Reading · Home Therapy™ with Michelle Ogundehin

I’ve been reading about autophagy recently. If you’ve spent any time in the wellness corners of the internet, you’ll almost certainly have come across it too. And if you haven’t heard the term, chances are you’ve heard of intermittent fasting. But while the two are closely connected, they’re not the same thing. Intermittent fasting is the practice. Autophagy is the biological process that fasting is thought to encourage.

The claim is seductively simple. Finish dinner by 8pm. Don’t eat again until midday the following day. Sixteen hours without food, allegedly, gives your body time to switch into repair mode, allowing your cells to begin “eating” their own debris. The implication is that this daily fast acts as a kind of internal spring clean, clearing out damaged cells, reducing inflammation, deleting cancer cells, and perhaps even slowing ageing.

It sounds remarkable. Almost too remarkable. Which made me wonder: can it really be true? The answer, as is so often the case with these things, is yes. And no.

Autophagy itself is absolutely real. The word literally means “self-eating” and describes one of the body’s natural housekeeping systems. Cells routinely identify damaged proteins, worn-out components and other cellular waste, breaking them down so their raw materials can either be recycled or safely disposed of. It’s one of the reasons our bodies continue functioning as well as they do despite the constant wear and tear of everyday life. In fact, it’s such a fundamental process that in 2016 the Nobel Prize in Physiology for Medicine was awarded to Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi, whose pioneering work revealed how our cells carry out this extraordinary act of self-renewal.

Where the certainty begins to unravel is the claim that fasting for exactly sixteen hours somehow flips a biological switch. Because biology rarely works like that.

One of the first questions that occurred to me was this: surely we’re already fasting every night? Even someone who enjoys a bedtime snack is unlikely to be eating while asleep. Eight hours, perhaps ten, without food is hardly unusual. If our bodies possess this remarkable ability to repair and recycle themselves, wouldn’t they already be getting on with the job while we’re asleep?

The answer appears to be yes.

Sleep is already one of the body’s most important repair periods. Growth hormone rises. DNA damage is repaired. The immune system resets. The brain activates its own waste clearance system, washing away metabolic by-products accumulated during the day (believed to contribute to dementia. And just to add, this is why I counsel to switch off wifi while you sleep so this important work is not hampered in any way). Autophagy itself continues as part of this ongoing maintenance. Our bodies are not lying dormant, waiting for permission to begin repairing. They are repairing all the time.

This, I think, is where some of the online conversation becomes misleading. It often seems to suggest that nothing much happens until hour sixteen, at which point your body suddenly begins cleaning house. In reality, scientists don’t know if there is a precise threshold at all. Measuring autophagy in living humans is surprisingly difficult, and while fasting does appear to increase some of the signals associated with it, exactly when this becomes meaningful — and how much benefit it confers —remains an ongoing area of research.

Perhaps the better way to think about it is not as a switch, but as a dimmer. Some degree of maintenance is always taking place. Sleep supports it. Longer periods without food may gradually increase certain repair pathways. But the idea that your cells patiently wait until 11.59am before deciding to tidy up is, thankfully, not how the human body works. Of course, even having read all this, I felt duty-bound to try it myself.

Finishing supper by 8pm was relatively easy. Waiting until midday the next day to eat again was another matter entirely. As early as ten o’clock I’d transformed into a unpleasant combination of weak, distracted and quietly furious. Apparently, water and green tea are permitted during the fasting window. Smoothies, however, are not. Which presented me with something of a dilemma, because breakfast is almost always a smoothie for me, and one I genuinely look forward to. I pile it full of all my faves: blueberries, a banana, nut milk, collagen, creatine, ground linseeds (excellent for healthy bowels!), maca powder, and greens.

So I stopped. Not because I don’t believe the science, but because organising my morning around a protocol rather than how I actually wanted to live, is no way to live. I’d rather enjoy my beloved smoothie at ten than spend two more hours watching the clock, and becoming increasingly bad company.

Inner Life

'Doing' life is surely the point?

Jun 21

Stephen Bartlett, host of the very popular podcast Diary of a CEO, recently caused a bit of a kerfuffle when he remarked on an episode that a single glass of wine had effectively “ruined” the next three days of his life. The reaction was swift. Some people agreed wholeheartedly. Others saw it as yet another examp…

Perhaps that says something larger about where we are with wellbeing. Last month I wrote about the growing culture of optimisation (see above). The idea that every aspect of our lives can, or should, be upgraded, measured and refined. Better sleep. Better focus. Better mornings. Better longevity. Every habit examined for hidden gains.

Autophagy risks becoming another example of the same instinct. We take something fascinating that our bodies already do naturally and turn it into a daily challenge, another target to hit, another opportunity to feel either virtuous or guilty.

Yet for much of human history, eating from dawn until late evening simply wasn’t possible. Meals were dictated by daylight, work and availability rather than convenience. Long overnight gaps between meals would have been entirely ordinary. Perhaps what we now call intermittent fasting is less an extraordinary health intervention than a return to a rhythm our biology already recognises.

As with so many wellness trends, I wonder whether we sometimes mistake rediscovery for innovation. What strikes me most, though, is how familiar this all feels. Because we understand instinctively that a home needs moments of maintenance. Cupboards need emptying before they can be reorganised. Rooms need airing before they feel fresh again. Surfaces need clearing before they can properly function. A home that is constantly being filled, used and added to without ever being given space to reset eventually begins to feel burdened by its own accumulation.

Perhaps our bodies are not so different.

So maybe the real lesson from autophagy isn’t that we’ve discovered a miraculous new way to cleanse ourselves. It’s a reminder that our bodies possess their own remarkable repair systems. Our task isn’t to outsmart them or optimise them into submission. It’s to create the conditions in which they can simply get on with doing what they have evolved to do ie to be given enough space, enough rhythm and enough trust to look after themselves. Just as the healthiest homes are rarely those with the most gadgets or the strictest routines, but those that quietly support the lives lived within them.

Let's learn about... autophagy

'Doing' life is surely the point?

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