Our mitochondria evolved from ancient bacteria called archaea to drive the power for our cells. They are our power plants. They contain 37 genes that provide the code to make the energy to instruct our DNA in the nucleus of our cells on how to run what I like to call our apps or software. These “apps” include two important processes called autophagy and apoptosis. Autophagy (which literally means eat yourself) is cell cleaning/ healing and apoptosis is cell death or suicide. As we move through life we must constantly clean ourselves or run the dishwasher and tell old cells to die. When this doesn’t happen efficiently, we get inflammation or even cancer from cell growth that is uncontrolled.
Mitochondria serve as quantum sensors for the world around us (for more on quantum, go back and read the la
st blog post). They use electrons from food to create a molecule called ATP. This ATP is the body’s supply of energy, and in the world of quantum physics, energy is information. It is required for all neurological functions, including voluntary processes like walking or lifting your arm (known as conscious thoughts) and involuntary processes like breathing or beating of the heart (known as subconscious, autonomic, or what I call automatic thoughts). These are the bodily processes you don’t have to think about.
Almost 1.5 billion years ago, one single-celled organism engulfed another, and the bacteria that was “eaten” became the energy producer for the other cell. This is called the endosymbiotic theory of evolution. As with everything in nature, things have to work together to evolve. As evolution progressed, so too did the amount of ATP or energy which allowed for growth of multi-celled organisms and the development of thought or consciousness. Today our mitochondria function to produce almost unlimited amounts of energy. Enough to keep us moving all day every day-- enough to keep us alive for over 70 years. This allows for extensive amounts of information storage when you think of the quantum definition that this energy contains information from the interaction of the subatomic particles (as discussed in last blog) with the Higgs field. (The Higgs field is a field of energy all around us that gives rise to the mass or matter that makes up all of our atoms, molecules, cells, and so on). These mitochondria allow us to make enough ATP to store memory so that we can perceive time. More ATP means more memory means the better we are at perceiving time. It is our memory that allows us to know what to be fearful of so we know to avoid it next time we experience something. Memory has been used as an evolutionary driving force to keep us alive.
Mitochondria interact with the environment to direct traffic and communicate the needs of the cell with the DNA in the nucleus, influencing gene expression. They can turn genes on and off that protect against damage, trigger metabolic reprogramming of the cell, and induce autophagy or apoptosis, amongst many other functions. Autophagy is cellular cleaning or what I like to call running the dishwasher. Apoptosis is programmed cell death or cell suicide. Our cells must die so that we don’t get things like tumors or cancer. Mitochondria influence DNA or our genetic blueprints through epigenetic (above genetic or environmental) changes, resulting in different genes turning on and off without rewriting the code itself. Think of mitochondria like a power plant and the DNA code like the blueprints for your building or body. These organelles not only produce energy for our bodies, but they also orchestrate nuclear DNA and cell function altogether, serving as the mediators between the environment (including light from the sun) and the cell. The light from our sun is perhaps the biggest influencer of our power plants. They literally feed off of the information it gives them, telling them what time of day it is and when to perform what duties.
The density or amount of mitochondria per area varies in different organs and cell types. The amazing female egg has the highest density of mitochondria of any cell in the body, with roughly 600,000 mitochondria per egg. The egg requires this many mitochondria to jumpstart the human zygote. The second highest density of mitochondria is in the brain, which utilizes 20% of the body’s total energy every day. The brain uses about 12.6 pounds of ATP in a carb or sugar burning state everyday! Next is the heart, followed by the immune system and musculoskeletal system. Without the immense amount of ATP or energy produced by the mitochondria, we would be unable to live, let alone store and process information. It is our very mitochondria that enabled us to evolve from single-celled, flagellated organisms to our current state in human evolution.
As ATP production allowed for us to evolve into complex organisms, the development of vision and the nervous system enabled us to store and process information. This evolution was dependent on a molecule called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which is an omega-3 fatty acid found in seafood. DHA is a key part of both the eye and the brain. It serves as the core of light receptors, which convert energy from light into electric impulses that can be transmitted along the nerves.
In 1921, Albert Einstein won a Nobel Prize for something called the photoelectric effect which converts the energy from light into electricity. Often, as in almost always, things discovered in the sciences are the reverse engineering of things happening in the human body. This is the case in this situation. Our eye or retina literally takes the packets of energy called photons from the light to convert it into the electrical impulse that allows us to see or have vision and coordinate the information in the light to our mitochondria or power plants.
This spark of energy transfer is what stimulated the evolution of the nervous system 600 million years ago, increasing in complexity and leading to development into fish, amphibians, mammals and eventually humans. There is an abundance of DHA in the brain, which is what allowed for the development of self-awareness and complex thought, otherwise known as consciousness. While use of most molecules changes over the course of millions of years as organisms adapt to function more optimally, DHA is one of the few that has been retained as a primary component of the nervous system and eye. In other words, it is so efficient at its job that it has never been replaced. Because DHA is a vital component of vision and cognitive function and is most highly concentrated in seafood, this supports the theory that the vision and neural function stemmed from the ocean.
In addition to transmitting signals, DHA can modulate the expression of hundreds of genes in the central nervous system. This means that DHA can cause epigenetic changes to the brain, including turning on and off genes that control hormone release from the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), or the brains’ timekeeper. Human evolution and perception of time and ability to store memory dictates that our brain must be saturated in DHA to entangle light from the sun. We cannot live as evolved conscious beings without this quantum connection. The light plays our DNA like a magical symphony through our mitochondria or the grand conductor of our biology. And each day we rise to greet the sunrise we are brought into a state of flow, so strong so powerful over time you can begin to feel this amazing connection to the light.
References:
Nunn AVW, Guy GW, Bell JD. The quantum mitochondrion and optimal health. Biochemical Society transactions. 2016;44(4):1101-1110.
Lane N, Martin W. The energetics of genome complexity. Nature. 2010;467(7318):929-934.
Martin W, Mentel M. The origin of mitochondria. Nature Website. https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the- origin-of-mitochondria-14232356/.
Crawford MA, Leigh Broadhurst C, Guest M, et al. A quantum theory for the irreplaceable role of docosahexaenoic acid in neural cell signaling throughout evolution. Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids. 2012;88(1):5-13.
Crawford MA, Bloom M, Broadhurst CL, et al. Evidence for the unique function of DHA during the evolution of the modern hominid brain. Oléagineux, Corps gras, Lipides. 2004;11(1):30- 37.
© 2021 by Courtney Hunt, MD, PC
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