Zombie is a popular buzzword these days. There are numerous TV shows dedicated to Zombies!
But what is a zombie?
A creature (usually human) that is more dead than live. It walks, it talks, it howls… but it doesn't think!
Doctors and scientists have co-opted the term (jokingly) "zombie cells" to mean aged, senescent cells in our bodies that have outlived their usefulness: they are more or less dead.
So, is that a problem?
Well, it turns out it's a very big problem.
Senescent cells are aged cells that stop functioning properly and can cause damage to surrounding tissues.
They lose the ability to grow or divide, and yet they refuse to die off, so they are a bit like “zombie cells.”
It's worse: these senescent cells spew out compounds that incite harmful systemic inflammation, inflicting even more damage.
Senescent cells are a major driver of age- related disease and dysfunction.
They even accelerate the aging process itself.1
The Dracula Experiment
This is shown by the fact that if we take the blood of young animals and inject it into senile animals (you can't do this with humans; shades of Dracula!) the older creatures are rejuvenated and act much younger.
That means either there is a "youthful" factor from the young animals being transferred.
Or there is a "senile" factor in the older creatures that is being somehow diluted. In fact it is the second of the two. As we get older, we accumulate "agedness" factor in the blood.
It turns out this senility factor is old and dying cells. If we can remove them, we feel rejuvenated and healthy again.
It doesn't need blood transfers.
We get the same happy result when we do fasting and keto. Keto triggers the removal of aged "zombie" cells, eaten up by macrophages and recycled, a process called autophagy (literally: eating self in posh old Greek).
This process is sometimes called "cellular housekeeping."
As a result, we feel vibrant, energetic and healthier than before. We also, coincidentally, get a rush of stem cells too, ready to go to work restoring and repairing the body's tissues.
In this context, targeting autophagy by natural products is considered a potential therapeutic strategy for the prevention and treatment of several disorders.
That's why I highly recommend intermittent fasting and keto. BUT IS THERE AN EASIER WAY? Oh, you bet!
There are nutrient compounds called senolytics (posh Greek for age dissolvers).
A number of these have been studied and some are really good at "zombie cell” elimination.
Check Wikipedia and it says this: A senolytic is among a class of small molecules under basic research to determine if they can selectively induce death of senescent cells and improve health in humans.
A goal of this research is to discover or develop agents to delay, prevent, alleviate, or reverse age-related diseases.
Here in one image is the result of taking good senolytic drugs (courtesy UK Daily Mail)