Fasting and Autophagy

A process of Cellular Rejuvenation

(Note — If you are a regular reader, you’ll know that I like to label my blogs according to topics — eg. there are 40-odd posts on fasting, 30-odd posts on diabetes, 50-odd posts on obesity/ calories. I do this because I blog about what interests me at the time and it can bounce around a little. This new section, covers mTOR, autophagy and mitochondrial disease, which you’ll see later, ties in very closely with the origins of cancer).

Throughout the recorded history of mankind, fasting has been a stalwart of traditional health and healing practices. This is true for virtually all regions of the earth and virtually all religions of the world. The roots of this ancient healing tradition may lie in the the sub-cellular cleansing process of autophagy, which is only just now being unravelled by science. Autophagy is one of the most evolutionarily conserved pathways known to exist, and can be seen in almost all multi-cellular organisms and many single celled organisms. Autophagy refers to the body’s response to a lack of food (fasting) which stimulates a degradation pathway of sub cellular components.

By digesting its own parts, the cell does two things. First it rids itself of unnecessary proteins that may be damaged or otherwise malfunctioning. Secondly, it recycles those amino acid ‘spare parts’ into…