Unlock Fasting’s Power Without The Hunger

Introduction to Fasting Mimicking 0:00

Welcome back to the Reverse Hypertension Naturally Summit. I'm Dr. Laurie Marbas and today I'm eager to introduce you to Dr. Will Hsu How are you today? Hi, Laurie. Thank you. Well, I'm excited to have you here because you're representing a kind of an alternative to just strictly fasting. So let's talk a little bit about ketos the difference between fasting and a fasting mimicking diet, which your company L-Nutra actually utilizes for health care. Yeah, we're really a sort of a 21st century solution to to getting the benefits of fasting without actually putting it through fasting.

So it is the new century we've got. We've gained a lot of understanding about the molecular pathways around fasting, what happens to the cells. And so we've leveraged that molecular knowledge and come up with with precision nutrition that gives you many of the benefits of fasting without actually putting you through a prolonged fast. And now this is really important. If intermittent fasting could solve all our problems, if intermittent fasting alone can do many of the great things that we hope that it would do, then, then we actually don't need mimicking fasts, right?

We actually don't need to mimic fasts. But now we've learned that many of the deep changes on the cellular level that supports the longevity and supports health really takes quite a bit of long time. In fact, too long for most people, including myself. Okay. And then look at we can go into that a little bit later. But suffice to say that because it needs a long time to see the true benefit of a prolonged fast, the week that we've come up with this technology called the fasting mimicking technology, which we can talk about more later.

Absolutely. So can you describe what you mean by a longer period of time? Like, how long are we talking about? Yeah. And I think, you know, for a lot of people, other than weight loss, which is a really important goal, but many people are doing fasting for the longevity benefit, for the overall health benefit. And for that to happen. It's really it's really a great story. You think about like what does it take? What does it take for the cells to actually turn over to create this kind of new health paradigm?

How Fasting Triggers Cellular Rejuvenation 2:37

It actually takes in humans probably more than three days. And and that's because the process of cellular rejuvenation, we use the term autophagy. Your listeners probably have heard this before. Autophagy, self eating that process only get triggered when there is enough stress, there's enough pressure on the cells. And let me describe that process a little bit. It's when food is not available for a prolonged period of time. The cell says, my goodness, I got to survive. How do I do that? And other obviously, the cells are going to hand down the fats and it's going to endow many other storage energy storage.

But inside the cells, it gets to a point where the cell says, I better find something inside, you know, rather than going outside, because I just don't know when this is going to stop. So as the cells through however many years you believe with existing on Earth, by perhaps a couple of hundred million years and probably even longer, just as life forms is really is adaptive mechanism where it says, okay, I need food, but I can get it from outside. So which part of my own cells can I sacrifice? Not the whole cell Because if you sacrifice the whole cell the cell dies, right?

So has to be part of the cells. Which one would you pick? Would you pick the brain? The cells which? The nucleus? Probably not. There would be death. Would you pick the most valuable part of the cells this young and vibrant? Probably not. Right. It's like in the in the. In the cold New England winter where you need heating, you know, you need food, you need coal, and you run out of them. What are you going to do? You get it? You're going to look around your friends, your cells. What am I going to take and not your grandmother's heirloom furniture?

It's going to be probably. Oh, the chair that was anyways have broken. Let me just throw that away right. And burning to keep the house warm until right. The night passes and same thing, right. The cell is going to look for misfolded proteins. It's going to look for dysfunctional mitochondria. It's going to look for anything that's older that can be like, right, the value is a little bit less. And that selection process has been honed species over species time, over time, and to a point where the cells knows exactly what to do right when you fast.

But the process cannot be triggered every night. If we simply do 16-8, you think the cells is going to chew itself up with 16 hours of starvation? Of course not. Right. So it has to be an existential stress. And that often means is three days is 4 days and perhaps even longer. And this is why we don't recommend simply to fast, because that's too difficult to do for three, four or five days. And this is also the opportunity where a technology such as fasting, mimicking diet becomes relevant. Hmm.

So that is really interesting. So now we understand the actual stress of fasting will cause the body or the cells to become hyper vigilant and more resourceful. Right. So reuse, recycle, type of thing, which we should be doing anyway. Just a regular. But our cells will do that. So how does the fasting mimicking diet do this? I mean, because we are consuming some calories. How does that actually work? What is going on on the cellular physiologic level. That a lot of people ask questions like, well, this is oxymoron.

When you are fasting, you're giving food, how is it possible? And this is where I think understanding of the physiology and the cellular signaling really helps. But when we when we don't eat any food, when we're fasting, is our nutrition and nutrient level like dropped down to zero? Does it drop down to zero in our body? Of course, the glucose always is at a range in the normal value is less than a hundred milligrams per deciliter. It's not like glucose is always zero when we fast it's not like protein or amino acids are always zero, right?

They're always nutrients in our body. So they're are also these these nutrient sensors called like working like a thermostat on the surface of the cells, the senses, if there's glucose, there's protein, amino acids, carbohydrates, these nutrients passing by. As long as you don't trigger these nutrient sensors, you can actually fly under the radar, these nutrient sensors So what if we give you the right amount of nutrients that falls below that detection threshold of these nutrient sensors? There is a way to keep the cells kind of quiet down and thinking it's fasting, but in you're getting some nutrients.

That's the genius behind this. Now, I did not invent this. Right. I wish this came out of the University of Southern California Longevity Labs and Valter, Professor Valter Longo at USC in his his longevity labs. He came up with this 25 years ago. NIH funded for over $36 million. And I'll tell you the story that he started looking at, sort of the intersection between fasting, nutrition and longevity. And so he's professor are actually study people in the biospheres if you recall the experiment where people went in there live for a year

How the Fasting Mimicking Diet Works 8:09

like self sustaining inside the biosphere when people came out there was fasting, right? Because there's not a lot of food. When those folks came out, they weren't happy and they weren't healthy. Then they lost muscle mass. And you could you can go watch the read the reports from those. They learn a lot that the pure starvation itself, it's actually really stressful to the body. It's amazing how body uses their fasting to to clean up the cells and rejuvenate the cells. But if you do it for a long term is actually not good.

Right. So so Valter, begin to look at this intersection between nutrition, fasting, longevity. There's got to be an Intersect there where it's like optimal, where you're not starving too much, but that the right amount of nutrients, the right amount of starvation phase. But also the flip side of that, the re feeding phase, a lot of people don't talk about that. It's once you shrink the cells, it's great you're getting rid of the old parts of the cells. But you've got to grow back now. When you grow back, you want to make sure that you eat right.

So the parts that are replaced is actually right, filled with good nutrients and replacing them, thereby completing the cycles and replacing older parts of the cells with new parts. There's no medicine that actually does that. You think about that, right? They actually shrink the cells, get rid of the old parts in there, replace it with new parts. How do you do that? Well, how many drugs is it going to take? Right. And think about this fasting process. It's a stressed until every part of the body.

It's not just unique to the fat cells. It's not unique only to the muscle cells, but the skin, the heart, the lung. And you can imagine that this this this autophagy process likely occurs in almost every cells in the body. And this is what I call kind of the miracle life. Like this is how we came to to exist on this beautiful earth for all this time when nature deals with, you know, kind of dealt us with a, a challenging environment and no food, we turn that disadvantage into advantage. This is the beautiful story of life on this earth, right?

So that's fantastic. So there is the resolve rejuvenation. So you how the fasting mimicking diet, flying under the radar, so to speak. So you're still providing some nutrients to mind. I'm sure there's a mind component to this. To you, food in your body, you're not fasting, you're feeling deprived. And we speak to the types of foods that are included in this. And is there a particular macronutrient ratio or like how does it all fly under the radar? Like the basal like glucose and proteins available for continued living on a fasted state?

So how do you how do you measure that? Is it watching glucose rise or like how do you know what that limit is? This this is where the $36 million of research, our it started with very simple single cell organism to see what triggers how much it triggers to multicellular organisms and then to animal models. And then finally, it's been validated with 18 clinical trials and we have 14 new ones ongoing right now. I mean, this is kind of the story of research and development. And we we prided ourselves prided ourselves that that when it comes to data, we don't we don't mince resources.

This is where we feel to bring the next generation of innovation in health care. You have to lead with science. You have to lead with evidence. Absolutely. So can we talk a little bit about the food and what's that? So let's do that. Yes. So we have many choices, right? We have many choices to to we could make them into specific format, but we feel that in order for this to be a lifestyle, it should be items that people are similar with. You should not be injection. You should not be like a pill, right?

You should be something this represents we it's part of the lifestyle. And so it's going to come in the form of soups, bars, capsules for some micronutrients like vitamins and others, and special drinks that that is that it is really a it's a is a decision on our part. We want everybody to incorporate this as part of their lifestyle. So so you will see in a five day but so that comes in in the product itself comes in the box each day, has a allocated amount of food, very well spelled out morning you consume this lunch is consumed this each one is meticulously calculated and developed to keep the body in a fasting state so it's it's shop it is shopping free it's is thinking free it's you just follow whatever it's been tested in 18 clinical trials and it's through 20 years of research and the the items in there is all do all with this fasting mimicking technology to keep your body in a fasting state.

It's obviously a balance because we want the balance. What is striking is between efficacy that is mimicking fasting, but also support, in other words, nourishing your body during the five days. And so obviously we can drop it down to five calories if we want to, but then the support aspect would be would not be optimized. And so the macronutrients there in general, it tends to be low in protein, but sufficient to maintain that function, cellular function for five days. But why do we intend to do this with a lower amount of protein?

Macronutrients is because protein is one of the most is one of the strong is stimulus for cellular growth even more than sugar because think about protein is the building block of of the body of the cells right. And so if you have any proteins that triggers the nutrient sensors, the sensor is going to say, oh, let's not rejuvenate, let's not go into autophagy because food is still around. Hold on a second. Let's grow. Right. And so even though it could be very low calories, but if if the signals are being perceived by the cells as a signal growth, even though it's low calories, you're not really sleeping.

Right. The cells are not really going to that that rejuvenation stage. And so it's almost yeah. You're not getting the quite the benefits of of a lot of people say oh it's just low calorie it is actually not if you simply have low calories but still stimulate these nutrient sensors, then you're just losing weight. You're not getting the cells to experience this existential crisis. And that's why that all the details, it is very intricate and so it's low in protein. Let me just finish that part. Yeah, but the carbohydrate is needed.

We have complex carbohydrate data. There was a high fiber contents in there as well. It's important because remember, it's between getting the efficacy of fasting but also nourishment. One of the key aspect we want to drive with all of our innovation is we want people to preserve their lean body mass to the fast. So sassy naturally protects the muscle cell because it's a stress to the body and the hormones and other x is going to support muscle health. But on the other hand, this is specially formulated to make sure that you don't lose muscle mass.

And so carbohydrates, complex carbohydrates needed over there. Otherwise the body's going to go to the muscle and say, hey, I need I need energy. It's going to obviously go go into our glycogen storage and say, I need energy, but it's not a good discriminator. So some of your muscles would be used up in this five day fasting that is not 5 hours, five days inside the the product also has specially formulated drinks so we call our drink

Medical Supervision and Diabetes Remission 16:50

which also helps to protect the muscle has everything is plant base gluten free and you we use the highest quality ingredients in this so that's kind of the kind of a five day our flagship product called the fasting to be in diet and it's available for purchase by the name prolonged. Now we have also taken this concept a further by if if people have a disease state such as diabetes or metabolic health, we've created a comprehensive program with medical supervision, with tailored dieticians, incorporating the fasting, mimicking day as part of that, but also longevity, nutrition, all as part of the program to help people reverse their disease conditions such as such as diabetes.

Okay. So that's a perfect segue into the next question, which was you do have individuals who, if they partake in this because we already know the power of a whole food plant based side, just switching that, you'll see people stopping insulin and reducing their blood pressure medications very quickly at times. So, you know, you have the program with the medical supervision piece. Can you speak to what's going on in the body that allows that to happen so quickly and why medical supervision, or at least awareness in engaging your own physician is important because medication, overdosing, that point.

That's so important. We're an ethical company and that's why we wanted to create a medical arm called L-Nutra Health to really help people with to manage this, not using medications, but actually with the hope of reducing medication. So so allow me to explain. You see the current state, I'm an endocrinologist, by the way, so I manage patients with diabetes for over 20 years and are the standard care says, hey, when you have diabetes, all you did, all you need to do is control your blood glucose.

That's kind of the game, right? But you think about it, what that means is that means there is no end to this condition and that means that you're living with a lifelong dependance on medications for the rest of your life. It's a life sentence. Now we learn from many insights coming from bariatric surgery, from intensive weight loss, and even from our own study with fasting, mimicking diet, that type two diabetes can be reversible. And in fact, major organizations got together and define that term.

They don't use the word reversal. They use the word remission. That means when you get your hemoglobin AUC, which is a marker of your glucose level over the past three months, down to less than six and a half for three months without a drug, without any help of a drug, a diabetes drug, then you are in a state of diabetes remission. To me that is great news that we haven't talked about. Like as medical community, we don't talk enough about it. Even though American diabetes Association, the Endocrine Society, the European Organizations on Diabetes all embraces this new definition.

This is also why I want to come on to you your show today to Laurita to talk about our listeners with type two, type two diabetes, hypertension and other chronic illnesses and experience freedom from drugs is they only do the right thing. And we put together a program leveraging the power of fasting, leveraging medical supervision. Because you said it because it works. We need doctors to prescribe or de-escalate and or to simply using simple term, just drop these multiple medications. And our patients are on right now.

We have the data to show that. And and the beauty is with this approach, you're not just targeting a specific pathway in the body using a drug. Think about it. If you have to target blood pressure, insulin resistance, cholesterol, glucose, then of course, no wonder people with type two diabetes are on average are taking 5 to 6 strokes, 5 to 6 strokes. When we're doing fasting, mimicking diet under the supervision of a program or by a physician, you're addressing many different aspects. The mother I'm sorry to use a kind of six sister.

Maybe you're the father of chronic illness, right? Right. Insulin resistance, right. You're treating the root cause of hypertension, inflammation, insulin resistance plus oxygen, stress, all of these, they're all tied together as sort of the at the root. A lot of these lifestyle interventions, which I know, Lori, a big proponent of like exercise, de-stress, sleeping well, right. Community, the multiple pillars of nutrition obviously now we're adding to it, hoping that this prolonged fasting assimilated through nutrition can add to this can can be synergistic to add up to to these amazing lifestyle medicine pillars.

So can we speak to you have the five days of the program, the only tour program under medical supervision? In what comes after that? How often do are they going to be using this? Is this a one and done? What type of diet is encouraged afterwards? Like, can we speak to that? That's a really great, great question. So certainly our selection intervention, nutrition and nutrition intervention is going to be just fast and they're picking diet. How often you do it and how long you do it, it really depends on the dietitian.

The registered dietitian is and also with the physician that's supervising this. And now if you have your own physician, we're happy to work with your physician. If you don't have a physician, we provide a physician through our telehealth partner, together with our dieticians that are trained in longevity and dietitian and nutrition and science. They're going to be tailoring the program for you are a clinical trial. I'll just tell you kind of what our study shows. And then and then certainly there's going to be modification based on each person's own need.

Our clinical trial shows that six repeated cycles of 76 and so five days per month. Now, as a clinician, if you say well beyond your best behavior era, I lose weight in six months. You know, no one's going to do it. But if you negotiate and say five days, can you give me five days a month? Give me retention. Your effort not going to be the easiest thing is, but there's going to be food. Can you do it? Almost everybody says we can do it. So it's just five days for six months consecutively. We show that people, first of all, will lose an average £22.

Well, and most of that is actually fat driven. Okay. So that means they preserve their lean body mass. Think about that. Losing £22, mostly fat with preservation, lean body mass up. Right. Because you don't want to be losing weight and you become weaker. And you think about like if typically when you lose weight with low calorie diet, what happens is you lose about a third of your weight loss is due to muscle loss. So that's £7 of muscle. Do you know how hard is to gain £7 of muscle? Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so I think so that's one result.

But people also decrease their hemoglobin agency by 1.4%, which is very, very good, comparable to a drug with, what, 30 days of plant based effort? Think about this in six months. And in addition to this, what's really most amazing is people were reducing their medications along the way. In fact, 67%, two thirds of the people experienced a reduction in their diabetes medicine. Amazing And this is why I think this is the power of lifestyle medicine. And what we've done through our program is to make sure you go through the journey safely.

Number one. Number two is that we make it easier for you to do that, right. You have to like, you know, not see the world five days out of the month. Now you can still operate and you can still kind of function. And and so that's hopefully, you know, our we're lead. We believe we're on the right side of medicine. Absolutely. And and we are you could say we are pioneers in this space. Right. Introducing this powerful nutrition intervention in the context of a program. Have I addressed what you're Asking, you know, I think this is fabulous.

So it's really important for people to understand all the benefits. And there's literally no negative side effects that I can see. You're using food as medicine, number one. You're also engaging the body in its own ability without drugs because nobody can do it as well as the body to recycle and rejuvenate.

Using ProLon and L-Nutra Health 26:38

So you're promoting longevity, but also you're seeing repair and literally reversal remission, whatever the verbiage, doesn't really matter of chronic diseases with disengaging your medications deprescribing which they along come along with side effects. So we're seeing a lot of benefits here and they lose weight, they feel better, they have more energy. I'm assuming that's just a natural side effect. So I don't see any negatives here. So it seems to me you're more than on the right side of medicine.

This is the way we should all be engaging in medicine. And in the now we've had folks going through the program, and I can tell you, they come in, they initially come in for the weight loss. They come for the metabolic benefits. Right. But they stay in the program. Yes. So all those benefits. But they see the problem because the way they feel, there's a sense of accomplishment. Like I did it. Oh, my goodness. Every couple of weeks is one less medicine. The dose has been dropped and I can live my life.

And they look at themselves in the mirror and say, Well, I look better and I don't feel weaker. Right. And those kind of end the companies they get from families and friends and knowing that they are taking care of themselves. The sense of accomplishment and the desire to do even more to to the heart of the physician. To me, that that's everything I wanted it. But in the past, it was more here's another drug, another drug, another drug, another this drug to control your glucose, this this drug. I can do this ABCDE And so I hope, I hope it wasn't it wasn't easy for me to leave medicine to be the role as chief medical officer for for L-Nutra But I'm hoping I'm giving more people tools to be in charge of their own health now.

Absolutely. So the content information obviously will be lost a little bit. Can we talk a little bit about how people can engage with L-Nutra and become a part of the program? Yeah. And so if you're if you're seeking health and wellness, if you're looking for healthy longevity as part of your preventive, everyday health, you can look for Prolon and go to a website prolonlife.com That's where you can purchase a box of the fasting mimicking diet. But however, if you are struggling living with chronic conditions like diabetes and metabolic syndromes and looking for a natural way to drive those kind of chronic conditions into remission, please come to L-Nutra.

That's our company name l-nutrahealth.com In there. Regardless whether you're physicians or you want to a telehealth physician there, we can arrange that for you. And it's a membership program because we want to go through this journey with you and support you along the way. So l-nutrahealth.com perfect. And this is fabulous. So thank you so much. One for taking on the, the flagship role of bringing this to a community of people who really need it. So I really appreciate you in sharing your time with us today.

Thank you so much. I hope this has been helpful for your listeners. Absolutely.