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Comment by mpreda | Hacker News Reader

Mitochondria are involved in aerobic energy production in the cell, using O2 (oxygen) and some energy substrate to produce ATP (adenosyne tri-phosphate), the "energy currency of the cell".

"exercise more" means "higher energy needs", and growing the amount of mitochondria would be adaptive.

"eat less sugar" means less anaerobic energy production, I guess. Thus more aerobic energy production in exchange.

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Interesting - I guess there is some sort of balance there, given the radical biochemistry that is seen with Mitochondria. “The more [mitochondria] the merrier” …?

The more the merrier, yes. I’m an amateur road cyclist and most of my training is spent in the lower heart-rate “zones” trying to train my mitochondria. The theory is that for endurance sports the key variable is your mitochondria’s capacity to use oxygen and fuel to produce ATP.

Further, if the mitochondria is being asked to make more ATP than it can aerobically, then it will skip the final respiratory step and respire without oxygen (anaerobically). This causes a build up of lactate in the cells that is not tolerated above a certain level, I believe due to it raising acidity levels in the cell.

You’ll often hear athletes and coaches talk about lactate threshold and Functional Threshold Power (FTP). This is all to do with mitochondria function.

If I'm rowing for 20-30 minutes in a HF range of 150-160, that should fall into your parameters, right? This is a very interesting fact - I have been sedentary for a couple of years and I'm fighting a kind of fatigue. Maybe this is a way to work against the symptoms. Do you know of a way to tell if the effects are taking hold?

You’ll know! I’ve been doing a lot of “base” training over the last few months and I feel a lot faster. And my Strava data agrees

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