The Best Type of Fasting for Longevity & Autophagy (better than 16:8)

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there's a certain kind of fasting that improves longevity more than other types of fasting now being completely honest with a full disclaimer here caloric restriction exercise weight loss all these things can drive up autophagy so autophagy is not unique to fasting however comma we have started to see that there is very interesting research surrounding fasting and unique elevations of autophagy genes demonstrating that fasting May trigger more autophagy than just caloric restriction but it seems as though it's specific kinds of fasting so we're going to go ahead and dive deep into what exactly is driving this so first we look at a rodent model study that doesn't have a whole lot to do with autophagy but it helps drive a very important point this was published in 2019 and it found that mice that were doing one meal a day lived significantly longer than mice that were just on a caloric restriction diet now what's interesting is that this was irrespective of what they were eating so they could have been eating garbage food they could have been eating clean food there was a benefit either way but then we asked the question could this be translated into humans and the short answer is yes because we see it in a study published in nutrients that teaches us a lot about autophagy as well you see when you're looking at longevity you have to look at a couple of things you have to look at sirtuins you have to look at NAD you have to look at autophagy you look at a multitude of different things so this study took a look at overweight participants and it had them consume food between 8 AM and 2 pm and then start fasting so it's what's called etrf early time restricted feeding where they stop their eating early in the day the other group did a 12-hour fast they ate between 8 AM and 8 PM okay what they found was that there were increases in sir two and one the longevity Gene but there were also huge increases in lc3a now lc3a is the autophagy Gene okay so anytime we can drive up autophagy we have potential benefits that come with longevity in that aspect because autophagy is sort of the cellular recycling okay when you're fasting you're breaking down organelles and kind of decrepit components of cells and pieces of cells that aren't being used anymore and your cycling them to be able to use them as fuel for the cell or to combine or in the case of mitochondria you have what's called mitophagy which is where mitochondria produce energy but when they start to get weaker and more decrepit they can combine with other mitochondria and actually make super mitochondria or stronger mitochondria so there's mitochondrial biogenesis and then there's mitophagy now I also popped a link for something down below it's very interesting you don't have to get it but I do think it's very interesting based upon this okay it's a product called timeline that uses something called mitopure it's a product called urolithin A and neurolithin A is uniquely derived from pomegranates but what it does is there are research bodies to back up the fact that it stimulates mitophagy so it can drive up mitophagy which ultimately means it helps your mitochondria sort of recycle and become potentially stronger so there's a cool study published in Jama that referenced this as well very interesting stuff so I popped a link down below for timeline so you can use that link go to timeline nutrition.com Thomas and that link will save you ten percent off you have it in a powder form that you can add to a shake you can get it in a capsule form or you can get it in just a straight up like whey protein shake form if you're maybe working out a lot you want to get protein along with it highly recommend it if you're interested in longevity science so if you're a nerd like me and you want to experiment with that stuff that's the product for you to check out highly recommend it that link down below so when we look at this elevation of the autophagy Gene with this specific fasting it begs some questions how come etrf is driving up autophagy more well it could be because there's a harmonious balance between our circadian rhythms and autophagy so with etrf when you're cutting out food earlier in the day you're aligning your circadian genes your sleep wake Cycles with your food intake much much better this in and of itself might drive up autophagy there's also a paper published in BMC genomics in 2018 that found that when subjects are fasting there are 367 genes that are seemingly affected as far as circadian cues go with fasting what that means is like when we fast there are tons of genes that get affected and it all circumnavigates back to the time of day in which we fast the importance of that means that when we fast becomes very important and it seems as though based upon this research published in nutrients well that if you are fasting in the afternoon and evening there is a stronger Drive of this lc3a autophagy Gene this Gene is expressed and allows for more autophagy to occur so what we're starting to elucidate from this is that when you compare apples to oranges like maybe a 16-8 traditional fasting to etrf etrf is going to get you more of this autophagy response is it negligible possibly but we can look at this and say okay how do we get more autophagy overall okay things like green tea green tea have been shown to induce autophagy a little bit more turmeric might induce autophagy a little bit more okay fasting induces autophagy but one of the biggest drivers of autophagy if not the biggest driver is exercise particularly aerobic exercise Okay the reason that resistance training doesn't drive up autophagy as much is because you get localized elevations of mtor which is basically the pro-growth signal the opposite of autophagy when you're resistance training doesn't mean resistance training is bad we need it but cardio aerobic work that zone three even up into zone four is really going to be what's good for autophagy so what I recommend is while you are fasting and you're doing etrf during your fasting period it may not be a bad idea to do some aerobic cardio the best time to do it would probably be in the morning before you start eating so it might look like this if you eat from 8 AM to 2 p.m and you fast from 2 pm to 8 A.M maybe getting up in the morning at 6 or 7 A.M and doing some aerobic work to drive up more autophagy while you're already at the end of your fast when autophagy is at its highest you can maximize the effect sprinkle in a little green tea and a little bit of turmeric there too and things might be working really really well so the type of fasting that we do does play a role and we have to look at the newer research that's coming out it's all about aligning those circadian cues and fasting at the right time I'll see you tomorrow