How To Improve Metabolic Health With Fasting Mimicking Diet

Introduction to the Summit and Guest 0:00

Hello. Welcome back. I'm your host, Dr. Sharon Stills. This is the Mastering The Meno(Pause) Transition Summit 3.0 my third year of having the honor of hosting this summit and sharing all new information with you. As many of you know, if you've been following me for a while, I am a huge fan of L-Nutra and ProLon. and the 5 day water mimicking fasting diet. And we have a very special guest today. We have Dr. Will Hsu, who is the Chief Medical officer. He's an endocrinologist. He has a specialty in blood sugar, metabolic health, diabetes, insulin resistance, all really important things.

As we are aging, as our hormones are shifting that really often we don't think about, but can be driving so much of the disease where seeing. And so we're going to have a really great talk today, get you really up to speed and educated about what you can do about your glucose regulation and how does ProLon play into that. And we're going to learn a lot. So welcome. This is my first time interviewing you, so I'm excited to interview you and learn from you. So welcome to the Summit. Oh Dr. Stills, thanks so much for inviting me to your Summit.

And I think, as all folks are, experiencing metabolic health and challenges, I think it's very timely that we have this, discussion. and you gave me a statistic before we went live, and maybe we can you said, what was it, 93. 93%?

Metabolic Health Crisis in the U.S. 1:57

so so this is a, a, a study that was published by two years ago looking at, the health of all Americans looking for way cholesterol, blood pressure, glucose health. And it turns out that only about 6% of us are considered healthy here in the US. And while 93% of us are not cardiometabolic healthy. And that's just astounding. and it's such a public health challenge for us. well, my goal is to make sure my audience here at the summit is in that 6% and not in the 93%. So I guess my first question is just how did you get involved with L-Nutra and fasting?

And I'd love to just hear a little background on you and your work. Yeah, I think time really has passed very, very quickly. so five years black joined the company at L-Nutra as the chief medical officer. In this role, I, I, I drive clinical development. That's research. conducting clinical trials, but also educating, physicians and our partners at large about our, our unique, technology. But, prior to that, I was, practicing in technologies. I actually was a faculty at Harvard Medical School, and, I worked at a diabetes center called the Joslin Diabetes Center.

This is the oldest diabetes center in the US, and probably the largest one,

Dr. Hsu's Background and Move to L-Nutra 3:28

for over 20 years over there. And it was really the amazing science, which is the pool that got me here. But also, I wanted to talk a little bit about the push. The push is that in a lot of the conventional medicine, physicians use medications to stop disease at its tracks. But the problem is we fail to address a lot of the underlying conditions, the root cause of many of these, many of these conditions. And then when, you know, we all we still resort to the easy prescription and just writing a drug.

So just give you one example, people with type two diabetes in the US now takes, on average, six different medicine to tackle blood pressure, cholesterol, their heart and their blood sugar. And that's a lifelong dependance. We've entered 21st century. Now we see many new technologies, many new understanding on the mechanism. Diseases have told us now we can actually reverse these conditions. We can actually get off these medicine, by activating the body's ability to repair, to rejuvenate and that's what kind of drew me out of the conventional academia into a cutting edge field.

you chose well, L-Nutra is certainly cutting edge and doing a lot of good. So I'm curious because I know you have a new program kind of focused on metabolic health and wellness, and I don't actually know about it yet. So I'm kind of curious. And, you know, for the listeners, you know, what it's about and why it's important and what should the ladies be looking for when it comes to their cardio metabolic health? Any, And. And, and. So, yeah. Give it to us all. Yeah. So there's just so many different options and sometimes noises.

Right. on the marketplace, like, do I take this, do I do this, do I do that? And, and I think for us, we've always wanted to lead with science and clinical evidence and, and so while many of your listeners may know our product by the brand name ProLon, using the same fasting mimicking diet technology, we've come up with a dietitian guided program for people struggling with metabolic health. Now, what is metabolic health? I mean, overall that here specifically we're talking about individuals

L-Nutra Health and the Metabolic Wellness Program 5:57

that has issues with cholesterol, blood pressure, prediabetes, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance information. These are all intertwined. You might think, oh, cluster problem. And maybe distinct from internal resistance. And they're all part of a syndrome, right. That has an underlying sources of problems from insulin resistance to information to being overweight to losing muscle mass. And that's why we've come up with this program. Well, I have the name over here, L-Nutra Health here. and it's a program guided by a registered dietitian that uses the first American diet as sort of a key component, a program to guide individuals, to drive cellular rejuvenation, to restore metabolic health.

So rather than give you five different medicine, we're we're really trying to activate the body's own ability to rejuvenate by by simulating a prolonged fasting from time to time, in fact, about five days per month or about six months period. And so we have published, clinical trials to show its efficacy and safety, especially in the hands of a guided, you know, tour, if you will, and experience, with a dietitian. I think, it's something, that is truly innovative. So let's, let's just break down some of the basic terms.

So first of all, fasting is all the rage. So if you could just discuss a little bit about why this five day water mimicking fast is different than intermittent fasting. You know, I we do the the water mimicking and why we don't just do water. Yeah that's really good question. Right. So for yes you're right. I mean if you think about all living organisms fast right. We fast at night, every organism fast at night. Right. And and in the history of mankind, we've gone through many different time periods of time where we experience starvation.

Right. So it's not new to to us. In fact, every living organism has developed mechanisms to deal with fasting. And that's the mechanism. It gets triggered when there's not enough food for long enough time where the cell says, I'm not going to survive. I have no food coming in. The cells begin to digest some of this part, hoping right to get a little bit squeeze in, squeezing a little bit more of the energy out of the cells, in order to survive another day. Now it has honed this this mechanism for many, many, many, many years.

I don't know how many years that is. Right. So it's too many zeros that we can tell. but essentially the process peaked out once there are less

How Fasting Mimicking Differs from Intermittent Fasting 8:53

and less valuable components of the cells and digested as a source of fuel, it's like a whole, you know, winter New England night, you know, where, you know, you run out of your your gas. What do you do? You open the furnace, you throw the some of the, you know, and use furnitures into the the other wood over to to keep, to keep the room warm. So what to survive another night, right. You wouldn't throw away expensive furniture that you just purchased. You got to look for things that are a little bit older, a little bit broken.

Right. And this is exactly what the body does in terms of, of starvation. The cells is what are dysfunctional, you know, cellular organelles that I can use temporarily. You know, let's throw it into the furnace and burn it as a as a source of fuel. What about the dysfunctional, you know, misfolded protein, dysfunctional mitochondria. Those are the ones that gets chewed up. And so, in fact, the cells actually do house cleaning during that period of time. So when food finally becomes available again, what happens?

Well, you got to grow them back. Now, what you grew out now is going to be new components. So look back what just happened. You replace old parts, broken parts with new parts. What do we call that? Cellular rejuvenation. And this is what happens with prolonged fasting. So the difference between intermittent fasting and longer period of fasting generally by definition, is that two days, if you fast less than two days, we call it intermittent fasting. If you fast more than two days consecutively, we call that periodic fasting because you do that periodically, like in nature, like fasting and starvation comes periodically.

Or we call that prolonged fasting because they're greater than two days now. Modern science has now just revealed that the cellular mechanism, gets triggered very differently by intermittent fasting compared to these longer fasts. Okay. So what I talked about was due to that cellular turnover, that rejuvenation, that autophagy, that's the term, the scientific term that describe that process only it occurs when there's enough stress, when there is long enough time of fasting. So autophagy despite many people's kind of claim does not happen with a 16 hours a 20 hours.

Okay. How fasting. so it doesn't have it does not happen with intermittent fasting. Autophagy, the cellular turnover, the real cellular repair occurs when you simulate a longer period of fast. And this is why adult nature, we have a program based on this fasting mimicking diet technology patented all around the world. For example, was developed with National Institutes of funding NIH funding in the Up was about $36 million, 25 years of research, which all to give us the benefits of the fast without the burden of ordering fast.

Now, what are the burdens? Well, hunger is one to you may not be safe. Think about is someone with health conditions. You wanted to ask them to fast for five days. It may not be very safe to do so right? And not only fasted. Could lead to weakness, can lead to dehydration, right or low blood sugar, right or gallstone formation, etc. and that's why in 21st century now we confess smarter with fasting, mimicking diet. Oh you're so good at explaining all that. I love your I love your fire analogy and throwing out the old furniture that that's because we hear about autophagy.

And I think now everyone who's listening can really understand it the way you broke it down. So that was lovely. And yes I think that is a big confusion where women and men, think they're getting that autophagy just by doing, 18 hour fast and they're, and they're not. It's really and so I'm curious why five days. Why not ten days or eight. It's a good such a good question. Right. So it's always a balance between, what you can achieve to what is the risk. Right. So for example, is exercise good? Of course.

Why the Program Uses Five-Day Cycles 13:26

But can you exercise 20 hours a day? Right. There has to be a limit. Right. You sleep good. Of course. But should you sleep 18 hours a day? No. Right. So same thing. The same question is why don't you fast for longer? Well, it's the same idea. There has to be a balance. When you start fasting very low. It's no longer fasting. It's called starvation. Right. And that's when you begin to shut down. You know, many of the cell of the organism, or the, the, the organ systems. That's when malnutrition could occur.

This is where the overwhelming stress could really hurt the body and really needs to be done and under medical supervision and so on, so forth. So it is not, you know, everything has to be balanced, right? and fasting is no exception. Five days. Let me explain. Five days. So it's five days because we've done now over we publish over 30 clinical trials right now. Publications. we're five day. It's just happened to be really the best for metabolic health. First day you're burning these, glucose molecules called glycogen in your liver in your muscle.

Second day, you shift over to burn fat. Third day, it's when your body begins to says, hey, there's there's really no food coming in. And so it triggers that cellular rejuvenation process, this cellular clean up process called top energy. And you can just start, house cleaning or spring cleaning and hope to finish it in one hour. You got to give it a couple hours for the to right to take out a curtain to shampoo the carpet, I mean, right, this is more laborious, but it takes time compared to your weekend cleaning, right?

And that's why from day three, day 4 to 5, these are good time for cellular cleanup to take place. And then come day six, that's your refitting day. That's the day where now everything gets like everything gets cleaned up. Now you got to grow them back, right? You've dispose of the old furniture. For what? Well, you're to keep warm in the winter, but now you need to replace them with new furnitures now. So. Day six seven. These are good feeding days where your your cells are like sponge, like a sponge right now.

So everything you put in the body. So, so a lot of people talk about fasting but look at the the the importance, the equal importance should be placed on the reseeding and in in a meal health program for metabolic health. This is where our know how goes into action. How do we guide you through the five day fasting and again diet by an RDD? And then what do you do for the rest 25 days where you really get that good nutrition back? So it's like the yin and yang. It's like exercise. And the rest. Right.

And that combination is truly the sacred secret to to good metabolic health and to healthy longevity. it makes so much sense to me. I was always taught, you know, the fast is important, but what's really important is what you do after the fast, right? Because you could do all that good. But if you refined in a unhealthy way, you've like undone the benefits to a point of what you just accomplished by doing the fast. And so what are other some things you can share that like you're teaching people on those other 25 days in this.

Yeah. Yeah. So you know, it's it's really based on the principles of longevity diet or we call it the longevity nutrition.

Nutrition, Circadian Rhythm, and the Other 25 Days 17:08

so, Professor wrote a long guide. USC has also invented this principle of eating. And and so it's it's based on a modified Mediterranean diet. But incorporate not only the what you should eat but it's also the timing of your seed. Okay. So the idea that it's not just what you eat but the pattern of your eating also has has. That's why we incorporate intermittent fasting here. Now just to, to go over very, very briefly, we believe that when the body wakes up in the morning and till the time it goes to sleep, that's a good eating window.

And when the sun goes down, that's when the body is turning into sleep and rest. That's not the time when we eat. Think about if all, all of us practice that way at 1212, circadian fasting. It's not going to be a lot of stress to the body. But this is exactly right what the body was designed to do. Now, if you don't believe me, 2017 Nobel Prize was was given to scientists. We discovered that there is these circadian rhythm genes, genes in every single cell in the body. Right. So everybody knows that we have a master clock in the in the pineal gland, the response to the sun. Yes.

But actually there is actually genes encoding the biological clock in every cell of the body. So when the cells are told it's time to go to bed, you don't want to be feeding nutrition, right? This is not when you want to stimulate growth further. And so we're fortunate in the 21st century. Now we we have such access to to understanding some of the molecular mechanism, of fasting and of the technology. I love that because that's what I teach my patients. And I think some women who are doing those more extreme feeding windows or shortening their feeding windows, they're doing a lot of stress to their glucose regulation.

They're stressing their thyroid. And so I love the you know, when you're up, you're eating and you have that 1212 and yes, when the I was just talking about this with someone else, like one of the best things you could do for yourself is just stop eating when the sun goes down and give yourself those three hours before bedtime and so, so super important. And so for someone listening, who is it enough to like if you need, if you're listening and you need to lose weight and maybe your insulin is too high and your blood pressure is running on the high side and your triglycerides are higher than your cholesterol, and you're in that metabolic syndrome state.

what is the difference between just doing the prolonged five day kit once a month or doing the actual diabetes blood glucose regulation? Well, we have, so I think the options are open to you. Right. So the problem is really reserved more for health maintenance, wellness, health maintenance for driving longevity. And then if you belong to that camp where you know, you want to maintain that health, healthy state girlfriend, right. However, if you have a diagnosis, if you have a health condition that's been identified to be obesity, maybe some resistance under the guidance of R.D.

coach, we can personalize that for you. Right. What do you do for the rest 25 days? They are personalized approach that will fit into your your dietary preferences that can fit into your lifestyle. Also the EF and the fasting and the entire thing we utilize in the in the program in the old Neutral Health program is slightly different than program. It really optimize the metabolic benefit. So but I think you cannot go wrong with either program one. But just remember if you're healthy prolonged is a great option.

But if you're struggling metabolically, I think having a guided experience personalized approach through here. Al MetroHealth I have it behind me here that's I think would be more appropriate. And when you say it's slightly different or you just mean there's different foods or different.

Who the Program Is For and How It Is Personalized 21:30

The macronutrients and the and and the composition of the first significant diet are two different packages. Okay. And I just like to talk about how easy it is to follow, you know, you guys just did such a great job. I always talk about, like, you get to eat chocolate while you're fasting. Does it get better than that? Like, I think you should have me on a billboard saying, ha! You know. That's just the end. All for me. Like, how great is that? You can chocolate while you're doing your cellular cleansing?

but can you just talk about. Because I think some women watching may be like, oh, I've tried a diet, I always fail. It's hard to stay. Yeah. So it's really about that. It's very common. I've been a physician been. And terminologies that care for people like metabolic disorder for so long. That is the number one. Number one. sort of complaints. Okay. I know what to do, but I can get to it. Right? It's hard to be a seen all your life. Right? And, there are times where we just we're sick and tired of of a commitment to a lifestyle change that just.

It's almost impossible. It's for the few people that work, they know that, for the prince and, princess, that they could get right to wake up at 6:00 and do their marathon and then right, and shower and then go to work for ten hours and come home and right. So, so the reality when I saw that, when I saw the technology here at Al Neutra, looking at the fast American diet, it's five days per month. What does that mean? It means doctor stills. Can you give me five days? You know. Right. You know that just you can give me, right?

Whenever I present this to a patient. Right? Can you give me five days where we can have the potential to reverse, you know, metabolic disorder? Five days. Can you do it? And we repeated a couple of times. Almost everybody says, yes, I could I can give you five days. Can I give you 30 days every month? Probably not. They might say yes, but when they go home their motivation will come down right very, very quickly. But can you give me five days, especially now in an L-Nutra Health Program where there's a dietician that's going to talk to you every other week, you know, on a zoom connect with you that that encourages you to stick to the program.

And I think your chance for really achieving your metabolic goal is going to be much higher than, say, go home. Here's a list and follow this every day and come back to see me in six month. Yeah. So true I mean I think about it I like to do it once a quarter and it's like so that's 20 days a year.

Ease of Use, Adherence, and Biological Age Benefits 24:18

And so for 20 days a year you are getting, you know so much it's like gold you're giving to your health in your body. And week, you know when you're doing it for five days, it's like you can do it the week. I usually do it Monday through Friday and then I refit on the weekend. Yeah. But like, you know, you're just like the weeks, the weeks fly by, right? Anyways, so I. Sure. This gift while you have a. Week for sure. And I was just going to say it's so doable. Like I work, I see patients and I was never good at fasting.

Like it was always challenging for me. But I find it like and I see in my patients that, you know, you can do the five days and you don't have to like take off. You can be in your life and do it at the same time. Yeah. And that's really the beauty here. I think one of the biggest obstacle is not trying not take the first step. And I will encourage you. Nothing works faster than the fasting mimicking diet. In five days you're going to feel different. You're going to see your waistline trim down. Yes, you may not be able to experience all the benefits of a cellular rejuvenation consciously, but you know there are now more than 30 publications, on Inhumans, the showing demonstrating the benefits of FMD.

So, I'll just, say one more thing here. You mentioned 20 days a year that distills. So we just published earlier this year. That's three cycles FMD that's 15 days. That's one five days, right? Three cycles. FMD is able to lower biological age by two and half years. two and half years. And that's amazing. And, I don't I think you you're not going to find any other intervention. So it's not a diet. It's actually a nutrition intervention. Five days per month to give you the results. It is. I left with Dr. Antoun when he told me about that because I used to, I always say I'm going to live to 120.

I think if we live right, we can make it to 120. We don't have to age in our 70s. And when I started doing ProLon a number of years back, I thought, I'm giving myself an extra ten years. I'm going to 130 because I'm doing this. So when he said that, I was like, see, I knew it, I was right. I am getting to 130 with the help of L-Nutra and ProLon. So any any last things you want to share with the audience? Well, I would just encourage everyone to take the first step towards your own metabolic health and, eat more than ever.

You have options now, so give it a try. I think you will experience a lifelong transformation. So, Yeah, well, I, I just love the work you guys are doing. I love how, you know, science backed you are. And you're just.

Closing Thoughts and Group Cleanse Invitation 27:28

Every time I talk to you guys, you've got a new study, a new publication coming out. So you're really committed to the science, to moving the field forward. And, you know, that's just so impressive. So thank you. It was a pleasure interviewing you and meeting you. I love how you explain things. Change the way I can explain things now. So I very much appreciate you taking the time. I know you're super busy to be here with us. We so appreciate L-Nutra sponsoring the Summit and helping to make the Summit possible so we can educate and inform all the listeners.

So thank you so much and it's a pleasure. And thank you, everyone for being here. And so take the first step. You know what we're going to be doing a group cleanse. you know a group 5 day water mimicking fasting diet I'll lead you I've done this before. We're going to do it again. So stay tuned after the Summit and you can join along. It's it's healthy to do the program. It's always much more fun to do with a group of people. It's much more fun to with friends. So stay tuned for that and I'd love to have you join me.

Thank you.