The Japanese Professor Diet, For Which He Received Nobel Prize – Fasting and Autophagy

In 2016, Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi won the Nobel prize in Physiology and Medicine for his research of autophagy in yeast. The study found that short periods of fasting have a positive impact on cell renewal and help slow down the aging process.

What is the secret of his discovery?

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The Breakthrough in Dieting: How The Cells Process Its Content

The Nobel Committee’s press release two years ago said: “Dr. Ohsumi’s discovery has led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how the cell processes its contents. His discoveries have paved the way for understanding the essential importance of Autophagy (body process that deals with destruction of cells) for various physiological processes, such as hunger adaptation and response to infection. ”

Regular exercise is the most popular way that people unintentionally help their body to cleanse.

What is Autophagy & Why It Matters for Dieting Folks

Autophagy is a process of utilization and recycling of unnecessary parts of the cell – any “garbage” accumulated therein. The term, which gave the name of the process, is formed by two Greek words, which together are translated as ‘self-sacrifice’.

The fact that such a phenomenon exists at all, scientists discovered in the 1960s. But they fail to decipher the intricacies of the mechanism. In the 1990s, this was done by Dr. Ohsumi. Through his experiments, he also found genes responsible for autophagy. And almost a quarter of a century later, the prize found its hero, who turned into a 39-year-old scientist with a Nobel Prize alone.

What Does the Process of Autophagy Include?

Autophagy is inherent in living organisms, including human beings. Thanks to it, cells are released from unnecessary parts, and the body as a whole – from unnecessary cells. Nature has forever endowed the cells with such an incredible and useful ability – to process everything that seems superfluous or harmful.

Ketosis is like an autophagy hack. You get a lot of the same metabolic changes and benefits of fasting without actually fasting.

They act almost like us, only automatically. Pack the “garbage” in special bags – autofagasomi. Then they move it into containers – lysosomes, where all the “dirt” is destroyed and processed. The products of the processing process are a kind of “recyclable” – they are used to produce fuel for cell nutrition. They also make new building blocks used for cell renewal. Thanks to autophagy, the cell is cleared of infection and toxins.

There’s a pretty strong case to be made that stress and self-destruction lengthens your lifespan.

Autophagy begins to work most intensely when the body is under stress. For example, when starving. In this case, the cell produces energy at the expense of internal resources – from the accumulated “garbage”. Including pathogenic bacteria. The discovery of the laureate shows: to starve and sometimes to fast – yet useful – the body is really cleared.

Confirmed by the Nobel Committee

As Dr. Ohsumi’s colleagues assure, the autophagy protects the body from premature aging. It may even rejuvenate the fact that it creates new cells, removing defective proteins and damaged intracellular elements from the body, keeping it in good condition. The process he studies is critical for cells to survive and to stay healthy. The autophagy genes and the metabolic pathways he discovered in yeast are used by higher organisms, including humans. And mutations in those genes can cause disease. His work led to a new field and inspired hundreds of researchers around the world to study the process and opened a new area of inquiry.

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However … it seems, in the name of prophylaxis, we sometimes have to rebuke, putting our body into a healing, as it turns out, stress. And the most interesting thing is that no long starvation is needed – only one day is enough.

The Nobel Committee for Medicine also confirmed that one-day starvation produced positive results. Autophagy protects the body from premature aging and, possibly, even fights the creation of new cells.