Biohacking Expert Shares Secret to Fasting Without Actually Fasting | Dr. Chris Rhodes

What is the point of living longer if you have to live less? Those were words that really resonated with me. That was one of the things that really got me interested in finding out, is there a way that we can recreate the benefits of fasting? That's ultimately what led to Mimio.

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My guest today is Dr. Chris Rhodes. Chris has a PhD in nutrition and has always been fascinated by the way we eat affects our health and longevity. In his scientific quest to find the perfect diet to maximize human lifespan, his team found something they didn't expect. So I'm very excited to have Chris on today to share this groundbreaking research with you, dear audience. Chris, welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. It's a pleasure to have you on.

Such a pleasure to be here, Claudia. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk through everything with me. I'm excited.

Yeah, and I'm excited to share what you have uncovered as well. But I'd like to start with how you became the black sheep of the nutrition department while doing your PhD. Can you share that story, please?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, a little bit of background about me. I got my bachelor's in biochemistry from Loyola Marymount University down in LA. But when I got out of college, you know, like a lot of kids, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, what really interested me. I knew it wanted to be something in research but wasn't sure what. So I took a 2-year immunology fellowship at Stanford where I just kind of started poring through all the research that I could get my hands on, like all the seminars that I could go to trying to find out what interested me. And eventually came across healthy aging and longevity research. And that was really, really fascinating to me because it used to be basically this area of myth, right? Like very like Ponce de León, Fountain of Youth, but was now suddenly this really active area of legit scientific research. And of course, longevity is super important because it's one of those things where if you can solve longevity, you can essentially also solve most major diseases, right? Because by and large, it's the aging process that degenerative processes that happen there that are the underlying factors that kind of lead to things going wrong in the system that lead to those diseases of aging. So, that was super fascinating for me. And of course, when you're in that space, eventually you come across fasting because it's one of the only ways that we know of to reliably extend lifespan and then healthspan as well. Like, in that same vein of all these other longevity questions, fasting has been shown to help treat, prevent, or delay most major diseases in something like over 100,000 different studies. And what was really, really fascinating to me about all of that was that fasting does that without actually adding anything into the system, right? So it's not like this superfood or this wonder drug, but somehow fasting is like activating this dormant longevity bio program that we all kind of have inside of us already. But just isn't normally activated. And, when that clicked for me, I was actually mad about it honestly.

You're like, "It's free. Everyone has access to it. And, what are we doing?" Exactly.

And, even more than that, it's like my body has this dormant longevity program inside of it already, but it's just not doing it. So, I could be living to 120 years old and in perfect health, but my body's kind of just too lazy to activate those programs. So, I'm like, "Okay." I, I have to figure out what is going on here, what is happening inside the human body during a fast, and is there some way that we can kind of, you know, recreate that system to turn on these regenerative bio programs, get the longevity benefits of fasting, but, you know, without the arduous everyday task of actually doing like 36-hour alternate-day fasting. So that's what kind of catapulted me into the nutrition department at UC Davis where I got my PhD. And there I was definitely like we talked about the black sheep of the nutrition department because everybody else there was very much like, oh, okay, like how many strawberries should we eat in order to, you know, like have the best diet and live the longest? Or, you know, like, you know, what's exactly the right amount of blueberries? And I'm just like, what if we don't eat at all? Maybe that's the secret. Have we tried that yet? Yeah. So everyone was kind of like, what's this kid doing?

He's in the wrong department. Like, get him out of here.

Yeah, like I feel like he's misunderstanding the point.

Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, so that's what I basically spent my PhD at UC Davis doing was studying what happens in the body during a fast and finding a way to recreate it.

So question, did they kick you out of the nutrition department or what happened?

They eventually kicked me out, but they kicked me out with a graduate degree and like 2 years of postdoc. So like it took a while, but eventually they kicked me out the door.

Sent him on his way as well. So let's, let's go down that rabbit hole, which is really exciting. So I love your premise of understanding like what is happening in the body when a fast is happening because we know it's so beneficial for our body. But obviously not everyone has that willpower to do the alternative day 36-hour fasting and not everyone is in a physical position to be in, and particularly women with hormonal cycles, etc. Right. But there's a whole spectrum of different causes why not everyone should be doing that. Right. So you decided to go down that rabbit hole. And so what was that process like? What were you uncovering along the way?

Yeah, absolutely. So it really started kind of my, you know, first and second year really getting into doing this larger-scale clinical study of fasting. So what we actually did for that was we had 20 people come in, 10 men, 10 women, because we wanted to avoid a gender bias. And like oftentimes—

Good job getting women. Yeah, by the way, which most clinical research Yeah.

Like the, the nutrition department is actually, you know, it's predominantly female, right? So like there was no way that we were ever gonna be able to do a study that was like, no, I think white men only please. And like older white men.

Yeah. Hallelujah to that. Finally.

Yeah.

Finally. Finally. Yeah.

I agree. Like I had a very, very good scientific upbringing on that front. So 10 men, 10 women, we, we had them come in in an overnight fasted state, which was their baseline state. Then we had them eat normally throughout the day while we were tracking what they were eating, just like their normal habitual diet, but everything was cataloged. And then we took a 2-hour like postprandial, post-eating time point. That was what we called the fed state. And then after that, we did a 36-hour fast to kind of like mimic the benefits that you see during alternate-day fasting, which is where you kind of maximize those longevity-style benefits of fasting. And, we did continuous glucose monitoring throughout. So, we had them doing finger pricks every 2 hours. So, everybody was super happy with me in that study. I was like, "Come and be a pincushion for me." Then, we did their 36-hour time point and then, we had them eat again on the third day but then, eat exactly what they had eaten on the first day. So essentially, this was what's called a controlled habitual diet and it controls for the impact of food so it doesn't become a compounding factor, but without introducing any new foods into somebody's diet that could, you know, also throw their system out of whack. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then we did, yeah, a 2-hour like postprandial time point after a full day of eating, and we called that the refed state. What we were trying to look at there was essentially, you know, are there benefits to like big long-term 36-hour fasting versus a typical overnight fast, the baseline and the fasting state. And then are there carryover effects of fasting between the fed state and the refed state that kind of, you know, continue on through like the acute portion of the 36-hour fast? So what we found was that there, there was a big increase in like plasma functionality between the baseline state and the fasted state. So these people's plasma became more anti-inflammatory, it became more antioxidant, like cellular protective, it became more cardioprotective, had better cholesterol efflux capacity, which is like the gold standard clinical marker of cardiovascular disease risk. And that was really, really exciting to us because essentially taking already young, healthy people with a single nutritional intervention and then being able to like make them even healthier, optimize their functionality. And that's a big thing in the nutrition world. You really do not see that very often. And so that kind of made us think, all right, what's the difference between the baseline state and the fasted state that could be causing these beneficial effects to happen? So we did what's called comprehensive metabolomics, essentially looking at all of the different small molecule components of the plasma. And what we found was that there were over 300 significant differences between the baseline state and the fasting state. And, when we started combing through those looking for the molecules that could be responsible for creating some of these beneficial effects, I want to say that we used this really super fancy AI program. I was like, "Oh, yes, we really were high-tech about it." It was like, no, it was just me, poor graduate student, and PubMed. But, what we found was that there were about a dozen of these molecules that had already been shown to have some kind of literature result. Of being bioactive. So, that's being able to have an impact on actual biological functionality, whether that was enhancing the anti-inflammatory ability or inducing autophagy or extending lifespan or what have you. And then, from that list of 12, we basically did ex vivo modeling assays to kind of reassess all of them for their functional capabilities. And what we found was that there was this synergistic combination of 4 of these molecules that when we combined them together, they could replicate all of those same beneficial effects of fasting that we were seeing in human cells. So that was really exciting. And of course, because this was also a, a study about human longevity and like the longevity potential of fasting and how that might be happening, we also did a C. elegans lifespan analysis with those 4 individual molecules as well as their combination. And what we found was, you know, each of them individually could extend lifespan, but together they synergistically extended lifespan. So, we could extend the lifespan of the C. elegans by 96% without any kind of fasting, without any kind of caloric restriction, just through supplementation with the molecules themselves. And that was kind of the big discovery there. So, this is kind of getting at our underlying biomimetic approach And that's ultimately what catapulted us into founding Mimio, is taking the molecules that the human body already produces during a fast and just giving them back to people as a supplement to recreate fasting on a molecular level and basically trick your cells into activating that dormant longevity bio program and get the benefits of fasting without actually having to fast.

So first of all, congratulations and super, super exciting and well done for pouring over the 300 different parameters. To find the 4. Sounds a little—

That's what graduate students do. That's, that's their role in universities for sure.

Well, my career started in investment banking, so I had to stare at like an Excel model of lots of numbers for many, many hours each day. So yeah, I feel for you.

Start off as an analyst and then you kind of work your way up.

Exactly. But for people listening, I'd really love to sort of break that down a bit because some people are like, oh, you know, is it like a magic supplement or not? But what is really happening when you take it? And like, what percentage is being absorbed or triggered in the body? Like, can you talk a little bit about that process and how that works?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So to get at that, it's probably good if I describe the second clinical study that we did. So like what I described before was essentially where the formulation came from, right? Like utilizing that biomimetic approach to really identify these interesting synergies of these clinically derived, like, health and longevity molecules and kind of tapping into that evolutionary knowledge and power to identify those things and, you know, see how they all work together. And it worked in human cells, it worked in C. elegans, and that's great proof of concept. But of course, we also wanted to make sure that this formulation would actually work in people, right? So, we did a pilot clinical study where we had people come in and then eat a standardized breakfast alongside a placebo control. And then, we assessed their plasma functionalities like we had in the earlier study. And then, we had those same people come back after a washout period, eat that same standardized breakfast but then with supplementation with Mimio. And what we found was that when they had the standardized meal with the placebo, there's this big loss in plasma functionality. And that's really, really standard of the postprandial state because you have kind of all this foreign material that's coming into the body, you have all this metabolic chaos that's throwing the system out of whack. So, that's causing a pro-inflammatory immune response. You have your metabolic markers going everywhere. So, we found that their plasma marker or sorry, their plasma functionality became more pro-inflammatory, less antioxidant, less cardioprotective. But, with supplementation with Mimio, we found that not only could we prevent all of that loss of function but then actually add gains of function on top of that that mimicked what we saw during an actual 36-hour fast. Fast. So instead of being pro-inflammatory, their plasma was anti-inflammatory and antioxidant and cardioprotective. And that was really like, you know, the big thing for us to be able to show like, yes, number one, the ingredients themselves are bioavailable. We checked, we did a PK dosing study to basically look at the appearance and disappearance of the molecules. And what we found was that all of them are very bioavailable. You take them, they appear in circulation after around, you know, 45 minutes to 1 hour and they stay elevated all the way through around 4 to 6 hours after that, at which point they're fully taken up into your cells and kind of start doing, doing more of their underlying processes there. But really from the actual clinical study, we saw that we could replicate a lot of these beneficial plasma effects of fasting even during a meal. And really importantly, especially in kind of like the typical overfed Western culture diet, we could prevent a lot of these negative effects of eating that can, you know, over time lead to more of this chronic disease progression.

So now comes a really important question, Chris. Somebody might be listening being like, oh, so I can go to McDonald's for like my 3 meals a day now and I just take Mimio supplements and I'll be— so let's talk about the nutrition aspect. As someone who works in the nutrition or studied in the nutrition department as well, Yeah, you're very, very correct.

As a PhD in nutrition, I was always very concerned about that perception of the product, right? It is a fasting memetic. So, people, yeah, kind of inherently think, "Oh, great, I can go out, I can have my donuts and Mimeo is going to keep me safe." And I'm like, "No, that's not quite right." So, I still definitely advocate for a healthy diet, a healthy exercise regimen. What we like to say is that we cannot guarantee that Mimeo will make you healthy, but we can guarantee that it will make you healthier. So, you want to be able to lay that foundation of having a healthy starting point and foundation to then be able to optimize functionality rather than say, let me start from the absolute baseline and just kind of try to get back to normal. So, that's really what I would say there is that this is not meant to be this magic pill that's going to erase calories or totally vanish food from your body magically, but it's more to help keep you safe and protected from some of the negative effects of eating. And then, even more, yeah, you can use it as a fasting mimetic, but also its use case as a fasting enhancer is something that's really, really interesting for me because you have a lot of people right now who are doing fasting and typically they're doing 16:8 or one meal a day. And because of, you know, just kind of the nature of scientific hype, you get a lot of, you know, a lot of results from a lot of different research papers that studied a lot of different time courses of fasting kind of all lumped together. So people think, oh, if I'm fasting for 16:8, right, I'm getting all of these lifespan extension benefits and these, you know, immune and cell regeneration benefits or these like autophagy benefits even. But in reality, the time course of fasting is much, much different than that. So 16:8 is the not really gonna be enough time to actually kick your body into the physiological like fasting metabolism. That doesn't really happen until at least 24 hours of fasting and then, you know, continues that upward progression all the way up until, you know, 72 hours of fasting. So for people who are doing like the 16:8 or the OMAD, you know, taking Mimeo alongside their fast can be really, really beneficial because it can help give you the benefits of a longer-term fast, a 36-hour fast in a shorter in a shorter window while also making fasting itself easier because these molecules are really interesting. They have like this broad spectrum of effects, but that includes, you know, enhancing mood and cognition, energy levels. But then also really importantly, they have this appetite suppression effect as well. So it can make fasting a lot easier and more enjoyable while still giving you the benefits of a longer-term fast in a shorter fasting window.

Well, these all sound phenomenal things that everyone, I think, who wants to be hungry all the time. Exactly. But the question, would it kick you— so say you were doing a longer fast to get into, for example, ketosis, um, for the benefits of that, would it kick you out of that if you take the supplements during that? It wouldn't?

No, no, definitely not. So if anything, it'll actually, you know, jump start your fasting. So essentially, you know, these are the same, these are the same molecules that your body produces during like that 36-hour fasting mark. So if you're doing 16:8, these things would not be elevated yet. So by taking these molecules, you know, earlier on in that process, it'll actually kind of, you know, boost your body into that later stage of fasting. So it can— yeah, it can be really helpful for actually, you know, kickstarting a fast and it won't break a fast at all.

Okay, amazing. Is there a particular protocol that you would say, you know, how regularly should people take it? How many of the supplements? Is this something you have to take for the rest of your life, or are there phases where you, you know, on and off? Like, what, what do you recommend?

Sure. So like what we basically say is that, you know, the daily recommended dose is 2 capsules per day, and you can take that with or without food depending on if you want to use it as a fasting mimetic versus a fasting enhancer. We do typically advise people to start off by taking it with food because there are some folks who are sensitive to the nicotinamide in the formulation. And, if they take it on an empty stomach or there's anybody who has difficulty taking supplements on an empty stomach, there can be some GI troubles there, but taking it with food pretty much gets rid of that, which is great. I would say that as with anything that's designed for healthy aging and for longevity, the longer you're on it, the more efficacious it can be, especially in the long term. You see that all the time in animal studies of longevity. The earlier in life the intervention is initiated, the longer, the longer the lifespan extension potential will be. So that mimio operates kind of in the same way, right? But as with any supplement, I think that there is a certain degree of cycling that should be done just to kind of help keep your body in that natural homeostasis allow you to return to baseline and then actually really be able to appreciate the, the effects of the supplements either, you know, going off of it and you can kind of like, oh, I feel worse, which is not great, but, you know, it lets you know. Or when you go back on it, you can kind of feel a bit more of those acute, acute benefits again. And so the typical time course that we've seen for MIMIO in terms of, you know, feeling benefits, getting, getting some of these great effects is really different for different people. Some folks are like more sensitive to the molecules and there are some like immediate tangible effects that you can feel within a couple hours of taking it. Right. So one of the ingredients in there, palmitoylethanolamide, it's involved in the endocannabinoid system. And what it does is essentially, you know, go to your neurons and stimulate the secretion of anandamide, which is one of the body's bliss molecules. So it has this really interesting effect on mood elevation. But then also pain relief as well. You can kind of almost think about it like your body's natural CBD, which is awesome. Like de-stress, like, you know, those, those pain relief elements, really good clinical backing for that as well. There's probably like, I think, 52 different clinical studies with PEA and pain. So pretty robust there. And then another one in there is oleoylethanoleamide, OEA, always fun to say. And that one is actually involved in the gut-brain axis where it it is a really powerful metabolic regulator and actually helps to decrease appetite. And really interestingly, the way that it does that is actually by naturally increasing the production of GLP-1 from intestinal cells. So that's something, you know, the effects of those molecules are something that you would be able, could potentially feel, you know, like within hours of taking it. Just like we saw in the clinical study, there are these immediate effects to the product.

Product.

But then, you know, we recommend people be on Mimeo for at least, you know, a month to really see whether or not it's gonna, it's gonna work for them.

So the 2 a day, and you talked about 2 of the molecules, and obviously there's another 2. So can you share about them? And then I'd love to also talk a little bit about the science with the synergistic effect, like what do you think is going on there that causes that? Because it's, it's so fascinating what the body is able to do that, you know, science and you've been discovering, right? So, I'd love it.

That's why I love the biomimetic approach to research in general is because you find out like the body is this completely intensely complex like just system of interlocking and interconnected parts that change one dial over here, another dial changes way over here that changes another dial way over here. So, when you think about things from a traditional pharma-style perspective of one molecule, one target style approach, that's kind of where the system breaks down because you're really messing up natural biological complexity. Whereas, the more you can actually approach biological complexity with these natural molecules, the more of an effect that you can really have across the holistic system while also keeping things safe and without having too many weird side effects, really being able to to put your biology under your own control. But anyway, the question was the other two molecules that are in Mimeo is spermidine, which is a really popular molecule in the longevity space right now that is really involved in autophagy. It's been shown to extend lifespan in mice already. And then, it also has a lot of good clinical backing so far about being able to enhance cognition in folks with cognitive decline or dementia. And then the final one that we have in there is nicotinamide. And nicotinamide is of course an NAD precursor. That's one of its, you know, its big, its big functions to kind of enhance the NAD+ concentration in the bloodstream, in cells, so that it kind of sets the stage for the rest of the molecules because NAD+ is essentially how your cells measure their energy state of the actual cell. So, if you have a lot of NAD+, it's essentially a signal to cells that says, "Oh, we're fasting so I can kick off a lot of these fasting processes and kind of bring down the guardrails so that we can start activating these different beneficial bioprograms that wouldn't ordinarily be turned on." So, having the nicotinamide in there, helps to kind of increase the NAD, bring those guardrails down, and help make the other ones a bit more effective. So, speaking to that synergistic piece of the puzzle. And of course, NAD has its own really interesting and well-studied effects like increasing brain health, skin health, heart health, muscle health, exercise performance and recovery, all that fun holistic benefit kind of stuff.

You see a lot of biohackers now even got Sentier One patches to try as well. Yeah. And what are some of the cases that you have seen for people? Like, have you just tested on healthy individuals or have you seen some research also on other like use cases or other types of patients, if you will, or clients?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So we have tested primarily on healthy people so far, just utilizing the full formulation. But the individual molecules in Mimeo have collectively something in the range, like over 100 different clinical studies about the individual molecules. And throughout those studies, you see a lot of different use cases for the molecules. And actually to the point where we were kind of struggling even now to figure out, you know, there are so many benefits to these molecules, especially when you put them all together. Like what's the right one to kind of go out and like tell people about? But, you know, you see like OEA being really great for helping to reduce appetite and like inflammatory markers, control metabolic risk factors, you know, control actual like weights as well in folks with obesity and folks with like nonalcoholic fatty liver disorder and folks with prediabetes. PEA has been shown in like multiple different, multiple different like pain disease states like fibromyalgia or diabetic neuropathy, it'd be incredibly helpful there, like nerve pain issues. But then it's also been shown to have great effects on exercise performance and recovery in healthy folks, has been shown and is like under pretty intense, like, research right now for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, because it has this really interesting effects on reducing neuroinflammation. And then, same thing spermidine, cognition like cognitive decline and dementia. Nicotinamide has been studied in every case you can possibly imagine at this point. So, these molecules have a very wide range of benefits, very wide range of use cases, and a lot of clinical backing behind them outside of even what we've done.

Which is reassuring. I'm actually going to be seeing my mother who has dementia next week. So I'm going to share my Mimeo supplements with her and see because it is quite advanced at this stage. And I think whatever it's worth to try and to see. And I guess that comes with the question as well, like, are there any profiles of people that it's not for that it could be dangerous for? Or is it so bioidentical that it's for everyone? It's a natural body?

Yeah, I would say that generally speaking, yeah, all of the molecules in Mimeo are of course ones that are already inside of the body, right? Your body naturally produces them and they naturally produce them way more during a 36-hour fast. So, they are very safe, very well tolerated. They're not like a foreign molecule. Even something as innocuous as aspirin or ibuprofen that has to be detoxed through the liver, the cytochrome P450 system, these can kind of be taken up by every cell in your body and every cell in your body can recognize them, knows how to metabolize them, and knows how to safely process them without any kind of toxicity. And, there's never been severe adverse effects reported in any of those clinical studies from these molecules. So, very, very safe from a safety perspective. The folks that we tend to say definitely talk to your doctor, don't do anything too out of line is I don't think that kids should be on Mimeo because I don't think that kids really need to fast or need to be activating their longevity bioprograms, right? But then also pregnant or nursing women, and not because I don't think that the molecules may be safe there, but just because that whole system of, like we said, not messing with biological complexity, you don't want to throw anything out of whack during a critical time in development.

No, that makes sense as well. So tell us about where you're at with Mimeo Health right now and your sort of journey there and what's the vision for the next sort of 1, 2, 3, 5 years?

So Mimeo Health, what we really want to be is like the biomimetic supplement company. So really, you know, utilizing this biomimetic research approach, our biomimetic technology to like, you know, continue to expand out the fasting mimetic formulation because like we said before, we have, you know, these, this list of 300 of these different metabolites. And we were looking specifically for ones that already had, you know, some kind of literature evidence of being bioactive already. But that left us with, you know, hundreds of other targets that haven't been assessed yet in the kind of like this really rich research pool for us to be able to go out and find new, maybe even better functioning molecules to enhance the formulation and make it more complete over time. But then really our long-term goal, just like we ran this process with fasting, you can do this with other regenerative states in the body as well. So, we have a fasting memetic as the first product, but maybe the second is an exercise memetic or a sleep memetic or a cold exposure memetic, a meditation memetic, things like that. So really going out there, studying human biology, figuring out what's happening during these interesting regenerative recreating that and, you know, giving it back to folks in a more convenient daily format.

I mean, let's break that down for a minute because you piqued my curiosity there. So like meditation memetic, how would that be? What would you envisage something like that looking like?

I'm not entirely sure at this point. That's kind of the fun of it, right? Is that like, you know, there are these really interesting studies out there on the benefits of meditation for, you know, for white matter, for even like reducing inflammatory markers, controlling metabolic markers. Especially the cognitive aspects of it as well. So, I think there's this really robust set of data that meditation does actually do something very beneficial for the system. And, what we would design for the study is essentially to kind of run the same process as what we did for fasting. So, take blood samples during a time course of meditation, see what's changing around and see if there's anything that we can isolate from there that when we give it back can have these kind of same beneficial effects. And I think, you know, specifically for the meditation, we'd be really interested in ones that have to do specifically with cognitive health.

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big, big fan of that. We've had Dale Bredesen on, who I'm sure you're familiar with. Kristen Willmeyer was the director of brain imaging at the Amen Clinics as well. And the beauty is that neurodegenerative diseases do not need to, to be. And Dale Bredesen identified 38 underlying drivers for that as well. But to have more more support in the system along the way would be really phenomenal.

Right, exactly. And I mean, that's what I would say too is that, like I said, we want to be the biomimetic company, but maybe a better term for it is we want to be the bio-enhancement company, right? I'm never going to say, no, don't go out there and fast or don't go out there and meditate, don't go out there and exercise, just take this pill instead because that's never going to work, right? But, I think that we can offer— life happens, right? Sometimes you can't fast, sometimes you can't exercise, sometimes you can't meditate, and we can to like bridge that gap for people while also when you do the thing, help make it, you know, more effective and maximize the benefits that you are getting from it.

Yeah. So let's say there's a person, Chris, who's, I don't know, say 40 years old, relatively healthy, but you know, not 100% certain what's good and not so good in their life. And they're saying, okay, now I've hit 40, I want to start, you know, understanding longevity better, I want to start optimizing my lifestyle, my supplementation, etc. What would be an ideal lifestyle, including, you know, nutrition, what to focus on, what not to focus on that you would recommend based on what you've seen in your research?

So I would say the, the big things there are, you know, from a nutritional perspective in general, I kind of like to do something that's called like nutrition maximalism. And like another, another way that I've described this in my TikTok channel is Nutrition Magic. So essentially what this is, is like, I like to eat a lot while still like eating as little as possible to kind of like go with that caloric restriction thing. So I focus on a lot of nutrient-rich and like very high-volume foods that ultimately don't end up having a lot of calories. So, you know, you can make a couple of simple substitutions to like still make really like delicious food, but that can cut out, you know, almost like half of the actual caloric impact while increasing, you know, nutrient content, your fiber content. So it's been more beneficial for the microbiome. And that's kind of how I like to eat.

Wait, one question to that, though. We have to be specific because people are like, oh, what can I eat? And all these things. Are you talking about eating mountains of broccoli? Or like, what is it that you're actually—

I actually kind of am talking about eating mountains of broccoli, but in a more, you know, in a more palatable way. So one of the, one of the, like, the big thing that I love doing is I was always a big big fan of pasta, like spaghetti and meatballs were my childhood and my, you know, my teenhood, my early adulthood, my everything, right? I mean, I love doing zucchini noodles now. Like, I got me a spiralizer and I just like, I go at that every day. And I have found ways to, you know, like the big problem with zucchini noodles is that they're always so watery. So, like, I put them in a, in a, like a cheesecloth, wring all the water out and then use them. So, they're like perfectly al dente and they don't seep water into your food, which is great.

You're quite a As well.

Like I said, like Nutrition Magic, I got a whole TikTok channel. Like, go ahead, go ahead, check it out.

We'll link it. We'll link it in the show notes.

Exactly.

We'll link it.

But yeah, but something, you know, like, you know, substituting rice with cauliflower rice, or there's been this really, there's this really cool new, new type of flour that's come out utilizing, you know, some wheat flour, but then also resistant wheat starch and gluten to kind of like recreate creates normal baking and physical properties of flour but at half the calories of normal flour. And, you can use that in baking. You can use natural zero-calorie sweeteners like allulose that has 70% of the sweetness of sugar but the exact same taste, no weird cooling effect, no aftertaste to kind of really make these very easy, can't tell the difference kind of substitutions while still being able to eat your favorite foods. And, this is not not— there's a term in the nutrition space for kind of these like, oh, instead of making normal pancakes, I'll make these weird flaxseed pumpkin pancakes that are still just as many calories but they're healthy, right? That's called sex with your pants on. And, I focus very much on foods that are not sex with your pants on. I'm like, no, if I can tell the difference, then there's no reason to do this. So, that's kind of my nutrition mission is to find ways to like create food that is essentially identical to what you would get, but just, you know, like really, really reduced calories. You can still eat all you want without overdoing it metabolically.

So question for you, cuz there's different schools of thought around calories and focusing on calories. Oh, sure. So can you walk through your perception in terms of looking at calories versus like quality of food in terms of like, you know, cold pressed organic olive oil, people are like, oh, olive oil is fat, like it's not good for you, right? But it's looking at calories but from a different point of view, just for clarity.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, calories are always a really interesting question. And I definitely, you know, you, you can get in trouble if you, if you talk about them the wrong way, right? So in the sense of the old adage that like, you know, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, like I don't, I don't think that that's And you can tell just from the actual nutrition science that that's not true either. You know, even just looking at the, what's called the thermic effect of food, the amount of energy that your body has to expend to break down different macronutrients, you know, like fat has almost no thermic effect of food. So your body expends almost no energy to break fat down. Then carbohydrates are the next step up from that. And then protein is the one where where, you know, when that comes into your system, almost half of the calories that protein is giving you is, you know, like used to actually metabolize the protein and turn it into something else. So there are, you know, by, by fiddling around with your macronutrients, you can definitely change the way that your body's gonna react to different forms of calories coming into the system. And then of course, you know, the actual like nutrient content of your food is gonna be really important as well, right? If you're talking about carbohydrates, carbohydrates that are coming from like, you know, a strawberry versus carbohydrates that are coming from sugar, like just plain and simple, that's gonna be a very different profile, right? The strawberry brings with it, you know, fiber, it brings with it like all the micronutrients, it brings with it all the antioxidants and the bioactive polyphenols and, you know, all these other things that have an impact on human health other than just the calories. So I definitely wholeheartedly prioritize the healthy nutrient-dense but still low-calorie foods because on the other side of the scientific coin, you do have all the studies that kind of show across organisms, right? Fasting and caloric restriction are some of the best ways to enhance lifespan and really enhance healthspan and prevent disease as well. So, it's kind of this balance between finding things that that can be very nutritional, give you all of the micronutrients, the bioactives that are going to help keep you healthy and thriving while also cutting back on total calories themselves and maximizing your metabolic rate. So you can, like I like to do, eat as much as possible while eating as little as possible.

So you're focusing on the healthy stuff. And I guess for everyone listening as well, this is not medical advice and do seek out.

Oh yeah, yeah. I'm not qualified. I'm a PhD in nutrition, not an MD. So anything that I say is for educational purposes only.

Exactly. So everyone should sort of gauge their view as well. But I think also just to make a point around like fasting, intermittent fasting in women and like hormonal cycles. So I went through phases of like keto diet and I noticed the sort of 3— the first 3 weeks I started feeling like amazing and, you know, clarity. But then thereafter I was really struggling with it and also energy levels, etc. Et cetera. Also with fasting, I was pushing for, you know, longer periods, trying to even do like the, you know, 18 hours fasting, et cetera, which again, short term was okay. But then I was starting to wear myself down. And I looked into it more. And I've had different conversations. And I think, you know, just for women listening as well, to be aware, because we have a very different hormonal cycle and profile than men do it. For men, it tends to be a lot easier to actually do longer fasts. Because of a 24-hour testosterone cycle, it's much easier as well. So there are certain phases days in the month for women, it is easier to do it. But if you're doing prolonged fasting windows, just to be wary of that. So do always, I think, number one, listen to your body. And I think with any intermittent fasting, so say somebody's listening is like, "Great, I'm gonna do longer intermittent fasting periods. I'm gonna take Mimio and I'll be fine." But just word of caution that intermittent fasting typically comes with assuming you have a very good baseline. You're not deficient in essential minerals and nutrients that you have as well. So, you know, just always when people hear fasting and they're in a terrible state already and then they start fasting, they're putting their body into huge stress and inflammation. So just like a word of caution there to people listening as well.

I would absolutely agree with that. And it's kind of like, you know, going on a vegan diet as well, right? Like a vegan diet can be very helpful for you if done properly. But if you're taking— if you're coming at it from like, all right, cool, I already have no iron in my system, and then I'm gonna start a vegan diet without any kind of like supplementation or like thinking through how I'm gonna, you know, really get my B12 or my iron or whatever. It's always gonna be like a bad situation at the end. And fasting is no different. You know, fasting is essentially like, how can I deplete my macronutrient and my micronutrient stores in my body as quickly as possible? Right? So if you're not taking the active efforts when you come back and you refeed, to make sure that you're getting adequate nutrition out of it, then it's going to be a non-sustainable system. Absolutely.

Yeah. I think that that's a really, really fundamental point as well. I almost feel like you guys could offer that as a protocol for people to have.

Actually, so we do as part of, you know, just as part of like, you know, the value that we're trying to bring to people, we do offer like what type of fasting is right for you, like inner, like quiz that I designed. So it's like from a PhD in nutrition. And then in the same way, we kind of have is your diet maximized for longevity? Longevity quiz that we also offer to people to just, you know, help get them engaged with Mimeo, but also provide and provide that value.

Perfect. Yeah, you have to share the links and we'll, we'll add them to the show notes as well. And do you do prolonged fasts during the year as well to like expedite also the fasting benefits, or do you just take Mimeo?

Yeah, well, for me, I do one meal a day style fasting. So I used to do— and this is kind of like also one of the reasons why I started Mimeo in the first place— I used to do alternate day fasting. This was back when I was at Stanford and I got really into it because I was actually taking my own plasma, testing my metrics, seeing what was happening to my cells. And I saw like, oh my gosh, if I fast for 36 hours, if I fast for 48 hours, there's this huge optimization of my cellular function and they're more resistant to stress and they aren't bothered by autoimmune stimuli. And so, that kind of got me hooked on it very quickly. Those biofeedback loops, they're powerful. But, eventually, it's a really difficult lifestyle to maintain over a long course of time. And, there's this very weird element of social isolation that comes with it because you're not going out there and having lunch with coworkers or even sometimes eating dinners with family. You're just kind of like, "All right, I guess I'm in a fasting box for the day." And so, eventually we were on vacation with my sister and co-founder, the COO of Mimio, Kaitlin Batey. And I was still doing the alternate-day fasting even on vacation because I was way too much of an evangelist for it at the time. And she was like, "Yeah, sure. Okay, fine. You're going to live longer, you're going to live healthier, that's great. But what is the point of living longer if you have to live less?" and those were words that really, really resonated with me. And I was like, okay, maybe I'm taking this a little bit too far. And that was, again, one of the things that really got me interested in finding out is there a way that we can recreate the benefits of fasting. And that's ultimately what led to Mimio. So now, I do one meal a day because that's kind of what works for my lifestyle. I love being able to go through undistracted acted throughout the day and then still be able to come home and have dinner with my partner and bond over food because I love it, right? If my whole eating philosophy is centered around eating as much as I possibly can, you know that I'm— I mean, yeah, I've literally dedicated my life and scientific career to it. So, that's what works for me. And then, I take Memeo alongside of that to really still be getting the benefits of that alternate-day fasting regimen that I was doing before, but, you know, with that shorter fasting window.

Beautiful. Chris, I normally ask this question with an if, but I'm going to say when you live to 150 years old with excellent health, how will you spend it?

Oh yeah. I mean, I'll probably spend it very similar to how I'm spending it now, honestly. It's like, what's the next thing I can do? Like, what's the next challenge? That's ahead of me. I'll spend a lot of time eating and traveling and trying to live the life Well lives. I think that's really important is that having that spirit, that bon vivant kind of mentality around life and just being grateful for every day is such an important component to longevity. And, that's most likely what I'll be doing. I don't think that I'll be doing anything crazy like, "Oh, I'm going to be the the first 100-year-old to like climb the face of Half Dome, you know, without a lifeline. Yeah, I'll just be like, no, no, I'm fine with, you know, like going to all the Michelin star restaurants in the world and, you know, like, you know, and eating the best food that I can.

Exactly. Well, watch those calories there because they—

yeah, every other day, maybe I'll take up the alternate day fasting for those things.

Exactly. To enjoy life like that as well. What trends and developments in the longevity space in general do you find most exciting?

Oh, I think the ones that I find the most exciting is, are like how AI is getting involved in kind of the next phase of molecule development. Because I think that that's going to very rapidly transform the pace of discovery for like not only, you know, pharmaceutical interventions, but things like what we're doing with Mimi with more of the holistic preventative stuff as well. And, I think that the trend now that we're moving into of actually people being more aware of longevity as a mainstream concept and being more aware especially now of preventative wellness rather than the more dogmatic traditional pharmacology style philosophy that was like— Reactive. Yeah, reactive. So, being like that, the focus on preventative wellness is I think going be a really big game changer for a lot of the, a lot of the health system.

Yeah. And I mean, what it also entails, right? So a health system, but also people living a different quality of life with more energy, doing things, going to Michelin-star restaurants in their 100s or climbing Kilimanjaro when they're 100, which I have with my kids. Let's see where we get to with that. Chris, for people and my listeners interested in understanding more about, you know, fasting and the science behind what you're doing, what are some online resources you would recommend they begin with?

Oh yeah, that's a great question. One of the, one of the, like, not online per se, but digital, there's a fasting app called Zero, which I love. I use it too. Yeah, tons of great information there. Like, really, just really great for getting into the lifestyle, learning more about it, and being able to, you know, track through, like, what's happening in your body during a fast. I will say that that some of their timelines are a little bit exaggerated like we were talking about before. A lot of the research kind of gets conflated together sometimes, but just like, you know, a great little entry point. And then I would also say that PubMed is another just like great way to kind of start dipping your toes in the water. Go to PubMed, search for review papers about intermittent fasting. That's kind of how I got into it in the first place. And it sounds very nerdy and scientific because I am, but it's still the recommendation that I'll give those people because you can really start to see not only, you know, what fasting can do, but how robust the actual research is around it and how much like scientific depth there is to some of these things. Whereas a lot of people think that fasting is kind of just like a fad that, you know, comes and goes like everything else. But there is really like decades and decades and decades of rigorous science that have been done with fasting.

Yeah. And I was just— what's something that came to me is another use case. So typically for fasting, it's like with caution after the age of 70 or whatever, but this is actually a perfect substitute for people who are a bit older who maybe are still in good health or their health is starting to decline more, but not to have to fast, but actually can take the supplements and get the benefits, I guess, right?

Yeah, that's absolutely true. And actually, like, you know, that's, that's one of our primary demographics right now. And our customers and we've heard great feedback from older populations. We had like an 87-year-old woman who started taking Mimeo and within the first 2 weeks, she emailed us kind of like raving back about like, "Wow, I didn't think it was going to work." Right? Like, it seemed too good to be true. But you have such a phenomenal product. Like, my energy levels are way up. I feel like my cognition has really improved. And then these daily aches and pains of kind of getting older, like really, really subsided. So she felt like she could just go out and do more, had the motivation and the energy to like live her life better. And that to me is kind of what it's all about, right? Like, I think that like the point of Mimeo, the point of everything that we're doing is, you know, to help people really live more, right? Like, like, like Caitlin would say, it's not about living longer, it's about living more.

Yeah, exactly. Increasing healthspan. So my father's 85, so I'm going to be testing on this with this as well next week. I will revert. Chris, where can people find out more what you're up to? Where can they follow you on social media, websites, etc.? And we'll link these in the show notes.

Yeah, absolutely. So if they want to follow me specifically, I am @thenutritiondoctor, um, and doctor with a D-R. Um, I'm on— and that's on TikTok. I'm not really on any other social media platforms. Platforms just because TikTok is kind of the one that I got into and the one that was successful for me and I was like, okay, that's all I can handle. But to find out more about Mimeo, you can go to mimeohelp.com. You can learn all about our science there. We have all link-outs to our clinical study paper that we were talking about today that was recently published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition as well as supporting studies for all of the individual ingredients. Audience inside of Mimeo. And then of course, you can, like, we just did a partnership with True Medicine, which is this great company that's helping make these preventative wellness initiatives like supplements and exercise routines and natural interventions more available to folks by allowing them to use their HSA and FSA funds to purchase them. So when you go to check out, you can use True Med, a partnership there. And if you qualify, save anywhere between 30 to 40% using your HSA/FSA to actually purchase Mimeo.

That's amazing. Beautiful. Chris, do you have a final ask or recommendation or any parting thoughts or advice for my audience today?

I would say, you know, if you, if you can fast, fast. If you can't fast, take Mimeo.

There's just so many benefits to it as well. It's been such a pleasure to have you with us today, Chris. Thank you so much for sharing your amazing research and what you guys are creating with Mimeo. And yeah, your passion is very obvious and on its way to changing the face of humanity. So well done. Thank you.

Thanks so much, Claudia. I've really appreciated it. And this has been such a fun time. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, pleasure.