Unlocking Longevity: Transform Your Health with a Fasting Mimicking Diet, with Dr. Joseph Antoun

You know, when you do diets, typically you're kind of feeling a little bit depleted. When you do the fasting mimicking diet, you feel actually more energized and empowered at the end of it.

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Hello and welcome to this episode of the five Journeys Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. This is at Lavitan, 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 mimicking diet. We're fans of fasting in general, but. So we're looking forward to this conversation. So what's the benefit of a fasting mimicking diet versus I'm just gonna go on water and not eat for five days? Besides five days of fasting being painful?

So you mentioned being painful. So it's very, very difficult to do five days of water fast. Number two is side effects. So imagine a patient on five days water fast. Sometimes you have headaches, they experience headaches, they experience fatigue. Some of them get hypoglycemic as well. Them got hypertension as well. So these, these are traditional side effects of fasting. Some of them have an increased risk of gallbladder stones fasting when the gallbladder doesn't squeeze and you sit on it for a few days. There's a lot of journals of surgeries that have published increased gallbladder stones when you do pure water fasting. So these are very established genocide effects. The third benefit doing what we call a nourished fast or the fasting mimicking diet, is that you're financing the rejuvenation. This is how I use it typically is like the cells have to rejuvenate, but if you don't have macronutrients, if you don't have the enzymes, if you don't have the minerals, it's difficult for them also to rejuvenate. So you're funding the rejuvenation, you're giving the enough nourishment. And it's very important to fund to, to, to bring calories to the essential organs at the same time. Right? So you, you want to stress the brain, but you don't want to starve the brain, you want to stress the heart to rejuvenate. You don't want to starve the heart, you want to give them the macro micronutrients in order for them to operate at minimum level.

So what's the innovation? I guess because it's not just calories, because somebody can just eat a low calorie to mimic what you guys do. But you, you've got more than that. So what's the innovation?

Yeah, the calorie is actually a minor factor. We, we, I mean you can mimic fasting by eating two lettuce and one cucumber, right? But you're, you're fasting by starvation still. We have developed, you know, the Prolon, we call it the Prolo and Prolon five day fasting. Mimic Nutrition. It's 1100 calorie day one and then 800 calories every other day. So it's a fasting by nourishment. And the secret is that the formulation is tailored towards having the right carbs, the right complex carbs in the right part of the day. Cortisol and insulin in the morning are different than the afternoon. You have the right sequences of amino acid, do not spike igf, so that the body is not recognizing that it's getting the proteins by the time carbs and the proteins get to the cell. We studied the nutrient sensing pathways, the pka, the TOR and the RAS pathway. So these are radars that tell the cell that it's food. So we studied the quantities so that when, by the time they get to the PK and the TOR and the RAS pathways, they're not overly triggering, triggering those pathways. So the cell is saying, I'm getting a little bit of nutrients, but I'm not convinced. I'm not safe enough to go off fasting mode. And there are some other ingredients that would not go through the radars. It would go completely undetected by the cell.

So let me make sure I got this right. You're eating in these Five days. But the body stays in the fasting mode without crossing into too much stress and without crossing into the side effects that people often have when they fast. For on a water fast only for five days. It's very cool.

So yeah, I think just for the audience, it is a small amount of food. Just to be really clear, it's not, you're not getting full.

I know we sell Prolon here. I've never done it actually. We should probably do it so we know what we're like with the experiences.

100%.

Yeah.

So tell me, are you in the ketotic state when you're doing the fasting mimicking?

For sure. You're in a actually deep, better keto state than the ketogenic. So the ketogenic diet is super low in carb and this is where the ketosis starts, but actually still have detectable proteins. So your body is like in a shallow ketosis. Right. It doesn't go deep enough. The deep ketosis is what stresses the cells and pushes them to rejuvenate. This is why with ketogenic diet you don't hear the expert talk about rejuvenation of the cell. In an autophagy, it's a shallow ketosis. It's induced by super low carb, but still the proteins are under detection. With a fasting mimicking diet, it's super tailored to get you into an acute deep ketosis to push that rejuvenation across the body.

Is there any studies that show that like, I know sometimes when people go into a fast or want to go into ketosis, they actually take external ketones. Is there any studies that show that that might benefit to start to kind of rev the system up or not?

Yeah, the MCT oil, what you're referring to is MCT oil is another ketone like bodies that people ingest. There's no studies showing major benefits from those. They basically are telling, are simulating the body or are trying to create an environment where you're telling the body to go faster into ketosis. You're, you're, you're trying to circulate more ketones than, than the true state of ketosis is and therefore sending a signal to the body to enter faster into ketosis. They're, they're not and, and they help, they help the brain. It's, you know, the brain loves mid chain fatty acids. So it's a good, it's a good way to, to a little bit support the brain when you're fasting and a little bit accelerate telling the body to Go into ketosis, but they're not nourishing the body. The fasting mimicking diet is giving you macros, is giving you proteins, is giving you carbs, is giving you, you know, healthy fat. So it gives you a deeper ketosis with nourishment versus with, with an artificial kind of MCT like environment.

So I guess I have a couple questions. If people are in their what I'll call standard American eating plan, which is going to keep them on the path for diabetes and diabetic nephropathy and bad outcomes, what do people need to improve overall before doing prolong or is prolon and the fasting mimicking program the step to then. Okay, when you're done with that, here's when you alter what comes first and what do people experience when they're on the program?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean obviously we recommend people eat healthy regardless whether they're doing prolon or not. So even before prolon start eating healthy. That's always the recommendation, but it doesn't have to answer your question directly. You don't have to alter your diet before doing prolon. We've tested the fasting mimbecaine diet now in 34 clinical trials and 18 of them are done and published in cell, in science, in nature, number one, number two and number three science journals of the world. In none of these trials, we ask anyone to change their diet before or after prolon. Otherwise it would be a true randomized clinical trial. So you do prolon or you do the fasting mimicking diet. It's five days, only a month. You don't need to alter your diet or exercise before or after. But one of the benefits, we see four reported major benefits, definitely the first one is people lose, lose a lot of fat and they preserve their lean body mass, so which helps with performance as well. So they come out of it. You know, when you do diets, typically you kind of, you're feeling a little bit depleted when you do the fasting. When we can diet, you feel actually more energized and empowered at the end of it. The number two benefit is changing relationship with food. And this is what you try to allude to. A lot of people after the fight they say, hey, I never knew I could live on a smaller portion. I never knew that I could sleep without having to re snack at night, watching Netflix, etc. I never knew I didn't need to eat five, six times a day. And, and, and they start and I never knew I could do, you know, more plant based diet. So we see people changing their mentality after prolong saying you know what, I, I want to improve my, my lifestyle. So it's a great inspiration. It's a tiny win and, and it helps people get on a better, on a better track if you want to. The third benefit we see is definitely, you know, blood markers and metabolic. A lot of people starting with, with a certain metabolic profiles get changed pretty.

Fast even after five days.

Like after five days, just like that. That's the beauty. So if, if you look at the we have two diabetes now trials that were that, that are completed. The first one that we published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Medicine one of the top diabetes journal is showing that just doing 6 month a fast immune diet which is just 5 days a month. So a total of 30 days it was able to decrease HbA1c by 1.4. It was able to do 2/3 of the patient decrease their meds. 67% of patients decreased their meds.

Not changing the way they ate, not changing anything except doing fasting, mimicking for five days a month for six months.

100%.

That's crazy.

That is crazy.

That's the power of cellular rejuvenation. This is exactly the technology we're talking about. This is not low calorie for five days. This is a total body performance rejuvenation.

I have a question. When people complete the program they're going to do, they just stop the program, go right back into their normal life of eating and do people experience a rebound in their weight because they've altered their behavior, not doing and then just gain it right back?

Yeah. So from a scientific standpoint, in order to do true science and publication, we ask them to go back to their normal life right away. Right. So because you want to single out the effect, obviously we recommend that everyone eat healthier after and probably many of them are eating healthier after with, with Prolon or the five days. But you talked about the rebound and this is really important goes back to the difference between the fasting mimicking diet and other, you know, low calorie or, or weight loss or diabetes. You know especially also with the ketogenic as well diets for diabetes. The, the problem with these diets is that first, you know, a lot of them are great on the short term but, but we gotta watch out metabolic rate and muscle loss. Because the rebound that you mentioned happened when, when you go off a diet you lost fat but you lost muscle. And then when you eat back again, unhealthy it's much fat. You, you, you gain fat much f. Insulin resistance much faster. And this is why the fasting mimicking diet is a key secret here. It preserves your metabolic rate again rejuvenating the muscle as part of the total body rejuvenation. So and we have a couple of secrets with the formulation that boost actually the muscle at night. So this is one of the proprietary thing that we do is, is never compromise a muscle during these five days. So you get out of it, you lost fat, you kept your muscle. This is rarely happens in any diet. So when you go back, you're faster, you're, you're actually a better eng to spend calories coming out of Prolon rather than your slower engine, which is what happens with most diets that you end up with. So the rebound is less. When we studied when you would go back, when the benefits of prolonged started disappearing, we did two trials and it's showing that 40 to 60% of the benefits would stay at least 30 to 60 days after. So it takes months for the benefits to go off. It's again people get inspired to eat healthier, they're burning fat, they're a much faster engine, their metabolic rate is preserved and it takes them time to go back to unhealthy diet and then start reversing the benefits.

So I mean if you think about this, if someone has a hemoglobin A1C of 6.8 and they do this program, you said they do it for six months and it brings their hemoglobin A1C down by 1.4 points. Did I get that? Did I capture the data or did I squish things together?

That's exactly what the trial we have done at Leiden University and sorry, at Heidelberg in Germany we have done a one year trial also now at late and it's not published yet, but will be published soon.

Can you tell us, can you tell us like the, what's, what's the latest? Are we allowed to know before it comes out or do you keep it secret?

All what I can tell you is that we had 800% better chance at reducing the medication versus medication alone.

Holy smoke balls. Okay, I didn't swear, but like that deserves a swear people. That's pretty impressive 800% improvement over what medication would do. So people brought their medication down by 800%. 800% improvement?

Yeah. If you add the fasting mimicking diet to your meds, and there were many, some people were an early stage, mid stage, different meds, but it increases by 800% your chances to needing less medication, which is what we call regression. So this June, we're launching a program called the Diabetes Remission and Regression Program. What does it mean, remission and regression? Regression means you need less medication, remission, you need no more medication. And this is very important. So the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, the Endocrine Society and the American Dietetic association, they start talking now about a new claim called disease remission and regression. And they define these claims to be a non pharmaceutical intervention, lifestyle intervention, non pharma. And instead of talking treatment or cure, they're talking regression or remission. You need less medication or no more medication. And this is what we're launching, a diabetes remission and regression program. So we have 800% better chance to do diabetes regression, needing less medication versus medication alone.

I mean, this feels like you should be putting people with early, early dementia because Alzheimer's is type 3 diabetes, essentially, right? So it seems like it would be effective for people with degenerative diseases, dementia or early dementia. Is this thought process accurate or is this not accurate?

So you're mentioning disease and these are big claims, right? But here's my answer. We have published on Alzheimer's six months ago, and we are on pre clinical trial and on phase 1 clinical meaning feasibility. We have a special fasting, mimicking nutrition technology for Alzheimer's. It actually has 1,200 to 1,400 calories because the elderly would need a little bit more calories intake or somebody with neurodegenerative. And now we're finishing up the human trial at University of Milan and up until the trials are completed, we can report the results. So for now I can say we know it's safe. We don't know if it works or not in humans, we know it works in mice. So I recommend we hold up until we get the results of the human trials.

That being said, for our patients with Alzheimer's dementia, a ketogenic diet is the way to go in general, whether it's, it's manageable, mimicking to start pick things off. But ketogenic diet is a way to start moving that, progressing with that.

Is it different for people who have a diagnosis of either metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes versus someone who just says, I want to improve my autophagy and my ability to live younger. Are the people who take it, are they different? Do they have different outcomes? What happens for someone who, like, I don't have diabetes, but I wouldn't mind losing some fat, right? I don't need to lose weight, but Fat.

So, so we've been selling Prolon for six years and it was exactly for that profile is healthy people who are mid age. Actually it's, it's you and I, you know, I do it every quarter, right? And we say look you, I would, I wouldn't mind rejuvenating my cells. And actually we should, right? It's, it's cellular rejuvenation and optimizing your body again when you're healthy keeps you distant from the onset of age related condition. And that's the goal. The goal is not to wait up until you have a disease and then start. So the protocol is that you do Prolon. So this is where the separation between the longevity arm of our company called the Prolon for promoting longevity. So you can do the five days fasting nutrition three times if you're healthy and you don't have to lose a lot of weight, you want to lose a little bit more weight, you can do it three to four times a year. And you rarely hear a CEO telling you do just five days of one of my products just three times a year. But that's exactly what it is. It's like when you watch a car race, right? You do a pit stop two or three times, that's it. You go in, the mechanics come, they check everything. They check the wheels, they check the gas, they check the oil, they check the steering wheel and they fix whatever goes wrong. Then you go back as a healthier car that can stay longer. You don't get the mechanics when the car is burning. You just do preventively two or three times. Now if you have a health condition, this is where the medical side of our company, we're testing the fasting mimicking nutrition part of a protocol guided by the doctor and the nutritionist for different health conditions. We're launching in June the diabetes one. We're going to launch cancer next year and autoimmune or Alzheimer's we'll see depending on which results. Stanford and University of Miami are testing autoimmune. University of Milan is testing Alzheimer's. So depending on the results, we'll launch next year. The other one or two health conditions and those protocols would have a little bit more frequent use because you're coming in trying to support fixing or healing. So Instead of doing three to four times a year, you're going to do four to six or seven times per year.

This is so cool.

Just to FYI like we crossed now 15,400 clinics registered with us in the US only, we're registered and we Crossed. Yeah, just today. That gets a phenomenon now and we crossed a million user off the Prolon. Wow.

So cool.

That's huge impact. Yeah, we definitely have found that people do really well and it's way easier than a water fast. And like you said, I have a.

Couple people I'm thinking of, I think Eileen, who listens to our podcast. Eileen, I'm thinking of you. I want to put you on this if you're listening. We're going to talk at your next visit.

And if you find that somebody is, is, you know, needs, is. Is too addicted to their food or needs some preparation for the Prolon, you know, we have launched the one day fast called Reset. The Prolon Reset. It's a plant based one box. I don't know if we're on video. I can, I can even show you the box in here. But a lot of people love it. It's just one day plant based fasting. Nutrition gets them trained to the taste gets them, gets their microbiome also started to to be a more of a plant based microbiome. For those who like intermittent fasting, they just want to skip one meal a day. We have the fast bar and the fasting shake. So it's the same technology I'm making fasting. You can use it for one me replacement, one day replacement or the five days. The five days is the only one that takes you into cellular rejuvenation. The other ones are more of a weight loss intervention.

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 our listeners who aren't part of our practice, where can they find 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 prolonged five days per year, we do have the one day as well. 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 15th 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. 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 because it was really crystallized the proper use and the approach and the application. 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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