Bio-Optimize Your Mitochondria for Better Health and Energy

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Thank you, Kashif. So good to be here.

Kashif Khan

We did have a couple discussions about mitochondrial health. We’re going to break that down a little further because you have this sort of eloquent way of diving in and helping people understand this complicated topic. And it’s such an important thing that we need to talk about. We understand more and more now that what we used to think, there’s other things to focus on, we’re learning that if this is where you put some attention, that all of a sudden everything gets better, you start to heal, the cells function better, everything is like, “Wow, this one switch I could have turned on or off could be good or bad for me.” So, let’s break it down. First of all, in simple terms, what are we even talking about here?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Yeah, I’m so glad that I get to break it down for you. ‘Cause I know you’ve talked to a Ari Whitten, Dave Asprey, super bio hacking, amazing guys, all about going deep into the science and my superpower as a Nurse Practitioner is to really help people understand this in a way that they could explain it to their kids. Because it’s really complex stuff. And I can remember when I was in biology class, everything was going good, we were dissecting worms, we were doing all this fun stuff and then we talked about mitochondria and the CREB cycle and ATP energy production and my head exploded and I checked out and went, “This is awful. This is really boring stuff.” So, it’s my mission to make it simple for you. 

So, think of mitochondria like your life force. And they’re called the powerhouse of your cells because they’re responsible for around 90% of energy production. And I know you’ve heard that before, but how can we make this really simple for you? So, I like to connect mitochondria with house plants. Everybody has a house plant, right? And location, living conditions and function of the house plant is how we’re going to compare with mitochondria. So, basically let’s talk about location first. When you think about a house plant, it is living in a pot, on a shelf or on a window sill or hanging in a room. So, that’s kind of the micro climate that it’s in, and it’s in a bigger space of the room itself. So, it’s in a kitchen or it’s in a bedroom or it’s on your patio or it’s in the living room, which is within your house. So, same thing with mitochondria. So, mitochondria is within a cell. So, the smallest place that it can be, just like the house plant is in a pot. So it’s in this cell, it’s in all the cells of your body except your red blood cells. And then from there, it’s in an organ. 

So, think of that synonymous to the room that the plant is in. So, it’s either in your brain or it’s in your kidneys or it’s in your liver or it’s in your pancreas or it’s in a muscle. I mean, it’s somewhere in your body. And then the greater structure is your body. That’s synonymous to the house. So, you follow? This is how mitochondria are located. And here’s the thing, mitochondria are suited for certain areas of your body, just like plants are suited for certain areas of your room. So, maybe some house plants are going to do really well in the moist bathroom. And some are going to do really well in the bright kitchen. Well, some mitochondria are suited for your brain and some mitochondria are suited for your heart. And some mitochondria are suited for your liver, for example. So, super similar.

Now, let’s talk about living conditions and this is fun, because giving the right conditions, mitochondria will thrive and grow and even reproduce. And so do house plants. And mitochondria are fragile. If you withhold what they need, they’re going to die or they’re going to malfunction. And house plants are exactly the same. They die or they limp along. So mitochondria and house plants, they really need the same things. They need clean water, they need sunlight and they need nutrition. So studies show, even if you talk negatively to house plants, they’re going to have stunted growth and the same for your mitochondria. If you live in a stressful, negative life, if this is your environment, you’re going yield a lower mitochondrial function. 

So you see? We’re just like, house plants. Now, last thing I want to compare is function. So, we all know that having house plants in your environment, have a positive benefit to our health. They create life giving oxygen. They help remove toxins from the air and mitochondria do something similar. They create life giving ATP energy that’s needed for every cellular function in your body. Plus, they even assist in the detox pathways to help your body flush out toxins. I mean, mitochondria have a list of functions and those are just two main functions. So, there’s my analogy on how you’re made like your mitochondria or like house plants, they’re finicky little things and you better treat them well, or they’re not going to make it.

Kashif Khan

Honestly, if somebody can just hear those few minutes that we just went through, it’s like these hours of conversations that you’ve been hearing on all these different podcasts and reading and magazines, you took the piece that people actually needed to know and made it make sense. It all makes sense. And then there’s a lot to unpack there. For example, you’re saying that if you look at a different organ system or different part of the body that mitochondria is actually different, they’re not suited for various jobs and they do very specific things.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Absolutely, so your mitochondria, you have a more higher concentration of mitochondria in your brain and they are going to function differently than the mitochondria that are in your liver, which are really good at helping you detox. And so, you can’t put a liver mitochondria into the brain and expect it to do the same function or to function the same. So yes, your mitochondria are suited for the different areas of your body and depending on what that organ does and the importance of that organ and how vital it is to your health and your life, you’re going to have a different concentration of mitochondria as well. Body’s a pretty smart thing.

Kashif Khan

That’s amazing. So the energy production, that’s the thing that we know high level about. So, is that also localized, like suppose a certain organ is whatever, for some kind of stress or pressure?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Exactly and so for energy production, everybody’s always thinking like, “Okay, this energy production is important, but what if Kashif, I feel like I have decent energy throughout the day? I don’t think I really have a problem with mitochondria because I don’t feel a midday slunk.” Well, so I like to break energy down into two pieces. So, there’s the energy that we physically feel. There’s the energy that gets us through our day. We’re doing our job, we’re taking care of our families, we’re creating whatever we’re creating in the world and we either make it through the day with energy until it’s bedtime, or we feel tired and we want to drink an extra cup of coffee or take a nap or take a supplement to boost our energy. That’s the kind of physical energy that we feel. Then there’s this whole invisible energy and that’s the energy that’s required for all the cellular functions. 

So, the invisible energy, you’re not aware of the energy that you’re creating to breathe or the energy that you’re creating for your heart to beat, or the energy that you’re creating to digest your food or to move toxins through the body or to move your little pinky or to get up and walk across the room. So, that’s invisible energy. And that’s ATP, I like to think of as a currency. So, it’s like you put money into the vending machine to get out the candy bar and not that I’m saying anybody should eat that, we all have a visual, we’ve all bought something out of a vending machine before. So you put the currency, the money, let’s say it’s 50 cents into the vending machine and you get out the candy bar. 

Well, ATP energy, you can think of it like a currency. So to move my little finger, let’s just hypothetically say that this requires five units of ATP energy. But for me to get up and walk across the room and go out that door, that’s going to take, say 50 units of ATP energy. I’m making this up and I know some really smart scientists somewhere can tell me exactly how many units of energy it takes to do that, but that’s the currency exchange. And so if you think about it, to answer your question in your brain, this requires a lot more, it’s more expensive to run your brain than it is to run another part of your body. And so this is the most important thing, ’cause this is Grand Central Station. It’s telling your whole body what to do. So, this is really expensive energy up here. It takes a lot of it. So yeah, different energy is produced in different parts of your body.

Kashif Khan

So, when you think about things like brain fog or mood and behavior issues, could that be rooted in just not having enough power?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

It could be rooted in not having enough power and it could also be rooted in toxins. It could also be rooted in infections. So, that’s a loaded problem. But a lot of times when you start producing more mitochondria, you support your mitochondria and get them working better. One of the first things that you might notice is brain fog gets less. But, there’s probably some more work to do, underlying the root cause of what’s causing the mitochondrial dysfunction in the first place and removing that is going to help with the brain fog as well. But definitely, if you’re not making enough ATP energy, if you don’t have that currency to spend on thinking, on your cognitive work that’s going on in your brain, then your brain’s not going to work so well.

Kashif Khan

And so when you talk about dysfunction, do we literally think of this as a condition? Like, are my mitochondria misfiring or is this the result of poor choices, like environmental choices? How do you get there?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Yeah, so when you think about the link between mitochondrial health and dysfunction or another way to think of that is chronic health problems or the symptoms that you’re having, we need to look at the cascade of steps of mitochondrial damage. So, let’s talk about how we damage them. And really the first thing I always say is genetic predisposition. And this is your area of expertise, you’re born with your genetics. And we can also flip on and off our epigenetic switches and we can cause dysfunction with our genetics. So, there’s that genetic predisposition and also what we’re doing that can change how we’re reacting and then there’s the aging process. So, we kind of don’t have control over aging. That’s going to happen. We can control how well we age and I would say some of us tend to age in reverse, but so some things that you really have control over though, sedentary lifestyle, are you moving your body? Are you sitting? 

Do you have chronic inflammation? And we can talk about inflammation and where the big source of that is coming from in our body. But inflammation is a big source of mitochondria dysfunction. It’s probably one of the things that mostly influences mitochondria and then high blood sugar levels, hyperglycemia is disruptive to your mitochondria, a poor diet with sugar and processed food. Non-organic food, food containing pesticides and chemicals. And then there’s nutrient deficiencies. So, either you’re not taking in the nutrients you need, or you’re not able to digest the food to move the nutrients around to the body. Nutrient deficiencies will cause that mitochondrial dysfunction, chronic stress, sleep deprivation, and then this whole cascade of infections. And as I’m saying this, what’s coming to mind is, I’m saying this whole entire list is the same thing that affects our epigenetics, right Kashif? 

Thinking like, “Yeah, this is the business that I’m in. This is all related.” So, solve all these problems and you’re going to solve a lot of problems in your health. You’re going to fix your epigenetics. You’re going to fix your mitochondria. You’re going to fix your gut health, but let’s talk about infections for a second, ’cause this is a big one. We’re talking about that cascade of mitochondrial dysfunction infection. So, I’m talking viral, like Epstein bar, hepatitis, herpes, COVID, bacterial problems, infections typically occurring in the gut, the urinary tract or really anywhere in the body but these kind of low simmering chronic infections and then fungal candida and then parasites, which is a big one. And people always think, “I don’t have parasites, I didn’t travel to a third world country, I didn’t go take a trip through the tropics.” And we kind of chuckle because parasites don’t know the difference between the line between this country and the next, they’re everywhere on planet earth. They’re in our bodies of water, they’re in humans, they go across the world. We fly parasites from one side of the world to the next side of our bodies. 

Our pets have parasites, the food we eat has parasites. So, that’s a big problem. And then environmental toxins. So, everything from your cleaning products, your body products, your beauty products, toxic candles and air fresheners that you’re burning or using in your house. The toxins that come from industrial waste and manufacturing, toxins in our water or food, radiation, electromagnetic fields, heavy metals, mold microtoxin. So, this is the first step in hurting our mitochondria. So, we’re exposed to all of these things and this leads to something called metabolic instability. So, metabolic instability is when you have this lower energy productions, think about your ATP bank account, that currency. That currency of energy goes down and then the cells start releasing more waste. 

So, damaging free radicals and waste that needs to be carried away in your detox pathways. And you have this increased oxidative stress, which ages us and lowered antioxidant production. And so that’s kind of the first part of the cascade. And then this leads to dysfunction and metabolic inflexibility. So, now you have dysfunctional energy production. So, all that energy you need in your brain or the energy that you need to move your finger, get up and walk across the room, you’re not making the energy that you need. So, it might be energy that you feel or energy that’s invisible that you don’t notice. And then you have four poor fatty acid metabolism. So, our cells love to use fatty acids to make energy. It burns clean, it’s the most efficient. So, think of it like you’re super unleaded gas. It’s the best fuel for our cells. 

So, you get this poor metabolism and this metabolic inflexibility. So, you can’t respond to your body’s demand, the metabolic demand and choose the best fuel source, which would be key tones over glucose, which I’m sure you have people talking about that too. And then you get protein damage and oxidative stress. And finally, finally, now we’re at chronic disease. So, that whole cascade of things happens. Now, you’ve got cardiovascular disease, cancer, you’ve got Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and metabolic syndrome and things like Lou Gehrigs and muscular dystrophy and epilepsy and autoimmune disorders and autism, fibromyalgia. I mean, it just goes on and on right, Kashif?

Kashif Khan

This is crazy, ’cause what you just said. So, you started by saying that we’re going to hear something similar to what we talk about. And the cascade you described is exactly what we talked about, but they’re parallel to each other, meaning that we talk about this, you’re talking about metabolic instability. We talk about it in terms of metabolic inflammation. That we know that all of what you discussed leads to an inflammatory state. We know that inflammation is a root of many diseases. The chronic wounds specifically. So, you’re literally walking the same path, just we’re parallel two sidewalks next to each other, but maybe they compound each other or maybe it’s one or the other, but the same environmental loads, food loads, stress loads, lack of sleep loads that we weren’t designed for get us there. And they get us to the same outcome, chronic diseases. So, how does somebody know if this is their reason? If this is their why? I have this and this and this and I have multiple conditions and nobody can fix me. Nobody can help me. Do I need to focus on my mitochondria or is it something else?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

That’s a really good question. This is where functional lab testing really comes in. So, taking a really good health history from birth until current time, really spending the time to dig in and find out what are the big events in your life that led up to it? And most of the time when you take people through this, they will identify, “Oh yeah, when I was 32 years old, I had this crazy thing happen. And then a year later, my health just fell apart and I’ve never quite been the same.” So really trying to figure out and identify what that thing was. And maybe it was a toxic exposure, a chemical exposure or a mold exposure, or maybe it was a highly traumatic experience where something really bad happened to you emotionally. So, getting that health history and then pairing it with functional lab testing. And I know you specialize in DNA testing and that can really tell you the direction to go to support people. 

In terms of mitochondria, we’re looking at something like organic acids test, which tells us how well those mitochondria are functioning. Are they building energy or not? And you learn a whole bunch more things about people when you do an organic acids test as well. And then from there you can start to replace deficiencies. And the other thing is finding out what your toxins are. So, this is why I like to think about it. We can identify nutrient deficiencies on organic acid testing, but we could replace deficiencies all day long. But what causes deficiency oftentimes is toxins. So, toxins lead to deficiency. So, I think of giving nutrient supplements as a way to give you a quick win, let’s get you feeling better and get you ready for the long game, which is the removal of toxins. So, it’s almost like a bandaid, but it’s a natural bandaid giving you supplement and nutrient support when we find mitochondria decline, but we really have to get under what’s causing the problem. And what’s leading to that sickness of the mitochondria, what’s leading to inflammation in the body and what’s causing gut health because it’s all interconnected.

Kashif Khan

So, you’re dealing with those triggers that are causing that metabolic instability you’re talking about. So, that’s like consulting, let’s dig in and let’s find the stuff that you didn’t know was the problem. Are you also doing anything to support the mitochondria itself or do you need to, or do you just get rid of the load?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Oh no. So, there’s all kinds of things you can do to support. And it’s funny because it’s so parallel with the work that your company does as well and the things that you do. A bunch of things, you can eat a nutrient rich diet. So, you want to eliminate the refined sugar and the processed grains and the bad fats and the case and the gluten and the artificial ingredients and eat greens and vegetables and herbs and fruits and nuts and seeds, legumes, all these healthy things, meat, I’m a huge fan of eating grass fed and wild cot and hormone free meat, clean protein, organ meats are really good for your mitochondria as well. And then the way you eat matters. So, intermittent fasting and extended fasting is actually really good. It helps you purge damaged mitochondria through a process called autophagy. It helps you get rid of damaged debris and accumulated reactive oxygen and nitrogen species. And really is like cleaning house when you’re doing intermittent fasting and then maybe not do it forever, but for a short term, keto diet can be really supportive for resetting and helping mitochondria because I talked earlier about how your body really wants to burn key tones for fuel, it’s more efficient. 

And so getting on a high fat, low carb diet can oftentimes reset your system. And you can feel kind of lousy if you try keto and you don’t feel good, it probably means you need to do some gallbladder and liver work. You probably have some sludgy bile and you need some support, but working with a practitioner to help you with that. But the way you eat can be important. And then of course, moving your body and getting exercising. Studies actually show that you get around a 50 to 80% increase in mitochondrial capacity and activity in people who exercise. So, that’s really important is getting up and moving your body and finding a sweet spot where you’re not overdoing it, because remember, if you have a decline in mitochondria and you go and you’re doing some really hardcore athletic training, you might not have enough ATP energy to support that. 

So, finding something that’s actually going to work, I don’t recommend really heavy athletic training unless you are a professional athlete, but you got to work up to that. And then reducing stress, getting good sleep, getting sunlight, getting into red light therapy. And then there’s something called mitohormesis, where you’re stressing the mitochondria and you’re doing, for example, a cold shower or cryotherapy or a cold bath, which is actually really supportive at getting rid of weak mitochondria and resetting everything. So, these are some of the things that we can do. And then there’s lots of nutrients that you can take in terms of supplements and support. So to answer your question, yeah. I mean, there’s other things you got to do.

Kashif Khan

Yeah. We think, I mean, they call it the biohacking or functional medicine type conferences, even two years ago, you didn’t really see supplement options for mitochondria but all of a sudden, there’s a lot of them and there’s some very specific brands that that’s all they do.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

There are. Everybody’s coming up with their perfect mix of the types of nutrients that really support mitochondria. So, things like CoQ10 and El carnitine and B vitamins and magnesium and like alpha-lipoic acid, for example, respiratoria, cumins, you’re finding all of these in these mitochondria formulations.

Kashif Khan

Yeah. And you’ve spoken of something that we don’t hear people often talk about when they’re focusing on the cell or the mitochondria is the connection to the gut. And that’s a place where I think we should dive deep into because I’ve never heard anyone talk about that before.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Yeah, I think this is a really important piece. In fact, in all of my programs, we start with gut health because if you don’t get that piece cleaned up, you’re going to be on this never ending hamster wheel of trying to fix. You might boost your energy up, you’re feeling good, you’re feeling good and then you crash again, and then it’s coming around, you’re feeling good, you’re feeling good and you’re crashing again. So, it’s really simple to understand. We know that all food goes one place first. It goes in your mouth and into your gut, where the food is digested, broken down into smaller parts so your body can use these nutrients and move it all over the place for energy production and all cellular functions in the body. But here’s the thing, your body cannot do any of it without the help of your microbiome. It’s really central to all of this. And your microbiome is made up of the community of bacteria that live inside of us. 

Plus, the immune and neurological axes, you’ve heard of the gut, brain axes before that regulate everything, that help communicate with your body. And so our mitochondria are basically stimulators of that same immune and neurologic system that interact with the gut. So without the mitochondria, the gut and the neuro system doesn’t communicate and with the gut being imbalanced and full of inflammation, the mitochondria aren’t working well, so they can communicate adequately with the neurological systems. So for example, when we get food poisoning, it’s the communication back and forth between the mitochondria and the bacteria and your microbiome, the microbiota that regulate the immune system response. So, the microbiota has to say, “Hey, red flag, we’re sick over here.” 

Mitochondria get that communication signal and let the immune system know, “Start battling.” And so is a really important link. And what goes wrong in the gut is that whole concept of leaky gut or dysbiosis. It drives inflammation. So, when you have an overgrowth of pathogenic, bad bacteria, viruses, parasites, something like that, inflammation increases, and it’s damaging the mitochondria. And it’s damaging the cell wall between your bloodstream and your gut. And you’re getting leakage of toxins and undigested food and all kinds of stuff into the bloodstream. Your body is now launching a immune inflammatory response against that. And that inflammation is damaging to mitochondria. So, you can see it’s just this big never-ending cycle. And if you don’t fix that really foundational piece, we all have to eat. I mean, intermittent fasting and fasting is amazing, but we can’t fast forever. We have to eat, we have to fix that system where the food goes in, or we don’t have hope. Yeah, it’s central to healing mitochondria.

Kashif Khan

You said something there that I want to make sure I heard it properly. The bacteria in our gut is foreign. It’s third party residents, symbiotic type stuff going on, they’re communicating to our mitochondria?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Yes, they’re communicating, they’re sending signals, mitochondria is picking that up. Mitochondria is communicating with our immune system and you have one piece missing and everything disregulates, and it doesn’t work.

Kashif Khan

Actually this foreign entity that’s living in you, that’s there to leach off the food that you’re eating is also supporting you by communicating back where you need to get some work done.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

So, amazing that it’s all happening by design.

Kashif Khan

That is incredible. I’ve never heard that before. Yeah, amazing. Yeah and so when we talk about eating the wrong foods that are misaligned to your, call it your traditional, what you were meant to have in terms of your flora, what it should look like, and then the wrong flora flourishes. So, it’s not just about what we talk about when we read this here, it’s kind of like, “Hey, you’re eating sugar so the wrong bacteria is flourishing, and now you’re going to get some toxic excrement or some kind of biproduct effect of that.” But you’re also killing off, call it, these guys in your gut that are supposed to be communicating and telling your body what to do, here’s what’s going on in the gut and that communication. So, it’s kind of like an exponential effect.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

It is and the day that I finally realized, “Oh my gosh, I cannot just focus on gut health, we have to focus on helping mitochondria.” Now, fortunately, a lot of things that we do to support gut health, simultaneously support mitochondria. You can kill a lot of birds with one stone when you’re eating healthy, when you’re moving your body, when you’re reducing stress, when you’re doing red light therapy, when you’re doing all these things we talk about, that’s the good news. You might be listening to this thinking, “Oh my gosh, this is so much to do. There’s so many pieces.” It all gets better when you do these simple things.

Kashif Khan

Do you recommend a particular gut test? And I ask this because a lot of them and the bigger ones that you see marketing themselves well seem to be premature in their science. Meaning that you download the app, you get your results then you log in four months later and it’s completely different results.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

I am so glad you asked this because I have this whole thing about gut testing. So, technically I don’t need a gut test to help you. But people do better if they see data. Because we can know from your symptoms what’s happening, you got an autoimmune disorder, you’ve got a history of cancer, you’ve got heart disease. I promise you, you’ve got leaky gut. I promise you. But people want to see data. And so, some of the gut tests that came out early on are really simple to understand. They show you, here’s the healthy commensal bacteria. This is what the population looks like. Here’s the opportunistic bad bacteria that’s overgrowing, here’s signs of parasites. Parasites are really hard to find. I want everybody to know, just ’cause you have a gut test, it doesn’t show parasites doesn’t mean you don’t have parasites. They’re masterful at hiding from your gut test. And then here’s a marker for inflammation. 

And here’s what we’re seeing with your pancreatic enzymes. And so I can look through that and say, “Okay, we need to support digestion, we need to give you something to help remove this bacteria that’s overgrowing, we need to support the good bacteria.” But then you have all these tests that are coming out on the market now that are double the price, that are a mile long report. And I even look at it and go, “Oh my gosh, this is like mental masturbation here.” People spend lifetimes just studying each of the bacteria and what they do. Is that really going to help you as the consumer to know what each individual bacteria is responsible for or are we more looking at the big picture? We need to support the good guys. We need to knock down the bad guys. We need you digesting and we need to get rid of that inflammation. I really don’t see the value in my practice and when I work with people in having all that nitty gritty detailed 50 pages of information, is that really helping people? I don’t know. What are your thoughts on that?

Kashif Khan

We see that every day, every day. There’s a couple questions. First of all, I don’t want to know if I’m getting Alzheimer’s, that’s the number one genetic rebuttal. Because people that say that don’t realize that we’re not also telling you if, but we’re also telling you what to do about it. So, there’s a solution. The number two is how many genes do you test for? Is it a full genome sequence? Is it a thousand genes, 2000 genes? And my answer to that is if I gave you an encyclopedia of your 22,000 genes, what are you going to do with it? Most of them, we don’t even know what to tell you about them, but we’ve literally carried it down to the hundred or so that matter, that are actionable. And yes, you can data bank. If you’re going to scan your DNA, you can scan it. ‘Cause one day we may know what all those genes actually do and what they mean. But there’s core systems. 

Anytime you talk to anyone that deals with medicine, functionally, that truly gets to the root cause and figures out your why and helps you get rid of that source, it always comes down to the same stuff. There may be a different path to get you there. It could be, genetics could be gut, could be whatever, but it’s detox, it’s inflammation, it’s anti-antioxidation, it’s, what’s going on in the gut, what’s going on in the blood. So, and we already know what drives all that stuff. And then it comes down to the recommendations, environmental health, nutritional health. Even lifestyle, what are you doing in terms of over-oxidating yourselves with cardiovascular exercise? Those types of things. So, we have different paths to sort of, here empirically prove it, here’s why you should do what I’m saying. And it isn’t an encyclopedia of genes or an encyclopedia of gut bacteria. ‘Cause most of it doesn’t mean much. I 100% agree with you. How valuable do you think it is when you get a result back from a gut test that tells you chickpeas are your super food, don’t eat kale, do we know enough yet for that to be true?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

That’s a great question. I don’t know that we know enough for that to be true. And people I find that when we go deep down the food wormhole, people get discouraged. They become fearful of eating. They’re afraid, they get paralyzed with what should I eat? How should I prepare it? How do I avoid it? They stop socializing, they start becoming what their families and their friends call high maintenance. And I don’t know that we’re doing people a service by doing that. A lot of times, if we seal and heal the gut microbiome and do some pretty basic stuff, all of a sudden foods you couldn’t tolerate before, start to be tolerable. I’ll give my own example. 

So, I did food intolerance testing early on in my own journey and found out that I was having a reaction to egg whites, dairy, sugar, baking soda, like the trifecta of baked goods. I couldn’t eat a muffin because I had eggs, baking soda and sugar reaction. So I mean, obviously I shouldn’t be eating a muffin to fix my gut, but my story has to do with dairy. So, I spent a period of time working on my gut, removing parasites, really restoring and healing and guess what? I can tolerate dairy now. And so it’s almost like you know when you eat certain things you feel kind of bad, avoid those things, the ones that give you the big symptoms and don’t get too caught up in the rest of it because I don’t think it’s healthier to be paralyzed about what to eat or not to eat. I don’t know, what are your thoughts on that?

Kashif Khan

Yeah, that big challenge for everyone, which is the answer to that for most people is in that time when they’re already sick. So, they’re already too close to that threshold you’ve caused yourself so much inflammation and so much damage that you’re hypersensitive now. So, if you wind that down, you weren’t sensitive when you were six years old. You could do a lot more, your energy levels were different. And the question becomes, how do I give you that? How do we take you back to that vitality you used to have? Where you weren’t intolerant, you didn’t have migraines and you didn’t have eczema and all this stuff. So, that’s my simple answer to that. 

Which is, if you try and measure in a sick state what you’re intolerant to, you’re intolerant to everything ’cause you’re already sick. You’re so inflamed, you’re so metabolically unhealthy that you can’t, and now we’re learning from you that also your mitochondria is struggling to such a sort of extreme level that your cells also can’t tolerate what you’re doing to your body, but unwind all that. And then all of a sudden you can tolerate a lot more. You have the energy, you can fight through things, whatever. And then the one key factor and people get this when it comes to food and they get this when it comes to chemicals. But I don’t think they consider it when it comes to the health of the cell and the mitochondria, ’cause there’s nothing visceral, there’s nothing you feel, you don’t even know that that’s something to do.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

It’s invisible. Yeah.

Kashif Khan

Yeah. It’s Invisible. That’s exactly the thing you said in the beginning, it’s invisible energy. People need to understand that you don’t feel it, your organs feel it. They’re suffering and struggling and you wonder why you get sick. So where does somebody start? Suppose like, okay, we’re just going to assume everybody has mitochondrial problems, everyone that’s listening today, what do they do today?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Today? So, can you get up and go take a walk today for 10 minutes? Can you do that? Can you just move your body a little bit? Can you take a look at what’s in your pantry and choose to, “Maybe I’m going to eliminate some of this convenience, easy foods that I’ve been relying on and I’m going to eat something whole today.” Can you just extend, well, here’s a simple one, can you close your kitchen down at 6:00 PM and don’t go eat anything right before bed, get out of there and actually create a fasting window where you go at least 12, 13, 14 hours? It’s super simple, if you close your kitchen down and commit to not eating, just drink water if you feel like you need something have some herbal tea or something like that. 

But that would be so amazing for your gut, your gut needs to rest. Your mitochondria need that fasting to regenerate and to get rid of the broken mitochondria that aren’t working. I mean, these are simple things. Not super hard stuff. Can you be dedicated to a sleep routine? Can you be dedicated to shut down work and shut down being on at a certain time of night so that you make sure you get at least seven hours of sleep? And we didn’t even go into that, but sleep is critical. We know that most people need at least seven or more hours of sleep per night. So, if you’re not getting that, if you’re getting six hours regularly, just extending to seven hours a night, could make a huge difference for you.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, I feel that on a daily basis. So, literally on the days, I end up going in these sort of like a trend of like sleeping too late for like a week. And I kind of nudge myself along. I can do a little more work, I can watch a little bit more Netflix and then I burn myself out. And the day that I sleep the extra hour, the next day is completely different. One day fix and I can feel it. It’s like this sensorial like, “Wow, that extra hour literally changed my life.”

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Right and so then it’s building the muscle and not just doing it occasionally, but making it happen every day. And every day that you build this muscle and you create this new routine for yourself, you’re one step closer to healing your body, to removing these chronic health conditions, to fixing the mitochondria, to fixing your DNA, to fixing all of it.

Kashif Khan

Yeah and the amazing thing is everything you’re saying, it’s not like go spend $20,000 on a treatment. It’s stuff you’re already doing, just do it properly. And it’s free.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

That stuff is free, yes. There’s definitely for people who get, I would say, don’t come to me for the $20,000 treatment until you’ve done this piece. Your $20,000 is going to go a lot longer and further and faster, because I mean, people who are toxic and sick, you can expect to spend thousands of dollars on. I mean, you lived into this, you’re going to live out of it. And I’m talking about the investment in supplements and infrared sauna and maybe a PEMF device. And I mean, I’m sure you have people coming on and talking about that. I mean, all these things you can do to accelerate to biohack, to get over that hump and reverse the damage and reverse the aging process. That’s an investment, but do all the free stuff first, get ready to work with your practitioner. Because when you come to me saying, I’m sleeping eight hours a night, I cut out the processed food and the refined grains and the sugar, I’m getting out and taking a walk for 20 minutes a day, I shut my phone off two hours before I want to go to bed, I’m doing all these things to support, I’m intermittent fasting now, I’m shutting the kitchen down at six o’clock at night. Now you’re ready to work with me. Now you’re ready to do the deep stuff and remove the toxins and fix your gut. You’re going to be successful at that point.

Kashif Khan

So, people can actually work with you?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Oh, yeah.

Kashif Khan

I should even like let everyone know. I’m sure after listening to this hour, they’re like, “Well, okay, how do I call Laura?”

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Yeah. So you can find me at www.laurafrontiero.com. It’s like the great frontier with an O on the end. That’s how you spell my life. And you can find me at laura.fronteiro on Instagram. And I’m sure you’ll have a link somewhere where people can find me on this summit.

Kashif Khan

We’ll share that. We’ll make sure everyone gets that. What does that look like that before we close, just to give people a flavor, what to expect?

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Yeah, all different levels. So, I work with people at a low investment level, all the way up to a VIP, they want regular access to me levels. So, the simplest way to work with me is to get into one of my programs where we do a gut test for you and you have weekly calls with a group of people who are going through the same thing for accountability. And we take you through the protocols to rebalance and support your health and clear up the gut infections and restabilize everything, and then start pulling toxins out of the body. And of course we work on all these lifestyle things as well, but most people are already doing those free lifestyle things by the time they come to me and what they found is, they’re doing the free lifestyle things, and they’ve had a level of success, but they want more. So, that’s where we come in and bring in the more advanced strategies to get you where you want to be.

Kashif Khan

This is awesome. So literally, right before we started, I thought, just like you said, “We talked to Dave and Ari about mitochondria, what else are we going to learn?” So it’s amazing, people needed to hear everything you had to say. And we are really appreciative that you came to share because of your knowledge and people you’re helping. And I would urge anyone again that feels like this sounds like them, should reach out. So thank you, Laura for joining us.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

Thanks Kashif. It’s been great.

Kashif Khan

We’re going to share, again, your Instagram, how to reach you. Anyone want to connect, we’ll make sure that they have access and thank you again.

Laura Frontiero,  FNP-BC

You’re welcome. Bye.