Watch the video to find out how autophagy works!
Video credit: Wall Street Journal
Our body cells constantly keep disintegrating and recycling in a process known as autophagy.
In 2016, a Japanese scientist, Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi, received the Nobel Prize for discovering the mechanism behind autophagy using fasting as a stimulus. Meanwhile, Dr. Ohsumi also found how fasting is extremely beneficial for our bodies.
The cells in our tissues are regularly replaced with new cells after the older ones die. In this way, each organ completely renews itself in a specific duration of time.
Dr. Ohsumi, who is a cell biologist, focused all his efforts on finding how human cells recycle themselves using autophagy.
In practice, a cell organelle called lysosome breaks down proteins into amino acids, which are then used to create new cells.
In this process, the human body can also use the protein from the damaged cells and bacteria.
Using this protein waste is essential for our body because the 70 g of protein that an average person consumes approximately every day isn’t enough to create new cells.
If this natural recycling mechanism gets disrupted due to any reason, the damaged cells and their parts start accumulating in the body, causing serious diseases such as cancer.
During his research, Dr. Ohsumi stimulated the body to break down toxic cells by fasting.
According to Dr. Ohsumi’s research, when we fast, our body has less inflammation, our cells produce more energy and live longer.
Intermittent fasting, comprising of alternating periods of fasting and food, cleanses our body, speeds up our metabolism, and helps us lose weight.
Some other benefits of intermittent fasting include a decreased risk of heart disease, diabetes, neurological problems, inflammation, blood pressure, and oxidative stress.
Intermittent fasting means eating your usual diet for one day and reducing it to at least one-fourth the next day.
In addition, there are several other methods of fasting as well. You can choose the one which works best for you in accordance with your routine.
If you don’t want to go for intermittent fasting, you can go for 24-hour fasting. In this method, you would have to choose an entire day of the week when you’ll keep yourself from eating.
You can also skip a meal to activate cleansing processes and boost your metabolism. But if you skip a meal, you shouldn’t overeat the next one as it would do more harm than good.
Another good option is limited fasting, in which you can only eat for eight hours every day. You can start this method in a less strict way by having breakfast at 8 AM and dinner at 6 PM.
You can also go for water fasting, in which you would have to rely on water or fresh juices for an entire day in a week. Water fasting goes a long way in removing toxins from your body.
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