Upgrading Your Brain for Free
Autophagy sounds like a big word but it represents a surprisingly simple concept. Here it's explained in simple terms for the common person, because information is the best motivator.
Today’s newsletter is about autophagy: what it is, what diseases it prevents, what the world’s top researchers in neuroscience have to say about it, why you’ve never heard of it, and how you can get it to work for you.
But first, I want you to consider a question since all good research begins with a well-formulated question.
Is it possible that these two massive changes from industrialization have had negative effects on our health?
First: the dramatic decrease in physical labor required by the average person (we no longer walk to the market, work outdoors, carry our water, chop wood, hand wash clothes, etc.)
Second: the dramatic increase in readily-available highly processed foods—fast food on every corner, packaged goods with a shelf-life of 11 years filling our pantries, an abundance of soda, candy bars, crackers, etc.
If so, how exactly have these changes negatively affected our health, and is there a hack to combat them?
One of the primary ways that industrialization has negatively affected human health is that our bodies are missing out on the necessary process of autophagy.
What is autophagy?
It turns out the body was going green long before reduce, reuse, & recycle became a slogan. The human body is equipped with an innate recycling system where it takes the damaged parts of cells and reuses them for other uses. This not only provides resources for the body, it also upgrades the inside of cells, keeping them from filling up with damaged parts that could eventually cause the cell to go rogue.
But the catch is that autophagy can only take place when the body has a period of time when it is low on nutrients.
Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi spent 50 years studying autophagy, resulting in the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology in Medicine. On a rainy day, you may want to read the Nobel committee’s detailed description of his work here.
How long do I have to go without food for the magic of autophagy to begin?
This depends on factors that will be explained in detail in future letters. The short answer is that if someone is metabolically healthy, autophagy can begin after 12-15 hours without food. If you finished eating at 7 pm, then by 7 am your body may begin the process. If you waited to eat until 10 am, your body could enjoy 3 hours of autophagy a day. The fewer carbs one has eaten recently, the sooner autophagy can begin. For those on a very low-carb diet, a little autophagy can work around the clock.
Autophagy in More Detail
Sometimes we stock up on groceries before emptying the fridge and the old food gets pushed to the back of the fridge and begins to rot. A similar thing happens in a cell.
Let’s suppose one day you were about to run to the grocery store but you looked at your bank account and realized you had no money. What would you do? You’d use up what you had on hand. This would rid your fridge of rotting food.
Now imagine that you went to the grocery store every day and consistently bought way more food than you used up. Before long, your kitchen would be in a state of decay. That bag of potatoes in the bottom of the pantry would begin to stink (that’s seriously one of the worst smells!), bread would mold, and leftovers would begin decomposing. Although you can cheat and simply throw food in the trash, this is something the body never does. Everything you consume can only leave the body when it’s used for energy.
Why Can’t Autophagy Always Occur?
Our refrigerators accumulate rotting food from our mismanagement. Is the body also mismanaging the resources we give it? If recycling damaged proteins is so necessary for health, why doesn’t our body recycle damaged proteins even when we’re not deprived of food?
To answer this question, you have to understand the delicate balance of blood sugar in the body. Picture 2 1/4 gallons of milk, which is roughly the amount of blood in the average person’s body. How much sugar should be in your blood at any one time?
The answer is one teaspoon. You read that right—your body only wants one teaspoon for the entire 2 1/4 gallons of blood. Any more than that must be removed.
However, a 20-ounce soda contains 17 teaspoons of sugar, all of which quickly enters the bloodstream—that’s 17 times the body’s ideal amount of sugar (not to mention the fries you just ate).
What happens to the other 16 teaspoons of sugar? The pancreas must work furiously to flood the bloodstream with the hormone insulin whose job it is to lower dangerously high blood sugar. Insulin escorts the sugar first into the liver for short-term storage if there’s room, (but for many Americans, the liver remains full), or into fat cells for longer-term storage. (Stay tuned for the long-term effects of chronically high insulin in later letters.)
The important thing to understand for now is that high blood sugar is an emergency that requires the body’s full attention. This is why high levels of insulin are the body’s chemical message to stop everything else and concentrate on this high-sugar disaster before the sugar damages delicate blood vessels in the eyes and wreaks havoc on dozens of other sensitive systems.
In summary, anytime insulin is high, all autophagy screeches to a halt. The body may desperately want to upgrade your cells which are filling up with damaged parts, but as long as insulin is high, it can’t begin the process.
Put simply, the body has two modes: it’s either in nutrient storing mode (the scientific term for this is anabolism) or the body is in scrounging-around-for-spare-energy-to-break-down mode (catabolism). The signal to store or scrounge is controlled by insulin. Insulin high: store nutrients. Insulin low: scrounge for nutrients.
But what happens in the body when insulin is always high and autophagy can rarely or never occur?
Tada: you get the diseases of civilization such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, autoimmune diseases, heart disease, and diabetes—diseases whose rapid increase mirrors the rise of readily available highly-processed foods. The average American is eating up to 6 times a day because Big Food messaging said that would stoke the metabolism. (Did you know that fasting has been shown in numerous studies to increase metabolism up to 14%? We’ll cover why in detail in a future letter).
Autophagy and the Brain
Dr. Mark Mattson, professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and former Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institutes on Aging Intramural Research Program, has dedicated his life to researching how intermittent fasting can protect the brain. National Institutes of Health (NIH) considers him: “one of the world’s top experts on the potential cognitive and physical health benefits of intermittent fasting.”
Mattson writes:
Nerve cells possess an innate ability to adapt to intermittent dietary challenges in ways that help them perform better and counteract the adversities of aging, thereby potentially delaying the development of neurodegenerative diseases of aging like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.1
(For further reading, check out Mattson’s new book The Intermittent Fasting Revolution: The Science of Optimizing Health and Enhancing Performance.)
When autophagy never occurs, the brain fills up with old junk leading to a host of problems that modern medicine cannot solve.
Dr. Mattson published a ground-breaking review study in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease".
Here’s just one conclusion from the study:
Intermittent fasting enhances cognition in multiple domains, including spatial memory, associative memory, and working memory; alternate-day fasting…reverse[s] the adverse effects of obesity, diabetes, and neuroinflammation on spatial learning and memory.2
Why have I never heard of this research before?
Because “a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent” (Exodus 23:8). It appears the FDA is in the pay of Big Ag who benefits from you eating round the clock.
For example, Dr. Ken Berry has a chapter in his book Lies My Doctor Told Me called “The Pyramid of Food Lies” (what a great name!) referring to the government’s food pyramid which urges Americans to eat 7-11 servings (not bites) of carbs a day. (Wait—did you say ELEVEN? I dare someone to try to eat eleven servings of pasta in one day. If you get rapid-onset diabetes, Big Pharma has some pretty swell drugs to sell you.)
Referring to how the pyramid of food lies was created, Berry writes: “Big Food and Big Agriculture companies got to proofread and change some of the guidelines after the nutrition scientists had finished with them and before the public saw them” (p. 87).
The bottom line is that intermittent fasting will never get the press time it deserves. How could an idea that costs nothing possibly compete with the advertising prowess of Coca-Cola which spent a cool $193 mil on advertising in 2021? If you are going to overcome the diseases of civilization, you will need to unlearn most of the propaganda Big Food has fed you since the cradle. It’s a slow process but worth every moment of your time.
That’s why I wanted to write this newsletter. The information necessary to take back our health will have to find alternative ways to spread. All the information is out there, but it takes a bit of time to unearth it.
Thankfully, I love digging for it, summarizing it, and sharing it.
If you are enjoying this newsletter, share it with someone whose cells are filling up with junk proteins that desperately need to be recycled (aka, just about everyone.)
Stay tuned for some tips on simple ways to get started upgrading to the new you.
Until next week: reduce, reuse, and recycle (your old cellular parts, of course) before your cells devolve into miscreants.
Fast well,
Leslie Taylor
Have you experienced any health benefits since beginning IF? If so, comment below to inspire others.
[This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not designed as a substitute for medical advice. Talk to your doctor before beginning any dietary changes, especially if you are on medications for diabetes. Fasting while taking certain medications such as Metformin and especially insulin can lead to dangerously low blood sugars. If your doctor does not support fasting, search for a physician who will support your fasting journey. Fasting is not recommended for those pregnant, breastfeeding, or for children and teens still growing and developing. For those with diabetes, personal fasting coaches are available through TheFastingMethod.com. I receive no compensation or ad revenue for anything in this newsletter including links to books, videos, websites, coaching services, podcasts, or supplements.]
https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/international-symposium-honor-pioneer-neuroscience-and-fasting
de, Cabo Rafael and Mark P. Mattson. "Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease." The New England Journal of Medicine 381, no. 26 (Dec 26, 2019): 2541-51, https://go.openathens.net/redirector/liberty.edu?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/effects-intermittent-fasting-on-health-aging/docview/2330626410/se-2.
I heard about IF in July of 2020 and started that day. I also heard about non-scale victories, or NSV's, but I didn't pay that much mind because I was after the weight loss.
However, after months of IF and no weight loss, (16:8 - 20:4 protocols) I decided to count my blessings, and there were so many!
> a long standing stomach issue faded away, never to return
> my brain fog cleared up (I'm 66, so I didn't know if there was hope!)
> I started sleeping longer
> I was surprised at the energy I had!
> a xanthelasma on my eye disappeared (my cholesterol is great, but somehow I got one of those!)
> arthritis pain in my thumbs disappeared. It had been so bad that it would stop me in my tracks.
To this day I haven't lost much weight, but I also haven't gained, which is wonderful. It's such a great lifestyle and so easy to manage that I kept on with it every day without fail till now. It's a forever way to eat!
Just recently, I heard Leslie's podcast on the Fasting Highway and am now trying Alternate Day Fasting.
Thanks, Leslie!
Hi Leslie, I heard your interview on the fasting highway and you came across very enthusiastic and articulate, well done for starting a newsletter. I look forward to reading your newsletters, Colin