Last Updated on November 9, 2023 by Fasting Planet
Intermittent fasting has many benefits, one of these being your ability to activate autophagy through calorie restriction. Yet during your non-fasting windows, sometimes you’ve wondered whether you can induce autophagy without being on a fast. Is it possible, and how would you kickstart autophagy?
You can achieve autophagy in a non-fasted state in the following ways:
- Eat foods that trigger autophagy
- Exercise
- Spend some time in a sauna
Can you really induce autophagy through a sauna? Indeed you can. In this in-depth guide, we will further explore how to activate autophagy without fasting. We’ll also answer all your most burning questions about the process of autophagy, including how it works, what to eat, how fasting can help, and what autophagy’s many benefits are. You’re not going to want to miss it!
What Is Autophagy?
First, let’s begin with a definition of autophagy.
Autophagy is an internal process that occurs to some degree all the time in our every day lives, yet you can accelerate autophagy through the means mentioned above. The term comes from the word autophagos, a Greek word that translates to self-eating or self-devouring.
Why does autophagy mean self-eating? Well, that’s exactly what happens across your body. You see, the 37+ trillion cells within you all die at differing rates. Your red blood cells live for 115 days, but your white blood cells only survive for about 20 days. Pancreatic cells live for a year on average, fibroblasts for about 60 days, and liver cells for upwards of 16 months.
According to this article in Science Focus, after seven years, maybe 10 years, most of your cells have been replaced by new ones. The only exceptions are skeletal muscle cells (which live for 15.1 years), intestinal cells (15.9 years), heart muscle cells (40 years), egg cells (50 years), eye lens cells (your whole life), and brain cells (possibly 200 years).
What happens to the average cell as it begins to edge closer to its inevitable death? Well, what happens to us people as we age? We become slower and less efficient than we were in our youth. The same thing is true of your cells. As they near the end of their lifespan, they can’t work nearly as well as they once did.
This can pose many health problems. To explain why that is, let’s use your white blood cells as an example. The average white blood cell lives for three weeks, give or take. Your white blood cells are chiefly involved in maintaining the health of your immune system.
Imagine then that your white blood cells are nearing the end of their lives. They’re working slowly and poorly, weakening your immunity and putting you at a higher risk of illness.
All your white blood cells don’t die at the same rate though. For every few older white blood cells, you have fresh ones that continue to push things along. Yet slower, older white blood cells can prevent the younger ones from doing their jobs well. That’s why autophagy must occur.
During autophagy, these young cells will eat the older ones. Sometimes, they recycle parts of the old cell, leaving younger parts alone so the cell may continue to live on. In other instances, during autophagy, the whole cell gets consumed.
The cellular recycling that is autophagy ensures that only young, healthy cells remain. In the example of your immune system, these younger cells would bolster your immunity so you may stay healthier, and that’s all thanks to autophagy.
Consuming a cell before its death can prevent the explosive nature of said death that’s called apoptosis. All those exploded cellular parts must be cleaned up, leaving your younger cells to take care of the job. This distracts from their main purpose, which is maintaining your health.
Autophagy can kick in before apoptois occurs across your entire cellular system in the body, preventing the time-consuming cleanup.
How Do You Induce Autophagy?
The simplest and often most effective way to induce autophagy in the body is through calorie restriction. Why does this work for autophagy? When you reduce your calorie intake, you induce internal stress. Although this may sound like a bad thing, some stress can be beneficial for the body, especially in this instance. Not only do you kickstart autophagy through the strses, but you activate other health perks as well.
According to a 2018 report published in Ageing Research Reviews, the cellular stress caused by autophagy can help cells adapt better to stress, maintain homeostasis, and renovate the cells. In other words, you have healthier cells across the body.
The two most popular options for calorie restriction to induce autophagy are fasting and the keto diet. Let’s talk about both of these options more now.
Fasting
When in a fasted state, you forego food and/or caloric beverages for a limited period. You might try a form of intermittent fasting, such as the following.
- 5:2 diet: The 5:2 diet involves five days of regular eating and then two days where you fast. During those two days, you’re supposed to limit your caloric consumption to 25 percent of the food you usually eat in a day. In other words, you’re eating no more than 500 to 600 calories.
- 16:8 diet: The 16:8 diet is a means of splitting 24 hours into two periods: your fasting window and a non-fasting window. You’d fast over 16 hours, and for the remaining eight hours, you can consume food. Some people tweak the 16:8 diet. For example, there’s the 14:10 fast for beginners or even 18:6 fasting for more experienced people.
- Water fast: On a water fast, you consume mostly water. Other drinks are allowable, including green and black tea and black coffee in minimal quantities.
- OMAD: OMAD is short for one meal a day, which tells you what this type of fast is all about. That one meal can be anything you want it to be, whether you make up for a whole day of eating or you choose to eat more sparingly. Different people do different things here.
- Dry fasting: Definitely not recommended for beginners or intermediates, a dry fast closes your eating window entirely. You cannot consume any beverages either, including water. On a soft dry fast, you can use water for bathing and hygiene, whereas on a hard dry fast, you can’t even do that.
- Alternate-day fasting: You can also try alternate-day fasting, where you spend 24 hours without eating and then another 24 hours eating more normally.
Ketogenic Diet
Other people swear by the ketogenic diet, which is a low-carb, high-fat way of eating. You can eat a variety of foods on the keto diet, including plain cottage cheese, unflavored Greek yogurt, coconut oil, eggs, poultry, meat, avocados, cheese, vegetables, and seafood. You must also aim to achieve at least 10 percent of your daily allotment of protein when on keto, although some people go as high as 20 percent with their quantities of protein.
The Best Ways to Achieve Autophagy Without Fasting
Now that you know how fasting and the keto diet can activate autophagy, we want to be clear that those aren’t your only options to get into autophagy. This is a good thing, as some people find it hard to go without food for extended periods or to increase protein while eating low-carb, as with keto.
Here are three ways to induce autophagy without fasting.
Diet
Instead of curtailing fat and carb-heavy food as you do when fasting, you can incorporate more foods into your diet to activate autophagy. In the next section, we’ll lay out a whole bunch of food options you can try, including some foods you probably regularly enjoy as well as a few interesting selections.
If you struggle with the calorie restriction part of fasting, eating an autophagy-friendly diet throughout the day will still let you activate autophagy, but without the need to fast.
Exercise
A second good means to increase autophagy is through exercise. A healthy lifestyle supports regular exercise anyway, so you might not even have to change much of your lifestyle to begin reaping more autophagic benefits through exercise.
According to a 2018 report in the journal Aging Cell, “during exercise, autophagy mediates the clearance of proteins and organelles damaged by heat, pH changes, or mechanical stress which likely acts to prevent accumulation of these cystolic components and maintain myocyte function.”
The article does note that exercise, when combined with calorie restriction such as fasting or keto, will produce the best results, but you can reliably use exercise to activate autophagy without fasting as well. Aging Cell reports that exercise-induced autophagy is especially advantageous for your skeletal muscles. There, autophagic upregulation will last for a period of days, whereas for most other areas of the body, the benefits are only for a matter of hours.
In this Siim Land video on YouTube, he talks about the importance of depleting one’s energy (for example, with exercise) to activate autophagy. When our nutrients get low, such as through fasting, our energy does as well. AMP-activated protein kinase or AMPK pathways then become active.
AMPK manages your cellular energy homeostasis by regulating your uptake of high-fat acids and glucose. This may raise your energy levels.
The mammalian target of rapamycin or mTOR is a second binding protein that comes into play during autophagy. This 2011 report in Nature Cell Biology says that mTOR can prevent autophagy while AMPK encourages it. Eating can increase mTOR levels, notes Siim Land, which is why exercise and fasting tend to (but don’t always have to) go hand in hand.
Finally, there’s ULK1 Atg13, a protein that can induce autophagy and regulate mTOR according to a Journal of Biological Chemistry publication from 2009. This too becomes more active through exercise.
Sauna
The third way that you can activate autophagy without fasting is to spend time in a sauna. This is a topic we’ve discussed on the blog before, but if you missed that post, we’ll cover it again.
When you visit a sauna, you expose yourself to a hot and humid environment with temperatures that reach between 150 and 175 degrees Fahrenheit. As you sit and relax, your body enjoys a slew of benefits. For instance, using a sauna can help you burn more calories. If you spend a half-hour in a sauna and you weigh 150 pounds, you may torch 56 calories. Still, you burn 1.5x the calories than your base rate if you sat and did nothing.
Further, spending time in a sauna can cleanse your skin inside and out. You also flush out toxins by sweating. Your muscles appreciate the time in the heat too, as they can begin the recovery process after a strenuous workout. Also, you may even sleep better after a trip to the sauna.
In 2018, the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine published a report that compiled the results of many studies done on sauna benefits, corroborating the above health perks. More than 40 studies and clinical trials were included that encompassed over 3,800 participants.
What does using a sauna have to do with autophagy? Lots! In a 2017 report in Science Direct, researchers at the Sanford-Burnham Presbyterian Medical Discovery Institute did a test on a species of worm called the C. elegans. The roundworms were exposed to heat for brief period. Those worms were shown to have higher rates of autophagy than the worms that did not undergo the heat treatment.
As for whether the same heat stress can induce autophagy in people, especially without fasting, the researchers said it’s definitely a possibility.
How Do You Eat for Autophagy?
Although you’re not undergoing calorie restriction per se when you eat for autophagy, you still do want to follow a certain diet. Here are some options you have to to begin eating for autophagy without fasting.
Schisandrin
The first one is a doozy, and that’s schisandrin.
Okay, so what is schisandrin? These are a group of bioactive chemical compounds that include schisandrin A through C.
So how do you consume schisandrin? You can ingest Schisandrin chinesis, a type of fruit that grows on a vine. Also known as the magnolia berry, depending on the variety of schisandrin, you can get one of five types of flavors. These include sour, pungent, bitter, salty, or sweet tastes.
You probably won’t eat the magnolia berry outright, although you can if you wanted. According to Plants for a Future, you can cook the fruit or make it into a paste, which is common in Russia. If that’s the route you want to take, you might want to follow in the footsteps of the Russians and use Actinidia arguta, or the hardy kiwi, as another ingredient in your paste. The kiwi fruit will control the bitterness of the magnolia berry.
In a publication of the journal Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology as published in 2018, the researchers found that schisandrin C can boost autophagy at the skeletal muscle cell level.
Naringin
Another ingredient to begin incorporating into your autophagy diet is naringin. This glycoside/flavinoid is common in grapefruit and other citrus fruits, although it’s more abundant in the former. Like schisandrin, naringin gives the citrus fruit its bitter flavor, especially that of the grapefruit.
Some fruit manufacturers will use naringinase, a type of enzyme that neutralizes the bitterness of grapefruit. You want the raw, bitter fruit if you can find it, as eating it will let you get the most naringin in each serving.
The International Journal of Oncology, in a 2015 report, found that naringin can activate cellular autophagy. Their study involved cancer cells. Naringin triggered pathways of mitogen-activated protein kinase or MAPK while reducing levels of mTOR, protein kinase B or AKT, and phosphoinositide 3-kinase or P13K.
Fisetin
The flavanol known as fisetin can also help you induce autophagy without fasting. Fisetin belongs to a plant-based polyphenolic group, and it’s sometimes used as a coloring agent as well. By eating certain fruits, you can ensure you get your supply of fisetin. These include persimmons, grapes, and especially strawberries. If you’re more of a vegetable person, fisetin is also present in onions and cucumbers.
In a publication of the journal Cell Death & Disease from 2019, the information shown that fisetin can activate autophagy by creating pathways for stress on a mitochondrial and endoplasmic level. The study results apply to cancer patients, but the journal does prove the connection between fisetin and autophagy nevertheless.
Further, fisetin is a known senolytic, or a compound that can encourage the destruction or recycling of older cells. That sounds a lot like autophagy to us, which can, in this instance, help you live longer.
Besides its autophagy perks, fisetin could also stop the spread and multiplication of cancer cells. The flavanol also prevents inflammatory compound activity and could improve your memory.
Resveratol
Here’s an autophagy ingredient that you may be more familiar with, resveratrol. As a phytoalexin, a phenol, and a stilbenoid, reseveratrol comes from plant tissue and is considered an aromatic compound.
Most people that know resveratrol probably consume it due to its inclusion in wine, but the phenol actually comes from grape skins. The skin of mulberries, raspberries, and blueberries also contains resveratrol, as does peanuts, so those are all foods to eat to increase autophagy.
This 2019 publication of OncoTargets and Therapy focused on how reseveratrol can induce autophagy as a means of avoiding and even treating cancer. According to the study, reseveratrol was shown as a natural cancer-preventing ingredient that has been widely studied as such for at least 20 years. The report mentions another study that states how breast cancer risk can decrease by around 50 percent when women regularly consume grapes with resveratrol.
The medical report goes on to discuss how reservatrol can activate autophagy in cancer cells, especially those that cause human ovarian cancer. Autophagy in this case can then lead to apoptosis. Although apoptosis is usually a deteriment since your healthy cell then has to stop what its doing to clean up the mess caused by the cell death, in this case, it’s a good thing. After all, the study illustrates how autophagy may help prevent cancer.
Reishi Mushrooms
The reishi or lingzhi mushroom has gained major acclaim recently for its slew of health benefits, and rightfully so. This red-capped mushroom with a firm texture and a kidney-like shape is a natural source of antioxidants. Reishi mushrooms may also reduce blood sugar (at least in animal studies), boost HDL cholesterol (the good kind) for better heart health, and reduce rates of depression and fatigue.
As if that wasn’t enough, reishi mushrooms could also combat different types of cancer and bolster the immune system, medical data has shown.
How does the reishi mushroom activate autophagy without fasting? In much the same way as resveratrol. Molecular and Cellular Biology published a report in 2013 about how the reishi mushroom can trigger autophagy to then cause inflammatory breast cancer cells to die through apoptosis.
Other studies correlate these findings, such as this classic report in the Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering, another classic study in the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Bulletin, and in a 2009 study from the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Coconuts
Lots of fruits contain reseveratrol and fisetin, but another fruit stands out on its own for its ability to induce autophagy without calorie restriction. That’s the humble coconut.
Coconuts contain phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, sodium, selenium, and iron as well as vitamins B6, B5, B3, B1, E, and vitamin C. It’s no wonder then that coconut oil is a ketogenic diet staple for many people. The oil is a powerful thing, as it has medium-chain triglycerides or MCTs.
MCTs can lower triglycerides in the blood as well as your cholesterol. Also important is how the MCTs in coconut oil trigger the production of ketone bodies. As you know, the more ketones you have in your system, the easier it is for you to enter autophagy. However, ketone bodies for fat burning are usually only created during periods of calorie restriction such as when on the ketogenic diet.
That you can consume coconut oil and still reap those same ketogenic benefits is incredibly impressive. Make sure you’re consuming at least a tablespoon of coconut oil each day, maybe as much as two tablespoons. This is one of the tastiest ways to increase autophagy, that’s for sure!
Olive Oil
From one tasty oil to another, olive oil is also great to eat if you want to increase autophagy. As an anti-inflammatory, olive oil is also with antioxidants and monounsaturated fats as well. Studies have shown that olive could could have a role in preventing or treating many health conditions, among them rheumatoid arthritis, cancers, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, and stroke.
In 2017, Temple University Health System shared medical data from a study on extra-virgin olive oil and its effects on memory. In that study, lead researcher Domenico Pratico, MD, also a professor at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University’s Center for Translational Medicine and the Departments of Pharmacology and Micribology had this to say.
“We found that olive oil reduces brain inflammation but most importantly activates a process known as autophagy…Brain cells from mice fed diets enriched with extra-virgin olive oil had higher levels of autophagy and reduced levels of amyloid plaques and phosphorylated tau.”
The Temple University team concluded that phosphorylated tau may play a contributing role in the development of Alzheimer’s.
Berberine
Next is berberine, a type of ammonium salt from plant alkaloids. You will have to do some specialty shopping if you want to eat more berberine, as it’s only in foods like tree turmeric, phellodendron, Oregon grapes, goldthread, goldenseal, and the European barberry.
Okay, what the heck are all those? Well, tree turmeric is a plant that’s also known as the Indian barberry, which is not to be confused with the European barberry. The phellodendron is another plant species with bark that’s mostly used for medical purposes.
Oregon grapes are a plant that grows a grape-like fruit with a sour taste and lots of vitamin C. Goldthread and goldenseal are yet more plant species, with the latter often recommended to consume if you have a cold. Finally, the European barberry is a flowering species of plant. Its berries also contain rich quantities of vitamin C.
Berberine may be found in some strange foods, but for autophagy, eating berberine is worth it. In a ResearchGate publication, the research states that berberine is a natural anti-inflammatory with antipyretic, antidiarrheal, antiviral, and antimicrobial properties.
Autophagy may allow berberine to supress the progression and growth of tumors as well, which is another way autophagy is good for your health.
Turmeric
We talked about tree turmeric, but turmeric on its own is also a very healthful ingredient for more autophagy without calorie restriction. The main compound in turmeric is curcumin, which is known for reducing depression, lessening arthritis pain, and acting as an anti-inflammatory. You could also be safeguarded from heart disease, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and some cancers by eating more turmeric.
How? The curcumin in turmeric creates oxidative stress that can, in some bovine cells, lead to autophagy as shown in this 2019 Cell Death Discovery report. This oxidative stress can encourage autophagy to the point of apoptosis.
Ginger
Turmeric and ginger are in the same family, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that ginger can also activate autophagy. Ginger has a whole boatload of health benefits too, among them working as a great treatment for indigestion, preventing the onset of heart disease, reducing cholesterol, lessening pain, and alleviating nausea.
As an anti-inflammatory and a source of antioxidants, ginger is also packed with vitamins and minerals that are good for your health. They include folate, zinc, phosphorous, magnesium, vitamin C, potassium, iron, and vitamins B3 and B6. Whether you eat ginger raw, in liquid form, or as a powder, you can enjoy some every day for more autophagy.
The 6-shogaol within ginger is chief in inducing autophagy. You must cook or dry out your ginger to bring out the properties of 6-shogaol. This compound proves how autophagy may prevent cancer, as it can activate apoptosis in cells that cause colorectal cancer, says this 2017 report in Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.
Green Tea
If you’d rather enjoy a beverage instead of food, that’s another of the many ways you can start autophagy.
Green tea is one of the healthiest drinks you can get, as it contains large quantities of saponins, theanine, vitamin E, vitamin C, many B vitamins, and tannins. Besides that, the catechins in green tea can boost the health of your blood vessels as well as your liver and cardiovascular system. Catechins may also prevent the onset of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
Polyphenols are abundant in green tea as well, especially epigallocatechin gallate or EPCG. According to a 2019 medical report in the journal Nutrients, EPCG can induce autophagy in the body even if you’re not otherwise fasting.
Coffee
That cup of coffee that fuels you in the morning can also fuel your cellular processes as autophagy begins in the body. That’s supported by a classic report from Cell Cycles. Coffee, like green tea, has polyphenols, although not the same ones as in the tea.
In its ability to cause autophagy in the brain, consumption of coffee could act as a means of preventing the devlopment of neurodegenerative diseases. Even non-caffeinated coffee may still have autophaghy benefits for the body, which is good to know!
Broccoli
Broccoli is a staple vegetable that many people eat for good health. It has a long list of minerals and nutrients per serving, including niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, zinc, potassium, phosphorus, iron, and calcium. That list keeps going by the way, as you can also get sources of manganese, folate, vitamin K1, and vitamin C through broccoli.
If you want to increase autophagy in the body, eating broccoli is the way to go. Specifcally, it’s the sulforaphane in broccoli that’s so useful. This isothiocyanate compound can reduce constipation, ward off sun damage, keep your heart healthy, and possibly even prevent cancer development.
This medical cancer study cited on SproutNet reports that the sulforaphane in broccoli was shown to activate autophagy, especially in cells with colon cancer. In this instance, the autophagy led to the death of the cells via apoptosis.
Can You Achieve Autophagy with Intermittent Fasting?
Throughout this guide, we’ve talked about methods you can use to activate autophagy without the need for fasting. What if intermittent fasting is a regular part of your life and it’s something you want to maintain on your quest for autophagy? Can you still fast and enter autophagy?
Most definitely. As we discussed earlier, intermittent fasting is a diet in which you curtail food for several hours or several days at a time. By doing this, you cause your body to burn through its supply of glycogen, an energy source that’s converted from glucose in the body. This simple sugar comes from the foods we eat, especially carb-heavy ones.
When your liver has no more glycogen to use for energy, it begins fat burning instead. (You can also reap these fat-burning benefits on a ketogenic diet.) Between reducing the calories you consume and burning fat, intermittent fasting may help you achieve your weight loss goals. Fasting also creates the stress necessary for you to get into a state of autophagy.
How Long Do You Have to Fast for Autophagy?
Now that you’re aware that intermittent fasting can allow you to activate autophagy, how long should you plan to fast to enter autophagy?
Your intermittent fasting window will have to be at least 18 hours, with some experts suggesting it takes as long as 20 hours for fasting-induced autophagy to begin. That is, by the way, just the amount of time you have to wait for autophagy to start when intermittent fasting. It’s recommended you fast for 48 to 72 hours total to get the most autophagy health benefits.
To enter autophagy, you might try an intermittent fasting plan such as the alternate-day fast. During your 24-hour window where you can eat normally, limit your fat, get plenty of protein, and incorporate the foods we covered in the last section. That may let you enter autophagy sooner.
Then, after 24 hours of fasting, you might try a water fast, where you don’t eat food and consume water and other low-cal beverages. Green and black tea and black coffee are allowable when water fasting. Sipping these drinks is one great way to get your body ready to activate autophagy sooner.
Can I Drink Water During Autophagy?
Speaking of water, would regular consumption of water interrupt autophagy in any way?
Not at all. Water contains no calories, nor any sugar, fat, or carbs. It’s allowable when fasting, be that a water fast or another type of fast. Even when you’re not fasting, you still want to drink water every day, at least eight glasses, each eight ounces. This maintains your hydration, keeping you healthy so your body can continue to support processes like autophagy.
Does Autophagy Kill Viruses?
You know the way that autophagy works by now. You have to create conditions of stress through exercise or fasting to induce the body into cellular recycling. Can those medical benefits work on such a level that autophagy can kill viruses in the body?
In some cases, absolutely. We shared several studies earlier in this guide where certain food and ingredients that trigger autophagy can cause apoptosis of cancer cells.
This 2010 report from the journal Viruses focuses on how autophagy affects herpesvirus cells. Host cells within the body attempt to kickstart autophagy to activate an immune response. Yet herpeviruses have evaded these autophagy efforts since the virus is tricky in several ways.
That said, the journal also mentions that autophagy can aide in viral protein major histocompability complex activity. The major histocompatbility complex includes a series of genes that undergo protein coding to improve the immune system. This protein coding tells the immune system what’s healthy and what’s a foreign invader so it can launch a response process faster.
This already makes your immune system function better. On top of that, think of what autophagy does. The process of autophagy involves cellular recycling so older, inefficient cells don’t survive and only the healthy ones do. Autophagy can encourage immune system recycling in the body to make your immune system healthier. That could keep you free of viruses.
In some instances, autophagy can unfortunately encourage the survival of viral cells, such as is detailed in this 2011 report from Seminars in Immunopathology. Autophagy isn’t always discerning about which cells it encourages to survive, after all.
It’s not exclusively viral cells that autophagy can encourage, but sometimes cancer cells as well, notes a publication of Advances in Cancer Research from 2015. That’s why autophagy is sometimes referred to as a double-edged sword. Autophagy can make your good cells survive, but sometimes the bad ones get through too.
Does Autophagy Help with Loose Skin?
For the most part though, when you activate autophagy through exercise or other means, you’re doing it for the betterment of your health. One of the ways that the process of autophagy can improve your health is through bettering the appearance of loose skin.
Your skin can become saggy and loose through age. If you lose a lot of weight, like after pregnancy or by following a strict diet, the fat may come off, but you’re left with a lot of leftover skin. Medical conditions such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma are also ways that you can end up with sagging skin.
Two proteins in the extracellular matrix contribute to skin firmness and youthfulness. Elastin gives you skin that bouncy, elastic quality while collagen leaves your face looking full and appealing. Both proteins are produced by fibroblasts.
When you activate autophagy through exercise or other forms of positive stress, your body can begin the process of recycling older fibroblasts that aren’t producing as much collagen and elastin. If you can induce autophagy often enough, then you can increase your healthy fibroblasts so your skin looks healthier, fresher, and firmer. This is another of the many ways autophagy is so beneficial for your health.
Conclusion
Autophagy is an internal process induced by stress that causes your cells to recycle and even consume themselves. This allows everything from your immune system to your fibroblasts, digestive system, and the brain to work optimally.
Fasting is one of the most recognized ways to activate autophagy, as is following the ketogenic diet. You can create stress for autophagy in other ways too, such as sweating in a sauna or getting some exercise. Many foods can increase your rate of autophagy in the body as well.
With so many ways to start autophagy, whether you want to modify your diet or get more exercise, you have plenty of options. If you’re looking to activate autophagy for the sake of your health, we hope this guide will help you get there!