The term “autophagy” denotes a biological process in our bodies during which cells cure their damaged spots, restore their parts and dispose of toxins. Unfortunately, as age advances, these processes become not so potent, one of the factors to which aging is attributed to. Other factors are energy loss, excessive weight, and serious diseases. Now the fact is, autophagy can be activated through employing specific techniques, with the result that you will be looking younger – and feeling respective. Here is how you can boost autophagy.
Follow a healthy diet
To ensure your autophagy is going strong, you should be very judgmental about your intake of calories – and fast from time to time. Research reveals links between calorie restriction and better brain, liver, fat, and muscle autophagy. Also, it promises longevity. This can be attributed to the fact that essential biochemical reactions in the body receive a higher amount of precursors and substrates.
Treating yourself to physical stress
Exercises are often avoided just because they are stressful. But what is their disadvantage is also their advantage. In terms of autophagy, when cells experience physiological stress, they become more active (the same as strain does to your heart when it begins to beat faster). So straining your muscles boosts autophagy not only in muscle tissues but also in the brain.
Even a little exercising does you a lot of good. To stimulate autophagy properly, you can work out for about half an hour. Aimed to improve autophagy, two kinds of exercises are especially beneficial: high-intensity interval training, HIIT for short, and resistance exercise training or RET. While the former is known to increase energy generation by amplifying mitochondria, the latter is good for general strength and maintains muscle mass.
Regular ample oxygenation
Since your cells want to be well-supplied by oxygen, they need regular exercise to ensure needful blood influx to all vital organs and consequently enough oxygen and cell nutrients. Besides, workouts advance transportation of degraded inflammatory metabolites as well as various products of waste. As your oxygenation gets enhanced, autophagy receives positive stimulation; moreover, you undergo hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT).
This therapy makes wounds and injuries heal better owing to better autophagy. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy also alleviates inflammatory processes and ensures good neurogenesis.
Befitting nutrition
For intracellular enzymatic reactions to function as they should, they need abundant substrates and co-factors. The most important co-factors are vitamins in various foods prepared with abundant green plants.
Autophagy tends to suffer when there is too much protein and saturated fats, whose digestion takes a significant amount of cellular energy, causing an upsurge of reactive oxygen species. Now plant-rich foods bring in a goodish volume of antioxidants that abate oxidative stress.
Sleep soundly, sleep enough
Beauty sleep can be so only with effective autophagy. Normal processes guarantee your normal circadian rhythm, meaning your sleep will be getting proper control. If you sleep little, your sleep is broken so that you can’t but wake up otime and time again. It plays around with autophagy in the brain. To avoid ruining your autophagy, see that you enjoy quality sleep.
This makes your autophagy depend heavily on ensuring sufficient rest. It involves steering clear of gadgets for an hour before bed, making your bedroom temperature not higher than about 65 degrees, and arranging for some pleasant brown noise like ocean sounds.
Protein cycling
Protein cycling is based on the idea that it’s beneficial to fast on protein now and then, like minimizing your protein consumption to about 15 grams once a week. As long as you don’t make it a deprivation, one or two days of protein cycling are supposed to do you good. Just avoid meat and milk, become almost vegan twice a week and collect your benefits.
Two main points you need to keep in mind:
The technique means temporarily lowering protein intake – if you overdo it, you can cause harm to your health and body.
Then, on the days you are into protein cycling, don’t go for heavy workouts; such days should be not so very active. Restrict yourself to walking or other gentle exercises that won’t put you under a lot of strain.
Alternating hot and cold temperatures
According to a study in Science Daily, sauna is particularly salubrious for autophagy. It is probably the pleasantest way to treat your body to temperatures of 120° F and over, generating heat shock proteins. It also provides extra stimulation to the lymph system, thereby improving microcirculation; all this produces a positive effect on autophagy.
Exposing your body to heat and cold imposes stress on your cells and stimulates autophagy. There are studies to show that exposure to cold excites neuronal autophagy and may well diminish the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases.
Actually, you don’t need a sauna to switch hot and cold water; alternatively, you can do it at home in the shower with the same beneficial result for autophagy. Make a habit of it in addition to other autophagy-healthy habits.
Enough antioxidants
To ensure the intake of antioxidants, your plant-based diet should be enriched with berries. Berberine is derived from barberries, sulforaphane can be derived from broccoli seed sprouts, and polyphenols come from drinking green tea. Make plenty of juice from turmeric and ginger roots and sip it on a regular basis.
Don’t clutter your diet with oily, sugary, dairy, fatty, and processed foods. All of these are conducive to inflammations and can oppress the mitochondria, hampering their functionality and thus affecting autophagy adversely.
Spend more time in the open air surrounded by nature
With people in frequent contact with nature, inflammatory mediators, namely prostaglandins and interleukins, were found to be weakened, while autophagic processes are usually amplified.
