What Is Autophagy? 8 Amazing Benefits Of Fasting That Will Save Your Life

What is Autophagy and why would you care. There was recently a Nobel Prize in medicine awarded for work on autophagy and the reason is that this shows great promise in reversing things like cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Improving immune system, reversing degenerative disease. And it has also shown promise for anti-aging so today we're going to talk about what autophagy is we're gonna explain some of the mechanisms and some of the principles that will help you understand why this can be so profound to the health of the body and then of course we'll show you some ways that you can start applying this in your life - coming right up I'm doctor Ekberg. I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympian in decathlon, and if you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss anything. The word autophagy means self eating and right on the surface that would seem like a really bad thing to most people. I mean wouldn't we want to stick around after all, but there's more to it than that. So the word Auto means self and phagy means to eat or consume and some of the benefits that have been discovered are things like anti aging it can slow or even reverse aging it is probably the mechanism that's really involved with calorie restriction diets that have been showing longevity but it's really the auto fudgie that is at the core of what's going on there it improves detoxification it improves clean up in the body it improves immune system it can improve the tissue quality it will improve your overall hormone balance in the body because it will reverse insulin resistance it will reduce insulin and it will increase growth hormone which is associated with maintaining muscle mass but also related to anti aging it can help reduce skin sag so when people lose a lot of weight then there's often a lot of skin left over well autophagy can reduce that amount of skin sag and make it tighten up for people who have had a concussion or a traumatic brain injury it can dramatically assist the recovery in that and it's been shown to reduce or possibly even reverse early stages of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's so we'll come back to that in a little bit and explain a little more but how does this work so before we get into that we have to change our mindset on a couple of principles because we think that we've been told that we eat so that we can build new tissue and that's basically end of story so we have this idea that growth is good growing muscles growing cells growing tissue it's all good and that breakdown is bad breaking down things that's a bad thing but it's not that simple and we have to stop thinking of the body as a statue in terms of oh well here's my body I see it in the mirror every morning it looks roughly the same today as it did last month so it's the same body but that's not really how it works the body is more like a river we want to think of the analogy river rather than statue because the cells in the body are constantly changing they're wearing out they're breaking down and they're being replaced with other healthier cells just like the river is never the same because the water keeps changing well that's how the body is as well it's not the statue is an inappropriate model it's not a good representation the river is a much better representation so instead of thinking of growth as good and breakdown as bad we want to think of them as equally important and that they have to be happening in balance so the health of the body - in order for you to have really healthy cells really vibrant tissue you have to get rid of the old tissue first the breakdown the cleanup is every bit as important as the building so think about that as if you're gonna build a new house and you don't build a foundation first you just bring in the timber and there's this rock pile but you don't create a smooth surface first you just start putting the timber on top of the rock pile that's gonna be a terrible house it's going to be hard to move around in it's not going to be very stable because we need a foundation we need a clean place to start with before start building and that's exactly how the body works as well one example is osteoporosis so bone is protein and minerals the protein gives it strength and flexibility and the minerals give it hardness and durability but if we don't have both we're gonna have terrible bone so there was a drug called Fosamax and what did it do well healthy bone needs to be broken down that you take away the old rotting the the worn-out bone and then you put in new protein and then you mineralize it but the Fosamax it just prevented it stopped the breakdown of the bone so it's like you just kept keeping the old crud underneath and you kept patching it with more mineral and in the end you have a terrible terrible foundation and you have more and more and more minerals so the bone looks really good on x-ray because the minerals show up on x-ray so it looks like you have a lot of good bone but the bone quality is terrible because it's very very brittle it's like glass almost it'll shatter at the slightest pressure and every cell in the body is the same way that the quality is depending on the proper breakdown first so we think a growth is good and growth is great when you're growing when you're going from a baby to an adult there's a lot of growth going on but once you're an adult then balance is more important and most of the diseases of adulthood thinks like cardiovascular disease that's a buildup of plaque Alzheimer's is a buildup of plaque there's neural debris there's little fiber tangles that don't get cleaned up and we just keep building new tissue on top of the old one and that's where we get plaque of course cancer is an overgrowth of unwanted tissue so there's a lot of things that happen in disease processes there's too much growth and if we can just back off and clean up first then the body has a much better chance of creating healthy tissue so that's the first thing that we need to understand about why autophagy is such a powerful tool that growth is not all good it's all about balance autophagy happens when we fast when we don't eat for a while so here's the mechanism normally if you would eat all the time you eat your three meals a day and you have regular meals you never miss a meal and let's say that you eat a hundred grams of protein and this protein goes into the body's amino acid pool that's all the stuff that you've eaten that hasn't been made into protein yet so the body eats protein breaks it down to amino acid and then reassembles it into protein for the body into body parts into new tissue so we have an amino acid pool that's that's the pile of raw materials if you eat a hundred grams a day then that hundred grams goes into the amino acid pool and then that same hundred grams gets built into new tissue but the fact is that you actually build a lot more than a hundred grams a day you use about 300 grams a day of amino acids to make tissue so if you only eat 100 that means they have to have a recycling mechanism so you make 300 grams you eat a hundred so 200 grams of that new tissue actually comes from recycling so again you break down old tissue you use those raw materials you use the breakdown products those amino acids and the body assembles them into new healthy tissue because you put in a hundred grams every day then there's a hundred grams left over the body builds 300s and breaks down three hundred again assuming that you don't grow and if you're done growing then that would be the normal state so there's a hundred left over and that gets discarded that gets excreted or it gets converted into energy we can convert protein into energy we can burn it for fuel four calories per gram so that would that's what would happen on a normal feasting situation which is most people's reality because they've never missed a meal and with that though they're constantly just packing more into the system and the excess gets sloughed off but there's always so much new good raw materials that the body doesn't have to become very efficient at the recycling it doesn't have to do a very good job however when we're fasting when we go without food for a while we we skip the eating so now for a period of time we add zero grams of protein we still have the same requirements of building tissue so we have the amino acid pool we have a requirement of 300 grams of new tissue the body is going to put a few things on hold but for the most part it still has to make the same tissue so what do we need to do we need to make red blood cells for example they only live for about three to four months and you make about 300 million new red blood cells every minute that takes some raw materials you also make white blood cells for your immune system you need to repair and replenish and tune-up tissue that is getting worn and this is an ongoing process it can never stop because then you wither away and die but now if there's nothing new coming in then the body has to get that much better at recycling it has to get really really good it has to put an extra crew on the recycling team and it has to go out and scour the body for any little remain of what's left over has to look in all the little corners all the nooks and crannies and every little molecule of debris and unwanted things gets brought back by the recycling crew so fasting is a powerful powerful upgrade of your cleanup crew of the recycling and as we said the breakdown is just as important as the build-up and if we always eat then we're not really paying attention enough to the breakdown to the cleanup so now we understand a little bit better why it improves the immune system because we are up regulating our white blood cells that's part of the cleanup crew and they have to go out and they have to find things they have to find raw materials and some of those raw materials are going to be virus and bacteria and dead debris and even cancer cells so immune system is upregulated and it becomes more effective your tissue quality improves because it gets cleaner it starts pulling out old fibers old debris thinks there are kind of marginal that the body might have left for later but now they say oh you know this one this little piece here could be used better so let's let's pull it in let's do something with it insulin goes down because you're not eating growth hormone goes up because during fasting is really important to preserve your muscle mass you don't want to be burning protein because you need this protein for making new tissue so the growth hormone makes sure that we preserve that we care for the protein and use it very very effectively so that the 300 grams can get into the recycling and now be burned for fuel skin sag decreases because part of that extra skin is debris it's extra tissue that now becomes a resource for the body so it recycles it more effectively traumatic brain injury concussions the brain is very different from the rest of your body the brain has the separate circulatory system so to speak it has something called a blood-brain barrier and brain tissue is different than muscle for example muscle is supposed to get damaged every time you work out you're supposed to break a few fibers and the body has an excellent system of repairing that you get a little inflammation you get some lactic acid the the repair crew goes right there and it's done in 48 to 72 hours the brain is different it doesn't have that kind of cleanup crew it is much much slower because it is protected by the cranial vault the brain is not supposed to get damaged the rest of the body is supposed to take a hit here and there the brain is not supposed to get damaged so he was never equipped with as good a cleanup crew but when you're in autophagy when you're up regulating this now there's two reasons first of all the autophagy improves the cleanup crew but also you're not eating so the sugar goes down you're improving ketones which is a cleaner fuel and the glucose is not there to interfere and create inflammation anyone with a concussion or a traumatic brain injury of a trauma of some other kind the single best thing that you can do is to stop eating sugar immediately go for an intermittent fast try to go as long as you can but then transition into keto and low carb because your brain will heal faster Alzheimer's and Parkinson's those are Alzheimer's is neural the accumulation of neural debris and if we upgrade the cleanup crew then we're going to be able to clean out that debris more effective so I think autophagy is incredibly exciting I think it holds the key to the reversal of a lot of disease process that we haven't been able to touch until now by understanding this but remember that it doesn't mean that you should just stop eating and you live forever that's not how it works it's all about balance we have to find the balance between anabolism which means building up and catabolism which means breaking down there is a golden balance there we have to find a balance between activation and recovery between being awake and sleeping between exercising and resting there's a balance the body doesn't need one more than the other it needs the balance of the two and maybe most importantly or not really because all of them are super important but the one that a lot of people miss is the balance between feasting and fasting that historically humans have had times of feast and times of famine we have had natural periods where we went 18 hours 24 hours 3 days without food and the body is perfectly equipped to deal with that and not only equipped but it sets in motion this process of autophagy that can be life-saving so it's balanced so our modern lifestyle of being a couch potato working at a desk for 8 to 12 hours sitting at a computer in the same posture coming home sitting down in the sofa burning the midnight oil creating a lot of stress with deadlines or video games and sitting up all night we have the benefit of artificial lights that we don't have to follow the sun well our ancestors they follow the sun they were up when it was light and they slept when it was dark and that created a certain rhythm and we are often upsetting that rhythm because we've found ways around and one of the worst ways is our official recommendations of never missing a meal to eat three meals a day plus a mid-morning snack in an afternoon snack in an evening snack and then having a sweet drink to sip on all the way to top off your blood sugar so it is about balance we need to understand how our modern lifestyle has changed that balance we are violating laws of nature so now of course you want to get into autophagy at least once in a while and how do you do that there are two tools that are powerful above all others and one is high-intensity interval training and the other is fasting so again high-intensity interval training it's a challenge on the body it changes it it makes the body have to do something different it forces the body to respond to change something and fasting is the same way when there's no more food coming in it forces the body to do something different to start recycling better to start burning fat instead of other fuels so how long does it take well that depends on how clogged your system is how dependent you are on carbohydrates and how insulin resistance you are so if you're coming straight from the standard American diet and you just stop eating cold turkey you'll probably go 72 hours before you see any significant autophagy going on however if you are already fat adapted if you are already on a keto diet your body burns at least a good amount of ketones maybe not like a maximum amount but a good amount of ketones and you've done some intermittent fasting so your body is used to generating fuel to kind of go in in and out on the edge of autophagy then you can probably get significant autophagy in about 24 hours so yeah these are not laid down in concrete they're different for everybody but it'll give you an idea of of what it's gonna take so if this is all new to you I would recommend that you follow the these steps you start going into low carb you drop your carbs down in the 50 gram range and then once your body is is used to that then you drop them a little further and you make sure that you're in ketosis that you're generating ketones so you're getting your body and your brain accommodated used to burning ketones for fuel and less reliant on carbohydrates then you can extend your fasting a little bit so now you skip breakfast you get into maybe a lunch and dinner lunch and noon dinner at 6:00 so you have 18 hours of fasting and six hours of feeding and once your body is used to that then try some longer fasts and I'm gonna make some more videos to talk about how to measure this and what you're looking for to know when you're in autophagy if you enjoy this and you'd like to learn more about related topics make sure to check out our 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Channel: Dr. Sten Ekberg

Views: 130,564

Rating: 4.9365273 out of 5

Keywords: what is autophagy, autophagy explained, autophagy fasting, benefits of fasting, fasting benefits, autophagy intermittent fasting, autophagy benefits, intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting benefits, autophagy, fasting, why you should fast, autophagy and fasting, fasting and autophagy, autophagy fasting weight loss, autophagy fasting nobel prize, insulin, cancer prevention, autophagy fasting how long, time restricted eating, dr ekberg

Id: XCvUf9WU4qI

Length: 22min 26sec (1346 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 05 2019