Fasting for Hormone Balance in Midlife (Without Going Extreme) | Ep. 274 - The Aging Well Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Welcome to the Aging Well podcast, where we explore the
science stories and strategies that help us live longer,
healthier, and more purposeful lives.
I'm your host, Doctor Jeff Armstrong.
My guest is a leading voice in nutritional science and
longevity, Renee Fitton. Renee is a longevity dietitian
and the Director of Education atEl Nutra, the company behind the

(00:25):
prolonged fasting mimicking diet.
With a strong background in Clinical Nutrition and a passion
for translating research into accessible strategies, Renee
specializes in helping people, especially women over 40,
optimize their health without making drastic lifestyle
changes. In this conversation, we'll
explore how fasting mimicking diets offer powerful support
during midlife, including their role in weight management,

(00:48):
hormonal balance, and cellular health.
Renee breaks down the science, clears up common misconceptions,
and shares realistic ways to integrate the benefits of
fasting into everyday life and help us to age well.
Renee, welcome to the Aging Wellpodcast.
Let's start by just having you kind of introduce yourself.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be

(01:12):
a nutritionist for a company like Al Nutra.
Absolutely. Well, first, thank you so much
for having me. I'm excited to be on this
podcast. I, I call myself a longevity
dietitian for a number of reasons that I'll explain in a
moment. So I could not feel more at home
on the Aging Well podcast. This is a topic and space so

(01:32):
important and I think it's finally starting to get the
attention that it deserves. So that is, as I mentioned, I'm
a longevity dietitian. I got my masters degree in
longevity health span healthy aging from one of the only
nutrition programs in the world that focuses on health span
through nutrition or supporting healthy aging, not just living

(01:57):
longer, but living healthier longer through nutrition out of
USC. And the, the founder of that
program is none other than Doctor Walter Longo, who is also
one of the leading longevity researchers focusing on
nutrition and longevity. And so was very, very lucky to
have him as my mentor and get tostudy under him through that

(02:22):
program. So even prior to that, you know,
spending a lot of time just uncovering how, you know really
the the underpinnings of how nutrition can support healthy
aging, Looking at the biochemistry, the Physiology,
not just, you know, the outcomes, which are incredibly
important, but also how it worksand why it works.

(02:42):
So that there's a complete picture as to what we can do and
how we can use nutrition and thefood that we eat, which is such
a big part of our lifestyle, to help us live longer, but again,
healthier as well. So we've talked about the
fasting mimicking diet before onthis podcast.
In fact, it was I think episode 192 that we had the CEO of your

(03:05):
company, Al Nutra, Dr. Ant and Town on the podcast.
But for the listeners tonight might be a little bit more new
to the concept. What exactly is fasting
mimicking the fasting mimicking diet and how does it differ from
traditional intermittent fasting?
Well, there's actually this is athis is a bit of a loaded
question actually, But first let's just go high level fasting

(03:28):
mimicking is kind of what it sounds like.
It is designed to mimic a water only fast by still allowing the
individual to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack your whole
meals of the day. But your body believes that it
is still in that water only state.
And we what we're best known foris the five day programs where

(03:50):
you're not just doing this for maybe like a 1618 hour daily
fast, but you're doing this, you're letting your body get
into a deep water only type fastfor five days, getting some deep
cellular benefits, things like autophagy that we'll dig into,
I'm sure, but really maximizing these benefits of longer fasts.

(04:10):
So yes, you get to eat, which isprobably the biggest difference
here, but the other difference is that you are allowing
yourself to get into these extended fasts in a safer and a
certainly easier way than through water only fasting.
And the important difference that we have to make with short
fasts to long fasts is that while there are benefits to

(04:32):
shorter fasts or there can be benefits to shorter fasts that
are done daily, which we call intermittent fasting, These are
fasts that are anything even within a 2 day range.
So it's actually you, you can, you can still fast for two days
and it'd still be considered a shorter fast, which is kind of
crazy. Once you get over that two day
mark, that's when we start calling it prolonged fasting.

(04:54):
The reason we start making that differentiation is that once
your body has stayed in this fast for at least those two days
and start getting into that three day range, your body
starts adding and getting additive to some of the benefits
that are happening. Beyond just some of the
metabolic benefits like switching your fuel sources,
burning fat for fuel, using ketones for energy that you can

(05:18):
do in these shorter paths. You also start adding in these
really deep benefits that are happening at the cellular level,
tapping into autophagy. This deep cellular cleanup.
I like to think of it as a vacuum cleaner for our cells or
a spring cleaning at the cellular level that you are just
not able to tap into in these shorter paths.

(05:39):
So those are going to be the twomajor differences that we'll
see. 24 hour fast before and been miserable and I actually
did do the prolong fast for fivedays I think last fall and I was
amazed at how you know these tiny little packages of food can
keep me sustained for five days I mean I felt great.

(06:01):
I end up losing 8 lbs and wasn'treally necessarily about the
weight loss. It was really just about kind of
that kind of body cleanse and kind of getting into the
autophagy and just kind of the, you know, the lifestyle kind of
cleanse. And I was amazed at how good I
felt at the end of that. It also got me drinking tea a
lot more. Oh.

(06:22):
Great. And, and in these, in the, in
the five day kits that are designed by Perlon and now
another company, El Nutra Health, they leverage teas like
hibiscus tea with just on its own has incredible longevity
benefits. So phenomenal.
But but beyond the teas and I, Ihave to mention that for anybody

(06:42):
who's unfamiliar with the fasting mimicking diet, the
fasting mimicking design diets designed by Prolana and Al Nutra
will deliver a kit directly to your door, breakfast, lunch,
dinner, snack in individual daily boxes, making it super
simple. And inside you will have real
food. People always think, oh, it's
going to be teas and broths. No, it's so much more than that.

(07:06):
You're getting nut based breakfast bars, you're getting
even a little chocolate crisp atthe end of the day, you're
getting olives, you're getting crackers, you're getting soups.
So you know, it's it's, it's actually a relatively hearty
food. And so I'm glad that you were
able to experience that and, andget to to see how even though it

(07:26):
is, yes, still calorie restricted, it's quite a bit of
food. And you know, you also noted
that weight loss, and I have to add that it's not just any
weight loss. This is the kind of weight loss
where we see muscle protection, which is, I mean, I think now in
the world of nutrition and longevity, people are really

(07:48):
starting to harp on the importance of protecting our
muscle. And this is a solution where we
get the best of both worlds. Yes, we'll get some weight loss,
but we also are keeping that very, very valuable muscle,
which is really quite hard to doeven with like a Mediterranean
diet, which there's been a clinical study that was

(08:08):
published just last year comparing the fasting mimicking
diet to the Mediterranean diet, showing equivalent outcomes in
terms of heart health, which is what the Mediterranean diet is
most renowned for, but and also showing equivalent results in
terms of total weight loss. But the Mediterranean diet
showed about almost 5 lbs of muscle loss, whereas the fasting

(08:30):
and making diet showed none. So this is really, really
important in terms of when we'relooking at weight loss, just
even just kind of what we like to call the cherry on top of
this program. It's the right kind.
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(08:52):
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Thank you. And now back to the podcast.
So what makes fasting mimicking diets particularly supportive

(09:14):
for women in their 40s, fifties and beyond?
So important and thank you for qualifying.
Also 40s, fifties and beyond because it's important to
differentiate fasting for women in their reproductive years to
those entering into perimenopause and then
menopause. Each cycle of life is going to
warrant slightly different needsand slightly different

(09:37):
recommendations. When it comes to fasting I
generally will no matter who youare always recommend men or
women recommend the fasting mimicking diet because it is
safer and because it is more muscle protective and and
because it is just a little softer on the body generally
speaking. Now I'm sure any of the women

(09:57):
out here listening have heard atleast once that they shouldn't
fast and usually the reason why people are suggesting this is
because fasts are by definition a stress on the body.
Now the stress on the body is generally recognized as a
hermetic stress or a positive stress, but it is still a stress

(10:19):
nonetheless and in anybody that is already stressed that can
just compound into not necessarily a positive.
Now with the fasting mimicking diet, because we're adding
nutrition, we are actually reducing some of that stress and
difficulty and safety concerns that we would see with water

(10:40):
only fasting. So this is just really important
again, for really anybody, but especially women whose bodies
are taxed or stressed at any given time.
And unfortunately most of our bodies are today.
We're just, we're dealing with alot.
Now on top of that, specificallyin perimenopause and and

(11:00):
menopause, where we start seeingthis decline in estrogen and
other reproductive hormones. It's really important to know
that while these are very strongly associated with
fertility and reproduction, these hormones are really
important for a lot of things. And that includes protecting our
muscle. That includes allowing a healthy

(11:20):
blood sugar regulation. All of these things are actually
managed and supported by estrogen.
So when this decline happens, wewe will see other things start
changing and that's, for example, decline in muscle mass.
That is seen for a number of reasons.
Yes, we often see that there might be a change in exercise,

(11:42):
but even women who are keeping their exercise stable because of
the decrease in estrogen and just the natural effects of
aging, that same workout might not yield the same results.
And so we're losing muscle mass,which decreases our metabolic
rate, which makes it easier to gain weight, which creates this
vicious cycle. So especially at this time of

(12:06):
life, it is critical that we areusing solution that are
protecting our muscle. And I've already talked a little
bit about the muscle protection aspect of fasting mimicking, but
this becomes especially criticalat this phase.
Another thing as I mentioned that happens when estrogen
decreases is that our insulin sensitivity decreases or our

(12:26):
insulin resistance increases. We become less able to take the
blood sugar increases and funnelthat into our cells.
It just kind of floats around causing havoc in our body and
this can increase the risk of pre diabetes which we see
increasing once we hit perimenopause and menopause and

(12:48):
type 2 diabetes. So fasting mimicking has been
able to show improvements in insulin sensitivity.
We even have preclinical trials showing improvements and
regeneration of data cells, which are what produce insulin
in our body. So because the fasting mimicking
diet is able to work at this root cause approach, we're able

(13:10):
to impact so many levels of thisproblem.
So this is, these are just some of the reasons why I think
fasting mimicking is so powerfulat this, this stage of life.
And, and why I also think it's relevant for, for really
anybody, because insulin resistance is a huge problem in
the United States and really in the world today.

(13:30):
Muscle loss is a huge problem across the board.
And it's, it's important that we're taking and leveraging
strategies that keep that in mind and is able to support all
of these things. And I would say we could
probably translate that also to bone loss as well.
Yes. So bone loss and osteopenia,
osteoporosis also increase as weage, but especially in women.

(13:52):
We've been able to show with a fasting mimicking diet that that
bone density is preserved. And we can do this through, you
know, relatively gold standard approaches like DEXA scans and
things like that, which show that even with multiple cycles
that that is preserved. And that's another thing that is
often called out as a problem with fasting.
I also like to remind people that the Fasting Mimicking Diet

(14:15):
is a 5 day program that is designed to only be done a few
times a year. So yes, we are causing a
positive hermetic stress that will cause the body to go into
all of this wonderful cleanup and repair, but we're only
inducing this a few times a yearas opposed to every single day

(14:39):
intermittent fasting, which willinduce some moderate amount
every single day. And so you can imagine that
because we're only doing this a few times a year, it can be
really beneficial official and it also allows you a lot more
time in between to focus on fullcomplete nutrition that

(14:59):
including adequate amount of protein, adequate amount of
calcium, adequate amount of vitamin D to support muscle and
bone density. And also to support exercise, it
was as well, I would assume because I mean, I was fortunate
when I did mine, I just kind of set the timing to when I was
doing AD load so I wouldn't haveto really test whether it would

(15:19):
diminish my capacity to exercise.
And so that makes it a lot easier, you know, because you
don't have to deal, you're not deloading more than maybe once
every month, couple months or so.
But you know, if you try and exercise and you're not eating.
And that's what bothers me aboutintermittent fasting is that I'm
a morning exerciser, so how am Isupposed to get up, exercise,
and then not eat for another sixhours or so before I can begin

(15:43):
to recover so I lose all that potential gain from the
exercise? Absolutely.
I mean, even with intermittent fasting, we always recommend
that people, if you're going to do it, if that's something that
you feel like is beneficial in your practice, that you should
be shifting that window to making sure that you're having
nutrition first thing in the morning and then sure, move up

(16:06):
your last meal. That's where the intermittent
fasting should be. It should be in the evening
where our bodies through circadian nutrition actually do
worse at metabolizing and leveraging and moving sugar into
our bodies. Our insulin sensitivity declines
at the end of the day. And this is just a natural part

(16:27):
of our circadian rhythms or likewhat I like to call it, our, our
cells schedule that they follow day after day after day.
They're very much on a set schedule based off of a 24 hour
clock. So we really do need to live
within that schedule and supportthat schedule by having a
healthy breakfast and consuming our meals in that shifted

(16:50):
earlier window. So, well, my general
recommendation and the scientific research supports
shorter intermittent fasting windows between 12 to 14 hours
and not pushing for these really, really long windows
every day on top of that is making sure that that window is
also shifted earlier in the day.Yeah, that that was one of the

(17:12):
lessons I learned from your CEO.It was the circadian
intermittent fasting. And it's like that makes total
sense. And so now it's that struggle to
try and force my eating into earlier parts of the day because
it's still kind of hard and, youknow, typical schedule to really
end your eating before 7:00 at night.
Yeah, yeah. And you know.

(17:33):
Yeah, absolutely it is. It's really, really important.
It's it's cool to look at some of the research and I would urge
anybody that finds this interesting to go check it out.
But you can see drastic differences in glucose response
or the the way that your blood sugar changes based off of when
you ate your last meal, and thatthose changes can persist,

(17:58):
continue all the way through thenext morning and the next day.
Even. So if you're eating later in the
evening, that might mean that your blood sugar spikes higher
or last, it stays elevated longer even the next day.
So this is, it's not just withinthat that window that you maybe
had a late meal. It is it can persist, you know,

(18:22):
even 24 hours later. So that's that I think it is is
really important for listeners to to be mindful of and if you
are going to have something later in the evening, trying to
keep it something that is higherfat and protein as opposed to
higher carbohydrate, because that is that's that's actually

(18:42):
really where the body is is struggling in the later
evenings. That's why I always will
recommend if you have this late night craving and you really
need something there is there's a product released by Prolong
called the fasting bar that is designed to keep your body in a
fasted state. It's primarily nuts and healthy

(19:05):
fats combined to give your body some nutrition to curb that
hunger without spiking glucose and with without dropping
ketones compared to water alone.So it gives you the benefits.
And I think for the listener andthe viewer, it's important for
me to point out too, that if they go to your website, it's
probably one of the most reference websites I've ever

(19:26):
been on, You know, when it comesto products, because oftentimes
I'll go on and there's, OK, yeah, there's a list of
references. But if you really kind of dive
into the, the articles that theysupply, it's like, well, that's
not really related to this, but there's like, I figured, I, I
mean, I, there was more than 25 articles, I'm sure on that.
We're now. Over 40 clinical trials deep.

(19:47):
So yeah, we we are very committed to having supporting
literature on all of our products.
I think the five day fasting mimicking diet has the most, but
we also have clinical trials. Even on the fasting bar and some
of the other products as well. So it's it is critical for us
that whatever we are promoting is highly based in research.

(20:11):
We have now over 30 to $40 million in NIH government
funding for the research becausethere is so much excitement and
opportunity in this world. There is now over 20, or I think
actually we might even be at 30 research partners that are the
best of the best. We're talking Mayo Clinic,

(20:32):
Stanford, Harvard, USC. These are the people doing this
research. So it is highly evidence based.
And so somewhat what are going kind of back to Women's Health
again, what are some of the biggest myths or
misunderstandings about fasting that especially as they relate
to women? But, you know, we can talk about
men as well because I think the hormonal balance in males is

(20:54):
just, I was going to say, just as important.
I think any woman that would be in the room right now would have
slapped me for saying that because I know there's a huge,
huge difference when we talk about the decline of
testosterone in males as we age rather than this roller coaster
of hormonal changes that women go through during perimenopause
and menopause. But what are some of the biggest
myths that we should talk about today?

(21:16):
I mean we already touched on thethe stress impact and whether
that's good or bad. I want to just double down on
that and just remind people thatwhen we do periodic prolonged
fasting, while there is some moderate amount of stress, it is
lower with fasting mimicking, less safety concerns with

(21:37):
fasting mimicking. It's also done less frequently.
That is really important. The I think another kind of
touch point on a myth there is that all fasting is made equal,
which is not true. Every type of fast has its own
benefits, its own in some cases downsides that you have to be

(21:57):
mindful of. And so personalization in terms
of fasting protocols are critical.
And you know, we, I've, I've really pushed a lot for, for
fast mimicking and these longer fast, but there are cases where
I would recommend a maybe 14 hour daily fast to an individual

(22:18):
specifically if there is significant weight loss needs
that need to, to be met. And there we might do that for a
short period of time. It's not going to be a forever
nutrition protocol, but that's another piece.
Is that it there is a high need for personalization.
And then another thing that's just specific to Women's Health

(22:39):
is that we know that it is either good or bad for for
women. Unfortunately, right now we
really are limited in the literature available.
So we have to be very cautious about making a decision honestly
in either direction. And I, I want to point to, for

(23:03):
example, this is going to be in my, my reproductive years, but
in my, in my patients with who are still in the reproductive
years where they ask when is theright time to fast?
Is it better for me to fast in the luteal phase or the
follicular phase? And there's going to be
arguments on both sides of that coin.

(23:24):
And then there's going to be people who tell you not to do it
at all. And every single one of those
arguments is based off of physiological data.
So data just based off of our Physiology that we, so we're
making assumptions saying well because when we have a higher
amount of estrogen to progesterone, our body lives

(23:45):
better in a ketogenic state and prefers to be in a more
ketogenic state. Whereas when progesterone is
higher, it would be more comfortable to be in a higher
carbohydrate state. Well then we should fast in the
follicular phase where the estrogen is higher relative to
progesterone. So that is an assumption, but it
has never actually been tested with fasting.

(24:08):
And so this is probably the to me, the the biggest myth is that
anybody really knows when is theright time to fast or when is
the wrong time to fast for, for women.
So I always urge people to try it themselves.
Use yourself as an end of one. The beauty of this is that doing

(24:30):
a fasting mimicking diet is not going, It's not like a make it
or break it for anybody. This isn't life or death
decision. This is what you will inevitably
see is I've seen it in at this point thousands of patients
where they see incredible benefits from these longer
fasts. And then for my women who are in
their reproductive years, I actually tell them, try it in

(24:53):
your follicular face, try it in your luteal phase and see where
you are more comfortable. See how it impacts your cycle in
the next 30 days. Afterwards, use yourself as an
end of 1 as the as that as that trial while we wait for
legitimate research that is doneasking the right question and

(25:13):
testing the full question that we want to know.
And isn't that kind of the ultimate truth of nutritional
science, that it's always an endof 1?
Personalization is so important.It's so important.
And when we look at so, so the research, we mentioned 40
clinical trials, right, right. The vast majority, I honestly
can only think of 2 examples where there are not both men and

(25:36):
women. There's, there's the prostate
cancer one, which was male only.And there's a muscle strength
study that was only in male, Butthe rest of the trials have been
with both genders. And so we can say that we've
done this research in women. We still need to and, and we do
actually pull apart men and women and we say were the

(25:59):
results relatively equivalent? Were there major differences
between the gender and what we see with fasting mimicking is
that these results are applicable to both, but it is
impossible right now really. I mean, with AI it will become
more and more possible, but it'svery difficult to peel apart all
of the different variables that might cause some differences

(26:20):
from person to person. So at the end of the day, you
are you. You should always leverage the
research and help guide you withthe research use.
Use your experience as kind of that final litmus test.
So we've talked a bit about reproductive years,
perimenopausal, menopausal. What about I might be inventing

(26:41):
a new word here, but what about like para reproductive, you
know, women who are kind of in that puberty, that puberty
stage. And I know there's always
cautions about having anybody intheir pubescent years fasting
and dieting and doing all that kind of stuff.
But is there any benefits or concerns that we should make

(27:01):
young women aware of if they're looking at, OK, I want to do
this and I'm, you know, 14 yearsold?
So we do have a recommendation that anybody under the age of 18
should not do fasting or fastingmimicking.
Even though fasting mimicking isis gentler, we still don't
recommend it. It's considered an exclusion
criteria. And there's a reason for this.

(27:24):
Now I'm going to get a little bit science nerdy right now, but
when we get when we get in a fasted and fasted mimicking
state, what we are doing is we are limiting the activation of
our grow growth pathway. So some of these pathways are

(27:44):
things like MTOR, IGF, one PKA and these, you know, shouldn't
be not activated at all. They are important to be
activated occasionally because they stimulate your body to grow
to build, right? And we do need that
occasionally. But if we're constantly
stimulating the body to grow andto build, then we're just
accumulating and it can accumulate to the point of

(28:07):
excess or to just accumulate a bunch of.
I like to think of it in terms of a home where you, you know,
you have your, your house and your set of walls and there's
only so much stuff you can fit in there.
You could buy a lot of stuff andthen eventually you just have
too much stuff. You need to go in and decide

(28:27):
what is the best stuff that I want to keep and what is the
stuff that's starting to get overworn and needs to be
replaced. And so our body needs to be able
to do this as well. We need to take a break from
always growing and and take a shift to clean up and repair,
which is what we do when we fast.
When we fast, we limit the activation of these pro growth

(28:48):
pathways. And the next beautiful part of
this is when we don't activate those, the body will shift to
signal repair, rejuvenation, clean up, activate autophagy,
activate pathways like AMPKI cango into a bunch of cool stuff
that gets activated in this world, but I'm going to stop
myself there. So there's a lot of, there's a

(29:11):
lot of repair that gets activated.
OK, so now let's bring this backto why the heck I would even
talk about any of this when we're talking about people who
are under the age of 18. When we're under the age of 18,
growth is very important. We need to be, we still are in
this building growing phase. And so there is risk in pausing

(29:32):
that even for five days, right. And so we have to be very
cautious about if and when we would implement these strategies
that pause the growth and shift to repair because that repair
really becomes especially important after about 18.
So hope that. Yeah.
No, that was perfect answer. And I think about that as well

(29:53):
or you know, some of the growingknowledge that we're getting in
the area of epigenetics. And I think of, you know, if
we're doing a lot of this stuff during the period of time when a
female is developing her eggs and preparing to be able to be
reproductive, that we can actually do damage and not only
might affect that individual, but generations down the road.

(30:15):
And there's been, you know, science showing that we, you
know, women who are, you know, developing their eggs during the
period of time when they're in afamine are more likely to have
offspring that are going to be at an increased risk of diabetes
and heart disease and so on. And thank you for bringing that
up, because when I was giving myexample of whether you would
fasten the follicular face, which is the first phase before

(30:37):
you ovulate, or the luteal face,which is afterwards, that the
example that I gave was why people fight for fasting in that
follicular phase. But it's important to listen to
the other argument, which is whyyou would fast after you
ovulate, which takes exactly what you said into
consideration, which says if youfast before you ovulate, you are

(30:59):
starving your body before the egg is produced.
Which is hypothetically a reallyimportant time where we should
be giving nutrition before the egg is created or as it's being
created, we're getting ready to be released as opposed to a
hypothetically safer time to fast, which is after it's
already been released. And now you kind of have this

(31:19):
little pause or break as you getready for the next round.
So you know, usually where I hear that argument more from is
from OBGYN and practitioners like that that prefer to fast
after you ovulate. Interesting.
That's. Very interesting arguments, so
yeah. Yeah.
But at this point, arguments that are, yes, founded in

(31:40):
science. So I do not want to say that
they are not founded in science,but they're just, it's limited.
Yeah. And I think that's an important
thing for people to understand that so much of science is
limited. You know, I have students that
will write in papers. You know, this article is
proving that no, no, nothing proves anything.
We just get closer to the truth.And so it's important to balance

(32:01):
all of that information as well as possible.
And I appreciate that you're coming out here and saying, you
know, we don't have all the answers here and nothing is
necessarily proven. I love that it was one of the
most important things that you learn when you get into kind of
the later, later years of your academic career, right, Is there
is no proving. And so that was maybe one of the
first things like day one of entering was no one used this

(32:24):
hard. And I think we might be a little
off topic, but that's something I think we should be learning a
lot earlier in our K through 12 education that nothing is
absolutely improving, especiallyif it's coming from the
Internet. Absolutely.
And what I, I, I love the concept that nothing is proven
because it allows us to continueto search for answers.

(32:47):
It leaves so many doors open. It removes kind of the box that
we live in where we think that everything is true.
Like, imagine, you know, and again, we are getting a little
off topic, but imagine if peoplewho, you know, believe that the
earth was flat, we're told that that's all it was.
And then we, you know, we never looked anywhere else.
Like imagine where we would be. So, you know, we always have to

(33:07):
kind of be always willing to learn and grow.
And on that same side of the code and kind of coming back to
Women's Health and fasting, I, Ihave changed my opinion on this.
I, I was one of the proponents to do always follicular fasting.
And now I have kind of stepped back and said, well, we really

(33:27):
don't know and we need a little bit more information here.
And so being able to be flexiblein this in this space is so.
That's science. We should be flexible.
Yeah, exactly. I will also note, I actually was
just thinking, you know, in Women's Health and, and again,
this again applies to everybody,but another area that we did
some interesting research, This was one of the studies that we

(33:50):
did with exclusively women was on skin health with fasting
mimicking, where we were able toshow that not only were there
incredible results on skin health, skin hydration, fine
lines, skin texture, all improved in as little as the
first cycle. So 5 days of fasting mimicking,

(34:10):
but even more so after three cycles, which is kind of the
general recommendation is that you would do one a month for
three months if you're just starting in the world of fasting
mimicking and then transition toonce every quarter moving on.
But beyond that, we also showed statistically significant
improvements in confidence beyond even just the physical,

(34:33):
which I love. I like kind of kind of coming
back to this because it is more than just the the Physiology or
the biochemistry or the biomarkers that we look at.
It's also how you feel and how motivated you are.
There is a really cool study that just came out less than a
year ago in patients with type 2diabetes doing the fasting

(34:53):
mimicking diet where they were able to show that the group that
did the fasting mimicking diet increased their physical
activity by 4 hours a week, whereas the group that did
healthy nutrition. So still like Mediterranean
diet, health gold standard. By the way, I'm a believer in
the Mediterranean diet. I, I sound like I'm knocking it,
but I'm not. But the, the Mediterranean diet

(35:13):
was done for, for every day for that six month period of time.
And they showed a decrease in physical activity by 6 hours,
which is really interesting. And people are always like,
well, why would why would that happen?
And you know, we can only kind of assume here, but there's a
lot of things that are happeningwhen we do a fasting mimicking

(35:35):
diet that again, go beyond the biochemistry or the biomarkers.
Is that one the patients were lighter, right?
They were losing weight, but they were protecting their
muscles so they feel lighter andstronger.
On top of that, they've completed this five day
protocol, which it you know, I'mnever going to promise somebody
it is a complete breeze. It is still a challenge.

(35:57):
It's still something where you are sticking to this five day
kit. So you're not you know getting
to grab whatever the heck you want out of the fridge.
So it is still a challenge. And so once you complete it,
the, the strength that you feel and the motivation that you feel
once you complete it is really empowering and makes you start
thinking what else you. And then the last piece of this

(36:18):
is you're only committing 5 days.
And So what do you do for the other 25 days?
You're left kind of thinking, maybe I can do something else.
Maybe I should look into exercise.
Maybe I should think about my sleep habits.
Maybe I should, you know, think about all these other things
that I can do. And that's something that I
guess often overlooked when we think about fasting, mimicking
is not just those five days, butwhat about all the, the 25

(36:40):
others else? Can you and what other benefits
can you do when you're not constantly thinking that, oh
gosh, I'm going to have to have this salad again today.
And I that's, that's more than enough.
I'm not going to do anything else, you know.
That's a very good point. And I've started to stress a lot
with my students. In fact, all my lecture and I
don't use lecture slides a lot, but when I use slides, every
slide says biomechanical, psychosocial across the bottom

(37:03):
because I want them to understand that everything that
we're doing has, you know, it's not a biological fix per SE.
And I had a biomechanist friend who pointed out that it's also
biomechanical, but also that psychosocial piece is very
important in there. And it makes sense that, you
know, doing something for just five days, it's very regimented
and controlled. And you have to kind of, you

(37:25):
know, time your meals. You have to, you know, be
disciplined with it, that that discipline can carry over and
also give you that motivation towant to do something that
requires a little bit more discipline.
Absolutely, absolutely. And now clinically shown too.
So I think I get so excited I see this.
So I've walked thousands of people through fasting,

(37:46):
mimicking diets across the board, healthy individuals who
are leveraging it to improve their metabolic health,
individuals through pre pre diabetes.
Now there are patients with diabetes that are actually
reversing their disease going into remission through fasting,
mimicking with as little as even3 to 6 cycles, which is

(38:06):
incredible. I mean, this is, this is by the
way, something that the, the ADAand some of the, the medical
boards were saying wasn't even possible.
Thankfully, they've started to change.
They're tuned with, with the advancements that we've seen in
lifestyle and behavior change that can in fact put people into
remission. But this is, this has really

(38:28):
been pushed a lot forward through and you'll see it in the
papers. They literally call out fasting,
mimicking diets as one of the reasons why this has now become
possible. So it is, it's really exciting
to see that people are being motivated, are seeing
significant changes both throughtheir biomarkers and there are

(38:50):
many of them by the way. I mean, we've barely touched the
OR scratched the surface on the research on all of the
biomarkers that are improved through fasting mimicking, but
also also through behavior. So in terms of weight
management, what kinds of results are realistic for
midlife women using Prolong or similar products?
Depends on the individual, the beautiful and you know well,

(39:13):
you'll hear me talk about personalization a lot.
I mean, as a dietitian, it is and, and as you mentioned
earlier, this is, it's so critical.
So we're never going to say everyone's losing 5 lbs of pure
fat. Well, that is, by the way, it's
about 5.7 in our healthy individuals that are already
healthy weight after those 3 cycles.

(39:34):
That is, that's the average of maintained weight loss.
By the way, this is even checking three months later and
seeing how those results were maintained.
So there's, there's some great results even in, in healthy
individuals. Now we see that individuals that
have more weight to lose will ofcourse lose more weight.
This is also really important because people who don't have

(39:55):
weight to lose should still do afasting mimicking diet because
of the deep cellular benefits, the longevity benefits, the
prevention benefits. And I don't want anybody
listening to this to say, well, I are, I'm already a healthy
weight. So this doesn't apply to me.
In fact, this still applies to you.
The exact same as anybody else, if not more because this is a

(40:16):
strategy and one of the few strategies are still very hyper
applicable to to to anybody. So for example, I myself a
already generally healthy weight.
I've done this 15 Times Now. And so I do it once a quarter or
three times a year. You may not have to do it as
frequently, but you still will get incredible benefit and

(40:38):
biological age benefits. Now we'll talk about that in a
bit, but that is that's even in healthy.
And let's go up to for example, our study where we had patients
who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Here we have ABMI about and of an average of 30.
So this is a higher weight groupand here we see an average

(41:01):
weight loss of about 22 lbs. And again, importantly, this is
fat mass with no muscle loss. So these are, these are
equivalent to some of the drugs on the market.
These are, this is equivalent significantly more than often
times what you can see with a standard nutrition protocol as
well. So we're seeing really, really

(41:23):
significant weight loss. And again with fasting mimicking
because we're not hacking the system, we're not saying, OK,
we're going to throw a drug in here, we're going to block some
pathways. We're going to, you know, what
we're doing instead is we're letting the, we're kind of
getting out of the way and we'reletting our body decide where it
wants to invest time and resources in repair, cleanup and

(41:46):
rejuvenation. And so it's beautiful because,
you know, we're talking about weight loss in this example.
And yes, as I mentioned, we see that individuals who have less
weight to lose will lose weight less, and individuals who have
more weight to lose will lose more weight.
All muscle protective. But we also see it in things
like fasting glucose, HBA, 1C, all measures of your blood sugar

(42:08):
control over over time, your insulin resistance, even CRP
measure of inflammation in the body.
We see it in our lipid markers. We see it even in our hepatic
markers. So it is going to in individuals
where it's already healthy, stayat healthy range.
It doesn't get dangerously low, which is also something we

(42:30):
always have to be. And in patients where it is
elevated beyond a healthy level,it decreases significantly.
So this is maybe, I don't know, there's so many cool parts so I
don't want to say it, but it is one of the coolest parts of the
fasting mimicking diet is that our body will put energy where
it needs to be spent in this repair cleanup across the board.

(42:54):
And I love that you kind of don't don't have done what we do
often on this podcast. And that's Pooh Pooh, the whole
idea of biohacking. I am not a fan of the term
biohacking. And you know, we will not have
anybody on this podcast that I think is is a biohack.
I mean, just the term hack to meis a negative term.

(43:15):
You know, that person's a hack. But you know, we're and it's not
even like we're manipulating thephysiological systems doing
something like fasting, mimicking dieting.
I mean, you can say you were kind of, you know, we're hacking
the fast, but it's not really that negative kind of hack.
It's it's really optimizing the physiological systems to be able

(43:37):
to do what they're intended to do.
And it's just triggering the right responses in the body to
keep us healthy. Absolutely.
And what I like to remind peopleis that while it seems like we
are hacking, the fact we are actually not.
We are doing the fast the way that our cells perceive and
define a fast, which is in reality the definition of

(43:59):
fasting. And it should be our dictionary
definition of fasting. But it's not because our
dictionary definition is based off of the outdated idea.
And fair enough, a more obvious and visible idea of what fasting
is, which is you either don't eat or you do eat, and when you
don't eat, you're fasting. When you do eat, you're not.

(44:20):
But our cells aren't. That's not the deck.
That's not the definition that they're using.
They're actually defining it based off of whether or not the
nutrient sensing pathways on itssurface are being turned on or
off. I like to think of them like
alarm bells or laser beams, like007 style that you can actually

(44:41):
live below. You can do some pretty fancy
moves and not trigger those sensors.
And that's what we're doing. So we are we're actually just
going based off of the definition that our cells have
as opposed to using this dictionary definition that is
inaccurate. What role do fasting mimicking
diets play in digestive health, especially again with women or

(45:05):
individuals who have kind of age-related gut sensitivity or
discomfort? Great question.
So this is still early research right now we have so and when I
say early, it means that we haveresearch, but it is primarily
done in mice models. Again, as a scientist, it's very
important that we differentiate between the research that is

(45:27):
done in humans and the research that is done in mice.
So I will always call out if anyof my studies are mice.
This is one of them. So what we've been able to show
in these mice models of IBD, nowthis is severe and chronic gut
inflammation. And what we see is that in these
models, when we add fasting mimicking is that not only do we

(45:51):
see that there is an improvementin the gut bacteria.
So we see an increase in these healthy bacteria, lacto and
bifido bacteria. But what's even cooler is that
we see regeneration of the gut line.
We see that what has been so inflamed to a point where it is
no longer functioning at the in the way that it should is

(46:14):
actually being rebuilt. So this is incredible.
This is, this is where we are really excited about the
possibilities of fasting mimicking because we were very
cautious to say, oh, it's going to activate stem cells, it's
going to activate full regeneration.
But what we're seeing even now in some cool human trials, which
I'm happy to talk about is regeneration is stem cell

(46:36):
activation. So in this in this gut health
model, we're seeing even beyond just a healthy microbiome or the
the amount of healthy gut bacteria, but also the gut
lining regeneration. And what I really love about
that study is that not only in that study did they do the
fasting mimicking diet, but theyalso did water only fast.

(46:58):
And this is one of the only studies where they actually put
kind of those two head to So we don't see a lot of these
kind of head to head trials, butin this one, it's in mind and

(47:21):
they were able to show that the fasting Mamo King diet showed
drastically better results in terms of this regeneration and
in terms of the repair because it's more than just full calorie
restriction and water only fasting.
It also is the addition of healthy nutrition.
And especially when we think about gut health, fiber is so
important and all of these nutrients, nutrients are so

(47:43):
important in this rebuilding, inthis growth.
So fasting mimicking adds to thebenefit.
It does, yes, the clean up, but it also does the rebuilding.
So those two things together yield this, this incredible
output. And we are now doing, I think
there's just been recently a study published in colitis

(48:06):
patients so and in human trials,it's still early, but there's,
there's now more and more research that is going to be
being done in this space. So very, very positive and
optimistic about what this is going to be able to offer.
It's pretty cool, except you putin my head this idea of like
mice with the little packets have an open nose and eat their

(48:26):
little bars and everything else,these tiny little prolonged
packets. Yeah, well, you know, funny
enough, they actually probably have it easier because they get
everything unpacked for them andperfectly delivered in a nice
little. You know, they even have chefs
delivering their food. The prolonged kits and the AL
Nutra health kits make it very easy because the only thing you
have to do is open up the kit. And in some cases, in fact, now

(48:50):
I don't know Doctor Armstrong, if you have tried the brand new
next Gen. kits, but they don't even require you to add water to
your soups. They're already hydrated.
You just open pour and heat and they're ready to go.
And on top of that, they are even tastier.
The Oregon electric properties, when you have it already

(49:12):
hydrated, allows for even greater flavor.
So those ones were even designedby a Michelin Starship.
Now this soups didn't taste thatbad in the powder form.
I mean I was not expecting high quality taste or anything, but
they really weren't that bad. Now, now I have to get you this
new next Gen. kit to try becauseit is it is even levelled up

(49:35):
even more. It is is truly incredible what,
how how those flavours have havecome through the tomato soup
that is included in here. It's a like tomato soup.
How fun or in how delicious could that really be?
You open it up and you just smell this waft of fresh basil.
I was I was amazed. I mean, these just came out.

(49:56):
I've I've only done one kit withthe next Gen. so far.
So but I'm I'm hooked, not doinganything else.
Yeah, I actually like the lentilsoup that was in the the
original formulation, so. Yeah, yeah, the, the lentil
Curry and that one's still available.
So I, I think we're, we're looking at trying to turn all of

(50:16):
the, the, the soup flavors and the most popular ones into these
next Gen. and really getting through that flavor.
Because the extra good part is that in the, in the new soups,
you'll get whole beans and you'll get a whole peas and
you'll get a whole, you know, like you really hold kernels of
quinoa. It's amazing.
It's like the the even the food science is being elevated now.

(50:40):
Yes. Anybody considering this, this
is not, it's not torture. It's, it's actually a very easy
process and tastes good. And it's, you know, it's, it's
only 5 days. And that's another thing too is
with cost. I mean, if anybody's thinking,
oh, well, this, you know, these expensive programs, you have to
spend far more money than you would on food.
I can have ran numbers and it's actually cheaper than probably

(51:01):
buying your average, you know, 5days of food, especially in
today's crisis. It absolutely is.
Yeah. So I think we were running the
numbers. And it depends again where you
are in the world. Like if you're in California and
New York, your prices are gonna be way more.
If you are outside of some of these major hubs, you might be a
little bit less. On average, people are either

(51:23):
spending the same per day or saving per day when they're
doing these these five day programs.
So yeah, we call it cost neutral.
It's it's really amazing that it's, it's that kind of price.
So yeah, see. What else I was going to say
that, you know, in the show notes, I think we're going to be

(51:44):
sharing some, some additional reduced pricing courtesy of the
Aging Well podcast. And we'll do that and we'll make
sure people are linked to where they can find the the product
and everything else. So try and think what else we
have not talked about. We've talked about skin health
and even just kind of reducing some of those more visible
markers of aging, which are probably what most people are

(52:06):
really most concerned about whenit comes to aging.
You know, we don't, I don't think we fully understand the
importance of autophagy in the aging process as well.
When we're talking about aging, well, we're starting to learn
about it, but most people are just, I don't just don't want
wrinkles and I don't want a dad bod, you know?
Which is totally fair. And the beauty of skin health, I

(52:26):
would like to remind people, it sounds sure so vain, but it's
really not because our skin is entirely made-up of ourselves.
It is an external representationof our health internally.
It is showing us in many ways how what is going on inside.
So This is why when we we see, you know, deep cellular benefits

(52:47):
in this autophagy, of course it's going to persist in our
skin health because they are so closely tied.
But another area that I think might be worth talking about is
the the literature that was published last year on
biologically. Tell me.
Yeah. So, so with fasting mimicking,
of course, we, you know, we talkabout how connected it is to

(53:08):
longevity. So it was only a matter of time
before there was literature to see what, what quantifiably are
we able to achieve in terms of our biological age.
Now, I'm sure on this podcast, the listeners are familiar with
biological age, but it is essentially instead of our
chronological age, that number on our birth certificate that is
kind of set in stone. Biological age is the number

(53:31):
that is assessing really how ourbody is, is behaving or what,
what age our body is more aligned with.
And you can have, unfortunately,an older biological age than
your chronicle age, which we certainly don't want, but we can
also have a younger biological age than our chronicle age or
chronological age. So with a fasting mimicking diet

(53:51):
just done three times, that's it, we were able to show a
reversal in biological age on average of two and a half, 15
days total across a three month period.
Biological age reverses 2 1/2 years.
In that same study, we did OK, we did this was a similar
simulation data. So we didn't actually follow

(54:13):
people for 20 years, but we simulated the data because
thankfully we were using some ofthe most robust data available,
the N Hanes data for anybody who's in real nutrition
research, it's a really hefty amount of data that we can use
to, to, to make very educated guesses of what happens long
term. What happens if you do this just

(54:34):
three times a year for a period of 20?
In this case, we looked at individuals from the age of 50
to the age of 70. So you do it 3 * a year from 50
to 70. And they showed a biological age
reversal on average of 11. Wow.
So this is, you know it. It's not even just about
starting, it's just about maintaining.

(54:56):
And in that same study, they also looked at prevention data.
So, you know, even if you're a healthy infant, right?
What is this going to align within terms of prevention of the
top killers today are chronic diseases that are afflicting
Americans in the world today, things like cancer,
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, how how even

(55:17):
neurodegenerative diseases, whatare we seeing in terms of risk
reduction? And we were able to show that
with done three times a year forthis 20 year period anywhere in
healthy individuals from about 5to 20% risk reduction.
And then if you did have a biomarker out of range, again
coming back to people who need it more, we'll see even better

(55:38):
results. We see that number jumping up
from like 10 to 30 percent risk reduction.
So this is again, why, yes, you're going to see these
longevity benefits, you're goingto see these biological age
benefits. And this is going to apply to
you whether you're already, you know, peak health or you are on
a journey towards better health.So what is some of your favorite

(56:00):
advice to women who want to maintain the benefits of fasting
between the cycles of the prolonged diet?
And do you have any favorite nutrition or lifestyle tips?
I have, I do, I have a lot that's that we could do a whole
other podcast on the other 25 days because realistically this
takes up so much more of the time, right?

(56:22):
And I shouldn't even say 25 daysbecause long term it's going to
be, you know, the other 350 daysa year, right?
And so this is still very critical.
One thing I would like to note is that every study that I
shared today, it doesn't requirenutrition change in the other
days. They didn't force people to have
a healthy diet in between. They wanted to really test what

(56:45):
are the benefits of the fasting mimicking diet.
So hypothetically you could get incredible benefits even if you
did nothing else as a dietitian,I'm never going to make nation.
Of course we would love if therewere other healthy changes done
in the 25 days and some of thosefor women.
We're going to focus in in this perimenopause, menopause.
But realistically, again, this applies to everybody.

(57:07):
It's just especially important at this phase of life.
Adequate protein. Now I am not talking excessive
protein, which is unfortunately today we're kind of starting to
put a little too far along that that spectrum, but adequate
protein and weight bearing exercise.
Another thing that I think we'restarting to miss the point on
though is that it's not just muscle and weight bearing

(57:29):
exercise. You still need aerobic activity
and maximizing VO2 Max. These are still important.
So exercise in general, but focusing on these three major
areas of exercise and making sure that you're finding time
for each of these ideally on a weekly basis.
So exercise huge and making surethat you have a varied exercise

(57:54):
schedule and making sure that you are protecting that muscle
by doing weight bearing exercise, heavy weights, but
work with a professional to makesure you don't just jump to the
heaviest weight and hurt yourself because that's actually
the fastest way to stop exercising is when you hurt
yourself. So you know, take it, take it
slow, take it easy. Sleep is right now one of my

(58:15):
favorite spaces of lifestyle health.
I am cautious as a as a dietitian, not to kind of cross
different, different areas. You know, this is not my area of
expertise, but we've seen so much research on sleep health
and longevity and health. And it can actually, when you
sleep better, allow your body tometabolize better.

(58:38):
It allows you to do to exercise better.
It'll it reduces your stress. So it all is interconnected.
So with that being said, making sure that you have a good sleep
hygiene. So trying to fall asleep, you
know, before I ideally, you know, earlier on in the evening.

(58:59):
So even if you can fit in eight hours, but you're not going to
bed until 1:00 AM, that actuallyagain pushes against your
circadian pattern. So making sure that you're
falling asleep, you know, earlier in the evening, like
9:00-ish is kind of an ideal time, right?
Staying consistent with that time, getting enough sleep,
getting good quality sleep. I'm a big fan of aura rings.

(59:22):
And, you know, getting some of some of that data so that you
can see, am I getting good quality sleep?
If you are waking up every day after 7 or 8 or even 9 hours of
sleep, still exhausted, something's up, something's
going on. And it's important that you are
working with a professional to help kind of guide that that

(59:43):
sleep hygiene. So community support is going to
be my last and final lifestyle piece, even though there are so
many more. But I think community support is
so important to just mention because I think it gets
overlooked too frequently And people think, you know, that's,
that's not going to help me loseweight or that's not going to
help me, you know, get reduced cholesterol or whatever.

(01:00:06):
But it but in fact, it is maybe one of the best ways to reduce
stress. Just generally.
It is so important for longevity.
We see it in some of these epidemiological studies where we
look long term at populations that have better community ties,
are connected with their families, are, you know,
connected with friends, having meals together.

(01:00:29):
You know, all of these little things do add up.
And I think it's one of the, youknow, unfortunately, it actually
is kind of hard. I, I, I, we want to say easy,
but it's tough today. So we have to make sure that we
don't let this slip away, especially post COVID where
we've, you know, we're working from home, we're doing
everything from home. It's important that we are
making the effort and Facebook doesn't count, you know, make

(01:00:52):
sure that you are, even if it's picking up the phone, even if
it's hopping on, you know, a Skype, a zoom, a FaceTime with,
with your, with your friends, family making that effort.
It also goes over very long way.So those are going to be I think
my top 3 is what I narrowed. That's good.
Sounds like he tapped into our six pillars because we always

(01:01:14):
talk about, you know, the role of exercise, physical activity,
healthy diet, maintaining a healthy body composition.
One thing we didn't touch on wasnot smoking, but I think that's
kind of getting to where nobody really smokes.
And I mean, there's people that smoke anymore, but it's reduced
significantly. Yeah, it's vaping and sleep.
And then, you know, the big one that we've added to that list

(01:01:35):
over the last year has been, I say, purposeful social
connection rather than because that's where Facebook can be
well, you're socially connected,but you're not really connected.
Right, right. Feeling like we are doing it.
But in fact, many of those things that we think are
connecting us to people are fully disconnecting us or adding

(01:01:55):
additional stress to our body, providing, you know, some issues
with our, our dopamine receptorsand all, you know, like the list
goes on as to you know, and I am, I am just as much dealing
with this as anybody else. I mean, we're also connected to
to our phones and it can become difficult to disconnect and

(01:02:16):
connect to those that are physically around us.
But it's just like with anything.
And you know, one thing I love about you bringing up these six
pillars is that pick one and just focus on that one.
Add a habit there. Once that habit is ingrained,
pick your next favorite one. Add a habit there.
The beauty is, is we have so many ways to support our health

(01:02:39):
through lifestyle change. You don't have to do them all
perfectly from the jump. Find an area that is speaking to
you where you think you're goingto get the most value out of it.
Do you think you might be the most likely to be able to induce
a impactful change and start there?
Baby steps, that's what we always say.
My favorite movie. What about Bob?

(01:03:01):
So now for the question I ask ofall my guests, what are you
doing personally to age well? Oh my goodness, this is a loaded
question. Actually, Interestingly, I just
started some new, some new. As I mentioned, I think
everybody can find a new pillar,a new space to focus on and
constantly grow and adapt. Some of the things that I have

(01:03:23):
recently added to my lifestyle that I think have been really
impactful is mourning, gratitude, and journaling.
It sounds like it probably won'tdo that much, but I cannot
stress the change that I have seen in terms of my morning
stress or, you know, even just like it perpetuates through the

(01:03:44):
day. So that's going to be 1.
And the other one that I just recently have started digging
into the literature and seeing such shockingly impactful
results is oral hygiene. I know, kind of a weird one to
throw in there, but flossing oral hygiene twice a day, making

(01:04:05):
sure you're doing that. You know, I literally have my
flossing pics right here becauseit's something that I really am
not the best at, is flossing twice a day, every day.
And so now I'm just trying to bring that in tongue scraping,
all of these cool things that can really support oral hygiene,
which in fact is tied to longevity in ways that you you

(01:04:28):
might not believe, including some of the biomarkers
associated with heart health, with cognitive health.
It is. It is all connected.
We actually had a green dentist on the podcast last couple
months, Doctor Patel, and she was basically making the

(01:04:49):
argument you can add 10 years toyour life with just proper
dialect dental hygiene, so. It's crazy, it's crazy.
I was, I was very excited when Isaw that because that one's not
even in our pillars, you know, like it's just a whole new space
that we can explore. So those are, those are kind of
my new ones right now. But of course I I always am

(01:05:12):
optimizing sleep, nutrition and all of the other pillars.
I like the gratitude piece because we we're on a campaign
here on this podcast to change the spelling of gratitude to
have two TS in the middle. So it's an attitude of
gratitude. I love that and it is crazy.
I will say one of the things that I noticed from just doing
you I one of my biggest problemsis that I will say I don't have

(01:05:36):
enough time to do XYZ thing. And so when I was adding
gratitude journaling into my routine, it was important that I
meet it as quick and dirty as I possibly could.
How can I sneak this in? And so I just do three things in
the morning that I'm grateful for.
And it's so interesting to see how just taking that time in the

(01:05:56):
morning to think of three thingsthat you're grateful for.
And it's important, at least in my practice, to make it 3 new
things that I wasn't that I hadn't found private.
So you kind of start thinking and digging at things that that
you might be grateful for. And it's funny when you write
down, you know, I thought this is so this is kind of like a
tangent, but I saw a little snail going across, you know,

(01:06:18):
my, my half the other day and I was like, how cute is that?
This is, this is what a beautiful thing life is, you
know, and, and I wrote that down.
And then, you know, when you start realizing that all of
these little things you are can be grateful for, it makes it way
easier to be grateful for other things.
And it adds positivity and motivation and, you know, reduce

(01:06:39):
stress through the rest of your day.
So, you know, you got to you gotto give things a chance.
This was something, by the way, just in all transparency, I was
like, absolutely not. This is so not my style but I
did it and here we are so. Sometimes you just have to take
that leap and do something you think's going to be
uncomfortable, or you might not even think it's going to be
worthwhile and then just reap the benefits.
It's so true, and it's so true across all of those things that

(01:07:02):
we've chat chatted about today. Right.
Well, let's see. I don't know that nutrition
science really seems to excite you much, but what excites you
most about the future of nutritional science and how it
relates to aging? Well.
Oh gosh, I think there's so much.
I think that we are still just the nascent see of what

(01:07:23):
nutrition science is. You know, we talked about how
you can't prove anything right now.
And I don't know if we ever realwill really be able to write
just based off of the definitionof what we were chatting about.
So there's so much more to know.I think we're we're really
starting to tap into the immune health, gut health, autoimmunity

(01:07:43):
too, which is starting to becomemore of a problem.
I think there's so much opportunity there, cognitive
health, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, everything that's
happening there. And by the way, everything that
I just named is some of these preclinical trials that we're
seeing with fasting mimicking specifically where we're going
to start seeing more research happening and more

(01:08:04):
opportunities. So, so really excited about
what's happening there and superexcited to see how AI is going
to start producing better research.
I, I really do believe that there is going to be, if it's
not already happening, the integration of AI in research to

(01:08:25):
make it happen faster, more effectively, and also allow us
to take research that has already been done and find how
it applies to us. Because when we talked about
this personalization piece, it'sreally hard in the vast world of
nutrition science to find the articles that apply to you.
And I think that there's going to be a world where we can

(01:08:46):
really start leveraging some of the technology that's coming out
today to, to support. So just some of the things that
excite me. That's interesting to me too,
because I kind of started reallymy scientific path.
I mean, my masters degree, we still had to look up journal
articles in in these books in the library.
And now it's like I don't have to go anywhere.

(01:09:07):
I can just sit on my computer and I have access to thousands
and thousands of articles that Ihave to tease through.
And now with AI, the AI can evendo the role of, well, this one's
not relevant to what you want todo.
This one is here's 1 you didn't find.
And, you know, we can get so much more information and be
able to sort through it and hopefully take out some of the
biases that we might even injectinto our own kind of research.

(01:09:30):
Because I talk to my students, it's like, you know, you pick
the articles that suit your thesis.
You're not doing good research. You got to find the stuff that's
going to say, well, no, wait a minute.
This is counter to to your research.
You have to have both sides of the argument.
Absolutely. And it's so, you know, as you
mentioned, we are at this place now where we have so much
research that it's like almost decision paralysis.

(01:09:53):
And so thank God AI is here to allow us to do a better job at
sifting through. I think it's it certainly is
still present. It's going to continue to
present challenges and opportunities.
I prefer to think of them as opportunities, right, but where
okay, now we have to make sure that we don't just like blindly
trust AI. We still have to take all of the

(01:10:14):
information that it's presentingto us and then look it up.
Look, whenever I use ChatGPT, which is like multiple times a
day, it's incredible. But I am it will always give you
the references that it sites andI will pull up every single one
and I will parse it and I will just take a peek.
Is it in fact saying what it's saying?

(01:10:35):
Because as intelligent as AI is,it's it will still miss things.
It'll quote things incorrectly. So you know, but how incredible
that it is getting you all of this information in one place
and giving you the opportunity to use your time wise in parsing
out. All right.
Well, is there anything we missed today?
My gosh, so much, believe it or not, so much, there's so much

(01:10:55):
more to talk about. But, but I, I, I hope that, you
know, at minimum, I, I hope thatpeople are seeing the
opportunity that fasting mimicking can bring.
Whether you are dealing with metabolic health concerns or you
are just searching for longevityand healthy aging, or, you know,
maybe you're looking for some other experimental strategies

(01:11:16):
for other areas of your health. This is really such an
opportunity. And I would urge you if this
piqued your interest, go look upthe research and see for
yourself. Bring it up to your
practitioner, bring it up to people that you trust in in
reviewing the the literature andbe be amazed when you try it
yourself. There are so many great

(01:11:37):
resources. So if you are interested in
doing this more for longevity, maybe a little bit of weight
loss, just general health and prevention, I would recommend
checking out Prolon life.com. That's PROLON life.com.
You are interested in doing thisfor diabetes remission, for pre
diabetes support, for metabolic health support.

(01:11:59):
You've noticed your blood pressure, cholesterol, a lipid
panel, your liver enzymes, things like that.
You your doctor is saying, oh, there's some, some things we're
worried about here. I would urge you to go check out
a company called L Dash Nutra NU, trahealth.com,
l-nutrahealth.com and they add to the fasting mimicking program

(01:12:23):
a a full programmatic approach with dietitians, with
physicians, with even biometric scales, with all this additional
bells and whistles to make it especially safe and easy to move
forward. And believe it or not, it sounds
like it would add a significant price to it.
It doesn't. It's almost the same price, but
it's just designed to make it a little safer.
So those are to resources that Ithink are important to share.

(01:12:47):
And then if you're interested inconnecting with me, you can
connect with me on Instagram is usually the fastest place at
Fittin Nutrition, that's Fitton Nutrition or on my website,
Fitnutrition dot. Com OK and we'll put all those
links into the description notes.
I really appreciate your time today.
This was awesome. I, I wish we had about three

(01:13:08):
more hours to talk. Maybe what we'll have to do is
have you back on another maybe six months or something like
that and we can kind of revisit how the literature has grown
over that period of time and just keep educating people in
this this field that is ever growing.
And it's what I love about it. And even in my field and
exercise science, it's constantly changing and evolving

(01:13:30):
and growing. And it's when we get static and
stuff that life gets really boring.
We're starting to look for wherewe can grow in our sciences
really. So I appreciate your time today.
Thanks for joining us. Just keep doing what you're
doing and keep aging well. I'm.
Here for it. Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you for listening. Hope you benefited from today's
podcast and until next time, keep aging well.

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Fasting for Hormone Balance in Midlife (Without Going Extreme) | Ep. 274

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Fasting for Hormone Balance in Midlife (Without Going Extreme) | Ep. 274