let's talk about the most important benefit of autophagy and this is gonna
surprise you now if you're not familiar with the autophagy is a condition
where your body is recycling damaged or old and not needed proteins in the body
I'm not talking just about hair and muscle I'm talking about those little
enzyme protein machines that do the work of the body those are the things that
make body tissue and they're at the cellular level when those are damaged
autophagy is a system to clean those out of the body and recycle them okay so
autophagy decreases the risk of chronic disease at autophagy will help recycle
protein as a survival mechanism for example one of the triggers for autophagy
is fasting so that would be kind of a similar thing to starvation so the body
kicks in this mechanism to help become more efficient so as to survive longer
so it'll take the protein it doesn't need recycle it into new tissue and even
use it as fuel also the autophagy can help reduce pathogens in the body and it
protects the neurons as a survival mechanism the heart cells and it gets
rid of what's called advanced glycation end-products which basically means like
sticky proteins that clog things up as well as plaquing in the brain so it
cleans up all this damaged protein in the cells that's what autophagy is but
the most important function of autophagy is anti-cancer so let me explain this
now the difference between a normal cell and a cancer cell has to do with this
one thing and that has to do with this in a normal cell you have respiration in
the mitochondria what does that mean well fuel is converted through a machine
to make energy currency of the bodies called ATP so you
fuel like glucose that uses oxygen to then be burned and that's the energy
currency of the body so in a normal cell you have something called mitochondrial
respiration the mitochondria is the energy Factory and respiration has to do
with breathing or oxygen okay so a normal cell needs oxygen to generate
fuel now in a cancer cell there's damage to this respiratory mechanism so this
motor with a carburetor that uses oxygen is broken
okay there's irreversible damage so what happens when you damage that system as a
survival mechanism this cell starts to activate an ancient pathway that is able
to ferment glucose which basically is a way of breaking it down differently
without the use of oxygen now whether there's oxygen or not that
has nothing to do with it glucose fermentation doesn't necessarily need
oxygen to make its energy so that is the difference between a cancer cell and a
normal cell normal cells use oxygen in the respiratory center this is a fancy
name for it right here and cancer cells basically ferment glucose without oxygen
one of the ways that they test for cancer is through a PET scan and a PET
scan they are measuring extreme glucose
consumption cancer cells are extremely hungry for glucose they hog glucose more
than normal cells and sometimes you will starve than normal cells now just by
knowing that simple fact right there why would anyone want to consume a lot of
glucose or sugar if they have cancer now the other question asked is why is there
damage in this part of the mitochondria well my theory is that it has something
to do with the DNA that gets damaged because what's unique about the
mitochondria is that the mitochondria has its own DNA
hey it's called mitochondria DNA versus the DNA in the nucleus of the cell which
is highly protective the DNA and the mitochondria are much more prone to
mutation or alteration because they're not as protected now the mitochondria
can use the DNA from the nucleus of the cell but it also has its own DNA and I
think that's really why it becomes damaged because it's simply not
protected you cannot get cancer in your body unless there's damage to this
respiratory part of the mitochondria what does all this mean it means that
autophagy has the ability to clean up this damage in you mitochondria because these
are protein machines these are enzymes the protein damage in the mitochondria
that causes the cells to shift can be cleaned up by autophagy so that makes
this benefit anti-cancer the most important benefit of autophagy now there
are two videos you need to watch now you need to know all the things that can
stimulate autophagy one being intermittent fasting but there's another video that I
will put on the screen and also down below that is on cancer in my interview
with Professor Thomas Seyfried you have to check that out