Transcript of Episode 217: Achieving Longevity Through Prevention
With Dr. Daniel Pompa and Dr. Joel Kahn
Dr. Pompa:
On this episode of Cell TV, stay tuned. This is a type of fast that you may not have heard of. As a matter of fact, for years I’ve called it a partial fast. Today it’s better known as a fasting mimicking diet, and it’s been made famous by a guy named Valter Longo. I interviewed Dr. Joel Kahn who has a cardiac clinic in the Detroit area, and he’s been using this fasting mimicking diet with great success.
As a matter of fact, I heard him speak at the A4M Conference, and I was amazed at the results that he presented. I said you’ve got to come on a Cell TV show and share the results of the fasting mimicking diet. On this episode, you’re going to learn more about how this particular diet or aka partial fast used once a month for three months can transform your health, weight loss, and conditions like diabetes, type 1 diabetics, at least in mouse models were transformative. Stay tuned on this show. This is one you’re definitely not going to want to miss.
Dr. Pompa here live with a great guest, and he is Dr. Joel Kahn. He is an MD and heads up the Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity. Today’s topic is one near and dear to our hearts, and that is fasting, specifically the fasting mimicking diet. Have you ever heard of it?
In this show you’re going to hear more about it. It’s a type of fast that studies show can regenerate cells, even pancreatic cells. I’m sure Dr. Joel uses it for the heart as well. Dr. Joel, welcome to the show.
Dr. Joel:
Thank you very much. My extreme pleasure to beam into Park City.
Dr. Pompa:
This is your book. I wanted to hold it up so they could see it. I’ll re-hold it up now that I can see myself. There it is. It’s The Plant-Based Solution.
I’ll tell you, we actually met in person at one of the A4M Conferences. I was out on the Dr. Manny show filming some episodes for him. Someone said we have to go to this amazing vegan vegetarian restaurant. I said, “I love those types of places. Let’s go.” A bunch of us went, and guess who owned the restaurant? You did. What is the name of the restaurant again?
Dr. Joel:
GreenSpace Café, which there’s actually two now. You’ll have to come back. We just opened our second one in suburban Detroit about a week ago.
Dr. Pompa:
The Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity, your restaurant, that’s right there in the Detroit area, correct?
Dr. Joel:
Right. We’re part of the Motor City Madness going on, all this rejuvenation on the rust belt of America.
Dr. Pompa:
I was there for the Flint, Michigan lead crisis. They had me in there speaking to doctors about my detox, etc. I was saddened when I was there. I saw the potential of one of the most amazing cities. It just seemed like it was decimated. You’ve been serving that community a long time.
Dr. Joel:
That’s hometown for me, and Flint is about an hour north. Cannabis sativa is going to—the growing center of the state. We’re not legal with recreation marijuana, but when it is, Flint is going to play a very big role in the economic windfall, which is a good thing because those people have suffered for many decades.
They’ve not been treated well by administrators. There will be children that will be harmed for life from the lead. There is already tremendous recovery going on in Detroit and Flint. When you hit bottom, everything’s up.
Dr. Pompa:
That was interesting that you just said that they’re going to be harmed for life. That was part of my message. They had moved the water supply back. They treated the water, but the problem was what I was trying to get them to understand just because the blood levels are now normal, that doesn’t mean these kids are going to be normal.
This lead has now bioaccumulated in their nerve tissue, their brains, and their bone only to come out later in life through puberty and even later in life to affect them. It’s going to affect IQ, behavior. I don’t know that I got anyone to pay attention to me, but hopefully so. I don’t know. There was a lot of politics there I felt we were battling with that message.
Dr. Kahn:
Absolutely, big risk to governmental people. There is litigation going on. It’s a very emotionally charged issue for reasons of caring about the kids and what allowed it to happen in the first place.
Dr. Pompa:
Before we get into the fasting, I think at A4M I heard your talk as well as Dr. Valter Longo, who I’ve read his work. Obviously, you have too. We’re going to get into that. Tell me your story. Tell me how you got into this. How did you get into medicine?
Dr. Joel:
Briefly, I grew up in a very average suburban household, father retail business in furniture. We observed the Jewish dietary kosher laws. Even as a kid, there was just that one minute pause, which now when you’re Paleo or keto or vegan, you pause before you eat because you have to think for a minute does this fit my diet? My rules were no pork, milk, dairy together kind of rules. That served me well because that is a type of mindfulness.
When you grow up with that, by about age 15 I had focused on medicine. Nobody in the family really had that background, but I wanted to do it. When I walked into the University of Michigan at age 18, 1977 there was a one-hit wonder. One visit to the dorm cafeteria, I called myself a salad baretarian. I was not a vegetarian, a vegan, a paleo a keto, but I knew I was going to be eating from the salad bar to honor that traditional diet that I had grown up with.
I had a girlfriend at the time, who is my wife of 37 years; she more than knew within a week of adopting a planned diet felt tremendously better. Obviously, she had been lactose intolerant for 18 years without a name, without a diagnosis. We just kept going. As soon as we got deep into medical studies, I heard a little bit about nutrition, a little bit about -inaudible-, a little bit about -inaudible-. Cardiology was my focus -inaudible-. It was good to hear this might not just be a personal thing Karen and I were doing. This might actually have some application to practice.
Throughout my entire cardiology training and practice, nutrition has been a component of it. About seven years ago I said I need to get better integrative training, which is when I started going to the A4M curriculum and ultimately walk away from traditional practice, hospitals, cath labs, stents about three years ago to dedicate fully to prevention and reversal, root cause cardiology. I went to a lecture last night, Upstream Medicine. It’s not necessarily a term I’d used before. You’re an upstreamest. I’m an upstreamest.
It’s not that you have diabetes, it’s what’s the lifestyle, the environment, the stress, the sleep that creates diabetes, for example. I have so much fun practicing medicine now. My colleagues don’t say the same thing because it’s not intellectually stimulating. I see results. I always know I’ve got to study and learn and stay up to date. It’s the greatest thing ever.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m a fan of plant-based diets for sure. I think your book laid out some amazing stuff. I recommend the book for sure. I talk and preach on this show about diet variation and plant-based diets. It’s a big part of it.
Fasting is something else you and I have in common. I loved your lecture. It was on the heels of Valter Longo. Just for our viewers, Valter Longo is out of Italy. He is a researcher talking a lot about something called a fasting mimicking diet.
Years ago I read about partial fasting and the benefits of partial fasting. We as a doctor group—I train doctors around the country. We started doing some partial fasting. It was remarkable. Then reading some of Longo’s work, it really fit in. How did you get into fasting? Then I want to talk about what you’re doing.
Dr. Joel:
Other than fasting on religious occasions, I was playing a little bit with once a week doing just green juice, not a structured, not a terrifically scientific approach. About two years ago I heard of his work. I had watched a few YouTube videos. He was often commenting about the nutritional value of a plant strong diet, and that resonated. It was a podcast about January 2017.
He made a comment that there was a commercially available program combining his 20 years of research on aging, biochemistry, pathways like mTOR, pathways like PKA, and a commercially available food program. He used the word plant based, and that really set me off and running. I started reading everything I could. There was a tremendously informative website. I read through all his amazing basic and then some clinical scientific studies.
I ordered a box, a five-day, 800-calorie program that put you in ketosis using high fat, low sugar, low protein, plant based foods, all within the box. It actually was the simplest five days. I didn’t have to make any food decisions. No decision fatigue. I didn’t have to really cook.
I warmed up soups. I had some teas. I had some olives. I had some nuts. I found it tremendously satisfying. Challenging a bit; eight hundred calories a day while you practice all day.
I do yoga every morning. I kept that part of my life. I didn’t do any hard cardio. I was advised against it. I had been a healthy plant eater for 40 years and carried a few extra pounds. I had tried no alcohol for two months, upped my exercise for six weeks, eat two meals a day.
I had not really clicked on anything that thinned me out a bit. I wanted to. It wasn’t a problem, but I wanted to. I was six or seven pounds down after five days from doing the first cycle. It’s five days a month, and then you return to the diet of your choice, hopefully healthy and whole food oriented for 25 days.
I did it a second month. The bottom line, after about three months, I was down about 18 pounds, which was unique. It clearly had affected more than just the scale. My whole schedule of eating, I was down to about two meals a day. I was extending my periods of not eating.
I had sort of a renewed enthusiasm and willpower to control portion size. I was no monster eater, but it is common in the plant community abundance, abundance, unlimited. That’s probably true if you’re eating nothing but bowls of arugula. I think there are vegans, plant eaters that over eat. I think most Americans overeat no matter what discipline you come from.
It just really brought that portion of my life dramatically under control. By even the second month I had started teaching patients this was an option, selecting patients that had inflammation, visceral fat. A lot of people want natural control of blood pressure. The reason this all was so stimulating, I heard about it right around the time of February 2017.
Dr. Longo published a randomized trial of 100 people that for 3 months half of them were told just continue your diet, and the other half for 3 months did this cyclic plant-based keto -inaudible- 5 days a month, 25 days back to whole food. At the end of three months those who had been doing the controlled diet were offered three months of the fasting mimicking diet. Those who were already doing it could continue to do it exactly the same box that is commercially available. When that data was published, the six month data was fairly stunning for visceral fat, waist circumference, body weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, hemoglobin A1C, blood sugar control, glycation, hsCRP, inflammatory marker.
Probably, as you said, the two markers amazingly, IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor 1, associated with breast cancer, prostate cancer had fallen dramatically from just 5 days a month of an altered diet with ketosis using plants. Then also, stem cells rocketed. Stem cell release day six, day seven at least at the end of the three-month period in the published randomized study were much higher. I don’t measure stem cells clinically. I measure all those other parameters pre and post three months of this fasting mimicking diet including IGF-1.
I had patients starting on it. It’s about a 90% win. Some people don’t like it. Some people don’t like 800 calories a day. There a few nut allergic people. There’s not really a great alternative for nut allergic people, but 90% of people were enthusiastic.
People lost weight. People’s blood pressure came down. They were able to get off some medication. The parts of your body that hurt stopped hurting maybe because inflammation, maybe directly because of stem cell release. Nobody worldwide can directly comment on reversal of atherosclerosis, endothelial function improvement.
These are studies that could actually easily be done. There just haven’t been protocols. There’s so much research going on in neurology, multiple sclerosis, early Alzheimers. In cancer there’s tremendous already published and ongoing studies, studies in prediabetes and diabetes that the focus really hasn’t been yet on a Dr. Ornish-style reversal of atherosclerosis trial, but that will have to wait, some future funding and future activity. It has been a breakthrough. Even though I already had a pretty strong nutrition background and nutrition-based practice, it’s one more tool. It gets people an answer, and it’s a quick fix. I mean, just do it like it says for five days. Don’t think about it. This is science. This is not an actress on TV selling liquid drinks. This is a man who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine who's thought out every nutrient. Why is there hibiscus tea and not green tea? Why is there spearmint tea and not Earl Grey? Why are there olives from Spain and not from Italy? Dr. Longo has an answer for every one of those because he played with all those nutrients in mouse models first and ultimately in human models. It’s a great advance. Whatever title you give to your eating pattern, this might be, like you say, a way to cycle in something new if you feel you’re in a bit of a rut.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I mean when you just—just so people understand what we are talking about here, we are talking about around 800 calories a day for five days. The studies have been to do it month-to-month. I think one of the studies is—I think after three or four months, it might have been four, they actually saw the regeneration of beta cells in type I diabetics.
Dr. Kahn:
Yeah, so that’s a mouse study. I won’t speak for him, but I know Dr. Longo tries to be very cautious about what’s been seen and not seen. In animal models, there has been actually myelin regrowth in mice with multiple sclerosis, a model of multiple sclerosis. There’s actually regrowth and improvement. In humans, there’s a symptom study that patients with multiple sclerosis doing three months of this five-day fasting mimicking diet , called fasting mimicking because you’re actually eating three small meals a day. The first day is 1100 calories. The next four days are a bit more challenging at 800 calories, but you are eating. It’s prepared as a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner, and a late-night little snack.
In animal models, multiple sclerosis, there’s actually been growth of brain tissue. Hippocampus grows in mice and some performance measures in mice in proven terms of memory. There is also some human data on memory, but there’s larger ongoing trials. In mice, most amazingly, if you damage the pancreas of a mouse with something called streptozotocin, the classic model of grading the equivalent of type I diabetes in the mouse, and you do this program, there actually is regrowth, presumably stem cells, that there is all of a sudden insulin production in mice that previously produced no insulin. Now nobody can say that that occurs in humans. There is not a case report. It will be very cautious about putting a type I diabetic on an 800 calorie-restricted diet and watch him go into hypoglycemic shock. Outside of a clinical trial, nobody is doing that. In fact, the company would list it as a contraindication.
In the last piece, there’s animal data. Dr. Longo have looked at differential nutrition. The cancer cells are multiplying, multiplying, multiplying and normal cells are at their own metabolic rate, and he asked the question if you use fasting during chemotherapy, could this create more kill of these rapidly multiplying cells? Indeed, he's found that wrapping a program like the fasting mimicking diet may be altering a bit. I think it’s a lower calorie version he’s using in the studies. You actually get greater impact of chemotherapy on cancer cells and less damage to normal cells. In humans so far, there are patients that have been studied that report less side effects of chemotherapy. Nobody can talk at this point.
Dr. Pompa:
I think it was his colleague who maybe got the story better than I. He was looking at fasting, and they gave them four or five times the amount of chemo that would typically kill a mouse or a rat. I don’t know what they were using. He had two groups, the group that was fasting and the group non-fasting. They were high dosing chemo that again would normally have killed them. He was away. He was traveling. One of his colleagues—his colleagues thought this was hilarious because of course the fasting group, they’re going to die sooner on the chemo than the non-fasting group because they don’t have any nutrition. He got a call from one of them. He says okay, it’s extraordinary. You’re going to be amazed by the result. What happened? She said well, one group is all dead. The other group’s alive. Well, which one? It was the group that was fasting was still alive showing that there was in fact protection during the fast from the chemo. Toxic effects, it protects as well.
Dr. Kahn:
I think it’s done so much for the fasting field you’ve been such a leader in because this kind of science—whether you’re doing other versions or the fasting mimicking diet, we all hope that calorie restriction or intermittent fasting is health-promoting and life-extending. Now to see at least this version have so many health implications—and really other than food allergy—I mean, that’s obvious. Other than being cautious and frail, you don’t use this in underweight people. You don’t use this in bulimic patients. A frail heart failure patient, I’d be cautious. A brittle diabetic I would stay away. For the vast majority of people, there is, other than hangry which isn’t really a serious side effect, there really isn’t a—this is food. This is real food perfectly picked to be—and again it’s about low protein, at least for a few days.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, what’s the protein—
Dr. Pompa:
Just shut down mTOR and the pathway that leads to IGF-1. It’s low sugar but not feed cells and replicate. It’s about 60% fat calories, 55 to 60 from nuts and olives. There are complex carbohydrates in the soups. There’s some minestrone soup and quinoa soup. It’s really quite tasty. No alcohol during those five days, boys and girls; it’s terrible.
Dr. Pompa:
How much protein a day typically?
Dr. Kahn:
It’s low. It’s somewhere in the range of 10 to 15%, which is pretty typical if you look at Okinawa; you look at Dr. Ornish. When you look at the Tsimane, this tribe in Bolivia that was described in early 2017 that people don’t know that they took a really hidden tribe in Bolivia, took them down the Amazon in canoes to a major hospital. They did heart CT scans and other testing and identified that at age 80, they had the lowest rates of atherosclerosis of any population ever described. They eat about 15% protein in their diets just from eating plants, and roots, and shoots, and trees. Now if they get a monkey, they get a monkey, but not every day’s a monkey day in Bolivia. It’s pretty common if you’re eating a largely plant-based diet. It’s going to work out to be about 15% protein.
Dr. Pompa:
When you’re talking about 10, 15% of 800 calories, you can see it’s very minimal. I know I read a study where they talk about autophagy. By the way, folks, listen, this is why this works. Just like water fasting, we get autophagy where—this is a reminder for y’all. This is where your body will eat the bad cells and the debris before it eats the good cells and uses it for energy. Of course, severe caloric restriction, low protein, and low carbohydrates, all three of those are characteristic of this diet, which all three cause autophagy. By the way, that’s why, so the body will eat the bad cells and then the body raises up the stem cells to basically replace those cells with better cells. That’s why this works. It’s the autophagy. All three of those things stimulate it.
Dr. Kahn:
In fact, I mentioned it, and I think I’m right in saying this: Dr. Longo was nominated in 2016 for the Nobel Prize for Medicine on the topic of autophagy. It was the reason the Nobel Prize in Medicine was given but a 76-year-old Japanese scientist of great renowned did win the Nobel Prize in medicine on the same topic. He was 20 years—Dr. Longo, 30 years his senior and a great scientist. There’s a statistic; if you could cure every case of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, you would instantly extend lifespan by about 13 years. If you could manage aging and stop cellular damage and death, you would extend lifespan by about 30 years. Now they’re both important goals, but when you’re talking about using a food play to really regenerate and restore cellular function back to a more youthful phase, it has amazing and crazy implications.
Dr. Pompa:
One of the things when we water fast people, about day three, especially day four, people lose their appetite. One of the things that we found that is potentially problematic is eating less calories for five days as opposed to nothing at all. Some people just don’t lose their appetite. Do you find that or not so much?
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t think people lose their appetite. Most people are challenged by this. For most people, this is the longest they’ve gone eating this number of calories other than -inaudible-. To voluntarily say, I’ll go through a little pain to get some gain takes a certain commitment and understanding and hopefulness, but yeah, I don’t think people are losing. There’s a couple of emails a day you get. If you absolutely have to, a couple slices of cucumber or a couple celery stalks can get you through the tough period, and the most important, people are working during this, so I don’t know how you manage. I’ve been to a few places, water fasting treatment centers, and they’ll be pretty quiet. They’re not exercising, and they’re not doing much work. People are going to work. They’re walking around and functioning. I certainly felt actually somewhat energized to do my work and perform my duties, so that lack of interruption.
There’s a cost to all this. You’re buying a box. It’s an interesting economic figure. The average person in the United States spends about 35 dollars a day on food is the statistic. These boxes are 50 dollars today, and it impacts most people initially. That’s quite pricy, and one can debate that. I know, from the beginning, there was an interest. If you made these meals into just powders, it would’ve been much cheaper. Dr. Longo insisted, I’m a food-based researcher. I want these to be actual foods, and sourcing the right companies and ingredients was much tougher, but in the overall picture, you’re not going to restaurants. You’re not going to the vending machine or the cafeteria. You’re eating nothing outside the box, so it’s quite a reasonable commitment and expense for the results that many people, most people see.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I’m interviewing Dr. Longo on the show. Matter of fact, he’s set up to speak at my next seminar, actually, in November, and we’ve been doing partial fasts for some years, and so we were just telling people, eat these foods, type of thing, where he’s -inaudible- in a box. I think it’s brilliant, because people always say, what do I eat? It’s like it magically—here you go. It shows up at your house. I’m all for it. We just haven’t experimented with it in our doctor group, but we sure are willing, especially now that he’s going to be at our seminar. I think it’s amazing. What’s the follow-through? What have you noticed? Do people—
Dr. Kahn:
Yeah. In my own case—so you know, the company talks about, if you really want to plunge in, match the clinical study. Do three months in a row. That’s 15 days out of 90. You won’t miss work. After that, it depends on your goal. It’s really a rejuvenation, regeneration, anti-aging play. Maybe twice a year, that would be reasonable. If you’re going for a bigger goal, and you’ve got maybe a number, like a C-reactive protein or a weight goal, this isn’t a plan to lose a hundred pounds. I’m not saying somebody could, but it’s not designed—I don’t think anybody’s ever been described—it could be that the mindfulness that comes out of this is translated into a long-term calorie-reduced diet with greater success, but I’m not really yet aware. I’ve had people down about as much as 30 pounds sustained. I’m actually down 20 to 25 pounds sustained. I’ve personally done this nine out of the last 13 months. I’m pretty much every other month at this point. I’ve bought a whole new set of clothes. I’m very committed to staying at this target weight. I now have my anti-aging tool to stay at a target weight I’m enjoying, and I see no downside to that.
What would be nice, I can’t claim—nobody can claim cardiovascular renewal. If you have a damaged heart, there is some data, not yet totally convincing, that stem cells may have a role to rejuvenate myocardium. We have no data on anything like that. You can’t oversell. Science needs to lead the charge here, but in terms of blood pressure and other biomarkers, all healthy weight loss typically leads to improvements. I think -inaudible- IGF-1 and stem cell production and the simplicity of doing this.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, you presented that at the conference. You showed some pre- and post bloods. What do you see? Are you seeing pretty significant predictable changes every time?
Dr. Kahn:
Yeah, blood pressure for sure. Many, many patients, and I’ve had well over a hundred do this program at least three months in a row. Many patients go down 20 millimeters of mercury, allowing them to reduce or eliminate one or sometimes all blood pressure medication, which is fantastic and a natural approach. Weight, which goes with that blood pressure drop, has been sustained in the majority. Not everyone. Some people will go down six pounds, creep up five pounds, second time go down seven pounds, creep up two, but they end up, at the end of three months, down five to ten pounds. Pretty much, that is average. A lot of people have done much more. C-reactive protein down, and in those that I’ve tracked, pre- and post IGF-1, I’ve seen pretty -inaudible- trends, 180 down to 110, which is just great. I’ll know in 20 years in their development of cancer and other IGF-1-related illnesses, but that’s exciting, and it’s—as you do, too, it’s all about empowering people that they’ve got tools that don’t always require a doctor and don’t always require prescription drugs and surgeries.
I think the dramatic—I mean, this tool is as effective as any prescription plan I can think of, and it’s food-based, and we’re foodies. You’re a foodie, I’m a foodie. You talk about rotating, and I agree, and this can be inserted like CRISPR-9 into anybody’s ongoing dietary choice, and it’s a great—it’s not a detox. It’s not a juice plan. It’s far more profound than that, but in some sense, I don’t know. I’ve not had anybody really describe the symptoms you might get from a water fast and all those toxins potentially being mobilized from adipose tissue or with headaches and acne and fatigue, probably because they are still eating.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. We use it as a tool. We use it—all my docs use it. We have for years. Some people can’t water fast. Some people are afraid to water fast. Multiple reasons, and it fits in, and we still get the autophagy, and we still get the stem cell rise. According to Longo, you get this real high stem cell day five, and he feels that’s why feeding on day six is important, because now you feed and almost activate those stem cells. I’ve heard him state that even in interviews. I find that that’s true. Matter of fact, even working out day five, because you have this high growth hormone, is something else that he recommends. Do you have your patients do that?
Dr. Kahn:
No. I mean, the refeeding day, five days of this, and it’s that caution on day six. That’s not burger, fry, and milkshake day. That’s not necessarily T-bone day. You will facilitate the stem cell release for a few more days if you ease back into the whole foods with some juices and some soups and kind of a lighter day. No real calorie goal there that has to be followed, but lighter foods versus heavy, and they found it makes a difference. I’m thinking, I just saw three weeks ago a 42-year-old new patient, and it turned out he’s running a two and a half billion-dollar company in Detroit and very humble but wonderful, now about 220 pounds on a 5’8” frame, and he told me, I’m stuck. I really don’t know how to get down. I work out. I eat a whole food diet, not plant-based, kind of clean Mediterranean-style diet. He took three boxes home of ProLon. He texted me. He goes, my wife wants to do this, so I thought I was going to do three. I’ll get another.
He texted me six days later, I can’t believe I’m down eight pounds. This was a breeze. My wife hated it. She just felt challenged. He goes, this was the easiest—he goes, this was easier than packing my lunch and deciding what to do. That’s the kind of ease, scientific support, and results I love to see, and he made that comment. I’m going to be so much more mindful until the next cycle rolls around. -inaudible- Can I do this more than once a month? I’ve had a very few people do it every two weeks, once or twice. It’s not that it’s unhealthy to do that. It’s a little pricy, but it’s within your goal and focus for the first month. It might really get people focused. I love that kind of tool. We all want tools, effective tools. It’s an easy tool.
Dr. Pompa:
I have to say, you’re the foodie. This book, the recipes, obviously tested and true in your restaurant, right? I just absolutely—they’re killer, man. It’s like—
Dr. Kahn:
A lot of them are very simple. Some are from my home kitchen, and my wife and I are not the classically trained chefs at the restaurant or at home. Some are from the restaurant and all, but thank you for that. They’re deemed to be pretty simple staples, overnight oats and chia pudding and grain-free pancakes and some others, but thank you for that. Yeah, there’s a three-week eating program there that might be a little twist on what people are doing.
Dr. Pompa:
No, I thought that was absolutely amazing. You mentioned mTOR. Tell reviews. I think some of them have heard this word, but it’s linked to anti-aging or aging, however you look at it. We know low protein is helpful with this mTOR, but kind of give them a little lesson on what mTOR is and why it could potentially be bad.
Dr. Kahn:
Yeah, so it is a cellular signaling pathway actually identified by Dr. Longo in a yeast model over a decade ago. It was a roll of the dice if there was going to be such an important pathway that leads to cellular proliferation and growth, rises in IGF-1, and it’s fundamental. It’s activated often by protein, specifically certain amino acids, leucine- and methionine-rich foods in the diet. Little concern about people taking a lot of branch-chain amino acids, which almost always have a lot of leucine in it. We don’t know for sure. It’s a theoretical issue. It may be for the super-athlete, it’s okay. For the average person to dump a lot of extra leucine in their body, it may activate mTOR. You might want to check your IGF-1.
The best example of why this matters and why the mTOR pathway leading to a high level of insulin-like growth factor 1, there’s a natural mutant. On the cell surface is a growth hormone receptor. There is a tribe in Ecuador this time, not Bolivia, called the Loran. L-O-R-A-N is the name of the tribe, named after an Israeli scientist, Zeb Loran, that identified these people. They have a defect in their growth hormone receptor. They don’t activate the production—oh, actually, growth hormone can’t stimulate a pathway leading to mTOR and IGF-1. They’re short -inaudible-, because they don’t have the full impact of growth hormone. They have very, very low levels of mTOR activity and IGF-1, but when compared to the general population of Ecuador, they have a fraction of cancer and a fraction of diabetes, even though their lifestyle is generally deemed not very healthy diets, not very healthy activity, high smoking rates, and this is all well-published research.
There is a scientist in Ecuador, Jamie Guevara, that studies them. Dr. Longo goes down. It’s made the point that theoretically lowering your IGF-1 through considerations of mTOR pathways may have implications for developing chronic disease and prevention of chronic disease and autophagy. That’s about where we’re at with that, but whether—plants don’t tend—the amino acid mixture of most plant foods is not very leucine-rich, it’s not very methionine-rich, and it may be why, typically, you remove dairy from your diet, IGF-1 goes down, and there goes some leucine, there goes some methionine.
I’m not telling all your listeners to adopt a completely animal-free diet if they’re on a good program with you that’s working, but being sensitive to the idea that the specific nutrients, that term called nutri-technology that Dr. Longo talks about. Protein is a way too simple of a term. It’s actually each amino acid may trigger different signaling pathways, and different foods have different combinations of those amino acids, so leucine and methionine are not necessarily in excess our friends.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, and that’s part of his work on why specific foods are why in his particular fasting-mimicking diet, which I found fascinating. It’s definitely not a study of mine like his, but I can’t wait to bring him on this show and even hear him at the seminar. Great stuff.
Dr. Kahn:
Yeah, so mTOR stands for—we used to call it mammalian target of rapamycin. Now some people have renamed it mechanistic target of rapamycin, but it’s a cellular signaling pathway. Rapamycin was actually discovered in fungi in Easter Island, if I remember. It is an antibiotic. It has some antiproliferative effects. I put in stents in people’s heart arteries that are coated with rapamycin, because it prevents proliferation of the endothelium, and the stents stay open rather than reclosing, so there’s medical uses for rapamycin. There’s some anti-aging ideas, like metformin or rapamycin. If it didn’t have important immune-suppressant side effects, it’d be an interesting anti-aging play, nothing I’m recommending, nothing I do, but it’s certainly been talked about. This pathway utilizes a receptor that rapamycin is involved with.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, the fasting-mimicking diet obviously is affecting this pathway for the better. That’s part of, I’m sure, why we’re seeing the results that we’re seeing. Is there a website? Where can I find out more about you? Where can they buy your book that I was bragging about the recipes in?
Dr. Kahn:
Certainly, start with reading your stuff. There is an interesting site that just went up called fastingblog.com people can look at. I’ve entered it there. I’ll hook that up. I’m at drjoelkahn.com, D-R-J-O-E-L-K-A-H-N.com. Links to my restaurant, links to my clinic, links to my YouTubes, Instagrams, Twitters. Like you do, I write blogs a lot, and they go on various places, but they all end up there, so I appreciate that. That’s all we’re trying to do is keep people healthy and use as much natural tools as we can.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt. Look, thank you for being on the show. I know people are going to love this information. It’s another fasting tool, and I was fascinated by your talk and how you’re using it in your practice. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and wisdom. Get the book, folks.
Dr. Kahn:
I’m a humble student of yours. Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Hey, likewise. Thank you, Joel. We’ll talk soon, I’m sure.