Autophagy - The process of elimination and regeneration
Autophagy - Dr Yoshinori Ohsumi
2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was offered to Dr Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discovery of Autophagy. The word is derived from Greek, ‘auto’ means self ‘phagein’ means ‘to eat’. The word means ‘eating yourself’. It is the body’s mechanism of getting rid of all the broken down machinery such as the Organelles, Protein clumps, and Cell membranes when that is no longer needed and they are functioning well. Regulated orderly process, not just to degrade these parts but to recycle them. Proteins are broken down during the process of Autophagy and taken to the lever where they are burned for energy or broken into component Amino Acids. Amino Acids are the cellular parts that makeup Proteins. The proteins that are no longer so functional or very old, get broken down into Amino acids. Amino acids then can be reassembled into new proteins rather than keeping the old junky ones.
Autophagy
a survival mechanism under conditions of stress and it maintains the cellular
integrity by regenerating these metabolic precursors in clearing out all.
It sounds really
bad to be broken down protein as we always think that building is good and
breaking down isn’t. This of this you have an old bathroom, colourless, old
tubs etc. you need to renovate it. You have to clear out all the old before you
reinstall anything. That’s the same thing that happens in the body. We don’t continually
grow once we are adults, we maintain the same size. But in order to function
well we have to get rid of the old proteins and replace them with the new. That’s
what Autophagy really does. It’s the process of cellular regeneration, in
Autphagy that’s the first critical step in breaking down these old proteins.
How does Autophagy work?
Once it is initiated the proteins, and the old cellular debris that the body doesn’t want
anymore gets targeted for renewal. It gets developed into a compartment
called autolysis and this prevents all the destructive processes from
spreading all over the cell and it gets contained within this compartment. This
compartment then merges with something called the Lysosome which is filled
with all these destructive enzymes called Hydrolases. When they merge all the
Hydrolases go down and they break down into the component Amino Acids. Then from
there, you can recycle those Amino Acids into new ones.
Autophagy
plays a key role in ageing and disease. There are several ways that Autopahgy does
this. There are different types of Autophagy, Lipophagy is the regulation
of Lipid metabolism, which also suppresses inflammation, there is Agrophagy which
is clearing out old misshapen protein clumps that can really clog up the
machinery of the cell.
Xenophagy
which is destroying the proteins that are related to infections such as degrading bacteria and
viruses.
Mytophagy
is the process of regenerating mitochondria which are those powerhouses
that generate energy for the cells.
When
Autophagy is deregulated in some way it
plays a role in all of these different diseases such as
Metabolic diseases
- Type 2 diabetes, obesity.
Pulmonary diseases
– Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Neurodegenerative and ageing diseases
– Alzheimer's, Huntington's
Infectious diseases
Vascular diseases
– Heart Attacks and Strokes
Cancer
Clearing
out these old things and creating new things might be a way in preventing certain
types of cancer.
How to activate Autophagy?
The key is
nutrient deprivation, our body has certain hormone messengers that are nutrient
sensors. Predominantly Insulin and mTOR tell us fluid is available so if
we eat carbohydrates insulin will go up, if we eat proteins like Amino Acids
then mTOR goes up and it gives the signal to the rest of the body that food is
now available and we should grow on the other side when we don’t eat both mTOR and
insulin are going to go down. It sends the signal that no food is available
let's slow down the cell growth and get into regeneration maintenance mode.
For
Autophagy mTOR is the key regulator it integrates the information from nutrient
availability and oxygen growth factors and insulin and when mTOR is high it
gives the signal to go ahead and grow. When it's low it says mTOR cell
maintenance starts Autophagy.
The most
efficient way therefore to activate Autophagy is to restrict those foods, you
can go into a very low-protein diet but then you run the risk of not having
enough protein to build what you need for muscle and other body parts. So,
fasting is actually the best way to activate Autophagy
You
are not getting any protein or any other nutrient signal so therefore you are
maximally lowering mTOR and stimulating Autophagy. But fasting does more than
that because as you break down those sub-cellular parts, as you activate
Autophagy fasting also stimulates growth hormones so that when you eat again
your body is now primed to replace all those proteins that you need it is ready
to rebuild so the process of breaking down the old, getting rid of the stuff that’s
junky and replace it with new is actually called rejuvenation, and that’s what
fasting does. Fasting has always been considered to be a rejuvenating process.
As
per Ayurveda People have been fasting for thousands of years and they call it
cleanse and detoxification. That’s exactly what Autophagy is.
Fasting
allows your body to clean out old proteins that it doesn’t need, it’s just now
that science is catching up. Now we understand how fasting can be part of good
health, clearing out all those excessive proteins through the process of
Autophagy.
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