Episode 43: Fasting Mimicking Diet: Beyond caloric restrictions with Dr. Valter Longo

Wow! What a great conversation with Dr. Valter Longo, director of USC’s Longevity Institute. It’s always exciting to talk to someone in the trenches of bench and clinical research, especially a rock-star like Valter Longo! You can hear my nerves as we begin ☺, yet there’s much to learn about Dr. Longo’s journey from a Blue Zone upbringing in Italy to music major to biochemisty major to leading expert in articulating the biochemical and genetic underpinnings of the aging process. Dr. Longo was a post-doc under Dr. Roy Walford – famous for his research on caloric restriction and longevity. While Walford’s work – famously the 2-year Biosphere study conducted on humans – yielded remarkable improvements in chronic diseases, there were many side effects. The limitations of the human Biosphere study prompted Dr. Longo to turn his attention to longevity in single-celled organisms (S. Cervascie, specifically), then animal studies, and most recently humans. Longo designed his short term fasting mimicking diet (FMD), which does away with the fallouts he observed in long term caloric restriction. We cover a lot of great material in this conversation – and Dr. Longo makes compelling points against the unfettered use of MCT and exogenous ketones. Take a listen and let me know what you think!