When it comes to maintaining your health and preventing disease, the important role played by your mitochondria cannot be overstated. If your mitochondria are not functioning well, your health is sure to be suboptimal. Your mitochondria also influence your longevity.

Furthermore, your mitochondrial health has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s. While there are a number of diet-based ways to boost and sustain these vital cellular powerhouses, the stearic acid found in grass fed beef is one of the best.

What Are Mitochondria and Why Do You Need Them?

Mitochondria are important to your health because they are, in simple terms, the powerhouse of your cells. They actually produce about 90 percent of the energy generated in your body.

Because your body is an energy system through and through — in fact, absolutely everything that happens in your body from muscle contractions to cell regeneration requires energy — the health of your mitochondria has a great bearing on your overall well-being.

As stated in the journal Nature, “Mitochondria are involved in a variety of cellular functions, including adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) production, amino acid and lipid biogenesis and breakdown, signaling and apoptosis. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and aging.”¹

Given your body’s many functions, your mitochondria are continuously being called on to supply energy. Any time you have a decrease in energy production, your bodily systems are affected and may begin to break down.

As mentioned, your mitochondria help coordinate apoptosis, or programmed cell death, which ensures the death and removal of malfunctioning cells that may otherwise survive, multiply and wreak havoc if left unchecked.

In that regard, dysfunctional mitochondria are thought to be the driving force behind chronic diseases like cancer. While not all free radicals are harmful and your body needs some to be healthy, most of the superoxide radicals formed at the level of your mitochondria are harmful. This is why you need to minimize them.

Efficient Fat Burning Can Help Minimize Mitochondrial Damage

The best way to support your body’s battle against free-radical damage is to transform it into an efficient fat-burning machine. That was the premise of my book “Fat for Fuel,” which details strategies designed to minimize the production of excess, damaging free radicals while maintaining the biologically important ones.

It’s becoming increasingly clear the standard American diet, which represents a total divergence from our ancestral diet, is causing the majority of this cellular harm. Specifically, the choice to ingest massive amounts of processed, unnatural foods and excessive amounts of added sugars, industrial fats and net carbs is fueling untold mitochondrial damage.

High-carb, processed food diets prevent your body from efficiently burning fat as its primary fuel. Burning fats and ketones is far more efficient and induces much less oxidative stress than burning carbs.

If you want to optimize your mitochondrial health, you must provide your body with the right fuel. Once you become an efficient fat burner, you will minimize the oxidative stress placed on your mitochondria, thereby improving your overall health.