so today i'm going to teach you a new word all right it's a very long word
and then i'm going to describe what it is but this way you can go to a party and sound very smart
so what is this word the word is ampk what does that stand for five prime adenosine monophosphate
activated protein kinase okay so just memorize that word and you can use it at a party so what
is this thing well it's the mitochondria protector they call it the guardian of your metabolism
now in this sense metabolism isn't necessarily just about weight loss it's about producing energy
and this energy is produced in the mitochondria so basically it's the central regulator of energy
homeostasis so homeostasis is the ability to adapt the internal part of your body to the external
part the environment so we can maintain survival so if it's cold outside our body starts to shiver
to increase temperature that's homeostasis if you were to run up stairs your pulse rate would go up
to adjust for the need for oxygen to your brain so you wouldn't pass out that's homeostasis so ampk
basically is an enzyme that adapts to things that deplete your cellular energy so it senses this
drop in energy in the atp which is like the energy currency of the body within the mitochondria and
then it adapts the mitochondria and other things to be more efficient so it can survive so it's
going to increase more atp and decrease the consumption of atp so basically it rewires
your metabolism to make it more efficient so any time we're talking about efficiency in the cells
we have to talk about autophagy an autophagy is the condition in your body where you're recycling
old worn out cell parts and turning them into new cells so ampk triggers autophagy
mitophagy now what is mitophagy that's a condition where you're recycling damaged mitochondria into
new mitochondrion now what's significant about that is there's so many diseases including cancer
that are related to damaged mitochondria then we have something called xenophagy and that is the
removal of intracellular pathogens and turn that material into new cells now isn't that cool to be
able to get rid of pathogens viruses and bacteria that are unwanted in your body and also as a side
note it suppresses tumors it's anti-cancer it helps you get rid of diabetes it helps get rid
of a fatty liver but other than those things it pretty much doesn't do anything else all right
so now what's the significance of this enzyme the main thing we want to know is how do we trigger
it right well anything that lowers your energy will trigger it like low glucose as in a low carb
diet hypoxia i know what's that that's low oxygen i've done a video on this where you can exercise
with a certain breathing restriction mechanism to induce hypoxia and that can activate that as well
we also have exercise okay because you're using up your glucose fasting of course is the big one
you're depleting your glucose and then running on ketones and metformin by the way which i'm
not recommending and i'm not telling you to get off your metformin either but i'm just telling
you that metformin is a synthetic version of a natural plant chemical that helps you with insulin
it makes insulin more sensitive it also helps your liver not make so much glucose and of course a lot
of diabetics are using metformin i i think out of all the medications for diabetes that one probably
is the least damaging but if you're on metformin i would highly recommend you start taking
vitamin b1 and b12 because metformin can deplete you of b1 and that can increase your risk to
lactic acidosis now there's some other things too that can increase this enzyme ampk polyphenols
okay what are polyphenols it's a natural compound in certain plants resveratrol from red grapes can
increase this enzyme certain phytonutrients in green tea can do it berberine is another
natural extract that can help increase it curcumin is another one i've done a lot of videos on that
ginseng is another one an alpha lipoic acid so anyway i just wanted to teach you this long
complex word so you can sound smart at a party and comment down below and let me know how that goes
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