I have become increasingly interested in senescent cells. These are cells that have shut down due to damage, but have not gone through apoptosis. They are often described as zombie cells, as they don't die, and have a deleterious effect upon surrounding tissue. There is an increasing amount of evidence that senescent cells play a role in age-related decline, and that clearing them extends healthy lifespan. IMHO senescent cells are part of Mother Nature's way of making sure you die on schedule.
Some molecules have senolytic properties, meaning they clear senescent cells (typically inducing apoptosis in them). One such molecule is fisetin, which is a naturally occurring flavonoid. Here's an article with a pretty striking effect of fisetin in mice:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30279143
Never trust just one article. However, there is a growing heap of evidence that these senolytic flavonoids are a good thing to include in your diet.
Anyway, for the hell of it, I decided to see if I could make a smoothie that was stacked in senolytic flavonoids. This is what I came up with:
That's strawberries (high in Fisetin, also has Quercetin, Kaempferol), persimmon (has Myricetin, Fisetin), onion (High in Quercetin, also has Myricetin, Fisetin, Kaempferol, Luteolin), and parsley (high in Myricetin, also has Fisetin, Quercetin, Kaempferol, Luteolin). I was guided by this paper:
https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/130/9/2243/4686539
It's awful. I think I am going to add oranges or apples. They also have a good amount of flavonoids, and might make this thing more palatable.
Uhhh... you could make some onion & parsley salsa and wash it down with a strawberry-persimmon smoothie.
See it's shit like this that makes the rest of us ignore you when you espouse the benefits of Soylent. You're like one step away from being sane but "maybe strawberries and onions will taste bad together" is like this insight that you're too focused to accomplish. ;-)
The onions are unfortunate. But it is in the neighborhood of a salad with onions and a raspberry vinaigrette.
I picked up some Quercetin tablets, so I could drop the onion and throw a couple tablets in, but I hate supplements as you never know about the quality control. Dropping the onion and adding apple would make for a pretty tasty drink.
The tough thing is the dose. For the human equivalent of fisetin that was used in this study, you need to eat about 2g of the stuff, which means about 14lbs of strawberries. That's probably a toxic amount of strawberries.
- The tough thing is the dose. For the human equivalent of fisetin that was used in this study, you need to eat about 2g of the stuff, which means about 14lbs of strawberries.
How... often must one eat 14lbs of strawberries? Because I'll be honest I've never seen a recipe that makes me question the LD50 of a fruit before.
I have a pal that just went for it with fisetin supplements. He reported no observable ill effects, except for itchy skin after eating more than a bottle. He has 30 years on me, and is in senolytics R&D. Don't try this at home.
I'm going to give it more time, and do some experiments (in the lab) myself before replacing a smoothie.
That's a compelling argument for adding onions to my dinner. I like onions fine, I'm just a little too lazy to cut them up. It isn't a compelling argument to make an onion/strawberry smoothie, though.
Dude how do you not own a benriner by now?
I'll be honest. I don't really like mine, despite the fact that every review agency for the past fifteen years keeps arguing it's the best. And it appears it's been updated a couple times in the interim so it's way better than it was. But it'll turn an onion into shrapnel with two chops and a dozen strokes. I can hack that shit up so fine it disappears into ground beef.
My mom would say "that's just one more thing to wash!" Meaning I'm too lazy to wash stuff."
As long as they're dishwasher safe (safe enough), I should get one. I do have a dishwasher.
I can also confirm tonight that adding chopped onions to tacos is delicious. Still uncertain is if I'll now live forever.
Found some curious articles. Seems like cooking at moderate temperatures releases compounds from cell material without degrading them.
Key takeaways are:
1) don't heat fats/oils to smoking point (150+C/302+°F) while cooking vegetables
2) if you're making soup, add acid (vinegar, tomato/tomato paste, lemon, yogurt, creme fraiche, etc.) to preserve phenolic compounds (particularly fisetin).
In general, heating had a positive effect on all four flavonoids. For instance, the total flavonoid content in the red onion variety (Q + QMG + QDG + IMG) increased from 9.34 μmol/g DW to 9.70 μmol/g DW on heating at 120°C for 30 minutes and then decreased to 5.40 μmol/g DW at 150°C. In all the studied onion varieties, the total flavonoid content increased up to 120°C, and then decreased at 150°C...
The total phenolic content was significantly increased after heating at 80°C, 100°C, and 120°C for 30 minutes each...
Heating at 150°C for 30 minutes decreased the total phenolic content for all of these onion varieties. Different processing steps such as boiling, sauteing, frying, and roasting can be used to liberate phenolic compounds from various plants...
However, simple heating reportedly cannot cleave covalently bound phenolic compounds; however, far-infrared treatment can cleave the bond;
Some results were obtained based on the changes in the k values under different pH values and temperatures. The first is that fisetin was more stable than quercetin, giving smaller k values in all cases. The second is that the degradations of fisetin and quercetin were sensitive to medium pH, especially at alkaline pH values.
Flavonoids in aqueous solutions show instability, resulting in concentration loss (i.e., degradation)....These mentioned studies shared similar conclusion to the present data, supporting that fisetin and quercetin were more stable (but instable) under acidic (and alkaline) conditions.