How to Detox Your Brain
Here’s the simple way to keep your brain young, sharp, and disease-free
In 2016, Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi won a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the mechanism of autophagy, the process the body uses to clear out and recycle old cell components. Making this discovery was phenomenal — but making it work is easy, and something you can do yourself.
About autophagy
Sometimes described as “cellular housekeeping”, autophagy — meaning “self-eating” in Greek - is a process that takes place in all mammalian cells and tissues.
It was in the 1960s that researchers first became aware that each cell can destroy its own components.
These components include damaged proteins and organelles, considered to be “common features of neurodegenerative diseases”, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.
Brain cells are highly dependent on this quality control process. When functioning efficiently, autophagy protects neurons and slows the advance of these neurodegenerative disorders. Conversely, when autophagy fails to function, or is abnormal, disease may arise.
As well as destroying old, worn-out parts, the autophagy process includes engulfing and destroying bacteria and viruses, and disposing of misfolded proteins, breaking them down into their amino acid elements and recycling them.
A misfolded protein is one that has become defective and misshapen. A protein in a cell is a chain of amino acids, and this chain folds itself into different structures. Each protein performs a different task but fails to do so if misfolded. This can lead to disease.
Some misfolded proteins start clumping together into aggregates. Neurons are highly susceptible to protein aggregation, which is an indication of neuron death. Tau tangles and Aβ plaques are examples of these wayward proteins and are characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers believe that deficits in the autophagy process are probably responsible for the formation of these aggregates.
“Failure to regulate protein and organelle integrity is linked to devastating neurodegenerative diseases”.
How to make it happen
The search for a pharmaceutical intervention that could induce autophagy in the central nervous system is actively under way. But we’re not there yet. In any case, autophagy is something that doesn’t require medication. It happens naturally — but only if we let it.
Here’s how you get out of the way, so the process can begin: you stop eating. When you give your digestive system a break, the magic begins.
When you are busy eating, digesting, and metabolising, autophagy is put on hold: the cell is otherwise engaged. But when you fast, autophagy is triggered. Food restriction is known to induce autophagy “in most tissues”.
You don’t have to starve yourself or become malnourished. A simple, short fast will suffice.
“One well-recognized way of inducing autophagy is by food restriction”
About fasting
Humans have practised fasting for millennia, and for numerous reasons, including health, religious observation, and weight loss. There are many different ways to fast, some much easier than others. Intermittent fasting (IF) is an increasingly popular practice, albeit one that has been around “since earliest antiquity”.
Although there is no official definition of IF, there are many variations on this theme. “Time-restricted feeding” is probably the most popular, being the easiest to adhere to. Food intake is restricted to a window of around eight hours (or fewer), for example between 11am and 7pm. “Periodic fasting” involves abstinence from food for two or more days, and is something only recommended under medical supervision. In “alternate day fasting”, food is eaten only every other day. In Islam, fasting takes place from dawn to sunset during Ramadan.
Fasting is normal for humans. It’s what our hunter-gatherer ancestors did, in the absence of shops and a food industry hell-bent on promoting mindless snacking. Challenges in the form of having to find food meant that pre-agricultural humans had to function well both physically and mentally when in a fasted state — they had to make critical decisions and move fast on an empty stomach.
Simply avoiding unnecessary snacking between meals, and eating only when hungry, is enough to mimic the eating patterns of your ancient ancestors and trigger autophagy. A long overnight fast, beginning with an early evening meal and ending with a late breakfast is an efficient and (for most people) manageable form of time-restricted IF.
Studies so far have been on rodents, as they undergo a similar process. In food-restricted mice, there is a rapid and “profound” increase in autophagy in the brain. Neuronal protein aggregation is reduced and the thickness of the myelin sheath is increased. The myelin sheath is the protective layer wrapped around the nerve cell.
When rats and mice are maintained on an IF diet, they experience less neuronal dysfunction and degeneration.
“Autophagy is emerging as a core regulator of Central Nervous System (CNS) aging and neurodegeneration.”
No loss of power
During IF, the body is able to function with no loss of energy or muscle mass.
Glucose is stored in muscle and the liver, in the form of glycogen. This storage is the equivalent of about 2,000 calories. When you fast, your body draws on this glycogen to provide energy.
Glucose can also be synthesized from body fat. After an overnight fast, the body starts to burn fat and ketones, substances that are made from fat. Ketones provide fuel to the brain in the absence of glucose.
The body does not store protein, so quality protein must be eaten at each meal. Proteins are chains of amino acids and when eaten, the amino acids are used almost immediately.
Despite not consuming protein during a fast, your blood and tissue amino acid concentrations remain more or less unchanged. Muscle is not broken down to compensate. That’s because after a few hours of fasting, “necessary amino acids are produced by autophagy”.
During autophagy, degraded amino acids are exported to the cytosol, the fluid component of the cell, where they are recycled. These amino acids can then be used as an energy source or to make new proteins.
Thus, the autophagy process has an important dual role: it removes and recycles toxic components from the cell, keeping it healthy, and provides the body with protein and energy when food is absent.
There is a third, brain-protective element to all this good work. Fasting increases levels of a substance called “brain-derived neurotrophic factor” (BDNF). In humans, BDNF protects neurons by strengthening resistance to damage. BDNF also strengthens synapses (a synapse is the structure between nerves, through which messages are transmitted), and helps form new synapses and neurons.
Low levels of BDNF are associated with various neurological disorders, including major depression, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, autism and schizophrenia.
Other benefits
Clearly, autophagy is a normal, highly protective biological process. It doesn’t just protect against neurological disorders: cellular clutter clearing is a means of defence against other common diseases, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer and type 2 diabetes.
Its potential role as an anti-cancer mechanism is the subject of much scrutiny, but we’re still in early days. Dysfunctional autophagy is known to contribute to the cancer process. For that reason,
“Nutritional restriction is a promising protocol to modulate autophagy and enhance the efficacy of anticancer therapies while protecting normal cells.”
We await further developments. In the meantime, for those more concerned about aesthetics and longevity, the best thing about autophagy may be its anti-ageing effect.
You can see the logic: taking a break from eating and digesting allows the body to get on with important maintenance and repair work. Constant eating is a form of stress on the body.
There has been a raft of studies that have found that when mice are put on a calorie-restricted diet, or an intermittent fast, their lives are extended. Rats kept on alternating IF for their whole lives live nearly twice as long as rats fed as much as they want.
“Since insufficient/impaired autophagy contributes to aging, it is conceivable that increasing the activity of this process could influence aging, in favor of life span extension.”
Perhaps one of the most egregious aspects of the modern diet is the phenomenal rise in snacking. Take a look at the aisles dedicated to snack foods in any supermarket. With their extended shelf-lives and addictive qualities, almost all these products are carbohydrate-based, enhanced with either sugar or salt.
When you see a packet of something starchy and refined, think high glucose, high insulin, and no autophagy. Snacking all day means that autophagy remains in the off position.
Instead of snacking, have a nice cup of coffee. Coffee can also trigger autophagy - see this recent article on the subject.
Yesss autophagy is so important for many organs, especially acting through Vitamin A.
Have you considered times of fasting in relation to the circadian rhythm? ie levels of cortisol, leptin, insulin throughout the day
So timely, this post. My wife exercised her creativity to the max for the holidays, creating 22 dozen cookies decorated in all sorts of amazing designs. This led to a great deal of dietary indiscretion on my part, but I'm back to a normal one meal per day routine. I've also taken to adding a tablespoon of MCT oil to my morning coffee. Per Dr. Stephen Gundry, this goes directly to the liver and is converted to ketones. The presence of ketones, again per Dr. Gundry, causes the mitochondria to believe that starvation is coming, and to go into overdrive to make more. Allegedly this allows more carb intake. I haven't been at it long enough (and it's a N=1 study!) to know for sure, but I have been heavier on the carbs of late without noticing a penalty on the scale. Would love an opinion piece on that.