Mitochondrial Myopathy and resistance training

Medical Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hi there guys! Just wanna quickly say what a great website, and it’s great work you’re doing.

This might be a little niche but I’ve been struggling to get something approaching a concrete answer from most health professionals as the area is rather under researched I believe.

I’m a 32 year old male recently diagnosed with a fairly rare genetic Mitochondrial Myopathy, resulting from a defect in my nuclear DNA (the gene POLG). The symptoms in my family have so far (my father and grandfather) been late onset CPEO. Ptosis, ataxia, trouble swallowing, general skeletal muscular weakness and other fun things seem to kick in around 50 years old and get progressively worse, until you’re fairly disabled in your late 60s.

Luckily (or unluckily depending on how you look at it!) for me I’ve found out now, so can potentially set myself up to try and prepare to mitigate these symptoms as best I can.

So, I started the SS LP a few years back (before I was diagnosed), got up to 2 and 1/2 plates or so but then life and excuses got in the way, but now it seems more pertinent than ever. I’m not symptomatic yet (definitely not an athletic phenotype though haha!)

It would be great to hear your thoughts on a few questions (I completely understand if you can’t properly answer them):

Do you think resistance training could exacerbate my condition? Given that the mutation is in the nuclear DNA and I’m presuming compounded by mitosis throughout my life, I probably don’t wanna go messing with that?

Do you think I should keep resistance training once I become symptomatic? If my mitochondria are knackered, is it worth keeping training?

Sorry for being a bit vague, or if that sounds a bit gloomy. I’m actually fairly upbeat about it!

Hope you guys might have a few pointers. Feel free to ask any more information, I’ll try and answer them to the best of my ability.

Thanks very much!
Tim

2

Hi Tim,

Sorry to hear about your diagnosis, though it’s great that you remain asymptomatic for now. These conditions are pretty rare, as you know, so the available data on this is limited. However, based on the limited data we do have in mitochondrial myopathy, resistance training (and combined RT + aerobic training) so far appears to be safe, well-tolerated, and improves functional capacity. This is similar to what we’ve found in other muscle diseases like muscular dystrophy as well. There’s also some interesting data suggesting that resistance training might actually reduce the mutant mtDNA load. The main precaution I’ve come across is to avoid training while fasted.

Here are a few links for further reading (Sci-Hub may help)

3

That’s a great help, thanks very much Dr Baraki!

Yes family experience has shown the condition is massively exacerbated by any kind of secondary illness (which often leads to fasting). I’m guessing fevers use up a hell of a lot of glycogen.

Back to the bar then! I think a high strength to weight ratio is going to be main goal for the time being.