Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #55 Eating for Longevity with Professor Valter Longo

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

What do we need to eat in order to live a long and healthy life? World-leading researcher in longevity, Professor Valter Longo, shares his views on diet and nutrition in this week’s episode. We discuss high protein diets, ketogenic diets and the concept of a low carb diet. Valter believes that we have over-simplified nutrition by looking at macronutrients in isolation - carbohydrates, fats and proteins – but in actual fact, we need all of these in our diets. And just as there are ‘good’ fats and ‘bad’ fats - some that we should be eating more of and others less of, the same is true of carbohydrates. Finally, Valter talks about fasting and his novel approach to research whereby he takes ancient knowledge and wisdom and marries it up with the latest science. This is the approach he used when formulating the fasting mimicking diet (FMD), a five-day plan that causes the body to go into fasting mode. Valter talks about the amazing benefits the diet - such as reducing visceral fat and abdominal fat. Although it hasn’t been proven in humans yet, it has been shown to reduce fatty liver, insulin resistance and even improve some autoimmune conditions in mice. This is a really eye-opening conversation – I hope you enjoy it! DISCLAIMER: Dr Chatterjee accepts no responsibility for anyone deciding to undertake the Fasting Mimicking Diet(ProLon). Please read all the disclaimers on the ProLon website – they state that ProLon is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Also, that it should not be used to treat either Type 1 or Type 2 Diabetes. Finally, please pay close attention to the ‘Is ProLon Right For Me’ section of the ProLon website if you wish to undertake the diet. Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/55 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The idea is to learn from history and tradition and evolution, and then learn from science and clinical work, and then combine those two things. And that's really when you see how we came up, I came up with the recommendation. GP, television presenter and author of the best-selling books, The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people, both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more.

Hello and welcome to episode 55 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chastji and I am your host. So what do we need to eat in order to live a long and healthy life? My guest today is arguably one of the world's leading researchers in the field of longevity, Professor Walter Longo, who in this week's episode shares his views on diet and nutrition. We talk about high-protein diets, ketogenic diets, and Walter gives his view on low-carbohydrate diets. Walter, like myself, believes that we have oversimplified nutrition by looking at macronutrients, such as fat, protein, and carbs, in isolation. And just as there are good fats and bad fats, some that we should be eating more often, others less of, the same is true of carbohydrates. Finally, Walter talks about fasting

and his novel approach to research, what he calls his five-pillar approach, whereby he takes ancient knowledge and wisdom and marries it up with the latest cutting-edge science. This is the approach he used when formulating the fasting mimicking diet, a five-day plan that causes the body to go into fasting mode. Towards the end of today's episode, Walter talks about the amazing benefits of his fasting mimicking diet, such as reducing visceral fat, abdominal fat, and potentially its utility in helping people with autoimmune conditions. Although not all aspects of the diet have been proven in humans yet, it has been shown to reduce fatty liver, insulin resistance and even improve some autoimmune conditions in mice. This episode is well worth a listen to the very end. I think it's really important for me to state that the bulk of my conversation with Volta today is around the optimum diets that we can consume in relation to

longevity. Volta's recommendations are not necessarily the dietary ones that we might make when someone already has an existing issue like type 2 diabetes and I do think you should keep this in mind throughout our conversation. In addition, Walter is a world-leading researcher. He is not a practicing clinician so a lot of his views are based from a research perspective rather than a clinical one. I think this is an important distinction as sometimes in the trenches clinicians like myself will have different views when compared to researchers who are primarily based in labs. You see, nutrition is a complex and hotly debated field. Many leading researchers

share different views, which clearly can make it tricky for the general public. Not everyone listening to this podcast, I am sure, will agree with all of Walter's recommendations, but I do think with someone of his caliber, it is well worth listening to the points that he raises. Now, before we get started, I do need to give a very quick shout out to our sponsors who are essential in order for me to be able to put out weekly podcast episodes like this one. Athletic Greens are one of the main sponsors of my podcast. Now, I prefer that people get all of their nutrition from food, but for some of us, especially in our busy modern 21st century lives, this is not always possible.

Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics and digestive enzymes. So if you're looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more,

you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. So Volso, I think the best place to start is where did your interest in longevity come from? is where did your interest in longevity come from?

The interest, I think it was always something that I had in the back of my mind. And I was 19 and I was in Texas, University of North Texas, studying music. And, you know, for some reasons, different reasons, I didn't want to continue with music. And so I immediately said I want to study aging and I want to study biochemistry to get to aging. So I switched from music, from jazz performance to biochemistry. And that was a little tough at the beginning, but then I managed.

Oh, fantastic. Well, I think that's something we both share. I'm also a very, very keen musician, and I am well aware from listening to some of the podcasts that you've been on previously that you also have a love of music. In fact, what really interests me in your book, on page 10, in fact, it says, as an example of how my music training informed my scientific inquiry, here's one of my favorite analogies. And I found that really interesting that you were comparing your experience as a musician and how that helps you be this sort of scientist that actually is considered to be one

of the leading researchers in longevity in the world i wonder if you could just share what is the similarity in music to studying longevity yeah so i think that um the um the music the composition for example it's a very good training to have because when you're composing something, there's something that I mentioned in the book, you're really forced to say, let me go into territories that nobody has quite gone into this way, right? So you're already starting by saying, I want to discover something new. I want to be in a place that hasn't been explored before. And that makes a big, big difference as a scientist

because lots of times as a scientist, you're trained by somebody else. And the tendency in the scientific world is to go back to what you learn, right? So you learn certain things and then you kind of want to continue that and expand it and that's fine there's nothing wrong with that that's very important to do but it really doesn't uh open up new territories as a composer you're thinking what can i do that and hasn't been done before where can i go here that hasn't been uh explored before so that makes a a big big difference. And I think also just the music, I didn't talk about that so much in the book,

but we know that the brain development is affected by the training, the musical training. And so certainly the brain functions a little bit differently in those that have been trained to be musicians especially starting at early age yeah absolutely i mean that's super interesting and also it makes me think that you know i'm a medical doctor and you know you come out of medical school learning certain hard truths to be the case and you know often we find as we go through our career that

we're basing everything upon the fact that everything we learned at medical school was correct and sometimes you actually that can be limiting in terms of um you know when you think what might be possible so you almost have to unlearn a little bit before you can move forward and i guess you're saying that in a similar way that actually sometimes particularly to make some really profound new breakthroughs in aging or anti-aging science you maybe have to think about things in a slightly different way um so before we get into the nuts and bolts of your research i guess it would be helpful to explain to the people listening you know what exactly is aging aginging refers to the time-dependent increase in dysfunction and usually in most

organisms is associated with an exponential increase in mortality. So that's aging and that's a way you can assess aging is by looking at mortality rates, age-specific mortality rates. So, what's the chance at any given time that an organism will die and of course, this increases very rapidly as you get up in age. But essentially, aging, by the way, is somewhat of a limited word because aging can be both positive and negative. We always think of aging as a negative thing, but lots of things, when they age, they get better, like a violin, for example, and wine can get better with aging

and lots of different things. Senescence is a better word. Senescence is a more technical term that really is describing the time, but also the dysfunction, something getting worse if it's becoming senescent. So aging for humans in itself is not necessarily something that we should be afraid of. Is that fair to say? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, now we know, for example, I mean, in the book, I talk about marathon runners, they seem to be in their 30s, right? I mean, not the runners, but the winners of the major marathons. And now we know people that are older are happier. I mean, lots of things that we didn't imagine just a few decades ago.

So yeah, there is lots of things to look forward actually in becoming older. And I mean, there's lots of things that you don't want to look forward for, but there are several that are actually positive and they get better with age. And the happiness seems to be one of them. Yeah, sure. Well, as a society, whether it's here in the UK, I know you're currently speaking to me from Italy, although you spend a lot of time in America and Los Angeles. You know, what are we doing wrong societally?

What are we doing that undermines longevity and undermines the aging process? Are there some core things that wherever you go all over the world that human beings are perhaps not doing in the best way that they could to support their longevity? not doing in the best way that they could to support their longevity? Yes. So we are now getting very, very far from the ideal decision to live long and healthy. For example, in the United States, you have 72% of people that are overweight or obese. So almost everybody is doing lots of things wrong. And obviously, we're not meant to be obese and overweight all year long.

Back in tens of thousands of years ago, we were, in many cases, supposed to gain some weight, maybe during the summer, and then lose that weight during the winter. And now we just gain the weight and keep lose that weight during the winter and now we just gain the weight and keep gaining, gaining, gaining, gaining. So immediately it's very obvious that 72% of the United States and maybe 50% or so of Europeans are getting to this very far away place in terms of the way and the amount we eat. And this is just the amount. Then you get into what you eat and that gets even worse, right?

So it's not just the weight but it's also the ingredients of the food, you know. So for example animal proteins we're now shown to be regulating pro-aging pathways meaning the genes that regulate aging the function of these genes or the proteins generated by these genes is accelerated and so basically if you have a high protein diet you have these pro-aging genes being more active and so you age more quickly. So, yeah, the quantity, the type, we're very, very far from where the ideal would be. And another thing, of course, is, as I mentioned earlier, the fasting. Certain things we used to do all the time, we don't do anymore ever. Many of our patients, they've never gone more than, let's say, 12 hours or so, or maybe just a little bit longer than that without having lots of food. And we're paying the price and the results are fairly obvious. I don't need to list them.

so much I want to pick up on. You mentioned protein there, which I think is a big topic we can talk about. You mentioned fasting, you mentioned eating too much. I mean, we will cover all of these things. One thing I think it's, if we start with fasting, I guess, because, you know, it would be great if you could explain a little bit about your protocol. My understanding from what I've read of the book is that there are some certain good principles by which we should try and live our life day in day out which is going to help slow down the aging process but there's also the specific um five day fasting periods this fasting mimicking diet is what you've called it's that we we we maybe can do two or three times a year and i wonder if you could just expand and actually clarify what the difference is

and what benefits people can gain if they do that. Yeah, so the idea is to learn from history and tradition and evolution and then learn from science and clinical work and then combine those two things. And that's really when you see how I came up with the recommendation. So, for example, the word fasting doesn't really mean anything. It's very similar to say eating. What does it mean, eating?

Nothing. It could be something very good, very much, very little, et cetera. It could be something very good, very much, very little, et cetera. And so fasting is likely to cause as much problems as it causes solutions unless you know exactly what we're talking about and how to use it and probably unless you have some type of medical professional, whether it was a dietician or a medical doctor, at some point guiding you in the right direction. So, for example, 12 hours of not eating, no food, and 12 hours of eating, that's very good. There is really very little data

suggesting that, let's say, you start at 8 a.m., you end at 8 p.m., and that's it. You don't eat anything until 8 a.m. the day after. There's very little data suggesting that that's not an excellent choice. As you go and you start eating more than that, you go 14, 15 hours, you start seeing problems you see problems in sleeping pattern you see problem in metabolic issues and disorders etc then the fasting making diet is something well it's periodic it's a diet that mimics fasting why is that why not water only fast well water only fast it should be done really in a clinic with specialized personnel. Why is that?

Well it revolutionizes your body. It's like taking five, ten different drugs. You don't want to do that on your own. You don't want to go to the pharmacy and say give me a bunch of drugs I'll just take them. And that's how it's very similar to just say I'm just going to fast for five days now or seven days. Lots of people will be fine. Lots of people are going to get in trouble.

So the fasting-mimicking diet is really there to simulate fasting, allow people not to eat a lot but to eat enough, and get the same or very similar effects as you would if you did water-only fasting. And how often you do that, well, it depends, right? So if you are somebody who's obese and has high cholesterol, high blood pressure, maybe once a month. If you are somebody that is an athlete, a 35-year-old athlete, and has a pescatarian diet, some ideal, you know, lots of vegetables,

sort of perfect longevity diet, then you might only need to do the fasting mimicking diet a couple of times a year. So when you say fasting mimicking diet, is this the five-day program that you outline in your research but also in your book, Your Longevity Diet? When you say fasting mimicking diet, are you talking about that five-day protocol? Yes, I'm talking about the five-day program, the one we tested clinically. The one is also available in the UK under the name Prolon.

And, you know, I don't benefit financially from it. But there are companies that benefit financially. And, you know, at least my part, all of it goes back to charity and research. But I think it's important to standardize it. You're a medical doctor. I think you know what I mean. When you start improvising, people love everything to be free. They want everything to be free.

everything to be free now they want everything to be free and and but but sometimes it's better to say you know invest two or three hundred pounds a year into something that is safe for you is highly tested then you know try to do it the free way and then uh and then getting hurt because uh a you might not have had the right screening or b maybe your blood pressure gets to too low levels your blood glucose gets to levels that are too low etc etc so yeah you we made the mistake of you know trying to make everything free at the beginning we saw lots of problems and then we basically said let's stop stop that because our wish to help people is going to end up hurting people. Much better to do it with a prolonged FMD.

Hopefully at some point, you know, this will be reimbursed, but right now it's not and we understand that not everybody can afford it. Yeah, sure. And Volta, I very much appreciate all the time and effort, you know, of at least 30 years you have put into research to try and advance this field and help, you know,

people like me and, you know, hundreds of thousands of people around the world live longer and healthier lives. And I think it's just worth acknowledging you for that. So much I want to talk to you about. I think the next place to go for me would be, you know, you're the first scientist I have come across who talks about these five pillars. And I find it really striking because you've touched on it a little bit already in this conversation,

but we want to take a bit of ancient knowledge and intuition and marry it up with the later science. But you take this a little step further, don't you? You talk about five pillars by which you will assess all science and all recommendations before you feel comfortable making that recommendation. I wonder if you could just tell us what those five pillars are and why you think they're so important. Yes.

I always thought it's really strange when, let's say, somebody is accused of a major crime, let's say murder, right, that we have this very sophisticated system in the court where you have to have the DNA evidence, maybe the cell phone evidence, the circumstantial evidence. So you have all these pieces, and and only then you can put it all together and then accuse somebody of murder, for example. And I always thought that it's really strange that we don't have anything like that in science, right? That we don't really have a method to say, hey, I think, you know, you can get out there and say, I think that olive oil is good for you. Well, what is that based on?

Is it based on epidemiological data only? So, yeah, so the five pillars are really, it's really about taking all the different disciplines and put it together to come up with this recommendation. And now people don't need to know about the five pillars, but they need to know that that's what we use to get to where we get to. And one of them is, as I just mentioned, epidemiological stats. So what happens to, if you take 100,000 people or a million people, and you compare it to, say, 100,000 people that eat lots of proteins, and 100,000 people that eat very low protein, how do they

compare and how do they compare at different ages? And so that's one pillar, very important. It's a really mathematical, it gives you high levels, big numbers to be able to have make general, have a general idea. But epidemiological data is now, lots of the times can have problems and the interpretation is very tricky so then you have say clinical data another one of the pillar randomized clinical trials so you know if you're talking about let's say proteins or olive oil what what happens if you put a hundred people and you give them lots of protein and 100 people and you give them low protein diet.

So you can actually have, you can test the effect of that change in dietary composition in a randomized way. So this is really the gold standard and but it's not always easy to do this for let's say an overall dietary pattern. Another pillar is centenarians. So once you have figured out the things, let's say, olive oil or proteins, good or bad, then you go around the world and you say, well, what about the people like Okinawa or Sardinia or certain towns in Calabria or Loma Linda? The ones that make it to very old ages, do they have high protein or low protein?

Well, it turns out that they have a low protein diet, not surprisingly. And then another pillar is basic science focused on longevity. So if you have an idea of something that you think is going to make people live longer, well, you should be able to see this in multiple organisms like a mouse or a rat, etc., etc. So if you can show that you can make a mouse live longer, you may not be on such a great path of making people live longer. So that's a very good start. And it's not just about a couple of months study, but it's about a lifelong study, like

the one we did for the fast and vegan diet. You take mice at middle age, you start giving them the fast and vegan diet, and then we show that A, they live longer, B, they have about half cancer, and C, they have about half of the inflammatory diseases, right? That's a very good way to start before you move to humans. And the last pillar is complex systems, and that's something I always like to sort of simplify things. Think of a human body like a car, and think of a young human body like a car that gets taken gets taken to the body shop into the mechanic periodically but an old uh human being like a car that is on its own it doesn't doesn't get to see

the mechanic or the or the body shop anymore and uh so you really have to be careful with it yeah it's great volta that you're you're the recommendations you make have actually gone through this five pillarpillar level, which I've got to say I've never heard a scientist put it in those terms before. There's something about your approach that really resonates with me, because I guess you're saying for longevity, well, if we're going to make a longevity recommendation, yes, let's look at short-term trials, but let's also look at what has gone on in those populations where people are living with a high proportion of centenarians, which I think makes a lot of sense. Do you think that, I mean, you mentioned protein,

okay, and I think that's something we have to touch on because protein is quite a hot topic in the nutrition world in terms of how much protein do we need for optimal health. And you're saying that actually in all those populations who actually have high longevity, you're saying that they are generally having a low protein intake. We know that sarcopenia, this loss of muscle mass as we get older, is proving to be a huge problem, particularly in the Western world these days. And some of the sort of institutions who are making protein recommendations around sarcopenia are saying that we should maybe be having 1.6 grams of protein per kilo each day, which is significantly higher than I think the recommendations you make. I wonder if you could sort of discuss some of your thoughts on protein

and what we should do if we're, you know, if as a population we're worried about sarcopenia. Yes. So the, yeah, these are one pillar strategies, right? So you go, not even one pillar, half a pillar. Why is it a health appeal search the 1.6 grams that's why voice are competing because first of all the sarcopenia unless there is a major disease like cancer is only you're only

gonna see it in the say 65 and 70 year olds and after right right? And it's really important, for example, with the protein to look at the data, right? So first of all, most studies, most medical associations are showing 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day to be sufficient, if not more than sufficient, right? There is no evidence that if you go higher than that, you're going to prevent anything. Now there is some evidence and geriatricians have gotten together and proposed that maybe one gram per kilogram body weight. So let's say that you weigh 75 kilograms and theoretically you'll have 75 grams of protein per day to be, if you're 70, 75, 80 year old. And that's probably not a bad, as I mentioned in the book, it's probably not a bad idea.

But I think if you look for younger people all the data is negative meaning let's go through the pillars if you do a randomized clinical study as has been done and you give people high protein diet their IGF-1 goes sky-high right and so the IGF-1 is insulin like growth factor one, it's a pro-cancer marker, potentially a risk factor, so probably not such a good idea. Another thing that we know from a high protein diet is leucine, I mean the leucine controls TOR, and TOR is another one of the very well-established aging accelerators, right. So now you're gonna have high TOROR, high AGF1 all the time. So these are pushing your body to go, go, go, go in aging and growth and aging direction.

So that's not going to work. So that's clinical trial. Epidemiological data, if you look at it, most of the studies show that people that have a low-pr low protein diet are the ones that are doing better. Now, as they get old, they don't do so well unless they have the moderate protein diet, and that makes sense, right? So, if you're 80 years old, you do not want to have too low of a protein diet because

sarcopenia could be one of the factors that you can encounter. So the centenarians, most of them have low-protein diet, epidemiology, low-protein. The clinical studies are suggesting that high-protein is detrimental. And let's take the last one, basic research focused on longevity. Guess what happens when you give a mouse high protein diet? They die early, right? They die early and develop all kinds of diseases, right? So all the pillars suggest that in a low but sufficient protein diet is by far the best,

and then a little bit of a complication is as you get to 75, 70, 75, 80 years of age, you have to increase the protein intake but also not just the protein, the carbohydrate, the fats, keep a healthy weight because as you start going down in weight, particularly if you started from a normal weight, then you start seeing problems, you know, you start seeing frailty and that's probably not good. And it's not just a muscle problem. It also seems like a little bit of extra fat, a little bit, not a lot, seems to be good for somebody that's 75, 80 years old.

And they tend to do better if they have a little bit of a reserve. So you're recommending, I i guess that maybe this obsession with protein is um you know certainly overplayed potential you're saying that actually for the majority of us certainly in middle age for young age middle age and sort of early old age let's say uh will benefit from having a low protein intake but potentially when we hit 75 or 80 you know we may benefit from starting to increase our protein intake and i potentially when we hit 75 or 80, you know, we may benefit from starting to increase our protein intake. And I think that's, I think that's a good message that people listening to this, that they have, you know, if they are elderly or they've got elderly parents or elderly

relatives or elderly friends, I think it is important. And I see this a lot as a doctor that often, you know, as patients get older, they're not eating enough. They're not eating enough full stop, including not eating enough protein. That's incredibly helpful. So, you know, there's a lot of talk now about the ketogenic diet. What are your thoughts on the ketogenic diet? Yeah, so first of all, we need to also understand what we say and what people do when they hear ketogenic diet right some people might think of ketogenic diet as high fat low relatively low protein but most people out there

are going to understand it to be high fat high protein low right? That's how most people will view the ketogenic diet. That's the reality. So, when we go out there and preach ketogenic diet, most people are going to have lots of animal fat, lots of animal protein, low carbohydrate. And so very little pasta, very little bread, etc., etc. And so what happens there? Well, it happens – first of all, if you look at epidemiology, you see that people that have a high fat, high protein diet, they die earlier, they have more cardiovascular disease, they have more cancer, they have more of almost every type of problem, or certainly lots of problem.

If you look at the centenarians, none of them have a ketogenic diet. If you look at the ones that have record longevity, you really don't see ketogenic diets there. If you look at mice, I think the positive results you see when you have a high fat, low protein, and low carb, and then you see some benefit, but not very much. So in general, there is very few, very little data suggesting that a continuous ketogenic diet is going to be beneficial for people. There is a new study actually that came out, I think it was Lancet, showing that people that had a high carb diet, I mean high but not super high, let's say about 60%, they lived the longest, they were followed by people that had a very high carbohydrate diet, and then

the bottom one was a low carbohydrate diet, right? So, over and over, the high but good carbohydrate diet, you know, see, for example, where the carbohydrate coming from vegetables, they're coming from legumes, those seem to be the ones that where people do the best longevity wise and health wise. Okay, great. Thank you for that. I mean, I think certainly that Lancet study, I've seen this quite a lot of controversy over that and how that was reported. And I guess, you know, some people would say, look, I can do a ketogenic diet in a healthy way.

I can have it, you know, with minimal protein, high fat, lots and lots of plant food in there. And I suspect that they possibly can. But as you say, a lot of people will interpret that as a high protein diet. And obviously you have some concerns over that, which really brings to a wider point, which I think you cover really nicely in your book. And it's very consistent with where I've been going with my thinking on nutrition in the past few years, which is we've become a little bit over-obsessed with fat and protein and carbs. And we've looked at these things in isolation. And I'm not convinced they actually mean that much to a lot of people because, you know, there are good quality fats that are very healthy for us. And there are some harmful fats for us.

Likewise, with carbohydrates, we can't really compare, you know, highly processed, refined bread with lots of colorful, beautiful vegetables, which are full of phytonutrients and lots of sort of healthy carbs. So I wonder if you could just sort of share your views on this whole obsession we have these days with macronutrients. trends yeah it's it's not just an obsession is also i think a media driven um need to simplify right people the media loves to say uh low to pick something uh the flavor of the day low protein high protein low low carbs low fat so um it's almost like an obsession with super simplicity, right? And everything that is more than low carb is too long. And of course you can't do that, right? You can't do that with nutrition, you can't do it with healthy longevity, so like you

said, you need to go through it and say, you don't need a manual for it. You just need to learn some of it and follow some rules. And so carbs are excellent for you. It should be about 60% of your calories in your diet, but they should mostly come from legumes and vegetables. And the rest of it is fine. Some fruit is okay. Some starches are okay. For example, pasta or bread or rice, that's perfectly fine if you keep, let's say, about 50, 60, 70 grams a day.

Once you start getting a ton of starches, then it's very similar to having lots of sugar. It makes very little difference. So people, for example, confuse all the time sugar, starches, and carbohydrates. And they think that most people out there think when you talk about a low-carbohydrate diet, it's a low-sugar, low-starch. They don't understand that a low-carbohydrate diet is also a low-legume diet. It's a low-vegetable diet, which means, of course, you got to get the calories from somewhere, you're going to get it from proteins, and you're

going to get it from animal proteins and animal fats. So then fats, same thing. The saturated animal fats, they seem to be clearly bad. Some people argue they're not, but overall, they're just not associated. Not too many people that live a long time have a high animal fat diet. That's just a fact. They're not the Okinawans, not the Loma Linda, the Sardinians. So that's not a good sign, right?

And then how do we, if we, when you do an experiment to create some type of cardiovascular and insulin resistance in mice, why do you do it? With high animal fat. So that's also not a good sign, right? They say, well, if you're going to make us mouth sick, give it a high animal fat diet. On the other hand, if you give it olive oil, nuts, you know, you see lots of this in people that live a long time.

You see them consuming olive oil or some type of oil. You see them consuming nuts, some type of nuts. So that seems to be a very good thing. So again, fats, good or bad, they're both good and bad. It depends which you pick and how much you have. So how much of the calories should come from fat? About 30%. So 60% from from carbohydrates 30 percent from

fat and then the rest of it is 10 percent and that's where the protein come in and i think it's better to go with the grams per body weight you know so about 0.37 per pound or or 0.8 per kilogram so that's that's a good way and once you figure out what that means to you then it's very easy then you kind of know like if you eat a little fillet of salmon you're gonna have enough for a whole day if you're let's say 150 pound person yeah that's great volter and i think you're right we need to be a little bit more careful with how we describe these various diets because you say low carb low sugar low starch you know it can all get lumped in together let's go into the fast and mimicking diets because this could be a great solution for a lot of people listening who may have tried various diets before, struggle to maintain them long term. Your research

provides a possible solution for them. So, you know, what happens in those five days and what are the benefits? Yeah, so what happens is that the body, first of all, goes to the central problem in insulin resistance, which is visceral fat, right? So it starts taking all the fuel from there. And that already makes a big difference. Now we suspect, and we're going to publish on that soon, is that the liver, the fatty liver is also affected.

We don't know yet, but certainly that's a suspicion. And then the muscle, the endpoint or the place where the insulin resistance resides is breaking down temporarily, and we think that is also helping with the fixing of the problem, meaning that you're getting rid of the fat in the wrong places and then you're starting to affect the muscle where the resistance is residing. And so that's where we think this combination is affecting the insulin resistance and the pre-diabetic state. Now, this is just – well, then the other thing we've shown in mice very clearly was the pancreatic regeneration. able to reduce insulin resistance and reduce abdominal fat, but it's also promoting pancreatic beta cell regeneration.

So if you look at the pancreas of a mouse while it's doing a cycle of fasting, making dietary feeding, it turns on lots of the embryonic genes that were only turned on. Normally they're turned on at that level when the mouse is first born. So, we don't know for people yet, we have multiple clinical trials that are now either running or about to start on diabetes and we'll find out. of muscle and the effect of fat are the major ones. Walter. And I guess in some ways it takes the pressure off people because they can actually follow, let's say, a less restrictive diet, a more moderate and in many cases socially acceptable diet for the majority of the year. Yet several times a year, they can do your five-day

fasting mimicking diets protocol and yield incredible benefits for their body, including, I think I read autoimmune disease as well. Where, where are you up to in your research on autoimmune disease at the moment? Yes. Well, we want to make sure that people don't think that we, all of this is done and that, you know, that you can treat diabetes like that. That's not the message. It seems like can treat pre-diabetes with this and so this is a message to the doctors and um but of course for for diabetes so people are still healthy they don't have a disease yet but they may get there soon enough right there seems to be a very good place to use it for diabetes we have to wait and see until we finish these

clinical trials for autoimmunities we we finished a 45-patient clinical trial. This was in collaboration with Charité Hospital. We had a mouse study and a human study in mice. The fasting-mimicking diet cycles were very effective in reducing the symptoms and even reversing many of the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. And in people, the patient reported having a much better quality of life. And so it looks promising. This was a single cycle of a fasting-mimicking diet.

So now we're starting in Italy, we're starting a 10-hospital multicenter trial, a multiple sclerosis, where the patients are going to do seven days of the fasting-making diet every two months. And, yeah, what we didn't see is randomized. Well, first, feasibility, and then it turns into a randomized trial. But, of course, we're running another one on Crohn's and colitis, another autoimmune disorder. And that's going to probably be both the US and Europe. And then we have lots of proposals, for example, for type 1 diabetes, for rheumatoid arthritis, et cetera, et cetera.

So I think soon enough we will be testing many different autoimmune disorders. Walter, one of your recommendations when people are not doing the fasting mimicking diet is that they have a 12-hour fast in every 24 hours. It's the same recommendation I make in my book and the work that I do with people because I think there are so many benefits

that we can see, including the promotion of autophagy, that sort of housekeeping process that occurs in cells to mop up a lot of the debris. When you do your five-day protocol, some of the benefits must come from autophagy. But what else is going on there to give such potential widespread benefits yes so we don't know yet the mechanisms we know at the cellular level so we know that for example as i was mentioning earlier about the pancreas that you break down you reduce the beta cells making insulin temporarily during the first making diet you turn on the stem cells and then when you refeed normally the stem cells give rise to new insulin producing beta cells. So there seems to be a very clear mechanism we've seen in our multiple systems so stem

cell based regeneration. Now the autophagy we don't know yet how much is that autophagy driven. We suspect lots of it or certainly part of it. We don't know yet. We need to demonstrate it. But that's certainly something that we're very, very interested in, the intracellular breakdown. You also mentioned that the faster-mimicking diets may help to regenerate stem cells. And I

wonder if you could first of all explain to the listeners what are stem cells and then what has your research shown so far in terms of the ability to regenerate these stem cells? So stem cells are cells that have the ability to generate lots of different cells. For example the pluripotent stem cells can generate many different type of cells and in most organs lots of organs have their own pluripotent stem cells and so basically the reason why fasting does what it does with stem cells is very simple. And so let's say you take, let's say that you stop eating right now. And you just drink water for two months.

And then we talk again. And you look, in two months from now, you're going to look like a skeleton. Right? And you look at in two months from now, you're going to look like a skeleton, right? And your organs two months down the road would be much, much smaller, right? Certain, some of it, right? Your liver will be smaller. Even your lungs will be smaller. And your muscle mass will be smaller, right?

So now imagine that you then start eating again. So you're going to re-expand. And that's really the power of fasting. Of course, I'm making this much more drastic and dramatic than it is when you only do five days. But let's say that you go to the limit and then you come back. Well, to come back from that very anorexic, you know, very thin person that you will become, you have to rebuild, maybe double in weight, right? You may, how much do you weigh right now?

I weigh about 95 kilos or so. Yeah, 95 kilos. So in two months from now, you're probably going to weigh about 50 kilos, right? So, yeah, now imagine having to go from 50 kilos back to 95. Now, think of all the stem cells that will have to be activated and turn on and build your cell-like cells in the liver that give rise to to hepatocytes and cells in the hematopoietic system the lthscs hematopoietic stem cells the cells in the nervous system even right we've shown that even those are there's going to be partial regeneration so and then all of a sudden

maybe within two or three weeks from that moment you'll'll be back to 95 pounds, maybe 95 kilos. Maybe it'll take a little bit longer. But certainly, now when you get back to 95 kilos, half of you is brand new, right? So it's just amazing. It's such a simple concept, but half of you is now completely young, right? So you've just being generated that health has been just generated in the past two or three weeks that's incredible to think about that yeah so that is the power of

course mismanaged i mean we don't want to do that and this is why we really have to be very careful with the fasting making diet so lots of people say why don't you make it more extreme why don't you do this and we say well our first purpose is do no harm right so people gonna live a long life i never want to take that away from from anybody right and even one in a million so so first you have to say is everybody going to be not affected in a negative way and it's not easy and sometimes you have to make it less powerful than it could be because you don't want to hurt anybody. So, for example, there is carbohydrates in the fasting-making diet. It's not a high-carbohydrate diet, but there is enough carbohydrates there

to make sure that you get into a ketogenic mode, but I don't push you to the limit. I don't push you to those two months that I just mentioned. Why? Because I don't know. I don't know if you did that. Forget the two months. But even if you did the 10 days of water only fasting, and you do it 30 times, isn't it possible that something goes wrong? Right? Yeah, it is possible. So this is why it's extremely powerful. But with all the extremely powerful things, they can work against you if you're not

very careful to talk me through it and for the listeners as well so on those five days what happens i wake up in the morning and and what am i doing am i taking the prolon uh the what is it how would you describe prolon and what talk me through those five days and also talk me through what is the compliance like do people find this difficult or is this something that most of your um you know most people you put through uh your research can actually do the the five day the five day protocol so the diet is um it's got let's say lots of nuts in it different type of nuts uh almond walnuts macadamia nuts etc etc yeah and then there's lots of vegetables so it's a vegan diet it's a it's a i think 100% vegan now

and um and then has um some vegetable chips um and um and other things for example supplements from some Omega some micronutrients that we feel are important to prevent problems but so the first day is a little bit higher so 1100 calories you're gonna have a one of these nut bars maybe for breakfast and is there's teas that are included in the box. Basically, we want people to keep eating maybe three times a day regularly, but it's not going to be as much as people normally eat, but it's enough for most people to get through it. It's everything, Walter, in the box. But it's enough for most people to get through it.

So is everything, Walter, in the box? So you order this box and have you got everything you need in terms of the food that you consume for five days? Yes, you have everything in the box. And that's also good, you know, because, of course, you don't have to go out and buy anything for five days and uh and people don't always realize that you also save for from not buying anything for five days uh so that helps a little bit with the with the cost and um or it helps a lot with the cost and uh yeah so it's it's uh it's really everything is in there and uh you consume uh the higher calorie day one then it goes down to about 800 calories on day two, three, four, five. And then you have a little bit of about 24 hours of transition moment where you return to your normal diet.

And this is to allow your gut to start rebuilding before you put lots of pressure on the intestine with let's say a steak or or something like it or even just high sugar diet you know these they can put a lot of pressure on the intestine and do people you know can people do this whilst they're working for example or would you recommend they start doing this at a weekend or when they've got sort of four or five days off yes people can do it i, not everybody can do it at work. It depends what kind of job you have. And so we always ask people to be careful.

So if you're a construction worker, that's probably not such a good idea. You find, especially the first and second time before you sort of know how it affects you, find five days where you're on vacation. That's probably a better way to do it. But then eventually, again, if you're not operating machinery, et cetera, you can do it on most jobs, being careful and that you don't, for example, if somebody starts running very fast, you can pass out, right? Because your body essentially is switching, is relying on the gluconeogenesis of the liver

making glucose. making glucose and so you can get to that sprint can make your blood sugar too low and you can pass out. This is why people should really respect the fact that it's a moment where you need to lay back, you can walk, you can do lots of things, but don't do exercise and don't try to do anything strenuous, like even in a job situation. Walter, you mentioned some of the long-term benefits of this in terms of your insulin resistance, maybe the visceral fat in your body, stem cell regeneration potentially, blood sugar, harmful cholesterol being reduced,

all these kinds of things. But in the short term, what do people feel? Do they, you know, is it the sort of thing where within a few days of doing it, people can actually feel better, get more energy, have a bit more vitality for life, these kind of things as well? Yes, lots of people say, for example, their skin looks better. They can remember things better. And many of these things we're testing now.

We're not claiming that this is the effect. In mice it is, right? Mice have a much better improved cognitive performance. They seem to be sharper. They seem to be learning better. And this is being demonstrated in mice, but it's not being demonstrated in people. So overall wellness is much much better

at least in the reports that people give us and you hear lots of stories of for example inflammation. Well we show in the trial the people that had systemic inflammation, high C reactive protein, this in most cases returned to normal and so it makes sense that we... Is this from one cycle of your 5 in most cases, returns to normal. And so it makes sense. Is this from one cycle of your 5-day protocol, it returns back to normal? Three cycles. Three cycles. And I think that's a wider point, Walter,

is how often should people be doing this? Or what would you recommend currently? And does it depend on their age? And does it depend on what conditions they may already have been diagnosed with? Yeah, so it depends on age for sure because after 70 you shouldn't do it unless you have a geriatrician that basically says, no, you're fine, you can still do it and you can have benefits for it. But then it really depends, as I mentioned earlier, if you have, let's say,

systemic inflammation, your crp is very high you might want to do three cycles and then under doctor supervision and then and see what happens right did the crp go back to normal as we've shown in the trial if that's the case then you can say okay now everything is back normal back to normal cholesterol is low the fasting glucose is normal okay don't do anything for another four months and let's see come back in four months and let's see what happens and when you say three cycles how you know let's say someone does uh today you know they go on a five-day fasting mimicking diet protocol um you know and then they go back to sort of their normal life, how quickly can you do your second round, as it were?

Yeah, in the trial, we've done it once a month, right? So five days on the FMD, and then let's say 25, 26 days in between, and then they do it again, and they do it for three cycles. But again, the three cycles should be used if you're trying to achieve a change, right? So let's say your patient is pre-diabetic, you really see, or has metabolic syndrome, you see multiple problems, and it might not be a bad idea to say, let's do three cycles, and let's see if things go back to normal. If they do, then again, let's put you on a…

So three cycles once a month for three months, then wait a week, and then do the test again. If everything goes back to normal, then great. Then you can move it maybe to once every four months and see if that's enough. And if it's not enough, maybe they have to do it more frequently. And, of course, lots of the times that depends on what they do in between right so they have a terrible diet and exercise they might need to do it once every two months and uh and some people might even need to do it once a month and for someone for someone i guess i guess i mean this is self-reported but someone i guess like myself who i you know i i would

certainly consider myself to be pretty healthy uh with it with a very healthy lifestyle by and large um how often would you recommend someone like myself might do the fast and mimic and diet protocol once a year twice a year something like that i would say you're young you're healthy you have a i assume a good diet you exercise absolutely i would say you need to do it and this is always something that i underline you do it when you need to do it in your case you probably need to do it once a year just to not get too far away from this need to periodically have a moment of where the body can get rid of lots of the junk that has been carrying with it.

I try and leave people at the end of this podcast with some lifestyle tips, some tips that are really going to inspire people and hopefully empower them to feel that they have got a lot of control over what happens to them as they age. Of course, people can do your fasting mimicking diet. But I just wonder if we could just finish off with maybe four tips is what I usually ask for, four tips that really summarize some of the top things that people can do to optimize their longevity, whether that's to do with food, movement, sleep, relaxation, whatever. Have you got some top tips for the people listening to this podcast?

Yeah. So I would say definitely a mostly pescatarian diet based on the food where your ancestors come from. So different people are going to pick different ingredients to get there. 12 hours a day fasting, 12 hours a day of feeding. And then if you are overweight or obese, go from five, six meals a day or whatever you eat right now to two meals a day plus a snack, either breakfast and lunch or breakfast and dinner, and then have a snack for your third meal. And then I would say 150 minutes a week of exercise. And that seems to be pretty close to optimizing health. Well, sir, thank you.

Those are some fantastic tips. Hopefully people will feel inspired that you are one of the leading voices in longevity and you are giving them some very credible advice at the end there, which hopefully most of us can try and follow aspects of that in our own life. I so appreciate a busy researcher like yourself giving up your time today for such a long conversation.

I really want to thank you, Walter, and I hope we get the opportunity to talk again at some point in the future. Yeah, sounds good. You're very welcome to thank you, Volta, and I hope we get the opportunity to talk again at some point in the future. Yeah, sounds good. You're very welcome. And thank you. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. I really hope you enjoyed the conversation and that you feel motivated to try and apply some of Volta's top tips at the end of the show. For those of you who want to try Volta's fasting mimicking diet, you can access all the links on the show notes page for this episode at drchastji.com forward slash 55. Now I have to say as a disclaimer that I can accept no

responsibility at all for anyone deciding to undertake the fasting mimicking diet it's really important that you read all the disclaimers on the prolon website where they say that prolon is not intended to diagnose treat cure or prevent any disease also that it should not be used either to treat type 1 or type 2 diabetes finally please do pay close attention to the Is Prolon Right For Me section of the website if you wish to undertake the diet. Now, as I mentioned in the introduction to this podcast, not all of you listening will necessarily agree with everything that Volta has said. For example, the whole area of high protein versus low protein diets is a really contentious one in the nutrition field. And I'm going to get a guest contentious one in the nutrition field.

And I'm going to get a guest on the podcast in the near future to present an alternate view to Walter's. I know that Walter is not a huge fan of low carb diets from a longevity point of view, although he does mention that one should not really consume more than 70 grams of starchy carbs like rice or bread in a single day. Now, that kind of advice is very consistent with some people's interpretations of a low-carbohydrate diet. And I think therein lies one of the big problems in nutrition. When we say something like low-carb, what does it really mean? Many people can eat a low-carb diet that really is rich in vegetables and low in refined and highly processed carbohydrates. And seemingly, these people do very well from a short-term health perspective, and I think

arguably from a long-term health perspective as well. At the same time, it's easy to follow a low-carb diet that is deplete of phytonutrient-rich vegetables, and potentially a diet like this will have a very different outcome than the first one I mentioned. I've really tried to go into detail on these topics in both of my books, The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan, to really try and provide some clarity for you when trying to figure out what kind of diet to follow. In both of my books, I have written about why I recommend that we eat all of our food within a 12-hour eating window on any given day, something that Volta completely agrees with. The one thing we didn't really touch on today

is the fact that in all of these blue zones where people have high rates of longevity, as well as good nutrition, they also have very low stress levels. Modern research is now suggesting that up to 90% of what doctors now see is in some way related to stress. I find that absolutely incredible. You see, modern day living can be really stressful and stress is very toxic for most organ systems in the body. This is one of the main reasons why I wrote my new book, The Stress Solution. This really is not just a book for those people who feel that they are stressed. I think the book is applicable to absolutely everyone because stress affects pretty much all of us these days. And in my book, I help you to identify where the stresses live in your

own life and then give you some actionable tips to help you overcome them so that you can live a happier and calmer life. You can pick up a copy of The Stress Solution in all the usual places in paperback, as well as an audiobook, which I am narrating. As always, do let me know what you thought of today's episode. And if you do enjoy my weekly podcasts, one of the best ways that you can support them is by leaving a review or whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels. Or you can do it the old-fashioned way and simply tell your friends and family about the show.

However you choose to do it, your support is very much appreciated. A big thank you to Richard Hughes for editing the podcast and to Ali Ferguson and Liam Saunders for the theme tune. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest episode. Remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it. Because when you feel better, live more i'll see you next time