What would happen if you made your cells eat themselves?

Take my friend, oh what name shall I invent to hide his identity, Ignatius. Iggy, let’s call him, has chronic stress in certain areas of his life, and is a lot more rotund than would be thought healthy. His diet is standard western, hence rubbish, he drinks ad lib (good name for a drink, you heard it here first) and wears trainers but rarely exercises. Not only do the stairs seem a lot steeper these days, he sometimes has little memory lapses.

Iggy doesn’t know it, but he has chronic inflammation in lots of his cells, including plaques, or neurofibrillary tangles, in his brain. But he doesn’t think there are any real problems because, despite his belly and breathlessness, he can get through his working day just fine, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?

So there’s this thing called apoptosis, or the scheduled dying-off of cells. Under…