Mitochondrial Damage: Can it be repaired?

Yes.

Drugs designed to target one aspect of aging also seem to help repair DNA damage and regulate gene activity, preventing them from going haywire with the stresses of time.

"In principle, we now could have a way of reversing the effects of aging," said David Sinclair, a Harvard University gerontologist and co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a company best-known for its development of an experimental drug called resveratrol.
Resveratrol and similar compounds activate an enzyme called SIRT1. The enzyme rejuvenates mitochondria, the machines that power our cells. Mitochondrial breakdown has been associated with many age-related diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and dementia. Several labs in addition to Sirtris are researching compounds that target mitochondria.
The new findings suggest that SIRT1 fixes DNA in addition to mitochondria.

Sinclair's team found that unless SIRT1 enzymes gathered at sites where DNA had started to unravel, other DNA repair proteins failed to arrive. This allowed damage to progress, eventually causing dormant genes to come alive, a process called deregulation.
Some researchers think gene deregulation is a cause of aging: As cells get older, they produce less SIRT1, ostensibly becoming less able to repair faulty DNA and suppress the dormant genes.

But in mice either given resveratrol or genetically engineered to produce extra SIRT1 on their own, repairs went smoothly and quickly.
"One idea of why we age is that DNA becomes damaged or mutated," said Sinclair, lead author of the research published Wednesday in Cell. "But perhaps the main culprit is the effect of genes switching on and off, and that should be reversible."

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What to do? Detailed information for chronic fatigue patients but useful and informative for all to follow is in a pdf - here.
http://www.ijcem.com/files/IJCEM812001.pdf

Supplements of Alpha-lipoic acid, L-carnitine and Co-enzyme Q10 to restore mitrochondrial function http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/25/health/he-skeptic25

Scholarly articles on ALCAR treatment can be accessed at Mitochondrial.net, here.

One protocol in an individual with mitochondrial disease called for the following:
Alpha-lipoic Acid (ALA) 300 mg 2x/day
Co-Q-10 200 mg 2x/day
Creatine Monohydrate powder 2.5 gm 2x/day

Margot Kidder Battles Stigma

Natural Health article
Margot Kidder's
SEARCH FOR SANITY*

by Karen Dale Dustman

Margot Kidder made headlines as Lois Lane in the 1979 movie "Superman." In 1996, she hit the news again -- when she was discovered ragged and hungry in the backyard of a stranger's Glendale, Calif., home.

Convinced her former husband, writer Thomas McGuane, and the CIA were out to kill her, Kidder roamed the streets of Los Angeles for 1-1/2 weeks, eventually sharing food and a cardboard shack with a homeless man named Charlie. By the end of her delusional episode, the actress was almost unrecognizable. She had lost the caps on her front teeth, chopped off her long auburn hair, and swapped her Armani suit for a homeless man's dirty T-shirt and pants.

Kidder has bipolar disorder, a condition marked by alternating episodes of depression and mania. (The manic phase can produce psychotic symptoms as it did for Kidder.) Born in 1948 in Yellowknife, a mining town in Canada's Northwest Territory, she spent almost 20 years of her adult life seeking treatment. After her 1996 incident, Kidder realized the conventional therapies she was receiving weren't working.
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That article was written years ago.... Kidder has been well with orthomolecular medicine for FOURTEEN YEARS. Here is an article about Kidder from 2008.

The actor downplays the time in 1996 when she went missing for three days in Los Angeles and was taken to a psychiatric ward when found dishevelled, dazed and fearful in a stranger's backyard.
"If I were a cancer patient, I would today be considered cured," said Kidder, once diagnosed with bipolar disorder. "I haven't had an episode in 14 years."
Food allergies, the environment, air and water pollution, toxins, a vitamin deficiency, drugs, lack of sleep, low blood sugar and gastrointestinal damage can cause emotional problems, she said.
"The list goes on. Such things can cause mood swings, delusions and even people hearing voices.
"The reality is that you can have 10 people with manic depression and they can have 10 causes that cause their symptoms.
"Pharmaceutical companies make millions of dollars, but are only interested in producing drugs that dampen symptoms."
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