Expert advice
How celebrities slow down the aging process without the use of drugs, backed by science
Imagine you had an internal switch that could balance your metabolism and do a deep cleanse without the use of expensive detox kits?
This is what Hollywood celebrities such as Hugh Jackman, Miranda Kerr, Liv Tyler, Christy Turlington, Ben Affleck and Beyonce have managed to achieve.
The best part?
Slowing down the ageing process is backed by science and is completely natural to achieve.
In this guide we’re going to show you everything you need to slow down your ageing process in the same way that Hollywood celebrities are doing.
Autophagy is the ultimate recycling system
Your body is designed to preserve the health of tissue by replacing out-dated and damaged parts of your cell with fresh ones. It does through through a genius mechanism known as autophagy.
Dr. Colin Champ is a board-certified oncologist and assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He says:
“Your cells create membranes that hunt out scraps of dead, diseased, or worn-out cells; gobble them up; strip ’em for parts; and use the resulting molecules for energy or to make new cell parts.”
He continues:
“Think of it as our body’s innate recycling program. Autophagy makes us more efficient machines to get rid of faulty parts, stop cancerous growths, and stop metabolic dysfunction like obesity and diabetes.”
The consumption of these dangerous bits creates fuel for your cells, as well as reusing the healthy parts. Cells can also digest long-lived proteins to release amino acids providing you with more fuel. This process is a powerful promoter of metabolic homeostasis (balance).
Autophagy is a major key in slowing the aging process.
Hugh Jackman follows a 16:8 diet regime, meaning he fasts for 16 hours and eats during an 8 hour window (see below).
Experts are finding evidence that autophagy plays a role in reducing inflammation and immune response. It helps to prevent cancerous growth and metabolic dysfunction such as obesity and diabetes.
In a series of studies conducted at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey, Eileen White and her colleagues found that autophagy protects against DNA damage. When they inhibited autophagy, they observed more chromosomal abnormalities, which are typically associated with tumorigenesis.
Exercise and fasting stimulates the process of autophagy
Autophagy occurs in response to stress in the body, and exercise is one of the best ways to boost it. It works because exercise creates mild damage to your muscles and tissues that your body then repairs, and in doing so makes your body stronger.
Exercise also helps by flushing out toxins through sweating, which is a foundational aspect of effective detoxification.
Dr. George Yu, for example, who has been involved with clinical trials to help detoxify people from the Gulf War, recommends using a combination of exercise, sauna, and niacin supplementation to maximize elimination of toxins through your skin.
“One study looked at autophagosomes, structures that form around the pieces of cells that the body has decided to recycle.
After engineering mice to have glowing green autophagosomes … scientists found that the rate at which the mice were healthily demolishing their own cells drastically increased after they ran for 30 minutes on a treadmill.
The rate continued increasing until they’d been running for 80 minutes.”
Fasting is another biological stressor that produces many beneficial results, including autophagy. While there are many different kinds of intermittent fasting schedules, one of the most commonly followed schedules involves fasting every day for 16 hours.
Beyonce follows a strict diet of low carbs and regularly punctuates her regime with periods of intermittent fasting.
This means scheduling all of your fasting in a single 8 hour window per day, for example between 11am and 7pm. This results in 16 hours of fasting.
Recently, Professor Mark Mattson, Chief of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging and Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, has committed to the idea that intermittent fasting could lower the risk of degenerative brain diseases.
There’s also compelling evidence showing that when you supply fuel to your mitochondria at a time when they don’t need it, they leak a large number of electrons that liberate reactive oxygen species as free radicals.
Boost your fats and reduce your carbs
When you do eat during your 8 hour window, you can also help the body boost its autophagy. It comes from nutritional ketogenesis which happens through reducing non-fiber carbs and increasing healthy fats in your diet.
According to Champ:
“Ketogenesis is like an autophagy hack. You get a lot of the same metabolic changes and benefits of fasting without actually fasting … Between 60 and 70 percent of one’s overall calories should come from [healthy] fat … Protein makes up 20 to 30 percent of calories, while carbs are kept below 50 grams per day … Similar benefits have been noted in people following a diet in which carbs didn’t exceed 30 percent of their overall calories.”
Most people consume harmful fats like processed vegetable oils. Not only are they processed, but they are also high in omega-6 oils. Excess omega-6 fats will integrate into the inner mitochondrial membrane and become highly susceptible to oxidative damage, resulting in your mitochondria dying prematurely.
Replace your omega-6 fats with healthy fats, such as natural, unprocessed fat found in real foods such as seeds, nuts, real butter, olives, avocado or coconut oil.
Ketogenesis diets are super high fat.
Between 60 and 70 percent of one’s overall calories should come from fat. (Lots of steak, bacon, and peanut butter shakes are a definite bonus for the ketogenesis crowd.) Protein makes up 20 to 30 percent of calories, while carbs are kept below 50 grams per day.
Ben Affleck is known to be a fan of intermittent fasting.
Is there an easier way?
Nope.
To get the benefits of autophagy, you need to exercise regularly, embrace intermittent fasting and embrace a diet of low carbs and high fat.
Of course, people are trying to develop drugs in pill form that mimic the effects of ketosis and autophagy. If they become available to the wider public, there’s a chance we’ll be able to pop a pill that cranks up autophagy with practically no effort.
Still, don’t get your hopes up, Champ says:
“There are so many metabolic changes that take place during ketosis that mimicking all of them with a pill might not be possible. The bodily stress that comes with entering ketosis might be necessary for the benefits.”
Just remember: You don’t have to fast, stay in ketosis, or exercise intensely all day every day to experience these benefits—even a few hours of any of these activities can help.
Here’s the bottom line
There’s a pretty strong case to be made that stress and self-destruction lengthens your lifespan. “It’s our ancestral and evolutionary response to dealing with feast and famine in times of stress,” Champ says. “Since a lot of these things would kill us, like starvation and exercise, it only makes sense that after millions of years we adapted those mechanisms to make them positive.”
The bottom line:
Regular exercise and restricting your carbs carries many benefits in addition to their likely impact on autophagy. The best that could happen is a stronger, leaner, and cleaner body.
