ALL ABOUT autophagy

Here’s how to ‘declutter’ your body on a cellular level through fasting.

- CHARIS TORRANCE

PLEASE NOTE! IF YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF EATING DISORDERS, OR ARE DEALING WITH HORMONAL IMBALANCES, THYROID ISSUES OR ADRENAL FATIGUE, FASTING IS NOT ADVISED.

From time to time, we all need to do a spring clean at home: weed out the clutter piling up in our wardrobes, finally take the recycling to the depot and replace that cabinet door that’s been hanging off its hinges since 2008. Well, your body does the same thing: it cleans out the dead cells, keeps the level of sick and old ones low, and makes space for the creation of new, healthy cells. This process is called autophagy, and once you understand exactly how it works, a whole new world of health will open up to you – one in which you can lower the risk of diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s. Nutritional scientist and founder of the Lifescience Clinic, Dr. Charlotte Prout-Jones, told us more.

WHAT IS AUTOPHAGY?

The word was originally coined in 1963 by Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve, but it’s only recently that we’ve really come to understand the full scope of the process, thanks to the work of Japanese biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2016 for his research and discoveries on its mechanisms. Even so, there are some things we still don’t understand about it.