Revitalize Health With Fasting Mimicking Diet

Introduction to the Interview 0:00

Welcome back to the summit. And I'm Dr. Dr. Laurie Marbas and I'm excited today to interview Dr. Joseph Antoun, who's the CEO of ProLon. And we're going to discuss the fascinating topic of the fasting mimicking diet. How are you today Dr. Antoun? Hey, Dr. Laurie, thank you for hosting me today. Hopefully we're going to change someone's life. Oh, I have no doubt that that will happen. So let's just dove right in. And could you explain the concept of the fasting mimicking diet and how it specifically relates to managing or Reversing Hypertension or in chronic disease in general?

So the research behind the research behind fasting started 20 years ago. We started doing that at University of Southern California. And now 18 other universities have either followed steps and 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 peoples age grade and BMI, etc., but if you fight for longer than two days, there's something very special that happens to the body. The body is engaging the cells to rejuvenate and reengineering.

So when the science in the past focused on intermittent fasting and you lose some weight with it, what we have uncovered is that if you go all the way up to five days of water fast,

What Is the Fasting Mimicking Diet? 1:35

that only losing a lot of weight, that only 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. And rejuvenation. When we talk about cell and biology, it means they're getting younger. So that prolonged fasting is what triggered the innovation behind the fasting, mimicking nutrition, because people cannot water fast for five days, at least for me. Let me say 99.9% of people don't want to water fast for three or four or five days and it's not safe.

Actually, we doing it to eat. We are not humans. We're not created to not eat for that long. So we do need to eat and and when the science in mice unfortunately advice you can you can impose that that's fasting when we're showing unbelievable results on reversing diabetes on 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 say, would you help us? Would you fund us? So that we go and create the fasting nutrition, meaning finding ways to a very specific formulation to nourish the body over five days.

But it's for relation that the body does not recognize as food and therefore everybody is fasting while actually getting the benefits while is being in the and hence the name the fasting mimicking. But it's a five days only food. It's all plant based with healthy ingredients. So there's no artificial additions or chemicals actually outside of mimicking. Fasting is one of the really healthy things to consume. And it comes to the box we call the ProLon, for promoting longevity and it comes through the box you open it they have day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4 and day 5 and every day gives you the food that you need for breakfast, for 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 most of our science or clinical trials, we tried it two or three times in a row, meaning five days on month 1, 1 ProLon box, 1/2 ProLon box on month 2, and then one ProLon box on month 3. A lot of the science focus on the three and then the four and five and the six boxes. And now we have over 32 clinical trials on it. As I mentioned, 18 universities joined the research most of this sponsored by top universities or governments or the NIH. And we're pretty advanced into mimicking the benefits of fasting and one for longevity.

Our goal is to and the ProLon goal and vision is to help people stay healthy longer but also is looking at okay if you lose weight you that metabolism 60 to 80% of all chronic conditions we suffer from today have metabolic and lifestyle reason behind it, including hypertension in some disease are more sedentary and again the prolonged fasting period with our fasting would be combined is pushing the cells to correct as well. This is a phenomenon called Autophagy and it won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016.

So we're helping both metabolic disorders and we're helping Celera or we're helping we're pushing the body to a self defense mechanism. We're awakening the boxer from within to tell the cells and the was in go ahead and rejuvenate, go ahead and fix because fasting is a stress and the stress has to be compensated and self-defense. So that's the secret of how the fasting women line has been proven to support with a bio age of the body, but also to help the body and push the body to cope and to manage in many cases to actually

How Fasting Supports Hypertension and Chronic Disease 5:38

it useful remission from certain chronic conditions. That's interesting. So I love the your awakening the doctor within. I think that's so powerful because so many people feel they are just a victim to 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 in ProLon might be an answer for that so that's fantastic. And this is a critical discussion because we as humans, we're not built to it all the time and that only we started eating frequently, but also with eating a very high concentration of calories and unhealthy calories.

So eating frequently. Whereas I would ancestors had periods of food is of no food and the body needed to know food to rejuvenate and be vibrant again. And we go back to the healthy period for eating frequently. We're eating unhealthy foods and we're eating very high concentration of calories. And we can talk a lot about the details, but this is what's not normal and fasting is what's actually normal fasting. It was part of the human diet. Since we learned the speed of this planet, whether by evolution or by creation, fasting lived with us.

And in summer time there was abundance of food and and we were stocking with a little bit of extra fat. And then when we were setting that up and, and nobody was eating late at night, there was no electricity or refrigeration or Uber eats and we were eating it. When the sun is going down five and six and then healthy, everybody rejuvenated overnight. So great the value of 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 big valuable for a ProLon product, a year now, the body rejuvenate and focus of attention on the root causes of. So I'm curious if you could speak to a little bit about the mechanism of action physiologically, at least in regards to hypertension specifically, can you give any indication of what this five days doing this on a monthly rotation actually can benefit someone specifically? Well, you know, hypertension is is a collection of it's a symptom of many. I mean, there's there's the primary and or another reason, but it's also a symptom of many other, you know, factor, whether this is an increase in weight, whether it's stress, whether it's a kidney dysfunction, whether it's abundance of sodium, get rid of it.

So 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's involving, you know, the entire body together to go against optimizing the performance of every organ, including the cardiovascular organs of 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 is inflammation. There's stress and there's other factors contributing to the high blood pressure.

And sometimes we don't know the reason. A lot of people with fasting, even on their own going back to normal pressure, what we know is that fasting food is so essential to every cell in the body, including the cardiovascular cells. And 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. And so cells go into autophagy. This rejuvenation that we talked about, which is helping every organ, every contribution, whether you have the hypertension for, again, obesity, the reason this function, the reason kidney reason or any other reason and 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 and whether that cell or that organ was engaged into inducing symptoms. Otherwise, this is where we see the improvements happening. We see that with people with diabetes and the control of HIV. One see within the same diabetes trial, we've actually had almost double digit improvement on blood pressure for those that have diabetes and blood pressure. So there was a big significant improvement, whether it's you having high blood pressure because of your lifestyle and your stress and your response to food and gaining weight.

Definitely this is a homerun for fasting. Everyone listening here as we pay their their their lifestyle, is that helping them get rid of the weight, especially this stubborn fat? This is where fasting is critical that only to melt the fat fasting focus on central fat of the body which is key for inflammation, for aging, for blood pressure. And by doing that, it's also with the fasting we begin invite because we're providing nourishment, you're nourishing your muscle. So one thing that we have to talk about very importantly today is know that every time you do a diet, a chronic diet and a low calorie diet, you lose fat and muscle.

And now a lot of people are injecting those things that that were is. But also 20 to 30% of them are losing muscle. And big, big, big amount of muscle. Right. Fasting mimicking diet. And now we have to pattern tried and true clinical trials is showing and maintenance of lean led events because

Muscle Preservation and Visceral Fat Reduction 11:30

when you the fasting again acts as a stress to the to the cells they rejuvenate including the muscle is asking for rejuvenation also growth hormone is a stress hormone so growth hormone is increasing with your fast with water fasting is reducing this call for rejuvenation and growth of the muscle. But is the water with the prolonged fasting or between diet because you're nourishing your body and as plant based sources of protein, we see the muscle actually maintaining and we see asking you briefly a lot of athletes, a lot of people actually see an increase in landing body mass.

And we've seen we haven't published a fair trial now on muscle, but it's showing in most people an increase of modulus. So let's say there's no increases. At least it's very important that your vascular system to lose the fat and protect the body mass, which I think is one of the keys for the success of the Passover because I've many patients. That's a I'm glad you address that because I was definitely going to be a question of mine was maintenance of the lean body mass but you're speaking to 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.

The inflammatory fat is the big part of the issue. So the fasting actually addresses that more. So yeah, fasting selectively go after fat and the muscle and even more selectively go after central fat versus subcutaneous fat. Oh, wow. Okay, Les, that's very cool to know. All right. And so kind of gets me to the point. So what are the essential nutritional components of the fast a diet like can you speak to where did the research land you as far as like are there certain macronutrients or micronutrients that you've paid attention to, to also, you know, promote the the well-being that we're seeing after someone partakes?

It is it was it wasn't easy at all, as you can imagine, to feed the body and keep it in a fasting mode. So it took two good $36 million in research and a good 12 years to come up with a full on formulation. And because you don't want to fast by starvation, meaning you don't want to undernourished the body because then you're creating the same issues that water fasting does and you don't want to over nourish because then the body is not fasting. And so we sit, we study two things in the body to create this specific formulation.

Now let's work to find out this we have looked at when you eat, how does the body systemically recognize that there's food, how the body says, okay, 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. So we started studying, how can I get some cards 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 and subcategories of plant based protein.

So that IGF does not spike and the body does not recognize the protein. And this is where because this is what the ketogenic diet falls short, there's enough protein in it that gets detected. And therefore it was a ketogenic diet. Yes, you might lose some weight. It's too improve blood sugar, but in the short term that your muscles need rejuvenating, there's no push for rejuvenation and modification in the body because this tells us half recognizing that there is food. So you don't do it deep fast.

You just do it shallow, fast. It that's the most important distinguish between the fasting by the pitch anything. So then we start looking at the cells so how isto comprehend and detect food. And so there are three pathways that are important to the cell, the PCA, the rice and the tau pathways. And we start looking at how can we by the time the nutrients, the macrophages get to it. So can we be a little bit more leaning on fat which do not go in through these receptors and how much amino acids and how much carbs should we have before the the radars to detect them but not be satisfied?

How can we launch this, though? Why are the cells they live with hungry and thinks it's fasting, is not convinced that there's enough food. So this is what we had to go through. And then you have to put all these ingredients together in a shelf stable format, in a tasty format and informative, nourishes the body. And thus far along 12 years and tens of millions of dollars and 18 universities that tested with us. But I think it's beyond proven and beyond. There's over a billion use of problem, by the way.

So we have a lot of a lot of selection and is turning out to be one of one of the most probably essential things you can do to your life from a health and lifestyle perspective to reinvigorate the. But let's not forget, there's something that no medicine, no life that talks about, which is the aging of the body. At the end of a day, a lot of a lot of us are getting blood pressure at age 17 or 19 or 22. We get it. You know, in the late thirties and forties and fifties and sixties and seventies, etc.. And then, you know, I'm an I'm an M.D., Ph.D.

Formulating ProLon and the Science Behind It 16:58

and I went to, you know, allopathic, you know, top schools, the Harvard, the Hopkins. And we were told that everything in it go back to a specific reason, and then you have hypertension. It must be either the kidney or must be genetics or must be, which may be, yes, as 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 at 30, but they didn't have hypertension because it's cells very young enough to cope with it, to compensate with it.

The muscle was active. The the stem cells were still abundant in the body to replace dysfunctional cells. So part of the success of all under the fasting mimicking life is how can we get the cells of the body a little bit younger? By getting that biological is 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 with at age 40 or 50 or 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, you help the body with lower fat and and better quality muscle.

Then the body is like, okay, I'm biologically younger. We're going to publish a study showing that if you do problem three times per year between age 50 and 70, it's actually decreasing the bio age by 11 years. And that's pre significant and nature just accepted this trial. So by the time you air and this is the number one science Journal of the World, so we're talking about a pretty impactful life changing intervention, which, again, you know, human evolution or gods or whatever and all religions together, they all had fasting to into our diet.

So we tried trying to bring something as new as much as science for the first time, understood the value of getting the body into it. Five days of fasting, nutrition. So that rejuvenates and rebuilds and it becomes supportive, vibrant and more full of life from the inside and able to cope with, you know, health conditions or aging in a better way. That that's what I say. So this was 11 years biologically younger. Is this mean that you had to do it three times every single year between 50 and 70 or was it just the one, one year or.

One year it had the 2.5 age. When you test before the first rule, then you test the age after the third prolonged. If you do them over three months, you improve on average 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, functional body that if you do these three cycles per year between age 50 and 70, we simulated those impacts.

And we believe based on two clinical trials that and based on one of the most prominent aging by age metric developed between by USC and Yale University's Together. And we use that that testing and it shows that on average people will have 11 years of age reversal of data from three times per year between age 50 and 70. Wow. Okay. So 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 is one more effective than the other or what what does the science there say? So intermittent fasting, two things that we need to know very well about it. So first of all, intimated fasting any time of fasting is less than two days. So anything below two days is most people think about this 16 eight when they enter it fasting, meaning we skip breakfast and we go all the way to lunch. So two things to know about is which first it will help you metabolically and including inflammation, hypertension.

So if done, if it's a front ended into a fasting, meaning you get to eat your dinner early and then it's okay to have your breakfast. It will be the good working hours that you need or if you wanted to leave for the day and you can do that, or you can have a fast bar or plastic shake. These are fasting, limiting breakfast. But most important is to sleep early and sleep hungry that you allow the body overnight first to sleep or get to sleep and to not be. Because when you sleep, you're more in anabolic states, growth hormone increase.

It's a movement at the end. So anything you're going to eat before you sleep is limited. The tendency is to support it versus when you eat throughout the day, the tendency is to burn it because you have to try to do it. Front end fasting. Most trials are showing positive results when you do that. Now, most people, because of our lifestyle, we watch the likes of the Facebook and work late at night and all of that. We're snacking a little bit late at night, so a lot of intermittent fasting are eating late at night and they've been starved their body all the way to 4 p.m..

And that's not the right to with fasting that's going on long term benefits and even short term benefits. These do just what we're loading your body with anabolic sleeping and storing it. And then and during the day when your essential organs are functioning, you need the calories,

Biological Age Reversal and Longevity Research 22:48

your brain, your heart going to work, running for they need the calories that the body has to go back and bring them down to the rest. So there's a mismatch. You're eating when you don't need it, you're starving when the essential organs get it. And we're seeing that those people have low success of losing weight and and the longevity of phosphoric acid. So this is why people are confused why in three to fasting something's going to involve evolve and it depends very much on which intermittent fasting you do make sure you eat or then it's okay to have your breakfast actually is encouraged early because in the morning is when you're active in the morning is when your brain is functioning and you want to nourish it.

So that if you still want to prolong it because you want to lose weight fast, you can do that. Or you can use the fast a lot of the fast, but make sure that you don't eat that mindset, starve your body overweight. That's the second point. To make it about into fasting is that it's too short lived long enough so it doesn't take the body to automation. It's a great way for the metabolic phase of fasting to get through weight, weight, improve inflammation, improve blood sugar. But it's not long enough like the fasting liquid diet or the prolonged water fast to stress the cells enough for them to rejuvenate so it can help with the bulk of conditions.

We're not sure about how big senator involvement in health conditions. So the longevity is the main component here that we really want to focus in on adding health to your years. That makes complete sense. Thank you. Dr. Antoun for everything you've spoken to our spoken about so far. I was wondering if you could give us a little advice for individuals who are looking to integrate the fast community 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?

It's actually great for work and travel because you don't have to cook, you don't have to do anything. You take your cleaning box, you open ends, you have your your morning balm that you can take with you to work or to the airport. I do it all the time with with me. And then you have your suits that you just need to open, put in a bowl of the water or use the microwave to to to to prepare. So it's really practical. It's because it's pretty easy to predict food for you. And it's all plant based and there's no artificially added preservatives or anything like that. Pretty clean diet.

Now, the downside is if you know, you can throw it when it comes to exercise, if your routine includes, you know, running five miles per day or going into a really intensive basketball game, try to take it easy during the five days. So we say, yes, you can stretch. Yes. If you were to do like an upper body and a workout, but don't do intensive exercise or expose your body to the 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.

Okay, that makes sense. And beyond what you just mentioned there, there any other safety or contraindications, maybe someone who has a particular illness or chronic disease that shouldn't be partaking in the prolonged. Yeah. So we've tested borderline for people between the ages of 20 and 70 and they can do it between this age if they're healthy. Otherwise if they don't have allergies to its ingredients. If you're below age when you're above age 70, we recommend that you talk to your doctor and to assess, to use.

Intermittent Fasting vs. Fasting Mimicking Diet 26:38

But you know, we don't want you to be old and frail and have multiple health conditions and still do the fast rate. So the doctor can assess your physical state. And there are some people who are at 75, but they're biologically pretty young and pretty strong, and they can still do it again with the doctor supervision and otherwise. As I mentioned, if you're below 20, about 75, but if allergies to any of the ingredients and they're listed on the website, on the life website website and if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, obviously growing another organism, you don't want to fast at that time, this would be the fourth either contraindication or people that should not be do it at that period of time.

Perfect. And one final question is, can you share any fun stories or amazing transformations that really can potentially encourage someone to look further into using ProLon? We have actually many thousands of stories, but I'm going to we have also enough clinical trials that we can share some of those outcomes. So one of the fun story that ends up being a clinical trial and successfully published is that a lot of when people used to when I used to say, hey, we have a fasting mimicking diet and nutrition and technology of making fasting and rejuvenation that aging.

And a lot of people hear the word diet and a lot of people are like, okay, how much weight I would lose, which everyone loves because you're going to lose a lot of fat with it and much faster that any would go or anything 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, You know what? It shouldn't be just about losing weight, but it's about rejuvenation. Now, how are you going to show rejuvenation?

I took a path of doing a full clinical trial to show that the skin change, the skin is one of the largest organ. If autophagy and rejuvenation is happening, this inspired rejuvenation so ended up going and doing a randomized clinical trial on the skin before and after ProLon and with the visor and all the technology that shows you skin all of these components in rejuvenation skin cells. And they were very statistically significant improvements happening at the skin's level. When you do the ProLon before and after an hour surprise, even emotionally to among the two top statistically significant benefits where that woman felt very confident and that happiness level increased because of that.

This is one of the visual rejuvenation that can happen because when we explain it, people will be like, Wow, it's going to rejuvenate. Like it's abstract for them. And I wanted to make it the way they can create. And then we get a lot of people coming to our Facebook and posting their pictures. And I remember what about to start the study on Syria

Practical Use, Safety, and Contraindications 29:38

and other autoimmune diseases that are visible on the skin. But I cannot forget the woman who had a full red leg. And then after five days, you know, she's showing like almost all the redness is almost done. So this is ProLon is very special into mimicking fasting, the technology that we created. But what's truly special is fasting itself is very special. It's it should be part of our diet. We're not built to eat and stress all the time. And we're not going to stop calories and just accelerates our aging.

What we see today is exactly what we predicted. Meaning you had more money into health care, but then diabetes keeps rising. You add more money into cardiovascular disease. Keep rising, get more money into cancer treatment and cancers to increase because the essential reason for all those is aging and lifestyle and nobody is truly tackling those. But also is difficult for people to change their life every day and eat healthy everyday. And this is why ProLon comes in is like five day you sacrifice those five days, you know, anyone can do something for five days and then go back 25 days and live your life.

And at least you would have had the benefits of the ProLon fasting. And I'm sure you probably see some people do the ProLon, but then they continue to eat probably a little bit healthier than they did previously just because they are seeing kind of a jump start into a healthier lifestyle. 100%. I think this is one of the top benefits and secrets of the product is, you know, I always say five days is short enough for people to complete. We have 91% average completion rates, which is five days, but it's long enough for people to say, you know what,

Success Stories and Lifestyle Impact 31:28

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 and Pepsis and pizzas and live my urges, you know, food and the salt, the sweeteners and all of that? So a lot of people, the product inspires them to gradually make these changes and it doesn't create panic. You know, the problem with every diet is like they seven, ten, 20, 40, and then they get it. They get a default at some point.

Is this what creates the learned helplessness? I think with ProLon let just say, do you five days is inspired me a little bit. And then I go back and I go back to what I used to do. But then I do second box and then I see the changes happening fast and these tiny wins they build up to change your life started proactively rather than imposed way to be there. Now that's perfect. That's fantastic. Well, I think that's a wonderful, positive place to end our discussion. But thank you so much for sharing this information about ProLon and It's amazing to see food in a very special formulation improve someone's health.

So thank you for all the work and research that you guys have all done for us. Thank you, Laurie.