3 Foods That Increase Autophagy Without Fasting – with Dr. Mindy

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Okay, let’s talk about autophagy, which, for those of you that are new to my channel, autophagy is like one of the favorite subjects that people keep coming back to over and over again here on the channel. And the first thing I have to just say is that I love that people even know the word autophagy, that they’re even searching the word autophagy, because not everybody geeks out on autophagy like I do. So I really want to talk about three foods that can increase autophagy, and this is important, because a lot of you don’t want to fast, although I’m not sure why you would have come to my channel if you didn’t want to fast, I am definitely a fan of fasting, but there’s a lot a lot of other great pieces of information here. So if you don’t want to fast, you’re going to want to pay attention to these three foods. And then I know that there’s a group of you that are like but I love autophagy. I love how I feel like I can see that I’m like the fountain of youth. I’ve dipped myself in the fountain of youth because I’ve been stimulating autophagy. How do I keep autophagy going when I’m eating and not fasting? So here we go. We’re gonna dive into the three foods that are going to increase autophagy without fasting. So let’s go. Welcome to the resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.

Okay, first thing for those of you that are like, What the heck is autophagy? Let me just explain that autophagy is exactly as you kind of break it down, if you break the word down auto and Fiji means self eating. So it is what happens to our miraculous body when there are minimal nutrients coming in. And I’ll talk about those nutrients in a moment when we don’t have as many nutrients coming into the system, the body, and even a little bit with glucose too. What the body will do is it goes, Wait a second. We need to clean up this cell. We need to make sure that this cell is a better cell, because we’re not getting nutrients in now. What’s really interesting? So for those of you that have been like autophagy geeks for a while, I really want you to think about this, that the main nutrient that kicks you out of autophagy are amino acids, because whenever we have any kind of protein coming into the system, we move to the opposite of autophagy, which is a pathway called mTOR. MTOR is a growth pathway, and autophagy is a destruction pathway. It’s getting think of autophagy as getting rid of the old it’s like spring cleaning for your cells. So when we want to activate autophagy, we need to keep the amino acid load down, which means we need to keep protein down. So for a lot of us, we stimulate autophagy by metabolically switching over into these fasted states. And we bring glucose down, we bring nutrients down, and autophagy kicks in. I can tell you, in the decades of researching autophagy, that what we see as fasting is absolutely the best way to stimulate autophagy, and it’s because you’re bringing nutrients down and glucose down. But when you go back into that sugar burner place, when you’re back into that place where you’re eating again, as long as you keep amino acids down, you can keep yourself in this spring cleaning state. And here are three foods based off science. I’ll give you the links. I’ll report the science. Here are the three foods that will help accelerate this spring cleaning within your cells. Ready again. First one’s actually my favorite fruit, and it may surprise you, because it’s not very ketogenic, and it’s pineapple. And the reason that pineapple can stimulate autophagy is because of its main nutrient, bromeline. So bromeline is an enzyme, and enzymes create cellular reactions. So nutrients, they come in and they help with cell cellular reactions. But enzymes actually are like a catalyst for a cellular reaction. So bromeline is an enzyme that instantly turns on a top. G and it starts that process. And so what research is showing is that bromeline In Pineapple. Pineapple is the best food on the planet for bromelain massively speeds up autophagy, and it starts to activate autophagy throughout the whole body. Okay, this is really important, because a lot of times we don’t think of these cellular healing processes as being organ dependent or system dependent, but you’ll see as I go into the other two foods that, yes, some foods specifically stimulate autophagy in organ systems, but bromeline stimulates autophagy throughout the whole body, and there was a 2022, study in a journal called antioxidants, that found that bromeli bromeline turned on autophagy within your arteries, and it started to clear away plaque, reducing the risk of heart disease. So this is really important, because a lot of you think I Oh, I really want you to think this through. A lot of you are coming to my channel because you want to bring your hemoglobin a 1c down. You want to bring your cardio metabolic system back into balance. But maybe for years and years and years, you’ve been way focused on on eating the wrong foods that have been creating plaquing so now you stop eating those foods. You start fasting. Your hemoglobin, a 1c, comes down, but you still have the plaque in. So when we add something like pineapple into our eating windows, now, all of a sudden, we’ve got a tool to be able to start to go after that that that plaquing on the side wall. Now here’s another really cool study that I found. It’s a 2024 review. Now keep in mind, if you’re not familiar with science, there are reviews are when they look at a bunch of different studies together and they come up with a conclusion. And in this 2024 review from nutrients journal. It’s big journal within the peer reviewed world, notes that bromelain also activates, you’re gonna love, this autophagy in the skin cells. So, you know, I’ve seen this a lot with fasting, where people will come to fasting and they’re like, within a couple of days, like a three day water faster, like, oh my gosh, my skin is glowing, and it has a whole new color. And I’ve noticed that my own self, and that’s because autophagy is cleaning up the Gook. It’s like a facial an interfacial for you. Well again, when we go back into the eating window, if we start to introduce pineapple or maybe even do a little bit of pineapple juice, not too much. Make sure it’s organic. Make sure it’s fresh. It’s not concentrated. You are going to now amplify the autophagy within your skin cells. And specifically this reviews noted that it not only replaced the old and damaged cells within the skin, but that it also improves skin texture, which is interesting. Put in the comments, because I think a lot of you notice this, as you fast, that your skin gets softer, something I’ve noticed, like, especially in the longer fast I just kind of go, Yeah, wow, my skin feels really soft. That’s because autophagy. Think of them like little men. They’re like cleaning up the skin. And so you’re going to notice a different level of softness. And then the last one that I’m going to tell you on bromelain is that there was a 2010 study in bio factors that found that it bromelain may even kill breast cancer cells. So it turned on autophagy to such a high degree this. That’s what this study is saying in cancer cells, that they completely self destructed. Now, remember, your body’s intelligent, so it’s not going to do this to healthy cells. The body’s always going to try to get rid of the old and bring in the new. So again, bringing this Brome lean factor in, bringing the pineapple back in we start to amplify autophagy outside of the fasting window, helping cardiovascular plaquing, helping skin and now we have a study here showing that it can actually kill breast cancer cells. So really cool. But all three of those studies are impressive to me, and I will tell you, as somebody who does like to go more keto, that I’ll splash some pineapple juice. If I’m on a beach in Hawaii, I’m gonna be eating tons of pineapple, fresh pineapple, always getting fresh, always getting organic, and not doing it every day. That’s sort of the general rule I have for pineapple as much as I love it, okay, the second food for autophagy is turmeric, and specifically curcumin, which is really this high antioxidant that can do a lot of miraculous things. I think most people know turmeric and curcumin as anti inflammatory, but it actually. Can help with autophagy. Turmeric and curcumin have been known for cognitive function. They’ve been known for inflammation, but there’s a 2016 study in the biotechnology advances that found Curcumin is specifically good at increasing mitology. Okay, not to get too complicated, but every single aspect of your body, specifically down to your cells, has its own unique version of autophagy. And so Mito, those of you been following me for a while, what is Mito? What do you think that’s going to

mean? Mitology is where we are seeing the self healing of the mitochondria. Now this is really important, because the mitochondria are the battery of your cells. They’re what give you energy, energy to heal, energy to function. They also are up regulating glutathione within the cell, so they’re helping your cells detox. So when we’re doing daily bouts of curcumin or turmeric, this would be one that I would recommend you do daily. You could also even do this in your fasting window to amplify it. You are actually encouraging these mitochondria, these little powerhouses, to clean themselves up, and that’s exactly what this study found, that during my tough AG, your cells destroy dysfunctional mitochondria. Oh, this is an important one. I have to tell you this, because this is one that doesn’t get spoken of enough. When a cell decides to become a cancer cell, what happens is that the toxins and the inner workings of the cells hijack the mitochondria, and when they hijack the mitochondria, the mitochondria go rogue, and instead of making ATP, they make lactic acid, which is what causes a lot of The soreness. So when we’re doing daily tumor or curcumin, what’s happening is you’re getting rid of the dysfunctional mitochondria. You’re cleaning up these dysfunctional mitochondria so that they don’t turn on you and become cancer cells. And not only are you getting more energy, more healing energy, but you’re getting these mitochondria to work for you when you start to stimulate this mitophagy. We have another study, a 2023 study in signal transduction and targeted therapy, that noted that mitology specifically is especially important for healthy aging and preventing fatigue. Think of it like this, your mitochondria are bombarded with toxins, with stress, with emotional traumas, and they start to power down. And as they power down, now, certain body parts don’t work right? You don’t have energy. Your brain doesn’t have energy. And so when we can stimulate my top 50, we can bring all of that back. Curcumin specifically turns on mitochondrial bio Genesis, which is a way of saying that it will stimulate the new growth of new mitochondria and start to strengthen the existing ones. I hope you all know that turmeric is bulletproof. I’ve been studying this stuff for decades, and I cannot find anything wrong with turmeric. I think the most important thing about turmeric is that we always have it with black pepper, because it increases its curcumins bioavailability by 2,000% so please make sure that you are having curcumin or turmeric, whether it’s supplements or whether it’s in food, make sure there’s black pepper in there, because it’s like an it like activates it. Okay, the third one and last one is also an amazing herb or or it’s actually a tea, which is green tea, and green tea has a lot of polyphenols, and they are really good at not only helping with inflammation and brain function and with gut health, but one of the main ingredients of green tea. I’m going to try to pronounce this, but from this point far, we’re only going to use the initials. It’s called epi Gallo, cat, chickens, epigallow Catch, agains, E, G, C, G, and that is the main active ingredient of green tea, and it’s especially good for autophagy. There are two studies I’ll bring to your attention. A 2019, in nutrients, found that green tea turned on widespread autophagy, so throughout the whole body, reducing inflammation throughout your whole body, and regenerating and healing cells every single cell in the body, the study found, when it was exposed to green tea, the cell activated autophagy. And then there was another great study in the n 2019, Anter anti cancer research found that E, G, C, G, really specifically helps with colon colorectal cancer cells I’m trying to talk today, and it destroys them. So think about this for a moment. You could definitely look at Green Tea and turmeric and curcumin. You could look at those in your fasting window to accelerate this autophagy process. You could also put them in your eating window and you’re still if you kept that protein down, you kept those amino acids down, you would still be stimulating autophagy. So just those of you that are experienced fasters, hopefully this helps. What I love when I look at studies like this and I look into research like this, is we’re not out of answers. We’re never out of answers. The body is always doing the right thing at the right time. And if you’re building disease or you have a chronic condition and you feel like your body’s turned on you, it’s just because your lifestyle has not been in congruence with how the body wants to be treated. It’s literally that simple. So what you can do is, when you listen to videos like this, is come back to the some simplicity, which is nature’s provided us a lot of incredible resources so that we can not only heal ourselves, but we can stimulate these natural processes that are going through our system. And my I’m always going to hold this line that the sugar burner system is great, the fat burner system is great, and our job is to metabolically switch typically, what I’ve taught you all is when we switch over into the fat burner state, that we are now stimulating autophagy. But what I’m hoping you’re gathering from a video like this is we also, when we switch back to the sugar burner system, that we can keep that stimulation of autophagy going. Make sense? Okay, three questions that got sent in. So if you have a question put in the comments, I’m answering them now on these videos. Also, many of these questions came from my reset Academy, which is a membership group where me and my team of coaches and master experts are teaching women specifically how to heal themselves and how to build a lifestyle that works for them. So if you’re interested in that. We’ll leave links for that. But here we go. Three different questions. I’m going to go through these really fast. The first is, what herbs naturally boost autophagy? So we did just talk about green tea. I kind of consider that in curcumin, those are herbaceous. But I do want to point out that there are a lot of really other interesting herbs. So Berberine is one. You’ll see a lot of those in supplements. The other one that I’ve leaned into a lot is Berg Mont. Here’s a funny little thing. Many of you know that bee minerals is one of my favorite companies. I just love the heart of the people. I love the products, and they have this thing that’s called a happy light spray. I’m just telling you this because I love it, and it’s Bergamot in it, and so I keep it by my desk, and I spray it on myself. It smells really good at which you can smell it, but bergamot, in any way into the body, is always going to have this self cleaning effect. We also know herb wise, we can look at ginger. We can look at garlic, cinnamon. Cinnamon is going to boost your metabolism so you’re not out of herbs. The list is long, and don’t, don’t, you know, I think there’s a tendency when something comes from the earth and it’s so simple, we dismiss its potency. And I’m going to ask you to not do that when you hear these things, because we’ve over complicated health, and it’s really important that we come back to what the earth and nature has provided for us. The last herb, and the most famous one for autophagy, is resveratrol. You can get resveratrol in I know what you, many of you, are thinking in wine, but that would be a little counterbalance, not like you can drink wine every night and the Fountain of Youth kicks in. So we can look at grapes and berries as being a really good source of respiratory fall. So those are just some notes to think about. The

second question was, are there other ways to get the benefits of autophagy. Yeah, I’ve done some videos on that. I will leave the links to those videos here. Hit training. We’ve talked a lot about hit training. My new book’s gonna have some fun things on hit training. But that hit training, where you’re like, sucking air, you’re like, like, that will stimulate autophagy. That’s one of, one of my favorite ways that I’ll throw out here is the way in which you exercise matters. And then the third question that was asked was, how does autophagy help with Aging and Longevity? So this is really important, and if you’ve made it this far through the video, thank you. And what I want you to know is that. We are in a real health crisis. Doesn’t matter where you live in the world, but there are so many things that are speeding up aging, speeding up disease, and shortening longevity. So we, if you’re doing nothing, you are actually on a collision course with chronic disease. The statistics are working against you, so we’ve got to turn to things like autophagy, and we have to find ways to naturally stimulate them throughout the day. So it helps with aging, because it takes these cells that are aging very quickly, and it cleans them up, and it slows that aging process down. So for example, let’s use like, well, let’s use the liver. The liver is a great one. Your liver will actually recirculate about, I think the last statistic I saw is that’s like, every year your liver cells will regenerate themselves. So what that means is, if you have an old cell in the liver, and it goes to regenerate itself, it will regenerate old cells, whereas if you stimulate that cell, yet clean it up, when it goes to regenerate, it will regenerate a more youthful cell. So by doing autophagy on a regular basis, what you’re doing is you’re literally creating an internal fountain of youth. You don’t need to be spending 1000s of dollars on all these products when you have it within your own body. So, and that’s I mean, I could go on and on about autophagy, but it is one. This is why my whole YouTube channel was built off of this term and people wanting to understand it. So hopefully that was helpful, and because so many of you are so educated on everything that I teach here, but specifically autophagy, put in the comments, if what your favorite way to stimulate autophagy is, I want people to understand as much information about this powerful internal healing response. So if you have other great ways to stimulate autophagy, please put it in the comments. But please know autophagy isn’t necessarily about finding the perfect supplement. Autophagy is about doing the right lifestyle choices so that you can stimulate it from within. Make sense. Okay, hope that helped. Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it, so please leave us a review. Share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.