fbpx

Intermittent Fasting & Autophagy

To save itself, the body must eat itself

The last few weeks I’ve been writing about (and practicing) Intermittent Fasting.

My main aim (and IF’s main, visible benefit) has been fat-loss. IF, at it’s very basic, is a calorie-restriction tool with the added benefit of putting one into mild ketosis.

That, in simple words, means that IF makes it easy for you to stay within your calorie quota and prompts your body to burn stored fat for fuel. #Win

But off-late, there is another major benefit of IF that’s being touted by its many proponents. And it’s got nothing to do with weight-loss. It’s called Autophagy. But before we get to Autophagy, we need to understand its daddy.

Apoptosis

Let’s talk death. What exactly is death?

Death, for any organism, isn’t one event. It’s a series of small events that eventually piles up. And this death, like any death, is essential for life. For new life.

Too far out? Allow me to explain.

All organisms are large, complicated cellular structres. And cells within any organism (like our bodies) get damaged and die all the time.

Old, damaged cells need to die, need to be wiped out, for new healthy cells to grow. It’s a process that’s continuously going on inside each one of us. Both at the cellular and the sub-cellular level.

But when and why do cells die?

Some cells can get damaged due to external factors, like injury or poison or infections. So when you get a cut on your finger, cells whose blood supply gets cut-off, die. This is called Necrosis.

But some cells don’t just die, they commit suicide.

Yup, cells kill themselves. Nothing external happens. Just that the cell becomes damaged due to excessive wear and tear, and the body decides its time is up.

This process is called Apoptosis. And as macabre as it sounds, apoptosis is key to living a healthy life.

When a fetus is taking shape inside a mother’s womb, it’s feet are webbed. Slowly, the webbing disappears and we get distinct fingers. The cells in the webbing die voluntarily. Apoptosis.

Our brains create millions of neurons at first. But only some of the neurons organise into neural pathways that become thoughts and memories. The rest die voluntarily. Apoptosis.

Think of your body as a equipment-rental company. Millions of cells that make it up, being the equipment it rents out.

We, both biologically and philosophically, are just tenants in our bodies. And we have a contract with this company. So whenever we need to perform a task, the company lends us a certain number of specific machinery built for the task at hand.

Want to lift a cup? The body mobilises muscular cells in your fingers and performs the task.

Want to solve a hard problem? The body mobilises neural networks in the brain and supports you.

Want to run a marathon? The body hates you, but mobilises everything from muscle fibers to ‘persistence’ neural networks in the brain to help you scrape through.

Now, due to prolonged use this equipment, like any equipment, goes through wear & tear. It becomes damaged and isn’t able to reliably perform its assigned task.

But the body takes its contract very seriously. If you’ve been keeping your end of the bargain and giving it clean fuel for its equipment (aka food and exercise), it wants to ensure you get the right service everytime. And it can’t guarantee that with damaged cells.

So it does continuous quality checks on its entire fleet. The equipment (cells) that it finds are beyond repair, are decommissioned (killed). Apoptosis.

The ones that can be fixed and made brand new, are sent in for repair. Sub-cellular repair. Autophagy.

Autophagy

Greek for ‘eat oneself’. Gory, but again, essential for survival. And for once, a Latin word that means exactly what it’s supposed to.

To continue with the example, assume it came up in the body’s assessment that a cell has sustained some damage. Much like a car that’s other-wise fine but needs a tyre change and an oil refill.

Rather than junk the entire car, the body instructs the sub-cellular component to ‘cleanse itself’. And the starting point for that, is to ‘remove’ the damaged component. And the body’s brilliant solution to that, is Autophagy.

Through a complex sub-cellular process (read this if the gore interests you), the body earmarks the damaged portion in the cell for repair and then begins it’s decomposition. During the decomposition, the absolutely worthless parts are discarded, while the retrievable portions become raw material from which the new part is manufactured.

Imagine a self-decomposing pile of waste. It feeds on itself. And then, using the retrievable junk, a new part grows in its place. Genius!

IF and Autophagy

Before I proceed, let me declare that this is the first IF article in my series that’s purely based on secondary research. With just a few weeks of IF behind me, I have no personal experience of these claims. Neither are they visible changes that one can notice.

That said, there’s a whole body of research that’s now emerging, which supports the claim that nutrient-deprivation stimulates autophagy.

Going back again to our analogy, Autophagy is like car-servicing. And servicing can’t be done if the car is still in use.

One needs to bring it to the garage and let it lie idle there for the mechanic to work on it.

It seems that if we continuously keep eating, and our insulin levels continuously remain high, the body is unable to initiate this ’self-service’ protocol.

This is the part where the science gets really complex. Eating triggers insulin which triggers protein synthesis via a kinase called mammalian TOR or mTOR. And increased mTOR suppresses autophagy due an equally complicated process. Read this and this and this if you’re interested.

Just so you know, I too am yet to get my head around the science. It’s too gory for me right now.

But mice trials, as well as in-vitro human trials, do seem to suggest that fasting does, infact, stimulate autophagy.

Which is great news if true. Because a lot of the diseases we suffer from today — from cancers to tumors — are all due to unnecessary over-growths. Others, like Alzheimer’s, are due to rampant cellular degradation without renewal.

Perhaps, our modern diets and lifestyles, which are so constant and demanding, are keeping our internal equipment in ‘always-on’ mode.

We keep feeding ourselves at these ’never before in human history’ levels of food intake, and our bodies just keep growing and multiplying cells. Never once stopping to service or cleanse the old, dying parts that might be going out of service.

Autophagy, or self-cleansing, is essential to life. And nutrient-deprivation (aka fasting) seems to promote it.

Anti-aging

In a previous post, I’d contended that aging is nothing but muscle-degradation. As I write this post now, I stand corrected.

Cell-degradation is aging.

Muscle-degradation is a sub-set of this.

As an organism ages, its autophagous abilities decrease. That means it can no longer service and repair itself as efficiently as it used to.

So cell-damage starts accumulating and over time, a majority of cells become damaged or defunct. Unable to carry out their designated functions.

When this degradation reaches vital organs, we die.

So anything that can help promote autophagy can, in principle, have anti-aging effects in the truest sense of the word.

That’s another big claim that IF proponents are making. Only time (and a lot of it if it’s true) will tell if it’s true.

For now, do IF for its fat-loss and calorie restriction benefits. The good health will surely make your time on earth better, if not longer.


Join my email list…and I’ll add 5 years to your life! Ok I’ll definitely send you my e-Book: A Beginner’s Guide to Weight-Loss. FREE!

More Like This

Will Intermittent Fasting make you enter ‘Starvation Mode’?

Will your body start storing fat and losing muscle? “If you don’t eat for too long, the body goes…

Read More
The Social Ease of Intermittent Fasting

You don’t have to say ‘No’ when you’re not at the table Following any system of diet, that doesn’t…

Read More
6 Weeks of Intermittent Fasting: Here’s What It’s Done To Me

At the start of this year, I started Intermittent Fasting. The aim was to find 3 answers: Does…

Read More

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Blog Categories

Get Free Weight-Loss E-Book

Get Free Weight-Loss E-Book