What Is The Fasting-Mimicking Diet?

Unlock the power of your next meal to not only nourish but also rejuvenate and extend your life. I’m thrilled to share the enlightening conversation I had with Dr. Joseph Antoun, CEO of El Nutra and Prolon, who brings a wealth of knowledge from the fields of medicine and nutritional science. Dr. Antoun delves into the intricate ways food can act as our most powerful medicine, highlighting the significant role fasting-mimicking diets play in cellular health and disease prevention. We tackled prevalent myths about autophagy, discussing the timeline for its activation during fasting and the cognitive advantages of ketogenic diets and fasting in the fight against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. Our exchange sheds light on how dietary strategies are not only scientifically sound but also practically achievable, potentially ushering in a new era of healthcare that prioritizes nutrition.

Step into a future where your diet is personalized to your health needs and where insurance companies potentially cover the cost of medically tailored meals. In this episode, we delve into how the healthcare system is evolving to incorporate nutrition as a fundamental aspect of disease management. We take a look at the economic and practical implications of preventative nutrition, examining clinical trials and published results that support the transformational capacity of diet in treating and preventing chronic diseases. Moreover, Dr. Antoun and I explore the alignment of specific dietary needs with longevity-focused eating patterns and the ways in which fasting-mimicking diets can address both metabolic and cellular health concerns. Join us for this thought-provoking discussion as we chart the course for a healthier, longer life through the science of nutrition.

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https://prolonlife.com/Lufkin

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsor (20% off with this link):
https://prolonlife.com/Lufkin

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome back to the Health Longevity Secret Show, and I'm your host, dr Robert Lufkin. Today we take a deep look at the secrets of longevity with Dr Joseph Anton, as we explore the revolutionary concept that your next meal could be the key to a longer, healthier life. From a career in medicine to the forefront of nutritional science, dr Anton takes us on an intimate journey through the landscape of food as our most potent medicine. Together, we tackle the science of nutrition's role in disease prevention and the fascinating world of fasting with food, where the body receives the nourishment it needs while reaping the benefits of fasting's cellular rejuvenation. As we unravel the myths of autophagy, dr Anton also sheds light on how significant autophagy doesn't start as soon as many think, but rather after the body begins to deplete its reserves. Finally, our discussion takes a deep dive into how diet impacts not just lifespan but also our cognitive function, with a particular focus on the potential benefits of ketogenic diets and fasting on not only mental clarity but also the fight against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. Dr Anton shares insights from cutting-edge clinical trials that are pointing to promising outcomes. Plus, we delve into the practical aspects of incorporating these nutritional strategies into our lives. So please join us now in this fascinating episode.

Speaker 1: 1:42

This week's episode is brought to you by El Nutra, maker of the prolonged fasting-mimicking diet. I just started using their five-day fasting plan and it's really pretty wild. If you want to try it, use the link in the show notes for 20% off. Please support this podcast by checking out their website and taking a look at their other innovative products. And now please enjoy this week's episode. Today we're going to talk about a fascinating topic. Everyone's talking about food as medicine, which it is. Today, we have the pleasure of joining and speaking with someone who actually has implemented that in his company. This is Dr Joseph Anton. Please welcome him. His company is Prolon, he is El Nutra and Prolon he is the CEO of this company. Welcome, joseph.

Speaker 2: 2:38

Thank you, Dr Lefkine, and hopefully we're going to chase somebody's life today.

Speaker 1: 2:42

Yes, absolutely. There's so many things I want to get into talking with you today, but before we do, maybe you could tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be in this space.

Speaker 2: 2:57

Yeah, well, probably like you, when I was young, I wanted to help patients and I wanted mainly to help them reach a cure, not just be okay for the less, okay, sick, okay, healthy for the rest of their lives. So I wanted to be a cardiologist and I'm an MD, phd by training and but doing my rotations, I felt that I'm meeting people after they're getting sick. So I was practicing more sick care than health care and I was putting them on almost the same five meds a statin for the cholesterol and a blood thinner and a blood pressure and a blood glucose and I was subscribing them to those pills with no endpoint, right. And there was things just, oh, you take it every month and you refill it every month and, by the way, while they're leaving the office is like, hey, take care of your food, take care, by the way, right, and that's the essence of it. And I always used to tease the attending saying, hey, if the meds work, why they have to refill it? And nobody had an answer. So I actually left medicine and I went to health policy and public health, trying to move the system more towards a preventive system. Let's practice health care versus sick care. And also that was difficult because you can explain so many times to a person that they should eat healthy, which everyone knows. You can tell them exercise everyone knows. You tell them stop smoking everyone knows that.

Speaker 2: 4:29

And I felt that the gap was to bring products. You know, preventive and curative products that are lifestyle products. So how can we create lifestyle medicine? How can we make it concrete? At that time when I had these ideas, it was nothing called lifestyle medicine or food is medicine, or it was either a pill or recommendations about lifestyle, and I got passionate about how to bring nutritional products as medicine, how to bring nutrition as prevention, how to bring nutrition for longevity, and decided to focus among the five pillars of healthy aging you know, stress, sleep, exercise, nutrition and social capital. I focused on nutrition because it's the only product we consume every day of our life, three times a day, three to five times a day, so it must have the biggest impact, and I felt the concept of food for longevity and food is medicine were very appealing to me. I got lucky.

Speaker 2: 5:27

I met the founder of this company, professor Walter Longo. I think many of the listeners today would know about him. He's the author of the longevity diet book, which talks about how to use food. As for longevity and for medicine, he's time top 50 most influential people in health. I met him and he had something that no one had, which is the biotech level of science very hardcore preclinical trials and clinical trials.

Speaker 2: 5:54

That that I, coming from medicine and MD, phd and it was a biotech as well I can trust and I can believe and I can see how the evidence is there for it. So I felt for the first time you have a nutrient technology company to compare it to. Biotechnology and pharmacy have a true scientifically scientific foundation behind food concepts for medicine and for prevention. And I decided to join in and I've been here for the last seven years and and I brought the first food is medicine to the market and one of our core, core ingredient is we. We've been make fasting with food. I'm pretty sure we're going to talk about it and that's our magic and it's been the right we had to launch these concepts and it's been quite a ride, but but a pretty satisfying one.

Speaker 1: 6:42

Well, I can't wait to get into talking about food and nutrition and and fasting as well. Before we do that, maybe we could just take a moment and just to understand your framework of longevity and aging and these chronic diseases. Why do we age? Why does longevity work? Obviously, the theme of this, this summit, is all about longevity and inflamaging. And how do you, how do you, conceptualize that?

Speaker 2: 7:10

You know something that I have not learned in medicine, but I had the pleasure to to meet a lot of aging researchers, and, and, and for them they were like it's all about aging. We should be treating aging it's not about Alzheimer's as a different condition than cardiovascular disease, as a different condition than diabetes. They're like, they're all age related symptoms. This is why we don't get Alzheimer's at age 20. You're not gonna get your first heart attack at age 23. You're not gonna get most cancers at age 18. You're gonna get them at older stage. It's like a car. You buy a car that's new, you drive it now for 250,000 miles and if you press on the window to open, it doesn't open. You don't say there's a genet, there's a manufacturer defect, it's just you've used it so many times and, by the way, you're gonna fix the window and next month the engine is gonna express something wrong and then the tire is gonna blow up sometimes after. So it's all about aging, not all, but the major chronic diseases that we're dying from today diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular and Alzheimer's the four biggest killers. 87% of us are dying from them. They're all age related diseases. So you can put some patches on this and this is why we're not able to reverse them, because they're essentially this function of the cell and old cell. Yes, there are kickers like genetic predispositions. Yes, there are other kickers as side effects of interventions, et cetera, but the essence of them they're age related diseases and the focus on aging today is actually one of the most powerful. Healthy aging is one of the most powerful interventions you can do to give people more health, span healthy, longer healthy part of their life.

Speaker 2: 9:01

And this was fascinating for me, and that was my quest in my last 15 years of professional life, is how can I slow down the biological aging of the body? And I can give you a pill for cholesterol it's not gonna move aging. I can give you a blood thinner it's not gonna. But if I slow down the aging rate of everyone of yourselves, I'm actually creating a space between you and the first Alzheimer's or the first cancer or the first heart attack or the first diabetes, and I think that's the fascination behind healthy aging in. Inflammation is just another sign of it. It's like a heated engine. Right, you drive your car and if the engine is getting more and more heated, my car is getting old and I get to fix that. It's exactly what it is. The more you age, the more you're the heat of the engine and that accelerates your aging even faster and therefore it gets you faster to. You know, a first chronic disease, and we're all about finding ways through nutrition and lifestyle to slow down that process.

Speaker 1: 10:08

Yeah, it's amazing how we're coming to the understanding that these four major chronic diseases that drive longevity itself are driven by these common underlying conditions, like you mentioned, like inflammation or insulin resistance, and these are all tied uniquely to nutrition and what we put in our body. And in fact, one of the earliest most powerful tools experimentally to reverse aging or slow down aging was caloric restriction and then increasingly fasting, and intermittent fasting has begun to play a role now in that. And how does that work with? How is intermittent fasting related to aging?

Speaker 2: 10:57

Yeah, and there's two ways that fasting is probably even at the center of aging and has helped our ancestors. Our ancestors did not eat all the time it was. One of the secrets is that there's a doctor called by the name of Dr Felice Kersh. She's a big fasting expert and she calls it the miracle of biology. Fasting was one of the assets where our ancestors stayed healthy and strong at later age and she thinks fasting, she believes fasting, was one of their secrets. But now we eat all the time, so we lost that secret and we're trying to bring it back. So fasting helps aging in two ways. The number one is the metabolic way.

Speaker 2: 11:41

When you fast, like you mentioned the word caloric restriction. Well, obviously you're gonna start losing weight. You're not gonna. When you lose weight, there's a lot of downstream positive metabolic effects. Right, weight is related to inflammation. Again going back to inflammation, weight is related to hypertension. Weight is related to blood clogging. Weight is related to insulin resistance. So there's a lot of downstream benefits from being in a calorie restriction mode and that's the metabolic benefits of fasting. And what separates fasting from all other weight management because you can achieve the metabolic part with any calorie restriction is the cellular impact of fasting.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Fasting is such a stress on the body that it triggers the cells to rejuvenate. It's a process called autophagy and typically it starts on day three of fasting. So the first two days the body is stressed, I'm not eating, I'm depleting my fat. I get the cells then, at day three, say hey, I'm not getting enough nourishment, neither from the outside because we're fasting, nor from the inside because we're burning the fat and we're in depletion mode. So I, as a cell, to survive, have now to eat what's inside of me intracellular self-eat and then it starts detoxing, starts rejuvenating as a survival mode. This cellular rejuvenation process that is called autophagy and it won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2016 is at the core of reversing, potentially, the age of the cell and or decelerating the aging of the cells. The cell is saying you know what I gotta fix myself, I gotta get a little bit younger to survive this fast. And that's a key and core component with how fasting is correlated with longevity, and the only actually patent ever issued on promoting longevity is on a fasting product is on the fasting nutrition that promotes rejuvenation and longevity. And that's the secret of fasting You're losing weight and improving a lot of markers, including inflammation, and you're rejuvenating yourselves to get biologically a little bit younger or to decelerate the biological process of the cell. Go ahead, sorry, I want to.

Speaker 2: 14:06

I always talk science and then I go back and I give us a Life example to make it simple. If you watch a car race, and so in a driver is going pretty fast and the engine is heated, that's accelerated, aging and efflumaging. What the what? What that driver could do? He can Put his leg on the brake and a little bit decelerate. That's intermittent. Fasting is gonna help decrease the heat is Good. This is, this is the metabolic benefits of fasting. But ultimately what he can do, he can go on a pit stop and that's the prolonged, you know, rejuvenate the part of fasting. The mechanics come in, they see, they check what's going wrong, they change the wheels, the oil etc. And the guard goes back healthier to stay longer on the track and win the race.

Speaker 1: 14:52

Let me see if I understand that right then there there are two large benefits of fasting. One Would be if I'm, if I'm overweight, let's say that I'm obese, and that is unhealthy for all sorts of reasons and drives all those chronic diseases. So if I do caloric restriction or a hypochloric diet, my weight will come down and when it returns to normal, my risk factors for these other diseases, my metabolism, everything will improve. That's one situation. And of course, a hypochloric diet is not sustainable. You know you.

Speaker 1: 15:28

You do it till you lose weight and then you go back to your normal. You go back. You have to maintain normal caloric input. So how for a, for a thin person like me, let's say, or someone who's not overweight, their additional benefits of fasting? What you're saying is that For an isochloric diet, in other words a fixed amount of calories, that there's actually a benefit for me or a disadvantage if I eat them spread out over 24 hours versus if I eat them over three hours, then the same calories Just eaten in a narrow window will be healthier Metabolically because of autophagy and other factors.

Speaker 1: 16:12

Then if I just snack all day long, like our parents used to tell us was a healthy way to do right. They are the small meals.

Speaker 2: 16:21

Yeah, I agree with you on the on the calorie restriction piece. On autophagy, there's a misconception which is autophagy doesn't happen within one day. You get across two days of fasting for autophagy to start and I know that is a lot of theory about 18 hours and 16 hours, and this is Barely barely less than 1% of us will go and order because autophagy require. Autophagy means I as a cell, I'm so depleted from the outside I have to eat the inside.

Speaker 2: 16:54

For a cell to be depleted on the outside, the body has to start spending glycogen, all the reserves and fat and breaks down fat and do neoglucogenesis, etc. So for most people, unless you're running, you're doing very high intensity exercise during that window, what you described, shrinking the food into two to three hours, or we call it omad, or one meal a day or a time-restricted window, a food, the you are still not touching on Reservating the cell, because your liver is still can dump a lot of calories in the blood. You have still a lot of glycogen in your muscle and your liver. You have a lot of fat to burn before the crisis Starts and before the cells are engaged. So, although I know there was a lot of Theories around autophagy happening in day one. Autophagy for most people, unless you're doing high intensity exercise and spending a lot of calories, happens actually after day two. So what.

Speaker 2: 17:52

I'm. So I'm trying to say is you're right about all the benefits of the calorie restriction, but but the cellular intervention starts, you know, around day two and three in in this is this is where water fasting becomes challenging, and and that's exactly what is. When it challenges your body, the cells response With. The cells start responding, but ideally you want to go above two days for the cells to start rejuvenating.

Speaker 1: 18:19

And then people can do that by just restricting their food for two days. What are other ways that you're looking at now, these diets that mimic fasting? How do you mimic fasting with a diet?

Speaker 2: 18:36

Yeah, and the diet exists because of what we just said, that you have to go longer than two days to get the cellular benefits. And people are so difficult for people to fast on water only for two or three or four days Because the science is showing you the minimum two days if you want to engage yourselves. And if you go long six, seven, eight, nine days then you're bankrupting the body. And I compare that to a company. If you have a company that needs revenues and if the revenues are not there for a period of time, the CO starts restructuring the company, cuts unnecessary costs, improve performance to survive, but if you go longer the company goes to bankruptcy. So our science is showing that three to five days is where that sweet spot is. Often you lose the weight in the first two days, you continue losing weight, you engage yourselves on day two and the cells rejuvenate for a good three days before then they get depleted and declare bankruptcy. Five days is a key period, but still water fast is too difficult. Taking a company through no revenues is very difficult and this is exactly the trigger that you need and therefore the National Institute of Health has given us funds to go and develop us. And your verse of sudden California, given us funds to go and develop the fasting, mimicking nutrition, and you help people do a five days of fast, but without starving, being nourished at the same time, and it's an oxymoron. How come they're doing it fast and they're being nourished?

Speaker 2: 20:13

So what we had to do for over 20 years, we started studying how a cell perceives calories and we discovered that there are what we call nutrient sensing pathways or radars, the radars of the cell, and they sense the food. And if the radars are triggered, the cell says well, I have food, I'm not fasting. And if the radars are not triggered to a certain level, they're not sensing the food. So we started studying how can I give you enough carbs, and what kind of carbs and which part of the day to not trigger the nutrient sensing pathways, how much proteins I can give you and what kind of sequences are in acids that do not trigger the receptors. So we figured out a full nutrition program that has the fats, the proteins, the carbs, the micronutrients, the vitamins, all of it together. That goes right below the triggers of the cells so that the nutrient sensing pathways are telling the cell hey it seems something is going through me, but I'm not.

Speaker 2: 21:09

but I'm not satisfied. So we're still fasting and this is the trick that the scientific trick that took, you know, tens of millions of dollars to discover and led to now the creation of the fasting mimicking. The fasting mimicking nutrition is called prolon as a product, and it actually helps people eat for five days the prolon diet while their cells are still rejuvenating and growing through the fasting benefits.

Speaker 1: 21:36

So we've had several other speakers that have talked. We've gotten into m tour a little bit and talked about nutrient sensing there and knowing what m tour senses basically glucose. So you want to keep the carbs down and the glucose down and then branch chain amino acids. So I suspect the diet is high in fat relatively and then moderate carb or moderate protein, but but low in carbs are. Are the patients in ketosis all the time? Is that? I guess that helps with the appetite control as well. Right?

Speaker 2: 22:15

Yeah, and the nature of it is five days. So the different and I agree with what you said m tour is sensitized to the more so to I, jeff. And proteins, pk and rasp pathways to the cars, but they all are, they all are, they all get triggered by both sides and and the goal is to give the right sequence of amino acids and carbs so that those three receptors, that toward the pk and the rasp, are not overly triggered. And but the beauty is only five days. So we are a deeper fast.

Speaker 2: 22:45

The fasting, mimicking nutrition, is a deeper fast than the ketogenic diet. It has a little bit of a different protein profile to really mimic a fast and get you in a deep out of a G and a deep rejuvenation. Whereas a ketogenic diet is, has a little bit more protein and goes a little bit longer for every day but keeps you in a shallow fast. So it gives you the metabolic effects for diabetes, for other metabolic condition, but does not get you into the rejuvenation because it's a little bit of a shallower fast because the cells detect that the protein and the ketogenic and they don't go into like a deep, full fast.

Speaker 1: 23:20

And what does the value? How do the carbohydrates help? I know we have a lot of several of our speakers have been about, you know, ultra low carb, that, that kind of thing. How did, how did the carbohydrates help with this diet?

Speaker 2: 23:34

And we have a little bit, actually more carb than the ketogenic diet. I mean, I know, we, we, we I don't know what the word is, but we devolize the carbs and everyone hates carbs today, but carbs is the essence of the function of every cell of the body and in, in, in, if you study centenarians, people living 100 and beyond, they're not carb restricted. It's just they don't eat the short term carbs. They don't. They don't eat a high group glucose, high dessert based lifestyle. They eat fruits and vegetables. So the right complex carbs that by the time they get to the body, they don't over spike insulin, which is a pro growth, pro aging factor. By the time they get to the tour and PK and the RAS pathway, they don't over trigger these receptors.

Speaker 2: 24:18

These type of carbs give you the fundamental energy for a healthy operation of a cell without doing the damage of pushing the cell to grow or to age or to store fat and to turn the carbs into fat. So we love that concept. If you go super low on carb, either you have to turn the body into full ketosis so that the brain is not confused. It's like am I going to work on ketones or am I going to work on carbs because that's the metabolic flexibility and the brain has to switch.

Speaker 2: 24:46

The issue with the ketogenic diet is that it's great for because of the ketones, is great for the brain and because it's very low on on on carbs. It's great for diabetes. Now the downfall of it it has enough protein for the cells to not fully fast and it's showing some and no carbs so the cell is like hesitant. Should I turn into into full ketosis and live on the ketone? But I'm seeing proteins and the tour pathway is triggered. So that's sitting in between and that's sitting in between is healthy for certain condition like diabetes and and some neurological is a little bit less healthy for longevity and for a deeper range of into fast.

Speaker 1: 25:28

So for longevity, for longevity benefits first, and then I want to talk about the other diseases that this is useful for. For longevity benefits, would would someone take this diet and do it every week, or is it once a month, or what is the recommended approach for that?

Speaker 2: 25:47

Well, the beauty is again, like the four below one car race, you do a couple of pit stops. You don't do. You know, you don't stop all the time. So it's only three times per year is the average recommended time for the prolon fasting nutrition. So we, as a company, you're you're going to hear a company or a CEO telling you, hey, do only my products two or three times a year.

Speaker 2: 26:08

But that's the truth. That's the truth because you don't need to regenerate yourselves all the time and you do it three times per year. We're actually about to publish a major article is going to show longevity benefits from doing that. And now if you say, look, I'm overweight, I'm pre diabetic and I really want to accentuate the weight loss aspect, not just the cellular aspect, of prolon, and therefore we say, okay, do it four times, or do it once every month on a on the first four or five months and then you can start skipping and doing it once every three or four times per year and do it a little bit more frequently if you want to accentuate the weight loss. But we recommend doing it three to four times per year on average for healthy aging.

Speaker 1: 26:51

Now I understand that I'd like to talk about, too, the fascinating work you're doing of taking this diet, this food, as medicine concept and going beyond longevity and applying it specifically to the diseases that determine our longevity, that 80 percent of us or more are going to die of the four big categories, and see how that is. I understand that, as we'll talk about that, insurance companies at least some insurance companies will actually pay for this once it's prescribed by your physician for them. Before we do that, though, for longevity, I assume there's not a prescription code for that. If someone needs this for longevity, I guess we all do right.

Speaker 2: 27:37

Not yet. I think the payers the insurance, the payers and Medicare, medicare figured out that if you pay for food as medicine for people with conditions, it makes financial sense for them to spare that cost. Now it's up for us to show them in the future that even if you pay even earlier, when people are healthy and keep them healthy, that still has some economic benefits. But the problem is, on average a citizen stays just for a few days with one insurance, so no one wants to pay for something today that's going to benefit another insurance or saves another insurance in the future. So that longevity of investment into today's food is going to be a little bit tricky in the US, in Europe, where you have single payer systems, and for example in the UK the NHS is paying for all your healthcare from the day you're born to the day you die. This is where it could be interesting to start creating codes for food as healthy, aging and as preventive and show them long-term value and savings into investing in those.

Speaker 1: 28:45

So it's really remarkable. What you've done is having these diets now that are paid for by many insurance companies. That then will actually benefit the major diseases which we've talked about many times, with cardiovascular disease and cancer and Alzheimer's disease and diabetes is, given that they're driven by common underlying mechanisms like inflammation or insulin resistance, although they're filtered through our own genetics and environments that we're exposed to. How similar are the diets let's say, a diet for diabetes versus a diet for heart disease versus a diet for longevity that we just talked about?

Speaker 2: 29:27

Yeah. So what we have done is we created a project under us called Nutrition for Longevity and it ships you meals exactly what you describe. The meals are medically tailored. They're called medically tailored meals or MTMs, and the medically tailored meals our science team look at and also we follow the association. So, for example, for diabetes, the American Diabetes Association has its own recommendation on what you should eat. We couple that with our longevity formulation and our science team input into this under Professor Walter Longo and we tailor the food to help you on the short term, mitigate and manage better, manager chronic condition, ie diabetes in this case.

Speaker 2: 30:12

Why the longevity formulation is helping you to stay potentially healthier as well, or to have a healthy aging process, and the Center for Medicaid and Medicaid love this concept. They give us a reimbursement code and now I think we've signed over 70 insurances around the US that are immersing our medically tailored meals under the brand called Nutrition for Longevity. We're very excited about that. We're probably one of the first. Food is medicine. Now, truly food is medicine. Companies in that company in that regard and we're very excited that. First, thankful for the National Health to have invested in us and supported us to get here, and very thankful for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid and the insurances that are saying we see you as medicine. We're going to pay for your food as well, to help patients optimize, if you want, their metabolic part of aging and help them increase their chances for remission and regression.

Speaker 1: 31:11

Wow, that's such a huge milestone and I mean, given that the fasting, mimicking diet has all these advantages for aging and inflammation and insulin resistance that we've talked about, when we take the diet and apply it to Alzheimer's disease versus cardiovascular disease, are there additional things in the diet that are unique for Alzheimer's disease or cardiovascular disease, or are they just getting the same benefits from the overall decrease in inflammation that's for aging? Are the diets tailored specifically like that?

Speaker 2: 31:49

The fasting mimicking diet was tested and we have the results for diabetes and for cancer. And we mentioned Alzheimer's and autoimmune. We're actually currently in trials. Stanford is doing the autoimmune trials and University of Milan is doing the Alzheimer's trial. So I cannot comment on the results there. I don't have them yet.

Speaker 2: 32:07

But on diabetes and cancer it's the same description we had. The theory is you help the metabolic factors and diabetes is mainly a metabolic disease and becomes cellular is when the pancreas starts falling, it starts getting tired. Cancer is a mixture of metabolic and cellular condition. So it starts with a cell that loses inhibition and starts growing and growing without inhibition, without stoppage. But at the same time cancer lives on getting food and gets pushed by growth hormones. So when you fast cancer, the theory is that first of all you're slowing down feeding cancer.

Speaker 2: 32:49

Once you have cancer it's the organ that likes to eat the most and you slow down the body's pushed for cancer growth through IGF and insulin. So with the fasting mimicking nutrition we've been able to create an environment in the body that does not help the cancer thrive. And when you underfeed cancer and then you bring chemo or you bring hormone therapy, cancer is so weakened, is not being well fed is not so defensive and then potentially that's the theory we studied you can sensitize cancer to be better hit by the current standard of care. So these are the two angles Diabetes makes very simple. Diabetes is a disease of overeating and fasting gets you in a very simplistic way. It's the fastest way potentially to help with the ambition and or regression On cancer. We hit a little bit on the cellular aspect and we hit a little bit on the metabolic aspect and we've published these trials in top science and medical journals for now.

Speaker 1: 33:51

Yeah, that's an interesting point that the diabetes and the cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's sort of there's a stage where they ramp up essentially with symptoms. So there's an early stage and you can have a little bit of diabetes or a little bit of Alzheimer's or even a little bit of heart disease with a calcium score or something. But with cancer it's kind of a binary thing. You sort of fall off the cliff with cancer. So I wonder for the food is medicine usage? Then this would be for people who have cancer undergoing treatment or who have cancer. What are the current indications now for our audience out there as far as cancer patients, and which cancers are they approved for?

Speaker 2: 34:38

Yeah, the nutrition for longevity, the meals, the medically tailored meals that we have every day. The concept there is how can we so cancer thruise when there's abundance of carbs and proteins? And cancer gets even happier when insulin is spiking as a response to carb and insulin, like growth factor, is spiking as a response to protein. So the tailoring of the food is to give you complex carbs and to give you no animal protein or special sequences of amino acids that do not overfeed cancer and do not over spike IGF, so that the cancer is feeling wow, I'm in a restricted environment, I cannot thrive. I'm not getting short term carbs, I'm not getting the proteins that boost me the most, which are special sequences. You can find a lot in animal sources of protein. So it's a plant based max pescetarian with a little bit of fish type of diet that's tailored to not spike insulin and not spike IGF, so that the cancer doesn't feel that it can grow fast into the body.

Speaker 1: 35:49

And one of the topics of this course is not only the body but also mind effects on longevity, and we've had some of our speakers, like Chris Palmer, talking about ketogenic diets reversing mental health issues. Yes, do you have any currently experience, or what's your vision for how these diets affect not only mental health but cognitive function, even sort of healthy, normal people?

Speaker 2: 36:16

You know fasting is fasting and ketogenic diets are important for brain conditions and we are currently. We just published an article with mice trials, preclinical trials on Alzheimer's and we're now in a clinical trial at the University of Milan. At the same time, on our medicated meals, were doing a trial with with few top clinics on Alzheimer's. But why the? Why the brain loves fasting and ketogenic diet? Because the brain is a fat organ and when you fast or where you're in a fasting mimicking type or on a ketogenic diet and so we're feeding the body the mid chain fatty acids, which are fat like food that the brain loves, and and when and so. So the brain actually switches very easily in living on ketones and and loves that setting to perform better.

Speaker 2: 37:09

And this is why we have fat in the body. You know this is this was a human evolution defense mechanism. When you're walking and there's no food, the body knew that okay, I'll bring down the fat, I'll turn it into small chains. They can cross the blood brain barrier to feed the brain so that I don't go into syncope and I don't die. So they stay up and I keep looking for food. So the brain loves that state. It just loves the ketones more than the carbs, being a fat organ that's thrive on it. So the ketogenic diet, indeed and the fasting kid could have some could create at least this, let's say, a honeymoon impact by, by supporting the brain and the function and maybe, if you go to a deeper fast, by rejuvenating parts of the brain. We don't know that. We're studying that and mice, we do see an improvement in memory and we're now in human trials to see what the outcomes could be.

Speaker 1: 38:02

So I understand that, as you said, that the actually the health care system, depending on the insurers may pay for some of these things If I have certain conditions that they're currently pride for it, and it's there's a long list, actually I imagine it's on your website. But how about if I just want to get the diet myself and maybe I don't have those conditions? Is it available for individuals like our audience just just to go purchase it and, and if so, how expensive is it?

Speaker 2: 38:35

If you want to do the five days fasting nutrition prolon, you can go and purchase it online at prolon fastcom. It is going to cost you between 189 and 199, which is basically the $30 $40 per day that you would otherwise spend on food. So we can have, say, okay, how much, an average, we pay more in Los Angeles and we pay more in Los Angeles than that, but on the average and the average country expenditure that $30 $40 a day and we said, okay, times five, that's between 189, $199 and that will give you your five days of food and supplements and everything you don't need to add to it. So any food or drinking, it's all included. If you want to do every day's meal, the medically tailored meals or the nutrition for longevity, then the, the the price per meal is actually just around $11 or $12. If you want to go full plant base will be closer to the 11. If you want to add fish and go, pescetane will be close to that $13, $14 and you can buy it on nutrition for longevitycom.

Speaker 1: 39:36

Great, and you mentioned one website for prolon. Maybe you could also tell our audience how they can follow you on social media and also the main website. If there's any other websites, they should be checking.

Speaker 2: 39:49

Yeah, if you want to read more about the science we talked about today, about a lot of you know out of a G and fasting nutrition for health conditions, All the science is published under the science tab with Lneutracom L-neutracom that's our company sign. If you want to follow me on social and Dr Joseph Anton and LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram I'm active on all platforms. And if you want to follow prolon and get the latest on the fasting nutrition itself, same on all the social platform you can follow prolon or prolon fast or prolon FMD.

Speaker 1: 40:25

Well, thank you so much, Joseph, for taking the time to talk with with us today in this episode, and also thank you for the remarkable work you're doing in advancing food and medicine and making it available to so many people and potentially doing such great good work.

Speaker 2: 40:44

Thank you, appreciate it very much and we'll talk again soon.

Speaker 3: 41:10

Can I start?

Speaker 3: 41:11

It's already recording oh sorry, this is for general information and educational purposes only, and it's not intended to substitute for medical advice or counseling, the practice of medicine or the provision of health care, or diagnosis or treatment, or the creation of physician, patient or clinical relationship. The use of this information is at their own users risk. If you find this to be on the value of, please hit that like button to subscribe to support the work that we do on this channel, and we take your suggestions and advice very seriously, so please let us know what you'd like to see on this channel. Thanks for watching and we hope to see you next time.

Speaker 1: 42:06

Thank you. Thank you.