How to reverse age with fasting, autophagy

 Autophagy and intermittent fasting

 

Intermittent fasting as discussed in the previous blog has a lot of health benefits.

One of the greatest benefits is autophagy. Fasting or calorie restriction induces autophagy in humans

 

What is autophagy?

 Autophagy is defined as the self-eating process of a cell. The cell itself starts consuming its own older useless parts and then recycles them for the preparation of useful components. 

 Yoshinori Ywas awarded the Nobel prize in 2016 in physiology and medicine for the discovery of the mechanisms of autophagy and in this blog, we'll talk about how is it INDUCED

 

So let's talk about it in a bit more detail:

 Autophagy is a process in which a cell eats its own components. The Greek word auto means self and Fiji means eating so inside the cell there could be some damaged organelles or could be damaged proteins and other enzymes

Phagophore is kind of a membrane that engulfs the proteins in the cell, then lysosome combines with it, releases its enzymes into it to break the protein, protein breaks down into its constituent amino acids, now these amino acids can be reused to make new required proteins, enzymes Or sometimes used to meet the energy requirements.  

Remember,1 g of protein when broken down produces 4 calories, almost equivalent to the calories produced by carbs, but carbs are the primary source of energy when it is no more available in blood or even the reserves are consumed the body goes for fat breakdown or ketosis,( where the weight loss starts)

 Protein is used for energy supply only in extreme conditions of fasting 

 

How does it work?

So let's take an example. Suppose you are starving and starving creates a stressed situation for your body because you don't get enough amount of nutrient for the metabolic purposes of the body so it's stressed.

 

 so how autophagy is useful in this situation? Under any situation, there are a lot of non-functional proteins inside our cell so when the body is not getting nutrients from outside it would look for non-functional degraded proteins inside and it would break it down and salvage it for the production of new proteins and that is how autophagy is really beneficial.

 

How long the fasting has to be:

 

Studies have shown that autophagy is evoked after 24 hours of fasting and it peaks if you fast for 48 hours that means even after taking a meal you have to wait for 24 hours patiently in order to evoke autophagy. The question is whether it is worth it or not.  

 

Yes

suppose you are in a certain situation of emergency. Your body needs to prepare yourself by synthesizing certain proteins. as you are starving, 

 we need proteins but we don't have amino acids(  basic 20 different types of amino acids which are the building blocks of all the proteins in our body ) coming from food because at this point in time we are starving so we don't have any food right so dietary amino acids cannot be utilized to generate new proteins so how does body manage to get amino acids the answer is simple body breaks down

Existing proteins using the autophagy

Health Benefits

 

·         In this process it not only breaks down the proteins but also recycle non-functional proteins and proteins which are kind of harmful and in simple word it's kind of like a detox activity

·         There are many cases like Alzheimer's disease where there are misfolded proteins now Theoretically autophagy can also recycle these misfolded proteins break them down and help the body to generate new proteins from this garbage that is how autophagy could be really beneficial for improving cognitive health and overall health.

·         Now researchers have proven that autophagy has implications in terms of aging and health

·         It’s like throwing away all your old furniture from the house and replacing it with the new one, the same happens to call in autophagy. So it is an anti-aging mechanism. Periodic fasting boosts autophagy which helps you to age slowly, increases your lifespan and it also evokes resilience towards many diseases.

·         Weight loss

·         Insulin effectiveness, prevent insulin resistance

 

What type of fasting is required?                                   

What type of fasting is required?                                   

Which fasting technique is the best for inducing autophagy because there are so many intermittent fasting paradigm in market like?

 Alternate day fasting is where you eat normally in a particular day and the next day you fast you take very low calorie or almost no calories and you repeat this pattern throughout the week this is called as alternate day fasting which means in this process your body goes through a cycle of metabolic switching sometimes your body is evoking autophagy when you're fasting and then it has a plenty of nutrients it's building your overall body and takes care of the metabolism