AUTOPHAGY AND OMY TRASH RECYCLING

Autophagy (self-eating) is your body’s way of clearing junk and debris throughout your body and inside of your cells. As trash collectors, the autophagy crew picks up the junk left over from life’s processes and either recycles it or prepares it to exit your body. It is a complicated but critical process that goes on 24/7. Collectively, I call the by-products of living “junk.”

I’m going to keep this simple. I won’t throw a lot of chemistry or biology at you because it isn’t necessary to explain autophagy. Autophagy’s process is comparable to your local trash removal service.

In the process of living, you generate trash; we all do. Some waste is recyclable, and this portion gets processed by companies in the recycling business. The recycling products are then sold to other companies for use in various ways. Trash that is not recyclable winds up in a sanitary landfill.

Senescence and Autophagy:

My previous post was about senescence, primarily a result of aging. You can give it a second look. Read it here: SENESCENCE, JUNK, AND OMYS.

Aging is the collective collateral damage of living. In the process of aging, our cells eventually die and become useless junk, even worse, they don’t die and become derelicts that hang around and cause problems. Either way, they need to be removed, which is the point of autophagy—gobbling up the debris of aging.

There are also processes going on within living cells. For example, when mitochondria (the cell’s powerhouses) get damaged or otherwise lose their function, they are repaired or eaten and re-purposed. Of course, it’s not that simple, but you get the idea.

It’s basic housekeeping.

Autophagy and Trash

Checklist on autophagy:

So, how do I tune up my Autophagy?

Like a lot of other things, autophagy gets weaker with increasing age. From a long-term point of view, this means that junk accumulates more as autophagy weakens. After reading about senescence in my previous post, you also know that renegade cells come at us faster as we age.

I’m simplifying again, but remember that cellular junk adds up as we age. Keep in mind that there’s lots of trash besides dead and living-dead cells. There are bacteria, harmful cholesterol by-products, funky proteins, and old red blood cells – lots of them.

Sometimes, autophagy will get out of control and attack things it shouldn’t, such as joint cartilage, resulting in inflammatory arthritis. It also attacks other healthy cells, going beyond its bounds – it’s complicated.

Let’s keep it simple, though. We’ll stick to autophagy’s primary job of cleaning up dead cells – this alone gives it plenty to do. Keep in mind, recycling the junk it can, and hauling off the rest (autophagy’s primary job), is a process monitored and controlled by your immune system. So, let’s talk about keeping your immune system healthy.

Immune System Health:

A healthy immune system takes us back to the three-legged stool of longevity. You can read about it here: LONGEVITY’S THREE-LEGGED STOOL.

This stool is about diet, exercise, and supplements. Get right with these three legs, and you’re on your way to a healthy immune system. Without exception, “polishing” this stool as brightly as you can is on every OMY’s get-it-done list.

OK, we’re working on our three-legged stools, so what else can we do. Well. We can initiate autophagy with a couple of simple tricks. And there are foods and supplements to consider as well. Let’s do food first.

Food and Immune Health:

If you haven’t read this, check it out: DIET OMYGOALS AND PURPOSEFUL EATING.

Some foods might help promote immune system health along with autophagy. These foods are what you would expect to find in a typical nutritionist’s handbook. Pick a book and create a balanced diet – one that you prefer. I won’t go into these here because “balanced diets” are ubiquitous on the internet, and all of them claim to be the best and most healthy.

Instead, I will give you several spices you can use as additives to your morning coffee or tea or add to a smoothie or a particular dish that you like.

GREEN TEA:

There are a variety of teas, green, black, and white. I don’t think any of these are best – different, yes, better, no.

Add tea to your coffee. Tear open a bag and put the contents in your coffee maker along with your coffee. Tea can be added to smoothies and sprinkled into soups, salads, and other foods. Of course, you can drink it as well.

There are many health benefits to tea, and stimulating autophagy might be one.

CURCUMIN:

This spice comes from turmeric. It’s the ingredient that gives turmeric its yellow-orange color. Curcumin is not used as a spice, although turmeric is. Curcumin can be added to smoothies or sprinkled into soups and dishes. It is not a flavor-enhancing additive.

Curcumin is not particularly soluble in water and would not work well in coffees or teas. This yellow powder does not assimilate well into the bloodstream and should be taken along with some black pepper to help this absorption along.

There are many healing benefits with curcumin, and promoting autophagy is possibly on the list.

GINGER:

A relative of turmeric, ginger is known for its aspirin-like pain-relieving qualities without the side effects. Ginger is soothing to the mind and is a potent anti-oxidant. It is relatively soluble and will dissolve suitably in most cases. Add ginger to drinks and foods. You can experiment.

Ginger is proven to reduce inflammation, and it might also be an immune booster – as to autophagy, this is likely helped as well.

CINNAMON:

Just the aroma of cinnamon brings us pleasure. Cinnamon is an anti-oxidant and a blood pressure modulator—it is given to people, especially children, along with honey to soothe sore throats and reduce coughing.

Autophagy and cinnamon might go together.

CLIOVE:

Like cinnamon, clove has a pleasant and distinct aroma. Clove oil is famous for dulling pain, like a toothache or on a scrape or burn. In some European cultures (France, for example), people chew cloves to prevent colds and sinus infections.

Clove is a spice used widely in cooking as a flavor enhancer. Clove powder does not keep well, and it is better to keep the florets and grind them before using them in drinks or smoothies. You can use them whole for cooking, like sticking them in hams before baking.

In winter, when respiratory infections abound, clove is believed to strengthen the immune system. This strengthening might also help with autophagy’s systemic cleaning.

NUTMEG:

Lots of wound healing is cleaning up the debris leftover from cellular damage. This cleaning is why nutmeg is on the autophagy list. This spice promotes wound healing and is an ingredient in many creams and ointments used for this purpose.

CHOCOLATE:

This universal treat has many health benefits and is also known to heal skin damage and help accelerate muscle recovery from exercise. Exercise damages muscle fibers, and they recover (or are replaced), making the muscle more substantial than it was before.

Cocoa and dark chocolate are your best choices.

Notice:

Autophagy has only recently stepped into the anti-aging arena. None of the above spices (foods) are verified to assist autophagy. They are, however, high on the “educated guess” list. Using them certainly won’t hurt you, and there is no downside to them. In other words, the upside/downside scale on these spices is in your favor – plus, they’re widely available and easy to use.

We’re now going to look at techniques to turn autophagy up.

Turning on Autophagy:

1. Stop Eating Junk Food:

The sugar and vegetable fats in junk food are inflammation promoters that interfere with your body’s ability to clean itself of debris. Eating this stuff adds waste and takes up space in your digestive system for as long as your gut retains them.

Since most junk food has very little fiber and is heavy on empty carbohydrates, it tends to stick around longer than healthy foods with adequate fiber. This lag in transit time causes intestinal irritation and retards the onset of the autophagy that naturally starts with fasting.

Bluntly stated, junk food stagnates in your digestive system and lies there irritating your intestines and colon, creating a “phantom” fullness (AKA constipation) leading to problems with healthy bowel movements and alternating states of inflammation and diarrhea.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome, IBS, can often be improved simply by shifting your diet from junky food to wholesome food with adequate fiber (do this under your PHCP’s guidance).

2. Exercise:

This is a must. Exercise does a couple of things to prepare your body for autophagy.

First, by movement and increased blood flow, exercise breaks debris loose from surfaces where it does not belong, causing this useless trash to float around in your bloodstream, making it easy prey for the cleanup crew.

Second, exercise causes damage that needs repair. This damage sends out an alert that “shucks” marginal cellular trash to enable the repair process. This replaced cellular trash is also lurking in your bloodstream.

So, in plain English, exercise sets the stage for an autophagy banquet.

3. Fasting:

Fasting is the ultimate trigger for autophagy. Dumping fast food from your diet, and making a serious commitment to exercise, are prerequisites to setting the stage for autophagy.

Understand that autophagy goes on 24/7. It’s always there. However, the cleanup crew kicks into high gear when your daily food’s been digested, and your foodless body looks around for something to eat.

Fasting is a subject for a post of its own. However, let’s say that once you digest the contents of your gut, your autophagy cleanup crew is ready to get going.

Final Thoughts on Autophagy:

For those who want a deeper dive into autophagy, here is a book on the subject: Metabolic Autophagy, by Siim Land. You can get this book from most booksellers. The book is OK to read if you have a fair background in biology and feel comfortable with a challenge. It’s overpriced (in my opinion), so try to find it used if you can.

If you want to look at a supplement for autophagy, here is a link to what I take:

Autophagy.

OMY1

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