Why is autophagy good for your health?

Autophagy is a self-cleaning process that cells use to get rid of damaged cell parts and proteins.

When autophagy doesn’t work like it should, damaged proteins can create disease, as in Alzheimer’s.

Autophagy is always occurring to some degree in your cells. But you can ramp it up by exercising and practicing intermittent fasting!

How exactly does intermittent fasting activate autophagy? Let’s explore.

Every cell in your body makes proteins, which are like tiny workers that make things happen in your cells.

Proteins have specific jobs, and they are turned on or off depending on what the cell needs.

mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) is a protein whose function is to sense when nutrients are available.

When you eat, nutrients are high and your cells are happy. They get to be in growth mode, dividing and making more of themselves.

When nutrients are plentiful, mTOR stops autophagy from happening. This keeps cells in growth mode.

This benefits organs that self-renew frequently, like the liver, by replacing dead cells, for example.

However, when you go for extended periods without eating, your body senses stress and a lack of nutrients.

Now a protein known as AMPK ( 5' AMP-activated protein kinase) blocks the activity of mTOR and signals your cells to go into self-protective mode.

This tells your cells it’s time to conserve resources. They start recycling damaged cell parts instead.

AMPK is the same stop signal that tells your cells they have divided enough. This protects you from cancer!

Autophagy helps your cells survive despite a lack of nutrients, removing faulty cell components in the process

Human studies have observed increased autophagy starting at 18 hours of fasting.

But intermittent fasting is not the only way to turn mTOR off so that your cells can perform autophagy. Keep reading to find out how else you can take advantage of it.

Exercise greatly benefits health, and some of those benefits might have to do with the ability of exercise to increase recycling in your cells.

For example, autophagy induced by exercise can repair damaged cell parts in your heart. This might protect you from heart disease.

Exercise, just like fasting, inactivates mTOR, which increases autophagy in many tissues.

Exercise mimics the effects of going without food for an extended period: It activates AMPK as well as other proteins that coordinate autophagy.

Studies in humans indicate that  aerobic exercises like running and cycling can increase autophagy.