Dr. Michael Greger

Sure, sure, sure.

They're like, okay.

So they release these inflammatory compounds, signal the immune system, and it comes and clears out these so-called zombie cells that are no longer participating in the body, actively spewing this what's called senescence-associated SASP,

But okay, the problem is, this works great when we're young.

Unfortunately, our immune system starts to decline with age.

And so what happens is our immune system's ability to clear out these cells declines such that our body's tissues get littered with these senescent cells spewing out inflammation.

And one of the reasons why levels of inflammation climb with age, so you can do these kind of blood tests of systemic inflammation like C-reactive protein and tumor necrosis factor, IL-6, etc.,

and they all go up, and so there's a term, inflammation.

And a big part of this is these cells, which our body should get rid of, but unfortunately, our ability to do that declines with age.

And so, two-pronged approach.

First, we prevent cells from going prematurely senescent, so they should make it to 50, but if they suffer damage to their DNA from free radicals, from oxidative damage to their DNA,

As a protective mechanism, because it could cause mutations or something, they kind of go out to pasture early.

And so we can decrease oxidatives just by flooding our body with antioxidant-rich foods like the berries and greens and really healthy foods.

Okay.

So one, so we prevent the premature senescence.

That's the first thing.

And the second is we look for senolytic compounds, ways to clear these zombie cells from our bodies.

There's been a number of drugs that have been put to the test.

Unfortunately, these drugs have some severe side effects.

And so there are certain medical conditions in which synethin cells play a key role, in which case the benefit-risk analysis might actually support use of some of these toxic drugs.