79: Dr. Sundeep Dugar: How mitochondria impact mental health, aging & energy

In this episode of the MindHealth360 show, Dr. Sundeep Dugar – pharmaceutical scientist, inventor, and co-founder of Blue Oak NX – explores the foundational role of mitochondria in brain function, psychiatric and neurological health, aging, and chronic disease. With over 35 years of drug discovery expertise, Dr. Dugar breaks down the science behind how mitochondrial dysfunction may be a key root cause of many modern health conditions, as well as mental health symptoms – including anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, and fatigue.

He shares how mitochondria generate ATP, the body’s essential energy currency, and how their decline over time and through lifestyle “insults” such as  pollution, poor diet, stress, and inactivity, and how their loss of function and resilience can impair everything from gene expression to inflammation, immunity, energy and brain health. Dr. Dugar also introduces the mission-driven work of his company Blue Oak NX, dedicated to affordable and unique therapies that support mitochondrial health and overall wellness.

Deeply scientific yet accessible, this conversation explores how optimizing mitochondrial function through exercise, fat-based nutrition, and lifestyle changes may hold the key to longevity, mental clarity, and true cellular healing.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why mitochondria are essential to life – and produce 90% of the body’s energy (ATP), but also perform dozens of other key functions essential to health and longevity.

• How mitochondrial decline begins around age 21 and accelerates with age.

• Why exercise is the most powerful intervention for mitochondrial health – and what happens on a cellular level when we move.

• The fundamental link between mitochondrial function and mental and neurological health symptoms such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, poor focus and poor memory.

• Why diet is “fuel” for your mitochondria – and how fats (not sugar) provide more sustainable energy.

• Why pollution, stress, ultra-processed food, and sedentary living create “insults” that impair mitochondrial function and overall health.

• How mitochondrial dysfunction may drive inflammation and underlie conditions like diabetes, cancer, and psychiatric and neurological illness.

• Why some people are more vulnerable to disease due to genotype and epigenetic responses to environmental insults.

• What “hormesis” and the “cell danger response” mean – and how they relate to mitochondrial resilience.

• How supporting your mitochondria can help shift the body from chronic illness to healing (salutogenesis).

• The groundbreaking molecule developed by Blue Oak NX which has been found to boost mitochondrial function in a way that only exercise can do, and its profound implications for people who cannot exercise.