Fortunately, autophagy has a direct effect on skin aging, and inducing the process can help tighten your skin and reduce the amount of loose skin on your body. It supports the processes that keep your skin more elastic and able to tighten up faster.
If you remain in a fasted state long enough, you will trigger the body's natural cell recycling process of autophagy. Fasting and autophagy don't directly rid the body of loose skin, but they help trigger processes that can prevent the skin from loosening in the first place.
Autophagy speeds the process of cell renewal and increases the rate collagen is produced. It's the ultimate anti-ageing therapy. Without this process, the skin looks dull and tired. This is because the cells are not regenerating quickly enough.
Similar to how our bodies can eat away at unnecessary skin cells from loose skin through the process of autophagy, the appearance of aging is also slowed (and many say can even be reversed to an extent) when we activate this mechanism of clearing out old cellular parts – therefore revealing more youthful, vibrant skin.
Experts agree that the autophagy process initiates in humans after 18-20 hours of fasting, with max benefits occurring once the 48-72 hour mark has been reached.
Studies have shown that autophagy may take two to four days of fasting in humans. It is believed that autophagy does not begin until the glucose and insulin levels drop considerably. Some experts suggest starting with 32 to 48 hours; 72-hour fast autophagy pushes the limits for most humans but can be possible.
Some individuals choose to follow a daily routine of eating one to two full nutritious meals a day. This gives their bodies six to 16 hours of everyday cleansing. Others opt for a 24-hour weekly cleansing or a 48-hour monthly cleansing.
Intermittent Fasting Increases Collagen Production
Human growth hormone helps to build up and even repair collagen. Fasting is one of the most effective ways to raise growth hormone. It can increase it by up to 2000% in men and 1300% in women.
When you fast, it improves the health of the gut so that the systemic inflammation of the skin reduces. The lowered inflammatory state in the gut makes the skin look younger, healthier, and clearer. In addition, fasting increases the body's metabolic activity, which also leads to a healthy body and skin.
“In general, it can take anywhere from weeks to months—even years,” says Dr. Chen. If after one to two years skin is still loose, it may not get any tighter, she says.
Intermittent fasting is one of the easiest ways of building muscle, decreasing body fat and increasing your energy. And by triggering the cellular cleansing process of autophagy, intermittent fasting also improves your life span – and makes your skin look smoother and younger.
“UV exposure can lead to the breakdown of collagen, which can lead to the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, so you're never too young to start wearing sunscreen regularly,” says Garshick. The American Academy of Dermatology recommends choosing a broad-spectrum sunscreen with SPF 30 or higher.
Collagen levels decrease with age and, unfortunately, there's no way to prevent this. The good news is that there are several cosmetic treatments that can rebuild or restore collagen.
Relatively long fasting times are required to promote autophagy and ketosis (8, 9). For this reason, 20/4 intermittent fasting is more potent to stimulate these two processes than other forms of intermittent fasting with shorter fasts (such as 16/8 or 14/10 intermittent fasting).
There are some studies to indicate that we can burn fat with autophagy. When you fast, your cells may begin to eat fat cells in order to gain the energy needed to function normally. However, you can achieve this level of autophagy without starving yourself for hours or days at a time.
What turns off autophagy? Eating. Glucose, insulin (or decreased glucagon) and proteins all turn off this self-cleaning process. And it doesn't take much.
Extended fasting over the course of several days, or intermittent fasting over the course of several hours, both promote autophagy. The type of fasting needed to jumpstart autophagy typically requires 14 to 16 hours without eating, though this is dependent on your body's metabolism.
There are no exact rules or recommendations (yet?), but researchers agree that extended fasting for autophagy — like going for 36, 48, or even 72 hours without food (like Jack Dorsey's three-day water fast) — is something that healthy people should do at most 2 or 3 times a year, and only after conferring with a doctor ...
One concern is that there can be too much autophagy—although not enough autophagy (cleaning) is not good, too much autophagy (or excessive cleaning) can result in its own set of problems (Figure 4), such that the cell dies (or the room loses functionality, as might happen if all of the furniture was removed during the ...
Some studies found a strong relationship between a fasting type diet and acne in human adults and young subjects. In fact, during the period of caloric restriction, sebum level was found to be reduced by 40%, which influenced the degree of acne severity [64,65].
“Think of autophagy as a Roomba inside your cells, cleaning and clearing damaged parts,” says Whittel. “When autophagy functions optimally, it works to clear away the cellular junk that can lead to fat and wrinkles.”