Does autophagy only happen during fasting?

Quora author Siim Land 05/21/2023

They say it takes about 2–3 days of fasting to activate autophagy. But there are ways of stimulating autophagy without fasting as well.

To induce autophagy, your liver glycogen needs to be low, you need to suppress mTOR, which is the pathway that signals your cells to grow and replicate; you need to upregulate AMPK, which is the fuel sensor that gets released in energy deprivation and fat burning; and you need to be in this depleted state for at least a day or even more.

To elevate AMPK and autophagy, you want to deplete your liver glycogen, which will lead to lower levels of insulin, suppressed mTOR, and higher levels of fat oxidation.

• Daily intermittent fasting for 18–20 hours can at least make you edge into autophagy
• Carbohydrate restriction will naturally going to lead to more frequent fasting and lower glycogen states, which in turn will elevate autophagy more often as well.
• Caloric restriction will increase autophagy to some degree.
• Aerobic exercise stimulates autophagy because it also improves lymph flow more so than resistance training. However, both are needed for maintaining lean mass.
• Some foods also stimulate autophagy-like coffee , green tea, turmeric, ginger, ginseng, medicinal mushrooms, berberine, and elderberries.
• Stimulating lymph flow will promote detox and autophagy. Sweating through exercise, hot yoga, heat saunas, infrared saunas, red light therapy , rebounding, bouncing around – everything that keeps your blood flowing will help
• Suppressing insulin and eating less protein will suppress mTOR which can help to raise autophagy. However, there’s another trade off in terms of maintaining muscle mass.
• The most severe way of speeding up the process of autophagy is dry fasting .

Autophagy is vital for health and longevity as most diseases are rooted in the body’s inability to remove its cellular debris.

Read the article: How to Activate Autophagy Without Fasting - Siim Land