By Dr. Mercola
While there are many different ways to rid your body of
accumulated toxins, from detoxifying foods and chemical and/or
natural detox agents to
saunas, a biological process known as autophagy plays a key
role.
The term autophagy means “self-eating,” and refers to the
processes by which your body cleans out various debris,
including toxins, and recycles damaged cell components.
The
video above provides a more in-depth biochemical review of
the autophagy processes involved in health and disease. As
explained in layman’s terms by Greatist:1
“Your cells create membranes that hunt out scraps of
dead, diseased, or worn-out cells; gobble them up; strip ’em
for parts; and use the resulting molecules for energy or to
make new cell parts.”
Dr. Colin Champ, a board-certified radiation oncologist and
assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center explains it thus:
“Think of it as our body’s innate recycling program.
Autophagy makes us more efficient machines to get rid of
faulty parts, stop cancerous growths, and stop metabolic
dysfunction like obesity and diabetes.”
By boosting your body’s autophagy process, you dampen
inflammation, slow down the aging process, and optimize
biological function. As noted by Fight Aging:2
“Greater autophagy taking place in tissue should mean
fewer damaged and disarrayed cells at any given moment in
time, which in turn should translate to a longer-lasting
organism.”
Boosting Autophagy Through Exercise
Like the benefits of
exercise, autophagy occurs in response to stress. And, in
fact, exercise is one of the ways by which you boost autophagy.
As you probably know, exercising creates mild damage to your
muscles and tissues that your body then repairs, and by so doing
makes your body stronger.
Exercise also helps flush out toxins by sweating, and is
helpful for just about any detox program. In fact, many consider
exercise a foundational aspect of effective detoxification.
Dr. George Yu, for example, who has been involved with
clinical trials to help detoxify people from the Gulf War,
recommends using a combination of exercise, sauna, and niacin
supplementation to maximize elimination of toxins through your
skin.
Exercise is an important component as it also causes
vasodilation and increased blood flow. Beyond that, as noted in
the featured article:
“One study looked at autophagosomes, structures that
form around the pieces of cells that the body has decided to
recycle.
After engineering mice to have glowing green
autophagosomes ... scientists found that the rate at which
the mice were healthily demolishing their own cells
drastically increased after they ran for 30 minutes on a
treadmill.
The rate continued increasing until they’d been
running for 80 minutes.”
How Much Exercise Do You Need to Optimize Autophagy?
The amount of exercise required to stimulate autophagy in
humans is still unknown, however it is believed that intense
exercise is more effective than mild exercise, which certainly
makes logical sense.
That said, other research has shown that the “Goldilocks
zone” in which exercise produces the greatest benefit for
longevity is between 150 to 450 minutes of moderate exercise
per week, lowering your risk of early death by 31 and 39 percent
respectively.
Spending at least 30 percent of your workout on
high-intensity exercises has also been shown to further boost
longevity by about 13 percent, compared to exercising at a
consistently moderate pace all the time.
Following these general guidelines will likely put you in the
most advantageous position for maximizing autophagy as well.
How to Radically Inhibit Autophagy
One of the quickest ways to shut down autophagy is to eat
large amounts of protein. What this will do is stimulate IGF-1
and mTOR, which are potent inhibitors of autophagy.
That is why it’s best to limit your protein to about 40 to 70
grams per day, depending on your lean body mass. The specific
formula is one gram of protein for every kilogram of lean body
mass, or one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass.
Substantial amounts of protein can be found in meat, fish,
eggs, dairy products, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Some vegetables
also contain generous amounts of protein — for example,
broccoli. Forty grams of protein is not a large amount of
food — it's the equivalent of one six-ounce chicken breast.
To determine whether or not you're getting too much protein,
simply calculate your body's requirement based on your lean body
mass, and write down everything you eat for a few days. Then
calculate the amount of daily protein you've consumed from all
sources.
If you're currently averaging a lot more than what is
optimal, adjust downward accordingly. The following chart
provides a quick overview of how much protein is in various
foods.
Red meat, pork, poultry, and seafood average 6 to 9
grams of protein per ounce.
An ideal amount for most people would be a 3-ounce
serving of meat or seafood (not 9- or 12-ounce steaks!),
which will provide about 18 to 27 grams of protein |
Eggs contain about 6 to 8 grams of protein per egg.
So an omelet made from two eggs would give you about 12
to 16 grams of protein
If you add cheese, you need to calculate that protein in
as well (check the label of your cheese) |
Seeds and nuts contain on average 4 to 8 grams of
protein per quarter cup |
Cooked beans average about 7 to 8 grams per half cup |
Cooked grains average 5 to 7 grams per cup |
Most vegetables contain about 1 to 2 grams of
protein per ounce |
The Importance of Mitochondrial Biogenesis
Healthy mitochondria are at the core of staying healthy and
preventing disease. Mitochondrial damage can trigger genetic
mutations that can contribute to cancer, so optimizing the
health of your mitochondria is a key component of cancer
prevention. Autophagy is one way to remove damaged mitochondria,
but biogenesis is the process by which new healthy mitochondria
can be duplicated.
Interestingly, exercise plays a dual role as it not only
stimulates autophagy but is also one of the most potent
stimulators of mitochondrial biogenesis. It does this by
increasing a signal in your body called AMPK, which in turn
activates PGC-1 alpha.
By stimulating your mitochondria — the organelles in nearly
every cell that produce ATP — to work harder, your mitochondria
start making reactive oxygen species (ROS), which act as
signaling molecules. One of the functions they signal is to make
more mitochondria.
In essence, the key to preventing disease — virtually
eliminating the risk of cancer, heart disease,
diabetes, many other diseases — and slowing down the aging
process lies in optimizing mitochondrial function and
increasing mitochondrial numbers. Thankfully, exercise helps you
do both.
Intermittent Fasting — Another Way to Boost Autophagy
Fasting is another biological stressor that produces many
beneficial results, including autophagy. In fact, some of the
benefits associated with fasting — such as a reduced risk of
diabetes and heart disease — can at least in part be attributed
to this process.
While there are many different kinds of
intermittent fasting schedules, if you’re insulin resistant,
my personal recommendation is to fast every day by
scheduling all of your eating within a window of approximately 8
hours or less. For example, you could restrict your eating to
the hours of 11am and 7pm. This equates to 16 hours of daily
fasting.
I used to recommend skipping breakfast, but I’ve since
realized that it probably doesn’t matter which meal you skip —
breakfast or dinner — as long as you skip one of them. Some
really struggle without breakfast, so play around with it and
find out what works best for you.
Eating between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. may work better
for some people, and this schedule actually has an added
advantage, because you’re now fasting for several hours before
going to bed. I’m convinced that it’s best for most to avoid
eating three hours prior to bed, as the last thing you need to
be doing is producing energy when you don’t need it.
There’s compelling evidence showing that when you supply fuel
to your mitochondria at a time when they don’t need it, they
leak a large number of electrons that liberate reactive oxygen
species as free radicals.
These free radicals damage your mitochondrial and eventually
nuclear DNA. There’s also evidence indicating that cancer cells
uniformly have damaged mitochondria, so eating too close to
bedtime is not a good idea. I personally strive for six hours of
fasting before bedtime, but at bare minimum, avoid eating at
least three hours before going to bed.
To Boost Autophagy, Switch to a High-Fat, Low-Carb Diet
Nutritional ketogenesis is a third strategy that will help
boost autophagy, and to accomplish that, you need to cut down on
the non-fiber carbs and increase the amount of healthy fat in
your diet, along with a moderate amount of protein.
(Many Americans tend to eat far more protein than they need,
which will counteract your efforts to get into nutritional
ketosis.) According to Champ:3
“Ketogenesis is like an autophagy hack. You get a lot
of the same metabolic changes and benefits of fasting
without actually fasting ... Between 60 and 70 percent of
one’s overall calories should come from [healthy] fat ...
Protein makes up 20 to 30 percent of calories, while carbs
are kept below 50 grams per day ... Similar benefits
have been noted in people following a diet in which carbs
didn’t exceed 30 percent of their overall calories.”
Most Americans consume harmful fats like processed vegetable
oils, which will invariably make your health worse. Not only is
it processed, it’s very high in omega-6 oils, and excess omega-6
fats will integrate into the inner mitochondrial membrane and
become highly susceptible to oxidative damage, causing your
mitochondria to die prematurely.
It is best to keep omega-6 fats consumption to less than 4 to
5 percent of your total daily calories Replace the omega-6 fats
with healthy fats- such as natural, unprocessed fat- found in
real foods such as seeds, nuts, real butter, olives,
avocado, or
coconut oil.
It’s also important to make the distinction about which carbs
we're talking about when we say “low-carb,” as vegetables are
"carbs" too. However, fiber carbs (i.e. vegetables) will not
push your metabolism in the wrong direction — only the non-fiber
ones will (think sugars and anything that converts to sugar,
such as soda, processed grains, pasta, bread and cookies, for
example).
Even more importantly, the fiber is not broken down by sugar
but travels down the digestion system, is consumed by bacteria
in your intestine, and converted to short chain fats that
actually improve your health.
If you look at the nutrition facts on a processed food
package, it will list total carbs, and again, that's
not what we're talking about. To calculate the
dangerous non-fiber carbs, simply subtract the grams of
fiber from the grams of total carbohydrate in the food in
question. Remember, you do need carbs, but you need most all of
them from vegetables, which are also high in fiber.
Autophagy Restores Function in Aging Muscle Stem Cells
It has long been known that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in
skeletal muscle are an important part of the muscle repair
process. Previous research4
has shown that exercise affects the behavior of your muscle stem
cells, and may help prevent or even restore age-related muscle
loss. MSCs in muscle are very responsive to mechanical strain,
and these stem cells accumulate in muscle post-exercise.
And, while the MSCs do not directly contribute to building
new muscle fibers, they do release growth factors, which
encourage other cells to generate new muscle. It’s also known
that people's muscles tend to become increasingly deficient in
MSCs with age, and that autophagy efficiency declines as well.
As a result, metabolic waste starts to build up in your cells
and tissues.
A recent Spanish study5
reports that satellite cells — muscle stem cells responsible for
tissue regeneration — rely on autophagy to prevent the arrest of
the cell cycle, known as cellular senescence; a state in which
stem cell activity significantly declines. In short, to improve
the regeneration of muscle tissue, you need to augment
autophagy.
With efficient autophagy — your body’s internal cleaning
mechanism — your stem cells retain the ability to maintain and
repair your tissues.
As reported by Fight Aging:6
“The researchers demonstrated that restoring youthful
levels of autophagy in old satellite cell populations can
restore them from senescence and return their regenerative
capabilities ... The paper ... is one of the more compelling
of recent arguments for putting more effort into treatments
based on artificially increased levels of autophagy ...
[M]any of the methods known to modestly slow aging in
laboratory species are associated with increased levels of
autophagy. It is a vital component in hormesis, wherein
causing a little damage leads to a lasting increase in
autophagy and a net gain. Stem cells spend much of their
time in a state of quiescence, only springing into action
when called upon.
This helps to preserve them for the long term. In
older tissues with greater levels of molecular damage, ever
more stem cells slip from quiescence into an irreversible
senescent state. These senescent cells are no longer capable
of generating new cells, and start to secrete all sorts of
harmful signal molecules.”
Health and Longevity Are Rooted in Mitochondrial Function
The take-home message here is that your lifestyle determines
your fate in terms of how long you’ll live and, ultimately, how
healthy those years will be. For optimal health and disease
prevention, you need healthy mitochondria and efficient
autophagy (cellular cleaning and recycling), and three key
lifestyle factors that have a beneficial effect on both are:
- What you eat: A diet high in quality
fats, moderate in protein, and low in non-fiber carbs.
Eating organic and grass-fed is also important, as commonly
used pesticides like
glyphosate cause mitochondrial damage
- When you eat: Daily intermittent
fasting tends to be the easiest to adhere to, but any
fasting schedule that you will consistently follow
will work
- Exercise, with high intensity
interval exercises being the most effective