Are you accelerating ageing by inhibiting autophagy?
Posted on April 03 2021
Have you ever thought about exactly why our cells are ageing? And, more
importantly, how to reverse the process?
In our latest podcast, we drill down into the exact role autophagy plays in the ageing
game and the important roles NAD, and our ageing genes SIRTUINS, play.
Crucially, we explain how not enabling autophagy can actually accelerate the body’s
ageing process.
Neuroscience expert and NMN Bio founder, Dr Elena Seranova, outlines how the
autophagy process can be thought of as, “like the stomach of the cell” as “any
material that is unwanted in the cell, autophagy can degrade”, and takes us through
how clearing out that unwanted material is vital to ageing well.
We throw light on how “SIRTUIN1 is actually responsible for activating some
transcription factors such as TFEB and FOXO that have to do with initiation of the
autophagy process”, and detail exactly what happens when SIRTUINS don’t have
the NAD resources they need to do their job well. Dr Seranova explains, “because
SIRTUIN1 doesn't have enough energy to function and to activate the TFEB and the
FOXO transcription factors to initiate autophagy, now you have all of these
dysfunctional mitochondria floating around, and autophagy starts being impaired as
well because we haven’t activated it enough. So, it's a negative feedback loop -
which accelerates the scenario where the cell is going towards cell death.”
We break down smart ways to avoid this negative feedback loop - including the
significance of intermittent fasting - and highlight exactly how NAD levels are linked
to kickstarting autophagy and switching on those longevity genes. Dr Elena
Seranova explains, “either you are trying to raise your NAD levels, or you are trying to
activate your autophagy, because those pathways are quite intertwined. And what
you eventually want to do is to have increased levels of SIRTUINS, and SIRTUIN1 in
particular.”
To get the full breakdown on exactly how autophagy, NAD, and SIRTUIN genes fit
together and what happens when the autophagic process fail, listen to the full
episode here: Dr Elena on Autophagy
and make sure to subscribe to our globally top 200 ranked podcast in health, fitness and medicine "Pushing the Limits"
on itunes, libsyn, stitcher, spotify or stream via www.lisatamati.com/podcast or to get future updates on maximising your own longevity.
