The Dr. Hyman Show - How To Kill Zombie Cells To Slow Aging

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Mitopure and Athletic Greens. Each of us is made up of an estimated 30 trillion cells, all of which work together in harmony to perform all of the functions necessary for us to survive from day to day and year to year. But sometimes cells go rogue and don’t conform to the normal cell life cycle. When that happens, we end up with cells in our body that start to cause damage. These rogue cells, called senescent or “zombie” cells, release inflammatory chemicals that contribute to all manner of health issues—osteoarthritis, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, to name just a few. In today’s episode of my series I’m calling Health Bites, I am talking all about zombie cells—what they are, how they develop, and how we can get rid of them. This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Athletic Greens. Mitopure is the first and only clinically tested pure form of a natural gut metabolite called urolithin A that clears damaged mitochondria away from our cells and supports the growth of new, healthy mitochondria. You can get 20% off right now at timelinenutrition.com/mark by using code MARK at checkout. AG1 contains 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, whole-food sourced superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens to support your entire body. Right now, when you purchase AG1 from Athletic Greens, you will receive 10 FREE travel packs with your first purchase by visiting athleticgreens.com/hyman. Here are more details from the episode (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): What are zombie cells and how do they develop? (4:00 / 1:14)  The negative effects of zombie cells (4:53 / 2:39)  How to get rid of zombie cells (7:06 / 4:08)  Causes of zombie cells (8:19 / 5:08)  Natural and pharmaceutical compounds that kill zombie cells (11:17 / 8:00)  Lifestyle practices that reduce and kill zombie cells (15:24 /12:20)

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. If you learn a little bit about how to attack and eliminate zombie cells from your body, you can stop them from accumulating, you can prevent all sorts of health issues from heart disease to dementia to cancer, and live a longer, healthier life. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark. Now I always say I want to live to be 120, but I only want to do that as long as I'm feeling great and I'm still able to do all the things that I love. Aging well requires some mindfulness and intention, but that doesn't mean it has to be hard. As I've dug into the research

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our health and feeling better at any age. And that is why I'm a huge fan of AG1 from Athletic Greens. Since our soils are so damaged, the plants can't extract the nutrients because there's no living matter anymore. And we're up against issues like chronic stress and toxicity and sleep deprivation like never before. And our bodies need some extra help getting all the right information to work properly. Now that information comes in the form of vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients and good bacteria, all of which help our cells remember how to efficiently tackle their important jobs. So one of the things I use every day to support my diet is AG1 from Athletic Greens. With just one scoop of AG1, I get 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, whole foods, sourced superfoods, probiotics, adaptogens, and more to support

my entire body. Even with a really healthy diet, it's hard to hit the mark for all our nutrient needs, so I feel better knowing I have some extra help from AG1. Unlike other supplements and powders out there, AG1 is third-party tested and made without GMO, nasty chemicals, or artificial anything. It actually tastes great, kind of like a tropical green drink. I like it on its own mixed with water, but it also works really well in most smoothies. If you're curious about trying AG1 from Athletic Greens for yourself, right now they're offering my community 10 free travel plaques with your first purchase.

All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com forward slash hyman. Again, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash hyman to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy, a place for conversations that matter. And today I'm bringing you a health bite to improve your health because taking small steps daily can lead to big changes in your health over time. Now, let's talk today about zombie cells. Okay, what are zombie cells? We're going to get into that and why they're so important and why you need to learn why you get them and how

to kill the zombie cells, which are very hard to kill. Now, each of us is made up of about 30 trillion cells. They all work together in harmony to do all sorts of things in your body to survive day to day and year to year. But sometimes the process of regulating ourselves, of replication, you know, killing the old cells that need to be killed, recycling the parts that need to be recycled, it goes awry. And it goes awry for a lot of reasons we're going to get into, but have to do with our really crappy environmental lifestyle and toxins now when cells don't properly die or get recycled through a die through a process called apoptosis which is basically like just means that cells kind of die normally um or uh they're not able to be cleaned up through this process of autophagy, which sort of means self-cannibalism or self-eating, they kind of aren't useful as cells anymore, but they become these zombie cells.

And these zombie cells, turns out, are a key part of the aging process, or what we call senescent cells. Senescence means the process of aging. I like to call them zombie cells because they're cells that never die. And they're not just floating around just doing nothing. They're producing this really nasty set of compounds that are driving inflammation throughout the body. And then they make other cells into zombie cells. So they just accelerate the collection of zombie cells in

your body. And the more zombie cells you have, the less well your body works, the faster you age, the sooner you die. So the key is to learn about why you get them and stop the zombie cell accumulation, the zombie apocalypse, and to learn really cool tools about how to kill the zombie cells. And we're going to talk about what those are in a minute. So stay tuned for this. Now, these inflammatory chemicals, we call them cytokines. And when the zombie cells are active, they're producing, they're doing basically nothing except producing these nasty sets of inflammatory signals and chemicals that are

causing everything from heart disease to cancer to osteoarthritis, high blood pressure, Alzheimer's, and the list goes on. And it's one of the underlying things we call the hallmarks of aging. And I just finished my book called Young Forever, The Secrets to Your Healthiest, Longest Life. And it's coming out February 21st, 2023. So make sure you get it. It's going to go way more into detail, all this. But bottom line is there are about 10 major things that go wrong in the body that explain all disease, especially all the diseases of aging. And in medicine, we basically go and treat the symptoms and not the cause. Hallmarks are going upstream and working on the root causes of the diseases. But there's also the causes of

the hallmarks, which I get into in the book. We're not going to go down that rabbit hole today, but the problem with zombie cells is we are getting more and more of them and we are not able to actually help our bodies stay healthy. So let's talk about the zombie apocalypse and why it's so important and how we have to think about fixing this problem. Now, the zombie cells are not killed by regular programmed cell death. You know, you've got 30 trillion cells, but your cells are constantly turning over, some every minute, some every day, some every week, some constantly turning over some every minute some every day

some every week some every year some every you know decade but your cells turn over in every part of your body and and that process is highly organized and it's a very smart process of either killing the cells through programmed cell death we call apoptosis which clears out old damaged cells and then this process called autophagy which actually also basically like a pac-man will eat the the dying cells and or the old cells and recycle the parts like when you when you for example fast your body can't use food to make new parts so it basically breaks down old cells and uses them for recycled parts. But the problem is sometimes apoptosis, autophagy don't work and the cells don't really quite die and they become what we call zombie cells or senescent cells. Now, why do you get zombie

cells? Well, it can be caused by DNA damage, which is caused by our inflammatory lifestyle, toxins in our diet, processed food, sugar, obviously all the environmental toxins that we're exposed to, 84,000 toxins in the last 100 years, only 1% have been tested for safety. It can be when we're reproducing in our cells, when we're replcing our cells or replicating our cells, we use these little things at the end of our chromosomes called telomeres to keep the DNA healthy and proper. And when you have these short telomeres because as you age, your telomeres shorten, sometimes that process

will not really lead to the death of the cells, but actually to actually zombie cells. So the predominant reasons though are chemical and toxic stress or inflammatory diet and lifestyle and the things that we actually have control over. And these accelerate all the age-related diseases, cancer, heart disease, liver disease, dementia, cataracts, Parkinson's, arthritis, muscle loss, all that stuff and more, obviously, are affected by these zombie cells. That's why they're one of the key factors in aging. And, in fact, there's billions of dollars being spent on looking at how do we kill these zombie cells and what do we do about it. Now, while these zombie cells wander around your body, they secrete really dangerous molecules.

These molecules are called cytokines and all kinds of other molecules with big scientific names. Basically, they drive inflammation. And then they also cause more zombie cells. So the neighboring cells kind of rapidly become senescent or zombie cells too. And that leads to this vicious cycle. So as we age and our immune system stops functioning as well, which is why as we get older, we're more susceptible to cancer, more susceptible to infection because our immune systems aren't as strong.

And so we see more older people dying with COVID. Our body can't really handle these zombie cells at all. And it just makes this whole thing worse. So you get into this whole inflammatory cascade. These inflammatory molecules flood your body. They cause damage. And they cause something called inflammaging, which is one of the hallmarks of aging as well that I talk about in my book. But inflammaging is driving so many of our chronic diseases.

Everything you know about as far as a chronic illness is usually caused by inflammation, heart disease, obviously cancer, diabetes, obesity, dementia, even things like depression, autism, all these diseases that we see out. In addition, obviously autoimmune diseases all are connected to inflammation. So what's interesting though is if we can break this cycle of the self-perpetuating zombie apocalypse and kill these zombie cells, which we're learning about through new research, we can actually slow the process of aging down, maybe even reverse it. Now what's really cool is that there's these natural and pharmaceutical compounds that actually kill them and stop the progression of inflammation and allow for your

body to repair tissue and rejuvenate and remodel. And these compounds are called senolytics. So senescence is aging. Lytic means to stop or blow up or break. So you basically stop the process of these senescent cells. And senolytics are a new category of both natural compounds and pharmaceutical compounds. Now, one really cool study actually used something called quercetin. Quercetin is a natural compound. It's found in apples and onions.

And it actually has so many beneficial effects. It's antiviral. It actually can be helpful in COVID. It helps gut healing. It's like a natural antihistamine. It's an amazing compound. It actually can be helpful in COVID. It helps gut healing. It's like a natural antihistamine. It's just, it's an amazing compound and it comes from our food. And they basically combine this with a leukemia chemo drug called Dasinib, which was incredibly effective in killing zombie cells. And they did this in mice and their lifespan was extended by 36%. That means if you're

like a human, you live to 80, that means you're going to live to like over 120 if you take these two compounds. Now it hasn't been done in humans yet, so I wouldn't start doing that. But Quercetin is benign. It's relatively inexpensive. It's accessible and there's no downside and potentially a lot of upside. It's one of my key parts of my longevity strategy. Now, other natural compounds also kill zombie cells. Now, in the edible plant kingdom, there's about 25,000 different compounds we call phytochemicals. These molecules are produced by plants. They're their defense systems.

They help defend against harsh conditions and predators. But our bodies use them. What's really interesting is that these are plant compounds. What would they have to do with us? But we co-evolved with these plants, I believe, in this process of symbiotic phytoadaptation. And or, you know, we kind of co-evolved with these compounds to use them for different bodily functions. And I think this is a really important thing to understand, because when we start to understand that food is medicine, and that actually there are certain ways that our bodies are lazy and

use these things to help regulate our function, we know about this. For example, we know about resveratrol, which is a compound from red wine that apparently helps extend life in animals and rodents and so forth. Well, how does it work? It works on certain pathways like CERT1, which is a regulator of aging. So we know that these actual plant compounds bind to different receptors and pathways in our body, just like medication, and actually work in ways that activate things in a way that's optimal. Rather than blocking or inhibiting a pathway, which most medication does, it actually helps optimize function and improve the systems working. Now, what are some of these senolytic compounds?

And by the way, there's a lot of money being thrown at drug discovery to try to find drugs that are senolytics, but you don't have to look very far to find plant compounds that are senolytics. And my favorite is called fisetin. It comes from strawberries, persimmons, apples, cucumbers, and onions. Super important. It's part of my daily regimen. And it's shown to be a very powerful senolytic. Luteolin, another plant compound found in carrots, broccoli, artichokes,

onions, cabbage cabbage apple skins of course tim we talked about it's uh i mean you can get in food as well apples grapes berries broccoli citrus fruit cherries curcumin which is found in turmeric which is a curry spice uh there's also alkaloids found in in long peppers all all kinds of things that we can use to actually activate these things. Now, there are pharmaceuticals that are coming out to look at this, but it probably is going to be not too far in the future that we're able to look at taking a supplement with the right combination of these natural senolytics, maybe new pharmacologic compounds that rest and stop this zombie apocalypse. And there's one other thing that works besides food,

which is hyperbaric oxygen. In Israel, they did a long-control study showing that better than actually any plant or pharmaceutical compounds that we've discovered so far, that hyperbaric oxygen, which is where you go in a, let's say, decompression chamber, 100% oxygen, they put you in an atmosphere too under the water,

or basically it'd be like 33 to 66 feet under the ocean. And that much pressure will actually create an anti-inflammatory state, will create this process whereby you both lengthen telomeres and you kill zombie cells, which is pretty amazing. So I'm kind of excited about actually how we're using these new and innovative therapies to help us stave off aging and to help reverse what's going on. Also, intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating can help. Exercise is really key. Hot therapy, saunas, hormesis. It's great we've talked about hormesis on the podcast, but essentially, it's a process of something that doesn't kill you, but makes you stronger. For example, like exercise, if you tear your muscles, you're injuring yourself, but you also come back stronger.

So heat therapy is one of those things. cells by a healthy lifestyle and to increase the killing of the zombie cells by both lifestyle habits, as we talked about, hyperbaric oxygen and natural plant-based analytics, and maybe even around the corner, more advanced combinations of these compounds or even pharmaceutical drugs that help to kill the zombie cells. So I probably told you way more than you want to know about zombie cells, but I encourage you to read my book, Young Forever, coming out soon. It's going to explain how all this is connected. But if you learn a little bit about how to attack and eliminate zombie cells from your body, you can stop them from accumulating. You can prevent all sorts of health issues from heart disease to dementia to cancer and live a longer, healthier

life. Okay, that's it for today's Health Byte. Be sure to share with your friends and family, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you to all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements, to gadgets, to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health.

And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S and sign up for the newsletter

and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.

If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.