Cellular nutrition and how cells respond to stress

With 37 trillion cells in your body alone, it's no wonder you can feel flat on a physical, mental or emotional level when your cells are stressed. Luckily, your body knows what's good for you and your cells have developed a range of molecular mechanisms to help combat these stressors and safeguard regular functioning. But with that being said, supporting your body with high-quality cellular nutrition can help boost stress responses and help maintain cell health.

What is cell stress?

Your cells regularly encounter environmental and intracellular stressors that trigger cellular stress responses. To cut a long story short, these stress responses help to protect your cells against damage and keep them functioning optimally so you can continue to feel your best.

Within your cells are small but mighty mitochondria, which are the energy powerhouses of your body. As part of normal cellular processes, your mitochondria generate energy to help you function day-to-day. During this process, they also create free radicals as a by-product of energy production. While it's completely normal to have some free radicals floating around your body, too many can start to throw off that delicate internal balance. This imbalance of free radicals is also known as oxidative stress. When your cells are subject to oxidative stress, things start to go awry. Prolonged exposure can lead to DNA damage which affect downstream pathways and prevent your cells from replicating correctly.

Luckily, your cells know exactly what to do. To combat the overproduction of free radicals, your mitochondria also produce antioxidants to help keep things stable and reduce oxidative stress. But environmental stressors, like extreme temperatures, toxins, infections, UV radiation, smoking, excess alcohol and pollution expose your body to even more free radicals on a daily basis, which puts your cells under increasing stress. And unlike a fine wine, your body's cellular stress responses don't get better with age... In fact, your body's stress responses can decline with the aging process and living in general, which can lead to cell stress.

In a nutshell, all of the mechanisms that occur during the stress response are intended to protect the cell using adaptive measures. In the short term, cellular stress responses aim to minimize cell damage, while over the long term, the stress responses provide resilience against similar conditions in the future. Ultimately though, different types of stressors lead to different cellular responses, from adaptation to autophagy and eventually, cell death.

The cellular stress response process

So, what exactly happens when you experience cell stress? When your cells are under attack they activate a stress response process by releasing stress proteins. These proteins are made up of two categories, proteins that are only activated in times of stress and proteins that are involved in both stress response and regular programming.

While stress response pathways vary depending on the type of stressor or cell involved, in most instances the cell stress response is initiated by the presence and detection of damaged proteins. Depending on the severity and duration of the cell stress, your cells will either return to the status quo by re-establishing cellular homeostasis, adapt to better function in the new environment or eventually trigger apoptosis, leading to cell death pathways.

As we touched on earlier, different types of cellular stress result in different stress responses. These cell responses can include inflammatory responses, DNA damage responses, the unfolded protein response, autophagy and heat shock response.

For example, heat shock occurs when your cells are exposed to high temperatures causing proteins to become damaged. In response to heat shock, your body releases special heat shock proteins. These proteins help to defend the cells against damage by ensuring that proteins retain their necessary shape to maintain the cell's ability to function properly.

How MitoQ can help combat cell stress

There's no denying that both you and your cells are going to encounter stress at different stages of your life. With that said, supporting your body at a cellular level with the right cellular nutrition can help to maintain cellular stress response cells and proteins. That's where cellular nutrition supplements, like MitoQ, can help.

MitoQ has been specially formulated to combat cell stress so to help you unlock more energy and embrace healthy aging. Just two capsules each morning for 90 days is enough for you to notice your mind and body feeling refreshed, re-energized and rebalanced.