Activate Autophagy For A Long Life But Don't Do THIS

Hello Health Champions today we're going to talk  about autophagy and how to exercise to live longer  

and why it is so important to understand that  because it's completely different from how most  

people exercise there's been a lot of talk about  autophagy lately because it can help you live  

longer it can help fight cancer it can boost your  immunity and it can boost your brain health the  

word autophagy means self-eating and that's not  as bad as it sounds like and we'll get to that in  

a moment but sometimes lack can be a good thing  because autophagy is driven by lack and there's  

two factors of lack one is if we have a nutrient  lack and especially a lack of protein that drives  

autophagy the other one will focus more on today  is the lack of oxygen called hypoxia so either  

lack of protein or lack of oxygen will drive  this very powerfully and when it's a nutrient  

loss then we're talking about fasting to drive  this and when we're look talking about hypoxia  

then we're talking about exercise to drive this  if the body senses a lack of protein then it's  

going to up regulate its recycling because if  we're not putting protein in through the food  

for a period of time then the body has to start  looking harder for leftover protein in the body  

and the first place we want to go looking is junk  protein protein that there's something wrong with  

and this is often called misfolded protein so  how does that work well protein structure is  

pretty complex and at the primary level we have  amino acid which are basically like pearls on a  

string and you can think of them as the individual  letters and you have to put the letters in a very  

specific order and that's what DNA does inside  the cell if the order is correct then we start  

spelling out words and that is the secondary  structure and then you want to think of these  

amino acids as having different charges they're  kind of like magnets and these balls are a little  

bit different sizes and different shapes so  they're going to start attracting each other  

and this string we're going to start folding it  and twisting it so the secondary structure is an  

example of that but then in the larger scheme now  we get into the tertiary structure and now you can  

think of that as sentences and now the shape of  the protein is held in place by these magnets or  

by these charges and if that doesn't work quite  right now we get misfolded proteins if maybe  

one amino acid was in the wrong place or if there  was some stress that just Twisted this the wrong  

way now that becomes a junk protein and up from  tertiary we have quaternary and that's just where  

we put more of these subunits together and if we  don't have autophagy if we don't clean up these  

misfolded proteins then they get left behind and  they can start clumping together and form what's  

called Aggregates protein aggregates and that is  a really bad thing or it can be a really bad thing  

they can be very toxic they can cause a lot of  damage and the way they do that is they interfere  

with the organelles inside the cell so your body  has organs and a really really tiny organ inside  

the cell would be called an organelle it's just  like a little bubble but it does very specific  

things and if we have a lot of these junk proteins  these aggregate proteins sitting around eventually  

they can start interfering with the function and  the communication and the normal flow of things  

inside the cells and one example that I bet you've  heard of is the beta amyloid plaques that causes  

Alzheimer's and those are an example of these  misfolding these aggregate proteins so what would  

happen if we didn't have any autophagy well they  did a study where they manipulated the autophagy  

mechanism in some mice so they basically had  no autophagy and what they found was these mice  

would pretty much all die prematurely but here's  the deal they all died from neurodegenerative  

diseases this all affected the brain so these  misfolded proteins where they caused the damage  

is in the brain and that's why autophagy is so  important for the brain and the Neural Health  

and this is the mechanism for virtually all of the  neurodegenerative diseases that people suffer from  

like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and ALS Lewy Body  dementia frontotemporal dementia and Huntington's  

disease these are all examples of these protein  aggregation diseases so autophagy benefits Us  

in three primary ways one is that autophagy is  the primary mechanism where why we can clean up  

these aggregate proteins inside the nervous system  inside neurons the second way is that it prevents  

cell damage by cleaning up not just these proteins  but all kinds of different debris in all kinds of  

different cells in the body but especially in the  brain and the third is that autophagy activates  

survival mechanisms and promotes longevity it  helps cells survive in a crisis and the genes  

involved with this are called sirtuins and the two  two primary ways to turn on autophagy is exercise  

and fasting so how do they compare well if we  put them side by side the hormones The Beneficial  

hormones associated with autophagy are human  growth hormone and bdnf brain derived neurotrophic  

factor which is a hormone that's like Miracle  growth of the brain it helps us make synapses  

it helps us rewire it helps us learn and improves  neuroplasticity and here both exercise and fasting  

will turn on these hormones significantly but  then they differ because when we talk about this  

lack of nutrients there's lack of protein that is  the fasting that causes that whereas the lack of  

oxygen the hypoxia is purely an exercise driven  mechanism and perhaps the biggest difference  

between the two is that exercise cause causes  a slight physical damage and that can be a good  

thing because the body can adapt and repair but  it can also be a bad thing it can cause injuries  

and we can overdo it but with fasting we get  the benefits without any physical damage so  

again it can swing both ways and the next couple  of benefits we maintain muscle mass more so with  

exercise because we stimulate muscle growth and  also we stimulate bone density and bone mass with  

weight-bearing exercise but also a huge difference  is that exercise is a local effect if you work out  

your legs you're not getting autophagy in your  arms you're getting the autophagy in the area  

in the body part where you're creating a lack of  oxygen where you're burning up the oxygen faster  

then you can supply it and that only happens  when you work a muscle group very hard and by  

contrast then fasting causes a global autophagy so  simply by fasting then the lack of nutrients and  

the positive hormones the growth hormone they're  going to reach every cell in the body now when it  

comes to the brain there are tremendous benefits  to the brain both from exercise and from fasting  

but for very different mechanisms exercise  is the number one thing that keeps the brain  

alive the movement sends signals to the brain  that's juice that's nutrients for the brain and  

only exercise can really do that but on the  other hand when we talk about the autophagy  

to clean up inflammation and debris and damage  in the brain then the autophagy from fasting  

is basically the only thing that can do that  and because the exercise stimulates the brain  

and a strong brain can control and manage and  inhibit stress better then exercise also provides  

tremendous stress relief and stress control and  one other Factor where there's some difference is  

in terms of reversing insulin resistance they both  can do it to some point but the fasting is by far  

the most potent in terms of changing the set point  in terms of really changing the hypothalamus and  

the set point for insulin resistance fasting is  the most powerful way to do that now exercise will  

help with insulin resistance but it's more of an  adjunct it will help indirectly by using up some  

extra fuel by using up some extra carbohydrates  so that the body doesn't need to release so much  

insulin so both of them have an effect but the  exercise effect is slight and the fasting thing  

is very powerful to reverse insulin resistance now  if we really want to exercise for Optimum Health  

and to live longer Unfortunately most people  get that wrong and here's what we're looking  

for we want to maximize autophagy and we want to  minimize the damage and what is that damage we're  

talking about well here's the truth exercise as  much as I'm for it exercise will break you down  

right exercise is catabolic the act of working out  of working of punishing your body is breaking it  

down it doesn't become beneficial until you have  recovery the recovery is anabolic the recovery is  

building you up so of course we need to have the  catabolic we need to have the breakdown in order  

to get the build up but we have to understand that  distinction that we're not getting stronger from  

exercise we're getting stronger when the body  can repair it in a parallel to that has to do  

with stress for the most part we talk about stress  as all bad as having too much to do and not enough  

time and feeling overwhelmed and feeling bad but  we have to realize that the stress is not the  

event it's the body's response bonds to it and  there is good stress called you stress you EU  

means good or true whereas this is something bad  and here's the difference stress is really really  

good if it's short term exercise is short-term  stress getting chased by an animal and escaping  

is short-term stress but then we can adapt we can  repair and we can grow stronger so this type of  

short-term control stress is what drives autophagy  and survival and Longevity the distress on the  

other hand is when stress becomes chronic now it  breaks us down a little bit over and over and over  

but because it's chronic and ongoing we never have  the time to repair in between the assault and the  

breakdown so this type of chronic stress which  is often associated with core is all actually  

drives another process called apoptosis which is  kind of the opposite of autophagy autophagy is  

about survival apoptosis is about programmed cell  death so we said that exercise creates autophagy  

by creating hypoxia a lack of oxygen so how do  you know if you have a lack of oxygen well the  

first clue is that your heart rate goes up if  your body has a certain amount of oxygen but it  

senses that it's not enough then the first thing  that's going to happen is it's going to increase  

the heart rate to try to pump around that oxygen  faster the second thing obviously is that your  

breath rate will soon increase also you try to  take more oxygen in and the Third Way you find  

out during exercise is when your muscles start  burning because when they're burning that thing  

is called lactic acid and the lactic acid is a  result of glycolysis breakdown so when you have  

enough oxygen now you're primarily burning fat  in the mitochondria you're burning a mix of fat  

and carbohydrate in the mitochondria but as soon  as you exceed the metabolic rate as soon as your  

activity is more intense than what your oxygen  can supply now you need another source you need  

an emergency Fuel and that is glucose you start  breaking down the glucose which creates lactic  

acid and it starts burning the muscles but when  it comes to this hypoxia and these three criteria  

that we just talked about it seems to be much more  effective in terms of creating a lot of autophagy  

to change it up to contrast and Alternate these  factors rather than a steady state so if we're  

exercising then we might want to start off with a  little bit of warm up we drive up the heart rate  

a little bit and then we hit it really hard and  our heart rate goes up but then we rest a little  

bit and allow it to come down but here's the trick  you don't want to rest until it comes all the way  

back to where you were you want to start another  interval while it's still slightly elevated and  

what happens now let's say you go 15 20 30 seconds  of intense and then it drops down now the next  

time you hit it for the same time you get a little  bit higher and then it drops but you don't let  

it drop and each time you drive it a little bit  higher and this of course is called high intensity  

interval training and the whole goal is just to  increase the heart rate and the intensity and the  

fatigue and all these factors we talk about the  hypoxia so that you hit basically a maximum level  

within a short period of time so what we want  to understand is that it's intensity that drives  

this autophagy and the intensity is directly  proportional to the hypoxia and it's directly  

proportional to how much autophagy you're getting  so a little bit of intensity if we have a little  

bit of intensity we get a little bit of autophagy  if we have a little bit more now we get double as  

much autophagy and if we can really really crank  it out now we get way way more autophagy benefits  

out of it the next question I always get is well  how do I do this what type of exercise can I do  

and it's not that hard you could do Sprints battle  ropes medicine ball you could ride a bike on the  

road you could do a stationary you could do a  recumbent you could do jumping jacks or burpees  

pretty much anything that you would normally do  just do it high intensity and if you want to do  

it more intense and you want to crank it up then  all you do is you increase the speed of whatever  

you're doing you increase the resistance of  whatever you're pushing or pulling or lifting  

you increase increase the incline so if you're  on a treadmill you increase the incline if you're  

doing sprints you do them uphill all of that will  make it much much harder Without Really wearing  

on your body more you don't increase your risk of  injury you just have that elevation to drive up  

your heart rate more you can also increase the  amplitude of whatever you're doing which means  

large motion so if you're doing battle ropes for  example don't just kind of whip it around a little  

bit in the middle you go all the way up and all  the way down and you really push it with your  

legs that's how you get more intensity out of it  and finally you want to use the largest number of  

muscles possible at any given time so you can do  this on a stationary bike but it's not my favorite  

because you're mostly using your legs whereas  when you're doing sprints you're pretty much  

using every muscle in the body same thing with  battle ropes if you do it all the way up and down  

you're using almost every muscle in your body and  then it's much easier to create that hypoxia on a  

global basis in the body the intensity should be  hard enough that you basically fail if you keep it  

up for 20 to 60 seconds if you could do the same  thing and keep going for several minutes then it  

is not intense enough it's not nothing wrong  necessarily once in a while but it's not what  

we're looking for this is something if you can  keep it up for several minutes now it's more of  

a wear and tear type of exercise if you're basing  it on heart rate you should be able to hit 90 to  

100 percent of your maximum heart rate within  that exercise within four to ten repetitions if  

you're doing sprints or if you're doing squats or  if you're doing a rowing machine it doesn't really  

matter you should be able to get really close  to your max heart rate but that maximum heart  

rate is for your age and for your Fitness levels  you never want to jump straight into this if you  

haven't exercised in a long time and your maximum  heart rate is roughly 220 minus your age if you're  

really fit it tends to be a little bit higher than  that so if you're 60 years old 220 minus 60 you  

should aim for 160 as your max heart rate but that  is not the first time you work out you might want  

to try to get to 130 140 first and then as you get  more fit and you get the hang of this now you try  

to push it to that 160. when it comes to frequency  you want to do this often enough to prevent a loss  

if you make some gains you don't want to start  going backwards and this could be your level of  

Fitness it could be your muscle mass your body fat  whatever it is you're going for now if you're thin  

and your primary goal is longevity then you'd  be amazed how little you have to do your body  

isn't just going to forget what it used to be  it's not just going to degenerate spontaneously  

you might be able to keep that up with as little  as one high intensity exercise every two weeks now  

that's minimal and if you're trying to maintain  I would probably suggest you do a little bit more  

and probably somewhere around once or twice a week  that will maintain it at a higher level and it  

will probably be able to provide some growth  as well and the reason you don't necessarily  

want to do more is that it is very stressful on  the body and stress like we said breaks you down  

especially as you get older you want to do less  of this and you want to make sure that if it's a  

hard workout you want to get at least 48 and  probably 72 hours of time to recover between  

high intensity workouts now that's if you do  like a whole body workout like an uphill Sprint  

if you're lifting weights then you just need  to make sure that you're getting 48 to 72 hours  

between muscle groups but we also have to realize  that people have different goals we're different  

sizes with different Fitness levels and so forth  so if you don't have a whole lot of muscle to  

start with and you're happy with that it doesn't  take much to maintain it but if you're very fit  

and a little bit more heavily muscled then  obviously you're going to have to maintain at  

a higher level so then you might want to do two to  three times a week especially if you're a little  

bit younger and if you're at the elite level and  you compete and it's important to you to perform  

now we're talking about a completely different  category now you basically do all you can and  

you you balance on that edge of performance versus  injury but that's a different thing like I said  

and now we're not necessarily talking about  Optimal Health anymore because top fitness and  

health are not necessarily the same thing they can  be pretty close but you are often sacrificing a  

little bit of Health when you take the performance  aspect to the extreme when it comes to duration  

most people do too much I often hear people say oh  I did a 45 minute high intensity interval training  

and then it is too much it probably wasn't intense  enough and it was way too long so basically you  

just want to go long enough to get your heart  rate up you might have a five or ten minute  

warm-up and then the active portion probably  should be no more than five or ten minutes  

so an example would be that you do a warm-up and  then you might do some 10 second Sprints with a  

30 second recovery now when I was an athlete  and if I did a 10 second Sprint that could be  

maybe at 80 percent or it could be at 98 if I  did an 80 intensity then I could manage on 30  

second recovery when I did a 98 intensity  now I needed probably three four minutes  

even with only a 10 second activity to be able to  do it again another example would be a 30 second  

Sprint and now depending again on how intensely  how fast you go you could do a two minute recovery  

or you could do less if it's not that fast if  you're not running but you're lifting weights  

and you do really heavy squats then you might do a  set of six or a set of ten and it would be pretty  

heavy close to failure you make sure you have some  spotters or some equipment that can grab the bar  

and you'd get a minute recovery or a little  bit longer if you need to in order to be able  

to do it again but it should be close to failure  because that signals the body that it has to get  

better and then you would repeat that four to ten  times depending on the activity and so forth so  

you have to learn your body you have to learn the  exercise and use your judgments but again none of  

that will do you any good until you get some  recovery so first of all make sure that you  

get enough sleep and that it's the right quality  sleep I've done a video on that you can check that  

out and also you want to get real food make sure  that once you break your body down you get some  

micro tears of your muscles and your bones and  your joints and you want to rebuild them you need  

genuine replacement parts so processed foods  don't have that whole food real food nutrient  

dense food is what your body wants and if it was  an intense workout then you want 48 to 72 hours  

rest so if you think about this if you do a really  hard workout then you're a little bit sore the  

day after and you're way more sore the second day  and while you're still that sore it is too early  

to go do it again you're not recovered from the  breakdown so if you break it down again now you're  

getting into that vicious cycle of breakdown  instead of building your body up so for a whole  

body workout if you used your whole body like you  worked out with weights and did every muscle group  

or if you did Sprints that's how long you want  to wait before you do it again if you only did a  

separate muscle group like you only did Legs you  only did back or you only did arms now you could  

do a workout more often you just can't repeat the  same muscle group within that time frame so if you  

do a really hard workout on your arms you wait 48  to 72 hours before you do the arms again so while  

it's high intensity that drives the autophagy we  also want to remember balance though so you want  

to do a little bit of high intensity and then you  want to do a lot of movement why is that because  

your body is made to move the purpose of your  brain and your body is to move the purpose of your  

brain is to control the body's movement through  an environment so that you can function in this  

three-dimensional world and there is a category  of living things that don't move they're called  

plants and they don't have a brain they don't  need one because they don't move if you have a  

brain you want to move to support it it's as  simple as that so A lot of people are aiming  

for something like 10 000 steps a day and that's  great and it's probably a good start but there's  

some indications that we probably need two or  maybe three times that to be really optimal  

so what I would suggest do the best you can so  maybe five six days a week then you try to get  

at least 30 minutes of movement and this could be  anything that you enjoy Joy you can walk your dog  

you can walk in the park you can play Frisbee you  can play golf it doesn't really matter it's just  

movement now if you want to dig a little bit  deeper and start understanding your body at a  

whole different level I've created a blood work  course and the first time through these modules  

are delivered live we still have four modules left  that you can still join us and catch those but  

either way you're still going to have access to  all the recordings afterwards there's going to be  

nine modules total and the first time through here  it's kind of like a beta test and you're getting  

a discount because you're basically helping me  figure out this course getting some feedback so  

I can improve on the course and then all of that  will be put into the recordings and you will have  

access for a lifetime but the price will never be  lower than with this beta test so if you want to  

know your body better and really understand what  the blood work is telling you I'll put a link down  

below you can check it out if you enjoyed this  video you're going to love that one and if you  

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