Your body has a remarkable secret weapon against aging and disease—and it’s triggered when you’re hungry.
Scientists call it “autophagy,” from the Greek words for “self” and “eating.”
When your body enters a state of nutrient deprivation, it begins a sophisticated cellular cleanup process, recycling damaged components and removing dysfunctional cells.
This isn’t just theoretical science. A 2016 study published in Nature found that mice subjected to fasting cycles showed significant reduction in markers associated with aging and disease.
The researchers observed a 30% increase in autophagy markers during fasting periods.
The most fascinating part? You don’t need elaborate medical interventions to access this healing mechanism. Simply spacing out your meals correctly can trigger your body’s natural rejuvenation process.
How Your Body Becomes Its Own Doctor
When you skip a meal, your cells don’t just sit idly waiting for the next influx of nutrients. They get busy.
After about 14-16 hours without food, your insulin levels drop significantly. This biochemical signal flips a switch in your cells, activating enzymes that begin tagging damaged cellular components for destruction.
These cellular components—misfolded proteins, dysfunctional mitochondria, and oxidized particles—are the very things that contribute to aging and disease when they accumulate.
Think of it as your body’s automated housekeeping service. When the pantry is full, your cells are busy processing incoming nutrients. When the pantry is empty, they turn their attention to cleaning house.
Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi, who won the Nobel Prize in 2016 for his research on autophagy, described it as “crucial for the cell’s response to starvation and other types of stress.”
His groundbreaking work revealed that without efficient autophagy, cells accumulate damaged proteins and organelles, particularly in the brain and liver. This accumulation is linked to Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes, and other age-related disorders.
The Cell’s Recycling Center
During autophagy, your cells create specialized structures called autophagosomes that engulf damaged components. These structures then fuse with lysosomes—the cell’s recycling centers—where enzymes break down the captured material into basic building blocks.
These building blocks—amino acids, fatty acids, and sugars—don’t go to waste. Your body cleverly reuses them to build new cellular structures or convert them to energy.
This recycling process is remarkably efficient. Research from the University of Michigan found that during a 24-hour fast, some cells can recycle up to 30% of their proteins.
The benefits extend beyond just cleaning house. Autophagy also strengthens your immune system by removing intracellular pathogens and stimulating immune cell function.
Your Inner Cleanup Crew at Work
Every day, your cells face an onslaught of damage from various sources:
- Free radicals from normal metabolism
- Environmental toxins
- UV radiation
- Inflammatory processes
Left unchecked, this cellular damage contributes to visible aging and increases disease risk. Your body’s autophagy mechanism is the first line of defense against this accumulation.
Dr. Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, explains: “When you fast, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it does is recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed.”
This recycling particularly targets the most damaged cells first, creating a selective pressure that leaves behind healthier cells.
The Surprising Truth About Hunger
Here’s where conventional wisdom gets turned on its head: some degree of hunger might actually be good for you.
Most of us have been conditioned to believe that hunger is a negative sensation to be avoided. We’re told to eat frequent meals to “keep our metabolism firing” and prevent our bodies from “going into starvation mode.”
But the evidence suggests something quite different. Brief, controlled periods of hunger trigger beneficial cellular processes that simply don’t occur in a constantly fed state.
A 2019 study in Cell Metabolism found that participants who restricted their eating to a 10-hour window each day (a form of intermittent fasting) showed improved cardiometabolic health markers, including reduced blood pressure and cholesterol levels. These improvements occurred even without calorie restriction.
The researchers concluded that the benefits came largely from extending the daily fasting period, giving cells more time to engage in autophagy.
“We’ve been advising people to eat regularly throughout the day to maintain stable blood sugar,” says Dr. Mark Mattson, former chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. “But from an evolutionary perspective, that’s not how we’re designed to eat.”
Our ancestors didn’t have 24/7 access to food. They experienced natural cycles of feast and famine—and our cellular biology evolved to thrive under these conditions.
Activating Your Body’s Self-Cleaning Mode
So how can you harness this powerful cellular cleanup system?
Intermittent fasting has emerged as one of the most accessible ways to trigger autophagy. This doesn’t mean extreme starvation—just strategically timing your meals.
The most common approaches include:
16:8 Method: Confine eating to an 8-hour window each day (for example, eating only between 11 AM and 7 PM).
5:2 Protocol: Eat normally five days a week, then reduce calorie intake to about 500-600 calories on two non-consecutive days.
24-Hour Fast: Once or twice a month, abstain from food for a full 24 hours.
Each of these approaches creates a metabolic state that activates autophagy to varying degrees.
Dr. Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute and author of “The Circadian Code,” has extensively researched time-restricted eating patterns. His work suggests that confining eating to 8-10 hours can improve metabolic health even without reducing overall calorie intake.
“Time-restricted eating is a daily eating pattern where you eat all of your meals within a consistent 8-10 hour window,” explains Dr. Panda. “This gives your body a predictable extended fasting period each day, which supports cellular repair mechanisms.”
Beyond Fasting: Other Autophagy Activators
While fasting is perhaps the most potent trigger for autophagy, it’s not the only one.
Research has identified several other factors that can stimulate this cellular cleanup process:
Exercise: High-intensity exercise triggers autophagy in multiple tissues, including muscles, liver, and brain. A 2012 study in Nature found that mice that exercised showed increased autophagy markers and better glucose tolerance.
Certain Foods: Some compounds found in foods like green tea (EGCG), turmeric (curcumin), and resveratrol (found in red wine and berries) have been shown to induce autophagy, though less powerfully than fasting.
Sleep Quality: Poor sleep disrupts autophagy, particularly in the brain. Quality sleep helps maintain optimal autophagy function.
Cold Exposure: Brief exposure to cold temperatures may induce autophagy as part of the body’s stress response.
Combining these approaches—for example, exercising in a fasted state—may have synergistic effects on autophagy activation.
The Balancing Act: When More Isn’t Better
It’s tempting to think that if some autophagy is good, more must be better. But the relationship isn’t that simple.
Extreme fasting or starvation can actually impair autophagy in the long run. When the body is severely deprived of nutrients, it can shift into a different survival mode that preserves energy at all costs.
Dr. Guido Kroemer, a leading researcher in the field of autophagy, cautions: “Autophagy is a dual-edged sword. While it’s essential for cellular health, excessive or impaired autophagy can be detrimental.”
The key is finding the sweet spot—enough nutrient limitation to trigger autophagy, but not so much that it causes harm.
For most healthy adults, this means intermittent fasting periods of 16-24 hours, not days or weeks without food. And importantly, even during fasting periods, hydration remains crucial.
Who Should Proceed with Caution
While autophagy offers promising benefits, fasting isn’t appropriate for everyone.
Those who should consult with healthcare providers before attempting fasting protocols include:
- Pregnant or breastfeeding women
- Those with eating disorders or a history of disordered eating
- People with type 1 diabetes
- Individuals who are underweight
- Those on certain medications
- Children and adolescents
Dr. Rhonda Patrick, a biomedical scientist who has extensively researched nutrition and aging, notes: “Fasting is a stressor on the body. For many people, this stress triggers beneficial adaptive responses. But for others, particularly those with certain medical conditions, it may do more harm than good.”
The Future of Autophagy Research
The field of autophagy research is rapidly evolving, with new discoveries expanding our understanding of this crucial cellular process.
Scientists are now exploring how autophagy relates to specific diseases. For instance, research published in Nature Communications in 2018 found that enhancing autophagy in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease reduced the accumulation of toxic proteins associated with cognitive decline.
Other researchers are investigating how autophagy might be harnessed to enhance cancer treatment.
Some studies suggest that while autophagy generally suppresses tumor initiation, it might actually help established tumors survive under certain conditions.
This complexity highlights why autophagy research earned Dr. Ohsumi the Nobel Prize—it’s a fundamental process with far-reaching implications for human health.
The Ancient Wisdom of Giving Your Body a Break
The science of autophagy offers a fascinating biological explanation for practices that many traditional cultures have long embraced.
Periodic fasting appears in nearly every major religious tradition, from Ramadan in Islam to Yom Kippur in Judaism to various fasting practices in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity.
These traditions intuitively recognized what science now confirms: giving your digestive system regular breaks offers profound benefits for physical and mental wellbeing.
“It’s remarkable how often traditional wisdom aligns with our newest scientific discoveries,” observes Dr. Valter Longo.
“The traditional practice of periodic fasting may have been preserving health for centuries before we understood the cellular mechanisms behind it.”
Incorporating Autophagy Into Modern Life
In our food-abundant environment, finding ways to incorporate beneficial hunger periods requires intention and planning.
Start small. Try extending your overnight fast by delaying breakfast by an hour or two.
Once comfortable with that, you might experiment with a 16:8 approach, eating your first meal at noon and your last meal by 8 PM.
Pay attention to how you feel. Some initial hunger is normal, but extreme discomfort, dizziness, or inability to concentrate are signs that your approach may need adjustment.
Remember that autophagy benefits accumulate over time. Consistency with a moderate approach will likely yield better results than occasional extreme fasting followed by binge eating.
Your Body’s Remarkable Self-Healing Power
Your body possesses an incredible ability to repair and rejuvenate itself—if given the right conditions.
The modern world’s constant access to food, while convenient, may be depriving us of one of nature’s most powerful healing mechanisms: the deep cellular cleanup that occurs when we simply allow ourselves to get hungry.
By strategically incorporating periods of fasting into your routine, you can tap into your body’s innate wisdom and activate processes that clear away cellular damage, recycle dysfunctional components, and potentially slow the aging process.
In the end, the ancient practice of occasionally embracing hunger rather than immediately satisfying it may be one of the simplest yet most profound things you can do for your long-term health.
As Dr. Mattson puts it: “From an evolutionary perspective, searching for and procuring food when hungry is associated with brain activity and vigor. It’s a natural, healthy state that modern conveniences have largely eliminated from our lives.”
Perhaps it’s time to reclaim a bit of that natural rhythm and allow our bodies to do what they’re designed to do—including the remarkable process of self-cannibalization that cleans, repairs, and rejuvenates our cells from the inside out.
The Hidden Benefits of Cellular Spring Cleaning
Most of us don’t think about what happens inside our cells. We focus on visible signs of health—clear skin, strong muscles, good energy levels.
But the microscopic cleanup happening through autophagy affects every aspect of how we look, feel, and function.
Brain Health: Keeping Your Mind Sharp
Your brain cells face unique challenges. Unlike most cells in your body, neurons don’t divide and replace themselves regularly. Many must last your entire lifetime.
This makes autophagy particularly crucial for brain health. When brain cells can’t clear out damaged components, problems begin to pile up—literally.
During autophagy, your brain clears away protein clumps that would otherwise interfere with cell communication. These are the same types of clumps found in higher amounts in people with cognitive decline.
Regular fasting periods may help maintain mental sharpness as you age. Studies on older adults who practice regular time-restricted eating show they maintain better memory function and processing speed compared to those who snack throughout the day.
One fascinating aspect is how autophagy affects brain inflammation. When your brain cells remove damaged parts through autophagy, they reduce inflammatory signals that would otherwise spread to neighboring cells.
This explains why many people report improved mental clarity during fasting—it’s not just psychological. Your brain actually functions more efficiently when cellular debris isn’t clogging the works.
How Autophagy Affects Your Appearance
The benefits of autophagy extend to your largest organ—your skin.
Skin cells are constantly exposed to damage from UV rays, pollution, and normal aging processes. These factors create oxidative stress that damages collagen and elastin, the proteins that keep skin firm and smooth.
Through autophagy, skin cells can remove damaged collagen fragments and rebuild with fresh materials. This cellular renewal process helps maintain skin elasticity and reduce the visible signs of aging.
Many people who adopt intermittent fasting notice their skin becomes clearer and more radiant. This isn’t just from drinking more water (though that helps too). It’s because their skin cells are actively removing damaged components and refreshing themselves from within.
The skin benefits go beyond just appearance. Autophagy helps skin cells better respond to damage and stress, potentially reducing skin cancer risk by removing cells with DNA damage before they can form tumors.
Immune System: Training Your Inner Army
Your immune system relies heavily on autophagy to function properly.
When immune cells encounter bacteria, viruses, or other threats, they use autophagy to break down and analyze these invaders. This process helps your body “remember” the threat for faster response in the future.
Autophagy also helps regulate inflammation—one of the body’s key defense mechanisms that, when chronically activated, contributes to numerous diseases.
By clearing away cellular debris that might trigger inflammatory responses, autophagy helps keep inflammation in check. This may explain why fasting has been found to help conditions linked to chronic inflammation, from arthritis to asthma.
Regular fasting periods may even help your body respond better to vaccines. When your immune cells are functioning optimally through efficient autophagy, they form stronger “memories” of the vaccine components, potentially creating more robust protection.
Why Autophagy Helps with Blood Sugar
The relationship between autophagy and metabolism helps explain why intermittent fasting can improve blood sugar control, even without reducing total calories.
When you fast, your pancreatic cells—responsible for producing insulin—undergo increased autophagy.
This cleanup process removes damaged components that might interfere with insulin production and secretion.
In muscle and liver cells, autophagy clears away damaged insulin receptors, making room for new, more sensitive ones.
This improved “hearing” allows cells to respond better to insulin signals, helping regulate blood sugar more effectively.
People with insulin resistance often see significant improvements when they adopt time-restricted eating patterns.
By giving their cells time to perform this essential maintenance, they address one of the root causes of metabolic dysfunction.
The timing of your meals matters as much as what you eat. Even healthy foods consumed around the clock can prevent your cells from entering the deep cleanup mode they need for optimal function.
Why Cellular Cleanup Matters for Lifespan
One of the most compelling aspects of autophagy research is its connection to longevity. Across multiple species, from yeast to flies to mice, enhancing autophagy extends lifespan.
The reason is simple but profound: aging largely results from the accumulation of cellular damage. By regularly clearing away this damage, organisms maintain youthful function for longer.
Interestingly, many known longevity-promoting interventions—including exercise, certain plant compounds, and calorie restriction—all stimulate autophagy. This suggests autophagy may be a common denominator in many anti-aging approaches.
The blue zones—regions of the world where people regularly live past 100 in good health—offer real-world evidence supporting this idea. In places like Okinawa, Japan, and Ikaria, Greece, natural eating patterns often include daily fasting periods of 14-16 hours.
These populations aren’t consciously practicing “intermittent fasting” as a health strategy. Their traditional lifestyles simply incorporate natural eating rhythms that allow for regular autophagy activation.
Finding Your Fasting Sweet Spot
The good news is you don’t need to follow an extreme approach to benefit from autophagy. Finding a sustainable pattern that works with your lifestyle is more important than pushing to extreme limits.
Personalizing Your Fasting Window
Everyone’s body responds differently to fasting. Genetics, activity level, age, and overall health all play a role in determining your ideal fasting approach.
Some people thrive with a daily 16-hour fast, while others do better with a 12-hour overnight fast plus one or two 24-hour fasts per month. There’s no one-size-fits-all prescription.
Women, in particular, may need to approach fasting more carefully. Female bodies tend to be more sensitive to energy restriction, sometimes responding with hormonal changes if fasting is too extreme or frequent.
For many women, a gentler approach—perhaps a 12-hour overnight fast most days, with occasional longer fasts—provides benefits without disrupting hormonal balance.
Age also matters. Younger people typically handle longer fasts well, while older adults might benefit from shorter but more consistent fasting periods that are less physiologically stressful.
The key is experimentation. Start with a moderate overnight fast of 12 hours, then gradually extend it if you feel good. Pay attention to energy levels, sleep quality, mood, and hunger patterns to find your personal sweet spot.
Breaking Your Fast Wisely
How you break your fast matters almost as much as the fast itself.
When you haven’t eaten for an extended period, your digestive system becomes more sensitive. Breaking your fast with heavy, processed foods can cause discomfort and inflammation that counteracts some of autophagy’s benefits.
Ideal fast-breaking foods include:
- Easy-to-digest proteins like eggs or yogurt
- Healthy fats such as avocado or olive oil
- Fiber-rich vegetables and fruits
- Small portions to start, allowing your system to adjust
Some people find that breaking their fast with bone broth or a green smoothie provides nutrients without overwhelming their digestive system.
Equally important is what you avoid when breaking a fast: sugary foods, refined carbohydrates, and highly processed items can trigger inflammation and rapid blood sugar spikes—the opposite of what you want after activating beneficial cellular processes.
Common Fasting Obstacles (And How to Overcome Them)
Many people struggle with implementing fasting because of common challenges:
Hunger pangs: Initial hunger can be intense when first adopting fasting. Usually, these diminish within 7-10 days as your body adapts. Staying busy, drinking water or herbal tea, and gradually extending your fasting window can help manage adaptation symptoms.
Social pressures: Family meals, work events, and social gatherings often revolve around food at times that might conflict with your fasting window. Having prepared responses and flexible strategies helps navigate these situations without abandoning your fasting practice entirely.
Energy fluctuations: Some people experience temporary energy dips when first fasting. This usually resolves as your body becomes more efficient at switching between glucose and fat for fuel—a metabolic flexibility that improves with practice.
Sleep disturbances: Fasting too close to bedtime can sometimes affect sleep quality. If you notice this, try adjusting your eating window to end at least 3 hours before bed.
Understanding that these challenges are usually temporary helps many people stick with fasting long enough to experience its benefits.
Beyond Basic Fasting: Advanced Strategies
As your body adapts to basic fasting protocols, you might explore more targeted approaches to enhance autophagy further.
Exercise-Enhanced Autophagy
Combining exercise with fasting creates a powerful synergy for cellular cleanup.
Exercising in a fasted state—for example, working out before breakfast after an overnight fast—significantly increases autophagy markers compared to either fasting or exercise alone.
You don’t need intense workouts to see this benefit. Even a 30-minute brisk walk in a fasted state triggers noticeable increases in autophagy.
This approach works because exercise temporarily increases cellular stress—depleting energy stores and producing some free radicals. When this mild stress occurs during a fasted state, it amplifies the autophagy response.
If you try this approach, start with light to moderate exercise. High-intensity workouts while fasted can be challenging at first and might not be appropriate for everyone.
The Protein Cycling Strategy
Another advanced strategy involves cycling protein intake—eating lower amounts of protein on some days and higher amounts on others.
Protein restriction can enhance autophagy because amino acids (the building blocks of protein) signal cellular growth rather than cellular cleanup.
By occasionally reducing protein intake, you remove this growth signal and allow more robust autophagy.
A practical approach might include:
- 5 days of normal protein intake (0.8-1g per kg of body weight)
- 2 non-consecutive days of lower protein (0.5g per kg or less)
This cycling approach provides enough protein for muscle maintenance while creating periodic stronger autophagy signals.
Some longevity researchers suggest that this protein cycling might capture many benefits of more extreme fasting without the challenges of complete food restriction.
Targeted Supplements and Foods
While no supplement can replace the autophagy benefits of fasting, certain compounds may enhance the process:
Spermidine, found in wheat germ, aged cheese, and mushrooms, has been shown to boost autophagy. It works by affecting specific proteins that regulate the process.
Sulforaphane from cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage activates autophagy through a cellular pathway that responds to oxidative stress.
Green tea contains catechins that may stimulate autophagy, particularly in liver cells. This might partly explain green tea’s long-observed health benefits.
Foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like fatty fish and walnuts, support cell membrane health, making the autophagy process more efficient.
Incorporating these foods into your diet—especially to break your fast—might enhance the cellular benefits you’re already getting.
Autophagy Throughout Life: Age-Specific Considerations
The importance and implementation of autophagy support changes throughout your life.
Young Adults: Building a Foundation
For people in their 20s and 30s, establishing autophagy-friendly habits sets the stage for long-term health.
Young bodies generally respond well to varying fasting approaches, including occasional longer fasts (24-36 hours) that stimulate deep cellular cleanup.
This age group also benefits enormously from combining fasting with active lifestyles, as their bodies can handle more intense fasted exercise.
The challenge for younger adults often isn’t physical but social—food-centered gatherings, late nights, and irregular schedules can make consistent fasting difficult. Finding sustainable patterns that work within these realities is key.
Middle Age: Preservation and Prevention
In your 40s and 50s, autophagy becomes increasingly important for preserving function and preventing age-related decline.
During these decades, cellular damage begins accumulating more rapidly. Regular autophagy activation helps clear this damage before it contributes to visible aging and disease risk.
For middle-aged adults, consistency often trumps intensity. A daily 14-16 hour fast might provide better long-term benefits than occasional extreme fasting.
This is also an important time to mind protein quality rather than just quantity. High-quality protein sources provide the amino acids needed for cellular repair after autophagy has cleared damaged components.
Older Adults: Balancing Benefits and Needs
For those in their 60s and beyond, autophagy remains important but must be balanced with other nutritional needs.
Older adults often need more protein to maintain muscle mass, so extreme fasting or protein restriction could potentially do more harm than good.
Gentler approaches often work best: 12-14 hour overnight fasts, focusing on nutrient-dense foods during eating windows, and staying physically active to enhance autophagy through movement.
Some research suggests that older adults might benefit from more frequent, smaller fasting periods rather than fewer, longer ones—creating regular “autophagy pulses” without placing too much stress on the body.
The Mind-Body Connection in Autophagy
Interestingly, your mental state affects how well autophagy works in your body.
Stress: The Autophagy Inhibitor
Chronic stress significantly impairs autophagy. When stress hormones like cortisol remain elevated, they signal your body to stay in a state of high alert rather than repair and maintenance.
This explains why stress management techniques—meditation, adequate sleep, time in nature, meaningful social connections—complement fasting practices. They create the internal conditions where autophagy can function optimally.
Some people find that incorporating mindfulness practices while fasting enhances their experience, reducing stress around hunger sensations and increasing awareness of the body’s signals.
The Placebo Effect in Cellular Cleaning
Your beliefs about fasting might actually influence how much benefit you receive from it.
Research in other areas has shown that positive expectations can trigger physiological changes through the placebo effect. While autophagy itself occurs at a cellular level regardless of your beliefs, your mental approach affects stress hormones and other factors that influence how efficiently the process works.
People who view temporary hunger as a positive signal—evidence that their cellular cleaning crews are hard at work—often report better experiences with fasting than those who approach it with dread or see hunger as something negative to be endured.
This mind-body connection highlights why understanding the “why” behind fasting practices, not just blindly following protocols, can enhance your results.
Integrating Autophagy Awareness Into Daily Life
Rather than seeing autophagy activation as yet another health chore, consider it a lens through which to view your overall lifestyle.
Finding Natural Fasting Rhythms
Throughout human history, fasting wasn’t a health hack—it was simply part of normal life. Food wasn’t constantly available, so periods without eating were inevitable.
Modern conveniences have eliminated these natural fasting periods, but you can intentionally reintroduce them in ways that feel natural rather than forced:
- Finish dinner earlier and start breakfast later
- Skip late-night snacking
- Occasionally miss a meal when you’re busy (instead of forcing yourself to eat on a rigid schedule)
- Allow yourself to feel mild hunger sometimes instead of immediately satisfying it
These small shifts align more closely with how humans ate for most of evolutionary history.
The Long View: Consistency Over Perfection
The benefits of autophagy accumulate over time from consistent practice, not perfect adherence to a rigid protocol.
Occasional deviations—social events, holidays, travel—won’t erase your progress if your overall pattern supports cellular renewal.
Many successful practitioners follow an 80/20 approach: maintaining their fasting practice about 80% of the time, while allowing flexibility for the other 20%.
This sustainable approach prevents the all-or-nothing thinking that derails many health efforts. Your cells don’t keep score of perfect days—they respond to your overall patterns.
The Future of Self-Renewal
As research continues to uncover the mechanisms and benefits of autophagy, we’re likely to develop even more targeted approaches to enhance this natural process.
Emerging research areas include:
- How specific foods and compounds affect different types of autophagy
- Genetic factors that influence individual responses to fasting
- Technologies to measure autophagy activity in living humans
- The relationship between autophagy and specific disease processes
These scientific advances will help refine our approaches, but the fundamental insight remains simple and accessible: giving your body regular breaks from constant feeding allows essential cellular maintenance to occur.
In our food-abundant environment, intentionally embracing occasional hunger might be one of the most powerful health practices available—no prescription, expensive supplement, or complicated protocol required.
By working with your body’s ancient wisdom rather than against it, you tap into a cellular renewal system refined by millions of years of evolution. In the pursuit of health and longevity, sometimes less truly is more.
References
- Ohsumi, Y. (2014). Historical landmarks of autophagy research. Cell Research, 24(1), 9-23.
- Mattson, M. P., Longo, V. D., & Harvie, M. (2017). Impact of intermittent fasting on health and disease processes. Ageing Research Reviews, 39, 46-58.
- Panda, S. (2016). Circadian physiology of metabolism. Science, 354(6315), 1008-1015.
- Levine, B., & Kroemer, G. (2019). Biological Functions of Autophagy Genes: A Disease Perspective. Cell, 176(1-2), 11-42.
- Menzies, F. M., Fleming, A., & Rubinsztein, D. C. (2015). Compromised autophagy and neurodegenerative diseases. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(6), 345-357.
