Growing Mode and Recycling  Mode, are made up concepts to compare biology with the so popular smartphones, that even if they are not really comparable, they are something most can relate to.

When a phone is in airplane mode, all of its features lean towards a particular functionality; a functionality that does not interfere with the aircraft equipment, allowing you to watch videos or listen to music, without emitting any type of electromagnetic frequency.

Likewise, the human body has its own “modes” called “signaling pathways” that, once activated, generate a cascade of events for a specific purpose.

In nature, there have always been periods of scarcity, followed by periods of abundance, and evolution prepared us to take advantage of both.

In times of scarcity, the body enters what we will call Recycling Mode, a period in which the body’s processes are inclined to reuse old parts, both as fuel, as well as to recycle its components to create new parts.

This gives us the opportunity not only to survive without food, but also to remove dysfunctional parts so that in periods of abundance, the contribution of nutrients that activates the signaling pathways of what we will call Growing Mode, will do the magic of rebuilding and strengthen the body using the increase in stem cells and the new nutrients ingested, plus the recycled ones, literally rejuvenating the organism, or in other words, slowing down the imminent deterioration.

Throughout this and future blogs, we will see what science tells us, in order to find the most optimal strategies to maintain a balance between these two states that are so opposite, but complement each other so perfectly in harmony with our biology.

Understanding these basic principles backed by the last 2 million years of evolution, 2500 years of history and more than a century of documented experimentation, will lead us to realize that what’s natural is to feel and look great, that almost all diseases are self-inflicted, and that we can regain a power that was taken from us by a mixture of economic interests and our own tendency to addiction.

Defining Growing and Recycling Mode:

We are going to describe some basic concepts about some of the key components of both Recycling Mode and Growing Mode.

Although these concepts are extremely complex, since they will be mentioned continuously throughout the future blogs, we will summarize them in their essential parts in order to have a general basic knowledge.

mTOR – The great protagonist of the Growing Mode:

The “target of rapamycin in mammalian cells” or mTOR, is a metabolic pathway that controls anabolic and physiological functions, regulates essential signaling routes, the stimulation of growth and the cell cycle. 

In essence, cells go into Growing Mode when mTOR is active and although this signaling pathway is fundamental to many processes, its continuous activation has the potential to create many problems.

In adults, continuous growth processes can be very damaging. In fact, cancer, obesity, atherosclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease among others, are abnormalities where there is a continuous “accumulation” or “growth”; therefore, it is not surprising that the induced inhibition of mTOR, has proven extend life and health in various types of organisms (1, 2).

Throughout this blogs, we will mention the known factors that activate and deactivate this pathway and how to use this to our advantage at the right time.

(TakeAway: The mTor pathway is essential for life, but its continuous activation has the potential to create a range of dysfunctions.)

AMPK and autophagy – Great protagonists of the Recycling Mode:

AMPK:

AMP-activated protein kinase or AMPK, is basically a fuel sensor and therefore, plays a key role in energy balance.

This molecule detects ATP (energy) levels and alerts the body when these levels are low. Which, in turn, generates a cascade of chemical reactions in response (3,4,5,6,7,8), among which we find the inhibition of mTOR, the use of fats as fuel (6), improvement of mitochondrial activity (5), increased production of antioxidants (6), increased production of sex hormones (7), increased release of nitric oxide (8) and activation of autophagy (3,4).

 

Autophagy:

 

From 2015 to 2020, I had the same smartphone, a THC desire 510.

Apart from the continuous mockery of my closest friends (especially my daughter), I was always proud of my ability to have made it last for so many years.

Of course, that it lasted so long was not a coincidence, but the result of taking into account what affects its half-life, something that we can also do with our biology.

If when using the cell phone (body), we take care of its battery (mitochondria), we do not saturate its storage (Growing Mode) and we reset it to factory values ​​(autophagy) with a certain frequency, we will increase its half-life considerably, whatever the model or the brand (genetics and epigenetics).

In this analogy, autophagy would be somewhat comparable to a factory reset; a function that makes the phone largely recover its functionality, although of course, with the passage of time (aging), it will eventually become obsolete (death).

Even so and as we have just mentioned, if we take into account all these variables and protect it from shocks (accidents), we can “stretch” its useful life much beyond what is expected for that brand and model (again…genetics and epigenetics).

Reset to factory values ​​in an organism:

Autophagy is a complex process in which the cell recognizes (among other things) damaged proteins and organelles and surrounds them with a membrane, forming a vesicle called autophagosome.

The next step is to fuse the autophagosome with the lysosome, which is an organelle that contains digestive enzymes, because its function is to reduce large molecules.

Once fused, the autophagosome and the lysosome form a third vesicle called the “autophagolysosome,” in which the digestive enzymes of the lysosome degrade and recycle the components previously surrounded by the autophagosome.

This process of eating itself causes the cell to get rid of dysfunctional organelles, invasive pathogens, unnecessary, damaged or deformed proteins, and to recycle its amino acids both to use them as fuel, as well as to create new cellular components.

This reuse of components is precisely the reason why Yoshinori Ohsumi, who won a Nobel Prize in 2016 for explaining this process, entitled his speech, “Autophagy – An intracellular recycling system.”

The ideal balance to stretch the “half-life” of an organism, would be to achieve the middle point between the Recycling Mode and the Growing Mode, a point that we will call “The Balance of Health” (as my first book), another concept that we will mention often through the blogs.

In the Recycling Mode period, there is an identification and then digestion of the dysfunctional parts and when resuming feeding, the Growing Mode will use these new materials plus the components recycled by autophagy, for rebuilding and maintenance and, if done with the right nutrients, will result in a renewal at very deep levels.

This is a mechanism as old as life itself, but from which we have completely distanced ourselves due to the wide availability of food and sedentary lifestyle.

Learning to choose which nutrients to consume, when to consume them and when not to and, intercalate these periods in micro and macro cycles, could become the best, least invasive and most economical strategy that we currently have for maintaining health, reversing diseases, delaying aging and as a side effect … improving aesthetics (not bad for a side effect).

Throughout this journey, we will use all the science that we have available, in order to draw conclusions that bring us as close as possible to The Balance of Health.

In the next blogs, we are going to discuss carbohydrates, insulin and the related dysfunctions, like insulin resistance and diabetes.

 

 

 

 

References:

 

1 – Fasting: Molecular Mechanisms and Clinical Applications.

2 – mTOR Signaling in Growth, Metabolism, and Disease.

3 – Diet and exercise signals regulate SIRT3 and activate AMPK and PGC-1α in skeletal muscle.

4 – Expanding roles for AMPK in skeletal muscle plasticity.

5 – AMPK at the Nexus of Energetics and Aging.

6 – Regulation and function of AMPK in physiology and diseases.

7 – AMPK: a master energy regulator for gonadal function.

8 – Vascular AMPK as an attractive target in the treatment of vascular complications of obesity.