Your cells accumulate their own waste. Right now, damaged proteins and dysfunctional organelles are building up inside them. The good news? Your body has a built-in cleanup crew. It’s called autophagy and it works naturally. The better news? You can choose to activate it on purpose.
Hey there. It’s me, Kore. And you’re listening to Exercising Self-Control: From Fitness To Flourishing.
Having started with a general overview of autophagy in the last episode (https://stoicstrength.substack.com/p/...) , today we’re exploring two of the most effective ways to trigger this cellular recycling process: exercise and fasting. These operate through entirely different mechanisms. Understanding how each one works gives you the power to choose how they fit into your life and support your goals.
Exercise And The Oxygen Deficit
When you exercise, your muscles demand oxygen faster than your circulatory system can deliver it. This temporary oxygen shortage, called hypoxia, is the signal that tells your cells to activate autophagy.
And here’s the thing: the harder you push, the stronger the signal. Higher-intensity workouts create greater oxygen deficits, triggering more robust cellular cleanup than low-intensity movement. Your body responds proportionally to the stress you create.
I want to be clear here. Not every workout needs to be high intensity. Low to moderate level exercise has its place and absolutely provides excellent benefits. The distinction is the cellular signalling is stronger the higher the intensity of exercise. I’ll go into more detail on this in tomorrow’s episode.
Where Exercise Cleans Up
Autophagy doesn’t happen everywhere at once when you exercise. It happens where you need it most.
In your skeletal muscle, autophagy clears damaged proteins and organelles, particularly dysfunctional mitochondria through a process called mitophagy. This cellular housekeeping is crucial for muscle repair, maintaining muscle quality, improving function and endurance, and allowing your body to adapt to training.
Your heart also benefits. Exercise-induced autophagy removes damaged components and improves mitochondrial quality, enhanced cardiovascular function, and offering protection against conditions like heart failure.
Even your brain gets cleaned up. Exercise promotes autophagy in your brain, helping clear neurotoxic protein aggregates, the kind associated with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, while supporting neurogenesis and cognitive function.
The Whole-Body “Conversation”
But exercise doesn’t stop at the tissues you’re working. Your contracting muscles release signaling molecules called myokines into your bloodstream. These circulating factors activate autophagy in distant organs (i.e. your liver, pancreas, and adipose tissue) creating a body-wide “conversation” that primes your entire system for improved function.
This systemic activation translates to real metabolic benefits. Exercise-induced autophagy enhances your insulin sensitivity and improves glucose regulation, helping you maintain the systemic balance that’s essential for healthy aging and disease prevention.
Photo by Bioscience Image Library by Fayette Reynolds (https://unsplash.com/@berkshirecommun...) on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/nervous-t...)
Fasting and Nutrient Deprivation
Fasting activates autophagy through a completely different mechanism: nutrient scarcity, particularly a lack of protein. When your body senses insufficient nutrients, it upregulates its recycling machinery to break down damaged or misfolded proteins into amino acids for reuse.
This nutrient-driven response triggers systemic hormonal changes throughout your body, including increased growth hormone production. Because nutrient deprivation affects your entire system, these hormonal signals reach every cell, creating a comprehensive autophagic response.
The Systemic Reach of Fasting
This global effect makes fasting particularly valuable for addressing systemic cellular health concerns.
Brain Debris Clearance
Fasting is a primary mechanism for cleaning up inflammation, debris, and protein aggregates within your brain’s neurons. This cellular housekeeping is particularly relevant for neurodegenerative conditions. By removing misfolded proteins like those associated with Alzheimer’s disease, fasting supports long-term brain health and cognitive preservation. Your brain gets the deep cleaning that exercise alone cannot provide.
Insulin Resistance and Metabolic Reset
Fasting is a potent way to change your metabolic set point in the hypothalamus (i.e. the brain region that regulates hunger, energy expenditure, and metabolic rate). By resetting this central control system, fasting helps you reverse insulin resistance ...
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