Arguing for Autophagy as the Primary Mechanism by which Exercise and Calorie Restriction Improve Health and Longevity

Autophagy is the name given to a collection of maintenance and recycling mechanisms responsible for removing damaged and unwanted proteins and structures from within cells. Many of the means of modestly slowing aging demonstrated in laboratory species feature increased levels of autophagy, in in some cases that increase in autophagy has been shown to be necessary for benefits to result. That autophagy is the most important means by which beneficial stresses such as exercise and calorie restriction improve health and longevity is by no means a novel argument. It has been made for decades, with increasing confidence. Despite this, there has been comparatively little progress when it comes to the development of therapies that directly target the operation of autophagy, as opposed to calorie restriction mimetics that do so indirectly by targeting regulators known to be involved in the calorie restriction response. (We could argue about which side of that line mTOR inhibitors fall on, but their connection to aging arose out of work on calorie restriction rather than work on autophagy per se). In part this is because safely manipulating the state of metabolism is very challenging; metabolism is enormously complex and still comparatively poorly mapped. Accumulation of dysfunctional and damaged cellular proteins and organelles occurs during aging, resulting in a disruption of cellular homeostasis and progressive degeneration and increases the risk of cell death. Moder...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs