Strengthen Your Muscles & Bones With Fasting

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Oh, I’m excited about being in this interview. I’ve been thinking about it all week because I know that when you and I start talking, the sparks start to fly. I’m excited and revved up, ready to go.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Yes, and to just frame the discussion. Would you say a few words about your background, your expertise, and your passion? And then I’ll start asking you questions, and we’ll take it from there.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Sure. Absolutely. Well, since the first time that I started working with individuals 40 years ago, I have believed that people deserve vitality at every stage of life. It doesn’t matter whether they’re six years old, 80 years old, or beyond. Let’s hope. With longevity.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

It’s like a testimonial: How old are you, Dr. LaValle?

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

I’m going to be 64.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

To me, you look 40 or 45. This is just to frame the discussion. Dr. LaValle has unlocked a lot of pillars of aging, so make sure you listen to him today and listen to the recommendation.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Well, I appreciate that. Joseph and I don’t have any filters on. This is the real me. My background is, of course, being a clinical pharmacist. I taught for 18 years at the College of Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati and brought in a lot of pioneering work, including writing databases on natural compounds and doing personalized work on people, starting in the mid-eighties. So I had this passion for that. And then that evolved from working with very large organizations. CVS, Rite Aid, Long Stride Chain, McKesson, to having probably the largest clinic in the country doing this work in Cincinnati, where we’re seeing three to 400 people a week where we’re working on personalization and programs that help people drive the best potential help for them. Yes, but over the last 20 years, I have been acting as the academic co-chair for the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, which is dedicated to longevity and anti-aging. Chairing the International Peptides Society, working with athletes in all five major league sports, and working with military special forces, I just got back from doing an education program with them. All of this works out whether you’re a high performer, meaning that you have a lot of demands on you, or you’re just trying to perform through your life. You get to enjoy the benefits of a long, healthy life. That’s been my focus. I’m working with the metabolic platform and looking at algorithms that can help people determine, well, where do I need to begin with my chemistry? There are some basic things I know we’re going to get to, but I don’t know what areas of my metabolism are the most disturbed, and how do I start to correct them? For most of us in the U.S., it all starts with eating too much, too often, too late, picking the wrong foods, developing insulin resistance, and then doing programs. We did a program with, for example, Lifetime Fitness, which affected 200 to almost 250,000 lives. I’ve been wondering how we create the ability to scale wellness. When I first started with you, Joseph, what I saw were the projects that you were working on with L-Nutra and ProLon. This was something that would scale wellness and longevity for individuals, something that could be implemented across a large population with very good science behind it. So that’s the net. The net still has two practices: one in California and one in Texas. I’m active in seeing people. That’s how you learn how to do things. Then, of course, as we met a few weeks ago at a Fountain Life project, we did things with groups like Fountain Life as well. I am very excited about the future of longevity and wellness.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

I appreciate you for that. Let’s hit the core topic here: fasting and longevity. You’ve been at the forefront of both. Can you explain a little bit to the folks listening to us in this episode? What are the types of fasting, what is the right way to fast, and why do we talk about fasting with longevity? What’s that interconnectivity? I know you track a lot of those practices and implement them in your clinics.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Why is fasting important? Well, from the most basic standpoint, when you fast and it doesn’t, I’m not talking about a five-day water fast, which needs to be supervised and carries some risks with it. But even the thought of fasting for some time is important because it cleans up your body. If you think about the topic of autophagy, basically what you’re doing is cleaning out the debris from the byproducts of your metabolism. Why that’s important is that if you build up enough garbage, your immune system starts to look at it and go, Hey, that’s bad stuff. We need to respond to that. Why fasting is important first is that it allows for that signal of autophagy or clean-up. That’s why the next thing that’s important to understand is that it helps to regulate a compound in your body called mTOR, and if you continually signal this compound called mTOR, which is anabolic, it tells tissues to grow. But if you’re in the process of triggering IGF-1, which is a growth hormone analog along with mTOR, it is going to accelerate driving, uncontrolled growth in tissues. We know that. I wrote a book, a chapter in a book called Diabetes and Cancer, Epidemiologic Links, and Molecular Evidence. In that, we discussed the fact that IGF gets out of control. That’s a big feature of what happens with people that are pre-diabetic, insulin resistant, or diabetic, which is a problem with 50% of our population, which then leads from that insulin resistance to diabetes to cancer. We want to regulate mTOR, which isn’t bad. You need to have the signal to make and keep your muscle, as muscle is the currency of aging, but you don’t want it uncontrolled. For example, after a fast, you’ll see a rebound of your growth hormone, which supports rebuilding your tissue. But for that time, while you’re fasting, you’re shutting it down to create regulation in your body. When it comes to fasting, first of all, Joseph, I’m an Italian in a traditional Italian family. You ate breakfast at 7 a.m., you ate lunch at noon, and you had dinner at 5 or 6 p.m. But a 12:12 window, which is what is a very healthy way to fast—eat 12 hours, don’t eat 12 hours. then if you could have a food that doesn’t spike your nutrient sensing in the morning where you could extend the fast but get nutrition, that would add a little extra benefit to it. But what I have found is that when I watch people who come into our clinic who are 18:6 faster than me here, eating six, 18 hours of fast, and six hours of feeding window, their labs don’t look that great. They tend to show more stress hormones, more triglycerides, and higher cholesterol. We have to bust that myth. If we’re talking about a once-a-week fast, I can understand doing something like that or two days a week. But what we’ve got in the market right now is everybody going—oh, well, it’s 18 six every day. then the other piece to it is you asking.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Then the extreme is the moment. the one meal a day that a lot of people are practicing. I want to say that you’ve mentioned two things that are probably going to shock the listeners a little bit: the way you talked about proteins and mTOR, and aging and cancer. I want to talk about that because people think carbs are bad and proteins are great. Everything is good in moderation, and everything is bad in high doses. We’re going to talk about that. Then you talked about fasting is good, but is the right way to fast, which is 12 hours or 14 hours and not leaving the body starving in the morning in essential organs for 18 hours, 20 hours, and 22 hours, and then binge eating at night, because that’s doing more harm than the benefits of fasting? We’re going to talk about which one you want to start with because of the concept of growth in eating and balancing that with fasting and making sure that the mTOR and the IGF are regulated. Based on Valter Longo’s studies, we have a big meta-analysis that is like that 103 to 150 IGF is where you balance having, and maintaining muscle, which is a great organ of longevity, and not pushing the biological age. We got to talk about this because a lot of us overeat protein by eating ourselves. Then let’s talk about the right way to fast after that, if you don’t mind.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Well, the first thing, and I’m a convert, is that when everybody goes low-carb or ketogenic and they go, “I feel so much better,” first of all, it’s typically short-lived. I’ve talked to enough people who stayed on ketogenic diets, and after they’ve been on them for four months, they don’t feel great anymore. But I call that putting a Band-Aid in a bullet hole because what it’s telling you is that your glucose and insulin receptors are now dysfunctional because you cannot tolerate carbohydrates. when you keep that metabolic information or metaformation signaling low in your body—glucose, insulin, and glycogen. Live in a beautiful relationship where you’re storing glycogen in muscle and utilizing glucose, and insulin is properly signaling in your body, which is reflected in a healthy hemoglobin A1C long-term glucose control number and better fasting glucose. Remember, the higher your glucose goes, the more your lipids will get dislipidemic because of the inflammation process that occurs from that. The first piece is that we know that once you’re over 60, it’s probably better to take in more protein. We agree on that. But where people are missing the boat is that carbs, fats, and proteins are healthy and good to do. It’s necessary for proper metabolism and energy production. And your brain needs glucose. It’s just a fact.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And your heart, and your kidneys.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Every organ in your body, right? Everything’s running on that. This is the science of, oh, it’s only about ketones; it’s just that. It’s not rooted in; your body would not utilize it and would not need insulin if you didn’t need glucose. When we look at ourselves as we’ve altered ourselves over generations, the need for glucose has healthily changed people and carbohydrates. Just look at them. in the blue zones. If you look at the blue zones, the one thing that I would say when we talk about the blue zones is that you have to remember that if you’re going to eat more carbohydrate, you have to move more. It’s when you’re in Sardinia that you’re walking up and down hillsides, so a little bit of this is, Hey, if I’m going to sit on my tail all day and I’m not going to move at all, and I’m not going to incorporate exercise as a global part of my house band strategy, well, yes. If you said you never move, yes. If you’re eating carbohydrates, you may end up gaining weight from that. But we all should be moving. The second phase it is that, of course, there’s a social context to why the blue zones work and that we create relevance for people with their aging because they are maintaining their vitality. We can gain wisdom from those folks. Those are important concepts, too. But I do think that in general, I know for myself, that I’ve cut my protein portions down from what I used to do, or what I’d call a recovering bodybuilder.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

I’m happy about that.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Yes, I’ve cut my protein down. I’ve tried to incorporate more backup.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Can you explain to people why you’re saying that and why you cut your proteins?

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Yes. First of all, if you’re eating a lot of protein, you’re signaling much more IGF-1, and you’re going to signal much more nutrients.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

IGF1 is an insulin-like growth factor. It pushes the body to age and grows.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Exactly.  Remember when I loved what you just said? Dr. Longo is not saying the low IGF-1 is good. We already know. I wrote it in the textbook. We know a high IGF-1 isn’t good. It’s on the bell curve of moderation. If you’re stimulating nutrient sensing with a high-protein meal, you’re stimulating more IGF-1. So it’s important to balance that out to not overdo it. So that’s the reason for doing that. The other piece to this puzzle, of course, is the timing of food and making sure that you’re not eating it all the time. People are doing one of two things right now. Today, they read all the time, which continually stimulates cortisol, insulin, and glucose, which you don’t want. You don’t want to eat all day. Even nibbling all day is going to have that effect. You want to have established meal times, maybe an established snack if you’re working out or you’ve got a long day, and at the same time you don’t want to start your organs, because I know we’ve discussed this before. We know based on studies, on animal studies, that when you go too long without eating, you starve the organs of the nutrients they need, and you don’t get the nutrients through the blood that’s being delivered to the organs to be able to clean up that. Whether it’s the liver, the kidneys, the pancreas, or wherever it is, you’re not getting that type of response. So it’s important to understand that there’s a balance to these things.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

If we put both concepts that you talked about that we don’t need to eat all the time, but it is good, but long fasting is bad, probably the recommendation that you’re hinting at is that you’d rather people fast for 12 hours overnight, which is a natural circadian fasting. But we have breakfast. There’s a lot of study time for everyone listening to us about skipping breakfast again. We’ll talk about how skipping breakfast could be good or bad, depending on whether you binge eat or not. how long. But in general, skipping breakfast is not a pro-longevity intervention. The more you frontload your food intake during the day, the better you are. Because, as Dr. LaValle said, you’re going to walk during the day, you’re going to exercise, and you’re going to burn it, versus when you fast the opposite of the circadian fasting, you’re starving your organs during the day, and then you just binge-eat at night. A lot of the 18-year-olds and to, oh, my, this is what’s happening to their bodies in the morning. The brain is active, but there are no calories for the brain. The heart needs to pump the kidneys. All the essential organs are looking for calories, but they find no calories. By the way, this is where you get headaches and fatigue. then you’re starving the organs when they need the calories, and then you load the body in the afternoon or before sleeping when the body almost doesn’t need that. all these calories in at night. Naturally, growth hormone is high. It’s an aging factor. Anabolic. Then you add to that IGF, or insulin because you ate late during the day. Your body is just getting all the signals of aging and food storage at night. This is how you develop a pre-metabolic disease and how you push the body to age. To put it all together in a simplified way, Dr. LaValle is saying is to fast, but do the natural 12- to 14-hour fast. Many people could benefit from fasting longer to lose weight, but that will compromise their longevity. This is where he and I have been working for a while. This all comes from Dr. Longo, and it’s a fasting-mimicking intervention. Meaning, can we feed since we’re saying it’s important to eat something in the morning or that it’s important to fast with food? Can we give the body a special formulation to mimic fasting while giving the nutrients that the organs need in the morning? This is a separate discussion about ProLon and the fasting-mimicking diet that we’re covering during the summit. I don’t know if Dr. LaValle will touch on that, but this is the essence I’m trying to simplify so that people don’t get lost and that they should fast, but then fasting is not good. No, it’s fast at the right time—12 to 14 hours. If you want to fast to get autophagy rejuvenation, do it with food because then you’re merging fasting and longevity.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

That’s a great summary, Joseph. Look, if you had to ask people the question, would you give 15 days a year up to improve the likelihood of a healthier health span, 15 days out of 365 days?

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

That’s now.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

it’s a pretty good equation.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

The 15 days of ProLon, if you’re hinting at that.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

I’m not hinting; I’m getting to where I’m going right now for you because I’m an advocate. I’ve lectured—just full disclosure—I’ve lectured for L-Nutra, and I do it because I believe in it and I recommend it. The point is that by using the fasting-mimicking diet, what you’re effectively doing is resetting your metabolism. If I had to say it in the simplest form, in those five days when you were turning down your nutrient sensing and stimulating autophagy, when you look at the data that comes out of it, you have better glucose control, better lipids, and people are more satisfied; it resets their satiety, at least in your subjective survey data. It was amazing that people thought about eating smaller plates of food than they got for quicker change.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

They can have a relationship with food.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Yes, we have a much better relationship with food. I think that’s important because one of the biggest things that I see overall is that, because of chronic stress, people end up overeating. They get triggered by the elevations in cortisol and by the reward cascade, where, before you know it, the plate of food becomes a bigger plate of food. The small glass of wine becomes a goblet of wine, and then come the snacks in between. And then, when we try to countermeasure for that, we swing to the one-day meal or the 18:6 fast instead of trying to narrow into a therapeutic window of, well, what is it healthy for me to eat? I was very intrigued when L-Nutra developed the morning shake that extends your fast while still giving you nutrients. That’s an important concept because, here is what I see: when people are fasting and they’re doing 18:6, their morning cortisols are higher, and their morning glucose is higher. What’s happening is that you’re breaking down muscle to keep that glucose level up; you’re becoming catabolic by doing that. And so it makes more sense to think about what I am trying to accomplish as a food and as a lifestyle, meaning that I want to eat the healthiest foods possible; I want them to be clean. I should structure my meals. One, it’s going to be more cost-effective for you. Everybody’s worried about the cost of food today. Cost-effective food that also ends up creating a benefit for you metabolically. People aren’t thinking that way about food yet, and they need to. We see the blue zones, and we understand how people are eating there, and that’s great. We need to apply that here in the U.S., which is an environment that’s much more stressful. So that is what we must concentrate on: how do we apply fasting to our diet? As I previously stated, would you give up 15 days a year? We’ve talked about how some people may want to do that more, maybe even if they did it last. But applying that five-day sequence of giving yourself digestive rest, reducing nutrients, and stimulating the clean-up procedure for your body, it’s important for people to understand that concept and that you don’t need a lot of calories to keep your muscle tissue on. I’ve learned that I’m a 205-pound guy. I operate at around 1800 calories, and I haven’t lost any muscle at my age. I certainly don’t have a bunch of saggy skin. The secret has been the fact that, for myself and also thousands of patients over the years, it’s understanding your relationship to food and just how important it is.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

73% of Americans have a certain level of overweight. But now the new statistics show that 90% of Americans have certain types of metabolic issues. You talk about this inflammation. We also call it a bit of high cholesterol and a bit of high triglycerides, all driven by lifestyles. The stress is creating multiple meals per day. This is such a core concept here today to balance fasting and nutrition. If you want to fast longer, do it with nutrition with the fasting. Nutrition is what we’re trying to say so that the life balance is set back and your body is aging gracefully with no over-push into growth factors like insulin and IGF. There’s no over-acceleration of the brain deposits in the cell, which creates more inflammation and accelerates aging. There’s a body recognition that we didn’t talk about the hallmarks of aging, the senescent cells. These are what we call them—the zombie cells and everything else. The longer sessions of fasting push the body to clean those or send them to apoptosis and get rid of them. As we know, once we have a lot of reasons to sell a lot of senescent cells, aging becomes exponential. After reaching the age of 60, it accelerates itself. The ambiance, the environment, is the body saying, “Oh, this is the new setting; let’s go and accelerate it.” Fasting is critical, and by balancing those, I know you’re also an expert in performance health. I don’t want to miss today without talking about it. That’s probably what a lot of your career has been about, culminating now with the metabolic code. Can you talk a little bit about what performance health is, why it’s core to longevity and the foundations of what the metabolic code is? How could people benefit from all this?

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

I’m currently at my center in Cedar Park, LaValle Performance Health Center, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re struggling with an autoimmune condition or you’re obese; your body needs to be able to operate at its best performance. Operating at its best performance means that the markers of aging, whether you’re an athlete or you’re just an executive, are someone for whom, for whatever reason, you’re already retired. The markers of aging are: if your insulin is high, it’s a problem if you’re making bad lipids; if your glucose is high, it’s a problem; and if your homocysteine is high, it’s a problem. So the metabolic code was about identifying these key markers of aging and the traditional evidence-based literature. I’m not talking about invalidated labs or things that are cool and hip in their longevity space. I’ve got nothing against that. That’s how you push innovation. But there are plenty of markers that are in the traditional medical realm of evidence that we can track and add our expertise to. The way that I look at performance health is, for example, if you have 85 blood sugar, you’re in pretty good shape. But if you have a 95 blood sugar, your doctor tells you it’s normal, but you have a 60% risk of being a person with diabetes, and if you have a 95 blood sugar and your kidney function is starting to lower, your blood pressure is borderline high, and you have a lipid particle size, it’s like you’re making BP, or LDL cholesterol, that allows you to attach to the inner lining of your arteries. Your mean platelet volume is elevated, which is a marker for matter formation. Now, all of a sudden, I just lined up five things that relate to my insulin resistance that are affecting and accelerating my inflammatory aging. That was the concept behind the metabolic code: identifying these acceleration points in people’s metabolisms and starting to factor them together. Now, in terms of performance health, there’s no doubt a person who’s training 4 hours a day because they’re a professional athlete has a different goal. They’re being paid a living to perform at their best. So it becomes incredibly important that they recover more than even how hard they train, and how you recover is by managing your chemistry. We’ve had many discussions about this. Joseph, I can’t think of how many times we’ve talked about athletes and how if they took a break from their training, maybe it’s in the off-season or it’s at the mid-season break, and they did a five-day fasting-mimicking diet to reset the inflammatory signaling and matter formation. That it could help in terms of their tissue enable ism coming out of the fast, their repair, and their ability to take control of those parameters or levers that you’re pulling on metabolic performance. For me, performance health simply means how, and this is what people are listening to—you need to think about how far you are from your best health. Right now, being trained as a medical doctor, what we get trained in the traditional medical system is that we have a line of demarcation that says you have a disease or you don’t. The reality is that there is so much trend analysis. I know we geek out on this all the time. I can’t think of how many conversations we’ve had about this. What we’re not doing is looking at the trend of where you are moving. To your point, 50% of the US population by 2030 is predicted to be obese, 73% overweight, or 90% with some type of metaflammation or metabolic imbalance. Think of the wave that happened with those in Ozempic and Mounjaro. People flocked to it, which is a good thing and a bad thing. People weren’t getting answers for their insulin resistance. They thought if they just took that, that would be the answer. Lo and behold, they’re losing too much lean mass because they didn’t change their lifestyle. If you start to combine 12:12 and 14:10, extending your fast in the morning, you are losing something like a ProLon and also using other aspects of what L-Nutra has developed. Now you get all the benefits, and I’ve done this. I work with this a lot. You can’t expect anything like Ozempic and Mounjaro or the great medications that have been developed. Fantastic. But to just use them for weight loss and not change your lifestyle and get committed to longevity and performance health limits that success. People get disappointed because they see their appetite come back, and then they eat a lot after they get off of it, and then they gain more weight.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

The big thing.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

It’s ProLon.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

A lot of them are coming back to ProLon to protect the muscles during rejuvenation. This muscle is critical for metabolic rate and burning the curves as you said. 

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Well, sparing muscle since you mentioned it. What is fascinating is that people go ProLon and don’t lose muscle, and in fact, they may even gain muscle back in the process. People have to realize that when you use those medications, the GLP-1 agonist or mixed agonist, you’re going to lose the same amount of muscle as if you get a low-calorie diet. This is in the studies that were developed by the drug companies themselves. I’m not saying anything negative. I’m just reporting the data. 20 to 30% of your weight loss when you use those medications and you’re not doing anything else, like utilizing ProLon to counterbalance that 20 to 30% is lean mass loss. It’s the equivalent of if you did low-calorie dieting. You don’t want to lose 20–30% of your lean mass on a diet. You want to not lose lean mass and only lose fat mass as much as possible.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

But that’s a critical point that we were also trying to disseminate: the importance of muscle and performance health for longevity. I know you have your protocols with some things for those who want to do the injections, such as how to do ProLon or how to do proteins with them and train their muscles to preserve their muscle. This is how going back to the IGF, balancing how that also increases the protein in a way that is also accelerating aging, and the fasting alternation with such nutrition could create that balance. Hopefully, one day, measuring IGF will become part of the same way we measure HB1C, and glucose and insulin can become part of a metric of longevity. This would reveal a lot and expose a lot about this marketing and forced hyperproteinization. I call it, diabetes, a protein that’s happening out there, and people are lost because there are very few ethical science-based innovations and interventions. Anyone, in addition, can write a book or start a podcast, and people are lost. I do a lot of podcasts, and we’re trying to take a lot of medications. The first feedback is that people are completely lost.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Oh, yes.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Fasting is good; fasting is bad; proteins are good; proteins are bad. and we’re trying through this summit that we’re trying through this continuous education to bring the true ethical science behind what to do, how to do it, and when to do it to clarify these concepts for people.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Well, you bring up such an important point, Joseph, because I’ve battled that a lot. I get on the podcast as a guest every once in a while, and there’s so much confusion about what to do. For example, even with the use of those medications and eating a high-protein diet, you limit its success because you need starch. You must eat carbohydrates for those medications to work effectively. So I see so much misinformation out there. Mostly, like I said, a lot of times I ask people in the big-name podcasters, Well, how many people do they see? I know that for me, even now, in my slow periods, I probably see 30 people a week working with their chemistries. At my peak, I was seeing 300 people a week. When you see people and you see what works, that’s what I say: start to listen to them because they’re on the front lines. We can all read a study and extrapolate on how it might be, but if you haven’t seen it work, and that’s why my hat’s off and why I’ve supported L-Nutra, ProLon, and Valter’s work, your work is because of your dedication and commitment to getting the science right, doing studies, publishing those studies, and showing the evidence. It’s very few and far between that that happens. It’s key to get rid of the misconceptions, get rid of what I call bro science or the myths that are out there so that people can start to live their lives in that. What’s the performance of health-span longevity? Look, what does the last data show? We’re living four years less than we used to. It’s the bottom line. We have to get some science and some guardrails on what we’re doing so that people can start to not make it such what I call a hypersensitized event: what should I eat and how should I eat? It shouldn’t be that confusing, folks.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

I appreciate it very much, and it is right on point. Just to conclude, I want to ask you two questions. Number one is, what do you think are the three in an if you want to summarize the discussion today, what would be two or three highlights of it that you can mention that people go and digest and adopt in their lifestyle?

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Sure.  The first is to learn about fasting and the science of fasting, and don’t assume that extremes are the way to go; in fact, extremes tend to disrupt your metabolism. Learn about the importance of fasting for your metabolism and how to clean up your chemistry so that your cells can remain vital and healthy and send appropriate cell signals. That’s going to limit senescence or those rogue cells that, as you’re aging, want to pop up and throw out a bunch of inflammatory compounds? learn about that science. The second one is whether you choose to fast, which is smart, utilizing a fasting-mimicking diet and all the tools that you have. Look, with all the nutrients, you have developed some amazing products. You have to think of it as a lifestyle of being well. Think about incorporating stress management into your lifestyle. If you’re noticing abnormal eating patterns because of the stress response, do a metabolic reset. Think about making a five-day commitment to yourself so that you can reset the circuit breaker box in your brain for that reward cascade. To me, managing appetite, managing your metabolism, and reaching for performance health all start with understanding your relationship with food and that 1212 cycle or even 1410 cycle that people should be doing and not eating late at night. Don’t go to bed on a full stomach. Those are probably the key things I would say are important.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

That’s probably the biggest advice I give people when they say just one thing. You do one thing and just don’t go to sleep on a full stomach. It’s going to accelerate your anabolic states of fat storage and aging. It’s so damaging that it’s even counterbalancing the benefits of potentially skipping or prolonging fasting the next day. It’s unbelievable how damaging and deadly eating is. Dr. LaValle, I appreciate you very much. Thank you for your time today. There are a lot of great lessons for people to adopt in their lives, and hopefully, we will contribute to increasing that health span today. I appreciate it very much.

James LaValle, RPh, CCN, MT, DHM, DHPh, ND

Thanks for having me, Joseph. It was a pleasure.