The Fast-Mimicking Diet - with Dr. Valter Longo | The Empowering Neurologist EP. 59

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the empowering neurologists I'm dr. David Perlmutter we got a great show today we're gonna be talking about this amazing book called the longevity diet and we'll be speaking with dr. Valter Longo it's going to be I believe a very very important interview giving some really incredible information I say that because he's quite a guy I'm gonna tell you all about him he is the Edna M Jones professor of gerontology and biological sciences and director of the longevity Institute at the University of Southern California Davis School of gerontology that deals with aging that's based in Los Angeles he is also the senior group leader at the IFO m and the FI RC Institute of molecular oncology foundation and holds four-year professorships across various top European Union academic centers so he has a global impact in terms of his work his studies focus on the fundamental mechanisms that are involved in aging not only in simple organisms but also in mice and in humans but long ago laboratory has identified several genetic pathways that regulate Aging in both simple organisms and reduce the incidence of multiple diseases both in mice models as well as in humans his laboratory has also investigated and described how dietary and genetic interventions might be able to reverse such things as diabetes and even Alzheimer's and ultimately protect cells and improve the treatment of cancer and other diseases that are found in mammals by his most recent studies are on the dietary interventions that can affect stem cell-based regeneration and promote longevity in again mice and in humans the longevity Institute which again is in Los Angeles is directed by dr. Longo and it includes over 40 faculty members focused on topics that range from regeneration to dietary interventions that are aimed at improving health and lifespan and even treating specific disease processes and we know that they are going to have significant breakthroughs in the very near future among the many accolades that dr. Longo has received include the 2010 Nathan shock lecture award from the National Institute on Aging and the 2013 Vincent Krista follow rising star award in aging research from the American Federation for aging research he is recognized global as a leader in the areas of aging and the effects of nutrition upon aging he has more than 106 peer-reviewed publications in journals that are very well respected including science nature cell the Journal of the American Medical Association circulation cancer cancer cell the Journal of translational medicine and many many others dr. Longo has been featured multiple times in Time magazine and he was originally from Italy he was born in Genoa the general rather received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Texas where he majored in biochem biochemistry with a minor in jazz performance we see that a lot in these high achievers creativity with scientific focus he received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of California Los Angeles in 1997 and his postdoctoral training in neurobiology of aging and Alzheimer's disease at USC he started his independent career in 2000 at the University of Southern California School of Geneva for aging and education so we're going to jump into our interview now very very excited and again just so everybody knows the book is the longevity diet and we'll be speaking with dr. Valter long well dr. Longo it's really nice to have you on the program today nice to be on it thank you forever you mean sure and we're gonna be talking about your new book the longevity diet and I want to just let's just jump into some science because I know our viewers are really interested in that and you know I think the main purpose of your book is that you have created this a fasting mimicking diet because it has such wonderful effects upon our genetic expression upon reduction of inflammation on energy production etc first why do you want to mimic fasting well the main reason is because of compliance and also safety water only fasting historically has only been done in clinics and and it can still be done in clinics but for most people that's not possible it's very difficult to do in the fast timing in diet solves that problem also we think there are components ingredients in the diet that have positive effects for example on stem cell activation and maybe at offer G so so those are additional components that of course wouldn't be in a water only fasting and they're present in an effective mimicking diet so the reason we start exactly what it all means the fasting mimicking diet but what is it about fasting that is so good for the body that you want to make a diet that sort of mimics that why do we why do people advocate fasting in the first place well there are a number of reasons the main one which we described from my laboratory I think is the clearance of damaged cells and also damaged components of cells so in the in on one side the cells like the white blood cells that can be destroyed and that sounds like a negative thing but there are for example a few years ago we've shown how this can be effective in clearing out the immune cells there are at in the the Milan in the spinal cord so for multiple sclerosis for example this was a mouse work but that showed that you can kill out immune cells and then turn on hematopoietic stem cells so the stem cells of the body and then in the repeating moment the steno stem cells give rise to the new young functional white blood cells right so that's one reason at the cellular level the intracellular level we know the auto AG goes on during fasting now we're trying to figure out and we're gonna have a series of papers in the future about that you know but the intracellular effects of the of the fasting and these are just a couple of the things that happen another one for example there is a remarkable is the frd effects on the visceral fat so the the visual fat is one of the only component that gets broken down specifically during fasting and fasting mimicking diets and it doesn't get rebuilt during the repeating period so of course this is obvious benefits because now you can lose visceral fat specifically without losing muscle mass I want to go back to the first topic and that is this this notion of auto Fuji and you know that affecting the mitochondria as well my Tata G and I think it's a very good point for our viewers to understand that yeah while we'd like to repopulate our bodies and our brains with new cells it's important to weed out the bad players and I think that it's quite clear that your research has shown that you are enhancing the scavenging ability of the body to rid itself of cells that are less than fully functional and even Seiler components that are less than fully functional like like mitochondria and your common about reducing abdominal fat I think visceral fat is also very timely for our viewers as we've just looked at a study relating abdominal fat to risk for dementia so beyond that what are some of the genetic events that happen in individuals who are on who are fasting or on significant caloric restriction yes so these was that the origin of the diet it came from our studies in the genetics of Aging and so first our identification of what I call the the protein Pro aging pathway which are about the the igf-1 growth Amane GF 1 and the Tauruses kinase genes and and those are clearly involved another somewhat of a consensus that they're involved in aging and age-related diseases and the other pathway is the pka pathway in simple organism is raspy ka and I call it the sugar pathway because it's activated by by glucose so fasting takes advantage of shutting down or certainly reducing the activity about of all three of these scrotum on igf-1 Tauruses kinase M PKA and by doing so on one side you have protection so the system becomes protected against toxins both inside and outside toxins and then also you have regeneration so by having low levels of Tauruses kinase and PKA n igf-1 we've shown that that's our stem cells become activated now they become activated they stand by until the refining part occurs and this is also you know why it's so important to understand mechanisms because then you can exploit them to do good and avoid the bad otherwise as we've seen for example for chronic color restriction you get both the good in the bad I just don't want that to get glossed over and that is you know as we are in the depths of the biochemistry here and activation and suppression of various pathways at the end of your discussion you said we want more of the good and less of the bad and I think that's you know the take-home message here with respect to this intervention this this dietary intervention that I think you've shown in your book does tend to be amplified along with exercise can you talk to us about that I you were asking about the exercise component yes yeah so exercise I mean there's no doubt that that it's very important it probably activates some of the same repair and regeneration mechanisms that fasting and fasting mimicking diet do and and so in the book I talk about I try to stick with data and data that is pretty well supported by multiple studies so I talk about 150 minutes a week between 150 and 300 but showing that much advantage of the 300 minutes of exercise versus 150 minutes so hundred fifty means it looks like a good a good number of minutes for for exercise some of which should be strenuous or should be pushing yourself but maybe you know 10 20 percent of that is sufficient if it is training so 150 minutes a week of exercise with maybe thirty of those minutes being a little bit more extraneous well I just you know if for people who think 150 minutes is is scary or compelling that's only 22 minutes a day that that's all your that's all we're asking so you know these are basically what you're saying is these are lifestyle choices that have a profound impact on some really important processes in the body that either open the door to disease or or wellness yes and in the book I thought it was important to not just speculate but to show clear examples for example I sure I talked about the monkey studies this was not done by us but was done by Richard winder at university Wisconsin and showing our calorie restriction this chronicler station can completely eliminate diabetes and reduce cancer and cardiovascular disease in monkeys by 50% so these are remarkable achievement if you think about it but the problem with car restriction is that the lifespan of this monkeys is an extended because by being pushed to the limit chronically like that so long then you have other problems for example immunity might be affected negatively right so I think the fasting mimicking diet in the longevity diet the rest of the everyday diet that I describe is really put in 25 years of our work together to say we think now we find a way to get all the benefits of calorie restriction and removing again all the or the great majority of detrimental problems for example a loss of muscle mass and and being imitated as you will if you were calorie restricted you know these these are obvious problems that people don't wanna don't wanna do or don't want to face and I think that fasting the periodic festival vegan diet eliminates this so again what you know for our viewers it's really getting the best of both worlds where you get the benefits of caloric restriction or fasting and yet the downsides that you just mentioned like initiation loss of muscle mass dysregulation of the immune system are not as likely to happen because you've created this way of still kriya of a diet that's good for you but then mimics the notion of fasting so before we get to the nuts and bolts of what that's all about what went into that what went into your ability to create this type of diet that takes the place of fasting and caloric restriction well I think the main thing again it was also finding out is fasting really beneficial and how do you do it I mean fasting is like saying eating it doesn't mean anything right the me you could fast for two hours you could fast for 12 hours you can fast for 12 days that what so which one and is it beneficial and the suspicion from the medical community was that it was not you know their fasting is actually detrimental and this is really has been the the common belief until recently by most doctors if not all doctors and and so now I think they all because that would include me it was until recently that's why I was saying for me recently I think that we started to see small percentage of doctors embracing it but historically I would say this is very very few right and so I think it was important to to first show what fasting can do and this started again for us started with bacteria and yeast and in showing now you can start simple organisms like that and they become longer lived and they become protected so then if you have something so far away from each other like bacteria and yeast being so protected by this we we figured that this was gonna go all the way to potentially to humans and then you know eventually we've shown that so I think it's important to first have the foundation I'm fasting and then the Festiva meaning that obviously is a way to say now most people cannot do what only fasting which we we seen this firsthand when we tried this with cancer patient here at the USC Norris Cancer Center and basically the oncologist didn't want people to fast and the patient's isn't one of fast so this is where when we went to the National Cancer Institute and they were very interested in in sponsoring the research including clinical trials on the fasting mimicking that so can you come up with a technology that you know can match the power of fasting and maybe surpass it and make a safer and a more doable by people and so you know then we have to go back to the biochemistry into the molecular biology and what I talked about earlier which is that how are the genes and the nutrients connected so which amino acids which protein what about carbohydrate which type what about fats which type or how much and so all of that including m-more go into the fast imaging diet on one side to treat the body to think it's fasting and on the other side to making sure that the patient that you know some patient may come in let's say a cancer patient could come in already in trouble nutritionally right and this is you know very very common and so you don't want to push them over the edge with further nourishment and that's why it was important with the Festiva meeting diet to nourish the patient while we're starving it so it's a counterintuitive but that's exactly what we do we nourish and starve at the same time you know if you think it's you know you hear people talking today how people how Americans are starving in the face of food abundance just based upon their food choices so you know the work has been going on for some time we've you know been following the work of dr. mark Matson for a long time one of the pioneers you know especially as it relates to brain function and viability of brain cells both you know in humans and certainly in animals so that we know that what you're doing here is putting a low level stress or a hormesis a type of event on physiology and the physiology responds in a way to protect itself so you then develop this program that would work or that was acceptable let's say for cancer patients and I think from then you extended it for all the rest of individuals who may not be suffering from a specific disease entity and tell us that if you can now let's go through the nuts and bolts of the program and how it specifically accomplishes a task while at the same time isn't isn't really you know depriving people yes so the task first of all is complex and and so we hear a lot about intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets and I really dislike these terms because they try to embrace everything and or they embrace everything and in fact you know a - are fasting in a five-day fasting are completely different things you know one does very little and one can have tremendous effects right so so I think it's important to start talking about exactly what we're talking about how long is it and for what purpose right so the the first American diet achieves is it lasts let's say for the regular people so somebody relatively healthy it tries to achieve multiple tasks and one of them is for making sure that there is there are enough days after the depletion of glycogen right so this is why it has to go for five days they cannot go for half a day one day etc as you see you hear many of these popular intermittent fasting programs now you know I'm not arguing against them I'm just saying that we have to be careful you know what the mechanisms are and so we know the glycogen can be around for for at least 1012 hours and in probably the ketone bodies in most cases we don't see them going up very much for at least a couple of days so that means that to really start many of these processes for example the brain switching to a keto ketone body dependent mode you need two days minimum and if you stop it two days even if you did to this you stop you probably get very little benefit right this is why we go for five days now by day five now the brain is reprogrammed into both a glucose dependent and a ketone body dependent mode that's what we want to achieve with that just if we're talking about the brain but this is not just a brain for example we've shown in our in our clinical study with multiple sclerosis that after seven days the white blood cell count in people is decreased by about 20 percent so so now if you're thinking about multiple sclerosis you go you have to go for seven days probably to even see a 20% breakdown of the white blood cells so just just to give you some examples of how we think when we address a problem so in healthy people five days is probably ideal why what most people don't want to go for more than that most doctors are worried about making a patient at home go for more than five days so five days turn out to be a very good compromise between efficacy safety and compliance and and I think now over 20,000 people have done it in the US UK Italy etc and the safety record is extremely good so we feel pretty good about it and and you know and some people have done it with doctor's supervision some people done with dietitian supervision but in general these five days seems to work very well and and you know in the clinical trial of course shows the results of what it can do it clearly one of the goals is to is to enhance the production of ketone bodies and as such what is the value of augmenting the production of these ketone bodies with precursors or with things like and medium chain triglyceride oil coconut oil etc it's it's an interesting I mean we don't know right I mean there are some studies that show advantages I mean their preliminary studies they're very promising so in the book I talk about it for example with Alzheimer I think it's a it's a very good way to go especially because you know an alzheimer patient we're about to start a clinical trial in Italy with Alzheimer disease and fasting we can die but we had to develop according to what I just said you know a special diet a higher calorie you know medium fatty acid and etc are going to be included in it so I think that we have to wait and see in general I think the having the natural ketone bodies and the reprogramming of the brain is the most important thing right so to have the brain go into this repair mode we really are starting to see the pattern of the fasting being may be something that was always there to destroy damaged replace damaged with new and now of course we eat all the time and we don't see that so is it possible the brain is also doing that and that's the idea now can they exogenous ketone bodies achieve that probably not because they're probably pushing the system a little bit in the right direction but they don't quite have the ability to restart the this embryonic like program that we see multiple organs that has the chance of really in a coordinated way taking out the bad and replacing it with the good you made an interesting comment there that I think indicates that we are kind of emulating the appropriation of resources caloric wise of our ancestors I mean we did experience times of caloric scarcity in which these pathways would have been activated survival pathways if you will and I think you know to put it in that context I think in some small way kind of validates the underlying principle of the so-called paleo movement that we're just trying to emulate what our genome and what our physiology was has evolved to respond to having said that let me go back to this notion of production of ketone bodies but let's go beyond just the notion of fuel in terms of the more efficiency that's imparted by using ketone bodies as fuel let's talk for a moment about butyrate and more about for example its signaling molecule characteristics and what are the epigenetic considerations of having higher levels of beta hydroxy butyrate well you know we we don't know meaning that there are no studies on what happens if you otherwise keep let's say coloring in take normal and have more beta trucks ameliorate I think it's a scary direction if unless there's a problem like Alzheimer why is that well because the system if you have beta drugs if you read or any ketone body is gonna get two signals right it's gonna get the signal of glycolysis and standard metabolism and at the same time it's gonna get the second signal that is the starvation response but it doesn't know where to go you know the first thing we can diet avoids that because it basically is caloric restricted enough and it just mimics the condition of the fasting but the IV normal calorie and add in beta drug simulate it's potentially problematic so what does it do well it pushes of course the system to use beta drug severe aid is a fuel source and and you know the consequences long-term are unknown essentially it's just a an alternative metabolic mode and and one that that potentially has beneficial effects and it seems to be associated with regeneration you know probably because what I said earlier the fact that during starvation you have to be ready to rebuild most likely in the old days at least when we start we start for long periods and and you know in those long periods the liver the new system the lungs in the muscle except except they're all undergoing atrophy and so they will have to be rebuilt and so I think that the ketone bodies are key molecules in in triggering the rebuilding of all these systems or at least in not interfering with the stem cell-based program that has the job of rebuilding after starvation periods well you know certainly there's at least in our world of brain related issues a lot of great information about being in ketosis in terms of stimulating brain-derived neurotrophic factor to enhance in the brain's case neurogenesis ie stem cell activity you talked in your book about the role of this diet in terms of longevity is it fair to extend this research from from the laboratory to humans in terms of making references to longevity well yes and no meaning that of course we demonstrated that in mice but we also have a human clinical trial and in the human clinical trial we saw changes in risk factor for multiple diseases and changes in markers for aging that would suggest that almost for sure this person will live longer now how do you demonstrate that a person will live longer than a diet it's impossible there is no I mean you could possibly do it if you took people at very old ages with respect high risk for a disease like you know the job the work that has been done in Spain with olive oil published in the New England Journal of Medicine yeah I could be done potentially if you took 70 year olds and basically say there have a cardiovascular disease or early stages and then you know you look at longevity but if you took our general population to be almost an impossible study to do so I would say that we've done as much as we can to show to show that this is probably gonna be beneficial for longevity but you know to demonstrate it it's premature to say I know that it will extend longevity but if you started affecting fasting glucose triglyceride cholesterol blood pressure systolic and diastolic CRP levels etc etcetera and an abdominal fat visceral fat it it's hard to imagine how that person will not live longer now we're in collaboration with Morgan live in a year we are about to calculate actually the biological age after three cycles of the FMD and even though you know I don't want to talk about the results yet I can't but certainly I also I suspect that the biological age will decrease in the population and now based on our idea based on algorithms and real numbers will decrease in the people who have done multiple cycles of the FMV so you know for our viewers a lot of times you know the some of the criticisms of ideas are based on the fact that there haven't been interventional studies that have been performed using that specific criteria and that a lot of the things people talk about our extrapolations from laboratory experiments and using animals etc but you know I want you to know that you know from from my perspective looking at your information you have done the very very best possible job in connecting the dots that I think very much allows you to look forward and make a statement that likely what you're proposing here will extend and life or enhance longevity I you know I'm certainly willing based upon what you've written in your 25 years of experience willing to to connect those dots especially as it relates to existing research and certainly what you've got in the pipeline so having said that what can we look for from you over the next couple of years yes and picking up from what you just said absolutely we've done a hundred patient the randomized trial that looks very very good but everybody's asking for bigger studies so now we have in the pipeline a 400 patient metabolic syndrome trial you know early diabetes and metabolic syndrome trial we have the Algebra one that we just got funded to do we are gonna do a Crohn's disease trial we're finishing up three or four different trials on cancer one has been done by University of Leyden in Holland and the other one here USC Mayo Clinic MD Anderson so that's gonna be finished pretty soon we have trials on the prevention of cancer for bracket one bracket two subjects there are a high risk for breast cancer I think these are just some of the ones we have the diabetes type two trial in Holland also University of Leyden that has been funded so I think that you know we we really multiple sclerosis now we were very close to start a multicenter trial with ten different hospitals in Europe so we're going after with facing the the facts and in some cases not gonna work we know that I mean it's a miracle it's not gonna work all the time for everybody but I think that the effects are very powerful and also I wouldn't underestimate you know sometimes I worry that there are like the alternative and complementary group and then the traditional group and and we're basically you know for example for cancer it's very obvious and when you combine the two you get the most powerful effect right and so now with multiple sclerosis I think we're gonna see the same that we're testing it with the FMD together with five different standard okay and I wouldn't be surprised if the most powerful attacks we see with the combination with one of these drugs right so so I think that's also an important message to use all that is available and especially with diseases that are very severe but you know for prevention I think maybe the combination of the FMD with a with a diet that I also described in the book is is the best way to go and and there - you know now we're talking to Loma Linda University about you know can we do large studies where we follow thousands of people they have say a pescetarian low protein but sufficient protein diet plus the FMD can we follow them for years and show beneficial effects maybe maybe a longevity or maybe just on markers of longevity so that those are some of the things in the pipeline that we look forward to doing it that's super exciting I I want to just go back to a couple things you said and in passing you know you kind of mentioned that you're going to be involved in looking at individuals carrying the bracket 1 or bracket 2 gene which people need to understand is a fairly powerful risk gene in terms of how it relates for example to breast cancer and other issues that said you know what you said I think was really very important and that is looking at a dietary intervention that might have an effect in what some people would consider to be a genetic die-cast that you know they're going to get a problem and yet through a specific dietary intervention you can reduce what may otherwise be a genetic predisposition similarly with respect to carrying any one of the many genes or alleles that relate to Alzheimer's risk for example looking at the apoe4 allele that deals with cholesterol metabolism and a couple of other cholesterol metabolism gene snips we know that there is plenty of research now showing that we can counteract the genetic predisposition by making certain lifestyle changes in your case it would be dietary and the case of offsetting apoe4 certainly dietary but also cardiorespiratory fitness has been shown to be effective in reducing some of the biomarkers that are found the amount of for example beta amyloid and the spinal fluid is seem to be lower and phosphorylated tall protein seem to be lower in people who though they can't they carry the genetic risk factor yet they're in higher levels of cardiovascular fitness so it's a new dawn that we are really pulling away from this notion of genetic determinism and more looking at genetic predisposition which is where you fit in beautifully in terms of saying hey you know you've these are your genetic issues that you have but look at how important this diet can be in changing gene expression in offsetting some of the risk that you may have inherited so it's really what you're doing is really very very exciting and I'm I think we all look forward to to seeing what's next for you and how these incredible studies are going to pan out because you know it's really getting to the heart of gene expression modulated epigenetically through the choices that we make in terms of our activities and our lifestyle choices yeah and breca one we pick because it's so extreme and you know you may have a chance of 85% chance of developing cancer so if it works for the bracket one of course now and we're doing both mice and humans right now and so if it works for that for them then I think it's gonna work for everybody else that might not have such a high risk for cancer yeah I mean what a thing to consider that when women are told that by virtue of their genetic issues that the best course of action for them is to have a bilateral mastectomy and now we're hearing today from you that you know there's reason to believe that you can offset that genetic predisposition by making certain lifestyle changes so yeah and I don't want discourage people from doing a mastectomy because obviously now we know it's very effective but but there are many women it I was shocked when I heard the percentage of women that refused a mastectomy and so and they have nothing right really and and that's that was amazing to me and and so this is why we were addressing this because for whatever reason and understandably saw a lot of women don't do it and and they don't have an alternative yeah and there was one other thing you mentioned and that is the utility of what your diet will do and even looking at markers various the parameters that are measured in multiple sclerosis not just clinical progression or recurrence and you know how it bridges traditional and complementary and I think a classic example of that now is you know for years those of us who have been involved in nutritional medicine and looking at complementary ideas have focused on a specific gene pathway the nrf2 pathway as being sort of the guardian of brain health and regulator of neurodegeneration knowing that traditional foods and spices like turmeric and coffee caloric restriction higher levels of oxidative stress for example enhance the body's ability to protect itself in this case through that nrf2 pathway and how now pharmaceutical industry has created a drug based upon this platform dimethyl fumarate that works as an nrf2 activator taking advantage of you know this pathway that is endogenous within us and has been amplified by our lifestyle choices so what an interesting example of you know of this cross-pollination then of traditional and complementary kind of approaches which is what you're doing I mean yes although I will say you know when there is a disease like Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis or cancer the combination very well it's probably gonna be the way to go in the prevention I'm a little skeptical of the pharmaceutical approach because of I I think they are somewhat unsophisticated up intervention or function meaning that you know you now have a drug the blocks a pathway or enhance is a pathway you know whereas the fasting and fasting mimicking diet really exploit something that's always been there yes so it's probably not gonna do damage and in fact it's going to be so coordinated to eventually do very very good the drug is is plucking something usually and the the question is what is that blockade or let's say increasing in this case you know and rf2 activity but what else is it doing and and what happens when you do that but the body is not set to do that right so another of two goes up in the calorie restriction because it's part of a protective program but and in or like let's say Corazon right and it's part of a fasting response pathway but what happens if you say increase Corazon all the time we know what happens it's not good you know and there is a lot of side effects of that and so yeah I'm worried that when we try to even in the prevention at the prevention level we try to always go to the drug that we're under estimating the side effects of the drugs in the long run and even calorie restriction as side effects right you know so so this is why again the first image that tries to avoid even the negative effects of something that is dietary or even exercise can have a negative effect right but imagine I think the drugs almost unavoidably after 10 20 30 years of of pushing up a particular gene is gonna start showing side effects yeah and you know you mentioned something earlier about the notion of this dietary approach not as a cure for cancer but as an adjunct to more conventional therapies I mean our viewers have seen an interview with dr. Thomas Seyfried who has popularized getting into ketosis as an adjunct to more conventional approaches to dealing with cancer chemotherapy radiation surgery etc and I think then we should look upon the use of your type of program in the treatment of disease as you know a tool in the toolbox it's certainly a very very important tool because it's not acting in just one way but you know you're activating a variety of pathways that are salubrious that are you know geared to retaining and maintaining health yes and also you know replacing damaged components with with good combines this way in the clinical trial if somebody had law fasting glucose let's say 75 in most cases they didn't go down at all encounter restitution it goes down further you know that you might see 60 55 even in fasting glucose but in in the periodic fasting meaning in diet it might have gone up to 77 right so now what that is telling us and it happened for almost everything so they're telling us that it's not really about lowering anything it's about replacing something dysfunctional with something functional and that's really I think the key I mean most people when there are 20 year olds they don't have very many problems and so I think the is the tissues and cells become dysfunctional then you develop insulin resistance and and in all kinds of problems that are ending up in diseases and I think that this periodic fasting mimicking diet last in five days is really has the job of clearing up some of the intracellular and cellular damage and in replacing it with components that work well you know you mentioned insulin resistance and again I would think that our viewers are really pretty well up to speed on how important and how pervasive the effects of insulin resistance are throughout the body not just the brain and I think that you know the the dietary program that you're working on you're developed and you talked about in your book I think one of the main things you're helping is this is insulin resistance in other words insulin sensitivity and certainly as it relates to the brain as it relates to igf-1 I think that might be one of them may things that you're accomplishing here in terms of the health aspects of the program yes so we've shown that insulin sensitivity both in the clinical trial but also very clearly in the mouth studies with type 2 diabetes Mallos that DBGB mice it was shown very clearly that this can affect what I can affect regeneration in the pancreas for making new insulin-producing beta cells but at the same time making the muscle cells etc more functional and making insulin less insulin work better now any comment on how the dietary program might affect the gut microbiota we're about to submit that and so and this is part of Crohn's disease study which also triggered a clinical trial which we're about to start here USC and so let's just say they're very positive very positive results and which involved in microbiota and in fact which may be centered on the microbiota you know well listen I want to thank you for your time I've really really enjoyed our interview today our time together it's just incredible work that you're doing and I will encourage all of our viewers to read this book buy this book and read this book there's terrific information here and again I want to thank you for joining us and praise you for the work that you're doing thanks a lot and by the way all my royalties go to research we go back to research so these allow us to do more many of the clinical trials that I just listed well that's an important point for all of our viewers that buying the book supports the research will all be better off for that thanks a lot okay talk to you soon bye for now okay bye I'm sure you could tell that I enjoyed that interview immensely doctor Longo is doing some amazing work you know application of really dedicated laboratory science and research to the clinical arena and to see what the effects are of what he's discovering on actual treatment trials so very very exciting information again here is the book I would encourage you to read it the longevity diet his name is Valter Longo PhD what an honor to spend time with such a creative and resourceful individual thanks for joining us today I'm dr. David Perlmutter here on the empowering neurologist bye for now [Music] you

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Keywords: david perlmutter, dr. david perlmutter, grain brain, dr. perlmutter, brain maker, fasting, ketogenic

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Length: 47min 37sec (2857 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 11 2018