Food deprivation and have long been credited with slowing aging, and fasting carries religious and popular claims of its own. Cells have a recycling process called , and nobody had gathered the evidence linking the two. A review set out to weigh it.
It switches the recycling on. The authors conclude that both fasting and calorie restriction upregulate autophagy, with the evidence overwhelmingly suggesting it is induced in a wide variety of tissues and organs in response to food deprivation. They also name fasting and restriction as the most potent non-genetic stimulators of it.
Autophagy is a lysosomal degradation process and a protective . It eliminates damaged organelles, long-lived misfolded proteins and invading pathogens, and recycles building blocks and energy for cellular renovation, which lets a cell adapt to stress.
That makes it interesting as a for metabolic conditions, neurodegenerative diseases, cancers and infectious diseases. The question is how to move it, and the oldest candidate is the simplest one.
Food deprivation and calorie restriction have traditionally been considered to slow aging and increase longevity. The connection runs deeper than correlation, since inhibiting autophagy attenuates the anti-aging effects of restriction, which is why autophagy has been proposed as part of the mechanism.
Among the stress stimuli that induce autophagy, the authors call fasting and calorie restriction the most potent non-genetic stimulators, lacking the undesirable side effects of alternatives. Their conclusion is that both upregulate autophagy, with the evidence overwhelmingly suggesting induction across a wide variety of tissues and organs.
wat. Going without food turns up the cell’s own recycling, across a wide range of tissues.
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Autophagy is a therapeutic target for metabolic, neurodegenerative, cancerous and infectious disease, and this is a way of moving it without a drug.
How do we know?
Bagherniya and colleagues reviewed the literature connecting fasting or calorie restriction with autophagy promotion, which they note had not been gathered and weighed before.
What is still unknown
This review does not separate human from animal evidence in its conclusion, so the strength of the human case is not something it settles.
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