“How can I get my old energy back?” Have you heard anyone say that recently? Yes, me too (mostly myself!) so I was rapt to attend a science and beauty event yesterday that has a brilliant solution to getting our energy back with a breakthrough made right here in New Zealand, at the University of Otago. These brilliant people have learned how to combat the enemies of energy by creating MitoQ for mitochondrial health to fight free radicals with these powerful antioxidant supplements and a face serum. It has gone from zero to a multi-million dollar business, had over 200 papers published, and over US$50 million invested in its research.
The speakers included Dr Kathleen Wills, ‘Nano-girl’ aka Michelle Dickinson, and Dr Mike Murphy, researcher at Cambridge University and inventor of MitoQ, followed by a Q&A session with the MitoQ team.
Dr Kathleen Wills says that at her Westmere, Auckland practice, energy is the most common complaint, despite normal blood results of patients. How can they get their energy back? they ask her. Cellular energy comes from mitochondria in our cells. Interestingly, women rate their energy levels lower than men do – we do so much, and feel a lack of energy. The enemies of energy are age, stress, broken sleep, sickness, and jetlag. The key to combating these enemies of energy, is mitochondrial health.
Michelle Dickinson asked the question, “Why can’t I live forever?” There’s huge pressure from media, and TV, to look young and we want to have lots of energy. We age due to cell damage, from free radicals, which come from things such as cigarette smoke, UV damage, and pollution, and these free radicals are highly reactive and destroy DNA inside cells and mitochondria. As we age, free radicals continue to destroy code in our cells. The “magical fix” is antioxidants. They react with free radicals and create a bond and protect and repair the DNA. (Excellent. That’s sort of magic fix I need.) Michelle showed us an apple she’d cut in half before the talk that had gone brown from oxidisation on one half, but the half in lemon juice (Vitamin C, an antioxidant) had not gone brown. If only it was as easy as drinking lots of lemon juice for us, she said!
Thirdly, Dr Mike Murphy spoke on the invention of MitoQ. Cells have thousands of mitochondria, which produce ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) using the energy stored in food. We need mitochondria working well to function, in fact, cyanide works by stopping the mitochondria from working, thus killing you. We want to block the damage around mitochondrial malfunction so they function more efficiently. Coenzyme Q10, Vitamin C and so on are very good but not at slowing down damage. So why is that? They’re not getting into mitochondria, he said. With MitoQ, they’ve managed to get into mitochondria 800-1200 times better than regular CoQ10.’ They’ve now done over 200 studies with it and got evidence of it blocking diseases – when mitochondria go wrong, many body processes e.g. the heart, liver, and others, are damaged. Unsurprisingly, scientists around the world are very interested in this. People lose 5% of their energy each decade, and 10% of our mitochondria each decade, but can bring energy back into cells using this supplement, he said.
Below: Beauty, health and lifestyle media at Spark Lab for the launch event.
Delicious healthy lunch with raw fish and salads and risotto, from Seafarers.
The benefits are for those aged over 30, as mitochondria start to deteriorate from our late twenties. There’s no point in teens and children taking it as their mitochondria are still fine. At present there are two products on the market, the face serum ($149) and the supplements ($75), of which you take two capsules each morning. Four more products are coming later this year. See www.mitoq.com to buy or for more information.
Megan Robinson
7th March 2015
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