Health is not only the absence of disease. It is the coherence of the whole system. In this conversation from Emeran Mayer, MD, the useful thread is not novelty for its own sake. It is the way small physiological signals become practical guidance for a more resilient life.
Transcript from Emeran Mayer, MD. Timestamps open the original YouTube video at the corresponding moment.
The reason stress is bad for our health is because it costs energy and then that ends up stealing energy away from the processes that normally keep us healthy and and young. Welcome back to the mind gut conversation. Today my guest is Martin Picard, professor of behavioral medicine and endowed chair in the science of energy and health at Columbia University and key opinion leader in the field of mitochondrial biology. Martin's goal is to accelerate the development of a new scientific field healing science. To achieve this goal, Martin has unified mitochondrial biology, bioenergetics, and aging science together with integrative medicine, psychosocial sciences, and contemplative practices into a rigorous interdisciplinary research program unparalleled in the field. Today's episode discusses the following topics. How the mitochondria influence aging, chronic stress and exercise physiology far beyond their traditional role in energy production. Exploring the evolutionary origins of mitochondria and their potential interactions with our gut microbes. Understanding Dr. Picard's concept of intrinsic health as a scientific framework that aligns with holistic traditions as well as integrative and functional medicine. Finally, what mitochondria targeted therapies might
mitochondria targeted therapies might mean for preventing and treating today's epidemic of chronic non-communicable diseases. Welcome to the show, Martin, it's a real pleasure to have the opportunity to talk to you and and have you share some of your amazing insights and research findings with with our audience. U let me start with so I have a series of questions from the most general and simple to some um pretty um you know I would say paradigm changing views of the field. Um so let's start with the most basic questions for the listeners who are not versed in that. What are the mitochondria and where do they come from? The mitochondria are small living organisms that populate every one of our cells. So every one of the cells in your body, neurons, cardiac cells, gut cells, muscle cells, they're full of mitochondria. And uh so they're they look sometimes like uh elongated filaments like spaghettis and sometimes they look like little beans and that's because the long ones can undergo fision. So they can fragment into smaller ones and then the smaller ones can come together fuse and become long. So there's this constant dynamics of it's called mitochondrial dynamics fusion and fision. Uh and then new mitochondria are born out of this process just like bacteria. They grow bigger longer and they they divide. Um, so that's how new mitochondria come to
so that's how new mitochondria come to life and then old mitochondria get recycled. So old mitochondria die out and then new ones are born. So they have a life cycle. So we think of them as little social creatures that live with inside our cells. Um and depending of your worldview, if you're gentric or if you're mitoric, uh you can think that you know what happened through evolution is that mitochondria kind of took over and then you know created this this these creatures that we are mammals and human beings. Uh and where they come from is from this evolutionary process called endo symbiosis. uh endo symbiosis means uh kind of inside and then symbiosis means working together. So the term means working together from the inside and about 1. 5 billion years ago there was this kind of evolutionary merger that happened where you have a bigger cell that couldn't use oxygen for for energy transformation. it was anorobic. Uh and then there was a smaller cell bacterium an alpha proteioacterium that was able to use oxygen for for transforming energy. It was aerobic. Uh and this alpha proteobacterium aerobic somehow found itself inside the big one and then the dominant story is the big one ate it, you know, for food. Uh the another story is the small one actually kind of entered and colonized a big one. So they're I don't think we know for sure but the product what we know for sure is that this symbiosis actually
sure is that this symbiosis actually transformed both parties. So the big cell became uh became became more social became more able to communicate and and the small uh bacterium became mitochondria and and it's clear that this combination was the the key uh trigger for complex multisellular life. Um and so as a result uh life was very simple like only single cells you know on the ocean floor for for millions of years and then when this endo symbiosis happened boom there was an explosion in the complexity of life. Uh so mitochondria we think was an evolutionary precursor to complex life forms um that eventually allowed you a bunch of cells to work together and then some cells that differentiate become better at transforming energy. Other cells become better at sensing stuff. other cells become better at moving and you know crawling and then worms you know emerge and then flies and then birds and then fish and then eventually mammals and then thinking feeling conscious creatures like us uh coming from this mitochondrial endo symbiosis it's that's an amazing story you know I thought I we had an exciting story in the microbiome field where these these uh early microbes uh colonized the gut of these creatures of of the first animals and then developed also the symbiosis with with the gut and transfer transfer genes. I mean they didn't invade actually the cells they they transferred genes to to the
they transferred genes to to the gut and then ultimately which made it to the brain and so on. Well, very similar story, right? It's going to coming inside. In this case, it's different scales maybe inside this big cell, right? Or in this case, it's inside the digestive track. Uh, but the product is the same. There was also an exchange of genes between mitochondria, the aerobic bacterium and the big cell. About a thousand genes were transferred from mitochondria to the nucleus at least. Um, and then they became kind of genetically intertwined uh and then dependent on one another. So now you cannot have mitochondria that live outside the cell and and you can hardly you cannot have a normal healthy cell that lives without mitochondria. So you need to so yeah they become genetically and functionally and metabolically interdependent maybe very much like the gut microbiome same same pattern but at different scale. Yeah, that is an absolutely fascinating story. Very cool. Not not um necessarily, you know, with clinical implications right now, but I think from a scientific standpoint, it's it's absolutely fascinating and and where we came from and that, you know, we got some of our most boasted neurotransmitters in the brain and the mechanisms to use oxygen from bacteria, you know, it's Yeah. Um is it you know just sort of um staying with this topic is that today I mean the microbes in the gut seem to be interacting with a lot of systems in our body with this interface that they have with the immune system. Is is anything known about interactions
Is is anything known about interactions between the gut microbiome and and the mitochondria? Is that something Yeah. the the mitochondria used to be bacteria and the back the microbiome actual bacteria they're cousins of one another. Uh so it would make sense from that perspective that they might you know have the ability to talk to each other or at least you know feel each other's presence and metabolism and and other kind of activities. uh there is one very clear pathway that's you know well known by which the microbiome uh can influence the mitochondria and that's in the production of short - chain fatty acids. So uh there's uh butyrate is a short - chain fatty acid that's produced I think from the metabolism of fibers uh by the the microbiome and u the short - chain fatty acids or food from mitochondria and uh very similar to ketone bodies right uh that are made by the liver um and so the and if you look in the liver you ask where do ketone bodies come from in the liver it comes from uh the hpatocy mitochondria So the the mitochondria in the hpatocytes is where the the beta hydroxybutyrate for example the BHB is made uh so the mitochondria in the liver make BHB put this out in the blood as food source and then the mitochondria and the brain for example can directly feed onto those short - chain fatty acids. Um so uh there's this system endogenously where the liver makes BHB
endogenously where the liver makes BHB and then they can feed mitochondria across the body. Uh and the microbiome can also you know do this. So there's probably through butyrate at least probably many other things that I don't know about. Um the microbiome can feed the mitochondria and and there's some evidence that if you change a mitochondria that can also change a microbiome the composition uh and the diversity. But that there's very very that's a very new field of of research. Yeah, it's fascinating about the butyrate because butyrate is sort of one of the most studied and most discussed molecules with its sort of the systemic anti-inflammatory effects also on right. Yes. So it's sort of like this pharmacy that uh you know that that the body has in collaboration close collaboration with the microbes and so I I was aware of that the fact that it also you know plays a role in with the microbes with with mitochondria I mean that's yeah it's a collective and um you fundamentally the organism is an energetic system right the what the basis of life is sustaining energy flow through the system so there there are multiple different intertwined metabolic pathways and axises that allow the exchange of energy and the transformation of energy. Uh so I think it makes a lot of sense that the the two bacterial cousins would kind of have a very strong bond metabolic or energetic bond between them. Yeah. Talking about this this energy concept. I mean this like when I heard you talk in um at a meeting in San
heard you talk in um at a meeting in San Francisco last year or was it earlier this year? Um I was sort of fascinated the way you you presented this. It's it was almost like u um I mean there's other healing traditions like uh traditional Chinese medicine where energy and chi plays such a central role. I mean obviously that only shares the name but I mean I just wonder if you could just highlight some of the key points that you presented in your talk. this whole aspect of energy that we we don't um I mean patients complain about lack of energy and um being tired and um you know there's all kinds of names for it brain fog um but it really goes down to these molecular mechanisms that you've been talking about. We think we we think yes uh like what is energy? If you ask people and I've been doing this now uh I'm writing a book on it's called energy and and it you know this one word means so many different things uh even physicists don't agree what energy is there's you know energy is kind of the most mysterious concept uh because it's not a thing right like if you talk about a mitochondrian is a thing you can look at under the microscope a cell you know a gene even ATP right like it's molecule but energy is not a thing. Energy is is the the potential for change. It materializes right in in
change. It materializes right in in different ways. It materializes into you know heat uh so thermal energy, electromagnetic uh waves uh sounds right as a form of energy, pressure waves, uh um nuclear energy. Energy can never be created nor destroyed. Uh uh so it's conserved uh thermodynamics but it's transformed in these different from these different forms. Uh and that is what life does. Life is about transforming energy and then harnessing that transformation to sustain a biological system. Um so if you think about life from you know very basic uh and from first principles the it becomes clear that the defining characteristics uh the key difference between a living thinking body you know someone who's alive and breathing and can interact with other human beings and a cadaavver right a dead body. The main difference is is not in how many cells there are, how many genes there are or even the metabolites for the most parts, you know, are the same. And so the structure is all the same. The difference is the flow of energy, right? So the flow of energy is what brings this whole thing, this hardware into life. And that's it's what brings the mind to life or you know consciousness. uh so it's the flow of energy through the system that is the basis for what we experience for what we fundamentally are uh and and I think
fundamentally are uh and and I think there if you ask you know what are we what is life what is a human being uh either you say the human being is a molecular machine right and it's it has this many cells this many genes and all of this and then it's kept alive by this flow of energy which we don't really understand or an alternative view is you say the a human being is the flow of energy, right? And it tends, it seems like uh it happens to take place in this physical structure. Uh and so you really are the flow of energy, but the flow of energy needs a physical structure. It needs kind of a um a home uh that you know which we we perceive as as a human body. Uh so I think that the concept of energy that is used in traditional Chinese medicine uh ayurveetic medicine and all sorts of uh you know ancient traditions uh is conceptually very similar to how we understand you know mitochondrial biology to to work and how we how modern biio medicine understands um the the field of bioenergetics. uh but practically there's I think a difference here that we cannot really measure u energy in its different forms or you we can't observe it as directly as we can observe you know molecules. So there's there's kind of a technical challenge to to testing some of the you know concepts and hypothesis that emerge from those ancient traditions or kind of this um subtle you know energy field that might exist that might be the basis
that might exist that might be the basis for acupuncture and meridians and energy healing and all sorts of things like this. Yeah. I don't want to discuss but you mentioned something about the mind um and consciousness. So I mean just it's a side issue in this conversation but I'm I'm kind of interested in that aspect as well and so there's always these these discussions um about you know planetary consciousness. I I attended a a meeting at the U Sguru's center for planetary consciousness at the b Israel which was really interesting. Um so you know there's this debate is consciousness dependent on the brain or is something you know that that exists on the planet as well you know it's it's some other which again eastern traditions would sort of favor this larger and and I think something to do with what you said about energy so as long as there's energy it could be that there there could also be consciousness I think the if you kind of go to the most fundamental mental uh nature of energy and this is where like quantum physics uh concepts become relevant and uh and the nature of it right and it's it's non you know it's deoized and it's it's um there's a potential there to manifest into something right when when it's observed and uh so those kind of concepts I think resonate a lot with the metaphysical concepts of you know consciousness uh so there I mean neuroscience has been in the business of
neuroscience has been in the business of trying to explain consciousness for for decades now. Uh and the approach it chose which was very much kind of a in the boom of of molecular biology and you know materialism and physicalism. Um there's a philosophical assumption that I think we've all grown up with as scientists and you know even if you're not a scientist you grew up in this culture that is uh influenced by the the current movement of science. So I think the current movement of science which is physicalism materialism everything is like small little pieces and then everything that we experience must you know emerge from the smaller bits right this is one way of thinking and that's like we need to appreciate this this is one philosophical approach uh which for us I think is almost like a fish and water like the relationship of a fish to water the fish has no way of knowing it lives in water because from the very first moment that it you know it was alive it was in water and it's never seen anything else so I think us as scientists we grew up like a fish in water in this world where we bathe in physicalism and materialism and it's really hard to to imagine a different way of thinking about you know the fundamental questions like consciousness uh but if you read enough and you listen to enough people philosophers physicists uh you know consciousness researchers who've been thinking about this and questioning the physic physicalist uh and materialist uh
physicalist uh and materialist uh perspective. I think that the arguments are much stronger that consciousness is more fundamental than than matter. Uh and if consciousness is is more fundamental, meaning that uh it doesn't need to emerge from matter, right? Matter could actually emerge from consciousness, uh I think the arguments from that perspective are actually stronger. Uh and if that's true then maybe there there's some deep truth about the fact that there's this underlying current of consciousness and maybe you know similar to like there's dark energy. There's like energy in every little you know bit of space that we can't perceive. We can't right but uh the physics is very clear. There's a lot of energy that you know we don't have access to. So if that's the case, maybe there's a parallel there between this like uni unified field of consciousness and you know this this underlying energetic reality that it seems every you know all of matter emerges from this would also make the you know the mitochondrial function and role even bigger like you would in what way how you think about this? No, I mean like if energy is the primal force on the planet or in the universe then you know the mitochondria who are specialized in generating energy and maintain this energy flow through the body um have a crucial role and I mean they're almost like the representatives of that larger you know rule that that um dominates the
you know rule that that um dominates the universe really. I mean, we're sort of getting pretty esoteric. Uh, we're getting philosophical because I don't think we'll ever be able to prove this. So, right, this is the realm of philosophy philosophy versus the realm of science. But if we never think and talk about these things, then we get stuck in dogmas and we get stuck in in you know overly simplistic and you know probably inaccurate ways of thinking about the world. So, I think it's useful to think philosophically about this. Um and I just want to mention something regarding what you said. Mitochondria don't generate energy, right? Energy is never generated or produced, but they transform energy. Uh and you know the most of what we know about mitochondrial energy transformation is they transform chemical energy in the form of food, right? If you eat lipids, right? Oils, uh uh proteins or carbohydrates, mitochondria take the energy that's stored, right? actually light energy from the sun that was stored in food and then mitochondria take this dematerialize they take material chemical energy dematerialize this into an electrical gradient right an immaterial form of energy and then once mitochondria become charged like little batteries now they can take that very flexible form of energy to make ATP right but then to do you know dozens of other things so from that perspective uh mitochondria act a bit as a a portal, right? A portal between the material world of stuff and things like food and and cells and
things like food and and cells and genes. Uh and maybe kind of the this immaterial dimension of energy and maybe that stretches all the way to, you know, consciousness. Um so I have some ideas and hypothesis about this, but I don't know that uh we're we're in a position to test any of those. Absolutely fascinating. You know it's I mean I talked to a lot of people on this podcast and amongst my scientific colleagues throughout my career. It's rare that you have somebody who is at the cutting edge of science but at the same time you know has this philosophical insight and interest you know I mean it's really a really unique combination I would say. Well, it feels like uh one of the you know biggest gap in our knowledge and and uh and biio medicine you know and our understanding of we care about understanding what health is and and how we can you know improve health and and heal from diseases and uh it seems like the biggest gap is this uh interaction between the the lived human experience, right? like the the thing you have access to that lets you know that you're alive, right? This is like small C consciousness or like individual consciousness awareness. There's no denying that this is real because that's what allows us now to, you know, to talk to one another. Um, this is, you know, the spectrum of human experience is so fundamental and it it is the basis for all of human behaviors, right? If we want to change how people
right? If we want to change how people eat, if we want to, you know, help people exercise more, if we want to, uh, help people, you know, come out of addiction or, you know, whatever it is, uh, make good life choices and and so on, be good human beings, like the human experience is is the foundation for, you know, you wake up in the morning and either you feel like, wow, I have so much energy, I have so much capacity, right? And then then you feel like you can do great things. you can be, you know, the the father you want to be. You can be the the a good friend, you can be a good spouse. Um and and you can do great things. And you know, there's this kind of unbounded um capacity. Uh you know, that's like at the one extreme of the human experience. The other extreme of the human experience is you wake up one morning and you feel like you you don't even want to be here and and you you you'd rather die. And this is a reality for for a lot of people. And we all live on this continuum and we all move along this continuum. This is a human experience. We have no scientific understanding of the basis for where you lie on this continuum. And we've tried to biologize, you know, to go into the the biology, the molecular nature of like psych, molecular psychiatry is a field, biological psychiatry. Uh and psychiatry kind of taps into part of this spectrum of human experience with, you know, the tools that it has. Um so we we've failed I think as a the scientific community we failed to bridge the human experience which is fundamentally what's most uh close to us
fundamentally what's most uh close to us and the biology and the the you know the molecular dimension of of life. uh those things you know relate to one another in some way and I think most of biio medicine has decided that you know the truest piece that we need to you know understand is the molecular dimension of things and then this other piece the human experience is is too fuzzy is too uh you know inaccessible with with or doesn't make sense from materialism or and physicalism so I feel deeply you know moved and and inspired to try to bridge that that divide between the human experience. It's that's not esoteric. This is like how do you feel right now? Are you you know able to be you know at your best? Are you able to reach your your optimal state of of health and well-being? This is the real deal and science has you know not been able to to connect with this. Um so that that's what my my research program is is moving towards. But do you feel that the mitochondrial function plays a significant role in this to answer that question? I mean that's the working hypothesis right like every model is wrong in science. You you make a model and then at some point the model is going to be wrong. Uh so far it's been a very productive hypothesis right that the the way energy flows through mitochondria relates directly to to the human experience. uh and it and for example one hypothesis we we tested was that uh how positive how many positive emotions
how positive how many positive emotions you have or positive mood right do you feel inspired do you feel loved do you feel close to other human beings trusting and so on or do you feel afraid you know betrayed and angry and negative emotions we ask these experiences this is you know what those people are experiencing is this related to the biology of the mitochondria could it be that there's an energetic signature, you know, somewhere in the immune cells, in the brain, in other organs of the body. Could it be that the this experience of like, wow, life is amazing and I'm full of gratitude and and joy and love. Could this be an energetic state? Right. Amazing. Uh and and we have at this point uh three studies that found, you know, supportive evidence for this uh and also evidence of a directional relationship. How people feel predicts mitochondrial biology the next day. This is a study we did in 2018 uh with Alyssa Epel at UCSF. Um and then since then we've done a study in the brain and we found that the brain mitochondria after people die you can you know and people donate their brain for for science. We looked at the biology of mitochondria in the brain and then we looked at the human experience of those people before they died when they they were actually able to to tell us how they were feeling. And there's a connection. And people who who experience life more positively and sense of purpose in life or who have more connections and and they feel social connections and they feel um um
social connections and they feel um um more um you know happiness. Those people have mitochondria in the brain that appear optimized for energy transformation. That's a revolutionary theory. I mean like most of the you know the patients I interact with and particularly now in this microbiome field where serotonin has become so such a popular and you know in the amongst lay the lay public you know it's always referred to as the happiness molecule that your serotonin levels basically determine all these these good things that you just mentioned but the states yeah these experiences but I think it's it's a lot more complex I mean it's not one molecule it's like this idea of that the that that the energy that this is more to do with the energy than with a single molecule or a single chemical I mean not by you know biological mechanism but it's also it's it's just a reflection of how we're we're moving away from from the traditional model in science the reductionistic model to the systems biological um concept that we see everything is interconnected and energy is a big part of is maintaining this these interconnections. Mhm. Yes. Yeah. Certainly. And you know specifically regarding serotonin and the the molecular and cellular theories of of depression and you know mental illness uh that serotonin deficiency was the driver of depression was a a hypothesis. It was a good hypothesis uh
hypothesis. It was a good hypothesis uh decades ago. It was never proven. uh but it you know there was a lot of money to be made by having this this hypothesis be true uh and even though it was never proven it became kind of a staple and that's what happens sometimes in science you come up with a hypothesis and then people become so attached to the hypothesis for whatever whatever reason I think u with our physicalist upbringing we when something is has a root cause in something that's physical molecular it's it's appeasing it it makes us feel like the unknown kind of dissipates and now even though it's uncomfortable uh knowing that there's a physical cause for something is kind of relieves the uncertainty and the the unknown and I think that's what the the dopamine and the hypothesis for like reward and then the serotonin hypothesis for depression those were hypothesis especially for serotonin there is no evidence that depression is caused by serotonin deficiency uh the drugs act on serotonin and some people the drugs have an effect in many people they don't. Uh so I think that the hypothesis became a dogma and and now there's such an attachment uh culturally scientifically uh financially the yeah so I think that's become very counterproductive and and now the the message if you're feeling down and you're feeling you know uh depressed over multiple days and weeks the message you get from your
weeks the message you get from your health care provider is that your brain is broken and it needs a chemical fix. uh which I my my opinion of this is that that's counterproductive. I think the uh drugs and pharmaceuticals can can help in in many situations. Uh but the the this understanding of the root cause I think is is pulling us away from from true uh and most effective ways to to address problems. Yeah. I mean, I've I've run into the same thing in in the microbiome field, you know, which initially was dominated by microbiologists who who were trained in identifying a pathogen and all the way down to mechanisms. And there's still quite a few people in the microbiome field now that still have this philosophy. we've got to find this one microbe that's bad and you know um but it's fortunately rapidly being replaced by the systems biological um concept that it's you know really hundreds of millions of billions of microbes and um millions of metabolites that all interact and create. So it sort of brings me to this next topic which I think is related to this concept of intrinsic health as a foundation for science of health. You so you've published an a fascinating article. Yeah. I mean maybe you should explain the basics assumption in this in in this model. I mean I think this model fits almost like a 100% with with some holistic theories.
a 100% with with some holistic theories. It's almost like the the scientific underpinning of what people have come up with by often surprises me how they come up by non-scientific ways with these things. Yeah. If you could say a few things about this this idea of um intrinsic health as a Yes. Yeah. this uh the concept of intrinsic health emerged from uh the Colombia science of health program uh SO about three years ago we we launched this and um Linda Frerieded who is a physician and uh she studied frailty uh you know for for many years and uh she had this sense that you know we need to we don't have a scientific framework for understanding health and most of biomedical research, most of the NIH, the National Institute of Health, most of the NIH budget is actually funds research on diseases. Uh there's very little of the NIH budget that goes towards understanding the basis of health or you know improving health. It's mostly about understanding what goes wrong in diseases and then and here again there's a hypothesis that if you understand the molecular features of disease you will be able to then go back and prevent that disease or create you know a drug that will cure that disease. This was a hypothesis and I think if you do like a metaanalysis of of biio medicine I think that hypothesis has not panned out very well. There's there's
panned out very well. There's there's been very little successes in understanding the root cause of a disease from studying pathology. Maybe that's a different p a different topic. Uh so for with the science of health group we had faculty members from uh bioatistics from aging biology from mitochondrial science that was my little contribution u epidemiology aging and then we came together uh weekly initially and then monthly for about two three years uh to try to define health. What the hell is health? And um we came to the conclusion that other people have you know come to before health is too complex like there's health has too many dimensions right and and then when it has too many dimension that the word health is is too loose to actually pin down and quantify you know empirically scientifically. So we had to say there are two components to health. There's a component to health this that is intrinsic to the person right it's kind of under the skin you know and it it relates to biology but it's also influenced by psychology by social influences by environmental right there's there's a a birectional interaction between what happens inside us and and outside of us but intrinsic health is that thing that's inside of us that can be quantified and then there's realized health which is you can have uh
realized health which is you can have uh let's say my eyes don't work as well as they should and you know if I don't have my glasses I can't you know see the details of things and in the distance I can't see signs so I'm there's a deficiency in my intrinsic health right at the level of my vision or you could have you know you could lose a leg because of you know an accident or something like this so your intrinsic health might be impaired but because you have prostthesis you get glasses or you get you know a prostthesis for your leg where you get a little scooter if you can't walk properly. Right? So there are all sorts of affordances and external things uh that we have then you realize health can be actually quite good. Uh and as we get older we think intrinsic health goes down. Uh but as you get older you accumulate resources, you accumulate you know uh social connections maybe you know how the world works and then you realize health can actually increase over time even though your intrinsic health goes down. So we had to disentangle those two things intrinsic health and realized health. So that paper specifically in science advances is about what what is this intrinsic health uh and and this kind of intrinsic part of of what we call health. Uh and what we propose is that intrinsic health is not a thing you know like a protein or you know mitochondrian or something else. It's a state uh very much like a magnetic field. And uh one property of fields often is that you cannot observe the field directly right
cannot observe the field directly right and to your eyes to to the human senses fields are invisible and then they're they're often you know ignored until you put something in the field and then you can measure the strength of a field by the effect the field has on the object. Right? So if you want to know you we all live in this gravitational field and you can't see it but you know it's there because if you take an object and you put it in the field and you drop it then you can measure its acceleration and then you know it's 9. 8 you know me second squared and then you know how strong the gravitational field is. Uh so the idea here is that intrinsic health is this property of the organism that is it's a fieldlike state meaning that it might not be directly observable but you see the traces or you see the effects of the field on biomolelecules on cells on behaviors on you know heart rate variability on inflammation. Uh so all of those physical physiological psychological uh behavioral uh features you know we can understand from this perspective as expressions of this field like state. Uh and then the the next question is where where is this field coming from? Is this like um um there was this um um is this like the vital force right? some like occult uh you know um esoteric concept and the answer is it might relate to that and it might
is it might relate to that and it might actually like you were alluding to help to explain those you know esoteric concept but we think fundamentally the field-like state that is intrinsic health emerges from first principles the flow of energy through biohysical constraints through structure right structure of the brain of the body of the mitochondria of the cells of the gut this is biohysical ical structure. When energy flows through structure like this, something happens. the energy gets patterned uh and that's then through that the patterning of energy flowing through a constraint uh emerges information right uh and then the energy flowing through uh is transformed and then if there is the right infrastructure which is afforded by biology and genes and uh the the you know cellular structures we have then energy is patterned and creates information and then information is the the third component energy flowing through structure and then information helps to pattern and direct the energy in proper ways. So then you emerg as you you end up with system a system like the the human body that fundamentally requires energy flow to stay alive but it requires intact structure and genes that don't have too many mutations and cells that have intact membranes and so on. Uh but then the energy needs to be organized uh and that happens through communication. So that's the third component and we do this with hormones, with neurotransmitters, with all sorts of things that coordinate and organizes and creates coherence in in the body. So in
creates coherence in in the body. So in in a nutshell, intrinsic health is a field-like state that emerges from the interaction of energy, structure, and communication and affords the field affords the properties that we know as resilience, robustness, adaptability, uh performance and so on. All of those we think emerge from this fieldlike state that is intrinsic health. Wow. This is really uh um it's it's almost like the string theory of health I would say. How how far do you think the medical field or the scientific field is away from adopting a a concept or a theory like this? I mean this this is yeah to adopt a theory like this uh the theory needs to be testable right? So there needs to be part of it that you can actually measure. Uh so the next question that we address in the paper is how do you measure intrinsic health right if this is the basis of your ability to heal and to recover and to be robust and and to grow for a children a child for example how the hell do you measure this uh so we propose a measurement framework and just like you know you cannot measure gravity directly you need to put something in the field drop it right so you need to perturb the system in a way or to um uh to interact with it in some way that reveals its strength or its qualities, its properties. Um so I think we need you know to draw probably from field physics and be inspired by other discipline. I
and be inspired by other discipline. I don't think measuring molecules is going to you know bring us all the way to understanding intrinsic health. Uh there are other energy based technologies that are emerging. uh biophotons, you know, every living thing, every living cell emits photons. Like I didn't know this until uh a few years ago. Uh those are called biophotons. And there's a field of research called UPE, ultraeak photon emission. Uh and uh so and people think this arises, you know, from a quantum process. as you have energy transformed in a living system uh there are photons that are emitted uh spontaneously and maybe there's information there uh and there's a lot of interest for red light therapy and you know using light you know a lot of people think sunlight has very positive effects on health I think there's evidence to support this how does it work I don't know but uh the the best theories out there is that light has positive effects on the body there's some very nice work recently showing red light improves improves glycemic control and improves glycemic control in in uh diabetics. Uh that might happen through mitochondria. Mitochondria like the chloroplast in plants h or equipped with u molecules uh you know that are hem containing that can absorb light. Uh so it's possible that the light sensor in in every one of our cell is actually the mitochondria and some parts specific parts proteins of the mitochondrial electron transport chain. So it's
electron transport chain. So it's possible there's light contributes right light as a quantum generated process u that is goes beyond or maybe underneath the molecular dimension that you know biio medicine uh adopts it's possible this becomes useful in measuring quantifying intrinsic health um and what we propose in the paper is kind of a combined approach like statistically if you cannot measure something you can measure proxies of this and then you can use statistical methods to say I can't measure directly what I care about, but I can measure all of these things that I think are related. Now, let's see what's common among all of these measures and try to um estimate intrinsic health. So that's what we propose and I think in five years I really hope their energy based methods for uh health monitoring and uh and maybe you know intervening instead of inter intervening molecularly pharmacologically by inhibiting a receptor or stimulating some process we might have ways energy based ways through electromagnetic fields or through light or through uh bio electricity to actually stimulate the healing process. and not, you know, not be just bound to inhibit or hyperactivate some uh some biological systems. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I would say, you know, it it will probably take science a longer time than the lay public because I mean, like many of these concepts are are growing rapidly in popularity. Uh I see this all the time. I mean you even
this all the time. I mean you even amongst um you know medical students and so this I mean so before the brainwashing of medical school kicks in obviously a lot of young people these kind of ideas yeah I think if I can say something about this I think um many people that are smart and interested and they want to be empowered they want to take their health into their their own hands and people have intuitions about what works for them and and what's true and and um you know either because of their own lived experience they know something to be true and and then if you know something to be true and something that works for you and then you go see your doctor and you say well I do this and it helps me and your doctor says there's no science this is not true like this doesn't work then either either you start to mistrust yourself right and you say oh like I'm I must be a bad person or I'm gullible or whatever you know self-depreciation we're very good at or you start to mistrust your physician and you know the whole medical establishment. There are tens of millions of people in America and around the world. I think in America maybe that's a little more acute. Tens of millions of people who have started to mistrust the medical establishment uh and who have started to feel like scientists are just you know doing their thing and they're they're spending a lot of money doing like fancy science that will get published in fancy journals that they don't even have access to. Um, so I think there's a bond of of trust and confidence. I think we as scientists
and confidence. I think we as scientists haven't done a really good job at making sure that the science we do has the potential to touch human lives and taking scientific approaches that respect, you know, individuality. All of our science is average based. Nobody is the average, right? But all the trials and everything for something to become evidence-based, it needs to move the average, you know, in in the appropriate direction. uh nobody is the average and in every trial you know the trials that clinical trials that end up granting approval by FDA for some therapy the approval is not granted based on individual data it's granted on average data but in in every trial if you peel off the the surface layer you find that some people responded amazingly right these are the people who should be receiving this this treatment or this intervention some other people were injured right and and we have no way now there's the the scientific framework, the myomedical framework doesn't have a way to take that into account. So we end up, you know, having blanket statements that this drug works for this this treatment or this intervention, you know, is efficacious and it is for some people, it is not for other people and we have a hard time with a rigid materialistic framework making sense of this and capturing individuality. So I think that erodess trust and um this needs to change and I think we as scientists have a big responsibility because I think what we seeing now happening this has a political dimension as well questioning
political dimension as well questioning of science and NIH funding. I mean there's a lot of stuff that's going on as a side effect of this frustration of patients with you know spending billions of dollars for for biomedical research but not really you know I mean people are getting I mean people survive they're not getting healthier you know I mean people survive longer so we're really good in keeping people alive but not really and charging them for it. Yeah. Yes. I I agree. I mean the your podcast I think is is an example of a very uh you know useful valuable uh kind of of uh connection you know can talking about real things that matters for people and helping scientists uh think about what matters for people and uh helping educate the public about you know key concepts that um that they can use and use in their health. So we need to do more of this. I I salute you for this. Thanks very much. Um, a side question, um, maybe not that important for our audience, but for us scientists. So, with with your unconventional views, um, and focus on health rather than disease. So, we talked about the NIH funding primarily disease related research. Have you been able to maintain your your federal funding on on this really innovate on these innovative concepts? Yes. Um we've been very uh you know
Yes. Um we've been very uh you know lucky to have uh generous NIH funding and and more recently non-NIH funding to to push the envelope a little further than what NIH reviewers which are other scientists kind of that like like many of us that are stuck in the paradigm. Uh so we've been able to to maintain funding and the approach has been to tackle problems that we all agree are important you know like inflammation and then uh to bring in a new idea like mitochondria could be the basis of inflammation right uh because they produce those signals the mitochondria used to be bacteria and maybe psychological stress causes inflammation which we know happens we've known for 20 years how does that happen so one of her NIH grant you know tested the hypothesis that stress affects the mitochondria that mitochondria are the signals for inflammation. So we've been able to attract funding to address those really important questions that the scientific community at large agrees are important and we bring in a new, you know, energetic perspective to to the problem. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I mean this topic of uh so I think you're also co-author the author of a paper on uh alostostatic load and overload and the role of the mitochondria in in the negative health effects. As I said, we've known this for a long time. Um very so we have this very effective um life-saving acute stress responses, but if it's stimulated over stimulated or stimulate to becomes maladaptive. So you think that um that
maladaptive. So you think that um that the mitochondria do play a role somewhere in this chain between the the psychological or physical stress and the inflammations. Yes. So the stress inflammation cascade or more broadly the stress disease cascade or the stress aging cascade right a lot of things happen in the middle um our working hypothesis is really this cascade is a stress energy disease cascade right or stress energy aging cascade um and so we've tested that that model and the hypothesis that emerged from it in a few different ways and and so far I think there there's a lot of evidence supporting this the reason stress is bad for her health is because it costs energy and then that ends up stealing energy away from the processes that normally keep us healthy and and young. So, uh stress probably, you know, the organism that's a longer discussion, but we have a fixed energy budget and stress basically now takes a big chunk of of your energy budget just to prepare in case something dangerous happens. But that energy needs to come from somewhere. There's not unbounded energy. If you want more energy, you cannot just eat more and now you can afford to not sleep and you have if you eat more, you actually end up, you know, damaging the system and uh, you know, being less energetic. So the stress we think happens and causes predisposes to disease because it steals energy. So that's a really interesting concept. Yeah, I mean it makes a lot of sense. I have to say whatever you I I think for a
have to say whatever you I I think for a lot of your your colleagues probably some of these things are are not necessarily something that they would agree with but I I have to say for me it makes a lot of sense. Um and and I love this connecting to both to healing traditions but also to the cutting edge science. I mean that connection I think is really really fascinating. I think that's where the future is. Um yeah. So, um I'm happy this resonates with you and I hope it it resonates with your audience. There's so much more work to be done and and so much more um to discover. Yeah. Thanks, Martin. Was really a pleasure talking to you this morning. I hope we we'll have a we have another opportunity in the future to to touch base and and exchange our views on things. And when when do you think your your book will be coming out? It's it's going to come out probably February 2027. Okay. So, in in about a year and a half. Sounds good. Good luck with it. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. Good talking to you. Byebye.
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
The modern wellness world often turns mechanisms into promises. A calmer approach asks better questions. What is the body being asked to adapt to? What dose can it recover from? What practice still feels intelligent tomorrow?
"Mitochondria and the microbiome are ancient partners in energy, immunity, and resilience."
Healthspan begins below the surface. Mitochondria, muscle, hormones, glucose control, inflammation (discussed further here), and repair systems shape how much capacity the body has available for work, recovery, and presence.
The strongest longevity practices are rarely dramatic. Training, protein, sleep, light, stress regulation, heat, cold, and metabolic steadiness compound because they are repeated. The advanced work rests on the ordinary work done well.
Use the idea as a ritual, not a performance. Start with the least dose that changes your state. Notice breath, sleep, appetite, training quality, and mood. Those signals tell you whether the protocol is building capacity or simply adding load.
Mitochondria and the microbiome are ancient partners in energy, immunity, and resilience.
Stress changes energy flow, and energy flow shapes the lived experience of health.
A systems view of health connects biology with sleep, emotion, environment, and daily rhythm.
Choose one practice you can repeat consistently for the next two weeks.
Track the felt outcome: sleep, focus, calm, recovery, or energy.
Increase intensity only when the current dose leaves you steadier.
