Fasting, Autophagy and Heart Failure

(Tom Seest) #1

For those that are curious about fasting and autophagy, and how it can effect Heart Failure, this is an up to date summary on what they believe they know:

(Doug) #2

Good stuff, Tom - a fascinating subject (one of the most!). I bet it’s a huge deal in the coming decades.

I think it also has great application to Alzheimer’s disease, though not all the medical community is yet onboard. Quoting from section 2.2.2 - “Chaperone-mediated autophagy activity has been detected in various tissues like the liver, kidneys, brain, and spleen.”

Autophagy gets rid of damaged cell components and old or damaged protein structures. It’s very important for our nerve cells. Neurons are 'post-mitotic," they cannot divide and form new cells anymore. Being able to divide helps out with messed-up cells - more new cells can be made to dilute the effect of those that are screwed up, but neurons can’t do it.

Neurons have a basal level of autophagy that is always supposed to be going on - a needed “cleaning up” since the cells are stuck with themselves; no dividing to get new ones. When this fails, neurons in the brain may form amyloid plaques between neurons (made out of beta amyloid protein fragments) and get neurofibrillary tangles - tau proteins form part of tiny tubes that transport nutrients around in nerve cells. With Alzheimer’s disease, the tau proteins are messed-up, and the tubes collapse, forming the “tangles”, malnourishing the cell. A lack of autophagy to correct this only makes it worse.

#3

Great post. I read the entire study — as far as I could interpret it — and it seems to me that my fasting efforts to reach autophagy might not be in vain.