Understanding Mitochondria and Fluoroquinolone Toxicity

What Are Mitochondria and How Fluoroquinolones Affect Them

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In today’s episode, Dr. Hugh will talk about mitochondria and how they play an important role in your health. This episode is especially helpful if you’ve been affected by antibiotics like fluoroquinolones, which can damage mitochondria.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• What are mitochondria?
  • Mitochondria are the energy makers of your cells. They help produce power so your cells can work properly.
  • Each cell in your body can have between 15 and 2000 mitochondria, depending on the cell type.
• How do fluoroquinolone antibiotics work?
  • Medications like Cipro and Levofloxacin target the DNA of bacteria, stopping it from copying itself. This is how the bacteria are killed.
  • However, these antibiotics can also damage your mitochondria because your mitochondria have DNA that is similar to bacterial DNA.
• Why are mitochondria at risk?
  • Unlike the nucleus of your cell, which is well-protected, mitochondria have ring-shaped DNA that is exposed.
  • This makes it easy for antibiotics to damage mitochondria, leading to long-term health problems.
• What happens when mitochondria are damaged?
  • Damaged mitochondria can cause nerve pain (neuropathy) and make you feel tired.
  • Mitochondria also help cells decide when to live or die, so when they’re harmed, it can cause your cells to stop working properly.

Dr. Hugh explains how fluoroquinolone antibiotics can affect your body by targeting the mitochondria. If you’re struggling with side effects from these drugs, this episode will help you understand why and how to begin your path to recovery.

Transcript

You're listening to the True Recovery podcast. Where there's help, there's hope. Hosted by Doc Hsu, a functional medicine doctor with over 20 years of clinical experience helping people recover from chronic, long term health conditions.

Welcome podcast listeners. This is Doctor Hsu and you are listening to episode number three. And today what I want to do is I want to start a series of mitochondria. You know, mitochondria is really hot right now in the functional medicine world. And there's a lot of patients that come to me and want to know all about their mitochondria. So today, what we're gonna be talking about is exactly that. We're gonna be talking about mitochondria, and we're going in depth on exactly what the mitochondria is and how it affects your brain and how you can get better. So one of the things I kind of want to start off is, is with the fluoroquinolones, the antibiotic that pretty much has damaged damage. Tons and tons of people out there. And if you're listening to this podcast, it's probably, you know, you've probably been damaged as well. So one of the things is this, this drug here, it actually goes after the DNA of the bacteria. Now, way back when when we talk about the cell wall and we talk about penicillin, I don't know if you if you remember that as I'm 48 years old here at the time of this recording, but penicillin was it was it was coming from mold. Right. So what penicillin did is penicillin attacked the bacteria, the outer cell wall of the bacteria. Now, this the new classification of these medications, the fluoroquinolones, like Cipro and Levofloxacin, they work in a whole different mechanism.

They actually affect the bacterial DNA. The bacteria have DNA in them. So what happens with this medication is it affects the DNA of the bacteria. When it affects the DNA of the bacteria, the bacteria cannot replicate and reproduce. And this is when the cell actually dies. The bacteria dies. It's because you need the DNA. If you don't have DNA, you actually die. It's like the DNA is the life code of our cells. The DNA is what tells our cells what to do. It's the blueprint of how the cell should function. So if you have a medication that can actually kill or actually stop the DNA replication, then that bacteria is going to die. So that's a that's the new medication on these on these bacteria or on antibiotics. And this is how it really affects the bacteria. Now the thing is with the human beings like we're actually talking about human beings is this affects your mitochondria. Now what happens within your mitochondria is just to give you a perspective. So every cell in your body has mitochondria. And I'll be getting to this in a in a minute because your mitochondria have DNA in them. So the mitochondria are the power house houses of the cell. Now a lot of things people say, oh, mitochondria. It makes it creates power to the cell and it does create power to the cell. But more significantly than that, it does lots and lots of other intercellular communications that, that that mitochondria need to be.

Well, we need well mitochondria. Now what happens is the mitochondria itself has a whole bunch of DNA in them. Now if you remember back to cell biology, you have the cell itself. And then you have the nucleus. And then the nucleus is where you have all the DNA. Now what happens if you've ever opened up a golf ball, right. If you've ever, like, cracked open a golf ball, you're going to see basically it's a whole bunch of like, rubber bands wrapped around to create a golf ball. So when we talk about the nucleus in your body, like the nucleus in your cells, and that's where your DNA is, that nucleus. And the DNA is very, very tightly wrapped, just like a golf ball. The golf ball has an outer shell that's very hard. And then. And then you should Google the inside of a golf ball, and you're going to see if you've never seen the inside of a golf ball, Google it and just see what it is. It's basically a whole bunch of rubber. It's a rubber binder, a huge long rubber binder wrapped around in a ball to create a golf ball. And then they put this plastic shell on it. Now, why is that so significant? Because your DNA within the nucleus is very protective. That white coat, just like the golf ball, is very protective.

It's hard for the fluoroquinolones to get into the cell nucleus, penetrate the wall and affect your actual human DNA. Right. This is the actual human DNA that tells your body who you are and, you know, expression of life. Now, one of the things is that if you if you take the DNA of a cell of an eyeball or the DNA of a bone or a hair tissue, you can actually create a whole new you, right? This is pretty amazing stuff. So that DNA within the cell nucleus is very, very well protected. Now let's go to your mitochondria. Your mitochondria have a whole bunch of DNA. So for example, let's say we're going to talk about your nerve cell. A lot of people have neuropathy when they've been Floxed. Now within one single cell one single nerve cell, you have one nucleus with all your human DNA. And then within that one cell you have anywhere between 15 and 2000 mitochondria. Between 15 and 2000 mitochondria are in each single cell. Ladies and gentlemen, that's amazing when you think about how much energy production, how much inner cell communication that these mitochondria do between the mitochondria and tell the cell when to die and when to live. The mitochondria does it. It tells the cell when to live and when to die. Now here's what happens when you have the fluoroquinolone toxicity. When you've taken these medications, what it does is remember it goes after the DNA just like the bacteria.

It goes after the DNA and affects the DNA replication of the bacteria, therefore killing the bacteria. Now, you know, research shows evolution wherever you stand in this whole process, they feel that that bacterial DNA and mitochondria, human mitochondria, come from the same genetic line. All right. But my whole point in here is when we talk about mitochondria, your mitochondria has lots and lots of round cylinder DNA. Just like a ring. Like if you put if you're married, if you wear a ring. So just imagine that the DNA is like a ring. There's a whole bunch of ring structure DNA that's not protective. They're just floating around. It'd be like if you have a small little rubber band, small little rubber band in your mitochondria, and that's the DNA. And that DNA tells the mitochondria how to function and what to do. But here's the kicker thing that mitochondria is not protected. It's not like the cell nucleus where the human DNA is at. That's not like that. These Mitochondria are these DNA molecules, these these ring structure DNA in the mitochondria are just hanging out. They don't have a protective coat on them. So what does that mean? What does that mean to you when you take these these antibiotics, it completely destroys your mitochondria because it gets in the mitochondria. And then it sees all it sees all this DNA replication, right? It sees all the DNA, the DNA.