#042 Dr. Valter Longo on Resetting Autoimmunity and Rejuvenating Systems with Prolonged Fasting & the FMD

Longo's fasting-mimicking diet: cancer cells get more vulnerable while healthy cells get stronger

Fasting makes cancer cells vulnerable while protecting healthy ones. Longo's FMD triggers cell death then stem cell regeneration.

"While these mutations may be to the cancer cell's advantage in a high nutrient environment, it is the low nutrient environment, in other words, the fasted environment, that suppresses this so-called oncogenic signaling where things get interesting. Dr. Longo's group has found evidence that fasting may produce in cancer cells a sensitivity to stress while actually conferring greater resilience to stress in healthy cells and tissues. This may be because the same mutations that cancer has accumulated to promote their growth ultimately make them less flexible. The advantage of this should be obvious. Fasting may make cancer more vulnerable to standard of care treatments while also making the side effects less severe for healthy tissues, something still being validated but holding great promise. Okay, so that's just a few broad strokes of some of the enormous potential impact of Dr. Longo's work and gives a great hint as to why I'm so excited about it. Additionally, we also discuss the difference between intermittent fasting, prolonged fasting, time-restricted eating, the fasting-mimicking diet, and caloric restriction. How the shift between normal metabolism and what Dr. Longo refers to ketogenic mode is subject to individual variation and the type of restriction practiced. How the beneficial metabolic effects and short duration of the fasting-mimicking diet may help people overcome both the physiological and psychological hurdles of losing weight. How the fasting mimicking diet causes a person to temporarily lose muscle, which gets restored upon refeeding, but also seems to cause a preferential loss in visceral fat rather than subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat is the fat that is stored in and around your major organs in the abdominal and is linked with an increased risk of a number of health problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. What some of the most promising lifespan extending strategies are and how they may have the potential to improve life and old age by reducing the prevalence of age-related diseases that actually make up what we think of as the decreptitude of old age. How massive cell death occurs during the fasting-mimicking diet, but refeeding enables healthy stem cell proliferation and potential differentiation. In the context of aging, how the fasting-mimicking diet has been shown to reset metabolism, driving down biomarkers associated with poor metabolic health, inflammation, and cardiovascular disease in humans. How shorter fasts may fail to approach some of the effects of periodic prolonged fasting and the fasting-mimicking diet by failing to achieve adequate glycogen depletion and ketogenesis. Some of the early but promising pretrial clinical anecdata suggesting potential complementary roles for the ketogenic diet and the fasting mimicking diet used in conjunction with conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy for certain cancers like gliomas. How oncologists might approach incorporating the fasting-mimicking diet, which is still seeking further clinical validation and approval, into their patient's care if they choose to. Dr. Longo's top picks for assessing biological age markers a person can ask their doctor to measure to gauge how well they're aging. A sneak peek at what's covered in Dr. Longo's new book, The Longevity Diet, and so much more. We're almost ready to get this show started, but first, hey you! Yeah you, the person that's constantly finding themselves googling things like mTOR and RAS, wanting to know everything there is to know about the growth hormone IGF-1 axis and its downstream growth signaling pals. You're the reason we put these episodes together. You have to admit that it's pretty niche, which is exactly why we're in a pretty special situation. This podcast exists because people like you even exist, because to everyone else, none of it matters. Therefore, if this stuff really hits the spot for you, you should absolutely consider becoming a monthly supporter of the show. We sort of do it like NPR around here, which is to say this podcast is viewer and listener supported."