Mitochondrial damage is associated with premature aging in the body and related disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease in the brain. If you want to grow old and healthy … be nice to your mitochondria … eat healthy foods and exercise.
When mitochondria are damaged, cells can use proteolysis to clean them out, but when this cleaning out process fails … trouble ensues. PINK1 plays a role on the clearance of damaged mitochondria as revealed by Dr. Derek P. Narendra and colleagues: PINK1 Is Selectively Stabilized on Impaired Mitochondria to Activate Parkin
Since neurons in the Substantia Nigra are postmitotic, any mitochondrial damage they acquire could accumulate over an organism’s lifetime, leading to progressive mitochondrial dysfunction—including increased oxidative stress, decreased calcium buffering capacity, loss of ATP, and, eventually, cell death—unless quality control processes eliminate the damaged mitochondria.
The findings we report in this paper suggest a new model in which PINK1 and Parkin together sense mitochondria in distress and selectively target them for degradation. In this pathway, PINK1 acts as a flag that accumulates on dysfunctional mitochondria and then signals to Parkin, which tags these mitochondria for destruction. Since disease-causing mutations in PINK1 or Parkin disrupt this pathway, patients with these mutations may not be able to clean up their damaged mitochondria, leading to the neuronal damage typical of parkinsonism.
Dr. Terry Wahls has some very inspiring experiences to share on the topic of mitochondrial care.
Genes 2 Brains 2 Mind 2 Me 
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