The Groundbreaking Science of Water Fasting w/ Valter Longo | EP #78

30:48So it was all, it was made 100 % with somebody healthiest food in the world. And that was a good idea because I think this prebiotic then turned out to, to affect bacteria species, a lot of acid, be feed of bacteria. And so we saw this jump, which we didn't see for water only fasting. And in fact, water only fasting increased the the leakiness of the gut. When the FMD was decreasing the leakiness of the gut. So the fasting, what only fasting is to a world, but it caused good and bad. And the FMD seems to be much more consistent, turning out, for example, intestinal stem cells and increasing the level of these beneficial bacterial families and decreasing inflammation, et cetera.

31:36So I think that it makes sense, right? It makes sense that having this planned -based vegan composition plus the fasting property might avoid a lot of the potential problems, like licking a soda gout, and at the same time still give you the autophagy and give you lots of the benefits. So I would say that people, of course, can decide what they want to do. I mean, it's also good that water only fasting is free. If you must have it and you cannot buy anything, that's good. You know, I always say, you know, eventually, if that's all, if you cannot afford it in your own country, where there is not reimbursement for it, absolutely, do water only fasting because it's gonna be still effective.

32:26Yeah, I mean, just for folks, though, the ProLon diet is not expensive. It's a couple hundred bucks. you're going to spend a couple of bucks typically on food during the five days anyway, unless you're a college student eating ramen noodles. So, but let's, two questions I want to hit on. One, how many times per year should I, just in terms of wanting to be in maximal shape, should I consider doing this at once a month, once a quarter, once a year? And then what are the actual you keep referring to my studies but I know there's been a lot of human studies done. What are the results of the human studies of using the fasting mimicking diet?

33:06So frequency first and then what about some of the clinical, I think there's like 21 clinical studies that have been done by Prolon? Yes and there's probably another 30 either running or about to start now. So the results are very good and the frequency, for example, for that diabetes, the Heidelberg study and diabetic patients, and the lady in study and diabetic patient did it once a month for six to 12 months. But the idea would be you get the diabetic and we were surprised how compliant they were, by the way. So, it's pretty, fairly high compliance, which we did not expect. So most of the people could complete the 12 cycles in one year.

33:53And so then the idea is to move it even for the diabetic patient, maybe move it from 12 to 8 cycles in year two or maybe six cycles in year three and then eventually last and that. And so yeah, but then also it's a question of risk and, and you know, let's say, let's forget the diabetic. And let's say somebody is normal and wants to live longer. So obviously, probably doing a more is gonna be more beneficial, but we don't know what happens if somebody does one cycle of FMD per month for 40 years, right? So, I mean, we don't know, right? So then there is always, with everything that you do so frequently, there's always some risk.

34:43And that's why we say probably three or four times a year somebody is healthy and wants to optimize health And so now we we just started well actually six months ago. We started a 500 patient Clinical trial here in southern Italy and we already recruited the first 200 patients and And that's the first time where we do the FMD once every three months and And so that's gonna be very interesting study, right? Now we're moving away from the once a month effect, which is over and over, it's been very, very effective in healthy patient and patient with lots of different diseases. But now we're moving to once every three months, so we'll see what happens, but we're optimistic.

35:27And by the way, in the 2017 trial, we published on healthy patients, we saw reduction of IGF1, We're reduction of inflammation, blood pressure, cholesterol, fasting glucose, and diabetes trials that was confirmed, A1C reduction in all the trials. Pretty impressive reduction of A1C, so glycated hemoglobin, but also reduction in drug use. Right. So most of the patients were able to reduce drugs. And that's what we think it's also very exciting about this, you know, getting people to be disease -free. And the last thing I want to say, which was very surprising, and now it's the fifth trial we see the same.

36:14No loss of limb body mass, right? So the great majority of diets, even the Mediterranean diet, we just got finished in a trial. and after seven months, a subject lost about five pounds of muscle mass. But with the FMD, with four cycles or five days of FMD, we saw no reduction in muscle mass. And so, yeah, so that's very important. I think we look like we got it right in. So that's interesting because one of my My objective is adding muscle mass. So I'm eating 150 grams of protein per day and trying to do as much of that plant as I can, but I have some fish and chicken as well. And at 150 pounds, I'm targeting 1 gram per pound to maximize muscle and then adding my workouts onto that.

37:08And I've always wondered, would in fact the fasting mimicking diet, because I'd be off that protein for five days, hit me as a reduction in lean muscle mass. And you're saying, so far the results show you would not. Yes, especially in somebody, obviously, as you know, you have a very high protein intake. So we recommend there's a lot of studies, a lot less, but it's your choice, obviously. But somebody that has 150 grams of protein per day, we will expect maybe the opposite, meaning gaining more mass by 25 -minute diet. Also because what we suspect is that this break, like we see for insulin resistance, is a pass of the, well, we know that it is IGF1 resistance, right?

38:03So this growth, the central growth factor, at least has been shown for Alzheimer. But it's possible that by removing this, Genie IG, I want to be very lawful five days and then going back to very high, now you may increase the sensitivity of the receptor and therefore the receptor on the muscle mass. I mean, we don't know yet, we're looking at this right now, but but there's certainly a possibility that, you know, so it looks like all the regenerative effects of the fasting making diet are in fact due to the alteration of very low of these crop factors and relatively high levels of these crop factors and potentially the sensitization of the receptors.

38:48Yeah, one of the things that a lot of people don't realize and I really appreciate this This is, we are the result of hundreds of thousands or millions of years of evolutionary pressures. And as homo sapiens for the last, you know, call it a million years for round numbers, we've gone through periods of, you know, fasting, massive fasting and huge rewards. And it's this cycling that our body's gotten used to. but we no longer have cycling with McDonald's and Whole Foods, we're just taking in massive caloric intake all the time. And so this could be a critical part of activation of those gene pathways that are able to benefit from the cycling.

39:36Is that assuming one of your conclusions and one of your the thesis underlying this? Yes, absolutely. So there's probably a lot of junk that accumulates and a lot of organs that need rejuvenation and regeneration, but in the old days for probably the entire history of any organism, not just humans, starvation was just unavoidable. And so now for the first time in history, maybe the last 100 years or so, there's people, So a lot of people that we enroll in clinical trials that have never gone more than a couple days of fasting. And so that's probably the great majority of the population has never been exposed to any of this.

40:21And that's probably why the insulin resistance and the cholesterol, the high cholesterol and the high blood pressure, a lot of organs that are probably waiting for that moment of reset. So they don't know what to do. Waiting for their reset. And they know what to do and they become dysfunctional and that's a lot of this problem. So nobody has a high cholesterol at 20, right? So why is that? It may very well be that the organ and the system need to go back to its original function. I want to get to the idea of multi -system regeneration in a moment. But let me ask one other question first, which is around the notion of what diseases have you looked at treating with the fasting mimicking diet.

41:14So I heard you say cancer, I heard you say diabetes, obviously, what about inflammatory, general and inflammatory disease? is what, you know, what are the lists of things that, you know, FMD could be valuable in addressing? I think many, and the reason is that it's not the FMD that is doing the work, is the FMD that is triggering the body to really start over. right and yeah so we looked at inflammatory bowel disease, I mean multiple sclerosis, we finished one trial years ago and it was positive increase in quality of life, we just finished another trial and multiple sclerosis, we finished or we are about to finish the Alzheimer's trial, but thank clinical trials most with most published cancer and yes so there is a two trial that I think now I stand for an inflammatory bowel disease.

42:16And yes, so these are just some, I think there is probably another 20 or so that are running on all kinds of different diseases. Yes, so probably almost everywhere where ageing is a central factor or certainly dysfunction is a central factor, central component of the disease. Hey everyone, I wanna take a quick break from this episode to tell you about a health product that I love and that I use every day. In fact, I use it twice a day. It seeds DSO1 daily symbiotic. Hopefully by now you understand that your microbiome and your gut health are one of the most important modifiable parts of your health.

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44:40So you have an increased population of hematopoietic stem cells. And then when you repeat, they go to work and they essentially rejuvenate the immune system. And then we went on to show similar effects in the pancreas, in the gut, in the nervous system, And now we're working, for example, we have a paper in submission for kidneys. And yeah, so multi -system regeneration has to do with probably either the self -renewal of stem cells on one side or the reprogramming. So we see Yamannaka factors, these factors that can make somatic cells into embryonic like stem cells. We see Yamannaka factor. And by the way, we see different Yamanaaka factors being turned on in different organs, right?

45:33Which makes sense, right? So Yamanaaka that probably sort of used the brute force to reprogram cells. And the pancreas may not need all the factors, may only need a few. And so for example, when you do the FMD in refeedy, you see the pancreas showing a profile, a gene expression profile, very similar to the one activated the doing embryogenesis. And so that's how we know that it's a real program, a very coordinate a program, by the way, with different steps and lots of transcription factors and that are, orchestrating this rebuilding process. So for example, we could take the pancreas of a mouse, destroy it with a toxin, and then, and that's permanently irreversibly damaged, right?

46:27So And then we started the FMD cycles and then you see fairly rapidly, the there is reprogramming of the pancreatic ILS cells and then they start making insulin again. And that's a permanent effect. So now essentially we have regenerated the insulin producing beta cells of the pancreas. And similarly, we've shown it in many different systems. That's amazing. So basically this is a chance for the body, like you said, to clear away the old and dying cells and get rid of waste products and to trigger a period of regrowth and revitalization, which is a normal part of life, but because we are just feeding the body constantly, it has no need to do this in the past, right?

47:26This is a chance to give the body access to normal, normal cycles, fascinating. Let's talk about time -restricted eating and what, you know, just diets in general because there are thousands of diet books, Let me just check with you when I'm teaching people and the work that I'm doing for myself, just the basics. Say, there's no one diet that's right for a single individual. We have a lot of genetic and cultural backgrounds, but what I think is important is number one, eliminate sugar to the maximum degree possible and maximize whole plant intake to the maximum degree possible. If you had to say two things, would you agree with those two things are the most important actions for folks to take?

48:11Yeah, I'm in a sugar for sure and yeah, I think I generally agree. I mean, I will have proteins, but you put me on the spot because you eat a lot of proteins. No, it's not. I'm going to learn as well. So how much protein should a person take? And I'm, you know, for me, my goal is maximize muscle gain for a number of reasons. And if I wanted to maximize besides the weight workouts, how would, how much protein would you taken and how would you maximize muscle gain? Yeah, so I think eventually, I mean, the recommendation for people is about 0 .37 grams per pound, right? But a third of what you, what should we, but of course there's not for athletes.

49:00So the athlete, my recommendation is always being increase it until you're happy with the results, right? So you go from 0 .37 to 0 .60, if that allows you to achieve the muscle gain that you want, then that's it, you stop at 0 .60. And we suspect that maybe as I was saying earlier, possibly by having so much protein and having maybe very high IGF1, you could be over stimulating some of these growth pathways. Like insulin, you know, can lead to insulin resistance. Lots of insulin. So, yeah, obviously, if you eat so much protein, most people get some benefit, right? But the question is, could you get even more benefit if you ate less proteins?

49:51By both, and so, you know, we've finished like a five year study now on mice and in looking at how you optimize is frailty, muscle function and longevity, right? It's pretty tricky, right? So you need to have everything, there's different periods of life and different techniques. And then eventually you get a longevity extension and you get the frailty protection, right? So yeah, I would say probably much lower. And if it doesn't affect your performance and your muscle, So then I think you're much better off with let's say 0 .5 than one per pound. But still sugar reduction and that includes high glycemic index, you know, breads and white rice and so forth.

50:42I don't want to talk about it while you're in Italy, reducing your high glycemic intake. Yeah, it's tricky. I think the high glycemic index obviously in general is a bad thing. but at the same time, we always get comments about how I ate soup or that soup and the glycemic index go up. I mean, we suspect that if you're otherwise insulin sensitive, some of these spikes might actually be helpful, right? And maybe a contributing to signaling, translational signaling that actually helps you maintain a lean body mass. So the problem more then the glycemic index and glycemic index intake is too much of it, right?

51:26So when you have it all the time and then you have I insulin all the time, then insulin resistance, then you got a problem, right? So but I see your point, meaning like you're saying people, the attention span might be limited. And so if I say, if I make it complicated, then then people may be not remembering the way to do it. But I would say the spikes itself is not really an issue unless those spikes eventually turn into insulin resistance. And then you got a big problem. So, and this is same for the sugar, right? I mean, obviously we work on sugar, but yeah, the green majority of the people just have a excess sugar and that's a problem, right?

52:11And so I can see your point of saying, I mean, look, because there's no damage you're going to very low sugar. And so I think it's a good idea. But I mean, technically I'm thinking biochemically, there may be, we are a sugar machine, right? So, we in fact need to maintain the sugar as a level. If you start seeing patients that we follow in the clinics with Blaschugar 60, we worry, right? And if you see an old person with Blaschugar 60, you really have to worry, right? So you want to see a rather see a person with blood sugar, fasting glucose of 90, then 60, because of frailty and other issues, right?

52:55So I'm saying just a complicated story and I know that it's very hard to communicate a complicated story to millions of people. So yeah, in general, I agree with you. So let's talk about time restricted dieting and how many meals you should have per day. There's a lot of individuals who are, listen, I only eat one meal a day or I only eat between a six -hour window and an 18 -hour fast. I recently read Peter Tia's book that the time -restricted dieting actually had no beneficial effects when studied in a large population. What are your thoughts about that? I think that in general, if you look at all the studies, some of the large studies have shown no beneficial, I think, improvement compared to calorie restriction.

53:50But in general, it works. And it's beneficial for fasting glucose and lots of metabolic markers. The problem, if you skip breakfast, is that 16 hours is associated with a shorter lifespan, and a more cardiovascular disease. But if you don't skip breakfast, and then there are probably mostly benefits and not detrimental effects. I like as such in pandanals, I like that 12 to 13 hours fasting, for the time of city eating, because I think is showing already very good benefits. It doesn't require skipping breakfast. It doesn't get into the range where gallstone formation is increased. So I really like that 12, 13 hours of fasting per day.

54:38I always say I've never seen any negative facts of the 12, 13 hours. And if you think about safety first, that's probably a very good way to go. And then I practice actually skipping lunch and I've been doing it for 30 years now. And I think that there may be one of the safest meals that you can skip, especially if you replace it with a small snack. And I usually have a snack, let's say 5 pm, but my lunch is an espresso usually, Monday to Friday. But I also alternated with weekends where I eat, and I think it's good that it takes a while for the brain to get used to it. but after about two months, that lunch is no longer necessary for most people that we follow.

55:30And so now, yeah, the benefits of being able to, you know, skip the central meal, without really having a difficult time achieving that. Yeah. So if you eat dinner at, not typical Italian style, typical American style, If you had dinner at six and you're ending at seven, then you might have a breakfast at 13 hours later at 8am, skip lunch, and have a dinner again at six that evening. Yeah, that seems to be very safe. And I was on a very time -restricted, you know, 18 hours off cycle, 12 or 13 hours off is much easier. The reason I stopped that cycle was because I was trying to increase my protein intake and my ability, you can't eat that much protein in such a short period of time, you will not absorb it.

56:21You have to spread it out during the day, but that's a different conversation. Yeah, I think we very much look at the long -term safety, right? So, I use these five pillars of longevity, right? One of them is epidemiological data, and one of them is centenarian studies. We follow very closely, but centenarians have been doing it for a long time. And so yeah, we try to avoid things that we don't, it's like an uncertain territory or terrain. And certainly, a lot of these techniques may be very beneficial, but then get you into uncertain terrain. And we could get surprised in 20 years, as I was saying earlier, about lots of different things that we do.

57:09Well, let's take a second because in your book, the longevity diet, you do talk about the five pillars of longevity. I think people inherently know what they are, but I'd love if you would hit them again just for thoroughness. So what are the five things that centenarians are consistently doing that you're seeing? Not so much centenarians, but everybody. So the pillars have to do with this scientific and medical disciplines, the feed, the instructions, let's say. right, the recommendation. So one of the pillars is epidemiological data and one of the pillars is clinical study, right? So what happened if you take a lot of people and put them on a low sugar diver, so high sugar diet and one of the pillars is basic research and aging.

57:54So how do you make a mouse live longer, right? And can you make a mouse live longer consistently? And if you can't, that's not a good start, right? If somebody has an idea and the mouse doesn't live longer with that idea, and I would say it's not a good start for humans. And then Centenarian studies, right? So that's one pillar. So the whole Centenarian populations that we follow really teach us a lot. And we like to have a, and then the fifth pillar is complex system. You know, others are playing or a car or the space shuttle age, right? So we look at things that we build, we know very well and so what goes wrong with these machines and why.

58:38And yeah, so then the attempt of the five pillars to get to a common denominator, they mix it fairly unlikely to change in five years from now. So, oh, I got it wrong. I thought that this was good. And yeah, so I think the five pillars help getting a right, and I think help getting a right for a very long time. So just the epidemiological studies, for example, So I would take another 30 years to prove everything wrong, accumulate it so far and make analysis. So yeah, so I think that's a good way to approach it. So what are the five things, the five key pillars here? Just from your book, obviously one of them was physical activity, exercise, sleep, social engagement.

59:26Yeah, no, I didn't talk much about social engagement. I mean, although I think it's probably important, but I'm not an expert, so I let the imbuter and others talk about that. But I mean, we focus on time recidity, I mean, the longevity diet, which is a pescatarian low protein diet, which increases as people get older. So after 65 is higher in protein intake. So highly goome, high whole grain, nuts, et cetera, and maybe fish three times a week. Then the time for city eating 12, 13 hours, then 150 minutes of physical exercise a week, plus an hour of physical activity a day, like walking, for example.

1:00:16And then muscle training, maybe three or four times a week. Yeah, so those are the main and sleep, but again, I'm not an expert on sleep and so I read it, tell people to read the book by Matt Walker or others that, you know, truly specialize on that. But obviously that's a very important one. Fantastic. I just, I think those are the basic ceremony knows, but just it always helps to hear that and reinforce it. Yeah, and sorry, I forgot the fastening me again, right? So at 304 cycles of the fastening me again, I per year. So yeah, I'm thinking for myself once a quarter. I'm curious once you do that for five days and then you do it, you know, 90 days later.

1:01:06After the five days, is there any evidence of how long the benefits persist? Yes, so we published on that and we have another two or three clinical trials confirming long -term effects. So, after 90 days from the end of the last FMD, about 60 % of the significant changes were still there. Suggesting that it's slowly moving back and probably within six months, you're going back to where you came from, maybe with some improvements. But yeah, it doesn't last forever, but I think that three to six months, you're going to have continued benefits. So as we close out here, I'm curious, where's your research going next?

1:01:56What's exciting for you in the near future here? And if you had all of the funding research to do, all of the experiments you want to do, what would you want to do? Well, number one, I think I liked the disease part and now we're really now moving into this can be done in the works. And so that should go in the doctor's toolkit. So we're pushing very hard to get to conclusive data and hundreds of patients randomized, well done studies, studies published in leading journals. So cancer, I'm particularly excited about. I think that fasting and making that can serve as a wild card helping immunotherapy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, etc., etc.

1:02:42work better and maybe as we've seen for lots of patients go from disease progression delay to cancer -free survival or remission. So that's an exciting set to studies. And then diabetes, I think we're really there. We're trial number four or five. It's pretty clear. It can reverse. It can reduce drug use and reverse. Within a year we get 15 -20 % of patients that are diabetes -free and I think within two years, the particles, if they follow, it goes to maybe 50%. Although we haven't done that part yet. But so diabetes, I think it's the most conclusive one already. And we were excited about that.

1:03:27And yeah, so lots of our diseases. And then I think Alzheimer's also very interesting. I mean, obviously the drugs have not done very well with Alzheimer. and maybe as we don't forget the drugs or whatever regenerative intervention, plus the fasting making diet, I think that's something that we're very excited about. And then of course we want to take it, so half of my group now works on these Yamannaka factors and stem cell activation. and so we want to take it to the next level. So can David and Belmont and others have shown that you can reprogram the sales and we're basically saying can we do as well, but in a natural way, and now do we get there?

1:04:22Can we get these effects that Belmont and David had published on, can we get it? And what kind of fasting making that? How long is that going to have to be? And do we need anything else to add to the FMD, right? So, yeah, so that's what we're very excited about that. Because I think that also is going to be at the center of treating diseases as David and others are also talking about. So, yeah, so that's a very exciting short -term goal, by the way. I think in the next 10 years, we should put it to work. Fantastic. For those you're interested, if you go in Google Prolon, P -R -O -L -O -N, you can get that the company that manufactures it, El Nutra, something I like to do once a quarter.

1:05:13Walter, where can folks find out more about your research on what website? Yes, I can be followed on Instagram or Facebook, but then the createcures .org, create here that org is where the clinic is in Los Angeles and it falls a lot of people all over the United States and then we have the the Walter Longo foundation that org in Europe and so that's how we follow people. Those they cannot afford it. It's a nonprofit clinic. Those they cannot afford it. Don't have to pay as long as we have money to operate things but the yeah I recommend that you you call, you contact the foundation. And whether it's somebody with advanced stage cancer or somebody they just want to be healthier, that's probably the best way to go.

1:06:02And it's fairly inexpensive. Fantastic. Walter, thank you for your time. Thank you for your research and the work that you're doing and excited to spread the message about how you eat, what you eat, how much you eat, all of these things are critically important for our health. and you can do something about it. Anyway, a pleasure, as always. Thank you, my friend. My pleasure, Peter, my pleasure. Thank you. I want to take a moment to tell you about a Bunnett's 360, my year -round leadership mastermind, for people who want to go big, create wealth, and impact the world. It's also a singularity university's highest -level program.

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