What the hell is AMPK?
Well, it’s something that’ll keep you brimming with energy, it’ll boost your immune system,
it’ll help you lose weight by burning fat…
but most importantly, it’ll keep you young by cranking up your mitochondria,
supporting autophagy and putting chronic inflammation on the back burner…if you activate it.
And in today’s video, I’ll show you how to do just that.
Look, we all want to stay young as long as we can, right?
We want to slow down the aging process, and even turn it back, if possible.
In today’s video, we’re going to take a look at a really great strategy to add to your arsenal of techniques
to live a radically longer and healthier life…and that’s activation of the AMPK pathway.
Today, we’ll be tackling the subject of AMPK activation.
We’ll take a look at what the AMPK pathway is, how it gets activated, the effects of AMPK activation,
as well as the impact that a decline in AMPK activation has on aging.
We’ll also discuss various things that you can do to boost your AMPK activation.
Now, before we begin, we need to understand what ATP is and what it does.
ATP is the primary energy source of all living organisms on earth.
Whether it’s metabolized from a light source, in the case of plants,
or whether it’s metabolized from the food we eat,
chemical energy is captured and stored in the form of ATP.
Then, in the mitochondria, the energy stored in the ATP is released
to fuel every cellular and biological function in our bodies,
from breathing to digesting food to running a marathon.
ATP stands for adenosine triphosphate.
It’s a molecule that has 3 phosphate groups attached to it, thus the "tri" in triphosphate.
It’s the breaking of the bonds that hold those phosphate groups in place
that generates the energy that is released.
Once the energy is released, the adenosine triphosphate is converted into adenosine monophosphate,
meaning that the molecule now has only a single phosphate group attached.
And it’s now called AMP.
So basically, AMPK activation occurs after a lot of ATP has been converted to AMP,
usually through some type of strenuous activity.
AMPK is an enzyme and it stands for adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase.
Kinases are simply enzymes that transfer a phosphate group
from a high-energy molecule to a specific substrate.
AMPK is biochemically activated in the presence of increasing levels of AMP and decreasing levels of ATP.
And when AMPK is activated, cells do not make or store fat,
but rather burn fat for energy and it promotes glucose transport.
Activated AMPK promotes the rapid, efficient release of energy, with little energy storage as fat,
resulting in low blood sugar and fat levels, increased insulin sensitivity and a low risk of heart disease,
diabetes and other metabolic disorders.
Activated AMPK also promotes the steady renewal of cellular components.
It promotes autophagy, which is the process where cells consume themselves and recycle their components.
This process eliminates damaged DNA and misshapen proteins…another cause of aging.
It induces mitochondrial biogenesis, which is the creation of new mitochondria.
It also stimulates the production of SIRT1, one of the sirtuins and an enzyme that repairs DNA
and is increased in animals with extended lifespans.
AMPK activation is critical to the immune system,
enhancing the ability of white blood cells to home in on and destroy invading bacteria.
Finally, activated AMPK inhibits signaling of the Nuclear Factor-kappaB pathway,
which is a pro-inflammatory pathway, so inhibiting this pathway results in reduced chronic inflammation.
Because of it’s importance in maintaining and restoring youthful function,
AMPK has been called a “gerosuppressor”.
“Gero” as in “gerontology”, the study of old age,
and it’s called this because it suppresses the processes of biological aging.
But, like most everything else, AMPK activity declines sharply with age.
AMPK activation can be suppressed by inflammation.
And when calorie intake in higher than needed to sustain energy expenditures,
when more calories are consumed than burned, AMPK activation can be markedly decreased.
And with reduced AMPK activation, cells decrease their energy-releasing, ATP-generating activities
and shift to energy-storing activities…generating new fat deposits and creating new glucose molecules.
Boosting AMPK activity will keep your tissues young and slow aging throughout the body.
It will also help suppress a number of chronic diseases associated with old age,
including cancer, cardiovascular disease and arteriosclerosis,
metabolic syndrome and diabetes, and liver disease.
So, in the quest to turn back the clock, activating AMPK would be a good thing, right?
But how do you do that?
Well, calorie restriction is one way, but to be honest,
it would require a more severe restriction than most of us would be comfortable with
or could sustain for very long.
Probably the best way to activate AMPK is through exercise.
AMPK activation is stimulated by muscle contraction.
Studies have shown that not only does exercise positively affect AMPK activation,
but the higher the intensity, the more AMPK is activated.
And as it turns out, high-intensity interval training is extremely effective in activating AMPK.
Dietary fiber is also a key player in activating AMPK,
particularly a special form of soluble fiber called glucomannan,
which is more effective than any other fiber at activating AMPK.
The only source that I know of for glucomannan is an Asian vegetable called konjac root.
If you want to take glucomannan, you can purchase it as a flour or as shirataki noodles.
It also comes in pill form, but I haven’t seen a lot of recommendations for taking the pills.
If you do, open the capsule and dissolve the powder in water or take with a lot of very liquid food.
As a soluble fiber, glucomannan absorbs a lot of water, so be sure to take it with sufficient amounts of liquid.
There are also several nutrients that have been shown to activate AMPK.
Alpha Lipoic Acid, or ALA, can activate AMPK in tissues, particularly muscle tissue.
Quercetin can increase AMPK in fat, muscle and the liver.
Fish oil, curcumin and EGCG, or epigallocatechin gallate, from green tea can also activate AMPK.
And finally, there’s metformin.
Metformin is one of the molecules that have been shown to replicate the effects of calorie restriction,
and in my opinion, it’s used to slow aging is profound enough to warrant going to the doctor
and seeing if they might be willing to prescribe meformin for off-label use.
And the thing to keep in mind is this:
research has demonstrated that the pathways that cause cellular aging, likely each effect aging separately,
because targeting each of them simultaneously leads to additive increases in lifespans.
Meaning that the more therapies or interventions that you use,
the more increases in your lifespan that you will experience.
Hope you enjoyed this video.
If you’d like to learn more about other nutrient-sensing pathways, then check out this playlist.
That’s it for me, I’m outta here.