For the last few years, I have been hearing a lot about fasting from friends, family and the media. I am sure you may have been as well. The words like intermittent fasting, time-restricted eating, etc. have been becoming common place terms.
Until recently, I have pretty much ignored this topic as simply yet another fad. As you can see from my blog post, I have not even mentioned this topic even once. There has been absolutely no mention of these terms in my posts, although I did mention that when to eat and how often to eat do play part in good health and longevity.
Well, over the last few months, I took a deep dive into fasting. I really got intrigued when I learned about the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine award of Yoshinori Ohsumi. Here is the summary of his work from the Nobel Prize website, highlights are mine.
“In the lysosomes of our cells its components are processed for reuse. The mechanisms of this process were mostly unknown until the early 1990s, when Yoshinori Ohsumi conducted a series of groundbreaking experiments with yeast, where he detected autophagy and identified genes important for the process. Yoshinori Ohsumi’s discoveries laid the foundation for a better understanding of the ability of cells to manage malnutrition and infections, the causes of certain hereditary and neurological diseases, and cancer.”
There is a lot here, so let me unpack it.
Autophagy is an amazing process for healing our bodies using its own intelligence that led me to the journey through this rabbit hole.
The term ‘autophagy’ is derived from the Greek meaning ‘eating of self’. The term was first coined by Christian de Duve over 40 years ago, who received his Nobel Prize for discovering subcomponent of cells (aka organelles) called lysosomes. He showed that lysosomes were the garbage collectors for the cells. Even better yet, lysosomes convert the cellular garbage into amino acids for the body to reuse just like it would protein you would eat through food. Amazing, isn’t it?
Ohsumi’s Nobel Prize brought this concept of autophagy to the forefront and unleashed renewed interest in this topic.
Autophagy is a very important aspect of human cell’s ability to collect garbage and then allow the body to rebuild the damaged parts from stem cells. So, let us say, you break a part in your car, you leave the car alone for a little while, and it takes the old broken parts, converts them into the basic material they were made of, turns them into any usable parts or disposable garbage, and then grabs some brand-new material off-the-shelf and 3D prints a brand new part. And, it is off and running again just like new. Sounds, just like in the movie Transformers.
If you up-regulate autophagy, i.e., you get body to do more of it, then you get lots of healing. If you down-regulate it, i.e., your body does less of it, and you get all kinds of diseases.
So, what does fasting have got to do with all this?
Turns out, fasting is currently the only sure way known right now, to put body into the state of autophagy. And, hence my intrigue with fasting.
In the next post, I would discuss how fasting induces autophagy, other benefits or side effects of fasting, different methods of fasting and my experience so far.
Summary
- In autophagy, lysosomes in our cells collect garbage and covert those for reuse.
- Do more of autophagy and body heals itself. Less of autophagy leads to diseases.
- Fasting is currently the only way to get the body into autophagy.
What do you think?
Have you an experience with fasting? Have you learned about autophagy?
I and the readers of this blog would love to hear from you and learn from you.
Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input.
As I mentioned in my previous post #58, I consider Michael Greger’s website 
In my blog post #9 – When it comes to health, vitality and aging what is really possible?, I had discussed the book, Prevent and Reverse Hearth Disease by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. M.D. In this book, Dr. Fuhrman’s has updated research on preventing and reversing heart disease. Case studies are mind blowing. He not only gives research but actually prescription on what you should actually eat and even very specific meal plans. Dr. Furhman promises his patients to let him decide what they eat for six weeks and then based on the result they can then decide what to eat. Most of them become converts to his prescription of nutrition after seeing the results.
I did a series for posts #51-#54 on How to Optimize Your Immune System. In this book, Dr. Fuhrman offers a lot more research and very practical ways to build immunity so your body can fight whatever comes its way – not only flues and colds, but also other infections and even cancer. Cancer after-all is just DNA mutation that body fights all day long. Only when our immune system is NOT capable of handling the mutated DNA, it starts to take over the organs unchecked. Again, the book includes nutrition meal plans, recipes to put into practice his philosophy – not just eat food that is packed with desired micro-nutrients, but eat a lot of it.
In blog post #50, I discussed how to optimize your health by maximizing your telomeres. Elizabeth Blackburh received Nobel Prize for her research in telomeres. Telomeres are the end-caps at the ends of our DNA strands like little plastic wraps at the end of shoe laces. If the little plastic wraps are damaged shoe laces become useless, so is the case with the DNA. The length of telomeres correlate with the remaining lifespan. Dr. Blackburn shares the latest research in lay-person language and shares the different methods by which we can increase the length of our telomeres. Reading this book, it should not come as surprise to you that the lifestyle choices I discussed in my Post #59, all help increase the lengths of your telomeres.
Time did a fantastic job in summarizing the latest in science of exercise in this special Time Magazine publication. If you needed any further evidence how exercise impacts health and lifespan, I believe this publication will deliver, without having to read some big tome. The issue spans many diverse topics: cardio vs. weights, high intensity interval training, running, swimming, yoga and other exercise modalities.
In my blog post #17 – Is meditation an effective antidote to stress, I talk about Transcendental Meditation or TM as a very effective and well-researched means for combating stress. Science of Being and Art of Living is book compiled based on lectures by Maharishi Mahesh, who introduced TM to the West. He also founded the TM movement that has established TM Centers pretty much in all major cities throughout the world. While first part of the book serves as evidence and motivation for TM, the later parts are more for the practitioners and advanced students of TM and Yoga.
A few months ago, I got a chance to meet and attend a work shop by Dr. Levy, who has spent all his life building bridges between Western medicine and Eastern philosophies of yoga and meditation. Dr. Levy talks about how to prevent and reverse heart diseases by tackling the most insidious of the issues that impact heart health, i.e., Stress. This manual is accompanied by CDs on which you will find and can actually use his hypnosis techniques for relieving stress and anxiety.
In this more recent publication, The Happiness Sutra, Dr. Levy further delves into the four different types of stresses humans face and how best to deal with all four types of stresses. This book also has a CD that you can listen to to get the benefit of Dr. Levy’s hypnosis methods for relieving stress.
Lissa Rankin, M.D.’s book Mind Over Medicine is a great case study of extreme stress brought on modern living and by our current medical system. Dr. Rankin, a practicing OB GYN, quit her practice of medicine because of the numerous health and personal issues brought on by stress from her profession. She eventually found ways to heal herself and then learned to apply her new found knowledge to become a true healer, without becoming slave to the medical system.
