The Symptoms of Mitochondrial Depletion — Before I Had a Name For It
Before I had language for what was happening to me, I had the experience of it.
Waking up unrestored. Moving through days that asked more than my body could give. Reaching for energy that simply wasn’t there — not because I hadn’t rested, but because rest alone had stopped being enough. The kind of exhaustion that doesn’t lift after a good night’s sleep, or a week off, or a month of doing less. The kind that lives below the surface, in the cells themselves.
That’s where this story begins. Not with a diagnosis, but with a body that had quietly stopped producing enough fuel to run on.
What Mitochondria Actually Do
Every cell in your body contains mitochondria — small structures responsible for converting oxygen and nutrients into ATP, the energy currency your body runs on. From the most basic biological functions to complex cognitive processes, everything is powered by this cellular energy production.
I think of them as my inner batteries. Not a metaphor for motivation or mindset — a literal description of biological capacity. When mitochondrial function is healthy, energy flows. When it’s compromised, the deficit shows up everywhere: in cognition, in immunity, in the ability to recover from even minor stressors.
What most people don’t realize is that mitochondria are also deeply sensitive to their environment. They respond to stress loads, inflammatory signals, and electromagnetic complexity. They don’t just power the body. They read the conditions the body is living in.
What Epstein-Barr Did to Mine
The Epstein-Barr virus had been present in my system since 2009 — activated during pregnancy, never fully quieted. For fifteen years, it ran as a low-grade background process, draining resources my body needed for everything else.
One of EBV’s most significant long-term effects is mitochondrial interference. The virus disrupts the cell’s ability to produce energy efficiently, while simultaneously triggering chronic immune activation that consumes what little energy remains. The result is a system perpetually operating in deficit — borrowing from tomorrow to survive today, with no mechanism to repay the debt.
This is not fatigue in the ordinary sense. It’s not tiredness that sleep resolves. It’s a fundamental interruption in the body’s ability to generate and sustain energy at the cellular level. My nervous system stayed overstimulated. My recovery window shrank. Tasks that should have been unremarkable became significant expenditures.
For years, I compensated. I adapted my life around a capacity I didn’t yet understand was structurally compromised.
The Environmental Layer — Why My Home Was Working Against My Cells
What I didn’t know — until my bioresonance practitioner began working with me — was that my home environment was compounding everything.
Three solar panel transformers near my bedroom were generating a low-frequency electromagnetic field that my system was processing around the clock. Not dramatic, not visible, but consistent. And in a body already depleted by viral load and mitochondrial strain, that additional processing cost was significant.
This is where Aires became part of my structural rebuild — and why I take their work seriously beyond personal preference.
Aires has spent decades examining the relationship between electromagnetic environments and biological performance. What their research consistently shows is that mitochondria are among the most environmentally sensitive structures in the body. They respond not just to signal strength, but to the predictability and coherence of the electromagnetic field around them. Chaotic, layered environments create an additional regulatory burden — one that shows up as fatigue, slower recovery, and reduced cellular efficiency.
Their technology introduces structural coherence into that field — not by blocking signals, but by reducing the unpredictable variability that sensitive biological systems have to work against.
Interestingly, Aires‘ two largest user groups are people with chronic illness and elite athletes — and that parallel is worth sitting with. Both groups are operating at the edge of their biological capacity. The athlete is trying to protect a high-functioning baseline. The person with chronic illness is trying to reach a stable one. The sensitivity is the same. The direction is different. What both need is an environment that stops costing them energy they cannot afford to spend.
Once I addressed the electromagnetic layer in my home, the mitochondrial recovery I had been working toward started to hold. The therapy could land. The rest could repair. The environment had finally stopped undoing the work.
How Mitochondria Rebuild
Here is what I’ve learned about mitochondrial recovery: it does not happen under pressure.
Mitochondria regenerate in conditions of safety — genuine, physiological safety. Low stress load. Reduced inflammatory signals. Stable electromagnetic environment. Consistent, deep rest. Gentle movement that supports circulation without triggering depletion. Nutrition that provides the raw materials for cellular repair without overburdening a compromised digestive system.
Resting isn’t laziness — it’s energy farming.
Every genuinely restorative nap, every walk in a coherent natural environment, every boundary that protects my energy envelope — these are mitochondrial inputs. Not metaphorically. Biologically.
I also support this process through targeted supplementation and a nutritional approach tailored to my specific biological blueprint — both of which I’ve written about separately, because they deserve their own space.
What I can say here is that the supplement choices matter less than the conditions underneath them. You can support mitochondrial function with the most precise protocol available — and still see limited results if the nervous system remains in chronic alert, or if the electromagnetic environment continues to generate invisible load.
Structure first. Support second.
What Rebuilding Actually Feels Like
It doesn’t feel like a return to a previous version of yourself.
It feels quieter than that. More incremental. There are days when the difference is simply that something hard didn’t cost as much as it would have six months ago. That a stressor moved through rather than landing and staying. That rest actually restored something.
My bioresonance practitioner put it clearly at my last session: my body has shifted from emergency mode into restoration mode. The adrenals are still recovering. The mucous membranes are still rebuilding. But the emergency signal has quieted. The system is finally spending energy on repair rather than survival.
That’s what mitochondrial recovery looks like from the inside. Not a dramatic return of energy. A gradual, steady expansion of capacity.
Not a rush of adrenaline — a grounded hum.
And that hum, quiet as it is, means everything.
Join the Vibe!
I’m Tani — writer, educator, and someone who has spent fifteen years learning to read her own body like a map. Based in Amsterdam, I navigate the crossroads of EMF awareness, post-viral healing, and nervous system regulation. Not from theory — from lived experience. This space exists for the ones who feel things deeply, who sense what others miss, and who are done being told it’s all in their head. If that’s you — come find your people. Follow me on Instagram @tanistates, tag me when something here lands, and let’s build something real together. Your story might just be the one someone else needed to hear.
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The Indigo Healing Guide
Fifteen years of living with Epstein-Barr, post-viral fatigue, and quantum sensitivity — distilled into the guide I desperately needed and couldn’t find anywhere. Part memoir, part manual. Written for anyone navigating the invisible gaps where medicine ends and embodied wisdom begins. I made it because I needed it. And because you might too.