7 Herbs That Enhance Autophagy and Cellular Healing

The desire to reduce pain, increase energy, lose fat, and improve mental clarity are some of the main reasons people visit my office. Chances are, your health goals include some or all of these wishes as well. In order to achieve these goals, you need to enhance autophagy and cellular healing in your body.

Autophagy is your body’s natural method of detoxification. It happens when your body recycles and gets rid of old and unhealthy cells allowing the creation of new and healthy cells to replace them. While fasting, fasted exercise, and eating a ketogenic diet are three of the most powerful ways to enhance autophagy, we can’t forget about the importance of anti-inflammatory herbs and compounds to enhance autophagy and improve your health.

In this article, you will learn what autophagy is, its benefits, and the power of fasting when it comes to enhanced autophagy. I will share with you my favorite anti-inflammatory herbs and compounds that enhance autophagy and cellular healing.

What Is Autophagy 

Autophagy is an essential part of your immune system. It is a process that happens when your body recycles and expels old or excess cells that don’t benefit or potentially harm your health. It is also referred to as a process of self-eating. Autophagy happens as a result of cellular stressors, such as nutrient deprivation from fasting, exercise, or significant temperature change.

Within each of your cells, there are a number of essential components called organelles. They serve as organs in your body but within your cells. When your cells are exposed to the stressors I mentioned earlier, it creates a phagophore, a transient double membrane structure. This phagophore has a great level of flexibility. As it expands, it’s able to surrounder and sequesters cellular components, including lipids, proteins, and entire organelles (1).

Once the phagophore surrounds and encloses these components, it takes them to the lysosomes, which as unique organelles that contain degrading enzymes. Lysosomes are able to degrade the components that they are released upon.

How Do We Enhance Autophagy Processes In The Body?

So how does cellular stress drives autophagy? Your body is constantly striving for homeostasis or physiological balance for survival. Stress, on the other hand, refers to an environment that demands change.

When your body is exposed to cellular stressors, such as nutrient deprivation from fasting, or high-intensity exercise, it needs fuel to produce the necessary energy for survival. To accomplish this, your body signals the break down of older and less efficient cells and cellular organelles, allowing room for the creation of new, healthier, and more efficient cells to produce more energy (2). 

As a result, autophagy helps your body to function better. With the help of new mitochondria and healthy cells, your body becomes stronger. It also becomes more resilient to chronic stress, inflammation, chronic pain, and disease (3).  ‘To learn more about autophagy, I recommend this article.

Benefits of Autophagy

Autophagy has several health benefits. Let’s look at them one by one.

Getting Rid of Senescent Cells

Senescent cells are older cells that don’t function at a high level anymore. While it is normal for your cells to age, it is also important to replace these senescent cells with new ones. Autophagy helps to remove old cells with new and healthy cells (4).

Improving Mitochondrial Health

The mitochondria are the powerhouse of your cell that is essential for energy production and overall health. Unless regular bouts of autophagy are stimulated, you end up with dysfunctional and metabolically inflexible mitochondria. Autophagy may help to degrade dysfunctional mitochondria and replace it with new ones (5).

Eliminating Viral Infected Cells

As opposed to bacteria, yeast, and parasites, viruses are intracellular pathogens that impact your cellular genetic. A strong immune system can put viruses into a dormant state, however, it doesn’t actually get rid of them. Autophagy is your body’s natural way of removing infected cells and replacing them with healthy ones (6).

Reduces Cellular Apoptosis

Older cells undergo programmed cell death called apoptosis. However, this process is very stressful on your body and may lead to inflammation. Autophagy, on the other hand, is a much more energy-efficient process that helps to get rid of old cells and create new ones (7).

Autophagy Creates a Stronger and More Stress Resilient Body and Mind

Autophagy helps your cells to become stronger and healthier, and your body to become more resilient to stress. It may help to reduce inflammation, including gut inflammation and the risk of leaky gut syndrome, and may help your brain health, mood, memory, and mental processing (8, 9).

Fasting To Enhance Autophagy

Fasting is a healing practice that has been used for thousands of years for both health and spiritual reasons. Fasting simply refers to a practice of not consuming food for a certain period of time but consuming nothing or only non-caloric beverages, such as water and herbal tea.

There are a variety of fasting methods out there. While extended fasting that lasts for several days or even longer may be beneficial in some cases, it’s not always practical. Intermittent fasting is more practical because you may practice it daily. Intermittent fasting is a fasting method that involves fasting for part of the day and eating only during a certain period of time. 

There are a variety of intermittent fasting strategies you may try. To find what may be the best strategy for you, I recommend that you read this article. If you are a woman, read this article about Crescendo Fasting, an intermittent fasting strategy that may be the best for certain women.

Fasting, including intermittent fasting, has many benefits to offer, including reducing inflammation, improving hormone sensitivity, increasing growth hormone, repairing your gut, and enhancing fat burning. One of the key benefits of fasting, however, is stimulating your body’s inherent autophagy process (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19). 

Fasting and Ketones

When you are fasting, your body has to turn to alternative fuel sources. Once it burns up all the stored sugar (glycogen) in your body, it starts to burn fat instead. This process produces ketones. Ketones are three water-soluble molecules produced by your liver from fatty acids during fasting, prolonged intense exercise, food restriction, carbohydrate-restricted diet, untreated type 1 diabetes, and alcoholism.

Ketones convert into acetyl-CoA and enter the Krebs cycle to help your mitochondria’s energy production. As a result, they enhance autophagy, metabolic flexibility, and fat burning (20).  

Top 7 Herbs That Enhance Autophagy and Cellular Healing 

One way to enhance autophagy and cellular healing is by using specific herbs. Many herbs contain polyphenols that help to suppress the mTOR pathway and activate the AMPk pathway to introduce autophagy.

Used in conjunction with fasting and other strategies, anti-inflammatory herbs are a fantastic way to optimize and enhance autophagy mechanisms in your body (21, 22, 23).  Let’s look at the top 7 herbs that enhance autophagy and cellular healing.

Matcha Green Tea

Matcha green tea is an increasingly popular tea. Though it comes from the same plant, Camellia sinensis, as green tea, it is grown differently. Farmers cover the tea plant for 20 to 30 days before harvesting. This technique increases chlorophyll production and amino acid content. After harvesting, they remove the stems and veins to create a fine powder from the ground up leaves resulting in a tea that’s higher in antioxidants than green tea.

Matcha green tea is rich in the polyphenol EGCG and has a number of health benefits. One of its benefits is enhancing autophagy by mimicking the effects of calorie restriction. Some even refer to matcha as the autophagy-tea. Other benefits include boosting brain function, supporting your liver, protecting your heart, and helping weight loss (24). 

Use Ginger To Enhance Autophagy

Ginger is one of the most potent anti-inflammatory herbs out there. It belongs to the rhizome family, which means that its stem grows horizontally grows underground forming roots downwards and stems and leaves above ground. It has been used for over 5,000 years in China and India as a natural remedy. Since the Roman Empire, it has also been popular in Europe and in the past several hundred years around the world, including the United States. It can be used in dishes, teas, and juices, and as a supplement.

Ginger has over one hundred chemical compounds. Gingerol is its most powerful active compound with a variety of powerful health benefits. Ginger may enhance autophagy, decrease inflammation, and lower pain levels. It has been shown to reduce inflammation and pain related to exercise, osteoarthritis, intestinal issues, metabolic syndrome, and obesity (25, 26, 27, 28 29).

Turmeric

Just like ginger, turmeric is an anti-inflammatory herb that belongs to the rhizome family. It is a warming spice that provides flavor and color to various foods, condiments, and teas. It has been used for thousands of years in traditional Ayurvedic, Indian, and Chinese medicine, and more recently as an anti-inflammatory supplement around the world (30).

Turmeric is one of the most researched spices. The US National Center for Biotechnology alone has over 6,000 studies on its benefits. It is a powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant herb with a potent active compound, curcumin. Turmeric may enhance autophagy, decrease inflammation, and lower pain levels. Research has shown that turmeric may benefit inflammation related to ulcerative colitis, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and lupus (31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36). 

Use Resveratrol To Enhance Autophagy

Resveratrol is a powerful plant compound that can be found in red wine, grapes, berries, and peanuts. It is mainly concentrated in the skins and seeds of grapes and berries, which explains that the fermented grapes in red wine are particularly high in resveratrol.

Resveratrol acts as an antioxidant with countless health benefits for your health. Research has shown that by directly inhibiting mTOR through ATP competition, resveratrol may enhance autophagy. It may also be beneficial for brain health, insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, and joint pain (37, 38).

Citrus Bergamont

Citrus bergamot is a unique orange-sized fruit. It’s yellow-green and bitter. It has been used as an aromatic essential oil for a long time, and it’s an ingredient of Earl Grey tea, traditional colognes, and other things.

Citrus bergamot is rich in antioxidant flavonoids that offer fantastic benefits for your health, heart health, and cholesterol. It may enhance autophagy, especially skin autophagy that I’ve written about in this article. As aromatherapy, it may benefit pain, anxiety, nausea, and vomiting (39, 40).https://www.youtube.com/embed/btumR2AMyOQ?feature=oembed

Oregano, Sage, and Rosemary

Oregano, sage, and rosemary are three fragrant, delicious, anti-inflammatory herbs native to the Mediterranean. They are popular all over the world. They belong to the same herb-family as thyme, basil, and lavender. 

Oregano, sage, and rosemary are not only popular in the kitchen but also possess potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds that may enhance autophagy. No wonder they have been used as natural remedies for centuries. Research has shown their potent anti-inflammatory properties as well. Rosemary, for example, may reduce pain and inflammation in those with rheumatoid arthritis (41, 42). 

Quercetin To Enhance Autophagy

Bioflavonoids, or flavonoids, are a group of pigments that may help to protect you against various diseases. They possess anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-viral, anti-allergic, and anti-carcinogenic properties, and may enhance autophagy.

While there are over 4000 known bioflavonoids, quercetin is one of my favorites. Quercetin can be found in onions, leafy greens, tomatoes, broccoli, and berries. It may enhance autophagy, fight inflammation, improve immunity, and fight free radical damage (43).

Reference: Drjockers.com