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- [00:01]
Dr. Valter Longo
We already had. The best medicine we have ever invented is the human body, right? This shrinking and this re expansion is the most powerful medicine ever. We see 70% of the diabetes patients reducing drug use and within a year starting to abandon drugs completely.
- [00:20]
Interviewer
We're told eat more protein to live longer. And 100 years of research actually say, as you know, I don't believe in longevity hacks except for one, fasting. And today I'm bringing you the world's top expert on fasting. Dr. Valter Longo is the director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on what actually causes us to age and how fasting can boost the immune system, reverse our biological age and fight cancer both before and after and after we get it. He also shows how it's much better fasting, that is, than a GLP one for losing weight. He is the creator of the fast mimicking diet, Prolon, you may have heard of it, and the author of the international bestseller the Longevity diet. Now here's Dr. Longo. Let's start with fasting because I think right now, maybe because of you, but there is a lot of interest in fasting. Does, does it really work? Should I be doing it? Can you take us through over say a five day period? What happens if I only consume water for five days in a row? Is that good for my body or bad for my body? And what happens exactly?
- [01:38]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, if you stop eating, essentially your body has some, your liver has some glycogen reserves, right? Some, some carbohydrate reserves and they can go from, for about a day or so. And then after it depletes these glycogen reserves, it begins to utilize fat, right? And so, and a lot of that fat comes from the visceral fat, right? So there's belly fat, the belly fat, that's where the fat is stored and that is slowly consumed. And as that is consumed, then you see what are called ketone bodies that are products, byproducts of fat breakdown. So these ketone bodies are being generated and the fatty acids, so the fat, you know, part of the fats are utilized as fuel. So now your brain and your heart and other organs can start using fatty acids and ketone bodies in addition to some glucose that comes from gluconeogenesis. Now the liver can use the amino acids from the, from the muscle, but it can also use glycerol coming from the fat to generate glucose. And that glucose, for example, needs to continue to be made for the brain now.
- [02:57]
Interviewer
So the bottom line is at first your body can use this glycogen which is ready access fuel. But then it starts turning your belly fat into fuel and various different kinds of fuel that the brain and the organization organs can use. Just to simplify it.
- [03:13]
Dr. Valter Longo
Right, right, right, yeah but, but it, it's also, there is something very important in this, in this process because basically when you, because glycerol is being generated by, during fasting, is being released, that also has a job of protecting the utilization of your muscle as fuel and as alternative fuel.
- [03:39]
Interviewer
Interesting.
- [03:40]
Dr. Valter Longo
So, so the, when you break down the triglycerides, now you generate glycerol, that glycerol now can be used by the liver to make sugar. And so this is very important. If you're thinking about drugs, for example, the GLP1 and the fact that they cause a lot of muscle mass loss is because they don't have the sophistication of the fasting. And if, for example, if you look at grizzly bears, when they lose fat during hibernation, during hibernation they don't lose a lot of muscle. Of course you've evolved a program that breaks down fat, allows you to survive hibernation, but doesn't or minimizes the breakdown of fat.
- [04:24]
Interviewer
This is really important. I just want to make sure I get it right. So when you start fasting and your body starts burning fat, simply it produces glycerol which protects muscle from being broken down. When you do a GLP one, it may help you burn fat, but it's not protecting your muscle.
- [04:42]
Dr. Valter Longo
It's not protecting your muscle. In fact, you know, some studies suggest that 30, 40% of the weight loss is lean body mass. Right. This is muscle muscle loss. These are the large studies. Right. So now they're developing drugs that have the job of trying to protect the muscle. But now you're adding more drugs to the drugs and of course you can see the dangers on there. It's already coming with a lot of side effects in, in addition to the muscle loss. But now you add in another drug that has the job of protecting you from muscle loss. And that's, see it's more and more interference with these beautiful programs that are billions of years old.
- [05:17]
Interviewer
That is so elegantly put. Let's go back to our five days water only fast. Let's go back to our 150 pound person, let's say he's overweight. How much weight could that person expect to lose over five days and how, what percentage of that might be muscle doing a water only fast?
- [05:37]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, I know there's lots. You can expect probably to lose about an average 7 or 8 pounds of fat or, or mostly fat, some muscle, but the, the muscle comes back when you refeed. Right. So you have a temporary shrinking of the muscle but it quickly comes back. Right. And so now we've, we've done a lot of trials. I mean we are not, we haven't done it with the water only fasting. We really don't think water only fasting is feasible for 99.9% of the population.
- [06:11]
Interviewer
Right, right.
- [06:11]
Dr. Valter Longo
Just too difficult. And also we're going to get to dangerous.
- [06:15]
Interviewer
Yeah, we're going to get to the fast mimicking diet. But I just wanted, I just wanted to start by helping people understand the benefits of the general idea of fasting. So we've established you're going to lose about 7 pounds, perhaps if you're 150 pounds and overweight, you're probably not going to have long term muscle loss. What else happens in your body during a fast? That's good.
- [06:41]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. So a lot of people talk about autophagy and most people think a lot of autophagy. So autophagy is a self eating process. Right. The cells of the body eat their own content, let's say. Right. And to, for fuel. And so and people, a lot of people, a lot of experts think that this happens very quickly. But you know, there's a trial that is going to be published pretty soon that and indicating that it takes about the whole five days of fasting to begin autophagy in the blood cells. Right. So, so it takes a long time for that, at least a, you know, significantly high level of autophagy to occur.
- [07:29]
Interviewer
So and we should make it clear that autophagy, when we're talking about eating cells, it's usually damaged cells, it's the cells you want to get rid of anyway for the most part that's sort
- [07:39]
Dr. Valter Longo
of like, like our own wishful thinking. Right. But the reality is that everything shrinks. Right. So if you look at the human body, so you know, Ancel Keys back in, I think in the 40s and 50s had done semi starvation studies. University of Minnesota, in the University of Minnesota. And in one of the studies that I saw, the heart of the patients, they were semi starving for weeks and weeks was 41% smaller. Right. So this is not just the damaged cells. I mean this is good cells of the heart, everything is shrinking now as extreme as that is, you can see the potential. Right. And so we've done a lot of studies now showing at least in mice and Rats. And it's difficult to do this. You know, you can never do the ancel key studies again. But in mice and rats we start to see cellular reprogramming, stem cell activation, autophagy. And so now you're, let's say you're shrinking someone's heart by 40%. Now you're re expanding that heart to the, to its normal size. And so what happens in that process? Right. So what happens is, you know, in a lot of organs now we've shown regeneration and so, so now it'd be interesting, one of our next studies will be with heart.
- [08:57]
Interviewer
And do you think this, this idea that your or certain organs shrink? I'm sure it's not just the heart, but when they come back, they come back younger, they come back rejuvenated.
- [09:08]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, this is what we clearly see. So we've done it in the gut, we've done it for the pancreas, we've done it for the kidney. And we see the same thing over and over. We see that either for example in the blood, we see in the mouse lthsc, Long term hematopoietic stem cells.
- [09:28]
Interviewer
That's a simple word. As we're talking, you have to imagine your very smart 16 year old nephew.
- [09:37]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. So the LTHSCs are these stem cells that have the job of generating all the cells of the immune system. Right. So during fasting these stem cells go way up and then within a couple months of them going way up, you start seeing a rejuvenation or regeneration and rejuvenation of, of the immune system. And so now you see that for, you know, the pancreas, the kidney for example, in the pancreas we damage the pancreas, right. In an irreversible way and to the point that it doesn't make insulin anymore. And so then once it's irreversibly damaged, then we begin with the fasting, mimicking die cycles. And we see that the pancreatics, the islet cells, the cells of the pancreas are being reprogrammed and then they begin making insulin again. So they're becoming younger and functional again. And the same happens in the kidney. These podocytes, they were believed to be non dividing and non renewable. Let's see, let's say if the podocytes of the kidneys, so the kidneys no longer we use a toxin, it damages the kidney in a, in a severe way. And then we begin the fasting, making diet cycles. And again you see the, the kidney cells being reprogrammed, becoming younger and becoming Functional again. And now the kidney starts working normally again. Then in this case of the kidney, we did a small trial in University of Rome and we took patients with kidney disease and chronic kidney disease and we did the three cycles and not only did their kidney function improved, but a year later it was still working better, was still improved and it was still the same. It was still nearly normal a year later.
- [11:37]
Interviewer
And this was in humans, this is in people.
- [11:40]
Dr. Valter Longo
Right. And they did three cycle of a five day fasting, mimicking diet.
- [11:46]
Interviewer
I go on a five day water only diet. What's going to happen to my, what are the good things likely to happen to my body?
- [11:53]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, so the good things is the loss of visceral fat belly that we discussed earlier and then probably the autophagy. So five days of water only fasting is going to activate autophagy in many cells of the body and it's probably also going to activate, it's going to increase stem cells and cause reprogramming in several systems. Now, we haven't proven this for people. We know it for mice, we know it for rats, we don't know it for people. It's much harder to demonstrate the activation of regeneration in people. But we see it, you know, consistently lots of organs of the mouse and we see it in the rat. And so it would be very surprising if it was not occurring in people. Yeah. So then I think most likely at least some of that is occurring in people. Although it's not been demonstrated yet coincidentally
- [12:59]
Interviewer
in all of the blue zones. If you look through their history, they've all endured periods of hunger sustained, Hungary especially during World War II. You see it in Okinawa, you see it in Sardinia, you see it in Icaria as well. And although it might not be five day prolonged fast, they often have religious fasts. They've had economic hard times. And it just seems that there was some caloric restriction, maybe not the pure fasting in the blue zones. What are the downsides of a five day water only fast? What are the dangers?
- [13:33]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, I think that one of the dangers is hypotension. Right. You know, your blood pressure dropping and this is very common.
- [13:41]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah.
- [13:42]
Dr. Valter Longo
Your blood pressure dropping and somebody can pass out. Right. And now you can imagine somebody passing out while they're driving. Hypoglycemia, your blood glucose level become too low. Now keep in mind the water only fast fasting does not have the salts. Right. And this is why it's also helping with the hypotension, with the blood pressure becoming too low. And yeah, so those are, those are two of the main ones. But also there could be a number of other side effects that are there. For example, when we compare water only fasting with the fasting making diet in mice that had inflammatory bowel disease. Right. So this autoimmune models, the water only fasting actually increased the leakiness of the gut. Right. And the fasting mimicking diet did not.
- [14:37]
Interviewer
We haven't told people what the fast mimicking diet is. So this is probably a good time to interject. You're largely responsible for the fast mimicking diet and prolon, which is a way for all of us to do it. But can you explain what the fast mimicking diet is?
- [14:53]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. So basically, many years ago, about 15 years ago, we started the first clinical trial and cancer we had results in mice showing that water only fasting was protecting mice from chemotherapy. So then we moved it to the clinic. And in the clinic we thought, the cancer patients are highly motivated, they're going to do water only fasting. And it turned out that they didn't want to do water only fasting. As motivated as they were, it was too difficult for them to do it. And the oncologists, I think, were also worried. Right, the oncologists were worried that to recommend three or four days of water only fasting to their patients, it's hard
- [15:30]
Interviewer
to pick for people.
- [15:31]
Dr. Valter Longo
Right. So then from there we went to the, to the government, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, and they fund the research to develop the fasting making diet. So the idea was just, you know, let's start with cancer patients. Can we feed them some a diet that will simulate the effects of water only fasting? So of course, we were experts in the molecular responses of fasting. So how does a cell change in response to fasting? And what are the ingredients, the macro and micronutrients that regulate those pathways? So for us was pretty straightforward to actually say, okay, let's make it a low sugar, low protein, low calorie, high fat, plant based diet. And that's what the fasting making diet is.
- [16:25]
Interviewer
Having done it, I know it's about a thousand calories a day, so you get to eat some so you're not dealing with the severe hunger. A lot of it tastes pretty good and it's formulated so that you're, you, you stay in this ketogenic state, right. So that your, your body stays in a state that it's burning fat, put in simple terms, so you get a lot of the benefits without a lot of the pain. And it is formulated in such a way that some of the downsides of a water only fast don't kick in. Is that a fair summation?
- [17:01]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yes, yes. So it is. First of all, I donate everything to charity, right? So I don't want people to think that I'm advertising a product here.
- [17:11]
Interviewer
Nobody believes you're a profiteer vulture, but
- [17:14]
Dr. Valter Longo
I mean some people think that and you know, and I'm a professor and people need to know.
- [17:20]
Interviewer
And by the way, this prolon diet is huge. It's a national phenomena and it really works. It's one of the few longevity interventions I actually believe in. Most I don't, and I know you don't take any money for it, but I don't think people sufficiently understand why they should go on a fast mimicking or prolon diet and what they get out of it.
- [17:44]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, first of all, when I did it, I didn't want to just do. I could have done a lot of fasting, making that even using animal products, right. And I said or regular plant based products. But the idea was instead let's look at the same zones that you have been studying for so long, right? You know, so what about the people, the centenarians of Calabria, of Sardinia, of Okinawa, of Japan, of Loma Linda, you know, or the long lived people and try to make a, a sort of longevity fasting making diet? Right. And that was a very good, very good idea because I think that picking the ingredients that were so healthy, it turned out to have two roles. For example, in some studies we're showing that the prebiotic of these ingredients are very important for the effect of the fasting making diet.
- [18:33]
Interviewer
Prebiotic is mostly fiber, right?
- [18:35]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. The fibers, right. The very healthy fibers that are contained in the longevity zone diets are now contributing to building the microbiota and you know, and making people healthier in addition to the effects of fasting. So now it's a fasting and mimicking diet, but it's also enhancing the effects of fasting. And the other thing that was, for which I think it was a really good idea is that it's training people to be vegan, right. I mean they don't have to turn vegan, but it's just making them. It's kind of like taking somebody to do a 10k run, right?
- [19:12]
Interviewer
Yeah. It's a gateway sort of to more plant based.
- [19:14]
Dr. Valter Longo
So do a 10k run with me and then maybe you realize that it's not so bad, right Then. And then you go back to the. So now, you know, people that come from all kinds of diets. So now we've, we're finishing a 500 people trial in southern Italy. And you know, and we were surprised how, you know, many people did it and now they, most people at least finished and not everybody finished that. But this was done only once every three months. And we now want to test it. Is it possible that you don't need to do this all the time? You could just do it once every three, maybe four, maybe six months? Right. Is it possible that if you do it only once every three or six months, it can still be effective? So we'll see. But you know, for sure, we see a lot of evidence of the brain slowly being trained to accept a much healthier, let's say longevity diet or blue zone type of diet.
- [20:14]
Interviewer
For people who haven't done the prolonged diet or the fast mimicking diet, it's five days. Generally. What are people eating during this five days? Just so they get an idea of what we're talking about here.
- [20:25]
Dr. Valter Longo
Right. So they're eating nuts and vegetables and some legumes, but very low levels of it. So then now you have five days of exposure to an ideal, at least
- [20:40]
Interviewer
ingredient selection and you send them in a box. And then there's the day one breakfast. You pull it out, you eat it. Day one lunch, day one dinner. And they tend to be really small portions, I remember, like a minestrone soup for lunch. And they kind of curb your hunger pains. They don't make them go away altogether. But it's easier than muscling through five days with no food at all.
- [21:03]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, and there are also tricks like glycerol, for example. It's part of the kit. Right. So we have glycerol in there.
- [21:09]
Interviewer
Glycerol, I recall, came in a little bottle and it was a clear liquid and tasteless. And what does glycerol do for us when we.
- [21:17]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, that's what I was saying earlier. Right now glycerol's job is preserving muscle, but is also making sure that if you need, if your brain, if you're about to pass out and your brain needs glucose now you have a source of glucose, Right. So the liver has this glycerol they can use to generate glucose.
- [21:40]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [21:41]
Dr. Valter Longo
But it doesn't need to, if you don't need it. Right. So it's there, it's part of the fasting response. So it doesn't interfere with the fasting response. And yet it's ready to give your brain glucose and, and to preserve your muscle mass.
- [21:57]
Interviewer
So what I love about this, there's an $84 billion anti aging industry out there that delivers us all sorts of false promises that interfere with the elegant system which is our body. Resveratrol, metformin, rapamycin. We don't really exact GLP1s. What you've done is you've harnessed a processy that humans have lived with throughout history and you've adjusted a little bit to optimize for the positive quality and also down downsize for the negative or dangers of going on a diet. And so you're in a very natural way slowing the aging process down, lowering some of the risk factors, and also indeed making us younger in some ways rejuvenating some cells. Is that a fair summation?
- [22:54]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, absolutely. And now we actually published the results of two trials last year showing two and a half years biological age reduction. Right. So after three cycles of the fasting making diet.
- [23:05]
Interviewer
Okay, just, just to make that clear, if you do fast mimicking three times over the course of how many?
- [23:11]
Dr. Valter Longo
Three months. This was three cycles in three months?
- [23:13]
Interviewer
Yeah. Okay, 15 days. In three months, you lower your biological age by two and a half years.
- [23:20]
Dr. Valter Longo
By two and a half years. This is based on these bio age markers.
- [23:24]
Interviewer
Would you see that in your face? I mean, would your face look like it's two and a half years younger?
- [23:29]
Dr. Valter Longo
Most people that have done it will say yes. And now I think the company had a paper where they looked at actually skin as quality and skin aging, and they showed evidence also in the skin for, for reduced markers of aging.
- [23:48]
Interviewer
Do you do the diet yourself, the fast mimicking diet?
- [23:50]
Dr. Valter Longo
I do it maybe a couple times a year. Yeah.
- [23:53]
Interviewer
Have you yourself experienced benefits that you can tell or you just believe in it?
- [23:58]
Dr. Valter Longo
I mean, of course, it's one of the ways that I can control my weight. So yeah, so that. And also family wise, I always had high cholesterol in the family, high blood pressure in the family, and thus far I've never taken any drugs. So I think that probably, you know, what we see in the clinical trials, which reduction in cholesterol, reduction in blood pressure is also applying to me. And that's. I also think that that's important for people to think. So for diabetics, for example, we see a regression of the disease, but the diabetics are doing it once a month. But I think the good news for somebody like that is to think about that eventually they'll go from once a month to once every three months or once every four months. And maybe like I do once every six months once they're back being healthy. Right. We see the diabetic, the 70% of the diabetes patients reducing drug use and within a year starting to abandon drugs completely. So that's what you want, you want people, that's huge, to go back to their, their full health and then, and then have very manageable ways, lifestyle ways to handle it, to maintain it, rather than, you know, additional drugs.
- [25:16]
Interviewer
For what conditions is the fast mimicking diet most effective?
- [25:20]
Dr. Valter Longo
I think it's going to be very effective for lots of things. Right. But it's what you can demonstrate that counts. Right. And so I think if you look at, if you look at demonstrations now for prediabetes and diabetes, it looks very solid. Maybe five trials all showing the same thing. Cholesterol lowering is pretty consistent. There is a trial that came out of University of Miami on using the fmd, the fasting diet, together with drugs for colitis. And now Stanford is going to come out with a study, I cannot discuss it on Crohn's disease, but we'll see the results of that. And then cancer, There's a lot of trials on cancer looking very promising for triple negative breast cancer, very aggressive. So Vernieri group in Milan showed that women at four years, this is a early study by women that were taking chemotherapy alone had a survival. There was nearly health compared to those that were doing fasting, making diet cycles and chemotherapy. Right.
- [26:28]
Interviewer
So this is really amazing. I mean, this is the closest thing to a panacea I've ever heard of. And based on what you just told me, it's. It's good for metabolic syndrome, it's good for a type 2 diabetes or pre diabetes. It's, it's good for cancer, it's good for irritable bowel disease, maybe good for colitis. I mean, it seems like arguably the best medicine we've ever invented.
- [26:53]
Dr. Valter Longo
I always say we already had the best medicine we have ever invented is the human body. Right. So this is not. There is, I mean, other than what I was saying earlier, the prebiotic. Yeah. That I think adds to it. But I think the best medicine was already in the human body. Like I always talk about, you know, if you cut yourself. Right.
- [27:11]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [27:12]
Dr. Valter Longo
That's a perfect repair. Now if you imagine if you put artificial intelligence and a thousand scientists saying, can you beat that? Right. Can you beat that Wound healing and you do it with your methods, you know, probably take 30 years and trillions of dollars to just match that, right?
- [27:28]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [27:28]
Dr. Valter Longo
But the body knows how to do it.
- [27:29]
Interviewer
Cost you $3,000.
- [27:31]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. So then it probably tells us that this shrinking and this re expansion is the most powerful medicine ever. So they shrink and they eat themselves, they say, and now. But they're turning on stem cells, starting to reprogram cells. These Yamanaka factors are turned down everywhere and they stand by.
- [27:52]
Interviewer
Yamanaka factors are basically finding the factory settings and cells and going back to their original.
- [27:59]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, the Yamanaka factors are these cellular reprogramming they take, they make any cell, they can make any cell a young embryonic stem cell. Right. But if you brute force turn on the Yamanaka factors, you're gonna do good and a lot of bad. Right. Because you can't just take the body and turn on these factors and make the body young. But the fasting when you shrink, this is done in a very coordinated way. It knows exactly which factors to turn on where. So we see the pancreas is turning on different factors than the kidney and different factors in the gut. So each system, blood is kind of, it doesn't even turn on factors, it's. It turns on stem cells. So each organs during shrinking prepares to re expand and regenerate in a different way.
- [28:49]
Interviewer
For those people listening right now, and they want more information on the fast mimicking diet, I know you've written several books, but what is the best resource for sort of the average person?
- [29:01]
Dr. Valter Longo
One is the longevity diet that was published in 2018 and then fasting Cancer there was published earlier this year. So those are the.
- [29:12]
Interviewer
So maybe start with the longevity diet which I've read, it's very good book. And it talks not only about fasting, but it also talks about a diet for longevity which I happen to be very much in agreement with.
- [29:23]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, it talks about the blue zones. Yeah. So absolutely. I think it's trying to, you know, put it all together and match the data that you, you know, I've been talking about for so long. What is it about these diets that is so healthy and, and is it, is it, you know, can we prove in animals that, you know, you can make them live longer and healthier and what else is there? Right. That, that maybe people didn't understand? So yeah, so I think it's, it's, that's what the book is about. Right. Putting it all together in a multi pillar system. So epidemiological studies, centenarian study, you know, blue zones and then mouse and then clinical studies. Right. What happens?
- [30:05]
Interviewer
I love this.
- [30:07]
Dr. Valter Longo
And then you know, what I call complex systems, which is, you know, how does a car age, how does a plane age and what can we learn from systems that we build to understand how the human body may best benefit from interventions?
- [30:26]
Interviewer
Can you articulate the longevity diet, the food part of it, in your book?
- [30:31]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. So the longevity diet is a mostly plant based diet that is rich in cereal, legumes, nuts and vegetables. Not as high in fruit as the Mediterranean diet and others would talk about. And I think it's because I always talk about the fact that it can only take, you know, 30 grams extra of one food component to make you obese eventually. Right. And that's why in a world where, you know, 70% of people are overweight and obese, I didn't want to give the message that you should have, you know, four or five fruits a day.
- [31:17]
Interviewer
Fruits will contribute to obesity.
- [31:19]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. I mean, even an extra apple a day eventually will make you obese.
- [31:23]
Interviewer
Right, that I think a lot of people will be surprised by that.
- [31:27]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. It is not my opinion. I mean, if you look at the calories, you know, and the sugar content of an apple, if you had an extra apple a day, this is why, you know, in the longevity diet, I recommend, I say two fruits a day, but I don't recommend fruits and vegetable because fruits and vegetable gives the message to a lot of people. I can eat four bananas and two apples every day. Well, now it's a lot of calories and a lot of sugar that you just took it took in with those four bananas. And so, yeah, I think it's important to talk about details and because, you know, if people hear fruits and vegetable, then they can say, well, what's wrong with this? You know, I'm eating a lot of fruit and some vegetables. So, yeah, so I think it's important, it was important to say eat a lot of vegetables which are low in
- [32:12]
Interviewer
sugars and essentially eat all the vegetables we want in a day.
- [32:17]
Dr. Valter Longo
Maybe we used to be able to. Now the world has changed and there's a lot of pollution and there is a lot of toxins that are associated with different vegetables, especially if they're not organic, but maybe even if they are organic. So unfortunately, I think it's probably good to not overdo it with anything. And that's why I like it so much to go to Sardinia or Loma Linda in a lot of these areas of the world and say, how did they do it? You know, Or Okinawa or Japan. Right. So now we're looking very heavily at Japanese, old Japanese versus old Okinawa modern. Japanese modern Okinawa modern.
- [32:57]
Interviewer
Yeah, very different.
- [32:58]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, very different. But we're also looking at the epidemiology of Japanese, they're doing still very good. They're number one in the world for life expectancy. Right? Yeah. So, so that says that, that increasing fish and, and, and fat from fish, et cetera, that they, they underwent, it's not a big problem. You know, Italians instead are losing positions in the life expectancy, you know, ranking. And, and if you look at Italians, a lot of proteins now, a lot of animal products. You know, Italians are not, not have been as disciplined as Japanese. Right. So all those things have to be kept in mind to come up with the, the perfect personalized diet, you know, so. And yeah, it probably shouldn't be a lot of fruit or a lot of vegetable. Should be like, wow, how much fruit and vegetable did these people that were so successful eat? And it is also that consistent with the epidemiological data on millions of people. Yeah. So if you put it all together, then you get a common denominator that says this is probably a good, a good way to go.
- [33:58]
Interviewer
People on this podcast, they like to know what can I do? So take us through what might be an optimal breakfast, lunch and a dinner to be on this on your longevity, which is pretty much a blue zone diet. But I want to hear your Right, right.
- [34:13]
Dr. Valter Longo
I start with this whole grain friselle. It's very dark bread from southern Italy. And then I put on top of it a almond spread and chocolate. It's just almonds and chocolate. There's nothing. It's a little bit of sugar, right? That's it. You know, so that I get from Italy and then an apple I eat. That's my breakfast. Right. So this friselle, this almond spread and apple and tea, right. And I mix a bag of green tea with black tea. And that's my breakfast lunch. I only have it twice a week. I have it on the weekend. I only have lunch on the weekend. And you know, and lunch could be fish, it could be salmon with a salad or something like that. Twice a week, the rest of the week, I don't eat lunch because otherwise I gain weight and I don't want to skip dinner or breakfast. Do you snack, 5pm Yes, I have tea usually with this whole grain biscotti, very healthy kind that I get also from southern Italy, from Puglia. And then dinner, it's usually this minestrone, you know, that I used to eat maybe five times a week when I got to southern Italy during my summers in the, in the 70s. So it's a lot of green beans, a lot of beans, a lot of vegetables and some Pasta usually maybe like 70 grams of pasta, but it's a big. It's a big dish full of maybe like five servings of vegetables on top of maybe 200 grams or so of legumes.
- [35:56]
Interviewer
How about a little wine there?
- [35:57]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, wine maybe. Yeah, maybe once a week I will have it.
- [36:03]
Interviewer
So you probably know Mark Matson, who's another sort of fasting researcher. He argues that evolutionarily, we probably didn't have breakfast. You didn't wake up and toddle over to the refrigerator and make a smoothie or get eggs and bacon. You had to get up immediately and look for food or hunt your food. There might have been something left over from last night, but given that you had to be very physically fit and mentally sharp to be able to go find food. And he argues that evolutionarily, the best pattern is to not eat breakfast right away, delay breakfast till about midday. And then he's also a big fan of the blue zone longevity diet approach, mostly whole plant based food and then an early dinner and then not eat again for, you know, ideally, he Sundays, at least 14 hours between your last dinner and last meal of the day and your next meal the following day. But if you can go 16 to 8, 18 hours, that's even better.
- [37:09]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah.
- [37:09]
Interviewer
So in other words, that would be a breakfast at noon and a dinner at 6 and then no more eating.
- [37:16]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. I mean, Mark and I agree on most things and Satchin, Panda and I agree on most things. We don't agree on this. Right. And I think evolutionarily, people, if you look at the Simone and a lot of the tribes around the world that don't have very much access to medical care, they live, I think, 60. You only have about 20% of people alive. Right. So yeah, they have a short life. Right.
- [37:49]
Interviewer
So those are Mike Girvin's tsunami people.
- [37:52]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, yeah. That means that it didn't matter 10,000 years ago because you were not trying to live to 110. Right. So now you have to go to 110. So how do you get there? It turns out that if you look at the big pillar, which is epidemiological studies, if you go, if you skip breakfast over and over and over and over, you are among the higher mortality, twice as high cardiovascular disease group. Right. And if you look at fasting and what happens to your cholesterol level while you're fasting, it just starts after 12 hours it starts going up. Right. And then you see multiple Studies are suggesting 20 to 30 points increase in cholesterol in circulating cholesterol Level by the time you get to 16 hours. Now a new study from, from China is suggesting that it doesn't matter when you do the 16 hours. Your cardiovascular risk doubles no matter when you do it. Right. So now you put it all together and you're saying, wait a minute, you know, this is not good, right? This is not better. This is twice as bad. Right. So, yeah, so I would say I agree with Mark about the dinner. Early dinner, very good thing. But I also, I cannot do it. And most people I know cannot do the early dinner. Of course, I'm European. But yeah, if you can do early dinner and Italian. And Italian, yeah, if you can do the early dinner, you know, then it's good. But I think that doing 12 hours, and I've been challenging people for a long time. Whereas you have a ton of studies associating the 16 hours with problems, including, by the way, gallstone formation. Right. So there's several studies indicating that people that consistently fast for 16 hours, women, I think women at risk for gallstone problems had twice as much gallstone operations if they were regularly fasting for 16 hours versus those that were fasting for 10 hours.
- [39:56]
Interviewer
So you're saying the optimal is about 12 hours?
- [39:59]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, I say, I know. Never seen a single negative study about 12 hours. You're not going to get all the benefits. I agree with Mark. You're not. I mean, if you do 16 hours, you're going to get there faster, right. Probably metabolically and you're going to have a lot of benefits short term. But then, you know, long term, I think you're going to see the problems. And also what we were discussing earlier, people are not going to be able. Most people, if they do 16 hours, they're going to drop it. It's just a matter of time. Right? It's hard for people. 12 hours, you know, 8am, 8pm, 7am, 7pm It's a great majority of people that I talk to say yes, with
- [40:37]
Interviewer
the work schedule, you know, I will say, no matter where you go in the world and you see long live population, I. E. Blue zones, the pattern is always the same. They get up, eat a breakfast, they always eat breakfast. The midday meal tends to be the biggest meal and then the dinner either is absent or very small. And it's early and you don't see snacking much, if at all. In blue zones, typically speaking, there was no eating between meals. I'm a big believer. If you want a guide for how to behave yourself, look to the populations who've achieved the outcomes you want Maybe you want to tweak it a little bit based on science, but it's a fairly good guide.
- [41:18]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. Now if you look at those populations, I think it gets tricky, right? Why? Because they've lived, like you said, very different lives, right. Wars, concentration camps, famine, and then maybe in the last 20, 30 years of their lives, they now a lot of them, as, you know, they move in with their sons and daughters, Right. And they start eating a completely different diet. Right. So I think that if you look at Okinawa or Japan, you could say, well, this is what they've been eating. But if you go, and actually as you've done and I've done, if you go talk to them, you know, they're living with their sons and daughters, they're eating a much more, let's say westernized diet. So then we, I think that the benefits are more complex than what we see. Right. And so is it possible that then you had this combination of a longevity diet of a, poor, you know, Mediterranean diet, but then also eating more after you turn 70, 75, 80, because your son and daughters are now having meat almost every day? Could that combination.
- [42:26]
Interviewer
Yeah, that's a very good insight actually. Yeah.
- [42:29]
Dr. Valter Longo
Could that combination have created this, this, you know, record longevity both in Japan and, and in some areas of the
- [42:37]
Interviewer
world, you know, and it seems that the longevity phenomena happens. People born after 1890 and before 1940. Why is that? Because people born much before 1890, by the time they hit adulthood, they weren't able to benefit from vaccinations and antibiotics, they were dying of infectious diseases. And those people born after 1940, their traditional diets that were so healthy begin to get corrupted by the inclusion of ultra processed foods. Too much meat and cheese and eggs and Coca Cola, et cetera. And you know, cars enter the scene, so they're not walking as much. And then at very end, social media. So your very good observation about indeed these probably poor, mostly peasant, who've lived a very sparse active life, not enough of the right calories, then all of a sudden, you know, the year 2000 comes around, they move in with their children, which is a very common practice in blue zones. Multi generational family. All of a sudden there's kind of a upgrade to their diet and it kind of begins to approach a western diet. But that actually may be a good thing when you get older and you need more protein.
- [43:56]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah.
- [43:57]
Interviewer
And more meat is good.
- [43:58]
Dr. Valter Longo
Exactly right. That's what we actually published, you know, 10 years ago, that after 65, those
- [44:03]
Interviewer
days, I just came up with it. Now you've known it for a decade.
- [44:06]
Dr. Valter Longo
No, no. The epidemiological data in the US indicated that the 80 year old in a very low protein diet was not doing good at all. But the 40, 50 year old in a very low protein diet, vegan or otherwise, was doing very well. Right. For cancer, for overall mortality. But then when you go to the field, you kind of see that, right. Say, and they're, you know, their families, they're, the centenarians are not having a bad diet, they're just influenced by this bad diet. So it's a, it's a compromise between what they always ate and what their sons and daughters eat. And that probably is the ideal diet. And that's very much what, what. All the pillars indicate that. Yeah, don't. Now, don't start. They're not eating hamburgers, you know, three times. They're not going to McDonald's three times a week. But they may be okay eating, let's say a steak twice a week and chicken twice a week and you know, fish twice a week. Right. So maybe animal protein serving per day is I think, very common for those elderly that are now living with their sons and daughters.
- [45:17]
Interviewer
Right. Now there is this obsession with getting more protein. And most of what we hear on the Instagram from these quote unquote longevity experts, they're recommending about at least twice as much protein as we, as we need. But it's more nuanced for that because a young maybe if you're interested in building muscle, fine, but we don't need nearly as much as protein as these quote unquote experts are telling us, which is one gram per kilo is what they're.
- [45:48]
Dr. Valter Longo
Two grams per kilogram. One gram per pound? Yeah, yeah, one gram per pound. Which is.
- [45:54]
Interviewer
So I weigh 190 pounds would be 190 grams, which would be about seven ounces of protein a day or something like that. 28 grams for all.
- [46:04]
Dr. Valter Longo
My recommendation is 0.37. So nearly almost a third. Right? A little bit over a third of what they're recommending.
- [46:13]
Interviewer
Right?
- [46:13]
Dr. Valter Longo
So they're going to be 1 gram per pound. I recommend 0.37 grams per pound. Now every medical association in the world is fine with 0.37 if it's good quality. And again, if you look at, for example, if you look at the mice that have record longevity, you know, they have a mutation in growth hormone and the growth hormone receptor, they live 40% longer. And these are the same mutation that we have in the little people of Ecuador that the mutation in Growth hormone receptor. That is the protein pathway, right? That's if you eat protein, the protein is going to activate growth hormone, IGF1 signaling more than almost anything else that you can, that you can eat. And we know that you know, if you take people and you feed them a high protein diet, they will have high levels of IGF1 and, or higher levels of IGF1. And that's, that's this pro aging pathway, right? So, so just to give an example of how detached that is from, from the research, if you want to make a mouse live longer with that calorie restriction, the only way protein restriction or methane restriction or what Methane, one of the essential amino acids in proteins, right? So that is the, I mean salad. If you look at solid data, one of the only ways that by changing the diet of mice and rats to make them long lived is to restrict their proteins or restrict their one of the amino.
- [47:40]
Interviewer
That's just so amazing. Where we're told eat more protein to live longer. And 100 years of research actually say low protein diets are the diets of longevity.
- [47:50]
Dr. Valter Longo
Very clear. Now nobody's arguing with benefit, small benefits, short term or even long term for muscle, etc. But you cannot just look at that, that's just, it's half a pillar, right? You have to look at five pillars and then when you look at all five pillars you realize that yes, you need to have sufficient proteins, yes you need to have sufficient essential amino acid, leucine, methylamine, yes you need to do muscle training. But you have to have as little protein that gets you to, to the muscle mass as possible because that, otherwise you're getting a good and three bad.
- [48:27]
Interviewer
It's very confusing though, I have to admit. I mean, you know, I study this, it's, it's, it's hard to know what is low protein, medium protein or high protein when you're out in shopping for your groceries.
- [48:40]
Dr. Valter Longo
I mean it's not that hard because everything's, it tells you exactly what, how much by law, right? So if you turn it, it'll say it's got per serving, this much protein. That's it, right? So if you buy the fish, they'll tell you exactly how many proteins per serving. If it's got four servings, it's pretty straightforward actually. And I don't think you need to sit there with the calculator every day once you learn, hey, if I eat about this much fish, I will have 25 grams of protein. Then you know that if you have that filet of fish, you're about halfway to the proteins you need for the day. And you also know that most of the protein, the rest of the protein should come from plant based sources. Yeah.
- [49:20]
Interviewer
But a general rule is we should not be thinking we should be eating steak to get the protein we need or we shouldn't necessarily be adding protein powders to our smoothies.
- [49:32]
Dr. Valter Longo
Well, steaks consistently come at the very top. Longevity shortening. Right. So red meat and processed meat, study after study after study. So you know, the best thing is to avoid them at least to age 65, avoid them almost completely. Right. Or minimize. Right. So kind of like mercury containing fish. Right. So yeah, you can eat it, but it's got to be once a month. Right. Maybe twice a month. But the other maybe like white meat. Okay. Once a week. Right. So or maybe twice a week and, and fish two, three times a week, maybe four times a week. And depending on what age you know, are you losing muscle mass? So yeah, you want to make sure that, that, that you don't then get into this malnourished frail group because you, that now you're going from one problem to another problem. Right. And that's why, yes, we need to avoid this one gram per pound animal protein levels, but we also need to avoid frailty.
- [50:37]
Interviewer
Where do you come down on eggs? Net positive or negative eggs from where?
- [50:42]
Dr. Valter Longo
I remember from a New England large study, up to three eggs a week was, did not have any negative effects. Right. On the population as you went up from three, from where I remember, it started to be associated with increased mortality. So I would say three eggs a week seemed to be a good, you know, a good limit. Again, we're talking about optimal, the perfect diet. Right?
- [51:12]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [51:12]
Dr. Valter Longo
So put it all together, that's a perfect diet. Now people can decide how close they want to be to the perfect diet, but the perfect diet seems to, to say that.
- [51:22]
Interviewer
How about the pasta paradox I call it because here you're Italian and Italians enjoy about five extra years of life expectancy over Americans yet eat a lot of pasta. On the other hand, the carbophobes. Oh my God, simple carbohydrates, pasta. So how do you reconcile those two situations?
- [51:42]
Dr. Valter Longo
I think people confuse high portion of calories coming from carbohydrate. From excess carbohydrate.
- [51:50]
Interviewer
Right.
- [51:51]
Dr. Valter Longo
So you need to avoid excess carbohydrate because even if you have an extra 30 grams, as I was saying earlier, of, you know, any carbohydrates.
- [51:58]
Interviewer
About an ounce.
- [51:59]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. If you have an extra ounce a day of, of carbohydrates you're going to be obese. It's just, it's going to take a few years, but you're going to be obese. So that's bad. But when you look at where proportionally the calories should come from, the data suggests that ideally about 50 to 60. So there's a Lancet study showing that it was better to have 80% of your calories coming from carbs than having a 20% very low carbohydrate. So it's better to have extremely high carbohydrate diet. And by the way, that's what Japanese used to have. That's what Okinawans used to have. It was 80% carbohydrate diet.
- [52:38]
Interviewer
Right.
- [52:39]
Dr. Valter Longo
But it was low calories. So the Okinawans traditionally used to have, you know, 1800 kilo calories per day in the Japanese is 2100. Right. So they were calorie restricted already 67 years ago. Now, most people, if you're starting to gain weight, if you're on a generally high carbohydrate diet. Yeah, you have to look for starches like bread and pasta and potatoes and rice. That's probably what's causing the, a lot of the problem together with the, with the animal fats.
- [53:10]
Interviewer
So it's not what we're eating so much when it comes to carbohydrates, it's how much. In other words, spaghetti can be just fine.
- [53:19]
Dr. Valter Longo
Oh, it is. I mean, we know it's just fine because, you know, you know, Caruso and Emma Morano ate pasta every day. Right. You know, so Emma Morano became the oldest person who ever lived in Italy. 117.
- [53:30]
Interviewer
And what did she eat every day?
- [53:32]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, she ate pasta and bread, and so did everybody. You followed, right. In most places that you went to. Right. So. So yeah, the Okinawans had the purple sweet potatoes and then. And the Japanese had a ton of rice, historically. Right. That's all they could get. And yeah, so I think that carbohydrates are perfectly fine, but you cannot have more than you need. Even a few grams. Even one ounce or even half an ounce eventually is going to turn into an extra pound of fat. 2, 5, 10, 28. And in 20 years, you're going to be obese. So. So, so yeah, you have to keep.
- [54:11]
Interviewer
Walter, you bring up a really good point here because we're constantly marketed this idea of you need to add this to your diet. You need this extra nutrient, this extra superfood. You need extra protein, extra meat, whatever it is. But actually it's not so Much about what as it is about the quantity.
- [54:32]
Dr. Valter Longo
No. What matters a lot. Right. So having the ingredients. So if you look at the.
- [54:38]
Interviewer
But let's just say a whole plant based diet, you know, we could split hairs on should we eat more broccoli or more nightshades or more carrots. But what you're saying here is you gotta be really careful not to eat more grams than we need.
- [54:56]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. There's different issues. Like one is probably the nourishment. Right. So if you eat the broccolis and you eat the carrots and you eat a lot of vegetable and fruits, that's micronutrients. Right. You're probably not going to be deficient in anything that you need, including the fibers. But when it comes to weight, it is going to be that extra piece of bread or piece of. Or potato every day. One extra potato eventually is going to make you obese. Right. And so all you have to do is, is understand that you're gaining weight and then adjust with the starches in most cases or with the. You, you can, you can also lower, let's say if you're having lots of animal fats. That's another good place to lower to take care of your. Because of course, that's even more calories from those animals.
- [55:49]
Interviewer
Very dense.
- [55:50]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah.
- [55:51]
Interviewer
You know, the. When I think of the Okinawan Goya Campuru, it's a stir fry and it has tofu in it. Very good tofu. It has some root vegetables and lots of greens. It is stir fried with some fat. Nicely spiced. But your meal looks like a compost pile on your plates. This giant heaping pile of food. And it's delicious. And you eat and eat and you're full. You can't believe you're having this wonderful big meal and you're stuffed and you've just consumed one fifth the calories of a hamburger. And. And I think of our minestrone, by the way, I start my day with minestrone. That's my first meal of the day. It's a giant bowl. It's. It's got beans in there. I don't put pasta in mine. I might put some barley in it. But there's about eight different kinds of vegetables. Herbs, a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. I like to put avocado on the top for a little extra fat. And I'm stuffed.
- [56:56]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. Yeah.
- [56:56]
Interviewer
I've just gotten half the fiber I need and most of the vegetables I need for the day. And I probably consume 600 calories.
- [57:05]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah. And I have that picture in my book, by the way, I have the pizza with cheese and then. And the calories, like 1100 calories or something. And. And then I have this big, twice as big, you know, minestrone with about half of the calories. And another thing, I think that people, you know, maybe hear this and say, oh, but you know, the pizza is so much better than the minestrone. I would say that, you know, if you talk to most of centenarians that have lived through having to eat a lot of this minestrone, they will say, forget it. I enjoy much more the minestrone than I enjoy the pizza. Right. Is. It's hard to beat. Right. Even compared to some of the tastiest food.
- [57:45]
Interviewer
Yeah, I'm so hooked on it. I have this whole book. About a third of the recipes in there are sort of minestrone type recipes. I think it's the. One of the best longevity cocktails there is. Where do you come down on wine? The National Academies of science will tell you that drinking wine every day, a little bit of wine will raise your chance for cancer 18%, but lowers all cause mortality by 10%. Italians, as we well know, wine is part of the culture. It has been for thousands of years. And, but I know, you know, the Huberman lab and the, the current state of science, there's no level of alcohol that's safe.
- [58:25]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, this, if we're going to talk science, then it's science. Right. And science is very clear on alcohol. It's neutral. Right. And it's not up to three drinks or four drinks a week neutral. It's not good for you and it's not bad for you. And that's overall effect. Right. You cannot say cancer because let's say that increase cancer by 10% and it decreased cardiovascular disease by 50%. It's not true, but I'm saying let's say that. Right. Then what's the relevance of the cancer effect if it decreases cardiovascular disease by 50%? Right. So this is why you cannot do preventive medicine. One disease at the time. Preventive. It's got to be treat aging. Aging is by far the biggest risk factor for many, many diseases. Right. And that's why you have to think about alcohol and aging. And the effect seems to be neutral. Doesn't help you against overall mortality. It doesn't hurt you. But yeah, it does increase, let's say breast cancer by 6% and some esophageal cancer by so. So then it should be that. Why would you possibly take away these three or four glasses of Wine from people when the effect overall mortality is neutral. Right. It makes no sense. But what makes sense, I think is to say if you have a, if it is a risk factor, if it increases your risk of developing breast cancer and you have a BRCA mutation in the family, or you have, you know, three relatives that died of breast cancer, you might not want to drink. Right. Because now you're combining two risk factors for cancer, for breast cancer, and that's really putting you in a danger zone.
- [60:01]
Interviewer
I will say, I know in the blue zones, I've seen the surveys that about 85% of people making it to 90 are drinking some wine every day. Maybe could they live a year or more perhaps?
- [60:16]
Dr. Valter Longo
But no, no, the data suggested they will not. Well, they're on average, yeah, some of them could live a year more and some of them will live a year less if they stop. Right. So. So in the end it'll turn out to be.
- [60:29]
Interviewer
But here's drinking every day. I'm talking about every day. Yeah, yeah, but they're still living 10 years longer than America.
- [60:36]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, but they may be, but they may be genetically selected, right? So they may not be as sensitive to that.
- [60:45]
Interviewer
Maybe in Sardinia, but the other ones are pretty heterogeneous, pretty, you know, melting pot people.
- [60:51]
Dr. Valter Longo
But I'm saying genetically is a population that may be less prone to the alcohol related deaths, at least historically now.
- [61:04]
Interviewer
Or maybe we flip flop on wine like we flip flopped on carbs and running marathons. It's like science tells us a different story every 40 years or so.
- [61:15]
Dr. Valter Longo
But the alcohol story has been pretty consistent at least for 20 years. Right. And I think now the zooming in on each disease is causing the problem. Right? So now, because it's clear that it is a risk factor for certain cancers, I think the epidemiologists are saying it is a risk factor for this. So if you're a cancer epidemiologist, you're saying, stop, don't do that. Any alcohol is poison because it increases that. But you cannot do that. And I remember looking at this data 10 years ago and it was pretty much the same, right? It was neutral effects. So in my, my first version of the book, I think I wrote it in 2015 and I made that conclusion. Now if you look at the new Harvard studies, alcohol, if anything, comes up a little bit in the positive, right. In the, in the, associated with positive effects on, and the ability to make it to 70 or 75 healthy, I think alcohol was definitely not in the red, it was in the green, which indicated positive effects.
- [62:21]
Interviewer
I know you have this new book, Fasting Cancer. It seems that by coupling caloric restriction or the fast mimicking diet with some of these more kind of conventional treatments for cancer, you get a much better result. Is that a fair summation?
- [62:39]
Dr. Valter Longo
I think that the summation would be we need to exploit the evolutionary biology of cancer and normal cells. Right. And so that's not done in cancer research or done minimally. Right. So the fact that if you starve a system, the normal cells will all go in one direction and the cancer cells will refuse to go in that direction. One of the hallmarks of cancer cells is independency from growth signal and refusal to obey anti growth signal. Right. So fasting is probably the biggest anti growth signal and they refuse. Right. So that's why it's so important to use something like fasting in cancer, because it's going to make it a lot easier for the drugs, but also the immune system. And now it turns out the immune system is much better recognizing the cancer cell once the system is fasted. Why? Probably because of the visibility of the cancer cell. If I know that if I fast you, you should stop, your cells should stop. And if the immune system now is observing, these cancer cells are rebelling, maybe that's a signal. And that's what we see in the clinic now, in the mice, but also in the clinic, like T cells and immune cells attacking the, the cancer cells more after fasting cycles. Right. So it's like maybe an opportunity to see a rebel cell and kill that
- [64:13]
Interviewer
rebel cell in general. If I've gotten a cancer diagnosis, breast cancer, colon cancer, leukemia, brain cancer, is it a good idea, no matter what, just to start the fast mimicking diet?
- [64:30]
Dr. Valter Longo
I think it's good to talk to the oncologist. And then, you know, I have a foundation clinic, a nonprofit that follows patients.
- [64:39]
Interviewer
So you're saying it might, it might be an okay diet, but you want to do it under a doctor's supervision.
- [64:43]
Dr. Valter Longo
Not only a doctor, but also the experts. Right. Because it's very tricky. And so, for example, if you look at, we have published doxorubicin, I just give you an example how tricky it gets. Right. So doxorubicin is a widely used chemotherapy drug that has cardiac causes cardiotoxicity. If you take a mouse and you fast it for two or three days and then you hit it with doxorubicin, the heart is very much protected. You know, it's just an unbelievable protection level. Right. So the mice are all alive versus if you don't fast them, they're all dead. Or, you know, a big difference. Right. But then you use intermittent fasting, one day on, one day off, and do exactly the same thing. Now cardiotoxicity goes up. Why? Because the refeeding is associated. And we always warned people, be careful because now you're not fasting during chemotherapy treatment, you're refeeding during chemotherapy. And that's the worst thing you can do. Right. Much better to not fast at all because now you're going from shrunk to high proliferative mode while the chemotherapy though is very high. And so the cardiomyocytes are now being damaged by this re expansion together with high levels of doxorubicin. So yeah, this is just an example of how just the length of fasting and the timing of fasting, very delicate. Can affect whether it's good for you or really bad for you. And it's exactly the same drug and it's exactly the same patient.
- [66:16]
Interviewer
What do you say to people out there who've just received a diagnosis of cancer? What's, what should their first step be? If they want to explore the interaction of fasting or caloric restriction with their treatment?
- [66:30]
Dr. Valter Longo
Contact the Create Cures Foundation. Spell that for Create Cures.
- [66:34]
Interviewer
Create Cures. Okay.
- [66:36]
Dr. Valter Longo
Foundation. Yeah. And then there's, there's a lot of specialized PhDs and, and nutritionists that, that do that for, for a living. And, and then the idea is always collaborate with the oncologist, you know.
- [66:51]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [66:52]
Dr. Valter Longo
So to bring.
- [66:53]
Interviewer
A lot of oncologists don't realize this. They don't realize there's another tool.
- [66:57]
Dr. Valter Longo
That's okay. Right? That's okay. That's why our job is to give them the papers and to say, these are the clinical trials, this is the animal data, this is the clinical data. This is, you know, what we are suggesting to the oncologist. Then it's between the oncologist and the patient to make a decision. So for example, a lot of the times if, if a patient is stage one breast cancer, let's say this is one of the most common type of patients that they see in the foundation. We tell them just use the longevity diet, let's take a blue zone type diet. And then we give them 14 hour time restricted, eating right. A little bit longer because there's data suggesting much better survival in breast cancer women that do 14 hours. So even now it's moving more to the range that I don't like for everybody else. But for cancer, it's not a bad idea. So 14 hour time, receipt of eating. So you fast for 14 hours a day. Plus the longevity diet for a stage one, if it's a stage four, stage three, stage four, but especially stage four, most patients we try to put in the fasting making diet and time it in the right way and we look at the muscle mass, we look at the weight loss and lots of different things and then we make our recommendations to the oncologist about what is probably the ideal type of fasting to do and how often.
- [68:20]
Interviewer
Maybe a first step is getting Valter's book fasting Cancer. For an overview and then read the Longevity diet and you have two, two very good tools to begin your journey to healing.
- [68:33]
Dr. Valter Longo
Yeah, yeah. And, and both of the books, all the, all the, my royalties go to the foundations. Right. So, so yeah, I encourage people to, to read it and, and if they have a problem, contact the foundation clinic.
- [68:48]
Interviewer
I love it. Do you think you're going to live to 100?
- [68:51]
Dr. Valter Longo
You know, I always say I'm afraid I'm going to die tomorrow, but I like to go to 120. So, so but for some reason most journalists take out the part about tomorrow and they keep 120.
- [69:04]
Interviewer
Well, we're going to keep the 120.