Some years ago, this little town became famous for having five centenarians and made it to the cover
of National Geographic having five centenarians out
of a couple of thousand people. Molochio is a blue zone. These are regions of the world
where people live much longer and healthier than the average. The oldest person recorded
here was Salvatore Caruso. He's what you'd call a super centenarian, having made it to 110. He passed away in 2015, but not before assisting those
in search of eternal youth. I think Salvatore has been
an inspiration, right, to say well, I followed this
person for the last 50 years of his life or so. And he made it to 110 healthy. So I've seen 110 healthy. I've seen it with him, but
it's not gonna be doable for the the entire world population. It's gonna be doable, I think, for the people that listen and
follow all the right moves. Valter Longo has spent
the past two decades identifying the optimum foods and fasting practices for
living healthier and longer. Now he's preparing for his
largest human study to date here in a remote Italian
town, famous for centenarians. This clinical trial that was just funded by the European Community
is gonna take 500 people and it's gonna split them into two. And it's gonna allow half of them to sort of have the the bad modern habits. Now, they are very different from those of the centenarians. So we take half of them
and we let them be, have this Western-like diet
and we take the other half and we bring them back
to the longevity diet. Longo created the longevity diet by combining scientific
research and lab work with the study of
centenarians around the world. Longo will also be testing his Fasting Mimicking Diet which offers the benefits
of prolonged fasting without having to actually fast. Fasting has been done for
thousands of years, of course, but we now have to move
away again from these ideas, words like eating or fasting, they both mean very little and move into exactly what
do we eat and how do we fast? So it shouldn't be about
now we're gonna turn everybody into a biohacker
and use technology and distort everything. Instead we should learn from the past and unite that with the science. I plan to discuss with you what I believe to be the most profoundly transformational concept and strategy as it pertains
to health and aging. So is this your first meal of the day? It's now almost six o'clock It will be. Yeah. Because? Well, because it's clear
based on thousands of years of human existence that eating less is... If it's not starvation, or
malnutrition, it's good for you. Because why? Yesterday I started this thing
called intermittent fasting Which is everybody's doing it. Fasting is such an interesting part of the longevity conversation. We've looked at cultures where
fasting is a practice, right? Where there's ritual fasting. And asked a question of, well, why are these people living so long? So we know that fasting does kick off certain biological processes that seem to also have a
connection to longevity. What we don't know at this point is how long do you have to fast? Does it work for everyone? Or there are just certain people of certain genetics for whom that works? So there's still a lot of questions, but at this point it
definitely does appear that restricting what you
eat might have some impact on how long you live
and how healthy you are. Intermittent fasting,
time-restricted feeding, and calorie restriction are
just some of the popular methods being adopted. And while cutting down on meals has long been viewed
as a weight loss hack, it's increasingly being practiced as a measure to delay the aging process and stave off chronic
diseases that accompany it. Studies have shown it has the potential to protect against a range
of age related diseases, diabetes, heart disease and
cognitive decline to name a few. But one hurdle remains, very few people want to do it. Have you done it yourself? I've done it myself, yes. I've fasted for four days, several times. And to me, it was very tough. Yeah. Longo began his research in the early '90s identifying the genes
associated with aging and how nutrients affect them. Longo tested different fasting methods and their effect on longevity in organisms ranging from yeast to mice, to humans. He found that cycles of
fasting and re-feeding cause multi-system regeneration, enhanced cognitive performance, and the potential to
prevent and treat disease. It's hard to imagine something that will do more to
a person than fasting. If you look at gene expression. So if you look at how the
genes are activated or not. One of the key mechanisms at play is a process known as autophagy which literally means self-eating. During autophagy cells
destroy viruses and bacteria and get rid of damaged structures in order to regenerate
newer, healthier cells. Damaged cells can speed up aging and lead to cancer if
they're not destroyed. So this process is vital
to health and lifespan. The best known way to
activate autophagy in humans is fasting. We started with water only fasting and we started with a cancer
trial using water only fasting. And we thought, of course,
somebody has cancer. They're gonna be motivated to do this and they're not gonna have
a problem with five days of water only fasting, but we were wrong. So it was the U.S.
government that eventually... and the National Cancer Institute and eventually the National
Institute on Ageing that funded research for
the Fasting Mimicking Diet. Longo created the Fasting Mimicking Diet or FMD, a meal plan that's formulated to
stimulate a fasting state while providing nutrients and calories through small amounts of food. The Fasting Mimicking Diet is a high fat, low protein,
low sugar, low calorie diet and starts with a 1100
kilocalories on day one and it drops to about 800 kilocalories on day two, three, four, five, usually between 70% to 90% compliance. So most people don't have a
problem doing this once a month or so for a number of cycles. The FMDs calorie restriction mimics the body's physiological response to traditional fasting methods. But it's not as simple as
just restricting calories. Longo and his team spent years perfecting nutrient combinations that can be consumed without triggering the
body's food sensing pathways. You place a system on a
Fasting Mimicking Diet and the system starts to shrink. And what we are seeing is
that the damaged components are being removed first. And then we thought, well, if
this Fasting Mimicking Diet preferentially kills damaged components, rebellious components, is it possible that it'll
go after the cancer cells? The autoimmune cells? The
insulin resistant cells? For the past 10 years
we've been focusing on that and finding that they do. While Longo and his team
see promising results among patients suffering
from a variety of diseases. He stresses the FMD is not
an alternative to drugs. Instead it works most effectively
in combination with them. And I think that the doctor of the future is gonna need to know
lot more about these. And especially now that
in the United States, healthcare costs are approaching
about 20% of the GDP, so this is not sustainable. And food obviously is the best way to go. Having gone through 30 clinical trials, the FMD is in the process
of getting FDA approval. For cancer now we have
just gone to the FDA and filed what's called an IND. So to make food into a drug, right? So how can food be now
used for cancer patients? Longo has developed a
meal delivery service called Prolon, which people
can buy the meals for the FMD. And he recommends speaking
to a medical professional before starting. He says he donates all his profits from Prolon to research. Well, first of all, I think Valter is wrong, but he and I have always disagreed on
pretty much everything. David Sinclair is another heavyweight in the field of longevity
and represents the conflict that still exists within
this scientific community. While the pair agree on
the biological mechanisms at play during a fasting state, they disagree on which are most important and the best way to activate them. If there's one thing I
would recommend in midlife to do that could extend
your lifespan, it's fasting. We find, my colleagues and I find that it's not so much how much
you eat and what you eat it's when you eat. And so don't always be fed. Don't always give into those hunger pains. I drink tea and I actually don't eat probably till late lunch
or dinner every day as a way to get those body
defenses going everyday. On an average day,
Sinclair fast for 22 hours, eating just one large meal. He encourages long daily fasts to instigate a biological
process called hormesis. Hormesis is the adaptive
response of cells and organisms when the body is put
under moderate stress. Short bursts of stress, such as fasting stimulate the body's mitochondria, which convert food and oxygen
into energy for cells to use. The body's mitochondria
play a crucial role in supporting major organs, but its functionality decreases with age. Hormesis has been found to improve the mitochondrial performance, therefore improving life and health span. These processes that we're studying. These basically enhancing
our own innate defenses against disease, they exist within us and we don't need
medicines to turn them on. We can skip a meal. We can become exhausted from running. We can lift weights. We can eat the right
foods, focus on plants, this kind of stuff. And we actually know just like epidemiologists have figured out that these are the things you can do to enhance those defenses. While Longo acknowledges
the role of hormesis, he suggests there may be
downsides to this kind of fasting. For example, now we know that if you
fast every day for 16 hours and that involves skipping breakfast, that can actually be negative
for you in the long run. And there is association
will reduced lifespan. We also know that if you fast for too long your metabolism could slow down, which may make it difficult for you to maintain a lower weight. While experts in the field may disagree on specifics,
they're all agreed on one thing, disinformation around
fasting is a major concern. It's unfortunate. 99% of what's out there
is complete rubbish. And so what I'm trying to do as a service is to speak to the public and say, there is this group of scientists who are publishing the
world's top journals that really are making
progress in this area. And while we don't have
anything to prescribe just yet it is coming soon. And certainly there are things
you can do in your lifestyle, with your lifestyle that'll get you ready for when those come. Longo hopes his upcoming trial can move the conversation along. The 18-month study in Molochio
will split 501 participants aged 30 to 65 into three groups. One will be a control group,
so keep their usual diet. One keeps their diet and
has three cycles of FMD. The final will be following
the daily longevity diet. The longevity diet is more a lifestyle. So it's an everyday diet,
and this is mainly vegan but not only vegan because you find also the
fish, especially small fishes. So avoiding the accumulation
of mercury, for example, which is neurotoxic. And there are also some fasting periods, for example the overnight
fasting, which is around 12 hours. And this is very important
to improve metabolism and to connect with the circadian rhythm. All participants will be followed by
nutritionists like Cervigni, who will monitor and
review their biomarkers. In order to define the best diet, it is important to put
together a lot of information both from scientific field,
but also from the population. So in this way, you can
test the information that come from science in the feasibility. So which of the informations
that come from science can be applied in everyday life. So I think that as we change our idea of what it means to be healthy and look instead at what are
the the biometric signals of health, what's your blood
pressure, stuff like that, we're gonna see more emphasis on getting people to eat
foods that are good for you and to exercise, than just
asking people to lose weight so they can be healthier. Huge discoveries have been made in the field of longevity and nutrition over the past two decades,
but it's still early days. Most research has been
done in cells and animals. And while this has provided early clues to how periods without food
may affect the human body, it will be the clinical trials that offer the most insight into how we can reach 100 healthy. Yesterday for me was the
first time I met centenarian and I realized what longevity means. So living long, but being
healthy and being present, be happy with your family. And I think if diet can help
reach longevity in this way it's really worth it.
