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Hmm I’m not going to pretend like I know more than you bc you prob know a lot more than I do. I haven’t studied a whole lot of cell physiology so I’m weak there too. But I’m also not here to play “Chief” or any of that like the rocktheworld suspected so let it be known my intention isn’t to act like I have more expertise than I actually do.
Anyway, I’ll link a study I found below and you can tell me what you think. I messaged my professor to see if she has any better studies linking what I claimed. But simply put, I don’t think any physiological process regulates its self without input from the brain and CNS whether direct or indirect. Right?
Skeletal muscle mitochondrial health and spinal cord injury - PMC
Mitochondria are the main source of cellular energy production and are dynamic organelles that undergo biogenesis, remodeling, and degradation. Mitochondrial dysfunction is observed in a number of disease states including acute and chronic central ...www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Hi Shine, the paper is fairly on point. The basic process it describes is that after spinal cord injury, it's common to get muscle degeneration and atrophy. Muscle is a significant contributor to metabolic regulation, because it is an important sink for excess calories. After a meal, for example, skeletal muscle takes up a lot of calories from blood, then releases calories back when you fast. If you lose muscle, you lose that metabolic regulation. Without adequate muscle, the surge in calories in the bloodstream after meals may be hard for the body to dispose of. When other cell types are exposed to an excess of macronutrients, they generate excessive oxidative stress, which can lead to mitochondrial and DNA damage, and ultimately to diabetes.
But ATP levels are not affected -- in fact it is an excess of ATP in the cells that drives the damage. I think the confusion is the idea that spinal cord injury directly impacts ATP or mitochondria. No, it's an indirect effect through the degeneration of muscle and other tissue.