MInding My Mitochondria

Minding My Mitochondria

By Dr. Terry L. Wahls


Dr. Wahls is an academic general internal medicine physician who has secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. Her MS confined her to a life of dependence on a tilt-recline wheelchair for four years. Eighteen months after starting her intensive, focused nutrition and electrical therapy to strengthen her muscles, Dr. Wahls now commutes to work five miles each day on her bicycle.

Minding My Mitochondria is a clear and concise explanation of the biochemistry that drives our brains and how the food we eat is linked to the health we do or do not have. Dr. Wahls teaches us how our brain cells work, the building blocks our cells need to do the work of living, and how to eat to ensure you have enough of them.

If you have a neurological or a psychological problem improving the health of your mitochondria will help your brain. If you have a chronic medical problem, improving the health of your mitochondria will help your body.

This book reveals the interventions, and the science behind them, that Dr. Wahls has used to restore her own health and the physical and mental health of her patients. Over 40 brain health recipes are included!

I.S.B.N. 13: 978-0-9821750-9-5

I.S.B.N. 10: 0-9821750-9-4

Publisher: TZ Press

119 pages






CONTENTS

Chapter 1. The Beginning

Chapter 2. Mitochondria

Chapter 3. Cellular Function and Brain Health

Chapter 4. Micronutrients, Supplements, and Food sources

Chapter 5. Neuro-protection

Chapter 6. Food Matters and MS

Chapter 7. Recipes

Chapter 8. The Synergy between Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation and Nutrition

Chapter 9. Frequently Asked Questions--and Answers

Chapter 10. Conclusion

Photographs

Nutrient and Function Chart

Abbreviations

Glossary

References
Excerpt
Chapter 1. The Beginning

Rising costs of health care is crushing us. It’s not just old people getting diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and cancers that are adding the cost of healthcare. Nearly a third of our children have serious medical problems like autism, depression, learning disabilities, obesity, or pre-diabetes. In addition to the exploding costs of health care, productivity of the American worker is falling because of declining worker health. Despite all the money spent on health care, we, and our children, are progressively less well.

Why is this happening to us? Have our genes gone bad? After all scientists are identifying more genes associated with chronic disease each day. Are mutations transforming our strong, lean bodies into obese, chronically diseased ones, or is there something else going on that is causing this change in the health our country?

I think the explanation for what has happening can be found in the corn fields of Iowa. When you buy seed corn, all the kernels have essentially the same DNA. The way farmers know what kind of crop to expect in the fall. Say the farmer plants half of the bag of seed corn in black Iowa soil and the other half in a trash heap filled with clay, plastic debris, and rock. Return in the fall to harvest the corn. The corn planted in the black dirt will be tall with three ears of corn on every plant. But the corn in the trash heap will look diseased. Instead of being dark green, the corn stalks will yellowed, stunted and barely three feet tall. Very few will have an ear of corn. If they do, only a few kernels will be present on tiny nubbins. It was the same DNA in both fields. But the black Iowa dirt was filled with the nutrients the corn’s DNA needed. The trash heap lacked nutrients, and you saw the results.

All moving things, including our bodies, break down with time. Fortunately, our bodies have tiny little maintenance workers who are busy repairing all the little wear-and-tear damage that occurs each day. Our DNA provides the blueprint for all the proteins and other stuff that needs to be replaced. If those little maintenance workers don’t have the all the building blocks, that is, the correct minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids, then trouble happens. They can’t make things according to the DNA blueprints. Those replacement molecules and structures get made not at all, or incorrectly, and we begin to deteriorate.