Autophagy and intermittent fasting

If you haven’t seen the podcast yet, check it out.  Two sister’s health.  It’s me and my sis, talking about everything related to healthy aging.  This week we talked about intermittent fasting.  Arguably the easiest thing you can do to get healthy.  Just don’t eat.  

Sounds easy right?  

Lets reflect on how we evolved for thousands of years. We would have lots of food around for a few days, and then none for several days.  Repeat. 

It has only been the last maybe 200 years that we have had such an abundance of food and the ability to store it efficiently, and what has that gotten us?  Well for most of us… sick

So we have come to find out that the lack of food was actually healthy for us.  Turns out, we need to take a break from food to stay healthy.  In fact we now know that there are optimal times to eat and optimal times to take a break from food, and even if we eat the exact same foods, we will be healthier if we do it within a certain window of time.  

Enter the idea of intermittent fasting.  Dale Breseden discusses this in depth in his book “The end of Alzheimer’s”. (If you have Alzheimers disease in your family and you haven’t read it, get a copy.  Your body will thank you).  We are beginning to learn that Alzheimer’s may be preventable in a percentage of people.  

So how and when should we eat?  Turns out you want to maximize the number of hours you take a break from eating and when you do eat, It shouldn’t be 3 hours before bed.

So if you go to bed at 10pm, stop eating by 7 pm, and don’t eat before 7am the next day.  Even better, wait till 11.  That way you will give yourself 16 hours of fasting a day.  During this fasting window, your cells clean themselves out and clear away debris, a process called,  autophagy.  If junk builds up in the cell, it can permanently tweak the cell's genes, making it difficult or impossible for the cell to repair itself and regrow the structures it needs to survive and thrive.  While some cells only last in your body for a few days, others are with you for a lifetime.  Two especially important types of cells don't turn over much and are with us for decades, so it's important that they stay healthy: neurons (which are in our brains) and cardiomyocytes (which make up our heart muscle).  We now know that reducing calories will increase the bodies ability to clean up.  

There are 2 well known studies where mice ate the same diets, but in one group of mice, they were only allowed to eat in an 8 hour window, while the other group could eat whenever they wanted.  The result was that the mice with the restricted eating window, were healthier, not developing the same diseases as the mice that ate whenever they wanted.  The other study showed that mice who fasted 2 days a week aged slower and had stronger immune systems than the mice who didn’t fast. 

There are several drugs that trigger autophagy without fasting.  Metformin is a drug that has been found by numerous studies to enhance autophagy and is now being used in anti-aging therapies.  If you would like to discuss this further feel free to contact me or a health care provider trained in anti-aging medicine.  

However, if we know that reducing calories does the same thing, why not just cut down your eating to a shorter window of time every day?  

For more information.  Contact me or subscribe to our podcast or YouTube channel.  Click on the links for more information. 

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