what are you trying to do that’s uh going to change the world I think that there’s a lot of work around these blue zones around the world a lot of them in Europe and Italy and Greece in Japan what’s going on there that is driving people to get to a centenarian and supercentenarian level thinking about the blue zones and and thinking about what are the healthiest food in the world ingredients in the world so calor restriction as you mentioned can extend lifespan but water only fasting is something that maybe 1% of people could do you know kind of like chronic color restriction maybe one or two% everybody Welcome to moonshots Peter dandis here the conversation we’re about to have is with Dr Walter Longo uh he is a professor at USC and he’s the creator of something called the fasting mimicking diet have you ever heard of it it’s a way to painlessly reduce your chloric intake for a 5-day period that has incredible impact on all kinds of
[00:01:02] diseases like diabetes inflammatory disease inflammatory bowel disease even cancer you know what you eat can change the course of your disease and really potentially extend your lifespan uh one of the incredible thinkers the uh author of the longevity diet we’re going to have a conversation about intermittent fasting about all the details around food this is one of my favorite subjects because it’s something easily done so if you’re longevity fan like me let’s jump in before I do let me just mention I love sharing the incredible conversations I have with you I’m committed to delivering the smartest individuals to you and having conversations that are in depth in terms of inspiration and guiding and Science and Technology if that’s of interest to you please subscribe uh let’s do this together uh when you subscribe it lets me know that you’re interested in these subjects all right onwards to our episode everybody Peter here welcome to
[00:02:00] moonshots uh we’re going to be discussing a topic today that uh I’m super excited to learn about alongside with you and we’ve talked about you know sleep and exercise and supplements let’s talk about diet today uh Dr wter Longo as I introduced is really one of the world’s experts in this area wter it’s a pleasure to have you here I’m looking forward to talking about the science and the practice of how and what and how much you should eat uh wter normally you’re at USC just down the road for me but today you’re across the Atlantic what part of Italy are you summering in right now I’m actually in southern Italy in a region called Pula well a pleasure so let’s be let’s begin I’m super curious um your work is the you know the the Cornerstone of a lot of conversations around uh around fasting fasting mimicking some of the term will be talking about the science you’ve done
[00:03:02] a multitude of clinical studies here and it really has changed the way I think about uh about what I eat when I eat how much I eat um but how did you start this work where where were you when you started thinking about dieting um as part of uh of the longevity uh area Focus yes I actually started very early I was a student of Roy wall for the aucla and he was my mentor PhD mentor and Roy was at the time probably the most famous person in the world for for nutrition and Longevity and he was working on something called calorie restriction uh and in fact when I met Roy he was not a UCLA he was actually inside of this place called Biosphere 2 which was a a sealed environment in Arizona and him and other seven people locked themselves up in that in that environment and stay there for 2 years um so it was um I guess I I had a a a
[00:04:05] major um moment let’s say uh a major exposure to this world and and and Roy was a little bit crazy but I think he was a real Pioneer and a real dreamer and uh so that was uh they made a big difference on me and then after that I end up uh back to the biochemistry Department working on starving bacteria and starving yeast I think also in inced by Roy and the fact that you he had been working on color restriction but I went much further and so I just say what if I starve bacteria and yeast what happens then and um and since then it was 1992 93 that’s all I mean I focus on that let’s say you know I I know on you Roy and I was at the first biosphere enclosure and then the coming out party two of my friends were there uh tabber and Jane tabber mallum um and I remember
[00:05:00] it an incredible story and just for for our listeners a uh a group in Texas decided they were going to try and create the first experiment for a biosphere with the thought if we eventually go to the moon or Mars or into space we want to be able to grow our food and create a self-contained closed economic uh environmental system and so they put I think it was eight people um inside this inside this enclosure GL enclosure the only thing that came in was sunlight uh they had fish in a pond they had crops they had to uh they had to harvest and eat and so they had to balance they to grow enough food for two years for them um and they had to balance the CO2 and the O2 and this Grand experiment goes on and the challenge was uh the you know the flying the ointment so to speak was the engineers didn’t realize that the concrete they had used uh to uh
[00:06:01] basically um uh build this this enclosure was absorbing CO2 that was was absorbing CO2 wasn’t it that was the issue and so as you started because the CO2 started get absorbing out of the air and they had eight scientists inside this biosphere everything is going fine going fine and then all of a sudden the CO2 levels are dropping and the plants are not growing as well and all of a sudden they’re on forced calorie restriction and they they reduced their chloric intake a lot didn’t they I mean different different members did different Walford was the one if you look at the charts they lost the right amount of weight I think maybe the other ones were cheating a little bit but overall they were probably at least 10% color restricted and if you look at the data it’s a pretty impressive changes which were then confirmed by randomized clinical trials by by lots of other people and by the way Peter we were at the same party then because I was there when they came out and I remember
[00:07:00] there’s a lot of interesting characters uh including Timothy L Timothy L was there part yeah exactly yeah no we’re the same exact exact same party uh whatever that was 40 years ago 30 years ago anyway um so if I were going to ask you uh wter what your moonshot is what are you trying to do that’s uh going to change the world what’s your goal yes my focus lab wise uh but also the focus of two foundations that I started a while ago is uh helping people get to 110 healthy um and with nutrition but lots of other things I mean nutrition seems to be the the safest and and quickest way to go right now but uh uh but I think we’re also working on drugs and and other interventions to to do that well I for one want to get to 110 healthy and then blast through that and you know a lot of people listening this podcast because we cover longevity uh and health a lot as well as Ai and other subjects you know want to set a Target and you know in the
[00:08:03] past I think people would set a target of 80 years old or 90 years old some might set of a 100 a friend of mine Dan Sullivan set 156 when I was in medical school I remember learning that you know boohead wels could live 200 years and Greenland sharks could live 500 years and I said you know well if they can live that long why can’t we what’s your longevity goal how long do you want to live I I wouldn’t mind making it maybe to one 25 or so um I mean realizing how difficult that is but uh yeah I think I’ve seen 110 with salvator kuso here nearby in Calabria I follow them for my entire life and um and I see 117 a scene 117 with Emma Morano in Northern Italy and she was at the time the oldest person in the world so I I’ve I’ve seen it happen and I’m thinking hey why not you know maybe uh uh maybe I’ll I’ll get
[00:09:00] to 125 or maybe I die tomorrow when we before we jump into the whole conversation around um uh your particular research and this idea of a fasting mimicking diet versus an actual diet or a water fast we’ll get into that uh I’m curious your thoughts on the blue zones uh there’s a lot of work around these blue zones around the world uh a lot of them in Europe and Italy and Greece and other look in Japan um what’s going on there you think that that is driving people to get to a centenarian and supercentenarian level yes so um I I go there a lot especially to the one in Sardinia and to lomalinda and um I think that Sardinia when you look at seulo in V grand um you realize but but also Calabria now we’ve seen lots of little towns that have a very high prevalence of centenarians and I think you realize
[00:10:01] that the genetic factor is probably much higher and more important than than previously described right meaning that you’ll see lots of the ceran saying you know I had three or four brothers and sisters and one made it to 95 one 198 102 and in fact this was the case for Emma Morano Emma had six brothers and sisters all of them I think made it over the age of 88 which is extremely rare almost impossible to happen in a single family so yeah so I think the the in at least some of these blue zones there is a genetic Factor uh and and some of them there’s a lot of in breeding like seulo and vag Grand there are these little towns on top of the mountains maybe a few families represent you know 70 or 80% of the population so a lot of inbreeding and we suspect that um the M creat like super longevity almost osity right so that they get two copies they eliminated the bad jeans and
[00:11:01] then they get two copies of the good the good jeans and that’s what I suspect but obviously the lifestyle is Al also right on right so a lot of lot of exercise and really good diets and and so probably I always say know to be Michael Phelps you probably need everything and so you you cannot you just you got to train but uh but you also have to be born right with the right genetics and yeah so I it wouldn’t be surprising if this world records by these little Villages are are there because of the combination of of genetics and also all the lifestyles that you can think of you know we talk a lot about extreme longevity and even the idea of longevity escape velocity that science extends your life for more than a year that every year you’re alive and I ask folks like David Sinclair and George church and Ray Kur you know is there a limit on the human lifespan in other words if we’re able to alter
[00:12:00] epigenetics or alter your genetics and so forth there’s there any reason why we can’t make it um past 120 past or 2 150 or or greater how do you think about that what what’s the evidence you’re seeing do you think we can get to uh over the next decade using Ai and Quantum um chemistry that we can move the needle and extend you know to Super supercentenarian so to speak is that science fiction or is there some rational reason to believe that’s going to be within uh the hands of Science in this next decade and until you say within the next decade I had a very positive answer um so yeah I think that the um eventually obviously we’re going to live a lot lot longer and um and it’s not going to be just 110 um but I always site my my lab uh it wasn’t my Discovery but somebody in my lab in the ’90s discovered the gene The Sod mutation for
[00:13:01] lugaric disease right and when we discover that when they discover that we thought just a you know within 10 years uh we’re going to cure this disease and so you know that was probably 1994 995 so 30 years have gone by and we’re still no nowhere even beginning to cure ALS lugaric disease yeah so unfortunately the the reality even if you consider the exponential uh growth grow and the exponential growth was also for ALS since 1990 to now right so we we much much better than 30 years ago in lots of different things but you know people still die and suffer miserably from from lugaric disease so yes wishful thinking in 10 years I think as you get to 20 or 30 years may not necessarily be wishful thinking uh depending on on U what happens in these 30 years and some really key um you know key uh discoveries uh so
[00:14:03] especially on the safety right you can reprogram all the cells you want uh but uh you know are you going to put the the person at risk remember when gene therapy was first started you know one person died and this this delayed the the the use of it by it was a great technology and it was just uh you know one person was enough to to cause a big problem for 20 30 years right so yeah I remember that very well I was I was in the field at uh uh at MIT in Harvard at the time and I remember the promise of gene therapy and it stopped cold like you said until the safety was put in place but you know even even the promise of 20 or 30 years from now so if someone’s in their 40s 50s or healthy in their 60s um if you can make it you know an extra 20 or 30 years get it get to 90 um then the potential to intercept these
[00:15:01] Technologies um may be may be there and I think the other thing to remember is it’s a non-linear progression it isn’t like we’re just incrementing the same amount every year we’re doubling in power with massive compute capabilities coming our way yes and I mean I guess the goal in 30 years will be maybe to to get an extra 20 30 years um and then um you know and then go from there right so so yeah I think if we achieve that it’s very achievable in the next 30 years that we add 30 years to the life and I mean I always say there’s going to be two population one that does all the right things and they may live 20 30 years longer and the other group I think is going to live probably about the same as now uh but of course yeah with the technology um maybe we’ll we’ll I mean I’m talking about nutrition and fasting and fasting making diets and all that uh but yeah with the technology I think uh it is possible maybe they will have initial technologies that get us another
[00:16:00] 20 20 or 30 years and then we have uh you know um Now 60 years to U at least the the the ones of us that are in our 50s um to uh to get there but you know it’s it’s it’s a fun for sure it’s a fun uh moment a revolutionary moment and we just have to see what happens here well I can guarantee everyone listening to our our voice in our podcast today is doing the going to be doing the right thing so let’s jump into that so you start um your graduate work or post-graduate work starving bacteria and yeast um and then getting to the point and realizing I mean there’s actually there’s a few very concrete things that one can do to extend the human lifespan and caloric restriction is definitely one of them you may not want to live that much longer if you’re restricting your your caloric intake radically um but it is definitely one of them if you
[00:17:00] could walk us through the work you did at your postgraduate work through to the development of this fasting mimicking diet but let’s let’s begin with fmd fasting mimicking diet what is that and how does it compare to a regular diet yes so um so calorie restriction as you mentioned can extend lifespan but um if you look at even mice about a third of the mice that are placed on severe color restriction actually live shorter about a third live the same and a third live longer right so it’s more complicated than people uh appreciate and I think the fmd coming out of wallford lab the fmd was a way to say well maybe there is a way that makes a lot less hard for people you could do this maybe once every two or three months and you don’t lose muscle mass like you do for calor restriction and uh um you know and you can get all the benefits of calor stion so the festing weing diet is something that last 5 days is
[00:18:01] plant-based uh is low calorie low sugar low protein high fat um and um and as the job really of uh shrinking at Le partially shrinking the human body or the mouth and then re-expand it right so it’s something very simple but incredibly powerful right so why because when you shrink you you start this self-eating process this you know repair process and when you re-expand actually as we’ve shown in lots of different papers in mice you turn on embrionic developmental genes right so so I think that um you know and this is all coordinated I I talk about three billion years of R&D right because um this is really a Nature’s Way to rebuild organs and systems and um and so I think it’s probably going to be the the first uh success I mean I’m I’m bu obviously but the first success in in causing
[00:19:01] multi-stem regeneration and Rejuvenation in a safe way in an effective way just because uh we we’re already there and um and so um and it is safe and and um and we already have data showing that it’s effective so let’s let’s introduce the term autophagy which is uh a term which obviously um you’ve done a lot of extraordinary work in as well which is when you’re in this fasting mode your body will begin to Auto fagy which means to eat oneself in one sense to uh to start killing the senescent cells um and as you said to shrink the body and put yourself it’s uh the equivalent in the seasons of life it would be fall where you’re shedding um and spring would be the return if if you would uh how much dieting does it take to trigger autophagy in the body it looks like it it needs uh about three I of course
[00:20:01] autophagy in some cells may start early maybe one or two days of fasting uh but I would say if you want to see the weight of multiple or most organs shrink significantly you probably have to go four or five days and that’s what the fmd the fasting making diet uh does you know it gets to the five days of of of fasting and uh and uh and that’s when uh um you you you begin to see a reprogramming and you begin to see the the shrinking of of lots of different systems for example if you look in people a white blood cell number you’ll see about in over 70% of the subjects you see about a 20% decrease so that uh indicating that the body is beginning the process of lowering white blood cell number keeping them high enough but lowering them and also redistribute them redistributing them in uh in different to different uh
[00:21:01] places like the bone marrow everybody I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that’s very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love company is called Fountain life and it’s a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented Physicians you know most of us don’t actually know what’s going on inside our body we’re all optimists until that day when you have a pain in your side you go to the physician or the emergency room and they say listen I’m sorry to tell you this but you have this stage three or four going on and you know it didn’t start that morning it probably was a problem that’s been going on for some time but because we never look we don’t find out so what we built at Fountain life was the world’s most advanced diagnostic Centers we have four across the us today and we’re building 20 around the world these centers give you a full body m MRI a brain a brain vasculature an AI enabled coronary CT
[00:22:02] looking for soft plaque a dexa scan a Grail blood cancer test a full executive blood workup it’s the most advanced workup you’ll ever receive 150 GB of data that then go to our AIS and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it’s solvable you’re going to find out eventually you might as well find out when you can take action Fountain life also has an entire side of the Therapeutics we look around the world for the most Advanced Therapeutics that can add 10 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers so if this is of interest to you please go and check it out go to Fountain life.com Peter when Tony and I wrote Our New York Times bestseller life force we had 30,000 people reached out to us for fountainlife memberships if you go to Fountain life.com back/ will put you to the top of the list
[00:23:01] really it’s something that is um for me one of the most important things I offer my entire family the CEOs of my companies my friends it’s a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans go to fountainlife decomp it’s one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners all right let’s go back to our episode so uh just for reference um uh when when vter is speaking about the fasting mimicking diet uh there’s a company that’s licensed his technology it’s a product I use called prolon by El Nutra and when you order prolon um you get a box of day one day two day three day four day five and these are uh powders or soups and and some bars that you eat that are very very specific amount of calories and specific fats and proteins that mimic dieting the alternative in the old days was doing a
[00:24:00] water diet right where I’m just drinking water maybe some salts mixed in with the water um to try and cut my caloric intake down to zero uh but let’s contrast one second uh the the prolon fastic making diet with a water diet here to understand uh is it better to go with zero calories and just water or is it better to go uh with the prolon and how many calories are you taking in on day one through five on the on the proline fmd yeah so obviously um eventually if you want this to be a you know let’s say a worldwide or certainly a popular uh intervention it has to be very safe it has to be very feasible you know people the majority of people have be able to do it and I will say water only fasting is something that maybe 1% of people could do you know kind of like chronic color restriction maybe one or 2% so I’ve done it one time and I still remember every day of it and uh and and
[00:25:02] this is how the fmd started with the clinical trial USC noris Cancer Center on water only fasting and we were convinced when we started this this is like 2010 or so when we were start we started the trial uh what only fasting in chemotherapy we were convinced everybody was going to do it highly motivated group of people and the great majority of people did not want to do it and and the oncologist did not want them to do it and that’s when we went to the National Cancer Institute and National intitute on aging and said I think we need to develop a fast imun making diet right so most people don’t realize this uh this is why we uh we develop we studyed develop it and and tested the fast making diet so um yeah so then it’s 1100 calories on day one 800 calories on day two to five and but it’s the composition that that matters the most or as much and so it’s uh a lot of of tweaking of not just the low protein
[00:26:01] let’s say or very low protein but also the type of protein that we use so there certain amino acids that interfere with the effects of fasting are so low that it’s like you did not have uh food at all you so if I remember correctly um uh on the prolon fmd it was something like 1,200 calories the first day then down to 800 calories for the next four days or something like that know 1100 going down to 800 yeah and how many calories does a person normally take so I’m 150 lb 1502 lb something like that um I’m you know in a in probably my best shape in terms of percent body fat and such and muscle but I think about that what is your what’s your advice for caloric intake in the first place yeah I mean the average American I think uh male is around 25 2700 kilo calories per day but but I think that it’s pointless it
[00:27:00] doesn’t mean anything you know it depends on energy expenditure and lots of other things right so it’s really about um your your abdominal circumference your BMI body mass index and uh so how much fat you have how much muscle you have and and then you adjust based on that right so so you could be eating 3,000 calories a day and there might not be enough um or somebody may be eating 1,600 it may be too much let’s say a woman we 100 pound in perfect shape so um yeah so I think it’s uh yeah counting Counting calories is pointless uh um much better to uh to focus on the the results of that and U and adjust the food based on uh how you respond all right so the fmd here is 1100 calories reducing down to 800 calories I think for the last 3 days and remember when I did it it was it was pretty easy to do um but my question in the back of my
[00:28:01] mind is if I really want to cause autophagy if I really want to make a difference and Trigger my body um is it better uh to just do a water diet uh solo and I remember speaking to the CEO of prolon and he said listen the science actually um according to the studies were that no um actually doing a fasting mimicking diet in terms of the healthy outcome uh of you know multi-stem regeneration and all of the benefits it was better to do uh this reduced caloric intake versus a zero caloric intake is that what your research also shows I think it was referring into my research probably uh so I think that water and only fasting can work for lots of things right but we we compare this say for example for cancer they work about the same right and um so if you take a mouse and you put it on water only fasting and
[00:29:00] you do let’s say three days or four days of fasting making diet is about the same um but of course with the water only fasting now there’s it’s a it’s a much more dangerous situation for the patients and again most oncologist and Physicians are not going to want to touch it uh for all the diseases for example we had a paper where we compare and we looked at inflammatory bowel disease in mice and um and uh the water only fasting worth only about half way to what the fmd did and it turns out something that was a little surprising right it was probably the prebiotics in the fmd so when I developed the fmd I wanted to make it extremely healthy so thinking about the blue zones and thinking about what are the healthiest food in the world ingredients in the world right so it was all it was made 100% with some of the healthiest food in in the world and there was a good idea because I think this Prebiotic then turn out to to
[00:30:00] affect bacteria species blob bacillus beo bacteria and so we saw this jump which we didn’t see for water only fasting and in fact water only fasting increased the leakiness of the gut when fmd was decreasing the leakiness of the gut so so but the fasting one only fasting still worked but it caused good and bad and uh and the fmd seems to be much more consistent you know turning out for example intestinal stem cells um and increasing the the level of this beneficial bacterial families um and decreasing inflammation Etc so so I think that it makes sense right it makes sense that uh having this plantbased vegan uh composition plus the fasting property uh might avoid a lot of the potential problems like leakiness of the gut and at the same time still give you the ofy and give you lots of the benefits uh yeah so so I will say that
[00:31:02] uh you know people of course can can 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 you cannot buy anything that that that’s good you know that’s uh I always say you know eventually uh if that’s all if you you cannot afford it and you’re in some country where where there is not reimbursement for it uh absolutely do do water only fasting because it’s going to be uh it’s going to be still effective you know yeah and I mean just so folks know the prolong diet is not expensive it’s a couple hundred bucks you’re going to spend a couple hundred bucks typically on food during the 5 days anyway unless you’re a college student eating ramen noodles uh 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 in maximal shape should I consider doing this at once a month once a quarter once a year and then what are the actual
[00:32:00] 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 uh of using the fasting mimicking diet so frequency first and then what about some of the clinical I think there’s some like 21 clinical studies that have been done by prolon yes and there’s probably another 30 uh either running or about to start now um so the um the results are are very good and the frequency for example for diabetes uh the Heidelberg study on diabetic patients um and the uh Laden study on diabetic patient did it once a month for 6 to 12 months and but the idea would be you get the diabetic and we were surprised how compliant they were by the way right so it’s pretty fairly High compliance which we did not expect so most of the people could complete the the the 12 Cycles in one year and so then they idea is to move it even for the diabetic patient maybe move
[00:33:00] it from 12 to eight Cycles on year two and maybe six Cycles on year three and then eventually less than that uh um and so yeah but but then also it’s a question of risk and and uh you know let’s say let’s forget the diabetic um and let’s say somebody’s normal and wants to you know live longer uh so obviously probably doing it more is going to be more beneficial uh but we don’t know what happens if somebody does uh one one cycle of fmd per month for 40 years right so I mean we don’t know right so then then there is always uh with everything that you do so frequently there’s always some risk and um and that’s why we say you know probably three or four times a year somebody’s is healthy and want to optimize health and uh so now we we just started well actually 6 months ago we started a 500 patient clinical trial here in southern
[00:34:01] Italy and we already recruited the first 200 patients and uh and in that’s the first time where we do uh the fmd once every three months and uh so that’s going to be very interesting study right that now we’re um we’re moving away from the once a mon effect which is over and over is been very very effective in healthy patient and patient with lots of different diseases uh but now we’re moving to once every three months and we’ll see what happens but we’re optimistic and by the way in the 2017 trial we publish on healthy patients we saw reduction of of igf1 uh reduction of inflammation blood pressure cholesterol um fasting glucose and in the F in the diabetes trials that was confirmed A1C reduction in all the trials pretty impressive reduction of A1C uh so glycated hemoglobin um but also reduction in drug use right so most
[00:35:01] of the patient were able to reduce drugs and that’s what we think it’s uh it’s also very exciting about this you know getting people to be disease free um and and the last thing I want to say which was very surprising and now it’s the fifth trial we see the same no loss of LM body mass right so the great majority of of of diets even the Mediterranean diet we just got finished in a trial and uh after 7 months a subject lost about 5 lbs of of muscle mass uh but with the fmd with four Cycles five days of fmd we saw no no reduction in in muscle mass and so yeah so that’s very important I think we we looks like we got it right there so that’s interesting right because one of my objectives is adding muscle mass so I’m you know eating 150 gram of protein per day um and trying to do as much of that plant as I can but I have some some fish and chicken as well
[00:36:01] and you know at 150 lbs I’m I’m targeting one gram per pound to maximize muscle and then adding my workouts onto that uh and I’ve always wondered would in fact the fasting mimicking diet because I’d be off that protein for 5 days hit me as a reduction in lean muscle mass and you’re saying so far the results show you would not yeah especially in somebody I obviously as you know you have a very high protein intake um so so we recommend based a lot of a lot of studies a lot less uh but you know it’s your it’s your choice obviously uh but somebody that has um50 grams uh of protein per day um you know we we will expect maybe the opposite meaning meaning gaining more muscle mass by5 that also because of what we suspect is that this break like we see for insulin resistance is it
[00:37:02] possible there is IG well we know there is igf-1 resistance right so this growth the central growth factor at least has been shown for Alzheimer but it’s possible that by removing this getting igf1 to be very low for five days and then going back to very high now you may uh increase the the the sensitivity of the receptor and therefore the receptor on the muscle mass I mean I we don’t know yet we’re looking at this right now but uh but there certainly a possibility that that you know so it looks like the all the regenerative effects of the festive making diet are in fact due to the alternation of very LW of this growth factors and relatively high levels of these growth factors and um and and potentially the sensitization of The receptors yeah one of the things that a lot of people don’t realize and I really appreciate this is we are the result of uh hundreds of thousands or millions of years of evolutionary
[00:38:01] pressures and as homo sapians for the last you know call it a million years uh for round numbers uh we’ve gone through periods of you know fasting massive fasting and uh and and huge uh 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 cic intake all the time and so uh this could be a critical part of activation of those uh Gene Pathways that are are able to benefit from the cycling is that assuming one of your conclusions and one of your the thesis underl this yes absolutely right so so there’s probably a lot of junk that accumulates and uh and a lot of organs that need the Rejuvenation and regeneration but in the old days for the probably the entire history of any organism not just humans uh starvation
[00:39:01] was just unavoidable and um and so now for the first time in history maybe the last 100 years or so um there’s people a lot of people that we enroll in clinical trials that have never gone more than a couple days of uh of fasting and uh and so that’s probably the great majority of the population has never been exposed to any of this right so and that’s probably why the in resistance uh you know and the uh cholesterol the high cholesterol and the high blood pressure a lot of organs that are probably waiting for that moment of reset and so they don’t know what to do waiting for their reset and they don’t know what to do and and you know and they become dysfunctional and that’s a lot of these problem so nobody has a high cholesterol at 20 right so why is that um and may very well be that um yeah that the organ and the system needs to go back to a its original function I want to get to
[00:40:00] the idea of multi-stem regeneration in a moment but let me ask one other question uh first um which is uh around the notion of what diseases have you looked at treating with the fasting mimicking diet so I heard you say cancer I heard you say uh diabetes obviously what about inflammatory General inflammatory disease um what you know what are the lists of things that uh you know fmd could be valuable in in uh in addressing I think many and the reason is that is not the fmd that is doing the work is the fmd that is triggering the body to uh to really start over right and um yeah so we looked at inflammatory bow disee I mean multiple sclerosis we finished one trial years ago and it was positive increase in quality of life we just finished another trial on multiple sclerosis we finished or we’re about to
[00:41:02] finish the Alzheimer trial about 10 clinical trials most of it most publish on cancer um and um yeah so there is uh uh two trials I think now I stand for that an inflammatory bowel disease um and U yeah so these are just some I think there is probably um another 20 or so that are running all kinds of different uh uh diseases um yeah so probably almost everywhere where aging is a central Factor uh or certainly dysfunction um is a central Factor Central uh component of the the disease hey everyone I want to 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 it seeds DS1 daily symbiotic hopefully by now you
[00:42:00] understand that your microbiome and your gut health are one of the most important modifiable parts of your health you know your gut microbiome is connected to everything your brain health your cardiac health your metabolic health so the question is what are you doing to optimize your gut let me take a moment to tell you about what I’m doing every day I take two capsules of seeds ds01 daily symbiotic it’s a twoin one probiotic and Prebiotic formulation that supports digested Health gut health skin Health heart health and more it contains 24 clinically and scientifically proven probiotic strains that are delivered in a patented capsule that actually protects the contents from your stomach acid and ensures that 100% of it is survivable reaching your colon now if you want to try seed ds01 daily symbiotic for yourself you can get 25% off your first month supply by using the code Peter 25 at checkout just go to seed.com moonshots and enter the code Peter 25 at
[00:43:01] checkout that’s seed.com slm moonshots and use the code Peter 25 to get your 25% off the first month of seeds daily symbiotic trust me your gut will thank you all right let’s go back to the episode so let’s get to this idea what do you mean by multi-stem regeneration can you define that and then what is your work showing possible there yeah so we started about 10 years ago publishing on the on the blood system and showing that during the fasting and fasting making diet the um the blood uh there’s a reduction in blood cells and then the hematopoetic stem cells are self renewing so you have an increased population of hematopoetic stem cells and then when you refeed they they go to work and they essentially rejuvenate the the immune system and then we went on to show similar effects in the pancreas in the gut uh in the in the
[00:44:00] nervous system uh and now we’re working for example we have a paper in submission uh for kidneys and um yeah so so multi-stem regeneration um has to do with probably either the self-renewal of stem cells on one side or the reprogramming so we see yamanaka factors this these factors that can make um somatic cells into embryonic like stem cells we see yamanaka factor and by the way we we see different yamanaka factors being turned down in different organs right which makes sense right so yamanaka had probably sort of use the Brute Force to reprogram cells and but the pancreas may not need all the factors may only need a few and and so for example when you do the fmd and reiti you see the pancreas showing a profile a uh gene expression profile very similar to the one uh activated doing
[00:45:00] embryogenesis um and so that’s how we know there is a real program a very coordinated program by the way with different steps and lots of uh transcription factors and and and uh that are you know orchestrating this rebuilding process so for example we could take the pancreas of a mouse destroy it with a with a toxin and then and that’s permanently irreversibly damage right so the mouse makes no longer makes insulin and then we start the fmd cycles and then you see fairly rapidly um the um there is reprogramming of the of the pancreatic ey cells and then they start making insulin again and that’s a permanent effect so now essentially uh we have regenerated the uh the insulin producing uh beta cells of the pancreas and similarly we’ve shown it in in many different systems that’s amazing um so basically this is a
[00:46:00] this is a chance for the body like you said to uh to clear away the old and dying cells and get rid of waste products and to trigger a a period of regrowth and revitalization um which is a normal uh part of life but because we are just feeding the body constantly um it has no need to do this in the past right this is a a chance to give the body access to normal normal Cycles uh fascinating let’s talk about Tim restricted eating and what you know just diets in general because there are thousands of diet books uh and you know let me just check with you when I’m teaching people and the work that I’m doing for myself just the basic say there’s no one diet that’s right for a single indiv individual uh we have a lot of genetic and cultural backgrounds but
[00:47:00] 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 yeah in a sugar for sure um and uh yeah I I I think I generally agree uh I mean I will have protes but you put me on the spot because you eat a lot of proteins uh no it’s listen I’m here to learn as well so how much protein should a person uh take in I I’m you know for me my goal is maximize muscle gain uh for a number of reasons and if if I wanted to maximize besides the weight workouts How would how much protein would you take in and how would you maximize muscle gain yeah so I think eventually uh I mean the recommendation for for people is about 0.37 G per pound right so about a third of what you what you eat uh but of
[00:48:01] course it’s not for athletes or so the athlete my recommendation has always been increase it until you’re happy with the results right so so you know you go from 0.37 to 0.60 if that allows you to um to achieve the muscle gain that you want then that’s it you stop at 060 and we suspect that maybe as I was saying earlier possibly by having so much protein you know and having maybe very high gf1 you could be um you know overstimulating some of these growth Pathways like insulin uh you know can can lead to insulin resistance lots of insulin so 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 at less proteins by both and so you know we finished like a fiveyear study now on M in looking at how you optimize Frailty
[00:49:02] muscle function and Longevity right it’s pretty tricky right so you you need to have everything there’s different periods of life and different techniques and um and then eventually you get the longevity extension and you get the the Frailty uh protection right so yeah I would say probably uh much lower and if it doesn’t affect your your performance and your and your muscle uh then I think you’re much better off with let’s say 0.5 than U than one per pound yeah but still sugar uh reduction uh and that includes high glycemic index uh you know Breads and white rice and so forth I’d want to talk about it while you’re in Italy reducing your glyc your high glycemic intake Yeah It’s Tricky I think the the high glycemic index obviously in general is a bad thing but uh but at the same time you know we always get comments about you know oh I ate this
[00:50:00] soup or that soup and the glycemic index go up um I mean the we suspect that that if you’re otherwise insulin sensitive some of these spikes might actually be helpful right and and maybe contributing to signaling inra cellular signaling that actually helps you maintain a LM body mass so so the problem more than the glycemic uh index and iic index intake is too much of it right so when you when you have it all the time and then you have eye insulin all the time then insulin resistance then you got a problem right so but but I I see your point meaning like you’re saying people the attention span might might might be limited and so if I say if I make it complicated then then you know people may be not remembering the way to do it but I would say the spikes itself is not really an issue uh unless those spikes eventually turn
[00:51:00] 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 great majority of people just have excess sugar and that’s a problem right and and so I can see your point of saying look because there’s no damage of going to very low sugar and uh so I think it’s a good idea but but I mean technically I’m thinking biochemical uh you know they may be um we’re a sugar machine right so so um you know we in fact need to maintain the sugar at certain level if you start seeing patients that we follow in the clinics with blood sugar 60 we worry right um and and if you see an old person with blood sugar 60 you have really have to worry right so you you you want to see rather see a person with blood sugar fasting glucose of 90 than 60 um because of um you know Frailty and other issues right so so I’m saying just a complicated story and I know that you
[00:52:01] know it’s very hard to to communicate a complicated story to millions of people so yeah in general I agree with you so let’s talk about Tim restricted uh dieting uh and how many meals uh 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 have an 18-hour fast uh you I recently read in Peter aa’s book that the Tim restricted dieting actually had no uh beneficial effects when studied in a large population what are your thoughts about that um I think that in general if you look at all the studies um you know some of the large Studies have shown no beneficial I think Improvement compared to calor restriction but in general it works and uh is beneficial for you know fasting glucose and lots of metabolic
[00:53:00] markers the problem if you skip breakfast is that that 16 hours is associated with a shorter lifespan and more cardiovascular disease uh but if you don’t skip breakfast and um then um you know they’re probably mostly benefits and not detrimental effects I like a such imp Panda no I like the 12 to 13 hours fasting per time to the eating because I think he showing already very good benefits uh it doesn’t require skiing breakfast it doesn’t get into the range where G Stone formation is increased uh so I really like that 12 13 hours of of fasting per day I always say I’ve never seen any negative uh um effects of the the 12 13 hours and uh you know if you think about safety first that’s probably a very good way to go um and then um um I I practice actually skipping lunch and uh I’ve been doing it
[00:54:00] for 30 years now and um and I think that that may be one of the safest meals that you can skip especially if you replace it with a with a small snack um and I usually have a snack let’s say 500 PM but uh but my lunch is a an espresso usually Monday through Friday but I I also alternated with the weekends where I eat you know and I think it’s good that the 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 and um and so now you the benefits of being able to you know skip this Central meal um Without Really uh having a difficult time uh achieving that yeah so if you eat dinner at not typical Italian style typical American style if you had dinner at 6:00 and you’re ending at 7:00 then you might have a a breakfast at 13 hours later at 8:00 a.m. skip lunch and have a dinner again at 6:00 that evening yeah that
[00:55:01] seems to be very safe yeah yeah and uh I’ve I was on a very Tim restricted you know 18 uh hours off cycle 12 or 13 hours off is much easier uh 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 you have to spread it out uh during during the day but that’s a a different a different conversation yeah I think we we very much look at the long-term safety right so that we we uh I use these five pillars of longevity right with one of them is epidemiological data and one of them is centenarian studies right we follow very closely what centenarians have been doing 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 uh and certainly lot a lot of these techniques may be very beneficial but then get you in into uncertain terrain
[00:56:04] and um and we could get surprised in 20 years as I was saying earlier about uh uh lots of different things that we do you know well let’s take a second because in your in your book the longevity diet uh 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 yeah not so much centenarians but everybody so so the pillars have to do with the scientific and medical disciplines the feed the the instructions let’s say right the recommendation so one the pillar is epidemiological data and um and one of the pillar is clinical studies right so what happened if you take a lot of people and put them on a low sugar diet ver a high sugar diet and uh uh one of the pillars is basic research on Aging so how do you make a mouse live longer right and can you make a mouse live
[00:57:00] longer consistently and and if you can’t uh it’s not a good start right if if somebody has an idea and the mouse uh doesn’t live longer with that idea then I would say it’s not a good start for for humans um and then centenarian studies right so that’s one pillar so the whole centenarian um populations that we follow uh really teach us a lot and and we like to have a and then the the fifth pillar is complex system you know as is a plane 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 with these machines uh and why and yeah so then the attempt of the Five Pillars to get to a common denominator that makes it very fairly unlikely to change you know in five years from now so oh I got it wrong you know I thought that this was good and yeah so I think the five pillars um I I think help getting it right and I think help getting it right for a very long
[00:58:00] time so just the epidemiological studies for example you know it would take another 30 years to prove everything wrong accumulated so far meta analysis uh so yeah so I think that that that’s a good uh that’s a good way to approach it so what are the F what are the five things uh the five key pillars here uh just from your book obviously uh one of them was uh you know physical activity EX uh sleep um you know social engagement yeah no I didn’t talk much much about social engagement I mean although I think it’s probably important but I’m not an expert so I let Dan buner and others talk about that but I mean we focus on on time I mean the longevity diet which is a pescatarian low protein diet and but which increases as people get older so after 65 higher in protein intake um so high legume High whole grain nuts Etc and maybe fish three
[00:59:02] times a week um then the the um time re the eating 12 13 hours uh then 150 minutes of of physical exercise a week plus an hour of physical activity a day like walking for example and um and then you know um muscle training uh maybe three or four times a week um yeah so those are are the main and and sleep but again I’m not an expert on sleep and so I rather tell people to to to read the book by Matt Walker or or others that you know truly specialize on that but obviously that’s a a very important one fantastic I just I think those are the basics everybody knows but just it always helps to hear that and reinforce it yeah and sorry I I forgot the fasy mimicking that right so three or four cycles of the F per per year yeah so yeah I’m I’m thinking for myself once a
[01:00:00] quarter uh I’m curious once you do that for five days uh and then you do it a you know 90 days later after the five days is there any evidence of how long uh the benefits persist yes so we 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 is slowly uh you know moving back and probably within six months uh you’re going back to uh to where you came from maybe with some improvements but yeah it doesn’t last forever but um I think that 3 to six months uh um you’re going to have uh continued benefits so as we close out here uh I’m curious where’s your research going next uh what is
[01:01:00] what’s exciting for you in the near future here and if you had all of the funding research to do all the experiments you want to do what would you want to do well number one I think I I liked the disease part and and now we’re we’re really now moving into this can be done and it works and so that it should go in the the doctor’s toolkit so we’re we’re pushing very hard to get to concl conclusive data on hundreds of patients randomized well done studies studies publish in in leading journals uh so cancer I’m particularly excited about I think that fasting making D can serve as a wild card helping immunotherapy chemotherapy hormone therapy etc etc work better and maybe as we seen for lots of patient go from you know disease progression delay to cancer-free survival or remission so that’s an exciting set of studies and then um you know diabetes I think we’re
[01:02:01] already there we’re trial number 40 five it’s pretty clear it can reverse it can reduce drug use and reverse I within a year we get 15 20% of patient that are diabetes free and I think within two years it probably goes if they follow it goes to maybe 50% although we haven’t we haven’t done that part yet but uh so diabetes I think it’s the most conclusive one already and um and we’re excited about that and uh yeah so lots of our diseases um and then I think Alzheimer um is also very interesting I mean obviously the drugs have not done very well with Alzheimer and maybe as we done for cancer the drugs or whatever regenerative intervention plus the fasting making diet I think that uh that’s something that uh we’re very excited about and uh um and then of course we we we want to take it so half of my group now works on this yamanaka
[01:03:01] factors and and Stem Cell Activation and and um and so we want to take it to the next level right so uh can David and and Belmonte and others have shown you know that you can reprogram the cells and and we’re basically saying can we do as well but you know in a in a natural way um and and how do we get right can we get these effects that Belmont and and David published on can we get it and what kind of fas we can that how long is that going to have to be and uh do we need anything else to add to the fmd right so yeah so that’s what we’re very excited about that uh because I think that also is going to be at the center of treating diseases as David and others are also talking about um so yeah so that’s a that’s a very exciting shortterm goal by the way I think in the next 10 years uh uh we should uh you know we should put it to work fantastic for those of you
[01:04:02] interested uh if you go and Google prolon p r o l n um uh you can get that the company that manufactures it El Nutra something I like to do uh once a quarter uh Walter where can folks find out more about your research on what website yes the I I can be followed on Instagram or or Facebook but then the creatures. org creatures. org is where the clinic is in Los Angeles and it falls a lot of people all over the United States and and then we have the the valter longo foundation.org in in Europe and so um that’s how we follow people those that cannot afford it it’s a nonprofit Clinic those that cannot afford it don’t have to pay as long as we have money to to operate things but uh um the uh yeah I recommend that you you call you contact the foundation and um you know whether it’s somebody with Advanced stage cancer or somebody that
[01:05:01] just wants to be healthier um that’s probably the best way to go and 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 uh how much you eat all of these things are critically important for our health and uh you can do something about it uh anyway pleasure as always thank you my friend my pleasure Peter my pleasure thank you I want to take a moment to tell you about abundance 360 my yearround leadership Mastermind for people who want to go big create wealth and impact the world it’s also Singularity University’s highest level program a key focus of abundance 360 is helping my members develop their massive transformative purpose or MTP and also to Define and execute on their moonshots you’re listening to the moonshot podcast so question is do you have an MTP do you
[01:06:02] have your own moonshot for example my massive transformative purpose my MTP is to inspire and guide entrepreneurs just like you to help you create a hopeful compelling and abundant future for Humanity my MTP drives everything I do it guides me it inspires me my books my companies the X prises we launch it’s all born out of that MTP as an entrepreneur you need to have an MTP it’s your highest level aspiration it connects your emotional drive with the moonshots you take on your MTP drives the direction of your moonshot it allows you to pursue your grandest dreams it fuels you to go 10x bigger and impact the world so the question is where do you go to discover your MTP to hone your moonshot join me at abundance 360 it’s a Global community of World Changers entrepreneurs investors philanthropists all of whom have an MTP and the moonshot
[01:07:03] we support each other in making a dent in the universe to positively uplift Humanity our mission at 8360 is to give you the tools the network and the inspiration to go big again to create wealth and to uplift Humanity if hearing this has you thinking I want to be part of that I need someone to help support my MTP and moonshot then consider joining us submit your application at a30c that’s a36c see you there now back to our [Music] podcast