Click to listen to the audio…

Clean up your arteries through autophagy

Your dustbin men sit tight, when you’re insulin resistant. So cleaning up barely happens. Wastes pile up and this has health consequences – diabetes, CVD, NASH

Lots of things, “go wrong” in metabolic syndrome.

• Blood vessels get thicker and then “block” up with cholesterol
• The liver jams up with fat and this causes metabolic mayhem
• Beta cells accumulate junk, become overwhelmed and stop producing enough insulin
• Fat cells become “constricted”, they fail to expand to accommodate all the fat being sent their way, the wailing and nashing of teeth, contributes to inflammation

Notice a pattern ?

Wastes pile up in metabolic syndrome

Each and every organ is piling up “something” – the biological term for this is hypertrophy.

The something is not in and of itself bad, but the gathering is problematic, it eventually leads to impeded function.  And the impeded function,  ultimately creates BAD BODY CHEMISTRY.  The kind that leads to poor health outcomes.

But, this shouldn’t happen.

The waste disposal department

Each and every cell, has a waste disposal department  – tasked with “cleaning up the junk”.

Different methods are employed, depending on the type of waste being encountered.  And in a busy cell, there is lots of waste.

Some things need to removed, chop-chop, or else.

But, other things, the removal is not THAT urgent.

Yes, it does need to be done. Living in a sea of worn out cell parts is messy.  And in the long run, compromises efficiency, but the task can wait, until the cell is LESS busy.

Meet the dustbin men

They are a team of proteins responsible for autophagy (self-eating), the “long” term clean up process.

When an item is BEYOND repair,  they step in to remove the worn out, broken bits and pieces.   They do this, by directing the offending item, towards the cell’s garbage disposal unit – the lysosome.

This is a vat of acid and enzymes, that digests  EVERYTHING.

Damaged proteins, invading pathogens and worn out cell parts (organelles).

Inside the acid vat, the item is  dissolved by the acid.  It is quite literally  pulled  apart, bit by bit.  When this is done, all that is left is a pile of basic building blocks.

Recycling

The amino acids, sugars and fatty acids, released by the acid digestion, are then recycled. They’re shipped back into the cytoplasm of the cell, where they can be used to build new things.

It’s a perfect system.

Except, when it doesn’t happen.

It doesn’t happen when you’re insulin resistant.

In the insulin resistant….

This is what a team of researchers based in North Carolina discovered.

The team made mice insulin resistant, by overfeeding them for  8 weeks.   Now, the little guys at this stage, were not diabetic, their  fasting blood glucose levels were normal,  but they had way too much insulin floating around in their system.

They were ticking time bombs for health problems.

The insulin was high, morning, noon and night – just like it is, in people with metabolic syndrome.

Dustbin men activity

At this point in time………..

They bumped the mice off. Of course they did it humanely.   They removed the livers and looked at just how much autophagy, had been happening.

They did this in two ways :

• They looked to see, just how much garbage had accumulated, by looking for specific items, such as the p62 protein. This is a long lived protein, typically removed by the dustbin men.
• They also looked to see, how many dustbin men were being created, by tracking gene expression.

Significantly less autophagy was happening in the insulin resistant.

Here you can see, there was tons of p62 present – which is NOT normal.

They did a few extra things, to establish the reason the dustbin men weren’t working, was because of insulin.

Hyperinsulinemia, this is the REAL killer.

Cells don’t multi-task

Breaking down old parts is HARD work.  It can be done, but, you need to be motivated.

The motivation for autophagy is when there is a shortage of building blocks. This only happens when supplies are limited.

Since insulin’s BIG JOB, is to put away the groceries.

Insulin’s presence signals, there are plenty of supplies available.  On paper at least !

Cleaning up barely happens

So………. the dustbin men sit tight, when insulin is out and about.

The dustbin men are not on strike – they’re just not needed to supplement supplies.

But they are NEEDED.

Wastes pile up

And this has health consequences……………… heart disease, type 2 diabetes, NASH.

The dustbin men need to be deployed on a regular basis.

Deploy your team of dustbin men, by reining in insulin.

Further reading

Need a little help reining in insulin ?