Organ Reserve - Ultimate Health Measure?

Organ reserve refers to the ability of an organ to successfully return to its original physiological state following repeated episodes of stress or injury. Or put more simply, the functional capacity of our organs to support life. Now, the word ‘organ’, in this context, refers collectively to our heart, liver, kidneys, lungs and total skeletal muscle mass. But really, in terms of metabolically active tissue, it probably encompasses more than just those. When we’re young our organs have more than enough capacity for basic function. Their limits get tested, but not seriously taxed by illness, injury, and environmental toxicity. It’s believed that this excess metabolic capacity could serve as an innate defense system which might help intermediary metabolism cope with increased metabolic demand, chronic or acute stresses and recover from injury. As we age however, our organ reserve diminishes and gets more severely tested and taxed by these same factors and tends not to ‘bounce back’ as well as it did before.
In recent years researchers have begun trying to give perspective to organ reserve in a physiological context, by expressing how many metabolic processes display excess capacity over and above what is required for normal daily function. Or in simpler terms, they’re trying to provide the ‘big picture’ of organ reserve by giving examples of how many ‘small scale’ processes already have their own reserve or extra capacity built in so to speak.
The rate of organ functional decline has been quantified to occur at a linear rate measuring between 0.5% to 1.4% per year and all indications are it’s accelerating by our fifth decade. This reality is succinctly expressed in this quote from a recent study, “These observations indicate that aging is characterized by limited organ reserve.
What’s more, it’s interesting that organ reserve and lean muscle mass appear to be linked throughout our life. Not only that, but an ongoing effort to maintain and even build muscle mass tends to improve or retain the function of vital organs as a whole.
So, let’s poke our nose into the biochemistry at bit and look at several specific examples of excess capacity which are emerging as candidates for measures of organ reserve:
Bioenergetics pathways we discuss:
Glycolysis and HMS, Respiratory Pathway, Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Telomeres.

References:
Atamna, Hani, Alfred Tenore, Forshing Lui, and Joseph M. Dhahbi. "Organ reserve, excess metabolic capacity, and aging." Biogerontology 19, no. 2 (2018): 171-184.

NIKHRA, VINOD. "The Concepts of Biorhythms, Redundancy and Reserve: Impact on Cardiovascular Ageing and Disease." Cardiology Today 23, no. 6 (2019).

Bolaños, Juan P., Angeles Almeida, and Salvador Moncada. "Glycolysis: a bioenergetic or a survival pathway?." Trends in biochemical sciences 35, no. 3 (2010): 145-149.

Ferguson-Miller, Shelagh, Carrie Hiser, and Jian Liu. "Gating and regulation of the cytochrome c oxidase proton pump." Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA)-Bioenergetics 1817, no. 4 (2012): 489-494.

Fumagalli, Marzia, Francesca Rossiello, Michela Clerici, Sara Barozzi, Davide Cittaro, Jessica M. Kaplunov, Gabriele Bucci et al. "Telomeric DNA damage is irreparable and causes persistent DNA-damage-response activation." Nature cell biology 14, no. 4 (2012): 355-365.

Rossiello, Francesca, Utz Herbig, Maria Pia Longhese, Marzia Fumagalli, and Fabrizio d’Adda di Fagagna. "Irreparable telomeric DNA damage and persistent DDR signalling as a shared causative mechanism of cellular senescence and ageing." Current opinion in genetics & development 26 (2014): 89-95.

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Time Stamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:37 – What is Organ Reserve?
3:26 – Glycolysis and the HMS
4:08 – Respiratory Pathway
4:40 - mtDNA
5:13 - Telomeres
5:58 – Neuronal Systems
6:32 – Some Context
8:03 – Nutrition and Organ Reserve
8:50 – Exercise and Organ Reserve
9:20 – Last Words

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