This is a genuine reframe of how we understand mood. The distinction between the chemical imbalance story and the bioenergetic model is the pivot that changes everything. We have been told for decades that depression is a serotonin deficit, but the evidence never really held. What if it is not a missing chemical but a power shortage in the machine?
What I find myself sitting with is the two-way street. The caregiver's evening mood predicted the health of her mitochondria the next morning. The mind reaching down and moving the machine. That is the part that unsettles the materialist model. We have never explained where the felt experience comes from, and now we see it measurably steering the body. The direction is not one-way.
The line that stayed with me is: "The mitochondria are not just the factory that manufactures your consciousness. They are the antenna it tunes into." That is the reach. It might be wrong. But it is a hypothesis worth entertaining, given that materialism is itself a philosophical position, not a proven fact.
Thank you, Jade. I really appreciated the way you brought together the biology without reducing the person to it. I think we're moving toward a model in which consciousness and physiology are understood as participating in a continuous dialogue rather than a one-way chain of cause and effect.
This lands for me specifically because I've worked the same territory from the psychological side. I've written about a metabolic cost loop, where chronic vigilance taxes the prefrontal resources needed to correct the very threat prediction driving it, closed loop, hard to break through insight alone. Picard's mitochondrial quality index work gives that loop a cellular floor I didn't have when I first drafted it. The caregiving mothers study especially, mood tracking next-morning mitochondrial health, is a striking empirical echo of something I'd only argued theoretically. Appreciate you flagging the philosophical turn as a reach rather than folding it in as settled, that distinction matters and too few people in this space bother making it.
“Depression may be an energy crisis.” Wow- what a stunningly great essay that really made me think. Yes, SSRIs were always said to top up / fill in the missing serotonin. But your essay makes it clear that it is not that simple of a mechanism. If we can tune up our energy, everything will work better, including perhaps, some of these drugs. And I love how you address the hard problem of consciousness. Consciousness is not simply “squirted out” by the brain. And just because something does not have hard data behind it, does not mean it cannot be addressed and analyzed. Thank you!
Thanks, Jade, this moved me deeply, and strengthens my suspicion that the mechanistic approach of traditional medicine fails to notice what it lacks concepts to explain.
This seems to raise more questions than answer them. Fine with me. I would tend to agree with what is written. But is there a way to sum up the speculation within?
I mean, think positive thoughts, and positive thoughts will prevail over time, right?
"What actually runs your mood is the tiny engines you inherited from your mother."
To some extent, this may be true.
But anything that allows those who consider themselves victims to point to anything inherited from either parent actually serves those "victims" no good, because then hey, why bother?
It is a complicated topic, and I thank you for the introduction to Dr. Picard.
This is a genuine reframe of how we understand mood. The distinction between the chemical imbalance story and the bioenergetic model is the pivot that changes everything. We have been told for decades that depression is a serotonin deficit, but the evidence never really held. What if it is not a missing chemical but a power shortage in the machine?
What I find myself sitting with is the two-way street. The caregiver's evening mood predicted the health of her mitochondria the next morning. The mind reaching down and moving the machine. That is the part that unsettles the materialist model. We have never explained where the felt experience comes from, and now we see it measurably steering the body. The direction is not one-way.
The line that stayed with me is: "The mitochondria are not just the factory that manufactures your consciousness. They are the antenna it tunes into." That is the reach. It might be wrong. But it is a hypothesis worth entertaining, given that materialism is itself a philosophical position, not a proven fact.
Thank you Vlad
Thank you, Jade. I really appreciated the way you brought together the biology without reducing the person to it. I think we're moving toward a model in which consciousness and physiology are understood as participating in a continuous dialogue rather than a one-way chain of cause and effect.
This lands for me specifically because I've worked the same territory from the psychological side. I've written about a metabolic cost loop, where chronic vigilance taxes the prefrontal resources needed to correct the very threat prediction driving it, closed loop, hard to break through insight alone. Picard's mitochondrial quality index work gives that loop a cellular floor I didn't have when I first drafted it. The caregiving mothers study especially, mood tracking next-morning mitochondrial health, is a striking empirical echo of something I'd only argued theoretically. Appreciate you flagging the philosophical turn as a reach rather than folding it in as settled, that distinction matters and too few people in this space bother making it.
“Depression may be an energy crisis.” Wow- what a stunningly great essay that really made me think. Yes, SSRIs were always said to top up / fill in the missing serotonin. But your essay makes it clear that it is not that simple of a mechanism. If we can tune up our energy, everything will work better, including perhaps, some of these drugs. And I love how you address the hard problem of consciousness. Consciousness is not simply “squirted out” by the brain. And just because something does not have hard data behind it, does not mean it cannot be addressed and analyzed. Thank you!
Thank you for reading and commenting
Thanks, Jade, this moved me deeply, and strengthens my suspicion that the mechanistic approach of traditional medicine fails to notice what it lacks concepts to explain.
Thanks for reading
This seems to raise more questions than answer them. Fine with me. I would tend to agree with what is written. But is there a way to sum up the speculation within?
I mean, think positive thoughts, and positive thoughts will prevail over time, right?
"What actually runs your mood is the tiny engines you inherited from your mother."
To some extent, this may be true.
But anything that allows those who consider themselves victims to point to anything inherited from either parent actually serves those "victims" no good, because then hey, why bother?
It is a complicated topic, and I thank you for the introduction to Dr. Picard.
He’s great and here on Substack