Welcome to Straight Talk on Health. I’m your host Dr. Chet Zelasko. Straight Talk on Health is a joint production with WGVU in Grand Rapids MI. I examine the world of health. Nutrition. Exercise. Diet. Supplementation. If there’s something new, I look at the science behind them, and let you know whether it’s real or not. You can check out other things that I do on my website drchet.com and sign up for my free emails.
“Grandpa – zombies are real! I’m not kidding.” Those are the words from my 7 year old grandson. He’s 9 now and he doesn’t buy it any more. But every video game, including educational ones (more about that later), seem to have zombies in them. Ever try to tell a first grader something isn’t real? They have to figure it out for themselves. But some people…
George Romero died about 8 years ago. If you don’t recognize the name, he was the director of the original “Night of the Living Dead,” the original gory zombie movie. Black and white. Filmed just north of the Pittsburgh area. The zombies were slow moving. Fast forward to today. The zombie genre has moved to fast moving zombies who seem to have increased strength and maybe even the ability to think.
The reason for zombies has changed. In the original movie, there was some vague reference to atomic energy. Recently, it’s moved from hazardous chemicals to viruses as in I Am Legend and Resident Evil. Even Pride and Prejudice and Zombies used bacteria or viruses as the cause. The question is regardless of the reason, is it possible? Could something from any of those sources cause people who have died to regenerate to come back to life? To be able to move, fast or slow, or even think?
No. I hate to mess up anyone’s alternate reality but it just can’t happen.
“Okay, Dr. Chet. Why are you doing this? I like those kinds of movies.” So do I, or at least I used to, but I am a scientist and that’s just the way I think. Could it be possible? Well….........let’s stick to actual zombies for now.
So again, no. Zombies are dead. Their hearts don’t beat so therefore there is no blood flow. Nutrients don’t get to tissues. Waste product build up. Signals can’t travel to muscles so therefore no contraction is possible. But probably the biggest reason zombies can’t exist has to do with the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell.
In order for the cells to have the energy to do everything they need to do, the mitochondria have to be able to produce energy. They can’t get nutrients. They can’t get oxygen. They can’t eliminate waste products—and damaging free radicals are a substantial by-product of energy production. No energy. No movement.
“Oh, come on. It’s just a movie.” I understand that but it has to make sense. When the movies were simple, as in the original, it was passive entertainment. But today, the types of complex activities that zombies perform exceed reality in a much greater way. Here comes the teachable moment.
If you’re not driving, touch your right index finger to your right thumb. Here’s just a very small glimpse of what has to happen for that to occur. You first have to decide to do that action. Then, your brain sends signals through a series of sensory nerve cells to the muscles involved in that action. This is not a direct route nor is it just a single nerve cell that controls all the muscles involved. There are several nerve cells that exit the brain, connect to other nerve cells in the spinal cord, which connect to more nerve cells as they exit the spinal cord, then travel down nerve cells to the muscles that control the muscles of the thumb and forefinger. At this point, each nerve cell can connect to more than a single muscle fiber that stimulates the muscles to contract.
But it’s not done yet. At this point, the muscle has to contract numerous individual muscle fibers in a specific sequence to begin the contraction. The number of biochemical processes that happen to allow that to happen would take an entire chapter in a physiology textbook to explain. This is the point where energy would be required and waste products to be eliminated—which also require energy. All that and more for just that simple movement—and if you decide to move them back to their original position, it all happens again.
Now, multiply that by millions of times per second for you to be able stand up and start to walk. You can see why the concept of zombies doesn’t make sense. But you should see why you need to exercise regularly. If you exercise, whether aerobic or weight training, you train every system involved to perform better and that includes the mitochondrion. The heart and blood vessels. The blood. The muscle cells. The sensory nerve cells. The motor nerve cells. Everything can work better with training.
But just for the fun of it, let’s say zombies are possible. At least you’d be in better physical condition to outrun, out jump, and over power any challenge like zombies we might face. Believe the possibility or not, what are you waiting for. Get off it and get after it.
We’re not done yet. There are two more points I’d like to make, one about video games and the other about—zombie cells. Riley loves video games, much like most kids. But with an N of only one subject, I think it’s helped him learn to read and to speak more clearly. I know most people condemn video games but unless Riley reads directions and names, he can’t play as well. If he can’t speak clearly, other players don’t know what he’s talking about. It’s helped him to learn to read better than other forms of reading. Just my opinion. Not trying to start a way of learning but that’s a benefit I’ve seen directly.
Remember how I dragged out that “Well...” talking about zombies. It turns out that there are zombie cells. They are also called senescent cells. They were first discovered in the early 1960s, the same decade as the original Night of the Living Dead. At first, these zombie cells were thought to be of no consequence. But they may not be as benign as we thought according to researchers at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center.
Senescent cells turn undead with aging and stress—they cease to replicate but also resist apoptosis. In other words, they refuse to die. They linger in cell cycle arrest and secrete pro-inflammatory toxins into their microenvironment. They are associated with chronic inflammation and thought to promote tumor growth. At this point, no one really knows because no one has studied them.
That’s about to change due to an NIH-funded study. Researchers aim to identify, define and track senescent cells across lifespan. The researchers will soon begin enrolling patients clinical trial. The study will compare three groups at baseline: young, lean subjects; older, lean subjects; and older subjects with a body mass index of 30 or higher. Investigators intend to examine the presence of cellular zombies in fat tissue—and whether senolytic drugs offer a benefit. As you probably figured out, senolytic means that they will eliminate the zombie or rather. senescent cells.
I don’t know. It seems they are doing what other studies do: sacrifice comparable groups due to labor or budgetary concerns. Why not began about the difference between men and women? Then groups of all ages? Then do the study they described. Time will tell how well this works. As for me, I’m all out of time so until next time, this is Dr. Chet Zelasko saying health is a choice. Choose wisely today and every day.
Reference:
1. BMJ 2018. doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k3312
2. AJCN. 2024. doi.org/10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.12.015
