0:02

Welcome to the Healthy Brain Toolbox. I'm Dr. Ken Sharlin, neurologist, speaker, author, and host for this show. In each episode, I interview influential people whose work impacts how we live and how we think. My guests are leaders in the health and fitness industry, physicians, scientists. Here, you'll find conversations that break down barriers, expand your horizons, and give you the tools you need to protect your health and nourish your aging brain.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 0:33

Today's guest is Dr. Joseph a visionary physician scientist and a CEO of L-Nutra. The company pioneering the science of fasting and nutrition for longevity with medical, biomedical, and policy degrees from institutions like St. Joseph's University, King's College, London, and Harvard. Dr. Antoun has dedicated his career to transforming the way we think about health from reactive sick care to proactive nutrition based wellness. Under his leadership, L-Nutra has brought the fasting mimicking diet. Sometimes we call it FMD. Known as ProLon to Millions Worldwide. Dr. Antoun is here to share how strategic nutrition can extend span, improve our metabolic health, and potentially delay or prevent age-related diseases. Thank you so much, Dr.

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 1:34

Thank you very much, and hopefully we're gonna change somebody's life today. So everyone, I recommend you listen a lot of wrong marketing and information and nutrition that we're gonna clarify today. We're gonna help you with how to onboard the longevity lifestyle so that you stay healthier longer and hopefully enjoy life with your loved ones.

Commercial break 1: 1:58

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Dr. Ken Sharlin: 3:46

So let's start from the basics. There is a really fascinating history here and you're part of a lineage that I think goes back a hundred years or so. Just explaining the biological rationale behind calorie restriction as a tool to potentially extend the lifespan and delay aging.

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 4:08

Yep. Today there's so many discussions and science and research on different ways to extend life, right? That's the biggest moonshot today for everyone is in science today, where everyone's talking longevity and extending human life, and especially the healthy part of human life, right? When you ask people, do you wanna live longer? Actually only 60% say yes because they think they're gonna live sick and long. But the most important part is how to live healthy long, what we call health span. And despite a lot of promising science in preclinical trials, the only humanly proven intervention to extend human life is calorie restriction. I wanna repeat that because we see NMN, NAD+ this, that red light therapy stem cell injection. The only today proven way to live healthy long is calorie restriction. So what does that mean? Or first of all, what is calorie restriction? In general, we say calorie restriction. If you decrease the calories by 25 to 30% in America, if you do that, you're just eating normal. You haven't even restricted calories because you're eating so many calories. But having said 25 to 30% or doing intermittently fasting, and I'll talk about the difference and why both. First of all, why restricting food extend life. I'm gonna share a sad news here, pro to many people. Every time we eat, we age Because two of the postprandial hormones are growth hormones. Meaning when you eat carbs, insulin spike and insulin goes into this the, that takes the glucose out of the blood to the cells, and then one of the pathways within the cell, that process all this is the PK and the RAs pathways. And those are aging pathways. When you eat proteins, IGF spike, what is IGF? It's called insulin. So it's like insulin growth factor. The name is a per is a perfect name, right? And the marketing in nutrition marketed to us. Food and especially protein is great and spike, IGF, you're gonna grow muscle. Yes, you grow muscle, but you grow everything else at the same time. The cells in the body have the to pathway and they respond to IGF secretion and protein secretion. So every cell is being pushed to age. We don't grow backwards, we grow forward right? A car is going in the race, if you go faster, yes, you're stronger, you're gonna win the race, but you're die first. That's the race you wanna lose at the late, the race of longevity. So every time we eat carbs and we eat proteins, we're spiking. Some of the hormones that get secreted are aging, pro aging hormones, and this is why one of your life goals should be to not have as many spikes of insulin and IGF. So reducing calories, reduce the height of the spikes, reducing the frequency. This is where fasting comes in. You reduce the number of spikes. So two things. Calorie restriction, reduce the height of the spikes and then intermittently not eating food or doing a prolonged fast, which is what we're gonna talk about today. There's something very special that happens there with prolonged fasting, but if you intermittently don't eat as well, reduce the frequency, then you're reducing the numbers of how many times insulin and IGF are growing your body and aging your body, so why we're saying healthier though, if you age faster, why? We're talking why it's so important. Aging and health span. Because 87% of us today are dying not from a car accident, not from a plane crash, not from suicide. We're dying 87 per percent of us from four age related healthcare diseases. Cancer happens with age, Diabetes happens with age. Heart attack, cardiovascular happens with age. Alzheimer's happens with age. You don't get Alzheimer's at age 22. You're not gonna have a first heart attack at age 27, and most cancers don't happen at age 23. This is a big miss as physicians, although we graduated, as you mentioned from the Harvards and Hopkins, we were never told, we were told it's genetics, right? Genetics is barely few percentage point why you get a heart attack. But why you get it is because of your lifestyle. And your lifestyle is accelerating the age of your cells. The inner age, which is the most important now unit to measure health is the biological age of your body and your cells as the most important thing when you are 70. If you are 65 or you're 60 from the inside. You are 10 years away from the Alzheimer's, the cancer, the heart attack or whatever you're gonna have you were supposed to hit. And this is today we're linking calorie restriction to slowing down aging Calorie restriction and fasting to slowing down aging. By slowing down aging, you slow down, you hitting one of the four diseases, which is decreasing 87% of your chances to reach the death. And this is very, I said, we're gonna change somebody's life today because this is something that nobody's talking about or few are talking about. But that's the essence of the only proven today method to slow down aging.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 9:23

Again, there is a really long history of this type of research. Most of it, as you've mentioned, has been on calorie restriction. And to be clear for folks listening, if you're calorie restricting, if that's a direction you wanna go in, it is critical that you're still reaching your optimal nutritional needs at the same time. Limiting food does not mean limiting nutrition. It means limiting calories, and this used to be called the Diet. there was at least one I know, and maybe more because I'm not a student of this, so much of this literature, I've certainly read my share. But wonderful sort of serendipity type of by chance human experiment in which a, the predecessor of Dr. Longo and yourself, Dr. Walford, who was a physician in the biosphere two experiment, quote unquote in the early nineties, he and his crew were faced with a problem, which was they planned on being able to produce enough food to live in the biosphere for a couple of years, but as experiments sometimes go, they don't always go perfect. And it's my understanding that the absorption of carbon dioxide by the concrete structure itself led to the dying off of many of the ecosystems within the biosphere to the extent that they were only able to produce about 70% of their nutritional needs, which they survived on walford's life work. And after that great two year experiment was over there was a testing done and it was published and they certainly showed changes in metabolic parameters that underlie the process of aging.

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 11:14

Yeah. So I wanna a little bit recap and add the science to what you just mentioned, right? Ideally you were gonna say, okay, decrease of cardiac consumption by 25 to 30%. This is not gonna be feasible to most people. We know that most people, first of all, we are over consuming calories, so just increasing by 25, 30 would just get us back to normal. But then you have to go a little bit below, below that. Valter Longo was named at Time Top 50 most influential people in health, and he was the student of Roy Walford and he was observing how beneficial was it to decrease the calories at the same time, how challenging it is, right? And on the long term, you don't wanna decrease metabolic rate, you don't wanna lose bones. So when he studied all this, he came up with this newly scientific intervention, which is called the Longevity Diet. So how can we eat normal calories? But, and at the same time, giving the body the effect of a little bit of a lower calorie, right? Because that's the ideal word. How can we reshape what we're eating today so that within almost the same amount of calorie, maybe a little bit less, I get less height of spikes of insulin IGF and how can I add fasting in and there to get less frequent spikes of insulin IGF? So how can I get the benefits of cardio restriction without restricting the calorie? And this was his life worth work called The Longevity Diet, and the book called The Longevity Diet was an Amazon bestseller. I really recommend everyone listening to us here to buy that book, the Longevity Diet, by Valter Longo And it really details the combination of fasting and the combination of a formulation of nutrition that we can eat. Close to pescatarian depending on age and cycles in life. But how can we be plant-based? Take most of the animal proteins from fish and from time to time, especially after age 65, add a little bit of meat. Flex it this work of flexitarian and this is how you can make sure, because in plant-based sources of proteins and carbs plant-based have a lot of complex carb so they don't spike insulin like sugar. Sugar is a very short branch. Quickly absorb spikes insulin as a reaction. Complex carbs that you can consume from plant sources, and fruits and vegetables, and legumes, and nuts. This base of your food does not get absorbed super fast. And does not lead to high spike of insulin or IGF. Same thing because you're taking most of the plant-based sources of protein. So you have complex carb plant sources of proteins. They don't spike insulin and IGF. So you're getting the benefit of calorie section without restricting calories. Then number two, how can you do fasting from time to time? And most importantly is the 12 hours of Circadian fasting. I know we talked today a lot about 16 hours and 18 hours and 20 hours, and some people should do those if they're severely overweight, have a high risk, et cetera. But if you're not severely overweight, you don't have high risk factors doing what we call Circadian fasting. The 12 hours only is Very beneficial. One of the most common denominator to the centenarians, we study a lot of people living a hundred and beyond the centenarians. One of the most common feature, they don't snack late at night. They eat breakfast, by the way, but they do what we call the front end to intermittent fasting, right? A lot of the science on intermittent fasting, you say, oh, it's great, but, and that, but comes from people skipping the morning breakfast where your body needs the calories because this is when your essential organs are performing. Your brain, your heart, your kidneys, and then you binge eat late at night. And that's the wrong way of doing it. The right way of doing it, which is what people living a hundred and beyond do. They eat their dinner at seven, eight, spend some time walking, talking, or what? And there's no snack. There's no late night eating. So they sleep without spike in insulin in IGF. They're not Ana, they're not very anabolic, they're not storing everything. They ate into fat and increasing inflammation. And then the next day after 12, 13, 14 hours, they're eating their breakfast and then they're going about their day. So that's a very important practice. Plus what we uncovered, and this is only us. Is the impact of the prolonged fasting, right? We were observing a lot of our ancestors. The winter times there was no food. Even nature. If you think about nature goes to a long winter and it drops the leaves. It originates in the spring and it flourish in the summer, right? So there's a cycle in life where sometimes a longer stress gets you to regenerate. We see this in a lot of animal models. We see this in a lot in nature itself, in trees, in plants. So we were looking at the human version of this, can human regenerate? Can you get rid of old six cells and push younger cells? And what we discovered is prolonged fasting, which was happening to our ancestors during winter times when there was wars, when there were disasters, when just fruits and vegetables were not easily available before optimizing supply chain and hunting, et cetera. These longer be fast. They were essential to regenerating and rejuvenating the cells of the body. There's only one thing today known to science, to rejuvenate the cells. It's prolonged fasting, a prolonged stress. Maybe you can get close to it with a CrossFit and running miles and miles. But when you fast for three to five days will be discovered. The body depletes first. You have some, it is like a company with no revenues. If you don't have no revenues, you're gonna go first to bank. You have a checking account by the savings account. The body does the same thing. The first goes to glycogen, the first few hours. That's the checking account of the body. Then by end of day one of fasting early day two, you go to the fat. Then end of day two, again, if you don't have money, you depleted your checking, your savings. Now you go to the bank or use your credit card, you get a loan. You get a credit card, you abuse your credit, and then the buddy on day two tells deliver, Hey, neogenesis, help us a little bit, dumping new calories into the bloodstream. But by end of day two, you started day three, and now you're depleting your reserves again, going back to the company example, if you have no more money, you're gonna restructure the company. That's the stress you need to take. True, and you can always improve your company. But if you wanna do a true restructure, you go into the stress of financial, no revenues, you fix sales, you fix marketing, you do this, you do that, a true restructure. So day three of fasting is when the sales, the body tells the sales, Hey, I cannot feed you any longer. You gotta restructure, you gotta use the debris, the organelle, detox from everything you have stored. Try to fix your DNA, try to fix how you operate, and this is where the cell optimizes itself. And then when the stress goes longer on day four and day five, and the body tells the six cells, Hey you're too old to fix. You're just here to create inflammation. You're just here to consume calories. I'm gonna get rid of you. So this is where we see the body on day five, triaging. This is the last restructure piece. You start doing a one deeper round of what we call regeneration in the body. You're telling the zombie cells, the old cells, the six cells. I'm gonna get rid of you. You're just consuming calories, no output. You're creating inflammation. And I'm gonna push the younger stem cells to replace you. They're cost effective in the way they deal with calories. They don't do mistakes. This is the regenerative part of fasting, which happens on day five.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 18:41

And beyond it, meaning that when you break that fast, does that further spur the regenerative process?

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 18:49

Of course. So the company that just got restructured, now you bring it funds, it's operating at its peak. It's the most cost effective company and it flourishes so well. So the refeeding, as you're saying after the fasting is actually very critical for the new cells and the body to flourish, but now in a more healed, more rejuvenative, younger way. This is where these cycles of five days will help your body biologically stay younger, right? Number one, you lost a lot of fat. Remember you're using the bank. You lost fat, which resets your metabolic health, decrease blood pressure. If you have blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, you have a lot of anti-inflammation, a lot of metabolic improvements. On top of that, what's unique to prolonged fasting that no other intervention today in medicine can do is the rejuvenation of the cells. And remember, every cell in the body lives on calories. So every cell in the body is feeling the stress when there's fasting and is trying to get proportional outage Reation, the combination of resetting your metabolism and rejuvenating your cells together made out of this five days of fasting. One of the best ways to rejuvenate the age of the cells, the aging score of the cells to reset metabolism, and potentially onboarding a true longevity lifestyle step.

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Dr. Ken Sharlin: 22:08

So we've talked about calorie restriction and we've moved into fasting and intermittent fasting. you guys are doing is a little bit different in that you have this fasting mimicking diet. So it's not like a water fast that some people are familiar with. Can we talk about the mimicking aspect of it? ProLon actually does involve eating?

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 22:33

of course. Science phase one is five days is critical for the body iteration. Science phase two, no company wants to go without funds for log period. The stress that regen raised the cells is the same stress that makes people tired and hungry and so this is when we applied more science to come and develop a nutritional formulation of precise nutrition that mimics the fasting benefit on the cells while you are eating the food. And this is why it's called fasting mimicking diet. So when we discovered the impact of water fast. We went into human trials on water fasting and people couldn't do it. It's difficult, right? No. CEO wants to go without funds for time and restructure and it's painful. There's a lot of gain, there's a lot of pain. So how can we keep the gain and take the pain off by developing a precision nutrition formulation that can mimic the benefits of fast? So how we were able to do it, we successfully did that after$48 million in research in r and d, we put together 18 universities to do the trials with us. Stanford, university of Genoa, university of Berlin university of Miami, university of Indiana. So put 18 universities, and they helped us all together research this new formulation called the Fasting Mimicking Diet. So how does it work? It's all plant-based and it's precisely done on the macros. So carbs, proteins, and fat. The mixture, the formulation mixture that we have, and it's all natural. There's no chemical. This is the, one of the actually cleanest, healthiest food you can put in your body. It's made of plant-based, again, some academia is nuts, A lot of nuts in it. And it's presented in a form of a morning bar for breakfast. You have then the soups for lunch and some snacks with it. You have an afternoon chocolate based snack, by the way. But of course no butter, no milk, no. It's a true chocolate, not the chocolates that they sell us today. And then you have at night soups again for dinner and another accompanying, food with it. So it is, there's a breakfast, lunch, and dinner all plant-based. And the goal was on a systemic level. When the food gets into the blood, it doesn't over spike. Insulin doesn't over spike. IGF. Going back to the concept, this is how the body recognizes carbs. And this is how we started, we was like, how does the body registers food? If carbs go into the blood, how does the body know or the cells it, because insulin tells the cells, Hey, through the PK and REST pathway, there's food, carbs are coming in. IGF tells the body through the mTOR receptor that there's proteins. So if you don't spike both of them, the body's thinking maybe I got some nutrients, but I don't feel like I can, I'm safe enough to go off fasting and defend myself. We started studying how much of the macros could go through those before the switch of satiety is on. So how much I can still funnel food before the cell says, okay, I'm not fasting. And then the diet basically has nutrients that go around the receptors and some goes through receptor without triggering that satiety or that switch on level. This is how the fasting mimicing diet was born.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 25:43

What is the approximate macronutrient proportion?

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 25:47

There's most of the fat in it is the brain-like fat. So the ke the ketone like, short machine fatty acids, and then you have plant-based sources of protein around that 11 to 13%, and you have carbs close to that same ratio, a little bit above that. So it's a well-balanced and you have the healthy fats, you have the proteins, and you have the carbs. I'm hesitating insulin because that's not the only thing. There's actually multiple factors. There's the timing of the day, morning when you wake up, you have, insulin is naturally high in the body, and you're coming from anabolism to catabolism so you can feed more up upstream morning and lunch versus, versus night. There's a liquid that you drink throughout the day that we provide to protect metabolic rate and protect the muscle, by the way. One of the biggest success we had with the fasting mimicking diet is that it does not lead to muscle loss, and this is very important right there. At the very few days, you see a muscle mass, little bit decrease. This is because a lot of glycogen, as we said, is consumed first and glycogen. A lot of it is in the muscle mass, so that's an artifact of that. But when you do the muscle performance and when you measure right after, then the muscle mass is protected. We have published three times about muscle protection. Why muscle is protected with every time you do cardio restriction. Even now with the GLP one, the biggest side effects, you lose muscle and a lot of doctors are putting their patients on ProLon. ProLon is the name of the fasting mimickin Diet ProLon for promoting longevity, P-R-O-L-O-N. You lose a lot of weight, as we said, it's fat driven weight loss. You're improving metabolic markets, cholesterol, triglycerides, et cetera, and you rejuvenating the cells while protecting muscles versus any other intervention. Why is that? So the fasting making Diet Pro works as a stress to the body, not as a deficit. It's only five days. It's not a chronic color section. And this is what, this is how vaulter was genius versus Roy Walford. He said, I don't wanna deplete for long term. I will do an acute stress rerate the cells and feed the longevity diet after less, which has the 12 hours intermittent fasting to not spike insulin IGF over the night and have complex carbs and plant-based source of proteins so that we don't have spikes. So you find a way to mimic the benefit on longevity of chronic Calorie restriction without restricting people under longevity diet. And three times a year you do the fasting mimicking diet to prolong to region rate. And there's something even color section couldn't do. To regenerate the age of the cells.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 28:15

I guess sometimes I ask questions that are a little bit loaded, but I figured that there was more to it than simply macronutrient proportions. I've certainly in just in the clinic where we use the fasting mimicking diet with some of our patients, I've had some people say why do I need to, why do I need to buy that? I'll just make up my own fasting mimicking diet. And no, you know that there's a lot that goes into those calculations, so to speak.

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 28:43

100% and two reasons. Your answers should be two reasons. One is what you said is very complicated and I wanted to finish the muscle protection. I was thinking, what did I miss? It's a threat. So having the same, the macros that we tested, again,$48 million took us two decades to test it with a lot of universities before we bring it to people. One mistake on one macro that the cell processes, if you trigger the PKA pathway or the REST pathway or the, it's like a ketogenic diet, then you don't regenerate with the ketogenic diet because the Torah pathway is triggered enough and the cells they don't regulate. So any one mistake you do on the macros or the timing, et cetera, then the body is on a low, on a very low calorie diet. But it's not a fasting mimicking regenerative diet. This is very important. Number two, we have a specific way to protect muscle, and I wanna go back and answer that when it is very important that the body perceives prolong as a stress, not as a low carry diet. As a stress the way it is, the body shoots UPG growth, ous and hormone of stress and cortisol. So cortisol decreased inflammation in the body with the FMD and is very helpful for inflammation, for autoimmunity, et cetera, but also growth hormone. this is natural because when you fast think about a hundred thousand years ago, and the nature where humans, there's no food. I wanna protect muscle, right? I want to shoot the growth hormone so that, and cortisol. So I'm going and finding my next food, vegetable or animal. the difference with ProLon, the muscle is fed, it's not starving. This is why fasting on water, you lose muscle. Intermittent fasting, sometimes you lose muscle. Fasting with a fasting mimicking diet growth hormone is high. There's complex protein and carb and mini spikes of insulin and IGF coming to the muscle. So the muscle is actually, is fed and it's called to be maintained rather than being depleted in the other chronic calorie restricted diet or Mediterranean diet or any diet you do on a long term that has some factor of Calorie section. This is a big secret and this is why reason number one, like you said, people cannot. It's 77 ingredients. A lot of science cannot copy ProLon. Number two, just tell them we price ProLon. ProLon is between 1 75 and$200 exactly what you would spend. And for most people less on food, beverage and supplements, it has your food, it has your drinks, it has your supplements for five days. So if you divide three meals per day times five days, that's 15 meals and 15 meals, we're charging 1 75 to 200, which means we're charging 12 and a half dollars per meal. we priced it in a way to help everyone because it's an ethical company. The founder, Volter Longo, who owns most of the shares, has donated those to the Create Cures Foundation. So it's, we're a four non-profit, almost company. A lot of big heart in this company. This is why we do ethical science on nutrition. So we priced it in a way that nobody can come and say, I cannot pay for it. most people on the coast, if you're in New York and LA and San Francisco, you pay$200 sometimes in a day or two on your food and beverages. But we priced it equal to what? An average, American would pay for food, beverages, and supplements over five days.

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Dr. Ken Sharlin: 33:29

Now we've talked about the macronutrients or the timing, the physiological effects the stress, the tress if you will. Having done a fasting m diet several times, of course the food itself has a micronutrient profile, and then there are a few supplements, not a lot, but a few supplements that are part of the FMD ProLon. I'm just wondering from the perspective of, as you looked at the micronutrient profile, what did you find were critical? What did you find? maybe you don't actually technically meet all of your micronutrient needs in those five days. You're not gonna suddenly become deficient, in a given nutrient. What was really critical and what did you leave out, and why?

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 34:18

We didn't mean to leave out anything. This is why while giving the food, we decided to add supplements because we wanted to supplement whatever. The food that mimics fasting did not include in the, in minerals and vitamins in the micronutrients. So the supplementation, the ideation behind the supplementation wasn't to bring specifically a supplement related to fasting or not. It was mainly we looked at the macros and the micro and the final formulation, and we were like, okay, to meet the minimum daily value of the micros, what shall we supplement with? And this is how we came up with the supplementation. It was exactly to satisfy the daily minimum recommended value on the micronutrients. it wasn't in that perspective. It wasn't a perspective of meeting the minimum required nutrient recommendations for the person.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 35:05

Makes sense. So could we move into talking a little bit about disease prevention and treatment? We're not going to suggest that, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but ProLon has a specific disease treatment indication, but some of the evidence-based science is very compelling, both in terms of disease prevention like cancer that you brought up looking at diseases of the brain, like multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's. are we learning right now when it comes to implementing this sort of approach and either preventing disease or potentially treating a disease as part of an overall treatment plan?

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 35:49

Just to clarify a little bit again, as a CEO, I have the responsibility for claiming and for the claims And so we, because food by the FDA, although the FDA governs Food and Drug Administration, the words prevent and treat are restricted to drugs. Unfortunately, by the way, because now we're discovering a lot of nutrition and other stress, sleep, exercise, they're very powerful, especially on metabolic causes of disease. You can take a pill for Diabetes every day and hundred of millions take metformin, and then they add another sensitizer, and then they add GLP one, then they add insulin and nobody's getting cured or treated, right? but we have to respect that. We have to respect that treatment and prevention and cure is only limited to drugs in our field. In nutrition, we cannot use those words, but because of the health outcomes of our trials, they were so potent. On many patients, when they tried the fasting mimicking diet, medical associations came together and they issued a new position paper defining two new claims, two new words, the word regression, meaning you are needing less medication, you're going backward instead of using treating or curing. And the word remission, it means this patient does not require medication at least. So we're not saying he's cured, we're saying for now he's not requiring medication. The word regression and remission are words we use in our sphere to make sure that we're compliant with FTC and FDA without crossing the line. But I hear your excitement because we do actually have 47 now, clinical trials. We just started our 47th clinical trial. We do operate as a nutri tech. Like a biotech. We do true randomized clinical trial in the big universities, and we put patients with health outcomes. We measure the impact of the intervention on health outcomes. Not to say cure or treat but as much as possible to be an aid to the current standard of care, whatever the patient's taking for cancer, for Diabetes, we come in with our nutritional intervention and we give them a higher chance of regressing or remitting from their health conditions. The big sweet spot that we studied is obviously Diabetes, because Diabetes, unfortunately medicine has not dealt well with Diabetes. You don't hear somebody becoming diabetic. He takes a prescription for six months and then he's not diabetic. That doesn't happen. We all. Un conspired to accept that this is a progressive disease and we just, people we doomed them when they make a diagnosis and we keep giving them prescription drugs that only balances blood sugar. And that's it. And we close our eyes to what's happening to the rest of the body and the aging and the fact that we keep adding medication and the fact that medications themselves actually increase the fat and insulin resistance by just moving the carbs to the cells and it is pushing the progression of the disease. We took a completely different approach, right? We said, okay, why? What are the three pillars of Diabetes? Diabetes happens for three main reasons. Yes, you can have genetic predisposition, but there's three much bigger reasons. Number one is aging. We just talked about how the fasting mimicking dietary versus the biological age of the cells and helps the cells deal better. And rejuvenate. Number two is muscle loss. After age 40, we lose 0.5% per year of our muscle. 80% of the carbs in the body are burned by muscle. So once we start losing muscle, the same carb that we eat before age 40 or after age 40, they're dealt with differently. They get start stored more because they're burned less at age 45 and 50. So the less muscle you have, the more you're gonna store the excess calories instead of burning them into fat. And as fat leads insulin resistance. So muscle loss is number two. And number three is insulin resistance. The fat you have in the body, at least insulin resistance, and then that took, takes you into pre-Diabetes and Diabetes. So one of the ideal way to unlock all three because diabetic medications, they unlock only insulin resistance. Then GLP ones, they're unlocking insulin resistance. But they're not unlocking aging, and then they're actually inducing a big muscle loss. So the fasting mimicking diet is reversing the biological. A score of the body is the melting fat, especially central fat. We have now multiple articles showing decreased fat in the liver, decreased fat around the heart, around the kidneys. So the central fat is the most insulin resistance and fasting taps specifically into that fat. And number three protects lean body mass. So now you hit the true three root causes of why you develop Diabetes. And this is why we're helping patients. We're saying if you do the fasting mimicking diet and for those who are interested that have blood pressure, blood sugar, blood cholesterol, you can go to LRA Health. That's the, this is where the program is. And you do the fasting mimicking diet month one, five days only in the. Five days only. Month, two, five days only. Month three, four, and five and six, six month total, 30 days. That's it. Again, plant-based, healthy, nothing artificial chemical. And you do it for six months and then two thirds of the patients in six months, two thirds starts dropping their medication most or decreasing full medication. Six months you lose 22 pounds. On average, insulin resistance drops by 59%. And then when we went head to head with medications, when you add the fasting mimic diet to the treatment, there's 700% chance increase in remission. So we have a clear path today with a fasting mimicking diet program. Again, it's ara health.com and of course we're showing benefits on blood pressure, on inflammation, on cholesterol. So everyone here above age 40 listening to us, there's 87% chance that you have a Cardiometabolic health factor. Go to Elra Health and you're gonna see our program, plant-based, no chemical, no other vessel. We don't ask you to go and run and change and do. It's five days only a month, and it's gonna help you unlock the triad of metabolic health issue and at least help you a little bit better manage the condition.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 42:08

Is it fair to say that results when looking at other conditions as a neurologist, I see a lot of Alzheimer's MS are encouraging with, even without necessarily using remission or so forth, just very encouraging findings in some of these diseases that affect the brain.

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 42:32

Your question is worth a full episode because brain disease also is redefined now, right? Alzheimer's being called type three Diabetes. We're seeing microplastic now behind a lot of Alzheimer's triggering an inflammation in the brain. We're seeing insulin resistance being behind a lot of the reasons why you get Alzheimer's, we're seeing leaky gut, getting foreign in ingredients into your bloodstream, and now crossing the brain blood barrier and increasing inflammation brain. So Alzheimer's, which before was like the APOE gene, but then if the APOE gene was behind it, why you don't get it at age 20? Why you need to age first, why? Why your body has to be exposed to something that long. And number two, why not everyone with the APOE gene has it? Or why people without the APOE gene have Alzheimer's, right? Because again, a portion of it is the predisposition like Diabetes, but it's a lifestyle health condition. It's a chronic inflammation. It's what crosses the brain blood barrier, and it's a lot of insulin resistance. So we do have promising data in mice, in humans. We don't have any health outcomes yet. We are in trials for Alzheimer's. The problem is the brain is a very difficult, the brain doesn't regenerate, right? So if you go into a car accident, right? And you break your hand, you tear. Say you have a big cut here. You break your shoulder and you hit your head and you're bleeding in the head. We know that stitching your hand is gonna regenerate the skin stress, right? It heals after a couple of months. you're gonna lock your shoulder after surgery for six months, but it's gonna. The problem is the brain, whatever is damaged in the brain doesn't get healed because the brain is mainly a fat organ, right? the axons are fat, and there's not a lot of stem cells in the brain. So we do not expect major benefits directly on the cells of the brain. But as a prevention, as a early intervention, a lot of the neurological age related brain health conditions seems now to be tied back to lifestyle, the stress, the nutrition, the sleep, the exercise, and the social capital. And this is where we see a lot of opportunity for the fasting mimic making diet to come and help people lead a longevity lifestyle.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 44:44

Biomarkers that could be very helpful in looking at this. And as someone who's seen, his share of, atrophied brains on MRIs and of course the clinical manifestations of advanced Alzheimer's disease. We do also know that when people are caught in that very early stage of mild cognitive impairment due to the neuropathological changes, early stage Alzheimer's, which is really distinguished by impairment and what are called instrumental activities of daily living that we can see changes in the brain. We can measure, for example, what I see move the needle that moves most quickly is a reduction in the amyloid beta 42, which should be not surprising to any of us who are interested in the science because that does tend to be more of a marker of inflammation than which is more biomarker.

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 45:44

Exactly. And you ask also, just to answer your question about MS and autoimmune in general. I wanna mention that because when you open the old books of medicine, when a patient came with autoimmune pori acids, lupus, et cetera, ms, the first treatment was fasting. When you fast. The patient with autoimmune, the body is I cannot spend calories. I'm fasting. And one of the biggest calories spender, if when you have inflammation, when the blood, white blood cells are replicating are secreting cytokines and other, pro-inflammatory markers, they're just inducing a higher burning rate in the body that the body does not tolerate when you're fasting. So the first thing we see when you do the fasting mimic diet in mice and now in humans, we just finished a trial on Crohn's disease with Stanford, ulcerative colitis with University of Miami, and we're doing MS trials in other places. So we have amassed a lot of data on how fasting and fasting mimicking can decrease inflammation We see the body getting rid of the T-cells that are by mistake, attacking the organs. When you do the five day, and it pushes the new, younger naive, what we call them T cells to be produced so they don't attack the organ. There's decrease of inflammation and there's rejuvenation within the white blood cells. At the same time, the damage organ skin and psoriatic acids, whatever the guts lining into in Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, the damage organ is doing autophagy, what we call the day three rejuvenation of the cell. So it's healing as well with fasting, right? Decreasing the attack and you're speeding up the healing process of the damaged organ. This is why we're very bullish actually on bringing the fasting mimicking diet as part of the protocol, the standard of care today to increase the regression or the remission, chances for patients with these conditions.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 47:29

I have my own personal professional journey has been one where, academically trained neurologist becomes somewhat disillusioned with the standard of care. Having a background in endurance sports, which led me to really study the impact of sleep and science of movement and nutrition on my performance on the day of the race, for example, or my ability to train, and then realizing that these principles were applicable in the clinic itself. Ultimately giving a name, functional medicine. Regenerative medicine. For me the pendulum has actually swung back in the middle saying, I'm really an integrative neurologist. I bring all the tools. And some people really do benefit from the medicines or need that in addition to. But I also say that look, the people who do best on the drugs are the ones who are also integrating the lifestyle piece.'cause there are plenty of people who get on the meds and then, they don't thrive. I happen to, I'm not trying to make fun anybody or anything, but I was speaking to a pharmacist yesterday and he was saying that their pharmacy is located a block or two away from a donut place and they have a pull through window at the pharmacy. People stop in, they'll drop off their prescription, they go to the donut for GLP one for, the semaglutide tirzepatide, and then they come around to the drive through window to pick up their prescription with a box of donuts next to them. That's not gonna work for them. And of course, I'm, offering an extreme example, but the combination of these lifestyle factors plus the medicines may really be optimal for some folks. Have there been any encouraging findings in respect to psychiatric illness, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, any of the things that affect so many folks out there?

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 49:28

You mentioned we get a lot of anecdotal data on people, obviously sending us thank yous or benefits on their mood, on their energy, on their mental focus, on their brain fog. and we've done surveys, so there's definitely more what, when, what we can claim is where we get more than 50 or 60% of people responding positive to it. So we could say energy, we can say mood, we can say brain fog, clarity, mental clarity, et cetera. But we did partner with the University of Palermo in Italy to do a randomized clinical trial on depression. we didn't know if we would've had any impact. So we just did 10 patients, 10 and 10, just a quick small trial to see if there's any benefit. And typically it's very difficult to find a small number. Statist significant data, unless it's really statistical significant. And actually there were a couple of metrics that were statist significant, which is the self-esteem and the happiness. They were actually very statistically significant with people with depression. And the outcome of the trial was very encouraging to do a bigger trial, which were about to start on using the fast mimickin diet for clinically diagnosed depression. We're not talking about, all of us here feeling a little bit down, which the fast mimickin diet, again, can help you with energy, brain focus, mental fog, clarity, all of that. We're talking about clinical depression and doing it as part of the supporting protocol to the current standard of care. So we don't have the results yet, but we have a promising early or smaller trial.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 50:54

what are you most excited about? What's coming around the bend or, what's got you really charged up? What's the future?

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 51:02

I'm excited about three big things, which is number one, I think we have enough, we have 47 clinical trials, but probably is the most tested scientifically nutrition formulation that we're seeing is helping the body in a pleotropic way in blood sugar, blood pressure, blood, less aging weight in a positive, natural way. What I explained to you today is sophisticated, but a sophisticated explanation of what was naturally happening for hundreds of thousands of years. We did not have Uber Eats at night. We were not eating every day four or five times. We didn't have pieces of cakes as humans, right? We were eating, sleeping 12 hours. Waking up eating the next day. Sometimes we go two, three days, five days without food and sometimes there's food. So what we're trying to do, what I'm excited mostly about is that science today partnered with nutrition and tradition through us to bring back what humans evolved to have as an optimal diet, which is eating every day a pescatarian flexitarian, right? We as humans, I know these theories, cavemen and whatever, and eat meat. This is, we were not living in caves. There's no water in caves nor vegetables. We were living around rivers. Around the river is where you have grass and greens and fruits and vegetables and trees and river is drinkable. Water and river has the fish. We were eating a lot of fruits and vegetables from the trees and the grass Then we learned how to hunt. Then we added some meat and this is where the flexitarian comes from. This is who we were. And we evolved to where science is now helping us to identify that there was a longevity diet. We also identified that periods of fasting were very important, is why we say do prolong three times per year. So that together is very exciting to me. Now what's even more exciting is policymaking is joining us, right? So now food is, medicine is a big chapter, and the government CMS start reimbursing food as medicine. There are codes to reimburse food. We actually started getting reimbursed on some of our nutritional meals as a drug. So bringing true food as medicine. Preventing rather than treating only late stage. The beauty of all this, because we used to be like, yeah, you prevent, is it going to cost a lot? The return on investment, the societal return on investment and the direct healthcare return on investment are both positive. Meaning whatever you spend as a government today on reimbursing food is leading to savings afterwards. And with the current administration there's a big focus on food as medicine and also on cleaning. You mentioned the donut story. The problem is if you put a donut store and it's beautiful and it's tasty next to a busy pharmacy, people gonna make, we made the unhealthy choice easy. And you need the interventions that the government is doing today, which is taking off bad ingredients of, exposing the labels. We're the only company that declares things and a lot of companies, not the only, maybe there are others, but most companies, they hide a lot of ingredients and they don't show, they don't have to show them on the label because they're less than 2% each. You can have 10, so 20%. But so we, for the first time, we're seeing concrete steps to force companies to only have clean labels, declare who they are, take off chemicals, take off artificial. We're cleaning those on a positive listing. This is the negative, what we call negative listing. You cannot use those on a positive listing. Food is medicine. As the government, we're gonna reimburse it. We as a company, we spend 26 years of science to bring a true food is medicine called the Fast Significant Diet. And this is one of the most exciting couple of years in my life, seeing that there's appreciation. The sciences here, we're selling something natural. We're not bringing artificials and chemicals and biologics. GLP one injection is a, is a poison from a lizard. Nobody will show you that, but it is how it's extracted, so at the end of the day we're on the right side of history and it excites me a lot that there's recognition and a full market for full food is medicine.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 55:06

If someone wanted to, of all, I would wanna direct people to where they can actually. Get the fast mimicking diet. one of the things I'm a huge fan of is metrics of measuring, right? So as they prepare to do this diet, they make their purchase, their kit comes in the mail, they've got more coming'cause they're gonna do a minimum of three, maybe more. We've talked a little bit about aging, for example, impacting biological aging. Are there a few basic metrics that you recommend for folks as a before and after so that they can really not only just feel and function better, but Actually no.

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 55:47

For sure. So first, take your weight before and after. Then do the biometric weight. So look at lean body mass and fat, because you're gonna be happy from much more fat you lost than muscle which most diets will not do that. Take your blood pressure, right? This is symptomatic or visual, then blood. If you wanna do a blood draw and measure in the blood, take your cholesterol triglyceride a blood sugar. These are the most important. And CRP for inflammation. If you wanna do your full bio age, there's a pheno age that being sold. You gotta add albumin and alkali phosphatase. And in two cholesterol, triglycerides, sorry, tri cholesterol, CRP and HPA one c. That if you submit this to some companies, they will give you your biological age, but basically cholesterol, triglycerides, CRP, HPA one C and blood sugar obviously, plus your weight, your lean body mass versus fat loss. And your blood pressure. Do them before and after, and you'll feel you'll see, you'll witness. And also, there's a lot of experiential feeling with ProLon where you feel the energy, the mental clarity. When you lose a lot of fat and you protect muscle, you have very high energy, you feel high, you feel so empowered, and your cells have just rejuvenated. We didn't mention that, but that process of rejuvenation is called autophagy, and it won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016. So this is very validated now. So you'll feel it, you can measure it and it will boost. We call them the theory of tiny wins. Every five day is a tiny win on your longevity path. So it just brings you back to a youthful you to a more performing you and results and you start, doing more and more.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 57:28

That is wonderful. Dr. Antoun, if folks do wanna learn more about fasting mimicking, diet, ProLon Elra, how to get the kits shipped to them and so forth, where do they go?

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 57:39

If you just wanna buy ProLon. And we have other longevity products there. We talked about the longevity diet, but if you just wanna buy the products, you go to ProLon life.com and if you wanna be coached with the longevity dieticians and you have a health objective, say I have a little bit of excess weight. I have some cholesterol, I have some triglyceride, I have some blood sugar, some blood pressure. If you have any of those metabolic markers, we have a program that you be coach for it and you'll be actually supported by L. Longevity Nutritionist and this is L-Neutrahealth.com. L-Neutrahealth.com. L is for longevity through nutrition. And this is where you get a food program. They're both priced. Again, people see a hundred seventy five, two hundred, two hundred fifty. It's exactly the price of your food and beverage and pills that you spend over five days. So this is just instead of going to Whole Foods or whatever you shop at, you're shopping with us. Plus it's a longevity nutrition, plus you get the dietician to support you.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 58:36

And the blood work that you mentioned is very straightforward, folks. These are some of the most basic tests that we do in the clinic. They're not expensive. I was just wondering if you guys do.

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 58:47

We don't do it in-house, but I know the big ones. The big ones do that, you can get easily. We don't have that package with us, but you can get it with any of the LabCorps or the others out there.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 58:58

And many of you probably had, just a cholesterol profile. Maybe not everybody had a C-reactive protein, but it's a very. Very basic test. I'm not trying to plug anybody or anything, but I do know function Health, for example, is accessible to folks and that's a pretty extensive panel. But if you're looking for a way, if you just for whatever reason, don't wanna talk to your doctor about it, and I would certainly encourage you to do'cause you're gonna ultimately really amaze your doctor and the kind of outcomes you get. That would be another way that I can think of to get those labs done. Now you're gonna be getting a lot more labs than that, but there's value in those labs as well. Dr. Atoun, it's been a fantastic hour. I really appreciate your time. I hope we get to talk soon and really focus on the papers that are coming out and really get into the statistics and the numbers and the outcomes, and talk more and more about, disease regression and remission. I truly believe that I have cases on my desk that I've been collecting of Alzheimer's disease remission. measured not just cognitive improvement, but measured biological markers of the disease. Tell me that it is possible to put diseases like Alzheimer's into remission. So I'm just saying that from personal experience, folks believe it. Don't get drawn into these narratives to, oh, I, it's in my family. I was inevitable. Once you get it, you have it, there's nothing you can do about it. All these narratives are just really false narratives. So anyway, thank you. Thank you so much for being on the Healthy Brain Toolbox.

Dr. Joseph Antoun: 1:00:34

I appreciate you. I think you're an angel and catalyst of change, and by bringing folks like us, you and exposing them, exposing us to your crowd, you're just helping them, change their life and appreciate you for that. And hopefully we'll talk again soon.

Q AND A: 1:00:51

Hi everyone. Dr. Ken Sharlin here with the Healthy Brain Toolbox. I'd love to hear from you. If you have general questions about brain health, neurology, or the science of keeping your brain sharp. Send them to questions@healthybraintoolbox.com. I'll be reading your questions on the upcoming episodes. Please remember, these need to be general questions, can't answer personal medical questions, or provide individual medical advice. So if you've ever wondered about brain health strategies, lifestyle tips, new research, or the future of neuroscience, send those questions in. I look forward to hearing from you and who knows? You might even hear your question featured on the show.

1:01:40

Thank you for tuning into the Healthy Brain Toolbox podcast. I hope today's conversation gave you new insights to protect and nourish your brain. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with anyone looking to take control of their health. Until next time, stay sharp and keep learning.