Reverse Pre-Diabetes with a Fasting-Mimicking Diet, with Dr. Joseph Antoun

When you cross two days of fasting, the body says, look, I'm burning a lot of fat. I got to tell the cells that we might get into a crisis. So let the cells practice what we call autophagy or self eat or self rejuvenate. So you're getting biologically a little bit younger, you're a better performer and it's very important for diabetes.

If you want to live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great and feel freaking amazing. You're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo.

I'm Dr. Ed Levitan. Welcome to the Five Journeys pod.

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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Five Journeys Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy trubo. This is @levitan and our guest today is Dr. Joseph Antoun. He is the CEO and chairman of the board of El Nutra and member of the Forbes Business Development Council. He's the former CEO of Health Businesses Reform, a boutique consultancy aimed at improving public health by reforming health systems management and delivery. And we're going to talk about really cool stuff today. So welcome Joseph. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Thank you guys. And I hope today we're going to together maybe change somebody's life. Let's, let's go for it.

That would be the goal.

We've known and used El Nutra for a while. Right. And we're big fans of the fasting limiting diet. We're fans of fasting in general, but so we're looking forward to this conversation.

Yeah. So we're going to talk about diabetes, diabetic nephropathy, how to reverse and improve your health. So I think we should start with what exactly is diabetic nephropathy?

So you know, once you have diabetes, which is in general is when your body started increase blood sugar because there's some kind of resistance to the, to the hormones that take sugars out of the blood. Then you're, you're called insulin resistance. You start becoming, getting pre diabetic and when your diabetes crosses, when your blood sugar crosses a certain number, you, you get the label of unfortunately, you know, diabetes and, and, and that has a lot of consequences. One of the most important ones is what we call the macro and the microvascular damages that this induces. The microvascular, meaning the small vessels start micro clotting or micro kind of getting closed. And the kidneys are known this is where the blood gets filtered. The kidneys are known to have very tiny, thin vessels where the blood goes there circulates, and a lot of the detoxing that goes into the urine, and a lot of molecules crosses those. But because they're very, very thin, when you have diabetes, you start getting damages there as well, and you start having what we call diabetic nephropathy. And we started, therefore seeing leakage of bigger molecule like albumin and others into the urine. And this is where this is one of the complications of diabetes. And so a lot of the thinking today about diabetes, whereas for the last 50 years was take medicine and let the medicine either stimulate hormones that take blood sugar out of the blood or take another family of drugs that actually decreases that resistance to insulin. Today we're all thinking about, hey, how can we change the lifestyle to start with, of that patient? How can we help the patient eat healthier, decrease insulin resistance in a natural way, and therefore decrease the complications of diabetes? And this is what probably today we're going to help our listeners, you know, learn about.

Well, I think before we dive into that, I think it's a huge plug for toxins too, because we're on the other side of it, which is how do we resolve the underlying inflammation in your body so that you don't go down these paths. But once you've gone down this path, we now have two jobs. Resolve that inflammation and also start to work on preventing it from getting worse and maybe even resolving that. So huge plug for get rid of your toxins and optimize your gut and your liver and your adrenals.

Right. And I just wanna. Let's. I wanna dumb it down a little bit. So diabetic nephropathy, easy for you to say, say that three times fast, is really damage to the kidney as a result of high blood sugar and diabetes, which then allows you to leak proteins and other things out. Do I have that right?

Yes.

Well, it's not, I would imagine it's not just the leaking the proteins that's the problem. It's that the primary function of the kidney is then impaired. If it can't function properly, then it can't filter properly.

Yeah. And one of the symptoms is that leakage of albumin that increases in the. Into the urine. Yeah.

And are people, if people have diabetic nephropathy, are they aware typically, or is this. I mean, they gotta get a lab test. They're not like, oh, look at that, I'm peeing out albumin.

Well, typically, the Diabetic ease of changes a little bit in colors. Actually, one of the symptoms is you start waking up at night and going more frequently to the restroom. That's one of the symptoms of that because, you know, water follows molecules, right, to keep the same osmosis on both sides. So the more you're getting molecules, the more you're going to see water drainage following and the more you're going to go to the restroom. So one of the early signs of diabetes is, you know, your patients will start telling you, I'm waking up at night and I'm going to the restroom. So you start seeing that. But that doesn't mean that you have damage already in the kidney at that stage. It's more the blood glucose that's draining more water at that stage. It doesn't mean you have yet any damage. But as the more you progress, a lot of the physicians tracking your diabetes, they will ask you for blood measurement, but also urine analysis. They're looking for these symptoms in the urine of starting the kidney damage because this is one of the, one of the major severe consequences of diabetes. Kidneys are such an essential organ that a patient with diabetes can evolve all the way to dialysis. And this is where lifestyle and quality of life gets curved big time.

I just want to, for the listeners that think they might have it and they'll know one easy way to do is as you mentioned, the urine analysis and look for microalbumin in the urine. And that will give you a good sense of it. Just, just so people, if they're freaking.

Out, don't freak out.

It's fixable.

Easy, easy test, never freak out. It's always fixable. We're going to fix this. Okay, so I mean, you, you take a nutrition, nutrition first approach to this, right?

Yeah, well, well, you know, you know, I went to med school, I did my MD, PhD. You guys did a lot of education in medicine. They, they, we got trained that diabetes is a disease that comes right somehow. Genetics, predisposition, etc. And then these are the drugs and the drugs have need to be taken every day of the rest of the life. Actually, if you think about it, diabetes is a foodborne disease. It's not maybe genetically like small fractional percentage. Type 1 diabetes is a small fraction. But above 80% of diabetic patients, they got it because of lifestyle and overeating, which increases insulin resistance. I mean, increases blood sugars and becomes more fat. Fat increases insulin resistance. You advance with insulin resistance, the pancreas start failing a little bit and then you become diabetic at diagnosis. So it's a foodborne disease. Right. Nobody taught me in med school and we went to great schools and nobody taught us that. Well, first treatment, you should change a lifestyle and you should, you know, decrease carb intake and insulin resistance. And that could be a majority of the patients that you can reverse before they get to end stage.

I mean, I think people know it, quote unquote, but I think it's really like they know they should eat less carbs or eat, I hate to say this word, but the common dog was low fat, which is no.

Or lower carb. You mean lower fat.

Well, that's the old model, the old paradigm, but that was lip service.

But they know it as like a support to medication, not as the medication. Right. So the, the, the, and this is by the way, the, the fasting. A lot of the fasting started and got promoted with, with doctors, diabetic doctors and nephrologists. I don't know if you guys know for example, Dr. Jason Fung in Canada, who, who talks a lot about intermittent fasting, and he's a nephrologist and he used to see his patients going to dialysis and he felt very upset because they keep eating, they keep damaging, they keep, they continue become diabetics. And the drugs never take that never reverse them or very rarely reverse them. They get into dial and the same program persists. So in. His theory is like you overeat, you become diabetics. If I want to reverse you fast, I got to tell you not to eat intermittently. And this is how he started pushing intermittent fasting. What I'm trying to say is like, of course, every diabetic patient, the doctor tell them eat healthy. But it is the medication, the drugs should be only as a last resource. When you fail of following the right lifestyle, we should stress much more on, on fasting and eating healthy. When you start having diabetes, that's, that's the main message.

There's something I don't want to go head to head with you. On the other hand, I can't step over. I don't want the listeners to walk away hearing, oh, just eat better. And this is your lifestyle issue. I mean, obviously it's a lifestyle disease. However, that includes your sleep, the toxins you're exposed to, the function of your gut, the way you're able to excrete. So I think there's a lot of facets that go into this it. And I would say it's not simply eat better and walk every day. It's really transform your life, including the food you're eating, the way you're eating it, how often, the fasting you're doing.

How many times you're chewing your food.

He makes fun of me because I chew my food a lot.

I don't make fun of you. It's good.

You do make fun of me a little. So, so there's, there's a lot more. I don't think it's necessarily only an overeating disease because you can overeat with broccoli and probably not get diabetes. But if you're overeating processed food with artificial colors, artificial flavors, high in sugar or artificial sweeteners, that's a different pathway that your body's going to go down than overeating, you know, broccoli, you're not going to harm yourself.

No, I mean we obviously what I meant lifestyle and overeating, it meant the entire lifestyle. So we're talking about food, exercise, stress, sleep and happiness and social capital. These are the five pillars. So. But the number one out of the five is, is, is food. I've yet to see somebody overeating broccoli every day. It's, it's 99% of diabetics are not overeating broccoli. So.

Right.

Not yet. But if we have still anything to do with it.

Yeah, yeah, of course. If we get into the detail, I'm fully, fully agreed. And it's the same reason that pushes you to overeat is stress is the social capital, is the environment you live at, is your sleep. So these are all interconnected. And food sometimes is the primary issue, sometimes it's the expression of all the other lifestyle issues that's actually getting, you know, symptomized into overeating but also aging because the engine slows down. The pathways of fixing the pathways of burning carbs slows down. When you do the fasting, maybe you can diet every cell of the body when you fast, every cell is impacted. That's the beauty multi systemic intervention. And then at the end of the day, the cells rejuvenate, they fix what's going wrong and they get biologically a little bit younger. So you're a better performer, you're younger. You know, you want to push, push somebody off or help somebody prevent. And diabetes is the first outcome. You know, cancer is next and Alzheimer's is next and all the age related diseases come next. And the best way to help somebody stay a little bit away from the onset of these chronic age related, chronic diseases is to give if to Help them biologically stay younger. And that's the true goal of the fasting mimicking diet. And this is why we talk longevity and healthy aging with the fasting mimicking diet. It's the cellular impact that's very important.

Yeah. And you're gonna. People who are listening to this probably wanna listen to or we interviewed Kara Fitzgerald for this podcast about younger. You like that's well all. And she's published a book. And so anyone who's interested in that should also check out that episode.

And what's the kind of difference when you talk about fasting mimicking diet versus nutrition first, how, how does that go?

So the, the obviously eating healthy and we can define what does that mean for a diabetic. But, but let's say a common denominator is, is, you know, having a lower carb intake. Let's simplify a little bit. We can talk a lot about whether with high fat or proteins or how and parts of the day this is something like mainstream eating, a healthy say Mediterranean or pescatarian diet if you are a diabetic and maybe on the short term ketogenics, so that you actually try to reverse in the early stage and then migrate to more of a longevity diet like pescatarian or Mediterranean. But the main difference with fasting, where we discovered why fasting became such a big phenomenon and especially for potentially the diabetic patients, it's because it doesn't work only by calorie deficit. It works as a stress to the body. And so, so fasting obviously will give you a lot of calorie. You know, you're not eating calories, so you're flipping the table. You were overeating and now you're almost not eating. But there's an extra step due to the stress of fasting that pushes the body to rejuvenate the cells. And that's very, very important. I'll give you two or three examples from the science of the fasting mimicking diet. What we discovered is that when you cross two days of fasting, and probably we're confusing the audience a little bit because fasting diet is fasting with food, we can talk more about that. But when you cross two days of fasting, the body says, look, I'm burning a lot of fat, I'm depleting my reserves, I got to tell the cells that we might get into a crisis. So let the cells, you know, practice what we call autophagy or self eat or self rejuvenate. So the cell starts burning intracellular debris, organelles anything that they can still extract calorie from and start rejuvenating. And that's a very important phenomenon because it happens in every cell of the body. You're getting biologically a little bit younger, you're a better performer. And it's very important for diabetes because the detriment of the long term, healthy food with diabetes is sometimes patients, we see them losing metabolic rate, decreasing metabolic rate and losing a little bit of muscle. Whereas with fasting, because of that stressful rejuvenation, you maintain lean body mass and you maintain metabolic rate. And that's very important because once you go back to your food, you don't want to be a slowed down, low metabolic rate engine and you pick up back fat and insulin resistance pretty fast. So, so one of the major difference between that prolonged fasting, which we mimic with the fasting mimicking diet, is to preserve metabolic rate and preserve lean body mass. There are two patents filed actually on lean body mass preservation with the fasting mimicking diet. And this is probably one of the secrets of why it's so impactful, even on the medium and long term, on diabetes versus eating just a low calorie diet.

So when you say prolonged fasting, what time frame or interval are you referring to?

So we've researched fasting for over 23 years now, and we discovered that if you want to balance the weight loss with cellular rejuvenation, so you want to induce that metabolic reset, important for again metabolic conditions and cellular rejuvenation, five days is the real balance. So if you go below that, because you want to cross day two to get cellular rejuvenation, the first two days, we all have enough fat, enough glycogen, enough. You know, the liver can do some near glucogenesis. So the first two days you have enough reserves in the body to compensate for the deficit from fasting, the body starts practicing autophagy, you know, after day two. So you want to have two to three days of autophagy and rejuvenation. If you go longer, you're bankrupting the body. You're reducing now side effects of fasting. So you day five was the right balance of inducing enough metabolic reset, inducing enough cellular rejuvenation without starting depleting the body. And again, not to confuse the listeners, we're not talking five days of water fast, we're talking five days fasting while eating food called the fasting mimicking diet. And that's the innovation and technology that we have brought. Actually USC and now Stanford and 18 other universities have Tested and we're bringing it to the market.

Okay, so let's tell people where they. I mean, obviously if someone who is in our practice wants to do prolon, they should talk to us because we do it. But where are listeners who aren't part of our practice? Where can they find out more about you? The diet, the type 2 diabetes, the treatment and Prolon. Where, where should people go if they're.

Healthy, they can go to the prolon site, prolonfast.com and, and if they want to do this cycle for three times, you know, three times of the prolon, five days per year, we do have the one day. If they just want to maintain, we do have the fast part and the fasting shake. If they just want to continue in between Prolons doing intermittent fasting. If you have a health condition, you should go to your clinics, your doctors, to you guys. And in June 15, we're going to launch the first diabetes remission program. You guys can talk to us to register your clinic for that you will get the diabetes protocol. Our chief medical officer was the vice president of Harvard Diabetes, the Joslin Clinic. So we have a really, really robust, good protocol you guys can implement in your clinics. This is not something for a diabetic patient to buy directly from us and just do it at home. We only do at home the healthy products and everything through the clinics and through the doctors, whenever there's a health condition.

Awesome.

Really cool.

Pleasure.

Do you have something else on your mind?

No.

Okay. I'm going to close out the podcast by saying this was really cool. I'm super grateful you came. We're super grateful you came on this podcast. So thank you very much. And for the listeners, Our guest is Dr. Joseph Antoun. He is the CEO and chairman of the board of El Nutra, which is also the producer of the Prolon Fast, the five day fasting mimicking, which has extremely strong data for reducing diabetes. And if this was useful, please give us a five star review and let us know how we can be more useful. So thank you for being here, Joseph. This was extremely valuable.

Thank you.

Appreciate you very much.

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