44. ProLon: The Fast Mimicking Diet with Dr. James Kelley

Dr. James Kelley 0:04

It's a great mental reset tool to get you back to help kickstart a healthier lifestyle. That is number one thing we heard from 90% of our customers is that it is much easier to adopt a healthy lifestyle after a loss. So if you're having trouble getting back onto a healthier diet, this is a good tool for that to mentally recalibrate you if you want to kick a sugar habit. If you want to reduce the amount of caffeine, you're drinking, portion control, cravings in general they all get better. So that is one thing we know from all of our survey data that this absolutely helps with that.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:36

Welcome to the longevity blueprint podcast, I'm your host Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life.

You're about to hear from Dr. James Kelly, who's going to break down what prolonged fasting is how it's different than intermittent fasting and what his company el neutre has assembled to make prolonged fasting easy for you to do. If you want to age well and lose weight you're not gonna want to miss this episode. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining me for another episode of The your longevity blueprint podcast today I have on James Kelly as guest he is a doctor he got his MD at The Ohio State University and was the inaugural research fellow at the Ohio Health Research and Innovation Institute. He finished his MBA at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. He holds a bachelor's degree in cell biology from the University of Virginia and completed his neuroscience Master's coursework at Miami University. Prior to joining the L neutre. Team, he was the head of inventor services at the Innovation Institute, a partnership with the Cleveland Clinic innovations group focused on developing and commercializing new and innovative health care solutions. Kind of a tongue twister there. So welcome to the show. Dr. Kelly.

Dr. James Kelley 1:49

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 1:52

So today we're gonna talk about fasting. I know that fasting was the kind of the number one strategy for dieting in the US for the past couple years. I've had previous guests talking about the benefits of intermittent fasting. My episode with Cynthia thurlow continues to be one of the top viewed episodes today. But today, I want to dive into prolonged fasting. And I think before we get there, and what your company has to offer, let's let's go back to what intermittent fasting is and even what time restricted eating or feeding is. So can you define for us what time restricted eating intermittent fasting and then prolonged fasting are and then we'll kind of get into the benefits of those?

Dr. James Kelley 2:27

Yeah, that's absolutely a great place to start. Because one of the common misconceptions is that all fasts are kind of equal, they absolutely do offer some benefits, each one is a little bit different. When people typically talk about fasting, they usually mean intermittent fasting. And when they talk about intermittent fasting, they usually mean time restricted eating. So it gets a little bit confusing what time restricted eating is, there's two main ones most people do and one is called the 1212 circadian fast where you eat all of your food within a 12 hour window, and then you fast for the rest of the day for 12 more hours. So typically, this is 8am to 8pm or sunup to sundown. And it's more in line with biologically how our system seemed to use nutrition. So it kind of lines up really well with how we absorbed food when our peak insulin curves are and you stop being when the sun goes down. And that optimizes how the body stores fat. And it does a lot of great stuff. The other version is 16 A which is a little more for a long time restricted eating weighing fast for 16 hours and eat during an eight hour window. And most popularly people typically eat around lunch till 8pm. Again, so noon to I can't do math in public, so I apologize.

But biologically actually seems like it might be better to do it early. So you do breakfast till like 4pm, which doesn't really makes sense for most people, they tend to do new names, just they are not as hungry in the morning. But unfortunately, it looks like it might be a little better to get started early. But 16 as a popular one. Intermittent fasting as we define it as a company is anything less than 48 hours, it's really less than 24 hours. So there's a couple different varieties of true full day intermittent fasting, like the five to where you do three days on one day of fasting, two days of regular eating one day of fasting. So it's like 312131213121, or you do two days of fasting in a row. And in that diet, I think they define it as like less than 400 calories of intake. So it's not truly fasting. They're just dropping the calories really low on those two days. There's also all day fasting, which is sort of a take on five to diet or every other. You're doing that. And just to clarify so when you're fasting Are you still consuming water? We do recommend that some people for various reasons like not to but I think in general most times when people say fasting water fasting is probably the best idea. Just because it turns out we have a lot of resources. One of them we don't have is like water storage. So if you go without water even for a short period of time, you can get rapidly dehydrating everything can get thrown out of whack and have more kind of side effects. not tolerate the fastball. Yeah, okay. Just just want to be clear to that as you're, you know, talking to the listeners about you know, you're eating so many days in the not eating so many days that that would include the water though you would still As you say,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 5:03

So let's get into a prolonged fasting then. So let's more talk about that.

Dr. James Kelley 5:08

Prolonged fasting, we define it as anything beyond about two days, even beyond one day really can be considered that. But that's when the body starts to really shift a little bit in how it processes food, how the gut is working, a lot of changes in how the body processes things, how the metabolism functions, what you're doing, it starts to leak over into ketosis, we can go into a little bit of depth depending on how long you do it. But there's sort of these zones of fasting, where fasting phase one is just getting into a cellular starvation state actually triggering all the things in your body that it really believes it's in a fasting state. Phase Two is really once you're in that which is typically not till at least about 24 hours into fast for some longer, and that's when you're starting to utilize more ketones.

Women tend to reach ketosis a little earlier, towards the end of day two fast men tend to think till about day three. But in phase two is when we think that's sort of the Goldilocks zone where you get a lot of systemic benefits from fasting. And depending on how much extra resources you have, internally, and how much fat you have things like that, you can stay in phase two for seven to 28 days, in some cases, under we don't want anyone attempting to belong fast without first checking with the health care professionals, it can be very dangerous, but in medically supervised fashion, people have done very, very well for a very long time, provided that they're monitored. And these are generally healthy people. Then you get into phase three, which is the danger zone that we worry a lot about, which is where you start to cannibalize organ tissue. And and that can be the really dangerous state. So zone two or phase two, a facet is really where we try to get people in our company but we're prolonged fasting, we think has the most benefits like things like neuroplasticity, does your brain work better heart rate variability improves parasympathetic tone goes down, things like even insulin sensitivity, you also see some changes in the gut where it will not produce as much of the digestive enzymes.

And because of that prolonged fasting typically does require a little bit of a transition to just back into regular food. You can't just go right back into it. Or you may be very uncomfortable. And you may have some side effects too. Yep. That's interesting that you said women had ketosis sooner than men because I would think women have like more fat than men, and it would take women longer versus that's interesting. Yeah. There's different theories why and I apologize, I'm not supremely well bet on on exactly why we just know that that tends to be what people see. In even in our diet, we do see we hear more from the women that they reach a full functional ketosis or over about point eight millimoles per deciliter of ketone bodies. So we do hear that more with the women a little bit earlier jives with what we read online. why that is, maybe it's to do with your body first, when you go into a fast before it picks up with ketones, it'll get its energy initially from glycerin, glycogen and amino acids, which are basically stored energy in the liver and the muscles designed to be really quickly used when you run out of sugar.

So if you eat a meal, you have about 12 hours of blood sugar from that meal. When that starts to go away, insulin drops, glucagon goes up, those are the hormones that regulate your blood sugar, it started to call for more energy. So your liver will liberate that easy energy from the glycerin, glycogen amino acid, your muscles will release some of their glycogen. And unfortunately, it takes a couple days in doses. And while you're waiting, you may actually cannibalize some amino acids in the muscles, which is the muscle tissue itself, the thing that makes up the sarcomeres, the muscle, the proteins in the muscle, so early on and water fast for a couple days, you're actually going to cannibalize a little bit of lean body mass and most studies that we've seen, both in animals and humans, so then when you run out of that stuff, that's when the ketosis sort of kicks in. So it could be that women just have less muscle bulk and less glucose. So yeah, yeah, very interesting. Yeah, I'll read up on that next time I go on and on veterans.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 8:52

So it sounds like kind of phase two is where the health benefits really kick in. The one being the process of a toughie G. Can you talk a little bit about a toughie G and why that's important and why we want that to happen?

Dr. James Kelley 9:03

Yeah, so autophagy is your natural intracellular finger like a recycling mechanism, your intracellular you have all these little things inside your cells called organelles, and you know, proteins and things that all do tasks, they have jobs, and as you age, and as you grow, and as the cells exist for longer, they accumulate some intracellular damage, they may not be functioning as well, they get a little more old and worn out. So autophagy is the natural process that your body will do to clean up old worn out intracellular components and essentially recycle them so if you have a an older mitochondria, it may eat the mitochondria and make a new one. And you may eat the broken misfolded proteins that are just floating around muddying up the water inside yourselves. So it's the natural way your body does that to optimize it also has other roles, which in your fat sometimes autophagy is a natural process that's always occurring. But Dr. Rose sue me and his team in Japan and I think in 2015, define how it worked in humans.

They won the Nobel Prize The next year, because it's an incredibly important process. Unfortunately, it really only starts around 24 hours, there's some people that may be able to get into it in about 20 hours. But that's when it starts. And the second you eat food again, it rapidly turns off. That's a question I have with with fasting, though. So if we don't want to fast for too long because of the dangers, if we're and I'm sure we'll get to this, and why you guys have created this product under this program, but we want to talk about Gee, I mean, temperature is happening, but we want more of that to kick in, after 24 hours. So the sweet spot is, what, 24 hours to 72 hours, or how long are those effects gonna last? Because if you start eating can then yeah, exactly.

And that's a great question, the consensus seems to be and it's very, very, very hard at the moment to measure autophagy. In humans, you generally have to take a tissue sample and do standing in a lab or look at what they call a toughie, g base and products in the bloodstream. And there's a lot of argument over how you would actually do that in the outpatient setting. So unfortunately, it's not a great way to really measure it, most of the research suggests that it's probably about 48 to 72 hours into a fastest when it peaks, which is day three to four. So it really takes several days to get all of this cleanup, and then it sort of peak comes back down. So there is a limit where it doesn't do much more, which is part of the reason why pro lawn is five days, but we'll talk about that more in a second. But it seems to start at 24 hours and then increase over time peaking at 48 to 72 hours in a water fast. So one of the reasons why we think prolonged fasting is more important in many ways.

And more beneficial than time saving eating is because of that. Now, you don't need to do it all the time, because you're not accumulating a huge amount of of old worn out tissue over a couple of weeks. It takes, you know months to do it. So once you get body kind of in fasting shape after a couple cycles of prolonged fast, you may not have to do it very often, whereas intermittent fasting has benefits that you would get if you do it every day. So we're big fans of intermittent fasting, we think it really helps with a lot of different things, including it does help manage weight. There's some other benefits that people have seen in different studies. So Dr. Longo advocates that everybody does a 1212 fast Dr. valter Longo is our founder.

So I should clarify, our founder one of the lead longevity researchers in the world, then you can be read about the longevity diet that kind of goes through all of the research and all of the he's the head of the longevity Institute at the University of Southern California is Leonard Davis School of anti aging medicine. He's got a professorship in Italy as well. He's a very well regarded researcher, and PhD, speaks a lot on longevity in general, the book goes through a lot of his observations, a lot of the data that we've gathered from the longest living healthiest populations on Earth, really breaking down how it looks like we should eat, if we want to optimize our longevity, it's not based on conjecture, it's really carefully done aggregated research and data and he talks about the impact that fasting they have on the body, he talks about longevity in general and what you should eat normally. So he really goes through all of that.

But he's a big fan of intermittent fasting, as I was saying, he does it himself 1212 every day, if you want to do a 16 eight, there are some additional challenges in some populations, there's been some research that shows they may be at an increased risk of things like gall stones, there are some heart issues for certain populations, where even that little bit longer fast can potentially make it a little more likely. But again, way more research is needed. Where even though there are there are actually 13,000 clinical trials on clinical trials.gov with the word fasting in your title going on right now. But we need to know way more than and we know a lot. Our company the bell new to the makers of prologue, which we'll talk about here, has spent at this point 10s of millions of dollars and decades of foundational research around this. So we're one of the leaders and even we know we've just scratched the surface we have a lot left to discover a lot of a lot of extra research you need to do.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 13:59

Could you be missing out on magnesium. If you aren't already taking magnesium you likely should be our deficient food sources caffeine consumption, stress and exercise rob us of magnesium which is an important cofactor for hundreds of processes in the body. It can calm your mind and ease your nerves to help you sleep at night and help reduce anxiety, PMS and headaches. It can relax your muscles when you have cramps your bowels when you're constipated, and it's required for energy hormone production and vitamin D absorption. If you're interested in exploring more about how magnesium can help support you living a longer healthier life and the exact type of magnesium supplement to look for check out my blog post the magnificence of magnesium found at your longevity blueprint comm forward slash blog and use code magnesium for 10% off our magnesium keylite product at your longevity blueprint calm. Now let's get back to the episode.

We talked a little bit about a toughie g can we you also talk about the nutrient sensing pathways and what happens to these paths when we restrict food and why that's important? I won't go through the ingredients. I'll let you kind of go through.

Dr. James Kelley 19:56

So yeah, so fall into five a plant based meal prep. Grand work each day is self contained. And that's just what he does day one. And we have breakfast, lunch and dinners, soups, snack bars, drinks, desserts, we try to make it feel like a lot of food, it's about 11 130 calories on day one, and then it drops to about 800 calories on each day after that, and we give you herbal teas, we give you all these things that have been carefully scientifically researched and designed to do one thing. And that is keep yourself in that fasting state, while giving your body sustenance to help give it some nutrition help support your lean body mass. So we can preserve as much muscle as possible during a fast but still allow you to get that fast without the hardship because the biggest challenge of fasting is adherence. 90 to 95% of people drop out by day to have a water fast, I don't know. But if you've tried to water as long as I've ever made as a day, yeah, I haven't done it longer than a day. Yeah, it's just really, really hard to do.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 20:52

And there are also some health risks because you're not eating any fat, so you're not moving your gallbladder, so your bile is sitting there. So you may be at an increased risk of gall stones, you're not eating any salt. So salt is what helps you hold on to your water in your body. So your blood is mostly water. If you don't even have salt, you're going to be hydrate and get low blood pressure very quickly. So that's a big risk with water fasting. And then you also have other challenges, like you don't have any nutrients. So you're not getting anything else to support the body. So if you're low in anything that can create a real problem. So macronutrient and micronutrients are very vital to how the body works, you're not taking those in. Beyond that you're just really hungry. So regular fasting is really tough, and Dr. Longo was not trying to create a box of food. When he got into this, he was trying to figure out how to give people the benefits that we had observed from some of the healthiest populations on earth by doing prolonged fasting, and everyone kept dropping out. So we had to figure out some way around it. So this is where the interesting part comes in. And I can if you like I can show you a couple of quick slides that it kind of illustrate how nutrient sensing pathways work and how we tricked them. If that's you.

Dr. James Kelley 21:50

You bet while you pull those up. I'll just mention based on personal experience, the kale crackers are delicious. So you do get some kale crackers, the nut bars, this product does have nuts as gluten and dairy free, but it does contain nuts. So if you have nut allergies, then this is not a program for you. Although it sounds like you guys may be developing a net free program eventually at one point, but the bars are not based at this point, the food tastes good and you don't feel like you're fasting. So I'll simplify what you just said essentially, you get the benefits of five day fast right you're going to get those phase two benefits that we were talking about what you get to eat so you don't feel like you're starving. You get the soups, you get the crackers, you get the tea, and then they're also as a glycerin drink, you alluded to preserving muscle mass can we can we before you show your slides, maybe Can you talk a little bit about that specific solution, the drink that you mix with water and why that's important and why that's different with your program. So glycerin is, as I mentioned, when you're going into a fast your body can draw energy from glycerin, glycogen and amino acids and your muscles are full of glycogen for their backup fuel. And they are made out of amino acids. So if I give you more glycerin, you will eat less glycogen, an amino acid so I'm going to preserve more muscle if I give you more glycerin. But the way glycerin works is it's a sugar alcohol, it's not digestible when you're not in fast. So they actually use it in a lot of products as a sweetener for diet products because it doesn't get absorbed Your kidneys is built right out. So when you go into a fast though, when insulin goes down, and glucagon goes up, now you can use glycerin brand, now you can absorb it.

And so that's why we get into on day two and not day one, I mean even day 234 and five and you drink it throughout the day for energy, that glycerin gets converted into energy, but it doesn't bump those nutrient sensing pathways. So they can sneak energy into the body without kicking you out of that fast. So that's one of the tricks we use in the diet to help with that. Now, one of the other things I would highlight is that you dose the glycerin by body weight. And we do that for a couple reasons. Because even though the box is one size fits all, there's only one amount of food and much larger people are eating the same amount as much smaller people, it's because your organs and a lot of the things that make up the important parts of you aren't really that different from person to person. Larger people have more skeletal muscle mass, they also have more fat, so we don't really want to preserve the fat. So the box supports your organs and your other important things and then the glycerin helps support your muscle and then we let the fat go away. So one of the things we see in our clinical trials is significant reduction in visceral fat. People lose on average, about 5.7 pounds over three cycles, they lose actually about five pounds the first time they do it, some people lose more. Now they preserve lean body mass, so they keep most of their muscle, the fat, the weight they're losing is predominantly set.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 24:37

So that's really really one of the important things we see about this is unlike some other restrictive chronic or restrictive diets who are going to you know lose fat and muscle. And when you finish those you may ramp back up again right back in this diet we saw you there's predominantly is that and if you do a couple cycles that have been over a couple months, the benefits last for a very long time, even if you don't make lifestyle changes. So that's one of the key parts of it. So

Dr. James Kelley 24:59

The diet itself, I try to make as tasty as possible. I think it's delicious. It's really well researched. But it does a couple things. I'll just show you that real quick, just so you guys can get a feel for how we think this works. So you have your normal diet of obviously stack the deck here a little bit, this is more of a typical Ohio diet, where I'm from, will activate your nutrient sensors to a very high level, which will lead to a lot of growth, but you keep all of the old worn out components inside the cell. So you have a lot of them, but they're dirty. Fasting by comparison drops down, you don't get more cells and the ones you have clean themselves up. But you'll notice you don't have to get to zero to get into this green zone. As I showed you the other one, there's a couple bars, your facet goes all the way to the bottom. What we figured out though, and this is what Dr. Longo spent decades finding out is where that line is, how much food can I sneak into your body and keep those nutrient sensing pathways below the threshold that keeps your cells in a fast but gives you food. So now we've figured out where that line is. And that's what goal one is, it's a very, very carefully designed line. And it's not just you know, 1100 or however many calories you said day one, they are strategic calories right there is a balance of the macro and micronutrients and whatnot. So this is not something that you can just do at home.

This is a like you said millions and millions of dollars have been put into researching and creating this box as well as even like the glycerin you can just go drink glycerin and fast that that's not how this works it glycerin is dosed based on weight, it's all strategically designed. Thank you for pointing nothing out even the nutball in the morning you get has about eight grams of honey in it, if I gave you eight grams of honey, you'd get kicked right out of the fast, there's no way to be fast with more than about a gram an hour, maybe a little bit more of sugar, it's going to be too much. So the way we do it, and we've shown this in clinical trials is we wrapped in a lot of nut based oils, a lot of healthy fats, so you've macadamia and coconut. And then we include a lot of plant based fiber inulin and things like that, that will help lower the glycemic load and index slow the absorption while still giving you a lot of satiety. So you get to feel full from this nut bar, because of the fats and things like that, that have been shown in other studies to help with with hunger and satiety.

And then you also get to not getting done fast because it isn't going to spike your fasting blood glucose or your any of those things, the way that traditional food would be, even though it tastes very sweet, you're not actually getting almost any of that children in a bolus, you're not getting a bunch of sugar at one time, you're getting a slow leak of it absorbed throughout the time that you're digesting. And so all the food is really carefully designed. So it's the ratio that matters. So how much protein how much sugar and carbs and how much fat that's very carefully controlled. And then it's the amounts of 800 calories a day after day one. And then it's the composition How did we put those specific foods together. So all of that matters. That's why I think the diet is so important, we did all the thinking for you too, which is the other thing when you're in a fast on a two and three, trying to figure out how to make food and not go too much and not go over it is almost impossible. So trying to keep yourself in a fast and with a homemade kit is going to be pretty challenging, and we know ours works. And it's I think if you remember that you're not you're not paying for any alcohol or anything else you're during the diet you're not paying for any foods other than the diet it actually ends up not even being that expensive, and you get all the benefits of a fast so a lot of really cool stuff. We did the thinking for you. I think everyone can really enjoy it.

So I know you've got a couple bucks I encourage everyone at home is listening to this one to consider giving it a shot because I know it can be a little intimidating. So and we can absolutely talk about the experience on the diet too. I want to go back to glycerin for a moment though, just because I am someone who has had a problem with sugar alcohols and I never really thought of glycerin as a sugar alcohol before. I guess I don't usually consume that much glycerin. So do you find that patients who have fructose intolerance can tolerate the glycerin or no, we rarely hear we date you on the diet can be the transition day for most people. So they if they're going to get a headache, they get it on day two, if they're going to feel a little lightheaded, they tend to feel it on day two or three. So day two is when we start the glycerin. So a lot of people think the glycerin cause it's not really the glycerin if you just skip the glycerin, you can still get your headache, it still made me feel fatigued or week or something like that.

So, so we do hear a lot of complaints about on day two, just because people mistake them what they're feeling for being due to glycerin, we do not typically get too many issues with it. It's a very clean very it's a small amount, we're not giving you a huge amount of glycerin and people are surprised at how little they actually need. So in terms of if you have a sugar, alcohol sensitivity, some people kind of classify it as a little bit of a modified carbohydrate. So it depending on how how you look at it, I we generally don't get too many issues where people do pretty and if they want to skip it, you know the issue might be that you might lose a little more lean body mass. It's not going to affect it. So if you don't think the question is good for you, when you choose to discontinue it, that's up to you. That's your prerogative. It's not going to affect the fasting mimicking effect of the diet. Wonderful. Thanks

Dr. Stephanie Gray 30:00

Talk about how prolon is recommended. So you earlier in the interview alluded to three cycles, you said you get the benefits without having to do this forever. But the recommendation, I believe is five days, three times, ideally consecutively. So that would be five days a month, three months in a row, correct. But ultimately, it's up to you when depending on your goal.

Dr. James Kelley 30:20

So if you have weight loss, or metabolic goals, most people like to follow our clinical trials protocol, which was we did two different browsers, one was three months, and one was four. And they looked at slightly different things. And we can talk about those later, but three months in a row of one cycle each month, followed by three months later of this follow up. So we looked at the ball, we saw that they lose a bunch of weight, the first time that they typically regain about half of it over the next month. The second time, they keep more of it off for longer the third time is really when it sticks, that's when you're in kind of a fasting shape.

So it's like going to the gym, you got to get in shape. Once you get in shape, you can work out a little more of a maintenance workout and keep the benefit. So it's Same thing with fast. And so if you have metabolic or weight loss goals, we do see people do a lot better if they do three cycles over the course of three months. And then once a year, do that. And then once a year do that most people like to do about once every three to six months. Ultimately it's up to you. When you say once you mean one five day cycle, every three site, okay, every time you say, yeah, so most people are going to want to probably do it once every three to four months. If they've done the three months in a row and haven't reached their goal. As long as they have adequate body mass and no other real underlying safety issues, it appears very safe to continue even once a month if they choose every month going forward.

And some people use it as the only thing they do. And then they misbehave the rest of the month, and they just keep doing rolling forever. And as long as they have adequate body mass, they've all done extremely well. We don't have any published data on that though. So we can't even statements on that. Primarily, we would say, three months in a row, see where you're at evaluate what's best for you moving forward? Sure. Let's, let's talk a little bit about what data you do have. So in the clinical trials that you have conducted, what biomarkers have improved, the main claims that we make are weight loss, healthy aging, metabolic balance, and cardio metabolic support as part of the healthy lifestyle. And the data that we have on that we show most of it is around body composition. So people lose a significant amount of weight, they most of it is visceral fat, significant reduction in waist circumference, about 1.6 inches off their waist over those three cycles. With preservation of lean body mass again, we also show that to help maintain healthy levels of IGF one, which is, as we mentioned that marker that may be in healthy aging, and then we help with metabolic balance with helping to maintain healthy levels and systolic blood pressure.

Now, there are a lot of limits about how we talked about data. And our studies are considered fairly small at this point, they're not FDA level. So we did measure a number of other biomarkers, but those are the ones we limit our claims to. Sure, sure, I can tell you from personal experience with my patients. So typically, when patients lose weight, yes, blood pressure can go down, cholesterol can go down, insulin resistance can improve. And typically when patients are eating clean, their inflammation in general goes down. So body aches can get better. I've seen, I've seen a lot of I know you can't make claims. I'm just talking to the listeners about what I've seen from my experience, patients tend to feel a lot better when they do this. And we know, with all of the pathways we've mentioned, we know this is going to help the aging process. So you're in with you want to consider fasting Yes, you get the short term many times benefit of weight loss. But most patients are in this for the long haul, right? They're wanting to live longer. So some of the benefits we don't see immediately. Some of those aging benefits can take a long time

for another another reason to it and there's actually there is none of the reasons evolve, which are all great. I think the idea that you might be helping optimize Healthy Aging is a great one and certainly huge, huge you've been doing it but even in the short term. For me it's a behavioral tool. So I am a poorly a Midwestern Irish guy loves his steak and loves his carbs. And when I do the diet for about a couple months afterwards, my cravings are significantly reduced. And we've done surveys 1000s of our customers that show the same thing. After one cycle, cravings are reduced. Your energy levels are higher mental clarity and focus go up. It's much easier to make healthy choices. And this is really big for right now. We've all been it's never ending downer of a year where everybody kind of fallen off the wagon. It's a great mental reset tool to get you back to help kickstart a healthier lifestyle. That is number one thing we heard from 90% of our customers that it is much easier to adopt a healthy lifestyle after a box.

So if you're having trouble getting back onto a healthier diet, this is a good tool for that to mentally recalibrate you if you want to kick a sugar habit. If you want to reduce the amount of caffeine, you're drinking, portion control trades in general they all get better. So that is one thing we know from all of our survey data that this absolutely helps with that. So even if you're just looking at it, like I'm not sure I want to commit to three, but I may want to try one. There's a great reason to try one right there and then you'll notice it you'll notice that you got through it the first time is usually the rockiest for everybody because it's when you

buddies just first figuring out how to do this. So if you're not a regular, faster first time can be a little rocky in the middle, but you most people get through just fine. And we have plenty of support, we can give you an obviously Dr. Greg can help you too. But we want to, you know, lower the burden for you. You can do anything for five days. But let's talk about that real quick. I just have a few more questions for you. So if someone is struggling, day two, day three, day four, I have patients who call in and say, Can I take lithium because that helps me detox. Well, that helped me I mean, I have patients ask all kinds of questions. Yeah, which is, but yeah, so what can they do, I usually say drink more water, drink more water. So there's,

one is we do recommend people drink plenty of water, I think it's super important to stay hydrated. And however much that means to you depends on how much salt you eat, and how much you normally drink in water, because your kidneys just get used to whatever you normally do. So if you're normally drinking a certain amount of water, you probably have to drink more, because you don't realize you get a lot of your water from your food as well. And you're just going to have less food in our diet. Even though we try to make it feel like a lot, there's less of it. So you will need to probably drink a little bit more water at least probably 32 fluid ounces, that's one get rest, stay active that helps to yoga, stretching, brisk walking, those are all beneficial, it helps your blood vessels kind of maintain their tone. So they're they're used to being a certain level of open. And when you fast, they may not be as good at adjusting anymore, because you've taken away their favorite food source glucose, so blood vessels need to open and close using energy too. So as you go into a fast, you just need to help keep the body kind of tone to the way it's supposed to be.

If you're a coffee drinker, have your cup of coffee that will make it easier, or two cups of espresso or two black or green teas, you can do all that or even six cups of decaf. So that'll help the diet a little bit you can use over the counter meds if you need to for headaches and things like that as long as you're using them as directed. But then in terms of if you're really struggling day two or three, you just really want to break it you need something, you can have two slices of an apple, or a stalk of celery or a couple slices of cucumber. That'll help you get through it sit down and have some of the L drink to that may give you a boost of energy, which has the glycerin. That's the glycerin drink. Yeah, yeah, you should be drinking that throughout the day, the meal cards a little unclear, but you should be drinking the glycerin throughout the day. Usually you mix it in your water bottle, fill it up. And if you want to add like a hibiscus tea to the water or something just in to change the flavor a little bit. That's what I do. But definitely don't get in a car feeling lightheaded, sit down, have l drink. If you need the slices of Apple have those two, if you are experiencing concerns, or safety issues or anything, please don't hesitate to call your doc. We want people to be safe first. If you need to discontinue the diet, do that too.

And we'll figure out what to do at the back end. But first and foremost, make sure you're staying safe. Sure. Who should not do this. So what are the major contraindications to doing this? Yeah, the number one would probably be insulin dependent diabetes we don't medications are stupid, they don't adjust themselves, they need other people to adjust them. So if you're taking a medication that's supposed to do one set amount of change to your blood sugar, and then you add the diet in, which does a similar amount, the now you have that much change when all you needed was that much. So that's trouble. So if you're on insulin, we don't recommend this, we don't have safety data, it may end up being something that we have in the future. But at the moment, we don't have it. So we recommend against that we're doing a ton of research with cancer. But this product is not the focus of that research. And the way we do that research is very tailored to the type of cancer and the type of treatment you're getting with it. So this is not something that we recommend for people with cancer, we just don't have again, safety and outcomes. What about pregnancy and lactation and probably not for pregnancy.

If you're pregnant or breastfeeding, don't do this, because you want the baby grow. And this is your calories. This is a time of your life you need more calories you got now the argument would be that we were as cave people running out of food still having babies and breastfeeding. So it is somewhat protected. But we still don't want to put your baby at risk. We also don't know what the IGF one changes do to the body until we do just stay away from it for that for now. Same with people under 18. We don't know the long term impact and even even a couple days of fasting on growth curves, we don't want to stunt their growth. We also don't know if this is the right diet even work for them. Because their nutritional their IGF one levels may do a different thing at that age. So until we have the data, we don't really want to do that either. So if you're under 18, your BMI is under 18.5. So if you're very lean, you need to have a certain amount of visceral fat and fat in general, to be able to make your own energy, the diet is not enough. So if you are too lean, you're going to lose some body mass, you may actually need some important things and we don't want to do that. So if you're too lean is not the diet for you, unfortunately. And then if you are sick, no one's done a study on during fasting, how severe any illnesses we know there are a lot of studies that are looking at and does fascinating for Debian system, what happens afterwards, but in the middle of a fast we don't have great data. So at the moment, we want to be careful that we don't drop your white blood cell count or something while you're trying to COVID or something like that. Soif you're in a high risk category, now is not the time to do this.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 39:58

But the majority of Americans are overweight and greatly benefit from from this program?

Dr. James Kelley 40:04

Yeah, I certainly think so. I think that if it's not last five days baffling with your doctor's supervision, I'm a big fan of prolonged fasting, I think it works really well. But again, you say, so if you do have any underlying medical condition, you need to go through a planation. To do this safely. There are challenges even to just regular, even intermittent fasting can have its challenges for certain people. So please, please, please be safe first. But let us help you in any way we can. So when we launched pro lawn here, at our practice, we launched this initial green and white kit. Since that time, you have launched a professional line pro on Pro, can you differentiate the differences between the initial and the professional line? Yes, professional, for one is only going to be available through you the clinician, so you can't get it online.

But I think everybody should be going through the petition anyway, it's always the best way to do it. The professional version is designed slightly different than the original version does pro on standard, as we say, they both have the exact same macronutrient ratio, they're both going to give you the exact same autophagy and intracellular benefits, they're both designed to trigger the same fasting related benefits. In addition to that, the formulation for colon Pro is designed around what they call the auto immune protocol, we just have lower inulin. There's no inulin in the soups, in proin professional, some people have some trouble with that fiber, there's reduced grains, and there is an eliminated nightshades. So the nightshades, tomato, bell pepper, eggplant is couple of potato,

they can be considered to be for certain people, they're a little bit different depending on your underlying condition. So

Dr. Stephanie Gray 41:34

they can be inflammatory for many patients. So part of an autoimmune protocol is to avoid those unless you've then avoided those in that

Dr. James Kelley 41:41

kit, we designed to eliminate those there still is some tomato powder and our one capsule, but it is not the skin of the tomato. So theoretically, the less dangerous party in such a minuscule amount that it shouldn't be too much of an issue, but just to be fully transparent there. But it is designed to be much more in line with that. So that's one of them, we also give you a dark chocolates where every day, so in addition to all the other little, little tasting sweetness. So if you're like me, and that makes all the difference, it can be a really nice thing. So that being said, I think a lot of people still really enjoy the pro one standard version one in two of the suits that they have different flavor profiles. So we now have three different varieties of soup for the diet. So depending on whatever your flavor, if you'd like more Mediterranean style, you go with their original, if you like a more conservative umami more Midwestern, you would go with version two, which has things like butternut squash and is a little more, I guess, I would say savory. And then once the the professional version, I think like I prefer that even more of the other two, but I think they're all great. And they all do a very, very similar thing, they all are adhering to the clinical trial. So they're all going to be very similar in those outcomes. We designed blonde Pro, just for certain individuals who may need that extra amount.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 42:54

And we cater to our patients. And then if they really only want the tomato or the squash soup, we'll swap out the soups for we've, we've done that for patients that they really are averse to one, we can make this work for you. Because we want you to be successful, we want you to want to repeat this, we want you to see results.

Dr. James Kelley 43:09

Yeah. And if there is something individual that happens, it's going to be that you want to talk about we're available as a company, we try to do a really good job of, of staying in touch helping support you during it. We want everyone to sign up for emails during the diet. So they get each day you get an email reminder, here's what's happening internally today, here's what you can do to help troubleshoot and giving you some encouragement. But again, you guys can do anything for five days.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 43:30

Well, thank you so much. This is very informative. Thanks for sharing what your company has to offer, specifically the Healthy Aging strategy of using prolonged fasting. So tell us where we can find you and your company and what your websites our social media channels, we want to make sure we stick focus through you guys. So

Dr. James Kelley 43:47

we want to support you as

you go through medical education, we have a little contact tab on our website, which is we apologize, we keep changing the names but I believe we have one that hasn't changed colon FMD or fasting mimicking diet pro on FMD calm, I believe we also have roll on fast, calm and pro lawn professional calm but the mind for the clinicians, so it's not gonna be quite as applicable for you guys, you want to go on Instagram, I believe it's also pro on FMD we might have finally acquired the morning and also. But again, if you are going through your planation I really want you to stick with your clinicians always more successful that way you'll get better benefits, you can talk more about any medical conditions you may have. If you try to go through the website and you have an underlying condition, we're gonna gonna kick you back out.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 44:34

So I want to make sure that we take good care of yourself again, and I look forward to working with you guys in the future and anything you have any questions? Yes, specifically, I'm happy to try to answer myself. Thanks again for coming on the show. I look forward to launching this episode in early 2021. So hopefully we can all do this prolonged fast together patients and listeners like so thank you for coming on the show. Get a group together. It's always easier when you do with a group. That's one thing I would say. So if you're the only one doing in your household, it might be a little tough. Definitely

Dr. James Kelley 45:00

easier as a group so let's get together and support each other doing this, the healthier 2021

Dr. Stephanie Gray 45:05

that's the plan. Cheers to that.

Dr. James Kelley 45:07

Cheers. Thank you so much.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 45:10

If you reference this podcast, we'll offer you $25 off your pro lawn or pro lawn professional kit from the integrative health and hormone clinic. We carry both at my office and can shift nationwide. I would love to hear your results. What are you waiting for the best time is now be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck. You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time the course is 50% off, check this offer out at your longevity blueprint.com and click the course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. And leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics, guests for how you're applying what you've learned on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. The podcast is produced by the team at counterweight creative. As always, thanks so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting.

The information provided in this podcast is educational. No information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai