This is because you can’t simply look at a cell and “see” autophagy in action. Trying to measure autophagy is akin to herding cats – it’s extremely difficult and currently considered unfeasible in humans – although some studies have attempted it. So, as it goes with many things in health – too much of a good thing is good for nothing. And in muscles, excessive autophagy can lead to muscle wasting and weakness, which is what we see in chronic nutrition deprivation. While autophagy does play a role in normal heart functioning, excessive autophagy in the heart has been associated with heart failure. When it comes to heart disease, it is currently unknown whether upregulated autophagy is helpful or harmful. As mentioned before, exercise induces autophagy and, in turn, helps to rebuild muscles.Īt the same time, over-activity of autophagy can be a problem as well, as it may lead to unwanted cell death, which could be a problem for some conditions. In the muscle, autophagy is important for normal muscle mass preservation and maintenance. When it comes to brain health, autophagy prevents the accumulation of damaged proteins, which may contribute to neurodegenerative diseases. In cancer, for example, inhibited autophagy may lead to tumor growth. Dysfunction of this process has been tied to many diseases including cancer, infections, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, neurodegeneration, and cardiovascular disease, just to name a few. Autophagy and Disease PreventionĪutophagy was first discovered in liver cells in the 1960s, but since then, we’ve learned that it is constantly occurring in all cells and is crucial to keeping our cells functioning optimally. It’s believed that in addition to keeping our cells protected from damaged components, autophagy provides much-needed resources to the body during starvation, which is why it occurs during fasting. These little guys swallow up junk in our cells and then bind with cellular components known as lysosomes, which release acidic enzymes to break down the cellular trash, freeing up the basic units to be reused to make new molecules or to be metabolized for energy. There are a few types of autophagy, but we’re going to talk about the main one, macro-autophagy, which involves the degradation of misfolded or aggregated proteins and damaged cell components by organelles known as autophagosomes. It doesn’t just dump cellular junk into our body’s waterways. Except unlike the US recycling process, autophagy actually works. What is Autophagy?Īutophagy is basically our cell’s recycling process. So, if you’re a longevity obsessed health junkie like I am and you want to get really nerdy with me right now and learn the truth about autophagy, let’s dig in. In the name of evidence-based practice, I would be remiss if I simply extrapolated animal data to humans and didn’t present the current state of the evidence. So, while I think and hope that my recent water fast induced autophagy, I can’t say for certain that it actually did – and neither can any of those biohacker YouTubers that make similar claims. While we know that autophagy occurs in humans and is an important process for cellular health – and we know that mild stressors like exercise, infection, and food deprivation increase its activity in mammals – we do not know how long it takes to induce autophagy during fasting or to what extent it is upregulated in response to fasting – at least not in humans. The thing is – there are only a couple of human studies that actually attempt to measure autophagy in live humans, and those studies are far from being definitive. They clearly haven’t read the research on autophagy. If you’ve ever heard someone say intermittent fasting induces autophagy and cell regeneration, call BS. If you’re thinking “autopha -omg- I’m bored already,” feel free to check out another video – I won’t be offended. So today, we’re talking about the truth about autophagy. So when I went to share the info with you guys about my fast and cite my references, I realized that what I thought I knew about autophagy wasn’t based on facts at all but a lot of speculation based on animal studies. The problem was, I didn’t look into the research ahead of time. I’ll explain that more in a bit – a lot more. If you saw my last video, then you know that I recently did a 3-day water fast with the hopes of inducing autophagy – a highly hyped up cellular process that is reported to stave off disease.
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