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

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