Are Mitochondria Causing Mental Illness?
Learn about these friends with benefits inside your cells and how they help… or go terribly awry
A billion and a half years ago, a bacterium crept inside a larger, single-cell organism and didn’t leave. We don’t know what benefits each partner in this relationship were betting on, but we’re living with the legacy of that symbiosis to this day. That ancient bacterium evolved into the mitochondria which provide the electrochemical energy to fuel our cells.
For decades we’ve been calling “mighty” mitochondria the “powerhouses” of the cells. These intracellular, membrane-bound cylinders are usually just a tenth the size of the cell nucleus, or even smaller. Mitochondria are vital to our everyday functioning and health, but they’re under constant attack and can use your support to help keep them vital.
Through a long series of chemical reactions, the mitochondria produce useful, transportable energy for all of the cell’s needs, in the form of a molecule called ATP. The long chemical process to make ATP also moves electrical charges from molecule to molecule. Biochemists call some of these charged molecules “reactive oxygen species” because they contain oxygen and have a strong tendency to interact with, and damage, other molecules in the body.
