Autophagy is a process in which your body cleans itself out by breaking down and reusing the old cell parts to make it more efficient. Both intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets are known to help trigger autophagy. When fasting, some people prefer lemon water because they prefer the taste of lemon water. Because the amount of calories in lemon water is so negligible, you can safely drink lemon water as it will not break your autophagy.
What is Autophagy?
Autophagy is a very important process in your body. It is called autophagy because ‘auto’ means self and ‘phagy’ means eat, it literally means self-eating. Your body is made up of cells that are considered the building blocks of your body. As time goes on, parts of your cells can become damaged or defective. Autophagy then happens to help break it down and reuse the parts that work and discard the broken parts.
While this might sound ominous to some people, it is actually a good thing. It is an evolutionary mechanism that helps your self preservation. This is done by removing the non-functional cells and recycling them through cleaning, eventually regulating them back to optimal function. It promotes your cells to survive and adapt to a variety of stressors that you accumulate throughout your life.
It is beneficial as it protects your body against illnesses and diseases such as flu, infections, cancer, insulin resistance and even aging.
What Happens During Autophagy?
To make autophagy happen, autophagy-related proteins are required. These autophagy related proteins helps create autophagosomes that can carry the discarded cell pieces to a lysosome. The lysosome is a part of a cell that has the ability to eat other parts of the cell. It digests and leads to the breakdown of the junk cells that you have discarded. After it has been digested, it allows for parts that can be reused to be released to be created into new cells for your body.
How Do You Achieve Autophagy?
Autophagy happens when the cells in your body are lacking nutrients, oxygen or they are damaged. Therefore, you can induce autophagy through fasting, calorie restriction, switching to a keto diet and exercise.
The current consensus is that you need to fast between 18 hours to 4 days to trigger autophagy to happen. Whereas those who follow a keto diet (low carb, high fat) can stimulate autophagy by promoting a ketosis state. This is a metabolic state where your body burns fat instead of sugar for energy.
Drinking Lemon Water
Lemon water is a great way to help flavor water and make it more tasteful. If you find it hard to drink water, adding lemon might make it more palatable. It is simple to make, all you need to put is the juice and/or the slice of lemon into your water. It is generally safe for most people. However, you do need to consider that drinking too much lemon water can lead to possible erosion to your teeth enamel.
Water is very important for our body, it is something that is required for us to survive. Our bodies are actually made up of up to 75% of water. Those who do not drink enough water might become dehydrated. This often gives you symptoms of headaches, dizziness and tiredness. It is very important for you to drink at least 6 to 8 glasses of water a day.
Lemon Water and Autophagy
Drinking lemon water will not break your autophagy. Water is best thing to drink to help you stay hydrated and lemon helps add a little flavor into your drink. Drinking plain lemon water (no added sugar or anything else) is so low in calories that it is negligible and will not break autophagy.
In fact, I would recommend you trying lemon water. It is healthy and does add a positive spin onto a regular cup of water. It gives it a nice scent and taste. As long as you drink only plain lemon water, it will not break your autophagy.
You can use either a fresh lemon or bottled lemon juice. If you plan on using bottled lemon juice, make sure you check the ingredients to be certain that it is just lemon juice and there is no added ingredients such as sugar.
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