When attempting to take the natural route to healing psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis, or any disease for that matter, the key is to create an environment within your body that will induce healing. Rather than taking medications to suppress your symptoms, natural healing requires that you use your understanding of nutrition to develop healthy habits that will free up the defense systems within your body to address the root cause of your symptoms. One of the most valuable lessons you can learn in addressing this root cause of your psoriasis, eczema, or dermatitis is how to promote a process known as autophagy.  

What is autophagy?

To put it simply, autophagy is a process of cellular regulation in which the body seeks out and eliminates toxins and dysfunctional cells while also simultaneously regenerating new healthy cells. It is basically a process of survival of the fittest within the body where the healthy cells feed off of the weaker cells resulting in a decrease in disease causing agents and an increase in total body functionality

I often see people refer to the metaphor of a kitchen to symbolize the autophagy process. For the sake of the metaphor, let your body be symbolized by your kitchen. Let’s say you get home from work and you make dinner and then eat it. After dinner, you clean the counters, throw out any scraps, and throw your dirty dishes in the dish washer. When you wake up in the morning for work the next day, your kitchen will be clean and fresh. This is an example of efficient autophagy. 

Now, lets say you’ve had a long day at work and you make your dinner and eat it just as you did in the other example. Except this time, you don’t wipe down the counters, you leave little food remnants laying around, you forget to take out the garbage and you leave some of your unwashed dishes in the sink. It’s ok you’ll get it tomorrow right? But you don’t and day after day this mess slowly piles up and you then are stuck with a stinky dirty kitchen that is in some serious need of a detox. This scenario obviously represents poor autophagy.

So how do you promote autophagy and avoid or correct this sort of toxin build up? Autophagy is a bodily defense mechanism that kicks into overdrive when it feels that your body is under attack in a sense. In order to wake up the autophagy process, you must develop certain habits that put positive stress on your body. You basically have to trick your body into entering survival mode. Below I have listed 5 of the best ways to promote autophagy.  

5 practices that promote autophagy

1. Fasting/intermittent fasting

Fasting and intermittent fasting is the absolute number one way to promote autophagy. When you fast for long enough, your body will eventually use up all of its primary energy. Once this conventional energy source is expended, your body will then resort to feeding off of itself in order to survive. Scientifically, this bodily happening is tied to the activation of AMPK (activated protein kinase). 

Autophagy is typically a very quite process that flies under the radar. That is until the body is put under a certain type of stress. If you want to find a way to clear your skin through the utilization of the process of autophagy, there is not better way than fasting. If you want to learn some more about how you can utilize fasting to heal your skin disease, click this link to be redirected to my ultimate fasting guide blog post. 

Engaging in longer water fasts that last for days or even a couple weeks is a great way to get a jumpstart on your healing process and really kill off some toxins while regenerating your body. With that said, the practice of intermittent fasting is extremely effective as well as this is a principle that you can apply to your every day life to promote constant efficient autophagy. By refraining from eating for a designated period of time each day (say 15-20 hours) you are giving your body a chance to clean itself out and revitalize itself day after day. 

2. Restricting calorie consumption

This practice sort of ties in with the first one in that your body is obviously going to burn through its energy sources much quicker if you eat fewer calories. Overeating in general is often the culprit for the toxin build up and poor autophagy in our bodies to begin with. If you are eating way too much food for your digestive system to handle, you are not allowing your body any time to relax and heal itself. It is constantly trying to keep up with all of the food that it has to labor to process. 

I am definitely not saying that you should starve yourself all the time and go through your days hungry and without much energy. All I am saying is that you should gain an understanding of how many calories you need to eat in a day in order to be satiated and eliminate all of the foods that aren’t essential to fueling and building your body. 

3. Eating a high fat/low carb diet

The reason why high fat/low carb diets such as the ketogenic diet are great for promoting autophagy is because they induce bodily occurrences that mimic a fasted state. When you follow a ketogenic diet, your body switches over from using glucose (carbs) as its primary energy to ketones (fats). This switching of fuel sources is very similar to the process that occurs when you are in a fasted state. 

Another reason why high fat diets are great for autophagy is because fats are a very satiating macronutrient. The more satiated you are, the less calories you are ultimately going to eat. It has been shown that people who follow high fat/low carb diet approaches tend to sort of naturally restrict their calories as the food they are eating is satisfying them for a longer period of time. 

Although I think it is a great approach, I don’t think that the ketogenic diet is the end all be all of diets. I personally follow a moderately high fat/low carb plan but it’s not as strict as keto as I include fruits and some occasional starches. If the ketogenic approach works for you, then keep it going. It’s a great tool. Just know that there are other ways to go about healing and living a healthy lifestyle. 

4. Eating foods that promote autophagy

Aside from fasting, limiting your calories, and eating high fat/low carb, there are certain foods that are effective autophagy boosters. These foods are great for promoting autophagy due to the fact that they assist in activating AMPK. Here is a list of a few of my favorite autophagy engaging foods and how to include them in your diet. 

• Cruciferous vegetables- broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, collard greens… Cruciferous veggies are simple to include in your diet as they are all typical vegetables that people eat. Eat some broccoli with dinner, have a collard green salad, or throw some kale in your smoothie. 
• Turmeric- Turmeric is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory herbs found in nature. You can cook with it, put it in your teas or juices, you can even stir some in with a warm glass of almond milk. 
• Ginger- Ginger is one of my favorites. Personally, I love throwing a big hunk of ginger in my juices or just a small thumbnail sized piece in my smoothies. 
• Green tea- Green tea is another autophagy boosting agent that is a simple add on to your daily life. Simply have cup of green tea in the morning on an empty stomach or shortly before your first meal.

5. Engaging in intense exercise

Engaging in intense exercise is another great way to promote autophagy. The type of stress that your body is under during intense exercise induces a positive biochemical change that boosts autophagy amongst other things. 

Although slower paced exercise such as walking or jogging is great as well, it is the intense exercises that are really going to get your body to reach that point of positive stress and promote the cellular regeneration process. 

A good way to look at this is not to focus on how much time you are spending exercising, but rather how hard you are working. An intense workout that lasts for a half hour is better than an hour of low intensity exercises. As with anything in life, you’re going to get out what your put in. 

Conclusion

Autophagy is an invaluable tool that you can use to take your skin healing regimen to the next level and get your health back on track so that you can enjoy what life has to offer. Although there is no replacement for consistency and dedication, learning to develop the right healing habits is a major part of the battle when it comes to natural healing. Take this information on autophagy and implement it into a diet plan based on whole foods and you have a recipe for success.