Autophagy

What it is

Autophagy — Greek for “self-eating” — is a maintenance program every cell in your body runs. Lysosomes wrap up worn-out proteins, misfolded enzymes, and dysfunctional mitochondria, then break them down into amino acids and fatty acids the cell can reuse. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for mapping out how this works.

Why it matters

Autophagy slows with chronic overfeeding, insulin signalling, and aging — exactly the conditions most modern people live in. Periods of fasting, exercise, and caloric restriction switch it back on. The cell takes out its own trash, and tissues that depend on healthy mitochondria — brain, muscle, liver — keep working longer. It is not a magic anti-aging switch, but it is one of the few endogenous repair systems you can influence directly with how you eat and move.