Conditioning Research

I've referenced autophagy before in relation to fasting.  Scientific American today pointed to a new study in Nature which identifies exercise induced autophagy. “Our findings demonstrate that exercise is a potent inducer of autophagy,” the researchers wrote. “Autophagy induction may contribute to the beneficial metabolic effects of exercise,” they concluded.  Here is the abstract - Exercise-induced BCL2-regulated autophagy is required for muscle glucose homeostasis Exercise has beneficial effects on human health, including protection against metabolic disorders such as diabetes1. However, the cellular mechanisms underlying these effects are incompletely understood. The lysosomal degradation pathway, autophagy, is an intracellular recycling system that functions during basal conditions in organelle and protein quality control2. During stress, increased levels of autophagy permit cells to adapt to changing nutritional and energy demands through protein catabolism3. Moreo...

In our little paleosphere endurance exercise is usually characterised as a "bad" thing.  Mark Sission's Chronic Cardio post is the usual basis for all this, but there are other references too.  In general I agree with this view.  However sometimes other bits and pieces pop up that indicate a different viewpoint.  I saw this one the other day: Autophagy-related and autophagy-regulatory genes are induced in human muscle after ultraendurance exercise The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether ultra endurance exercise changes the mRNA levels of the autophagy-related and autophagy-regulatory genes. Eight men (44 ± 1 years, range: 38–50 years) took part in a 200-km running race. The average running time was 28 h 03 min ± 2 h 01 min (range: 22 h 15 min–35 h 04 min). A muscle sample was taken from the vastus lateralis 2 weeks prior to the race and 3 h after arrival. Gene expression was assessed by RT-qPCR. Transcript levels of autophagy-related genes were increas...

Autophagy (surely pronounced Auto[space]Phagy) is usually characterised as cells eating themselves.  I think I've posted stuff before about  autophagy being turned on by fasting.   This guy (Ron Mignery) also explains how fasting from protein alone can also turn on autophagy.   Matt Lalonde also mentioned this idea in Robb Wolf's podcast last week - he occasionally has a low protein dinner to promote autophagy. Anyway, here is something else interesting - another reason to fast occasionally or at least have low protein days - autophagy represents an important natural safeguard against cancer development: Scientists discover that self-eating cells safeguard against cancer Normally, the process of autophagy is switched on when cells experience periods of starvation and in this context is beneficial by helping to keep the 'wolf from the door' until food reappears on the menu. However, the Martin laboratory has discovered that mutations in a gene ca...