When I was a kid I was on at least one potentially liver damaging drug(however my liver values seem ok), for approximately 6-7 years, that could have caused mitochondrial damage. From that point on I suffered from depression, lack of energy, back pain (muscular), digestive problems/lower pancreatic function, hypoglycemia(I needed to eat often to keep my sugar levels normal, otherwise I would have a sharp decline in concentration etc) lower brain function(aka adhd), and deficiency of catecholamines(thats what I call it because increasing them reverses most symptoms for me). Also my white blood cell count is on the low side and I am more prone to infections. Without training, my bodyweight was about 80-84kg, without the typical ektomorph bodycomposition, more like a endomorph, just without musclemass.
Before hitting the gym I was weak and slow compared to my age class.
I could go to the gym and increase my endurance however. Also, gaining strength was not a problem at first, and I was able to gain about 10 pound of muscle mass, but thats it.. I was never able to get rid of my abdominal bodyfat(I'm not fat though). No matter how hard I tried. And I tried so hard while weight training that I "fried" my nervous system, meaning I totally burned it out resulting in overtraining. To the point where I had even more massive problems to concentrate days after I hit the gym. Actually, I found out that if I hit the gym only all 6 days(weight trainining), my nervous system would be regenerated(I later found out that my nervous system would regenerate much faster if I took l-dopa during a workout session). Also, when doing my sets the first set usually was ok, while starting with the second set my reps would be very low compared to the first set, within set breaks where others would recover normally. I could not work without stimulants such as caffeine until I discovered that I need no stims if I simply increase my catecholamines.
I could not explain why I was "low in catecholamines". I don't until I thought about it:
Most of the symptoms like I said went away after increasing my catecholamines. dopamine, adrenaline and noradrenaline are all exhibitory neurotransmitters. They increase activity. An increase in activity means that more energy is burned.
Also, more adrenaline means more blood sugar, and increased burning of energy. this is probably, why my back pain was gone with enough adrenaline.
more (nor)adrenaline noradrenaline means less bodyfat, again, because fat cells give up fatty acids more easily, and the body burning more energy due to increased metabolism.
and dopamine activates the frontal lobes which are, as far as I know, those areas that are about complex problem solving etc, in short all that is needed for higher thinking. And the brain, esp. those areas that are involved in more complex tasks should need the most energy.
So... my hypothesis would be:
I don't have low catecholamines, they are within the normal range - BUT my mitochondria are damaged, therefore normal levels are not sufficient anymore for normal body/brain function.
Or it is a combination of lower production of catecholamines due to decreased overall cell energy and less response to catecholamines due to less mitochondria power levels.
Or the energy level affects how much catecholamines get produced. Same effect.
in both scenarios, an increase in catecholamines increase whole body metabolism and normalize my body functions.
What do you guys think?
Or maybe someone has a better explanation for my symptoms - please share it. This is the first hypothesis that seems to make sense to me, but I am open to other ideas.
P.S.: I am right now testing pqq for mitochondria support, but it is my first day, and although I feel very good, it might be placebo or something else.
