Fascinating. I wonder if there will soon be a way to culture your mitochondria externally in order to give you extra, maybe it could help with diseases like chronic fatigue.
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Beyond athletic performance and chronic fatigue, some neurologists and psychiatrists have recently suggested that every mental disorder (literally, the entire DSM) has a single underlying cause: mitochondrial dysfunction. If that's true, mitochondria transplants could solve the mental health crisis.
(2014) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24845118/
"Evidence suggests that alterations in mitochondrial morphology, brain energy metabolism, and mitochondrial enzyme activity may be involved in the pathophysiology of different neuropsychiatric disorders"
(2021) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8291901/
"we provide a focused narrative review of the currently available evidence supporting the involvement of mitochondrial dysfunction in mood disorders"
(2022) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36181925/
"Increasing experimental evidence supports a role for mitochondrial dysfunctions in neuropsychiatric disorders. "
(2024) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497...
"We summarize the existing literature on mitochondrial dynamics perturbations in psychiatric disorders/neuropsychiatric phenotypes"
While psychology today ain't a scientific journal, they provide an excellent summary, providing that evidence is both widespread and well known. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-therapy-center/2...
Dr. Chris Palmer's book "Brain Energy" is a good introduction to the body of research. Dozens of pages of citations, you can judge for yourself how well-considered they are. - "Mitochondrial dysfunction has been found in a wide range of diagnoses that include pretty much every symptom found in psychiatry".
"Pretty much every symptom" is not going hard enough. There has yet to be a single psychiatric symptom that isn't theoretically and empirically linked to metabolic dysfunction. The only symptoms he left out were the ones which have no published research!
And finally, just this week Forbes had a feature about it. Again, not a sci journal but there's enough interest to name it the "quiet revolution underway in psychiatry". https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessepines/2025/04/05/could-mit...
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Do you still feel that the metabolic theory of mental illness is an unbelievable claim, poorly considered?
It may not be THE only answer. But at the very least, this theory is well supported with decades of research and deserves serious consideration.