Why is autophagy important for our body and how to increase its effect?

Autophagy is a mechanism of our body that helps us to be healthy. Although the human body is healthy, cells experience damage during various metabolic processes. As we age, our body is under constant stress with more and more damage caused by free radicals. Our cells become more exposed to damage and the action of toxins.

Besides, as the organism ages, metabolic processes slow down, the endocrine system and the structure of hormones change. In that case, the organism is also exposed to greater stress, and certain changes occur.

Then he performs on stage autophagy. This process in the body helps our body get rid of damaged cells. Targets include active cells that have no role in the body. Cells that represent excess and also malignant cells.

The body needs to eliminate damaged, unusable and malignant cells because they can indicate inflammatory reactions or some severe diseases.

The word autophagy was coined several decades ago and consisted of two Greek words. The first is “auto” (meaning self), and the second is “page” (meaning to eat).
In recent studies, researchers have understood how our immune system’s complex part can affect our longevity, improve our immune system, our heart, and complete metabolism.

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What is autophagy and is it good or bad for you?

The definition of autophagy is the consumption of the tissues of one’s own organism in the form of a metabolic process that occurs due to starvation or due to various diseases. Researchers believe that autophagy is a survival mechanism. In that way, the organism reacts to stress and tries to protect itself.

Is autophagy good or bad for your health? She is definitely good! As I mentioned, you can consider autophagy as a form of self-devouring. This may sound scary, but this is a normal process of the body during which cells renew themselves. Autophagy is so helpful that it is the key to preventing diseases such as cancer, neuronal degeneration, diabetes, liver disease, autoimmune disorders, and infections.

Autophagy many benefits help with aging. Autophagy uses waste produced in cells to produce building material to repair and regeneration other cells.

Thanks to the latest studies, we know that autophagy cleanses the body and protects it from the negative effects of stress. Scientists are still researching the way and processes of autophagy and how it actually affects the organism.

There are several processes involved in autophagy. Lysosomes are parts of cells that can destroy large damaged structures, such as mitochondria. These cell parts can also help transport these damaged cell parts to generate energy. The sum of the Summorum, of the complete process, is that the lysosome must first transport the damaged material, then reconstructed, and then used for a new purpose.

Types of autophagy in the cell

There are 2 forms of autophagy.

Microautophagy is a process that involves the direct separation of part of the cytoplasm by the lysosome membrane. Chaperone protein-mediated autophagy specifically refers to proteins that carry a precise sequence of 5 amino acids (KFERK). These proteins are supported by a complex formed by a chaperone (hsc70) and co-chaperone (hip, hop, hsp40, hsp90, and bag1) proteins that direct them to the lysosome, where the lysosomal membrane-bound receptor (LAMP-2A) recognizes them and allows their translocation into lysosome lumen.

Finally, macroautophagy is the least selective form of autophagy. The entire portion of the cytoplasm containing organelles or degradable proteins separates into a vesicle formed by several membranes called autophagosomes. The origin of these membranes is not clarified, but we are talking about a process of elongation of the membrane structure called “preautophagos” (or phagophore). It will then combine with the lysosome by autophagosome to form an “autolysis” in which lysosomal enzymes can digest various ingredients. Thus, macroautophagy generates nucleotides, amino acids, and free fatty acids that can be reused to synthesize new macromolecules and energy (ATP).

Benefits autophagy

Researchers have hinted at the most important good properties of autophagy for our body:

Providing building material and energy for cells.

Recycling of damaged proteins and waste

Regulation of the drive functions of cells, mitochondria, which serve to produce energy and can be damaged due to oxidative stress and anaerobic state of the cell due to physical exertion, disease, or the influence of certain hormones on cells and their receptors

Protects the nerve system and stimulates the development of new brain cells. Autophagy improves cognitive functions, brain structure, and neuroplasticity.
Autophagy promotes the growth and development of heart muscle cells. It also protects the heart from heart disease.

Improves and modifies the immune system by eliminating intercellular pathogens. It also reduces toxicity in the body and thus protects DNA.

Prevents damage to healthy tissues. It destroys cancer, fights neurodegenerative diseases.

There are several different types of autophagy. Science knows macroautophagy, microautophagy, and protective autophagy. Macroautophagy is a catabolic process by which vesicles are formed that swallow cellular macromolecules and organelles. This is the most commonly used form.

The human species is not the only one to benefit from autophagy. Autophagy also occurs in plants, worms, flies, and other mammals. A lot of research with autophagy has been conducted on rats. 32 genes associated with autophagy have been isolated. Research has continued, and their course is critical because, in this way, I can discover many new details related to this metabolic activity of the organism.

The link between autophagy and apoptosis

Scientists believe that autophagy is a selection when removing certain organelles, ribosomes, and protein aggregates from the human body. There is currently no information that autophagy or apoptosis (programmed cell death) regulates some other body processes. Some studies confirm the fact that autophagy is a mechanism of apoptosis.

One of the reasons researchers are interested in the connection between autophagy and apoptosis is that autophagy can treat cancer and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. Autophagy can act as a therapeutic process in the body, by which we purposefully remove unwanted cells and keep them healthy.

In the future, we can use the process of autophagy to protect cells and their renewal and destruction of cells that cause diseases and inflammation in the body.

How to enhance autophagy?

Autophagy is active in all cells, but it intensifies when food intake decreases, more precisely, we starve the organism. This goal can be achieved through exercise, physical activity, and reducing calorie intake. Both methods are associated with weight control, longer life expectancy, and the prevention of many age-related diseases.

Fast

When we use diet and adjust life habits to boost autophagy activity, the best trigger is fasting. The best dietary strategy is so-called intermittent fasting. Fasting has a straightforward concept: to stop eating for a certain period of time (you can still drink water during fasting or liquids like coffee and tea).

If you are unfamiliar with intermittent fasting, this type of cyclic diet includes time-restricted diet periods. Many different forms of intermittent fasting enhance autophagy, such as Alternative Daily Fasting, in which you limit your daily food intake between 4 and 8 days.

Studies have shown that fasting between 24 and 48 hours has the strongest effect, but this type of fasting is not feasible for all people. Try at least between 12 and 36 o’clock if the above figure doesn’t work for you.

The easiest way to achieve your desired goal is to eat 1 or 2 meals a day instead of much smaller meals. If you finish dinner at 6 or 7 o’clock, try to starve until at least 7 a.m. the next day or even better, until 11 or 12 o’clock.

You can choose 2-3 days of fasting; it can even be longer when you become experienced enough and get your body used to fast.

Ketogenic diet

The ketogenic or KETO diet is a diet with many healthy fats and a small number of carbohydrates, and this diet works very similar to fasting. The keto diet works by getting 75% of your daily calories or more from healthy fats. And only 5 to 10% of calories from carbohydrates. This affects your body so that there are some key changes in it. Metabolic pathways are beginning to use fats as fuel instead of glucose from carbohydrates.

What types of food are most important if you plan to start a Ketogenic diet? Use coconut oil for food, olive oil, eggs, peanut butter, meat from animals fed exclusively on grass, fermented cheese, avocado, smoothies, and pits. The fruit is also included because of the necessary fiber for the digestive tract and its vitamins and anti-oxidant properties.

In response to reduced carbohydrate intake, ketones will begin to be produced, which have many protective effects on your body. Studies have shown that ketosis can activate aphagia, which has a neuroprotective function. In studies in rats, the keto diet activated autophagy activators’ metabolic processes, and on that occasion, Autophagy reduced brain injuries in injured rats.

Exercise

Another good stress that can activate autophagy is exercise. Recent research shows that exercise can activate autophagy in various organs, including metabolic regulation of muscles, liver, and pancreas.

Exercise has many good sides; it is a form of stress because it destroys the tissue, causing its repairs and growth in a stronger form. It is not clear how much exercise enhances autophagy, but researchers believe it is best to boost autophagy.

Exercising for 30 minutes enhances autophagy in the skeletal and muscular system. Can we exercise during fasting? Most people can. You may also notice that you get a big influx of energy when you stop fasting, which can motivate you even more to exercise.

Safety measures during fasting

We learned a lot of things about autophagy through this text. By increasing autophagy through fasting and regular exercise, we achieve excellent results.

If you are taking certain medications to control your health condition, it is best to consult a doctor before you start fasting. For people who suffer from hypoglycemia or diabetes and pregnant women, breastfeeding should not fast. Anyone who has diseases such as cancer should consult their doctor before fasting.

Six phases of intermittent (and prolonged) fasting in autophagy

By 12 o’clock you have entered a metabolic state called ketosis. In this condition, your body begins to break down and burn fat.

Some of this fat is used by the liver to produce ketone bodies. Ketone bodies or ketones serve as an alternative energy source for your heart, skeletal muscle, and brain cells when glucose is not readily available. Did you know that your brain consumes about 60% of glucose when your body is at rest? When you fast, the ketone bodies produced by your liver partially replace glucose as fuel for your brain and other organs. This use of ketones in your brain is one reason why fasting is often said to promote mental clarity and positive mood – ketones produce less flammable products because they are metabolized by glucose and can even trigger BDNF production! Ketones have also been shown to reduce cell damage and cell death in neurons and reduce inflammation in other cell types.

By 6 pm, you have switched to fat burning mode and are generating significant ketones

You can now start measuring your blood ketone levels above your baseline values. Under normal conditions, ketones’ concentration in your plasma ranges between 0.05 and 0.1 mM. When you fast or limit carbohydrates in your diet, this concentration can reach 5-7 mM.
As their bloodstream levels increase, ketones can act as hormone-like signaling molecules to instruct your body to speed up the body’s stress-reducing pathways that reduce inflammation and, for example, repair damaged DNA.

Within 24 hours, your cells increasingly recycle old components and break down the misfolded proteins associated with them Alzheimer’s and other diseases. This is a process called autophagy.

Autophagy is an important process for rejuvenating cells and tissues – it removes damaged cellular components, including misfolded proteins. When your cells cannot or do not trigger autophagy, bad things happen, including neurodegenerative diseases, which occur due to reduced autophagy that occurs during aging. Fasting activates the AMPK signaling pathway and inhibits mTOR activity, which activates autophagy. However, this starts to happen when you significantly deplete your glucose stores, and your insulin levels start to drop. In deprived mice, autophagy increases after 24 hours, and this effect are enhanced in liver and brain cells after 48 hours. In humans, autophagy has been detected in neutrophils starting with 24 hours of fasting. Exercise and calorie restriction by fasting can also increase autophagy in many body tissues.

By 48 hours without calories or with very few calories, carbohydrates, or protein, your growth hormone levels are up to five times higher than when you started fasting (Hartman et al., 1992).

Part of the reason for this is that the ketone bodies produced during fasting accelerate the secretion of growth hormone, for example, in the brain. Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, also promotes the secretion of growth hormone. Growth hormone helps maintain lean muscle mass and reduces fat accumulation, especially as we age. It also appears to play a role in mammalian longevity and may promote wound healing and cardiovascular health.

By 54 hours, your insulin has dropped to the lowest level since your fast, and your body is becoming increasingly sensitive to insulin (Klein et al., 1993).

Lowering insulin levels has health benefits, both short-term and long-term. Decreased insulin levels inhibit insulin and mTOR signaling pathways, activating autophagy. Decreased insulin levels can reduce inflammation, make you more sensitive to insulin (and/or less resistant to insulin, which is especially good if you have a high risk of developing diabetes), and protect you from chronic aging, including cancer.

By 72 hours, your body breaks down old immune cells and generates new ones (Cheng et al., 2014).

Prolonged fasting reduces the level of IGF-1 in the circulation and PKA activity in different cell populations. IGF-1, or insulin-like growth factor 1, resembles insulin and has growth-promoting effects on almost every cell in the body. IGF-1 activates signaling pathways, including the PI3K-Akt pathway that promotes cell survival and growth. PKA can also activate the mTOR pathway (and, interestingly, too much caffeine during fasting can promote PKA activation).

Let’s see where this leads – pressing the brakes on IGF-1 and PKA by restricting nutrients and fasting can reject cell survival pathways and lead to the breakdown and recycling of old cells and proteins. Studies in mice have shown that prolonged fasting (longer than 48 hours) reduces IGF-1 and PKA, leading to resistance to stress, self-renewal, and regeneration of hematopoietic or blood cell stem cells. This same mechanism has proven that prolonged fasting for 72 hours maintains a healthy number of white blood cells or lymphocytes in patients on chemotherapy.

Seven important questions and answers about autophagy

What is autophagy?

Autophagy is a body recycling program and is essential for every cell. When the autophagy procedure is carried out efficiently, you will feel more energetic, agony, clearer, the skin will begin to take on a youthful glow. Autophagy is an amazing natural cell rejuvenator and is very effective. Autophagy stops accelerated aging and, at the same time, helps you feel and look better.

What natural substances enhance autophagy?

Although coffee enhances autophagy, there is also a simple and delicious way to get up without a caffeine rush. Combine one bag of green tea with one bag of citrus bergamot tea, as well as one tablespoon of raw coconut oil with a cinnamon stick. This drink warms the body, and it can be drunk at any time of the day. This drink’s effects are to burn fat, improve brain function, strengthen immunity, and make the skin glow.
Citrus bergamot is one of the best and healthiest autophagy activators in the world. It protects the heart, and green tea polyphenols such as EGCG stimulate autophagy and a process called thermogenesis (calorie burning rate). Cinnamon is neuroprotective and can protect cells from damage and cancer. Coconut oil increases the level of ketones, which have been found to have anti-autophagy so that you feel fulfilled at the same time.

How does fasting on autofaia work?

Autophagy is activated when cells go through a certain amount of stress. It has been proven that limiting calorie intake induces a process that helps cells become stronger and longer-lasting by conserving energy. One of the simplest ways to start autophagy is fasting. Practicing fasting does not mean that you have to starve. To trigger autophagy is to be without food for 16 hours. You can achieve this if you eat an early dinner and skip breakfast or have breakfast later than usual. If you apply it for only three days in a row, the body activates autophagy, giving the cells a chance to rest and cleanse any waste and toxins accumulated in the body.

How to start autophagy outside and inside?

OMI’s patented cell rejuvenation complex consists of premium ingredients that have been clinically proven to activate autophagy. The ingredients are citrus bergamot, ceramide, trichlose, and caffeine. Although each of these ingredients individually will do wonders for your complexion, including renewing the skin barrier, increasing moisture, and reducing inflammatory processes. Together, these ingredients are much more powerful, improving the skin’s nutrition, which it needs for youth and radiance.

Do I increase autophagy by training?

Studies show that in just 30 minutes of exercise, autophagy is caused in the heart and bone muscle cells. One of the best ways to achieve this and at the same time to take advantage of all the other benefits of exercise such as HIIT-interval training of high intensity. This training includes exercising at short intervals and resting. By repeatedly pressing on your anaerobic threshold, you amplify the effects of autophagy and improve mitochondria’s health in cells. Anyone can apply this way of exercising during any activity that you normally perform, such as swimming, running, or brisk walking.

How does resvereatrol enhance autophagy?

Resveratrol is a super powerful polyphenol found in the skin of red grapes, peanuts, and berries. Many studies have shown that resveratrol works wonders for the human body. It prevents cognitive functions’ decline by increasing blood flow and reducing inflammation in the brain. Resveratrol also activates sirtuins that increase metabolism, improve the cardiovascular system’s health, and contribute to weight loss. You will benefit from small doses of red wine. It is most effective to take resveratrol 1000 mg daily as a dietary supplement. Combating damage from toxins in the atmosphere. Resveratrol accumulates collagen in the skin and keeps the skin firm and wrinkle-free.

What are the main benefits of autophagy?

The main benefits of autophagy come from the basic principles of its anti-aging action. Autophagy activates the rejuvenation of the organism, destroying old cells and promoting the development of new young cells. When the cells are under stress or are damaged, the effect of autophagy is disturbed.

Fasting and starvation leading to a stronger activation of autophagy and decomposition of damaged cells.

At the cellular level, autophagy helps by:

– removes toxins and proteins from cells associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s

– recycles proteins

– produces energy and building material for the repair of damaged cells and the construction of new young cells

– on a wider scale, it promotes the regeneration and health of the complete cell system

Autophagy can successfully treat cancer, and a regulated diet combined with autophagy can reduce cancer activity.

Since all cancers actually start from mutated cells, autophagy itself can have a preventive effect on cancer’s possible development in the body. With the help of autophagy and the immune system, the organism has the ability to recognize and destroy cancer cells.

Researchers believe that the use of autophagy should be combined with other anti-cancer therapies and that in this way, You can achieve extraordinary results.

Summary

Over time, autophagy increases researchers’ interest in discovering the increasing benefits that the organism has from it. Research is expanding to various other areas.

For now, nutrition experts emphasize that autophagy is still an under-researched area and that much more information needs to be gathered to know what exactly amplifies it and what are all the positive aspects of this metabolic process.

For the organism to adapt to autophagy, it does not need to be immediate and extreme. It is best to gradually introduce fasting and exercise as a routine and get used to it over time.

Be sure to consult a doctor if you are taking any medications, suffer from a chronic illness such as diabetes or heart disease, or pregnant.

Share your experience with autophagy, ask a question or answer a question in the comments.

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