29:19 - 00:14:59:12
Dr. Mike Belkowski
It is part of. As we discussed earlier in cancer cells, this mechanism is broken. So cancerous cells that should die continue to proliferate. Cancer cells are sneaky about ATP production too. As early as 1924, a German scientist named Otto Warburg observed that instead of a line on their mitochondria to make ATP, cancer cells use a process called glycolysis, which doesn't require oxygen.

00:14:59:14 - 00:15:33:03
Dr. Mike Belkowski
This finding was puzzling because glycolysis is a very inefficient way to produce ATP. While glycolysis produces only four molecules of ATP from each molecule of glucose, mitochondria produce 30 to around 32 molecules of ATP. Why do tumor cells use less efficient ATP production? Warburg believed that cancer is caused by mitochondrial dysfunction, and that this is the reason cancer cells switch to less efficient glycolysis.

00:15:33:06 - 00:16:08:19
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Today, most scientists believe that he was wrong about this point. The answer seems to be rooted in the speed of ATP generation in glycolysis, which better matches the energy demands of the rapidly proliferating cancer cells. Glycolysis is 10 to 100 times faster than mitochondrial respiration in producing ATP. Essentially, cancer cells are wasteful but fast. They extract less energy from each molecule of sugar, but they do it at a speed that enables the rapid growth.

00:16:08:21 - 00:16:39:28
Dr. Mike Belkowski
This strategy works for cancer cells for another reason blood vessels don't develop fast enough to feed the tumor, which means that there is less oxygen. But because glycolysis doesn't require oxygen, tumor cells can still produce enough ATP to continue to grow. Cancer cells also have lower reactive oxygen species production and thus less reactive oxygen species induced damage. Because the mitochondria are much less active.

00:16:40:00 - 00:17:16:23
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Another benefit of switching to glycolysis. While Warburg was wrong about seeing cancer as driven by mitochondrial dysfunction, a reminder that correlation doesn't mean causation. His observation that cancer cells use glycolysis to generate ATP has been confirmed, and it's called the Warburg effect. Cancer cells are inconsiderate of other cells. Also, when it comes to the use of nutrients, they steal nutrients and other molecules from other cells, even though they still use the Krebs cycle in their own mitochondria to generate building blocks for themselves.

00:17:16:25 - 00:17:51:16
Dr. Mike Belkowski
If this is not outrageous enough, they even steal intact mitochondria from other cells to support their survival. A researcher, Sengupta from the Harvard Medical School, was working on cancer, and he kept seeing cancer cells that were not affected by immune cells, called T-cells, that come to fight them. In 2022, using sophisticated microscopy tools, Sanjay Gupta and his team were able to observe cancer cells that send out a very fine nanotubes to connect with immune cells.

00:17:51:18 - 00:18:20:24
Dr. Mike Belkowski
In further experiments, they were able to demonstrate what is transported in those nanotubes. Can you guess what it is? His mitochondria, those sneaky cancer cells, literally suck the life out of the cells that come to fight them. Like an army that captured the enemy's supply. This siphoning of mitochondria by the cancer cells weakens the immune attack of the T cells, and gives the cancer cells even more building blocks and energy.

00:18:20:27 - 00:18:51:03
Dr. Mike Belkowski
There's more. In 2025, researchers from Japan found that cancer cells have two more nasty tricks in their bag. First, they poison the immune cells by transferring their own damaged mitochondria into those immune cells. Second, and even nastier, the cancer cells provide these damaged mitochondria with a cloak of invisibility, hiding the poison from removal by autophagy in the immune cells.

00:18:51:06 - 00:19:23:15
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Yet in the end, sociopaths can't hide because they identify themselves through their behavior. Similarly, the unique asocial behaviors of cancer cells provide ways to identify them. For example, Otto Warburg observed that cancer cells consume enormous amounts of glucose, and this feature is being used to this day in scanning for cancers to identify where cancer cells hide in the body, Pet scan machines are looking for locations with high glucose uptake.

00:19:23:18 - 00:19:54:18
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Here's another example of unusual behavior that draws attention after a bank robbery. A vehicle zigzagging through traffic may help police identify it as the getaway car, and researchers at Harvard Medical School suspect the similar zigzagging may be going on when cancer starts to metastasize from one organ to another. As you recall, mitochondria use mainly fatty acids or glucose to feed the Krebs cycle.

00:19:54:20 - 00:20:22:00
Dr. Mike Belkowski
But research led by Marsha Haggis, a professor at Harvard, demonstrated that in the same person, the metabolites of a tumor change when the cancer moves to a different organ, for example, they showed that to sustain their Krebs cycle, breast primary tumors use glucose and glutamine, but that long metastatic cells from these tumors use pyruvate in brain. Metastatic cells use yet other substrates.

00:20:22:03 - 00:20:50:13
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Haggas and others believe that this behavior may help develop new strategies to identify and fight metastatic cancers. Cancers are complex diseases with a variety of tricks to fight anti-cancer cell defense mechanisms and our immune response. But again, all these tricks that they use to enable their fast growth and unique metabolism are also their Achilles heel, which gives hope for new treatments.

00:20:50:15 - 00:21:19:02
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So those are the excerpts I wanted to share with you guys from the book. And really, if nothing else, I hope you gleaned from it. That really is information and research continues to come out. We're finding more and more causation and sometimes correlations between certain diseases or pathologies or health maladies, and how the mitochondria play a pretty central role.

00:21:19:05 - 00:21:49:16
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And also in terms of cancer, like how wild is it that it's literally siphoning mitochondria and its energy for itself, and then it's providing or it's spitting out dysfunctional mitochondria to the immune system cells so that it can't fight the cancer cells. And then it's giving these dysfunctional mitochondria, essentially this invisibility cloak. So they the dysfunctional mitochondria that it's spewing out can't be seen by our immune system.

00:21:49:21 - 00:22:15:15
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And thus they kind of get bogged down and can't attack the cancer cells as they otherwise would. So like these cancer cells are pretty nifty. They have some tricks up their sleeves. But as the book alluded to, they also leave a trail of where they are and what they're up to. So? So it's also very relatively it's becoming relatively easy to spot where they are, where they're going as they leave their trail behind.

00:22:15:18 - 00:22:53:21
Dr. Mike Belkowski
But how interesting. There were continuing to find these ways, these intricacies, the central roles that the mitochondria play in all of these different pathologies and conditions, and they're even held hostage by by the cancer cells and then actually used against our normal cells. So it's pretty wild to see again the central role mitochondria play. And within that chapter there, they also talked about the central role in neurodegeneration, type two diabetes autism and and other pathologies, chronic fatigue syndrome, which of course that makes sense.

00:22:53:21 - 00:23:19:13
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So yeah pretty interesting. So I hope you guys enjoyed that information from the book. But now let's move along to the second part of this episode where let's just unravel some of the most interesting research in terms of the micro mitochondrial research from the past six months or so. So this first paper we're going to look at essentially talks about nano flowers.

00:23:19:13 - 00:23:51:26
Dr. Mike Belkowski
That's right. Nano flowers that turned stem cells into mitochondrial bio factories. So the the title of this paper and this is from 2025 of course past six months. It's entitled nanomaterial induced mitochondrial biogenesis enhances intracellular mitochondrial transfer. So what do they do in this. This article they engineered what is termed nano flowers from molybdenum disulfide and exposed stem cells to them.

00:23:51:28 - 00:24:36:06
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So these particles nudged stem cells to double their mitochondrial production. The quote unquote supercharged stem cells were then Co cultured with damaged and energy depleted cells. And the key findings from this article were that the nano flowers again from live molybdenum disulfide. These nano flowers caused a robust burst of mitochondrial biogenesis in donor stem cells. The donor stem cells transferred surplus mitochondria to injured cells, restoring the ATP production membrane potential and reduced oxidative stress.

00:24:36:09 - 00:25:07:03
Dr. Mike Belkowski
In vitro, this looked like a powerful way to recharge aging or diseased cells in excuse me, in vivo work is still early. So again, these donor cells are transferring excess supercharged mitochondria to these injured cells to basically restore their function energy and all that good stuff. So this is pretty interesting. So we're using designer nanomaterials to create mobile mitochondrial repair crews.

00:25:07:06 - 00:25:27:21
Dr. Mike Belkowski
It's it's pretty it's pretty wild. I would wonder about the safety and efficacy of this. And of course again this is just in vitro. This is in vivo work as early. So it's clearly underway. So I'll I'll I'll be looking forward to hearing how these nano flowers work inside humans or at least you know, we'll start with rodents.

00:25:27:21 - 00:25:59:01
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Check out the safety efficacy, then move to humans. But it'll be interesting to see how nano flowers work in vivo. The next article this one is about sprint interval training and mitochondrial ultra structure remodeling. And this is actually from this month December. So it's hot off the press. It's entitled sprint interval exercise disrupts Mitochondrial ultra structure driving a unique mitochondrial stress response and remodeling in men.

00:25:59:03 - 00:26:31:03
Dr. Mike Belkowski
That's a very long title. But what they did. So they took young healthy men and underwent eight weeks of sprint interval training, which is very high intensity with low, low total volume. So of course, sprint interval training kind of like hit training, high intensity interval training. And they took muscle biopsies plus imaging were used to look at the mitochondrial ultra structure plus functional metrics such as respiration, that type of stuff.

00:26:31:08 - 00:27:09:27
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And the key findings from the study was that early in training sprints actually disrupted mitochondrial ultra structure. The Chris de or disorganization occurred and there were stress signatures, and that acute damage triggered a coordinated mitochondrial stress response. My AG biogenesis and quality control pathways were ramped up over weeks, though the mitochondria remodeled, they had improved respiratory function and more efficient oxidative metabolism.

00:27:09:29 - 00:27:43:25
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So this is basically homeostasis at the mitochondrial level, or dare we say, Wolff's Law of adaptation. You know, you you put a stress upon a tissue and it'll adapt accordingly. And likewise, if you don't put a stress upon a tissue, it'll adapt accordingly to the lack of stress. Right. So high intensity intervals don't just boost mitochondria. They first break them in that hermetic way, break them down to make them stronger, break them down in a controlled way, forcing the system to upgrade its hardware, if you will.

00:27:43:27 - 00:28:05:17
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And so just think of other hermetic inputs like cold cryotherapy or heat stress in the sauna. Even red light therapy is a hermetic stress when you get down to it physiologically. And then you can add methylene blue plus light, because then you're kind of ramping up that photodynamic capacity, fasting of course, and other hermetic stress exercise, all that good stuff.

00:28:05:17 - 00:28:36:08
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So sprint interval training, break down the mitochondria physiologically. And then weeks later, if you continue with a program, you're building more robust mitochondria. And this makes sense. Like if you were a sprinter or even if you're just an endurance athlete, you recognize that as increased endurance capacity, you're able to do the same intensity, whether it's a sprint or whether it's a trail run or whether it's a marathon, you're able to do the same stressor, but more efficiently.

00:28:36:10 - 00:29:01:09
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And that's basically what this article is indicating. Is your mitochondria with proper training breakdown, initially come back stronger and then you, the human being, feel that as being more efficient, you're able to better utilize the oxygen that's coming in to oxygenate the tissues. In the mitochondria, we see that as oxygen being the terminal acceptor of electrons, which then can help ultimately produce ATP and that metabolic water.

00:29:01:09 - 00:29:41:20
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So not necessarily groundbreaking, but kind of a cool way to look at how mitochondria are literally being broken down, broken down to become come back stronger and accept those stressors and better able to be more resilient. At the end of the day, this next article is about the mitochondria as the engine of T-cell memory and antitumor immunity. Speaking of how the cancer cells can use our dysfunctional mitochondria against our T cells, this article is entitled mitochondria support T cell proliferation and memory formation.

00:29:41:22 - 00:30:25:14
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So this group they dissected how mitochondrial metabolism governs T cell proliferation, differentiation, and exhaustion in cancer. In chronic infection models, they manipulated key mitochondrial pathways and T cells so things like oxidative metabolism stress responses and they tracked impacts on T cell fate and tumor control. So the key findings from this article were that robust and flexible mitochondrial metabolism was essential for T cells to proliferate and avoid exhaustion.

00:30:25:16 - 00:30:52:27
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So flexible mitochondrial metabolism being able to use both fatty acids and glucose. So especially for diabetics, their cells don't know how to utilize fatty acids, so they're reliant upon glucose. So to have a flexible metabolism, apparently not only is of course good for your metabolic or but tabassum itself healthy metabolism but also it's important for your immunity. It looks like for the T cells.

00:30:53:00 - 00:31:31:25
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Also, though, tweaking mitochondrial pathways could maintain a more stem like and memory prone T cell phenotype with better anti-tumor function. And then lastly, the work points to mitochondrial metabolism as a lever to enhance cancer immunotherapy and vaccine responses. So this is an interesting bridge between mitochondria and immunotherapy. T cell exhaustion and cancer might be as much a mitochondrial energy problem as an immune checkpoint problem.

00:31:31:27 - 00:32:09:19
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And future checkpoint strategies will almost certainly include mitochondrial tuning in the like in the future, especially as we get more and more of this research coming out, pointing to the mitochondria play and such a key role in, you know, T cell exhaustion and and immune immunity in general. This next article is is a pretty darn interesting one. It's entitled mitochondrial Co or Mitochondrial Knockout a dedicated guide RNA library for mitochondrial research.

00:32:09:21 - 00:32:43:20
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So Mtco Mitochondrial knockout is a system or library used in Crispr gene editing to systematically knock out or disable genes related to mitochondria to see what functions are lost in. The purpose is to identify genes and pathways within mitochondria crucial for cell survival or disease. States like cancer. So in terms of this article, they and again this is from July 2025.

00:32:43:20 - 00:33:25:21
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So about six months ago at this point five months ago, they developed this Mtco mitochondrial knockout. Again a Crispr guide RNA library specifically targeting mitochondrial genes and pathways. And they used it for unbiased screening in cancer cells to see which mitochondrial components are essential for tumor growth, especially in id1 mutant cancers. In the key findings from this article is that they identify the mitochondrial antioxidant enzyme superoxide dismutase as a critical vulnerability in id1 mutant cancers.

00:33:25:24 - 00:34:07:12
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Superoxide dismutase activity determined how these cancers behaved via control of redox homeostasis in mitochondrial fitness. More broadly, mitochondrial knockout provides a platform to map which mitochondrial nodes are druggable weaknesses in different diseases. So this is kind of like mitochondria meets systems biology. So rather than going one enzyme at a time, we now have a a genome scale tool to figure out which mitochondrial levers matter for cancer, neurodegeneration and so on and so forth.

00:34:07:15 - 00:34:47:03
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And you can speculate about future drugs that precisely target mitochondrial Achilles heels for a given cancer or disease or pathology. So I'll definitely be paying attention to this one in the future. This mitochondrial knockout, to see what comes of it. This next article is about mitochondrial dysfunction at the heart of sarcopenia, or muscle wasting, which is a concern as you chronologically age the papers entitled Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Age related Sarcopenia Mechanistic Insights, Diagnostic advances and Therapeutic Prospects.

00:34:47:05 - 00:35:41:24
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And this is from October. So a couple of months ago. And this is a comprehensive but very current review rather than a single experiment. And is synthesizes human and animal data on how mitochondrial changes drive age related muscle loss. And as you can imagine, as you lose muscle, you're literally losing mitochondria as well. But anyways, the key findings was that aging muscle shows impaired might haffajee altered fusion and fission dynamics, accumulated mitochondrial damage, and reduced oxidative capacity, and you could literally use that entire list for virtually every pathology that we have, every disease and every cancer has some type of this impairment of my type AG altered mitochondrial dynamics, accumulation of mitochondrial damage, reduced oxidative

00:35:41:24 - 00:36:26:03
Dr. Mike Belkowski
capacity, and throw on increased oxidative stress. And that's a complete list basically. But anyway, more key findings were that this review highlighted emerging diagnostics such as imaging circulating mitochondrial markers, and biopsy based assays to quantify mitochondrial health and muscle therapeutic prospects include exercise prescriptions, Mitford G. Inducing compounds, mitochondrial targeted antioxidants, and possibly cell based therapies. So this paper specifically, it's kind of like a muscle centric state of the union for for mitochondria.

00:36:26:07 - 00:36:54:13
Dr. Mike Belkowski
You're listening to, of course, playing the role of metaphor G a resistance and endurance training to to build up the oxidative or oxygen capacity of muscles. Resistance training to maintain and or build muscle mass to maintain mitochondrial function and in, in terms of quantity, antioxidants. Thinking about methylene blue, carbon 60 even my thought or excuse me even your it could be considered an antioxidant.

00:36:54:16 - 00:37:29:21
Dr. Mike Belkowski
But really this this paper puts sarcopenia this muscle wasting disease in terms of a mitochondrial issue, not just of the physical loss of muscle, but what are the implications of losing that muscle and not just muscle wasting or like muscle loss, but even the muscle you retain that ages is riddled with potential mitochondrial problems. If you're not being proactive about your exercise, your diet, nutraceuticals, your sleep, circadian rhythm, I mean, the whole ball of wax, right?

00:37:29:21 - 00:38:04:27
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So these things we just associate with aging and quote unquote old people, things as, as simple as as muscle aging or muscle wasting. Those are those are riddled with mitochondrial dysfunction and issues as well. This next article, also from October, is is a blood based mitochondrial biomarker that's tied to fitness and aging. And in this article is entitled mitochondrial blood based biomarker is related to cardiorespiratory fitness and aging in a sex dependent manner.

00:38:04:29 - 00:38:43:15
Dr. Mike Belkowski
This is actually in a journal called Alzheimer's and Dementia. So what they did this was a short human study examining a circulating mitochondrial biomarker, a mitochondrial related measure in the blood, specifically in relation to age and VO2 max, and included both men and women across an aging spectrum. And cardiorespiratory fitness was measured alongside the biomarker. One of the findings in the study was that the mitochondrial biomarker track with cardiorespiratory fitness in chronological age, but in different ways in men versus woman.

00:38:43:15 - 00:39:15:21
Dr. Mike Belkowski
It suggests mitochondrial aging and exercise responsiveness are sexually dimorphic, and it's important for personalized interventions and lastly, this marker could potentially be used for early risk stratification in cognitive decline, linking systematic mitochondrial health, fitness, and brain outcomes. So again, this wasn't the article or the Journal of Alzheimer's and Dementia. So definitely an older population that the study is tailored for.

00:39:15:24 - 00:39:39:08
Dr. Mike Belkowski
But one could argue that this mitochondrial age might soon be a blood test. This biomarker they're talking about and potentially, well, not potentially. I mean, based on this article, we need sex and gender specific thinking and strategies in terms of mitochondrial diagnostics and protocols. And you know what works for one person, of course, based on their nuclear DNA.

00:39:39:08 - 00:40:08:08
Dr. Mike Belkowski
But also now we have to consider their mitochondria is not going to be the same for another person. So it's going to be nice as this research continues to play out, to have this dementia prevention and also consider what types of exercise are specifically improving or maintaining your VO2 max matter. So much for mitochondrial health and brain health, because VO2 max is that capacity that measurement for your body's ability to utilize oxygen efficiently.

00:40:08:11 - 00:40:47:00
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And of course, like we've talked about, oxygen is important to kind of be the the capper. If you will, to the electron transport chain to produce energy and metabolic water. So if your body's not efficient at using oxygen, that's literally going to have an impact on your energy. Low energy i.e low redox potential is is going to accumulate over years and decades in the form of potentially neurodegeneration or cancer, or as we saw or as I alluded to in the book, type two diabetes or autism or chronic fatigue syndrome.

00:40:47:00 - 00:41:10:18
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So again, it can play out in so many different ways depending on which tissues are most affected. Your mitochondria, that is. So what tissues are your dysfunctional mitochondria in. Is it your brain? Is it your lungs? Is it your immune system? Is it your muscles? Your skeletal muscles? Depending on where they are, that's what you're going to see the disease arise first.

00:41:10:18 - 00:41:33:06
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Right. So again it all just comes down to bioenergetics. And then of course time in exercise and the importance that plays in this article. They're specifically looking at a biomarker in an exercise cardiorespiratory fitness. In the prior article we're talking about sarcopenia right. So strength training as you get older is important to maintain or build. Muscle mass was as important as that is.

00:41:33:06 - 00:41:56:15
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Maintaining your cardiorespiratory fitness. So exercise isn't just good for the sake of exercise because it's good for you for the sake of being good for you. Exercise is important because it literally up regulates and optimizes your mitochondrial function on so many different levels. So people are looking for that secret pill. Well, I hate to break it to you, but exercise is that super pill.

00:41:56:18 - 00:42:38:20
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And then we'll wrap it up with this kind of crazy futuristic sounding article about IVF and preventing inherited mitochondrial disease. And this came out around June or July of this year. It's entitled any Gem Study on Mitochondrial Donation or Mitochondrial Replacement with three person IVF. So a quick review. IVF stands for in Vitro fertilization, which is a fertility treatment where an egg is fertilized by sperm in a laboratory dish, meaning in vitro.

00:42:38:21 - 00:43:08:07
Dr. Mike Belkowski
As the research articles put it, with the resulting embryos then transfer to the uterus to achieve pregnancy, helping with issues like blocked tubes, male infertility or other genetic conditions. And so this article is looking at a three person IVF in terms of preventing inherited mitochondrial disease. So this was a clinical trial in the UK using mitochondrial donation treatment.

00:43:08:13 - 00:43:46:25
Dr. Mike Belkowski
The Pro nuclear transfer in 22 women at high risk of transmitting pathogenic mitochondrial DNA mutations. The parents nuclear DNA is moved into a donor egg containing healthy mitochondria, creating embryos with DNA from three people, nuclear from the parents, and then mitochondrial from the donor. And the key findings from this crazy study was that eight healthy babies for boys, four girls have been born with no clinical signs of mitochondrial disease.

00:43:46:25 - 00:44:27:12
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So far, genetic analysis shows drastically reduced levels of maternal mutant mitochondrial DNA, though a tiny fraction persists and will be monitored over time, and this article demonstrates that mitochondrial donation treatment can, at least in early follow up, effectively prevent severe mitochondrial disorders. Of course, they'll have to keep tracking those boys and girls as they continue on in life, and so this is mitochondrial medicine at the reproductive level now actually preventing mitochondrial diseases across generations.

00:44:27:15 - 00:45:04:04
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And of course this opens a huge ethical and regulatory can of worms in terms of heritable genome modification. The whole concept of three parent babies. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. But regardless, it's the studies. Been out for half a year now, but clearly there are some promising outcomes for mothers that are carrying poor mitochondrial DNA or as they put it, mutant DNA and are able to have healthy babies sans mitochondrial disorders.

00:45:04:06 - 00:45:34:23
Dr. Mike Belkowski
So in terms of a mitochondrial perspective, that's pretty profound and impactful in terms of the whole ethical and regulatory aspect. Well, we'll let that get played out. Just keep in mind again, this was a clinical trial in the UK, not the USA. And there's been none of this that I've heard of yet. But another topic we'll be talking about in future episodes as time goes on, because this is becoming more and more popular is mitochondrial transplantation.

00:45:34:25 - 00:46:08:06
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And just briefly, that is a seemingly promising a new therapy where healthy mitochondria are transferred into damaged cells or tissues to boost ATP production, reduce oxidative stress, fight disease, especially in conditions like heart attack damage, excuse me, or mitochondrial genetic diseases, with clinical trials showing potential for restoring heart function and improving neurological conditions. Though the exact magic of how they transfer and work within cells is still being studied.

00:46:08:10 - 00:46:32:19
Dr. Mike Belkowski
But there's a lot more research that I'm keeping my eyes on in terms of mitochondrial transplantation. But this is the first time I've really been reading and reporting on IVF to mitigate and prevent mitochondrial disease. So this is very interesting. But I mean, as you can see, this whole arena of mitochondrial medicine is rapidly, rapidly growing and expanding.

00:46:32:19 - 00:46:54:18
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And I mean, again, a lot of potential, a lot of promise. But in terms of this IVF stuff in the whole three parent babies, again, that gets into the whole ethics regulatory thing. We'll leave that for another day. But in terms of creating a world of mitigated mitochondrial dysfunction and mitochondrial disease, we can see that there's a lot of interest in this area.

00:46:54:18 - 00:47:15:18
Dr. Mike Belkowski
There's a lot of potential, and there's clearly a lot of strides being made. So I think this area is going to continue to evolve and grow and like, who knows where we're going to be a year from now or five years from now or ten years from now. In terms of the capacity of us to implement these mitochondrial strategies and tactics and technology.

00:47:15:20 - 00:47:47:05
Dr. Mike Belkowski
I think we're in for a pretty, pretty crazy right here in terms of being a mitochondria. And speaking of which, if you're a true mitochondria out there, I hope you really enjoyed this episode or that was tailored towards providing the newest information. And in research, in terms of what's going on in the mitochondrial world, I mean, it's kind of expanding quicker than I could have ever imagined compared to when I began this journey, especially starting this podcast.

00:47:47:07 - 00:48:11:07
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Almost five years ago. Now we're starting to see a crescendo. We're starting to see that parabolic rise in interest both in in the research world and now in the consumer world. So, so I think we're in a good place now, and it's going to be fun to keep our pulse on where this goes, how we're able to manipulate our mitochondria for better.

00:48:11:07 - 00:48:34:03
Dr. Mike Belkowski
Again, that can be exercise, that can be diet, sleep, yada yada. But even these seemingly farfetched side of the mitochondrial world with this IVF and the mitochondrial transplantation, which we'll get into more in the future, the future is bright, that's for darn sure. Thank you everybody for listening, especially if you listened this deep into the episode. I appreciate every single one of you.

00:48:34:06 - 00:48:58:10
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And as we get closer to the apex of this holiday season, just be sure not to get too stressed out. When in doubt, get in front of that full body red light therapy to drive down those cortisol levels and ramp up that parasympathetic nervous system. Reduce that fight or flight and rebalance the nervous system. But as always, you know, get out in the sunshine whenever you can, touch the grass.

00:48:58:13 - 00:49:30:19
Dr. Mike Belkowski
And as always, light up your health. And on second thought, I've been thinking about this for for a little while. We're going to end the closing phrase. We're going to retire. Light up your health, alcohol. Use that, especially in social media and otherwise. But the new closer is going to be mitochondrial medicine isn't the future. It's now. You've been listening to The Energy Code, the podcast that unlocks your mitochondria, and the science of limitless vitality.

00:49:30:21 - 00:49:52:27
Dr. Mike Belkowski
If this episode gave you insight or tools to elevate your energy, share it with a friend or family member. And if you're enjoying the show, please leave a five star rating and review as it helps me reach more people and help spread the mission of mitochondrial health. Your energy isn't just about today, it's the foundation of your future health, longevity, and performance.

00:49:53:00 - 00:50:06:02
Dr. Mike Belkowski
For more resources and to connect with me, visit firelight Dot shop and also check me out on all social media platforms under my name, doctor Mike Falkowski. This is the energy code where energy becomes unlimited.