Mitochondria are implicated in all phases of the human stress response, including cortisol release, noradrenaline release, inflammation, and epigenetic changes.

“Mitochondria at least play a role in all of the aspects of the human stress response. So when humans are stressed, either physically or psychologically, there are several things that happen-- increased cortisol increased adrenaline, noradrenaline, inflammation, and gene expression-- in particular, in the hippocampus-- occur with the stress response. And one group of researchers actually genetically modified mitochondria in four different ways, and found that all of the stress response, all those four buckets of stress response were impacted in one way or another, implying that mitochondria are somehow playing a role in those.”