#219 Autophagy, Sauna, Red Light, Hormesis

Connie Nightingale (0:00)

All right, Siim, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you on here.

All right. So you are big into so many biohacking things. It's super exciting. I really love that realm of health, and it's something I'm trying to get more and more into.

I think it's something that is really important for my listeners to talk about as well. So before we get going down that route too much, can you tell my listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Siim Land (0:29)

Yeah, well, I'm an author and like a content creator as well as a speaker from Estonia, and I talk mostly about this biohacking, where it involves things like health optimization, nutrition, diet, resilience, sleep, and everything just related to improving your biology and health in the making. And yeah, I've written several books about this topic, a lot about intermittent fasting is one of my main areas of focus, but also things like sauna, cold, exercise, even like stoicism or like philosophy, and yeah, the immune system, so everything related to just improving your health.

Connie Nightingale (1:13)

Yeah, and all of that's become more and more of a hot topic these days with all the COVID stuff running around, and people are starting to learn that all of these systems hold hands with your immune system, and how important it is to take care of all of that in so many different facets. So it's really great. You actually just came out with a new book about immunity, correct?

Siim Land (1:35)

Yeah, it's co-authored with Dr. James Denical Antonio, and he's a pretty renowned author.

He's also like a cardiovascular researcher and editor in British Medical Journal. So yeah, he's pretty renowned. And we co-authored The Immunity Fix. It's about, like I said, kind of bridging the gap between your immune system and every other system in your body, like the endocrine system, your circadian rhythms, your metabolism, your metabolic health. So yeah, it kind of gives you an understanding about how the immune system works and how to improve it based upon these different factors.

Connie Nightingale (2:10)

Awesome. Well, before we dive in today, I think we need to catch my listeners a little bit up to speed because we want to talk about metabolic autophagy. What is it?

It seems like something that's super deep.

Siim Land (2:24)

Right.

Yeah. Well, like metabolic autophagy is one of the titles of one of my books.

And autophagy itself is like a biological process during which your cells clean up from different like infectious particles, just the junk and the debris. So it is involved in like longevity and anti-inflammatory, you know, results. So you can lower like oxidative stress, you can eliminate different pathogens. It's also involved in the immune system functioning and like fat burning. So it is a pretty central component to like just healthy cellular functioning. And like research finds that, you know, sufficient autophagy can be linked to many chronic diseases like, you know, insulin resistance or even accelerated aging, whereas sufficient autophagy is the opposite. It kind of helps to promote longevity and just general health and well-being.

Connie Nightingale (3:22)

And I think the first time I ever heard the word cellular autophagy, it was when it came to fasting. So it's become kind of a buzzword in the fasting space. Many people talk about cellular turnover in the fasting space, and that's part of the reason they're doing it. But there are other ways to achieve it as well, correct?

Siim Land (3:44)

About autophagy from fasting. And it is a very potent way of activating it, but there is not like very clear-cut research about fasting and autophagy per se.

There is actually a lot more research about autophagy during exercise, which is one of the maybe second best ways of achieving that. Or even like, if you were to consider like the relative amount of autophagy you get, then like during exercise, your body is probably experiencing more autophagy than it is when you are fasting.

Because like the energy stress is higher during exercise, you're exerting energy, you're burning through like these like glycogen and other resources. So it is imposing more stress on the body and the stress response itself just activates this autophagy process. But there are also other similar stressors like the heat that you can do with like with the sauna or other forms of maybe hot yoga or something that can also turn on some aspects of autophagy, as well as like these different dietary polyphenols and phytonutrients like coffee, green tea, you know, Reservatrol, dark pigmented berries and vegetables. They have these compounds that also turn on autophagy.