Fasting is the abstention from eating and sometimes drinking. From a purely physiological context, “fasting” may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight, or to the metabolic state achieved after complete digestion and absorption of a meal.
Fasting is the voluntary abstinence from food and drink for a period of time, while autophagy is a cellular process that removes damaged or dysfunctional components from cells.
Fasting can trigger autophagy, but it is not the only way to induce autophagy. Other factors that can induce autophagy include stress, infection, and damage to cells or DNA.
Intermittent fasting is a recent popular dietary trend. Peoples of some cultures have been fasting for thousands of years for health or spiritual reasons. And each day we ‘break the fast’ with the first meal of the day no matter what time it is eaten.
