electrolyte supplements are your best friend. electrolytes control eg your heart, muscles and everything, so if you want to make sure it all stays in check then make sure you are having these electrolytes. you can buy them as effervescent tablets or just pills.specifically watch potassium as an imbalance can lead to heart attacks and chest pains.
broscience take: first remember autophagy is a catchall term for various processes. It’s not some silver bullet with an on-off switch. Autophagy is always happening at some level.
Your overall level of autophagy is regulated by biochemical signals in your body, which you can manipulate to up-regulate autophagy a ton. Your main tools to control autophagy are fasting AND exercise. Bonus points to combine them.
Take 30 minutes and google two things: mTOR and AMPK signaling pathways. mTOR is the master signal for various metabolic processes, including autophagy. When mTOR is down-regulated, autophagy goes up. Fasting downregulates mTOR. AMPK is turned on with ATP starts running low, and AMPK is a major inhibitor of mTOR. So you can get splendid autophagy with strenuous exercise alone, though it downregulates again when you eat.
My recommendation for you would be to start OMAD(one meal a day) with vigorous exercise before you eat. That will accomplish your autophagy mission in short bursts. And once you feel comfortable doing that, start rolling 48 or 72 hour fasts, and keep exercising every day. So long as you eat enough protien on the refeed you don’t lose measurable amounts of lean tissue exercising fasted. And your mTOR will be so downregulated with AMPK through the roof, that autophagy mission of yours will be accomplished
Autophagy is a natural process, as such it’s not an on/off switch. Elevated insulin levels reduce Autophagy, so the longer your insulin levels stay low, the more Autophagy happens. There’s a feeling that it peaks at 72 hours, not sure if that’s solid or just an estimate.
As far as measuring Autophagy, I don’t think it’s currently possible to directly measure. Markers of possible Autophagy include reduced insulin and Mtor in the blood.
So, anything done to reduce insulin levels, such as IF, low carb/keto, exercise, or fasting, will help increase the amount of Autophagy going on.
It’s helpful to know you are in autophagy right now. Fasting will ramp it up. So there’s no magic number you have to achieve to benefit from it. So if you just end up doing 18-6 or omad, you’re still getting more of it than before. Over time that can add up.
72 hours is considered a good autophagy fast for a non faster. It is plenty long and will be challenging yet feasible for an inexperienced faster.
To goal is to have your body seek out and recycle badly behaving cells to harvest the amino acids for required cellular repair / replacement. Normally dietary protein is used, but when fasting you have no new protein intake. Again, 72 hours will do a significant clean up of the weakest cells - ones that could possibly turn into cancer, Alzheimer’s. Parkinson’s, or some other disease. Do it quarterly for ongoing autophagy benefits so newly malfunctioning / aging cells are recycled.
If you never fasted before, start with a 16:8 intermittent fasting schedule. Otherwise its like throwing yourself into the deep end before knowing how to swim. The hunger pangs really get to some people and is probably the number one reason that most don’t stick to fasting as part of their lifestyle.
Edit: Also, do not worry about entering Autophagy, the benefits will show even if you just end up sticking with 16:8 or 23:1 schedule and anything in between. Just keep in mind, bad food is even worse for you and good food even better.
If you’re specifically fasting for autophagy, the length likely won’t be as important as how active you are. The more calories you can burn while you’re fasting the more autophagy will take place. If you’ve never done a long fast before it may be tough, but if you can fast for 36 hours and go for a 12-16 hour walk that’ll do a lot more than a 7 day fast.
If you do prefer to just lay in bed and drink water, the longer the better.
I would start your first 24 hours eating only fruit. Afterwards a one day OMAD. day three don’t forget plenty of water, start your spring water fast, even take. A multivitamin. If a break is necessary and you aren’t ready to reach that seven (gallon a day of spring water for 3 days) breaking with an easy “keto” type meal. A perfect start to your journey tbh