Unlock Your Path To Reverse Type 2 Diabetes With FMD

William Hsu, MD

Dr. Yates, my friend and colleague for this diabetes summit, it was good to be interviewed by you for these important updates. I’m Dr. Will Hsu. I’m an endocrinologist. I’m a chief medical officer for L-Nutra, which specializes in a fascinating platform that supports longevity while at the same time helping people with metabolic conditions recover and return to their true health. 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. It is good to be here.

Beverly Yates, ND

I’m so glad for your background and the work that you’ve put into the clinical focus and effort because this is where the rubber meets the road: helping real people in their lived experience of something that’s so chronic and pervasive, like Type 2 diabetes. With that in mind, let’s hear what the significance of the findings is. The first study you’re going to share with us is one where it talks about reversing biological age. In the second study you’re going to share with us, you talk about the use of a program for a fasting-mimicking diet over a year to 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. We’re talking about something that people can do long-term and win. Go ahead.

William Hsu, MD

It’s important that these two studies—for me, it’s like the one-two punch—show you the 12-month results of what happens when you’re sticking to an 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 itself is good, but the biological age paper shows a unique mechanism of action. Let me explain. Biological age is something that we’ve been looking for in the medical world because you can imagine that if somebody is 50 years old, that person’s true physical age, the true age of the body, could be maybe 45 years old or 55 years old. We all know that the year of your birth doesn’t determine exactly what your true health status is. Scientists have come up with this score called the biological age score. Now, there are many different ways to look at biological scores. But what it does is peer a lot of the way deeper into what reflects the health status of the human body. Some of them look at DNA methylation, and some of them look at metabolism and metabolic markers; we call it metabolic age as a way to do that. This paper was about a study done by Professor Valter Longo at the USC University of Southern California in collaboration with a team of scientists from Yale and other places that took two studies. Looking at what happens when people fast with the fasting-mimicking diet, we call that the FMD. The top-line result is that I merely fasted by doing FMD, the fasting-mimicking diet, just three times a year, five days per month; repeat it three times per month: one month, two months, and three. There was an impressive two-and-a-half-year reduction in biological age. What that means is that after three cycles of 15 days of effort, folks their biological age dropped by two and a half years. That’s amazing work. Show time or intensive work to yield such an important effect of biological age.

Beverly Yates, ND

I’m going to share my screen for just a moment so people get a chance to see what this looks like.  This is the actual study that you’re referring to here for this. 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. Again, it’s not a one-off thing. It’s repeatable and that people are experiencing in their actual lives. It’s not mice; it’s humans. It’s more people than mice who are doing this like it’s working for various elements of the lived experience of what’s happening. For those who struggle with lifestyle things, being consistent, etc., just please know that these kinds of research studies are very carefully put together so that they work in the real world because that’s the final test.

William Hsu, MD

In the study, we also saw a reduction in liver fat, which is important. We saw a drop in insulin resistance, which is important. But there is also this idea that the immune system is getting rejuvenated. We call that immunosenescence. The fact that there’s a more defensive lineage of cells against infections in aging is an important factor. The best part of this is that it doesn’t require drugs. A lot of people are taking these supplements or those that supposedly support a lifespan. But this is a lifestyle intervention. By simulating the rejuvenation that comes from a fasting-mimicking diet, and simulating a fasting environment for five days per month for three months, you get all these results. Number two, because it’s just 15 days a year, it doesn’t require a permanent, changing lifestyle. We talked about this in other parts of our series for reversing Type 2 diabetes, some in that the fasting-mimicking diet works by providing nutrients to the body during a fasting state. But these are just not any type of nutrients. They’re specifically developed to hide away these nutrients so that the body does not sense them. You could get the benefits of fasting without the burden of fasting. It’s amazing when you put the body through a fasting-mimicking diet, which is a five-day similarly fast. As I mentioned earlier, the biological age drops by two and a half years, not months but years. The best part of the study, which was also very surprising, was that the benefit of age was independent of weight loss. In other words, it wasn’t the weight loss that drove this biological; it was the age decline. Now that’s important, right, for society that we are constantly looking for a solution for weight loss. Now we have another mechanism to improve health without necessarily relying on weight loss.

Beverly Yates, ND

It’s profound that that shift, that mindset shift, occurs because people get so obsessed with weight, and as you and I both know, we’ve talked about this several times, both in this summit and prior summits and other work that we’ve done together, about how often, 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 assume that that person is not in trouble metabolically, that their cholesterol is fine, etc., and it’s a missed opportunity to serve people. Regardless of where you are on the weight spectrum, this is something that could benefit people.

William Hsu, MD

By doing so, you could be fitter at every weight. and it doesn’t require medication or a permanent lifestyle change. I’m just so excited to tell the world about this new technology and new thinking, not merely looking at biomarkers like blood pressure, body weight, and cholesterol. Those are all important, but now we have an additional marker called biological age. Now, not only do we have a way to assess that, but we also have a way to impact that.

Beverly Yates, ND

It’s a win. that I’ve heard for years now, decades, and 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 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. This is one way to win.

William Hsu, MD

We all talked about this before as well: that the goal is not necessarily to live as long as possible, but to live well and be healthy. the idea of striving for health span versus lifespan, and this is what we are talking about in the same paper. We also show that if one spends three cycles or commits to three cycles of a fasting-mimicking diet per year from age 50 to age 70, the study predicts 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. 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 pointing to. If we’re able to lower these risk factors, not by singlehandedly treating blood pressure, treating glucose, and treating obesity as a multiple modality, but 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 likely to develop these age-related conditions. It’s such great news for a lot of our patients who are just tired, barely surviving all the effort and emotional stress of living with chronic illnesses.

Beverly Yates, ND

The wear and tear are real.

William Hsu, MD

Not only physically but also mentally as well. The idea is that once you are diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, you’re committed to a life of dependence on medication. You’re sick all the time, and that only gets worse over time. We want to change the paradigm. We want to shift the paradigm here so that talking about diabetes and remission, or disease and remission, even for those who don’t have diabetes but have metabolic conditions, is the same approach. If we can make the cells younger through a program that centers around the fasting-mimicking diet, plus coaches, plus all the support systems provided by a dietician, we can get there.

Beverly Yates, ND

I agree. I also feel like this can include 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, but they’re not looking to have the problems. Perhaps they’ve seen family members do so. They’re like, Can I avoid this outcome? Can I be healthy and have good blood sugar control and age, well, like live long and live well and not suffer?

William Hsu, MD

You’re probably on our summit; we have many people quoting different studies, but I wanted to share with you that this paper published in Nature Communications is one of the top-tier journals, meaning that it’s peer-reviewed. It means that rigorous scientists are looking at this study and providing proof of approval. Again, a study. that brings comfort to our hearts as we look at the level and seriousness of the weight of the evidence.

Beverly Yates, ND

Let’s dive into the second study, which is for a longer period. The thing that I like is that it shows very clearly the power of what you can do over a year as you get into a great, healthy rhythm that’s sustainable. It’s not meant to be a fad or a one-off event. This is how you make a change that you can sustain.

William Hsu, MD

You’re right, Dr. Yates. that there are two interesting features in this study. One is the fact that it was done in a primary care setting. You don’t need to go to a super-specialist to get this fasting-mimicking diet program. On the other hand, in the primary care setting, it’s important to have medical supervision. Now, why is that? Because the fasting-mimicking diet works. That means your glucose level is going to improve. That means you’re going to require fewer medications. That’s why having this medical supervision is very important. That’s number one. The number two is 12 months because a lot of people can do a lot and see a lot of great impact in a short period. But what happens over 12 months? We all have this experience at the beginning of the year. We have a New Year resolution.

Beverly Yates, ND

The drill.

William Hsu, MD

Having a 12-month duration gives us confidence that the dropout rate is very low. There’s more than 80% compliance in this study. That means that when you ask people for five days of effort to reverse their Type 2 diabetes, they can do it. In the study, we’re able to show that there were about seven times more people who were able to either reduce their diabetes medications or improve their glucose control seven times compared to standard care. Standard care is folks who take that format every single day. They saw disease progression over the 12 months because, because diabetes is a progressive condition, people needed more medicine as time went on in the standard of care. However, it is not the same with the intervention group. In their intervention, when people are on this five-day fasting-mimicking diet, they reduce their medications and their glucose levels at the same time. It’s a different model of care. It helps people improve from the inside out. When you take the two studies together, it presents a very unique model. A lot of the interventions probably lower glucose in the short term. But they may not be good for the long term. For example, if you just skip out on carbohydrates all the time, every single day for the rest of your life, we don’t know what that does to mortality. We don’t know exactly although you may improve your glucose in the short term.  So with these two studies. It lowers 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 in biological age. That’s what we ought to do. That’s what we ought to aim for today. This is the 21st century. We should not improve disease at the expense of health. But literature has diseases toward the end of our lives. So I’m so excited to share with you these two parallel studies.

Beverly Yates, ND

Thank you so much for sharing these. I have to say that for the trajectory of my career, the work that I’ve done, the work that you were doing at Harvard, and how with L-Nutra ProLon, it comes together beautifully. Because, 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 as Type 2 diabetes and how lifestyle-sensitive it is, it is a blessing, I feel. It is also part of the challenge. This way we can lift the blessing. The good news is that you can do something about it. There are some chronic illnesses for which you cannot do much. You can do a lot with this, but you need a plan, a process, and support, and people deserve that. We’re all trying to improve the care and access to the care. 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. Then you say to yourself, if you’re a doctor, a nurse, a nutritionist, a dietician, or you know you’re an endocrinologist, you’re all of the people who are part of this world. Podiatrists who like what? What’s going on here? We’re not helping; this way, we’re healthy.

William Hsu, MD

Based on these results, we have developed a unique program l-nutrahealth.com, which we call L-Nutra Health. L-Nutra Health program was born out of these fantastic research studies. It’s a diabetes remission regression program that centers around a five-day FMD. On top of that, we have partnered with telehealth physicians who specialize in lifestyle medicine so they can supervise the course of medication de-escalation. Members will also experience dieticians, counseling, consultations, and support from a dietitian. They’ll hold your hand twice a month, every other week, to help you not only figure out what to do exactly with the five days on the FMD but also the rest of the 25 days, where they will provide nutrition counseling for the rest of the 25 days. They’re laboratories, and there are connected devices. It’s a comprehensive solution with one single goal in mind. That is to help our patients with Type 2 diabetes to remit or regress, meaning to become less dependent on their medications and to control their diabetes. Now, equally exciting is that we also have programs for people who don’t have diabetes but are struggling with metabolic health conditions, pre-diabetes, and metabolic syndromes. The same type of program that I mentioned earlier centered around the fasting-mimicking diet with dietician support and connected devices. We wanted to take the patients through this journey of cellular rejuvenation so their metabolic health could be restored.

Beverly Yates, ND

It’s a wonderful journey. 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 is that I want to make sure people understand that everything is included in the kit and the programs, so you don’t have to struggle. You add water and follow the directions. For myself, sometimes I struggle with following directions, like overthinking and doing silly things, you know? But even so, it was foolproof, even for me. I’m like, okay, this is good. If you’re traveling, if you’re busy, if you’re stressed, if you’re a caregiver, many people with diabetes are the rock in their world, in their families, and in their communities. They’re doing a lot of things for a lot of people, but not themselves. This is a way to have your self-care game go up without your stress level going up.

William Hsu, MD

This is so important right there that people with Type 2 diabetes or even metabolic health conditions like pre-diabetes and others lead busy lives and don’t want a shopping list. They don’t want to have to think about and measure different things. and because they just get burned out in the L-Nutra Health program, it’s designed to be very simple, designed to be supported by experts in diabetes and also in longevity science. So we’ve designed a perfect program for our audience.

Beverly Yates, ND

Is there anything else you’d like to share with us before we wrap up this episode?

William Hsu, MD

I would like to invite you to learn more about the program, and you can find out more information at l-nutrahealth.com. You can see the sign in my background here: l-nutrahealth.com. I am confident that you will not regret taking the step towards better health.

Beverly Yates, ND

Friends are great, so please share these episodes with others that you know who either have this problem or who care about their health. For those who are looking to live longer and live well, or simply live well, it’s a wonderful, straightforward, and delicious way to go about things. It’s doable in people’s actual lives, rather than needing a staff of 20 people to help you do this process. It’s not like that at all. It’s very simple. Thank you so much. Dr. Hsu, I appreciate having you here. This has been great.

William Hsu, MD

Thank you. Dr. Yates.