The old ones who do not look old.
Each shift starves out worn-out cells that no drug has matched. Not immortality. A slower gear.
Hormetic senolytic programme
Metabolism · Senescent cellsPlate · LCAN · Hormetic senolytic programme · theoretical reconstruction
Senescent cells failing first under the ATP crash of the shift and clearing. stays on. The old ones who do not look old are running a monthly cull. The plate is a cell that did not survive the night, which is the point.
Senescent cells survive by running expensive anti-apoptotic programmes — BCL-2, PI3K/AKT, HSP90. Under the extreme ATP depletion of Stage Three gluconeogenesis those programmes fail first. The monthly shift is, incidentally, a senolytic event of a completeness no pharmaceutical has matched: zombie cells clear, SASP load drops, tissue function resets. -TERT keeps telomerase on. The NAMPT axis maintains NAD⁺ and sirtuin signalling.
Longevity here is not haemophagic immortality. It is a slower slope: a body put through a hormetic catastrophe twelve times a year and rebuilt. The does not stop ageing. The Lycian ages in a different gear.
Ch. 13A
Werewolves in Theory