Revitalize Health With Fasting Mimicking Diet

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Dr. Laurie, thank you for hosting me today. Hopefully, we’re going to change someone’s life.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I do not doubt that will happen. Let’s just dive right in. Could you explain the concept of the fasting-mimicking diet and how it specifically relates to managing or reversing hypertension or chronic disease in general?

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

The research behind the research behind fasting started 20 years ago. We started doing that at the University of Southern California. Now, 18 other universities have either followed the steps or joined with us to do the clinical trials of fasting. But our biggest discovery was that if you fast for more than two days and it varies from other people’s age grade and BMI, etc., if you fight for longer than two days, something very special happens to the body. The body is engaging the cells to rejuvenate and regenerate. When the science in the past focused on intermittent fasting and you lost some weight with it, what we have uncovered is that if you go all the way up to five days of water fast, you’re only losing a lot of weight; you’re resetting it with embolism. But the cells go into a crisis mode, and they go, and they’re rejuvenated to survive that crisis mode. rejuvenation. When we talk about cells and biology, it means they’re getting younger. ProLon fasting is what triggered the innovation behind fasting-mimicking nutrition because people cannot fast for five days, at least for me. Let me say 99.9% of people don’t want to water fast for three, four, or five days, and it’s not safe. We are doing it to eat. We’re not created to not eat for that long. We do need to eat, and when the science in mice, unfortunately, advises you, you can impose that that’s fasting when we’re showing unbelievable results on reversing diabetes, increasing rates of cure in cancer, and many other chronic diseases. This is where we went to the National Institute of Health, and it went to multiple governments and said, Would you help us? Would you fund us? So we go and create the fasting nutrition, meaning finding ways to make a very specific formulation to nourish the body over five days. But it’s for the reason that the body does not recognize it as food, and therefore everybody is fasting while getting benefits while being in it, hence the name fasting-mimicking diet. It’s a five-day-only diet. It’s all plant-based, with healthy ingredients. There are no artificial additions or chemicals outside of mimicking. Fasting is one of the healthier things to consume. It comes to the box we call the ProLon for promoting longevity, and it comes through the box you open if they one day to be for 25 and every day gives you the food that you need for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and you have the supplements as well, and they add some liquids for hydration, and you follow the regimen for five days. But for most of our science or clinical trials, we tried it two or three times in a row, meeting five, five days a month, 1 for 1 box, 1/2 box a month, two, and then one, four box a month. Read a lot of the science, focusing on the three and then the four and five of the six boxes. Now we have over 32 clinical trials on it. As I mentioned, 18 universities joined the research, most of which were sponsored by top universities, governments, or the NIH. We’re pretty advanced in mimicking the benefits of fasting and one for longevity. Our goal is to help people stay healthy longer, and our vision is to help people stay healthy longer, but we are also looking at the fact that if you lose weight, you have a metabolism. 60 to 80% of all chronic conditions we suffer from today have metabolic and lifestyle reasons behind them, including hypertension in some diseases that are more cellular, and again, the ProLon fasting period with our fasting-mimicking diet would be pushing the cells to correct as well. This is a phenomenon called autophagy, and it won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016. We’re helping both metabolic disorders, and we’re helping cellulars, or we’re helping, by pushing the body to a self-defense mechanism. We’re awakening the boxer from within to tell the cells that they should go ahead and rejuvenate, go ahead and fix because fasting is a stress and the stress has to be compensated by self-defense. That’s the secret of how the fasting-mimicking diet has been proven to support a biological age of the body, but also to help the body and push the body to cope and, in many cases, to manage useful remission from certain chronic conditions.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I love your awakening the doctor within. That’s so powerful because so many people feel they are just victims of whatever chronic disease they’ve been labeled with or diagnosed with that they don’t understand decisions got them into this decisions may get them out of it and ProLon might be an answer for that, so that’s fantastic.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

This is a critical discussion because, as humans, we’re not built to eat all the time, and not only did we start eating frequently, but we also ate a very high concentration of unhealthy calories. Whereas my ancestors had periods of no food, the body needed food to rejuvenate and be vibrant again. We go back to a healthy period of eating frequently. We’re eating unhealthy foods, and we’re eating very high concentrations of calories. We can talk a lot about the details, but this is what’s not normal, and fasting is what’s normal. It was part of the human diet. Since we learned the speed of this planet, whether by evolution or by creation, fasting has lived with us. In the summer, food was abundant, and we were stocking up on a little bit of extra fat. Then, when we were setting that up and nobody was eating late at night, there was no electricity, refrigeration, or Uber Eats, and we were eating it. When the sun is going down five and six and then healthy, everybody is rejuvenated overnight. Great value in bringing intermittent fasting back to our lives so that we’re not starting fat and increasing blood pressure by doing this every night and every day. This has been valuable for a long time—a year now—as the body has rejuvenated and focused attention on the root causes.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I’m curious if you could speak a little bit about the mechanism of action physiologically, at least in regards to hypertension specifically. Can you give any indication of how these five days of doing this on a monthly rotation can benefit someone specifically?

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Hypertension is a collection of its symptoms. There’s a primary and/or secondary reason, but it’s also a symptom of many other factors, whether this is an increase in weight, whether it’s stress, whether it’s kidney dysfunction, whether it’s an abundance of sodium, get rid of it. There’s a multi-month ideology, and sometimes we don’t get to the bottom of it. But having said that, fasting is probably the only intervention that involves the entire body to goes against optimizing the performance of every organ, including the cardiovascular organs. Blood vessels are everywhere in the body, and there’s external pressure on them, and there’s internal pressure that could be created as well, which is inflammation. There’s stress, and there are other factors contributing to high blood pressure. Sometimes we don’t know the reason a lot of people go fasting, even when they go back to normal pressure. What we know is that fasting in food is essential to every cell in the body, including the cardiovascular cells. When you fast, every cell in the body is going through this starvation process. This is an important, essential ingredient for every cell that is lacking. So cells go into autophagy. This rejuvenation that we talked about, which is helping every organ and every contribution, whether you have hypertension for, again, obesity, the reason for dysfunctional reasons, kidney reasons, or any other reason, we haven’t tested all. But I’m just talking about the physiology. The essence of how fasting works is pushing every cell into the body to go and optimize its function, whether that cell or that organ is engaged in inducing symptoms. Otherwise, this is where we see improvements happening. We see that with people with diabetes and the control of HbA1C. Within the same diabetes trial, we’ve seen almost double-digit improvements in blood pressure for those with diabetes. There was a big, significant improvement, whether it’s you having high blood pressure because of your lifestyle, your stress, your response to food, or gaining weight. This is a home run for fasting. Everyone listening here, as we pay attention to their lifestyle, is that helping them get rid of the weight, especially this stubborn fat? This is where fasting is critical—only to melt the fat. Fasting focuses on the central fat of the body, which is key for inflammation, aging, and blood pressure. By doing that, it’s also with the fasting we begin to invite because we’re providing nourishment and you’re nourishing your muscles. One thing that we have to talk about very importantly today is knowing that every time you do a diet, whether a chronic diet or a low-calorie diet, you lose fat and muscle. Now, a lot of people are injecting those things that were there. But also, 20 to 30% of them are losing muscle. Big amount of muscle. Fasting-mimicking diet. Now we have to pattern tried-and-true clinical trials to show and maintain lean-led events because when fasting again acts as a stress to the cells, they rejuvenate, including the muscles, asking for rejuvenation. Also, growth hormone is a stress hormone, so growth hormone is increasing with your fasting. Water fasting is reducing this call for rejuvenation and growth of the muscle. But is the water with the ProLon fasting-mimicking diet because you’re nourishing your body, and as plant-based sources of protein, we see muscle maintenance and we see after you reach this, a lot of athletes, a lot of people see an increase in body mass? We’ve seen that we haven’t published a fair trial on muscle yet, but it’s showing in most people an increase in body mass. Let’s say there’s no increase. At least the cardiovascular system needs to lose fat and protect the body mass, which is one of the keys to the success of the fasting-mimicking diet because I’ve seen many patients.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s a good question, and I’m glad you addressed it because I was going to ask a question of mine about the maintenance of lean body mass, but you’re speaking to the fact that the visceral fat component is more likely to be reduced than the subcutaneous fat, which so many people are looking at in the mirror, but they don’t understand the visceral fat. Inflammatory fat is a big part of the issue. The fasting addresses that more.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Fasting selectively goes after fat and muscle, and even more selectively goes after central fat versus subcutaneous fat.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

So it gets me to the point. What are the essential nutritional components of a fasting-mimicking diet? Can you speak to where the research landed you as far as, like, are there certain macronutrients or micronutrients that you’ve paid attention to also promote the well-being that we’re seeing after someone partakes?

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

It wasn’t easy at all, as you can imagine, to feed the body and keep it in a fasting mode. It took a good $36 million in research and a good 12 years to come up with a full-on formulation. You don’t want to fast by starvation, meaning you don’t want to undernourish the body because then you’re creating the same issues that water-fasting does, and you don’t want to overnourish because then the body is not fasting. We sit down and study two things in the body to create this specific formulation. Now let’s work to find out what we have looked at: when you eat, how does the body systemically recognize that there’s food, how the body says, that there’s food, I’m not fasting, and the systemic hormones: one is insulin as a response to carbs, and one is IGF as a response to protein. We started studying; how can I get some carbs into the blood? But without spiking your insulin so that the body’s not recognizing the parts, you’re not going to get some plant-based proteins or subcategories of plant-based proteins. that IGF does not spike and the body does not recognize the protein. This is where, because this is where the ketogenic diet falls short, there’s enough protein in it that gets detected. Therefore, it was a ketogenic diet. Yes, you might lose some weight. It’s too easy to improve blood sugar, but in the short term, your muscles need rejuvenation; there’s no push for rejuvenation and autophagy in the body because this tells us to recognize that there is food. You don’t do it deep and fast. You just do it shallowly and fast. It’s the most important thing to distinguish between fasting by the pitch. Then we start looking at the cells, so how is it possible to comprehend and detect food? So three pathways are important to the cell: the PKA, the RAS, and the TOR pathways. We start looking at how, by the time the nutrients get to them, the macrophages get to them. Can we be a little bit more leaning on fat, which does not go in through these receptors, and how much amino acid and how much carbohydrate should we have before the radars can detect them but not be satisfied? How can we nourish the cells while the cells they live with are hungry and think they’re fasting? They are not convinced that there’s enough food. This is what we had to go through. Then you have to put all these ingredients together in a shelf-stable format, in a tasty and informative format that nourishes the body. Thus far, 12 years, tens of millions of dollars, and 18 universities have tested with us. But it’s beyond proven and beyond that there are over a billion problems, by the way. We have a lot of selection, and it is turning out to be one of the most likely essential things you can do to your life from a health and lifestyle perspective to reinvigorate it. But let’s not forget that there’s something that no medicine or life talks about, which is the aging of the body. At the end of the day, a lot of us are getting blood pressure at age 17, 19, or 22. We get it. in the late thirties and forties and fifties and sixties and seventies, etc., then I’m an M.D., Ph.D., and I went to allopathic, top schools, Harvard, and Hopkins. We were told that everything in it goes back to a specific reason, and then you have hypertension. It must be either the kidney or genetics, which may be, yes, an expression, but it’s all about aging. At the end of the day, most of it is age. That person was eating unhealthy, maybe at age 40 as well as at 30, but they didn’t have hypertension because their cells were young enough to cope with it. The muscle was active. The stem cells were still abundant in the body to replace dysfunctional cells. Part of the success of all under the fasting-mimicking diet is how can we get the cells of the body a little bit younger. By getting that biological is a little bit reversed, you’re creating a mechanism of compensation the same way when we were younger to compensate with the same lifestyle that you had at age 40, 50, 60, or 70. We’re seeing this with diabetes. We’re seeing this with other conditions where, if you look at how the cells rejuvenate, you help the body with lower inflammation, lower fat, and better-quality muscle. Then the body is like, I’m biologically younger. We’re going to publish a study showing that if you do ProLons three times per year between the ages of 50 and 70, it’s decreasing the bio age by 11 years. That’s significant, and nature just accepted this trial. By the time you air, this is the number one science journal in the world, so we’re talking about a pretty impactful life-changing intervention, which, again, human evolution, God, or whatever, and all religions together, they all fasted into our diet. We tried to bring something as new as science into it for the first time and understood the value of getting the body into it. Five days of fasting and nutrition. rejuvenates and rebuilds, and it becomes supportive, vibrant, and more full of life from the inside and able to cope with health conditions or aging in a better way.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s what I say. This was 11 years biologically younger. Does this mean that you had to do it three times every single year between 50 and 70, or was it just one year?

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

One year it had the 2.5 age. When you test before the first rule, then you test the age after the third ProLon. If you do them over three months, you improve on average by two and a half years of biological age. The biological age does mean you’re going to live longer because there’s a correlation between chronological and biological, but at least you get a better state biologically. You get a fibrin-filled, functional body if you do these three cycles per year between ages 50 and 70. We simulated those impacts. Based on two clinical trials and one of the most prominent aging bio-age metrics developed between USC and Yale University together, we use that testing, and it shows that an average person will have 11 years of age reversal of data from three times per year between the ages of 50 and 70.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

How does this compare to the time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting that we’ve heard so many people are trying to do and utilizing for weight loss and just in general health improvement? How does that compare? Is one more effective than the other, or what does the science there say?

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Intermittent fasting—two things that we need to know very well about it. First of all, intermittent fasting means fasting for less than two days. Anything below two days is what most people think about when they enter fasting, meaning we skip breakfast and go all the way to lunch. Two things to know about are: first, it will help you metabolically, including inflammation and hypertension. if done, if it’s a front-ended fast, meaning you get to eat your dinner early and then it’s to have your breakfast. It will be the good working hours that you need, or if you want to leave for the day, you can do that, or you can have a fast bar or fasting shake. These are fasts, limiting breakfast. But the most important is to sleep early and sleep hungry because you allow the body overnight first to sleep or get to sleep and rejuvenate and could not be because when you sleep, you’re more in anabolic states, and growth hormones increase. It’s a movement at the end. Anything you’re going to eat before you go to sleep is limited. The tendency is to support it, whereas when you eat throughout the day, the tendency is to burn it because you have to try to do it. Front-ended intermittent fastening most trials show positive results when you do that. Now, most people, because of our lifestyle, watch Netflix, and Facebook, work late at night, and all of that. We’re snacking a little bit late at night, so a lot of intermittent fasts are eating late at night, and they’ve been starving their bodies to 4 p.m. That’s not the right thing to do with fasting; that’s going to have long-term and even short-term benefits. These do just what we’re doing: loading your body with anabolic sleep and storing it. Then during the day when your essential organs are functioning, you need the calories; your brain and your heart are going to work, and you need the calories that the body has to go back and bring them down to the risk. There’s a mismatch. You’re eating when you don’t need it, and you’re starving when the essential organs get it. We’re seeing that those people have low success in losing weight and extending the longevity of phosphoric acid. This is why people are confused about why, intermittent fasting, something’s going to evolve, and it depends very much on which intermittent fasting you do. Make sure you eat your dinner early. It’s encouraged to have your breakfast early because in the morning is when you’re active and your brain is functioning and you want to nourish it. If you still want to ProLon it because you want to lose weight fast, you can do that. Or you can use the fast a lot or the fast-shake, but make sure that you don’t eat that mindset and starve your body overweight. That’s the second point. To make it about fasting, it’s too short-lived, so it doesn’t take the body to autophagy. It’s a great way for the metabolic phase of fasting to get through weight, improve inflammation, and improve blood sugar. But it’s not long enough, like the fasting liquid diet or the ProLon water fast, to stress the cells enough for them to rejuvenate, so it can help metabolic health conditions. We’re not sure about how things involved in health conditions are.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Longevity is the main component here, and we want to focus on adding health to your years. That makes complete sense. Well, first of all, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. Everyone who’s listening, I hope you find this conversation insightful and engaging. If you’re a summit purchaser, stay right here because we’re about to get a little bit deeper into this amazing conversation. If not, please click the button below or to the side and get access to the rest of our conversation. If you’re watching this, thank you for being a valuable member of our community, and let’s continue. Thank you, Dr. Antoun, for everything you’ve spoken to us about so far. I was wondering if you could give us a little advice for individuals who are looking to integrate the fasting-mimicking diet into their lifestyle, like considering factors like daily routine, exercise, and work travel. How can most people do this effectively on an ongoing basis?

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

It’s great for work and travel because you don’t have to cook; you don’t have to do anything. You take your daily box, you open the ends, and you have the morning balm that you can take with you to work or to the airport. I do it all the time. Then you have your soups that you just need to open, put in a bowl of hot water, or use the microwave to prepare. It’s practical. It’s because it’s pre-mixed for you. It’s all plant-based, and there are no artificially added preservatives or anything like that. Pretty clean diet. The downside is that if you can throw it when it comes to exercise if your routine includes running five miles per day or going into an intensive basketball game, try to take it easy during the five days. We say, Yes, you can stretch. If you were to do something like an upper body workout but don’t do intensive exercise or expose your body to extreme temperatures because your body is fasting for those five days, you don’t want it to go to extreme calorie expenditure or extreme conditions.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That makes sense. Beyond what you just mentioned there, are there any other safety or contraindications? Maybe someone who has a particular illness or chronic disease shouldn’t be partaking in ProLon.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

We’ve tested the borderline for people between the ages of 20 and 70, and they can do it at this age if they’re healthy. Otherwise, if they don’t have allergies to its ingredients if you’re under the age of 70, we recommend that you talk to your doctor to assess and use. But we don’t want you to be old and frail, have multiple health conditions, and still do the fast. The doctor can assess your physical state. Some people are 75, but they’re biologically pretty young and pretty strong, and they can still do it again with the doctor’s supervision and otherwise, as I mentioned, if you’re below 20, about 75, but if you have allergies to any of the ingredients listed on the website, on the ProLon Life website, and if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding and growing another organism, you don’t want to fast at that time, this would be the fourth contraindication or people that should not be doing it at that time.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Perfect. One final question is, can you share any fun stories or amazing transformations that can potentially encourage someone to look further into using ProLon?

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

We have thousands of stories, but I’m going to also have enough clinical trials that we can share some of those outcomes. One of the fun stories that ended up being a clinical trial and successfully published is that a lot of people used to, as I used to say, have a fasting-mimicking diet and nutrition, and the technology of mimicking fasting and rejuvenation that aging. A lot of people hear the word diet, and a lot of people are like, “How much weight would I lose?” Everyone loves it because you’re going to lose a lot of fat with it and much faster than anyone else, so a lot of people do it for that. But because we put a lot of money into science and we talk about identity and health conditions, I was like, it shouldn’t be just about losing weight; it’s about rejuvenation. How are you going to show rejuvenation? I took the path of doing a full clinical trial to show that the skin changes; the skin is one of the largest organs. If autophagy and rejuvenation are happening, the skin should rejuvenate. So I ended up going and doing a randomized clinical trial on the skin before and after ProLon and all the technology that shows you skin all of these components in rejuvenation skin cells. There were very statistically significant improvements happening at the skin’s level. When you do the ProLon before and after. And to our surprise, even emotionally, among the two top statistically significant benefits, that woman feels very confident, and her happiness level increases because of that. This is one of the visual rejuvenations that can happen because, when we explain it, people will be like, it’s going to rejuvenate. It’s abstract for them. I wanted to make it the way they could. then we get a lot of people coming to our Facebook and posting their pictures. I remember when we started the study on Psoriasis and other autoimmune diseases that are visible on the skin. But I cannot forget the woman who had a full red leg. Then, after five days, she’s showing that almost all the redness is almost gone. This is all very special about mimicking fasting—the technology that we created. But what’s special is that fasting itself is very special. It’s something that should be part of our diet. We’re not built to eat and stress all the time. We’re not going to stop calories; it just accelerates our aging. What we see today is exactly what we predicted. You put more money into health care, but then diabetes keeps rising. You add more money to cardiovascular disease. Keep rising, get more money into cancer treatment, and cancers will increase because the essential reason for all those is aging and lifestyle, and nobody is tackling those. But it is also difficult for people to change their lives every day and eat healthy every day. This is why the problem comes in: you sacrifice those five days. Anyone can do something for five days and then go back 25 days and live their life. At least you would have had the benefits of the ProLon Fasting.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I’m sure you probably see some people do the ProLon, but then they continue to eat a little bit healthier than they did previously just because they are seeing a jump start into a healthier lifestyle.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

100%. This is one of the top benefits and secrets of the product. I always say five days is short enough for people to complete. We have a 91% average completion rate, which is five days, but it’s long enough for people to say, I was able to do a plant-based diet for five days. I was able to have small portions. I was able to eat a soup and be content with it. Why do I need to go back to my Cokes, Pepsis, and pizzas and live on my urges, food, salt, sweeteners, and all of that? For a lot of people, the product inspires them to gradually make these changes, and it doesn’t create panic. The problem with every diet is that they get seven, ten, 20, 40, and then they get it. They get a default at some point. Is this what creates the sense of helplessness? withdrawal and you just say, “Do you have five days?” inspired me a little bit. then I go back and I go back to what I used to do. But then I have second thoughts, and then I see the changes happening fast, and these tiny wins build up to change your life, starting proactively rather than being forced to be there.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Now that’s perfect. That’s fantastic. That’s a wonderful, positive place to end our discussion. But thank you so much for sharing this information about ProLon. It’s amazing to see food in a very special formulation improve someone’s health. Thank you for all the work and research that you guys have done for us.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Thank you, Laurie.