The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Dr. Valter Longo On The Science Behind Dieting, Aging, Cancer Prevention, & What Really Extends Your Life

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

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30% off from March 3rd to the 4th. That's shop skinny confidential.com She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire Fantastic and he's a serial entrepreneur a very smart cookie and now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. Dr. Valter promised that I would live till 120 years old after I spoke to him. So Lauren's going to be stuck with me for a little longer. To start, for people that are unfamiliar with you and your work, how would you describe what you do? You know, what I've done for 30 years actually, starting at UCLA here next door, is longevity,

studies on longevity and aging, and particularly the genetic and nutrition that can make you live longer. So, our genes affect the longevity and function, and as nutrition controlling the genes, they control the aging process. Okay, so it all, from your perspective, most of this starts with the food that we eat, and that's what contributes to a large degree how long that we live.

Is that the hypothesis? Well, most of what you can do, right? So the rest you're born with, and for a while, you're not gonna be able to change your genes. But the nutrition, and to a lesser extent, the exercise that is able to control the genes that control aging and now it turns out also the genes that control rejuvenation, right? We're also starting, and we can discuss it, we're also starting to show that you can make organs younger and people potentially younger by activating this reprogramming and stem cell

based rejuvenation effects. Okay. To start, and I know we're going to get very granular here, but high level, if you could wave a wand and prescribe a kind of diet to the majority of the population, what kind of diet is that? Yeah. So, there are three things that are important. the majority of the population, what kind of diet is that? So there are three things that are important. One is what I call the longevity diet,

everyday longevity diets, which is a pescetarian diet for adults, at least. Pescetarian diet for fish plus vegan, right? That seems to be the best. Let's say up to age 65 or 70, after that, probably you need to go more to a Mediterranean diet, that type of lifestyle. The second one is what's called time-restricted eating, and this is how many hours you eat

per day, right? And that should be 12, right? Some people, so 12 eating, 12 fasting, some people do it for longer, but we can discuss why that's not a good idea. So 12 hours, 8 a.m., 8 p.m., that's it, right? Don't eat before, don't eat after. And the third one is what we've been focusing on. It's called fasting mimicking diet. So is it possible that you can do this five days every maybe four months

of a vegan fasting mimicking diet? So a diet that simulates the effects of fasting. So you're eating, but it's as if you're not eating at all. And so now we have a lot of clinical trials that are indicating that this reduces biological age and makes people more functional. We're also using it for cancer. We're using it for diabetes treatment

and autoimmune disease treatment. So it's really also in the clinic for disease treatment, but there's a version that we've been testing on people that don't have diseases to just stay away from from diseases and be more functional. If someone comes to you and they're like my mom was just diagnosed with cancer, what do you typically recommend? Are you asking what kind of cancer or does that not matter? And what fast do you typically tell them to go on? Yes, for cancer patients, we follow thousands with the foundation clinics,

which we have both in Italy and here in Los Angeles. And so it's a very personalized treatment, right? So we first need to talk to the oncologist or learn everything they have done, and then we support the job of the oncologist. So usually we do three or four things, the same that we just described, time receding. For cancer patients, we usually move it to 14 hours

because of data suggesting, for example, breast cancer women that were fasting for 14 hours every day, they were living longer, right? So that's one of the things we adopt. And then the everyday diet, but for cancer patients, it's very different than everybody else because we want to make sure they don't lose muscle mass, they don't become what's called cacactic, sarcopenic, right?

So we don't want them to be frail. We want the immune system. The number one defense against cancer is the immune system. If the immune system becomes weaker, then the patient is less able to do that. So we adopt the everyday longevity diet, the fasting-mimicking diet, and also ketogenic diet. That's something else that we use,

particularly with certain cancers like glioma, brain, very aggressive brain cancers. For that, we also use the ketogenic diet, and we rotate all these different diets. You just make it very difficult for the cancer to adapt. Of course, in combination with the standard of care. You know, and this has been working very well for many, many cancer.

Of course, we have to wait and see what all the clinical trials show. But the initial clinical trials are very positive. And so for example, for triple negative breast cancer metastatic, so women that have this very aggressive breast cancer, which has gone everywhere in the body. The Vernieri group in Milan has just published

that the four year survival rate almost doubled if they were doing the fasting-mimicking diet versus plus chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone. Can you tell us a story about someone that had cancer, maybe talked with you, where you put them on a certain fasting diet and what happened and can you also walk us through what you prescribed to this person to get them to the other side? Yeah, so it's a tricky world, right, because obviously we don't want to give the impression that in a podcast we can treat patients.

But I think, for example, a nice example is five cases that came out of this larger study at the National Cancer Institute in Milan. And for example, there was one case where this was actually a friend of the chief oncologist who had stage four lung cancer and it was just doing immunotherapy and it wasn't working. Then they added the fasting mimicking diet, which comes in a box essentially. So the immunotherapy plus the fasting mimicking diet and this patient went into remission, right? Then they published a paper on five cases, which were all stage four cancers, and all of them went into remission

when you would not expect somebody in that advanced stage to go into remission. And so we've had a lot of cases like this that we followed personally. For example, a judge here in Los Angeles, they had a very aggressive cancer. This is one of the first cases, maybe like 2009, I think. And then of course we followed thousands and thousands,

but she was one of the interesting ones. She had a very aggressive cancer and then she, in those days, long-term fasting, plastic chemotherapy, and she ended up being cancer-free. So it's one of our own stories, but I think I you know, I've rather rely on the clinical trials. Have you ever seen, and I don't know if you can answer this, the fasting work without the chemotherapy or is it usually together?

We've seen it only for blood cancers and in a domain where we think it's very useful to talk to the oncologist and which is let's say leukemias, lymphomas in the watch and wait period so where there is really not a treatment like for example CLL a type of leukemia a very common one we had a number of patients that have stayed for years without chemo because they keep the markers, the leukemia markers below the cutoff range for chemotherapy. I think in that case it's good to talk to the oncologist and these are published. These are in my book, but also some of these cases are published. So these are in my book, but there are also some of these cases that are published. And so I told the oncologist and see

if that in that watch and wait period, you can adopt just a fasting meal. We do both longevity diet and fasting-meating diet. And yeah, so far we've been very successful, at least with a number of patients. Of all the cancer patients that you've seen, are there certain lifestyle factors that you can pinpoint that either contribute more

or actually guard more against cancers? Is there a certain way that someone's living that you can say, if you keep living that way, you have a greater chance of increasing cancer? Or if you keep doing that, you have a greater chance of offsetting? Is there patterns or things that you see? Yeah, certainly there are hundreds of papers on obesity and overweight and the chance of developing cancer

and the chance of the cancer progressing, right? So it's pretty clear. It's not for all cancers, but for lots of cancers. And then, you know, 10 years ago we published this paper, which got a lot of attention on people in the United States that eat high protein diet versus those that eat a low protein diet. And it turned out that those that had a high animal protein diet had a fourfold increased risk of cancer mortality, which is a huge small group, but big enough to have a statistically significant effect. Did they determine what kind of animal protein? Like what kind of quality?

No, this was independent of the type, but in the group, and this comes from the CDC database, called NHANES, and so the Americans that reported eating a high animal protein diet had a much higher overall mortality, but especially a higher mortality from cancer. Now, if there were 75, this is up to age 65, if the question was asked to the 80-year-old, then that didn't work anymore.

So the 80-year-old reporting a very low protein diet did not seem to do very well. In fact, it seemed to do more poorly than those that had a moderate to high protein diet. So I think it's, yeah, so young people are eating too much protein. So there's very little data about it. to high protein diet. So I think it's, yeah, so young people are eating too much protein. So there's very little data about it.

Do you think that it's the animal protein or what the animal protein is injected? Like meaning like, is it the antibiotics and the hormones and the non-grass fed and like, is it like McDonald's meat that's the problem or is it actually the animal protein? Probably more the amino acid content of the animal protein, which is very different, usually an average

from that of the plant protein, right? So I think we, soon enough, we should move away from the idea of proteins and move into amino acid profile. Some sources, even within plants, you can have a five-fold difference of content of certain amino acids from two different plant protein sources, right? And then clearly from plant protein to animal protein,

you can have up to 10-fold difference in amino acid content, right? So you take grams of protein, one comes from legumes and one comes from red meat, you can have a seven, eight fold difference in one particular amino acid. And so now we're gonna publish actually

a number of papers this year on that. And yeah, so amino acids seem to be regulating growth factors which are clearly regulating aging, for example, IGF-1, right? So something called insulin-like growth factor one has been associated with lots of cancer for a long time, and you regulate it with, you make it higher with some of the amino acids that are high in the red meat, but also in chicken and also in fish, right? So there's nothing wrong with animal proteins. It's just the excess of animal protein

that Americans and Europeans now have adopted. That's a problem. In a book that we wrote about children in Italy, we saw that children were eating two to three times in certain age range more protein than every medical association in the world recommended. And so it's really a strange phenomenon because you know it's bad. It's not a 20% increase. It's like a twofold increase and but yeah nobody's doing

anything about it. On that note, European versus American, as someone who looks at the data and obviously a big topic in this country is our food supply and figuring out you know the differences and we spent, told you, we spent some time over there, and when we go to Italy, we eat kind of whatever we want without thinking about it and feel fine. We come here and we have to be really thoughtful. Do you see the data sets presenting different numbers in terms of cancer presentations between European

and American numbers? Europeans are very close to Americans now for almost everything. Italians are a little bit better, but not that much, and they're moving very fast. So if you look at breast cancer incidents in Italy for women, it was very similar to Japan, right? It was very low.

And then in the last 20 years, it's now caught up. The Japanese didn't, right? But the Italians caught up with the Americans. Why do you think that is? Why I think it's because the westernization of the Italian diet, that is very Well, I think it's because the Westernization of the Italian diet. That is very similar, right? McDonald's is everywhere.

And so, yeah, it's just Western lifestyle. It's almost the same in Italy and the U.S. A little bit better, but not that much. So when you look at somewhere like Japan that has lower incidents or lower cases, and then you look at somewhere like the US and then now following Europe, what do you take away from that information?

What are the big takeaways that we could? Well, I think Japan has somewhat been able to keep the weight down and the diet reasonably healthy still like Italians used to have, and Italians have gone to high protein, high animal products. Yeah, so I think the Japanese now eat a lot of fish, but not necessarily a lot of red meat.

So I think that, yeah, the Japanese have generally, they're moving in this direction. Like Okinawa, for example, now is no longer, used to be an island in Japan with record longevity, and now not so much, right? So yeah, they're also moving to the Western lifestyle, but they're doing much better so far, and they're still on top of the world for longevity, right?

So Japan, whereas Italy dropped a lot of positions, I think to number nine now, Japan is still in the top one or two. What do you take from places like Sardinia and Corsica that have that? Why do you think that happens in places like that? Well, I mean, Sardinia, I think these areas of longevity, I think had to do with genetics plus lifestyle, right? So they have it all.

If you go to little towns like Saulo, Villa Grande Strisale, which were made famous for the blue zones, right? So they have it all. Like if you go to little towns like Saulo, Villa Grande Strisaili, which were made famous for the Blue Zones, right? So there is clearly this lifestyle with a lot of walking, very good diet, and plus they seem to have been born with the right genes, right? So you put it all together and that's where you get towns where people on average reach 100 way more

than any other town in the world. So yeah, so I think that we've seen that in Calabria, we see it in Sicily, but we see it in a lot of places, probably everywhere in the world. So I think it's just that everything combined. If you were to describe a fasting mimicking diet to someone who has no idea what that means in the most digestible, like kindergarten way. How would you describe it? I would describe it as probably best to just get the one that is available and you have to essentially because otherwise you will have to,

you know, have a professional following you the whole way. But it's a 800 to 1,100 kilocalorie per day diet. It lasts five days, is vegan, is low protein, low sugar, and high fat. I have done Prolon, is that? Yeah, I cannot talk about products, but I mean, because I'm the founder of the company. So, yeah, I just stay away from that. So you can buy the fasting mimicking diet through you that you...

Not through me. Oh, not through you. Okay. So you... But there's a company that sells it. And yeah, so I just have to stay away from any advertisement type of thing. If you were to do a fasting mimicking diet yourself, which I'm sure you've done, are you curating it for yourself or are you using a company?

No, no. The fasting-mimicking diet, the recommendation for patients and non-patients is to do what's been tested clinically, which comes in a box. And of course, you cannot... Well, now for diabetes, there's a program, and you can actually also get in a program for diabetes, a special fasting-making diet. Soon enough there's going to be one for auto-immunities and there's one for people that don't have any disease and they just want to, you know, and so for example, with this year we published a paper where we did three cycles of the FMD, and we showed that biological age was reduced

by two and a half years. So people became an average based on these markers that they were described by Morgan Levine at Yale, people became an average two and a half years younger. So people can do it also just to be more functional. But yeah, so these are different versions of the FMD and they're all available commercially. I'm really interested to talk to you about this next subject because I feel like you'll

have a different take. We've talked about this on the show a couple of times. GLP-1s, what is your thought on it? Yes, so I just wrote an article for the Italian Corriere della Sera on this, actually two articles. And my point was that GLP-1 should be there if everything else failed with a professional that knows what they're doing. Now fails because you were on your own and somebody was overweight or diabetic and nobody really helped you and say, well, okay, good luck, go and change your diet and run.

That's the system we have now. It's just GLP-1 or nothing, right? So I think that we should have that team that follows you, like we do in the foundation clinic, you know, it's a non-profit. And so we can bring most people back. So in the trials now, we show that with the fast-moving weekend diet,

we can reduce drug use in about 70% of the patients. So that would be the idea. Even if you are on a drug, including GLP-1, you should try to go back to full health so you don't need any drugs. Now if that fails, and only after that fails, with the team, the professional team that follows you, and I'm not talking about a team very expensive, I'm talking about a very inexpensive team, right? So something that could cost'm talking about very inexpensive team, right? So something that could cost you literally $200 a year,

right, to be followed by the right people. So with a very small investment, now you have a chance to go back to the weight that you always wanted and the health that you used to have when you were 20 years old. And, but if that fails, some people do need GLP-1 agonist and, you know, and it may be psychological, it might be genetic, it might be epigenetic, right?

So people get modifications. So for example, we work with these mice, it's called DBDB mice, right? And they have a mutation in the leptin receptor. Technically it doesn't matter. The point is that they're doomed to become obese, right? There's almost nothing they can do. So yeah, if you're born like that, it's very hard, right?

It's very hard, but that's a very small percentage of the population. Everybody else don't believe any of these stories that you hear, your weight is fixed. We've taken so many people back to their normal weight. Takes about two years though. It doesn't take two weeks. When someone works with you and you're not using a GLP-1

and they wanna get back to their weight that they were two years ago, what are the protocols that you put in place? What are the first things you have them start doing? Yeah, so we work with them psychologically first on what can you sustain, right? So if somebody says, I have to have five steaks a week, and my life is going to be miserable, if you remove this, then we say, okay, keep the five steaks, right?

So we'll start with that, right? And then we try to figure out how close to the everyday longevity diet can you get. And by the way, the longevity diet is not a calorie restricted diet. It's actually normal calorie, if not higher calories. So you get to eat more, but it may be normal calories, but now you're starting to get benefits weight-loss-wise and fat-loss-wise. But some people, for example, we always talk about a case of a doctor, Italian doctor. We put him on this longevity diet for nine months, nothing happens.

Yes, diabetes, hypertension, he's overweight, nothing happens. And then we start with the three cycles of the fasting-medicine diet in one year, three in one year, and to the next year. So in one and a half years he does five cycles and now you see his insulin resistance dropping, his weight dropping, and he's now off ozampic. He was on ozampic, he was on metformin. He did it all. Nothing worked. And now he went back to normal weight and no drugs, right? So he's completely healthy.

He's been on like this for four or five years now. And I like that because he's a doctor. But you said it took nine months, nothing, and then? Nine months of the diet, almost nothing. He lost like two pounds. And the insulin resistance was high. His blood pressure stayed high, nothing changed.

So this is the frustration of a lot of people because we changed his diet, right? And he was fine. He didn't mind to change the diet. So we made it this very strict pescetarian diet, nothing changed. Then we had the five cycles of FMD, fasting and, making diet in one and a half years, and now is that work. Right? And it's only five days.

Five days. Yeah, five days by five. So 25 days in one and a half years that he had to dedicate. But see, because the mechanism of insulin resistance and fat accumulation needs to be unlocked. This is why a lot of people say, if you used to wait so much, you're gonna stay there. That's true unless you unlock that, right? Once you unlock it, then you're ready

to go into a fat burning mode. And this, of course, comes from our history, right? We used to eat a lot and to survive the winters or the period where there was no food. Right? So obesity is part of our history and it's part of our protection to stay alive. Right? So if you don't become obese 10,000 years ago, you're probably not going to make it. So yeah.

So that's the understanding that we need to treat people. I gained 60 pounds with both my babies. And would this be something that you, if I had met you, would you have said to help me get the weight off postpartum, is there a certain amount of time you should wait? Can you do it three months in? Can you be breastfeeding?

What are all the protocol for that? Well, first of all, and we discussed this in my book on children, you need to start first, earlier, right? You need to start with the mother and make sure that you help the mother not gain, because it's very easy for women to say, I need to eat so much because of the baby. But that's not true.

And so the professional should help you gain only so much weight, which is maybe like 15 pounds or something like that. I gained 15 pounds the first day I found out I was pregnant. That's what's gonna go viral on TikTok. And it's not gonna be me getting in trouble over once. Yeah, yeah. So, but yeah, so there is a set weight gain, right? And the professional, like people in my foundation,

the dieticians can help the woman Just get there and then of course you want to as soon as the baby is born then you want to start acting You know probably leave some time after that before the fasting making diet But it'll be like a month or two, you know And then you can start and you can't do the fasting mimicking diet pregnant I'm assuming no, but to unpack that a little little bit, what you're saying is there's maybe a myth or a lack of understanding that exists where it's during that time you need to maybe eat more than you actually do.

And it's... Careful. I'm being very careful. No, but it's a natural... It's a natural easing. When I was pregnant, this guy tried to get in the way of me ordering Krispy Kremes at 11 PM at night.

And it was, I was like, literally, move. He's like, ordering Krispy Kremes at 11 p.m. at night, and it was I was like literally Move he's like you really think you need donuts at 11 p.m. I was there was nothing stopping me It was like a Pac-Man. No, I understand and that's why we were saying like I was saying about the stakes before right some people say There's nothing stopping me from eating five steaks a week and that's okay, right? If that's something that you cannot do without, fine, you need to work with it. And that's what the dieticians at the foundation are specializing.

So they will say, okay, have that, but then let's work on maybe the bread or the pasta or the rice or, you know, let's try to counterbalance that with something else. Or the 4,000 calorie smoothies. But I guess my question was, when you are pregnant, how much do you actually, how much do you actually need to increase your food intake if at all, or is it just, you can still follow a normal diet and the baby and the

mom are still going to be as healthy? It's not even more of like a food intake, it's more of like, what is actually a healthy outcome for somebody that's trying to create a baby? Yeah, no, I'm not an expert in a way, but it's in my book, you know, but there's a standard. This is every doctor, every pediatrician in the United States is gonna have that table and it'll say, you only need to gain this much. That's it, right?

But I understand it's not easy, right? And then most women gain a lot more than that. But I think it's important for people that listen that maybe in that situation to know, get a pediatrician or a dietician that knows the exact, and they can follow you and they can tell you exactly if you're you know even a pound above where you should be, right? And every week of the pregnancy. So you know I don't remember the numbers now but you know those are tables that are well established and, and, and people should follow that.

But yeah, if you, if you don't make it and you gain a lot more, okay. But now you can go to work after, right? And, and yes, I think the great majority of people, probably not all they gained a lot of weight, whether they were pregnant or for any other reason, we can slowly bring them back without drugs. In some cases, if they're already taking drugs, then our idea as tested in the clinical trials is let's try to get them off the drugs.

In the trials so far, they remove in 50 to 70 percent of the patients, we were able to reduce drug use or right? Or go to zero drug use, like I just described for that physician in Italy. This is really weird, and I don't know if you know anything about this, but what I remember from being pregnant is, you get pregnant and like a switch turns on where you're starving.

Like first thing you wake up, I'm not ever starving when I wake up, but when I was pregnant, you're starving. Like, first thing you wake up, I'm not ever starving when I wake up, but when I was pregnant you're starving when you wake up and then whenever you need to eat you get starving. And the problem is, is most people would say, well maybe you need more protein or maybe you know you're not eating right, but you have adversion. So all of a sudden you have adversion to all these foods that you, that you used to love. So all of a sudden you have adversion to all these foods that you used to love. So I'll give you like an example.

I love eggs, but when I got pregnant, it grossed me out. So I couldn't eat eggs. So you have all these adversions and you can only eat certain things. So then you end up eating a bagel, but what does that do? It crashes the insulin. So then you're hungry again. So you're kind of in this weird spot

where nothing sounds good and everything's gross, but you're starving. So you end up eating shit food. That was my experience. Yeah, no, and obviously so there are pediatricians and dieticians, especially dieticians that are specialized in this, right? And that's you want to work around it. Say, okay, you don't want to eat this, you have aversion to this, this, and this. Try this, but you still need to get the nourishment. You still get the proteins, need the proteins, but you don't want to have excess proteins. And so, yeah, it's a job, right?

It's a job. And so, in your case, like in any case, what should happen, which is crazy that it doesn't happen, is that the government and the insurances have that dietitian follow you for so many hours a year. There should be a lot of hours, especially in those nine months. This is not reimbursed. Most insurances and even government programs

don't reimburse this, and this is why most women, you know, they don't have that. They don't have the person that you can call and say, okay, I have aversion to this, this, and this. What shall I do? Like the question you just asked. There is nothing like that. And it's crazy, right?

So I think that that's also, you know, with your podcast, something that you need to say, this should be part of the healthcare system. Next time you want the Krispy Kremes, I'll show up with a box of kiwis. I do like kiwis. I mean, I- You like kiwis. Yeah, okay. Whatever you want. Youpy Kremes, I'll show up with a box of kiwis. I do like kiwis. I mean, I... You like kiwis?

Yeah, okay. Whatever you want. You're going to kill me. You keep mentioning teams to work with, and you mention there's a team that's $200 to work with. Is this your team or is it a different team? Our audience is going to ask what team? Well, the Create Kews Foundation. It's a nonprofit foundation.

We have clinics in Italy and clinics in the United States. Some people can contact the CreaQ's foundation and say, I wanna enter a program. And then, it's based on income, somebody cannot afford it. They can work with them. But the point is, allow people to enter a program where you can be followed long term

versus just going to the hospital and you know, and getting 15 minutes of a physician and then going home and continuing to do the mistakes that you always made. So we could just link out this create Cures Foundation and they can find the information. Yeah, Cures Foundation, they can book an appointment. You can also do it, you know, online and then, yeah,

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Yeah, with alcohol, you see that it seems to be fairly neutral overall, for lifespan and there's some. Oh, I love Italians. Move me to Italy. I'm in the wrong country. This is every American doctor would say, you can't do this, you can't do this.

I'm going to Italy. Yeah, this is based on epidemiological data, very extensive, right? So if you look at how long you live, people that drink a little bit, like say three, four drinks a week or less, they live as long as anybody else, right? Now there is some data that suggests that people may have less cardiovascular disease. That's pretty weak. So the alcohol doesn't really protect you that much from cardiovascular disease. But yeah, the alcohol, truly, it is a risk factor for certain cancers and a little bit

higher breast cancer and a few others, but very small effects. So what we recommend is always, if you have talked to your doctor and if you have other risk factors for that particular cancer for which alcohol is already a risk, don't combine two risks. If you have a lot of breast cancer in the family, yeah, you may want to stay away from alcohol. There is only four or five cancers for which there is a consistent association of alcohol consumption and that particular cancer.

I will look at those and then determine, is this type of cancer something that was in my family, a lot of people in my family died of? And that's the case, yeah, stay away. But other than that, say up to four drinks a week, very little evidence that it's going to do anything to your health span. What about sleep in relation to cancer? Do you see people that are sleep deprived spike more in terms of, um, having cancer or do you see it not affect as much as?

I'm not very familiar with, I mean, general sleep is very, very important for longevity. And so for, you know, the number one risk factor for cancer is and so for, you know, the number one risk factor for cancer is, contrary to popular belief, is aging, right? So by far, right? So even smoking disappears compared to 30 years of age. So the more you can reduce your biological age, the least chances you will have to get cancer. So sleep is at the center of biological age is very important. So you need to find a way to sleep.

So yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that we preach is, stay away from food three hours before you go to sleep. Oh, that's my problem. So if you can stay away, if you can't, you don't wanna fast for five days, you would say stay away from food for can't, you don't want to fast for five days. You would say stay away from food for three hours before you close your eyes.

Well, I would say do eat for 12 hours and three hours before you go to sleep. If you want to have the simplest of all. Wait, my brain doesn't think like this. So if I wake up at seven. So let's say 8 a.m. and let's say 8 a.m. You can eat between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. And then don't go to sleep until 11.

If you wanna maintain that. If you say, no, I have to go to sleep at 10, then you have to do 7 a.m. 7 p.m. Okay, so I like to go to bed at nine. So when is that being said? Yeah, okay, then you have to do 6 a.m. I mean, you can start at 7 a.m. and by 6 p.m. Okay, you know what?

My husband after this is gonna be so annoying. Well, it's not good for you. He's gonna be like, oh, why are you eating that acai bowl in bed? He's gonna be yelling at me. Well, it's not good for you. He's gonna be like, oh, why are you eating that acai bowl in bed? He's gonna be yelling at me. He hates it. No, this is maybe, sometimes people think I'm strange. Like, last night we went to dinner, but I knew we had a late day yesterday.

And then I knew I was gonna have to go to bed, like, kind of right when dinner was ending. And I just didn't eat the dinner. And it's not that I just, I don't feel good personally when I go to sleep, when I just ate. I feel like I get bad sleep. He's a fourth Japanese.

Well, yeah, but that would be, I don't know how that matters. I've seen the way that your mom is and your grandma with food. It's different. It's different than Americans. I'm telling you, I've watched. They'll be the best cake you've ever had in your entire life you've never had a better cake he will eat eat it like I'll cut him a piece and then I'll look down and he'll get up and on the plate is like four bites left me if it's the best cake

I'm eating the whole thing to say to be satiated yeah he eats till he's yeah it's very interesting you're disciplined right there so it's good. I mean, you could do it. Most people cannot, but... I don't even think it's discipline as much as like... Like last night I just knew, like I was a little bit hungry, but I knew I was going to just not feel great if I... I don't like eating that close and then running upstairs and going to sleep.

I just feel like it ruins everything. But I was going to ask you, is it better in some scenarios to cut yourself off like that and then get the better sleep, or is it more important to actually eat the meal? I don't think there is anything wrong with once in a while, if you gotta eat at midnight, eat at midnight, that's okay. I mean, the brain, what you don't want is to have this frequently.

I mean, I think it's good to keep very regular times, like the circadian rhythms, right? So you wanna stick with the regular plan and the brain likes that. But then if once in a while you violate, it's okay. I mean, you know. You just wanna be consistent. Yeah, I mean, you know, you don't wanna violate

every other day or three times a week, right? Because then you lose the benefits. But, and I think it's perfectly three times a week, right? Because then you lose the benefits. But, and I think it's perfectly fine to not eat, right? And people are obsessed with this idea. I'm always interested, entertained by, when I see some movies and the people haven't eaten for like two days and they think they're gonna starve to death, right?

It takes two months, right? Two months to starve to death. But it's funny, right, because in the popular understanding of things, people think after two or three days they just watched this movie about this rugby team that died in the Andes Mountains of South America. I don't know if you're familiar with that movie, right? And like on day two or three they're stuck in the mountains and the plane crashed, right? They start saying, oh, we're going to starve to death. And they're like two months away,

and they were found then after 45 days. I forget what it was. But yeah, so skipping a dinner, my point is... Not the end of the world. No, it's nothing. It's not the end of the world. It's good for you, right? It's good for you.

As long as you don't do it so often, they become malnourished. Well, I guess in this country in particular, the portions are so massive and there's this pressure. It's like, you got to finish your plate. I mean, a lot of people, you've heard like, finish your plate, like don't go. And I don't know, I always just found that to be strange

because I feel like you eat until you're satiated. And then if you're not hungry, like it's more of a portion thing than as a... But this is an Okinawa practice, right? There's Okinawa, this is part of their rules, right? You live a little bit on the plate, right? So, this is... Yeah, so somehow you got that. It's great, right? It's great.

And most people don't, right? Most people don't, you know? So, I would probably not leave anything. This is why, for example, Monday to Friday, I don't eat lunch, right? Because if I eat lunch, then I gain weight, you know, like everybody else. So, okay, we've talked about intermittent fasting on this show before, and we've had all sorts

of different people come on and talk about these different windows. You mentioned right before we started that 16-hour windows may not... Tell me if I'm wrong. Please correct me. 16-hour windows may not, tell me if I'm wrong, please correct me, 16-hour windows may not be great for many people. Can you? Right, for most people. Yeah, so the problem with the 16 hours is that in most cases they involve skipping breakfast, right? And so

you get more benefits than the 12 hours because of course you're only eating for eight hours a day. And so a lot of people say, no, do 16 hours because look at me, look at the results that I got. But our specialization is making you live to 110 or 100, let's say, right? So we say, yeah, short term, it'll be great for you. Long term is associated with increased overall mortality,

increased cardiovascular mortality, and lots of other problems. So what does it mean? That probably it gives you benefits, and then problems at the same time. You just don't see the problems until much later. Now, and this is the breakfast keepers. We have very little data on the dinner skippers, right?

But for breakfast, this has been known for 30 years as meta, it was called meta-analysis, the studies of all studies, very clear, right? Over and over and over in every country that is looked at. So a breakfast keeper that do 16 hours of fasting, they live shorter, right? Now people argue, well, because the breakfast keepers also have other bad behaviors, and that's why they live shorted. Yes, but my question to those that they argue like this is why doesn't, if 16 hours is so beneficial,

then why doesn't it at least make you go back to a normalized plan? Why does it actually shorten it, right? This is not good when in epidemiology you see something associated with worse, right? Then probably forget that, right? Don't do that, right? So why do they think it shortened it?

Well, one reason, last year several papers were published and they took people to the hospital and gave them the food. They gave them exactly the same food. And so they fed them starting at 8 a.m. or the same food, but started at 12. And the people that started at 12, they had a slower metabolism, a lower energy expenditure, and more hunger, right?

So just by, and they fed them the food, so they knew it was exactly the same food. So yeah, that could be part of it, but it could be worse, right? It could be worse. We know that, for example, cholesterol increases during fasting, and then it comes back down. So 16 hours could be affecting some bad risk factors that keep... So every day, let's say you have a peak of cholesterol, I mean, we don't know. Maybe it has nothing to do with that, but those are some of the

things that I think need to be investigated. Is it possible that these peaks of cholesterol every day are now eventually gonna increase your cardiovascular risk? But short term, do you like to implement a fast like that for people that want to do a reset or want to manage weight a little more effectively? Do you implement it at all or do you tell people to just shy away

from the 16 hour fast? No, we tell people to stay away. We tell people that 12 hours is great. It's going to take you longer, but it's something you can keep for the rest of your life. Once you get there, you'll feel this is nothing. Like I do it and I don't feel like, oh, if I could eat for another two hours,

that would change my life. So to me, it's completely irrelevant. But you miss lunch five days a week, right? Within that. Yeah, then I had to, because I eat a days a week, right? Within that. Yeah. Then I had to, because I eat a lot at night, right? And I have a good breakfast and then I eat a lot at night. And to me, there was the compromise.

I like to eat and I'm Italian and especially when I'm in Italy, it's impossible. Dinners are all the time. And yeah, so I had to go move to Monday to Friday, no lunch. And you know, we use this with a lot of patients that come to the clinic. And you suffer for the first couple months because your brain is telling you for two months or so, at least I suffer for a couple months. A lot of patients feel the same way because your brain is telling you where's lunch, right? But then after two months, it's just like the breakfast keepers.

Like most breakfast keepers say, it's really effortless to me. I don't feel like I have to eat breakfast, but it happens to be effortless, but causing problems. The lunch keeping, there's no evidence. But for the average person then say, if they could stop eating from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and then eat in the window from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.,

go to sleep at 10 p.m., that would be like a healthy way to diet. That would be the healthiest way. The healthiest way. And then also if you added no lunch five days a week, that's taking it up a level. And then what I'm hearing, and tell me if I'm wrong, you would also add a fasting mimicking diet

at five times a year? No, no, no, not five times. Not five times. Two to three times, I say in the 20 to 40 years of age, I would say two to three times a year, right? So unless you need them more, right? So somebody gained a lot of pounds because they were pregnant or for whatever reason, then in the clinical trials, we've done once a month until phase B, right? So, and I think it's important for patients because, for people, let's not call them patients, for people because you do the five days and then you can go back to

your whatever it is that you do, right? And no changes in lifestyle other than the five days. So yeah, for people that have a bigger problem, we can start, we can do, we usually do once a month, and then we move them to, you know, maybe three times a year anyways, or four or five times a year, starting a year or two, right? So yeah, if you're obese and you have diabetes, you're gonna need to put more effort initially.

So 12 months consecutively, five days FMD. But this is without the order of things, right? So the doctor that I was telling you about, it was implementing all of it, longevity diet, the 12 hours and the fasting-making diet, and only did five in one and a half years, right? Even though he had diabetes and he was obese. So-

How much did he lose? He lose 30 pounds. So he lost 30. It almost sounds like to me, and I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but it has the similar effects that Ozempic has, but in a natural way and it balances your insulin levels. Yeah. So first of all, I don't want to sound like a commercial, you know, or an infomercial, but so we take this university work, we take it very seriously, you know, and we've let other universities do it independently of me

and so that's exactly right, right? So no lean body mass loss if it's not combined with drugs. The only time we see muscle loss or bone density loss is when we combine the FMD with drugs. If we do it in three or four trials now, no drugs, no muscle loss. Osempic, et cetera, a lot of muscle loss. Osempic, a lot of, GLP-1 agonists. You know, osempic, I'm not familiar

with the osempic-specific literature. But I say, GLP-1 agonists, you know, Ozempic. I'm not familiar with the Ozempic-specific literature. But I say, GLP-1 agonists overall, muscle loss, bone density loss, and now the new study in JAMA ophthalmology, a big increase in ischemia, optic nerve ischemia, which is just, I think, part of the side effects. I think that why drugs are overestimated and overvalued is because they're easy to do, right?

But then I think we're not thinking the fact that they're interfering with normal metabolic programs, right? we're not thinking the fact that they're interfering with normal metabolic programs. So now you're GLP-1, you're forcing this activation of this hormone, but the body is really in another modality. And so that's when side effects happen, when you either interfere with something or force something that is not normally there, we talk coordinated with the general response. So the fascinating thing in that is basically going back to what we've always done and unlocking in a natural way that insulin resistant, that fat storage modality.

And of course, 10,000 years ago, you wouldn't want to lose muscle while you switch back to a fat consumption modality. And sure enough, you don't lose muscle. And why don't you lose muscle? Because we see stem cells being activated, including muscle stem cells, and we see cells being reprogrammed, right? So the evolution has probably already set a method to make sure you don't lose muscle mass,

or if you do, you lose it temporarily, and as soon as you refeed, you regain the muscle mass. And that's exactly what we see in the trial. I love Netflix. Who doesn't love Netflix? Netflix, Little Popcorn, maybe some Sour Gummies. I'm good. There is a new show.

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muscle mass? Or do you not see that data at all? Meaning as the people that present with cancer, do you see any indication that muscle impacts cancers in the body or no? I think that, I don't know, I haven't seen data on that, and people would normally not look for muscle and cancer. But for sure, if you get into a state of frailty, that's a very bad sign for an oncologist, right? So if patient loses muscle mass, usually that patient is getting in trouble, right? It means that the system is failing,

and the patient is becoming frail. And with the muscle, I think, is the immune system, as I was saying earlier, right? So yeah, so you don't want, this is why in our trials, in cancer trials, so we published one with women with breast cancer, and we had an exercise regimen, muscle. And the women actually gained muscle mass

during the one year of therapy. So, yeah, so it's very important to keep the muscle, but it's very important to keep the proteins as low as possible and keep the muscle. So, in that trial, we got actually angry with some of the physicians that were overfeeding the patients between fasting, meal, and diet cycles. And this is probably why the women gained muscle mass. We did not want that. We wanted them to keep a normal muscle mass and then fight the cancer. But that's a special situation because you asked me about cancer. So ideal, you keep the diet in a way that keeps these growth factors, insulin, glucose,

is low but not too low. And then you have muscle exercise so that the women or men can keep a good muscle mass. Okay, and then the follow-up, the second thing, which we haven't talked about, are there, when you run the blood work, are there any supplements or vitamins that you suggest people take or levels that they manage in order to stave off cancer or to combat it

once it's there? I mean, different people, there's lots of studies looking at the US population and most people are missing something, right? So the best thing you could do is just make sure that you're not missing B12 or D or, you know, yeah. So, so I would say, you know, a multivitamin every couple of days, omega-3, those seem to be the ones that people are missing the most, one of the many vitamins. And so if you have a multivitamin every other day and omega-3 fish oil every other day, that's pretty

good already. That's probably going to catch the great majority of the deficiency. It doesn't seem really to be anything that is confirmed to prevent cancer. Yeah, so the people that say, you have a lot of vitamin C, they don't see, most studies will suggest that this minimal effect on cancer.

And that's the one that has been mostly talked about for cancer, right, vitamin C. So, but yeah, having a high vitamin C intake or supplements that doesn't really prevent cancer. Now, you know, there could be some things that do, but none that after 30 years of people looking, I haven't seen a single one. Before you go, you have to tell us

what you think made your book so incredibly successful. The Longevity Diet was an international bestseller. It translated into over 25 languages sold in more than 30 countries around the globe. And you were also voted one of the 50 most influential people in Healthcare by Time Magazine. That book obviously struck a nerve with a lot of people. What do you think about that book when you're reflecting on it was so impactful?

I think it was probably the first book that didn't just say, I'm going to use the same epidemiology, the studies of population to make decisions. That's what a lot of what you hear. It was 30 years of work with the centenarians, the mice, the people, the clinical trials. And so I think people appreciated that all of that being put together. Of course, it would be almost impossible for anybody to be able to put it all together. And so because it was my job, I think I was able to, and I work with some of the best people like Roy Walford here at UCLA and, you know, some of the best people like Roy Walford here at UCLA

and you know some of the best scientists in the world in this domain, you know, collaborated, let's say, with the Harvard School of Public Health and there's great great work coming out of that school. Yeah, so I think, yeah, putting it together for people in a way that it was fairly straightforward for them. But also it was, I think they got the message that this is probably not going to be proven wrong in two years. It's not a fad that okay, he's got a new idea, a new diet. It was more, here's what, 30 years of work by me and many laboratories and many people that we collaborated with and also those that we didn't collaborate with. Let me put it all in a

book and give it to you in a way that tell you a story first of all. I think the storytelling was also important. I didn't make it about a manual. It was more like, hey, I got to Chicago from Italy. My relatives had diabetes and I never seen diabetes in my they came from Italy. They were all from Italy and a lot of them had diabetes and cardiovascular disease and none of my a lot of them had diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and none of my family members in Italy had diabetes. So it was the same genetics, but all of a sudden, yeah, so that's a story telling that I think for people

was also important to see that, or me being a biochemistry, having a degree in biochemistry and still having a terrible diet until I went to Walford, I said, you have a biochemistry degree, shouldn't you have a good diet? No, I didn't. I had a terrible diet when I first got to Los Angeles and I had high cholesterol, high blood pressure as a 25-year-old. I mean, I was starting to get there.

So yeah, those are the things that I think that made it successful. Where can everyone find your new book? Where can they ask you questions? Fasting Cancer is the title, comes out February 2nd. Yeah, so Instagram, Professor Walter Longo, Instagram, Facebook, and then the Create Cures Foundation, and please contact them, and the book is by Every Random house. So yeah. Thank you for

coming on. I am going to talk to you about trying my fasting mimicking diet twice a year. Okay. Thank you.