The Cellular Mechanisms of Stress | HOMe Podcast #027
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Why do mitochondria treat viruses, toxins, and stress the same way?
Your mitochondria cannot tell the difference between a virus, a toxin, and a relentless email inbox. All three get read as the same thing, danger. When that danger signal never turns off, your cells do exactly what they're built to do. They hunker down, they stop producing energy, at full capacity at least, and they wait for the all clear. So if you're exhausted for like no obvious reason, your cells aren't malfunctioning. They're just waiting for you to tell them that it's safe.
Welcome back to the Health Optimization Medicine Podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Sher, board-certified internist and health optimization medicine doctor. Joining me today on our clinical panel are Jodi Duvall, naturopathic doctor and home practitioner, and Dr. Alan Buchatz, chief of emergency medicine and home doctor.
So today we are opening this month's theme on stress with a cellular deep dive, as we always do. Is your fatigue actually your mitochondria trying to save you? So we're unpacking Dr. Robert Navajo's cell danger response, the ancient hardwired program every cell runs when it perceives a threat and why so many of our patients are stuck mid-program.
I'm so glad you said that, Jodi. Mid-program reminds me of like a stalled computer.
And
that framing overall takes us right into our first mandatory comparative reframe, functional medicine versus home hope, salutogenesis. So in functional medicine, they approach chronic fatigue and inflammation by hunting for the trigger. the toxin, the pathogen, the deficiency, by suppressing or removing it, that's how the care is rendered. And it's legitimate. And in some senses in Home Hope, we actually ask similar questions. But we actually ask a fundamentally different question here. We ask, what are the conditions that the cell needs to safely complete its danger cycle and return it to a full bioenergetic output?
Ellen, that brings us to our $64,000 clinical question of the day. Why do patients with completely normal labs still present with profound fatigue, brain fog and exercise intolerance?
And we see this all the time in clinical practice, Jody, coming to us with normal labs in quotes, right? It's because normal labs measure structure, not signaling state. A cell can be structurally intact and still be metabolically paused in the cell danger response. Standard labs weren't built to catch a mitochondrion that's deliberately downshifted ATP output because it still perceives the environment as unsafe.
Yeah, Dr. Scott's exactly right here. So The patient's sitting in front of you, right?
Why can patients feel extreme fatigue and brain‑fog even when standard labs are normal?
We see it all the time. The blood work is clean. Their imaging is clean. We check some of just the basics of their endocrine system, and nothing is in crisis. And yet, they still can't get through a workday. We use terms like adrenal fatigue or my adrenals are burnt out. But in fact, the mitochondria themselves are actually running this legit defensive program here. And nothing on a standard panel is designed to see things like pure energetic signaling or a stalled metabolic phase.
So on that note, let's go deep on the mechanism, Alan. So walk us through the three phases of the cell danger response.
All right. So I like to think of it like a construction site after an accident, right? So we have phase one, CDR1. That's the, we'll call it inflammatory lockdown state. That's, it's glycolytic. So ATP gets released extracellularly as that pure energetic alarm and immune cells get called in and the site overall gets fenced off. So think of it like when you fall down, you scrape your knee, what happens, right? Immediately, You get pain, it gets red, it gets tender, and it gets swollen. So you're splinted and you're instructed biologically not really to move it. CDR2 is proliferative. So we have cells that are now dividing. New tissue gets laid down and the crew starts rebuilding. We carry on our analogy. That's now our scab is forming, right?
And we're having a little bit of pain, but we know that it seems to be filling in, we'll just say. But there still needs to be care taken because the skin is not necessarily intact.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why do mitochondria treat viruses, toxins, and stress the same way?
0:00–2:45
2
Why can patients feel extreme fatigue and brain‑fog even when standard labs are normal?
2:45–5:55
3
How does the Cell Danger Response (CDR) differ from traditional functional‑medicine approaches?
5:55–8:56
4
What are the three phases of the Cell Danger Response and what does each phase look like?
8:56–10:24
5
How can hormetic stressors like zone‑2 exercise or temperature exposure help complete the CDR?
10:24–12:28
6
What is the step‑by‑step protocol for moving a stuck cell through its danger cycle?
12:28–13:49
7
How does extended‑exhale breathing provide a parasympathetic safety signal to mitochondria?
13:49–14:08
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Health Optimization Medicine Podcast
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