Episode 64: Valter Longo talks about the fasting-mimicking diet and the keys to longevity

Today’s episode features Dr. Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California. Valter is best known for his research on stem cells and aging as well as his fasting-mimicking diet. Often referred to as FMD, the diet is intended to avoid the downsides of fasting while reaping the health benefits of a calorie-restrictive diet. Over a 25-year career, Valter has published numerous papers about the ways specific diets can activate stem cells and promote regeneration and rejuvenation in multiple organs to reduce the risk for diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease. He writes about this research and diet in a book that was released earlier this year, “The Longevity Diet: Discover the New Science Behind Stem Cell Activation and Regeneration to Slow Aging, Fight Disease and Optimizer Weight.” The book details an easy-to-follow everyday diet that is combined with short periods of the fasting-mimicking diet. Valter says the diet has the potential to help people live healthier and longer lives. Valter is a native of Genoa, Italy and moved Chicago when he was 16. He received his bachelor’s of science degree at the University of North Texas in 1992 and his Ph.D. at UCLA in 1997. Links: Longevity Center website: http://longevityinstitute.usc.edu Longo’s USC faculty page: http://gero.usc.edu/faculty/longo/ “The Longevity Diet”: https://amzn.to/2s1fcky A periodic diet that mimics fasting promotes multi-system regeneration: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4509734/ Fasting-Mimicking Diet Promotes Ngn3-Driven β-Cell Regeneration: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30130-7 Fasting-mimicking diet and markers/risk factors for aging: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/9/377/eaai8700 Prolon FMD website: https://prolonfmd.com/fasting-mimicking-diet/?doing_wp_cron=1526216346.5062971115112304687500 Show notes: 2:24: Dawn opens the interview by mentioning that Valter was born and raised in Genoa, Italy, the hometown of Christopher Columbus. She asks if reports of him driving his neighbors mad playing Dire Straits, Jimmy Hendricks and Pink Floyd on his electric guitar as a youth are accurate. 2:43: Dawn asks Valter what his parents said when he tried to talk them into letting him go to London to be a rock star when he was 12 years old? 3:10: Valter left home when he was 16 to go visit an aunt in Chicago, but ended up staying in Chicago to go to school and play music. Dawn asks what that was like? 3:49: Dawn comments on how in addition to being exposed to some of the best blues music in the world, Valter also was exposed to some of the unhealthiest food in the world. Valter then talks about what he refers to as “the heart-attack diet.” 4:48: Dawn asks what lead Valter to attend the University of North Texas College of Music. 5:30: Valter joined the Army Reserve to help pay for college and ended up assigned to a battalion of Army tankers. Ken asks Valter what that was like. 6:15: Dawn asks if it’s true that the idea of directing a marching band lead Valter to switch majors as a sophomore. 7:07: Dawn comments on how not many jazz performance majors, who have never taken a biology course, decide to switch their major to biochemistry. She asks Valter what the people in the biochemistry department had to say about that. 8:04: Dawn mentions that when Valter was five years old, he saw his ailing grandfather pass away. She asks him to talk about that experience and the role it played in his decision to study aging. 9:14: Dawn mentions that after switching over to biochemistry and graduating from college in 1992, Valter headed to UCLA, which at the time was one of the world’s leading centers of longevity research. She asks Valter how that opportunity came about. 10:22: Ken brings up Valter’s work at UCLA in the lab of the pathologist, Roy Walford. Valter studied the effects of caloric restriction in the lab and ...