Manipulating mitochondria: playing in the fountain of youth

Nutrition Action Healthletter, Dec, 2008 by David Schardt

In young animals, quercetin boosts mitochondria, much like exercise does.

"The effect is startling," says Mark Davis, director of the Psychoneuroimmunology of Exercise and Nutrition Laboratory at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

"When the Department of Defense asked me to study quercetin, I said I couldn't believe that anything of a nutritional nature would have the capacity to increase the mitochondria."

Davis quickly became a believer.

When his lab gave "fairly low doses" of quercetin to young mice for seven days, the number of mitochondria in their muscles and brains rose by about 30 percent.

"It's unprecedented to find a natural compound that can increase mitochondria like that in both the brain and muscle," Davis notes.

His mice got the human equivalent of about 850 to 1,700 mg a day of quercetin, "which would be very, very difficult to get from food," says Davis. (A can of FRS has 325 mg of quercetin.)

Having more mitochondria in your muscles means you can burn more fat for energy.

"We reasoned that quercetin-fed mice with more mitochondria ought to have more endurance or at least a delay in fatigue," says Davis. "Lo and behold, their endurance capacity increased on a treadmill." The mice also spontaneously became more active.

Davis presented abstracts of his findings at a scientific conference last summer and expects them to be published soon. (7)

Researchers have also completed a trial to see if quercetin raises the number of mitochondria in humans. The results are expected next year.

"For those who know something about mitochondria, the implications are huge," says Davis. "Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease all involve the mitochondria in some way."

In what way? That's something scientists are still trying to unravel.

Davis notes that researchers have looked at how quercetin affects muscle and brain mitochondria only in young, not old, animals. "We're really just at the beginning of understanding what quercetin can do," he says.

Quercetin also seems to help fight viruses, though researchers don't think that has anything to do with its impact on mitochondria.

In a small study simulating a military mission, researchers put 40 young men under intense physical stress for three days. (8) The 20 who were given 1,000 mg of quercetin each day were much less likely to catch colds or other viral infections than the 20 who got a placebo. (See Nutrition Action, Nov. 2007, p. 7.)

And when Davis exposed mice to a flu virus, those given quercetin were less likely to get sick or had milder symptoms than those given a placebo. (9)

Researchers are now looking at whether 500 or 1,000 mg a day of quercetin can prevent colds in people who aren't under unusual stress.

In all of these studies, researchers used a high-purity quercetin called QU995. That's the kind that's also in FRS energy drinks, mixes, and chews, as well as in RealFX Q-Plus Chews.

The Bottom Line

* Does it work? Quercetin boosts endurance in laboratory animals, but no studies on people have been published. It also may protect people against colds and other viral infections.