Some years ago,
this little town became famous
for having five centenarians
and made it to the cover of National Geographic
having five centenarians out of a couple of thousand people.
Molochio is a blue zone.
These are regions of the world where people live much longer
and healthier than the average.
The oldest person recorded here was Salvatore Caruso.
He's what you'd call a super centenarian,
having made it to 110.
He passed away in 2015,
but not before assisting those in search of eternal youth.
I think Salvatore has been an inspiration, right,
to say well, I followed this person for the last 50 years
of his life or so.
And he made it to 110 healthy.
So I've seen 110 healthy.
I've seen it with him, but it's not gonna be doable
for the the entire world population.
It's gonna be doable, I think,
for the people that listen and follow all the right moves.
Valter Longo has spent the past two decades
identifying the optimum foods
and fasting practices for living healthier and longer.
Now he's preparing for his largest human study to date
here in a remote Italian town, famous for centenarians.
This clinical trial that was just funded
by the European Community is gonna take 500 people
and it's gonna split them into two.
And it's gonna allow half of them
to sort of have the the bad modern habits.
Now, they are very different
from those of the centenarians.
So we take half of them and we let them be,
have this Western-like diet and we take the other half
and we bring them back to the longevity diet.
Longo created the longevity diet
by combining scientific research and lab work
with the study of centenarians around the world.
Longo will also be testing
his Fasting Mimicking Diet
which offers the benefits of prolonged fasting
without having to actually fast.
Fasting has been done for thousands of years, of course,
but we now have to move away again from these ideas,
words like eating or fasting,
they both mean very little
and move into exactly what do we eat and how do we fast?
So it shouldn't be about now we're gonna turn
everybody into a biohacker and use technology
and distort everything.
Instead we should learn from the past
and unite that with the science.
I plan to discuss with you
what I believe to be the most profoundly
transformational concept
and strategy as it pertains to health and aging.
So is this your first meal of the day?
It's now almost six o'clock
It will be. Yeah.
Because?
Well, because it's clear based on thousands of years
of human existence that eating less is...
If it's not starvation, or malnutrition, it's good for you.
Because why?
Yesterday I started this thing called intermittent fasting
Which is everybody's doing it.
Fasting is such an interesting part
of the longevity conversation.
We've looked at cultures where fasting is a practice, right?
Where there's ritual fasting.
And asked a question of, well,
why are these people living so long?
So we know that fasting does kick off
certain biological processes
that seem to also have a connection to longevity.
What we don't know at this point is
how long do you have to fast?
Does it work for everyone?
Or there are just certain people
of certain genetics for whom that works?
So there's still a lot of questions,
but at this point it definitely does appear
that restricting what you eat might have some impact
on how long you live and how healthy you are.
Intermittent fasting, time-restricted feeding,
and calorie restriction are just some of the popular methods
being adopted.
And while cutting down on meals
has long been viewed as a weight loss hack,
it's increasingly being practiced
as a measure to delay the aging process
and stave off chronic diseases that accompany it.
Studies have shown it has the potential
to protect against a range of age related diseases,
diabetes, heart disease and cognitive decline to name a few.
But one hurdle remains,
very few people want to do it.
Have you done it yourself?
I've done it myself, yes.
I've fasted for four days, several times.
And to me, it was very tough. Yeah.
Longo began his research in the early '90s
identifying the genes associated with aging
and how nutrients affect them.
Longo tested different fasting methods
and their effect on longevity in organisms
ranging from yeast to mice, to humans.
He found that cycles of fasting and re-feeding
cause multi-system regeneration,
enhanced cognitive performance,
and the potential to prevent and treat disease.
It's hard to imagine something
that will do more to a person than fasting.
If you look at gene expression.
So if you look at how the genes are activated or not.
One of the key mechanisms at play
is a process known as autophagy
which literally means self-eating.
During autophagy cells destroy viruses and bacteria
and get rid of damaged structures
in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells.
Damaged cells can speed up aging
and lead to cancer if they're not destroyed.
So this process is vital to health and lifespan.
The best known way to activate autophagy in humans
is fasting.
We started with water only fasting
and we started with a cancer trial using water only fasting.
And we thought, of course, somebody has cancer.
They're gonna be motivated to do this
and they're not gonna have a problem with five days
of water only fasting, but we were wrong.
So it was the U.S. government that eventually...
and the National Cancer Institute
and eventually the National Institute on Ageing
that funded research for the Fasting Mimicking Diet.
Longo created the Fasting Mimicking Diet
or FMD, a meal plan
that's formulated to stimulate a fasting state
while providing nutrients and calories
through small amounts of food.
The Fasting Mimicking Diet
is a high fat, low protein, low sugar, low calorie diet
and starts with a 1100 kilocalories on day one
and it drops to about 800 kilocalories
on day two, three, four, five,
usually between 70% to 90% compliance.
So most people don't have a problem doing this once a month
or so for a number of cycles.
The FMDs calorie restriction
mimics the body's physiological response
to traditional fasting methods.
But it's not as simple as just restricting calories.
Longo and his team spent years
perfecting nutrient combinations
that can be consumed
without triggering the body's food sensing pathways.
You place a system on a Fasting Mimicking Diet
and the system starts to shrink.
And what we are seeing is that the damaged components
are being removed first.
And then we thought, well, if this Fasting Mimicking Diet
preferentially kills damaged components,
rebellious components,
is it possible that it'll go after the cancer cells?
The autoimmune cells? The insulin resistant cells?
For the past 10 years we've been focusing on that
and finding that they do.
While Longo and his team see promising results
among patients suffering from a variety of diseases.
He stresses the FMD is not an alternative to drugs.
Instead it works most effectively in combination with them.
And I think that the doctor of the future
is gonna need to know lot more about these.
And especially now that in the United States,
healthcare costs are approaching about 20% of the GDP,
so this is not sustainable.
And food obviously is the best way to go.
Having gone through 30 clinical trials,
the FMD is in the process of getting FDA approval.
For cancer now we have just gone to the FDA
and filed what's called an IND.
So to make food into a drug, right?
So how can food be now used for cancer patients?
Longo has developed a meal delivery service
called Prolon, which people can buy the meals for the FMD.
And he recommends speaking to a medical professional
before starting.
He says he donates all his profits
from Prolon to research.
Well, first of all,
I think Valter is wrong, but he and I
have always disagreed on pretty much everything.
David Sinclair is another heavyweight
in the field of longevity and represents the conflict
that still exists within this scientific community.
While the pair agree on the biological mechanisms
at play during a fasting state,
they disagree on which are most important
and the best way to activate them.
If there's one thing I would recommend in midlife
to do that could extend your lifespan, it's fasting.
We find, my colleagues and I find that
it's not so much how much you eat and what you eat
it's when you eat.
And so don't always be fed.
Don't always give into those hunger pains.
I drink tea and I actually don't eat
probably till late lunch or dinner every day
as a way to get those body defenses going everyday.
On an average day, Sinclair fast for 22 hours,
eating just one large meal.
He encourages long daily fasts
to instigate a biological process called hormesis.
Hormesis is the adaptive response of cells and organisms
when the body is put under moderate stress.
Short bursts of stress, such as fasting
stimulate the body's mitochondria,
which convert food and oxygen into energy for cells to use.
The body's mitochondria play a crucial role
in supporting major organs,
but its functionality decreases with age.
Hormesis has been found to improve
the mitochondrial performance,
therefore improving life and health span.
These processes that we're studying.
These basically enhancing our own innate defenses
against disease, they exist within us
and we don't need medicines to turn them on.
We can skip a meal.
We can become exhausted from running.
We can lift weights.
We can eat the right foods, focus on plants,
this kind of stuff.
And we actually know
just like epidemiologists have figured out
that these are the things you can do
to enhance those defenses.
While Longo acknowledges the role of hormesis,
he suggests there may be downsides to this kind of fasting.
For example,
now we know that if you fast every day for 16 hours
and that involves skipping breakfast,
that can actually be negative for you in the long run.
And there is association will reduced lifespan.
We also know that if you fast for too long
your metabolism could slow down,
which may make it difficult
for you to maintain a lower weight.
While experts in the field
may disagree on specifics, they're all agreed on one thing,
disinformation around fasting is a major concern.
It's unfortunate.
99% of what's out there is complete rubbish.
And so what I'm trying to do as a service
is to speak to the public and say,
there is this group of scientists
who are publishing the world's top journals
that really are making progress in this area.
And while we don't have anything to prescribe just yet
it is coming soon.
And certainly there are things you can do in your lifestyle,
with your lifestyle
that'll get you ready for when those come.
Longo hopes his upcoming trial
can move the conversation along.
The 18-month study in Molochio will split 501 participants
aged 30 to 65 into three groups.
One will be a control group, so keep their usual diet.
One keeps their diet and has three cycles of FMD.
The final will be following the daily longevity diet.
The longevity diet is more a lifestyle.
So it's an everyday diet, and this is mainly vegan
but not only vegan
because you find also the fish, especially small fishes.
So avoiding the accumulation of mercury, for example,
which is neurotoxic.
And there are also some fasting periods,
for example the overnight fasting, which is around 12 hours.
And this is very important to improve metabolism
and to connect with the circadian rhythm.
All participants
will be followed by nutritionists like Cervigni,
who will monitor and review their biomarkers.
In order to define the best diet,
it is important to put together a lot of information
both from scientific field, but also from the population.
So in this way, you can test the information
that come from science in the feasibility.
So which of the informations that come from science
can be applied in everyday life.
So I think that as we change our idea
of what it means to be healthy
and look instead at what are the the biometric signals
of health, what's your blood pressure, stuff like that,
we're gonna see more emphasis
on getting people to eat foods that are good for you
and to exercise, than just asking people to lose weight
so they can be healthier.
Huge discoveries have been made
in the field of longevity and nutrition
over the past two decades, but it's still early days.
Most research has been done in cells and animals.
And while this has provided early clues
to how periods without food may affect the human body,
it will be the clinical trials
that offer the most insight
into how we can reach 100 healthy.
Yesterday for me was the first time I met centenarian
and I realized what longevity means.
So living long, but being healthy and being present,
be happy with your family.
And I think if diet can help reach longevity in this way
it's really worth it.