The 5 Pillars To Increasing Your Lifespan & Aging in Reverse w/Dr. Valter Longo EP 1199

This is episode number 1199 with Dr. Valter Longo. Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

And each week we bring you an.

Inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Now let the class begin. Welcome back my friend. Today's guest is Dr. Walter Longo and he has 30 years of experience in the field of longevity and healthy eating. He is the director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California and the director of Longevity and Cancer Program at the Italian Foundation for Cancer Researches Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy. In 2018 Time Magazine named Professor Longo as one of the 50 most influential people in healthcare for his research on fasting mimicking diets as a way to improve health and prevent disease. He's also the bestselling author of the Longevity Diet. And in this episode, we dive in deep on the main causes of people not having longevity in their life, what the longevity diet is and why it works, the five pillars of longevity and so much more. And I tried to question as many variables as possible around what helps and hurts our lifespan. so I know you're going to learn a lot in this interview. And if you're inspired at any moment or learning something new, then please spread the message of greatness to a friend, a family member, or post this over on your social media platforms. Make sure to tag me and Dr. Valter Longo as well so we can stay up to date on what you're listening to and what you're liking about this episode. And I want to give a shout out to the fan of the week from Leiders who says, By far my favorite podcast ever. And it's truly helped me to become more emotionally stable, positive, and have more belief in myself.

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The content is truly insightful and addresses the core of issues rather than just providing relief from the symptoms. The world would be a much better place if everyone listened. So, Lighters, thank you so much for being the fan of the week and leaving a review. And if you're listening right now and you want a chance to be shouted out on the podcast as a fan of the week, then just leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now or at the end of this episode and let us know which part you enjoyed the most. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Dr. Walter Longo.

I.

Read a stat recently that between 150,000 and 180,000 people in the world die every day. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but that's the stat.

Sounds about right.

150 to 180,000 people a day die. What do you think is the main cause of people dying earlier than they should be dying?

Well, there are lots of causes, of course, you know, different parts of the world. very, very different. So lots of people die of malnourishment, you know, they don't have enough food, you know, and, but lots of people, maybe now more people die of too much and too much food and too much food that is bad. And so, yeah, so I think that that, you know, even China and the Middle East and regions that traditionally were doing very well now you're starting to see obesity, obesity, overweight, diabetes, etc. Etc. And, and so that certainly is at the center of just too much food. And, and, and the wrong kind is at the center of almost every disease that you can think of. Really.

Are, are more people dying from too little food or too much food?

I don't know the stats on, on too little. I will say more or much more people are dying of too much food.

An abundance of the wrong foods as well.

Yeah, yeah. But the number of malnourished people is still high. So I think that both are a big problem.

What's been one of the biggest, I mean, you've been studying this for 30 years, almost 30 years. You're really obsessed with the data, the research, and doing a lot of these tests and labs. What has been the biggest finding that you've found on extending lifespan and longevity in the last 30 years?

Well, I think one of the biggest findings was the TOR pathway, right? So these genes that, because when they first started working with Roy Walford here, UCLA, very close by, it was 1992, right? And we were just doing comparative biology. You take an old mouse, a young mouse, an old person, a young person, and at the end of it, you knew as much as before, right? I mean, you're just as confused as before. You knew there was difference, but you had no idea why. And so then I went back to the biochemistry department and I started, I went from humans and mice to microorganisms, you know? And that's where I think everything changed because then we were able to identify the genes that control aging to the point where we took this microorganism and we can make them live 10 times longer just by two mutation plus fasting, right? So we fasted them and then we had two mutation, one in what's called the, what I call the sugar pathway, one is the protein pathway plus the fasting and we completely reprogram life, right? So yeah, so I think that was the initial central point, the discovery of the TOR/S6 kinase pathway in aging. And then, you know, we followed that up with, with nutrition and finding that protein restriction as long as you don't go too far, too low, that's also central for aging and diseases. And then after that, what at the same time, the use of fasting, fasting and making diets. And there was a sort of response to what Walford was doing. So Roy Walford, for those that don't know, was probably the most famous person in the world for nutrition and aging. And he was a medical doctor at UCLA and a professor at UCLA. And he was working on something called calorie restriction. So, which it's a simple idea. What happens if you take a normal diet and you reduce by 25%? You just eat less, a quarter less of the whatever diet.

Instead of 3000 calories a day, it's 2500 or 2000 or whatever.

Yeah.

So say 2400 calories instead of, or, or 2, 2,000 calories, 2200 calories. So pretty restrictive. And actually, in most cases, it was more like 18, 1900 calories for, for the people that were involved in the trials. And, and so, and, and then one of his students, it was here at UCLA in walfers lab right before me, Richard Weinrock, did a study in monkeys. Right. So they took monkeys in Wisconsin and they, and they did a lifelong Let's see what happens if you calorie restrict them. If you just give them 25% less food, same identical food, but 25% less. If you look at that, it's remarkable because you would say, oh, just revolutionize medicine. They go from 60% diabetic or insulin resistant to 5%. Cancer is reduced by 50%. So cutting health and cardiovascular disease is reduced by 20-30%. but then if you look at these monkeys, they don't live that much longer. And so.

So we restrict the monkeys 25 of the food. They had less disease or less cancer, but they didn't live longer. Is that what you said?

Yeah. They had less of all these diseases, all the major diseases, but they didn't.

Live longer than they.

But they live. No, they lived a little bit longer, but not that much. You think you know, eliminate diabetes, less health of the cancers and 30% less cardiovascular disease.

We should live 10 more years.

20, 25 years longer. I mean, not the monkeys, but let's say, yeah, 20% longer. Got something like that. And it didn't happen, right? So that tells you that there were good and bad about this diet. And so then what I spent the next 30 years doing was how can I eliminate the bad? Because obviously the good is unbelievable. I mean, more than anybody could dream. More than the NIH has been able to do, the National Institute of Health has been able to do in all these years, right? I mean, cut almost eliminate diabetes and cut cancer and cardiovascular disease by 30 to 50%. So yeah, so then how do you do that? And I think that the fast, the periodic fasting mimicking diet is certainly has that potential to allow people, and we'll see. I mean, of course we got lots of clinical trials. So it's not just in my opinion anymore. So lots of clinical trials. But the idea is, can you intervene for just five days? And instead of starving people, give them some food, not all the food they would like, but some food. And could this, what if you do it only once every four months? for five days, that's it, you know? Or maybe even once every six months. Could this change someone's health?

So five days restricted diet, not restricted every day for the rest of your life, but for five days, a couple of times a year.

Yeah.

So what if you do this fasting, this vegan fasting, making diet with very specific content two or three times a year? Could that change things the same way the color restriction changed things. I mean, it's starting to look like yes, it's, it's getting to that level.

Right.

So we'll see. But, you know, is it getting to the abolishment of, of diabetes? I don't know. But certainly, you know, we have a clinical trial now going, which finished now in Holland, looking at diabetic diabetes in the, you know, 12 this is monthly cycles, right? So we'll see very soon the results of that. But, you know, I think there's gonna be a trial coming out every couple months now using the FMD.

Do you think it's possible to reverse diabetes or reverse cancer and disease from fasting and calorie restriction diets?

Yeah, not only is it possible, but we do it all the time. I just did a Facebook Live, unfortunately it's in Italian, but we we took a doctor, a physician in Italy, and he had diabetes and hypertension.

There's a doctor.

A doctor, yeah. Diabetes and we did that on purpose, right? I mean, so we follow a lot of people. We have two clinics, foundation clinics, right? So we follow a lot of people, but we wanted to make this talk about this case, right? So is hypertension, diabetes taking four drugs a day?

Wow.

So then we started with what I call the longevity diet. It's everyday longevity diet, it's pescatarian diet, and he's already improving with that. Then you look at the charts and you see, then we start with the fasting-mimicking diet. And he was doing pretty well with the hypertension, he was doing pretty well with the weight, but he wasn't quite doing very well with the glycemia, so the diabetic component of it. And as soon as he starts the fasting-mimicking diet, you see that the fasting glucose and the A1C dropping down. and two years later, perfect. No drugs, no disease. And I mean, again, I wouldn't talk like that if I didn't have clinical trials to back it up.

Sure.

But I just thought that visualized so well. Wow. You know, the work can be done.

Did he, so what was his protocol for two years? Did he stay on the fasting mimicking every day? Was this once every six months?

Twice a year.

Twice a year, and then he did the longevity diet.

The longevity diet, but the idea at the clinics is work with the patient. Don't revolutionize somebody's diet. Try to start with what do you like, what do you think you can handle for the rest of your life, and then work with that. So it's a longevity diet that is really adapted to the need of, in this case, a doctor. So, yeah, he did lots of the things we told him, and some of the others he didn't do.

Right.

Like what?

What other things?

Well, I think that, for example, we asked him to also exercise, and he didn't exercise, right? And we asked him to do 12 hours a day of time-restricted eating. So, 8:00 a.m., 8:00 p.m. Most of the times he didn't do that.

So, yeah, so-- and even without exercising, without doing the time-restricted eating and just doing the longevity diet and the fasting mimicking process twice a year, he reversed his diabetes, got off medication.

I lost weight and diabetes.

What's hypertension? What is that?

High blood pressure.

High blood pressure. He reversed that diabetes and lost weight too or-- yeah, yeah, lost weight.

Lost weight is back to, you know, it's still a little bit overweight, but not that much. And it's perfect, you know, perfect blood markers.

And now, now what is in the longevity diet? What are the pillars of that?

Yeah.

So the longevity diet is a pescatarian. So maybe fish two or three times a week, and then it's a vegan diet. So lots of legumes, lots of, you know, beans and, and chickpeas, Etc. and it's a, you eat a lot, right? So the idea is to eat a lot of food, more food than you would on a high calorie diet.

Yeah.

So, you know, big dishes, but big dishes. So, for example, a, something that I eat, you know, five times a week is, you know, a little bit of pasta, maybe 70 grams, like two or three ounces. and then have lots of vegetables and maybe lots of legumes, right? Lots of chickpeas or lots of black beans or green beans. Yeah.

So.

You're pretty skinny.

You're a pretty skinny guy.

Yeah.

So you eat a lot of food.

I eat a lot of food.

How do you stay skinny though? Is that a genetic thing or is that the process?

Well, you know, it's a science, right? the content of food will regulate the metabolism, right?

Really?

Yeah.

So not the quantity, but the content.

Not the quantity. Well, first of all, you can eat a lot of food that is calorie low in calories. It's not dense in calories. So that's already one factor that you have a mechanical, so your intestine is filled with food and with fibers. And so that already helps, you know, eating stuff, regulating the amount of food you eat. Then there is also a nutrient base, and the system detects how much of the nutrients you have and what's missing. And if nothing is missing, then that's also an order to, you don't need to eat anymore because you have everything you need. And then there is a further order within the food about metabolic regulation. And so that we haven't published about yet, but let's just say there are components of the food. So, and I cannot tell you what it is, but I can tell you the experiment. So you take mice and then you give them two types of foods. They have In fact, you have more calories or certainly a lot more food, but a little bit more calorie in diet A, right?

Okay.

And they overeat this diet and they lose weight versus diet B, they gain weight, right?

So- Wait, so there's more calories, more food in diet A, diet B, less calories, less food, and they lose weight in the first diet.

And they gain weight in the second day.

How's that possible?

Well, because the regulation of fat breakdown, the regulation of metabolic rates, the regulation of heat production, so the system, everybody knows somebody that eats all the time.

And they're skinny and shredded.

And even in their 40s and 50s.

You're like, how is this possible? Is this genetics or is this the content in the context of the food they're eating?

Well, no, no, in their case it's probably genetics.

Really?

Yes, some people are just born with the right genes and they can do that. because most of the time you ask them what they eat and they like.

French fries and pizza, ice cream.

Yeah, but very few people have that. Especially, I mean everybody has that metabolism in their 20s, but as you get to 40s, in the 40s and 50s, very few people have that. But when you find these people, it's really remarkable. They eat twice as much as everybody else and they stay skinny.

And they lose weight.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then that can be controlled by. By genes, but it can also be controlled by what food you eat.

So let's say you don't have the. The shredded fat burning Gene in your 60s and you weren't born with that. What is the. The diet a that these mice had that helped them lose weight and eat more?

Yeah, that I cannot tell you, but I. But I can tell you, you know, what I publish in my book. And by the way, all the profits go to, or my part, go to charity, which is the pescetarian diet. So the longevity diet, the longevity diet is certainly the one diet that is close enough to being able to cause these effects. Really?

Longevity diet.

Yeah, so lots of vegetables, lots of legumes, lots of nourishment. Fish a couple of times a week, two or three times a week. And always, I think each person has to look at their own response, right? Like, as we just said, some people can burn more, some people can burn less. So, it's really a matter of watching your abdominal circumference, watching your weight, watching your muscle mass, you know, so if you go too low, then maybe the proteins is not enough. Maybe the protein quality is not sufficient. Right.

So.

So these, these are all things that are personalized and, and different people may have to adjust to make sure that, you know, in the end, you, you, you're okay.

Can you, can you eat too much or too little protein? How much does protein really affect the body? whether you're more of an athlete training hard every day or just, you know, someone who's not working out as much. How does protein, eating protein, play into the body?

Yeah, protein is very, very important. So you can have too much. Most people have too much.

Really?

So we're about to publish a meta-analysis and, you know, people having too high levels of IGF-1 and this IGF-1 is then associated with mortality, early mortality. Really? But then we see the opposite. We see the people that have too low IGF-1 doing even worse than the ones that have very high.

So it's better to have more protein than less?

Well, no, the best is to have that like low but sufficient level.

Okay.

Those are the people that live the longest and those are the people that live the healthiest too, you know, apparently.

So what's the amount you should be having on a daily basis, I guess?

Well, we calculated that around, I think it was around 60, 60-70 grams of protein per day seemed to be in that spot where it was in either too high or too low. Is this, I mean, it's an average of this was based on the NHANES on the CDC database in the United States.

And this is no matter how big or small you are or is it kind of based on how, you know, if I'm 230 pounds, do I eat a little bit more? If I'm 130, I eat a little less?

No, this is per kilogram.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

So there should be per and they should be really per kilogram of lean body mass, bones and muscle, right? They shouldn't be if somebody has 50% fat, that gets counted by maybe health, right? So, yeah, there's some calculation to be done there, but yeah. So if somebody is 200 pounds and it's only like 15% fat, that person needs a lot more protein than somebody that that is 120 pounds and 40% fat, you know?

Right, right. Okay.

So, so yeah.

So 60 to 70 grams per day based on your muscle.

The number should be between 0.7, 0.8 grams per kilogram. Okay. Which I think it turns out to be about 0.32 to 0.37 grams per pound. Per pound, yeah.

Okay, so how much protein you should have for yourself per day?

Yeah, that's how much. Within adjustment based on this is not enough for me because I do too much training, too much exercise. So I'm just gonna increase it a little bit until I can. So for example, we just done a clinical trial with cancer patients and we were trying to keep the make the system very hostile to the cancer, right?

And.

And the physicians insisted that so we gave a little training to the women that were with breast cancer, muscle training. So we wanted to make sure that they kept the muscle mass. And the interesting thing, they actually ended up gaining muscle mass, right? So we were just giving them too much proteins. And the mistake, I think, was to give them 1.5 grams per kilogram instead of 0.8, so almost twice as much. So anyways, yeah, so you can, we measure their grip strength and we measure their lean body mass, their muscle function, and you can see everything going up, right? Especially the muscle function and the muscle mass. So, it doesn't take that much. So most people could, I think, come to the clinic here, the foundation clinic, create cure's foundation clinic, and they can test, you and just make sure that you have the right amount based on what you're trying to achieve.

Gotcha. So how much does gaining muscle mass and having strong muscles support in decreasing disease and also increasing longevity? Is it important to have more muscles or less?

Not really, no.

Really?

No.

Based on longevity and disease.

If you look at the people that are the longest, One of my passion is to go around the world and visit the oldest living people. So for example, Emma Morano, I followed for the last five years of her life. She got to 117, right?

117.

The.

Third oldest person who ever lived in this planet.

Wow.

And most of them are really thin, you know, really frail.

Well, I guess at that age though, you're gonna be a lot thinner.

Yeah, but I think, you know, if you look at their, the way they wear. If you look at the pictures and if you look at their sons and daughters, you know, they were skinny. In most cases, they were skinny. The Okinawans, for example, it's another place in, in Japan where they have record longevity and they're very, very thin. Now, it doesn't mean it's necessarily good to be old and thin. You know, it's probably not good. You break your bones if you fall. You're frail. But, and, and that's what we're trying to bring into this, like this age specific nutritional we're saying, for example, we published some years ago that those that were 70, 80 years old, I mean, whereas the people that had a low protein diet were doing much better up to age 65 for cancer and overall mortality after age 65. So when we asked the 70, 80, 90 year olds, how much proteins you eat per day? And they answered very little. They were not doing well at all.

They weren't doing well.

They were not doing well.

With low protein.

If we asked the 60 year old, the 50 year old, and they said, I have a very low protein diet, they were doing very well. So this is suggesting that eventually that muscle, that strength is gonna help you in your older years, but it doesn't really help you that much because it's probably that those growth factors in the food you eat that helps you keep the muscle is also working against you when we're talking about diabetes. cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc.

If you had a magic wand and you could eliminate three foods or three types of foods in the world that we would never be able to eat, what would those three foods be that would support you in longevity, healthier body, less disease? What would you say are those?

I don't like to say that because people then think, oh, I'm gonna remove red meat from the.

Well, if you could minimize it where you could only do it every once in a while.

Yeah, I would say, you know, certainly processed meats, you know. Yeah. So those are, are clearly in the bad category for cancer, cardiovascular disease, Etc. Then I would say probably fried animal fats, you know, oils, Etc. When they're fried, they're, they're, they're not good at all.

What happens to the body when they're, when they're fried?

Well, I mean, the fats change, and when they change, they can cause inflammation, they can contribute to I mean, the number one that causes that in the United States is still cardiovascular disease. So, yeah.

And that's inflammation has caused- Inflammation and the fats, right?

So the fats then are gonna help deposit inside walls of the arteries. And then when you have inflammation plus the fats and these saturated fats, particularly now you have a recipe for heart attack, stroke, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, so those are- Processed meats, fried.

Animal fats, and what would you say would be the third one?

The third one may be like processed sweets, right? So the type of stuff that you see in a package with lots of sugar in it.

Oh man, the good stuff. The sweets.

Well, I mean, yes and no. For example, every day I eat dark chocolate, 85% dark chocolate. I think if you ask me, when I used to have candy- It doesn't taste as good. Well, I will say, I already have the candy. If you ask me now, I would say there is no way. I'm so much happier with the dark chocolate, you know?

Why is that?

Well, because I think there is a more richness in the flavor and it's kind of like, you know, when we're 16, we drink beer, right? And Coke. And then eventually wine comes in. And it takes a while, right?

It takes a while to acquire the taste.

Yeah, but then, you know, for most people, if you say the people that are drinking wine, or let's say high quality beer, you say you want to go back and have the sugary stuff. I mean, yeah, some people say yes, but lots of people say no. I mean, I'd rather have this. I'd rather have high quality beer or wine rather than cheap stuff or sugary drinks. So, I think it's the same way with the sweets. Eventually, you appreciate the incredible taste of some of the very healthy sweets that are not necessarily viewed as very tasty.

Yeah, right. But they're more acquired over time and they become very tasty to you over time. So, fasting has become this massive, more mainstream talked about thing. We were talking about this before. There's all these big fasting apps with millions of users. There's tons of fasting books. There's different types of fasting. there's water only fasting that you do for a few days, there's, you know.

Just.

Calorie restricted fasting, there's the time restricted fasting, there's the fasting mimicking diet, there are all these different types of fasting. Can you break down maybe the pros and cons of some of these that you've seen?

Yeah.

And which one is most effective for us? Or is it something we just need to try and see what works for us.

I would definitely say no to your, your last question.

Right.

So, yeah, it's not about trying because it, it can do. Fasting is like eating.

Right.

Okay.

It can do a lot of good for you or a lot of damage. And, and so I would say that. you're starting to see lots of clinical studies and preclinical, so animal studies, clinical, and at a certain point you put it together and you get a good sense for what works and what doesn't work. It doesn't mean it's not by no means final, but you get a good sense. So I would say if you look at the daily type of fast, what clearly works and is not associated with any negative effects is 12 hours. 12 hours, 12 hours of time restriction.

A day.

Yeah, don't eat for 12 hours.

Yeah, don't, yes, say 8 a.m., 8 p.m., stop eating at 8 p.m. and no more food until next day, 8 a.m. Okay. Okay. So that, I would say, I've never.

Seen a negative study about this. So if you eat, if you wake up, you eat between 8 and 8, you're good.

Yeah. Don't eat before 8 a.m., don't eat after 8 p.m. Yeah. So that's already a very good one. Another one, now if you go to 16 hours, say 16-8, you're starting to see lots of benefits, but you start seeing lots of problems.

What type of problems?

Well, first of all, gallstone formation, right? Gallbladder operation, gallstone formation, they double between the people that fast for 10 hours and people that fast for 18 hours, right?

Really?

Yeah.

So just to give you one, another one, study after study after study, and we've done the same study, somebody has published it before we get a chance to people skip breakfast. Most people that go 16 hours will skip breakfast. And the breakfast skippers tend to live less, have more cardiovascular disease, have more disease in general.

Okay, wait a minute. Let me break this down. So for years, I was always eating breakfast because I love breakfast. Then I heard about intermittent fasting, where it's like skip the breakfast and eat at lunch and do the eight hour window, right? But you're telling me now that the studies are showing that those that skip breakfast are living less and having more problems than if you eat breakfast and eat within the 12 hour window. No, if you just eat breakfast. Just eat breakfast.

Okay, so eating breakfast against not eating breakfast, right? Gotcha, so just eating breakfast, what are.

The studies showing now between not eating breakfast and eating breakfast?

Yeah, so the people that skip breakfast, they're living shorter with more diseases. Really? And then study after study after study, it's not one, you know, it's very consistent.

Over 60 years old or so?

No, no, no. Yeah, this is just looking at people, did they have breakfast or not? And then follow, let's say for 20 years, the mortality of those that historically never eat breakfast.

Are there other conditions around that where they were over-stressed or they were, you know, didn't have good relationships or?

They adjust for most of it, but it's possible. But my point to those that say, well, maybe something else, it's not the breakfast skipping, Yeah, but if it's so beneficial to go 16 hours a day of fasting, why doesn't it at least bring you back to normal life?

Interesting. So why is breakfast so important?

Well, nobody knows, but it could be that it's setting up the metabolism, right? It's setting up the metabolism to be, you know, like we were discussing earlier. So if it's affecting the way you burn fat, if it's affecting the way your insulin functions, etc. Eventually, you could be more prone to insulin resistance, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc. You don't need very much. And also the heart, right? So it could be the ketone bodies, this continuous high level. So when you fast, these ketone bodies, this is what the word ketogenesis comes from. These byproducts of fat are going up in the bloodstream, right? and also fatty acids, the fat themselves. And these can alter the way your heart works and the way your brain works. So we don't know, but it is possible that by having lots of that all the time, now some of the systems now develop problems and not improve.

So it's okay if you're doing a week-long fast or a three-day fast to obviously skip the food or have less food during breakfast. But you're saying skipping breakfast on a consistent basis has proven that it's not a good thing.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously nobody did an experiment where they said, oh, let's randomize that 10,000 people and you skip breakfast and you don't and let's wait 30 years, right? They cannot be done. But it's epidemiological studies. So, you look at the databases and you say the breakfast keepers are they doing better or worse than the non-breakfast keepers? And they're doing consistently worse. Wow. And this is why you want to say, okay, if you want to do 16 hours, talk to a doctor, fine. It could help you, you know, do it for a month or two, but then find something else. Yeah, find something else. Because, you know, it does have a beneficial effect. It can have lots of good, could do lots of good things, but then eventually you don't want to keep it for 20 years. so that's the sort of daily stuff. Once you get to alternate day fasting and all that, I think it's just crazy stuff. I always say I have a difficult time asking people to go from four coffees to three coffees. So when if you go to someone and say, oh, from now on beside the potential long-term problems that we just discussed, if 16 hours does that, what could happen if you don't eat every other day? But beside that, just the feasibility, the fact that people are actually gonna do this, it's just extremely unlikely. You're looking at one person out of 100, maybe they can not eat every other day.

Right, right. What about one day a month? If you're like, I'm gonna do a 24-hour fast one day a month, is that show benefit?

Yeah, and nobody knows, right? Nobody knows. The problem with that, and this is why we my lab and my group has always focused on this developing this fasting, making diet is that in the one day you don't quite get into the ketogenic mode, right?

In one day of fasting.

Yeah, in one day of fasting. So you struggle because most people.

Will.

Not view that positively. I mean, you know, tomorrow or next week I'm not gonna have a day where I don't eat, right? it's a struggle and also you don't quite get so you're hungry for that 24 hours and you don't quite get into a fat, a starvation response mode. That's why we're saying probably the system, if you look at our history.

Most.

Likely we can't go back in time. But most likely In the summers, we had the job to get fat, right?

Fill up for winter.

Lots of fruit, honey, whatever you can get your hands on, eat as much as possible. And then the diabetes and pre-diabetes, the insulin resistance that then leads to diabetes, so insulin doesn't work as well, it was probably part of that process of making you store fat. put away as much fat as possible. So now, you know, this can be activated any time of the year, right? Because people overeat all year long. And so probably not probably what we see now clinically is that when you do, let's say, five days of a fasting mimicking diet or it could even be water only fasting, you unlock that. You seem to unlock that mode where and this is why the doctor that I was telling you about, you see him even using the longevity diet, but he's still not quite losing that insulin resistance until he does the fasting-mimicking diet. That changes, and you clearly see the slope of the glucose levels curve. And so.

The fasting-mimicking diet is around like 300-500 calories a day type of thing, is that right?

No, the fasting-mimicking diet is the one for regular people is 1100 calories on day one and then it goes down to 800 calories on day two, three, four, five.

Okay, got you. So it's 800 calories for the last four days. Gotcha. Okay.

Yeah.

So then the possibility is considering that over 70% of Americans are either overweight or obese. Now we're saying if you intervened a couple of times a year at least and you remind the system we are not in summer mode, okay, let's go into winter mode. Let's go into, let's burn these fats because, you know, we're no longer having to store him.

Yeah.

So that, that could be the, the trick of the, the five days versus, let's say, one day a month.

Interesting.

Which may keep the system confused and not sure. Did we reach another phase here? Is it do we need to go now? into a fat burning mode or can we stay in the fat accumulating mode?

So what's the difference between having the fasting mimicking process of five days, 800 to 1000 calories versus water only for five days?

I've done it, I can tell you the difference. I've done it one time with water.

Only for five days.

And I remember every day of it. The pain of it, you mean? Or what? Yeah, to me it was near torture. And we knew that that was true when we did the that I was telling you about, the first clinical trial in 2009, I think it was here, USC, on cancer patients, and we thought, Somebody has cancer, they're not gonna argue with water-only fasting. They're gonna do it, right? We were sure, the oncologists were sure, let's go, let's do it. Nobody wanted to do it, right? So this is why we went to the government and said, We would like to develop a fasting mimicking diet. for cancer patients. That's where it comes from, right? So it comes from the refusal of cancer patients who are like, I'm gonna.

Eat no matter what.

It's just a safety issue. There's lots of things in food that are important to maintain high enough glucose level, high enough blood pressure, et cetera, et cetera. So once you remove it, I think you know, people can do water only fasting, but probably in a specialized clinic, you know? Right, right, right.

Yeah.

So if you go to a place, it is effective.

It is effective.

If you're in a specialized clinic in your house.

But watch out, right? Because again, as we were saying earlier, the devil is in detail. And if you go long enough, right? Especially if you're extreme and long, then the body goes into another response, which is thrifty mode. So the body is thrifty mode.

So it stops burning.

Yeah.

Then the body, it keeps the fat. Let's say you go a couple of weeks without food at all. The body now has to intervene and say, we're gonna be in trouble soon enough, right?

So we're gonna keep that.

We're not gonna burn this. We're not gonna burn. And so now you could have, and we know this from long-term calorific studies, you could have probably, nobody's ever figured out what it is, but it's called epigenetic change. so there's a switch that turns on and say, okay, from now on and maybe for years, I'm now in a saving mode. I'm gonna save energy. So now if you, and this is why the technology is so important, right? So you wanna do all the things that we just talked about and don't, you wanna avoid all the bad things, right? You don't wanna get into thrifty mode, you wanna get into the ketogenic mode, you wanna burn the, start burning the fat, keep that long term and avoid the side effects, you know. Yeah, so all of this, even though people think, oh yeah, it's an old thing, people used to do it, you see how the purpose, it was not to get to 110 years of age healthy back 2000 years ago. The purpose, if you were lucky, is make it to 50 years of age, and have children. So now everything changed, right? So now we can just fast the old ways.

Right, right.

We have to know, we have to be respectful of the tradition and what we learn from all these old practices. But at the same time, we have to bring in the science, the clinical trials and say, okay, how do we, where do they match? You know, what's the common denominator between all these things?

So who was the woman you said is 117 years old?

Emma Morano is her name.

Emma Morano. She's Italian?

Italian. From Verbania, Italy.

Wow.

What are the main causes beyond diet of her living a long, healthy life?

In her case, it was genetics, right? So, and we knew, I mean, you're never 100% sure, but you're pretty sure because when I asked her, tell me about all your brothers and sisters and your mom and father, They all lived old. All of them but one over the age of 90.

Oh my gosh.

And the chance of that is one in a billion probably, right? So extremely unlikely that by chance a bunch of people in the same family, virtually every one out of 10 people will make it to 100, 90.

So that's a genetic, that's a gene type of thing. What is the gene that she has or her family has and is there a way that we can trigger those genes in ourselves?

Yes, with nutrition, with the longevity diet and the fasting making diet and a few other things. Yeah, so we've been following now for 15 years this population in Ecuador and they're little people, right? So they're about three feet tall.

No way. Three feet?

Three feet tall, yes. And they're lacking what's called growth hormone receptor. But why are we studying these people? because if you remember our first discovery of the genes that control aging in microorganisms, it was in the same, what's called pathway. So these microorganisms that live 10 times longer, they are little. Yeah. So, and then the work by John Kapczynski and Andre Bakhshi here in the US showing that the mice that have longevity, record longevity extension, the little mice, right? With the same mutation in the same gene, the growth hormone receptor.

Both of you and I are kind of tall though. Are we screwed?

No, no, not necessarily because we know that we can intervene at different stages of life, right? So you can intervene, you can start a nutritional intervention or a pharmacological intervention on a mouse at different stages. Of course, the earlier you start, the bigger the effect you see. But, but, but you can still get a lot of the effects later, later in life, especially if you consider the deaths from diseases. Right. So, so if you, if you switch your, your nutrition, even when somebody was 60 years old, they could still make a big difference.

You could still extend your lifespan and, and reverse diseases at 60 potentially.

Yeah, almost for sure. I mean, I mean, if you consider that, yeah, if you consider cardiovascular disease and diabetes alone, I mean, those you can truly revolutionize, let's say, the chance of developing them or having them progress based on a, on a clear and strong change in your, in your diet.

Wow. What were the other factors Beyond nutrition that you think are allowing her to live a longer life?

The big, big factor was Carlo Baba, her doctor, right? Big factor. Why? Because Carlo, the attention, and we saw that when I visited Monte Carlo and San Marino, you know, some of the places they have the highest longevity in the world. I realized that one of the major reason is that they have such a close attention to the old person. Right?

The doctors do or the medical system?

So they, you know, for example, in Monte Carlo, if you're older, they can bring you the food at home. They have, you know, ambulances very close by. So they have a safety system for older people. For everybody, but for older people that make sure that if you get a heart attack, they're gonna be there very quickly. Or they're gonna catch it early. or they're gonna give you the test, right? So that's how Carl O'Bao was with Emanuel Morano. He made sure that, you know, she got checked, she got treated, he had to do some blood transfusion. I think he did them at her home 'cause she didn't wanna go to the hospital. So this, so she would have probably made it to 100 on her own, but to make it to 117, I think it took a very inspired physician.

So it's, you know, regular checkups, it's prevention of things. It's not just going through life saying, I'm fine. It's, you know, going to do a checkup once or twice a year and making sure blood levels are good and everything's good. Is that right?

Yeah.

I, I think that, you know, having somebody follow your nutrition and, and have, have the right people follow your nutrition is key. Interesting. But, but at the same time, you know, are you gonna you know, get a colonoscopy or not? Are you gonna check your fasting glucose level at the HbA1C? Are you gonna, you know, have, if you have high blood pressure, are you gonna intervene strongly enough against it without resorting to drugs, right? So, so the idea is, I mean, as you introduce drugs and the more drugs are in the system, the more the system now is going to adapt, change, and now each drug can cause another problem, right? So then ideally you want to try to keep everything working without drugs, which is very difficult to do. And that's why you need probably a team that helps you get there.

Let's say you have unlimited resources. Let's just hypothetical situation, you've got unlimited resources or you've got a certain amount money to dedicate towards a nutritional health doctoral team a year. Who would you want to have on your team or what types of people should people be looking for on their team? Is it a nutritionist? Is it a specific type of doctor? Is it a trainer? What are those people that we should be looking for?

Yeah, so we're trying to do that both in Italy and here in Los Angeles. So the We have physicians that are in internal medicine, internal medicine doctors, and they are integrative type of doctors. So they understand, they appreciate the integration with other interventions that could be nutrition, exercise, etc. Then we like to have at the clinic, dieticians that have higher degrees, right? The type of person that might have focus on nutrition might get a PhD. And then ideally a psychologist, we don't have that yet because we're still small, but I think that would be very helpful. And then the collaboration, which we have, luckily, with lots of hospitals all over the world, right? in each case we look for partners in, you know, usually we do clinical trials, but you know our partners include MD Anderson, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, you know, and so as we develop protocols, clinical protocols, then we go to some of the leading hospitals and we, and usually the leading hospitals are very open, you know, they like things that are different and they're looking forward or forward looking. And yeah, so I think that eventually it'd be nice that everybody had that, right? Everybody had that. So you, let's say you come to our clinic and then based on the problem, the clinic says, I think you should be treated by this oncologist or this cardiologist. or this immunologist because they're probably the ones that are gonna work with the team in a way that, you know, minimizes maybe the drug interventions until you do need the drug intervention. For example, in cancer trials, it's all drugs, right? So it's fasting making diet plus the drugs. We've never seen any evidence that doing it without the drugs is gonna be helpful.

How much of a negative effect does taking drugs consistently in your life affect the longevity of your life, even on a little bit of drugs or medication or a lot of drugs.

Yeah, nobody knows, right? Because I don't know that there is any formal studies on this. But I think that the body is in a perfect equilibrium.

Yes. Harmony.

Yeah. Everything is perfect. It was nearly perfect, let's say, you know? And so. for example, if you think about cholesterol, right? So now you have a statin. So this drug is now going to block cholesterol synthesis. Well, it's going to cause a different problem, right? Yeah, is that good? Well, yeah, it's good because it's lowering your blood cholesterol. But at the same time, so you have to ask the question, why were you making all that cholesterol? You know, what are you trying to do with that, right? So the cholesterol is involved in making hormones. you know, in making, in building cells. So what happens when you block that? And, yeah, so then, then you have to consider that lots of drugs are blocking things and, and they're not necessarily blocking things in a sophisticated way. Right. So they're not, let's say, go after the cholesterol synthesis. Oh, I'm gonna allow this type of cholesterol to be made, but. I'm gonna, you know, affect some other subtype, you know. Usually they're pretty rough, right? Of course, you know, things are getting better in some cases. There are more sophisticated drugs, for example, those that are targeting the immune system. You know, they try to, you know, let's say somebody has an autoimmunity, the drugs are trying to go after only a subset of immune functions so they don't take away your normal immune function. but most of the immune drugs will say the chance of infections is gonna go up and the risk of that from this and that. Yeah, so that means that when they were in the trial, they observed that the risk of certain diseases or infections went up and it's not surprising now you're blocking something.

Something else.

That is trying to help you, right? But that is also hurting you by, let's say, attacking your own cells. So yeah, no matter what system you look at, what type of drug, you know, cancer drugs, right? They say immunotherapy. Well, lots of good, right? Because, you know, it changed the survival in several types of cancers. But then again, now some people are gonna have the immune system attacking the normal cells. And so there's lots of side effects caused by immune therapy. So, yeah, so I think that-- so it's best to figure out what's the.

Root cause of it. Try to get to the root first before using the drug is what I'm hearing you say.

Yeah, let's take diabetes. Let's take the doctor that we were talking about earlier.

So he's got diabetes, got hypertension.

He had four medications. He was on four medications. So, and he was gonna be on his way within, I would say, two or three years of having to inject insulin. with the pancreas being, you know, irreversibly damaged, right? So, you know, so right there you see that what should have been done, you knew how to do it. Now you could say, oh, lots of people are not gonna be able to do it. Well, of course they're not if they don't have the team, right? If they don't have the team, and we already see, for example, in Holland we did a clinical trial, a multi-centered clinical trial, where we did not have a centralized registered dietitian calling people up and knowing the system. And the compliance, so the percentage of patients that did more than three or four cycles of the fasting-mimicking diet together with chemo went down to like 35% or something like that. When we do it with the dietitian calling you, then we're up 70, 80, 90%, right?

So you mean just the dietitian calling you for accountability to check in once a week or once a month and saying, are you doing what you're supposed to do?

How are you feeling? Here's what you can expect from this, right? How are you feeling? Did you eat anything else? Can I help you? Yeah, so that completely changes the ability and the willingness of a patient to do it. So, yeah, so I think one thing is to say to a patient, change your diet, and one thing is to say, don't worry about it. We got the team, we're gonna help you. And at the beginning, you're gonna have lots of questions, lots of calls, and then you know, after a couple months, you're gonna say, I don't talk to you anymore.

I know. Yeah, I got you.

I'm doing it. I'll check in less. Yeah, I'm doing it. And now you have, you know, continuous glucose monitors. We use that on this doctor, for example.

Right.

So, yeah, we were able to, you know, without him even seeing it, we were following his fasting glucose, adjusting to it. So we will call and say, okay, what did you do? Did you eat something last night? Oh, yeah, last night I had a big dinner and. Yeah, so I think that the technology is a big help. So that, you know, just in also making it easier for the clinic to do the job.

Did this doctor, was he obese as well? And did he lose a lot of weight in this process?

He was overweight. He lost weight. He didn't lose, it wasn't somebody lost 40 pounds, you know?

Right.

He must have lost, I don't know, maybe around 10 pounds or something like that.

But he reversed a lot of the, challenges internally in his body.

Well, that's a trick, right? It was losing weight, but there wasn't so there seems to be two factors, right? One is going after, let's say, blood pressure and other issues that he had, but that wasn't really changing his insulin resistance.

Right?

So that was solved by the fasting mimicking diet. So there's probably that switch that keeps the body in let's store fat to let's use fat. And that's what needs to be unlocked. And yeah, so that the combination of the correct everyday diet and that diet that forces that unlocking process is seems to be key.

If someone's just like, you know, they don't need any medication for anything, they're pretty fine except for they're overweight or they've got 40 pounds to lose and they just care about fat loss and losing the weight. What would be the process you would suggest to them? Is it the fasting mimicking diet once every four to six months and the longevity diet? Is it something else included in that? what would you recommend there?

Yeah, no, I mean, in, in the, in the book, the longevity diet, you know, I, I describe all of it, but I would say the longevity diet with pescetarian, you know, up to age 65, 70, let's say, the one we described earlier, the 12 hours.

12 hours, yeah.

The 150 minutes a week of exercise. and I think for anybody that can do it, one hour a day of walking. So find a restaurant that is 15 minutes away or a coffee shop and go there twice. That's one hour of walking.

What was the exercise amount? How much a week?

150 minutes a week. So this is basically- Two and a half hours.

Just two and a half hours.

A week, yeah.

That's it. Of working out, of some strenuous exercise.

Yeah, running, biking, swimming. that doesn't have to be strenuous. I think only about 10% of that. So about 15 minutes has to be strenuous. So out of the 150, push yourself for 15. So try to push the limits where your heartbeat goes high.

So two and a half hours a week of that type of workout, and on top of that, an hour of walking every day.

Yeah.

Then on top of that, every day, stairs, don't use elevators. Your body is not made for all this.

Just sitting around, standing around. How important is the hour a day of walking?

I think it's very important. Really? I think it's very important. And I think when I go around the world and talk to centenarians, you always get the ones that were shepherds, they were working in the field. I mean, the majority of them had some type of manual labor. So I think it's very important also psychologically to just be out there and just walk and get used to that and get used to the stairs, you know, and I always show my students this escalator in the, in the Metro of Geneva. And so you have the stairs and you have the escalator, and you have, like, 200 people on the escalator, not a single person on the stairs, you know, and that. So we turn into, uh, uh, uh, you know, systems that. are continuously dependent on cars and, and, and, you know, and machines that do the job for us, you know?

Right.

So the elevator and, you know, so there's really even if you think about gardening and some of the things that you see maybe in the, in Japan, in Okinawa, eventually even something like gardening can, can mean a lot of a lot of physical exercise.

Yeah.

You're on your knees, you're squatting, you're, you know, you're using your body in different ways to, to get in there and stuff like that. You're not just sitting around the whole day.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think that that's very important. And then I would say I, I do it myself. And for all the people that tend to gain weight and, and, and I'm one of them, the, I usually do. breakfast and I do dinner and either no lunch, like, you know, when I, when I go to Italy, I, I have lunch also because it's, it's hard for me not to have lunch there. But when I come back to the states, it's like, Monday through Friday, I don't have lunch. I just have coffee for lunch. You know, like a tall coffee, and that's it. And, and that's helped me for the past, you know, 20 years. Really helped me and help a lot of people that we follow in the clinics.

Yeah.

So that, that's for, not for everybody, but I would say for most people, that's like, that's a great way to control weight without adding any problems, you know, because, again, you don't want to skip breakfast. Dinner, most people don't want to skip because of, you know, dinner is just friends and family and just, yeah. So, so you, you're Monday through Friday. So even the lunch on the same, the weekend. is probably not a good idea. Right.

And.

Wow. But Monday through Friday, I find it extremely easy.

And.

And they usually, I. I still remember the first.

The.

When I first did it 20 years ago, very difficult. Right.

They skipped lunch.

Yeah. The first month and a half of skipping lunch, it was extremely difficult for me. And then now having lunch or not having lunch makes no No difference. I would say that it's almost neutral effect. If you take away my breakfast or my dinner, and now I'm back to that behavior when I first started.

It might take a few months, but it's not gonna have the benefits in your body and longevity.

Well, I mean, no, dinner could, right? If you skip dinner, it could. Lots of centenarians eat no dinner or very little dinner.

They have breakfast, lunch, and then they stop at three o'clock.

Yeah, that's very common. Nobody studied that, right? so I think it's a little bit less risky right now, knowing all we know that you keep, you know, you have a snack a little bit, you have breakfast and dinner and a little snack in between. That's a good way to control weight and not introduce any, any potential problems. If you skip dinner, it could turn out that, you know, 10 years down the road, we find out the same. That was true for breakfast, skipping is true for now. You're going to have too many hours of fasting and, and now you're back to, to the good and the bad, right?

So you think no more than 12 hours of fasting is, is key, right? 12 hours only.

Well, on average, we, we know that 16 hours got problems associated with it. And, and so, you know, 16 hours can be good for short periods for.

A week or something.

But even for a couple of months, you know, if somebody had diabetes and the Physician said, you know, we're gonna put you on, on this. 16 hour for two months, let's get you down. And then we, you know, we put you on the longevity diet or whatever diet. Yeah, I think that that's reasonable, you know, that just to unlock a little bit the person to, to get him, you know, lower, to get him to lose some weight and, and lose some of the abdominal fat that may be helping them also maybe psychologically get into a, you know, a modality where they're going to change their diet.

Yeah.

So no lunch. So a lunch fast is what we're looking to do. Wow, that's interesting. So you've been doing that for 20 years?

I've been doing that for 20 years.

No, most of the time no lunch.

Yeah, and I mean, I give you.

A big breakfast then or is it like what do you usually eat for breakfast?

No, I have an apple and some, you know, almond spread, almond butter, almond chocolate spread and then some It's called Focaccia. It's like dry bread from Italy, from the south of Italy. That sounds good.

So you have an apple with some spread, some bread.

And tea.

That's your breakfast.

That's my breakfast.

No lunch. What time do you usually eat breakfast?

It's say nine o'clock. 9:00. 30:00, 9:00.

And then no lunch. And then do you have an earlier dinner, later dinner? How's that? Oh, then I have dinner at about 8:00. 8:00. Is there a time we should stop eating dinner to help us With fat.

Loss or with... Yeah, I would say, you know, three hours from bedtime, you know, so... Okay. So, yeah, and this is what I do, but people can be shifted to 7 a.m., say 7 a.m., 7 p.m. Right, right. And then they go to bed, say, 10:00, you know, I go to bed at maybe midnight and I stop eating at 9:00.

So, yeah, so I pretty much follow all the things that I preach. That's good. So, the longevity diet, 12-hour fasting daily in that window. one hour daily of walking, two and a half hours a week of working out, eat breakfast and dinner, skip lunch Monday through Friday. If you can do the weekend.

If you're weight gainer or you're overweight or you're obese, if you have normal weight, then you can eat five times a day.

Right.

Okay.

So we're trying normal weight, the normal abdominal circumference. So you, you're not accumulating fat. You know, let's say somebody's got 12, 13 fat.

They don't need a skip lunch.

They don't need to skip anything. They may need to eat more.

Gotcha.

Okay.

And you mentioned in this team, if we could have this, if everyone could have a team around them, you mentioned the psychologist. Why is a psychologist important for healthy weight control and longevity?

I think that everything is about the mind and your ability to follow certain things and to do them.

And.

That gets even worse for somebody that's got cancer or has got a disease. But even somebody that has nothing, just let's say the seven out of ten Americans that are overweight, the psychologist can make a tremendous difference in allowing you to see the maybe the problems that are behind the eating, overeating, or not being able to be disciplined, right? Because in the end, you have to have this discipline, some type of discipline, right? So you have to have it for the exercise, you have to have it for the hour walk, you have to have it for the 12 hours. All of this takes some form of discipline.

Structure, order, scheduling, discipline.

Yeah, so I think that a psychologist can probably help you get there. It might not get everybody there, but I would say that it's probably a large percentage of people that would benefit from having a professional understand why you're not able to make those changes and then allow you to get there.

In.

A way that is easy enough. and also permanent, right? So the worst thing you could do is do a diet, you know, so change nutrition and then go lose a lot of weight and then go back. Right. It's much better to never change. And I'm talking about it's much better for longevity. So this is being studied. You do this yo-yo more than a couple times in your life, you're gonna live shorter.

Right.

Really? So why is that?

Well, nobody knows, right? But. but this is being shown by epidemiological studies. So people that have lost, I think it was more than 10% of their weight, at least twice in their life. So they've done some type of extreme, you know, heavy nutritional change. They live shorter than those that just kept the same weight but never bothered to lose it. Interesting.

And what do you think is the main cause for seven out of ten Americans being overweight and obese? Is it lack of discipline, lack of knowledge, just abundance of food available that they're just eating? Is it they don't care, they're not educated?

What's the... No, I think it's the system. The whole system is structured. You know, the food companies.

The food marketing, constantly selling a lot.

Of money, selling everything. And the food company, each individual can say, look, don't blame me, I'm just selling french fries. you know, am I a bad person because I sell French fries? No, you know, it's okay to have allow people to eat some French fries. But then you have the medical system that basically says, you know, we're not that interested in nutrition. We're interested in treating people. And then you have the hospital making a lot of money, you know, because people are sick and the insurance company pay for it. So the entire system is loves it like this, right? the funny thing is, of course, all the people that are working for these companies that sell food and hospitals are the patients themselves, you know? Right. And that's the ironic part, right? So, yeah, so I think that you have to change all the way from the journalist to the TV commercials to the entire system has to change. And so we kind of like it happened for smoke, right? You have to sort of say, yeah, this is not good for you. And so at some point then the system said, you know, smoking kills you. And then that did not change everything, but certainly it caught the smokers in health. Maybe a little bit over health right now.

Right.

So that's good. That's a big victory, right? That's a big victory. So now if we say bad food kills you and we put it in-.

All the labels like in smoking.

Yeah, and you know, all the television sing this story and the universities and the hospitals, then yeah, then you're not gonna see everybody, but out of the 72% or so, I think we go down to 35 or so.

What's the obesity? And you grew up in Italy, right? What's the obesity level there?

It's getting very close to the children. I wrote a book last year in Italian, which I'll publish here soon. and it's called longevity starts in childhood. And the overweight percentage in Italy surpassed the United States in the children.

Really?

How is that possible?

Obesity was higher for the US and overweight percentage was higher for Italy. And if you look at Southern Italy, it's much higher.

Why?

How is that possible?

Same problem, same system. Lots of confusion create lots of confusion. And so nobody knows what you're supposed to do anymore. Create lots of drugs, lots of commercials, you know, and all the magazines are just packed with commercial.

Really? Drugs and food, huh?

Food and drugs. We're just surrounded by advertisement of food and drugs. So get sick.

Eat the food and then have the drugs.

Have the drug and the hospital.

To make you feel good again.

Get scared of this, you know? And then, of course, in the process we go bankrupt because you know, 17 of GDP. Right. So that's a lot. That's a very expensive process. Right.

So what's the healthiest country in the world? And what are they doing differently?

That's a good question. I would say that Japan is certainly still among those that don't have a big, big obesity and overweight problems.

I'm sure there are there's a percentage, but it's not.

Yeah, no, obviously there's a percentage, but I think it's very far from the 70% of the US and I think 50% or so of Italy. And most Europe, by the way, right? It's not Italy special.

It's like, most of Europe is 50% now.

Yeah, most Europe is around 50%. And so overweight and obesity. Yeah. So I think that Japan is probably one of the examples of doing a better job for sure than most of other countries. So it can be done. I mean, it's just pretty straightforward if you think about it, but it just involves everybody, right? You cannot have people like me going around and saying, you know, eat like this, eat like that. If the doctors, the dieticians, the, you know, CNN and everybody else, if they don't get on board, It's hard.

It's too much confusion. It's not gonna happen. And then people are just exhausted or.

Tired and they're just eat whatever they want. Yeah, then of course, low fat, right? For 20 years, low fat, low fat, and people are gaining weight, right? And then it's like, oh no, no, it's not fat. It's gotta be carbs. Low carb, low carb, and people are gaining weight, right? So in both the low fat era and in the low carb era, Americans and Europeans have gained weight, right? So because, why? Because we're eating too much. too many calories and from both fat and sugars and carbohydrates, right? So, so, so, and proteins, right? So we have more of everything, right? And, and that's a problem. So, and it's just easier for, for the media to demonize. It used to be fat and now it's, it's carbs and at some point maybe will contribute to demonizing proteins, which we're not trying to do because we're saying, hey, you know, a healthy level of protein is essential for making it to, you know, 110 healthy. But it's just, I remember when we published in 2014 a paper on proteins and we showed that it was two phases of life, right? As I mentioned earlier, up to 65, low protein, then after 65 go to a moderate protein intake and maybe you can have a more of a variety of food, right? a little bit more meats and yogurts and et cetera. And I remember one of the big national shows that the physician went on TV and looked at our papers like, oh, well, low protein and then it changes too confusing. It was two things, right? It was very simple, right? But even just the fact that we had described two phases of life to the physician on television was too confusing. And yeah, so that's a message that we give people, it just gotta be one word, you know, hide this, low that, then, you know, people can understand it. If it's more than that, it's too confusing. And yeah, so then of course, then of course people are gonna suffer the consequences of this.

How much does your environment play into longevity? Like the space you live in, the city, the weather, you know, how much does that play into beyond nutrition, your longevity?

Probably a little bit, but not a big, big effect, you know? So, I think, you know, New York, I think it's got a lot of people that live long, long lives. New York City and, yeah, New York City does. New York City does, yeah.

Really, why is that?

Probably because, you know, they're pretty wealthy and they have good doctors and they have good food, you know, and, yeah.

So, Community and they got people around.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you get the checkups, you're eating healthy and, and, you know, even though you're in a very stressful City full of people and, and probably polluted, etc. Etc. So I think, you know, you could do very well no matter where you are. It might take a couple years off your life, you know, if you, if you're in a highly polluted area. But, but I think, you know, if you look at the abdominal circumference and diabetes and you see that your chances of getting diabetes go up tenfold if.

You have a bigger.

Yeah, so then your chances of developing cardiovascular disease and cancer, etc. So it's very clear what's at the center of diseases and longevity. you know, that doesn't mean that other things are not important. But also, if you look at the, our field, you know, if you look at the, the animal research after 100 years, I would say the consensus is that nutritional interventions are by far the most powerful in making a mouse live longer, right? Or making a rat live longer or any, a monkey live longer. I would say that, you know, there are some drugs and, and, and interventions that are, are emerging now. but I would say if you took a hundred scientists working on aging, I would say 90 will say, yeah, probably some type of nutrition-based intervention is going to be the one that I would pick to make any organism live longer.

Wow.

So, this is really discovery from the last 20 years that you guys have been, you and a bunch of other people in your industry have been studying and researching, right? We found that this nutritional changes can really support the longevity.

You know, the dietary restriction work is started like 100 years ago.

Okay.

And just what happens if you lower. But then, as I was saying, what happens is that you have lots of good and lots of bad. Right. So, so, so now I think what we and a few others have contributed to the nutrition and the restriction field is, can we remove the bad and keep the good? You know, and, you know, of course, that, that, that, that, that's a that's a big factor, right? So can you, let's say that continuous calorie restriction is gonna make you lose muscle mass. We've shown in the clinical trial and we are about to confirm that no muscle mass loss with FMDs, right? With fasting mimicking diet.

So no muscle loss?

No muscle loss. And even with the pace, with five.

Days, if it's longer would it be some muscle loss or?

Yeah, of course, you know, if it's longer, eventually you have no muscle loss. It's impossible to keep your muscle mass. but even in the women that did it for eight cycles, once every month or two, if they did the little light training, muscle training exercise, they actually gained lean body mass. So yeah, that's one immune system. Well, that's another issue about calorie restriction, where is your immune system going to be weakened by having this continuous restriction? or by potentially also having continuous dietary intervention, say every day, 16 hours, every day, every other day, fasting. It's a very chronic intervention, right? So then there is a suspicion that you could negatively affect the immune system. Well, again, we're seeing, if anything, the opposite, right? So with periodic fasting, we can diet, we see, at least in mice, we show very clearly the blood stem cells activated in bone marrow and now you're rejuvenating the immune system. So I think that's a much more sophisticated type of intervention and less burdensome. Both are necessary. You have to be more sophisticated, but you have to use the sophistication to make sure that it's very easy on people. you know, can you do five days of something that comes in a box twice a year? I would say 90% of people can do that. Sure. You know, are they gonna, are they gonna, you know, like it? Are they probably half of them are not gonna like it? And the other half are probably gonna feel pretty good about it. I'm talking about not the sort of response we see. Some people say, I do it because I have to do it. Some people say, I love doing it because I feel better when I do it. But I think that's certainly a change compared to what we used to have. And I mean, there's other things, I think that the time where the eating was such in Panda is doing, I think is great. And there are a few other things that, you know, the certain ketogenic diet, I think for brief periods, that's interesting. What I think Eric Verdin and others are doing, I think there are some interesting aspects of that, you know, is there a, for example, lots of data now are suggesting if you go low carb, it's fine if it's a vegan diet, right? So if it's low carb, animal based, it's not good at all. You're gonna have a shorter life.

Really?

But if, yeah, this is meta-analysis like the studies of all studies. but if it's low carb and it's plant-based then it seems to be like the best diet. You know, say 40% carbohydrate plant-based that seems to be the best diet of all, right?

So.

Interesting thing that a few people are studying and we're starting to study it.

It seems like there are a lot of people that have lean red meats that are healthy, that look great, that have clear skin, that seem to be aging well. Is red meat something that we should be looking out for in the future or is a certain amount of it okay?

It depends what your goals are, let's say. So somebody could say, look, I eat red meat once a week. I have the organic kind that is grass-fed. fatty and is that gonna be really bad for me? Probably not.

Right?

Got it. Probably not. But, you know, then most people say, oh, I have, you know, I have the red meat, the steak once a week. Then I have the sausage once a week. Then I, you know, for breakfast, I have a bacon.

Yeah. Yeah.

Then you put it all together, and then you get into a Western diet, you know? And the Western diet is what we use to. to let's say shorten the lifespan. We just published a paper in mice and we had this like Western high fat, high calorie diet and you see the mice just dying much earlier. Really? Yeah, they get big and they die very early, right? With lots of problems, high cholesterol, heart problems. So yeah, so then it's pretty clear that by having a Western diet, full of animal proteins and animal fats, you're gonna have a problem. You know, we're gonna have many problems, not just one. And, you know, our point has been you got one life, probably. You know, it's relatively short, I would say. Right. And, and, and so how do you optimize this life? Right. And so, yeah, to optimize it, I would say, go with the longevity diet. But then, as many Americans will say, and many people in Europe, I can't do this. Can I have one steak a week? Okay, that's fine. It's probably not gonna, it may make no difference to you in your life. It may make some difference, who knows? And by the way, this is what most of the centenarians used to do. let's say red meat once a week. This was very common. So it wouldn't be that far from, I think the Okinawan one is probably not, but I would say that most Southern European centenarians had the red meat at least once a month and maybe once a week.

Gotcha. So very little, not as much, not every day, not a few times a week, but the less you can do, it seems to be the better for longevity.

Yeah, and again, it's not really about red meat, it's about lots of, you know, animal products, the milk products, you know, the white meats, the red meats, lots of them treated with antibiotics, lots of them having high levels of hormones, maybe steroid hormones. And yeah, so it's.

Probably.

The combination of all these animal-based products that each contributing a little bit to some inflammatory problems, to increasing the growth factors, to increasing the glucose level in the blood. So you put it all together and you keep on going. And then you get, you know, then you get, you know, the problems. Multiple diseases that most people in Europe and America have.

What would you say, what do you think based on your studies, almost 30 years that you've been in this field, what do you think we're going to discover in the next 30 years that we haven't discovered yet about longevity, optimizing our health? Is there anything you think maybe this could happen or we could discover this new thing or we're early stages but there's not enough data and research yet? Is there anything you see either changing the gene or nutrition or something that could extend our lifespan even more.

Yeah.

First of all, I think, you know, I call the nutri technology, right? So the, you know, the, the nutritional field used to be sort of like a soft science, you know, just a lot of ideas and observation. Now it's moving into a hard science. Yeah. Exactly. What kind of amino acids are in that composition and what is the frequency, etc. so I think the nutri technology is going to get better and better and better. And, and at some point also we're going to combine it with artificial intelligence. And so, you know, it's going to revolutionize, I think, in the next 10, 15 years.

Yeah.

So if somebody has a problem, let's say it could be an immune problem, it could be a gastrointestinal problem, it could be diabetes. And, and I think at some point we'll be able to pinpoint exactly. Let's say you have celiac disease, right? It's an autoimmunity and it's caused by gluten. You know, 30 years ago, nobody knew that, right? So you were eating pasta and bread and suffering like hell and. And people had no idea. They just load you up with drugs, right? So now, no, no drugs. Just avoid gluten. You know, that's it, you know, and then you cure. so yeah, so then imagine, so we know that it's very clear or lactose and lactose intolerant, right? If you're Japanese, most Japanese are going to be lactose intolerant genetically, so if you drink milk and you're not feeling so well, you have a simple solution, right? So imagine how many of those there are that we don't know about. And we you know, omics, so be able to look at the microbiota composition, but also look at the, there is something called metabolomics. It looks at all the molecules in the blood that change and eventually very soon we'll be able to relate that to what you're eating, right? So then we'll be able to say, you need to avoid these six foods and you need to have higher level of this another attempt foods and that's going to solve the problem. So that's, I think, a big, it's going to have a lot of potential. And then I think we'll see a lot of bionics, so we'll see a lot of probably artificial organs and yeah, people have been working on this for a long time and now there's a lot of excitement, can you make a pancreas? that is artificial, right? So yeah, of course they're working on that and can you make kidneys that are artificial and the heart do we really have it? So yeah, so I think that in the next 30 years we're gonna see lots of this machine slash human combined. Of course the longevity is a little bit trickier because you have protect everything, right? Including the brain. And the brain is a tough organ to replace, right? So, and it's not going to happen anytime soon. But I think that, you know, the people that have heart problems and or type 1 diabetes or kidney problems, and there's going to be a lot of these solutions, artificial systems that are going to be introduced.

That's crazy.

They'Re gonna make a big difference.

Let's say you're born today. What do you think is the potential lifespan someone could have? And right now, what is the. The oldest age, 120 or something, or what's the.

122. Yeah.

122. Someone living today, 122.

No, no. That was the oldest. Madame Calmont, she get. That's crazy.

What's the oldest person today?

I think right now we're probably around one. 17, I think somebody must be around it.

So, if someone's born today with all you know it's coming, all you know we have right now plus all that's coming in the next 20-30 years plus 70 years, what do you think is the potential in your hypothesis is potential for lifespan?

I think that if the brain is.

Protected and everything's protected obviously, but what is?

Yeah, certainly I think that there's gonna be two groups, right? So the world is going to be divided in two. And there's going to be the ones that follow all the supported strategies, right? So this is why in the first book I talk about five pillars, right? So you talk about epidemiological studies, clinical studies, basic research, centenarian studies. You know, instead of saying, oh, Longo thinks this, it's more like Longo puts together all these data and then says, okay, it's just hard to imagine how this particular diet could not work, right? It's worked for this and this and this and this and this. Yeah, so I think there's going to be a group that follows all the right, that does all the right things. And then there's a group that continues on. And the group that continues on the way they've been doing it now, I think it's probably we're gonna see a lifespan about the same.

But.

You know, so it could be, I don't know, an average lifespan of 90 or 95, you know, let's say. And, but then the other group, I think it's gonna, instead we're gonna start seeing maybe the 105 average lifespan.

Right.

And, you know, of course, the drugs are gonna be there and, and, you know, and the drugs can make a difference with their, or, or their surgery.

Right.

Can make a difference whether you die when you're 22. Right. Or you make it to 105. Right. Or 110.

Yeah.

So I think that all together with the technology, plus the nutrition, plus, plus, plus. I wouldn't be surprised then if you have a population that follows all this, that gets to 105 years of age average. So that means that health of them will live longer than that and health of them a little bit shorter.

Sure.

It's inspiring.

With some people maybe making it to the 125, 130, you know, range. As you have a population, like say, Let's say a billion people followed all this for the next 120 years, it'd be surprising that one of them would not, let's say, get to 130.

That'd be amazing. 130 years, that's crazy, right?

Yeah, definitely.

It's inspiring.

It would be a long life.

You mentioned the five pillars. What are the five pillars for increasing longevity that you just mentioned?

Yeah, so the five pillars, you know, epidemiological studies were the studies of the numbers, right? The population, 100,000 people that eat lots of cheese and people that don't. Then the clinical studies, you know, so once you identify it, let's say proteins are too much protein, it's bad for you. You can do a randomized trial where you see people that have high protein diet, people that have low protein, and look at the changes, maybe not for 20 years, maybe for one year, but you can already monitor that. Then the basic research, okay, so you think a high protein diet is bad for you, why don't you give a high protein diet to mice? Do they live shorter? They do, right? So, and do they have more diseases? They do.

Oh man.

So, yes, that's a third pillar. And then centenarians, you know, if you think a high protein diet is so bad for all of us, let's go around the centenarians. Do any of them have a high protein diet? Nobody does.

Right?

Not the Okinawans, not Loma Linda, not the Sardinians, not the, you know, so nobody does. You know, they might have a low protein, most of them low protein, some of them may have a moderate protein diet, but you don't see a high protein, famous population, I mean, population famous for making it to 100 years of age. So that's a good sign, right? It's another pillar. and then complex systems, you know, I think it's always good to have a reductionist approach and think of the human being as a plane or a car, you know, something that is complicated, sophisticated and complicated, you know, how do you, I always use it, for example, when people ask, you know, should I go running, you know, 20 miles a day or should I never run? Well, I always say, well, if you keep your car in the garage all the time, not good, right? If you drive your car all the time, not good either. Nobody wants a 10-year-old car that's got 180,000 miles, right?

Right.

Nobody wants to buy that. Why is that? It's like, boy, it's a car that's being used a lot. That's good, right? No. Why? Well, because the mechanic will say, it's just gonna break apart, you know, just a matter of time. Now, the body has self-repair mechanisms, which the car doesn't have, but still, you know, the if it's overused, it's gonna break down.

Right, right. This is inspiring. Is there anything else we should know about longevity? Or is this pretty inspiring to me? This is inspiring to me. You've got an amazing book, the Longevity Diet, that people can get right now. It's inspiring. It's got a lot of this information plus more details and examples. on how to really implement this in your life. The fasting mimicking diet, which I did years ago, I want to redo again. This is the five-day process of calorie restriction, plant-based specific types of foods and soups, I think it was, and some vitamins in there. I'm not sure if it's changed from five years ago or if it's pretty much the same, but-- Pretty close. Pretty close, yeah.

Because of clinical trials, right?

Right, yeah. So you've got that. People can check out valterlongo.com and they can learn more about that. The book is there. the fasting mimicking program is there as well, correct?

Well, the book talks about the fasting mimicking program.

Yeah.

And the foundations, right? Of course, the foundation here in Los Angeles, Create Cures, it's a nonprofit clinic, you know, and we try to take care of people. Those they cannot afford it, they're not charged, and those they can't afford it, they pay a pretty low price.

Donation based or something. So what is Create Cures? Is a clinic here in Los Angeles?

That's the foundation. It's the foundation that I started years ago. ago with the idea of like bringing creativity into medicine and yeah, so it's here in Santa Monica and the idea is to do what we discussed earlier, you know, to have the team, the nutritionist, the physician, et cetera, et cetera. Still, the Italian one is more advanced. The American one is in its early days, but I think it's getting there.

Who is a good candidate for this? foundation to be a part of it.

You mean to be a patient or?

Yeah, to be a patient.

Anybody. I mean, so there's people that are healthways, people that are, you know, athletes and. But there are people with cancer, you know, there are people with autoimmunities and.

Yeah.

So we try to. To, you know, work with doctors at the big hospitals in town or small hospitals. to try to help them.

What's the process look like? If someone like me wanted to go there and check it out, what would the process be like?

Well, just, you know, call the clinic or email them at createcures.org and then, you know, set up an appointment and, you know, they can get you set up with blood tests and then, or you can have your own blood test.

And then... And they analyze and they kind of put you on a game plan or a process.

Yeah, then they implement the different approaches, of course, very different from somebody who's healthy, who might just get the longevity diet and then measures of, let's say, muscle function and muscle mass versus somebody's cancer, in which case we need to talk to the oncologist that is treating them and decide, can they do certain things? Can they not? Is the oncology is favorable or not? Gotcha.

So your team assesses that and puts people on a plan and then supports them in that process. You're saying it's free for people that can't afford it and then others you pay a certain amount.

Yeah, the others is pretty reasonable.

Gotcha.

I think there is probably a discount plan for everybody, meaning like even people that don't make that much money get a pretty heavy discount.

Something.

So that's cool. Createcures.org.

Yes.

So anyone can go to the website, check it out and see if there's.

The right fit for them.

Yes. That's cool. Okay. We got that. We got your book, the longevity diets. How else can we be of support to you? I checked out your Instagram. You're not that consistent on there, but you've got some great stuff on there. Some of it's in Italian, so.

But if you want the English version, where should they go to the main website? Yeah. Facebook. We have, we still have a page. that is pretty active.

Okay.

And I have people that post on it. But yeah, I think soon enough we'll have to maybe invest a little bit more time in the various social platforms.

Yeah, yeah. But great stuff with the book and the website and everything here. So how else can we support you and your mission?

I think that's it, send people to the Curacures and also donation, of course, it's a foundation that that takes donation and if anybody, we're trying now to do an event next year, probably going to be a race in Los Angeles to raise funds, you know, so for the foundation and, you know, so that we can follow more people.

That's cool.

And now we used to have doctors and now we realize that, you know, we need to wait until we have a California medical license, But that's a very expensive operation when physicians are are also part of it so that's why it's important for us to to raise funds it.

That's cool. So a race like a 5K or.

We'll see we'll see we're now thinking of the details, but it's probably gonna be May and and Yes, so we're gonna have people that that you know get other people involved.

I mean if I'm in town I'll be in the race. So I'm excited. Thanks Amazing. This is inspiring stuff. I've got a couple of final questions for you. This is called the three truths question. I ask everyone this question at the end of an interview. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario that it is your last day on earth, many years away. You live to however old you want to live. You've followed your own plan, so you live over 100 and you live a great life. But for whatever reason, it's the last day. and you've got to take all of your content, your books, this interview, anything you've ever said, you've got to take it with you to the next place, or it leaves the world.

So we're only said.

And written said, any content, all content you've ever created, it's gone. So we don't have access to your information anymore. But you have, you know, a piece of paper and a pen, and you get to write down three lessons that you've learned in your life. and this is all we would have to remember the wisdom that you gained and you share with us. I call us the three truths. What would you say would be those three lessons or three truths for you?

Well, for sure, take care of your.

Health.

And that includes your mental health. I would say for sure, keep what you need and donate the rest. I would say that that's probably a very, a very important thing. And then I think that the third would be, I don't know, maybe, you know, spend as much time as possible with the people that that you care about.

I.

Love it. Those are good truths. It's good wisdom. Well, I want to acknowledge you before I ask the final question, for your commitment and dedication to serving so many people who have struggled with their health and are confused. I think there's a lot of confusion in the world and your commitment to science research clinical studies, all the different things that you've done in the last 30 years in the education system to bringing this wisdom to the world has been extremely helpful for so many people who have no clue what they're doing. So I really acknowledge you for showing up consistently for walking the talk, for continuing the research and putting this out there in a powerful way. It's really inspiring and you're helping people live longer and healthier lives. So I appreciate that.

Well thanks, thanks.

Yeah, it's really inspiring. My last question is, what's your definition of greatness?

Probably, I mentioned this in my first book, you know, change things in positive for as many people as possible.

Yeah.

Right, you know, if you can make it better for a billion people, you just, you know, change a billion lives for the better.

So.

So, yeah, so I think that's probably a great message.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple podcast as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.