[ExI] Autophagy and Aging

[Stuart LaForge]

For those of you who might have missed it, the 2016 Nobel Prize in  
Medicine or Physiology went to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his work  
elucidating the mechanisms of autophagy. Briefly, autophagy is when  
cells are induced to digest their own damaged proteins to salvage  
amino acids for other purposes. It is evolutionarily a highly  
conserved process that we share with creatures as primitive as yeast.

Here is a very good open access article in Cell about the process of  
autophagy and its role in health and disease:

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(11)01276-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867411012761%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

What I have learned is that when you don't eat for at least 16 hours  
or so, your body starts the process of autophagy where it digests worn  
out and damaged proteins in order to use the amino acids to synthesize  
new fully-functional proteins as well as synthesize glucose for your  
brain and your liver through the process of gluconeogenesis. Autophagy  
peaks between 24 and 48 hours and then declines to a slow and steady  
rate, once your body switches to burning your fat stores to obtain  
ketones to fuel your brain instead of glucose from amino acids.

The upshot of this is that short fasts of between 24 and 48 hours do  
wonders for your health potentially reversing some of the effects of  
aging caused by the build up of worn out proteins and organelles in  
cells. I have been experimenting on myself by eating every other day  
both to both lose weight and to induce autophagy and I can't help but  
notice beneficial effects. My mood is improved, I feel sharper and  
more energetic with a general sense of well-being. Moreover, I have  
lost about 15 pounds in three weeks this way.

On my fasting days, I try to get by on black morning coffee and a  
multivitamin and then water alone for the rest of the day. But if I  
get too hungry, then I eat a tablespoon of pure fat like butter, olive  
oil, or coconut oil. But I avoid eating any carbs or protein for the  
whole time.

On my eating days, I pretty much eat anything I feel like eating,  
including dessert.

For those of you who don't need to lose weight, I would just eat as  
much pure fat as you can stomach but nothing else, on one or two days  
a week so you can induce autophagy without losing any weight. Then  
make it a point to eat extra protein after the one or two fat only  
days are finished so you don't lose muscle mass.

Anyways, water only fasting every other day is working for me so I  
thought I would share.

Stuart LaForge