Unlock Your Path To Reverse Type 2 Diabetes With FMD

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of The Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit. I'm your host, Dr. Beverly Yates. I have an amazing, fantastic co-host, Will Hsu, who has a fabulous background. Will, would you please introduce yourself? And we're going to take it from there. We're going to cover some very important, you know, breaking news kinds of research to affirm the effectiveness of fasting, mimicking diets. Will go ahead. Dr. Yates, my my friend and colleague for this Diabetes Summit, really good to be interviewed by you for this really important updates.

So I'm Dr. Will Hsu. I am I'm an endocrinologist. I'm a chief medical officer for L-Nutra that really specializes in in in a fascinating platform that supports longevity, but at the same time also help people with metabolic conditions to recover, to really return to their true health. And so I worked in the diabetes space for about 20 years, serving as vice president at Harvard's Joslin Diabetes Center for, as I mentioned, about 20 years ago, but about five years ago, drawn by this amazing science that we're about to talk about the fasting mimicking technology, I came to L-Nutra to do what I do now.

So good to be here. All right, great. Great. So I'm so glad for your background and the work that you've put in the clinical focus and effort, because, you know, this is where the rubber meets the road is actually helping real people in their lived experience of something that's so chronic and pervasive, like type 2 diabetes. So with that in mind, let's hear what the significance are of the findings. The first study you're going to share with us is one where it is talking about

Biological Age Study and Fasting Mimicking Diet 1:57

reversing biological age. And in the second study you're going to share with us is talking about the use of a program for fasting, mimicking diet for the course of a year to really make a huge change in someone's level of blood sugar control and to help them get those sustainable habits in place, because we all know there's a lot of tricks and hacks that are sometimes offered in the world of health where it's a one and done so you get a benefit for a minute, so to speak. But it's not sustainable, right?

We're talking about something that people can actually do long term and win. So go ahead. Yeah, it's really important that, you know, these two studies, for me, it's kind of like the one two punch, you know, one shows you kind of the 12 months results of what happens when you're sticking to a innovative lifestyle medicine approach. The second one shows that it's not only about making your disease or controlling your disease and making your disease go away that other that itself is really good, but the biologic age paper shows a unique mechanism of action.

And so let me explain. So a biological age is is something that I think we've been looking for in the medical world, because you can imagine if somebody is like 50 years old that, you know, that person's true physical age, the true age of the body could be maybe 45 years old, could be 55 years old. Right. So we all know that that the year of your birth doesn't determine exactly what your true health status is. So scientists have come up with this score called biologic age scores. Now, there are many different ways to look at biologic scores.

But but but what it does is it kind of peers away sort of a lot of the, you know, sort of the deeper into what really reflect the health status of the human body. Some of them looks at DNA methylation, some of them look at metabolism, metabolic markers, we call it that metabolic age as a way to do that. So what this paper was about was a study done by Professor Valter Longo at USC University of Southern California in collaboration with a team of scientists from Yale and other places that basically took two studies.

And looking at what happens when people fasted with the fasting mimicking diet, we call that the FMD. So the top line result is that I merely fasting was sued by merely doing FMD, the fasting mimicking diet just three times a year. So five days per month, repeat it three times month, one month, two months, three. There was a really impressive two and a half years of reduction in biologic age. So what that means is that after three cycles of 15 days of effort, folks actually their biologic age dropped by two and a half years.

And I think that that's really amazing work, right? Show time or intensive work to yield such an important effect of biologic age. All right. So I'm going to share my screen for just a moment so people get a chance to see what this looks like. Right. So this is the actual study that you're referring to here for this. You know, and this is a groundbreaking moment because this is advancing a lot of the knowledge that's known and putting it in one place now, making it repeatable. So, again, it's not a one off thing.

It's something that's repeatable and that people are experiencing in their actual lives. And, you know, it's not it's not mice, it's humans. It's more people than mice are doing this like it's working for various elements of the lived experience of what's happening. And for those who struggle with lifestyle things and being consistent, etc., just please know these kinds of research studies are very carefully put together so that it actually works in the real world, because that's the final test.

Right then in the study, we also saw a reduction in liver fat, which is really important. We saw a drop in insulin resistance, which is really, really important. But also this idea that the immune system is actually getting rejuvenated. We call that the immuno senescence, right? So the fact that there's a more defensive, a lineage of the cells against infections in aging, that's a really important factor. And the best part of this is it doesn't require drugs, it does not require drugs. A lot of people are taking these supplements or that that supposedly can can can support a lifespan.

But this is a lifestyle intervention, right. By doing by simulating the rejuvenation that comes from fasting, mimicking diet, by simulating a fasting environment. So the cells five days per month for three months, you get all these results. And number two, because it's just 15 days a year, it doesn't require a permanent, unchanging lifestyle. And we talked about this in other part of our series for for reversing type 2 diabetes Summit, that the fasting mimicking diet works by like providing nutrients to the body during a fasting state.

But these are just not any type of nutrients. They're actually specifically developed to fall to kind of hide away these nutrients so that the body do not sense that. So you could actually get the benefits of fasting without the burden of fasting. So it's amazing when you put the body through these kind of a fasting mimicking diet, which is a five day similarly fast. As I mentioned earlier, the biologic age drops by two and a half years, not months, years. And the best part of the study also to me was very surprising is the benefit of age was independent of weight loss.

In other words, it wasn't the weight loss that drove this biologic, the age decline. Now that's really important, right, for society that we are constantly looking for a solution for weight loss. Now we have another mechanism actually to improve health without necessarily relying on weight loss. Yeah, I think I think it's profound that that shift, that mindset shift because people get so obsessed with weight and as a number and you and I both know and we've talked about this a number of times, both in this Summit and prior Summit and other work that we've done together, how often the cases when someone is lean, they don't get the clinical assessment that they deserve to objectively assess their metabolic state.

Many times people, including health professionals who should know better, will make an assumption that that person is not in trouble metabolically, that their cholesterol fine, etc. and it's a missed opportunity to serve people. So wherever you are on the weight spectrum, this is something that could benefit people. By that you could be fitter at every weight, right? So and that it doesn't require a medication or it doesn't require a permanent change in lifestyle.

12-Month Diabetes Remission Results 9:15

I think about that. I'm just so excited to tell the world about about this kind of new technology and new thinking and not merely looking at biomarkers like blood pressures and body weight and cholesterols. Those are all important, but now we have an additional marker called biological age. And now not only do we have a way to assess that, but we also have a way to impact that. Absolutely. It's a win. I know that I've heard for years now, decades, and I know you have to clinically. One of the fondest wishes people have is to be able to reduce their dependency on prescription medication when they have type 2 diabetes.

They really want to reduce the number of scripts, but they often walk out of the office with yet more prescriptions or they have to take things more frequently or it's gotten more aggressive. So this is one way to win, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think we all I mean, we talked about this before as well, that that the goal not necessarily is to live as long as possible, but you want to live well being healthy. Right. So the idea of of really striving for healthspan versus lifespan and this is what we talking about in the same paper, we also show that if one spends three cycles or commit to three cycles of fasting, mimicking diet per year from age 50 to age 70, the study predicts that that it's translating into about 11 years of reduction in biological age by age 70.

If you do that consistently every year, three cycles, three cycles. And that also translates to the likelihood of five years of life extension. Now, no one's going to promise that if you do this right, you're going to live five more years. But this is what the science is, is pointing to. If we're able to lower these risk risk factors, not by singlehandedly, you know, treating blood pressure, treating glucose, treating obesity as a multiple modality, but really as an upstream intervention that helps the cells to be younger.

If the cells become younger, that means the biologic age is younger. If you're biologically younger, that means you're less prone to develop these age related conditions. And thus, I think it's such a great news for for a lot of our patients who are just tired and fatigued, barely by all the the effort and the emotional stress of living with chronic illnesses. Yeah, the wear and tear is real. It's real. And not only physically, but also mental mentally as well. Right. The the idea that once you are diagnosed with type two diabetes, that you're you're committed to a life of dependance on medication.

There is you're sick all the time that only gets worse over time. And we want to change the paradigm. We want to shift the paradigm here so that to talk about diabetes, remission, to talk about disease, remission, even for those who don't have diabetes but have metabolic conditions is the same approach, right? If we can make the cells younger through a program, the centers around the fasting mimicking diet and plus coaches, plus all the support systems provided by a dietician. I think we can get there.

Yeah, I agree. And I also feel like this can include the people who perhaps have a strong family history and who feel like this is lurking as they get older and they want to do something about it and they're not looking to have the problems. Perhaps they've seen family members have. They're like, Oh God, can I can I avoid this outcome? You know, can I be healthy and have good blood sugar control and an age, well, you know, like live long and live well and not suffer. And, you know, you probably on our summit, we we have many people quoting different studies, but but I wanted to share with you this paper published in Nature Communications is one of the top, top tier journals, meaning that it's peer reviewed.

It means that there is a rigorous scientists looking at this this study and basically providing the proof of a sort of a stamp of approval. So, again, a study. So that brings comfort to our hearts as we look at the level and the sort of the seriousness of the weight of the evidence. All right, great. So let's dive into the second study, which, you know, is for a longer period of time. And the thing that I like is it shows very clearly the power of what you can do over the course of a year as you get into a really great healthy rhythm that's sustainable.

It's not meant to be sort of a fad or one off event. This is how you actually make a change that you can sustain. I think you're right, Dr. Yates. I think that there are two interesting features in this in this study here. One is the fact that it was done in a primary care setting, right? So you don't need to go to a super specialist to to get this fasting mimicking diet program. Right. On the other hand, in the primary care setting, it's actually really important to have medical supervision. Now, why is that?

Because the fast moving diet works. That means your glucose level is going to improve. That means you're going to require less medications. And that's why having this medical supervision is very, very important. Okay. So that's number one. The the number two is the 12 months, because a lot of people can do a lot of can see a lot of great impact in the short period of time. But what what happens in the course of 12 months, I think we all have this experience at the beginning of the year. We have New Year resolution. But nevertheless, right.

Yeah. The drill. Is now. Having a 12 months duration gives us the confidence, right, that the dropout rate is very low. There's more than 80% compliance in this study. That means when when you ask people for five days of effort to reverse their type two diabetes, they can do it. And in the study, we're able to show that there were there were about seven times more people that were able to either reduce their diabetes medications or improve their glucose control seven times compared to standard care.

Standard care are folks who take that format every single day. They actually saw disease progression over the food for the 12 months duration because diabetes being a progressive condition, people actually needed more medicine as time goes on in the standard of care. But not the same with the intervention group in their intervention are when people are on this five day fasting mimicking diet, they reduce their medications and reduce their glucose level at the same time. It really it's a different model of care, right?

So it really helps people to to to improve from the inside out. And so when you take the two studies together, it really presents a very unique model, a lot of the interventions probably, you know, lowers glucose in the short term, right, But may not be really good for health span. For example, if you if you just skip out carbohydrates all the time. Right. Every single day for the rest of your life. We don't know what that does to mortality. We don't know exactly. I mean, although you may improve your glucose in the short term.

L-Nutra Health Program Overview 17:00

Right. So so with this two studies, right. Lower the biologically at one hand, but also reduces reliance on medications. We're talking about treatment, the disease of the root cause, but also reflecting an improvement in biological age or reduction, biological age. That's what we ought to do. That's what we ought to aim for today. You know, this is the 21st century. We should not improve disease at the expense of health span. We also should not eulogy life. Right. But literature with diseases towards the end of our lives.

And so I think I'm so excited to share with you these these two parallel study studies. Yes. Thank you so much for sharing these. You know, I'm I have to say, for the trajectory of my own career, you know, the work that I've done, the work that you were doing at Harvard, and how with l nutrient pollen, it comes together beautifully. Because, you know, when you think about it, when we're addressing root causes, truly the root causes and you look at something that's such a chronic illness is type two diabetes and how lifestyle sensitive it is, it is a blessing, I feel.

And it is also part of the challenge, right? And so this way we can lift up the blessing. The good news, because you can do something about it. There are some chronic illnesses which you really cannot do much. You can do a lot with this, but you need a plan, you need a process, you need support, and people deserve that. And so we're all trying to improve of the kind of care and access to the care. And so everyone understands that this is available to them so they can make those healthy choices for themselves.

Otherwise we just see people get sicker and worse. And then you say yourself, if you're a doctor, you're a nurse, you're nutritionist, you're a dietician, you know you're an endocrinologist, you're all of the people who are part of this world right? Podiatrists who like what? What's going on here? We're not helping, you know, this way we're healthy. So based on these results, we have developed a unique program called L-nutrahealth.com, Right. So we call L-Nutra Health, L-Nutra Health that was born out of these really fantastic research studies.

Basically, it's it's a it's a diabetes remission regression program that is centers around a five day FMD bolero. On top of that, we have partnered with a telehealth physicians that specializes in lifestyle medicine so they can supervise the course of medication. De-escalation members will also experience dietician, counsel, consultations and support from a dietitian. They'll hold your hand twice a month, every other week to help you to not only figure out what to do exactly with the five days on the FMD, but also the rest of 25 days where they will provide nutrition counseling for the rest 25 to 25 days.

They're laboratories, there are connected devices. It's really a comprehensive solution with one single goal in mind, one single goal in mind. That is to help our patients with type 2 diabetes to to remit, to regress, meaning to become less dependent on their medications and to control their diabetes. Now, equally exciting is, is we also have programs for people who don't have diabetes, but really are struggling with metabolic health conditions, pre-diabetes, metabolic syndromes, The same type of program that I mentioned earlier centered around the fasting mimicking diet with dietician support, connected devices.

We wanted to take the patients through this journey of cellular rejuvenation so their metabolic health can be restored. And it's a wonderful journey. Straight, straightforward. It's tasty. I have to say I had a chance to use it myself. One of the things I appreciated about it the most, and I want to make sure people understand is that everything is included in the kit and in the programs so you don't have to struggle. You literally add water, follow the directions. I know for myself personally, sometimes I struggle with following directions, like overthink and do silly things, you know?

But even it was foolproof, even for me. So I'm like, okay, this is really good. If you're traveling, if you're busy, you're really stressed, if you're a caregiver, oh my gosh, So many people with diabetes are the rock in their world, in their families, their communities. They're doing a lot of things for a lot of people, but not themselves. This is a way to really have your self-care game go up without your stress level going up. And I think this is so important right there that people with type 2 diabetes or even metabolic health conditions like like pre-diabetes and others, they lead busy lives and they don't want a shopping list.

They don't want to have to think and measure different things. And and because they just get burned out in this L-Nutra Health Program, it's really designed to be very simple, designed to be supported by experts in diabetes and also in longevity science. So so I think we've designed a perfect program for our audience. All right, great. Is there anything else you'd like to share with us before we wrap up this episode? Well, I really would invite you to to learn more about the program and you can find out the information at L-nutrahealth.com.

You can see the sign in the in my background here, L-nutrahealth.com. And I am confident that you will not regret

Closing Remarks and Call to Learn More 22:39

taking the step towards better health. Absolutely. All right friends great so please share these episodes with others that you know who either have this problem or who care about their health. Those who are looking to live longer and live well or simply live well. I think it's a really wonderful, straightforward, delicious way to go about things. And it's doable in people's actual lived lives rather than you need a staff of 20 people to help you do this process. It's not like that at all. It's very simple.

All right. Thank you so much Will, Dr. Hsu, I appreciate having you here. This is really been great. Thank you Dr. Yates.