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William Pawluk, MD, MSc, author of “Supercharge Your Health with PEMF therapy”, was recently a holistic doctor near Baltimore, MD. Previous academic positions at Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland. Training: acupuncture, homeopathy, hypnosis, energy medicine, nutrition and bodywork. Considered the foremost authority on the practical use of Pulsed Electromagnetic... Read More
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC, has served thousands of patients as a Nurse Practitioner over the last 22 years. Her work in the health industry marries both traditional and functional medicine. Laura’s wellness programs help her high-performing clients boost energy, renew mental focus, feel great in their bodies, and be productive again.... Read More
- Discusses the top 3 functions of mitochondria; Why mitochondria are important for prevention and treatment of chronic disease; Easy methods for restoring mitochondrial health; The simple link between gut health and mitochondrial function and how well PEMFs increase ATP production directly and improve the body’s health to improve mitochondrial function more broadly.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
This is Dr. Pawluk. Today, I have a wonderful special guest, very amicable and bubbly person who is going to tell us all about herself. So this session is about mitochondrial function, and I’m introducing you now to Laura Frontiero to tell us about herself first, and then we’ll dig into the topic on mitochondrial function. Laura.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Hi, Dr. Pawluk. Hi, great to be here. Boy, do we have fun when we get together, this is gonna be a good one.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
I look forward to it.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, sir. So I’ll tell you a little bit about myself, I am a Western Medicine Trained Nurse Practitioner, and I spent many years actually working in preventive medicine to begin with. And it wasn’t until 20 years into my career that I learned about functional medicine, integrative medicine, other ways to help people heal their bodies. And what I realized looking back at my career is preventive medicine in Western medicine was really more about early detection, not really about prevention so you think about that. We talk about prevention in a Western perspective as being breast cancer screening, colon cancer screening, prostate cancer screening, think about that. It’s a screening for early detection. It’s not actually preventing the problem in the first place and the extent to which we prevent problems is pretty minimal because we don’t really focus on nutrition and when we do focus on it, we’re not actually giving the best advice. So an example would be for people with diabetes, we say, use artificial sweetener instead of sugar so you don’t spike your blood sugar, but that’s a host of chemicals and toxins that you’re putting in your body and causing all kinds of problems. So, after 20 years of being in the Western model, I found functional medicine and this is where I live now. This is where I love to be to help people heal their bodies and truly prevent chronic health conditions. So, I’m excited to talk about mitochondria, I have a little bit of an obsession with them because in my training in functional medicine, one of my mentors that I studied with was really loved mitochondria and I learned that without supporting mitochondrial health, all the things that I’m trying to do to help people heal their inflammation and their chronic health conditions and their gut health and live longer, vibrant, wonderful lives, it can’t happen unless we support mitochondrial health. So, here we are today talking about mitochondria and I’ll say that when I was a kid and we all had to take biology class to get out of high school, right. So, if you remember biology class, the moment that that teacher started talking about mitochondria and the Krebs cycle and ATP energy production was the moment that most of us check out because it’s really boring stuff. So my goal is to make this fun and interesting and speak in stories and analogies and make it not boring because biology really, I didn’t love it when I was a kid. Love it now, not so much back then. So, that’s a little bit about me.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, fantastic. So now you’re a mitochondrial expert.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yep.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
And we appreciate your expertise on our summit as well. Well, okay, so mitochondria. Let’s assume that the people listening know nothing about mitochondria. So what are mitochondria?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I like to talk about mitochondria in really simple terms, but the overall concept that you get to understand here is that, think of mitochondria like your life force, and we call them the powerhouse of your cells because they make 90% of energy in the body and we can dig into that and what that means. I personally like to think about energy in two ways, I like to think about it like physical energy, the kind that we feel throughout the day, like, in the mid-afternoon, do you have a slump and lose your energy or do you feel energy to last you through the day until it’s time to wind down and go to bed? And then there’s this invisible energy that’s happening in our body, and that’s the kind that we don’t notice, so that’s like cellular energy. It’s required for gut healing and restoring and immune support and making your heart beat and your lungs work and your brain function and your nerves fire, that’s invisible we don’t know that’s happening. So mitochondria are responsible for all of that and they’re responsible for a lot of other things that we can get into talking about as well. But first, let’s talk about what these little guys are anyway, these little, teeny, tiny microscopic organelles that live inside of our cells by sometimes the thousands inside of a cell, they’re so small and so to help you understand these guys, I like to compare them to house plants, so bear with me.
So, with house plants and mitochondria, we like to think about location, living conditions and function. So those three things, location, living conditions, and function. So in terms of location, let’s think about a house plant and then relate it to a mitochondria. So a house plant, it lives in your house, right. They live inside of a room in your house and usually in a specific location. So, a house plant will live on a window sill or sitting on a shelf or maybe inside or hanging from a hanging device. Well mitochondria similarly live in a certain spot. They live on an inside of an individual cell and that might be a brain cell, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a heart cell, a muscle cell and so on. So, now you have that kind of microscopic location. Now that location is inside of a bigger structure, so it’s in the living room or the dining room or your bedroom, just like the mitochondria are inside of the kidney, the liver, the heart, so a bit of a bigger space. And that is housed on an even bigger level inside of the walls of your home, so think of that like your body, you being the house of where all these things happen so we just get down on the granular level of thinking how small a mitochondria is. Now, living conditions are important. So given the right conditions, your mitochondria will thrive and grow and they’ll even reproduce.
And guess what, so do house plants as well. So, for those of you who don’t have a green thumb, you know that house plants are fragile and mitochondria are also fragile, if you withhold what they need, they will die or they will malfunction and house plants are the same, they die, they limp along, they don’t look so good, they need the same thing. Mitochondria and house plants need clean water, sunlight, nutrition and they need you to be nice to them. So studies show, if you talk negative to your house plants, they’re more likely to have stunted growth. Actually people have studied this, and it’s the same for your mitochondria. A stressful and negative life will yield lower mitochondrial function. And then the final concept here is just function. What’s the function of the mitochondria? What’s the function of a house plant? ‘Cause a house plant does have a function. They create life giving oxygen, house plants do, and they help remove toxins from the air. In fact, you can use house plants to clean and purify your air, put a whole bunch of house plants, and you may get a similar effect of bringing in an air purifier and house plants are much less expensive and they’re beautiful and it’s the way nature intended the air to be cleaned. Well, guess what? Your mitochondria very similarly to house plants, they create life giving ATP energy, and they also assist your detox pathways to keep you flushed of toxins plus a whole bunch of other things. So there Dr. Pawluk is my very simple explanation of mitochondria and how they live and work and how fragile they are. We really have to be good to them.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, I don’t know if anybody’s interested, but I’ve always found it interesting. Where do these things come from? Mitochondria?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Well, they actually come from our maternal DNA. So they’re being passed down from your mother to mother to mother. They’re very old DNA and it’s part of our genetics. So, it’s really important, me as a mother and anybody watching, a female, that you do everything you can right now in your reproductive age to pass on healthy mitochondria to your offspring. This is really important.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well yeah, that’s very interesting and in fact, that’s critical during pregnancy and so many women get pregnant, don’t even know they’re pregnant and they don’t know how to deal with pregnancy, they don’t know how to take care of themselves anyway, so often the first pregnancy is a challenge, talk about stress as well. But mitochondria of genes come from what?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So mitochondrial genes, they come, well, you’re stumping me, where we going with this?
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Bacteria.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Ah, yes sir, bacteria.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Right? We look at it under electron microscopes. A mitochondria looks like a bacteria.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yep.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Right.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
A very ancient bacteria, yes.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So they are commensal with us. I mean, we totally depend on this. So somewhere in the evolution of the human, the species we incorporated mitochondria, just like we incorporate bacteria and viruses in our bodies like we have a microbiome and that’s gonna lead to the next point that you’re gonna make.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Just like we need a microbiome, we need those bacteria ’cause they have functions in our bodies. We tend to think of bacteria as being bad, right? I think most bacteria are not bad. With our bodies control them, they become bad because we haven’t developed the proper controls. So, go to your next point.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So let’s talk about a function of mitochondria. So we understand where they come from and where they live in our bodies and that they’re fragile. They’re very powerful as fragile as they are. They are quite powerful and there’s many, many functions of mitochondria, but three main functions that I like to outline for you would be cellular respiration, energy ATP production and then there’s this whole concept of the cell danger response. And after we talk about this, we’re gonna get into the importance of PEMF as one of the ways that we help maintain mitochondrial health as well. It’s a vital part. So, in terms of these three processes, cellular respiration, think of this like your cells having a biochemical process and similar, a good way to think about it is similarly to when you breathe, oxygen goes into your lungs, it’s moved throughout your body by the bloodstream to your cells where then the mitochondria used the oxygen and then carbon dioxide is released from the cells and move back through your bloodstream to the lungs and exhaled, will your cells also have their own biochemical process inside that occur to move waste out of the cell to move what needs to be utilized by the cell for whatever the purpose of that cell is, is it a heart cell? Is it a brain cell? Is it a muscle cell? Mitochondria responsible for that cellular respiration, kind of the movement of things coming into the cell and out of the cell.
And then there’s this whole concept of energy ATP production. So this is the big one, when people think about mitochondria, they think about ATP. That is a unit of energy that’s produced for something called the Krebs cycle and then there’s this intercellular energy transfer and energy is stored as a chemical bond in the ATP molecule and it’s released when the bonds are broken. So that’s a whole big complex thing to think about but an easy way to think about this is ATP Energy is like a currency, almost like the US dollar. For example, you have to trade dollars to get what you need, to get food, to pay your mortgage, to have a car. Well, similarly in your body, you have to trade ATP for everything you do. So just for the example of moving my little finger, there is a cost to that in ATP. It’s a different cost. If I were to get up and walk across the room and go out the door, there’s a cost to every breath I take, to my heart beating and so you have this bank account of ATP and you’re withdrawing on it. You’re paying for all of these functions in the body and as such, you must continually replenish that bank account. You must continually put ATP these units of energy back in, and that’s what the mitochondria do. They make sure that you have that bank account, that currency so you can spend everything that your body needs to function. And then the third thing that I wanna highlight is the cell danger response. So, mitochondria have this other critical role in cell defense and in defending your body against a threat and they can actually detect the presence of things like infection or inflammation or immune overactivation and the presence of toxins which we talk a lot about toxins as causing a problem for mitochondria.
Well, mitochondria create an immune system response so that to those threats, and then they actually believe it or not decrease energy production when that happens. It’s wild. So, if you think about when you’re sick and you get really tired and all you wanna do is sleep, well one of the reasons that that’s happening is because mitochondria are actually slowing down the production of ATP because the invader that’s in your body, the virus, the bacteria, whatever it is, it’s gonna use that ATP so it can be stronger and reproduce and your mitochondria don’t want them to take that energy so it tamps down. It’s kind of the same concept of why when your body launches a fever, we should let it do its thing because a fever is gonna help kill bacteria or virus and it makes us uncomfortable. Yes, but it’s actually a vital role of the body healing itself, well energy decrease when you’re sick is also one of those vital roles. So cell danger response is something that mitochondria do to protect us.
So, next time you get sick and you’re exhausted and you’re frustrated about it, think about those mitochondria doing their job. That’s actually part of the critical role. So, those are kind of the three big ones when we think about mitochondria. Mitochondria do all kinds of things. They promote cell growth and multiplication. They’re responsible for cell death and cleaning out old cells that shouldn’t be there anymore. They generate oxidative radicals, free radicals or reactive oxygen species which in large amounts can be harmful to us but in small amounts, they actually have a helpful effect on the body. It’s important to have that. They support nervous system function. They help us produce heat so, keep you warm through nonshivering thermogenesis, their organs of metabolism, they synthesize biomolecules, I mean, you can’t survive without mitochondria. So, for the rest of this talk, I really wanna, it gives you an idea of how important they are, right. But for the rest of the talk, let’s talk about mitochondria health and chronic health problems and what we do to fix it. So I just pause there, Bill, and have you put in your 2 cents here?
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, thank you for allowing me to put in my 2 cents. The picture that I’m getting, the body is a homeostatic mechanism. Homeostasis means balance. So on the one hand, when you’re sick, you need more energy to be able to help to defend you against whatever the invasion is, but at the same time, that as a cost to that, but there’s also a risk of overdoing it so you don’t wanna overdo it to feed the bacteria, viruses or whatever. On the other hand, you also have to be guard against depletion. So, if you’re constantly producing ATP, is there a big bank of ATP in the body?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Well, there is a bank of ATP, but there’s so many factors that are gonna influence how much of that you can produce and so you definitely wanna support everything you can to support ATP production.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So clearly it is making up for what you may lose. So every beat of the heart, every beat, the heart has to produce ATP to make that beat. And then between beats it has to replenish the ATP. Right? So if your heart’s racing really fast, then it’s using up more ATP, more energy and again, you’re going to have to spend extra time to repair and recover. That’s why wounds and surgery and infections, all of these require us to have downtime. So, we’re not using extra ATP. So in other words, don’t run a marathon when you have a fever.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
No, so, and this–
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Not a good idea.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And this is what people do too. They are sick and they wanna push themselves. I gotta get my workout in. It’s gonna help me get better. And you actually might be causing a delay in healing and a lot more stress on your body.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So ATP management, ATP resource management is a critical part of what we do as well.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, for sure.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
All right so, go on the next important aspect and why do try to maintain ATP.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So, in terms of maintaining mitochondria, restoring mitochondrial function, some pretty common sense things to begin with. Things that are really easy to do, do not cost a lot of money and that is first off nutrition. So we gotta eat anyway, you’re going to eat every day, multiple times a day. So, make it worth it, eat a nutrient rich diet and really eliminate things like refined sugar and processed grains and bad fats and artificial ingredients. I used the example in the beginning about the person with diabetes being told to use artificial sweeteners which is just makes no sense.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Artificial.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Artificial sweetener. I mean, it says it right there in the name of it. Eat greens and vegetables and herbs and fruits and nuts and seeds and legumes and whole grains. I mean really eat a variety of food, eat healthy fats. So, avocados and olives and coconut and grass-fed butter and ghee and MCT oils and pasture-raised eggs. I mean, how hard is it to when you’re buying eggs, and I know your dollar counts, and I know you’re standing there in front of the eggs and looking at it, but this carton is cheapest, at the end of the year, if you bought the pasture-raised eggs every time, you’re probably only spending at the end of the year, for as many times as you buy eggs, maybe 20 to $40 more at the end of the year for eggs. I mean, it’s not that big when you think about the price for your health, right? So eat clean protein. it matters when you’re eating grass-fed, wild-caught, pasture-raised, all of those things you’re looking for in the meat that you eat and organ meats. Here’s another one, organ meats are full of mitochondria and nutrients that are so good for us so liver, kidneys, heart, tongue, brain, bones, I mean, it sounds awful, but if you can bring this in, it’s so nourishing. Now, some other things you can do that don’t cost you a thing to fix your mitochondria and to manage ATP production so intermittent fasting. So when you’re fasting, damaged mitochondria are purged through something called autophagy. The process allows the mitochondria to remove damaged debris, accumulated reactive oxygen and nitrogen species and it helps clean us out. So, fasting can be simple. It can just be close the kitchen at six o’clock at night, do not go back in there, do not eat anything else. Make sure you’re not eating at least three hours before bed and don’t open the kitchen again until 11 o’clock noon. So for me, I’ve got my black coffee here. I’ve not broken my fast yet today. So I’ve had black coffee since I woke up, kitchen closed last night at six and after we’re done with this interview, I’ll finally have something to eat and so that was super easy for me and in the beginning it might feel kind of squirmy to do it, but you get used to it and then you feel great.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Now a 12-hour fast is good so what you’re doing is more like an 18-hour fast.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, well, I’ve worked towards that.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
But fasting from 6 PM until six o’clock in the morning, that’s a 12-hour fast.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Anybody can do that.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
That’s why we call it break fast, break, breakfast, right?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And that’s good for your mitochondria. So the thing is the problem is we go into our kitchens at nine or 10 o’clock at night wanting a snack before we go to bed and now you’ve destroyed that window, that 12 hour.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
And whatever causes you to have that need to go to the kitchen at night, there’s lots of reasons for that too.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, there’s something to work on that. So then, something else you can do is you can move your body. So, studies show that you get a 50 to 80% increase in mitochondrial capacity when you exercise with interval training. So, you don’t have to go to the gym and do an hour workout. You can get up in the middle of your workday and just take a quick risk walk or lift some light weights and you can do that multiple times throughout the day and you can really support mitochondria health. It’s free. It’s just a matter of setting up a routine and a habit to do it.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
What you’re doing is putting a demand on your mitochondria, right? Yes.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Do that.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
You’re putting a demand on it which means that they can no longer be lazy. Now they have to go to work.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, yes, exactly and then sleep, good sleep helps your mitochondrial work better. So we know that anything less than seven hours per night, decreases the amount of mitochondrial DNA in the blood and it causes poor cellular function so sleep seven to eight hours a night and get a sleep wake cycle routine schedule going so that you stick to it. And then sunlight, sunlight is so important. I mentioned that our mitochondria are like house plants and it’s important that within the first hour of waking up that you get your eyeballs on the daylight, even if it’s overcast, it’s okay. Get your circadian, use your circadian rhythm to your advantage. Be in the daylight. It’s also important at the end of the day to watch the light change as the sun goes down, and this can create wonderful habits of a morning routine. I like to go out, read in the morning for 20 minutes or so right out there in the morning light. And then at the end of the day, when you’re winding down, you can utilize that evening light to spend time with your loved ones, do something as a family or with your partner, or take that down unwinding time and it’s really good for your mitochondria. And then that brings us to devices and things.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Let’s not go to devices yet.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Okay.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Let’s talk about stress in mitochondria.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Stress is a huge one. So stress, Okay, so chronic stress increased inflammation. It increases inflammation. It reduces your immune function. It increases fatigue and so strategies to reduce stress include breathing, meditation, mind, work therapy, journaling, hobbies, time and nature, yoga, anything uplifting and I know like there’s stressors that are not gonna go away. I get it. I mean, we live in a fast-paced world. I’m a business owner, I’m a mom, I’m a wife. I’ve got stress. That’s not gonna go away. You know stress that kills me right now, I get emails from my daughter’s school on the regular about her homework, her tests, she got like, she missed points on this or that like those are little shards of stress that hit me every day and I’m like, “oh gosh, she failed this test. Is she ever gonna get into college?” I mean, these are the silly things that are hitting us all the time and so managing your mind over that and being in mindfulness and allowing yourself to shift quickly from those stressors. Stress is absolutely a toxin. So when we think about toxins from the environment, toxins from infections, toxins from the food we eat, stress is a toxin and if you do not manage the stress piece, if you do not reduce the stress piece, you could do everything else perfect. You could eat perfect. You could sleep. You could do all the things. Stress is going to be that thing that undermines your success every time.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
I know we’re gonna go to devices. Well, hold on to that. Laura is gonna remind us. Don’t forget to go to devices. There’s genetics, right? Also involve what you inherit in terms of your capacity to have efficient mitochondria. There is autoimmune. So, these days you hear and more and more about mitochondrial disorders. So what’s probably the most common mitochondrial cause of mitochondrial dysfunction today?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh, I would say toxins.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
And side stress.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Toxins. I would say environmental toxins and all the environmental chemicals, the toxins coming in, our food, the air we breathe, the products that we put on our skin, our cleaning products, the plastic that we’re inhaling, that we’re eating, that we’re absorbing through our skin, so toxins are huge, toxins and infections.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So we can add again, if you do everything right, but you’re still loading with toxins, right? And if you look at all of the cosmetic stuff that we use, even our shampoos get absorbed into our skin and into our bodies and they create habit with the mitochondria and just cellular function in general, So you limiting toxins as much as possible. There are gonna be components of the summit that will also talk about toxicity, environmental.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So important. It’s so important. And I would say for anyone here working with practitioners, your practitioner must have a way for you to reduce toxic load in the body. To remove toxins from the cells is so vital for restoring your health because your mitochondria will not function properly if those toxins are not addressed and of course it’s removing the source of toxins as well, but we have stored toxins that need to come out also.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
And that’s hard, some of those toxins are very hard to get out and it’s a lifetime process and these days babies born today are born with over 200 toxins in their bodies.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So sad.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So you’re getting it from mother who wasn’t aware over a lifetime up to the time of pregnancy and then, from then on the children are still going to be continually exposed. All right so, before we go to devices, let’s talk about the gut.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Okay, so gut microbiome, this is my happy place. So, I think everyone can agree that all the food that we eat, it first goes straight into your digestive track and in order for mitochondria to survive, to do their job, they need nutrients and that comes from the food that we eat primarily. So, your gut is where food is digested. It’s broken down in a smaller parts so your body can then utilize all the nutrients. But here’s the thing, your body can’t do any of it without the help of your microbiome. It’s made up of three main things, the community of bacteria that live inside of us, plus the immune and the neurological access that regulate everything and help it communicate with our body. So your mitochondria are actually stimulators of the same immune and neurological symptoms that interact with your gut. So for example, when we get food poisoning, the communication back and forth between the mitochondria and the microbiota, the bacteria that regulate the body’s immune system response is critical. There’s two different sets of organisms in your gut, the bacteria and the mitochondria which we’ve also established are come from bacteria. They’re communicating back and forth to keep everything going smooth and healthy. So what goes wrong here is first off a dysbiosis gut imbalance.
It drives inflammation. So, we were just talking about all these toxins that come into the body and this is one of the main drivers of dysbiosis and gut imbalance and then you have this overgrowth of disease causing pathogenic bacteria, inflammation increases, and this is damaging to mitochondria, so when we think about the number one damaging thing to mitochondria, inflammation, when we think about underneath that what’s driving the inflammation, what’s causing it, toxins. So, inflammation and toxins, you can’t really talk about them one without the other. And so, really it’s vital that in order to support mitochondrial health, you must support gut health as well because the most up to date research shows that the thing that affects mitochondria the most is uncontrolled inflammation and the thing that’s driving that for a lot of people is leaky gut dysbiosis because that barrier, so your gastrointestinal tract, your digestive tract is actually an open system. So, from your mouth all the way through to the rectum, to the end, it’s actually a big hollow tube that goes all the way through your body and so that is being impaired when you have leaky gut, that tube that’s supposed to only allow healthy nutrients through is now allowing toxins that we’re ingesting to get into the blood streaming into the body. So, there’s that connection between gut health. What I would say is you can’t fix one without the other. You must address gut health when you’re addressing mitochondria support as well. It’s vital.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
And how do you do that?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Well, with first off, those things that we talked about in terms of eating healthy food and eliminating toxins, you wanna remove the infections, you wanna remove the toxins, and then you wanna support the body to rebuild that delicate gut lining that’s been compromised and you can do that with supplements, you can do that with nutrients and you need stress reduction in there and you can also do it with the support of electromagnetic fields.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Devices
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Devices, yes.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
We’re gonna hold on to devices.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, so here we go back to devices.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, let’s not go there yet.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Okay. Where else are we going?
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So, the next place I would go to, there is no mitochondrial organ. There is no pancreas that produces mitochondria. There is no heart that pumps mitochondria through the body. No liver that makes mitochondria. All these organs make their own mitochondria but let’s, how do mitochondria get into the circulation? How do mitochondria actually spread beyond an organ or do they?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Well, mitochondria, every organ has its unique mitochondria that are specific to it so for example, the liver mitochondria are really good at supporting detoxification and the heart mitochondria are really geared towards that heart electrical system, conduction and pumping system and so mitochondria actually reproduce in the place that they are at so liver mitochondria make liver mitochondria and heart mitochondria make heart mitochondria so, for example, a liver mitochondria is not suited to support the brain. The mitochondria are in their space, kind of like how those house plants, you’ve got a house plant that is suited for the bathroom. It wants a moist damp, hopefully sun lit, hopefully you got a window in your bathroom environment and that’s where it likes to be and then you’ve got the kind of mitochondria that might do better in a shady, darker place like the bedroom maybe that spends a lot of time in the dark. So mitochondria are unique to certain parts of the body.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Okay, so basically what you’re saying is that mitochondria, it’s not like the pancreas which produces insulin and the insulin then goes into the circulation and then goes throughout the whole body. That doesn’t happen to mitochondria.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Not the same.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Not the same thing. So, every organ is individual for that. Which organ of the body makes the most ATP?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Well, the brain. So your brain is like command central. So it requires the most ATP.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Which organ has the most mitochondria per cubic centimeter?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So this is, I’ve heard debate on this. I have heard ovaries and I’ve also heard brain. What is your thought on this?
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
As brain is high, but it’s not the highest.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So what is the highest?
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
The liver.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
The liver. So it’s funny, depending on what specialist I talk to, I get different opinions on this. So I’m sure you have some science to back this up, Bill.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, there are some studies I was reading about it when I was preparing for my heart failure blog. That’s one of the questions I asked myself, which organs have the most mitochondria ’cause I assumed the brain because it’s constantly going, but the other organ that’s constantly going has a constant demand for ATP is the heart so I was surprised. No, it’s the liver because the liver, if you think about it, we don’t see it we don’t thub, thub, thub, we don’t feel it, we don’t think it but it is there in the background working absolutely constantly. It doesn’t take a breath.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And I’m sure the brain doesn’t take a breath either so that’s surprising to me.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
But the brain is not as big as the liver.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, true.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So it’s not just a matter of density, it’s a matter of size as well. Okay, we can’t avoid this anymore.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Devices!
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So let’s go to devices.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Okay, this is your zone of genius. So we’re gonna rely on you, but I do have one of your devices here to share because I love it.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Yes. Go ahead.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So we’ve got one of your, this is the flex pulse and this delivers 200 gross with–
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Gauss
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Gauss with both of these little guys stacked together and this is actually a really important piece when you’re doing all the nutrition and the stress reduction and you’re doing the intermittent fasting and you’re moving your body and exercising and you’re reducing toxins and you’re hydrating and all of these pieces, you can significantly improve the speed and the rate at which you heal and support mitochondria with electromagnetic fields therapy. In fact, we were just talking before we started this interview today, that without electromagnetic field, the Earth’s electromagnetic field, we would really cease to exist. Mitochondria would die. And I want you to go in deep on how this works, Bill ’cause this is your expertise but this is a game changer for people. It helps not only with boosting your immune system and supporting detoxification, it helps with reducing pain, it helps with faster cellular reproduction. I mean, from what I’ve learned about PEMF from you, I feel like I wanna be hooked up to one 24/7.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
What? Well we are. It’s called the planet. Right? And the more we’re in motion on the planet, the more charge we create in our bodies. So creating charge in the bodies is not just a matter of muscle movement, creating charges crossing over field lines of the magnetic fields of the earth, anytime magnetic fields lines cross with the body, they stimulate charge production in the body as well. It’s very weak, but you’re still doing the same thing so that’s why movement becomes really important. Preferably moving horizontally across the field lines. So when you’re perpendicular to the Earth’s field lines, you’re gonna create more energy than if you’re going up a field line. So motion becomes really important. Now, magnetic field therapy, as you said, it’s not just about mitochondria. It’s about all the other functions of magnetic fields. So here’s where I can do the ad, right? The ad for the supercharge health with PEMF book. So “Supercharge Your Health With PEMF Therapy” book.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Here’s the book.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
That’s what talks about all the things that magnetic fields do and how to use them. So when you dial in a PEMF device, you’re not picking and choosing what it’s gonna do. Your body’s gonna do what it wants to do with the stimulus that you just gave your body. Like when you give your body glucose, you don’t control what’s gonna happen with that glucose in your body. Your body’s gonna use it in whatever way it knows how to use it. So magnetic feels stimulate ATP, we know that for sure. So we go back to prevention, there are three kinds of prevention, right? Primary, secondary, and tertiary
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Secondary, and tertiary
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So basic epidemiology, so primary prevention is what you were talking about, proper eating, proper sleeping, proper attitudes, proper water, all that’s primary prevention. So if you’re doing all those right, then you prevent things from happening in the first place, they just don’t happen. So medicine’s perspective is because medicine today basically is based on an insurance model and the insurance model is a catastrophic model. It takes care of catastrophes. That’s the purpose of an insurance. Insurance is not available, generally speaking for prevention because prevention never sleeps, right? You’re always preventing at a primary–
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And there’s no money. There’s no money in prevent.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, of course there’s no money in it. That’s right. But you don’t have enough money, there’s never enough money. There was an insurance company in Washington State that did an experiment with prevention and they funded like four or five different programs. They funded like five or $6 million and they got enrolled people and they gave ’em all this money to do all this prevention. It went bankrupt in six months. Why? Because it’s not catastrophic. It’s not a one time event. It’s something you gotta keep doing nutrition. You never stop doing nutrition. You never stop sleeping, but you can occasionally do acupuncture. You could occasionally do chiropractic, but there’s some basic things that you just can’t stop doing so it runs outta money. That means prevention is our responsibility. Primary prevention is our responsibility. So this secondary prevention is discovering problems early. That’s secondary. So you’re preventing it from getting worse. So you discover it early, it doesn’t progress. Tertiary prevention is helping to prevent the complications of something that’s already happened. So if you already have diabetes, ideally you wanna prevent it in the first place but if you have it, then you wanna prevent it from getting worse and then you wanna prevent the complications of that diabetes. So you got all three levels of prevention, primary, secondary and tertiary. Fortunately, magnetic field therapy does, which one does it do best?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh my gosh. Well it helps on all levels, but primary prevention, if you’re using it before any of these problems happen, it’s gonna be amazing. It also will help you if you have the disease already, it’ll help the tertiary side as well. So you tell me, Bill, which one is it best at or is it a trick question, all three?
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
That’s it, that’s the answer. All three. Which one is the best? It depends on what you got going on, right? The problem with primary prevention is you don’t even know what you’re preventing. So you don’t know where to put your money ’cause you don’t know what you’re preventing. Now, if you have a strong family history of something, then you better work harder at preventing that than if you do other things. So the good thing about magnetic field therapy, it works at all three levels of prevention. It works on the disease when it happens, it works on the complications to prevent the complications from happening. So if in terms of primary prevention, magnetic field therapy generally lifts all boats. It lifts the whole body on that tide because it’s increasing ATP. So, but the challenge with ATP is you got a nice little device there.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I do
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So what’s it gonna help?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Well, explain it Bill.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
I know you have, I know you know the answer. The answer is gonna help where you put it.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh, that’s where you’re getting at. Yeah, the location that you’re putting it on, yes. I move it all–
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Right? So it’s help all that location the most.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, I move it all around my body depending on where I wanna be stimulating for the day.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
I asked you that question about an organ producing a hormone that then released into the circulation. So if you stimulate that organ, then it’ll produce more hormone and then there’s more hormone available in the body in general. Unfortunately ATP, because of the way it’s generated by the mitochondria is a local phenomenon. It’s primarily local. So that means that you have to in fact, treat the whole body. So ideally people really need to do whole body magnetic therapy and whole body magnetic therapy typically is less powerful. The coil is bigger coil, that means the energy level drops for the same amount of energy output from the control unit. So local will give you stronger action locally, but very little ATP action distally, but because it does so many other things, local simulations still ends up producing benefits in the rest of the body as well through circulation, through immune enhancement and so on. So I think ideally from a mitochondrial perspective, ideally you really need to be doing whole body and then touch it up with local as you need it.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I have goals to have a whole body machine.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, we’ll work with you on your goals to get a whole body machine.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, I’d love to put my husband in it too. He’s a landscape contractor and he’s worked hard labor his whole life and I know his body will love being inside of one of those every day.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
I do consultations on a regular basis and yesterday somebody told me basically the same thing, she laid down on the system. Well, actually you tell us your experience at 8 AM. Why do we share that?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
4So Bill and I were together about a month ago at a medical conference and he had one of his big full body devices there and so you know, I like to look cute and I had these really gorgeous, Ferragamo high heels, nice beautiful and I was walking around the conference floor on these for a couple days. And so here we were several hours into this particular day and my feet were hurting and Bill said, “Come over here. Let’s just get you on the big unit.” So I laid down and I was sandwich between two units and I laid there for about 30 minutes. We had a wonderful talk about the meaning of life and everything. It was wonderful. And then when I got up, the pain in my feet was gone, but not just that my energy level was up like so you know how much energy it’s draining to be around that many people in the bright lights standing all day, smiling all day, just on your game. It’s a lot of energy. It takes a lot of energy to hold that much when you’re just interacting with people all day long. And I felt so revitalized, I could go on for the, we had a busy evening ahead of us. We had a dinner to go to and everything and so it was like a full refresher. It was amazing. It truly was.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
So people, one of the comments I frequently make to people, they ask me, “Well, what’s the biggest side effect of PEMF therapy?” Do you remember what I said?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Happiness?
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Close.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Was that happiness? Joy? Well, just feeling more energy. For me, it was just so much energy. But what was the thing? Remind me.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, you’re very close but that’s a metaphor. It’s the urge to put on a cape.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
That’s right! The urge to put on a cape. Yes, that’s right. It’s the urge ’cause you feel superhuman with this. You do. I felt like I could go through the rest of the day, superhuman power.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, and that fortunately that doesn’t last that long because as we talked about ATP, ATP recycles constantly so you’re constantly needing to replenish it and if you’re depleted in ATP, then doing a magnetic field treatment especially whole body without reasonable intensity magnetic field, then all of a sudden, you’re just basically zooming everything up. All the tissues now are making more ATP.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, with ATP you’re living paycheck to paycheck.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
You are, you’re living beat to beat. You are absolutely living beat to beat. All right, do you have any final thoughts? Final comment to make.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yes, so my final, really what I would say is, there’s a lot of things that you can do to support your mitochondrial health, to support lowering your risk for chronic disease, to reduce inflammation in your body and what I would say is investing in your health, it is the most important thing you can possibly do because without it, you cannot leave a legacy for your family. You cannot be productive in the world. You cannot be fulfilled. If you don’t have your health, you truly don’t have anything. And what I know from working in the Western model for all these years is what the Western model has to offer is not truly prevention and it’s not even truly healing. It’s very reactive and it’s putting bandaids on health problems and investing in your health, investing in working with practitioners who can help you get down to the root cause and solve the problem, investing in devices that you can use over and over and over again for so many conditions, it is so worth it. You will never regret. You will never regret having something like a PEMF device. I have a couple of them in my house. I recommend my clients get them. I’m recommending my family get them. It’s just, you gotta have an edge in today’s world with the amount of toxins we’re exposed to and this helps give you an edge. So that’s what I would say is get a device.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
And the sooner, the better, because I tell people all the time, magnetic fuel therapy does not raise the debt.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
That’s right.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
The sooner you start.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So that’s a key concept. The earlier you start on your healing journey, the better. I mean, you and I both know this Bill. It’s much easier to heal a child than it is to heal a 50 year old and older. It gets harder and harder and to heal our bodies, the longer we wait.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
And if nothing else, talk about cosmetics and beauty and ego and set vanity, well, PEMF therapy works with all of that as well. So instead of aging rapidly, you start to change the aging curve and it’s going to be up higher. When you do all these things, you can’t just do PEMF therapy. You can’t just do diet. You can’t just do gut. You have to look at this as a complex system and forgive yourself Forgive yourself for not knowing everything now and not being able to do everything today. Give yourself a chance. Start somewhere. The one step at a time.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
The funny thing that comes to mind too is these things cost us a lot of money and we replace them every couple years because the technology becomes outdated. You can own a device like this and spend the same amount of money and it doesn’t wear out. It doesn’t need to be replaced. It just keeps working and so really, my last words would be, really take a look at what you spend money on and that vanity piece brought that to mind, like look in your closet and the designer things that you have in there and the fancy things that you have around your house and the fancy car, are you that invested in supporting your wellness and your wellbeing and your health? And if you’re not, I would invite you to reevaluate and start spending on your health.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
Well, that’s a phenomenal place to leave, but before we do leave, tell people where they can find out more about you, or if you have other resources that you wanna point people to please.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Thank you. You can find at laurafrontiero.com. That’s like the great frontier with an O on the end. That’s how you spell my last name and you can find me on Instagram at laura.frontiero and you know, honestly, an amazing resource for all of you is this book and is Dr. Pawluk’s website. I’m all about supporting what you’re doing in the world. I mean, you have spent an entire career Bill. You don’t need to be doing this anymore. You could happily retire right now, but your love for humanity and for healing people and for passing on your knowledge is something that I really admire and so you want a good resource, go to Bill’s website because it is full of information.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
That’s drpawluk.com, but you should have heard by now if you listened to more than just this interview. Well, again, I’m honored to have you share with us. I look forward to meeting you again and learning further from each other.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Absolutely Bill, thank you for this opportunity. It’s been wonderful.
William Pawluk, M.D., MSc
It’s wonderful. Enjoy your day.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Thank you. Bye now.
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