Scientist wins Nobel Prize after showing world how fasting keeps us younger
You’ve heard of all the benefits of fasting before, surely, but have you ever stopped to consider why it works so well?
Fasting has long been touted for myriad health benefits, from losing weight more quickly to regulating blood sugars, improving brain function, boosting your immune system health and more. Stretching its roots even further back, it has been a long-held tradition in many religious and spiritual practices for thousands of years. So, then, what are the cogs behind the results? What on Earth makes fasting so beneficial to so many?
Well, as it turns out, molecular and cellular biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi has an answer for that. One that won him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2016.
The term that people are looking for when talking about the bodily processes behind fasting is called autophagy.
Autophagy literally translates to “self-eat” from its Latin root words. It may sound a bit disgusting, but according to Ohsumi’s findings, the process is a true Godsend to the health of our bodies. The study provided us with an unprecedented insight into the probability of developing such crippling diseases as cancer, dementia, and Parkinson’s, and a possible look at how we might prevent them.
Essentially, autophagy is a bodily, self-regulated recycling system on the cellular level.
With the aid of organelles known as lysosomes, when autophagy occurs these organelles use their “degradative” enzymes to penetrate the cells and clean house. They do this by breaking down used cellular material and proteins that can then be used by the body to generate new cells.
During this “clean out” process, harmful bacteria and viruses are targeted within the cells as well. Since these are not useful to the body, they are then destroyed and cleared to make way for new, healthy cellular material. This has led Ohsumi and other researchers to believe that a lack of autophagy leads to a buildup of these nasty materials in our cells, which then leads to inflammation, cancer, diseases, and even aging.
Though the pharmaceutical industry has been on the hunt for a drug formula that will trigger autophagy since Ohsumi’s research came out, the scientist says there’s really no need for all of that.
People can induce autophagy simply through fasting.
This cellular “self-eating” process occurs on its own when our bodies go into starvation mode. Why? Because all the waste material that isn’t recycled for new use is then burned for energy. Obviously, with all of the environmental toxins we’re surrounded by and the unhealthy food we ingest, autophagy is something we want our bodies to be doing fairly regularly.
Ohsumi, supported by many fitness and diet gurus, believes fasting in combination with high-intensity workouts and a restricted carb diet will trigger this highly desired process in our bodies.
“Certainly the evidence from experiments in mice suggest that would be the case. There are studies where they have switched on the process using genetic tools or drugs or fasting, and in those cases the animals tend to live longer and be in better overall shape. What we’ve discovered is that it protects against diseases like Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and certain forms of dementia,” claims University of Cambridge and UK Dementia Research Institute’s professor of molecular neurogenetics, Dr. David Rubinsztein, in an interview with the BBC.
Though it’s been proven fasting has many health benefits, you should always consult your doctor before designing a fasting schedule for yourself.
The jury is still out on exactly how long a human needs to fast before triggering autophagy. However, there is much anecdotal evidence from people who swear by it to support a couple of different methods to try.
The 24-hour Fast
Just as it sounds, a 24-hour fast is when you forego eating absolutely anything for a full 24-hour period. You can have dinner on Monday, for instance, then not eat again until the same time on Tuesday night.
Then there’s the other method…
Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is another popular method to induce autophagy and is easier on those who experience a lot of “hanger” episodes. In short, you reduce the hours in the day you allow yourself to eat and stick to that time frame. For instance, you might only allow yourself to eat food between noon and 8 p.m. That means your body is fasting from 8 p.m. through to noon the following day.
If you would like to try intermittent fasting, here is a great article for beginners. Some people choose to stick to this time-frame for eating every single day, while others only do it a few times a week. Either way, there are huge benefits to be gained from fasting.
While autophagy itself was first discovered in the 1960s, it was Yoshinori Ohsumi’s extensive research that has helped bring its benefits into the mainstream of medical and fitness knowledge today.
To learn more about his research that led him to take home the Nobel Prize, read up on it here. To see a simplified explanation of the science behind autophagy, watch the video below.
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