What Is Autophagy? (A Short And Simple Guide)

The human body is a pretty amazing machine. It can do a lot of things on its own, including healing itself. When the body is sick or injured, it can help to promote autophagy.

TIP: Autophagy is not a diet plan or an exercise routine; it’s something that occurs within your body naturally in order to keep you healthy and strong.

Autophagy involves the degradation of cells through the lysosomes (or vacuoles) within the cell. It cleans up the cell by breaking down the cell parts that are no longer of use to your body. This helps you get rid of unnecessary proteins and damaged cellular parts in order to maintain cell integrity.

Autophagy is often confused with mitophagy which is a specific type of autophagy that breaks down mitochondria within cells. Mitochondria produce energy for cells and when they break down, it forces the cell to go back through apoptosis. However, autophagy is not always about producing energy for the cell; rather it’s about removing damaged or unnecessary parts from the cell.

Describing autophagy as a process that allows cells to “clean up their mess” would be more accurate because it has much more functions than just eliminating cell waste material. Some of these functions are listed below.

1. Removing damaged organelles

Autophagy plays an important role in the life cycle of a cell. One of the phases of this process is named mitophagy, or the selective degradation and recycling of mitochondria within the cell. Mitochondria are responsible for producing energy and sustaining the healthy functioning of a cell. If they are not functioning properly, they can cause oxidative damage and lead to cell dysfunction or even death by apoptosis (self-destruction). In this case, autophagy is triggered in order to eliminate damaged mitochondria and replace them with new ones.

2. Removing toxins from cells

Just like mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) can be damaged by oxidative stress and toxic compounds produced by a cell during normal metabolic processes, such as reactive oxygen species (ROS).