Planet Thrive

What do medications, household cleaning products, processed food, pesticides, food additives, toxic non-cold pressed fats, perfume, pink M&Ms (like they sell for breast cancer), and personal care products have in common? They all contain toxic synthetic chemicals.

Eating, drinking, breathing, or rubbing on your body any substance containing chemicals causes free radical formation that leads to oxidative stress. Oxidative stress damages the mitochondria.

People who assault you with their toxic perfume are doing more than annoying you or making you feel sick, they are killing your mitochondria. Selling pink M&Ms for breast cancer research is downright stupid as well as confusing and misleading to the public as they contain toxic petroleum based dyes, toxic high fructose corn syrup and other health and mitochondria-killing chemicals…..not to mention that sugar feeds cancer cells, accelerating their growth!

Why do I always warn against medications to “treat” CFS? Simply because I want to help you heal your body. Medications cause side effects that muddy the waters when you have CFS. And medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain many adverse effects. It’s fairly well documented now that CFS is a mitochondrial disease, whether it be failure, dysfunction, decay, or damage of the mitochondria. If you have CFS, a mitochondrial disease, do you really want to make it worse or do you want to heal and recover?

Since the first mitochondrial dysfunction was described in the 1960s, the medicine has advanced in its understanding the role mitochondria play in health and disease. Damage to mitochondria is now understood to play a role in the pathogenesis of a wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disease, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, migraine headaches, strokes, neuropathic pain, Parkinson’s disease, ataxia, transient ischemic attack, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetes, hepatitis C, and primary biliary cirrhosis. Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain many adverse effects. All classes of psychotropic drugs have been documented to damage mitochondria, as have statin medications, analgesics such as acetaminophen, and many others. While targeted nutrient therapies using antioxidants or their precursors (e. g., N-acetylcysteine) hold promise for improving mitochondrial function, there are large gaps in our knowledge. The most rational approach is to understand the mechanisms underlying mitochondrial damage for specific medications and attempt to counteract their deleterious effects with nutritional therapies. This article reviews our basic understanding of how mitochondria function and how medications damage mitochondria to create their occasionally fatal adverse effects.” – Mol Nutr Food Res. 2008 Jul;52(7):780-8. Neustadt J, Pieczenik SR. Medication-induced mitochondrial damage and disease.

Anyone with CFS can tell you that there is a problem generating energy even if they know nothing about the mitochondria. Every individual cell in your body requires energy to perform its functions. Energy is derived from the carbohydrates that you eat and the cell’s mitochondria, the little power plants work to convert glucose into usable cellular energy.

So what to do? You must decrease your toxic load, taper off medications, eat an excellent diet rich in antioxidants, take antioxidant supplements, rest, get restorative sleep, and decrease stress.

• Pace – Don’t exceed your energy envelope
• Feed the mitochondria – D-ribose, CoQ10, acetyl-l-carnitine, NAD, magnesium, B12 injections, green powder supplement
• Restorative sleep
• Excellent nutrition – begin with alkalizing diet: eat every 3 hours-do elimination diet to identify intolerances and allergies – eat organic or wash produce well with dilute white vinegar
• Eliminate toxic stressors including all products with chemicals, alcohol, tobacco, drugs and volatile organic compounds
• Deep breathing and meditation
• Sinus irrigation to rinse out allergens and toxic chemical residue that you breathe into your sinus cavity
• Take probiotics and glutamine, get your hormone levels tested and replace as needed

Do your best, try not to stress about perfection, do what you can. When I first started my healing program I was too sick to do anything but exist. I also couldn’t afford food and lived on charity food. Still I would pray over it and ask that it would nourish my body. I worked hard to make changes so that I could heal. Healing takes time no matter what your situation. Do your best, be consistent, and make forward positive changes as you can.