Autophagy: regenerating the body from the inside

Remember what you do in a general cleaning at home and you will understand very well what it is the autophagy. Let’s say that you discover that in your kitchen there are remains of a dish that you prepared days ago, some piece of old fruit or vegetables, expired cans… And you start throwing away everything that is no longer worth it.

When doing cleaning, as if it were a miracle, you discover that you had rich foods that had gone unnoticed in that little chaos. A jar of miso, infusions that you brought back from a trip, small jars of spices… So you get rid of the old and put these little jewels on display to take advantage of them and add value to your dishes. Something similar happens in your body. This is what is called autophagy.

Autophagy is a natural recycling system That works for clean the body from everything that is no longer useful and could cause you harm, and to take advantage of what is still valid to generate new cellular components and so on. boost your health.

Cellular digestion boosts your health

The word autophagy comes from the Greek words cars (self), and phagien (to eat) and means “to eat oneself”. The term was chosen by the Nobel laureate Christian De DuveBelgian scientist who described the main cellular component involved in autophagy, the lysosome.

Almost half a century has passed since then and today there are tens of thousands of scientific articles that delve into its relationship with health, its Therapeutic use and the mechanisms underlying this process. For the latter, only a few years ago they gave the Nobel Prize to the Japanese Yoshinori Ohsumi.

Autophagy is a cell digestion process That you can see. When we look through a simple light microscope we can tell that a cell is autophagy because they appear “vacuoles” or “vesicles”, bubbles in the cytoplasm of the cells, which correspond to those miniature washing machines in charge of grinding cell waste.

Under an electron microscope, with a higher magnification, it is seen in greater detail: everything begins with the formation of a membrane around the material to be digested, so that this material is isolated in a cell compartment called phagosome. Then a lysosome approaches the phagosome, the membranes of both fuse and the lysosome pours out its enzymes, the tools in charge of shredding the scrap.

In this way, the components to be degraded are broken and are reduced to their elementary parts. And these fragments are released into the cytoplasm of the cell, where they can be used in recycling and synthesis of new cellular components (membranes, proteins, organelles…).

Perfect balance

The autophagy it is a very well calibrated survival system: it requires a perfect balance point. Both a deficiency of autophagy and an excess could be detrimental. there has to be a balance point between activated autophagy and stopped autophagy.

How is it achieved? In the biochemical field, this control in the activation of autophagy is established through the balance between a metabolic pathway called mTORwhich is a growth-linked protein, and a pathway called AMP-K, a protein linked to shortage alert systems.

To make it more understandable, imagine a switch: in the branch of the mTOR circuit, when the mTOR switch is on, autophagy is inhibited; and when it is off, autophagy is activated. In the other branch of the circuit, the so-called AMP-K, when the AMP-K switch is on, autophagy is activated; and when AMP-K is turned off, autophagy stops.

Now let’s see what is that activates one way or another in our organism.

1. The way of food

The mTOR pathway is activated by ingesting food.especially the one rich in carbohydrates, due to the elevation of blood glucose levels, due to the increase in insulin and the presence of “insulin-like growth factor” (IGF), and also –very important– due to high levels of amino acids. An excess of food, carbohydrates and protein stimulates the mTOR pathway.

2. The path of scarcity

The other pathway, AMP-K, is stimulated by situations of scarcitywhich the body identifies as difficult and alarming, in which it is necessary to save energy and activate recycling to obtain all of our own resources at the lowest possible cost, such as in situations of caloric restriction, lack of oxygen, drop in temperature… And also when we fast, although in this case it is a voluntary stop in food intake, fasting It allows a global tuning of the organism.

Fasting and autophagy, an ancient practice

Cleansing and fasting are natural practices, common to many species. If you live with animals you will have seen it: cats and dogs stop eating and purge when they have been intoxicated; In the wild, most animals stop eating while they heal from fractures or injuries, migratory birds do not eat for long periods of time, and bears fast during their hibernation period.

The human being is adapted to periods of scarcity, and naturally, man fasts when sick. Cleansing diets and fasts have been present throughout human history, both in the East and in the West, for religious and health reasons. In the 20th century, therapeutic fasting reappeared with force and today it is very topical due to its link with food and health.

Helps detox

The overcharging Currently, the consumption of processed foods and a sedentary lifestyle exceed our natural capacity to eliminate toxins. And with fasting we facilitate the detoxification and purification process of the organism and the better functioning of the organs in charge of these processes: the intestine, the liver, the kidney, the skin and the lungs.

By fasting, we can expel toxins from outside (chemicals from the environment, toxins from food, from the home…) and toxins from inside the body, caused by the assimilation process, such as urea from protein metabolism or free radicals from metabolic processes to obtain energy.

For our safety, our body also has defense mechanisms that protect us from the harmful effect of toxins that we cannot expel, such as fluid retention (edema), binding to fats (cellulitis) or crystallization and deposit in various structures (joints or the walls of blood vessels).

How fasting works

To the fasta person does not spend energy in the process of digestion and nutrient assimilation, and the cells and organs in charge of these processes rest. And that energy can be used in the processes of elimination and purification of toxinsdamaged cells, cell fragments, microtumors, diseased tissues and altered proteins.

During the first 24 hours of fasting. You get energy from reserves of carbohydrates (stored as glycogen in the liver and muscles). During the following hours and up to 40 days (in general terms). You get the energy from the fats.

During fasting they are hardly consumed proteins. At the beginning you can use proteins to obtain glucose for the brain, until your body adapts to the use of ketone bodies as fuel, a highly effective alternative energy source derived from fat. Let’s see how.

Fats are released in the form of fatty acids into the bloodstream; a part of them is used as a source of heat and energy generation and another part is metabolized by the liver to become ketone bodies. The ketone bodies they will be the new fuel for your cells, Much more efficient than glucose.

detox signs

The purification process presents with manifestations such as:

phlegm Dry mouth white tongue sweating Strong smelling urine Headache Weakness If there is a disease, the symptoms can be aggravated. Weightlossespecially the first days, due to the elimination of retained water and toxins.

To help the bodyyou can drink water, alone or with lemon, infusions, vegetable broths or sea water, to replenish the necessary mineral salts.