Longevity Diet Review

Most of us want to live a healthy, long life. But what’s the best way to switch on your body's ability to promote cellular protection, regeneration and rejuvenation? Valter Longo Ph.D., a researcher and director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California (USC) helps answer that question, as he’s investigated this topic for over two decades. As the editor and founder of the most visited natural health site I had an opportunity to carefully review Dr. Longo’s book which is why I can post a comprehensive review on the date of publication.

By studying the effects of starvation on yeast, Longo discovered that sugar accelerates aging and premature death. He also found that limiting protein intake providing profound metabolic benefits and as a result he promotes radically reduced protein consumption. Longo recommends limiting protein to 0.31 to 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight. For most, that would mean cutting down their protein consumption by about two-thirds. If you weigh 150 pounds, you’d need just 50 grams of protein a day.

If you eat excessive protein then your regenerative potential is placed on hold. Once you remove these blocks, your stem cells are turned on, and then, during the refeeding phase, your body undergoes a major regeneration and rejuvenation phase. This is in part why intermittent fasting or fasting is so much better than chronic calorie restriction. The “magic” actually happens during the refeeding phase, after you’ve gone through a period of starvation.

If you just cut calories but never enter refeeding, you miss the opportunity to rebuild your body. So, while starvation triggers the cleanout process of autophagy and activates stem cells, refeeding triggers rebuilding, and for optimal health, you really need both.

It is Longo’s research that finally convinced me that multi-day water fasting is one of the most powerful metabolic interventions out there. There's really nothing that comes close, and the reason for this is because it switches your cells to a protected “anti-aging mode.” It promotes autophagy and replaces cell components with newly generated functional ones, thanks to the activation of stem cells. I now do a five-day water-only fast once a month, and recommend it for most people — as long as you’ve prepared yourself properly first.

A key step that made water fasting easy for me was getting into the habit of intermittently fasting 20 hours a day for at least a month. If you’re on medication, you also need to work with your doctor to ensure safety, as some medications really need to be taken with food and/or can become toxic when your body chemistry normalizes. Those taking hypoglycemic or anti-hypertensive medication are particularly at risk, as they may end up overdosing.

Longo cautions that people who should not water fast or be on the fasting mimicking diet include pregnant women, people who are seriously underweight (have low body mass index) and/or suffer from anorexia, seniors over the age of 70 (unless you’re exceptionally healthy), anyone who is fragile or people with liver or kidney disease. If you have a chronic disease, be sure to work with your doctor and have him or her closely monitor your condition.

One of the strong recommendations in Longo’s book is to actively incorporate the fasting approach if you’re undergoing treatment for cancer. Not only will it radically improve the effectiveness of the cancer therapy, but it will also decrease its side effects. In his book, Longo cites animal research showing the fasting mimicking diet in combination with treadmill exercise resulted in greater maintenance of muscle mass and a decrease in sarcopenia. Interestingly, neither strategy worked on its own.

Longo’s research also shows the fasting reduces inflammation and inflammatory diseases such as dermatitis. Cancers are reduced by nearly 50 percent. Importantly, cancers are also significantly postponed, and many tumors are also benign rather than malignant. Cognition is also improved. In mice that received the fasting mimicking diet twice a month were cognitively doing much better than the mice on the regular diet.

Another area of improvement is your immune system, which undergoes a transformation to a more youthful state. Overall, there’s a reduction in risk factors for diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, and an improvement in markers for aging. So if you are interested in increasing not only how long you live but the quality of those years then you would be strongly advised to review this book to understand how to best accomplish that with our current understanding of biology.