- We're taking a break
from talking about weight loss this week.
I'm gonna focus on another benefit of intermittent fasting,
autophagy.
- Autophagy.
- Not autophagy, it's autophagy.
- Autophagy.
- The last time you said autophagy,
lots of people mocked you in the comment.
- Autophagy. - We'll check it out then.
Use that Pronunciation Guide website.
- Okay, well, let's check that out.
- [Ghost Voice] Autophogy.
- Oh.
(upbeat music)
Hey Carb Dodges, my name is Dr Dan Maggs.
I'm so glad you've landed on my channel,
which is all about achieving lasting weight loss
through low carb real food nutrition.
Now we've known about autophagy since the 1960s.
But it's been a particularly hot topic over
the last few years
since Japanese cell biologist Dr Yoshinori Ohsumi,
won the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology
for his work on autophagy back in 2016.
So what is autophagy?
Well, the word autophagy itself literally means self eating
when translated from the Greek.
It's the process that cells use
to get rid of damaged structures within themselves,
in order to turn them into newer,
healthier versions of themselves.
Think of it like decluttering,
but for the inside of yourselves,
and there's a lot going on inside a cell.
Take your wardrobe, for example,
it's normal that over time,
you're gonna need to get rid of some of your older,
worn out clothes and buy some new ones.
There's got to be some out with the old,
and in with the new to keep some sort of order.
Without wardrobe autophagy,
your clothes just become more and more ragged and damaged,
and you never make room for new one.
And when you think about it,
ageing is just more and more damage occurring
at the cellular level over a prolonged period of time.
Or worse still,
the failure to repair damage,
can lead to things like cancer.
Alternatively, you don't clear out
your old clothes properly,
and you buy new clothes anyway,
and your wardrobe starts to spill over,
you start bagging those extra clothes up
and leave them lying around.
And over time,
they build up and you can't even open the doors anymore.
Well, some of the common neurodegenerative conditions,
are caused by abnormal clumping
of proteins within the brain,
which can cause damage to nerve cells.
Amyloid plaques are a feature of Alzheimer's disease.
And we see something called Lewy body formation
in Parkinson's disease.
But with wardrobe autophagy working perfectly,
you're not only getting rid of those old clothes,
you're selling them on eBay and using
that money to buy new clothes.
And that's just like with actual autophagy.
When you're breaking down those old damaged bits
of the cells and building them back up into new good things.
I think that's about as far as I can push
the wardrobe autophagy analogy.
So I think it's time to move on from that.
This new understanding of autophagy
is helping us look at certain diseases
in a completely different way.
We think that a lack of autophagy plays a role
in neurodegenerative diseases, in cancer,
in autoimmune diseases, in infectious diseases
and in
ageing.
And talking about aging,
the bad news for all of us is that,
the rate of autophagy does decrease as we get older.
So the benefits of potentially increasing
the rate of autophagy are pretty obvious.
And there is a huge amount of money being spent
by pharmaceutical companies trying to provide drugs
that will increase autophagy.
And I'm sure we'll see the results of those trials within
the next 50 years or so.
Now, I don't know about you,
but I'm not gonna wait for that research
to become available before I start
to do something with this.
And I'm also not gonna take a drug
if there's a way to do it entirely naturally.
And if you're interested in this too,
then you're definitely gonna be interested,
In the next bit of this video.
What increases autophagy?
How do we up-regulate this process?
Now both ketogenic diets and exercise up-regulate
this to a certain extent.
But by far the most potent way to increase autophagy,
is nutrient deprivation.
And by nutrient deprivation,
I mean, fasting.
And so the next question is logically,
how long do you need to fast to activate autophagy?
Okay, so here is the slight problem.
How do you measure autophagy?
How do you know it's happening?
Well, the best way is to look
for something called autophagosomes.
And these are what are actually doing the autophagy.
In one study mice that fasted for 24 hours,
produced significant numbers of autophagosomes.
But we're not mice,
so we can't say that this translate over to humans.
So we're pretty limited in what we know.
But there is a general expert consensus around this,
and that is that you need to fast rule about 18 hours
to get this process of autophagy properly started.
And you need to stay in that fasted state
for about two to three days in order
to get the maximum benefits.
So quick disclaimer this is not my medical advice.
I'm not telling you to go and fast for 72 hours.
I am a doctor,
I'm not your doctor.
And especially if you've got ongoing health conditions,
is maybe something you wanna discuss
with your own doctor before attempting
a longer term fast like this.
Can you have too much autophagy?
Some is good, so more equals better, right?
Let's go back to that wardrobe analogy.
If you're selling your clothes on eBay,
faster than you're replacing them,
you're gonna run out of clothes.
Similarly, too much autophagy,
such as fasting for too long or fasting too frequently,
may cause harm rather than doing good.
Again, there is a general consensus about this.
And they say that two or three longer fasts,
within a 12 month period should be sufficient.
But again, who knows for sure.
Ultimately, we don't wanna be overdoing these things.
Life is about balance.
With fasting comes feasting.
And for me,
this new information we have about autophagy,
just serves to reinforce
that we are hard wired,
a genetic level for feast and fast,
not for this ongoing carbohydrate-based,
three to five meals a day sometimes.
Our ancestors would have to survive
for long periods, without food.
It makes sense that evolution has given us
a process like autophagy
to use up our intracellular waste for energy,
during those times of starvation.
So guys, that was a really high level overview
of intermittent fasting and autophagy.
I found it really, really interesting.
I hope you did too.
I'd love to hear,
having watch this video are longer fast,
something you're thinking about trying?
Let me know in the comments down below.
Let me know if you've tried a longer fast,
you know, up to 72 hours in the past.
How did you find it?
And I think this is a really, really important topic
that more people need to know about.
So I'd really appreciate it,
if you think this video is being good,
then please share it on your social media channels.
There's gonna be loads more videos
about intermittent fasting coming up soon
that are gonna be linked up here in this playlist,
which you can click on and just get taken to,
all my intermittent fasting videos.
And you can subscribe to this channel
so you don't miss any of the new videos as I release them.
Hopefully, I'll see you next Tuesday.