Heart health decline is often treated as unavoidable. And yet, the body is equipped with a remarkable tool to fight it.
Your cells have a built-in process known as autophagy designed to protect you.
But it may or may not be functioning appropriately — and there are things you can do to enhance it further.
What is autophagy?
Autophagy is the biological process of consuming dead or damaged cells in order to repurpose the material for energy. It can be roughly translated as “self-eating” or “self-devouring,” and thought of like an automatic garbage disposal system for the body.
Here’s a high-level breakdown of how it works:
- Parts of your cells that are old, damaged, or no longer working properly are encased in a membrane.
- These parts are carried to a part of the cell called a lysosome.
- The lysosome breaks down and consumes refuse parts, then converts them into energy for the cell.
Autophagy occurs in the background for your body, but at varying degrees of intensity. It ramps up significantly during periods of stress — think fasting, exercise, or calorie restriction — and operates on a much smaller scale after eating or during blood sugar spikes.
It can also have an enormous impact on the heart.
How autophagy connects with heart health
Autophagy and heart health are tied at the hip.
When properly functioning, autophagy:
- Clears out damaged mitochondria: Autophagy removes dysfunctional mitochondria through a process known as mitophagy, which may protect heart muscle cells from oxidative stress and energy failure.
- Supports the survival of heart cells: Proper autophagy maintains heart cell survival under stress. It may also help in particular with metabolic stress, oxidative injury, and inflammation. Speaking of inflammation…
- Reduces inflammation in vessels: Studies show that autophagy lowers chronic inflammation in arteries, which ultimately reduces atherosclerosis risk.
- Supports healthy aging of the heart: Even though autophagy declines with age, it can still help to mitigate against the stiffening and reduced resilience of the heart. Boosting it may preserve function in older adults and have an almost anti-aging effect on the heart.
- Protects against heart attack damage: Studies show that activating autophagy shortly after myocardial infarction can limit tissue death and promote healthier remodeling.
Dr. Roberta Gottlieb, the director of Molecular Cardiobiology at the Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute, says it best: “If we can get autophagy in motion shortly after the heart attack, we can reprogram the heart to have some beneficial remodeling rather than long-term damage.”
But what about the risks?
There’s been some conjecture in recent years about the risks of extended autophagy. And while more research is certainly needed, there are a few points of data worth considering here.
First, prolonged calorie restriction. Research shows it may stimulate cell death when paired with excessive autophagy response.
Second, abnormal autophagic responses could potentially cause the death of cardiac cells. This may contribute to worsened heart health, but only for those with unusual physiological responses.
So to reiterate: enhanced autophagy can be cardioprotective, but over-activation could potentially cause problems.
The goal is to find a balance between the two. Luckily, there’s plenty of research exploring how to get there.
How to improve your natural autophagy
Autophagy often occurs in the background for the body, but research shows we can enhance it by engaging in certain behaviors.
A more efficient autophagy process could potentially elongate your lifespan and healthspan, improve weight loss, and prevent certain cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, and metabolic disorders such as heart disease.
Here are a few suggestions:
Intermittent fasting
Autophagy is less effective while your body is digesting, so following modern dietary guidelines and snacking frequently throughout the day could blunt your ability to dispose of old cells.
After 12 to 18 hours of restricting food, the body depletes its blood sugar and liver glycogen stores. This encourages the production of ketones, a byproduct of the liver, which stimulates autophagy induction. Then, heightened autophagy stimulation begins after 24 hours and peaks after 48 hours.
Intermittent fasting offers a number of other benefits, including greater insulin sensitivity, which makes it easier to enter autophagy in the first place. It can also improve blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol levels, all of which will benefit your heart health in the long run.
There’s no hard-and-fast rule for picking a fasting window, but cardiologists like Dr. Pradip Jamnadas recommend occasional three- to five-day fasts for maximal benefits.
I wrote a guide on how to build your own fasting routine if you’re looking for ways to get started.
Low-carb diets
Keto, carnivore, and other diets below 50 grams of carbohydrates can expedite your body’s autophagy processes. Making the switch from burning carbs to burning fat can help deplete glycogen stores and improve the effectiveness of autophagy.
Just keep in mind that low-carb diets will also change certain biomarkers, so be prepared to see changes in your blood work beyond increases in ketones.
And remember that low-carb doesn’t necessarily induce autophagy — no diet does. It simply makes it easier for your body to get started.
Physical activity
Any amount of exercise will work to deplete glucose and glycogen stores in your body. The heavier the exercise, the more glucose and glycogen you use, which encourages your body to use alternative fuel sources such as dead or damaged cells.
Studies show the easiest way to enter autophagy is to rely on physical activity like:
- HIIT exercises, which may improve cardiac muscle cells
- Resistance training, which will improve skeletal muscle mass
- Endurance walking, which can show benefits within 30 to 95 minutes
Other resources to protect your heart
Supporting autophagy is one of the many things you can do to support your heart health.
If you’re looking for more ideas and suggestions, one of the following may be of interest to you:
- A guide to reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease
- The easiest way to boost (and destroy) your heart
- 5 heart health myths debunked by a heart surgeon
