Fasting with Food: How ProLon Boosts Autophagy, Hormones, and Cellular Renewal with Renee Fitton

Hey there, I'm Claudia von Boeselager, a former investment banker turned entrepreneur, longevity coach, biohacker, and mother of two. Once burnt out and overwhelmed with chronic health issues, I've transformed my life and helped thousands of people do the same. I've even reduced my biological age by 17 years. Yes, I'm 26 again. Now I'm here to share the tools, strategies, and inspiration to help you live healthier, happier, and longer. On this podcast, I interview world-leading experts in health, biohacking, mindset, and performance, and share personal stories and learnings to bring you the latest insights and tips. Think of this as your go-to space for real talk about all things health and optimizing your life. Ready to unlock your best self? Let's dive in. This is the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast.

My guest today is Renee Fitton, an expert in the science of nutrition and longevity. Renee is a longevity dietitian and the director of education at L-Nutra, the the company behind the revolutionary fasting-mimicking diet and ProLon programs developed by Dr. Valter Longo and trusted by leading doctors and researchers worldwide. With a master's in longevity nutrition, Renee has helped thousands of individuals and healthcare professionals harness the power of fasting with food to activate cellular renewal, balance hormones, and improve metabolic health. Renee is known for translating cutting-edge science into simple, doable strategies. She co-founded Healy AI, a nutrition tech platform, and now leads the longevity Lab webinar series and speaks on global wellness stages to make fasting more accessible, especially for women navigating stress, burnout, and hormonal shifts. Today we're unpacking the cellular magic behind ProLon, how to fast without giving up food, and why this approach might be one of the most exciting tools in the longevity toolkit.

Please enjoy. Welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast, Renee. I'm delighted to welcome you to, to the show today.

Thank you so much for having me. It is such a pleasure to be here. I love talking about longevity. It is my career, so I'm ready to rock.

I love it. So Renee, the concept of fasting with food often feels very counterintuitive. For our audience, could you break down what exactly is the fasting mimicking diet and how does it work to induce a fasting state at the cellular level while still allowing people to eat?

Great question. And very, a very fair one too, right? Of course, the concept of fasting with food goes against everything we've ever heard about fasting. But I think the most important thing to recognize here is that our definition of fasting is based off of this dictionary definition, based off of what we saw a long time ago. Okay, we've eat, we eat, we put food in our mouths or we don't. But what's important to recognize is that that definition is only one of several definitions of fasting. And possibly the most important definition of fasting should come from what our cells are perceiving as a fast. When do our cells think that there is enough food present, or enough nutrients importantly present, that it will say it's time to grow and it's time to build. That's when we are outside of a fasted state. And when is there so few nutrients, if the right kinds, that our body is signaled that food is not present and therefore it should shift its energy onto repair, rejuvenation, and maintenance? And so about now, it's been about 30 years ago, where scientists were looking into this cellular definition of fasting. What specific nutrients in what specific amounts trigger us in and out of these fasts? And what they inevitably found was that there are certain nutrients that you can have a little bit of. Now, this isn't going to be an unlimited amount of anything, right? But there—

that would be too good to be true, right?

Of course. I mean, that would be great. That would be great. But, you know, it's, it's still some what, restricted in a way, you know, as, as we'll go into this more, you'll, you'll see that it is far less than you might think. People are having breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, even little desserts at the end of their day. And their body is still believing that they're in this fasted state. And that's because the way that I like to think of it, we're living below the radars or the sensors at the cellular level that tell us whether we're in or out of of a fast.

So research on the fasting mimicking diet, including ProLon, consistently highlights significant increases in autophagy and stem cell regeneration. Can you break down for my audience what autophagy is and how does the fasting mimicking diet specifically promote it, and what are some of the tangible effects of enhanced cellular repair regeneration for overall health and longevity?

Absolutely. Okay, several questions here. What is autophagy and how does fasting activate it? Well, first let's talk about what autophagy is. It is the ability for our cells to clean themselves out from the inside. The word autophagy literally means self-eating, and it is our cell's ability to go in and kind of take stock of what's, what's there and see what's broken, what's misfolded, what's not working as well, and then remove those things. Break them down, get rid of them. That is autophagy. And it is a process that it does at a small level occur relatively often and, and even all of the time, but in never any significant amount that really is like what I like to consider a spring cleaning where you really go in and clear everything out. In order to significantly activate autophagy, our body has to be in this elevated stress state. Now that sounds like a bad thing, but there's many things that are stressors to our body that are good, including physical activity. And in this case, fasting, it's called a hermetic stress or a positive stress. Now, when this stress elevates enough, our body shifts gears again. And it really is— I'll mention shifting gears relatively frequently because that really— our body's really going to do one or the other. So once that stress has activated enough, then, it will turn on autophagy to a significant level. I like to think of this like a dimmer switch, but not just any dimmer switch that kind of goes up and down. It's one that's a little bit broken where the bottom is kind of stuck, and then all of a sudden with enough force, it starts going up. And that is because in order to really trigger autophagy, we actually need not only to fast, which causes that hermetic stress, but fast for at least 3 days usually. It's about this 72-hour mark where we really start seeing this significant activation, where that stuck switch starts to move. And so this is really important, and why when we talk about the world of fasting and fasting mimicking, I like to remind people that not all fasting is made equal, not all fasting is the same. If you want to get that deep cellular cleanup, this autophagy that we're talking about, doing everyday intermittent fasting is not going to really get you there in any significant capacity. It's pretty much just going to be about the same as what you would do while you sleep and some of these, you know, just baseline autophagy levels.

So that's a really important point.

Very important. Very important. So I think we've covered what is autophagy, how it is activated in fasting, and why it's activated in fasting. And the last piece is, how is this beneficial? Well, you can imagine that as our cells accumulate waste, which unfortunately that is just a part of aging. It is part of everyday, you know, going through life, we accumulate waste. There's nothing you can really do about that. So it's important that no matter how healthy or unhealthy you might be, that you still go through this process of this cleanup. And when you do, of course, you can imagine your cells are going to function better. They're going to be more effective at all of the wonderful processes that our, our body needs them to do. And the, the lovely part of autophagy is that it can happen in all sorts of cells and all of our cells that have slightly different functions. So you can imagine that because we're working at this root level, which is the cell, and that the cell is, you know, pervasive across our entire body, that this would mean that you can have benefits in so many different ways. So the research that we've seen now, there's over— and we'll just talk specifically about fasting mimicking because I'm a big fan of it, and I think it's easier, safer, and just generally a better option. There's now over 40 clinical trials across condition types, healthy individuals, biological age, skin health, metabolic health, across the board, covering so many benefits.

I know people who struggle with fasting on water, so we'll get to that later, but it's such a great solution that has come up, and the fact that you can actually eat as well. And I'm going to be sharing with you, to your audience, when I go on that 5, 5-day journey, and so check it out on social media. But I'd love if explain what is happening day by day. Why would a 5-day fast versus a, you know, 24-hour day fast or 72-hour day fast make sense? So maybe you can explain really, like, is it another level of that autophagy that's happening, that cleaning out, or what's happening there?

On day 1 of your fasting mimicking diet, we like to consider this a transition day. You are just, for one, getting used to switching from just grabbing whatever you want out of the kitchen to, you know, sticking to some very specific foods that have specific nutrients and specific amounts that live below those nutrient sensing pathways or those alarm bells. And so part of the transition day is just a mental game, getting used to living within these walls. Now, the other part is that your body is going to start burning the sugar storage that it has, and that really only lasts if you eat no other additional sugars about 12 hours. Now, with the fasting mimicking diet, you still get a little bit, so you know, that might extend the window a tiny bit, but you are really getting— starting to get into this burning fat for fuel phase. Now, this is what we call ketosis. So some listeners were probably quite familiar with this, as the ketogenic diet has become quite, quite familiar and popularized. And so this shift to starting to burn fat for fuel is happening because we've run out of sugar in our body to use. Now, this is happening Even when we do intermittent fasting, really, as I mentioned, anything over about 12 or so hours— everybody's a little different— but at around that mark, that will activate. Things that we can benefit by entering into this ketosis is the ability to be better at switching between our fuel sources, using sugar and then using fat, using sugar and then using fat. That is something we call metabolic flexibility, and it is really good for our metabolic health. It's also, as you can imagine, when we start burning fat for fuel, it's an efficient fuel source for our body. Our brains really like it. So some people notice a little bit of this mental clarity, but of course also because we're burning fat for fuel, it's good for weight loss. So even in the, these shorter fasts, there is still benefit and opportunity here. But what we need is once we enter into day 2, the real focus here is maximizing. That ketosis, or really getting— you'll notice kind of like that dimmer switch again, it just gradually increases over time as you continue to burn more fat for fuel and start really relying almost entirely on these ketones from the fat production. Now on day 3, day 3, now okay, the body has experienced this increase in, in ketosis. It also has now noticed that food has not been present for a significant period of time. We have dampened and or, or limited entirely the activation of these nutrient sensing pathways. All of these things have to happen for enough period of time for then autophagy to finally switch on. That happens on day 3. This is when this real significant spring cleaning is happening. How importantly, you wanna stay in it. You don't just start spring cleaning, do it for an hour, and then say that you're done. You have to actually do it for the whole weekend or the whole week. You know, you need to, to, to do it for a significant period time for it to have the beneficial effects that you really want it to, right? So that's why we continue for another 2 days beyond that. Ketosis will continue, autophagy will continue. And in fact, as you mentioned, ProLon has done the clinical trials to confirm autophagy, which is actually quite difficult to do. You can't just go get a blood test, um, has to be done in a lab. Now that showed that yes, autophagy was activated around that 3-day mark, especially activated on that 4-day mark, continues 5, and even on day 6, once the program is discontinued and you resume regular eating, because it's that dimmer switch, it was still elevated, which is really cool. So that's kind of what the, the 5-day journey is like. I think just in terms of what you feel, I think most people will notice day 1 is a breeze. Day 2 or 3 is usually the toughest day for most people. Once you get over that hump is clear skies, and most people find it's, it's relatively easy to the point where on day 6, I'll even have some people ask me if they can just keep going. I always say no, but you know, it's inevitable.

And I wonder, curiously, because I used to do the ketogenic diet previously and track it and see how deep I was into ketosis, is there research around the average depth into ketosis by measuring the millimoles, mmols, for ketones? What is the average after day 1, day 3, and day 5?

So everybody's different, but there is a kind of more what I'll do is like a graph trend. So if— and I'll try and explain it for anybody who's not actually watching as well. But what we see is that there is a gradual increase from day 1, and with every meal that you have, what we usually see is a small dip. Very small. It's not going to bring you back down to zero. Small dip and then continues to go up past further, and then small dip and then kind of goes up past further. It's, it's kind of this zigzag trajectory up instead of what you very likely see, or what you, you should see with water-only fasting, where it's more of this gradual linear increase. With fasting mimicking, we see kind of this dip and increase and dip and increase. And what I have noticed is that it's not the same millimoles that you mentioned per person. You know, it does change and it does vary per person. Now, importantly, to activate autophagy, you don't have to have have a specific number or amount of ketones. Your body just has to be in ketosis. That is important in some capacity, right? So you want your body to have entered into this state, but it doesn't need to absolutely maximize that state. Now, on that same, same side of that coin, being in ketosis does not mean that you will activate autophagy.

Autophagy.

In fact, the ketogenic diet will not activate autophagy unless you are doing a very strange ketogenic diet that I don't think I've seen yet, which is like 5% protein or less. Um, very, very low, and also not just lower than 5%, but also calorically restricted. So this is important because protein is one of the biggest triggers out of a fast, and it will trigger mTOR and IGF-1, and these are going to, when activated, signal to your body that you are not in a fasted state. So importantly, ketogenic diet, not the same as a fasting or fasting-mimicking diet, while they do have some similarities.

That is really, really helpful because I know some people are like, oh, you know, I do my fasting via the ketogenic diet, it's producing the ketones, but it's not triggering autophagy, which is the key thing here. So that was really insightful. Thank you, Renée. And I have a question for our female audience, um, specifically because we We often hear concerns about fasting and hormonal balance, right? So fasting, as we know, can be empowering, but for women, what is one thing you wish more women knew about fasting and their hormones, and how does ProLon help women navigate stress cycles or menopause more safely?

This is a big question because we are, you know, you covered actually different cycles or different parts of the woman's life, right? And so we as women have different phases of our life, and they should all be kind of uniquely, because we have different needs during time. So I'll try and touch on our, our reproductive years as one bucket, and then our perimenopausal and menopausal years as a second bucket, as there's two different areas here. So in these reproductive years is certainly the— this is, it's really important that we support a healthy reproductive cycle, that we support a healthy cycle in general. We do need to feed our body to support this.

This episode is brought to you by ProLon. We all know fasting has powerful health benefits, but it's not always easy to stick with. That's where ProLon comes in. ProLon is the first and only patented nutrition program that supports longevity through cellular rejuvenation. Backed by science, it's been shown to support healthy cardiometabolic markers. Fasting isn't just about weight loss, it's about resetting your system and setting your health journey up for success. That's why I love Prolon. With their fasting-mimicking diet, I can eat while fasting, so my body stays nourished while still getting the full benefits of a prolonged fast and more. And now with Prolon's Next Gen program, it's even easier. It's designed for busy lives like mine. You get everything pre-packed and labeled by day, so there's zero guesswork. In just 5 days, Prolon can help shift your relationship with food and jumpstart lasting results. To help you jumpstart a plan that delivers real results, Prolon is offering the Longevity Lifestyle Podcast listeners an exclusive chance to be among the first to try NextGen with 15% off sitewide, plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-day program. Just visit prolonlife.com/claudia. That's prolonlife.com/claudia to claim your 15% discount and your bonus gift. Dear friends, want to boost your brain clarity, energy, and focus in just 5 minutes a day? I've created a powerful free guide just for you. It's called Unlock Your Brain Superpower: The 5-Minute Blueprint to Boost Mental Clarity, Focus, and Lifelong Vitality. Inside, I share the exact microhabits I use and teach my clients to rewire mental patterns, grow new brain cells, balance energy, and protect long-term brain health, all backed by cutting-edge science. Whether If you're feeling foggy, stressed, or simply want to future-proof your brain, this guide is your first step. Download it now for free at longevity-and-lifestyle.com/brain. That's longevity-and-lifestyle.com/brain. And start unlocking your brain's full potential today.

Please enjoy. A healthy ovulation will occur really only if the body feels like it is in a well-fed state to move forward. Um, we also know that of course stress can impact our cycles. So now we know now from earlier in this conversation that fasting can induce stress, and of course it can limit nutrients. So these two things seemingly should make fasting not the right fit for women. And that's, I think, why a lot of people really push back. But what is really important is that It is likely rather that we need to find the right time to fast and the right way to fast. Perhaps it would be better to fast in the follicular phase or the first half of our cycle, or perhaps it would be better to fast in the luteal or the second. And unfortunately, we don't really have the answers right now. There are some proponents of fasting in the follicular phase because we have higher amounts of estrogen to progesterone ratio. They're both still relatively low, but we do see that estrogen is higher and with estrogen dominance, we could do better in a ketogenic state. That's, that's kind of what the physiology suggests here. But then, you know, there are OB-GYNs and people who are worried about the fertility and the ovulation that would recommend that you fast in the second half of your cycle after you ovulate so that your body has the nutrients it needs to support ovulation. So I've heard both sides of the coin, I've seen research on both sides of the coin, and for that reason, I generally recommend that women try both and see where they feel better. Use yourself as the N of 1 and/or look at the research and decide which one speaks to you most. And until we get a really good study that asks the question, when do we fast, instead of just trying to pull assumptions from physiology, we really won't know what the best answer is. But the nice thing is, is that it's not— this isn't a life or best thing. You know, if, if your cycle gets impacted from one of these fasts and then you are able to resolve it by switching it over to a different type of fast, then fabulous. The other important thing to note here is to try and limit the stress on your body, right? And to do that, adding food and nutrients to a fast can certainly support that and support the safety. That's why many physicians are referring fasting mimicking instead of water-only fasting. On top of that, we see that if you shift your meals a little earlier in the day, that can also be better because what we see is the first thing in the morning, our cortisol levels go up. And when we eat, it helps bring it back down. Now, if we let cortisol go up and we wait a long time to eat, as with what we typically— I think most people when they do intermittent fasting, that's what they do. They'll wait until 1 or 2 PM before they have their first meal. What you're doing is you're letting that cortisol stay high, and that can be a stressor on the body as well. So that's why we oftentimes hear, you know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You know, you can still have intermittent fasting windows if you want, if it's important to you, even daily, although I only recommend this for people who need weight loss specifically. But you can still do that, but just shift your window so that you have breakfast within and at least I like to recommend an hour of waking up. And then you have a nice, good buffer, at least a couple hours, but even more than that, ideally before bed when your body is not as good at metabolizing sugars and carbohydrates. So this all follows the circadian patterns that our body has. And if you can live within that, it can be much better, especially for women, especially in these reproductive years. Okay. I'm just going to quickly touch on a couple of additional pieces. For our women out there entering into perimenopause or already currently in their menopausal years. Now, especially for perimenopause where our estrogen levels are declining, this is where we want to be especially cautious of muscle loss and where we will generally see unfortunately also weight gain. And this is happening because of muscle loss and also because of changes to our metabolism. That occur when estrogen declines. Estrogen is way more important than just fertility and reproductive health. It is important for so much. It's important for our metabolic health, insulin resistance. It's also why we see increased levels of prediabetes and diabetes after the ages of 40, 50. This all increases, and it's in part due to this decline in estrogen. Now, fasting mimicking supports this in a number of ways. One, We improve insulin sensitivity and reduce insulin resistance with fasting mimicking. This has been consistently shown in individuals with type 2 diabetes, where we're even seeing people come off of medication and go fully into remission. It's amazing. Now, yeah, we also see that we have weight loss with muscle protection for anybody at all, women, male, young, old. We want to protect our muscle. It is one of the most important— many people are now calling it an organ of longevity. So we want to protect it. And so yes, of course, there's this instinct to lose weight, but don't lose weight at the expense of your muscle. And so whatever you choose to do to support you in getting those results, make sure that it's muscle protective. And unfortunately, I would say, actually, I'm not, I'm not sure what the statistic is, but my, my guess is 9 out of 10 because I have, I have not seen very many muscle protective nutrition programs out there. Even comparing the fasting mimicking diet to the Mediterranean diet showed the Mediterranean diet had a significant muscle loss, whereas the fasting mimicking diet over that same period of time, which was 4 months, meaning The fasting mimicking diet was done 5 days a month for 4 months. The Mediterranean diet was done 120 days consecutively. And we showed muscle protection with fasting mimicking and unfortunately muscle loss with Mediterranean. Both showed good benefits on weight loss overall, showed benefits on cardiovascular health overall, but only the fasting mimicking diet was also muscle protective. So those are just a couple of many things to note for women's health.

I think that muscle piece is so, so important, right? As you were saying, and they're even calling estrogen in the key to longevity hormone as well. I'd love to touch on somebody who might be considering going into a 3, maybe even a 5-day fasting mimicking diet. How should they prepare mentally and physically? Can you walk through how they're going to feel? Some people might feel like, oh, am I going to be hungry? Am I going to be fatigued? I have a busy job, I've got kids. How, how can I incorporate this into my life?

Well, let me just first say that for even your very first time, there's about a 95% completion rate on a 5-day fast. So for these fasting mimicking diets specifically, it makes it way easier to complete by a long shot. I can tell you I have never been able to get over about 24 hours of water-only fasting. Granted, I know that I can do it with fasting mimicking, so I don't even want to bother. Is, is very doable, and I even recommend to all of my patients and thousands of people that I've walked through fasting mimicking diets, do not completely kibosh your schedule. Keep your work schedule as it normally is. Keep those meetings. Keep, you know, maybe you don't need to go to a big buffet dinner with your family, but aside from that, you know, even I have a lot of clients that still go to their business meals and they just bring their, their soup or their snack or whatever. And it ends up actually, of course, it doesn't disconnect you from the world. It allows you to continue living your life, keeps you distracted from You know, imagine just sitting on your couch all day and you have this very specific meal program and you are just thinking constantly of anything else that you could be doing or eating. And it actually makes it harder when you do less. So I always recommend keep that schedule and people will find again because they are entering into ketosis and those ketones are high efficiency fuel for your brain, they oftentimes notice that they have incredible mental clarity and that they're more alert. Another symptom of fasting is that because it's a stress on the body, we notice that there is additional levels of some hormones like adrenaline and things like that that actually make you feel like you're really able to get things done. You can have people feel like they can be awake for longer and sleep for less and feel the exact same. That's something called orexin-A that is being released when we sleep. So there's all this cool stuff that's happening that actually, if anything, makes you more productive. Now, all of those things are good for a short period of time, so very important, we only do this periodically, like, you know, maybe 3, 4. The most we recommend for individuals who have metabolic health concerns is about 8 times a year, but the average person is usually doing this about 4 times a year. So yeah, so there's— I, I always remind people, it is absolutely something that you can fit into your everyday life. You don't have to cancel all of your plans. Now, Now, does this mean it's going to be a complete breeze? I will never make promises I can't keep. Everybody is different. Some people go through it and they're like, oh my gosh, that was a— that was such a breeze. I felt like a regular day. And then other people will notice that I kind of mentioned day 2 or day 3 are usually, you know, one of the tough days where you notice a little bit of hunger. You might notice a light headache. You might notice lightheadedness. These are all symptoms of what we call colloquially the keto flu. So it can sometimes feel like some of these flu-like symptoms oncoming. It's not going to be a full-on flu where you're bedridden, but you know, the, the early stages of some of those sickness coming on.

And it's the body detoxing, right? So that's what's really happening.

It is that, but it is also your body kind of fighting back and telling you that it doesn't want want you to stop eating sugar. Our body thinks that eating sugar is the easiest, fastest way for it to get fuel. It has to work a little bit harder to get that, those, that, that fat for fuel. And so if you're not used to that— now, if you are, if you're super metabolically flexible, your body's used to switching fuel sources, no problemo. But if you're not, and for most people actually, you're not, because you have to fast for over 12 hours, and ideally closer to like 16, 18 to like really start getting that, that switch, right? And many people aren't ever fasting for that long. Even when you sleep, if you eat right before you go to bed and you eat the moment you wake up, you're probably never getting a 12-hour fast. So, so this difficulty in switching fuel sources is also part of that difficulty. But yes, the detoxification is part of it too. Some people call that like a Herxheimer reaction. That also can be different depending on the individual, depending on how much buildup you have of various things. And so, you know, we always personalize this cleanup by the individual based off of what we know that, or what we believe might be already held within your body, because a lot of fat stores a lot of toxins. And so when we start breaking that up, that can sometimes yield some uncomfortable feelings. But again, And again, as we're mentioning, everybody's different. So I have had people go through it as a breeze, and I've had some people say it was a little tough. But then for anybody that did think that it was a little bit tough, clinically shown that every single time gets easier. And that's again because we're getting used to switching fuel sources. Our body is cleaning itself out.

It does get easier every time. One trick I do if I'm fasting is have a sparkling water with some fresh lemon or lime. I find that that kind of hits the spot and helps you go through. So keeping hydrated is obviously really important. Renee, I want to ask you around behavioral health. Some people are like, I struggle maybe with my relationship with food, or it's just my sort of go-to soothing tool. How can this help rewire some of those cravings or emotional patterns?

Oh, this is, this is such a fun one for me because as a dietitian, this, this is a— this is super important to me too. Now, our relationship with food, everybody is different, um, and so first let me say that if you have a history of eating disorders, this is not for you. That is actually an exclusion criteria for fasting and fasting mimicking, and you should work with a professional to find the right solution for you. Now, for individuals out there that just notice you have really high sugar cravings, you find yourself always kind of, you know, going to the fridge at a very specific time mindlessly, you know, kind of these these, these less connected to food moments where we're just doing this very mindlessly. The beauty of fasting and fasting mimicking, especially these longer fasts, is that we really do have to connect and examine our relationship with food. Not to mention that after 5 days, you feel incredibly empowered. Look at what you've done. You don't— and, and for the vast majority of people, because it's only 5 days, you're not— you don't have to do this for the rest of your life. You You don't have to restrict yourself forever. It is this empowerment that for these few days, we're making this choice to support your cellular health beyond weight loss. You know, this is way more than weight loss. This is so much deeper than that. You're doing it for your health, and then when you're done, you feel accomplished. So on top of that, you feel good because your body has gone through all of this deep cellular cleanup, and on top of that, you've protected your muscle, so you feel stronger. And in fact, all of these things coming together has even shown that even beyond— yes, we've been able to show through survey data of self-reported that people have less sugar cravings, that they have more energy, that they have a better relationship with food. All of these pieces, yes, have been shown. What I think is the coolest study that just came out, actually just this past year, was in individuals with type 2 diabetes. They were either given a healthy diet or they were given the fasting mimicking diet once a month for 6 months. And the fasting mimicking diet showed drastically better results across the board. But the cool one is the behavioral change, where the individuals who did the healthy diet decreased their physical activity by 6 hours a week, whereas the individuals who did the fasting mimicking diet increased their physical activity by 4 hours a week. Now, this was completely separate of the researchers telling them to do absolutely anything with their physical activity. This was a study about the nutrition protocols. But because they— the individuals on the fasting mimicking diet felt empowered, were stronger, were lighter, and they also, keep in mind, only had to do the nutrition protocol for 5 days, meaning for 25 other days they were sitting there thinking, man, I feel good, like, what else can I do? What, what else can I do for my myself, right? I don't have to, you know, the burden of going to pick out this salad that I don't feel like eating for the 100th time. Now that I think is really where this shines is that there is so many ways that it can support our health and so many ways that it can support our behavioral health.

So exciting and so helpful for so many people who would otherwise just struggle with accessing fasting and the benefits of it. What do you think is the most exciting long-term benefits to cellular aging from fasting mimicking diets that research is uncovering more and more?

Oh man, there's so much on its way. Let me just tell you, we are just scratching the surface now. One is stem cell activation. So we just had a study published in humans showing the regenerative capacity of the fasting mimicking diet. Now, this was also what they did. The researchers did is they accounted for weight loss. So they said, yes, we know that weight loss is going to help this, sure, but is there something else going on here? So they accounted for the weight loss and they took that out and they saw, is there still a statistically significant difference? And they did see that there still was, which means that there was something else going on. Now, the belief is, is that that deep cellular cleanup that we discussed, autophagy, is certainly part of part of it, but also very likely the activation of stem cells. Now, we do believe that that again is something that takes enough stress on the body to really turn that on. So again, we want to get into these longer fasts so that we can get there. But I think that that's an area that's— we, we don't know from that study if stem cells were activated. It's in humans, at least we don't have that certainty, but I think that's something that we'll see. Uh, and then the other two areas that are really big right now with fasting and fasting are autoimmune conditions where, for example, we've seen really cool benefits with multiple sclerosis in preclinical trials. This means they were done on mice, so it's still early, but regeneration of the myelin sheath, which is degenerated in multiple sclerosis. We see it with IBD models where there's regeneration of the gut lining. We see it with type 1 diabetes where we see regeneration of the beta cells, cells that are no longer functioning in type 1 diabetes. All of these autoimmune conditions, this regenerative capacity, I think we're going to see a lot more there. And the last area where we're seeing actually quite a bit of human data, and in fact, just recently there was a study published in triple negative breast cancer. So the area is cancer, but the, the area, the study that was just published showed that there was increased survival rates when fasting mimicking was paired with chemotherapy. Chemotherapy. Importantly, we are not suggesting that fasting mimicking alone would cure cancer. In fact, the word cure is never used. Very, very important. But the research shows that in some cases where we have the basic cancer treatment and then add on fasting mimicking, it can be additive to that treatment. So really early still, but still really exciting. And if that's of interest to any listener out there, I would urge them to read a new book that came out by Dr. Valter Longo, who's the father of fasting mimicking. And he wrote a book called Fasting Cancer, and he really goes into this in a lot of detail.

Excellent. And we can link it in the show notes as well for people listening. To summarize, Renee, what would you say if someone's feeling burnt out, low energy, frustrated with yo-yo dieting, what would you say to them to really understand the power of something like Prolon?

Well, first I would say that, you know, we, I get it. You know, I have myself gone through these. I have so many patients that come through that go through this and it is a, you know, unfortunately kind of a normal part of life in our world today. But there is absolutely, I have seen the turn that can happen. It is really just about taking a step in the right direction. And the cascade of incredible things that can come from that are incredible. I love the fasting mimicking diet, especially in this population, because sometimes you just need a sign. You need to see something move the needle and get the change, even if it's just a little bit, to be motivated to keep going. Kind of an adjacent to this, but there was a really cool study done with fasting mimicking making on skin health, where they showed improvements in skin texture, in fine lines, in skin hydration. They also asked in this study confidence. How did your confidence change? And that is a more subjective measure. You do, of course, have to ask, you know, the individual how they feel, and you have to bank on that. But this is a controlled and randomized trial, so I still love this finding because they show that the fasting mimicking drastically improved confidence as well. And sometimes, even when we see really great results on the scale, on our biomarkers, on our biological age, on all of these markers that we see improvement with Fasting Mimicking Diet, sometimes what's really missing is confidence to keep moving forward. So the beauty of this is that it taps into so many different angles that might be holding you back from really reaching that, you know, movement in the right direction that you need. And I believe that the fasting mimicking diet is a really good strategy there.

Oh, Renee, this has been so informative. Thank you so much. For listeners looking to dive deeper into the benefits and the science and ProLon, where can they find you? And we'll link everything in the show notes.

Absolutely. Well, first, let me say that there are actually two companies right now doing fasting mimicking. I strongly recommend using using these companies because they will get everything done for you. You get a box delivered to your door, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack. You don't have to buy anything else. You just need to hydrate with water. Now that makes it really easy. It makes it so it's foolproof. So you will not, you know, these nutrient sensing pathways, they're pretty darn picky. So you wanna make sure that you aren't deviating too far. So I strongly recommend using these these set kits. Now, the two companies are Prolon, which we've mentioned. That is going to be for our biohackers, already healthy people, longevity people looking to lose a few pounds. So, a generally healthy audience. This is— you can find more at prolonglife.com, P-R-O-L-O-N-life.com. Tons of resources there, and you can of course get your kits there. Now, I do want to quickly touch on L-Nutra Health. It's a new company that is supporting with diabetes remission, pre-diabetes remission, metabolic health support. So if you've noticed your blood pressure is going up, your cholesterol is going up, pretty much anything that your doctor has, you know, said, hey, I'm, I'm noticing these blood markers are looking a little elevated here. Not only are you going to get the support of fasting mimicking diets, but you also get the support of physicians and dietitians one-on-one. And it sounds like it's going to be so much much more expensive, but it's not. It's just a really great way to do this safely and to make sure that you can support, ideally in type 2 diabetes, disease remission, and in, in some of these other areas, significant improvement, and doing that safely. So that's l-nutrahealth.com, l-nutrahealth.com. And if anybody wants to come chat with me, you're more than welcome to find me on Instagram— is probably the fastest way— at Fit in Nutrition. F-I-T-T-O-N Nutrition, or you can find me online at my website at fitnutrition.com.

Thank you so much, Renee. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you, dear audience. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Um, really appreciate you coming on.

Thank you.

Thank you. Hi everyone, it's Claudia again. Before you take off, would you like to get a short email from me to you several times a month with top tips, insights, and strategies to help optimize your life, health, and business? This could be interesting posts or articles I've read on life and longevity optimization, cool biohacking or lifestyle products that I've discovered and other fun things to help you be at your best. It's a very short piece of inspiration for you, so if you want to receive it, check it out by going to llinsider.com. That's llinsider.com, and leave your email to get the next one.