By Costin Liculescu, creator of InsightArea
When someone says, “I have no energy,” we may hear a comment about motivation. Reading Rowan Jacobsen’s Scientific American article on mitochondria, aging and disease made me think more carefully about that assumption. In some cases, the person may be describing a real biological limitation.
Energy has a biological basis
Mitochondria help convert energy from food into ATP, which powers cellular activity. Researchers are investigating how disruptions in this process contribute to aging and disease. The energy resistance principle offers one proposed framework for understanding these connections; its broader claims remain hypotheses to test.
Depression provides a revealing example. In a small 2026 pilot study, researchers found higher resting ATP production in one brain region, alongside a reduced capacity to produce ATP in blood cells under experimental stress. The findings are preliminary, but they illustrate why “less energy” need not mean uniformly lower ATP production. How cells respond to demand may also matter.
None of this makes our feeling of tiredness a direct measurement of mitochondrial function. The sensation is real, but it does not tell us its cause, and depression cannot be reduced to a single energy problem.
What this changes about effort
My takeaway is that two people facing the same task may be facing different internal demands and limitations. Someone who struggles to get through an ordinary day may have less capacity available, even when that difference is invisible from the outside. Judging their motivation from their output alone overlooks that possibility.
Recognizing a limit still leaves room to consider what is manageable. Depending on the person and their condition, that might mean a smaller task, a slower pace, or more recovery. It does not require assuming that every feeling accurately measures our capacity, or that everyone can safely push past fatigue.
For me, the useful question is what I can realistically do with the capacity available today. That leaves room for action, rest and support, without expecting every body to sustain the same pace.
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