Recently watched this clip from a well known Biochemist and Biomedical expert Dr. Rhonda Patrick:
She says that consumption and metabolising of xenobiotics actually breaks a fast, in terms of the autophagy process. So even pure black coffee or vitamins of any kind would count, regardless of if they’re zero calories, because our bodies would still need to break them down and absorb the compounds, which kicks us out of the ongoing autophagy process.
I’m inclined to believe her as she backs up everything she says with strong studies, but I can’t seem to find any studies on this one.
Anyone have any information on this claim?
So the first and most obvious thing I’ll bring up is she didn’t say that these things inhibit autophagy. All she said was that they start metabolic processes, and then even goes on to say that there is zero empirical evidence to support this assumption. As far as it breaking autophagy, I’ll explain why that makes no sense.
First we must understand what regulates autophagy. I may be telling you information you already know, but just in case you don’t, I’ll get into it. mTOR receptors are what regulates autophagy, and triggers it to start and stop in the body. mTOR receptors are triggered by two things: glucose, and amino acids, so proteins and carbohydrates. In the absence of these macronutrients, your body will go into a state of autophagy.
Ask yourself this, would it make sense or be an effective system if literally everything, electrolytes, vitamins, and non calorie liquids prevented autophagy? Our bodies are complex and brilliant things, that evolved to be as efficient as possible. When you consider that the water our ancient ancestors drank was much more laden with minerals and electrolytes that we’ve farmed and mined from the earth, it wouldn’t make evolutionary sense for those to stop autophagy.
To summarize, if it isn’t protein or carbohydrates, the expert consensus is that it won’t disrupt autophagy.
Now as far as what people define as a fast, there are some purists that think anything not water is breaking a fast. To these people, I ask what they are looking for in a fast? Autophagy is happening, weight loss is happening, gut microbiome repair is happening, HGH is increasing, our immune system is repairing itself, and all of the other benefits are happening, whether we consume coffee, tea, vitamins, or not, as long as you abstain from calories. There’s no prize or reward at the end because you only drank water. If you’re worried about your metabolism starting up from a cup of coffee, I challenge you to find out how that’s a bad thing.
So did we drink pure distilled water as cave people? No, I suspect we’d have drunk from streams with tons of natural minerals, dirt, bugs, algae etc, so unless there is a double blind study that says breaking down florinated, chlorinated, fungle, minerisalised, recycled sewage acceptable contaminants tap water, then you’d have to assume you can only drink distilled water if you took this stance.
The only source I’d trust for health/science info is peer reviewed published articles from pubmed. This lady may be speaking facts but you can find and read scientific studies on effects of fasting on autophagy here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=autophagy+fasting+