Keeping lunch, i do it myself, it seems to be very, very good. Keeping breakfast does not seem to be good at all right. So there's study after study after study showing decreased uh lifespan for people just keep practicing well that well this doctor longer i'm in deep. Then if that's the case, because i don't think i've eaten breakfast in 25 years, the garyvee audio experience vayner nation.

It is great to be back on the garyvee audio experience uh, as we said earlier in the year, a lot less interviews, but ones that are more meaningful to me around. Subject matters that i'm interested in people. I'm interested in events that i'm interested in and today will be no different uh dr longo is with us i'm going to allow walter to introduce himself in full detail and we're going to talk about something that i've been doing my whole life long before it became Something that i think is on many more people's radars and we're going gon na poke and prod around the history of it, the current of it uh entrepreneurship and and many other things that uh i want to get to in this episode. But let's get into uh the intro part uh, dr longo, how are you my friend, good good? How are you i'm well, why don't you take the floor for two three four minutes and tell everybody who you are full full pledge give us some context? Okay! Well, i'm a biochemist by training trained at ucla uh, also a neurobiologist by training and i'm now a professor of bio gerontology, so studying aging, basically and uh uh malsa the director of the longevity institute at usc, and then i i run a program on cancer.

A molecular oncology in milan, italy, um and that's where we do all the most of the cancer work that we were carrying out and yeah. My interest has always been since i was 19 years old, aging um. Well i used to be a musician. Then i i was uh so uh enthusiastic about aging and and uh.

You know excited about this world and i was just surprised back then that nobody that everybody was not interested in this and and i have to say in the last uh 30 years - everything changed back. Then aging was viewed as a crazy uh science and you know we were asked at ucla. Why would you work on aging and now everything has changed but yeah. So that's all i've been doing uh since then.

Biochemistry then, genetics of aging uh was involved in the discovery, some of the the key genes in the the regular lifespan, including the torah as cis kinase pathway in aging regulation and then eventually, we, i was a student of roy walford roy back then was the guru Of longevity and nutrition, i was a famous pathologist at ucla that was my mentor for a number of years and uh and since then, we've been working on nutrition in parallel with the genetics of aging working on nutrition and aging, and then eventually, uh used uh defined. This fasting mimicking diet as a way to keep all the benefit of what roy walford was working on, which was called calorie restriction. So what happens in people if you just severely restore calories all the time? So i didn't like that. But, and so eventually, we switched from that - you know a continuous restriction of calories which works it's fantastic in some sense, but bad in other senses to a periodic, fascinating diet.

Is it possible that you can do something only three four times a year for five days and you get all these effects positive effects, so calorie restriction, but not the negative? What's right, dr longo, why at such a young age, did you fall in love or get passionate about aging? Why? Why did that happen? I don't know, but i was a music major and i just kept thinking about aging for some reason it i i expect. When you're you were you scared to die, were you van? Were you? Was it vein? Oriented like you didn't want to look older. Was it vanity or was it fear or something altogether different? No, i mean not all that i mean. Of course i was 19 years old, so i think it might have been.

You know when my grandfather died. That was five years old and i was actually in the room when he died. You know, so i just think that connection. You know when you're five being in a room and just having this sense, he died of a heart attack.

No, he died of a cancer that he wasn't treating, you know and he was fairly young, 75 76 or something like that, so i just thought i wasn't affected by i at least i didn't think i was affected by it back then right that was very well And i looked almost like, i was in charge of the situation as a five-year-old, but you know i think that just stayed in my head. You know life is not permanent and uh, and so maybe i should work on that right rather than the house that i can think of you know. I understand so something very interesting with me is um. I grew up.

I was born in the former soviet union. Um i came to america when i was three and you know my. My parents worked hard. My mom worked all day.

You know raising family, my dad worked all the time and specifically my dad. He wouldn't eat breakfast or lunch and he would always eat a lot of calories at dinner. You know and that's how i got kind of brought up and that's the track i had and then somewhere along the line in my mid-20s. You know i started to gain weight for the first time in my life and in my late 20s i was gaining enough weight that i was like wait a minute, this sucks, but i had no interest in working out or eating properly and so what ended up Happening was, it was so easy for me to go from waking up until 7 or 8 p.m without eating.

My body, like it's, 1, 38 p.m. Right now i haven't eaten breakfast or lunch, and and and that is my natural state - and i you know my friends are all so obsessed with lunch, and i always you know they always when people meet me and get to spend time close to me. They're always fascinated by the no lunch thing and but it's always been my whole life. I worked in the store and there was no time for lunch.

That was when we'd get a rush in the store, and so when i was in my late 20s and i wanted to lose weight, it was easy for me to just fight. At night i used to always joke with my mom. It's like, i can do young kapoor once a week. You know like i could fast.

You know it wasn't easy because you're so hungry by night, when your body structured the way i was doing it, but then later in my late 30s and early 40s, the last you know seven eight years, i i really got serious about health and wellness. I work out all the time i work on stretching a lot of different things and one of the go-to's for me when i, when i'm struggling a little bit with food management, has been fasting and i really enjoy it like very much enjoy it um. What you know, what is it for most people, because i've been talking to a lot of people about it because it's obviously become this is something you've been doing for your whole career in some shape or form. Obviously, as you know, you're with prolonged you're very in it fasting has become much more top of mind for a lot of people over the last half decade, yeah.

What what is it in people's minds when they first so i've been talking a lot more about it? That's why i wanted you on the show: what is it that scares people so much like it's unbelievable to me how many times i'm saying to my friends, you know my friend will be like man. I want to start getting my act together like have you thought about fasting? That seems to them as no way. I can't do that. I can't not eat in a day why? Why is that such a like visceral reaction from so many people that i've come across yeah? Well, essentially, food is like drugs right, so there's a clear addiction for good reason, not for bad reason for good reason right.

Well, we should eat uh. I mean for the very majority of the history of humans, but also the primates and everything else before that uh food you eat as much as you can get right and um, and because eventually the winter is gon na come and you're not gon na have anything And so, if you didn't overeat uh during the summer when there was a lot of fruits and honey and nuts you're going to die right, that's that's! How strong that signal is eat, eat, eat and get fat by the way right, and there was this - the? What saved you right, getting fat as fat as possible was was save people during the winter yeah. So that's why you can't uh sort of instinct-wise. You cannot tell somebody stop eating um and, and then again you know it's very important in your show to point out that fasting, i always say, doesn't mean anything right.

So so fast is like eating. You know is eating good for you well yeah. Some of it is, and and some quantities and some other foods are not, and some other quantities are not right. So, for example, skipping breakfast skipping lunch.

I do it myself, it seems to be very, very good. Skipping breakfast breakfast does not seem to be good at all right, so there's style. You have to study after study showing decreased uh lifespan for people to skip breakfast right. So then, you could say well that well this doctor longer i'm in deep, then if that's the case, because i don't think i've eaten breakfast in 25 years, i'm gon na get my acne together yeah.

It may be that on you, it does at a course. Sometimes. Maybe you come from a family that always did it, then of course, of course, but i think that's you know real quick. I apologize it's an important point.

I as people become obsessed with health and wellness. I keep reminding all the people in my life i'm like. Yes, that is a study. Yes, that is a trend.

Yes, that is science, but don't forget you better. Do individual work on your own blood work on your own, like you have to get a sense of you just like anything. There are common themes, but some people have different structures: correct, yeah, correct but but you're still going to vegas right, so you're you're, still betting against the numbers right so correct of skipping breakfast. For example, you know you're looking at about 10 studies, pretty consistently showing reduced lifespan in those that skip breakfast now.

Is it breakfast? Is it that people just keep breakfast have bad behaviors in general and they're more excited it's hard to know? What surprise right, though, is if it's so good to skip breakfast? Why doesn't that counter balance the bad behavior right? Why why don't we see at least neutral effects right you skip breakfast, it's very good for you! Why isn't it making your bad behavior neutral and that's? What's what's concerning right that that we don't see a neutral effect, we see a negative effects of, or so they suggest, for example. Could it be that the ketone bodies we're doing mouse studies right now and we were surprised to see that the highest ketone bodies of all wear in the western diet right? So the western diet also causes ketogenesis? You know these byproducts of fat that people always talk about as a positive thing, but they're very high in the western diet. Right, so could it be that by having ketone bodies high all the time, you put a strain on your heart or you know they may be fat accumulation, etc. We don't know so uh so probably best to have breakfast and skip lunch.

I think lunch is what i've been doing for 20 years uh and that's a great way to uh. Regulate that you know not over not get. The ketone body is too high, but control the weight and uh, and i think it's got a central role in in helping against diseases. Dr one of one of the reasons i really wanted, you also is i've, been thinking a lot about science, professors, professionals entering the entrepreneurial world.

So there's a lot of people who are listening to my show, who are in academia who are in the medical field, who are in incredibly high virtue careers, who, i think, are worried at times to jump into entrepreneurship because they're taking their talents their knowledge. This you know thing they put on a pedestal and they're, bringing it to the business world and i'm very empathetic to them. I they believe they are compromising. You know, selling out uh they're worried about the judgment of their fellow uh.

You know partners in academia or finance or uh education or other things. You obviously have a company. You know you do these things from a scientific academic background. Was that a challenge for you to make the leap into entrepreneurship? Did you consider it? Was it something on your radar earlier in your life, and you didn't want to do it because you felt like it could hurt the science hurt the mission? It's not the right thing to do when you're trying to really help people.

I think this is a profound conversation and since you're going through it with prolonged, i thought you could be a great source of inspiration for some of the people that are on the fence. How did you go through your journey of being in this from a medical academy standpoint to making a jump into entrepreneurship? You know i actually, i think, the other way around right, so i will argue that i felt that if i wasn't going to do it, it wasn't going to happen and that's probably true right. So we were working on cancer and fasting, making diet and diabetes and fasting making diet, and i just thought for the sake of getting it out there to patients uh. If i don't go find the clinicians, if i don't sit down with them and start the trials, but also say hey, there's a product because otherwise what are you gon na? Do the clinical trial with right uh? It was uh nearly impossible.

I think without a company at least back then 15 years ago, to start this operation. Now we have over 30 clinical trials running and - and i think you know the company sponsors some of them and lots of others are sponsored by the us government by foundations by the universities themselves right. So i just felt kind of like this argument was also made about doctors right. They showed a doctor or a group of people in a hospital, and it turns out there's probably who you want to ha own, a hospital right.

You want a doctor to own the hospital, because they're going to be much more aligned with the patient when it comes down to a decision. A doctor is always going to go with protect the patient right businessman might not right. Somebody selling drugs might not right. So, in my case, i'm always going to think there is no way i'm compromising.

You know the safety and the health of the patient, even if it's a billion dollars to be made right, but i think a businessman would not hesitate and uh i mean you know within the the domains of the law or the of course uh. I think most businessmen will say well, if it's legal i'll, do it, i would say no, it could be legal. It's going to hurt the patient you're not going to do this, of course, of course yeah. I actually you know, what's funny, i actually think the best businessmen and women think about the value exchange the most.

I i even think if it's going to hurt somebody emotionally it's a bad thing, so you know, i think, that's a very powerful thing. What are the biggest misconceptions in the modern fasting conversation? Because you know what happens now: bad business people who genuinely just care about money and could give a about humans or patients? They see a trend and then they start exploiting it. What bad information, or like help us here like what's some of the stuff that undereducated influencers or entrepreneurs, or even doc, pseudo like what are we seeing from like bad information like what's a thing that you see, people believing is true, but isn't give us a little Cheat sheet of things to watch out for, if you're on your journey to potentially get a little bit into fasting, because if everyone's listening like again, i know a lot of people genuinely are looking to be healthier and happier and all those things that i you know. There's a famous clip in my content of like what do i think about health and wellness when it comes to business, and i reply to the kid as i'm walking on the floor of a of a convention, i reply.

Well, if you're dead, you're out of business and it like really got very popular. So you know i like having people like dr longo on occasionally one because i thought that little part about entrepreneurship in the scheme of academia and health and well is important. But then number two you know i like i like to keep everybody who's listening to the show around longer, so they can achieve all their hopes and dreams, and i really think for a lot of you. Who've never tried it that it is going to be fasting.

That's going to be the breakthrough on you shedding 15 pounds feeling healthier feeling better, so i really want to inspire some people to at least try. It may not be right for you, but at least try dr longo. What are some of the watch out for this right now, because everyone's talking about it in fasting? One of them? We already mentioned right, for example, and probably the most popular oil. You can do 16 hours and you know - and i love the work that sachin panda and others have done on that.

But the 16 hours of fasting and just keeping breakfast is clearly associated with lots of problems. You know not just to reduce life but also gallstone formation and um. So so i will say that we need to go from the word fasting uh to what do we know that works, and there are many studies showing that it works and it's unlikely to cause any problems and uh and also what is going to be the effect Of this on lifespan and health span, and not just what's going to happen next three months, are you going to lose some weight, so you could lose a lot of weight in a lot of ways right, but you most cases you regain it back and as as You go through, let's say 10 or more weight, loss and 10 or more weight regain that also is associated with a shorter lifespan right. So it's better to do nothing than to do these yo-yo interventions, so i think the misconception is very wide, and - and so there are very few things that i think consistently work for example and don't have any negative studies associated with it.

For example, 12 hours a day of fasting, i always say: i've never seen a negative study on 12 hours of fasting 12 hours of feeding. So it's time to stick to eating is not you don't get the benefit. The quick benefits that you get with 14 or 16 hours, but you may get long-term uh. I mean much easier to to not to stay with it, and then you know much more likely to get you to a long lifespan, and then you know, of course the other one i'm a fan of is you know: uh fasting, mimicking diet, let's say three or Four times a year, uh again a safety record is, is very, very good.

I think over probably a million people. Now i have done it and we haven't heard uh back from uh. I mean the side effects have been really spectacularly low and uh yeah. So i think that um and i think the fascinating underlines the the the importance of having things clinically tested, as so, we have the fda for drugs.

So we have this incredible process. Even look at what happened with coffee right i mean we still have. People were dying, but everybody say wait. You know we cannot uh get things out there just because they may save lives, because they're, probably gon na hurt more people than they save.

So, let's wait until the approval. It went very quickly, but it still required approval now in the fasting world, and all of that there is no approval at all. It's just you wake up in the morning. You hear something and it's like okay, i'm going to start doing it.

Well, that's probably going to hurt you in the long run, not help you but hurt you so focus on the things that have lots of clinical trials on and uh and and so yeah 12 hours of fasting and the fasting making diet three or four times a Year, uh, i think those are very good and then you know i i wrote a book called the longevity diet and all of it by the way, all the all my shares of the company are going to go to charity right. So that's another way of uh and i don't take a penny in consulting from the company, so i really financially don't make in the world company you're the company, we're talking about programs, we're talking about problem and then a little neutral one more time, because i think It's going to be a pretty big business, um! Congratulations! So you're, saying all of the profits. They are coming your way: you're you're donating 100 of my shares and a hundred percent of the of the um consulting or whatever goes already to my my foundation. The great cures uh foundation and and even my book royalties go to my foundation right, so i really only make whatever i make at the university as a professor and nothing else right.

So was that important to you, because you felt that it wouldn't compromise your professor medical work? Yes, because i got attacked by lots of journalists right then i got attacked on this years ago already, and i could sense that, yes, that fear or not they were going to attack me. Oh he's trying to exploit uh the the research to make money, and so i say you know what uh i'm just gon na. Let me do this. Do this, dr, like before we get out of here like what's your intuition like if everything goes well, this may happen after you're, not on earth like what's your intuition, as as humans, become more educated with the power of what i would call food scheduling right like Like just being more uh educated on how this all works, what do you think it kind of looks like 50 100 years from now? If this is universally understood and executed yeah, i think it's gon na i like to think it's good.

What's going to happen next 10 years, i think, what's going to happen, you're going to have two groups in the world right you're, going to have whatever eight billion people that don't don't listen to anything they do whatever they want and then we're gon na have maybe Half a billion to a billion people, they say you know what i'm gon na follow the scientists, the science. You know what i call the multi-pillar approach. You know clinical studies, epidemiological studies, you put it together and you get a pre particular picture. In fact, there was a study that came out a couple weeks ago on plus medicine, showing if you start even at age 60.

If you start something very close to what i described as the longevity diet, you are associated, your life is gon na have eight or nine extra years right, so starting right now, so i think that yeah we we're gon na, have this two population, one following everything And living maybe an extra 20 years uh and uh, and everybody and everybody else improvising and uh, maybe on average living 20 years less. Eventually, i think you know we're gon na get better and better. You know 100 years from now, then i think it's a different world, you know it's a different world and - and i think uh unfortunately or fortunately we're gon na see a lot of engineering, bioengineering, robotics, say and uh uh playing playing a part. You know so now we can make artificial hearts artificial, you know pancreas uh, releasing insulin, etc, etc.

So you know that, and it should be, it should be so um if it's gon na be much more a part of uh human life. You know gon na be part human impart machine, and - and you know we already are right, so we already are and lots of people are walking around with pumps, uh diabetes type one. So it's just a reality and the engineers are are so good that moving forward. It's gon na take a long time right, so i think now nutrition is by far the investment for the next 20 or 30 years, eventually slowly.

I think that the technology is going to take over and uh dr longo. If, if i asked you if somebody's 20 years old right now yeah, what's your guess, your educated guess on what their life expectancy yeah so that the study showed that if you started the longevity diet or something like it and at 20, that would be 13 extra Years of life expectancy right so so then, uh you're, looking at that 20 year old, following everything, maybe looking at 105 as an average lifespan, which is pretty remarkable right, uh, yeah so also 105 average. Following all the right things, uh uh with lots of people making it 110 115 uh yeah, so that that's what i i think it's uh the numbers are showing, but it's got to be a careful uh consideration of all the things you do, probably working with some Professionals that help you get there anything we didn't touch on as we get out of here, uh yeah, just very briefly. The longevity diet - i think you know what came out of that study - was lots of legumes, no red meat, no processed meat, lots of nuts uh lots of vegetables, and so those are the main things that came out of the everyday uh nutrition, uh and fish was Allowed, but that seemed to be the best animal source of proteins, so some fish and everything else coming from legumes, uh protein-wise, so a diet that almost nobody in the united states follows, but that it will make a tremendous difference.

I think, together with the fmds and making people live longer and healthier, but so many people don't want to give up steak. You know it's, but we published a study a few months ago where we took mice and we put them in a high calorie high protein. Really bad western diet right and they became very big, you know and they live very short, yes and then we did exactly the same, but we gave them once a month. The fasting mimicking diet and it reversed everything.

So they live normal life, perfect weight, so yeah. So then, i think uh. If you don't want to give up anything, if somebody is going to have a bad western diet, then it may have have to be as frequently as once a month the fasting making diet. So wait a minute real, quick! That's a really interesting insight.

It is your hypothesis that if you're a bad western dieting that, if you fast for on a certain regimen once a month that there's an offset there, that is balancing. So we've shown this in now three clinical trials right and there's a fourth one. I mean one. We publish three are going to be published in the next six months, right so very clearly, uh the people that start the worst.

You know the ones that have high higher cholesterol, higher blood pressure higher fasting glucose they're, the ones that do the best after the three cycles of the fasting making diet so very clearly, mice, but also very clear in in human trials, that, yes, those that have the Worst diet, uh would uh could potentially uh and we're not at all saying, okay keep a bad diet. In fact i just said you know: people should switch to a longevity diet but understanding that most people don't want to do that or lots of people don't want to do that. Then, yes, you might have to go uh to a fastly mimicking diet as often as once a month, but then i think as that, helps you. Then you could go once every two months once every three months, so it could be the beginning.

You have a bad diet and then you do the the fmd once a month and then eventually, maybe once every two or three months, it could be enough uh to uh to offset at least lots of problems caused by your your bad habits, not just diet. You know smoking, you know we didn't test that, but i mean that's what uh what we speculate? At least you know that it could be a way to reverse bad habits. You know cheers dr longo, thank you for being on the show.