Autophagy – your body's innate healing abilities

Our bodies have an innate ability to heal.

They repair damaged cells and their components, allowing better and more efficient cells to reproduce, and get rid of natural but harmful metabolic biproducts of energy conversion that can cause disease.

But when we constantly eat and drink food, don’t move or exercise, or eat toxic manufactured foods, we can overload our body with waste and this repair can’t happen.

This is because when we eat from early in the day to bedtime, our body is in growth mode where our mTOR (rapamycin) signalling, which regulates our metabolism and physiology, is switched on.

While mTOR is necessary, this pathway is also associated with cancer, arthritis, insulin resistance, osteoporosis and other diseases.

On the other hand, when we give our body a break from ingesting and digesting food, it will enter autophagy.

Autophagy is a natural process of ‘self digestion’ where hungry cells clean house and recycle their rubbish. It's activated when we give our body time without food.

When we do this it activates our AMPK signalling pathway and inhibits mTOR activity. This in turn activates autophagy.

When we give ourselves time without food we call this intermittent fasting for shorter periods of time, of fasting for longer periods of time. It’s a tool I use for some clients to trigger and support their healing.

For example, a 24-hour or longer fast allows your gut to create new stem cells. People pay a fortune for stem cell therapy!

Different lengths and patterns of fasting can be useful for