Genetic Factors Related to Mitochondrial Function

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Hi, and thank you for having me. It’s a fun topic.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It is, and I wanted to bring you on here because I wanted somebody to really dig into genetics for us and talk about how our genes are related to mitochondrial function. I think this is a big, you know, question mark for a lot of people. So thank you for contributing to that part of the discussion.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Sure.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Good thing.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, you’re the founder of the Institute of Nutritional Endocrinology and you train health and wellness practitioners of all types to have the skills, to find the root cause of health challenges. That is so, so vital to be able to practice root cause medicine. Now, your passion is about transforming our broken disease focused system, the current system we have, into a true healthcare system. And, you know, I came from that broken system for 20 years. So I applaud you for being one of those people who is here helping to patch that system and make it truly work for people. You are well known, you’re a best selling author, speaker, internationally recognized nutrition and functional health authority. You have over 30 years of clinical experience. You have a podcast, “Reinvent Healthcare,” and you provide health and wellness practitioners around the globe to be part of the movement to provide root cause care to people in need. So thank you. Thank you so much. And we’re gonna dive right in and talk about genes. So which genes are related to mitochondrial function, Dr. Ritamarie?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

So before we dive into which genes, what I wanna say is, so many people want to spend their time blaming their genes for their dysfunctions. And I wanna say that there’s nothing about genetics that’s black and white like that. Yeah, there’s a few diseases that we find that if you have this gene, you have this disease. It’s very rare. I can count them in less than one hand. And what happens is we have, we Delta set of cards, right? We Delta set of cards that say, “Here’s how your cells, how your DNA is going to use “the cellular mechanism to create different structures, “to create mitochondrial function, “to dictate specific pathways.” But just because you have a particular gene, doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a life of misery. So in the case of mitochondria, just because you might have some of these mitochondrial related genes, genes that are related to the production of ATP, to the production of energy at a cellular level, doesn’t mean you’re gonna be just an exhausted basket case for the rest of your life, right? I just wanna make that really clear, because people wanted to say, “Oh, well it doesn’t matter whether I eat M&Ms, “or you know, green foods, I have these genes, so I’m stuck. “So therefore I might as well eat the M&Ms “and enjoy my life.”

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Right.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

That can’t be further from the truth.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Right, so I think the way that I always think of it is you might have the genes, but there’s this epigenetic switch that can be turned on and off. And you might be able to shut that off if you’re eating the greens instead of the M&Ms. Do I have that right?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Exactly. Exactly. And we don’t spend a lot of time teaching people, except when you’re doing summits like this, where you are educating people. But the world at large, the medical system, the news media, the journals, even, they’re not taking the time to say to people, “You can change your genetic expression “by the choices you make every single day.” And I think that we get, how many choices do we get to make all day long?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

All day long.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

All day long, right? And you know, if you eat, say you eat three meals a day, that’s three different times you get to choose whether you’re gonna nourish yourselves, whether you’re gonna feed your mitochondria, whether you’re gonna enable your body to make energy, or whether you’re gonna starve them, or poison them, at worst. ‘Cause, as you probably talked about in this summit, mitochondria are little sensitive critters, right? They’re sensitive to oxidative stress. They’re sensitive to chemicals in the environment. They’re sensitive to foods, and missing nutrients, and excesses of things that don’t make them work right. So they’re sensitive and we have to take care of them.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, so we’re gonna talk about which genes are related to mitochondria dysfunction or function, which doesn’t mean that, if you have this genetic predisposition, it doesn’t mean that it’s gonna be a problem for you if it doesn’t work. You talked about genetic expression, genes, can you break down, really simply, for people? And I know I talked about the light switch, but I bet you have more to add to it. What is epigenetics? What does that mean when we hear epigenetics versus my DNA, my genes?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Right, so epi means on top of, so it’s factors that sit on top of the genes that determine whether that gene gets turned on or off, right? Whether that gene is functioning in a proper way. Or whether that gene is not functioning properly. If a gene makes you more prone to a particular type of imbalance, the epigenetics controls whether you’re gonna express that or not. And what controls our epigenetics is, like I said, those day to day choices, the lifestyle choices, what you put in your mouth, what you put on your skin, the thoughts you think in your head, how you breathe, right? Everything in life affects our epigenetics. And so give you an example, some of these genes that I’m gonna talk to you about, I have what’s called well, what the general public calls mutations in genes. We don’t talk about mutations. We talk about variations. Because there are variations in genes that are actually normal. 

That are actually just what makes us different, right? You have darker hair. I have lighter hair. There’s a genetic, a SNP, a single nucleotide, or a set of single nucleotide polymorphisms, which is how we talk the language of genetic variation. You have ones that predispose you to dark hair. I have the ones that get me light hair. Does not make it, you’re damaged or I’m damaged. It means that we are different, right? But the truth of the matter is, is that, between us, you and I and everybody else out there who’s part of the human species, we’re like, 99.5% the same. And look at how different we look, right? We look very different. Yet, we’re 99.5% genetically the same. Which means that, a lot of those variations that we see physically also are manifesting variations inside the way your mitochondria work versus mine. The way your thyroid hormone creation works versus mine. 

So we have to be looking at how can we change that? No, I can’t change my hair color unless I buy a bottle of dye, right? I can’t change my eye color unless I get a pair of contacts that change the color of my eyes. There’s some of these things we can’t change. But we can make it so that the genetic variance that may cause a weakness in a certain genetic or biochemical pathway, we can make it so it’s not that big a deal. So just as an example, I’m loaded with energy. I have a lot of these genetics that predispose me to poor mitochondrial function, to poor thyroid function. Yet, I’m able to overcome them by my choices.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, I love this. This is like the whole concept of bio elevating yourself. You are literally creating the environment for your mitochondria to function optimally, because you know you could have a predisposition to them not working as well. So this is fascinating. What genes are related to mitochondria function?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Okay. So I’m gonna just do a handful. There’s probably a whole lot more, but I’m gonna show you three to five of these.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

So there’s one called UQCRC2. This is why we don’t memorize these, right? You had to go around memorizing all these things. Now you look them up on charts. And I’ve created this beautiful set of charts that I give to my practitioners in our training programs, that list the major ones. Not all 650,000 variants that we’ve discovered, but the major ones that we’ve discovered that have an effect on function. So UQCRC2 is important for the production of CoQ10 in the respiratory chain. So when we’re making the mitochondria go through these three stages, there’s the glycolysis, there’s the Krebs cycle in the respiratory, there’s all this stuff, and there’s different nutrients that are important at each place. The CoQ10 is critical in the respiratory chain. If we have a SNP there, we may not have enough CoQ10 that will feed into that pathway to make it efficient.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And real quick, just tell us what a SNP is. So that’s the first time we’re using that word in this interview, so…

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Oh, I did use it before but I spelled it out. Single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP. And what that means is when we look at the language of the genes, like we have in the English language, 26 characters, the Arabs have what, 40 something, the Chinese have like, 80 something, whatever number that’s the alphabet. So the alphabet of the genes is four letters, right? And they’re called nucleotides. Guanine, adenine, cytosine and thymine. So when you code these particular, when we look at the code at specific areas on the genes, they’ll have a specific letter associated, a particular nucleotide. One change in that nucleotide, changes the expression of that gene. So they call them single nucleotide polymorphisms. Basically, the public will say genetic defects or… They’re not defects, right? There are changes in the code. So there’s particular ones, we’re not gonna go into all the details about which letters and all that kind of stuff, those things you can look up.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, totally. I just want, because we have practitioners and health consumers watching this, so we wanna make it as simple as possible and if you want the more detailed, well, if you’re a practitioner, Dr. Ritamarie can mentor you and there’s a lot of information out there on the internet. So which genes, you’ve listed one, which other genes would you wanna list today?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Okay. So there’s a few others. there’s one called ATP5G3, and there’s a couple of other ATP type, and it has to do with the synthesis of the ATP. It has to do with the pathways involved in creating, you know, we put in glucose and we put in oxygen, and outcomes 36 ATPs, which is the energy currency of the cell. So there’s all kinds of pathways If you’ve ever looked the pathways involved in the mitochondria. There’s different pathways, and there’s different nutrients that are required. This particular gene codes for a pathway or an enzyme that is important for transporting the mitochondria, to transporting the hydrogen by adding ions into the mitochondria from making ATP. So that’s another one.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, got it. So far we’ve covered a CoQ10 one, an ATP one, what else do you got?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

There’s another one called COX5A, C, O, X, five, A. So cytochrome c oxidase 5a. And that transfers electrons from cytochrome c to oxygen in the respiratory chain. So in the Krebs cycle, it’s a cycle, and we see one chemical going to the next chemical, going to the next chemical. And we’re basically adding things on or taking things away to get to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next. And there’s a lot of nutrient co-factors involved in those pathways. So this particular gene, COX5A has to do with the transfer of these electrons from cytochrome c into oxygen in that chain. So it’s pretty important, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Right, so now we have a electron transfer gene, and then couple more, one more, two more, How many more?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

One more, one more that I’ll talk about today. And this is called NDUF. And there’s an NDUFS3, there’s a whole bunch of these, N, D, U, F, It’s basically nicotinamide, adenine, dinucleotide hydro… Hydroxy.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

That, that one. That long thing. NADH hydrogenase, dehydrogenase, okay? And it’s involved in the transport chain and the transfer of electrons from NADH to CoQ10. So like I said, there’s all these chemicals in there, niacin, this is related to niacin B3. There’s some flavanoid ones which are related to B2. There’s others related to different nutrients. And you’re just basically moving electrons along until you get, voila, magic, ATP, which is energy.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, good. You’re making this easy, so thank you. What? Okay, so let’s talk about, by what mechanism did these genetic SNPs that you’ve just listed four of them, by what mechanism do they affect mitochondrial function now? So now we’ve laid out that there are some SNPs, what happens next?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Yeah, so if you have these SNPs and they’re active now with this N, D, U, F, there’s a gazillion of them. And you can list them out in a genetic report. Some of them, they have these things called rsIDs that are, you know, used in research. And so if you have a SNP in one of these, but all the others are okay, you might have it just a slight slowing down of the function, of moving the electrons from NADH into CoQ10. If you have a whole bunch of these, then you have a much higher risk of slow down of the function. So what becomes really important, if you have any of these SNPs, any of these possibilities for slowing down this process of creating ATP, you wanna look at nutrients, right? 

So for example, with the first one that I mentioned, which is the UQCRC2, which is related to the CoQ10, we wanna look at, “Okay, well, how do we improve our CoQ10?” Right? We wanna have more CoQ10 there. So that we don’t have to rely as much on this SNP. And there’s all kinds of ways you can do it. Obviously, you can take a supplement of CoQ10, which is highly advisable if you’re on a statin, by the way, that’s another story. But CoQ10 is also rich in a lot of foods. And some of them are just common foods that we eat on a regular basis. So if you focus on getting these foods, if you have this genetic, you are not gonna see a big impact of it. And by the way, most research shows that the genetic SNPs are maybe 5% of the efficiency of the pit pathways it has to do with the epigenetics and the choices we make, that’s the other 95%.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, so there are nutrients that can actually support mitochondria dysfunction even when you have these SNPs, you just kind of mentioned CoQ10, but I bet there’s… So can everybody take CoQ10? Or is this something that we should test for to see if you need it?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

You know, you can take it. I don’t, you know, I can’t say that everybody can take it, but you can also get it from food, right? And CoQ10 is not cheap. So if you want to eat foods, I can read you off a few of these foods. I have a list in front of me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

That are common, inexpensive foods, olive oil, sesame seeds, pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, natto, which most people don’t like, but the Japanese do it well, and it’s a really good anticoagulant and really good thing, it just doesn’t taste all that good. Broccoli, chestnuts, Chinese cabbage, sweet potato, sweet pepper, garlic, tofu, peas, cabbage, millet, and buckwheat. These are all high sources, good sources of CoQ10. So if you have, by any chance, this SNP, then you make sure that you’re eating an abundance of these foods on a regular basis.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. Yeah. And that said, you made me hungry going through that list.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Oh, handful moments, a little bit on this session.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I know, right? Yeah. So what other nutrients can support that?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

So the nutrients, we mentioned already, the NAD it’s niacin. So niacin’s a super important one. So vitamin B3 is niacin. So B2, flavanoid. So FAD is another cofactor in there. Another, you know, cog in the wheel of the Krebs cycle, if you want that, that’s B2. And again, in the form of FAD, flavin adenine dinucleotide, okay? There’s a bunch of amino acids. So what that means is that you need to be eating sufficient protein, not too much, not too little, but also have good stomach acid so your body can break that out, and break down the protein, right? So it all comes down to like, all these efficiencies in the body, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, so it’s not enough just to eat the foods you gotta have a healthy gut microbiome from top to bottom to extract the nutrient, what I’m hearing.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Exactly. Exactly. And other things like magnesium, most people are deficient in magnesium because they’re not eating magnesium rich foods. So things like green, leafy, vegetables, and chocolate, it’s a good way to get it, but most people are eating their chocolate on, you know, it’s not done in a very good way, you can eat a… I eat a hundred percent chocolate. I just eat a hundred percent, right? Because it’s good. It’s a good source of magnesium. It’s got some good calming neurotransmitters. A little bit of caffeine, but not enough to really damage the cells.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, most people are eating their chocolate with antinutrients mixed in.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Yes, with sugar, and milk, and preservatives, and hydrogenated oils, and whatever else. But you get a good piece of dark chocolate it’s gonna support your mitochondria.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That is so good to know.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Isn’t it?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I feel a bit better about my dark chocolate love. So you mentioned B3 and B2, so niacin and B2, flavanoid. Can you talk a little bit, if you happen to have a list in front of you, of some of those foods that would be supportive, I mean, this is so helpful for people to know. “How can I get it naturally?”

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Yeah, so I don’t have a list in front of me, but off the top of my head, the B vitamins are high in things like whole grains. And I know a lot of people don’t eat grains because they’re trying to, you know, go keto or paleo or whatever, but they are high in those foods. They’re high in nuts and seeds. They’re high in legumes. And guess what? Green leafy vegetables. So they all have a fair amount of the B vitamins, especially B2 and B3. And if you’re drinking alcohol, you especially need extra of this because alcohol impairs the utilization of the B vitamins, right? That’s why a lot of the alcoholics get that, you know, the DTs and all this kind of stuff, because they are depleted of these nutrients, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, and then if you’re a meat eater, you can get some B vitamins there too.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

You can, absolutely, yes, definitely.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And these amino acids. Now, amino acids are really plentiful in animal products, but you can get them in plant products too.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What would suggest for amino acids? Because those are so important for mitochondria.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Yeah, my favorite source is hemp seeds. It’s got all your necessary amino acids. I use nuts and seeds. I there’s a lot in vegetables. I was just showing somebody on, there’s an app called Cronometer and I was showing her how she can increase, she’s plant-based, a hundred percent vegan, and she’s like, “Oh, what do I eat for extra protein?” And we just took these things and put them in her diet and the Cronometer app added it up two cups of broccoli, two cups of dinosaur kale, and it gave her an extra, almost 10 grams of protein, right? And that’s a fair amount. So really, eating whole foods, you’re not gonna get a lot of protein in fruits, you’re not gonna get it in candy bars, you’re not gonna get it in those kinds of foods, but you will get it in whole foods. Plant based or animal based.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So supportive. And that’s what we’re hearing over and over again on this summit, is eat foods in their whole form, stay away from processed food. So on that note, what are the foods that hurt mitochondrial function when these…

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Oh, those poor mitochondria, they’re so sensitive. They, you know, things that we just totally need to avoid. So sugar, right? Obviously. Talk about processed food, it’s the ultimate processed food. It’s just the fuel taken out, without the proteins, without the B vitamins and all that. And B vitamins are, like we said, super important for the mitochondria to function. Trans and heated fats, not just the stuff that says partially hydrogenated soybean oil, in Jiffy peanut butter, or the commercial peanut butters and other things.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What? Jiffy peanut butter is bad for us?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Yeah, partially hydrogenated, to say nothing of the aflatoxin and all the other kinds of stuff that’s in there. But we don’t have to go there.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And the sugar…

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

And the trans fats, right? Margarine. Mayonnaise. We had this whole shift like, “Oh, saturated is very bad.” And everybody stopped eating butter and started eating margarine. So we discovered how bad margarine is. It’s damaging,. But also heated fats. So a lot of people talk about like, “Oh yeah, just throw it all in the oven.” Or like, making keto cupcakes. And we’re using high omega-3 and six foods in the oven, at 450 degrees, and baking them, and that creates oxidative stress. It creates oxidative byproducts. And the mitochondria are extremely sensitive to that. So I recommend if you’re going to heat, well, I don’t recommend oils, I recommend whole food plant based fats as opposed to oils, right? The vegetable oils and all that. But if you are gonna make a stir fry, use something like, olive oil or coconut oil, because it’s more stable, it’s not gonna break down at those temperatures.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, higher smoke point. 

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

And don’t eat your fats, just eat them in the raw state. MSG, right? We see that a lot. You got a Chinese restaurant syndrome. Ask about it before you eat foods at a restaurant. Because a lot of places are putting it in. Plus, any food that has hydrolyzed vegetable protein. That’s MSG guys, right? Damaging your mitochondria, the preservatives, the additives that are in there, the artificial colors and flavors.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So on that note, if you’re reading a label, it might not say MSG, it might say hydrolyzed vegetable protein to trick you. Because there’s this movement of don’t eat MSG so you’re looking at something and you don’t realize, oh, it’s just another way to say MSG.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Exactly. Exactly. And there’s a lot of that, you know, deceptive food practices, unfortunately abound, because the companies are not out for you to be healthy. They’re out for them to make a profit. And they quite frankly, don’t really care much about you being healthy.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s really hard to wrap your mind around, right? Because you think, “how could somebody “be putting out products and taking my money “if it might hurt me in the long run?” And by hurt you, we’re talking in this talk about hurting your mitochondria, turning on those epigenetic switches.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Exactly.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And they are gonna stand responsible for that. So you have to do it yourself.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

You have to do it. Exactly, and that’s why, you know, educating yourself by coming to things like this kind of summit, where you’re hearing from a lot of experts in the field that I don’t have a financial gain. If you eat white flour and hydrogenated oil versus you eat whole foods, I don’t benefit either way, except for my heart because I wanna see you healthy, right? But these companies are not like that. So you really have to read your labels because it’s really, really important.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And not even that. Eating in restaurants is really tricky because, they might say on the menu, they say all the right things, they say it’s a grass fed, whatever it is, or it’s a wild cod or it’s with, you know, farm to table fresh, you know, organic vegetables. But what are they cooking it in? And what are they putting in the sauces? I mean, even these restaurants that are touting really healthy ingredients, they are in the business of making money. That’s that is their point. They want you to come back. They want you to be addicted to their food. So they do put ingredients in there that stimulate your brain, get you excited. And they also use cheap seed oils because it’s expensive to cook things in avocado oil.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Exactly.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And ghee and olive oil.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Right. It’s all. And that’s what they’re going to use. They’re gonna use those processed seed oils because they’re cheap, canola oil is very common and very cheap and they can get them in huge bags. And be careful, ’cause sometimes they just reuse them over and over.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, especially for frying. Exactly.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Right, right. Exactly. Yeah, not good. Not good.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so we’ve really talked a lot about food. In the time that we have left, if we could go a few more minutes of just talking about, what are some of the other lifestyle things. Because you mentioned, you know, lifestyle will very much support keeping these genetic SNPs off.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Right, right.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So what else would you say, when you’re working with your patients or your teaching practitioners, what are your top recommendations?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

A couple of things. I’m gonna start with breathing because oxygen is so important, right? Oxygen plus glucose, fed into the mitochondria, plus all the nutrients, the B vitamins and the amino acids, equals energy. So if you’re not breathing, if you’re doing that shallow breathing because you’re stressed out, you’re not fully oxygenating. That’s important. So breathing is, you know, it’s critical and yeah, we can’t live without breathing, but we don’t necessarily thrive from the kind of breathing that we’re doing. So that’s what I would look at, is breathing. Number two, sleep. Sleep is one of the most damaging things that you can do, lack of sleep, to your mitochondria, right? And what a lot of people don’t realize is that mitochondria produce some of that melatonin and mitochondria require good amounts of melatonin. So if you’re getting, you know, short sleep and you’re going to bed late, and you’ve got all the blue light coming into your eyes, and you’re not making enough melatonin, that can cause damage to the mitochondria. And overnight what do we do? We detox, right? We cleanse the cells and the mitochondria are very prone to oxidative stress. So if you don’t have enough sleep, and you don’t spend enough time in that mode of cellular debris cleaning, then poor mitochondria aren’t gonna work very well.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

No, not at all.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

And that’s very important.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So breathing, sleep, food, stress, what else?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Stress is super important. And when you’re under a lot of stress, your body produces cortisol. Cortisol and melatonin don’t play well together, so it affects your sleep. Cortisol causes your body to mobilize storage sugar stores, places where you’ve got it in your muscles, in the glycogen in your muscles or the glycogen in your liver or the fat stores. And it mobilizes that so you can run away from hungry tigers. Well, I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had a hungry tiger chasing in me recently, right? Most of the stress has to do with that soft stress, as we could say. So it’s really important to get enough mindfulness practice going on. The breathing, appreciation, meditation, yoga, things like that, to dissipate that stress and get your cortisol levels to where they should be.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This has been so good. Anything else you wanna throw out before we wrap up?

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

I wanna throw out alcohol.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Okay.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Because I see it a lot in the healthy people, people who are into health drinking organic wine. Well, number one, it plays with your blood sugar and it throws off, you know, the whole insulin thing. And if you don’t get the sugar into the cells via good insulin receptivity on your cells, you are not gonna be able to make energy in the mitochondria, ’cause you don’t have the raw materials. You don’t breathe right. You have a lot of sugar coming in. You have insulin resistance. So we really wanna stay away from alcohol because it damages brain cells, it damages liver cells, it damages the gut lining, it thins out the mucosa and the gut, and so we don’t get all those nutrients absorbed as well. So those are my main ones. I know, I’m no fun.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

No, but this is really important, to say the things that are no fun, because you know, people are here because they really want to shift their health, they want to have high energy. They wanna be productive in their lives. They want good health. They don’t want, I mean, they’re, oftentimes, helping their aging parents deal with health problems and they wanna do what they can. So just know that you are not your genes. You don’t have to go down the same path. You can absolutely control an aspect of this. Thank you for making the conversation about gene so easy to understand, so simple, and so hopeful. I think that’s the central theme here is there’s so much hope for people.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Yeah. And it’s all comes down to choices, right? You set your mind on what you want most. Do you want chocolate cake most or do you want a lot of energy, and longevity, and good health? And then, you make choices around what you want most. And when you make those good choices, you feed your mitochondria, you don’t damage them. You have more energy to do all the things you wanna do. And I’m gonna say one last thing because people think of energy as, “I have energy, I can go hiking. I can do this and that.” But it’s more than just the external expression of energy. It’s cellular energy. Do your cells have enough energy to bring the nutrients in and push the waste out? And every single system in the body relies on good cellular energy for all the pieces of that system.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m so glad you said that. The way that I explain that, in my lower brain, is that we have physical energy that we notice, the energy that we feel throughout the day, and then we have invisible energy, and that’s what’s happening in the cells and that’s what’s making our lungs work, and our heartbeat, and our food digest and our brain think, and our nerves fire, and every aspect of everything that happens in our body. It’s so invisible. And we don’t realize it. We only realize what we feel. But there’s so much more going on that we just don’t have a sensation of. Well, then, what happens is you get chronic illness and then that’s really the sensation that things aren’t working.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

That’s when it comes out. But then it’s been going on for so long and it’s harder to reverse. Because the body’s pretty resilient, but once it gets past the point of no return, it’s harder. And when you start to see the symptoms is a sign that something’s been distressed for a long time.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thank you so much. Can you share with our audience where they can get in touch with you? Where they can find your work and, yeah.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Yeah, absolutely. So my consumer work, my for the public work is at drritamarie.com and I’m on Facebook, Dr. Ritamarie on Facebook, and Instagram, and YouTube, and all that. And I’m pretty active there. And then, for practitioners, INE method the Institute of Nutritional Endocrinology method, inemethod.com and that gives you more information about what we do for practitioners.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Perfect. Perfect. And just one last thing I wanna say, I get to see you multiple times a year. And I will say to our audience that you walk the walk and talk the talk and live the life. When we are at events together, and retreats, and masterminds, and all the things that we do, you are actually living the lifestyle that you just explained here. So I just wanna acknowledge you and say it doesn’t go unnoticed. You are healthy all the time.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Thank you. We try, I work at it. It’s like, it’s most important thing to me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You’re an inspiration.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Thank you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thank you, Dr. Ritamarie. You take good care. Bye now.

Ritamarie Loscalzo, MS, DC, CCN, DACBN

Thanks. Bye.