Mitophagy Is the Quiet Maintenance Behind Longevity
Video·Dr. Stephen Cabral·3 min read·August 29, 2026
Mitophagy Is the Quiet Maintenance Behind Longevity
Longevity is often framed as a search for the newest intervention. The deeper question is quieter: how well does the body maintain itself when stress, inflammation, and time begin to leave their mark?
In this conversation, Dr. Stephen Cabral turns that question toward mitochondria. These small structures are best known for producing energy, but their influence reaches further. When mitochondrial health declines, energy, resilience, repair, and healthy aging all feel the consequence.
all right everybody back with a brand new show on anti-aging and Longevity if you've ever wondered one of the key factors in improving your overall not only lifespan which is the number of years that you live but also your health span that's the number of healthy years you live Today's Show will hopefully help with that so there's a new science into something called mitophagy I'll share exactly what that means but what it alludes to are these powerhouses these energy cells or batteries inside of our cells all of us have them called mitochondria and they produce energy but what they don't always share with you what you don't always hear about is what they do is they help to combat inflammation they help to actually combat the wearing down of the body the breakdown the C metabolism the wearing away of this actual organism of who we are think about it if every single day you broke down just a little bit more and a little bit more well over time that's essentially what happens to our body but it can happen faster or it can happen slower and the mitochondria have a huge part in doing this now on just about a week ago's show and I'll link that up here today we went over medications and drugs that speed up that process they
basically wipe out these batteries inside of your cells called your mitochondria and that was episode 2958 we'll link everything up today and I want you to worry about all the numbers head on over to Stephen cal. com 2965 as you're following along with the show today because I'm going to link up a bunch of studies there for you as well the first one I wanted to go over and this is really important because a lot of the time with anti-aging we're focused on just one thing like we're focused on nutrition we're focused on exercise we're focused on toxin removal they're all important don't get me wrong they're all important but sometimes we lose sight of what's the nutrition or the exercise or the detoxing doing for our body well when we look at this we start to see oh Science And scientists are actually looking at how are those things actually improving longevity so that we can do more of them I'm going to open one up right now it's from Frontiers and this was a study that I wanted you to know about so I'm going to actually readed for you here today on the show and I think what you'll get from it is a sense that we are beginning to actually figure out and understand how the human body ages that's one big part but also what can we do to slow the aging process that's important as well because we can't stop it yet but we can reverse unhealthy aging which can literally reduce our biological age and if you don't know your biological age you absolutely should test that that you
should do it now so that all the healthy interventions that I know that you're going to be doing you can see if they're working or not so go to hperformance health. org well I'll get that for you I believe it's bioage but let me check that for you I'm going to link it up here today so again go to stepen cal. com 2965 and I'll put the biological age test there simple link again we work with the best of the best lab companies and what you're going to do you're going to be able to actually find out what your biological age is with a simple finger prick but let's move on to that study called mitophagy an emerging role in aging and age Associated disease this this was published in Frontiers I'll link it up for you very short paragraph maybe eight lines I'll translate it into normal speak after I'm done reading it it says mitochondrial dysfunction constitute one of the Hallmarks of aging and is characterized by regular mitochondria mitochondrial morphology insufficient ATP production accumulation of mitochondrial DNA mutations increased production of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species and consequent consequent oxidative damage to nucleic acids proteins and lipids mitophagy a mitochondrial quality control mechanism enabling the degradation of damaged and Superfluous mitochondria prevents such detrimental effects and reinstate
cellular hom homeostasis in response to stress to date there is increasing evidence that mitophagy is significantly impaired in several human pathologies including aging and age related diseases such as neurod degenerative diseases and disorders cardiovascular pathologies and cancer therapeutic interventions aiming at the induction of mitophagy may have the potency to amarate these dysfunctions so what is all of that mean well what it means is this and they go on to introduce the entire study which I'm not going to bore you with right now but I want to share with you the exciting details so basically this is what happens when we accumulate toxins from the environment let's call them heavy metals let's aluminum Mercury lead cium arsenic uh let's talk about things like pesticides herbicides Roundup uh what else can we talk about parabens Plastics all of these things right 100, 000 Plus manmade chemicals all right they come in our body what happens they create inflammation immune-based response and weakening of the mitochondria what else well we might get a virus we might get a um bacterial based infection it can weaken the mitochondria as well we do really hard workouts and that um creates inflammation U mitochondria obviously help but it can then weaken the mitochondria so all of these assaults on the physical body can weaken the mitochondria over time that's not necessarily A Bad Thing but what happens
is that the mitochondria get weaker and we have less per cell so typically we have anywhere from hundreds to thousands per cell depending on the type of tissue it is in the body for example the heart can have 5, 000 mitochondria per cell it's pretty amazing right so when we look at that we say over time they get weaker and less of them okay so what does that mean well it's also makes it worse when a natural process such as inflammation cardiovascular Bas neurod degenerative toxicity cancer stops a natural process in the body called mitophagy think of it as autophagy right we've been talking a lot about autophagy since 2016 on the podcast with the Nobel Prize in cancer for autophagy right what happens when the body's not getting enough fuel well it goes through a process of destroying weaker cells immune cells pathogenic tissue cancer cells we've known that well what happens with natural process in the bodies when the mitochondria get weaker what should happen doesn't always what should happen is those mitochondria die off and they're replaced by stronger ones the problem is they're only replaced by stronger ones and they only die off if the body is at a state of homeostasis a balance of dynamic equilibrium and the way that this happens is through very specific lifestyle-based interventions meaning that it's not automatically going happen
as you get older yeah things are going to get worse only if you are not following the specific steps the human body needs in order to be able to regenerate now for now we are all getting older but we can reduce the biological age so in the beginning and I'm always honest with all of my labs again you know I was very sick from essentially as a child um then very sick at 17 all the way through 27 and it was absolutely better there's no doubt about that like absolutely better after I met my mentor but I didn't know how well I could get and now in my mid-40s I feel better than I did in my mid-30s and certainly in my mid 20s and definitely in my teens so how does that happen well believe it or not even in my early 30s when I first did biological age testing my biological age was like 20 years higher than my regular age it was terrible I still had high levels of inflammation I was still you know I was not that I don't work a lot today but it was different type of stress all these different things and what I can share with you is that I had to focus on anti-aging myself and I really focused on it with my high performance Health curriculum that I teach about three years ago and over that time I was able to reduce my rate of aging from over a year so basically for one year of living would be a little bit more than a year of biological aging and then I was able to take that and over time I was now able to get it down to 67 to 69 rate of aging and that reduced my biological age
all the way down from mid-40s to 32 years old and so what I'm sharing with you is that now I my body is Aging for about seven to eight months of the year but not for about four to five months and that's enabling now my body to not necessarily not age at all it is but age at a slower pace and that's what I want to share with everyone I want to be able to give others the same energy and vitality and essentially just passion and that that I have for Life each and every day but a lot of that comes with being able to reduce the inflammation reduce the overall essentially onslot of free radicals inside of the body and part of that was building up my mitochondria so what I want to share with you right now are 10 steps to building back up your mitochondria that anybody can use and next week I'm going to go in depth on just the nutrition part of it all right so hopefully you'll find this helpful we're going to go over those 10 steps right now and then I'll give you an I mean for people who want to go really in depth and learn about this over the course of 20 hours or so even become a high performance health coach if they want they can go to highperformance health. org but let me give you 10 really powerful ways to boost the mitochondria one of them I already alluded to is exercise so exercise in the beginning for someone like myself with Addison's
disease or low levels of mitochondria and no ATP that's the ability to produce a denzine triphosphate energy for things like walking up a flight of stairs it was brutal so what I want to share with you is this is that you have to start slow but exercise causes the body to then call for more mitochondrial production it's called mitochondrial biogenesis that means the body is forced to make more mitochondria if you don't overdo it create too much inflammation so very slowly increase your exercise tolerance by just adding just a little bit more per week never more than 10% all right the next one let's go right into nutrition that I talked about that I'll talk about more next week in the diet but part of that is just caloric restriction I know it seems like it doesn't make sense because if you do caloric restriction well that means then that you're not going to have enough fuel calories literally produce energy but what happens is when the body is in a fasted State especially with intermittent fasting it enables your body to go through a state of not necessarily starvation but it flips on a survival based switch and that survival based switch will cause you to create more mitochondria in the cell and stronger ones and go through a period of M mitophagy in order to be make the body strong enough to then go hun for that more food or go Forge for more food so
it's a survival based mechanism which greatly improves oxidative stress all right the next one we talked about this before we have a whole product built in this called cell Boost literally boost mitochondria in the cell that's exactly what it does um you can always find the products that we use the lab test we use everything at stepen cal. com slop that'll take you over to equal life that's our private practice and uh and you can find everything right there with cell boost so inside of cell boost though you have all the mitochondria nutrients we know that the body in the mitochondria need B vitamins they need Vitamin C but also there's greater things as well like pqq El carnitine and many others co-enzyme Q10 that will help boost the mitochondria so specific nutrients after that it's getting enough sleep this is It's just so far overlooked because right now we have so many people Preaching Online you know I get Buy on 5 hours sleep it's all I need no it's not all you need you're surviving but you're not thriving and you will burn your body out and so for sleep what we want to look at is total hours that really does matter 7 to n hours per night and aiming for 2 hours of REM sleep to rejuvenate the brain and 90 minutes at least 75 minutes of deep sleep to rejuvenate the body and the mitochondria all right Next Step I want to share with you red light therapy does work is it highest and best on my list no but it helps improve the collagen in the skin fine line wrinkles hair growth and it also
improves mitochondria cold exposure this is not going to work for exhausted people worn out people people already producing too much dopamine too much norepinephrine not great for those individuals do way better with sauna but for people that are kind of lower mood lower energy inflamed they could get a lot out of 2 to 3 minutes maybe a little bit more of cold based exposure doesn't need to be 37 ° it can actually be 55 56 ° in order to get you benefit as well all right a couple more I want to share with you is I already share with you the sa of the cold support using a product called and I talked about this inside of the mitochondrial nutrients like the foundational ones your B vitamins your zinc your copper like those are absolutely needed and the the specialty ones are the pqq the co-enzyme Q10 uh and then another one nicotinamide riboside or nicotinamide mononucleotide um we use NR nicotinamide riboside inside of that cell boost and those help to produce more NAD a basically version and version of nasin vitamin B3 and what it does is it helps to produce more ATP it helps to improve overall mitochondrial strength and capacity all right sunlight some of these are just free right they just are but too many of us well we live in cold climates we don't necessarily get those during the 6 Months 8 months of the the year where the sun isn't strong enough and just because the sun is strong outside doesn't mean we're actually outside
we're not getting Morning Sun we're not letting that touch our skin if we do go outside maybe only our hands are exposed or our face is exposed or we're in so much sunscreen that we block all of that anyways but remember sunlight is a powerful one for the mitochondria along the same lines as red light okay another one that I want to share with you and you kind of get a two for one is infrared therapy so infrared sauna therapy it doesn't have to be in a sauna so that's why like but you can just double up if you have an infrared sauna well you get the infrared benefits as well the difference with infrared heat is that it actually penetrates the skin to a deeper level so if we go in a regular sauna which is Amazing by the way it heats the outside air but an infrared sauna it actually penetrates the body from anywhere from 1 to 5 millim depending on if it's near Mid or far infrared wavelengths so that can be helpful and I'll just want to give you one more here today and that is nonsleep deep rest I have a whole podcast on it it's essentially what we're doing for relaxation during the day so the relaxation could be meditation sure but it could just be going for a calming walk it could be um repeating a mantra over over and over to yourself it could be box breathing it could be resonance breathing anything that induces What's called the parasympathetic nervous system because as you start to move more into the Natural Health based realm you begin to understand that so much of the healing process actually comes from getting out
of fight ORF flight sure there's gut issues there's parasites there's heavy metals there's viruses there's immune dysfunction but if we want to truly heal we have to get out of that stress based Zone we have to get out of fight or flight we can't live in that zone we can enter into it we can dip our toes in it but we can't be there all day long and so finding these relaxation techniques can be an absolute GameChanger in order to not only improve your overall health but your longevity as well hopefully today's podcast was helpful I'd love to hear from you in the comments let me thought let me know what you thought about the show but also other ideas you have other topics for shows we take all of this into consideration this show really is about you our community and how we can help make sure you're tuning in each and every day to the cabal concept and next week we'll do another show on the absolute best diet to improve your mitochondrial energy take care everybody do share the show with anyone you believe it could serve thanks so much for tuning into Today's Show before you go don't forget to hit that subscribe button I want to make sure that you're getting our daily content not missing out on anything functional medicine Wellness weight gain weight loss anti-aging living longer stronger and all of the most Cutting Edge research and if there's any topics you want to hear feel free to leave them in the comments below take care
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
The Maintenance System Inside the Cell
Mitophagy is the body's process for identifying damaged mitochondria, breaking them down, and making room for stronger, more efficient ones. It is a form of cellular quality control.
In plain language, the body is not simply trying to keep every part alive forever. It is trying to keep the system clean enough to function well. When worn-down mitochondria linger, cells lose energy, oxidative stress rises, and the work of repair becomes harder.
Mitophagy is not about chasing youth. It is about preserving the body's ability to renew what has been worn down.
Why Mitochondria Matter for Healthspan
Mitochondria help convert food and oxygen into ATP, the usable energy of the cell. High-demand tissues, including the heart, brain, and muscle, depend on that energy every moment.
Cabral also points to their role in inflammation and cellular stress. When the body is carrying a heavy load from poor sleep, infections, environmental toxins, overtraining, or chronic stress, mitochondria can become less efficient. Over time, that can change how old the body feels, not just how old the calendar says it is.
The Stress Signal Has to Be Matched With Recovery
The practices discussed are familiar: exercise, intermittent fasting or caloric restraint, sleep, sunlight, red light, sauna, cold exposure, nutrients, and parasympathetic rest. Their value is not that they are fashionable. Their value is that they send signals.
Exercise asks the body to build capacity. Fasting creates a temporary scarcity signal that may encourage cellular cleanup. Sauna and cold exposure apply thermal stress. Restorative practices help the nervous system move out of fight-or-flight so repair can take priority.
The lesson is balance. A stressor that is well dosed can build resilience. The same stressor, layered onto exhaustion, can become another withdrawal from an already depleted system.
Cold, Heat, and the Mitochondrial Conversation
Cold exposure may support mood, circulation, inflammation control, and mitochondrial adaptation for the right person at the right dose. It does not need to be extreme to be meaningful. Cabral notes that moderate cold can still create a useful signal.
Sauna offers a different pathway. Heat encourages circulation, relaxation, and thermal adaptation. For people who are already depleted, anxious, or overstimulated, heat may feel more restorative than cold. The best protocol is the one that strengthens the person in front of it.
Sleep Is Not Optional Maintenance
The most grounded point in the episode is also the least glamorous: sleep determines how much repair the body can perform. Deep sleep supports physical restoration. REM sleep supports the brain. Both matter when the goal is long-term vitality.
There is no sophisticated longevity practice that compensates for routinely living under-recovered. Mitochondria respond to rhythm, nourishment, movement, light, and rest. The basics are not beneath the science. They are where the science begins.
Words Worth Hearing
"If every single day you broke down just a little bit more... over time, that's essentially what happens to our body." — Dr. Stephen Cabral
"We can't stop it yet, but we can reverse unhealthy aging." — Dr. Stephen Cabral
Practical Takeaways
Think in signals, not hacks. Movement, fasting, light, sauna, cold, and rest each ask the body for a specific adaptation. Choose deliberately.
Respect your recovery state. If you are exhausted, overstimulated, or sleeping poorly, begin with sleep, nourishment, and downshifting before adding more stress.
Make mitochondria a daily practice. Morning light, regular movement, enough sleep, and measured thermal exposure compound more reliably than occasional intensity.
