Fasting Decoded: The Truth About Intermittent And Prolonged Fasting

Opening and Longevity Summit Introduction 0:00

Hi everyone, Last year we had 55,000 people. The watch, our summit and I'm pretty sure we changed the thousands of lives there this year. Hopefully we're going to have 75,000 or 100,000. We'll see. Doctor Joseph Antoun, I'm the host. I have spent decades of my life in longevity. Started as a physician and turned into prevention and living a healthy, long life rather than a secure system. Where you live is sick. And actually, we're not even living long sick. The US population lost 0.5 years of our lifespan last year, so we're living more a bigger portion of our lives sick, and then we're dying even sooner, which is unbelievable concerning.

And in light of spending over three and $4 trillion per year on our health system, today, I want to talk to you about a very critical topic. Is fasting for longevity. What are the types of fasting? Because there's a lot of misconceptions. Some people tell you intermittent fasting is good, some is bad, and you study here and you study there. But on average, most people are convinced it's healthy. But I'll tell you how it's healthy and when it's not healthy. And then I'm going to talk to you about the prolonged fasting where the magic happens and why we invented

Why Fasting Matters for Longevity 1:14

the technology of fasting with nutrition called the fasting mimicking die. So let's start from a high level perspective. There are two types of fasting the intermittent fasting phase. Intermittent fasting, meaning fasting zero hours right after your last meal all the way to two days 48 hours. We call all of that intermittent fasting. When you cross the three and you go longer and you're fast. We call that periodic or prolonged fasting. Three and beyond. Why we divide fasting into two major types.

Because the first type, the first 48 hours, the first reaction of the body is to say, okay, I'm not eating, I don't have calories. I'm going to go and tap into the reserves. I'm going to do a comparison between the body and intermittent fasting and a company that has no revenues. It's the same way when the body doesn't have calories. It's like a company with no revenues. What do you do if you're if you're the head of this company? First I'm going to say, well, you know, I don't have revenues now.

I'm not selling well this month. Let me go and get some money in the bank because I have saved some money in the bank. So first I go to my checking account and the body in the first few hours goes to the glycogen. Glycogen are small storage of extra calories in the body, mainly the muscle, some in the liver. And this is where the body goes first. That's our checking accounts hours, the first hours of fasting. Then again, if you have your company and you said, okay, I'm depleting my checking account, let me tap into my savings account and the body says, okay, after almost a day now saying, let me go and talk into fat, let me go break down the fat that I stored.

Intermittent Fasting and the Bodyu2019s Energy Stores 2:53

I turn those into ketones. So the debris is the cuts. When you cut the fat, it goes into small ketone bodies. This is why you say when somebody is fasting they are in ketosis. It means they already have went through hours and hours of fasting and now they're tapping. They're breaking down the fat the same way you go and you tap into your savings account. Now, when you start depleting the savings account, where are you going to do? You're going to go and tell the bank, hey, I need a credit card, or I need a loan, or I need to borrow something because I'm still lacking funds the same way the body goes to deliver and ask the liver.

Liver has some extra calories. Ask deliver to do something will make glucose traces. Can you dump more calories into the blood? Because we need you. We need you, Mr. Bank. Mr.. Lohner, Mr. credit card. And this is what happens after they run getting close to day two. Now, when you did fleet your checking accounts, when you deplete your savings accounts, when the bank is saying, I gave you the money I can give you now, I have to stop what you're going to do. You're in a crisis mode. You're in a stress and a crisis mode.

This is the transition from intermittent fasting to prolonged fasting after day two or day three. And then what do you do if you have a company? And now you depleted all the checking and savings and your loads, you're going to restructure the company. You're going to come in, you're going to gather the team and say, hey, we're going to fix everything going wrong to survive another day. We're going to cut unnecessary expenses. We're going to transition some of the funds from this department to that department, and we're going to fix 80 thing going wrong.

And this is what the body tells the cells after day three. Please consume all the debris and the organelles, whatever is left over within the cell, a process we call autophagy self eat, self rejuvenate. And this process won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016. Three important. It's the first time we're talking about something impacting every cell in the body, because every cell in the body eats. And when every cell is fasting, every cell lives on calories. It is impacted, is involved into this fasting process.

It's one intervention is impacting we we call it upstream. Intervention is impacting the entire body. And look what's doing to the cells is telling the cell rejuvenate, fix, heal, reprogram. Practice autophagy. Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016. It's very powerful because this is a miracle of biology. When we say we have a doctor within, this is the doctor with it. Fasting, especially prolonged fasting, awakens the doctor from within.

From Ketosis to Prolonged Fasting 5:47

It's a natural healing process. Our ancestors thousands of years ago, they did not have food all the day. They were not ordering Uber Eats at 10 p.m. they had tears of food, especially in the spring and summer. And this is when they stored a little bit of extras both in, in storage and in fat. And then when they go through the winter time, there was a lot of periods where there was no food, migration and snow, etc., etc. and their body knew what to do consume the fat, rejuvenate the cells, and then in the spring you flourish again with nature.

We lost these cycles of fasting and nutrition. We eat all the time today. This is why we keep sorting fat, storing fat, storing fat, insulin resistance. With aging, we age and we keep storing, and then we develop insulin resistance. And that's the mother of almost a lot of or all almost. We don't want to say all age related chronic conditions. Diabetes now with diabetes type two, cardiovascular health, cancer a lot of cancers are linked now that were lifestyle especially interesting and especially insulin resistance.

And all times we started calling the diabetes type three. It's intoxicating the brain with insulin resistance, with glucose and with molecules coming into the brain that otherwise should not be absorbed into the body. This is why it's so critical to get into this autophagy, to get into this total body audit and rejuvenation phase. If you watch a car race, you know the cars are going fast and the engine is getting tired and and there's ways and tears in the wheels. And then what the car does, it goes to a pit stop.

It stops. The engineers come in. The mechanics, they they look at what's coming wrong. They change the wheels, they change the gas, they fix whatever is going wrong. And then the car goes back stronger, longer to the track. We need the same things. We're going at full speed in life stress, lack of sleep over overeating, concentration of calories, preservative, conservative things that we're putting in our body from time to time. And we recommend three times per year, 2 to 3 times. If you don't have any health condition, you can do it 2 to 3 times per year.

You got to put your body into rest, into a full reset.

Autophagy and Cellular Rejuvenation 8:09

You got to reset your cells. You get a detox, lose the excess weight, lose the toxins and then go back stronger, longer. This is the importance of the prolonged fasting. Now you don't want to go for days and days and days. Some people go extreme for weeks. Then you become depleted. A company that has no funds for a longer period is going to lose some of our some of its own best people. They're going to go and apply to other companies. It's going to lose supply and sales for the next month. It's going to be in a detrimental.

You cannot order this on supply, cannot sell, cannot market well. And then there's a vicious cycle. So it's good to stress and then refit. When the when the theory structures the company with his team. The same way when the body does autophagy. Now you want to bring back food and then it evolves. The company evolves into its best way. This is how the body also rejuvenates even after the fasting with the feeding period. So that flourishes in the right direction with new cells, with healed cells. So intermittent fasting 0 to 48 hours, prolonged or periodic fasting three days and onwards.

We recommend you stop at day five. The five day fasting is a very, very important reset to the body. Resetting metabolism. You're losing a lot of weight, which improves, you know, blood pressure, blood sugar, blood cholesterol, etc. and your building the cells. There's nothing in medicine today. There is no pill, there's no surgery, there's nothing in healthcare. They can rejuvenate the cells of the body like a prolonged fasting. And then you stop at day five, you feed and you're going now back into the right direction.

Hopefully you reverse the bio bio age of the cells. So important, so important, this artificial process. You reverse the biological age score of your cells and then your body is younger from the inside and is healing from the inside. If you have diabetes, if you have other chronic conditions, inflammation the body is trying to heal. The wake is the doctors from inside to try to heal and try to be biologically younger. Why it's important to stay younger than your age. Fasting or prolonged fasting is one of the most important intervention and one of the most proven ones ones to stay younger than your age.

Remember this expression I want to stay younger than my age. My chronological age is 50, let's say, or 55 or 60. I want to be 40. I want to be 35. I want to be 45. I don't want to be equal age to my chronological age or even older. Why? I want to be younger from the inside. Because 90% of us die from one of four diseases and they are age related diseases, right? Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer's. You don't get Alzheimer's at age 22, you didn't develop your type two diabetes or blood sugar started increasing.

At age 23, it increases at age 55.

Health Risks, Aging, and Chronic Disease 11:15

You didn't get Alzheimer's. At age 27, you got it at age 70, you didn't get the first cancer, say colorectal cancer didn't get it at age 22, you get it at age 65 and 60 and 65 and 70 and so on and so forth. You're not going to get your first heart attack at age 27. Your first worry at age 27 is not a heart attack. You're worried about heart attack when you're 55. And so this is a big concept that medicine ignored. This is why medicine still practice seeking medicine ignored. That aging of the cells from the inside is the true sign of health.

The unit of measurement of longevity should be your age. Your inner age. The age from the inside. The age of the cells. The age of your metabolism. Because the younger you are, the further away you are from your diabetes, your cardiovascular event, your Alzheimer's and your cancer. And one of the best way to stay younger and away from what's going to kill you. What's killing 90% of us is to do the prolonged fasting. Now, prolonged fasting for five days is not, you know, an easy thing to do. It comes with all these benefits that we talked about, but it also comes with side effects, right?

When a CEO of a company has no money, there are problems. Also. Yes, he's going to restructure. Yes, the bank account, the fat will decrease. But there are also side effects. There are headaches, there is muscle loss. There is fatigue. There's risk of low blood sugar. So it's a stressful process. And this is why the scientists in 18 universities got together led by USC and Walter Longer. Professor Walter Longer, who's the grandfather of this fasting discipline. And the new invention that is called the fasting mimicking die.

So all these 18 universities got to and the National Institute of Health started funding the process of discovering what we call today the fasting mimicking diet. What does that mean? It's a nutritionist, a very precise formulation that researchers have studied at Elettra, and all these as the company that manufactures it and researchers and all these 18 universities, it's they developed this food, this very precise nutrition formulation, all plant based, healthy, gluten free, soil free, lactose free, so very premium, high quality nutrition.

But when it gets into the body, when you eat it, this cells and the blood to not send signals of food. So it's a fasting mimicking diet. You're fasting. You're getting the benefits. You're doing autophagy, cellular rejuvenation. You're resetting your metabolism, you're losing weight. And actually with the fasting you protect the muscle. This is very important. And so the fasting mimicking diet is the way that allows you to fast for five days for a healthy longevity

Why Prolonged Fasting Has Limits 14:05

and without having to starve your body with no calories. It makes fasting compliant easy and more fruitful. It's an enhancement to the fastest experience. So these are the two types of fasting. Intermittent fasting for weight management resetting the metabolism. And there's multiple ways there's multiple names there. Those who skip breakfast with all 16 eight days. Those who 16 eight meaning 12 hours overnight are fast, plus four hours because you skip breakfast and now you're going all the way to lunch.

We call it 16 hours, eight hours. So 16 hours, 16 hours of food fasting and eight hours of food. There's if you if you say 24, it means 20 hours of no food for hours of food. There are those practicing what we call old mad one meal a day, which is eating one time a day. And so intermittent fasting in general is beneficial. There's two types of science behind it whenever you do observational trial. And so you're just watching people and you study them when they do intermittent fasting. Typically the results there are not great. Why?

Because people do the wrong intermittent fasting. They're eating eight late at night and then they skip breakfast. Most of us were like, oh, I wake up in the morning. You know, I don't have a big appetite. But if you research it in depth so you're not hungry in the morning because you ate later at night, and yet little bit of reflux and is giving you a bad taste and you don't want to eat in the morning, you just say, hey, I'm not a breakfast person. I can easily skip breakfast. A lot of people do that because they have not finished their dinner early at 6 p.m.

they have not walked or spent two hours before sleeping because believe me, if you do that, you're going to wake up hungry the next day. One of the signs, actually one of the if you want a secret here, one of the signs to be doing the right nutrition and fasting and living healthy long life is to sleep a little bit hungry. I always say sleep on it a little bit. Hunger, too much hunger. You can not sleep. Being full and sleeping is wrong because you're talking the calories that you ate at night. Whatever you eat at night is going as a reserve.

There is no exercise when you sleep, your heart rate is low. You're not moving. So you're basically. And the hormone, the anabolic hormones are up at night, growth hormone is up at night and a little bit later early in the morning. So your body is ready to pick up the calories at night. Whatever you eat, the excess goes into fat. We used to say in the 80s and 90s calorie in calorie. That's not true. What you eat before sleeping is mainly going to be stopped.

The Fasting Mimicking Diet 16:48

What you eat in the morning or during the day is going. You have catabolic hormones is going to be spent because you're moving throughout the day. You're thinking your entire body is active. So when we do observational trial, intermittent fasting people by default, they do intermittent fasting by skipping breakfast are a little bit late night eaters. Not everyone. I'm not generalizing, but a lot of them. So when you mix the results, the results are not so positive. This is why a lot of people are confused today.

Is intermittent fasting good or bad? Well, actually if you do it late and intermittent fasting, meaning you're eating late at night and then you're skipping breakfast, actually, the results are more negative and positive because there's nothing worse than eating late at night. Even skipping breakfast the next day cannot overcompensate to eating late at night, and therefore the results are mixed. Now, when we do randomized clinical trials, when we come in and intervene and tell people what to do, we tell them, you know, finish your dinner at 6 or 7 or max eight and then stay with that food to the next day.

So they're doing a front end intermittent fasting. They're pushing their dinner backwards and they're starting early. And now you have a perfect night's sleep. You didn't store the fat during the night. You start burning fat in the morning because you ate your dinner early, and you continue the fat burning throughout the day because you skipped your morning food. This is where we see a positive results from intermittent fasting. We see pro longevity results with intimate fasting. When you do a front ended intermittent fasting.

What I'm saying here is very important because even a lot of doctors are confused. It's fast and good. Should I tell my patients to do intermittent fasting? Should I tell them or dieticians or nurse practitioners? They're all interested. They're reading the benefits of fasting. But for every four positive article, there's one negative article and they're confused. And I'm here trying to clear the confusion for everyone. If you eat your dinner early, you practice intermittent fasting by sleeping great overnight, not eating food overnight, and then adding for extra hours after that to continue the burn.

This is where intermittent fasting helps you lose a lot of weight, and it's pro longevity. For a max longevity benefit, we recommend you just do that 12 to 14 instead of 16 because we believe breakfast is not bad. So like a lot of people ask me, how come you're asking me to do breakfast and to do intermittent fasting? Well, this is what the centenarians do. This is one of the biggest secrets that we uncovered from people living 100 and be out. They eat their dinner early. Most centenarians are not watching late night movies then not staying up late.

They actually sleep very early. They have their dinner at 5 p.m. at 6 p.m. max at 7 p.m., then there's 1 or 2 three hours before they sleep, and then they still have their breakfast the next day.

How to Do Intermittent Fasting Correctly 19:38

So they actually practice 12 to 14 hours of intermittent fasting and still had breakfast in the morning. This is very much pro longevity because you see all the positive factors came together. We we had we had dinner, but early dinner, we didn't sleep on a full stomach. So our body and the biological age of the organ, biological clock of the organs is not interfered with. They didn't stock calories overnight, didn't increase insulin resistance by stocking those calories, and the next day they still ate in the morning.

Because guess what? We need to draw the day. People always ask me and they ask the founder of our company, Professor Walter Longo. You know, he's the author of the Longevity Diet Book. If you want to read about all this that I'm what I'm talking about in a concise, precise way, go read the Longevity Diet book by Professor Walter Longo. And it's the most scientific evidence behind what we're talking about. But a lot of people, they don't understand that or not, they don't. It's it's there. Confused about whether breakfast is good or bad.

Well, breakfast is actually very important because it gives you the colors in the morning that you need so much. Your heart is pumping faster in the morning because you're walking, going to your job, tilting at home breakfast, going to the gym, whatever you're doing, your muscles are active. Your brain is the most active in the morning as you work, as you cater for your kids, etc. whatever you do in life. So there's a demand for calories in the morning. You want to supplement that demand. Now breakfast becomes bad.

If you ate at 10 p.m. and you still ate at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m., you just in a constant eating mode. And of course, then you're over stacking calories. You know, more morsel in the night that in the morning. But then this is an oversupply of food. And this is where a little bit of becomes less fat. So a big mistake by a lot of nonscientific theories in the 90s and the 2000 saying, oh, you should not eat breakfast and you should eat every sick or eat the opposite, eat every six hours. These are not the right recommendation.

The right recommendation is eater dinner early. Allow time for your body to rejuvenate overnight, to sleep well, to start spending the calories, and then when you need it in the morning, just have your breakfast in the morning. So this is I just took a little bit of time to help you understand all the theories and the science behind intermittent fasting. Now, intermittent fasting will not get you into autophagy. You know, one of the biggest misconceptions out there is that, oh, I do intermittent fasting because I heard it resonates myself and I will live healthy, long life.

Well, you might live a healthy, long life because you are losing weight. You're approving your metabolism. Very important for inflammation, very important for blood pressure, very important for blood sugar. It's actually an amazing intervention if you do it right. The 12 to 14 hours still changing, fasting the overnight fast that we talked about.

Breakfast, Longevity, and Final Takeaways 22:28

But it doesn't stress you enough to get to cellular rejuvenation. You got to go to 2 or 3 days of fasting to get there. Remember the company with no revenues. If you know, if you have a delay a few hours and revenues, then going to go and restructure the company, you're just going to wait for it. Your bank account drops a little bit. That's intermittent fasting. Your fat drops a little bit. It's healthy to do it every day the right way, but it's not going to stress enough the company or the body to rejuvenate the stress of RFA and reversing the biological age of the cells comes after three or more days of Fassi.

This is why the fasting mimicking diet comes here, and it helps you go through that process in a healthy and the left side effects and it enhances. It's a funded fast. There's macronutrients is micronutrients coming to the body to help the cells and grow back healthy. Hopefully this summarized the types of fasting, the benefits of fasting, and how to do fasting. Right, and I'll see you in the next episode.