The Fast-Mimicking Diet

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Live, Fast, Live Long

This is Dr. Valter Longo. He’s a biogerontologist and cell biologist, whose work has focused on fasting and nutrient response genes, and how we can leverage them against diseases and aging in general.

We reviewed his book recently:

The Longevity Diet: Discover The New Science To Slow Aging, Fight Disease, And Manage Your Weight – by Dr. Valter Longo

What does he want us to know?

What to eat

Dr. Longo recommends a mostly plant-based diet (especially vegetables, whole grains, and legumes), but also having some fish. The bulk of our dietary fats, however, he says are best coming from olive oil and nuts.

He also advises aiming for nutritional density of vitamins and minerals in our diet, and/but supplementing with a multivitamin once every few days to cover any gaps.

If in doubt choosing between plant-based whole foods, he recommends that we choose those our ancestors will have eaten.

Read more: Longevity Diet For Adults

When to eat

Dr. Longo recommends time-restricted eating within a 12-hour window per day.

See also: Intermittent Fasting: We Sort The Science From The Hype

However, he also recommends (additionally or separately; it’s up to us; additionally is better but the point is it still has excellent benefits separately too) his “fast-mimicking diet” (FMD), which involves eating according to what we said in “What to eat”, but restricting it to 750 kcal per day, 5 days in a row, but not necessarily 5 days per week.

For example, the following was a 3-month study that involved doing this for only one 5-day cycle per month:

❝Three FMD cycles reduced body weight, trunk, and total body fat; lowered blood pressure; and decreased insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). No serious adverse effects were reported.

A post hoc analysis of subjects from both FMD arms showed that body mass index, blood pressure, fasting glucose, IGF-1, triglycerides, total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and C-reactive protein were more beneficially affected in participants at risk for disease than in subjects who were not at risk.

Thus, cycles of a 5-day FMD are safe, feasible, and effective in reducing markers/risk factors for aging and age-related diseases.❞

~ Dr. Min Wei et al. ← Dr. Longo was

Note: the introduction mentions FMD in mice, but this is just referencing previous studies. This study is about FMD in humans!

Read in full: Fasting-mimicking diet and markers/risk factors for aging, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease

Want to know more?

You might like this (text-based) interview with Dr. Longo, with the Health Sciences Academy:

Eat, fast and live longer? Interview with Professor Valter Longo

Take care!

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  • Dates vs Raisins – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing dates to raisins, we picked the dates.

    Why?

    There are benefits for each fruit, but we say dates come out on top. See what you think:

    In terms of macros, while they’re both dried fruits, dates contain more water (unless you leave them sitting open for a while), which will tend to mathematically lower the relative percentages of other components because they’re being held against water weight too. However, even though this is the case (i.e. dates are being mathematically disadvantaged), dates contain more than twice the fiber that raisins do (8g/100g compared to raisins’ 3.7g/100g).

    While we’re talking macros, dates are also lower in total carbs, as well as obviously net carbs, and have a much lower glycemic index than raisins (dates have a glycemic index of 42, considered low, while raisins have a glycemic index of 64, considered medium; their respective glycemic loads are even more telling: 13 for raisins and just 2 for dates!).

    About those carbs… For dates, it’s an approximately equal mix of sucrose, glucose, and fructose, while for raisins it’s 49% glucose and 49% fructose. Because sucrose is the only disaccharide here, this (as well as the fiber difference) is one of the reasons for the different glycemic indices and glycemic loads, since glucose and fructose are more quickly absorbed.

    That’s more than we usually write about macros, but in this case, both fruits are ones especially often hit with the “aren’t they full of sugar though?” question, so it was important to cover the critical distinctions between the two, because they really are very different.

    Summary of macros: dates win easily in every aspect we looked at

    In the category of vitamins, raisins get a tally in their favor. Raisins are higher in vitamins B1, B2, C, E, K, and choline, while dates are higher in vitamins A, B3, B5, and B9, giving raisins a 6:4 lead here. In dates’ defense, the difference in vitamin K is marginal, and it’d make it a 5:4 lead if we considered that within the margin of error (because all these figures are of course based on averages), and the vitamins that dates are higher in, the margins are much wider indeed, meaning that both fruits have approximately the same overall levels of vitamins when looked at in total, but still, we’ll call this category a nominal win for raisins.

    When it comes to minerals, dates have more magnesium, selenium, and zinc, while raisins have more copper, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. Nominally that’s a 4:3 lead for raisins, but if we consider that raisins also contain more sodium, it’s more like a tie here. If we have to pick one though, this is a very slight win for raisins.

    Adding up the sections, we have one huge win for dates (macros) with two very marginal wins for raisins—hence, we say that dates win out.

    Still, of course enjoy both; diversity is good for the health.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Power Plates – by Gena Hamshaw

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Superfoods are all well and good, but there are only so many ways one can reasonably include watercress before it starts becoming a chore.

    Happily, Gena Hamshaw is here with a hundred single-dish vegan meals, that are not only nutritionally balanced as the subtitle promises, but also, as the title suggests, are nutritional powerhouses too.

    In the category of criticism, some ingredients are not so universally available as others. For example, depending on where you live, your local supermarket might not have freekeh, gochujang, or pomegranate molasses.

    However, most of the recipes have ingredients that are easy enough to source in any medium-sized supermarket, and for the ones that aren’t, we do recommend ordering the ingredient online and trying something you might not otherwise have experienced—that’s an important thing in life, after all!

    Bottom line: if you’d like plant-based meals that are packed full of nutrients and are delicious too, this is a top-tier recipe book.

    Click here to check out Power Plates, and enjoy a wide variety of plant-based cuisine!

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  • The Sweetener That Interferes With Hunger/Satiety Signals

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Non-sugar sweeteners came under fire from the World Health Organization a couple of years ago:

    The Problem With Sweeteners ← this is mostly about how they prompt cravings of increasingly sweeter foods/drinks, but there are other considerations discussed too

    And sucralose (which is technically a sugar, but isn’t processed by the body as sugar, so it “doesn’t count” as such; the body treats it as a dietary fiber instead) got some bad press of its own:

    The Sucralose News: Scaremongering Or Serious? ← the answer is both, by the way, but there’s nuance here, so do read the article!

    And now, there’s more news about how sucralose specifically interferes with the brain’s hunger/satiety signals:

    The study

    A medium-sized (n=75) study of adults looked at the brain’s responses to, varyingly,

    • Water
    • Sucralose in water
    • Sucrose in water (matched to be the same sweetness as the sucralose)

    …using MRI, focusing on hunger-related regions like the hypothalamus.

    Additionally, blood samples were taken to measure glucose, insulin, and satiety hormone (GLP-1) levels.

    As for what they found:

    • Sucralose kept hunger signals active in the brain for up to 35 minutes, unlike sucrose, which reduced hunger activity quickly.
    • There was increased hypothalamic blood flow after sucralose intake, which meant heightened hunger signaling.
    • Participants felt hungrier after consuming sucralose compared to sugar
    • Sugar intake increased blood glucose (obviously), suppressing hunger, whereas sucralose had no such effect (again, reasonable, though it was worth checking, because if sucralose had an effect on insulin response, that would indirectly affect blood sugar levels one way or the other, depending on the effect on insulin levels—but that didn’t happen, so for now we may assume sucralose doesn’t affect insulin or insulin signalling).
    • Women exhibited twice the hypothalamic response to sucralose compared to men, reinforcing sex-based differences in appetite control. Specifically, it was most likely hormonal differences that drove this, since the study’s participants were young adults (ages 18–35); it’s possible that if older adults had been included, untreated menopause could have changed these stats. But that latter’s just a hypothesis for now.
    • Sucralose enhanced brain connectivity between the hypothalamus and motivation/reward-processing areas, potentially increasing cravings.

    You can read the paper itself here:

    Non-caloric sweetener effects on brain appetite regulation in individuals across varying body weights

    The practical takeaway? Sucralose interferes with the brain’s “full” signals, keeping you hungrier for longer, which will (all else being equal) incline you to eat more than you would otherwise.

    So, it might be worth skipping sucralose, unless you specifically want to increase how much you eat.

    Want to learn more?

    You might want to check out:

    Carbonated Water: For Weight Loss, Satiety, Or Just Gas?

    Take care!

    Share This Post

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  • Beetroot vs Eggplant – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing beetroot to eggplant, we picked the beetroot.

    Why?

    It’s close!

    In terms of macros, they’re equal on fiber, while beetroot has slightly more protein and carbs. In both cases, despite being quite firm vegetables when raw, they are nevertheless both mostly water. We’re calling this category a tie.

    In the category of vitamins, beetroot has more of vitamins A, B2, B9, and C, while eggplant has more of vitamins B3, B5, B6, E, and K. That’s a marginal victory for eggplant.

    When it comes to minerals, however, beetroot has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while eggplant is not higher in any minerals. A clear and easy win for beetroot this time.

    In terms of polyphenols, both have good-but-different health-giving polyphenols to share, including the quercetin in beetroot and caffeic acid in eggplant—nothing that would tip one ahead of the other, though.

    All in all, the categories added up are balanced, but beetroot won the minerals category much more convincingly than eggplant won the vitamins category, so we’re giving this one to beetroot, even if only on tie-breakers!

    Of course, enjoy either or both; diversity is good 😎

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Beetroot For More Than Just Your Blood Pressure ← more beetroot benefits

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  • Practical Optimism – by Dr. Sue Varma

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    We’ve written before about how to get your brain onto a more positive track (without toxic positivity), but there’s a lot more to be said than we can fit into an article, so here’s a whole book packed full with usable advice.

    The subtitle claims “the art, science, and practice of…”, but mostly it’s the science of. If there’s art to be found here, then this reviewer missed it, and as for the practice of, well, that’s down to the reader, of course.

    However, it is easy to use the contents of this book to translate science into practice without difficulty.

    If you’re a fan of acronyms, initialisms, and other mnemonics (such as the rhyming “Name, Claim, Tame, and Reframe”), then you’ll love this book as they come thick and fast throughout, and they contribute to the overall ease of application of the ideas within.

    The writing style is conversational but with enough clinical content that one never forgets who is speaking—not in the egotistical way that some authors do, but rather, just, she has a lot of professional experience to share and it shows.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to be more optimistic without delving into the delusional, this book can really help a lot with that (in measurable ways, no less!).

    Click here to check out Practical Optimism, and brighten up your life!

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  • Needle Pain Is a Big Problem for Kids. One California Doctor Has a Plan.

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Almost all new parents go through it: the distress of hearing their child scream at the doctor’s office. They endure the emotional torture of having to hold their child down as the clinician sticks them with one vaccine after another.

    “The first shots he got, I probably cried more than he did,” said Remy Anthes, who was pushing her 6-month-old son, Dorian, back and forth in his stroller in Oakland, California.

    “The look in her eyes, it’s hard to take,” said Jill Lovitt, recalling how her infant daughter Jenna reacted to some recent vaccines. “Like, ‘What are you letting them do to me? Why?’”

    Some children remember the needle pain and quickly start to internalize the fear. That’s the fear Julia Cramer witnessed when her 3-year-old daughter, Maya, had to get blood drawn for an allergy test at age 2.

    “After that, she had a fear of blue gloves,” Cramer said. “I went to the grocery store and she saw someone wearing blue gloves, stocking the vegetables, and she started freaking out and crying.”

    Pain management research suggests that needle pokes may be children’s biggest source of pain in the health care system. The problem isn’t confined to childhood vaccinations either. Studies looking at sources of pediatric pain have included children who are being treated for serious illness, have undergone heart surgeries or bone marrow transplants, or have landed in the emergency room.

    “This is so bad that many children and many parents decide not to continue the treatment,” said Stefan Friedrichsdorf, a specialist at the University of California-San Francisco’s Stad Center for Pediatric Pain, speaking at the End Well conference in Los Angeles in November.

    The distress of needle pain can follow children as they grow and interfere with important preventive care. It is estimated that a quarter of all adults have a fear of needles that began in childhood. Sixteen percent of adults refuse flu vaccinations because of a fear of needles.

    Friedrichsdorf said it doesn’t have to be this bad. “This is not rocket science,” he said.

    He outlined simple steps that clinicians and parents can follow:

    • Apply an over-the-counter lidocaine, which is a numbing cream, 30 minutes before a shot.
    • Breastfeed babies, or give them a pacifier dipped in sugar water, to comfort them while they’re getting a shot.
    • Use distractions like teddy bears, pinwheels, or bubbles to divert attention away from the needle.
    • Don’t pin kids down on an exam table. Parents should hold children in their laps instead.

    At Children’s Minnesota, Friedrichsdorf practiced the “Children’s Comfort Promise.” Now he and other health care providers are rolling out these new protocols for children at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland. He’s calling it the “Ouchless Jab Challenge.”

    If a child at UCSF needs to get poked for a blood draw, a vaccine, or an IV treatment, Friedrichsdorf promises, the clinicians will do everything possible to follow these pain management steps.

    “Every child, every time,” he said.

    It seems unlikely that the ouchless effort will make a dent in vaccine hesitancy and refusal driven by the anti-vaccine movement, since the beliefs that drive it are often rooted in conspiracies and deeply held. But that isn’t necessarily Friedrichsdorf’s goal. He hopes that making routine health care less painful can help sway parents who may be hesitant to get their children vaccinated because of how hard it is to see them in pain. In turn, children who grow into adults without a fear of needles might be more likely to get preventive care, including their yearly flu shot.

    In general, the onus will likely be on parents to take a leading role in demanding these measures at medical centers, Friedrichsdorf said, because the tolerance and acceptance of children’s pain is so entrenched among clinicians.

    Diane Meier, a palliative care specialist at Mount Sinai, agrees. She said this tolerance is a major problem, stemming from how doctors are usually trained.

    “We are taught to see pain as an unfortunate, but inevitable side effect of good treatment,” Meier said. “We learn to repress that feeling of distress at the pain we are causing because otherwise we can’t do our jobs.”

    During her medical training, Meier had to hold children down for procedures, which she described as torture for them and for her. It drove her out of pediatrics. She went into geriatrics instead and later helped lead the modern movement to promote palliative care in medicine, which became an accredited specialty in the United States only in 2006.

    Meier said she thinks the campaign to reduce needle pain and anxiety should be applied to everyone, not just to children.

    “People with dementia have no idea why human beings are approaching them to stick needles in them,” she said. And the experience can be painful and distressing.

    Friedrichsdorf’s techniques would likely work with dementia patients, too, she said. Numbing cream, distraction, something sweet in the mouth, and perhaps music from the patient’s youth that they remember and can sing along to.

    “It’s worthy of study and it’s worthy of serious attention,” Meier said.

    This article is from a partnership that includes KQED, NPR, and KFF Health News.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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