Most of us learned one thing about mitochondria in school:
Mitochondria are the “powerhouses of the cell.”
That’s true—but it’s only part of the story.
We now understand that mitochondria are incredibly dynamic. Yes, they help turn food and oxygen into energy, but they also respond to hormones, nutrients, inflammation, stress, light, movement, and signals coming from other cells.
In many ways, mitochondria act like tiny cellular sensors, constantly gathering information about the environment around them.
Are nutrients available?
Is it daytime or nighttime?
Are we moving?
Are we under threat?
Is this a time to grow and repair—or conserve resources and protect ourselves?
In other words:
Your lifestyle becomes information for your cells.
And that gives us a very different way of thinking about health.
What If We Asked, “What Creates Health?”
Traditional medicine is very good at asking:
What causes disease?
What causes diabetes? Cardiovascular disease? Cancer? Infection?
This approach is called pathogenesis, and it is incredibly important.
But there is another question I think deserves just as much attention:
What creates health?
This concept is known as salutogenesis.
Rather than focusing exclusively on what makes us sick, salutogenesis asks what helps human beings remain healthy and resilient—even in the face of stress and adversity.
What allows us to adapt?
What helps us recover?
What moves us beyond simply not being sick toward actually thriving?
Think about health as a continuum:
Disease ←————————→ Thriving
We all move back and forth along this continuum throughout our lives.
The goal is movement toward health.
Your Cells Are Constantly Reading Their Environment
Your mitochondria receive information every day from things like:
- Light
- Food
- Sleep
- Movement
- Stress
- Relationships
- Toxins
- Your surrounding environment
These signals help determine where your body should invest its resources.
When the environment feels safe and resources are available, the body can devote more energy toward growth, repair, reproduction, and normal cellular function.
But when our cells perceive danger, priorities change.
Infection, trauma, inadequate sleep, poor nutrition, environmental exposures, and ongoing emotional stress can all signal that resources may need to be redirected toward survival and protection.
This is part of what researcher Robert Naviaux describes in his Cell Danger Response model.
In the short term, this protective response is adaptive. We want our bodies to respond appropriately when we’re sick, injured, or threatened.
Problems can arise when the system has difficulty returning to a state of safety and recovery.
Over time, persistent physiological stress may show up as fatigue, brain fog, pain, inflammation, or metabolic dysfunction.
Sometimes Fatigue Is Information
This is one reason I encourage people to become curious about symptoms rather than immediately viewing every symptom as something the body is doing “wrong.”
Fatigue, for example, isn’t always failure.
Sometimes fatigue represents intelligent energy conservation.
If the body perceives that demands are greater than available resources, conserving energy may be an appropriate biological response.
That doesn’t mean we ignore fatigue or other persistent symptoms.
It means that in addition to asking:
“How do I get rid of this symptom?”
we can also ask:
“What might my body be trying to tell me?”
Maybe we need more recovery.
Maybe we’re under-fueled.
Maybe we’re not sleeping.
Maybe we’re asking our bodies to adapt to too many stressors simultaneously.
Finding the right “thread” to work on is often how we begin moving the system back toward health.
But Stress Isn’t the Enemy
Here’s where things get interesting.
Creating a resilient body doesn’t mean avoiding stress altogether.
Our bodies actually need appropriately dosed stress to become stronger.
This phenomenon is called hormesis.
Exercise is the perfect example.
When you lift weights, you temporarily stress your muscles. Given adequate nutrition and recovery, your body responds by rebuilding that tissue so it is better prepared for the next challenge.
Your mitochondria respond similarly.
Think of it this way:
Too little stress → stagnation
Appropriate stress → adaptation
Too much stress → breakdown
Exercise, heat and cold exposure, learning something new, certain forms of fasting, breathwork, and even phytonutrients found in plants can provide mild challenges that stimulate adaptation.
The key isn’t simply adding more stress.
It’s finding the right balance between challenge and recovery.
That’s resilience.
What Message Are You Sending Your Cells?
One of the things I find most empowering about mitochondrial biology is that our cells are incredibly adaptable.
They are constantly listening.
Your morning light exposure is information.
Your breakfast is information.
Your workout is information.
Your sleep is information.
Your relationships are information.
Stress is information.
And recovery is information.
Those signals accumulate day after day.
So perhaps one of the most useful questions we can ask ourselves is:
“Does what I’m doing today move me toward health—or away from it?”
You don’t need perfection.
You need enough consistent signals that tell your body:
We have resources. We can adapt. We can recover. We can grow.
And that’s where the everyday choices we make become remarkably powerful.
In Part 2, we’ll look at six practical ways to send your mitochondria stronger signals of health—and how we practice many of them every day within the Alight Wellness community.