Fasting Mimicking Breakthroughs: Research on ProLon and Autoimmunity (IBD, MS, Type 1 Diabetes), Type 2 Diabetes and Longevity with Dr. Joseph Antoun

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. Today I will be speaking with Dr. Joseph Antune, CEO and Chairman of the Board of L-Nutra, a unique nutrition technology company leading the longevity and food as medicine markets and the company behind the Prolon fasting mimicking diet. He is the former Director of Health Policy at the University Chicago and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Health Systems and Reform. Dr. Antoun completed his health policy studies at Harvard University, public health at Johns Hopkins University, medicine and biological sciences at St. Joseph University, and his PhD studies in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern studies at King's College. Dr. Antoun has dedicated his professional experience to launching two novel markets. The first is the longevity market, where he launched the first tested and patented health aging product called Prolon. The second is the food is medicine market, where he launched Nutrition for Longevity. Which is now amongst the first food ever to be reimbursed by Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. If you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebook, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Antle. Thank you, Lindsey Parsons.

So I'm excited to have you on the podcast. I've heard about ProLon and the fasting mimicking diet, well, at least a couple years ago. And then when it fell into my sphere of potential podcast guests, I was really excited. So anyway, can you tell me about what a fasting mimicking diet is, or tell everybody else, and how it's used currently clinically in terms of a general overview of conditions and the duration and frequency?

Yeah. So as you know, fasting became very popular in the last 7, 8 years, and a lot of that was coming from our research. We, you know, I lead a company called Alnutra that produces the ProLon, but we're a spinoff from University of Southern California where a lot of the research on fasting started, if you want. So there's now 18 universities doing research on fasting. And what they discovered some 10, 12 years ago is that Intermittent fasting, doing that for, for a few hours or extra hours, the 16 or the 18, you know, could help people lose some weight. And there's a lot of clarifications to do there and how to do it the right way. But the biggest discovery was that if you go longer, you know, how about 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, 5 days, what happens to the body? And one major discovery which ended up winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016 was that when you cross the third day, when you go on a third day of fast, there's another layer of benefits that happens in the body, which is cellular rejuvenation. So basically, the first two days of fasting, your body has enough glycogen in the muscle. I call those the, the checking account in the bank. When you need money, you go first to them. And then you have enough fat, which is the savings account. And then if you need a little bit more on your credit card, the liver Liver has also some, can do some neoglucogenesis. So the first 2 days you go to glycogen and fat and to the liver and they can help the body sustain. On day, when you cross day 2 and you're getting into day 3, the body is declaring crisis. It's saying, well, using my bank account, I'm getting depleted. So it tells the cells that you're on your own now. You have to consume the debris, the organelles. You gotta detox, you gotta improve how you operate, how you function. Otherwise we're going to die. And so on day 2 and 3, we call this the cellular rejuvenation and the body is rejuvenating the cells and you go longer. Now if you get— you go to day 4 and day 5, the body is saying, wow, I mean, the cells tell the body, hey, I'm using the debris, the organelle, I'm trying to fix. And now what's next? What's next is there's some old cells that the body doesn't need that kills them and pushes the new young cells to replace those. So there's a third layer The first 2 days is a metabolic fast. The second, day 3, day 4, we call it rejuvenation and fasting. And then as of day 4 onwards, there's a regeneration. The body kills the old cells, the senescent cells, which are behind a lot of inflammation and aging in the body and pushes the young cells to replace them.

And that's called autophagy, right?

Autophagy is the second one, the rejuvenation one.

Oh, okay.

The regeneration one, which very few people talk about, is all coming from the science of USC and Valter Longo, very well described in the Longevity Diet book. If, you know, I really, if anything out of this podcast for, for those listening to us, if you go and read the Longevity Diet book, it was an international bestseller. It explains why to go a little bit longer. But we're gonna talk about it because we do it to close the question. We do it with nutrition. We're not here recommending that people go on a water fast for 5 days because it's so difficult. It's sometimes risky and, and it's very difficult to comply with. But I'm explaining why we got to the nutritional phase. So the biggest discovery was that 2 days of fast, first 2 days, okay, good for metabolism. Second days, 3 and day 4, cellular rejuvenation and autophagy, Nobel Prize in medicine. Day 4 onwards, all the way, actually, the benefit stays is the body starts killing the old cells, taking more structural, more deep change, and pushing the stems of the younger cells to replace. The older cells, which is a full regeneration of the body. So it's a, it's a big body detox cleanup and cellular rejuvenation. It makes the body a little bit younger. That was, this is what made fasting actually very popular is when those cellular changes were discovered, people were like, wow, fasting can be a preventative intervention for many chronic diseases. It could be a reverse to age and it could be a very good intervention, medical intervention, the medical fasting for people who suffer with, from overweight and diabetes, for people with cancer because you starve the cancer, for people with other chronic conditions. And then USC, University of Southern California, and the other university, they went to market trying to tell people to fast for 5 days, and they were trying that with, with certain conditions, including autoimmune disease and cancer and and it was very difficult. Nobody was, you know, able to do that. But the trials in mice were unbelievable. The, the, the cure rate from many chronic conditions and improving mice health was very beneficial. So they took the mice data and they talked to the National Institute of Health. The NIH funds a lot of research across the US, and they asked for a big grant to develop the fasting mimicking diet. Basically, how can we help people eat something during the 5 days, but mimicking the benefits of fasting on the cells. So that was the big endeavor. And it took $36 million actually of the grants and donations. It took 12 years for those researchers to sit and say, okay, how much of every macro and micronutrients I can give you and which time of the day and combined with, with which other micronutrients so that what we call the nutrient sensing pathway, the cells have receptors to food so that we don't trigger the receptors of the cells so that the cells do not recognize they're eating, so that the cells stay in a fasting mode. So it took 12 years, a very precise Precision Nutrition formula that gives you all plant-based healthy ingredients, no chemicals, no whatever processed extra processing. It's just literally high-end premium clean food that is made of ingredients tested to not trigger the satiety of the cell and therefore keeping your body in a fasting mode although you're eating for 5 days. And this is why they call it the fasting mimicking diet, probably the biggest oxymoron you'll hear in nutrition. It's a fasting food basically. Much better than fast food, by the way.

So, so could you give me some examples of the types of food that are in the Prolon fasting mimicking diet?

Yeah, the way the consumer would see it, and the Prolon is the brand name of the fasting mimicking diet. So if you consume Prolon, you're having a bar, a fast bar in the morning. You can actually buy it by the bar separate. It's called the fasting bar. So you get a bar for breakfast, then you get a soup and some olives and then supplements for lunch. You have a small snack, the Choco Crisp, in the afternoon. And for dinner, you will have another soup and kale crackers. And you have a drink that you take throughout the day and your supplements, minerals, and, and algal oil as well. And it's all vegan. And this is at the presentation level, but the ingredients themselves, the macro ingredients, a lot of it are coming from high-end nuts. So you have macadamia, you have almonds, you have pecans, because they have the right proportions of healthy fats for the brain when you're fasting. They have the, the complex carbs. You don't want to have short carbs because they spike insulin, they spike the detection of the cells, and they have plant-based sources of proteins, which is very effective for actually maintaining lean body mass. This is one of the biggest surprises with ProLon is when you do fast and you do it a little bit longer term, you lose a little bit of muscle right here. The muscle is not getting the— but, but when you do ProLon, there, there's two clinical trials on ProLon and, and patents filed. You protect lean body mass. So what happens is the cells of the muscle are rejuvenating. And then what makes fasting different than all other diets, it's a stress reaction that is induced in the body is why the cells rejuvenate. Whereas any other diet is, is a calorie deficit. So the body adjusts by losing fat and losing a little bit of muscle. But with fasting, it's the stress and stress increase stress hormones, one of which is growth hormone. So when you're doing ProLon, growth hormone is high in the body. And now because you're doing a fasting mimicking nutrition, you're getting proteins to the muscle. And we have a secret in it where we spike a little bit in the soups, we spike a little bit the carbs, which spikes a little bit insulin. Without going off fasting. And now the muscle is seeing a mini spike of insulin, is being, is seeing a, a spike in growth hormone because of the stress and is getting fed because it's a, it's a nourished fast. So the muscle gets maintained and in many cases actually increased. So it's, it's one of the most important feature of doing fasting with nutrition versus not. And it's helping a lot of people when they go out of ProLon to still have high metabolic rate to still be vibrant, to still exercise, to not pick up the weight right away. A lot of the metabolic benefits with ProLon last 3 to 4 months. So 90 to 100 days after just doing that 5 days of fasting mimic nutrition. We've tested it against Mediterranean diet, against a lot of pills for diabetes, including the Ozempics and the Wegovy and the insulin. And, and the effect is by hundreds of percentages better, mainly because Cellular rejuvenation, you're getting younger. A lot of the chronic disease we suffer from today is due to aging. So you want to hit on two things. You want to get your body a little bit biologically younger. There's nothing today that you can take that is proven to get you, get your cells younger and fixed except fasting. Right. So that's, that's one of the biggest impacts. And people need to understand that 90% of us are dying from four conditions today, right? Cardiovascular, diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer's. These are not independent diseases. These are not genetically driven. Certain extent, yes, but these are mainly diseases of aging. Even if you have the APOE gene, if you're not 70, you're not going to get Alzheimer's. You know, most people have diabetes at age 60. They were still a little bit overweight at age 40 and 30, but they did not get diabetes because they had younger cells, they had better muscle, they were able to deal with the excess carbs. So reversing biological age is key to escape or prevent or better deal with these chronic conditions. And this is why we're seeing the fasting mimicking diet in the clinical trials. We now have over 32 clinical trials and 18 top universities globally. We're showing major health benefits on chronic conditions because this is the only intervention is rejuvenating the cells, getting you a little bit younger. A younger you is a much better body and biology and metabolism to deal with with conditions. And the second biggest secret is protecting the muscle. The muscle is very important for viability, for burning carbs, for decreasing insulin resistance. And as you know, 73% of us have certain level of overweight. And now the latest statistics is showing that 90% of us have certain metabolic issues. So getting the body younger, protecting the muscle turns out to be way superior to the Wegovy and Ozempic or the chronic dieting. And this is what's behind the success of ProLon and fasting today.

That sounds amazing. One big question that hits my mind, because when I think of fasting, my biggest fear is hunger pangs. So do you still get the hunger pangs with ProLon?

Different people have different experiences. So if we take 100 people, the statistics show that a third will say it was very easy and I'm used to it. And these are typically people who are metabolically flexible. They exercise or they try the keto. Meaning their, their body easily switches to ketones, you know, easily, you know, break down fat, easily calls from the, for the liver for excretion. They, they flex, they do exercise, they do eat in general healthy, and, and sometimes they've done some, some ketogenic diet. So they find it very easy. There's a good 40% that find it, you know, okay, it was challenging. And especially on day 3 when, when now the pressure is on the cells to rejuvenate, but then they go through it. And there's a good 20% that say it was very difficult. And these are typically people who are not metabolically flexible. They've addicted their body to carbs or others, and they find it difficult to jump and do it. But then every cycle you do it, we show that it becomes easier and easier because your body now— it's like exactly when you go to the gym, right? If you're used to going to the gym, it'll be easy. If you're not used, the first time you're going to have a little bit of muscle ache and you're going to feel tired the next day.. And we see the same. Fasting is, is actually like intensive training. It's, it's the same mechanism. The same way they tell you do intensive training now and then, it opens new vessels for the heart. It takes your body to the next level. It's just a stress imposed on the, on the body. When you impose a stress, the body elevates its defense mechanism. And a lot of those are great mechanisms for aging. The same way fasting does the same for the cells at a much more advanced level. Obviously, we talk about rejuvenating your cells. Because you're going 5 days. It's not a few hours of stress. It's a 5-day process. But over a million boxes now consumed. It's only 5 days. Statistics show that 91 to 93% of people would be able to complete it. But again, some people find it difficult the first cycle.

Hey, this is Lindsey here, just letting you know that if you're tired of dealing with digestive issues like bloating, indigestion, soft stool, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, IBS, IBD, or the numerous health conditions that come about when your gut is off, like brain fog, weight gain, UTIs, fatigue, mental health issues, or complex conditions like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS. That's my specialty. With my 3 or 5 session gut health coaching packages, we'll discuss different stool and functional medicine tests to find out the root cause of your symptoms. I'll interpret the results and provide clear explanations, empowering you to make informed choices for your gut and overall health. And together we'll develop a customized action plan based on your test results so you can find relief and regain your health and vitality. I come from a functional medicine perspective, trying to incorporate the latest peer-reviewed research and educating you on protocols used by functional medicine practitioners, but devoting lots of time and support to my clients the way a doctor simply can't. If you're interested in a 3 or 5 session coaching package, you can sign up for complimentary 30-minute breakthrough session. Or if you can only afford one appointment at a time, you can book an initial 60-minute consultation. Links for those are in the show notes. Now back to the show. And so I'm thinking about the fact that obviously somebody who is, you know, a bigger man versus a small woman typically consume a lot different number of calories. Is it in any way calibrated to weight?

It, it's not. And I get this question very frequently and we tested it on different BMIs. We tested it on different body weights, on different muscle mass and why we don't calibrate it because it actually autocorrects, meaning if you're a bigger weight and you have a lot more reserves, you will get into autophagy towards day 4, not day 3, because you have more reserve, you can cope more, and your metabolism is not probably as active as a person who's skinnier and who's— has less reserve and is— has a lot of muscle. And so what happens is if you're bigger, you get into autophagy on day 4, and if you have a higher metabolic rate and you have less fat and your BMI is lower, you get into autophagy towards day 2. But why we don't wanna autocorrect? Because for the person who has a lot of reserve, you, you're gonna give him even lower calories to get him into autophagy sooner. And the lower calories becomes a risk for that person because that person is addicted to the, the carbs a little bit more and, and has a bigger volume intake. So it self-corrects in the same way. You don't wanna rush already a skinny person who's already have a high metabolic rate into autophagy. So what happens, it self-corrects and it works for each one, balancing compliance, safety, and efficacy together. Okay.

So let's talk about the research on the fasting mimicking diet and inflammatory bowel disease or Crohn's and colitis.

Well, yeah, this is a very current topic. Stanford University is doing a trial on Crohn's and University of Miami is doing a trial on ulcerative colitis. And we don't have yet the results published. But what we have studied extensively is in mice first, we studied fasting, water fasting, we studied fasting mimicking diet, the ProLon, and we looked at the benefits. And, and at least in mice, again, I cannot confirm in humans up until we have the results of the clinical trials and we're compliant. We don't wanna over, although we have a lot of cases reported to us of a lot of benefits, but I, I'll stick to the results in mice. And in mice, what we showed is that You know, water fast doesn't actually— so, so inflammatory bowel disease or autoimmunity, even also you mentioned also ulcerative colitis. It's, it's the common factor is inflammation and some of it is an immune reaction to the gut lining. Some of it is also leaky gut and, and we can talk about, there's so many, so many root causes to each. But what fasting is showing, the water fast is helping. Decrease inflammation across the body. We see that all the time. And why is that so? When you do water fast, the, the body cannot spend calories, right? So the body tells all the white cells, hey, do not— inflammation is a replication of white blood cells and, and secretion of cytokines, which increase inflammation. It's like getting the engine of your heart a little bit heated. And when you fast, if you don't have gas in, in the tank, you don't wanna, you don't wanna accelerate and heat the engine because you're, you're spending it. The same way every time you fast, we see the body dropping inflammation. Now, with water fasting, we haven't seen a lot of benefits on leaky gut, and we haven't— and we did see microbiome changes, and we saw some stem cell healing in the gut. With the fasting mimicking diet, and we have published that, we showed it's superior to water fast. This was one of our biggest surprise initially. We thought the fasting mimicking diet will give you a portion of water fast benefits. It's actually giving more. Benefits in many cases because it's funding the rejuvenation, right? So it's something to tell a cell, do autophagy, and I'm not gonna give you minerals and vitamins, you just go and figure out. And something to tell a stem cell or a young cell, go replicate, fill in the gap for an older cell, and, but I'm not gonna give you any water, I'm not gonna get any minerals or any macros. Versus with a fasting mimicking diet or ProLon, you're giving them macronutrients, and micronutrients. So you're funding the correction at the same time. So we saw a better closure with the leaky gut. We saw a better stem cell regeneration or younger cell replication when you do the fasting mimicking diet in mice with the IBD, with the IBD, which was a big surprise to us actually. And we filed a patent on it and we published an article on it. So in general, if we zoom out, why fasting? If you read the old, old books of even autoimmune disease including IBD and ulcerative— sorry, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's, Even the old, old book of medicine had fasting. And, and why is that? It's very interesting. So we talk about decreasing the immune attack because when you fast, the body doesn't wanna fund any replication of white blood cells, doesn't wanna secrete cytokines and increase temperature. But also the, the body, actually we see the body killing the active T cells and regenerating new naive, we call them naive new cells because they're not gonna do the attack. So it's part of the body human evolution and natural selection of, hey, if by mistake I have white blood cells, T cells doing a lot of attack, let me just wash them out and bring new T cells. So we just, we see, we see this all the time. Immunity a little bit drops and a little bit increases showing the regeneration. So very interesting to swap active cells with non-naive new cells that will not do the attack. But also on the heat, on the damaged organ, You know, whether it's psoriasis, whether it's rheumatoid arthritis, whether it's ulcerative colitis, we talked about autophagy and cellular rejuvenation. So we see healing happening at the damaged organ. And this is why fasting has been so effective in autoimmune diseases. It decreased the attack and it helps the damaged organ to heal. And it just— I was fascinated. I'm a physician myself, but we never learned that. But when I went back and, you know, one, one night I was looking at the old Interventions in autoimmune and fasting was core to those. So now with the fasting mimicking nutrition, we are testing in humans whether we can get the same benefits or maybe, maybe either could be better, could be not before we announce officially and then we launch our autoimmune programs.

You have studied MS though, correct?

We have studied MS. And same concept, what we've seen in MS, we studied in human, we studied in mice and in humans, we studied. One cycle followed by Mediterranean diet, one cycle fasting mimicking diet with followed by Mediterranean diet. And in MS, same as, as other autoimmune systems, you see the immune attack goes down pretty fast. In mice, actually 20% of the mice reverse all the immune attack in, in, in the first cycle of the fasting mimicking diet, which is striking. And then when you go, and we've shown on MRIs, the damage, you know, myelin around the axons get also rejuvenated and get healed. So again, I cannot confirm all this in humans. We're a science company, so we have to do clinical. This is why we have 32 clinical trials. We take every condition and we go with it.

Okay. So only so far we have mice results.

We have mice results with showing, because this is, you know, invasive, which we're showing the rejuvenation in the myelin cords. In humans, we do have a human— early human trial. It shows symptomatic improvements, but we haven't done invasive big trial on humans to show a full rejuvenation happening in the amygdala.

Okay. And that was with one cycle, there were symptomatic improvements?

Yeah, it was a feasibility. So typically when you do mice trials and you go to human trial, you start with a small trial in humans just to show safety and feasibility. So we've done a quick one. We show it's safe for people with MS to do. The fasting mimicking diet, it was prolonged at the time, and then we show it's feasible, at least it's not making them worse or putting them at risk. Then you go to more phase 2, phase 3, which is a bigger, bigger intervention on bigger volume of people. We haven't done that.

Okay. Yeah. So I know that the most recent paper published, or at least when we originally spoke, was on diabetic nephropathy and the fasting mimicking diet. Yeah. Can you tell me about that study?

Yeah. And, and now we just published another one. 2 days ago. So this is diabetes. We have launched our, what we call the Alnutra Health for Diabetes program or Fasting Mimicking Diet for Diabetes program. We've, we've done 2 clinical trials on diabetes and, and diabetes we're most excited about, number 1, because it's the one of the biggest diseases. So we can help so many people and, and hopefully millions of people.

Type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes. We study type 1 in mice. We'll talk about that. But yes, type 2.

Okay.

And then what we're excited about also is diabetes is a combination of, is actually combination of 4 things. And again, I am an MD PhD, but I've never been taught these 4 things behind diabetes. So I've been taught that blood sugar increase, you give them pills, they'll take them for the rest of their lives, right? I've never been taught the true root cause of diabetes and how we can reverse those. So diabetes, for people listening to us, is a pillar of 4 things. Number 1, aging. Again, when you were diagnosed at age 50 with diabetes, you were also eating the same at age 40 and at age 30, and you were a little bit overweight. I'm, I'm generalizing, right? Most people, or a little bit less weight, but you were younger, your, your metabolism was higher, you wouldn't amass insulin resistance as much as you would do at age 50 or 60 or 70. Number 2, it's a muscle, it's a disease related to muscle. So protecting muscle and keeping the metabolic rate is very important. It's a disease of lifestyle, right? And then number 4, yes, just genetic predisposition, but it's mainly lifestyle as well and how you eat and how you exercise and stress and sleep and all of that. So the Fasting Mimicking Nutrition, we're so excited about it because it hits on 3 out of the 4 pillars. You cannot change genetics to yet, but what you can do is you're helping with the cells getting younger, you're protecting lean body mass, you lose preferential fat. This is so critical. I, I'm repeating myself, but it's so important. You lose a lot of fat with the Fasting Mimicking type of Prolon, but you don't lose muscle or, or a tiny bit because glycogen is in the muscle. And then number 3, you're inspiring the person. A lot of people, when you ask about the number 1 benefit when they finish Prolon or the Fasting Remission Diet, they say it changed my relationship with food. And this is a big unlock because we know that diet and exercise can reverse diabetes if you sustain them for long term, but it's very difficult to sustain and you lose muscle as well when you you go on a low-calorie diet. But when you do ProLon or the fasting, it's 5 days, right? So 5 days, 90% of people can do anything for 5 days, right? And then, and I always say it's short enough for people to complete, but it's long enough to inspire you not to say, wait a second, because when you start ProLon on day 1, you're like, okay, if I'm gonna feel hungry on day 6, I'm gonna do a party, I'm gonna eat all the pizzas and the burgers. And here comes day 4 and day 5 and you're like, I just, I cannot even see a pizza or a burger. I just want to eat healthy on day 6. So that change of relationship with food, understanding you can go more plant-based, understanding you can eat lower portions, understanding that I don't have to snack big at night and I can wait till tomorrow to have my food are very big inspirational steps. And I'm a big believer in the science coming from Stanford and BJ Fogg about tiny wins, right? So every time patient or a person feels like I did something in 5 days, I succeeded, because typically we fail on diets, they're chronic. This is a very short diet. It's just 5 days. I succeeded. I felt that I can go 5 days on healthy food. Why not continue a little bit? And then the next cycles remind you, and then the next cycle reminds you. So it's very important to inspire people with diabetes to become healthy rather than just scare them out of there when they leave the clinic. Put them on a very hard diet and then they, they, they just fail and they learn helplessness. They, they get acquired learned helplessness and they just keep needing more medication and swapping every time muscle with fat. And this is what Ozempic and Wegovy are accelerating now is the muscle loss. And, and we're waking up now to say, okay, if you stop them, you're picking up all the fat faster and you're not developing the muscle. And this is creating a big issue that we're facing with these drugs. So We were very excited with the Fasting Mimicking Diet for Diabetes because you lose the weight, you protect the muscle, you reverse the bioage. All 3 big pillars for diabetes remission. We're seeing a lot of patients in the first clinical trial, 2/3 of the patient reduced medication on month 6, meaning they just done 6 times 5 days, 30 days.

So once a month.

Once a month. It's once a month for 6 months, and then you maintain, you do it just once every 3 or 4 months. So very high degree of compliance. At 12 months, compliance rate was 83%. Very high chance of reducing medication. This is huge for diabetic patients because the story for diabetic patients, we start you with metformin, then we only add, add, and then you have to inject, and then you have to go on insulin, and then you die. This is how, this is how diabetes was taught in medical school, and this is how it's practiced today versus somebody telling the patient, Let's take you off medication. And so we're seeing very high chance of what we call regression, reversing a little bit the disease and needing less medication, and a double-digit chance of actually remission, which is getting off medication.

And I assume you're also tracking hemoglobin A1C and insulin and that kind of thing. What, what results are you seeing there? Yeah.

So within 6 months, as we mentioned, already a decrease of 1.4 points in HbA1c. And, and this including, you know, some doctors, doctors typically see their patient every 3 to 6 months to measure HbA1c. So not only reducing HbA1c, reducing HbA1c on top of taking medication out, because you have to adjust to that effect as well. And so within 6 months, people on average are dropping 1.4 points of HbA1c. They're losing 22 pounds on average. 67% is needing less medication. At that level.

And this is with no specific diet in between the 5-day fasting period.

Zero, zero, zero request to change the diet, zero request to exercise more, zero request to do any changes. You just do the 5 days fasting mimicking diet. This is how we do it with all our trials. Otherwise, you bias the results and nobody would— you would not be published in a high-ranking journal or getting any patents on those.

Right. Now, I originally asked about diabetic nephropathy, and that obviously is different than neuropathy. Can you tell me the difference and then what that, what you showed in your paper?

Nephropathy is the kidney. The nephro is kidney. Neuropathy is nerves.

Right.

And, and so in that article, we were showing that it's not only metabolism that you're improving blood sugar and HbA1c, but actually transitionally, it wasn't permanent, but transitionally for patients who tried the fasting mimicking diet, that already have diabetes, already have damaged the kidney because kidney is the biggest, one of the biggest side effects of diabetes, right? There's a lot of side effects that happen from diabetes, microvascular, macrovascular, but part of the microvascular is the kidneys start getting damaged. And as you know, a lot of diabetic patients end up with kidney failure and dialysis. We're trying to see if we can help them temporarily. And we're starting measuring proteins. Part of the measurement of damaging the kidneys with diabetes, you they start leaking albumin into— so we showed that actually we improve kidney function transitionally, that ARCA was a short-term, it was a very short-term intervention, but we saw that after every cycle we're showing an improvement in kidney function, so which gives us hope to do a longer one.

Like the eGFR?

Yes, and the albumin in urine, right? So one of the biggest symptom of the damage that, that night—

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This is what we— where we detail is actually 3 mechanisms of action, right? You lose fat significantly versus protecting lean body mass, number 2. Number 3 is you rejuvenating the cells, which is very important for metabolism and, and vibrancy of the body to deal with diabetes. And it's feasible. It's not a long-term diet, so people can complete it. Patients successfully complete it, and it inspires them to lead a healthier and a better lifestyle. All these combined are showing this high effectiveness on, on the condition.

Great. Well, let's talk about type 1 diabetes, because that is an autoimmune disease, and I do definitely have listeners who are interested in autoimmune disease and have one client who has type 1 diabetes.

Yeah. And, and, you know, type 1 is tricky because they are dependent on insulin and you're fasting them. So it's always tricky on hypoglycemia. And this is why we haven't done a human trial yet on, again, we have stories, but I don't wanna report here successes because then it'll be like as if I'm claiming, and, and again, we're, we're a company of science. If anything, if anything, people also wanna take from ProLon today, it just, it's a nutrition product based on science, on NIH money, on universities, on double-blind randomized clinical trials published in top journals. So I behave the same. We have to be compliant. So I'm not going to recommend anyone with type 1 do it today. But what we have seen in mice, because we wanted to test the concept before we go and we do it with human, we're talking with Harvard University to do the human trial, but we haven't gotten— we need the funding for it. So we haven't been able to move forward yet. Funding 14 other clinical trials at the same time. But in, in type 1, the theory is the same way we explained it for IBD and Crohn's and other autoimmune, right? If, if the premise is that immunity is excited, is attacking the pancreas, and the beta cells are not producing insulin, if you fast, are you taking the aggressor, the white blood cells? Are you rejuvenating the white blood cells so that you're taking the, the temper and you slow down the aggression? And are you then giving time off for the pancreas to heal and rejuvenate and do autophagy and reproduce insulin? So what we've done with mice, we have a major article in Cell. Cell is the number 2 science journal of the world after Nature. We have multiple Nature articles, but in Cell, which we have 7 or 8 articles there, we published an article talking about beta regen— the regeneration of the beta cells of the pancreas, which is the cells that produce insulin.. And what we did, we destroyed the pancreas of the mice and then we put them on cycles of the fasting mimicking diet and we saw them regenerating beta cells and reproducing insulin and normalizing their blood sugar.

Wow.

It was a huge article for us. It was a big, big achievement. For the first time, something describing rebuilding the pancreas and reproducing insulin.

That is amazing.

And we got awarded the patent on treating diabetes because of that. But in humans, you have to go and test, and maybe in humans you can reproduce it, maybe not, or maybe you produce a fraction of it. We have over 15,000 clinics in the US that recommend the fasting mimicking diet. So we have stories, but we cannot base any claim on stories. We have to, we have to wait to, to hopefully find some funding and fund the trial and maybe then be able to help patients either do it or not do it. Yeah, but definitely it's, it's a tricky one just because of these patients are very dependent on insulin and therefore risk of hypoglycemia with the fasting.

Right, right. Of course.

We're going to have to do the clinical trial under supervision.

So back to autoimmunity and IBD, is there any advice at this point? I know you're still underway in the human clinical trial, but any advice at this point of how best to implement the fasting mimicking diet in IBD, like once a month?

Thor? Yeah, unfortunately, I cannot claim if I don't have the results. But what I see, I see some physicians, they do ask these patients to do it once a month. But again, up until, I don't know till when, I don't know the efficacy yet, et cetera.

Right. Like when, when people are flaring or not flaring or?

Again, this is a tricky question. I want to answer to help people, but I cannot answer because we sell the product. What I'm gonna say is my sister has one and she does it initially every month and now every 3 to 4 months as a maintenance.

And she has IBD?

No, a different, a different autoimmune disease.

Okay.

Again, I don't wanna mention because if I, I look like I'm claiming and I'm asking.

Right, right. Of course.

Unfortunately I cannot, but I can invite you guys listening here to go to your doctor, give him the science. You can go to ProlonLife.com. That's the website of Prolon.

Mm-hmm.

ProlonLife.com. There's a science section and you can take the articles and then you talk to your doctor. At the end of the day, this is not a chemical or not a biotech. It's a vegan 5 days of healthy food. Let your doctor look at the science, and if he decides to supervise you and do it, then it's his decision. But we cannot today push that direction.

Okay, fair enough. So I know that a lot of biohackers use fasting for longevity and such. Has the fasting mimicking diet been compared to water fasting for this application?

Yeah, we, we talked a little bit about it. Well, there's no randomized clinical trial on water fast versus fasting mimicking diet. Nobody has done that, but The, the goal is, again, intermittent fasting is more tested as water fast because there's no trials where people fast for 5 days and it's too difficult. This is why we existed. We, we actually were water fasting company, right? Remember I told you the story and we started at USC, we went in human trials to try it and nobody wanted to fast for, so this is why either you have trials on, how do you sell that one though?

You can't make a lot of money off of water fasting, can you?

No, and it wasn't a money project at all, actually.

Right.

The founder, you know, the, the founders of, of ProLon are USC and Professor Valter Longo, again, the author of Longevity book. And he donates 100% of his shares to the Create Cures Foundation. I'm happy you mentioned that because this is exactly the opposite. People, they found and launch companies even in nutrition, and always there's the bias of making money. And why our story is always science, and you hear me talking about science and trials, because the founders They don't care about the revenues. They actually pre-donated the shares to the Create Cures Foundation to help patients access new novel innovation. So we're sitting on a company that is funded with science and we have to give back the profits.

Wow.

Yeah, it was a pure need actually. This is why the National Institute of Health stepped in, said, okay, I'm gonna give you the funds to create the fasting mimicking diet because there was no way people to water fast for 5 days. So, and this is why it exists, right? It exists to help you do a longer fast to reach cellular rejuvenation on day 3. We talked about that versus people can do intermittent fasting on their own, 12 hours and 14 and 16. And you don't need always to, to do that with nutrition. Actually, we do have a fasting bar and a fasting shake to do that because we don't believe you should starve your body for 18 hours on water, especially when you skip breakfast because you're just starving your brain and your heart and your kidneys, the essential organs, at their peak performance, which is in the morning. We would rather you starve yourself at night rather than you starve yourself in the morning. So we have developed the FastPod and the Fast Ring just to help people in the morning consume those as breakfast and then stay in a fasting mode. But we're less interested in intermittent fasting. It just, it helps you with losing weight. It helps if you do it right with your metabolism. We're more interested in the longer fast Again, we don't recommend anyone do water fast for a long period. We do it with the ProLon or the fasting mimicking diet. This is why we existed, was out of that need and it was to make fasting safe and compliant for most people.

Mm-hmm. So this is just a hair off topic, but, but I have heard people make different claims about when autophagy starts once you start fasting, you know, like how many hours at night to not eat. What is the official word on that? And obviously it sounds like it, differs by body weight.

They, they, they're wrong. I'm, I'm, I used to be politically correct. They're all wrong because it was speculations, right? And I'll, and I'll tell you why they're wrong. Number one is, is we're 100% sure they're wrong. We, the NIH just deployed 8 machines to measure autophagy. So why there's different theories on autophagy? Because there was no way to measure it in humans. And now there are 8 machines that the National Institutes of Health funded to do, to measure autophagy. And ProLon, one of them is at University of Texas San Antonio. And ProLon was the first product to be tested, by the way. And we're now showing that day 1, there's no autophagy. Day 2, there's no autophagy. It's at day 3 that happens to most people. And so now we have a proof at a randomized clinical trial, randomizing people and showing that it happens as of day 3. So I can 100% say yes, we got the data last week, so it's fresh. But we always knew that. Why? Because Again, a cell rejuvenates when this— when the body tells the cell, I cannot feed you, you gotta go and eat your inside and rejuvenate. And, you know, if you skip breakfast in the morning, you still have a lot of fat. You have a lot of glycogen. Your liver has a lot of extra reserve. Why the body's gonna rejuvenate when you're not stressed, right? It's the same way like going on the company and telling the CEO, okay, you need a million dollar. I'm gonna give you a million dollar, but Wait for me 6 hours. He's just gonna wait for me. He's not gonna go restructure the company. Now, if you, if you tell him, I'm gonna come in 2 weeks, he's gonna be in deep trouble and he's gonna go and restructure the company and try to fix it and try to save and try to cut. So there's always a basal rate of autophagy. Every, every minute of the day, some cells are rejuvenating just out of normal function and vibrance of the body. But to spike autophagy is definitely not skipping breakfast, not even skipping lunch, not even skipping dinner. You would barely start touching it because it makes sense. You know, you're not in a stressful mode to go and do it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it doesn't really matter then, other than the fact that you're simply not consuming as many calories that you fast for, say, 13 hours at night versus 16. Because I know there are some, there are some trials on that, on intermittent fasting.

Not autophagy. Not autophagy.

No, no, I know. On intermittent fasting and its impact on blood sugar and all that.

Yeah, of course. So.. So again, go back to the CEO example. If he needs $1 million per month and you're delaying now 4 hours, then he has to go and take some money from the bank. So same way, same way to cover these few hours. Same way the body, you know, goes to the fat and breaks a little bit of fat every time you do it. Now we can talk 2 hours about that because some people binge eat. So whatever they try to use, they can over actually abuse after. And very important, which time of the day. Again, we can do a full session on intermittent fasting. A lot of people are doing it wrong because a lot of the early influencers told everyone skip breakfast, skip lunch, do OMAD, one meal a day, or do 18 hours. And this is not a longevity practice because you're basically starving your body in the morning when it needs the calories. And a lot of longevity trials are showing that Risk of cardiovascular disease increase if you skip food for a long period during the day and then you binge eat after that. This is what happens. So, so why, why intermittent fasting grew in that sense? Because two wrong informations. They told people to have autophagy if you skip breakfast, which is wrong. And number two, they're gonna tell— they told them you're gonna lose weight, which is also not always true. And it depends on if you're eating dinner late, and then you're skipping breakfast, lunch, and then you're eating at 4 or 5 PM. What you have just done is you're stuffing your, your body in food at the evening time and you go sleep. When you sleep, your insulin and your growth hormone are high at night, actually. So you're in anabolic, so you're storing everything you took into fat versus— and then you go, you starve yourself during the day when you need truthfully these calories for your essential organs. This is a big mismatch. What you want to do, the right intermittent fasting is you eat your dinner early and then you stay overnight fasting and then you do your breakfast. You should get breakfast or get a fast bottle or fasting shake, but eat something in the morning because this is when your body needs these. So the right intermittent fasting is 12 to 14 hours max, front-loaded, sleep at an empty stomach and get your breakfast or delay a little bit your breakfast. That's the one that helps longevity. When we study centenarians, people living 100 and beyond, no centenarians do one meal a day or do the crazy starvation stuff. They actually, most of them though, say we eat early, you know, we go to bed early as well.

Early like 5 or early like 3?

I mean, 3 is an afternoon snack. And honestly, I mean, you can go all the way. The extreme case is Bryan Johnson is he only eat between 8 and 11 in the morning, right? And, you know, it's just, we don't wanna go extreme in any way. We believe the best longevity, you get it from harmonization, right? From harmony, from matching your body with your environment, with, with the circadian rhythm. This is why intermittent fasting 12 hours overnight works very well, right? So, so what you should do, don't eat late at night. Eat your dinner early, as early as you can, right? And then go on an empty stomach. This is where your body will rejuvenate at night without storing fat. And then the next day you wake up. I always say if you're sleeping a little bit hungry and you wake up hungry, this is a great longevity practice. And then get your breakfast in the morning. Your brain will be happy because you're going to work or you have your kids and you need to function. Your muscle is happy because you're walking. Your kidneys are happy. Your heart is happy because you're The heart rate increase when you're moving, they're fed on time. And then you go in the afternoon, you eat a little bit or at night and then you sleep. And that's the right practice versus people snacking late at night and then trying to stay the next day 16, 18 hours to eat in the afternoon. Your body tells you that you feel weak, you feel the headache, and then you binge eat and then you say, I'm not losing a lot of weight and it's difficult to practice.

Yeah. It's a lot more in tune with the European, or at least the French way of eating where the biggest meal of the day is lunch and then dinner is usually just more of a snack.

Well, I can give you an advanced trick. If you do, how about you do breakfast and dinner and a light lunch like this, you would have done twice 12:12, right? You would have gone overnight till breakfast and then from breakfast to dinner, that's another almost intermittent fasting with 12 hours. This is what our founder, Professor Valter Longo, and again, Time top 50 most influential people in healthcare. Chad GPT, number 1 longevity expert and fasting expert. This is what he does. He eats, he eats breakfast, very light snack in the middle of the day to get his body going. And then he eats dinner. Dinner is social. It's difficult to skip it. Right.

Exactly.

And so, so he's, he's a genius in that sense. He does double 12s in a, in a, in a healthy way rather than staying 18 hours.

So is he up at 5 in the morning? I'm just curious to have an early dinner.

No, because you can have your breakfast at 8 and then have your dinner at 7. Oh, okay. It's difficult with work now to eat dinner at 5. You got to stay a little bit at work. We're all really busy. You got to be practical. And then you go eat at 7. Okay.

So that's actually a relatively late dinner.

Depends on when you sleep again. But yeah, 7 is, I mean, in the summer, 7, the sun is not down. It's actually, early and late depends on circadian rhythm at the end of the day. This is where because the body follows. I mean, we talk about the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016 was on autophagy, right? 2017 was on biological clock of the organs, and it follows circadian rhythm. So when the sun is down is the time for dinner. This is how I say it. And this is why 7 is not that late. I mean, winter is 5, 6 PM, and in the summer it's 7, 8 PM.

But that's because of daylight savings time and spending time, right? We altered the clock.

No, not the clock.

Well, okay, that's true. The sun does naturally.

Yeah, naturally. The position of Earth versus the sun.

But we exaggerated it by adding in the daylight.

It's 1 hour. 1 hour in biology is not the end of the day. It's 1 hour plus or minus. I'm just saying around that time, having dinner at 5 PM for many people is impossible. They're still at work. But you should not eat at 10, what we're trying to say. So anywhere between 6 and 7 and 8.

So you're telling me my 10 o'clock ice cream snack is not good for me? I at least eat the keto ice cream or the, or the sugar-free.

Yeah. But, but the calories are being stored, right? And this is one of the next biggest lies in, in, right? It's, it's super, super low carb or low carb. Your body lives on carbs. And this keto thing is, is another probably podcast that we can talk about. Your body lives on carbs. And if you get the calories from fat and you're sleeping and you're in an anabolic state, you're gonna store those. So yeah, it's definitely not— don't go high carb. But, but you didn't, you didn't change much when you eat late at night. It's the biggest— if you ask me, like, and we can talk a lot about what to do to live healthy, long life. But one of the things I always recommend is sleep a little bit hungry and then everything gets fixed. You're going to feel like even if you, even if you're eating big breakfast and eating a big lunch, You feel it's getting burnt and you feel you're not gaining the weight. Sometimes most of us, oh, I don't eat breakfast and I stay all the way till— and I only have one meal at night and I'm not losing that stubborn weight because you're eating the calories at the wrong timing. What fasting brought to us is the importance of not just calorie counting, but the timing. During the day, you're catabolic, you're spending, right? Your muscle is moving. You're— and during the night you're storing. Don't fuel the storage, fuel the expenditure.

Right, right. Okay. Well, I think that was a lot of good information that people can use both about the fasting mimicking diet and about just what time of day to eat. So thank you for that. Any final thoughts before we go?

No, I appreciate you, Lindsey Parsons. I think for those listening here and wanting to enhance, you know, their chances of living a healthy long life, I recommend you do the overnight fast, 12 hours max, 14, but just do it the natural way. Every day, a lot of people living 100 and beyond do that when we study them. Eat your dinner a little bit early and stay overnight. Don't eat overnight. Do 2 or 3 times per year the fasting mimicking diet. It's part of the human evolution. This is not an artificial, you know, request here. Our ancestors migrated during the winter. They didn't have food all the time, and they used this time to rejuvenate, right? It's like spring, even in nature. ProLon is like spring. Is when you go and you rejuvenate. And then make sure, you know, stress less and sleep better, and then improve your happiness and serenity and, and social capital. These are the, the pillars of longevity.

Awesome. Well, I'll put everything in the show notes. I've got links to the various papers and to the website to purchase the ProLon. So thank you so much for being with us.

Appreciate you very much, Lindsey Parsons.

Okay, I did confirm I have set up an affiliate account with El Nutra for the Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet, and you get a discount off the retail price if you buy it through me. So you can find that at prolongfmd, for fasting mimicking diet, .com/highdeserthealth, or find the link in the show notes along with links to the research studies we discussed. It sounds like a low-impact way to have an incredible impact on your health, so I hope some of you will give it a try and let me know how it goes. And maybe one day I'll get up the courage to try it too. I suppose it couldn't be much worse than my 3-day bone broth fast. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can buy supplements at a discount from my FullScript Dispensary, order tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab Store, or use my affiliate links to eVitamins, Bulk Supplements, or Amazon. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all The perfect stool.