Autophagy is a metabolic process within your body that breaks down damaged materials into constituent amino acids and as a result acts to protect you from disease caused by these damaged cell components.

It was discovered in 2016 by Yoshinori Ohsumi, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2016 for his discovery

It’s well known that fasting will induce Autophagy, but also, reseach indicates that Keto dieting will induce Autophagy in the brain.

Here is an interesting study into the links between Atherosclerosis (the build-up of fatty material (atheroma) inside your arteries - eg Heart Disease, and Autophagy as a mechanism to regulate/reduce the Cholesterol that causes it.

Another on the effect of autophagy on arterial plaques https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8669172/.