How Your Body Detoxifies & Repairs Itself

The biological process known as autophagy, plays a key role to rid your body of accumulated toxins. Autophagy literally means “self-eating”. Autophagy is the processes by which your body cleans out various debris, including toxins and recycles damaged cell components to produce new cells.

These dead, diseased, cancerous, ruptured or worn out cells, are hunted down, goggled up and stripped of their usable molecules. This whole process seems to be a combination of a Pacman game and a recycling center.

By boosting your body’s autophagy process, you can reduce inflammation, slow down the aging process and optimize biological function.

Boosting Autophagy Through Exercise:

Exercise is one of the ways by which you boost autophagy, since exercising creates mild damage to your muscles and tissues that your body then repairs.

Exercise also helps flush out toxins by sweating and is helpful for just about any detox program. In fact, many consider exercise a foundational aspect of effective detoxification. Exercise also causes vasodilation and increased blood flow.

The amount of exercise required to stimulate optimal autophagy in humans is still unknown, however it is believed that intense exercise is more effective than mild exercise.

Research has shown that the “Goldilocks zone” in which exercise produces the greatest benefit for longevity is between 150 to 450 minutes of moderate exercise per week, lowering your risk of early death between 31% and 39%.

Spending at least 30% of your workout on high-intensity exercises, has also been shown to further boost longevity by a bonus of about 13%, compared to exercising at a consistently moderate pace all the time.

What Inhibits Autophagy?

One of the quickest ways to shut down autophagy is to eat large amounts of protein. That is why it’s best to limit your protein to about 40 to 70 grams per day, depending on your lean body mass. A healthy amount of protein, is one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. If you're currently averaging a lot more protein than what is optimal, try to adjust downward accordingly.

The Importance of Mitochondrial Biogenesis:

Mitochondria are the organelles of the cell that produce burn fuel and supply energy to the cells.

Properly functioning mitochondria are vital to good health and the prevention of disease. Mitochondrial damage can contribute to poor health, disease and cancer.

Autophagy is one way to remove damaged mitochondria, but biogenesis is the process of new healthy mitochondria being duplicated.

Exercise plays a dual role, by stimulating autophagy, as well as by stimulating mitochondrial biogenesis.

This is just one other important reason to get regular exercise.

In essence, one major key to preventing cancer, heart disease, diabetes, many other diseases, as well as slowing down the aging process, lies in optimizing mitochondrial function and increasing mitochondrial numbers. Thankfully, exercise helps you do all of this.

Intermittent Fasting is Another Way to Boost Autophagy:

Fasting is another biological stressor that produces many beneficial results, including autophagy. In fact, some of the benefits associated with fasting, such as a reduced risk of diabetes and heart disease, can at least in part be attributed to autophagy.

While there are many different kinds of fasting schedules, a great one is to fast by scheduling all of your eating, within a window of approximately 8 hours a day or less. For example, you could restrict your eating to the hours of 11AM and 7PM, or 8 AM to 4PM. This also means 16 hours of daily fasting. It is also best, for most people, to avoid eating three hours prior to bed. There’s compelling evidence showing that when you supply fuel to your mitochondria at times when they don’t need it. By eating late, your mitochondria will produce free radicals. This produces oxidative stress and premature aging. Not eating late will also reduce the chances of acid reflux

To Boost Autophagy, Switch to a High-Fat, Low-Carb Diet:

Nutritional ketogenesis is a third strategy that will help boost autophagy. To accomplish that, you need to cut down on the non-fiber carbs and increase the amount of healthy fats in your diet, along with a moderate amount of protein.

Most Americans consume too many harmful fats, such as processed vegetable oils, which will make your health worse. Not only is it processed, it’s very high in omega-6 oils. Excess omega-6 fats will integrate into the mitochondrial membranes and become highly susceptible to oxidative damage, causing your mitochondria to age and die prematurely.

It is best to keep omega-6 fats consumption to less than 4% to 5% of your total daily calories. Replace the omega-6 fats with healthy fats, such as natural, unprocessed fats that are found in real foods, such as seeds, nuts, real butter, olives, avocados, sardines, salmon and coconut oil.

It’s also important to make the distinction about which carbs we're talking about when we say “low-carbs”. Vegetables are "carbs" too, but high fiber vegetables have a low glycemic index and will not spike your blood glucose levels. Fiber travels through the digestion system and is consumed by bacteria in your intestine that converts the fiber to short chain fats that actually improve your health.

Autophagy Restores Function in Aging Muscle Stem Cells:

It has long been known that stem cells in skeletal muscles are an important part of the muscle repair process. Previous research has shown that exercise affects your muscle stem cells and may help prevent or even restore age-related muscle loss. These stem cells release growth factors, which encourage the generation of new muscle.

Health and Longevity Are Rooted in Mitochondrial Function:

The bottom line here is that your lifestyle is a vital factor that will have a great influence in determining how long you will live and how healthy those years will be.

For optimal health and disease prevention, you need healthy mitochondria and efficient autophagy. That can be determined by:

1. What you eat

2. When you eat

3. How you exercise

Prior to starting any new diet or exercise program, you should first consult your physician, especially if you have health issues.

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