ApoptosisProgrammed cell death

Apoptosis is programmed cell death: an orderly, energy requiring process in which a cell dismantles itself and its remains are cleared by neighbouring cells without provoking inflammation. It is the opposite of necrosis, the messy death that follows injury and does provoke it.

It is essential rather than unfortunate. Billions of your cells die this way every day, removing cells that are damaged, infected, no longer needed or potentially dangerous, and the process shapes tissue during development, including separating fingers in an embryo.

Cancer is in large part a failure of it. Cells that should self destruct when their DNA is damaged instead survive and divide, which is why many cancer treatments work by restoring or forcing the apoptotic pathway.

Too much of it is also a disease mechanism. Excessive apoptosis contributes to neurodegenerative conditions and to the muscle loss seen in some chronic illnesses.

In muscle it plays a role in remodelling after training, and in the loss of motor neurons and fibres with age that contributes to sarcopenia. Regular exercise appears to normalise apoptotic signalling in ageing muscle, which is one of many mechanisms behind why training preserves tissue.

It is often confused with autophagy, which is worth separating: autophagy is a cell recycling its own components to survive, while apoptosis is the cell dying in an organised way.

In practice this is background biology with no consumer action attached, and any supplement claiming to regulate apoptosis is selling a mechanism rather than an outcome.